A Visiting Star Jostled Our Solar System 70,000 Years Ago - <AUTHOR> https://gizmodo.com/a-visiting-star-jostled-our-solar-system-70-000-years-a-1823954398 <comment><USER2> I'll take this opportunity to recommend Universe Sandbox[1], which is pretty cheap on steam and worth every penny.

Turning on projected orbital lines in an N-body simulation of our solar system and seeing what happens when you toss a star in there is _really_ enlightening... the rings all shift in tandem in a visceral way that really helps me "feel" what happens.

There's a simulation that comes out of the box that simulates the circumstances of the book "Nomad" (I haven't read the book) where a small solar-mass rogue black hole drifts past the solar system at high speed. With orbital path projections turned on you get to watch all the paths shift like wobbling hula hoops as the unseen object drifts past. Most orbits remain stable but very deeply shifted from where they were (earth's aphelion ends up far out where Jupiter was, with its perihelion much closer than before...)

The effects described in the article are obviously less extreme, but the game helps me get a sense of just how perilous our planetary orbits are and how vulnerable to outside influences they can be.

[1] [http://universesandbox.com/](http://universesandbox.com/)

<comment><USER3> > Most orbits remain stable but very deeply shifted from where they were > (earth's aphelion ends up far out where Jupiter was, with its perihelion > much closer than before...)

That's incredibly terrifying. Although from what I see in the book description, it focuses more on the drama aspect.

I wouldn't mind someone exploring the technical aspect in more detail, e.g. what would be possible to do to prepare for such an event (if anything) and how likely it would lead to the extinction of civilization.

<comment><USER4> The scenario described is almost certainly the end of human civilization and the majority of life on earth. Assuming I've done the math right, an aphelion of ~5 AU and perihelion of ~0.9 AU gives a highly eccentric (e = 0.69) orbit taking 5 years.

I'm just guessing here, but I imagine each orbit would start with 6-8 months of relatively normal temperatures as we made or closest pass by the sun, a year or so worth of dropping temperatures, 2.5 years of deep, deep freeze, and a year of slow warming as we approach the sun again. Each orbit is probably going is probably going to see the planet spending at least 3 years _competely outside the habitable zone_. I'd expect virtually all life as we know it on the surface to die in the first orbit.

With enough warning we might be able to dig some deep facilities that could harness geothermal energy to generate power and avoid freezing. They might be able to use hydroponics or something to sustain themselves for a long time, but to what end?

<comment><USER5> There's life beneath deep oceans that thrive on geothermal - I think it's possible some life can survive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was going to ask if perhaps ancient humans saw this new red star and if it drove them to an elevated state of being superstitious and chaos but:

>When Scholz's Star was in the neighborhood, it would have been a 10th magnitude star (red dwarfs are very dim). That's about 50 times fainter than what can be seen with the naked eye at night. Under normal circumstances, it would be invisible. But because red dwarfs are magnetically active, it could have briefly "flared-up" (i.e., V-band flares) to become thousands of times brighter. The astronomers say it's possible that the star was visible to our paleolithic ancestors for a few minutes or hours if this rare flaring event transpired at the time.

<comment><USER7> I was drawn to that passage as well. The author goes on:

> _Sadly, this star's passing likely went unnoticed by our ancestors._

I mean, I _get_ it, but _why_ is it sad? Is it because it feels like a "missed connection" with our ancestors? Tangential, but I feel like the answer to this question connects with why people study astronomy in the first place, and I'm just curious if others relate to this sentiment. :)

<comment><USER8> Sadly because our ancestors missed the opportunity to see such an event, as rare as we think it to be.

<comment><USER9> Actually perhaps it's better that way. Otherwise they could base some superstitious thinking on it that would stick if we were unlucky enough and there'd be yet another case of irrational thinking to be undone.

<comment><USER10> I have never been able to understand why so many other scientists and "rationalist" look back on humans early "superstitious" ideas with contempt. To my mind these superstitious ideas are the beginning of the rationalist mindset. These ideas are people's attempts to explain and understand how the world works. I am certain that some of the ideas that many of us hold now will be thought quite silly in a few hundred years.

<comment><USER11> _> am certain that some of the ideas that many of us hold now will be thought quite silly in a few hundred years._

Yes, like the theory that we're actually living in a simulation, espoused by Elon Musk and other respected, ostensibly science-minded people.

It's basically Creationism in modern form.

<comment><USER12> It isn't like creationism because it is based on some otherwise currently unexplained observations such as quantum mechanical behavior and magic physical constants. The idea is that these are exactly the sort of observations you'd see if you were in a simulated universe.

Now if we were to observe new species being created in N days, for small integer N, then I suppose your assertion about creationism would also hold.

<comment><USER13> Wouldn't a simulation have to have a creator? Unless you are postulating that a Turing-complete simulator got itself together by random chance and, by random chance, started simulating universe(s), one of which, by random chance, happens to simulate beings that can imagine a simulator simulating themselves. It seems like a simulation is a fairly strong evidence FOR a creator. Hawking's quantum bubbles seem much more like what would happen without intervention.

Also, creationism isn't limited to only 6 day creation, that's more of a modern thing by people that insist on taking Genesis 1 (which is poetry) literally. Early Christian thinkers postulated that 1 Genesis-day was actually 1000 years. Creationism just says that God created the world; how long it took and how he did it are implementation details.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Isn't that around the time of the Homo Sapiens genetic bottleneck?

<comment><USER15> I'm amazed at this coincidence, too.

<comment><USER16> It can't have had sufficiently fast impact on Earth by disturbing orbits to create impactors, given the distance.

<comment><USER17> Isn't the article mostly about how it _did_ influence Oort cloud object orbits? Thirty-six identified.

<comment><USER18> That's a minuscule number and "influenced" doesn't necessarily mean "aimed them at the Earth." There's a lot of space out there which it takes things a lot of time to move through. It takes the Earth a year to go around the Sun. And the Oort Cloud is, like, 100,000 times further away from the Sun than we are.

<comment><USER17> They went into 'v' orbits, which as I understand it, means steep highly elliptical orbits that come inside the Earth's orbit? Its a lot more crowded in here.

<comment><USER18> I'm no space science maker person. So take this all with a grain of salt. But.

Halley's Comet takes 75 years to make an orbit. It goes out to about 35AU. Let's call that 1 year per AU. That rough, rough number would lead one to conclude that anything from the Oort Cloud moving at a similar speed could take, say, 100,000 years to get here even if it was aimed at us. If triggered by something 70,000 years ago, we'd still have a bunch of millenia to prepare.

Anyway. I'm sure I'm completely wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Wikipedia says this is 17-23 light-years away. So it moved between 16.2 and 22.2 light years in 70k years. This means relative to us it is moving an average of 0.0231% to 0.0317% the speed of light.

</comment><comment><USER20> Reminds me of an Ask Ethan where solar systems can get slingshot out of their galaxy with planets in tact: [https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/ask-ethan- can-stars-es...](https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/ask-ethan-can-stars- escape-from-the-galaxy-with-planets-intact-e8b6f4bf73ef)

</comment><comment><USER21> > Around the same time our ancestors left Africa, a dim red dwarf star came to > within 0.8 light-years of our Sun

So that's within the Oort cloud. If this happened again should we be more concerned about the star disturbing our Oort cloud or about us travelling through the other stars Oort cloud?

</comment><comment> c-smile Again: as sooner we start our resettlement to other star systems - the better.

<comment><USER22> What about the opportunity cost? What about the long-term?

Maybe we should make our ecological footprint steady-state sustainable, first.

<comment><USER23> I think your idea is more practical, given the state of spaceflight technology - BUT, should it succeed, then little incentive would exist to leave Earth.

Given the impulses of people in power now, coupled with whatever steps the future takes to make Earth sustainable, it's hard to imagine a future government allowing people to leave. It would, after all, be setting up a competitor. Paranoid, you say?

Imagine an English king c. early 1600s having a vision of the descendants of his loyal colonists rebelling 170 years later. And the nation founded by the rebels eclipsing England 130 years after that. History might have turned out differently.

The good news is that thanks to France and Spain, the English king had little choice - he had to oppose France and Spain everywhere he could, or risk losing strategic advantage.

<comment><USER24> >It would, after all, be setting up a competitor

There is nothing paranoid about that.

Evolution is not some magical 'forward' direction where every species becomes more technologically capable, or even more dignified.

It might be true that our species' now has a limited opportunity to become multi-planetary.

The first person to get to the moon was Korolev, and he would have continued rotting in a gulag had the urgency for a space program not been there.

And before you say the US is so much unlike Russia--our competing Vanguard program should, from an industrial standpoint, have won, but it was a massive failure, and embroiled in politics of its own.

Humanity needs competition to keep us honest, in the same way that the veracity of ideas needs to be tested by experiment to keep them honest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Do large, bright stars ever pass that close? What would that look like?

<comment><USER26> > Do large, bright stars ever pass that close?

Yes, but it's extremely rare.

> What would that look like?

Not much. The Scholz flyby was at 0.6-0.8 light years, the same order of magnitude as the distance to Alpha Centauri. It would just look like a star, probably not even a particularly bright one.

<comment><USER27> Alpha Centauri is 4.37 light years away. Or did I misunderstand your comment?

<comment><USER26> Hard to say. Yes, Alpha Centauri is indeed 4.37 LY away, though that kind of precision is irrelevant when talking about orders of magnitude (OOM). Two numbers are considered to be the same OOM if the absolute difference of their base-10 logarithms is less than 1.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Immediately upon clicking this, I typed Ctrl-F followed by "artist's depiction". The page didn't disappoint. :)

</comment><comment><USER29> I wonder what its velocity is in relation to the sun. Twenty two light years in 70,000 years seems rather fast!

<comment> maze-le It seems to be quite fast, but not exceptionally. Lets do a quick calculation, and neglect all aspects of proper stellar kinematics -- Our sun has traveled quite some distance itself during the 70000 years, I don't properly described that motion itself, so take everything with a grain of salt:

Lets call the speed difference of the star with respect to our sun `Δv`

       Δv = 20 [ly] / 70 000 [y] = 0.000285714 [ly/y]

Now, lets convert the unit `ly/y` into a unit that we can relate to, to get a grasp on it: 1ly = 63241.08AU[1].

       Δv = 0.000285714 [ly/y] = 18.0688 [AU/y]

18 AU is about the perihelion of Uranus, a bit smaller still. So the star traveled on average, with respect to our sun, about the smallest distance between the Sun and Uranus in 1 year. To put that in perspective:

       Δv = 18.0688 [AU/y] * 149597900 [km/AU] / 31557600 [s/y]
          = 85.6550 [km/s]

The LSR[2] is about 220 km/s. The Suns deviation from this value is about +14 km/s[3]. So an object with Δv of about 85.6 km/s is quite fast in comparison. But this is still nothing compared to hypervelocity stars, wich can be more than 1000 km/s faster and are exceeding the escape velocity of the galaxy.

\</comment></comment><comment>

[1] : 1 AU (Astronomical unit) is the average distance from Earth to Sun.

[2] : Local Standard of Rest -- average speed of our stellar neighborhood through the galaxy.

[3]: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1411.3572](https://arxiv.org/abs/1411.3572)

</comment><comment><USER30> I have a problem clicking on Gizmodo ever since I read an article on what was essentially a moto perpetuo machine presented as a breakthrough. Do we have a better source for the news?

</comment><comment> john-adword Nice information

</comment><comment><USER31> My guess is that the Oort Cloud is where the mothership turned off its interstellar drive.

</comment><comment><USER32> > orbits that are very exaggerated, and with a characteristic v-shape

v-shape, we all know where this will go to...</comment>


Companies With More Women Board Directors Experience Higher Financial Performance - <AUTHOR> http://www.catalyst.org/pressroom/press_bottom_line_2.shtml I wonder how many startups have female board members?<p>"Fortune 500 companies with the highest representation of women board directors attained significantly higher financial performance, on average, than those with the lowest representation of women board directors, according to Catalyst's most recent report." <comment><USER2> Causation != Correlation

Maybe companies with higher financial performance tend to add more women board directors later on, as they grow in employees and revenue.

<comment><USER3> Or perhaps these two things are caused by a third.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is who the study was done by:

"Catalyst is the leading nonprofit corporate membership research and advisory organization working globally with businesses and the professions to build inclusive environments and expand opportunities for women and business"

Does it seem like an independent study?

</comment><comment><USER5> The numbers don't pass the smell test. Best bet: All-male boards represent brand-new companies. Only mature, profitable companies start to worry about installing "tokens".

</comment><comment><USER6> counter-theory:

Having higher performance (or brighter outlook) _allows_ companies to take on weaker performing women.

\--yes that guess is politically incorrect

<comment><USER7> If the woman were weaker, then performance would not have improved _after_ taking them on as board directors, as this report shows conclusively.

<comment><USER6> None of us have the stats to prove anything conclusively.

And this is the problem. If the article is going to make such big claims with such small evidence, then it seems worth evaluating some more obvious solutions first.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask YC: Who's pushing their data to 'the cloud' - <AUTHOR>

Just ordered a new laptop and I've decided to try to push as much of my data online as I can to make life more flexible.  I'm just curious to see who here does this and what do you use if so? I am thinking my regular work files, my photos etc.  I'd like to keep some files locally as well, but thinking that anything older than 30 days could be stored online - especially if its over a replicated system like Amazon S3. <comment><USER2> _"... Just ordered a new laptop and I've decided to try to push as much of my data online as I can to make life more flexible. I'm just curious to see who here does this and what do you use if so? ..."_

WHY

I do. Any post I make I have squared away. This allows me to make my site the definitive collection of my data. It also allows google to index it. I have control over my own content and if for some reason a third party site wants to exert control I still have my stuff. Unlike slashdot who didn't allow any tools to save posts. Hence I lost from about 1996 to 2002's worth of comments. [0]

HOW

There are 2 ways of looking at this. You can either generate you _"stuff"_ from a single point [0] at your machine, save it and pump it out OR use the web apps as clients and suck the data back via RSS, Atom, JSON etc.

I've been doing a bit of both. Pushing stuff from my blog engine after I've cached it and now I'm beginning to suck up the various websites I frequent. So for pushing out I have:

\- OUT: flickr (blog, tags, images) , twitter (snippets), hackerid (hackernews data), links (various links I save including links to hackernews & export to delicious)

\- IN: hackernews (all posts every 15m, friends),

\- IN TODO: wordy (words I use), spock (tags), colourlovers (colours), librarything (my library), amazon (new books), lastfm (what I'm currently listening to), delicious (new links I find), twitter (friends), flickr (friends, processed images, text, tags)

Now as you can see that's a lot of data. Some of the things I'm finding:

\- It's easier to push than pull if you want an accurate copy because you save before you export

\- pulling data means you don't have to write firstly the interface to capture the data and simply call RSS

\- not every site has an API or good RSS feed

\- Linking data together is not easy except by time though you could try to match by friend (ie: friend is on twitter, flickr, hackernews)

\- displaying the data effectively is difficult simply because of the volume and complexity of it. A good example of how to do this is <http://friendfeed.com> Clear, simple and pretty much allows for good reading.

I'm now at a stumbling block with a templating engine I'm using and so I'm pretty keen to just extract the data as Atom, RSS and JSON as individual feeds or a mashed feed by date and write a Javascript based website to avoid having to deal with heavy weight blog engines. Let the data go free and see how people use it.

The key thing to realise is when you are compiling your data timestamp it at DB level (if you are using one) ISO1606 format, maybe add a tag layer over the top so you can get the benefit of tagging across data layers.

It's turning out to be an interesting project.

[0] <http://goonmail.customer.netspace.net.au/2005DEC131709.html>

<comment><USER3> I've heard of ISO 8601 timestamps but never 1606 (and neither has google it seems). What is that?

<comment><USER2> You are dead right. I was wrong. I meant "ISO 8601". Late night post and I should have checked ~ <http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3339.txt>

<comment><USER4> From this RFC I learned that:

      Standard time in the Netherlands was exactly 19
      minutes and 32.13 seconds ahead of UTC by law
      from 1909-05-01 through 1937-06-30.

Those wacky Dutch!

<comment><USER2> _"... From this RFC I learned that: ..."_

The bit I use is a bastardisation of _"1985-04-12T23:20:50.52Z"_. A shorter version as a string, say "20070202T1422" stripping out the hyphens, colons and Zulu.

<comment><USER3> Actually I don't believe "20070202T1422" is a legal 8601 timestamp. My read of the partial ABNF below requires you to designate the time zone with a "Z" or a specific offset (e.g. +08:00).

       time-secfrac    = "." 1*DIGIT
       time-numoffset  = ("+" / "-") time-hour ":" time-minute
       time-offset     = "Z" / time-numoffset

       partial-time    = time-hour ":" time-minute ":" time-second
                         [time-secfrac]
       full-date       = date-fullyear "-" date-month "-" date-mday
       full-time       = partial-time time-offset

       date-time       = full-date "T" full-time

If your data is going to stick around a while (and possibly loaded into some other system in the future) you should be sure to encode the timezone.

<comment><USER2> _"... 20070202T1422 is a legal 8601 timestamp. ..."_

20070202T1422 - but close enough for me in 1 timezone and limited space for display. I have a double use as both a (8601 hack) and as a human readable title. Adding extra "-" and "Z" makes it harder to read and the accuracy for seconds is simply not required. Trade-offs I'm willing to make.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As one of the developers/founders of Openomy (<http://www.openomy.com>), I'm keenly interested in this.

Our goal is to provide a place where people can store and access all their online files. We want to be the Online File System. We're heading to the "cloud" already and it's becoming increasingly difficult for us to manage our own files. My photos are locked in Flickr, my docs in Zoho, etc.

We want to break down the "data silos" and provide a single interface to all your "cloud storage" as well as provide a single API for developers to code against to access user's data in meaningful and interesting ways.

We're taking a multi-pronged approach to this. One prong (currently launched) is to allow you to upload your files through our API or our web interface and we'll store it (using Amazon's S3 for reliability and scalability). You can access the files and their metadata through the UI or through the API. You can tag them, share them, make them public, etc.

Our next step is to provide many backing-stores. That is, import your files from Flickr/Zoho, etc. We'll keep things sync'd up, so that Openomy becomes your Online File System; storing the metadata of everything you do online. Then, the UI becomes the equivalent of Windows Explorer or Finder, and the API becomes the equivalent of the single file system API provided to you as a desktop developer.

We think it's going to be, at the very least, extremely fun to build. :)

</comment><comment><USER6> I keep copies of all of my files online using a distributed storage grid that we've created.

(bias alert: I'm deeply involved in the project I'm about to mention)

A few years ago I realized that I'd either lost data due to hard-drive crashes or mistakes and wanted some sort of safe place to put my data. We then started a project (<http://allmydata.org>) which provides for a decentralized, secure storage fabric. You can create your own grid if you'd like, create one with friends, or use our managed grid (for a service fee).

I think that Amazon S3, Nirvanix, and others are starting to provide nice basic services in this area as well, but I do think there is a lot of room for retaining and saving information that is gently locked into web services (Flickr, blogs, LinkedIn, etc.).

</comment><comment><USER7> I've been thinking about the same thing. There's a Flickr tool for iphoto if you use a Mac and I currently use Furl for bookmarking.

</comment><comment><USER8> I use our own service at <http://www.i2drive.com> not only to store files but also to edit files on the remote server. it uses webdav for back-end which lets you map a drive from windows or mount from Mac and Linux.

</comment><comment><USER9> There are some products that do P2P+Server data sharing. I'm thinking Groove especially, but I'm sure there are more.

This allows me to put my data "out there" among all the computers/friends that I share my space with, without publishing the information for the whole world to see. So I have ease-of-access, backups, online/offline access, etc without having to go public. Plus it tightly integrates with my operating system and office software, as opposed to my having to write a bunch of hand-coded stuff.

<comment><USER10> Microsoft is so dead... I was intrigued by your post and went ahead to research Groove a bit more, but their site is full of "marketing messages" and I ran out of patience looking for an answer for "WHAT DOES GROOVE DO?", therefore your post remains the only information I got about this service.

<comment><USER3> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Groove> has a pretty good summary.

It certainly says something when you can get better information from Wikipedia than from Microsoft about one of their own products.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why isn't literally every train automated? - <AUTHOR> Possibly late here, but why aren't more / all trains automated? The route is static; Speed should be easy to determine; AFAIK they aren't mechanically unreliable enough to warrant a full-time mechanic on-board; LIDAR and image recognition can detect hazards on the track.<p>It seems silly that there have been such strides in automating automobiles before trains. <comment><USER2> Here are some ideas from the top of my head:

* Many trains are old (at least in the UK), and tend to be very slowly upgraded, so the trains on the network were built before it was considered practical to automate them.

* Signalling systems are old, UK example: the warning system (AWS) is built on electromagnets, clever and cheap, but not enough for automation.

* While it's possible to design a system that works well for a normal journey if nothing goes wrong, when things do go wrong you'd need a person (for example, I once was on a train and a door was stuck, the driver got out and fixed it so we could get off), also what about level crossings?

* Once you're paying someone as a failsafe, then they already know how to drive the train, then the extra automation is just extra cost, except when the railway is busy (so London Underground has partial automation, as cost of driver + automation is worth it to run all the extra trains).

* Places with automated systems tend to be isolated (see the DLR, it's isolated from mainline trains, and also has no level crossings).

* Maybe a way to keep people to blame if things go wrong, if an automated train goes wrong, who is to blame?

* Who in their right mind would want to lose their job? From what I understand people enjoy it, and it pays well, and it's not exactly a skill that can be transferred (while in an ideal world someone could get another decent job, the fact is we're not in an ideal world, so if someone loses their job they're going to have a hard time and not have a way to magically get something new, unless they're lucky).

<comment><USER3> Level crossings aren't an issue. It's easy to detect the presence of large objects blocking a level crossing if the barriers fail to come down and signal to the train to stop before it reaches the crossing.

Drivers tend to earn much more money than guards do because the work is more skilled. If all you're doing is opening doors then you can be a min wage worker who is easily replaceable and thus not very unionisable. So there is benefit even in systems that still need guards.

The real issues are deeper. Yes, union opposition is a big one, but there are technical problems too. Full moving block signalling i.e. trains that track how far they are from other trains and know to slow down or speed up depending on distance was being discussed in the 1990's but the only implementations anywhere are on metro lines. For above-ground heavy rail there are no implementations anywhere in the world, as far as I know.

As observed by the OP this cannot be entirely a technical issue. If Google can make a driverless car that can navigate California, a driverless train is surely far easier. The real problem is that train automation is not a problem that attracts the best engineers. Google can hire out entire academic departments of the top machine vision researchers in the world to work on self driving cars because self driving cars are something that appeals to the whims of billionaires and techies alike. Also because the market size is effectively limitless.

But when was the last time you heard about an automated train startup? When did you hear about someone leaving their job at Facebook to go work on train automation? Trains do not appeal to rich billionaires or American tech workers in the same way that cars do, so funding for them comes entirely from the capex budgets of mostly government funded rail operators, and is spent on a handful of large engineering conglomerates. There are I think only about 4 companies in the world that can make automated train systems of any kind. Each engagement is a massive activity that always requires very large and expensive customisations to the base system. Because there are so few competitors they're huge public contracts and it only takes one or two to be ruled out or refuse to bid and you're down to a single potential supplier.

Projects like this can _fail_ and when they fail they fail very expensively and with huge political fallout. They are the epitome of huge expensive government IT projects. The Jubilee line automation project started installing equipment in 2006 and didn't activate until 2011, with loads of line closures and problems that made major news.

There are also some more direct technical issues. Trains have huge stopping distances. They need to know where other trains are blockages are far in advance of being able to physically see them. They also spend a lot of time in tunnels. Therefore camera based approaches like what self driving cars use are not so trustworthy. This means upgrades to the track so all trains can know where they are at all times, and to get the benefits means reliable communication from a central control room rather than all trains autonomously deciding things like how fast to go (remember they cannot see slow trains on the track ahead). These things in turn mean line closures and engineering works, which are very expensive. And remember there's no money for upgrades because they're all government subsidised.

There's an article about some of the issues and the smoother rollouts London is seeing these days here:

[https://www.railengineer.uk/2015/05/08/lu-northern-line- goes...](https://www.railengineer.uk/2015/05/08/lu-northern-line-goes-cbtc/)

<comment><USER2> Well... The Victoria Line was a form of automatic since it was made, so it seems to be more practical to have a new system created as an automatic one rather than upgrade an old system. Even with the new systems on the Underground, the driver still needs to know how to drive the train, for when things go wrong, and unlike a car, other trains can't move around a stuck train.

I guess one of the big problem with automating trains is that while it's easier to automate the normal operation of a train, there is less tolerance for any issues (a train stopping blocks all other trains on the line, there are also a LOT of people on a train at a time, stopping distance is huge, etc...).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> In some places (eg. London), automation is totally possible, but is resisted so hard by workers unions that all other workers on the railway would go on strike until the train operator promised to rip out automated systems and return to manual operation.

On some lines, all the driver does is open and close the doors. Even getting to that level of automation caused lots of strikes.

<comment><USER5> Similar situation in Montreal. The new metro cars are fully ready to be automatically ran, but it's resisted by the union.

<comment><USER6> But if it's fully autonomous then they don't need the workers? So if they all go on strike, they can all be fired.

So is it not fully autonomous, or is there a law I'm not aware of?

<comment><USER7> You still have track workers, ticket takers, etc...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> How much savings would you expect from this? And whose job should be automated? If you think about replacing one driver per train then probably the cost of automation is higher than his salary. Instead of paying one man a salary you would be forced to pay a maintenance contract to some IT/automation company that would charge you exorbitant rates just because this is industrial automation and you have no idea how to operate it.

<comment><USER9>
      some IT/automation company that would charge you
      exorbitant rates just because this is industrial
      automation

This is shenanigans. This is the kind of game Enron [0] played, gouging prices for irrational reasons, until eventually outside intervention dismantled their operation, to discover actual costs.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Star_(business)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Star_\(business\))

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Numbered pages 3, 9, and 10 of [https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42637.pdf](https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42637.pdf) have some info on why even positive train control (PTC) isn't live yet:

> The estimated capital cost of meeting the PTC mandate is thus roughly equal > to the railroads' total capital spending in a single year."

… and that's for PTC, not driverless. Successful PTC is arguably a precursor to anything more automated, with or without humans.

<comment><USER11> Most human-driven trains use coloured circular lights for signalling. Determining the presence of a coloured circle in a known location is about the simplest computer-vision problem known to man, so we could probably practically solve this cheaply tomorrow with an iPhone on a suction cup.

Maybe there are legal issues in many/most jurisdictions getting in the way, but isn't saving "roughly ... the railroads' total capital spending in a single year" worth a change in regulations?

<comment><USER12> > worth a change in regulations?

Why? The regulations are there for a reason. In Netherlands the rail safety system has to be heavily improved before automation is possible. What apparently is the cause of the outdated safety system is that the system was (when built) ahead of its time, but nowadays other systems are much better.

They're now going to test with automated trains on specialized goods-only train lines.

In this case the regulation is there to ensure safety. If improvements cost a lot it'll have to be spread out over multiple years, or e.g. not automate away drivers. What's to me seems utterly strange is immediately jump to just allowing such changes and assume regulation is the problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The Lille (north of France) metro/subway/underground is totally automated - there aren't even any drivers for safety reasons. I haven't heard of any major issues and from using it personally it's always been flawless.

</comment><comment><USER14> The Copenhagen metro is fully automated, but it was built like that from the start. This means that there's no metro driver unions, and the metro stations were built in a way, where it's generally hard to get unto the tracks. It did have some issues to begin with, but it works flawlessly today.

</comment><comment><USER15> Somewhat unrelated but I have wondered why people are assuming the first use of automated vehicles will be for personal transport on a public road.

It seems a lot simpler to have a part of the road network dedicated to fully automated vehicles. And instead of immediately transporting people (which carries a high risk) it seems a lot more sensible to initially focus on the transport of goods.

The initial set up would be quite expensive, but once you no longer need to worry about human drivers and don't need to worry overly about a million to 1 chance for things to go wrong, you should be able to use the road a lot more efficiently.

</comment><comment><USER16> In the US, most of the train technology is old and not cross compatible, making each installation difficult and expensive. Looking at the NY metro area trains and driveways, there are frequent mechanical issues, both on the trains themselves and on the train instructions such as switch problems, sometimes necessitating reversing back a few stations in order to switch tracks.

</comment><comment><USER17> Cars can stop much more easily than trains. Trains can take _one or two miles_ to stop. That's hard to do with LIDAR.

There have been failures of automation. BART was fully automated. Then one train misread a speed command from a trackside gadget, and sped up to over 60 MPH when it was supposed to be slowing down to 20 to prepare to stop at a station. Unfortunately, the station was the end of the line (Fremont), and the train ran off the end into the parking lot.

On the other hand, that was in the 1970s. Some new systems have been fully automated. The Las Vegas Monorail is fully automated. At the end of the line, it asks you to exit, but there's nobody there to make you, so I didn't. Then it runs out on this dead end to switch over to the other line, where it will fall off 20 or 30 feet if it doesn't stop in time. It's a bit scary, but it worked...

</comment><comment><USER18> Likely unions or insurance reasons.

I've heard similar things about airplane pilots.

<comment><USER19> No one has figured out how automation can save a flight in the air if the automation fails. Remote control and communication can also fail. Ground based trains or vehicles can just stop on the ground.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I guess that Train technology is old enough that regulations about drivers, signals, and safety surely assume that there is a phisical person in charge of driving.

Maybe the first step towards automation is beign able to drive the train remotely. Technically feasible; but is it legally feasible?

</comment><comment><USER21> Some airports have automated, unmanned trains or trams that take passengers from terminal to terminal within the airport.

The example is illustrative because those are usually either elevated or underground, with virtually no possibility of people being on the tracks, and no crossings with other traffic.

</comment><comment><USER22> it is very cheap! how many people do you need to operate a train ? 2,3 ? compare to the scale of train it is very cheap!!!

</comment><comment><USER23> The Skytrain system in Vancouver is fully automated and works well.

Only time I saw a driver was when we had a lot of snow last year. He was there for safety since Vancouver isn't so ready for snow.

</comment><comment><USER24> On some lines where the train is automated, the metro operator still keeps someone on the train who has training for an emergency situation, I.e. Evacuating passengers.

So the saving is their salary compared to the train driver's salary.

On big trains, we expect the driver to spot dangers like landslides, fallen trees. These happen extremely rarely, so the driver would be bored and lose concentration without having to drive the train -- within the strict parameters set by the computer, on the most modern high speed lines.

</comment><comment><USER25> Specifically for the London Underground there's a lot of union opposition. Some lines have mostly-automatic operation (everything except opening/closing the doors) and keep a driver around for safety reasons.

</comment><comment><USER26> Watch tram crash compilation for hazards where LIDAR and image recognition might not be adequate. Note the might.

</comment><comment><USER27> Normal people don't want automation...

</comment><comment><USER28> I'll go for the low hanging fruit - unions?

</comment><comment><USER29> There was a thread about it on reddit, please go and find it. The trains do not need LIDAR or image recognition. Going in straight line on rails is simple. You don't need to even brake (useless, stopping distance is way too big). What happens in stations and what preparations are done, that cannot (e.g. cost efficiently) be automated. Metro on other hand is mostly automated (see Europe)</comment>


U.S. Supreme Court to hear case about who gets paid in class action lawsuits - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-google/u-s-supreme-court-to-hear-google-privacy-settlement-dispute-idUSKBN1I11DO <comment><AUTHOR> For anyone who only reads the HN comments, the title does not really include the interesting part of the article. This case revolves around the question of who gets remunerated in class action lawsuits against a company. The case in question was a privacy lawsuit against google where the two representative plaintiffs received $5,000 each, the lawyers received $2.1m, and the rest of the money went to privacy non-profits.

<comment><USER2> I think there is a risk that some will say something along the lines of that in the example you give it is unfair for the plaintiffs to only get $5k and the lawyers $2.1M. Reality though is that not only would a lot of these cases never see the courts at all if the Lawyers were not paid, but also it is expensive as fuck to bring these cases and to the research and front end work, with a huge risk that you may not win the case at all.

I would be for courts to calculate compensation to plaintiffs as a ratio of, but on top of the award, i.e., if the punitive or compensatory award is X, the plaintiff's ratio is a minimum of 1/5, with total award being 1.2X.

I am not all that against blood sucking lawyers taking a pound of flesh and am open to the notion of their compensation being controlled and limited (which would NEVER happen considering the power and strangle hold the legal profession has on government ... bar (yes, that's intentional) lawyers from government and lobbying maybe???).

<comment><USER3> in class actions, the compensation is very much "controlled and limited." The lawyers have to make a separate motion to be awarded fees and there is intense scrutiny by the court and potential objectors of every dollar requested.

The benchmark in the Ninth Circuit is 25% of the common fund, but district courts almost always also ask for a "lodestar cross-check," which is the hours expended by the plaintiffs' firms multiplied by their customary hourly rates, plus expenses. It's often a very contentious battle to establish a reasonable hourly rate and will turn on the relevant legal market (SF has higher rates than, say, Tulsa even for the same sort of work), the attorney's experience, the results obtained, and so on. And the judges often cut hours, saying they were duplicative or excessive for whatever reason. This can be used to increase or (more commonly) decrease from the 25% benchmark.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > The deal's opponents were led by Ted Frank, director of litigation for the > Competitive Enterprise Institute, a Washington-based conservative think > tank. They said the deal violated procedural rules in U.S. law requiring > settlements to be fair, reasonable and adequate.

What's the Competitive Enterprise Institute's goal in this lawsuit? I once read an editorial once by a CEI guy that was very pro-forced-arbitration, a view which often goes hand-in-hand with an opposition to class action lawsuits.

Is this lawsuit part of the legal campaign to to neuter class actions?

<comment><USER5> I think this is the interesting question about the situation; what is the conservative movement's agenda here? I don't see a clear one. (Let me be clear: I'm not writing this to criticize or support the movement or its agenda in this case; I'm just wondering what the agenda is.)

It's broader than the Competitive Enterprise Institute. For example, the U.S. Justice Department under Sessions instituted a policy banning (or reducing?) settlements with the Justice Department that paid money to 3rd parties. When the Sessions' Justice Department did it, I assumed they wanted to defund 'liberal' institutions (meaning, those not in the conservative ideological movement). As another example, there is also the effort to defund Planned Parenthood and the successful one to defund ACORN.

Note that the Supreme Court case matches a modus operendi of the conservative movement: Change policy and law via the courts rather than through Congress. They develop legal strategies, find good test cases, get Federalist Society judges appointed (especially to the Supreme Court), and incrementally change law and cement policy changes that way. Other groups in other parts of the political spectrum adopt the same approach, of course; it's not just the conservative movement, but they have been particularly strategic.

But why this issue? Perhaps someone in the conservative movement decided that these settlements are a valuable revenue stream for "liberal" groups. If someone read through the literature, I'd bet we could find the reasoning and the strategy. Perhaps someone here already has and will share with us?

<comment><USER3> the pro-business agenda is to eliminate or reduce class actions as much as possible because they can be a huge cost of doing business. Litigation generally is how businesses are held accountable for their actions because in the US there tends to be very little governmental regulatory enforcement in most industries.

Cy pres settlements are generally easy headlines: "Charities get $X million, lawyers get $Y million, regular folks get nothing." Which means it's easy to demagogue.

The larger picture is that having to pay $8.5 million plus whatever O'Melveny & Meyers was charging for defense costs led Google to change its business practices. Where that money goes is largely beside the point, though plenty of free market legal scholars will note that large attorneys' fees encourage more such suits, which means more zealous enforcement of consumer protection laws.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> So just to be clear because I don't think this article does a very good job of explaining the background.

Google was sued in 2010 for a privacy violation as a class action. They chose to settle and the terms of that settlement (according to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23) were carefully reviewed by Judge Davila, an experienced federal district court judge in San Jose. He approved the settlement's terms as fair based on the transaction costs of giving small amounts of money to a large number of persons. Instead, Google would make a donation to a charity, some of which would be diverted to the attorneys who brought the case. This is called a "cy pres" award, from the latin meaning "as near as possible." Cy pres only settlements are quite rare in class action practice and are strongly disfavored.

Here are the terms, as described by the Ninth Circuit:

       Of the $8.5 million settlement fund, approximately $3.2
       million was set aside for attorneys' fees, administration
       costs, and incentive payments to the named plaintiffs. The
       remaining $5.3 million or so was allocated to six cy pres
       recipients, each of which would receive anywhere from 15 to
       21% of the money, provided that they agreed "to devote the
       funds to promote public awareness and education, and/or to
       support research, development, and initiatives, related to
       protecting privacy on the Internet." The six recipients were
       AARP, Inc.; the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at
       Harvard University; Carnegie Mellon University; the Illinois
       Institute of Technology Chicago-Kent College of Law
       Center for Information, Society and Policy; the Stanford
       Center for Internet and Society; and the World Privacy
       Forum. Each of the recipients submitted a detailed proposal
       for how the funds would be used to promote Internet privacy.[1]

Between preliminary approval and final approval, Ted Frank from the CEI filed an objection. (He's done this dozens of times and cy pres is a particular hobby horse of his.) When Judge Davila overruled his objection, he took an appeal. The Ninth Circuit denied that appeal, so he asked the US Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari.

The news is that this was granted. It takes four sitting US Supreme Court justices to grant cert so it doesn't necessarily mean the law is going to change, just that at least a significant minority of the court want to opine on this particular issue.

[1] See page 6 -- [http://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2017/08/22/15...](http://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2017/08/22/15-15858.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER6> Apart from the case, why are privacy non-profits accepting donations from Google? This seems like a huge conflict of interest.

<comment><USER3> why not? If Google wants to give them money knowing their particular interests and motivations, take every penny.</comment></comment>


How the environmental lawyer who won a judgment against Chevron lost everything - <AUTHOR> https://theintercept.com/2020/01/29/chevron-ecuador-lawsuit-steven-donziger/ <comment><USER2> For an alternative view: [https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2014/06/23/victus/](https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2014/06/23/victus/)</comment>


Android GPLv2 termination worries: one more reason to upgrade to GPLv3 - <AUTHOR> http://www.fsf.org/news/android-termination-upgrade-gplv3

<comment><USER2> Don't panic! The article isn't about an expiration or termination of the GPLv2 itself. It's about the termination _of violator rights_ after the violator complies with the license.

GPLv2 requires all copyright holders (which is hundreds for Android) to agree to forgive the violator, GPLv3 assumes that the violator will be forgiven after they comply with the license.

Sounds like a good reason to upgrade to v3 to me.

<comment><USER3> Upgrading the Linux license to v3 would also require all copyright holders to agree, making it equally impossible to do in practice... in fact, probably more so since most contributors would just blindly 'yea' vote on revoking the termination of an Android license for any specific vendor who came back into compliance whereas some of them are actively opposed to GPLv3 terms.

<comment><USER4> Given the number of complaints Linus Torvalds made about GPLv3's anti- Tivolization clause, I don't think that we're going to ever see the kernel on v3.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Hence, we created new termination provisions for GPLv3. These terms offer violators a simple method to earn back the rights they had. Parties who violate the license have their rights restored provisionally as soon as they come back into compliance, and permanently if no copyright holders terminate those rights within sixty days of the last violation. Furthermore, first-time violators will have their rights restored permanently if they come into compliance within thirty days of receiving such notice."

So you violate the GPL and if no copyright holder complains in 60 days, you continue to distribute software? Hmm.

<comment><USER3> "within sixty days of the _last_ violation"

If you continue to distribute in violation of the GPL, that violation window continues to be reset.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Ouch...that's quite a kick in the teeth to Groklaw, Boycott Novell, Brian Proffitt and a few other well known commentators, who have been trying hard to dismiss any claims that the GPLv2 termination clause could be a problem here (because once you lose your rights, you need to get the copyright holders to explicitly restore them if you want to resume distributing the GPLv2 software) as FUD from Android enemies. Some of them even claim it comes from people secretly on Microsoft and/or Apple's payroll.

</comment><comment><USER7> I think this is one more example of how, rather than freeing software from the grip of corporations, the open source movement has succeeded in making the licensing of software such a morass that nobody can even understand it.

<comment><USER8> I think you're incorrect there. I think the GPL is relatively complicated, and made certain high value project (Famously, MySQL and the Linux Kernel) safe from capture by private entities.

Most other open source licenses are extremely liberal. LGPL is a little complicated, but not so much anyone who understands recursion can't understand it.</comment></comment>


Richardson Maturity Model (2008) - <AUTHOR> https://www.crummy.com/writing/speaking/2008-QCon/act3.html <comment><USER2> Two small threads about this:

2015: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9178074](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9178074)

2010: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1201377](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1201377)

Related from 2016: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11075738](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11075738)

[https://web.archive.org/web/20160403010332/https://medium.co...](https://web.archive.org/web/20160403010332/https://medium.com/@chrstphrhrt/microservices- the-unix-philosophy-and-the-richardson-maturity-model-425abed44826)</comment>


Ask HN: How do you search for a new job? - <AUTHOR>

What are the smartest, most efficient ways to search and seek-out the ideal job?
To gather some broad percentages, I've created a quick (multiple-choice) survey. If you have a method not covered, please comment.
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1fLn27cxee-icREdk3UrMhV4hFp8aMx1oyZuH5qMuRmE/viewform <comment><USER2> There was an interesting post a while back, basically stating that the career page on company website is much more effective than job search engine since there are a lot of dead listing. They also went into how you can use google to search these career pages. You might want to look more into that.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable link: [https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1fLn27cxee- icREdk3UrMhV4hFp8...](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1fLn27cxee- icREdk3UrMhV4hFp8aMx1oyZuH5qMuRmE/viewform)

</comment><comment><USER3> could you not turn the google doc into a poll here on HN - keep it in the family as it were?</comment>


Cherow ECMAParser support comment attachment - <AUTHOR> It's now possible to collect and attach comment with Cherow ecmaParser without any 3rd party libraries<p>GitHub: https://github.com/cherow/cherow <comment><AUTHOR> [https://github.com/cherow/cherow](https://github.com/cherow/cherow)</comment>


Folding Paper in Half - <AUTHOR> http://fermatslibrary.com/s/folding-paper-in-half <comment><USER2> Perhaps this post is in response to it, but for those who haven't seen it, here's a video of what happens when you use a hydraulic press to try to fold paper beyond the limit: [http://www.sciencealert.com/watch-what-happens-when- you-try-...](http://www.sciencealert.com/watch-what-happens-when-you-try-to- fold-paper-more-than-7-times-with-a-hydraulic-press)

It's certainly not what I would have guessed. I would suggest watching the video before reading the text.</comment>


EmailOracle shuts down - <AUTHOR> https://emailoracle.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> I wonder why they are disappearing? This type of tracking has existed as delivery receipts in email for a long time but a lot of web-based mail providers break this functionality.

I thought they were onto a winner here for corporate use.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Actually, given their goodbye message they are probably owned by etacts.com.

<comment><USER2> The sites are on the same IP address so I guess that answers that.</comment></comment>


Startup out of funds. Continuing on.  New corp or not? - <AUTHOR>

I have a startup which is out of money and has been running the last couple months on personal funds to pay my cofounder.
I've tried to get the previous seed investors to extend our round, but none are investing. I don't blame them; that's life.
Typically, I think, a startup shuts down.  I'm pressing on because I can fund it awhile longer on my own and believe what we're working on now (different product/ different customers) has legs.
Since I can march on I ask you... should this new thing be a new corp?  I want to live up to obligations that are real, not imagined ones I have.  I also fear that if the new product gets some traction (not a lot) having previous investors would hinder raising for the new thing. <comment><USER2> This depends on your founding documents and your terms with the investors. The answer is going to differ based on those, as well as your state laws.

Absolutely spend the money to hire a good lawyer who specializes in startups. If you're getting some traction and believe you're going to succeed, you'll save yourself a lot of heartache (and potentially huge amounts of money) by investigating this properly right now.</comment>


Why Do Colleges Give Honorary Degrees? - <AUTHOR> http://priceonomics.com/why-do-colleges-give-out-honorary-degrees/ <comment><USER3> [1]Richard P. Feynman:

Dear George,

Yours is the first honorary degree that I have been offered, and I thank you for considering me for such an honor.

However, I remember the work I did to get a real degree at Princeton and the guys on the same platform receiving honorary degrees without work—and felt an "honorary degree" was a debasement of the idea of a "degree which confirms certain work has been accomplished." It is like giving an "honorary electricians license." I swore then that if by chance I was ever offered one I would not accept it.

Now at last (twenty-five years later) you have given me a chance to carry out my vow.

So thank you, but I do not wish to accept the honorary degree you offered.

Sincerely yours,

Richard P. Feynman

[http://stancarey.tumblr.com/post/30867103451/why-richard- fey...](http://stancarey.tumblr.com/post/30867103451/why-richard-feynman- declined)

<comment><USER4> "I don't like honors"

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

<comment><USER5> Anyone know if this is part of a longer talk? If so which

<comment><USER6> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyqleIxXTpw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyqleIxXTpw)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> At Clemson I've seen honorary degrees given to very successful people who gave a lot of money to the university. The degree was usually given during general graduation and gives the successful business person a chance to speak to the graduating class.

Honestly, it never bothered me at all. It's one thing if you're saying "here, take this honorary degree and go work in a new profession"...but that's not what happens. Honorary degrees are given in an area where the person has already proven themselves successful...so it's really nothing at all like an "honorary electricians license".

I'm sure most colleges would love it if people decided to take the "easy route" and go, be extremely successful in a field, give a bunch of money to the university and get an honorary degree at some point.

Feynman, in this particular instance, is showboating more than anybody who's ever been honored. I've got an undergraduate degree and a masters degree. I worked hard for them. I've worked a hell of a lot harder to be successful in my field and if I get to a point where I've been so successful that I can dole out hundreds of thousands of dollars back to the school that they choose to honor me with another degree I'll appreciate that they thought I was worth recognizing...

But the amount of work involved to "get a degree" or even two degrees is TRIVIAL compared to the amount of work involved in actually being successful. Lots of people have degrees. Lots of people are not overly successful in their careers.

To that end, Feynman is showboating.

<comment><USER8> Being successful =/= Being rich

And while being successful or making an outstanding contribution is a way to get an honorary degree, it is easier still to just buy one.

<comment><USER9> I prefer /=

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "Supreme Court member Ruth Bader Ginsburg has an honorary degree from every single Ivy League School, with the exception of Cornell, which doesn't give them out."

...except for her actual undergrad degree, which is from Cornell.

(Hey, when you don't have presidents, you take what you can get. And we'll take RBG over several presidents.)

<comment><USER11> An earned undergraduate degree is not an 'honorary degree'.

<comment><USER12> No, but it's a "degree", and she has that university covered too, degree-wise, which is what he means.

<comment><USER13> But the quote explicitly says "honorary degree". She doesn't have an honorary degree from Cornell.

<comment><USER14> If a sentence can be interpreted in two different ways, and it's clear from context which one the speaker meant, it's considered polite to choose that one.

<comment><USER15> Also called the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Honorary degrees is a cheap way of increasing prestige by associating the university with someone who already has prestige.

<comment><USER17> Exactly. Another form of brand marketing. I do wonder how/when these started.

<comment><USER18> It started as a way to recognized important contributions to a field outside of the academic process.

<comment><USER5> The article that started this conversation, completely disagrees with you, and they cite the historical record of the early honorary degrees.

<comment><USER12> One example of an early honorary degree (the one the authors of said article probably found with a quick search in Wikipedia) doesn't capture the practice through the centuries, nor how it was established and used in other countries.

There's a difference between "first" and "representative of how a thing caught-on and came to be established and practiced" \-- the first uses might not be representative of neither the reason for widespread adoption nor current use.

There are countries whose universities need (and do) no marketing at all otherwise, because they are public and state sponsored, but still give honorary degrees to honour important contributors from outside the academic field.

<comment><USER13> And the very same article addresses that point as well. From the first one granted in the 15th century to the most recent granted a few months ago, honorary degrees are extremely highly correlated with the important contribution the individual made to the university's coffers, or secondarily to people whose names lend some sort of beneficial aspect to the university. I just looked up my doctoral university's list of awardees, and by coincidence, wouldn't you know that one of their names is on the college of business and another on the relatively newly formed institute of technology. What are the odds? :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's cheaper to issue a worthless piece of paper than to pay cash to a celebrity to make a speech at a conference. I think it is a rather smart use of tuition funds. Paying people in esteem is a management 101.

<comment><USER20> By your logic, it would be an even smarter use of tuition funds not to turn those funds into tuition for the sake of a worthless piece of paper.

I happen to agree, but that's a different conversation.

<comment><USER19> Well, this is assuming a honorary doctorate isn't really a diploma

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> There should be a distinction between an "honorary" degree awarded because a "real" one would be superfluous (Richard Stallman, Increase Mather, etc) and those awarded because of donations or co-branding.

<comment><USER22> Stallman is a hugely influential person. He has contributed a great deal to the world of free software. And giving him an honorary degree is a great thing, demonstrating his many accomplishments.

But it still really bugs me that he calls himself a PhD, and asks for the title "Dr." (And yes, I have a PhD, on which I worked for 11 years, at great cost to myself and my family. So feel free to take my comments with a grain of salt.)

A PhD doesn't mean that you're a very accomplished person. Or a smart person. Or an influential person. It demonstrates that you know how to create, execute, analyze, document, and defend a specific research project, using the tools and vocabulary of a discipline.

If a university wants to retroactively award Stallman a PhD for his research, then they should do so. I know that this has been done in the past, because a professor in my graduate program got his PhD in precisely this way -- he did amazing work, and someone said, "You know, this is worthy of a PhD." He wrote it up, and got it. It's quite possible that one or more universities would be willing to do this for Stallman.

But until they do, his honorary PhD is a way of indicating their gratitude and respect for his many contributions to the world of free software. Which is great, but it's not the same as a real PhD.

By the way, MIT (where I got my undergrad degree) doesn't give honorary degrees: [http://news.mit.edu/2001/commdegrees](http://news.mit.edu/2001/commdegrees) I'm rather proud of this, as well as the fact that when you graduate, you don't do so "with honors" and such. Either you finished, or you didn't.

<comment><USER23> > _And yes, I have a PhD, on which I worked for 11 years, at great cost to > myself and my family._

Stallman's work hasn't entailed great effort, long years, and costs to himself and loved ones? As you say, a PhD is more about elbow-grease than intellect, but Stallman has that in spades - not only about the philosophy he espouses, but also that he personally created so much of the GNU environment that we take for granted these days. The work Stallman has done in his field exceeds that required of a PhD, and he has spent decades defending his thesis - <USER2> not just to experts in the field, but laypeople as well.

When push comes to shove, 'doctor' functionally means 'a master the field'. Stallman definitely is that. I think if you want to argue against honorary PhDs based on workload and execution, Stallman is not someone you would want to draw attention to. Otherwise you're basically arguing that the important part is the piece of paper and the process of red-tape, not the accomplishment of mastery.

<comment><USER24> I don't think Stallman would submit his work for a PhD, mainly because one's PhD work becomes the property of the university. It's against everything he stands for.

<comment><USER25> That's the default, but usually can be negotiated with the university.

<comment><USER26> For specific examples, here's MIT's policy, from [http://libguides.mit.edu/c.php?g=176367&p=1159444#13351783](http://libguides.mit.edu/c.php?g=176367&p=1159444#13351783) :

> Who holds ownership of the copyright to my thesis?

> In most cases the Institute will hold ownership of the copyright to a > thesis. In general, students may retain ownership of thesis copyrights when > the only form of support is from (1) teaching assistantships (the duties of > which do not include research activities) and (2) NSF and NIH traineeships > and fellowships (although the trainee or fellow may be required to grant > certain publishing rights to NSF or NIH). See the current Specifications for > Thesis Preparation for more details.

> Students may request a waiver of the Institute's copyrights by written > application to the Institute's Technology Licensing Office (NE25-230).

Here's information about the copyright for a Harvard PhD, from [https://www.physics.harvard.edu/uploads/files/grads/forms/um...](https://www.physics.harvard.edu/uploads/files/grads/forms/umi_dissertation_publ.pdf) :

> You may choose either open access or traditional publishing. If you choose > Open Access Publishing, the published version of your dissertation or thesis > will always be available for free download to anyone who has access to the > Internet. The Traditional Publishing option works on a standard copy-sales > and royalty-payments model. We sell copies of your work (in any format) and > pay royalties as described in the Publishing Agreement. Either option gets > your graduate research out where other scholars can find and use it through > the ProQuest® Dissertations and Theses (PQDT) database, subscribed to by > more than 3000 libraries worldwide.

Or to pick a non-Boston-area school, here are open access PhD these from Florida State - [http://diginole.lib.fsu.edu/etd/](http://diginole.lib.fsu.edu/etd/) .

Stallman has an honorary degree from the University of Glasgow. Pulling up the first PhD thesis from [http://theses.gla.ac.uk/cgi/latest](http://theses.gla.ac.uk/cgi/latest) I see "Copyright and moral rights for this thesis are retained by the author." The same is true from the couple of other theses I looked at.

He also has an honorary degree from Sweden's Royal Institute of Technology. I pulled up three PhD thesis from [http://www.kth.se/en/ict/forskning/ickretsar/publikationer/r...](http://www.kth.se/en/ict/forskning/ickretsar/publikationer/recent- phd-theses-1.395356) . Two of them had a copyright statement by the PhD candidate, one had no explicit statement.

So it's not the case that thesis copyright transfer is a major issue preventing Stallman from getting a PhD.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Oh, Priceonomics, always looking for a slightly ham-fisted angle!

I am very much looking forward to gaining a degree from some fringe yet accredited online university, and everybody who cares about that sort of thing will have to address me as 'Dr.' Precisely because caring too much about letters before and after one's name is asinine, vapid, and ultimately delusional.

Strive to be the best person you can be. And if you really want a better seat, why not embrace your inner arsehole fully, and get a disability badge?

<comment><USER28> I don't know about that last line, but everything before that rings true.

My graduate school mentor told this story quite a bit, and it has always stuck with me:

I grew up poor, like dirt poor. Dirt floor, no shoes, backwoods poor. I did well in high school, I was well known around town, and people liked me. They knew I was a good kid with good intentions, who just happened to come from poor folks. I knew that graduating from high school would make me a big man. My parents had never finished high school. I knew people would look up to me.

Then I heard about university.

I knew that if I graduated with a bachelors that I would be it. People would respect me. People would look up to me. My parents didn't even know about the university system, let alone what getting a bachelors meant. So, I went to college, I did well. People knew me around campus, I was involved in clubs and sports and worked. People liked me. I knew I was going to be a big man.

Then I heard about graduate school. I had to get a masters. I knew for my career it would bring me respect. I knew personally it would bring me respect. People would know me.

Well, by that time, I knew about the PhD, so you can probably see where this is going.

I knew that when people had to call me Doctor, they would respect me. Doctor La___. It sounded good. People would know me, people would respect me. So I went to graduate school and I worked on my doc. I was well known in my classes. I worked on interesting and exciting research that led me to my current career. I am a leader in my field.

And I tell people not to call me Doctor. I want them to call me Jim.

It wasn't until my last semester of post-graduate work that I realized it.

People didn't respect me because of my degrees; they respected me because of who I was and what I did.

I had been treated the same since high school. People had always known my name, I had always received choice assignments at work, I was always greeted with friendly smiles and genuine enthusiasm when I traveled to see old acquaintances.

And none of it had to do with my degrees.

The moral of the story: If you rely on titles and public accolades to feel big, more than likely you spend too much time making yourself feel small.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Awarding an honorary degree is analogous to liking a status update on Facebook.

<comment><USER30> Not always, it can also be a very overtly political act. Consider playwright Tony Kushner's honorary degree from a CUNY college, among many others.

<comment><USER31> So can liking an overtly political facebook post.

(Ineffectual potentially but still political.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> On my graduation, someone called _Mr_ Jack Jones was being given an honorary doctorate. (I understand he was a trade unionist or something, if I may be as dismissive as I possibly can.)

I wanted to walk out when they got to his bit of the ceremony but general cowardliness took over - they might have revoked my degree if I had made a scene!

When he was presented for the applause I did my best to remain seated with my arms folded and a look of disapproval. I observed that over on the other side of the room where the parents were seated, he was getting a standing ovation, while my side of the room could be best described as "polite". No-one (as far I could see) was standing.

</comment><comment><USER33> If the average donation for an honorary degree was $68,854, would it make more sense for me to just forego the four years of effort and write a check for $70k in return for a degree?

A masters is two years, so that's $35k per year. A PhD is 4-10 years, so that's 17.5k-7k per year.

It's starting to sound like a good investment!

<comment><USER34> I wonder what kind of entry level positions you could score with a bought-and- paid-for honorary degree?

<comment><USER33> If I were the kind to actually enact this plan, I'd be the kind to forget my degree was honorary on my resume.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Very interesting article .. it demonstrates that big ivy league institutions used it as means to obtain funding and built connections for their institutions. An "honorary" degree cannot be compared to a degree won through sheer hard work and dexterity ... society should know this and highlight it

<comment><USER36> > An "honorary" degree cannot be compared to a degree won through sheer hard > work and dexterity

I thought that was kinda the point of honorary degrees- a person accomplishes something in a particular field despite the lack of the formal education.

<comment><USER37> I've always understood them as recognition for accomplishments like other awards, medals, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> It's just a way to get some press and maybe some money as well. I doubt anyone would be fooled by the title.

I went to Oxford, and the arts undergrads there can get an MA OXON 7 years after matriculation (arts courses are generally 3 years, and you don't do anything other than send in a form to get the Master's). I doubt anyone confuses it with the MEng that I got.

Using the title is a poncey thing. The last time I remember someone insisting on it was Helmut Kohl, when he got pissed off at some journalist.

<comment><USER39> I think Germans still place a lot of importance on titles and they still have formal and informal ways of referring to people Du vs Tu

<comment><USER40> Did you mean "Du vs Sie"? If not, what do you mean with "Tu"? I've never heard of that.

<comment><USER38> Looks like he's mixed German and French.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I think there is a case to be made for honorary degrees, but not with how they are commonly used today. To me it makes sense that if someone becomes one of the utmost authorities in a field, but didn't do it by spending half a million dollars and many good years at an Ivy League school, you can still recognize their credibility through an honorary degree.

<comment><USER42> If someone is the utmost authority in their field, they won't need a degree for you to recognize their credibility.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> And as usual, Thomas Jefferson's foresight was about 20/20 in this case.

</comment><comment><USER44> For a supposedly economics oriented site this article sure spends a lot of time talking about celebrities and how much of a sham it is for them to title themselves "Dr." I am completely on board with the unearned title thing, but how many paragraphs about various people's shelves full of honorary degrees do we need? The title asks why but doesn't supply a straightforward, albeit somewhat obvious, answer until the last quarter of the article. I hate to be another "where is all the real journalism?" person but, seriously where is it?

<comment><USER45> They spend time talking about celebrities because that will improve the SEO results of the article. They have substantial, original content that mentions famous people.

Journalism is dead. We're now just fodder for the "article hackers" whose job it is to get page views. There are different ways to do this for different audiences; this is the snobbish academic equivalent of a Buzzfeed article titled "15 Signs You Totally Have VD".

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> The cynical side of me says that honorary degrees are ways of collecting big- name people so that colleges can claim them as one of their own.

Our university boasts the like of Richard Stallman and supreme court justices!

<comment><USER47> Big-name people like heads of state, like the then PM of my country to which the University of Philadelphia in 2004. gave a honorary degree. The same now sits in jail for corruption, fraud, and war profiteering amongst other charges.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Not crazy about the statement about Harvard where "the rate of increase there is in a league of its own". It looks like in about 2000 they just decided instead of giving out 1 or 2 a year they would give out about 10. Who cares? IMO for places like Harvard that already have maximal prestige, throwing around more degrees is only diluting their value.

On a personal note, the president of my alma mater happened to be leaving the year that I graduated. She gave herself an honorary doctorate!

</comment><comment><USER49> Honorary degrees seem to follow the same pattern in Italy.

Off the top of my head, I remember them being awarded to a few musicians (literature), a sportsman (Valentino Rossi, bike racer in "Communication Sciences"), tv personalities and only one that made some sense (Ronald Rivest, Computer Science).

(Interestingly enough, in Italy the "Dr." honorific is used for people with a master degree, not just a doctorate as it is elsewhere, so people receive just a master-level degree, not a Ph.D).

</comment><comment><USER50> While this article is aimed at the American system, it can't be applied as is throughout the world. My institution in continental Europe does award honorary degrees (~3 each year) though very few of the recipients can be considered pop stars. Most of them have had a significant impact in their domain (e.g. art, environment, 3rd world politics), though little publicized and quite unknown. This is something I can feel proud about.

</comment><comment><USER51> Small nitpick: The second image in the article, labelled 'Oxford University' would more properly be labelled 'Keble College, Oxford'.

</comment><comment><USER52> "One" can buy a doctorate degree, but most can't test out of a simple 4-years bachelor's degree. Isn't it hypocritical?

</comment><comment><USER53> I thought honorary degrees were just a ploy for universities to drive stoned wiki stumblers to their pages.

</comment><comment><USER54> Honorary degrees bring dishonour upon both the conferrer and the conferee.

<comment><USER55> I happened a few years ago to be at a relative's graduation from Wilson College in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. They gave Temple Grandin an honorary degree, and she gave them an excellent commencement speech. I haven't heard a lot of commencement speeches, but this one was a lot better than the excerpts I see every year from big universities. I did not think worse of Dr. Grandin for receiving the award, and I did think much better of Wilson College for their choice of commencement speaker (to the extent that I thought about it at all before).

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> It's all about PR, I would imagine.

</comment><comment><USER57> Do you think the guy who invented college went to college? Nope. It's obviously degrees are bullshit, one day I hope people learn that.

<comment><USER58> Is this a serious comment? Do you believe that there is literally a "guy who invented college".

<comment><USER12> Yes, there's IS literally a "guy who invented college"...

"An academy is an institution of secondary education or higher learning, research, or honorary membership. The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, founded approximately 385 BC at Akademia (...) north of Athens, Greece".

This has been the early prototype for later roman, middle-ages, renaissance and finally modern colleges.

It wasn't the first teacher or even school were children were taught, but it was the first higher learning institution, with organized courses and mostly modern form.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_higher- learning_instit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_higher- learning_institutions)

Comparing it to the "guy who invented language"? As if it's something communally developed, whose origins are lost in prehistoric times? Really?

<comment><USER58> The same wikipedia article goes on to say

 _[these academies] are to be distinguished from the Western-style university which is an autonomous organization of scholars that originated in medieval Europe and was adopted in other world regions since the onset of modern times_

<comment><USER12> I only copy/pasted that part to provide the exact dates and location.

Other than that, it's neither a well written article nor very accurate. In any case, the missing part before your quoted text is not "these academies". The article talks about several "ancient higher-learning institutions were developed in many cultures to provide institutional frameworks for scholarly activities". That part of the article is quite sloppy too (mentioning "museums", "scientific institutions" in a lemma referring to antiquity [1]).

Then it goes on to refer to the Academy too, later on, but even so, it undermines its own differentiation, as the Academy was both an "Autonomous organization"(check), and of "scholars" (check).

It didn't follow the full template of how a univerity today is (that starts around the 16th century), but it was most of the way there and is widely regarded as the precursor of the modern university (even the name "academic" is not a coincidence).

Now, my intention of reffering to the Academy was to give an example that the earliest college is something that we got in historical times and we know who created it (contrary to what the parents wrote).

If, as you suggest, we maintain that the first "actual" college was created even later, that serves me even better.

[1] There were museums in antiquity, but extremely few, and of them we know nothing much, and especially not that they operated any schools.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Barefoot running: the best trainers money can't buy - <AUTHOR> http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/features/article7045833.ece <comment><USER2> That article has some good points, but I'm really frustrated by this sort of thing:

 _Hartmann has worked with more than 100 world-class African athletes. "Most never wore shoes until their late teens," he says. "They have few foot defects."_

World class athletes have few foot defects? Can you say selection effect?

My biggest criticism of the barefoot running crowd is that they usually treat it as a way of life. They _always_ run barefoot, when that's not really necessary. Most of the benefits of barefoot running come from changes in running form. Shod runners have plenty of padding, so they can get away with letting their heel strike. An occasional barefoot run on grass will help you learn proper form while avoiding the disadvantages of constant barefoot running. At the end of the run, you can look at the grass stains on your feet to get an idea of how much your heel is striking the ground. Once you learn proper running form (no grass stains on your heels), you can practice that same form while wearing shoes.

There is one oft-forgotten side-effect of barefoot running: massive callouses. See [http://www.shallowcogitations.com/2010/02/barefoot- running-l...](http://www.shallowcogitations.com/2010/02/barefoot-running- lookin-good.html) for before and after pics.

Edit: I forgot to explain the non-obvious disadvantages of barefoot running. While humans ran barefoot before shoes were invented, the typical prehistoric human wasn't as heavyset as the typical westerner. Feet, legs, and backs aren't evolved to properly support overweight joggers. Proper shoes can help correct problems in running form/gait that an individual's muscles or connective tissues can't compensate for.

<comment><USER3> > _My biggest criticism of the barefoot running crowd is that they usually > treat it as a way of life. They always run barefoot, when that's not really > necessary._

Disagreement about the validity of the "lifestyle" argument aside: when is it necessary to wear shoes? What are the disadvantages, apart from "massive callouses"?

> _I forgot to explain the non-obvious disadvantages of barefoot running. > While humans ran barefoot before shoes were invented, the typical > prehistoric human wasn't as heavyset as the typical westerner. Feet, legs, > and backs aren't evolved to properly support overweight joggers. Proper > shoes can help correct problems in running form/gait that an individual's > muscles or connective tissues can't compensate for._

It is undoubtedly unwise for someone that drastically overweight to start jogging cold turkey and that there is a literal breaking point in fitness to start barefoot running, but do you have some sources for the argument that those issues can be corrected with shoes (rather than, say, starting with a bike or elliptical machine)? Especially since joint issues in ankles and knees in particular - areas that barefoot running helps in - are prevalent among the obese.

<comment><USER2> _What are the disadvantages, apart from "massive callouses"?_

I can't edit my comment anymore, but my dad loves to run barefoot. I mentioned callouses as an excuse to link to a blog post where he shows off his Fred Flintstone feet.

As to the disadvantages... what if you're fighting Hans Gruber and he shoots a bunch of glass windows?

I think being barefoot all the time is very different from just running barefoot. A barefoot life is rather unsanitary and unsafe (there are lots of dirty pointy things on the ground). Shoes offer protection from cold, heat, physical trauma, sunburn, moisture, and social embarrassment. They also provide better traction on many surfaces.

I'm too lazy to go searching for sources that justify my claim, but you don't have to look far to find some weaker evidence. Look at people who have the muscular strength but not the structural support necessary to walk: they use braces to help restrict motion or devices to reduce weight on their joints (walkers, crutches). Look at anatomy: ligaments don't thicken along with one's waistline. Even if they did, they wouldn't keep up with the square-cube law.

I guess a more concrete example would be this: If you had to wear a weighted vest while running, would you rather be barefoot or wearing supportive shoes? If the vest is heavy enough, your calves won't support you and you'll be forced to heel-strike. At that point, a supportive and cushioning shoe would be less stressful than barefoot running. That's basically what people with weak calves or large guts experience. And most people in that situation aren't going to train enough to get to the point where barefoot running is better for them.

<comment><USER3> Perhaps the following formulation would be appropriate: if you are not in shape to run, you are not in shape to run barefoot. But I do not think anyone has argued otherwise.

I had an inkling hygienic concerns might be partly underlying your opposition. Even without addressing whether the issue is really of much concern, Feelmax, Vibram and others make shoes that provide protection while allowing for "barefooting." Against the elements? This winter (down to -22ºC) I have been wearing a traditional moccasin with a 4mm flat rubber sole without any problems.

> _I'm too lazy to go searching for sources that justify my claim, but you > don't have to look far to find some weaker evidence. Look at people who have > the muscular strength but not the structural support necessary to walk: they > use braces to help restrict motion..._

Support braces are an _entirely different matter_. I would contend that people who are reliant on mechanical contraptions for moving are as a group not the prime audience when talking about running of any kind.

> _I guess a more concrete example would be this: If you had to wear a > weighted vest while running, would you rather be barefoot or wearing > supportive shoes?_

I would prefer toe-stepping.

> _If the vest is heavy enough, your calves won't support you and you'll be > forced to heel-strike. At that point, a supportive and cushioning shoe would > be less stressful than barefoot running._

I am not sure this is true at all. Yes, it is really hard to toe-step if you lack the muscle to support yourself, even though exercise will eventually strengthen you enough, but to go from that to asserting that heel-stepping is therefore better is a stretch. I would imagine that weight sufficient to force me on my heels would be highly destructive on joints ( _hence all such problems obese people face._ ) If you consider such weight pushed down on an unstable surface - which is what a cushioned shoe is - without the necessary ligament- or muscular control to maintain posture, the leg is virtually guaranteed to be constantly misaligned.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If nothing else I think we can be certain of one fact regarding barefoot running: it is a very appealing story. How many publications that don't typically cover running have written the same story now, and how many times has it made the front page of hacker news?

</comment><comment><USER5> Can't buy? Perhaps not _actually_ barefoot, but my wife got a pair of these [1] and I'm planning on getting some soon myself.

(For those not interested in clicking, think toe-socks with +5 armor rating)

[1] <http://www.vibramfivefingers.com/>

edit: as to starkfist's comment, these and other "barefoot" shoes have been around for quite a while. Maybe if there were more correlation, but as-is I don't see any marketing stunt.

<comment><USER6> I'm a huge fan of VFF. Extremely comfortable (I dislike the pressure most shoes/socks put on forcing my toes together laterally), and great for running. I've been running with these on asphalt for the past six months, and feel the best I have in years.

And I get comments/questions about them all the time on the train, welcome attention :)

<comment><USER7> After reading a HN linked article on barefoot running I did some research and bought my first pair of VFF about 2 months ago. Bought my second pair, Treks, two weeks ago for every day and use the first pair for running only. For me it has been a lifestyle changer. My feet and legs want to walk or run all the time. I'm frustrated by rainy days that leave me cooped up in the office. My wife says I get grumpy if I don't wear my "duck shoes".

<comment><USER8> I just yesterday upgraded to the KSO Treks after about five months in regular KSOs because.....

\- I hadn't done the tape mod, so the straps frayed and eventually broke.

\- The Treks have more waterproof materials.

\- I managed to slice up the soles. The Treks have thicker soles.

I'm looking forward to a run in the rain today :)

<comment><USER7> What's the tape mod? And why would I need to do it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I have recently wrote an article about barefoot running <http://www.freestylemind.com/barefoot-running>

I don't have years of experience, but when I run with minimalist shoes (now always) I never feel arch or knee pain. It's worth at least a try.

</comment><comment><USER10> The benefits of barefoot running can be obtained without going totally shoeless.

I haven't started running barefoot yet, but my beefy New Balance running shoes have been relegated to mucking about in the yard. I now run in a well-worn pair of Chuck Taylor hightops. Just going to a much more minimal shoe forced me to concentrate more on forefoot/mid-foot striking, a light, quick stride, and proper posture.

What many people overlook is that running is a skill that must often be relearned as we get older and run again for fitness (ever see any nine-year- olds with shin splints, runner's knee or ITB syndrome?). Cross-country skiing, cycling, and swimming all have skill components, why not running? Going minimal on footwear forces that attention to form.

<comment><USER11> The Newton Running [1] shoe is also designed with additional padding on the forefoot to support forefoot based running styles, like barefoot running. I like them quite a bit. Barefoot really seems appealing to Luddites. The benefit of cushioning simply can't be denied. Even the supporters negatively compare the feeling of running on concrete barefoot to running on soft dirt. There is simply less impact on the body.

[1] <http://www.newtonrunning.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is anyone else suspicious that all these articles about barefoot running started appearing at the same time a bunch of companies came out with specialized "barefoot" shoes?

<comment><USER13> Nike has Free for 4-5 years. It had even added some cushioning to original Free over the years.

<comment><USER14> _added some cushioning to original Free_

Is that a joke? Or was there some need to add cushioning?

<comment><USER15> There wasn't any need, but they did it anyway. I'm subscribed to the Ebay feed for the Free 3.0 in the hope that more of the old style will turn up, but the supply's been running low lately. Hopefully they'll see the error of their ways and start making the older style again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I recently wrote about my experience in transitioning to barefoot running. [http://suburbiarebooted.blogspot.com/2010/01/how-i-became- ba...](http://suburbiarebooted.blogspot.com/2010/01/how-i-became-barefoot- runner.html) Bonus-- I was doing it before it was cool. :-P

</comment><comment><USER17> I just bought a pair of vibram's last week. That's crazy enough for me.

I did notice that running down hill requires new technique. You cant use your heel as much or at all when barefoot.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm about three-quarters through _Born to Run_ by Christopher McDougall, and it already feels life-changing.

</comment><comment><USER19> WRT healthier walking and posture: what shoes can be purchased that don't look completely ridiculous?

<comment><USER18> You know what looks ridiculous? Hobbling because cool looking shoes have smashed your feet and wrecked your knees.

<comment><USER19> some of us have jobs where we cant wear toe shoes. be realistic.</comment></comment></comment>


Great Thoughts  - <AUTHOR> http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/jan07/4807

<comment><USER2> A lot of studies have shown that sleep is the best enabler of 'great thoughts' [http://www.cnn.com/2004/HEALTH/01/21/sleep.creativity.ap/ind...](http://www.cnn.com/2004/HEALTH/01/21/sleep.creativity.ap/index.html). Perhaps more high thinking job positions should pay workers to guarantee they'll make time to sleep 8 hours a night!</comment>


Python 3 new features - <AUTHOR> http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-python3-1/index.html?ca=dgr-twtrPython3-P1dth-LX&S_TACT=105AGY83&S_CMP=TWDW

<comment><USER2> Skip that useless "article" and go straight to the source:

Python 3.0 whatsnew <http://docs.python.org/3.1/whatsnew/3.0.html>

Python 3.1 whatsnew <http://docs.python.org/3.1/whatsnew/3.1.html>

They're clearer, more readable, more complete and linkable. No reason to use TFA.

</comment><comment><USER3> "True division—for example, 1/2 returns .5."

This wasn't there previously? Ugh.

<comment><USER4> When given two integers pretty much any language will return an integer (so 1/2 = 0).

In Python 2.6, if one of the arguments is a float you'll get a float result, the same is true for Ruby 1.8.

The new behavior is to return a float even if two integers are passed.

<comment><USER5> Well, not exactly "pretty much any language": Common Lisp, Scheme, Arc, Clojure, Haskell, Perl, and SQL all return either 1/2 or 0.5. I'm sure there are plenty of others I'm not familiar with that behave the same way.

<comment><USER4> Good point. I was thinking of the C-based languages, though to be honest I'm not sure all of them behave in the same way. I should have been more careful talking about languages, especially around here...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> print(césar)

Should give arc a run for its money.</comment>