Why Paul Graham is sort of wrong about philosophy - <AUTHOR> http://philosophicalhacker.com/2014/05/26/why-paul-graham-is-sort-of-wrong-about-philosophy/ <comment><USER2> What surprised me the most about PG's essay was his use of tiny small sample size to make a broad statement about an entire field of study. He puts together an interesting argument about the pros and cons of ancient Greek philosophy and their discussion of metaphysics, and includes modern perspectives, but then titles it "How to Do Philosophy". That's akin to writing an essay called "How to do Computer Science", then only discussing the shortcomings of COBOL, FORTRAN, and LISP and concluding that Comp Sci is still a young field and has a long way to go.

Yes, Philosophy is still a young field, but there's at least 2000 years of material not covered in his essay.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wittgenstein was certainly interesting, but he thought Godel was wrong, precisely because Godel showed something interesting about logic itself:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del's_incompleteness_the...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del's_incompleteness_theorems#Wittgenstein)

Paul is obviously right in criticizing the gaseous generalizations, nonsensical pretentiousness and word games that much of the western (particularly, the german) philosophical tradition fell into after the reformation. But I also agree with the philosphical hacker that he is overstating the case that word-confusion is the primary cause of conflict in philosophical disagreement, and I think Godel showed why this is compatible with an apparently deterministic and logical universe.

As near as my uneducated mind can tell, Godel is the most important philosopher since Aristotle: he proved something practical, dramatic and unintuitive about the world, using only words.

In as much as I understand it, it makes me laugh hysterically.

<comment><USER4> "We can do philosophy better if we filter out thoughts that don't meet a usefulness criterion."

Yep, as soon as I read that, I knew someone on HN would point to Godel somewhere in the comments. I'll agree with you as well on Godel and his importance. His theorem is easily one of the most important things to come out of the 20th century. I'd go: penicillin, atomic bomb, better farming tech and chemistry, Godel.

I've not got the chops for the actual proof, but the many 'for the layman's' books Ive read on it just point out how incredibly important it is. From AI research to Turing's tape to the nature of reality itself, the proof is just astounding. To put him up on Aristotle's level is obvious even to a math layman like me. Likely because of the difficulty of the proof, it is not very well known, and that is a shame. I'd love a torn-down proof easy enough for a high schooler to understand. The best I've found is: [https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/453503/can- someone-...](https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/453503/can-someone- explain-godels-incompleteness-theorems-in-layman-terms)

<comment><USER5> I have very often seen people criticise Philosophy from a point of ignorance and then follow up by espousing their own very bad philosophy. It's kinda like criticising a Mathematical proof without understanding Math. You can do it, but you're highly likely to be off the mark.

It's not that Philosophy doesn't have areas worthy of criticism. I personally believe that the best reason to study metaphysics is to learn why metaphysics is useless. Ironically, understanding why it's useless is actually quite useful :o)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _> > Suppose I'm wondering whether it is it right for me demand extra equity because I'm the guy who came up with the idea for our startup. This is not a question about the meaning of my words. If someone responded to my wonderings by saying, "It depends what you mean by the word, 'right'," we'd probably think they have missed something._

I haven't studied philosophy, so I may be naive here, but does this question NOT depend on the definition of "right"? In a practical discussion, maybe both parties would agree that "right" in this case means "fair, in accordance with my contributions to this startup".

But in a philosophical debate, "right" would be quite ambiguous. One party, for example, could posit that the ideas of "right" and "wrong" are completely subjective. That, in the absence of some stated goal or constraints, what's "right" or "wrong", "good" or "evil" is no more valid a topic of debate than whether chocolate ice cream is better than vanilla. However, once you introduce said constraints, the discussion is no longer philosophically interesting.

<comment><USER7> _But in a philosophical debate, "right" would be quite ambiguous. One party, for example, could posit that the ideas of "right" and "wrong" are completely subjective. That, in the absence of some stated goal or constraints, what's "right" or "wrong", "good" or "evil" is no more valid a topic of debate than whether chocolate ice cream is better than vanilla.However, once you introduce said constraints, the discussion is no longer philosophically interesting._

So, what you're saying is that the problem of philosophy is that someone could derail a discussion concerning ethics by simply asserting meta-ethical subjectivism and that would be uninteresting or bad in some other way...

I don't quite understand this objection. Not to mention that this is exactly the _opposite_ of what you would expect to find in a philosophical debate. The whole point of the discipline is that every position must be argued for and questioned and not just asserted. That of course includes subjectivism.

<comment><USER6> It's not that the discussion is simply derailed. It's that it can't even _take place_ until both parties agree on the terminology. The word "right" is packed with all sorts of assumptions on the speaker's part that the listener may not agree with. If that is the case, the discussion devolves into a discussion about those assumptions, which in turn devolve into more discussions about more assumptions.

 _> > The whole point of the discipline is that every position must be argued for and questioned and not just asserted._

That's the problem. Nearly every word is packed with meaning, which must be unraveled and argued for with... more words. The cycle never ends.

<comment><USER7> _> >It's not that the discussion is simply derailed. It's that it can't even take place until both parties agree on the terminology._

On a theoretical level, this is true for every discussion in every discipline. On a practical level, how would you know that this is a special problem in philosophy if you admit that you haven't studied any?

 _> >That's the problem. Nearly every word is packed with meaning, which must be unraveled and argued for with... more words._

Just for the record. I did say that arguments are required and of course those arguments are composed of words (and symbols) but i never said that those arguments are about the _meaning of words_.

<comment><USER6> I don't know. I only suspect based on what I've seen. Philosophy, it seems, makes it difficult to use common language colloquially, because the meaning of the words is the primary linchpin upon which many philosophical debates rest, rather than external data or evidence.

In other disciplines, this is not the case. The two participants in a discussion generally share the same goals, or at least agree on the measuring stick (e.g. uncovering evidence to prove a hypothesis, making an app load faster, improving a car's fuel efficiency, etc). Progress toward their goals can be measured in straightforward and objective ways. Thus, it's much less common for there to be disagreement about basic terminology.

Of course I could be wrong. Maybe there are many interesting philosophical debates that don't simply devolve into semantics. Perhaps you could humor me by providing examples?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why do people think that computer science gives them the authority to pontificate on any topic of their choosing? Clearly the author has no idea what they are talking about, as by their own admission, "I've only taken 1 metaphysics class" and has a "suspicion" about the entire field. And even considering the question of "is all philosophy simply word confusion" would get you laughed out of the room by any philosophy grad student. You wouldn't like it if some philosophy student wrote blog posts about how P=NP without having the slightest knowledge of the field, so afford other areas of study the same respect.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, bkoa. I actually just graduated with a master's degree in philosophy from Tufts University, one of the top philosophy programs in the country. (I also studied philosophy in undergrad.)

I'm perfectly happy with admitting that I don't know a lot about metaphysics and I'm perfectly happy for people to call me out on this point. (In fact, I call myself out on this point in a footnote in my post.) I just wanted to set the record straight: I am not merely a comp sci person who feels that he has the authority to "pontificate on any topic of their choosing."

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> To me it seems like this whole debate (Is philosophy useless or not in 2014?) is suffering from the same debate over words which philosophy supposedly suffers from. Nobody seems to agree what philosophy actually is.

The question can't be answered without that being clearly defined.

</comment><comment><USER10> I have Ph.D. in philosophy and assert, with all the authority that grants me, that Graham's essay is extremely ignorant and arrogant; this should, I suppose, surprise no one intelligent.

<comment><USER11> "with all the authority that grants me, that Graham's essay is extremely ignorant and arrogant"

I am sorry for the following comment, but isn't that comment actually extremely arrogant as well? One should present ideas and arguments and not credentials, but I guess this is only the opinion of some one not as intelligent as a PhD holder.

<comment><USER10> Yes, it is also arrogant, and relies on a lot of presumed deference to the holder of a degree. Freely granted! Would you prefer a full-length analog to Dabblers & Blowhards?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Another computer scientist's take on philosophy:

[http://www.naur.com/Antiphil.html](http://www.naur.com/Antiphil.html)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey, all. Thank you so much for the comments and criticisms on my post. I'm glad you found it interesting. I'd like to respond to your comments, but there's a lot here and there is some overlap in the points that people are bringing up. If you are interested, I think I'll go ahead and respond to your comments in a separate post that I'll have up by this Thursday.

<comment><USER13> I would definitely prefer another post over replying to individual posts. Good luck!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> As someone with a degree in Philosophy, I would humbly suggest to PG that the fact that many philosophical puzzles are entirely about what the words actually mean is something that Philosophy as a discipline has been aware of for at least centuries.

</comment><comment><USER14> I noticed there's a lot of people here on HN that strongly oppose any doubt in utility of philosophy. Does opposing notion of utility of philosophy paint one to be anti-intelectual?

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm not sure he knows anything about philosophy, ethics and epistemology are both ridden with word arguments.

Ethics - Are people really altruistic if they gain pleasure from it? What does altruism mean?

Epistemology - what does know mean? (Yes, he's completely wrong, a whole chunk of epistomolgy is about the meaning of what is a justified true belief)

I didn't read any more. No idea who he is, but he doesn't seem to have studied first year philosophy.

<comment><USER16> Let me goo... follow that about link on his website for you:

Formation de K. Matthew Dupree Tufts University Master's degree, Philosophy

2012 – 2013

University of Central Florida Bachelor of Arts (B.A.), Philosophy and Religious Studies

2007 – 2011

University of Central Florida Minor, Mathematics

2007 – 2011

<comment><USER17> If those are his credentials, I would have preferred he debate Wittgenstein instead of PG.

In the article, he could have simply acknowledged PG's essay for re-igniting his critique of Wittgenstein. And, as a bonus, a blog title of " _Why Wittgenstein is sort of wrong about philosophy_ " might have attracted more hits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I don't think the author's case for philosophy not being driven by confusion over words holds up. His argument is basically that he knows what _he_ means when he uses a word, so how can there be confusion? For example:

 _' When I ask, "How do I know I'm not in the matrix?," I'm asking, "Why should I believe that I'm not in the matrix?"'_

Ok, fine, but is that what _everybody_ who uses the word "know" means by it? And shifting to the word "believe", as the author does here, doesn't help; there's just as much argument over what "believe" means, or should mean, as over what "know" means, or should mean.

In some cases he doesn't even explicitly give his preferred meaning, but just assumes that we all know what it is:

 _' Whether someone was "free to act" is something that we consider often in legal settings, and I think it's right for us to ask this question before we lock someone up.'_

Which may well be true, but it still leaves open the question of _what, exactly, we are asking_ when we ask if someone was "free to act". What do we need to take into account in order to decide the legal case one way or the other? And is the legal question the _same_ question as all the other questions that are pointed at when we use the term "free will"? The author seems to assume that we all agree on all these things, but the philosophical literature makes clear that we don't.

In fact, as this example illustrates, the author mis-states Graham's point about confusion over words. He says:

 _' To say that a question can be answered by saying, "Depends on what you mean by X" is far from proving that the question is motivated by a confusion over words.'_

But Graham didn't claim that we could _answer_ all philosophical questions by just defining what we mean by X (and he certainly didn't claim that we could answer them just by _saying_ "Depends on what you mean by X"). He only claimed that the questions aren't _well-defined_ unless we specify what we mean by X. What looks like one question could end up being three or four (or seven or eight) depending on which definition we choose for X; so unless and until we pin down the question more precisely, we end up talking past each other instead of actually accomplishing anything. I tend to agree with Graham that much of philosophy suffers from exactly this disease.

Finally, I would like to see some evidence for this claim of the author's:

 _' Graham seems to be saying that if a philosophy professor can't distinguish a "real" philosophy paper from a fake, placebo paper that is purposely filled with nonsense, then the real paper is meaningless. If this is Graham's proposal, I think that many philosophy professors could pass this test for many philosophical texts. There are definitely some charlatans posing as philosophers out there, but that doesn't mean that all or most of philosophy is B.S._

</comment><comment><USER17> PG was not the only one highlighting " _confusion over words_ ".

The more notable philosopher Wittgenstein also expressed this idea: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_Investigations#Pr...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_Investigations#Private_language)

The TFA proposes that 2 other branches of philosophy 1) ethics and 2) epistemology have not been affected by " _confusion over words_ ".

I think Wittgenstein would say that must be false because those 2 subject areas also are discussed using the mechanism of words. You can't escape "words" because philosophy (any branch) can't be discussed any other way.

I believe the TFA is arguing incorrectly because he thinks PG's criticism of philosophy is _about_ "word confusion" when the higher meta-issue is that the "words" themselves handicaps all of philosophy.

<comment><USER9> PG mentions that in his blog post:

 _" Wittgenstein is popularly credited with the idea that most philosophical controversies are due to confusions over language. I'm not sure how much credit to give him. I suspect a lot of people realized this, but reacted simply by not studying philosophy, rather than becoming philosophy professors."_

<comment><USER17> Ah yes, I see that now. I didn't notice that the TFA had a direct link to PG's essay.

Since the author (K. Matthew Dupree) could see Wittgenstein was cited, I'm wondering why he didn't address what the notable philosopher already said.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> pg's essay about philosophy is simply embarrassing.

He should just stick to essays about startups and lisp instead of pontificating on something he clearly has very little understanding of.

<comment><USER20> Since you seem to be relatively new to HN (based off when your account was created), when commenting, it is common practice to give examples/links/proof, ie. in this case; _why_ his essay is embarrassing. The reason, is that this could lead to an insightful discussion, and offer paths to improvement. If you give evidence then you will likely not get downvoted even for saying something controversial [1]. After looking through your comment history, this style of commenting seems to ring true, in that when you provide links and proof, you have an improved comment score.

[1] Although, you are talking about PG (who is the founder of this forum), so you might get downvoted just for the hell of it ;)

<comment><USER21> > Although, you are talking about PG (who is the founder of this forum), so > you might get downvoted just for the hell of it ;)

I'd like to add that while this may be true, it's not a good thing. Any act of silencing someone in an act of fanboy revenge is an embarrassment to this forum. It's a shame the downvote threshold doesn't rid of this type of behavior, and I doubt raising it would help. I'm tired of seeing grayed out controversial opinions.

<comment><USER22> Well though there were for sure "fighting words" in this comment.

And with anyone who is admired such as PG you would typically try to be very careful (almost diplomatic) in how and what you said.

Statement was:

"He should just stick to essays about startups and lisp instead of pontificating on something he clearly has very little understanding of."

or, suggested re-write (for someone who feels this way):

"PG's essays about startups and lisp are great|good|wonderful however in my opinion, and based on my particular experience, I can't tell that he has any particular expertise in Philosophy".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I don't think the article gives valid criticisms of Paul Graham's essay.

Let's take a few points: "Let's start with ethics. Suppose I'm wondering whether it is it right for me demand extra equity because I'm the guy who came up with the idea for our startup. This is not a question about the meaning of my words. If someone responded to my wonderings by saying, "It depends what you mean by the word, 'right'," we'd probably think they have missed something."

As another commenter has pointed out - of _course_ it depends on what we mean by "right". Right as in "can I get away with it"? Right as in "what's best for people if everyone does what I do"? Right as in "what's best for society"?

This is _exactly_ a case of being able to argue _a lot_ without people defining what exactly they mean, and therefore their arguments are worthless.

Let's take another quote from the article: "Then there's epistemology, the study of knowledge. How do we know that we're not in the matrix? How can we know anything if all our beliefs rest on beliefs that are unsupported by evidence? (We've got to have some "foundational beliefs.")

Again, if someone responded to these questions by saying that we are confused about the meaning of the word "know," we'd feel that they have missed the point."

But once again, this shows the problem with philosophy - there _are_ fields in which people discuss what it means to "know things". We've come a long way in certain respects, e.g. coming up with respected models like Bayesianism and others. If someone says "no, but how can I really _know_ I'm not in the Matrix", the answers he should be getting _should_ take into account modern thought backed by _some_ kind of progress. If answers from 2000 years ago are just as valid, we haven't _learned_ anything.

And once again, clarifiying that the actual argument isn't about the matrix at all, but rather about the nature of knowledge, is _exactly_ the right approach - trying to clarify what it means to know is what will solve this issue.

Paul Graham's essay isn't the best or most complete criticism of philosophy, but it certainly makes a strong case in a clear way that's accessible to many people, and that obviously many people connect with.

<comment><USER24> _But once again, this shows the problem with philosophy - there are fields in which people discuss what it means to "know things"._

That's not a problem with philosophy, it's a problem with the OP. Epistemology is the study of what we can know, and what is required to make a claim to knowledge. A side effect of that is that there are a lot of arguments and questions surrounding what it means to know. The difference between me a PG (er, one of many) is that I don't have a problem with that. If you're having an informal discussion on the internet, yes maybe you'll spend a lot of time talking in circles before you can say anything meaningful, but trained philosophers have 3000 years of philosophical arguments to draw on, and can be very specific about what they mean with a given argument or word.

Also, there are many forms of philosophy that people don't always think of when they write dismissively about philosophy. Any field of study has a surrounding philosophical discourse, including the hard sciences (Hello, philosophy of research, hello materialism). Dismissing philosophy because it includes arguments about the meaning of words misses the point. We argue about the meanings of words because they form the basis for how we conduct our work, how we transfer knowledge, and how we talk about what we do.

<comment><USER23> You're right - I was too broad in saying "the problem with philosophy" when I should've said "the problem that PG talked about which the OP doesn't in any way refute".

As for your thoughts on Philosophy, I'm not sure I agree - philosophers _have_ actually wasted a lot of time arguing over what is in essence semantics, and even when they haven't, there has been plenty of (IMO) unimportant back-and- forth without any evidence or really anything to back it up. (Years of arguing over the mind-body problem without any shred of evidence supporting _anyone 's_ worldview).

I'm not sure if it's true, but I've heard it said that every field that ends up being practically useful or meaningful turns into a specific field, and Philosophy is all that's left. E.g. Mathematics, Physics, Economics, etc. Arguably, the fields you mention are also specialized branches that are not part of mainstream Philosophy (very arguably though).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Philosophy is what you do when you don't have data. The other thing to do would be to get data, but who would bother. Especially before lunch.

<comment><USER25> How do you collect data about what constitutes a good life?

\- Study people who are leading a good life? Circular: how do you identify them? \- Ask people if they are leading a good life? Begs the question, since to decide they must have already answered it.

Do you believe the answer is unimportant? Self-evident? Relative to time and place? Naturally dictated and discoverable by reason? Primarily decided by social structure? Primarily determined by the individual?

All of those positions have been held by and forcefully defended, and all of them have also been forcefully attacked. By people studying philosophy, because that is at root what philosophy is.

It's a vital question because we can't measure the effectiveness of public policy or personal decisions without some notion of "good" to apply as a scale.

<comment><USER26> Has contemporary philosophy come up with an answer to "what constitutes a good life?" or made measurable progress on this answer? Under what measure is it progress?

Just coming up with arguments without answers is nothing more than "structured pondering". It'd only seem useful to increasingly meta topics where data can't be found.

<comment><USER7> Well, holding fallacious beliefs prevents you from arriving at the correct answer. Since philosophers have refuted many fallacious arguments concerning that question they have, therefore, made some measurable progress.

<comment><USER14> You can't refute an argument without data. If it was precisely defined you could disprove it without data but that's math not philosophy.

<comment><USER7> _You can 't refute an argument without data._

What if i point out that it commits a modal scope fallacy?

What data do you have to refute the statement: "A statement can be refuted without data"?

<comment><USER14> > > You can't refute an argument without data. > What if i point out that it > commits a modal scope fallacy?

I tried to educate myself a bit to understand you. I've read: [http://www.logicallyfallacious.com/index.php/logical- fallaci...](http://www.logicallyfallacious.com/index.php/logical- fallacies/128-modal-scope-fallacy) and failed.

First example claims that "(p => q, p) so q" is a fallacy by closely squinting at word "must". Second example claims that p => q where ~q => ~p is assumed is also a fallacy because they claim that one word that q consists of spills out and covers whole statement.

From this brief brush I'd say "modal scope fallacy" is just about some fuzzily defined semantic nuance of English language. So, no, I'd say you can't refute anything except bad grammar with this.

If you can write it down and the thing you want to refute, with symbols and prove their conjunction to be tautologically false with formal logic then I'd say you've refuted the claim. But as I said that's math not philosophy.

> What data do you have to refute the statement: "A statement can be refuted > without data"?

Are you asking because you think I claimed to have refuted or wanted to refute that statement?

What refutation can you offer of the statement that data is needed to refute the statement: "A statement can be refuted without data"?

That's exactly the chain of pointless self, and cross referential statements that arise when you are trying to refute something without data and/or precise definition (which would make it math).

<comment><USER7> _First example claims that "(p => q, p) so q" is a fallacy by closely squinting at word "must". Second example claims that p => q where ~q => ~p is assumed is also a fallacy because they claim that one word that q consists of spills out and covers whole statement_

No it doesn't. You've formalized it incorrectly.

Doesn't matter, i might as well have said that the argument is affirming the consequent and we'd still have a problem since there is a deeper issue here. What you're saying is that the simple acts of either formalizing your arguments or precisely defining your premises somehow turns it into math and precludes it from being philosophy. Yet philosophers do exactly that all the time.

Is that the point you want to argue? Cause i am neither convinced or interested in pursuing it. It would seem to me like a pointless argument about definitions.

<comment><USER14> > No it doesn't. You've formalized it incorrectly.

I haven't formalized anything, I just used notational short-hands.

Example goes:

If Debbie and TJ have two sons and two daughters, then they must have at least one son. Debbie and TJ have two sons and two daughters. Therefore, Debbie and TJ must have at least one son.

If I substitute string "Debbie and TJ have two sons and two daughters" with "p" and string "they must have at least one son" with "q" and write relation If ... then ... as ... => ... and implied conjunction between two first lines as ( ... , ... ) and substitute string "Therefore" with "so" (for no reason, I just like short syntax) I get what I wrote: (p=>q, p) so q

It's not formalization, it's just string substitution. What I implied later (mainly that the author of the example claims that something tautologically true is fallacy) assumes that we can agree to assign either true or false to the strings denoted by p and q and we use conventional logic.

The only way this could be incorrect is if words in one line of the example are defined to mean something else than exact same words in other line they occur. It's possible but without explicit definition of such bizarre behavior I won't be guessing what author had in mind.

> Doesn't matter

Oh, yes it matters. It's an excellent example of what remained of philosophy when natural philosophers left. Thinking so fuzzy that it lacks not only application but even meaning. Despite that appreciated and cited as a marvelous tool for argumentation.

> affirming the consequent

Much better. But that piece of philosophy was swallowed by math long time ago. Any statement about logic that philosophy can currently make is math, false or semantically fuzzy. You won't be trying to refute many arguments using reasoning of Zeno of Elea nowadays.

> What you're saying is that the simple acts of either formalizing your > arguments or precisely defining your premises somehow turns it into math and > precludes it from being philosophy. Yet philosophers do exactly that all the > time.

Really? Could you point me to works of some, perhaps fairly modern, philosopher that defines what he ponders with accuracy that could be appreciated by a mathematician? But no cargo cult please. Preciseness and some actual meaning is what I'm looking for.

<comment><USER7> Look, i originally cited that identifying (P⊃◻Q, P) ∴ ◻Q as a fallacy in an argument is an example of refuting that argument without any data. I don't care about your struggles with some random article.

As i said, i don't really want to argue weather that is math or philosophy, especially when i see statements to the effect that affirming the consequent was once philosophy but math "swallowed" it so now pointing out that fallacy means you're doing math and things like that. Talk about imprecise and meaningless right there.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Mach's designers simply assumed that systems would be rebooted often enough - <AUTHOR> http://clozure.com/pipermail/openmcl-devel/2011-February/012567.html

<comment><USER2> I'm not going to pretend I know what Mach is, but around here, (big company that you're familiar with), rebooting/bouncing the servers is pretty much how issues are dealt with. "Response times outside of SLA: bounced the server." "Database connections timing out: bounced the server." "Users experiencing high load times for pages: restarted JVMs. Then bounced the servers."

Root cause seems to be "server up too long."

<comment><USER3> At my last sysadmin job, we had a policy of bouncing a server if it's uptime exceeded one year, not to clean up any resources, but to make sure the config in the files matched the config that was running. Of course, not only were we running Linux (gentoo, in fact), but a lot of our stuff was DJB services, including his service manager.

I'd argue that a 5 why's analysis of "server up too long", leads to "server wasn't written well." YMMV

<comment><USER4> Richard P. Gabriel makes that point somewhere - that one of the downsides of an 'organic' system like a Lisp or Smalltalk image where you can rewrite or do anything dynamically is that you tend to do just that, and can wind up in a situation where you are no longer able to stop using the image because it has too many valuable changes which are too difficult to reverse-engineer.

<comment><USER5> That's a bit of an understatement. Basically all Squeak and VisualWorks images have been running since some time in the late '70s. They've been migrated from 16- to 32- to 64-bits and across chip architectures, but it's the same image. Other dialects were bootstrapped more recently, and some of them have retained the ability to create an image from scratch.

I guess bootstrapping is more common in the Lisp world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wonder if that's been fixed in the OS X/Darwin version of Mach, seems like the only time I ever reboot my MacBook is for system updates.

<comment><USER7> really man? maybe you are not using your macbook long enough or you are simply browsing the internet with it?

I reboot my macbook pro (running leopard) as often as I reboot my windows 7 PC which is not much. Except I use the Win7 machine 90% of the time and for much more "intensive" stuff.

<comment><USER8> As a fellow mac user: If you are rebooting your Mac for reasons other then system upgrade, something is wrong with your machine. I say this as someone who compiles from source and runs server software on my mac almost every day. mogodb, apache, nodejs, mysql, tomcat is just the tip of the iceberg in the server department.

<comment><USER9> > If you are rebooting your Mac for reasons other then system upgrade, > something is wrong with your machine

Indeed; that is the point of the article. =)

<comment><USER10> Or you have made the grave, grave mistake of installing Adobe products on your machine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> My favorite Linux bug (since fixed):

<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=97373> (System UPTIME reported incorrectly):

"Steps to Reproduce: 1. Boot Linux system; 2. Go away for 497 days; 3. check uptime"

<comment><USER12> Take it off the queue and go on a 16 month sabbatical to somewhere really beautiful. Come back, check uptime, report to your boss that you've recreated it and you'll start digging in the code.

<http://xkcd.com/583/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Relevant: [http://www.usenix.org/event/osdi04/tech/full_papers/candea/c...](http://www.usenix.org/event/osdi04/tech/full_papers/candea/candea.pdf)

Microreboot – A Technique for Cheap Recovery

"A significant fraction of software failures in large-scale Internet systems are cured by rebooting, even when the exact failure causes are unknown. However, rebooting can be expensive, causing nontrivial service disruption or downtime even when clusters and failover are employed. In this work we use separation of process recovery from data recovery to enable microrebooting – a fine-grain technique for surgically recovering faulty application components, without disturbing the rest of the application."

</comment><comment><USER14> "Hello IT, have you tried turning it off and on again?"

</comment><comment><USER15> There are some great reasons due to memory fragmentation and other issues to reboot your systems every two or three days anyway. Plus, if you pride yourself on having failover, DR systems, etc, rebooting lets you know that your failover systems are working.</comment>


How a trio of hackers brought Google's reCAPTCHA to its knees - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/security/2012/05/google-recaptcha-brought-to-its-knees/

<comment><USER2> I can still see the 10 words in the revamped reCaptcha. Surely their program can be tweaked.</comment>


Apparently Kids Doing ASMR Was a Problem: YouTube Deletes Video [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JM4OwGhchUA <comment><USER2> Original, removed for 2 months, clip: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M78rlxEMBxk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M78rlxEMBxk)

Actual content was left untouched on YT until I guess things blew up on social media. Its removed now, but the channel remains ([https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC88Qzl8DnaiR0Pxadh56iQw/](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC88Qzl8DnaiR0Pxadh56iQw/)) but still available on dailymotion under "SASSY Police Officer / Cop Roleplay  SASSY AND RUDE" (I wouldnt even look that up).

</comment><comment><USER3> Shirley, I wasn't the only one.

From Wikipedia, [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_sensory_meridian_...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_sensory_meridian_response)

Autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) is an experience characterized by a static-like or tingling sensation on the skin that typically begins on the scalp and moves down the back of the neck and upper spine. It has been compared with auditory-tactile synesthesia[2][3] and may overlap with frisson.

ASMR signifies the subjective experience of "low-grade euphoria" characterized by "a combination of positive feelings and a distinct static-like tingling sensation on the skin". It is most commonly triggered by specific auditory or visual stimuli, and less commonly by intentional attention control.[4][5]

<comment><USER4> [https://youtu.be/KM2K7sV-K74](https://youtu.be/KM2K7sV-K74)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The review YouTube deleted is here: [https://www.bitchute.com/video/yQz6SCAassse/](https://www.bitchute.com/video/yQz6SCAassse/)

[strikethrough]The reviewed video is still up on YouTube[/strikethrough]

EDIT: linked to the wrong video

</comment><comment><USER6> So a bunch of videos about that will be uploaded on YouTube in the next hour.

</comment><comment><USER7> There are a few things on YT where it feels like the unexpected target audience is male 35-50 and it just might be better to not do it.

I forgot when I saw a good example but it was a ASMR video.</comment>


How Al-Qaeda Uses Encryption Post-Snowden - <AUTHOR> https://www.recordedfuture.com/al-qaeda-encryption-technology-part-1/ <comment><USER2> A question (disclaimer... I don't know much about encryption and assume types are recognizable to experts).

If Al-Quida has it's own type of encryption wouldn't that be a huge red flag as it went across the wires and the senders and recipients be fingered almost immediately?

It seems it would be safer to use something lots of other people are using as well.

<comment><USER3> Only if you can distinguish them on the wire.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I got this from Schneier's blog:

[https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/05/new_al_qaeda_...](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/05/new_al_qaeda_en_1.html)</comment>


Prison Bankers Who Profit from the Inmates - <AUTHOR> http://time.com/3446372/criminal-justice-prisoners-profit/ <comment><USER3> They also operate the e-mail system that can be used to send e-mail to/from inmates (using a JPay tablet, of course). You have to purchase _' stamps'_. For _e-mails_.[1]

1: [http://www.jpayinc.com/email_videograms.html](http://www.jpayinc.com/email_videograms.html)

"One stamp corresponds to one 6000 character message (about the length of one handwritten page), or one attachment."

"JPay's correctional email service is faster than regular mail, with inmates usually receiving emails within _48 hours_." (emphasis added)

Looking up the pricing for a random facility[2], it's $18 for 40 'stamps', each one of which is good for 1 small attachment or 'page' of text. This is fucking extortion.

2: [http://www.jpay.com/Facility-Details/Kentucky-Adult- Institut...](http://www.jpay.com/Facility-Details/Kentucky-Adult- Institutions/Kentucky-State-Penitentiary.aspx)

<comment><USER4> >This is fucking extortion.

Not to be too pedantic, but that's not extortion. Nobody is required to buy them nor are they threatened by not buying them.

<comment><USER5> In the EU this would be considered extortion because you have a right to a family life; unconscionable profit at the expense of this right might be considered illegal, especially if it was the only service available (e.g. banking, family visit, letters etc)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The only question that rings to me anymore about these stories: What can I do?

What code can I write? What broker can I call? What form can I sign? How can I register my civic will so as to undo this blight?

For me, this is the most embarrassing thing about being a United States citizen.

<comment><USER7> Start a kickstarter campaign to create a not for profit, ethical competitor to JPay? Providing the prisons still get a similar commission (which according to the article isn't where the lion's share of the fees comes from), why wouldn't they opt to go with a payments firm that gives them good PR?

Edit: alternatively, maybe the stripe guys could fund/seed a philanthropic off-shoot to tackle this?

<comment><USER8> Because of this (quoting from the article):

"To impress state corrections officials and gain their business, JPay spends heavily on industry conventions attended by agency heads with contracting authority. During a 2012 convention of the American Correctional Association, the company threw what it called an "END OF THE WORLD PARTY" at a Denver wine bar that bills itself as "about you, and your inalienable right to the unbridled enjoyment of food and wine."

The invitation, printed on a disposable beer coaster, promised "a bash, JPay- style: _fuerte_ tequila, hand-rolled cigars, a live mariachi band." Conventioneers could catch a JPay shuttle leaving from the hotel "ALL NIGHT LONG," it said."

<comment><USER7> That actually makes it easier. Build a non-profit competitor, get the press, charities & public behind it and shame the fuckers in to switching. With material like that it would be like shooting fish in a barrel.

<comment><USER8> One would hope so, but I suspect that they don't care about public perception, _and_ a surprisingly large slice of the public would actually be _supportive_ of punitive treatment of prisoners' families.

<comment><USER6> > large slice of the public would actually be supportive of punitive treatment > of prisoners' families.

I refuse to believe this.

<comment><USER9> > "Specifically, the stigma' of incarceration and the accusation of > shamelessness are not reserved for offenders; as recent empirical and > ethnographic research confirms, the families of convicted and incarcerated > persons experience a significant stigma as well."

AUSTIN, R. 2004. Shame of It All: Stigma and the Political Disenfranchisement of Formerly Convicted and Incarcerated Persons, The. Colum. Hum. Rts. L. Rev., 36, 173.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The prison phone systems are also bilking families. In the Alaska prison system, I had to call collect to my family. Phone calls were limited to 15 minutes and they cost my family $33 per call. I hated calling them because I felt so bad about that cost.

<comment><USER11> They normally charge outrageous amounts for long distance calls, which is basically all their calls. Last year the FCC limited the max rate of calls to 25 cents a minute, or 3.75 for a 15 minute call. Still outrageous, but at least not as insane. They usually charge much less for local calls, and there are a lot of services that will set up a number local to the prison and forward calls to cell phones. It's easy enough to set a number yourself with twilio if you're technically inclined, but most people with family in prisons are unfamiliar with things like twilio or google voice.

[1][http://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-reduces-high-long- distance-c...](http://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-reduces-high-long-distance- calling-rates-paid-inmates)

<comment><USER12> Yeah, there's outrageous and there's extortion.

Like a $0.10 / kilobyte overage charge on cell phone data plans.

<comment><USER13> Imagine not being allowed to own a cellphone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> There is a lot that one could say about this, but let me throw this in the mix: a big part of the problem is simply that we (the US) have far, far too many people incarcerated and "in the system" to begin with. The US ranks second only to the Seychelles in terms of "prisoner count per 100,000 of population"[1], at 707. And many of those people are in jail for non-violent crimes, or crimes for which restitution would be a better consequence than jail.

We need to decriminalise drug possession and sales, and focus on restitution for cases of theft, fraud, etc. The people in jail should be mostly murderers, rapists, and people who have shown themselves to be an active threat to society. And even then I'm not actually convinced that jail is the best solution, but let's tackle one problem at a time.

(Sidebar: a different Wikipedia page says the US incarceration rate is actually the highest, not second. See: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_rat...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_rate))

[1]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcerat...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate)

</comment><comment><USER15> So they bribe and kick-back their way through the year and then throw a big party (ahh 'convention') in Vegas where they give each other awards while sucking down premium liquor, hand-rolled cigars, and no doubt metric tons of the stuff half of their inmates are in prison for.

The pigs from 1984 would blush over this stuff.

<comment><USER16> _Animal Farm_ is Orwell 's dystopia with pigs.

<comment><USER15> Doh. Dys-topia-phasia strikes me yet again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is a state-granted monopoly and it's being abused. The services JPay offers should either be government run or open to free market competition.

<comment><USER18> How can we trust the government to solve this when it was the government that created the problem to begin with?

<comment><USER19> I doubt the government would be doing this:

"JPay is protected from other market forces, as well. When states offer its music players and tablet computers for sale to inmates, they often confiscate radios that people already own, according to inmates in Ohio. This leaves inmates dependent on JPay's music downloads, which can cost 30 to 50 percent more than the same songs on iTunes, inmates say."

I'm confused, are you defending this company and its practices are merely railing against government? Atleast with the government, there is a bit of oversight. It seems like JPay is a monopoly thanks to bribery and their CEO's lack of morality.

Edits: spelling

<comment><USER20> Who is confiscating the radios? JPay?

No.

<comment><USER21> You cant have two devices at a time (prison security) - so if inmate buys an mp3 player he has to give up his walkman

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> For the record, it's this exact injustice that kicked off Bayes Impact. Pyduan and I sat at dinner talking about my past life in private equity where I spent a lot of time looking at private prison companies, including JPay. There are huge barriers of entry into these markets, particularly in having close relationships with the decision makers: commissioners of the Department of Corrections.

The answer we came up with was a nonprofit that could develop strong relationships with civic institutions and be free from conflicts of interest and profit motives. This is a very poorly incentivized market, and startups will have a tough time disrupting the existing players because such perverse incentives exist. If anyone is interested in learning more, feel free to shoot me a message, and I'm happy to chat.

FYI, JPay is moving into all modes of communications and media, including email, video chats, music, etc. For families looking to keep in touch with their loved ones in jail, they are essentially the Apple in jails.

</comment><comment><USER23> The cynical way prisoners are exploited is reminiscent of the way prisons in the middle ages were run, except they didn't have marketers back then.

<comment><USER18> To me it is reminiscent of the way our government (and most others) works.

Both involve a monopoly on banking, granted by the government, to enrich government-selected corporations, at the expense of non-bankers.

No need to go back to the middle ages to find analogies. :)

<comment><USER23> I was more thinking of how prisoners used to be nickel and dimed by gaolers back in the day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I don't understand. Why can't the state let a bank put a bloody ATM (or several) in a common area, and let the inmates use debit cards?

My blood pressure was shooting up as I read that article. I don't mind people charging a fee for providing _better_ service. But in this case, this human leech is just spreading more misery. Why must these people abuse others this way? I hope, when he is on his deathbed, this fucker suffers the most unimaginable amount of pain for a long time.

<comment><USER25> >> Why can't the state let a bank put a bloody ATM (or several) in a common area, and let the inmates use debit cards?

This is what you get in a privatised system. Money must be made and an ATM in the common area is not going to do that.

[http://www.alternet.org/story/155199/private_prison_corporat...](http://www.alternet.org/story/155199/private_prison_corporations_are_modern_day_slave_traders)

<comment><USER24> Is it any wonder then, that when the prisoners get out, they turn to crime? We are subjecting them to a selfish, dog-eat-dog world every day; we are harassing them, taking advantage of them (and their families) when they're the weakest; and then we expect them to come out and behave like model citizens??

<comment><USER26> It's worse than that. As an eye-catching example to lead in, the United States is the only country in the world in which more men are raped than women. The U.S. authorities know this is the case, and they know that they have created lawless societies in which they force people to live, without protection.

You take a man and you spend ten years teaching him that he is beyond the law. That the law does not apply to him. That he can rape someone and the law will look the other way, or that he can be raped and the authorities will offer him no protection, no respite. Theft, robbery, assault, murder. Crimes committed regularly, all around this man, and he sees every day that he can commit these crimes and the law will not apply, he can be a victim of these crimes and the law will not apply. The U.S. teaches a man for a decade that none of the rules apply to him; that he is above the law is demonstrated to him over and over and over again.

And then when he's released, having been taught this day in, day out, brutally, every damn day for a decade, it's a fucking surprise that he commits a crime?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Another shameful story about the criminal justice system in the US.... I wish I were more shocked.

I'm not a sociologist and I'm not going to look for links, but I'm pretty sure there is a strong correlation between poverty and crime. Now certainly correlation doesn't mean causation... but is keeping people in poverty more likely to cause or to prevent crime? But this question might make the bad assumption that the intent of the criminal justice system is to prevent crime in the first place.

We all pay for crime. Something to keep in mind. Social justice is more than just feeling good and being fair. It's about practicality also.

</comment><comment><USER28> This looks like a nice gig to have too, running an app-store for a (literally) captive market of over a million people: [http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-08-14/the-apple- of...](http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-08-14/the-apple-of-the-u-dot- s-dot-prison-system)

</comment><comment><USER29> The solution isn't making a more efficient competitor to Jpay. The solution is abolishing prisons. Angela Davis has written a good short book on this subject called "Are Prisons Obsolete?".

<comment><USER23> Well, that may be a bit of a stretch (are you really going to put seasoned killers in the street?). A first step would be ensure that inmates and their families are not treated like animals. Unfortunately, this is also a societal choice, and that's something often difficult to sensitize the citizenry to. A system like this prospers because both JPay and the authorities benefit from it, and because neither US citizens or the press, who could do something about it, care about what happens.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> making profit out of prisons, in all shape and forms, is a such unbelievable conflict of interests. It is the ultimate monopoly - monopoly of force and violence - that is being abused by existence of any revenue stream associated with prison system.

</comment><comment><USER31> _" He says he charges only as much as he must to maintain a razor-thin profit margin."_

I have a hard time believing this. Does any one have experience in this space? The way I understand it, it really shouldn't cost $6+ for an electronic transaction.

<comment><USER22> I used to do work in this space and personally diligenced JPay for investment purposes. Their profit margins are low for the same reason most successful startups have no profit - growth. They're growing incredibly fast, investing in sales and marketing efforts (as well as the 'commissions'). Take out the growth aspects, you have a company with very high gross margins.

<comment><USER32> Is this company in any sense a startup? They seem like a utility to me. I've never seen any ads they've run, and I can't imagine an ad volume that would justify $6 emails, so "sales and marketing" seems to be a euphemism for "lobbying, bribery, and personal entertainment slush-fund". This much basically-stolen money being thrown around is bound to erode ethics. It will surprise no one if multiple principals of this firm get to use these services personally within the decade.

<comment><USER21> pEOPLe you're all talking out of total ignorance. Jpay has huge capex - <USER2> none of you know anything about business ill explain - they spend millions upon millions of dollars deploying networks and computer banks in prisons for inmates to access these services. Now you know why their margins are high? Understand why they charge for email? If they were gouging customers people would send snail mail. You are all plain dumb. And I'm a former customer who used to pay these damn fees!

<comment><USER32> Nice sock-puppet, Shapiro. I hope you lose the rest of your hair.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Two stories next to each other on the home page with someone called Ryan Shapiro in them, in both cases he is 37. One where he is an foia activist [1], and this one where he runs a company profiting from prisoner's families. Are they the same people or is this just a strange coincidence?

[1][https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8390642](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8390642)

<comment><USER34> Coincidence. This is the FOIA activist: [http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/11/foia-ryan- shapir...](http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/11/foia-ryan-shapiro-fbi- files-lawsuit)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> What an utterly sick, broken system. Cannot contain my despair at this.

</comment><comment><USER10> CCA (Community Corrections of America) is owned by a group of judges, I believe. They run for-profit inmate holding centers across the US.

<comment><USER36> > CCA (Community Corrections of America) is owned by a group of judges, I > believe.

CCA, Corrections Corporation of America, is publicly-traded REIT, as is GEO Group. Anybody here with access to the American public equities markets can purchase shares of stock in CXW or GEO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> There is a good lesson in this article that is getting lost in the debate. The lesson is _don 't go around committing armed robberies._ You are screwing your family. More specifically, you are punishing your mother.

</comment><comment><USER38> Amateurs. We're all prisoners to ZIRP, QE, 'collectible' taxes on gold, and central banking which is all legalized counterfeiting for the .01%</comment>


Ask HN: Where are you looking for local tech events for attending? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I get emails from some of them. Sometimes I see a poster.</comment>


Expert reaction to organic food nutrition study - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-study-comparing-the-nutritional-content-of-organic-and-conventional-foods/ <comment><USER2> Unfortunately, all the responses are pretty negative and feel selective. The responding authors always criticize details, sometimes even around implied intent rather than factual content, while carefully omitting core parts of the original paper's findings.

For example, nobody even cares to agree that organic food has significantly lower pesticide residues, which I think is a pretty agreeable positive effect of organic produce, and one of the cornerstones of the argument for organic foods. This affects not only the health of consumers (around which there can be an absolutely healthy debate despite the fact that less poison is probably almost always better here), but also impacts the environmental footprint of farming.

There are also loads of straw-man arguments, which further undermines the trust in the credibility of the responders. The OP never denied that eating more fruits and vegetables - organic or not - is better than eating none at all. All that the paper did was publishing findings about the differences between organic and non-organic produce. I don't think antioxidants or phenolic compounds were framed as essential nutrients, and besides that non- essential nutrients do have effects on the consumer's wellbeing and health as well.

A truly unbiased response would feel more balanced. It would welcome certain findings, rounding out the picture with additional facts that might change certain conclusions drawn from the data, and add contradicting data found on a similar scale of research to the conversation. Such a straight and drastic dismissals of the paper in its entirety, however, based on carefully selected details, feels motivated by external factors beyond science or neutral dialog.

<comment><USER3> The health benefits of Organics are often less about the process and more about the seeds. Heirloom tomatoes as an example tend to be smaller, and squishier, and more flavorful.

The smaller means you can't produce as many per acre.

The squishier means you lose more in shipping.

The Tastier often accompanies more nutritious.

The Pesticide issue is two fold. (same with herbicides) You could dust your plants with arsenic and call them Organic. That would work well, (and is used in certain organic farms often for strawberries) but the residue would be more harmful even in lower amounts than say a Coal-Tar Pesticide (basically an artificial flavor sprayed on to mimic the smell of a predator, or the flavor of something an insect doesn't like)

Organic != Safe

Traditional != Dangerous

My biggest concern is that we cannot produce enough food via organic farming to feed everyone. If we move too much of the market to Organics, we may end up like the places where 40% of their income goes to food, instead of 4% that we currently enjoy in the US.

My secondary concern is that too many people think "all-natural" or "organic" means safe. NightShade is an all natural herb. Doesn't mean I should brew tea of it and have it at bed time.

<comment><USER4> _we may end up like the places where 40% of their income goes to food, instead of 4% that we currently enjoy in the US_

Given the level of diet-related illness in the US, much of it a result of ultra cheap (through subsidies) sugars and grains, I can't help but wonder, "if people were paying 25% of their paychecks for food, would they make better choices?"

Of course, the issue there has nothing to do with organics and everything to do with subsidies.

<comment><USER5> "if people were paying 25% of their paychecks for food, would they make better choices?"

No. They will still choose the cheapest/most-convenient.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I would think we would be better at spotting sock puppets. "Expert reaction?" More like paid schill: [http://www.sciencemediacentre.org/about- us/funding/](http://www.sciencemediacentre.org/about-us/funding/)

Syngenta? Croplife? BASF?

<comment><USER7> I can just about guarantee you those companies couldn't care less about a few 10 thousands of people eating a little organic food. It's not a threat to them and they simply don't care enough to put out sock puppets. This lack of caring actually gives the new hippie-science disregarding (or whatever you want to call it) authors like Micheal Pollan more air time because nobody calls them on it when they get out of bounds of good science. Nobody writes sensational books about the over-hype and under evidence of the benefits of organic farming nor the dangers of un-regulated and un-inspected food production.

The amount of anti-science junk regarding food production I see posted on HN is stunning given that this is supposed to be a group of intelligent rational people.

<comment><USER8> All you've basically done is attempted to marginalize a group of people ("couldn't care less about a few 10 thousands of people"), while calling them out for being 'wrong.' In addition, you've attempted to call out HN as being the negation of a "group of intelligent rational people" because they don't share your views. On top of that, you've in no way told us _why_ all of these people are wrong, other than "the people that know the _real_ truth have better things to do than explain it to you."

<comment><USER7> I haven't called anyone out for being wrong (except the original poster on his shill suspicion, I believe he is unreasonable and almost certainly wrong on that count).

All I'm saying is that it is unlikely these companies care enough about a small niche market that doesn't really doesn't pose a danger to their business nor impact them enough to post shills.

As for unscientific views on the topic of food production... It's not a matter of "wrong". It's a matter of acceptance of science. The rejection of science in favor of unreasonable conspiracy theories and anti-scientific pop authors by this many presumably intelligent members of a "tech" site is surprising and a bit disturbing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > The paper also reports a decrease in protein, nitrates and fibre in the > organically grown crops, which may be undesirable, and which are maybe > unsurprisingly not referred to by the authors in their advocacy of > organically grown produce.

Hmm. I think this is important, and something I certainly overlooked in the initial hype.

<comment><USER10> If there's a decrease in both protein and fibre, what is there an increase of to compensate for it? There has to be "more" of something per unit of mass.

<comment><USER11> I don't know but "conventionally mass-produced" produces tend to be bigger and tasteless... that might have something to do with growers selecting them for the "wrong" trait (gene) [0]. Tomatoes being the best example; they are much better when bought at my local farmer's market (as opposed to buying them at Walmart).

0: [http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1112648268/scientists-f...](http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1112648268/scientists- find-gene-behind-ripe-tasteless-tomatoes/)

<comment><USER12> Tomatoes are a terrible example. Ripe tomatoes damage very easily so tomatoes going to grocers are picked green and then reddened by exposing them to ethylene gas. This minimally affects flavor but causes the tomato to appear "ripe".

If buying from farmers (not distributors) at your farmers market then those tomatoes were most likely ripened in the field then picked rather than gassed which is why they taste much better.

<comment><USER7> I worked on a commercial tomato farm before. You are both right.

What you get in grocery stores is a green tomato that has been gassed so the flavor isn't the same as truly ripe tomato. Also, the varieties planted that are good for mass productions, packing and shipping aren't necessarily the best tasting varieties.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Quick, somebody put together the app that does some Bayesian work to score people and their quotes, research, funding, etc. to show on a scale where their tendencies would be expected to be for a given next statement. Let's get META!!! on meta-analyses.

What's interesting is the turf battles going on over what I would say are details vs the "news you can use."

Industrial agra => :P tasting + less desirable enviro impact.

Alt agra => less offputting, better enviro impact, but big hand waving around potential to be capable of scale and affordable for current and future population.

I get a sense there's this looming dread of having to deal with someone saying, "We can't survive (or will have a bad time) as a species if we sit back and slurp big agra, but we can't realistically keep everyone around/afford it if we try to help everyone eat 'correctly/safely'."

If the organic path is the moral path, is it OK to allow food costs to increase substantially? Is it OK to disallow the big agra calories and nutrients which likely enable subsistence for those unable to fight over spots for their Teslas and Priuses at Whole Foods?

<comment><USER14> "Deer: Predation or Starvation" [1], is an exercise many may remember from high school biology class.

In the exercise, the implicit goal is for students to recognize that the deer population shrinkage was a good and natural outcome leading to balance and that balance is good.

There are various problems with the exercise though; for example, we only see a few years of "balance" with the implication that it continues forever.

Replace wolves with food costs, and deer with humans. We would expect the Industrial Agra crowd to be "pro deer", and the Alternate Agra crowd to be "pro balance" while Industrial Agra itself is "pro wolf".

I find it interesting that if you're interested in rising human populations, then you're coupled to rising food prices no matter what. In other words, consumption of organics is non-linearly related to rising food prices and orthogonal to morality.

[1] [http://www.biologycorner.com/worksheets/predator_prey_graphi...](http://www.biologycorner.com/worksheets/predator_prey_graphing.html)

<comment><USER13> Big agra has been able to shrink the cost per calorie at a rate which has kept food costs in check, so I'm not sure I can allow the assumption of increased costs being a given. We can talk portion of costs, relative costs, or per capita... there could be advances that enable a new green revolution... if you would just pray at the altar of big agra and wear your nitrate and phosphate filters according to the directions. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Of course a lot of the "experts" are on the payroll of big food corporations.

It's difficult to have independent science in this day and age on matters where billions are at stake.

There is of course bias on the other side as well (e.g ideological), but nothing trumps actual, solid, business interests as a bias.

<comment><USER16> And the experts are also on non profit and large research universities, including the university that published the study (University of Newcastle). What's your point?

<comment><USER15> I made my point already.

A lot of the experts are on the payroll of the food industry. They work directly on it, or their research is funded by it. The same way there was tons of tobacco industry sponsored studies in the seventies, that said it was all OK. The same way studies on sugar were downplayed.

A university (research funds aside) doesn't have the kind of multi-billion interests a whole industry have. Their researchers have other shit that can interfere with their research (e.g the need to churn out papers to stay afloat, or the desire to write a controversial paper to make their names known), but nothing that trumps hard multibillion monetary interests.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> In their statements they all ignore the question of environmental impact, pesticides, worker health, etc, which are the strongest reason to buy organic (and not because the food has magical properties).

<comment><USER18> Exactly, for us the main reason to buy organic is we don't like the concentrated industrialized production of regular food. We care about sustainability, environmental impact, working conditions, treatment of animals, etc. A carrot is a carrot, it's the story behind the carrot that matters.

<comment><USER19> Yup. Also, I vote with my dollars, preferring local, small business, cash transactions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I don't think anyone in my family eats organic foods. Many of the older generation have lived into their 90's and 80's. My grandparents are in their 80's now. Would their parents have lived into their 100's had they eaten organic food? They weren't sickly miserable people all their lives. I just don't get the ultra-health kick. My take is to stop worrying about your food so much and eat whatever satisfies your hunger, just not too much. Micromanaging our diets is this generation's yogurt enema.

<comment><USER8> The way that food is produced now differs significantly than the way it was produced even 50 years ago. To use the lives of your relatives that lived into their 80's and 90's as 'proof' that no one needs organic food is disingenuous, regardless of the existence (or lack) of health benefits to eating organic food.

As an example, did your 90-year-old relatives eat Monstano-engineered "Round Up-Ready" corn for a majority of their lives? If not, then how can you claim that their lives have any bearing on the current situation?

<comment><USER20> 50 years ago they were spraying crops with DTD and other terrible pesticides. If you don't remember, soldiers in the Spanish American war suffered more casualties from the terrible food they were given than from combat[1]. The industrial revolution started more than 90 years ago and industrialized agriculture is not a new phenomenon.

I was thinking about this post this morning and wondering if the ultra- longevity origanic food types would cut off their testiciles if it was shown that you could squeeze out a few extra years of life if you did it early enough. This micro-managing of food eaten is obsessive, although I think half the people writing comments are actually conspiracy crazed about Monsanto and other big companies who must be out to get them (which is not to say that big companies are not screwing over people or small farms, they probably are).

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Army_beef_scandal](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Army_beef_scandal)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Organic is a toxic anti-science religion.

Do we really need an article explaining how organic is not better for you?

Do people on HN really think that could be true? I'd like to think not.

If you go to an organic farmer and explain that this method using chemicals has been prove better and harmless through science they won't do it because they are fundamentalists.

I'm amazed by the tolerance of the organic religion by the scientific community.

<comment><USER22> Pesticides have not been proven harmless, just acceptably harmful. Much like how lead is bad for you but some lead in drinking water is accepted.

There is a similar issue with GMO food. Everything out there might be safe, but there is little research done before new strains enter mass production so some caution is reasonable even without demonstrated harm.

PS: IMO, anything still considered safe after 30 years is probably ok but organic / non GMO is a reasonable catch all for that kind of a track record.

<comment><USER7> Some pesticides are pretty harmful some are really not.

There are many unrelated types of compounds we are talking about here... from severe (and generally now banned) biocides like Methyl Bromide gas all the way to a light camomile tea solution.

It's like your dad saying "drugs are bad!" then proceeding to drink a six pack. Dose and type mean everything. Not all pesticides are dangerous to man nor the general environment.

<comment><USER19> _Some pesticides are pretty harmful some are really not._

The burden of proof is on the advocates of pesticides.

I'm utterly exhausted by the endless hair splitting and PR campaigns. As a consumer citizen, I do not have the resources or wherewithal to determine which pesticides might be acceptible. When negative information is routinely buried, such as the brouhaha over honey bee colony collapse disorder, I've completely lost my patience and confidence in agribiz and its captured regulators.

They can all rot.

<comment><USER23> There is testing, science etc for things like pesticides and residue. The burden has been born and carried to a conclusion. Its new claims that the testing was not good enough that have a burden - its easy to call foul or claim hidden problems, then be conveniently too exhausted to do anything about it. Sometimes its not that problems are buried; sometimes they're not real.

<comment><USER22> That's a perfectly rational argument, however there is a long history of pesticides turning out to be more harmful than originally thought. There are even commonly used pesticides that are known to be harmful to people that are still in common use with the assumption that the residue is not harmful.

Unfortunately, that's vary hard to test as the population for a study is much smaller than the population effected by any given pesticide. When you include environmental effects the argument generally becomes one of acceptable harm. As there is also a ridiculous oversupply of food there also clearly over used.

<comment><USER19> _...pesticides turning out to be more harmful than originally thought._

Licenses (to sell pesticides) should be periodically reauthorized, given the current best available science. Factoring cost to benefit in the authorization, of course.

Like all these intractable policy issues, at the heart it's about governance. Right now the burden of proof (of harm) is on the critics. That's inefficient and unnecessarily adversarial.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> this article is fucking trash</comment>


State of Ethereum: August Edition - <AUTHOR> https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/08/27/state-ethereum-august-edition/

<comment><USER2> I'm reasonably sure that ethereum will be a failure because of a fundamental incompatibility between speculators (enticed by "get rich by being early adopter just like those bitcoin folks from 2010") and developers (who actually increase the value of the platform)

I have a novel idea for a decentralized application which I think might take off. There is no way in hell I will build this with Ethereum where it will disproportionally benefit "early adopters" doing nothing and sitting on their butts. (Instead I will likely fork an existing codebase such as NXT or one of the lighter altcoins)

I believe many developers interesting in building actual apps (not 10-line code snippets shown as examples on the website) feel the same.

To build on the analogy from an earlier Ethereum thread, that's like Google selling developer versions of Google Glass but because of speculators buying them in bulk, the price is $100,000 per item. As a result, no one actually develops for the platform.

<comment><USER3> The early speculators in the cryptocurrency space are developers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The biggest unaddressed problem I see with Ethereum is the potential of the blockchain growing _very_ large. There has been some discussion of this (on the Ethereum blog and elsewhere), but these discussions focus on showing that the blockchain will remain secure at very large sizes.

I'm more interested in the operational mechanics of having to deal with a very large block chain. The figure of 100 TB was used in one blog post, and that is a challenging amount of data to deal with for anyone.

What I haven't seen is any progress on any proposals to either provide incentives to limit the size, or ideas around splitting the chain.

<comment><USER5> I briefly mentioned Ethereum 1.5 at the end of my blog post; I'll soon cover some clever ways of creating quasi-scalable dapps using the ETH blockchain as a usually-inexpensive security backend.

Believe me, consensus and scalability are the two largest problems on my mind. We don't have nice solutions (yet :) ) because the problems are fundamentally hard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "The block time is decreased from 60 seconds to 12 seconds"

Now this, I like. I went to a ethereum meeting in Toronto a few months back, and the block time was the only question I had for the speaker. Reducing the block time to something reasonably quick will allow for usable user applications.

<comment><USER7> I thought the risk of a split chain was tied mostly to the wall clock, not the block count? Would you not still need the equivalent of 6 BTC block confirmations aka 60 minutes of confirmations?

<comment><USER5> No, the block count is the only thing that matters. If an attacker has X hashpower, the probability that they will succeed in a 51% attack after N confirmations is (X / (1 - X))^N ; you can derive this formula yourself via generating functions. The block time appears nowhere in that analysis.

<comment><USER7> But with a shorter block time, they can make more attempts in the same time span... Even if each attempt has a low probability of success on its own, wouldn't the higher number of attempts make it more likely to succeed at least once?

I was led to believe the purpose of slow (long) confirmations was to reduce the risk of an attacker mining an alternative chain in secret (to be revealed later as a hijack and a double spend), by making it unlikely to be able to sustain a high hashrate (multiplied by "luck"?)

<comment><USER8> Above and beyond that, the effect of high block times is that centralized miners gain a significant advantage over decentralized ones. The current block latency of the Bitcoin network is in the order of a number of seconds. As we know that current mining pools are indicative of the best connected (many of them have private peering and significant numbers of edge router nodes), we can assume that the majority of the network will be even poorer than this. In some testing the difference between a Stratum socket on the top 4 pools announcing a block was often up to 3 seconds.

For a 12 second block time in Bitcoin, the network would likely collapse down to just the biggest pool, as everybody else would have a disproportionately high number of orphan blocks. Sensible miners would need to move to the biggest pool in order to avoid a significant double-digit percentage losses.

> I thought the risk of a split chain was tied mostly to the wall clock, not > the block count?

This is a correct statement to make. The number of blocks considered to be safe is completely irrelevant, and only has the effect of denoting the time on the wall. An hour for 6 confirmations in Bitcoin wasn't chosen so much because it was 6 blocks long, but because it is a reasonable tradeoff between convenience and security. If the block time had been 5 minutes you would need 12 to get the same level of confidence in a transaction. I don't understand why the Ethereum developers appear to think otherwise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> >Currently, the biggest threat to our approach is likely some kind of rapidly switching FPGA.

Finally, a project for my area of focus. Man that would be fun.

<comment><USER10> It's interesting how much work they're putting in to making their mining process ASIC resistant. Their approach to implement a turing-complete scripting system into their blockchain which miner's must be able to execute is definitely interesting. But it's also very complicated. I'll be interested to see if they can successfully implement it.

In my opinion, a much more viable approach to ASIC-resistance - which is already implemented and live today - is proof-of-capacity hard-drive based mining. This is an approach to mining which Microsoft proposed in a research paper last year [1]. It's recently been implemented by an altcoin called Burstcoin [2].

I should disclose that I've been mining BURST, and therefore am financially interested in seeing it succeed. However I also genuinely believe it is interesting technology, and I'd like to see some sort of proof-of-capacity mining succeed purely because of the technical merits.

The proof-of-capacity mining process basically works by pre-generating as many "plots" as possible to your hard-drive. Every plot is like a lottery ticket for a lottery that takes place once per block. If you have the luckiest plot for a block, then you get to claim the next block. After initial plot generation, the mining process is very energy efficient since it only requires a small amount of hard-drive reads per block. It's also ASIC-resistant and likely to remain very decentralized because the of the wide distribution of hard-drive storage capacity.

[1] [https://research.microsoft.com/pubs/217984/permacoin.pdf](https://research.microsoft.com/pubs/217984/permacoin.pdf)

[2] [https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=731923.0](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=731923.0)</comment></comment>


Immortal ZX Spectrum games - <AUTHOR> http://zxds.raxoft.cz/games.html

<comment><USER2> I had spend a lot of my youth playing those games. Elite was fun to play. It even had SimCity. Remember being so impressed I could get SimCity on my puny 3Mhz/48K machine since before I had only played it on an IBM desktop at scool.

But the good thing about the platform is that there quite a few programming environments, there was a C and Pascal compiler. You'd load the compiler from tape for 5 minutes, enter your program, compile it, run it, it would crash, rewind the tape, do the whole thing again. Remember writing my own assembler as well. Good times...

All in all ZX Spectrum platform is almost entirely responsible for me picking programming as my profession.

<comment><USER3> > All in all ZX Spectrum platform is almost entirely responsible for me > picking programming as my profession.

Me too. Started with the 48k, switched to assembly soon after getting bored with BASIC, and for a few years I got my name printed in Your Sinclair for posting POKEs for various games.

The Z80 assembly language set me in good stead for early programming with MS- DOS (3.3 or so) as the assembly syntax was familiar. (I think Zilog engineers were ex-Intel. But my memory is a little hazy these days.)

I still play "Choas:The Battle of Wizards" on an emulator every few months, alongside "The Hobbit" and the various Hungry Horace games.

<comment><USER4> Well, it was POKEs from Your Sinclair that got _me_ into programming, so perhaps I have you to thank? Thanks!

<comment><USER3> I think there were a lot of people doing that stuff. Most people would send in one or two, but there were people like Jon North, & Gerard Sweeney, who I remember as submitting, contributing, and documenting hundreds/thousands of hacks.

Truely impressive to me, as a twelve-year old.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's been brought up here before but relevant again in case you missed it the first time.

The original developer for R-Type for the ZX Spectrum wrote up a detailed story of the technical challenges for developing the game. Shaving cycles off to make action smooth was what it was all about.

IT'S BEHIND YOU: [http://bizzley.com/](http://bizzley.com/)

<comment><USER6> Yes - a recommended read. In a similar vein: [http://www.jordanmechner.com/backstage/journals/](http://www.jordanmechner.com/backstage/journals/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> In my opinion this is a brilliantly put together list.

The nostalgia that comes flooding back to me from my childhood almost brings tears of joy to my eyes.

It's truly staggering to read at the start that there were ten times as many titles (15,000) than there are for the DS or GBA.

I do wonder if the children of today will feel nostalgic about the software of today in 25 years time?

For some reason it doesn't feel like as much love and passion goes into a lot of games being produced at the moment. So many of those Spectrum titles were labours of love by single people working for months on their own in bedrooms.

<comment><USER8> > It's truly staggering to read at the start that there were ten times as many > titles (15,000) than there are for the DS or GBA.

It makes sense that there will be a lot more games on a open platform than on a platform from company that is notorious for not attracting 3rd party titles.

> For some reason it doesn't feel like as much love and passion goes into a > lot of games being produced at the moment. So many of those Spectrum titles > were labours of love by single people working for months on their own in > bedrooms.

Step outside the world of Call of Duties and Battlefields and you will find lots of games that are very much labor of loves from bedroom developers.

<comment><USER7> The author probably just picked that as an example of a very popular platform - the DS (2072) has double the titles of the PS3 (1026) according to Wikipedia and isn't far off the total titles of the PS1 (2355) or PS2 (2468).

I know there are plenty of indy titles on Steam and the other app stores that are remarkable games and immense labours of love, but I wonder how many really get under the skin of a lot of children today for a long period of time?

So many games I see my nephews playing are freemium titles that seem to drift in and out of their lives on a day to day basis (especially on iOS). I certainly don't see them building a connection like I did with Manic Miner or the Dizzy games anyway. One exception I can clearly think of though recently with kids would probably be Minecraft. Others miles may vary I guess.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Hard Drivin's approach to collisions or unrealistic events—putting the car back on the road at a standstill—was the norm for driving games until later games such as Cruisin' USA and its successors introduced intentionally artificial physics to force a car to always stay near the road and land right- side up pointing forward."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_Drivin%27](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_Drivin%27)

I thought it was fun due to its realism.

also this bit is interesting from the wikipedia page

Physics The engine, transmission control, suspension, and tire physics were modeled in conjunction with Doug Milliken[18] who was listed as a test driver in the game credits. In the 1950s his father William Milliken of Milliken Research led a team at Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory in Buffalo NY USA (later Calspan) that converted aircraft equations of motion to equations of motion for the automobile, and became one of the world's leading experts in car modeling.

BTW, what is the spiritual successor to Hard Drivin' today?

<comment><USER10> I remember playing Hard Drivin on the c64, it was a terrible port. The spectrum version was great though.

Spiritual successor? In terms of realistic car modeling, I would say the rFactor series.

<comment><USER9> In terms of modeling I'm sure you're right. Something about Hard Drivin' makes it feel not like a straight up racing game. It was an odd combination of physics + disembodied stunt tracks.

The combo of a sim, but a playful environment seems very hard to find.

<comment><USER10> I see your point, maybe something like BeamNG.drive when it is finished.

<comment><USER9> I think you found it :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Back when a single person could make a top-notch game, and a really large team might be 4, I feel like there were a lot more games. This, of course, meant a lot more _crappy_ games too, but diversity makes for a more rapid exploration of the problem space.

</comment><comment><USER12> Pete Cooke was responsible for a lot of great, great Spectrum games. I don't hear Micronaut One mentioned much, but to my mind it's the smoothest 3D game on the Speccy

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfKUZRI90rI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfKUZRI90rI)

His "Whole New Ball Game" was brilliant too

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyIHM8SY1pE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyIHM8SY1pE)

</comment><comment><USER13> Wow. Reading that I could literally taste in my mouth the excitement I felt all those years ago playing some of those games and seeing the amazing graphics and interaction modes.

</comment><comment><USER14> I wish some retroprogramming fan would do Civilization, The Sims and Minecraft (isometric) on ZX Spectrum. It would be interesting to see how well these would be doable...

<comment><USER15> >Civilization

Could be done

>The Sims There is a home simulator for the C64 I think.

<comment><USER12> Little Computer People

[https://www.c64-wiki.com/index.php/Little_Computer_People](https://www.c64-wiki.com/index.php/Little_Computer_People)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Great great list. It feels so good remembering all of these.

I can't believe Jack the Nipper 2 isn't on your list though. Excellent graphics, great theme, great gameplay.

<comment><USER17> Good God you just mentioned it and the soundtrack started playing in my head.

<comment><USER16> Ha the SFX are burned into my memory

 _kicks green coconut_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Amazing list. I've yet to find a Laser Squad clone that was as much fun, or a Deflektor one. I did find a modern version of Highway Encounter sometime last year (I forget where, since my hard disk died) and of course I have been keeping track of the Elite renaissance, but it's amazing to think that I spent hours as a kid waiting for these to load from a dinky cassette player.

Happy, happy days...

</comment><comment><USER19> Nice list although I knew many of the games from other platforms (c64 and amiga mostly) where the graphics were a lot better.

<comment><AUTHOR> Time for a Speccy vs Commodore redux I think. Two tribes....!

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The game Driller is certainly worth a look. Though I'm not sure this would be my platform of choice.

It is a 3D puzzle game. Circa 1987 running on XT CGA class systems I find it to be fairly advanced for the time. But it feels certainly antiquated today. Still it definitely deserves a look.

</comment><comment><USER21> i had a spectrum and a monochrome (green phosphorous), beige box, TRS 80.

i always wanted to play games and write basic on the TRS80 just because i couldn't stand the keyboard on the spectrum.

</comment><comment><USER22> I would love to see or play "Nether Earth" like game clone :) I liked the concept of "Nether Earth".

<comment><USER15> There is a libre remake somewhere. [http://www.braingames.getput.com/nether/default.asp](http://www.braingames.getput.com/nether/default.asp)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Life is serendypic.

Yesterday I was doing some Z80 ASM code for the Speccy (FUSE + OpenSE ROM) with the help of Pasmo, just for fun.

</comment><comment><USER23> Excellent resource! Does anyone know of comparable listing for the C64?

</comment><comment><USER24> i really liked the monochrome isometric graphics from games like knight lore. wonder how successful that would be today; it produced some very atmospheric games.

</comment><comment><USER25> I remember most of those games, boy I am really old! :)

<comment><USER26> Yes, we are.

30 years ago, pretty sure I would have been playing Lords of Midnight.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Keyword King – Quickly identify your app's bad keywords - <AUTHOR> http://www.keywordking.co/

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the tool! Makes me wonder how I can do better.

Maybe people in here can help me with this: I've entered the keywords for a little game I made. The name of the game is Lina (app store name: Lina - endless space snake).

My keywords are

        lina, line, action, fast, square, snake, star, space, runner, tron, retro, reflex, addictive, free

Out of those, only "lina" scores 4 and all the others are >50 - bad keyword. I realize that keywords like "addictive" and "free" are kind of useless, but I only put them there because I didn't have many keyword ideas...

Any ideas to what I could use to get better ranking?

<comment><USER3> Hi,

I'd recommend going more spesific with your keywords. And try to look for double keyword combinations you can rank high for. For example, even though you might rank low for both 'snake' and 'game', you will rank higher for 'snake game'. So remember to fill in any important double keyword combinations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've used this for an app I've build for fun (to check out Swift).

It ranks bad for both Yoga and Meditation, yet one can't use the app for anything else. I could, theoretically, remove these keywords, but what would I replace them with? I have no idea, and your tool doesn't help me.

I'd say it is more valuable to rank for a strongly-related keyword anywhere than to rank high for a weakly-related keyword. I.e. if my Yoga and Meditation app ranked #1 for Airplane, it would be completely useless :-)

Otherwise, I enjoyed using the tool. Nice flow through the process and good visualisations in the end.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the feedback! It's very important to choose keywords that are strongly related to your app.

However, that a very difficult task to solve with an app, so were sticking to give you an overview over how they are performing. It's up to each user to jugde wether or no his/hers keywords are relevant for the app :)

<comment><USER5> Have you looked into the alchemy api?[http://www.alchemyapi.com/](http://www.alchemyapi.com/)

<comment><USER3> I haven't, but I surely will! Thanks for the tip.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Here is an article we wrote about the development by the way: [https://medium.com/@gregaubs/a39477d2242a](https://medium.com/@gregaubs/a39477d2242a)

</comment><comment><USER6> Pretty cool tool all though it should be said that combinations of the keywords are important as well as the keywords alone.

I made a small script to allow searching in stores other than the us and in general for experimental purposes.

[https://gist.github.com/k0nserv/adc136f35c696584c0aa](https://gist.github.com/k0nserv/adc136f35c696584c0aa)

</comment><comment><USER7> And nobody cares that they are giving their keywords to Keyword King? It's like the people using AppAnnie who don't realize they are giving away their revenue data for free so that AppAnnie can sell it to their competitors.

<comment><USER3> We have no interest in using the keywords to anything other than giving you an overview over how they are preforming. Plus, you can easily scrape this info from the iTunes Search API if you query it for all the words in the english alphabet, so its not worth much..

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Nice, I sure will use this soon when I release my next app. It is a great idea!

</comment><comment><USER9> Cool, will keep an eye on this when we release our app later this year.

</comment><comment><USER10> Such a handy tool for app developers. Simple and easy to use.</comment>


Scene-Demo running on ATM-machine - <AUTHOR> http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=55757 Youtube-Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GynWoDcjE-4 <comment><AUTHOR> Youtube-Link: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GynWoDcjE-4>

</comment><comment><USER2> What's an automatic teller machine machine?

<comment><USER3> It's like a factory factory.

<comment><USER4> Not to be confused with a FactoryFactoryFactory.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's not a live ATM. They didn't even have to hack the Windows PC it's running on, since they're developing for it.

<comment><USER6> How do you know this. In the video it's clear they come to some place where all these ATMs stands. Do you think they are affiliated with bank running these ATMs? I doubt bank need such "advertisement" =)

<comment><USER7> I'm undecided. There are more than enough blur effects used that could conceal cuts in the movie's timeline.</comment></comment></comment>