If WikiLeaks is dying, then the NYT is partly to blame - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2011/11/07/if-wikileaks-is-dying-then-the-nyt-is-partly-to-blame

<comment><USER2> "WikiLeaks is a journalistic entity and deserves our protection"

No, it's not. It lost that moral ground when it released unredacted information.

It also lost that status when wikileaks became about Assange himself.

I supported the original wikileaks: Anyone could leak anything and wikileaks would publish it, and sometimes the broader media would pick it up.

This new wikileaks is all about damaging entities Assange doesn't like. No thank you. Wikileaks should not get to choose what to leak. Either leak everything you are given (after redaction of course), or nothing, do not selectively choose who to leak against.

Once you do that you become a political organization.

<comment><USER3> hmm? you mean like every other journalistic entity out there? Journalistic Purity aside, WikiLeaks _was_ a journalistic entity and _did_ deserve our protection.

We have just established a precedent that the US government can unilaterally decide to shutdown any journalistic entity that reports news it doesn't like.

What kills me about this is that people seem to _support_ that status quo. Lots of mumbling about how wikileaks should have redacted <whatever> and no outrage at all about how easy it was for this voice to be silenced by our government as soon as it suited them.

<comment><USER4> I don't think we have established such a precedent. Wikileaks is still up. You can still donate to them. Visa and Mastercard have decided not to allow them as a customer, but I know of no evidence that says it was ordered by the US government (that's not to say it wasn't).

Wikileaks's claim that this 'blockade' has shut them down is just based on the fact that they haven't been receiving a lot of donations since the embassy cable leak (<http://www.wikileaks.org/Banking-Blockade.html>). Of course, they haven't done anything interesting since then, either. Look at their own charts, and you see that their income is heavily correlated with major releases (etc. Collateral Murder in April, Embassy cables in December) and their current donations don't look that far removed from, say, September or May 2010.

Even their own financial statements ([http://wauland.de/files/2010_Transparenzbericht- Projekt04_de...](http://wauland.de/files/2010_Transparenzbericht- Projekt04_de.pdf)) say that most of their money came wire transfer (which is still possible and fully legal). This is definitely more an issue of people not wanting to donate than it is being not able to. Obviously, the best way to raise more funds would be to do more high-profile work; WikiLeaks is choosing to shut down all their high profile work.

You say the government shut them down, but in fact they shut themselves down, as your parent comment mentions. They shut down their super-useful, award- winning site (eventually to be put back up as a read-only archive at <http://www.wikileaks.org/wiki/WikiLeaks>) and re-purposed themselves entirely to hyping up the five things they got from Brad Manning. Now, they're out of money, they're out of juicy Brad Manning leaks, they haven't even been _accepting_ anything new since they shut themselves down, and so they're gonna drum up their little government-conspiracy thing that they do very, very well, to try to raise some more money.

<comment><USER3> So your argument is that the arrest and ongoing prosecution of Assange(sp?), the shutdown of services from paypal++, visa, master card, bank of america, Western Union and Amazon had pretty much no noticeable effect on donations, was not the result of a coordinated effort by the US government and the _real_ reason donations are down is because they haven't released any more leaks?

sounds entirely plausible to me. would you like to buy a bridge?

++Hendrik Fulda, vice president of the Wau Holland Foundation, mentioned that the Foundation had been receiving twice as many donations through PayPal as through normal banks, before PayPal's decision to suspend WikiLeaks' account.

<comment><USER4> You're obviously exaggerating what I said for effect, but that's the gist of it, yeah.

I didn't mention his sex crime accusations, and I only said that there's no actual evidence that the US government directly influenced Visa and Mastercard. Surely it's possible Visa, MasterCard, etc. made their decisions on their own, but I honestly don't know, and wouldn't be surprised if it was a "favor."

But for the rest, the numbers speak for themselves, and it's pretty much common sense. Everytime there's major leak, they got a ton of money. They've haven't been publishing, they're not getting attention, nobody's donating to them. From their own charts, they made more in post-blockade February '11 than they did in pre-blockade Sep '10. Again, _most_ of their 2010 money... more than 50% of all their money came through channels that are still totally available.

It is true that they were taking in more with PayPal than through transfers before December. There's obviously no way to know how much of potential paypal donations were lost versus replaced by wire donations, but it remains that _most_ of their money in 2010 came from transfers. In December, about 2/3s of it came from transfers. The steep drop-off from December to January in their charts has nothing to do with the blockade, right? They got 398,365.60EUR through wire transfer in December and (estimating from their charts) about 20K in January. Is that not clearly just interest from the embassy cables dying down?

They're claiming they've lost out on "tens of millions of pounds" because of this 'blockade.' That is a __ridiculous __number, considering they made just more than 1M last year. Somehow they expected to average more than twice that every _month_? Despite not publishing any new sources of material? Or even _accepting_ any new material? Ridiculous.

This is an organization that accepted credit card payments for __46 DAYS __and they're coming on like Visa and Mastercard are ruining them?

Everything Wikileaks has done since Assange started talking with Brad Manning has been hyped-up, conspiracy-theory, drama-queen publicity stunt and this 'financial blockade' is no exception.

Tell me more about this bridge you have, though.

<comment><USER3> heh. Thats a good response, thanks.

I do wonder whether transfers work if your bank account has been frozen?

They _are_ drama queen-ish though, I agree. Luckily that doesn't stop them from being a journalistic entity.

<comment><USER4> As they mention on their Banking Blockade site, the Treasury found no reason to put them on their blacklist, and nobody has frozen their bank accounts.

I agree they're a 'journalistic entity' -- whatever that means. I was only rebuffing when you said "We have just established a precedent that the US government can unilaterally decide to shutdown any journalistic entity that reports news it doesn't like."

Their webpage is still up. Assange is still making cheesy videos where he tells you how terrible the world is. It's still legal for you to donate. Nobody has accused them of committing any crime. A handful of US companies decided not to do business with them, but with only circumstantial evidence of government influence. There were certainly no judges involved.

Wikileaks shut themselves down to new submissions a year and a half ago when they started pushing Brad Manning leaks, and they've done nothing but hype up and politicize those leaks since. Now they're whining that nobody's donating to a whistleblower site that doesn't accept whistleblowing. They shut themselves down.

In no way did the US government unilaterally decide to shut anyone down. They're still allowed to operate, and just drama-queening that they're shut down. If the government _were_ to try to shut down a news organization just because it didn't agree with them, there definitely would be a gigantic backlash.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Reading this article several times, I really failed to see a clear logic from the author as to why the supposed dying of Wikileaks is the NYT's fault.

<comment><USER6> [edit: I see a few people disagree with this. Care to respond rather than simply downvote?]

In case you haven't been following what has been going on. The NY Times published a tabloidesque hit piece on Assange, and has failed to defend Wikileaks on the basis of journalistic freedom.

It's pretty clear that the Times management consists of war hawks who oppose Wikileaks b/c of their neoconservative political beliefs and desire to please those with political power.

Think about when the last time the NY Times published any remotely controversial investigative journalism... oh yeah it was the articles that _supported_ the claims that Saddam had WMDs.

Strangely, the Times (a good but ardently neoconservative) paper still manages to fool progressives into thinking that it offers a sympathetic voice. Sadly the pressures of competing in the online world have left the paper with no choice but to sell off its journalistic integrity year after year.

If anything, one would hope that a paper like the Times would have taken a skeptical but journalistically sharp look at the leaked info and would have held off on the ad hominem attack on the Wikileaks founder, at least until some evidence was offered in support of the allegations against him.

And no, I don't think the total buffoonery written by Krugman, Dowd, and Herbert counts for any progressiveness points. If anything the three are a sideshow act with no relevance to the issues that matter.

<comment><USER7> You're downvoted for pretending controversial opinions (that the nytimes is a neoconservative stronghold) are obvious and need no justification.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The truth even if it causes some harm, is always infinitely better than a lie, even if it helps someone. That is my position.

</comment><comment><USER9> There will be many causes for Wikileaks' death (if in fact it does in fact die). None more damaging though than the damage Wikileaks did to itself. Leaving unredacted the names of informants who were later executed for providing the very information Wikileaks posted clinched its fate IMO.

<comment> X-Istence [citation needed]

I haven't read any information regarding sources being executed.

<comment><USER9> I stand corrected. There's no proof any source has been killed, but the Taliban has repeatedly vowed to hunt down and "punish" the sources not redacted in the Wikileaks docs. Many links on that on the Web.</comment></comment></comment>


Windows Signature Experience: it's just windows sans the crapware - <AUTHOR> http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/b/windowsexperience/archive/2010/10/01/inside-the-microsoft-signature-lab.aspx <comment><USER2> Did I understand this correctly? When you buy any PC with crapware on it at $discounter, you can go to that Microsoft store, _buy another, possibly non- upgrade, license of Windows_ and they install that?

So in turn, MS gets to sell two licenses (the oem and the end-user one), the crapware vendor gets paid for installing the crapware and the consumer gets a clean windows installation for more than twice the price. Awesome deal. Yes.

I know why I stopped using Windows machines

Edit: also, it's debatable whether Acrobat Reader doesn't also qualify as crapware, when you consider it's recent security history and the fact that there are alternatives around (which, unfortunately, isn't true for flash player)

<comment><USER3> You can get a refund for an unused OEM licence.

<comment><USER4> Still absurd. The steps apparently:

1) Buy the computer which includes the price of the OEM license (and with the version which also doesn't ask you for the license key)

2) Try to get the money back for the OEM license (edit: AFAIK you can do this only if you never try to use the computer until that point).

3) Carry the computer to the Windows Store

4) Buy there the more expensive license, with which you have to type in the license key whenever you do a reinstall (well, of course, why not paying more to have it harder to use).

5) Let the MS store guys "apply the Signature configuration to it."

6) Whenever you want to reinstall your dearly paid Windows (in money and the time spent), go to step 3) (carrying your whole computer!) convince the guys there you did the step 4) and that you don't want to do it again to make them do the step 5)

And they actually have the nerve to write: "Microsoft Signature Upgrade: It's a great way to make your PC experience even better."

Brought to you by the company that gave you Windows Vista.

<comment><USER3> Normally you'd just buy the PC at Microsoft Store. You probably don't have to to go back for reinstall, there will be a restore DVD or partition.

<comment><USER4> We are talking here about the "Microsoft Signature Upgrade" -- not the "Microsoft Signature on any PC purchased from the Microsoft Store." Check the main article again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I must admit, this is pretty shitty. However, as a former Microsoftie, it makes a sense to me.

Allow me to explain: YOU ARE NOT MICROSOFT'S CUSTOMER. OEMs are. Enterprises are. This is a serious financial advantage for Microsoft.

That said... YOU ARE APPLE'S CUSTOMER. And this is a serious competitive disadvantage for Microsoft.

That said... MICROSOFT WANTS TO BE IN THE CONSUMER MARKET. They have to be to compete with Apple long term.

So the way I see this is that Microsoft is opening their own retail stores and they are going to essentially be yet another OEM. They are going to compete with the likes of Dell on merit of quality. This "signature team" is the team responsible for setting that quality bar.

In true Microsoft fashion, "Windows Signature" is an internal name that is leaking externally. In this case, it appears to be intentionally. It seems like an odd choice because no one talks about "Windows Dell", why should Microsoft have a name for this? It's just plain silly, but I digress.

Since Microsoft doesn't need to pay for Windows licenses, they will have higher margins and will be able to muscle around the OEMs who depend on crapware for profits. If Microsoft simply started forcing rules down the throats of OEMs, the OEMs would retaliate by distributing Linux more widely, so it is wise for Microsoft to push a caliber of desktop experience that Linux can't quite deliver yet for the average user.

tldr: This is Microsoft changing OEM behavior passive aggressively.

<comment><USER6> > It seems like an odd choice because no one talks about "Windows Dell", why > should Microsoft have a name for this?

I think that's the point—they're making the market think about a point of differentiation that they weren't before, and so they want to give it a name. "If you buy your PC at [random shop], will you still be getting the Windows Signature Experience?"

<comment><USER5> I can see that reasoning, but I probably frame it as "If you buy directly from us, we're give you the Microsoft Bonus Stuff Pack which is much better than the Dell Crapware Pack".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "If you live near a store, you can bring in any Windows 7 compatible PC and the Store techs will do a clean install of Windows 7 (you'll need to buy a full retail copy, of course), migrate all of your data, and then apply the Signature configuration to it (i.e., set it up almost exactly like a Microsoft Store-bought PC). It's a great way to make your PC experience even better."

Of course! It makes perfect sense that I'd need to pay for Windows twice, once for each time it's been installed. How reasonable of you, Microsoft. Obviously, the crap that got pre-installed on my first copy of Windows was stuff I actually asked for, and not an inevitable result of _your_ business model.

<comment><USER8> It is funny, Microsoft people are quite willing to chat on the net about all the great stuff they are doing, but as soon as someone points out something incredibly stupid that they are doing, they all disappear.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Apparently gratuitous editorial spin in the titles is okay as long as it has to do with Microsoft?

In any case, people are focusing on a minor detail rather than the interesting piece of this: The point is, when you buy from the Microsoft Store, you can get that's set up to have a "best-effort" configuration of Windows--one where the choices of what to install and what not install are made from the perspective of making the customer experience great, not based on who paid the most money.

If you want the same thing done to a PC purchased elsewhere, perhaps you have to buy a copy of Windows (I work for MS but I have no idea whether that is the case or not). On the other hand, all of this setup/optimization is free, so it's quite likely cheaper to pay for Windows a second time than to pay, say, Geek Squad for their questionable "PC optimization service."

If the store just said "come in and get your PC optimized for $99" I'm sure no one would have an issue with it.

<comment><AUTHOR> point is microsoft is supposed to be doing a certification process already which as far as I remember was to certify that the experience was guarantee... so base on this news, that certification sticker is just full of crap and now I need a geek squad or microsoft itself to tune it up to be the best experience.

seriously, if microsoft did their quality process the way it should be there should not be a need for "pc optimization services" or this such "signature experience" of any kind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wow, Microsoft is telling people who _already have Windows_ to buy a _full retail copy of Windows 7_ just to get rid of crapware?

Maybe there's money to be made by rebranding CyanogenMod as "Android Signature" (now in vanilla froyo flavor)...

<comment><USER11> "If you live near a store, you can bring in any Windows 7 compatible PC and the Store techs will do a clean install of Windows 7 (you'll need to buy a full retail copy, of course), migrate all of your data,"

This reads to me like you can either upgrade to Windows 7 or they will reinstall a clean image with your current license key...

<comment><USER12> Your current license key is usually for an OEM version and not a "full retail copy." I understand this as meaning you will have to purchase Windows 7 again if it came pre-installed on your PC.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> paying microsoft extra for the experience I'd have got from the beginning is shocking... microsoft should focus more on getting OEMs stop this crapware fair and instead provide a great experience for their end users.

anyway, this a response from someone at Microsoft from a twitter conversation that started from this same link:

@xpaulbettsx: @timheuer @shanselman @samiq we are working to do this via perf requirements - slow down the OS, get penalized

<http://twitter.com/#!/xpaulbettsx/status/26334503491>

<comment><USER13> Microsoft have created a situation where OEMs margin is coming from that crapware. The incentives are way off and the end user is the big loser.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't need anybody to install me Internet Explorer 8 and Adobe Acrobat, especially when i'm gonna install Chrome and Sumatra instead. But other people posting here are right: You shouldn't be paying for that kind of stuff. It should be basic service.

</comment><comment><USER15> Didn't quite understand Signature Experience (and I didn't want to install silverlight). Does anyone here use it?

Completely off topic and half-joking; but was it a joke to call it "window- steam-blog" or should I only see "windows-team-blog"?

</comment><comment><USER16> Silverlight video, huh? I think this calls for a poll - <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1754755>

</comment><comment><USER17> If you live near a store, you can bring in any Windows 7 compatible PC and the Store techs will do a clean install of Windows 7 (NOTE: If your PC already has WIndows 7 on it, you're good to go - no new license is required!

Meaning, if you bought a Windows 7 computer somewhere else (with crapware, etc.) you don't have to buy a new license--they just clean off the crapware for you and install their stuff.</comment>


Twitter's poor API documentation practices - <AUTHOR> http://gazit.me/2012/01/09/Twitter-documentation-fail.html

<comment><USER2> I'll take a poorly documented API that works over an API so broken, that's its outright ludicrous.

For instance, Facebook. For _months_ now, the Like button has been completely broken on any sites that classify themselves as og:type product. Which is basically, very many indeed.

The bug? Some idiot at Facebook apparently registered type "product" as belonging to a particular app id. Now no one other than this unknown entity is allowed to use og:type product.

The problem is, it could be easily argued that the single-most feature of the facebook API is the like button. If the _very core_ of their "business" is so overwhelmingly neglected and broken from an API perspective, how can _anyone_ trust them to do anything right after that? How can anyone feel comfortable building on the Facebook platform, basing the existence of entire products, startups, and companies on the whim of such a ridiculously unorganized company and their broken API?

The age of web apps is great, but you cannot blame anyone for lamenting the end of an era where your products were as good as your code - not reliant on the whims and caprices of a company that you can't trust to maintain their API - or even build it right in the first place.

[https://developers.facebook.com/bugs/285421101492706?browse=...](https://developers.facebook.com/bugs/285421101492706?browse=search_4f0b662b147b41994400672)

Facebook has 'acknowledged' the issue, but what's the use of that?

<comment><USER3> Facebook API had so many breaking changes happening all the time that they decided, as a "benefit" to developers, that they would stack them all up to occur on the first of each month. This is in the name of BS called "operation developer love". And this is only for the breaking changes that get announced. The much more common scenario that ComputerGuru mentions is where stuff gets broken, acknowledged as a bug Facebook, and then never fixed. If you read the stats they publish in their blog posts, 2-3x the number of bugs get accepted than the number that get fixed, EVERY SINGLE week.

<comment><USER4> I read this and I think, why would I even want to write code for an API that I'd have to maintain far more actively than the rest of my project?

They've even faffed with the basic generated widgets enough for you to have to keep an eye on what works, so you can prepare to fill the same form in yet again to get the same thing working again.

Stability should be the priority if you don't want to piss third party devs off.

<comment><USER5> Ugh. I did a favour for someone by added some _very_ basic FB integration to his site. I've had to go back 2 or 3 times to fix it and he now thinks I'm pretty incompetent as a result.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As someone who writes a bit of documentation for dev.twitter.com, I admit that a full accounting of every field that passes through the API is certainly missing. The reasons are boring and mostly historical, related to the organic growth of the API & its documentation; for much of the existence of the API, deep pre-existing understanding of Twitter itself was assumed and required for success. That combined with the majority of developers using scripting languages with loose typing meant that devs could fill in the blanks pretty easily.

A more exhaustive index of the fields, a kind of bird watcher's guide for the fields of the Twitter API, should make an appearance in the coming weeks.

</comment><comment><USER7> From the article: "Of all the large product API's I consume regularly, Twitter's is the one I've had the worst experience with. "

Clearly he hasn't worked enough with Facebook's API and its often broken documentation. It's always fun when Facebook decides to change the API when you're in the middle of a project, but keep backwards compatibility and only "hide" the documentation for the old API so you can't find it with search, and now you're left with trying to decide if you should try to keep using the old interface or change your whole code for the new API.

</comment><comment><USER8> "Of all the large product API's I consume regularly, Twitter's is the one I've had the worst experience with." - I hope you never have to deal with facebook.

</comment><comment><USER9> I had the misfortune of doing my final year computing dissertation using Twitter's streaming API.

I had many late nights trying to debug similar problems. One particular problem I never solved was using the language/location information to help filter out invalid tweets in non English tweets.

I used C# to do the processing and eventually gave up trying to cast the JSON from their API to static types and used C#'s dynamic keyword as their documentation was so poorly written and didn't include decent examples.

Fond memories.

</comment><comment><USER10> Ha, this exact issue bit us in the ass a few months ago. We were working on some streaming Twitter utilities (put in a username and we fire off some events if a mention or a RT of them occurs) and just to test the scalability of our services we entered Justin Bieber. Well one of his tweets got over 100 RTs fairly quickly and we weren't expecting a string to come back. Long story short, it solidly fucked up our event queueing/processing pipeline and brought some of our servers to their knees.

Thanks, Twitter!

<comment><USER11> Really? An expected response from a foreign (uncontrolled) source brought you servers down?

Are you validating responses now, or just assuming they'll never change / always be correct?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Am I the only one getting tired of articles on Hacker News amounting to, "$PRODUCT is horribly broken! Let me describe one small pain point and promise you that there are countless others."?

<comment><USER13> hear, hear

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I just do not understand why documentation continues to be a problem. There are plenty of API-as-platform models going around, and there will be more in the future.

We are developers creating a product (an API) for other developers. We _know_ what other developers are going to want to understand and the details they're going to need when implementing against an API. It should be crystal clear what information needs to be provided.

<comment><USER15> I look forward to seeing your perfectly-documented API product.

<comment><USER14> Why strive for quality, eh?

Maybe we should just pat Twitter, Facebook, etc. on the back for what they provide and say "hey guys, appreciate the almost-accurate info."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I don't know, Twitter API at least works in consistent manner.

If you ever tried Facebook API ... People complain that there are no examples for Facebook API: the problem is that they cannot keep up with example to work with constant changes, so they just gave up on examples.

</comment><comment><USER17> My experience is similar to a lot of others. I've spent the last two years working with quite a few social media APIs and while Twitters API documentation and reliability could be a bit better at least it looks like there was some level of design/thought to it. On the other hand is Facebook, which to say appears to have come into existence organically would be beyond generous. Examples are non existent, bugs are either unacknowledge or unfixed indefinitely and documentation as simple as what permissions are needed to access a property are a challenge to find.

In general APIs are going to suck unless you're paying to access them. It may be less than perfect, but being able to ride on the coattails is better than nothing.

</comment><comment><USER18> The problem with his example `retweet_count` is the blanket statement in the API:

        The timeline returned is the equivalent of the one seen when you view a user's profile on twitter.com.

Thus:

\- the value is capped at 100 (since the retweet count is displayed up to 100)

\- the value can be "100+" (<https://twitter.com/#!/SEGA/status/144219968773423104> says "Retweeted by ivucica and 100+ others")

Now, I don't disagree that the documentation should explain retweet_count more clearly, but I'm surprised that people trip up on this particular issue.

<comment><USER19> Now I don't use twitter's API, so I have no clue as to their conventions, but when I saw, in the documentation you qouted, the phrase the "equivalent of", I read this as the "raw data we used to produce" , and not the "exact string you see."

Clearly I should have read it the other way - but I bet a lot of people will read it like I did.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Like twitter gives a shit about the API. See if you can get your own old tweets or DMs.

</comment><comment><USER21> I just recently was impressed by how nice looking their docs are and confused by how bad they are at actually explaining what to do with it, so I can certainly relate.

I think what they really need is to figure out what calls people make most often and mark those very clearly at the top, along with a human-readable description. Like for example "HERE'S THE CALL YOU CAN USE TO GET A USER'S TWEETS', or 'HERE'S THE ONE YOU USE TO GET TWEETS ABOUT WORD OR HASHTAG X' -- Isn't this the case for everything?

</comment><comment><USER22> I think this is an industry wide problem, and not just Twitters. It's more the norm to see bad or incomplete documentation than to see stellar, up to date docs.

</comment><comment><USER23> By analogy, we have to expect the author to write a 800-page tome when he gets his hands on Facebook's elusive API.

</comment><comment><USER24> While, yes, docs should actually document all of the cases, this post just assumes developers will actually read the docs and cover all the cases. Would be nice.

Twitter supplying a torture test might make more of a difference -- I don't know.

</comment><comment><USER25> I absolutely feel this authors pain. I laughed out loud the entire time reading this.

I'd love to see this article rewritten:Facebook API edition!

</comment><comment><USER26> Um, isn't that simply a small bug in the documentation that should be reported to Twitter, not blown out of proportion in a blog post?

<comment><USER27> No abysmal documentation is I am afraid endemic these days look at the mess that is googles API's

Just listing methods that some programtic tool created is not documenting an API.

<comment><USER26> Sure, I was only referring to the linked article which seems to dwell on a single undocumented field in the API.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Ok So you found 1 missing line of comment on the API docs for twitter. Suddenly the whole API doc is garbage. You do a very good job generalizing.

</comment><comment><USER29> Oh god. I'm going to be working with that? _sobs_</comment>


Data initialization in C++ - <AUTHOR> http://woboq.com/blog/data-and-initialisation.html <comment><USER2> File-level static non-POD instances are a big no-no. If you really (really) need a global static, move it into function scope in a function which returns the static (singleton pattern). (Additional tricks can be used to ensure it is only initialized once in a thread-safe manner.)

e.g. [https://github.com/bloomberg/bsl/blob/master/groups/bsl/bslm...](https://github.com/bloomberg/bsl/blob/master/groups/bsl/bslma/bslma_mallocfreeallocator.cpp#L40)

<comment><USER3> Static init/de-init order were huge issues at my last job, working on embedded devices. When I say huge, I really mean issues that would seem to come and go randomly with builds, and in some cases brick devices until someone could JTAG it and get it up on a debugger to load a new boot block or determine the root cause. As the guy that got to do this, let me tell you that stepping through the ARM assembly of the runtime library made me feel like an uber hacker, but it wasn't exactly fun.

The nifty counter pattern[0] ended up being the most helpful for generating a static initialization and de-initialization order without conflicts. The tradeoffs are that it increases codesize and that it looks like magic to a lot of people. I don't remember the exact reason that wrapping everything in functions returning references didn't work - I think it was more to do with the de-init side of things, since the function wrappers guarantee the init order but not the de-init order.

[0] [http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/More_C%2B%2B_Idioms/Nifty_Count...](http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/More_C%2B%2B_Idioms/Nifty_Counter)

<comment><USER4> Uhm... but why would you have globals with constructors in a code where de/initialization order matters?

<comment><USER3> Massive, legacy codebase, C wrappers around new C++ functionality... to be honest I don't remember the exact reason. It mostly had to do with concurrency primitives not being initialized when they needed to be due to a lack of a way to initialize a class instance the same way POD instances are initialized (aka int x = 0 in global scope.)

You work with what you're given, sometimes! ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is my first exposure to constexpr and it looks very interesting. According to this article it's a second C++ metaprogramming language: [http://cpptruths.blogspot.ca/2011/07/want-speed-use- constexp...](http://cpptruths.blogspot.ca/2011/07/want-speed-use-constexpr- meta.html).

The more I learn about C++11 the more I like it. There's some really amazing new features that I've only seen in Lisps, plus there's full static typing, which is the one thing I miss from Lisps.

<comment><USER6> The more I use C++11 the less I like it.

constexpr has many problems:

\- Its syntax is that of C++s, but limited to a single statement and so is about as expressive as a block of wood. Templates are much closer to functional languages and so are naturally more expressive. Seriously, use templates instead!

\- It's inefficient. If you want to do heavy computations then you're better off writing a program to generate code. If you want efficient run-time performance then good luck optimizing a single statement.

\- It's specification is full of quirks and pitfalls. Quite simply, constexpr does not follow the path of least surprise. Plus, I hear it was a nightmare for the compiler writers.

<comment><USER5> After reading up on Lisp macro programming (PG's on OnLisp and others) you will see that it is always advised to use only purely functional code when doing metaprogramming. In Common Lisp and all the others Lisps I've seen, this is not strictly enforced by the language and only advised. The code should be purely functional because you don't know when and how many times it can be called by the compiler leading to some grand mysteries when something does not go as expected during compilation due to unintended state.

The constexpr design is taking this to heart and enforcing that the code to be purely functional. I don't see this as a disadvantage but take it that designers of C++ are forcing best practices for the features they are adding. Best practices are generally not the most convenient, but by doing it this way, they're giving you less 'rope to shoot yourself in the foot'. Lisp was more of a research language woring as a testbed of features that are now moving into mainstream languages now that there is some experience with how to use them in the least damaging way.

Purely functional programming is not as 'easy' to write because almost everyone learns imperative first, which is the most natural way to code (do this, then do this, then do this,...). Using functional code requires you put the control that you would normally put into code into the _data_. It's a different way of thinking and is not natural in the way that imperative programming is.

And regarding that implementing constexpr wsa a 'nightmare for compiler writers', it should be! Strong abstractions are difficult to design and implement, but once they are complete everyone benefits. Compilers are the one things that should take on the hard features since everyone uses them.

Thanks for your experiences with constexpr and I'll form my own opinions of it after some practial use and maybe i'll find it just as lacking as you do in the end :). I'll stand by my statement that C++11 is heading in the right direction, even though it may have some warts and tradeoffs that it can't be avoided, like anything that matures. It will be interesting to see what C++ goes in the next 10 or more years.

<comment><USER6> Hi! Thanks for your thoughts :)

I pretty much agree with everything you said, with the exception of defending constexpr. What follows is more ranting on constexpr and praise for templates.

> The constexpr design is taking this to heart and enforcing that the code to > be purely functional.

You're falling into the common trap of confusing purity with functional. constexpr is only enforcing code to be free of side effects; it's even less functional than C.

Templates on the other hand, are functional. With templates, you get pattern matching, easy recursive data types, high order functions, and more. You can literally take Haskell code, change the syntax a bit, and end up with a complete metaprogram. That's not possible with constexpr.

Templates can work with values, but more importantly, they can work with types. Being able to actually to modify the types and code of the program is essential to metaprogramming. None of that comes with constexpr. Hell, I wouldn't even consider constexpr to be metaprogramming.

In addition, templates can actually form abstractions, even ones that aren't functional. Boost.MPL, over a decade old, emulated C++-style containers at compile time using only templates. As a personal experience, I've implemented a stack-based language akin to Forth using templates, see: [http://pubby8.wordpress.com/2012/10/15/stack-based- template-...](http://pubby8.wordpress.com/2012/10/15/stack-based-template- metaprogramming-in-c-11/)

Well guess what? Templates suck. They slow the compile down to a crawl, their syntax is incomprehensible, and don't get me started on their error message. The only reason to use them is because there is nothing better.

C++11 had a chance to fix this. Instead, we got constexpr.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


OpenPrescribing: England's medication prescription data - <AUTHOR> https://openprescribing.net/ <comment><USER2> This is amazing.

I do some work around suicide prevention.

Having access to this data means I can ask why so much co-proxamol (a medication that has no evidence of effectiveness, but which is also very dangerous) is being prescribed in Gloucestershire.

<comment><USER3> I was taking a look around some of the data for antidepressants and was wondering why there are sometimes such drastic decreases in spending. Spending for Escitalopram dropped over 80% in a single month[1]. There are a few others that had sharp drops in spending. Just curious, do you know why?

In any case, it would be really interesting to see how legislation, lobbying, and current events (relative) may have affected this data.

[1]: [https://openprescribing.net/chemical/0403030X0](https://openprescribing.net/chemical/0403030X0)

<comment><USER4> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escitalopram#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escitalopram#History)

Maybe the patent expiring. (WP talks about a US patent and this is the UK, so it's a guess)

<comment><USER5> I read that as 'the patient expiring', which I believe would also have an effect on drug use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I searched for the medicines I get from my GP and it turns out I'm the only one getting them. You can see the blips in the graph from zero when I got the prescriptions!

<comment><USER7> Isn't this a privacy issue? There are some very small GP offices. From the HSCIC FAQ:

        I am prescribed a drug for a rare condition; can I be identified in this dataset?

        All practice level information down to presentation level is being released, but no
        information about patients is contained in the data. It is not possible to identify
        individual patients in the data.
        In line with the recent High Court ruling on the release of abortion statistics, data can
        be released unless an individual can be identified from the data or from other data
        that is already in the public domain. The release of practice level prescribing data
        does not enable the identification of individual patients.
        If you are the only patient receiving a certain drug in your practice then the number
        of items prescribed and their cost for that medicine will be in this dataset but it will
        not show which patient received it. Note that information about the price of drugs is
        already available in the public domain.

That last paragraph doesn't make sense. I can easily imagine someone who knows a friend/relative has a rare condition using a data source like this to see how often it's being prescribed, and (perhaps) whether they're taking the medicine as often as they're supposed to.

<comment><USER8> That was my first thought. I think it's brilliant that people with background knowledge can assess unusual prescription patterns at GP practices, but this is bound to release data that can give you a pretty good idea of [some of] what some individuals with a particular rare condition are being prescribed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is an amazing dataset. I did some work with it in 2012 at a hackathon, in particular linking it to wiki entities. I used the redirects as drug synonyms and automatically extracted and linked drug names to their Wikipedia pages, which then offered more structured info on the drugs (eg side effects etc). From that, I then did some basic NLP to identify diseases that mentioned those drugs, thereby linking the diseases each drugs can be used to treat for further analysis. The next step we didn't do much with was linking it to the British national formulary - the uk clinical guidelines on drug use (a digital version wasn't readily available then). You can see some of those wiki datasets on my website ([http://www.stewh.com](http://www.stewh.com) \- I'm on a train so can't get the exact url, but you should find it in the menu). I had more datasets and the MapReduce code for working with the dataset and wiki dumps if anyone could use it.

<comment><USER10> you might find the MEDI dataset useful. It links rxnorm to the ICD-9 codes the medications are written for based on EHR and other data.

[https://medschool.vanderbilt.edu/cpm/center-precision- medici...](https://medschool.vanderbilt.edu/cpm/center-precision-medicine- blog/medi-ensemble-medication-indication-resource)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Please Review my New Site - <AUTHOR> http://www.jukaroo.com

<comment><USER2> It's neatly designed and inviting/friendly-looking.

I like what you've done with the Google maps section, I've not seen anyone do that with neighborhoods before. (Google can be a powerful ally for such maps.)

Since I've never been to Thailand (people who visit might want your page very useful) it'd be good to include some history and culture of Thailand somewhere.

A lot of sites like this tend to get over-cluttered pages after a while, I hope you can avoid that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. Although we do want it to be useful for anyone coming to or in Bangkok, it's really geared towards Bangkokians. Yeah, I'm not sure how we're going to handle markers (and other clutter) as we take on more data. I too hate clutter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I like the looks of it. I just couldn't find anything else than restaurants? Did I miss something? How about a tourist coming to Bangkok any places of interest?

<comment><USER4> The whole of Thailand is "of interest", but tourists will most likely just get dumped in Thanon Khao San and they will not venture out of it except for few trips to seedy Patpong and whatever they can find in their Lonely Planet.

Hangout with Thai people of your gender and age, drop the tourist look and go super local.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I passed through Bangkok when I was just out of college and did the Khao San - Samui circuit. I encountered a bunch of drunk soccer hooligans and cynical, scam-touting tourist handlers. When I moved here later on I was amazed what Bangkok is actually like. Wonderful place.</comment></comment></comment>


Tens of thousands in austerity protest in Spain - <AUTHOR> http://www.ctpost.com/business/article/Tens-of-thousands-in-austerity-protest-in-Spain-1380467.php

<comment><USER2> Spaniard here. Male, 24. People are mainly protesting against bipartidism not addressing the country's problems and working together for the greater good of the country, since they only play dumb and fight childishly.

The party in charge hasn't done shit about the whole economic crisis. First they tried to fool the people into thinking there was no crisis. When it was so obvious they couldn't keep lying, they passed some stuff that didn't really address the main problems (rigid two-tier labor market, too much spending on pointless bs, almost no-value added economy, too much regulation, and so on). They prefer to spend their time battling oh-so-important problems as fierce copyright laws or populating our roads with pickpocketing speed traps. Oh yeah right, and wether we should be able to speak to a civil servant in any of our languages (spanish is not the only language spoken in spain, almost every state has its own regional dialect/language, which are for the most part mutually intelligibility, but hey, let's make a big deal out of it anyways, who the fuck would care about easing conditions for the self-employed or the start-ups, right?).

The opposition, luckily in such a good place to just play the nice guy part and thus get the job with a few good proposals, are drowned in their own pile of corruption-related shit and instead of making easy proposals to win voters back, they prefer to try countless aggressive ad-hominem attacks against the prime minister and his clique wishfully hoping they'll eventually step down.

And while they all are pulling each other's hair as if this were a playground, there's +20% unemployment, +45% unemployment for young spaniards and a whole lot of just plain misery sweeping the country. I'm talking tonight-there's-no- dinner misery.

<comment><USER3> Since you'll likely be directly involved politically in this issue (by protesting and/or voting), I urge you to read the comment I left as a reply to another comment further down the thread:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2558318>

It's important to understand the reasons for the crisis. Your leadership should take responsibility for what happened, but the voting public should develop and demand different policies from their successors. I think it's crucial to realize austerity could only make things worse and that it's currently being forced upon a number of the poorer EU countries (I'm also a citizen of one). I'm sure corruption is a problem, but in this case it goes much deeper and runs right into the almost religious adherence to neoliberal economics throughout Europe and the US.

<comment><USER2> While fine-targeted spending can foster growth and productivity, that thing you've thought of about having one person digging and other one filling holes is completely wrong.

How do I know? The idiot in charge in my country spent thousands of millions of euros developing that near-sighted idea to no avail. He just kept the housing-bubble men busy for a while longer.

And then along came deficit.

<comment><USER3> It's clearly a dumb thing to do, I agree. I'm just arguing it's better than austerity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "I have several degrees and speak many languages and still can't find a high- paying job" - well, maybe you should turn to whoever told you several (very likely liberal arts) degrees are in causal relation with a high-paying job?

<comment><USER5> Well, your assumption is wrong. There is actually such a high degree of unemployment that affects professionals like: biologists, doctors, architects and even engineers. I do have friends in that situation. I'm living in Madrid, just 10 minutes away from where everything is happening.

<comment><USER4> I live in Bulgaria, and we have many people in the construction business - starting from architects all the way to hard-hat workers - out of job - but I attribute it to the construction boom that pulled way too many people towards that area; we don't actually need all that concrete crap built. But doctors? This is surprising. The "common wisdom" around here is that the EU needs all the doctors it can get, as virtually all the medical graduates emigrate quickly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> They won't solve any problem by protesting. Moreover, they're probably protesting for the wrong reasons. Spaniards are asking the government for jobs and decent salaries as if bureaucracy could solve these problems; and the more the government does, the worse it gets, because what the government should do is "nothing" but just get out of the way and let the free market take its course.

<comment><USER7> I believe what people are protesting is that austerity measures, more often than not, are enforced upon services that benefit the middle to low income working class, rather than on the corporations that were complicit in creating the problem in the first place.

They are protesting for a more balanced approach.

<comment><USER8> I'm sorry, but it was the middle class that went along with the insane bubble.

The big Spanish banks, unlike banks in most other places, acted relatively responsibly and have not needed to be bailed out (the 'cajas', which are local banks controlled in part by politicians on the other hand are totally bust).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> You can't protest your way out of being broke, which is the ultimate truth of this situation.

<comment><USER10> On a material level, no, protest cannot create any new goods. But on a sociopolitical level, protest can force change that can lead to different allocations of resources (or human rights, a la the Civil Rights era in the US).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wonder what had happened if the the government were the PP...

</comment><comment><USER6> To those that degraded my comment: what I said is what I believe. Disagreeing is not a valid reason to put down the other person's opinion. If you want a debate, let's have it, but you have to respect what I say unless you prove that I'm wrong.

<comment><USER12> >you have to respect what I say unless you prove that I'm wrong

the ideology is like a religion, both are outside of the realm of reason, any attempts to prove something in that realm is stupid and futile.

Respect it? What for?

<comment><USER6> VladRussian, I welcome your comment and your questions, and I responded. A question for you: Did you down-vote my comment?

<comment><USER12> Of course, and i explained why. You posted an ideology bit, a propaganda, and it litters discussion. Hundreds years ago, considering the body of knowledge back then, the ideas of the flat Earth or the ability of free market to exist on its own magic without necessary role of government were a reasonable theories. Today these ideas exist only as components of religious or ideological platforms, well outside of the body of scientific knowledge.

>Religion is very easy to prove wrong, using logic, facts, and science.

No. Check any good book or university course on the philosophy of science. Religion and "logic, facts, and science" are completely disjoint realms, and have no connection, intersection or whatsoever relation. Just for illustration : any of the following 5 ideas for example - "God created evolution", "God doesn't exist", "The Earth is flat as created by God", "There is only one God", "There are five Gods" - aren't in logical contradiction with each other as they belong to the realm of religion which is outside of the world of logic and science where notion of logical contradiction exists and limited to. The same way, any and all the 5 together of these ideas have no relation to or any effect on or affected in any way by any of the established scientific facts, like for example, evolution, pie=3.14... or "the Earth is round and flies around Sun" - as the facts belong to the realm of science which is disjoint with the realm of religion where the above mentioned ideas belong to.

>Respect if you don't have a better argument. Better in terms of logic, facts, and science. Respect if the other person is following logical implications.

once you have it and do it, i guess you'll see the respect you want.

<comment><USER6> We can't talk if you have a magic button that fades my comments away and I don't. Thanks for your honesty though.

As a way to balance our powers, I left you a blackspot for everyone to read at <http://www.spottiness.com/spots/JEM5U01L>

If you had your email address in your HN profile, I would have sent you a code that allows you to respond.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


End of the world: God particle could DESTROY universe, warns Stephen Hawking - <AUTHOR> http://www.express.co.uk/news/nature/508102/End-of-the-world-Stephen-Hawking-God-particle-Higgs-boson-destroy-universe <comment><USER2> Early scientists were afraid that nuclear tests would cause the Earth's atmosphere to ignite its Oxygen Nitrogen atmosphere.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not that worried. The accretion disk around a galactic black hole surely already creates collisions as powerful as an earth sized particle accelerator.</comment>


Judging the Stupidity of GitHub Projects by Stars and Forks - <AUTHOR> http://ericgreer.info/github/funny/stupidity/2016/02/28/judging-the-stupidity-of-github-projects.html <comment><USER2> The metric is interesting, but it would be helpful to choose a friendlier name (or an euphemism).

Perhaps this is related to how difficult is to install the tool.

It looks like most tools used by programmers have a <30% coefficient. The strange part is that git has almost a 50%.

PS: MariaDB is sorted in the wrong place.

<comment><USER3> I really didn't like the unwelcoming label of "stupidity"

You wonder why tech work gets the reputation of being unwelcoming to women? It's because of posts like this... Truth is, it is often wildly unwelcoming to everyone.

I've forked plenty of repos without starring them or getting listed as an actual contributor.

I forked entityframework (core) last night for example. I'm playing with the idea of writing a MySQL provider.

Will it ever get pushed or rolled back in? Unlikely. I'll never be listed as a contributor.

But is that stupid? Forking was what I wanted to do in this case. I can push into MY EF repo without issuing PRs.

It's really low cost too (in all of time, effort, money virtually nil)

"stupid" isn't just the wrong word, it's a "jerk" word to use.

<comment><USER2> Good use case. I actually have one fork to do some experiments like using [https://nightli.es/](https://nightli.es/) . For the type of project, it doesn't make sense to put the automating testing in the original repository.

Perhaps the author can update the metric to count only the repositories without original commits. (But it looks much more complicated than the original work.)</comment></comment></comment>


$2.25 Lyft line rides in SF - <AUTHOR> http://blog.lyft.com/matchmuni <comment><USER2> The actual lyft line code is more simple than you would expect. It's written in Flask and uses lots of heuristics. Lack of real-time traffic data causes most of their issues. We're hosting the engineering lead for Lyft Line at our meetup in SF next month if you are interested in learning about it: [http://www.meetup.com/OpenLate/events/217476372/](http://www.meetup.com/OpenLate/events/217476372/)

</comment><comment> enahs-sf This price war between uber and lyft seems foolish and unsustainable, but as a consumer, I'm down.

<comment><USER3> You shouldn't, the end result is that drivers will end up with shitty salaries (and no, most drivers aren't going to be retrained as computer programmers when they realise Uber can't help them pay for their SF rent). Not to mention that these people are contractors (illegal) so have more personal taxes to pay.

In my eyes Uber and Lyft have lost all moral high ground. These companies are just not following regulations to make more money. This money was going towards drivers, but it's clear that that's no longer the case. If you have any moral qualms about Walmart's treatment of employees, I don't see how you cannot have issues with Uber.

<comment><USER4> It's not clear to me that the contracting model for drivers is illegal. Drivers choose their own hours, own their own cars, and don't have to be exclusive to either Uber or Lyft--many drivers drive for both more or less simultaneously. That's the most clear cut example of a valid, legal contractor model I've seen.

<comment><USER5> If working your own hours, with your own equipment, for one or two companies is illegal then myself and a lot of Hacker News are working illegally.

<comment><USER3> working almost 40 hours of week for only one company as a contractor _is_ illegal. In the eyes of the IRS you are an employee, not a contractor. But this is illegal for the employer rather than the employee in this case.

<comment><USER6> That's not true. Working 40 hours in a week is not a problem. A contractor can put in an unlimited number of hours if they wish. 20, 40, 80 - it doesn't matter.

The differentiator you're probably thinking of is whether the worker chooses which hours they work. If the worker decides independently how much they will work and at what times then the IRS doesn't tend to consider the relationship employment -- regardless of how much time is put in. This is precisely how these driving services operate.

If the employer is scheduling a fixed schedule, say 9-5 M-F, then the IRS considers it an employment arrangement. Regardless of the number of hours worked. But that is not at all how these services operate.

<comment><USER4> One of the defining features of Uber is that the drivers set their own hours, too. That's how surge pricing is supposed to work--it's supposed to incentivize part-time drivers to get off their butts and drive during peak times.

Sometimes it backfires; Uber sent warning emails about surge pricing New Years Eve to drivers _and_ to riders, and the cumulative effect of the warnings resulted in a glut of drivers and relatively little surge pricing in Seattle, at least according to a driver I talked to. In this case, leaving it as a contract arrangement even works for Uber because it lets them leverage market forces where a traditional employment model would make it impossible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> For those not in the SF area, this is almost certainly in response to this (unless Uber has a mole within Lyft...): [http://blog.uber.com/SFpoolparty](http://blog.uber.com/SFpoolparty)

</comment><comment><USER8> I just tried Lyft line in SF. The first request got canceled after five minutes. The second one found matches after a few minutes and told me to be outside 6 minutes later. At some point someone else joined the ride, so the 6 minutes turned into 12. About 15 minutes went by, and (when the estimated wait time had decreased only by 4 minutes) the driver decided to cancel the ride. My guess is that it was because rush hour pricing jumped from 50% to 75%, so "James" decided getting a single, full-price ride made more sense.

Needless to say, not a happy customer at this point.

</comment><comment><USER9> For its shortcomings, at least Muni has a level of accountability to the public that Lyft and Uber inherently lack. I can't see Lyft or Uber providing discounts to seniors or people with disabilities.

<comment><USER10> True in a political sense I suppose. But Lyft and Uber are far more accountable to actual users. And I'm nor sure I would equate accountability with offering arbitrary discounts to select groups.

<comment><USER11> I wouldn't call them arbitrary. As a society we've chosen to make the _idea_ of helping the less able lead more normal lives something we want. Whether it really helps or is the most effective way is debatable, but I think it's pretty clear _why_ ; it's generally well supported and fits with our cultural mythos.

<comment><USER12> Also young people don't vote ;)

<comment><USER11> Yes, I also thought of that as well. :) I didn't feel like exploring how that interrelates to other classes like the disabled in complex ways though[1], so omitted it.

Edit: s/included that as well/thought of that as well/

1: Do the disabled benefit from this association and the voting power of the elderly, and if so how much of our cultural wish to help the disabled is rationalization after the fact?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The company I work for recently won a contest put on by Lyft offering free Lyft Line rides to and from work for an entire week. I live in Lower Pac Heights and work in the Financial District and take a couple different Muni routes to and from work. I'll take either the 2 or the 3 heading in and the 38L heading back; the 38L is way too crowded in the morning by the time it gets to my closest stop. Morning commute usually takes around 15 minutes and afternoon takes around 10.

So, my commute isn't bad by any means but I decided to give Lyft Line a shot to see if I could do any better. The first day I tried hailing one in the morning, the app hung up looking for drivers; it said 1 minute to match with a driver but I waited 3 before quitting the app and deciding to take Muni. That afternoon, I tried again but ran into the same issue. The next afternoon, I was finally able to line up a ride but had to wait 10 minutes for the driver to get to me. Once he did and we were on our way, I had the joyful experience of sitting in traffic for blocks on end while watching Munis zip by in the designated lanes beside us. Not including wait time, the ride took around 20 minutes (double my normal commute time).

I'm sure there are some routes for which Line is a better option than public transportation, but I personally have a much better experience on Muni than I did with Line. I get why they're focused on rush hour; a service like Line requires a critical mass of people to use the app concurrently in order to make it work. But, the downside of this is that the times when it reaches this point are the times when traffic is the worst and public transportation offers a superior alternative in many cases. We'll see if this ends up taking off, but I know I won't be using it for my commute. Maybe this would be better suited for one-off events like Outside Lands, Giants games etc. but I'd imagine they'd run into the same problems.

<comment><USER8> Sounds similar to my thoughts. I've been trying to get a ride for the past two hours (I'm in the office, no rush to go home). I got canceled three times.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've been a regular Lyft Line user. Except for some cars that show up in pretty bad shape and smell, it's a good experience. And I've had to wait much longer on an average.

It's heartening to see a company just focused on the "user" and not just world domination.

<comment><USER15> I'm assuming you mean Uber is after "world domination"? But don't fool yourself, Lyft is the same, Uber is just better at it so Lyft has no choice but to fight back with $2.50 to Uber's $5 bucks flat.

This isn't because the company is "focused on the user", it's because the company is focused on the competition. If that goes away (unlikely for Lyft to see Uber go away) don't expect high standards.

<comment><USER16> Do you believe this because you know some inside information, or is this just a generic "All any company cares about is your money"-type platitude?

<comment><USER17> Companies exist to make money. Some don't say it outright and focus on the user experience, which brings more money (i.e. Apple). Others focus directly on the bottom line (Uber). There's nothing wrong with either mindset, but I believe it's naive to say that companies don't care about money. Without money, you can't pour it into R&D, expansion, or improvements.

<comment><USER18> Companies need to make money to keep existing, the same way we need to breathe.

If you've ever had a tyrannical boss, you'll see sometimes the company is just their fiefdom. Feeding their ego is their prime motivation and organizing principle for the company - not generating money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This would seem to undermine companies like Chariot, who are offering more MUNI-plus like services:

[http://chariotsf.com](http://chariotsf.com)

</comment><comment><USER20> I use Lyft all the time, multiple times a week. This is ridiculous. How in the hell are their drivers supposed to make money?

<comment><USER21> It's likely that Lyft are loss-leading to keep marketshare and still paying their drivers the regular amount.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> The "Drive Happy District"? That sounds like something right out of Super Sad True Love Story.

</comment><comment><USER23> Wonderful. As a heavy Lyft user, I'm looking forward towards the same in NYC - NJ area.

</comment><comment><USER24> Pretty neat idea. However, more glad that Lyft finally has the ability to split fare.

</comment><comment><USER25> ok what is a lyft line? is that some other type of lyft?

<comment><USER26> A potentially shared ride. It spends a minute searching to see if someone is heading in the same direction as you and then you share the ride. As a passenger, you also only have 1 minute to get downstairs when the car arrives or you have to pay a $5 fee (which really annoys me sometimes as their estimates of time to arrival are sometimes grossly incorrect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> thats quite cheap if you go from one side of the square to the other.. which happens to be my case ;)

</comment><comment><USER28> the 1-up-manship continues

<comment><USER29> At what point do drivers tap out? This match keeps cutting their hopes dimmer and dimmer.

<comment><USER30> So, I've been talking to a lot of Uber/Lyft drivers, and while I have no carefully tabulated data to quantify my point, I must say Lyft drivers complain less than Uber drivers (at least not explicitly) about their respective employers.

This attitudinal difference is most acute when the driver drives for both: they generally like Lyft better for how the company treats them but are also on Uber to ensure steadier business.

<comment><USER31> I thought dogma was that drivers are not employees, but Independent Contractors? Meaning Uber/Lyft are not employers (of drivers), but more akin to a fancy home improvement parking lot?

<comment><USER32> They're still employers, even if the drivers are independent contractors. The name doesn't change.

<comment><USER31> They do employee people (office staff), but they are not employers of the drivers. It would be more accurate to call them the contractee.

At least, this is the argument that Uber/Lyft will/does make to shield them from general liability for their contractors' actions as well as tax liability[1].

[1] [http://www.irs.gov/Businesses/Small-Businesses-&-Self- Employ...](http://www.irs.gov/Businesses/Small-Businesses-&-Self- Employed/Independent-Contractor-Self-Employed-or-Employee)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Who would have thought private industry was better than government at things.

<comment><USER25> This is a limited time promotion. The Muni price is a long term price. After a while, lyft and uber will bring their prices back up. It will be a shame if any muni services are lost in the meantime because people stupidly believe that these are long term prices.

<comment><USER34> Lyft's normal line price is frequently (slightly) cheaper for my wife and I than Muni. Of course, during heavy demand times or for longer rides, muni wins, and I certainly would not want it to go away!

I think long term something like robot driven 6-rider lyft-line style vans is probably the future of public transit (hopefully) :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> [http://www.reactiongifs.com/wp- content/uploads/2012/09/throw...](http://www.reactiongifs.com/wp- content/uploads/2012/09/throwing-money-away.gif)

Edit: thanks for downvoting a valid point. It's weird that HN doesn't see it for what it is.

<comment><USER36> HN downvotes low effort posts like reaction gifs, it has nothing to do with your point.</comment></comment>


My Code made it to a Hollywood Movie - <AUTHOR> http://hackoftheday.securitytube.net/2013/04/my-code-made-it-to-hollywood-movie.html <comment><USER2> This is slightly meta, but it's nice to see the attitude of the OP here. It quite matches my own.

It's always disappointing to see my work appear somewhere else without credit, but usually it is not worth moaning about. At the end of the day, he put that material up to be helpful to someone - and even if it wasn't used in the way it was intended, or with appropriate credit, at least it was still helpful.

It's a good attitude to have, I feel.

Especially as it means he gets to feel "cool, my work is in a hollywood movie" rather than "they stole my work". A much more positive feeling :)

<comment><USER3> Somewhat related, I've had an ambition for a while to contribute to a widely used library like zlib or OpenSSL, purely so that I could claim I had written code used in Windows or on my friend's mobile phone.

I am yet to contribute to either project, but I did successfully get in a patch to PHP which removed logo GUIDs for good, which means once PHP 5.5 is out, I can claim that a lot of internet websites use my code :D

<comment><USER4> For others who were curious, I tracked down that PHP pull request: <https://github.com/php/php-src/pull/132>

<comment><USER3> That's the one!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The most interesting part is that they even bothered to take source code that is loosely related to security stuff and not just took any source code that came across their way.

<comment><USER6> I used to pause Person of Interest <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1839578/> to look at the code which made no sense at all and stopped following the stupid series.I am sure I am not the only one .It's not a bad thing to pay attention to detail.

<comment><USER7> You're an outlier though. Making the code look authentic means burning through valuable time and money on a special effect their viewers almost certainly won't know enough to care anything about. It's just not worth the effort for anything more than "something that looks like code."

<comment><USER6> You are right, if there is no reward for authentic looking fake stuff ,why bother.. I should stop trying to make sense out of television hackers code.

<comment><USER7> Repeat to yourself: "it's just a show, I should really just relax."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm not sure which to be more amazed by, that someone recognized their code in a small snippet in a movie, or that a movie maker actually used _networking_ code when the plot called for it.[1]

[1] As opposed to "The Terminator" who came from the future running a bootleg copy of the Apple II boot roms :-)

<comment><USER9> Well, they still make 6502 derivatives[1] and it may be cost effective to embed for part of a terminators[2] control. Think of it as embedded device controllers. :)

1) <http://www.westerndesigncenter.com/wdc/>

2) side theory I read somewhere: Pixar's Cars is a sequel to Terminator about 1,000 years later.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is really cool. It's amazing that even at big budget movie studios, the general workflow is the same as everywhere else: copypaste an as fast as possible solution from the internet... I guess no matter where they work, people remain people, and budgets are tight.

<comment><USER11> I doubt google-copy-paste is the norm in movie studios. Movie studios must be very conscious of copyright infringement. Certainly for audio tracks and works of art showing up in movies, they make sure they will not be sued if the movie is successful.

For source code, I don't know how far copyright stretches. Does it apply to the textual form at all? For example, if this this code is GPL-ed, and you buy a copy on DVD, would ey be required to give you the source on demand?

<comment><USER12> Not legal advice: I'm too lazy to apply the fair use factors here but it might actually be copyright infringement. On one hand it's a small snippet of code. On the other hand it's a for-profit product. You wouldn't get sanctioned for suing them over it I don't think.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I find it amazing that somebody actually knew OP's code well enough to recognize it in the trailer. Or maybe someone searched github for the strings they saw instead? Either way, pretty cool - I'd love to have some code in a movie too!

<comment><USER9> VFX guys are pretty knowledgeable about computers, so maybe one of them knew about the code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Český Wikipedia has the code as well. <http://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raw_socket>

I'm not sure whence the code was lifted, but it would not surprise me if they just grabbed some code from Wikipedia and assumed it was freely usable.

<comment><USER15> The code on Wiki doesnt seem to have the same comments.

<comment><USER14> No, but the key one is "/* A simple write on the socket ..thats all it takes ! */" which the author said was rather distinctive, and I would have to agree. (In fact, it was the search I used to find this example.)

How it got onto Wikipedie is another question (might have been on en, ru, or other wiki and translated).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If I was the OP I would just ask them to stick my name somewhere in the credits and call it a day.

<comment><USER17> If I was the OP, I would do exactly what he is doing. This in no way deserves a credit in a movie.

<comment><USER18> Why not? If they used 3 seconds of somebody's music, you can be sure they'd have to give some credit for that - at the very least!

Look at the average credits for the average film. They go on forever, and there are tons of people in them. It's not like crediting somebody is a big deal, in terms of the cost of giving it out. There are plenty of people whose contribution to the film was small, just like the author of this code, but they get credited anyway, and that's just as it should be - the credit is for the contribution, not for the extent to which it makes the film a success.

<comment><USER19> I think a better example would be a scene where someone is reading a book. I kind of doubt they would give credit to Earnest Hemingway in the credits, but maybe I'm wrong.

<comment><USER20> The difference here is that it appears we are meant to believe a character in the movie wrote the code. I may be wrong since it's hard to tell from a promo what is happening, except for LOTS OF EXPLOSIONS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Considering the way Hollywood bristles at "piracy" of their own products, I suggest raising holy-high-hell over this example of Hollywood "piracy" of the code in question.

</comment><comment><USER22> NMAP has often appeared in movies too: <http://nmap.org/movies/> .

</comment><comment><USER23> I wonder if this is enough to make his Bacon number finite.

<comment><USER24> Why do you say finite? The point of the Bacon and Erdos quip is that most people would have a low number (8-10).

<comment><USER25> The point of Bacon and Erdos numbers is that most actors and mathematicians have low numbers, not most people. I, for example, have never published an academic paper, which makes my Erdos number infinite. OTOH, if you count working as an paid extra, my Bacon number is 2 (what do you mean that doesn't count?).

BTW, a Bacon number of 10 is extremely high. IIRC, the highest finite Bacon number of anyone in the IMDB is 8.

<comment><USER24> Thanks. That clarifies it. I got this confused with the seven degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon, wherein you count the number of people who know each other between you and the actor.

<comment><USER26> The fun part is that the Oracle of Bacon etc. has given us a great way to drive home the degrees of separation stuff not just for movie stars, but by making it fairly easy to find your own degrees of separation from Bacon.

E.g., I'm Norwegian, with no direct connections to the movie industry at all.

But if you include documentaries, Gro Harlem Brundtland, a former Norwegian prime minister and WHO director, has a Bacon-number of 3 (she was in some documentary that included Morgan Freeman)

As a child, I pretty much ran into her while on vacation. In high school, I interviewed a member of parliament that had regular dealings with her at various points in his career, and later I was politically involved and did debates against a later minister in a Labour party government, etc. I can find a number of other things connecting me to her.

Depending on how strict you want to be, I can "trace" back to Kevin Bacon either directly (tenuous) or about half a dozen people that both she and I had dealings with, in the latter case with 4 people separating me and Kevin Bacon.

Alternatively, I can find a link to Kevin Bacon via Mao Zedong: I used to know a guy that met Mao on a trade union trip to China in the 50's. Mao obviously met Nixon, and Nixon and the Clintons know each other, and Hillary Clinton was on Entertainment Tonight with Kevin Bacon at one point. Alternatively Nixon mas in a TV special with Robert Wagner, who was in Wild Things...

I could probably find dozens more paths to someone in the IMDB data.

 _Most_ people can probably "connect the dots" via people they can name in their social circuit to _someone_ in the IMDB dataset in at most 2-3 steps, and actually find a specific path to Bacon...

Quite likely you can find several weird paths. Find anyone who has ever served as a member of congress or parliament in your respective country, for example, and you have at least an indirect path to a head of state, which gives you a path to any of a large number of high profile heads of state that have IMDB credits...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> If it weren't for the code comments, it would've been hard to notice that it was the OP's code. It's sometimes very hard to find the differences between C-based POSIX/BSD socket code written by multiple parties - especially when it comes to the set-up routines. Kudos to the OP!

<comment><AUTHOR> A _new_ reason why to comment your code well :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> that's awesome. I love the OP's attitude : "How do I feel about this? Great :) If not me, at least my code made it to a 3 second clip in a Hollywood Movie :) ". It kind of makes me angry for him though that they didn't even bother to give him a credit or ask him if they could use it in anyway. The least anybody can do is give credit where credits due when using open source libs.

<comment><USER29> If they should credit everyone that did something that's used as a backdrop for a few seconds in a movie, they'd have time for little else. The guy who did a mural the main character walks by also doesn't get a credit.

<comment><USER30> Actually - that depends. Artists have sued (and successfully settled in some cases) for their artwork appearing as the background of other productions.

[http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/Maya-hayuk- lawsuit-...](http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/Maya-hayuk-lawsuit- sony-295409)

I'm not saying I think he should pursue it in this case, just that the scenario you laid out isn't unprecedented.

<comment><USER31> Yeah artists seem to do it all the time. They also often get indignant at the merest suggestion that they might want to agree for someone to use their work for free.

The difference is, of course, that writing code is joy so no wonder people will gladly do it and give the results away, whereas creating art is unpleasant, tiresome work, so it's an insult to suggest anyone would do it for reasons other than money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I remember when I worked for a company that made hospital computer software. They were on top of the industry and growing, yet at one point totally geeked out about the fact that their software was going to appear on a show like Gray's Anatomy. Hollywood is the greatest.

</comment><comment><USER33> Great, but what's the license on the code? Isn't this a breach of copyright?

<comment><USER34> Most likely falls into Fair Use. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use>

<comment><USER35> Ironic, since doing something analogous with scenes from this White House Down movie in a few years will probably get us a DMCA takedown.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I found this to be interesting. Good to see Hollywood using real code. You can use this on resume :)

</comment><comment><USER37> You could probably get a credit for that, maybe...

</comment><comment><USER38> dont get stuck in command mode on us...</comment>


GPT-3: A Hitchhiker's Guide - <AUTHOR> https://lambdalabs.com/blog/gpt-3/ <comment><AUTHOR> Happy to add any demos / papers to this post that you think are worth linking.</comment>


Ask HN: Where to get reliable information on nutrition/health? - <AUTHOR> Given amount of information on nutrition it is hard to wrap your head around it. On top of that, I constantly question the veracity of claims that are being made [0]<p>Which sources do you use to learn more about health & nutrition (anything from podcasts to papers will do)?<p>[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/13/well/eat/how-the-sugar-industry-shifted-blame-to-fat.html <comment><USER2> The author Michael Pollan summed it up fairly well with "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants."

When in doubt, try to think what humans evolved to do and to process, and try to mimic that.

For nutrition, did we evolve with enormous servings of fast food, donuts, and spend millions of years eating highly refined highly concentrated packaged garbage packed full of preservatives, chemicals, and mystery substances, all consumed in absurd quantities? Or did we evolve to eat a diverse range of plants with occasional proteins and meats?

For health and exercise, did we spend millions of years sitting around watching TV and being screen sloths? Or did we spend millions of years walking dozens of miles every day, with near constant physical activity in some form or another?

As for studies and raw data, NIH pubmed [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/), NHS, EU, all have interesting raw largely non-opinionated information to scan through.

<comment><USER3> You could argue that evolution will adapt to processed white food as a dietary staple.

I dare say the diabetes and heart disease epidemic is the start of natural selection weeding out the genes less tolerant of high carb, high fat diets.

<comment><USER2> Sure, give in a few million years and I am sure we will be optimized for packaged donuts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm a co-founder of a company doing science-based tailored meal plans for people here in Shanghai, China, and over a few years of pre-study on this, we developed a framework to sift through the body of nutritional knowledge.

As a part of it, we're also making something similar to SpamAssassin for articles. "A friend of mine" is co-hosting SciHub mirror, so we parse and index an extensive collection of papers.

We ban for any "toxins", "detox.+", "mycotoxin", juicing, for anything "leaky gut"-related, any "meso-/ecto-/whatever-"-morph (somehow this stuff is popular here in China), any trademark mention, all Bulletproof® Coffee™ and such; ban most "doctors" mentioned on quackwatch.org + our own blacklist (Mercola, Osprey, Taubes etc).

Generally, we don't trust anything from the Internet, double-check the books, and re-check the scientific papers. Many papers study very small cohorts (N=10-20) or miss important correlation issues (like the famous Blue Zones study or China study).

Learn to recognize that ~30% of current proven knowledge will be disproven in the future, like cholesterol.

Personally, I trust Dr. David Katz, examine.com, to less degree consumerlab.com, healthnewsreview.org, sciencebasedmedicine.org, nutritionfacts.org.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the reply! What is your take on foundmyfitness.com and Dr. Rhonda Patrick in general?

<comment><USER4> Happy if it helped. IMO Dr. Rhonda Patrick is good, even if she is a biochemist. Her nutrition advice is mostly based on others' work and is well researched and solid. I'm skeptical about the whole cryo thing, and we do not support smoothie movement, so we mostly ignore that part. She's certainly worth to listen/read.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> [http://dietdoctor.com/](http://dietdoctor.com/) is my primary source of information on both nutrition and health. zaptheimpaler makes a good point to listen to your own body. Some years ago, I wasn't, and I felt like crap a lot of the time, with something that sounds a lot like IBS.

I switched my diet over to something more closely to what diet doctor advocates, and have gotten slighly more strict with every year, becauase I _feel_ a little better. To me, the "proof" that the information is accurate is that I feel good.

I have the impression, though this may be dated information, that a lot of science on the topic has been primarily focused on measuring the number of calories in/out, because that's easy to measure. When you try to measure _quality_ of your calories, everything becomes magnitudes more complicated to prove, so there's far less reliable science on the topic.

</comment><comment><USER7> As a long time DIY Soylent aficionado I use examine.com[0] as my go to source on supplements and USDA Food Composition Databases[1] to look up nutrition info on food. When and if I need community input on stuff, I usually go to the DIY section of Soylent forum[2].

[0][https://examine.com/](https://examine.com/)

[1][https://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/](https://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/)

[2][https://discourse.soylent.com/c/diy](https://discourse.soylent.com/c/diy)

</comment><comment> open-source-ux If you want a reputable look at health stories in the press (admittedly with a strong UK focus), the NHS website has an excellent section called 'Behind the headlines'. It looks at health stories in the news and examines them in more detail, debunking misleading claims. You can trust that the information is reputable and there is no commercial conflict of interest.

The health articles are written for the layperson and go to the source of the research - explaining the methodology and limitations of a particular study.

It's an excellent resource and one that deserves a wider audience in my view:

[http://www.nhs.uk/News/Pages/NewsIndex.aspx](http://www.nhs.uk/News/Pages/NewsIndex.aspx)

Here's how they reported on a recent story about bread: _Is white bread just as healthy as brown?_

[http://www.nhs.uk/news/2017/06June/Pages/Is-white-bread- just...](http://www.nhs.uk/news/2017/06June/Pages/Is-white-bread-just-as- healthy-as-brown.aspx)

And here's one from 2015: _Sugar intake should be drastically reduced, says report_

[http://www.nhs.uk/news/2015/07July/Pages/Sugar-intake- should...](http://www.nhs.uk/news/2015/07July/Pages/Sugar-intake-should-be- drastically-reduced-says-report.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm trying to solve this exact problem, since I had/have it too. Not just for nutrition but for all habits.

I read directly from scientific articles. And I'm also trying to come up with a methodology to select the best and most useful ones, that can provide actionable guidance in terms of which lifestyle changes to adopt.

You can find more about my habits and the papers I've selected in one of my answers on reddit [0] or you can also check a prototype I created to help me find which lifestyle changes would most improve my health/longevity [1]

Let me know if I can help in any other way

[0] [https://www.reddit.com/r/longevity/comments/5isp2r/what_thin...](https://www.reddit.com/r/longevity/comments/5isp2r/what_things_are_you_doing_to_delay_aging_which/)

[1] [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.healthylab...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.healthylabs.android.healthyhabits)

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the links! Reading from a source and weeding out "low-quality stuff" is a valuable skill to have. Not so long ago a study on telomere length was lambasted by HN community for having low sample size [0]

How do you choose which papers to follow? Any rules of thumb/red flags for assessing a paper?

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14575361](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14575361)

<comment><USER8> Yes, definitely!

First, I start with a clear goal/question in mind: e.g. which lifestyle changes could help me live longer? Then there are several things I look for when assessing a specific paper:

a) Sample size is key. Small samples are not very reliable as you can reach almost any conclusion you want. I also prefer looking at meta-analysis (this is when scientists look at all the studies that analysed a given topic). This means more data (larger samples) and less risk of biases.

b) Low P-value (below 5% is what you're looking for). This is the probability that the effect found was due to randomness. If this is too high, then you cannot rely on your conclusions.

c) Adjusting for other variables that could explain the effect that was found in the study. E.g. if you want to find if eating more vegetables is healthy, you should adjust for exercise, so you can compare people that do the same amount of exercise but eat different amounts of vegetables. Otherwise the effect found could be explained by other variables not adjusted for.

d) No funding bias. Is this a study stating that eating X is good but funded by the Association of X Producers? Avoid those :)

e) No publication bias (this only applies to meta-analysis). This is when scientists don't publish their findings (e.g. because they did a small study, or found an insignificant effect, or found an effect they or their funders "didn't like"). Most good meta-analysis will comment on this (it's also called Funnel test/analysis).

f) Human studies. I tend to ignore studies that aren't done with humans as the probability the conclusions will hold in humans is actually very low (probably less than 10%). It's also preferable to have intervention studies (when you get two groups of people that receive two different interventions - e.g. eating beets juice and placebo - and compare outcomes; they generally don't know which intervention they're getting) vs. observational studies (when you study a group of people and try to assess if differences in what they say they do lead to different health outcomes). But in this field, most studies are actually observational, hence the importance of all the other things I've mentioned.

Hope this helps!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> [https://examine.com/](https://examine.com/)

<comment><USER10> Hear hear.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Harvard's Nutrition Source web site [0] is the best source I've found. It has a wealth of evidence-based information. The accompanying book "Eat Drink and Be Healthy" discusses what features make a study reliable or not. The web site will be more up-to-date on specific dietary advice.

The Harvard School of Public Health are behind 2 of the biggest ongoing studies on diet, the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study[1], which has followed 50,000 men for over 30 years, and the Nurses' Health Study which has included 275,000 people over 40 years.

[0] [https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/](https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/)

[1] [https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hpfs/](https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hpfs/)

[2] [http://www.nurseshealthstudy.org/](http://www.nurseshealthstudy.org/)

</comment><comment><USER12> I have been watching the videos on nutritionfacts.org for years. If you want to see nutrition information backed up by scientific studies, that's the place to go. In a nutshell, the website and the science espouses a whole foods plant based diet.

I find the information they provide so valuable that I developed and currently maintain their Daily Dozen Android app that helps you track that you're eating the correct foods for good health. Check it out here: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.nutritionf...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.nutritionfacts.dailydozen)

</comment><comment><USER13> Start with "Whole" from T.Colin Campbell.

Then there is Greger's work mentioned already somewhere above. And McDougall and Fuhrmann are worth your time.

If you "supplement" this information with Graham (811rv is the keyword) you'll get a pretty broad picture which includes discussion of all fashion diets like Paleo etc.

Bottom line is that for over thirty years it's pretty clear that animal protein is a problem fur the human body. Whole foods plant based it's the answer. Or the alternative is Western diet plus drugs. Pretty much the "truth" you can see all around you these days. If you dare to look objectively..

</comment><comment><USER14> I went to several nutritionists with a similar quest after watching a video that explained all foods only have 7 things in them. It was money poorley spent. None of them could answer my simple questions. And all of them wanted to develop a meal plan for me. This was a classic _buy what I 'm selling not what you're asking for_ situation. I was going to go to the local college bookstore and get a book on it.

</comment><comment><USER15> I listen closely to my body, my parents and my doctor in roughly that order.

Old knowledge is better than new when it comes to health - statistically too it has "survived" longer without being debunked.

Forget fads and realize there are always economic incentives at play to promote information on health.

Excessive attention to health could be called stress, which itself is horribly bad for health.

</comment><comment><USER3> You can't. Every faction has their own truth. And since people vary so widely, you might need to experiment to find your truth.

Your best bet is do do N=1 experiments on yourself. Find what works, and do that.

</comment><comment><USER16> Just go to [http://www.dannyroddy.com/](http://www.dannyroddy.com/) and start from there.

</comment><comment><USER10> www.Examine.com, slam dunk.

The deeper analytical stuff by NYTimes and NHS is strong too.</comment>


Anchor Physics Simulator in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> http://pjama.github.io/projects/anchor-physics/ <comment><USER2> From an oversimplified perspective, I reckon Euler and Verlet and Leapfrog integration are quite basic and quite similar. Euler is the simplest imaginable scheme (ignoring fine math insights) of step by step calculations of position, velocity, acceleration.

Leapfrog is the same process as Euler integration, except the velocity values are initially nudged to set their state to the middle of the update timestep so that when the timestep is applied from t to t+1, the velocity applied is middle/average of that step (at t+0.5)

Verlet integration noted by this project, seems to be essentially Leapfrog integration, while not storing velocity data explicitly-separately from position information.

From a programming perspective, these seem to be very basic and similar integration schemes which can be overcomplicated by mathematical descriptions. I have programmed and used leapfrog basically. The Rebound engine includes some tasty looking advanced integration schemes where the fine math seems more necessary to grasp what is being calculated.

</comment><comment> FLUX-YOU >this._boat = new Boat(); // I wish it were this easy.

You and me both

</comment><comment><USER3> Adjusting chain weight makes the chain stretch, is this detail outside of the scope of this demo?

<comment><USER4> Surely too little stretch for the typical anchor chain length?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Make the water deep enough (max depth) and it will drag.

<comment><USER6> it's supposed to, right? (because there is less friction with the bottom)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Just set the wind and depth to maximum to make it drag.</comment>