Contrary to Musk's claim, Lidar has some advantages in Self Driving technology - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/08/elon-musk-says-driverless-cars-dont-need-lidar-experts-arent-so-sure/ <comment><USER2> What gets me is the obsession with "identifying objects". The first thing you want for self-driving is an elevation map of what's ahead. If it's not flat, you don't go there. You don't need to know what it is. This is what LIDAR is good at.

Radar is not yet usable for ground profiling. Radar returns from asphalt at an oblique angle just aren't very good. Nor is there enough resolution to see even large potholes. Maybe someday, with terahertz radar. Not yet.

Now, you can go beyond that. If you're following the car ahead, and it's moving OK, you can assume that what they just drove over was flat. If the road far ahead looks like the near road, and the elevation map of the near road says it's flat, you can perhaps assume that the road far ahead is flat, too. That's what the Stanford team did in the DARPA Grand Challenge.

Identifying objects is mostly for things that move. Either they're moving now, or they're of a type that's likely to move. This is where the real "AI" part comes in - identifying other road users and trying to predict or reasonably guess what they will do.

Collision avoidance based on object recognition has not worked well from Tesla. They've hit a street sweeper, a fire truck, a crossing tractor-trailer, a freeway barrier, and some cars stalled on freeways. All big, all nearly stationary. This is the trouble with "identify, _then_ avoid".

<comment><USER3> Even when trying to identify objects, I don't get the push for trying to understand what they are. The way I see it (and I might be very wrong here), you should be able to get good enough results by identifying things around you that are solid (that's the most important part), and tracking their velocity. This should be doable without any kind of understanding of _what_ the objects are. Then the car's control system should keep the speed and direction such that the car can always be stopped before any of the tracked objects hit it.

Having done that, you can play with identifying lanes of traffic and sidewalks and other "normal" features, and potentially ignoring objects there as long as they behave according to expectations. But I'd think the first order of business would still be ensuring that you don't run into solid objects, whatever they are, and whether or not they're moving.

<comment><USER4> > _Even when trying to identify objects, I don 't get the push for trying to > understand what they are._

Without that you don't know lots of things.

1) Whether they might move or are completely stationary (e.g. a pole vs a motorcycle).

2) How they move.

3) Which you're better off hitting if you need to swerve to avoid another car (is it better to hit the fruit stand or the 10 year old boy?)

4) Whether they tell you something (e.g. traffic signs, traffic lights, a traffic cop directing you elsewhere, for starters).

5) Whether they represent some danger and you need to keep a distance (e.g. a bus with open doors, from where someone might come out at any minute).

<comment><USER5> >3) Which you're better off hitting if you need to swerve to avoid another car (is it better to hit the fruit stand or the 10 year old boy?)

This is a non-issue in practice. Just brake and don't turn the wheel. It's a naive approach and it leaves a lot of accident avoidance potential on the table in most situations but it's what most people do and expect everyone else to do. Trying to do anything else is impossible to justify to the public because everything you have to say about why you shouldn't panic stop for a object in the middle of the freeway when there's an open lane beside you will be drowned out by people telling you you're crash the car if you dare touch that steering wheel in an attempt to not crash.

<comment><USER6> You're 100% wrong. Many people, especially big trucks, have swerved off the road to avoid killing people and animals. If you'd ever taken a defensive driving course, you'd know that it's always quicker to steer avoid collision than it is to brake. This takes a supreme amount of context and situational awareness.

<comment><USER5> >You're 100% wrong. Many people, especially big trucks, have swerved off the road to avoid killing people and animals. If you'd ever taken a defensive driving course, you'd know that it's always quicker to steer avoid collision than it is to brake.

You are 100% failing to properly parse my comment. I'm expressly saying that braking with zero regard for the situational details is not ideal but it accomplishes the goals of a self driving car.

* be as good or better than humans at not crashing

* react to situations in a manner similiar to and predictable by humans

* not make any important stakeholders more likely to get sued

* actually be implementable with current or near future technology

>This takes a supreme amount of context and situational awareness.

Which is hard enough to teach to people, let alone an AI.

<comment><USER4> Err, if a self driving car just breaks in that situation, then it fails all of the above goals:

1) "be as good or better than humans at not crashing"

It could still crash because of momentum/distance. It could cause a pile-up.

2) react to situations in a manner similiar to and predictable by humans

People would swerve depending on the situation. It's extremely common, and the logical thing to do in many cases.

> _not make any important stakeholders more likely to get sued_

Getting sued depends on the effect of your actions. If you kill/hurt your passengers, cause a pile-up, hit the person in front, etc. you will get sued.

> _actually be implementable with current or near future technology_

That's irrelevant...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This author missed Musks point entierly. His argument is that to solve self- driving you need a deep understanding of your surrounding which you can only achieve with visible light spectrum video. That's the real hard problem to solve and you need cameras to solve that and if you solve it then lidar becomes unnecessary.

The doomed part is because if companies are spending all of their energy on creating neural nets around lidar then they'll reach a local maximum where they never begin to tackle the much more difficult problem truly needed for self-driving.

<comment><USER8> Seems to me that "deep understanding of surrounding" and "only achievable with visible spectrum" are contradictory. Visible light is readily attenuated, occluded, and reflected.

The first time Tesla runs over a kid chasing a ball into the street because it couldn't see him between the cars, this will be readily apparent.

Seems to me that Tesla is in the business of selling cars, other self driving companies are interested in AV for ride sharing or trucking. The latter have different requirements for styling and costs and the consumer case, so Musk has several limitations on the sensor suite he includes in a Tesla.

What he's doing is trying to argue a $5k system with cheap cameras and crappy radar coverage is all that is needed, because a full no-blind-spot multi- spectrum system would both cost too much AND likely make the car look ugly.

Two people have already been killed, and several injured, by Tesla autopilot due to blind spots.

<comment><USER9> Can you explain how a lidar sees a child hidden between cars? I was under the impression that lidar was line of sight.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Musk's point has always been to combine vision with radar, instead of Lidar. I'm amazed that this combination is usually overlooked in discussions of Tesla/Lidar

<comment><USER11> I'm sure this is a dumb question to anyone with knowledge in this field but is there any reason to not use all three together?

<comment><USER12> Price. I worked briefly with teams building self driving cars in the past. Their budget for sensors far exceeded the cost of the car itself.

<comment><USER13> Of course, they were presumably using a mostly-stock car with custom niche sensor products, so that comparison would be a bit more favorable in production.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think I would find Musk's claims more compelling if he had actually sat down with an expert and discussed in detail why he believes what he believes. Instead we're sitting here discussing quote a kooky quotes with no real analysis. Even on the face of it

>"They're all going to dump lidar," Elon Musk said at an April event

We know which companies are building self-driving cars, we know what technologies they're using and we know how long they've been working on it. Have we seen any signs that any of these companies are dumping LIDAR? I would've thought it'd be pretty big news right?

<comment><USER4> > _Have we seen any signs that any of these companies are dumping LIDAR? I > would 've thought it'd be pretty big news right?_

In fact, why would they not have a multi-faceted system, keeping LIDAR and alternatives?

<comment><USER15> Because LIDAR is expensive. If camera-based neural networks eventually get good enough that LIDAR provides minimal additional value, they will drop it. This is what Musk is betting on. We're not there yet for sure, and it's not clear to me yet whether that's a realistic goal for the 5-10 year time frame.

<comment><USER16> Musk is betting on a lot of things lately. I would rather have him focus on one or two hard problems and solve these first.

<comment><USER17> Musk's job isn't to solve problems, it's to find people who can solve problems, put them together, and pay them.

<comment><USER4> Musk's job is to secure investment (and government deals) with promises and signs of hope.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > For example, one of the distance estimation algorithms used in the Cornell > paper, developed by two researchers at Taiwan's National Chiao Tung > University, relied on a pair of cameras and the parallax effect. It compared > two images taken from different angles and observed how objects' positions > differ between the image—the larger the shift, the closer an object is.

The shift or disparity between sensors doesn't really matter. We've known that wider convergence angles begets better object point estimation since the 70s. Yet, even the KITTI dataset doesn't attempt to take advantage of this, and uses two rather average cameras with a (relatively) short baseline of 0.06m (see: [http://www.cvlibs.net/datasets/kitti/setup.php](http://www.cvlibs.net/datasets/kitti/setup.php)). That's 6cm!!! You have the entire width of the car to separate these cameras by.

> This technique only works if the software correctly matches a pixel in one > image with the corresponding pixel in the other image. If the software gets > this wrong, then distance estimates can be wildly off.

Again, yeah. But the problem is twofold: you need to detect / match similar points between two images, but the fundamental setup of your system can limit your precision and accuracy. Use a wider-angle lens with better convergent geometry. Every publication based on the KITTI dataset doesn't even address some of the most basic criticisms from photogrammetry.

Which leads to probably why LiDAR gives such a distinct advantage in most of these data sets. You solve two problems:

1) You solve the correspondence problem trivially because LiDAR doesn't need to match points between cameras, and there's no baseline / convergence criteria that the final point precision depends on.

2) Robust geometric data is well-modelled, well understood, and provides an easier criteria for machine learning systems (particularly ones running over KITTI, as in the article) to converge on than just using stereo-imagery with a baseline of 6cm. You get the scale of the system for free and your calibration troubles are whisked away as LiDAR systems tend to be better-calibrated and more stable than most lens systems or configurations you'll find in the cheap off-the-shelf cameras that many autonomous driving startups are using.

I guess I come off a little negative by looking at this, but my first reaction to Musk saying that nobody should or will want to ever use LiDAR for this is that he doesn't know a damn thing about what he's talking about.

<comment><USER19> A 6 cm baseline is enough for humans to make adequate distance estimates.

Besides the correspondence problem, a longer baseline makes it hard to keep the cameras aligned as the vehicle bounces and flexes. You can't mount them separately to the car -- a chassis can easily twist by a degree or two. So you need a stiff mounting bar between them, which you can either put outside the car like a roof mount (ugly, and it gets buffeted by wind) or inside (also ugly).

<comment><USER20> Why even limit yourself to two cameras? If I recall correctly multi-view geometry benefits from having as many cameras as possible.

In the future we will all have walls covered with a checkerboard pattern in our garage to calibrate the cameras on our self driving cars. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The article misses one important point about LiDAR. Frequency modulated variants, referred to as "FMCW", get velocity information for free via the doppler effect. You can't get that information from a camera without sophisticated image processing, and you can't get it with high resolution from RADAR. Knowing velocity as well as position is important to assessing immediate safety threats.

There's a good write-up by the co-founder of SiLC, a silicon photonics LiDAR startup, here:

[https://www.photonics.com/Articles/Integrated_Photonics_Look...](https://www.photonics.com/Articles/Integrated_Photonics_Looks_to_Advance_Safety_for/a64791)

</comment><comment><USER22> I agree with Musk and see lidar where ray tracing was decades ago. It was an expensive impractical "holy grail".

A set of lidar sensors right now costs as much as a car.

Maybe at some point in the future one of these lidar startups will come out with an inexpensive (maybe solid-state) version to augment the current sensors. Or maybe by that time vision will have gotten much better.

<comment><USER21> The cost of lidar is going to plummet due to exactly the end of your post. Several startups (SiLC, Aeva, etc.) are using silicon photonic integrated circuits. Several more early stage startups have either mems or phase array prototypes for completely solid state chips.

<comment><USER23> The thing is, self driving wars will likely be over before economies of scale for production of lidars will happen.

If non-lidar system doesn't work, then the cost of lidar, even at $10k, is irrelevant.

If you can make non-lidar system work better than humans (i.e. with quality acceptable for regulators) before the cost of lidars drops down significantly, then lidars lose based on economics.

And the cost of lidar won't drop significantly quickly. The next step-change in price would probably require mass production i.e. production of hundreds of thousands of units per year.

Even if lidar robotaxis happen before non-lidar ones, initially they'll be made in tens of thosands of units per year, leaving a couple of years for non- lidar tech to catch up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I wonder about the noise aspect of this when you've got 20 cars nearby also using lidar. Is there a point where these kinds of active sensors begin interfering with eachother? I know that it isn't lidar but the xbox kinect's used to interfere with each other if you had multiple in one room

<comment><USER18> That really depends on the modality of the LiDAR. For the record, the Kinect is techically LiDAR since it is using "Light Detection And Ranging."

As for why the Kinect interferes with other units, it's because of the imaging modality (structured light). The sensors interfere with one another because they're largely dependent on detecting a specific pattern of projected dots. If you detect too many dots or if the image gets saturated, you start to have a problem.

In the case of traditional scanning LiDAR (e.g. terrestrial LiDAR in the sense of a Leica or Faro or Velodyne unit), this isn't necessarily the same case. Sure, if the two lasers point exactly at each other for a given point over their sweep, then at that point the lasers will saturate the measurement and that specific measurement will not be useful. In time-of-flight based, mirrorless systems, this matters less than one might think. I can see this being consistently a problem when scanning with Velodyne tech since they tend to only rotate about one axis, but for other types of LiDAR I don't think it would be as big of a deal. Granted, then you have to worry about scanning speed and how that affects the final results.

Overall, I don't think that unit interference is going to be a significant factor in adoption. LiDAR is a broad technology and it's not easy to make assumptions about the entire industry based on a couple implementations or modalities.

<comment><USER20> As an aside, the original Kinect and Kinect for Xbox 360 use different technologies for 3D detection. The original Kinect projects an infrared pattern and then detects the deformation of the pattern to determine distance/shape. The Kinect for Xbox 360 uses more traditional time of flight.

<comment><USER25> you are confusing between Kinect for XBox 360 and Kinect 2 that is Kinect for XBox one, Kinect 2 ( kinect for xbox one) uses time of flight. Original kinect and Kinect for xbox 360 are same and uses structured light sensor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> To sum up. If I use Lidar - Lidar is good. If I do not use Lidar - Lidar is bad.

<comment><USER27> That's what each of the companies involved claim, but here you additionally have benchmark results from independent researchers who aren't building self- driving cars that say Lidar is good.

<comment><USER26> Everything that you see is a piece of marketing (in both sides). This "research" was drafted, vetted, reviewed, approved (by at least 5-10 people).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Another possible argument is simply pragmatic - by not including LIDAR, Tesla can actually sell cars and therefore be in the best position to get to L5. They'll have the biggest fleet, the most data, the most technical expertise and experience, etc. I mean they're actually selling something people are buying. It may or may not be the correct technical choice but it seems to be easily the correct business choice.

</comment><comment><USER29> One of the major disadvantages of LIDAR is poorer performance in rain, snow, and fog, which are quite common in many parts of the world. I'm surprised that isn't being discussed more.

<comment><USER30> Is that any better with Radar or cameras. What happens when there is a large droplet over a lens? Does sound diffuse in a heavy rainstorm and/or completely drown out the ping.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> IMO all of the cost and power arguments are currently red herrings. An autonomous car or truck is worth at least $100k more than a non autonomous one, so whatever it takes sensor wise is worth it.

Where musk's argument makes sense is that if lidar can't be made to work in all weather, putting effort into making algorithms for it may be a dead end. There are a number of companies with various approaches to making lidar work better in bad weather though

</comment><comment><USER32> a big drawback is not performance but that most lidars are expensive and fragile.

<comment><USER33> This was true... until recently when Luminar announced a fairly affordable (for an automobile BOM) ~$1k version to be available this year. [https://www.engadget.com/2019/07/12/luminar-affordable- lidar...](https://www.engadget.com/2019/07/12/luminar-affordable-lidar/)

<comment><USER25> Article clearly mentions that these will be ready for production not before year 2022, until then it's all speculation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> How well do Lidar systems work when there are 5, 10, 20, 50 cars with Lidar units all in a small area (like a busier intersection in my smallish town)?

I wonder if Musk has done some tests of this sort of scenario and that is what he is basing this judgment on?

</comment><comment><USER35> Surely a blend would yield the best all weather solution? Even if the lidar isn't top shelf.

</comment><comment><USER36> Musk said he is a fan of LIDAR, the Tesla has forward-facing LIDAR, and he even helped develop a LIDAR for the Dragon docking system. This is a hit job.</comment>


Light Table ClojureScript Tutorial - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/swannodette/lt-cljs-tutorial <comment><USER2> You could have linked directly to the file containing the tutorial[1], it's quite readable. I quite like this sort of 'code prose' style, which reminds me of _Learn Lua in 15 Minutes_ [2]. Light Table particularly lends itself to this style, however, as you can go through and selectively evaluate each block of code with CMD+Enter as you read. That said, one could argue that having to manually type into a console would do more for making those bits of code stick around in your brain.

Looking forward to the rest of it!

[1] [https://github.com/swannodette/lt-cljs- tutorial/blob/master/...](https://github.com/swannodette/lt-cljs- tutorial/blob/master/lt-cljs-tutorial.cljs)

[2] [http://tylerneylon.com/a/learn-lua/](http://tylerneylon.com/a/learn-lua/)

<comment><USER3> Another interactive tutorial I loved was vimtutor.

If you have vim installed and always wanted to see what all the fuss is about, type "vimtutor" in console and enjoy your 15-30 minutes interactive tutorial, all inside vim. (I know it works on Linux, should work on OSX and Windows too, I hope). Really great tool to learn the basics and be up and running in no time.

Also, kudos to David Nolen for the cljs tutorial! (check out his other stuff, he does a lot of cool projects)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> In addition to this language tutorial I also wrote up a tutorial yesterday on basic interactions with the ClojureScript Analyzer & Compiler. Also best if walked through using Light Table :)

[http://github.com/swannodette/hello- cljsc](http://github.com/swannodette/hello-cljsc)

<comment><USER5> These are great and are excellent introductions to Clojure(Script) that should be in the standard LightTable download.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Swanondette: Your posts this last month have been absolutely top-notch, thank you for getting so many JS developers interested in Clojure and CLJS, least of all me! Your post on Om is the reason I'm spending 5 hours a day sweating in Light Table, in hopes that I find a better way to structure my apps.

</comment><comment><USER7> Thanks so much for this; its exactly what I've been looking for since OM was released in an attempt to get a handle on reading ClojureScript before I dive in.

</comment><comment><USER8> Is there a similar file for python?</comment>


How I'd Hack Your Weak Passwords - <AUTHOR> http://lifehacker.com/5505400/how-id-hack-your-weak-passwords <comment><USER2> _Randomly substitute numbers for letters that look similar. The letter 'o' becomes the number '0′, or even better an '@' or '_ '. (i.e. m0d3ltf0rd like modelTford)*

This is essentially useless. Decent password cracker tools already try such substitutions. For example, John The Ripper contains such substitutions as part of the default ruleset.

Other than that and other nitpicks, nice article. People need to know.</comment>


Texty - <AUTHOR> http://www.texty.com/ <comment><USER2> Is this a ycombinator company?</comment>


The Americanization of Mental Illness - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/10/magazine/10psyche-t.html

<comment><AUTHOR> "'The results of the current study suggest that we may actually treat people more harshly when their problem is described in disease terms,' Mehta wrote. 'We say we are being kind, but our actions suggest otherwise.' The problem, it appears, is that the biomedical narrative about an illness like schizophrenia carries with it the subtle assumption that a brain made ill through biomedical or genetic abnormalities is more thoroughly broken and permanently abnormal than one made ill though life events. 'Viewing those with mental disorders as diseased sets them apart and may lead to our perceiving them as physically distinct. Biochemical aberrations make them almost a different species.'"

<comment><USER2> I'm committing the sin of not reading the fine article, but if you've spent any time around an uncontrolled (i.e. unmedicated) schizophrenic you realize their thinking is fundamentally broken. They are in a sense "thoroughly broken and permanently abnormal" _in a way that only medicine can treat_. Cognitive Behavioral therapy can help and sometimes fix a lot of things like standard depression, but there's absolutely no substitute for antipsychotics for the schizophrenic and mood stabilizers for the bipolar (which hopefully TFA pointed out).

My mom became an RN at a fascinating time in the '50s: she did 3 months of her residency in a psych ward, and then a few years later she was amazed to see one of the "hopeless" cases from there working at her hospital in a service role. That was after the first antipsychotics came out, and they truly are wonder drugs.

All that said, the thesis might be correct, although I seriously wonder if the layman's view of the mentally ill is that nuanced. A lot of people don't want to have _anything_ to do with the "mentally ill", full stop....</comment></comment>


Predictive intelligence based app engagement platform, InsetLabs begins beta - <AUTHOR> http://www.insetlabs.com/admins/sign_up

<comment><AUTHOR> Machine learning based push notifications to target at appropriate time/place is one of the features</comment>


Japan's Strict Building Codes Saved Lives - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/12/world/asia/12codes.html <comment><USER3> I'm not sure I understand the point here. Is it that strict government regulation saves lives?

If so, yes I suppose that could be true. Fewer people would die in traffic accidents if we had a stoplight on every corner, we had to drive Sherman Tanks, and the speed limit was 20MPH. The problem is we'd be way less productive and we'd be much poorer.

If China had Japan's strict building codes from 1980 to present, China's economic growth would have been far slower, but in an earthquake, more people may die in China. Is that a good thing or bad thing? Over the last 20 years, strong economic growth in China has likely saved far more lives than strict building codes may have saved. But that is too complex to get into here.

Also note Japan's poor economic growth during over the last 10-20 years.

Are some people in Japan better off because of strict building codes? Yes, no doubt. Is everyone in Japan better off due to strict building code? much harder to say.

<comment><USER4> Decent building codes don't necessarily stop economic growth. Housing is slightly more expensive and it takes more capital to build, but its really not 2 or 10x the price of an unsafe home. Heck, some safer designs are cheaper than unsafe designs.

I don't really buy the "safety is cost prohibitive" argument much. Modern societies have no problem absorbing the cost. Not to mention the cost of post- earthquake cleanup is less.

<comment><USER5> The bigger problem from a libertarian point is that regulation does not necessarily result in better safety. A lot of it simply results in higher costs, and redistribution of money to "licensed professionals". As an earlier commenter pointed out, many insurance companies actually require greater degrees of safety in buildings they insure than building codes do.

<comment><USER4> I'm not seeing how bureaucracy and "licensed professionals" hired from the for-profit insurance industry to maintain their codes is better than doing the same in government. In fact, I would argue that the government alternative is superior as it doesn't involved the overhead of making a profit and growing markets (see socialized healthcare vs private healthcare).

Unfortunately, its popular now in the USA to dismiss public safety as being less important than profits and to praise horribly unsafe countries run by dictators for their "growth." Not to mention, the intangibles here with the libertarian approach - massive brain drain to safer countries, lower quality of life, lower lifespans, etc. I'd rather be taxed out the wazoo in Germany than be tax-free in Somalia. I'd rather be in an earthquake in the USA or Japan than in China or Libya.

<comment><USER6> Somalia is the antithesis of a libertarian country.

<comment><USER7> how?

<comment><USER6> A libertarian ideal country requires the protection and guarantee of individual rights.

<comment><USER7> that doesn't mean anything. In America, the wealthiest nation in the world, do I have the right to not starve to death if I become disabled? Do I have the right to live in a building with strict earthquake standards if I'm in an earthquake zone? Doesn't that conflict with the right of the business constructing the building to build it as they see fit? Do I have the right to breathe clean air? Doesn't that conflict with the factories right to pump pollutants into the air?

One persons individual rights inevitably conflict with someone else's individual rights. I have no idea what libertarianism is by your definition. For it to mean anything you have to lay out a value system that gives a default answer when one persons individual rights conflict with someone else's.

<comment><USER3> It's a debate surrounding positive rights vs. negative rights - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights> Libertarianism generally supports negative rights arguing that the establishment of positive rights will always violate someone's negative rights and that negative rights are the natural state of human beings given the absence of violence. That means that you would not have a right to "not starve" if that meant you had to hire someone (the government) to club me over the head and steal my sandwich so you don't starve. But you do have the right to try to convince me to voluntarily give you half of my sandwich. It is the use of violent aggression as means to an end that Libertarians universally oppose, so by definition Somalia is not a libertarian paradise.

<comment><USER7> You dodged the hard questions and are using language again that doesn't mean much of anything.

Are you opposed to all taxes? If not, then you believe in some violent aggression? Do you believe in protecting peoples rights with violent aggression? Will you use the force of government to prevent someone from dumping toxins into a river? How do libertarians deal with things like water rights? Borders? Can a mexican freely come across the border and get a job? I.e. is labor as free as capital?

I still have no idea what libertarianism is from your explanation.

<comment><USER3> You're asking for specific answerers to many complex questions. I'm not going to try to put them in a few words here. If you are honest about your desire to understand libertarian ideas read "Healing our World in an Age of Aggression" by Dr. Mary Ruwart. [http://www.amazon.com/Healing-Our-World-Age- Aggression/dp/09...](http://www.amazon.com/Healing-Our-World-Age- Aggression/dp/0963233661)

I will say this, government has become so big and so complex I can't imagine ever unraveling it. The best I hope for is that someday we will actually shrink the government a bit instead of constant growth. The current government growth is unsustainable so it might be a forgone conclusion anyway. I am a libertarian (small l) because it is the only political philosophy which honestly wants to reduce the size of the government. I also want to bring awareness to people that the use of the law is the use of violence and that we should be aware that when make new laws, we understand that we are advocating violence against those who don't comply. For example, do we really want to arrest and lock someone in jail when they refuse to wear a seat belt and don't pay the fine or when they smoke a cigarette in a bar? Is that what we've become? If so, what's next? I do believe in the rule of law, but we've made the rule of law trivial and arbitrary... anyway, off the soapbox.

<comment><USER7> Reading a book is a large investment of time. You have to give me something to make me think it's worthwhile. This narrative of violence doesn't make any sense to me. Should we use violence to enforce contract law? Should we use nuclear power, and if so should we use violence to raise taxes to manage nuclear power plants? Should we use violence to prevent child labor?

I'm still trying to find some core libertarian values that I can understand and is consistent. I'm not motivated to spend hours reading a book without that.

<comment><USER3> Are you looking for some universal value? How about, "We should not use violence or coercion against peaceful people, and we must intelligently and slowly begin to work toward that goal. Violence is not an acceptable answer to our problems." But you are clearly an intelligent person, and you know that life is nuanced. Social interactions aren't 100% consistent all the time. But this is clearly an ideal we could work toward.

I'm starting to think I'm feeding a troll. I feel like you are just trying to get me to say, something like "Child labor should be legal." But I'm not saying that, I'm saying that the answer can be solved - over time - <USER2> violence.

How could you learn about a thing without investing some time?

A few reasons why reading the book would be worth your while:

1\. Why do you believe violence is a necessary ingredient for the achievement of the above goals?

2\. Is working toward a less violent world worthwhile, even if it seems remote at this moment?

3\. To gain understanding. Even if you're sure there is no possible way you'd agree with anything you'll read in such a book, you would learn about the philosophy that is embraced by an estimated 10-20% of the American public, not enough to "win" an election, but certainly enough to lose one if you piss them off.

Go ahead and have the last word...

<comment><USER7> I've asked a few simple questions and haven't gotten an answer. How does that make me a troll?

'I feel like you are just trying to get me to say, something like "Child labor should be legal."'

No, I'm trying to get you to explain how you prevent it without violence.

"I'm saying that the answer can be solved - over time - without violence."

How?

"How could you learn about a thing without investing some time?"

There is an effectively infinite number of things I could learn about, sadly I have a small finite amount of time. This makes me picky about what I spend time on.

"Why do you believe violence is a necessary ingredient for the achievement of the above goals?"

For many reasons. One, it's in individuals personal interest to take advantage of others. This could be child labor, pollution, outright fraud, breaking a contract, etc. How would you deal with these? I still don't know. Two, some people are plain crazy, and do stupid things. And that still leaves the more complicated issues like water rights. How does a libertarian system deal with water flowing throw a river on someones property? Can the person upstream suck it out or build a damn? Can they dump pollutants into it? How does a libertarian system resolve that, and more importantly how would you enforce the resolution?

"Is working toward a less violent world worthwhile, even if it seems remote at this moment?"

This doesn't mean anything. How do you deal with situations where one persons interests and liberty are in conflict with another persons interests and liberty?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _All_ strict building codes save lives. That's the whole point of building codes. Sheesh. You'd think New Yorkers would get that.

<comment><USER9> Building codes were on the books in Haiti too. There is a lot more to this question, including the presence of honest government, the ability of an economy to afford the code, and a healthy insurance market.

Insurance companies often require higher standards than building code demands.

Also, politically, the reason some societies have strict building codes is because there is a group-- insurance companies-- that have an economic incentive to push for stronger codes.

<comment><USER10> There's also political pressure in the opposite direction, from the construction industry.

I heard a lecture once by a structural engineer who had worked in hurricane alleys in Florida. He said there was a cycle of tightening up rules (for instance on the number of nails needed to hold down a roof) after big storms, then relaxing them as the years went by. Without a big storm to remind people just why the rules were tightened up, there was inevitable pressure to relax them in order to make it cheaper to build.

This is more off-topic, but another interesting thing he said was that you could get a sense of maximum local wind speeds by looking at airstream-type trailers. They are, as you might expect, extremely well engineered to resist the sorts of wind pressures you get at highway speeds, so winds of 60-80mph don't tend to rip the hide off them. But you get above a certain threshold, and they all tend to give way at once.

<comment><USER9> Florida is an interesting example. If development patterns there were left to market forces, the coasts of Florida would not be as significantly developed. Insurance costs would prohibit it. But the state's insurance regulations control prices and force inland homeowners to subsidize the insurance rates of coastal homeowners. Even worse, as insurance companies flee this distorted market, the state stepped in and now runs its own insurance company, which is building a massively underfunded risk portfolio. Literally the state of Florida is at risk of bankruptcy if another hurricane Andrew hits.

Another factor is, if the storm is big enough, the feds step in with FEMA and bailout people who are underinsured.

People living in Florida's hurricane alley pay nowhere near the cost of the risk of living there, and the result is overbuilding, and catastrophic property losses when the big one eventually does hit.

<comment><USER11> Sorta like earthquakes in the SF bay area. Humans aren't rational. Considering relatively few people actually get earthquake insurance in California, I'm sure theres some level of the cognotive dissonance by many of those who agree with the main thrust of your point.

<comment><USER12> They are rational in this case. They are getting others to cover the expense of their lifestyle. If someone is going to bail you out why would you bother not living as you'd like.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The media are failing to point out that the Earthquake was 200+km offshore. There is a huge difference between an 8.9M 200km offshore and an 8.9M directly below a city. The ground motions recorded were relatively low in the cities and not very destructive. PGV (peak ground velocity) is a more accurate way to estimate the strain put on infrastructure. This shakemap shows that the intensity was relatively low: [http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/shakemap/global/shake...](http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/shakemap/global/shake/c0001xgp)

Many people said the same thing about building codes after the 7.1 in Christchurch last September. That earthquake was 40km away from the city. Cruelly the 6.3 on Feb 22nd with its epicenter directly below the City showed the difference that proximity to the epicenter makes. Proximity to the epicenter and PGV is almost more important than magnitude when accessing how well buildings performed.

<comment><USER14> This particular article actually seems to focus more on the seawalls designed to protect from the resultant tsunami.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Everything has a cost and these costs are not always obvious. Government regulations like building codes and food safety generally ensure that buildings are safe and food is not contaminated, but they do so by defining acceptable things.

There are perfectly safe building designs which would never pass building codes. This is a huge barrier to innovation.

To be legally allowed to construct something that is not explicitly allowed by codes can require years and lots of money to hire engineers and lawyers.

Also, who writes these building codes? It's engineers employed by the construction and construction material industries. They have a perspective shaped by the status quo. So the codes require specific materials and techniques.

Codes also empower lots of unelected officals. A food safety inspector can shut down your plant and force you to throw away all of your products, with absolutely no form of appeal.

I don't really mind building codes. I just wish there were some objective criteria that designs went through. For example, if you could demonstrate your building can withstand an earthquake, regardless of it's method of construction, it's permissible. If you could demonstrate your food was not contaminated with bacteria, etc.

If you give a damn about any of this check out Mike Ohler's "The Fifty Dollar and Up Underground House Book" for the evils of building codes and Joel Salatin's "Everything I want to do is illegal" for food regulations.

<comment><USER16> The building codes _are_ the objective criteria. Most government building codes I've seen will require compliance with certain engineering standards, and the engineering standards themselves will say things like "a building built in this part of the country must be able to withstand x ms-2 in vertical acceleration and y ms-2 in lateral acceleration". It doesn't get any more objective than that.

<comment><USER15> Well... kind of. There is a whole lot of shit like this:

        705.1 General. Each portion of a building separated by one or more fire        walls that comply with the
        provisions of this section shall be considered a separate building. The     extent and location of such fire walls shall
        provide a complete separation. Where a fire wall also separates groups that are required to be separated by a fire
        barrier wall, the most restrictive requirements of each separation shall apply. Fire walls located on property lines
        shall also comply with Section 503.2. Such fire walls (party walls) shall be constructed without openings. (from the 2000 ICC building codes)

It is specifying a specific arrangement of firewalls. What if I can make buildings even safer with nothing resembling firewalls? It's not nearly as clear cut or simple as "building must be able to withstand x forces".

Plus it's not as though housing contractors actually build experimental buildings in earthquake test facilities to see if they comply. What they do is screw a bunch of prefabricated pieces together. All of which are accepted by the inspectors as following the codes. The result is a monoculture which is highly reluctant to accept new ideas. Remember that building boards consist of people from the construction industries, they people who make and use these materials.

The people who make the decisions on whether your buildings are unelected boards who have investments in the status quo. They can force you to spend 100s of thousands in engineering fees to convince them that your design is safe enough for you to live in.

<comment><USER17> It's not requiring fire walls. It is allowing their use as a method of code compliance - Trust me, the ability to use fire walls to create separate buildings provides enormous economic savings to developers and owners every day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The irony is that this is the top item on reddit right now: <http://i.imgur.com/eGSKJ.jpg>

<comment><USER19> I don't get it? Why wouldn't you read that?

<comment><USER18> It means to say that no such article will exist, so you can't read it.

<comment><USER20> Indeed. I'd imagine that the image of the tweet on Reddit was seen by someone at NYT then created with the hopes of pulling viewers because it was clearly a hot button topic.

The opposite of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Journalists look to Reddit to see what people are interested in, write the article, point back to self. Reap rewards.

Right? It's the content production business after all, just makes good business sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I find the comparison with SE Asia rather poor with regards to investment as I've been to Sri Lanka and the amount of money that is available for basic infrastructure, let alone anti-tsunami barricades, is negligible compared to Japan unfortunately.

<comment><USER22> From the article: "unlike Southeast Asians, many of whom died in the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami because they lingered near the coast despite clear warnings to flee"

Interesting way to put it (implying that the issue was behavioral/cultural rather than one of engineering)

<comment><USER23> I think they were referring to the annual drills institutionalized in Japan. From the drills conducted annually, people knew how to react to disasters, whereas people who don't experience drills (in, say SEA) ignored the warnings or didn't know how to react since they had no reference.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> 25 people have died in China and they didn't receive the bulk of the destruction. This attests to Japan's high end building codes.

</comment><comment><USER25> It sounds like the strict building codes served them well for residential housing and commercial spaces. However, it looks like the engineering standards for their nuclear reactors could stand to be a little more strict ([http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42025882/ns/world_news- asiapacif...](http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42025882/ns/world_news- asiapacific/)). Perhaps the news article is overly sensational, but I can't help but wonder, "Why are we even talking about the possibility of a meltdown in 2011?" Shouldn't loss of reactor cooling capability result in an automatic reactor shutdown? Wasn't the lesson of the Three Mile Island accident that you should build your reactor so that the default thing that happens when you lose power (and therefore lose cooling capability) is that the control rods drop via gravity and stop the reaction? Any nuclear engineers out there care to comment on the design of Japan's reactors?

<comment><USER26> Please don't spread misinformation about this. The reactors stopped automatically, but you still have to cool them. They ran out of diesel, so they're getting mobile power units in to cool the rest.

They're not morons.

<comment><USER25> So, basically, MSNBC did a crappy job of writing their article -- it should have explicitly stated that a shutdown happened...

<comment><USER26> Yeah, but every news agency is.

The BBC had a "live feed" of a huge blazing fire, and the caption was "Government declares Nuclear Emergency".

The fire was at a natural gas storage tank...

I don't know if these news agencies like stoking mass panic, but you need to be a little sceptical about reporting in the media about "contentious" issues like nuclear power.

Here's the IAEA post about the current issue:

<http://www.iaea.org/press/?p=1133>

It's standard procedure in these situations to evacuate a 3km radius from the plant, just in case. If the situation gets slightly more... interesting (as in, they need to vent some steam), they evacuate 10km.

TL;DR: Let's wait and see what happens before declaring that Japan is about to be annihilated by nuclear fallout.

Edit: here's the current status of each reactor:

[http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp- com/release/11031207-e....](http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp- com/release/11031207-e.html) [http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp- com/release/11031212-e....](http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp- com/release/11031212-e.html) [http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp- com/release/11031213-e....](http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp- com/release/11031213-e.html) [http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp- com/release/11031214-e....](http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp- com/release/11031214-e.html)

I.e., all shut down. Need cooling. Pressure being vented in the Daiichi reactor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Please don't get mad at this, but the reason I love hackernews is because its not like reddit has become: there are no silly posts or posts that don't relate to technology and programming. This post seems necessary for reddit, but not for hacker news. Please don't let this community change!

</comment><comment><USER28> I dont have a nytimes account.

not even readability can save me here.

<comment><USER29> Copy the title of the article and paste it into Google. The link from Google will always return the full article.

<comment><USER30> Only the first page of the full article, unfortunately; I hit the login wall when I try to go to page 2.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'm not sure of the _news_ aspect of this. Japan has a long history of damaging earthquakes and tsunamis, and they're famous for their preparations for the same.

Someone needed column inches.

<comment><USER32> > I'm not sure of the news aspect of this. Japan has a long history of > damaging earthquakes and tsunamis, and they're famous for their preparations > for the same.

Yet they still "needed" the Great Hanshin Earthquake 16 years ago to fix numerous issues, especially in disaster planning, prevention and response, and in infrastructure management.

<comment><USER31> And "16 years ago" makes it news how? How does that reform invalidate that modern Japan has been doing far more in terms of earthquake-related preparedness for decades than other countries?

<comment><USER32> That their fame might be somewhat understated.

<comment><USER31> Japan is and has been pre-eminent in earthquake prepareness for decades. Whether they decided to increase efforts doesn't diminish that.

At this point, you're trolling.

(Also, I think you meant to type "overstated".)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> "Multimedia" seems like such a quaint term now.

</comment><comment><USER34> When people talk about the America's crumbling infrastructure, it isn't just potholes folks.</comment>


Go by Example - <AUTHOR> https://gobyexample.com/ <comment><USER2> It's Friday gents! No excuse to set aside Saturday and Sunday, you can easily go through these examples in two days and grok it. Go is that _slim_, and that's good!

Guaranteed you'll find use for Go in one system or the other when you want easy deployment, fast development time and extreme speeds. :)

(Disclaimer: I love Go and I hope it goes mainstream in a big way in 5 years)

<comment><USER3> One nice thing these examples also do is make it really simple for detractors to point out what they don't like about it. My #1 gripe about go, for example, is this: [https://gobyexample.com/sorting-by- functions](https://gobyexample.com/sorting-by-functions)

In a few other languages:

        // C++
        sort(vs.begin(), vs.end(),
             [](const string& l, const string& r) -> bool {
                 return l.size() < r.size();
             });

        # Python
        vs.sort(key=lambda s: len(s))

When they fix this, Go might be the perfect language for me. Until then, I'm not touching it with a pole.

<comment><USER4> Wow, yeah. This is pretty bad. The example doesn't even make logical sense. Why is ByLength a type? Shouldn't you just want to pass in an array?

Can any "idiomatic" Go programmers here give a better example of how you would do this?

<comment><USER5> _Can any "idiomatic" Go programmers here give a better example of how you would do this?_

Sure.

sort.Sort(sort.Reverse(sort.StringSlice(vs)));

<comment><USER5> Oops, I looked at the Python code again, and it seems to be sorting the strings by their length, not reversing the sort order like I did. Sorry, I didn't look at it very carefully earlier. Anyway, the easiest thing to do is probably write a wrapper type around StringSlice using Go's anonymous struct syntax. You only need to implement LessThan, since StringSlice already implements the other two.

      type StringSliceByLength struct {
          sort.StringSlice;
      }
      func (s StringSliceByLength) LessThan(i, j int) bool {
          return len(s.StringSlice[i]) < len(s.StringSlice[j]);
      }
      Sort.sort(StringSliceByLength(vs))

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This documentation is great, but one thing I tend to miss with examples like these is how to structure a project, deal with packages, etc.

<comment><USER7> GitHub is your friend here.

Here is a search for Go repositories with > 100 stars.[1] Every project will look different (the really big ones might be more complex then you need) but as you get deeper into the results you can find some great stuff.

[1]: [https://github.com/search?l=go&q=stars%3A%3E100&s=stars&type...](https://github.com/search?l=go&q=stars%3A%3E100&s=stars&type=Repositories)

<comment><USER6> That's a great idea, I hadn't thought of that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Another nice introduction is the Go Playground's Tour ([http://tour.golang.org/#1](http://tour.golang.org/#1)).

</comment><comment><USER9> The documentation format is a revolution of simplicity and comprehension. I can see this list format (and content) working for any/all languages.

<comment><USER10> I'm in the process of making a clone of the site for node.js [here]([https://github.com/L8D/nodebyexample](https://github.com/L8D/nodebyexample))

<comment><USER9> Throws a 404. Is it a public repo?

<comment><USER10> Yeah, I trashed pretty quickly because I realized I didn't have time to work on it, nor did I have the creativity to write good examples. It would have better suited to be about JavaScript rather than Node, and there are already plenty of better ways to learn good JavaScript on the internet. I might do 'Haskell by Example' which would be really fun, if I ever have time for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Love it, bookmarked. I've been hoping for something like this for a while. One of the most frustrating things for me about trying to pick up Go is a lack of 'guaranteed quality' examples of different basic operations, especially code that adheres to the latest spec.

</comment><comment> cupcake-unicorn Are there any plans to make this into something more interactive, like [http://nodeschool.io/](http://nodeschool.io/)? Alternatively, do any of the interactive "Learn Coding" sites out there feature Go? I can't think of any.

<comment><USER12> The tour does this: [http://tour.golang.org/](http://tour.golang.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I am not personally interested in Go but I care about CSP. I will defently check out some of these CSP things and maybe try to recreate them in Clojure core.async.

</comment><comment><USER14> Golang is good language. Cannot wait until it's generic.

</comment><comment><USER15> It's about time! Go doesn't really have a good community or really practical examples. Glad to see someone took the time to put this together.

<comment><USER16> > Go doesn't really have a good community

What about freenode/#go-nuts? Seems like a very nice channel to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Thanks, I am going to use this for my go experiments.

</comment><comment><USER18> Hey, nice site. FYI I can't copy and paste from the examples on the site without also bringing in the text on the left too.

</comment><comment><USER19> Nice and clean. I like it. Maybe it would be nice to have comments with up/down votability ala Stackoverflow.

<comment><USER20> Such a nice UI. We all like fast food!

\- Eggs should not be washed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Very Cool - thanks</comment>


Nobody's Going to Help You, and That's Awesome - <AUTHOR> http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/07/nobodys-going-to-help-you-and-thats-awesome.html

<comment><USER2> If you can only stomach scientifically proven self-help advice, then you might like this:

[http://lesswrong.com/lw/3nn/scientific_selfhelp_the_state_of...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/3nn/scientific_selfhelp_the_state_of_our_knowledge/)

<http://lesswrong.com/lw/3w3/how_to_beat_procrastination/>

<http://lesswrong.com/lw/4su/how_to_be_happy/>

Now, upvote me :) (reverse reverse psychology)

<comment><USER3> That first link in particular is excellent. Thanks for posting it!

<comment><USER4> Yup, interesting page, but I have to say that I found the section on 'study methods' a little disappointing. That section reduces the idea of learning to memorising information.

As a teacher I'm more interested in helping my students achieve a deeper learning - an awareness of how concepts are connected and how they link to the lives of my students.

If you happen to have access to an academic library, look at _Visible Learning_ by John Hattie. Plenty of evidence (the book is an attempt to synthesize the findings of many hundreds of studies).

[http://gwegner.edublogs.org/2010/03/01/john-hattie- visible-l...](http://gwegner.edublogs.org/2010/03/01/john-hattie-visible- learning/)

Having said that, getting teenagers to make a simple to do list and to allocate a little time per day to routine 'deliberate practice' is a good start. The Pomodoro Technique page went down quite well, especially when I brought in some kitchen timers...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I used to read a lot of self-help but I don't anymore. It's not that many books don't provide good advice but that the advice is really just common sense. Read a list of proverbs and you've basically got what most self-help books and blogs say covered.

A few years ago I bought into a lot of the self-help stuff. I read many books, and by the time I realized I was pretty much reading the same thing over and over again, I stopped. There were of course some esoteric Neuro-Linguistic- Programming Techniques I could try, but to me that seemed a lot like being a "cargo-cult" (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_programming>) programmer--introducing behavior patterns that are meant to be a stand alone module when you don't know how they might interact the code that is already there (i.e. your current behavioral conditioning).

To me, I think that reading self-help can be a necessary and important stage in personal growth. Necessary and important, but intermediate. The moment you graduate from self-help, is the moment you start creating your own path for growth that is meaningful for you.

<comment><USER6> The thing is, advice _is_ common sense once you get it. I've read a lot of self help and I feel that it has helped me evolve in many ways. I am not attracted to the new-age stuff but for instance Tim Ferriss offers really actionable advice which I like.

The same thing applies to HN. I used to swallow all of it whereas now I feel that most material here is repetitive. I catch myself thinking "Jesus, another blog entry on this topic that is obvious to everyone!". What has happened of course, is that HN has shaped and evolved my thinking in this particular area. I still love it but I am looking forward to discovering the book/forum/idea that will take me to the next level in my life.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It seems to me that people that don't read self-help books lump a lot more books into the genre and that causes them to miss a number of books they should read.

Earlier this year I recommended Bargaining for Advantage to someone and they responded that they don't really read self-help books. There are a number of books like this that deal with particular topics inside of the broader self- help genre, many of them going to a much more useful level of depth.

In bookstores I regularly find very good books on particular areas of business mixed in with self-help in the more populist style.

Reading a number of these expert titles is very valuable. From the popular group often only one book is enough to cover the common sense side of things, for instance I recommend that all my friends read "how to Win friends and influence people".

<comment><USER2> People who don't want to read self-help books boggle my mind.

Self-help to me means seeing life as an MMORPG with infinite possibility: levelling up your player character, meeting cool guild mates, acquiring lots of loot, exploring new areas, etc. Who the hell doesn't want that?

Then again, most people probably think of the most egregious examples of cheesy New Age stuff when they think about self-help. What I advocate is more like "muscular self-help", ie everything that levels up life and leads to more winning! (heh). I will read anything that gives me a shot at that.

I even founded a magazine because of my belief in muscular self help: <http://www.interestingtimesmagazine.com> (shameless plug, I know).

<comment><USER8> The point is: would you rather spend your time playing the game, or reading someone's stab in the dark on the mechanics of the game based on his/her personal experience and questionable expertise?

<comment><USER2> I would rather do both, actually.

I can find out a lot of stuff on my own, but it never helps to read what someone else has figured out.

Analogy: I can figure out design patterns of programming on my own, but I can speed up the process if I read a book on it. Same with design patterns for happiness and success.

There are lots of things I consider possibilities now that were not even on my map before I read self-help books.

EDIT: s/never helps/never hurts/

<comment><USER8> Personally, I agree (although I haven't actually read any books yet, but I'm interested). But I would much rather spend 100% of my time playing the game and 0% learning mechanics than I would spend 50% of my time playing and 50% learning mechanics. I imagine the anti-self-help attitude comes from looking at the 50/50 (or more extreme) people.

<comment><USER2> Isn't that what most people do, though? And most people are not living the optimal version of their lives, or anywhere close (optimal being defined as the life one wishes one had).

Before I started reading self-help materials, I was intellectually gifted but I was a mess in terms of communication with others, emotional stability, self- limiting beliefs, knowledge of possibilities in life, luminosity aka self- insight, strategicness aka getting shit done with a plan, etc.

Studying self-help materials for the past 5 years is the most important thing I've done in my life (a quite dramatic statement perhaps, but that's how it feels to me).

That's why I get a bit upset and argumentative when people slam self-help: it's a bit like saying I shouldn't have wasted my time reading all those things, and instead should have just plodded on in darkness.

<comment><USER9> Got any good book recommendations?

<comment><USER2> What are your goals? Easier to recommend something if I know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> Shameless plug: I wrote an essay called "Tony Robbins über alles: or why I'm such a gigantic self-help junkie".

Some of y'all might like it, some probably won't. Take it for what it is: my somewhat sound defense of my overly costly self-help habit :)

It's the first article in this pdf: <http://interestingtimesmagazine.com/archive/IT07.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER10> I think this is in part caused by the fact that we're really poor at remembering and learning anything without actually applying in practice first, analogously to how explaining a concept to someone actually helps you learn it considerably better.

What this means is that self-help books are useful, but also that each hour of self-help learning must be followed by 10 hours (or whatever ratio works for you) of practicing and gaining experience. I think most people who are burned by self-help are simply not turning into action what they read about, and hence not deriving whatever important lessons or conclusions they could be making based on what's in those books.

At the end of the day you don't have to agree with what any self-help text teaches you, but by trying it out in practice you'll at least figure out if it works for you or not.

<comment><USER11> It's not about the application of self-help advice, but the fact that most self-help advice don't have any scientific basis and is mostly bullshit.

Anybody can sound authoritative and true. Anybody can invent ad-hoc reasons for why their advice will work. That doesn't mean that what they're saying is true. Just because the advice seems to work for you, doesn't mean it's actually causing the progress.

You are a human being. You have cognitive bias. You have selective memory. You are fallible.

This is why we need to conduct psychological research on self-help advice. There are books that draws on the research done by psychologists over several decades. Use them. Don't simply listen to self-help gurus that got rich simply by writing self-help books.

Yes, application of self-help advice is going to be a problem, but it does you no good if you're applying BS self-help advice.

<comment><USER10> Isn't it irrelevant if it is scientifically proven or not, as long as it actually works for you?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It depends on what you understand under "self-help books".

The generic, feel-good ones, sure, those are trash that usually doesn't work (they still might work given the specific situation).

The well researched, written by scientists and psychologists - I found a few that I love. In fact I'm going to buy ten pieces of one book for this Christmas because I have found it crucial.

These are the three well researched books I've read in the past 18 months that turned my life around for the better and that I heartily recommend:

[1] The Promise of Sleep

[2] Self-theories: Their Role in Motivation, Personality, and Development

[3] Learned Optimism (that's the one I'm buying ten times for this year's Christmas)

The one recommended in the article, 59 Seconds, is waiting on a pile of books (not exclusively from the self-help category, with The Algorithm Design Manual, Street Smarts, Architecture of Open Source Applications, Learn You a Haskell etc.) to be read soon.

Let's read, think and become better people.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Promise-Sleep-Medicine-Connection- Happ...](http://www.amazon.com/Promise-Sleep-Medicine-Connection- Happiness/dp/0440509017/)

[2] [http://www.amazon.com/Self-theories-Motivation- Personality-D...](http://www.amazon.com/Self-theories-Motivation-Personality- Development-Psychology/dp/1841690244/)

[3] [http://www.amazon.com/Learned-Optimism-Change-Your- Mind/dp/1...](http://www.amazon.com/Learned-Optimism-Change-Your- Mind/dp/1400078393/)

</comment><comment><USER13> Self-help books are (very) often crap. But when they're good they really push your motivation. So you don't learn a lot because learning requires always doing and failing BUT usually you get some motivation and energy to try it again, start something over--better books know how to brain wash and reframe your mind for a few days. You get a very positive mindset and that's what you need to get out of your daily routine which wears you out. Some examples which gave me this motivation push: Poke the Box from Seth Godin, Millionaire's Upgrade, Ellen Cars Stop-smoking book and some more (the ratio of good to bad books ist as the OP said: 10 to 90 to even 5 to 95. And as I wrote the motivational push keeps usually a few days only but hey, that's often enough to start something new and get traction.

But somehow I am not sure if the post is a clever way to sell the promoted book ...

<comment><USER14> The post is a clever way to sell the Skeptics Stack Exchange site (and the referrer link in the Amazon link won't hurt either). Not that there's anything wrong with either of these things — the book sounds interesting and I wasn't aware of the Skeptics SE site so it's win/win for Atwood & I.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Its not that self-help books are bullshit, its that most people don't have the willpower to actually change their lifestyles. They're afraid of stepping outside of their comfort zone, because they're afraid of failing, being criticized, working hard, etc. The excuses vary. Self-help books possess a lot of great knowledge, but if people actually followed the advice they read, every self-help writer would be out of a job. I once read through a few books but never took initiative to change anything in my life. Then I stumbled upon "Think and Grow Rich" by Napoleon Hill, and it was so effective at changing my attitude that I've never bothered to read any more self-help books or blogs afterwards.

<comment><USER2> I don't think it's willpower that really determines things. Willpower is the ability to resist a cookie or do your homework even though you don't want to. I don't have a lot of willpower myself :)

I think self help comes down to willingness to learn and willingness to change. Simple, but hard to do consistently.

One thing that will massively improve one's chances is getting a Mastermind Group (which is a concept from Think and grow rich, IIRC).

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> ha.. i love this. being an ex self-help junkie myself, i did at some point come to a conclusion that while it helps to feel better, no actual work is getting done while improving "the system".

I feel like i owe a lot to self-help. Coming from a place where i was operating at 0-5% efficiency, it's a miracle i was able to make any progress in my career

SH REALLY helped me debunk some limiting beliefs i imposed on myself and ultimately find a happier state of being although that took a lot of hard work.

to me, SH was not a quick solution, but a slow progress, where each year i'd get a little bit better with seemingly not noticeable differences, but multiply that over 5 years, and the difference is huge.

not to say that one could not figure all of this stuff out on their own, if they only stopped to think every day about how to get where they want to go. Unfortunately most people don't think about such things.. and as Brian Tracy put it, most people throw themselves at life like a dog chasing a car :)

Anyways, over the time, i slowly transitioned my energy into doing productive things vs reading about doing productive things.. but form time to time i stil re-read some of the old classics and usually get those "oh yeah! i forgot about this" moments because there really is a sea of great advice buried in SH genre.

</comment><comment><USER17> Hm, self-help books don't work, except if they are good? Seriously?

I am currently reading the 59 seconds book because I found it in a lesswrong article. It is OK, but it doesn't solve all problems (it only covers some techniques). The human psyche is a complex thing, "just get to work" is simply not going to be enough for everyone.

</comment><comment><USER18> If you like 59 seconds I'd also recommend the Happiness Advantage. Also based on scientific results and studies:

[http://www.amazon.com/Happiness-Advantage-Principles- Psychol...](http://www.amazon.com/Happiness-Advantage-Principles-Psychology- Performance/dp/0307591549)

</comment><comment><USER19> I think this post was already on HN a couple of months back... is there a way to check for sure?

<comment><USER20> I assume you asked this to see if anybody would help you.

[http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=Nobody%27s+...](http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=Nobody%27s+Going+to+Help+You%2C+and+That%27s+Awesome)

<comment><USER19> I guess HN should hire the StackOvorflow guys to help them with an algorithm to automatically find articles already submitted... ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> First time I've seen this book anywhere, may check it out. I recommend the Happiness Hypothesis. Whether the theories in it are true or not, they're incredibly well developed arguments.

</comment><comment><USER8> Has anyone read the Kindle edition of the 59 Seconds book linked to in the article? Trying to decide if it's worth buying.

<comment><USER22> I've read the paperback and it's good. I can't see why the Kindle edition would be much different: there's scarcely any fancy formatting or anything.

(By "good" I mean: so far as I can tell the science Wiseman reports is correct; the material is interesting; I haven't tried enough of the concrete advice to have strong anecdotal opinions about how well it works[1]; the quality of the writing is perfectly decent. If you are in the market for either reasonably-scholarly popular psychology or self-help, you should probably get it.)

[1] We see here a concrete example of one reason why self-help books generally don't work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Self-help doesn't work for a lot of reasons. It's funny how one self help method or book will help one person but not another. I hate the pseudoscience crap that passes for self help but Im not sure if just having a basis in fact and researched science is enough. Sometimes people just _feel_ better when they attend a bullshit lecture by a self help author because of their charisma.

I'm reminded of a guy who I almost worked for to build a website for his self help career. He told me he didn't have a degree in psychology but was a college grad. He would get his hands on real scientific research by real psychologists and then translate it into layman's terms and sell the results in the form of blog subscriptions, seminars, and ebooks. He pretty much told me point blank that he and many others were full of BS and doing what anyone who can read at a high school or college level can do. He also said that for him and his colleagues it was all about the money. It really upset me.

I'm totally sure what my point is but I do know that just because a ton of people get burned by self help it doesn't mean none of it works. And I've seen some BS self help books actually help people too. The post is right on for the most part but I'm not sure why. There seem to be some variable we're missing.

<comment><USER2> "Self-help doesn't work for a lot of reasons."

Okay, so what is the proper way to live then? To be miserable, not try to transcend one's limitations, never seek to improve oneself, etc?

It may seem like I'm arguing against a strawman here, but I am genuinely curious to hear your POV :)

<comment><USER24> > Okay, so what is the proper way to live then?

Some (very) old school answers in:

"The Meditations of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus":

About the book (including some pithy quotations):

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meditations>

Get it here free, in a variety of formats:

<http://www.manybooks.net/titles/aureliusetext01medma10.html>

Also here (Long's translation):

<http://classics.mit.edu//Antoninus/meditations.html>

<http://classics.mit.edu//Antoninus/meditations.mb.txt>

<comment><USER2> I've read most of that book, and I do agree that having equanimity/unreactiveness is a worthy life goal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The way I see it is the neurons in your head are going to do what they're wired to do. You can't change physical law, and any amount of success or failure won't change your brain structure. Your perception of the world is essentially constant. You don't need help being a person any more than a dog needs help being a dog. Just exist and do whatever.

<comment><USER5> MRI scans of accomplished meditators have shown significant changes in brain structure, as do players of certain video games. People do change--whether or not that's a matter of free will is a discussion you'll never reach the end of.

<comment><USER25> Although it changes it is still in the human range, close to your original personality, and the delta is negligible. Your brain is essentially the same.

<comment><USER5> I'm not a neuroscientist so I won't argue that point. I think as far as self- improvement and personal growth is concerned, however it seems that at least on a surface level that people can alter their behavior. Again, whether they are hard-wired to do so because of brain structure I don't know.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


4th RISC-V Workshop Proceedings - <AUTHOR> https://riscv.org/2016/07/4th-risc-v-workshop-proceedings/ <comment><USER2> At least one big use case. NVIDIA: We will build a new control processor core from RISC-V ISA

[https://1nv67s1krw3279i5yp7fko14-wpengine.netdna- ssl.com/wp-...](https://1nv67s1krw3279i5yp7fko14-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp- content/uploads/2016/07/Tue1100_Nvidia_RISCV_Story_V2.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> I blogged a summary of the various talks here, which may be of interest [http://www.lowrisc.org/blog/2016/07/notes-from-the-fourth- ri...](http://www.lowrisc.org/blog/2016/07/notes-from-the-fourth-risc-v- workshop/). With lowRISC, we've established a not-for-profit project aiming to produce volume silicon of a complete open-source SoC using the RISC-V ISA. If you have any questions, ask away!</comment>


Brazilian site teaches journalists how to protect sources and personal data - <AUTHOR> https://knightcenter.utexas.edu/blog/00-18527-brazilian-site-teaches-journalists-how-protect-sources-and-personal-data-digital-attac <comment><USER2> Basic Security Guide | [https://techsolidarity.org/resources/basic_security.htm](https://techsolidarity.org/resources/basic_security.htm)

 _Basic security precautions for non-profits and journalists in the United States, mid-2017._

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13622684](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13622684)

\--

Security First | [https://advocacyassembly.org/en/partners/securityfirst/](https://advocacyassembly.org/en/partners/securityfirst/)

 _making it easier for human rights defenders to work safely_

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14544031](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14544031)

\--

UCLA CS88S: Safety in the Cloud – Introduction to Cybersecurity | [https://kfrankc.me/cs88s/](https://kfrankc.me/cs88s/)

 _an preliminary introduction to the field of cybersecurity_

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14056893](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14056893)

\--

bonus (Windows): [https://decentsecurity.com/](https://decentsecurity.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Also handy:

[https://privacytoolsio.github.io/privacytools.io/](https://privacytoolsio.github.io/privacytools.io/)

[https://prism-break.org/en/](https://prism-break.org/en/)

[https://myshadow.org](https://myshadow.org)

[https://ssd.eff.org](https://ssd.eff.org)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Nice to have it here in my country and nice that this story was picked up, but worth to comment here that this is a brazilian branch originated by an australian initiative: [https://privacyforjournalists.org.au/](https://privacyforjournalists.org.au/) from this organization: [https://cryptoaustralia.org.au/](https://cryptoaustralia.org.au/)

All of that is clearly referred at the story and at the brazilian website, so no call out here, just pointing the sources directly.

</comment><comment><USER4> Hi!

I'm Raphael Hernandes, who's behind this project. Thanks for the support.

If you wish to contact me, feel free to email me firstname.lastname@example.com or on Twitter @rhhernandes.

Thanks once more!

<comment><USER5> I might bombard you with some questions if you're not swamped with work. You don't happen to have any plans to attend Defcon 25 this year in Las Vegas by chance?

<comment><USER4> I'm actually at the newsroom right now, but feel free to contact me. I'll certainly reply asap. I'd be glad to.

And, no, no plans of going to the US, unfortunately.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is something we're going to have struggle with as a society for quite a while -- the pervading reach of technology makes enforcement of privacy rights and constraints on government ever more important. I wonder if it can go all the way to childhood. I've tinkered with the idea of doing a children's book on privacy -- I think you learn about VPNs along with your alphabets haha.

In all seriousness, anything that helps people be educated about security in the digital age is a massive plus.

</comment><comment><USER7> reposting a dead link for viewing, this collection is good info and applicable.

spurlock 1 hour ago [dead] [-]

Also handy:

[https://privacytoolsio.github.io/privacytools.io/](https://privacytoolsio.github.io/privacytools.io/)

[https://prism-break.org/en/](https://prism-break.org/en/)

[https://myshadow.org](https://myshadow.org)

[https://ssd.eff.org](https://ssd.eff.org)

<comment><AUTHOR> I've never seen this happen to a comment before. (Thanks for reposting the links). Did it get downvoted to death or something? I'm not seeing any negative points on it though</comment></comment>


Men can fight food urges better - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7837012.stm

<comment><USER2> "Dr Andy Calder, a scientist at the MRC Human Cognition Unit at Cambridge University, said that given the relatively small number of people involved, it was hard to be certain whether the difference between men and women was genuine."

That's a severe problem with the reported study.

<http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html>

</comment><comment><USER3> Correlation does not imply causation. Eg, brain scans could result from genetic differences or environmental (cultural) differences. All this study shows is that people who report cravings have different brain activity than people who do not.

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't mean to be defending or attacking the validity of the study, and this is of course completely anecdotal, but my own personal experience would lead me to agree with the results.</comment>


The Great CSV Showdown: Julia vs. Python vs. R - <AUTHOR> https://towardsdatascience.com/the-great-csv-showdown-julia-vs-python-vs-r-aa77376fb96 <comment><USER2> I wish paywalled Medium articles would come with some indication in the title.

Just a waste of time for those of us who aren't interested in giving Medium money for whatever reason.</comment>


Archaeologists excavate the site of Operation Gunnerside - <AUTHOR> https://www.archaeology.org/issues/283-1801/trenches/6198-trenches-norway-wwii-heavy-water-plant <comment><USER2> I liked Ray Mears "Real Heroes of Telemark" about operation gunnerside. He speaks to Ronneberg, and discusses the survival situation. Amazing

</comment><comment><USER3> Fascinating subject. But the article adds nothing to our knowledge about it. Vacuous.

<comment><USER4> It adds something to people with no knowledge about it. That's not vacuous.</comment></comment>


I am a computer engineering student 3rd year, I don't know what to specialize in - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I'd echo another commenter to optimize for your earnings: pick the one thing out of many that seems to have the highest starting salary, and go for it. That is, if you think you'll be happy with a specialized career...

For myself, I like a lot of different aspects of both software and hardware (but pure software more-so) and I think it's really hard to sell yourself as a generalist in hardware unless you're joining a startup. I successfully advertised myself as a software generalist and that led to a decently paying job after graduation from my CE program where my career trajectory for what I'll be doing in 5 years isn't really fixed. I like FPGAs and embedded RTOSs and radar applications, and I like web apps and game programming and databases, but it scares the crap out of me to think that I'd have a 20-40 year _career_ with a single focus on just one of those (and have to relegate all my alternate interests to side projects, if I can muster the time and energy for them). Some people are born for that, I'm not. Just be sure you know for yourself which you are before making a big decision...

</comment><comment><USER3> Hi everyone , sorry for hijacking this thread and this might seem some kind of rant to some developers/engineers anyways thanks for reading on :)

The University I'm currently studying in is state university and one of the deemed in my country. I'm studying bachelor in CS (4yrs) course and 2nd year is about to end. This semester we were taught about S/W engineering as a separate subject. I had huge expectations with it because I was primarily interested in different kinds of methodology and norms that real s/w engg followed in the world out there.

Now what happened through out the semester was , we were taught management , micromanagement and how to write beautiful pdfs in non-paid MS Words :|. There was not a single class where we were taught milestones , scrums , agile and software design , documentation , working collaboratively , dividing work , version control , just nothing. Instead focus was solely upon management works like Risk management , how to make RMMI tables , how to make gnatt chart using excel and things like those.

Don't get me wrong , I believe that planning ahead for risks is better step , making gnatt chart might help someone someday , but is this management thing software engineering? Also I haven't mentioned about what we had to do for semester project in this subject. We have my practical tomorrow , most of students are submitting variations of parking lot software , which comes up 1st on google searches.

What I'm afraid of is , almost 99% of students already have no idea about programming , and alike me , they too had expectations that they might actually get to work on simple , even non-GUI kind of software and learn something better , but everyone is kind of disappointed after this. Is this real software engineering? Are software engineers paid to do this?

</comment><comment><USER4> What do you like? You should specialize in fields that you have an interest in (it'll make work seem like play).

If you don't know what you're interested in, then you should probably start trying out random fields (or ones that are close to your interests)

</comment><comment><USER5> Around my third year in mathematics, I had the same realization: I did not know what I wanted to specialize in. After some thought, I understood it to be because I did not know enough about all the various fields to make a solid decision.

Though mathematics and computer engineering are two distinct fields, consider that this may be a similar position to the one you are in.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thank you very much for your feedback everyone, I really like Computer Architecture(Datapaths, MIPS, ARM design) and Machine Learning. Its really a tough choice because I have also taken a lot of electrical engineering courses, computer science and computer hardware design courses. So...its really a tough decision.

</comment><comment><USER6> Whatever you find most interesting ?

If you find everything equally interesting try the one that you think would have the most direct impact on the world in the shortest possible time.

I am a 3rd year student too, and I am working with machine learning and industrial robotics. However there are so many things out there in 2015 !

Cryptography for web, VR, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, it seems that control systems and machine learning are the next big thing in the industry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Statistics and machine learning are heavily sought within tech jobs and will be more so (as long as the robot uprising doesn't happen in the next year) in the coming years

</comment><comment><USER8> what do you want ?</comment>


Yelp lays off 1k employees and furloughs 1,100 more - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/09/yelp-lays-off-1000-employees-and-furloughs-1100-more/ <comment><USER2> It was shortly on the frontpage [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22822784](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22822784)</comment>


Advanced caching in Rails - <AUTHOR> http://broadcastingadam.com/2011/05/advanced_caching_in_rails

<comment><USER2> All the time spent talking about caching in Rails avoids the real issue: _generating complex html in Ruby/Rails is really slow_.

My Rails sites spend 85% of the time generating HTML, the other 15% of the time is spent communicating with the db and other external services. And it's not easy to figure out where the slowness is. When I've ran performance profiles in the past, something like 50% of the time was spent in GC.

<comment><USER3> From experience I have to agree with both parts of this - it can be very slow and it's generally not that easy to profile, e.g. the call graph tends to get very complex and therefore difficult to interpret, and as you say, GC can be a big part of the problem which doesn't help.

One thing worth mentioning: anecdotally I've found that ActiveRecord can have an impact on performance far beyond the cost of the database queries, both by directly adding a reasonable amount of overhead and by instantiating a lot of objects internally which in turn triggers a lot of garbage collection. I wouldn't be surprised if that accounts for a fair chunk of what you're seeing.

<comment><USER3> I should also add that addressing performance issues with caching can seriously impact the maintainability of your application, particularly if you end up with complex cache expiry rules and/or systems to pre-populate cache entries. I'd definitely say that the priority should be to first simplify your app as much as possible, then optimise and only when that doesn't work to use caching.

<comment><USER2> Agreed 100%. I've worked hard to remove all forms of caching from my sites. It simplifies things tremendously.

I've found that database views and functions are one of the easiest ways to improve performance in Rails.

FOR EXAMPLE

To generate user's information shown above each comment for [https://img.skitch.com/20120220-pununfygpsaw1cw5gmjin8e95i.p...](https://img.skitch.com/20120220-pununfygpsaw1cw5gmjin8e95i.png), I have to get the user's username, the total amount of "points" the user has, the user's profile image, if the user is an admin (admins are formatted differently), etc. This information is stored across around 5 or 6 tables. Enter this view (which calls a few db functions):

      CREATE VIEW user_profile_info
      AS
        SELECT users.id                     AS user_id,
               users.slug                   AS user_slug,
               users.username,
               user_stats.total_points,
               user_profile_image(users.id) AS profile_image,
               is_user_admin(users.id)      AS admin
        FROM   (users
                JOIN user_stats
                  ON (( user_stats.user_id = users.id )));

Now, I can have a simple UserProfileInfo ActiveRecord class that wraps this user_profile_info database view.

Then I can do:

      @object.comments.includes(:user_profile_info)

and, very efficiently, I get a list of comments and all the user's information.

If I didn't use this approach, I would have to have a complex caching scheme to avoid the multiple sql queries. The goal is to minimize the amount of data that comes over the wire via sql queries (which also reduces the amount of work ActiveRecord has to do to construct these objects in memory).

BTW, I'm starting to write a book about using postgresql effectively with web applications. I've found that there are tons of web developers (especially in Rails) that don't use the full-power of postgresql correctly which leads to slow and buggy code.

<comment><USER4> I'd be very interested in purchasing this book. Please keep us updated when its available.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hello, I'm the author. You can ask me respond to me here if you like.

</comment><comment><USER6> I use most of these methods for caching. I have my own little methods for making cache keys. I use Rails.cache all over the place. I have a couple sweepers. What I really struggle is testing this stuff. You really can't do it anywhere other than an integration test, and they're _ugly_. I mostly just test the sweepers. Anyone have any nice solutions for testing caching, or think its unnecessary?

<comment><USER2> I would try to remove as much caching as possible. It is complicated and hard to test.

<comment><USER7> I haven't had a lot of experience with caching, and I agree with your comment above about database views, but wouldn't the complications be mitigated by using the approach DHH detailed recently? [http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3113-how-key-based-cache- expi...](http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3113-how-key-based-cache-expiration- works)

That is, incorporating `updated_at` into the cache key, and using `touch: true` on your AR relations to make sure that caches of affected parent objects get expired too?

Are there other complications I may not have run into yet?

<comment><USER2> Imagine you have User has_many Comments. When someone's username is updated, you might need to update all the user's cached html comment fragments to include the new username.

However, ActiveRecord doesn't support touch on has_many relations. (It probably shouldn't, as updating the username would mean updating/touching thousands (or more) comment rows).

Also, if you have to update the database outside of ActiveRecord for any reason, you could be screwed - the cache would become out of sync with the database.

<comment><USER7> Cheers, a helpful and extremely likely case!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The post is actually easy to read and understand. Funny thing is, in the last couple of weeks, there has been a lot of material (podcasts, posts, screencast, etc) on the subject. But it didn't really take off until 37signals mentioned it.

<comment><USER9> Is there any screencast other than the Railscasts one?

<comment><USER10> New Relic has a series of videos on scaling Rails, several of which are about caching. They're a couple of years old but most of the concepts and method calls are still valid.

<http://railslab.newrelic.com/scaling-rails>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "worthless applications" like a news site or blog? Yeah, those seem to be pretty unpopular _eyeroll_

</comment><comment><USER12> This is the best article on Rails caching I have ever read. Highly recommended.</comment>