Americans Are Among the Most Stressed People in the World, Poll Finds - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/25/us/americans-stressful.html <comment><USER2> From casual observation (living here since 2000) I believe that being stressed and "busy" is a badge of honor in the US. For example during Christmas time everybody complains about being stressed with it. I don't remember that from living in Germany. Christmas was downtime not a source of stress.

For a while it was also popular to be "outraged" about stuff but that seems to have calmed down quite a bit.

<comment><USER3> People through history have always had an outraged culture, it is just that the goalposts of that outrage move, and occasionally rear up en-madd like a tidal wave over what for many is innocuous unless edge-case contextualized - which is often the case in outrage cultures.

There was a time in which people would be outraged at other people not wearing a hat, times change, yet the ability to be upset and project that upon others soldiers on regardless. Just today's outrage culture has a more accessible platform to artificially embellish their outrage and societies ability to see 1% vocaly upset with outrage and presume the other 99% agree is a path that sadly still plays out from time to time.

But let's not confuse outraged issues with real issues that don't need to be blown up out of proportions to gain attention. That is the worrying issue today, that so many times a small event gets recontextualized to fulfil a narrative of outrage and promoted as such. Downing out real issues that fester without vocal champions.

<comment><USER4> The biggest difference is that today outrage is incentivized, even manufacturered, because it makes money.

<comment><USER5> "If it bleeds, it leads" has been a common refrain for TV news programs from decades ago. It's not new, although the mediums have shifted.

<comment><USER4> Yes, it's not a new trick,but it's been amped up to 11.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > The findings were not all bleak for the United States. Despite having > widespread negative experiences, Americans also generally reported more > positive experiences, on average, than the rest of the world did.

It'd be interesting to know how they came to the decision to focus on the negative emotions in the article.

<comment><USER7> Negative things always get the clicks. As the old saying goes: "If it bleeds, it leads".

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm American, and I frequently notice that most people are always talking about how much everything sucks. If somebody sees a movie, there is a 50/50 chance they will be talking about how they didn't like it because they thought the writing was awkward in one scene. When talking about a car they will complain about how the dashboard feels. When talking about their relationships with other people they will complain about how this person is too familiar and that person is too distant. It's as though everyone is employed as the Roger Ebert of their lives and everything they come into contact with. This approach to life seems bound to make anyone stressed even if they live in complete prosperity. Are people like this everywhere or is this more of an American thing?

<comment><USER9> Is that really a problem for things like movies and cars, though? When I watch a film, part of the fun is critically examining and discussing it afterwards. If I'm making a huge purchase like a car, I'd want to be extra-conscious about things I'm not 100% satisfied with. Sure, don't be critical about everything in life, but it has its place.

<comment><USER8> Sure, make a careful decision when buying your car. But after you buy it, like it! You made a big commitment, and switching costs are high, so you'll be happier if you feel you made the right decision.

After watching a movie, critically analyze it if that makes you happy. You aren't married to it because you saw it - disliking it won't hurt you. But when you're thinking about whether you should go with your friend to watch a movie they want to see, don't agonize over it for hours, just see it or don't. There are a million things going on in any movie and you can always find something interesting to pay attention to. If you can afford to spend $15 and a few hours, find a way to enjoy it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It is a quirk of American culture. In many parts of the world, society expects people to be unremarkably average in some sense, and there isn't much room for unfettered ambition. American culture, by contrast, has an expectation that everyone can be exceptional and should strive for that, even though the reality is that most people have little capacity to be exceptional in any meaningful sense. I think attempting to live up to this standard of American culture is the root cause of a lot of uniquely American stress. You even see this difference in the startup cultures between the US and Europe. The flip side is that in some sense I think Americans feel like they achieve self- actualization more often.

I don't think you can change this part of American culture, it is deeply embedded part of the American identity, and it does come with real benefits as a society in addition to the obvious downsides. Individuals can choose to opt out but there is always pressure to spurn that option.

</comment><comment><USER11> I moved to San Francisco from Russia and lived there for over 10 years. Despite unstable life in Russia, with each year I was becoming increasingly anxious whilst living in the States. Although I was making a bank, it felt like I could loose it all any day if I'd became ill. I left that country less than a year ago. It's magical how exponentially happy and calm I am after moving to Australia.

US is a country for people in their 20s who are either rage at EDM festivals or those who busy building startups. There's nothing to do if you poor or ill - you fucked!

</comment><comment><USER12> I wonder if the root cause for all of this is poor instruction on stress management and anger management.

I am starting to wonder if many of these issues are actually culturally driven, rather than biologically driven. American urban and industrial culture as-a-whole is one that prizes productivity, grinding, and individual work, rather than looser workdays, efficiency and teamwork.

I am aware there are exceptions.

<comment><AUTHOR> >>I wonder if the root cause for all of this is poor instruction on stress management and anger management.

Do citizens of countries with low stress and anger levels receive such instructions?

Because if not, lack of such instructions is unlikely to be the "root cause" of the observed phenomenon.

<comment><USER12> Instruction on stress management and anger management is driven by parenting and school environments, not by state-mandated education and mandatory stress management workshops.

If you see your parents constantly on the verge of bankruptcy and lay-offs, struggling to pay off medical bills and resorting to shouting as a stress relief mechanism, then odds are, you'll grow up thinking this is the norm.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I find the less news and social media I consume, the less stressed I am.

<comment><USER14> It's a strange balance between our desire to get informed and the need of the media to monetize that desire.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think the movie / book "Fight Club" does a good job of pointing out how ridiculous American culture can be. Up until they go off the rails and start bombing stuff, it's a really nice critique on society.

For example: "We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars, but we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off."

"Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. "

"We're consumers. We are the byproducts of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty, these things don't concern me. What concerns me are celebrity magazines, television with 500 channels, some guy's name on my underwear. Rogaine, Viagra, Olestra."

America has a problem with raising people to have realistic expectations. Whatever your parents' station in life, that's probably right about where you'll end up. You can't be "anything" you want. People grind themselves into the ground trying to be things they aren't.

<comment><USER16> That movie was made in the 90s, right? I think that culture has shifted some since then and people are less obsessed with brand names. But maybe that obsession has been replaced with looking good on social media?

<comment><USER5> You bring up an interesting thing I noticed in the film (released in 1999 btw). There's a scene where Brad Pitt is on a bus and pointing to an ad of a ripped Calvin Klein model and commenting to Edward Norton "As if that's what real men look like".

And yet, what do people remember most about the film? Brad Pitt's shirtless physique during fight scenes. Look up "Tyler Durden Fight Club fitness" on Youtube. Tons of hits. People may conceptually understand that Fight Club is satire, but their actions indicate otherwise. They want to have that kind of body, even though they know it's not going to make them a movie star or a rock god.

<comment><USER17> That's a good point about missing the satire and why movies like "Boiler Room", "Wolf of Wall Street", etc can rub me the wrong way. Sure, there's a fall and consequences after all the money and partying but that money and partying looks pretty good (especially if you don't get caught).

<comment><USER5> I didn't like WOWS for the reason you describe. They went completely over the top with the party/drug/girls scenes, and you can tell the film is trying to overtly glorify that kind of lifestyle, as opposed to showing the trappings of that life. I got the same feeling I get when I see some random flexing on Instagram. It felt fake.

Boiler Room on the other hand might have been a worse movie, but it had a low- budget feel about it that at least grounded the characters and story within some sense of reality. I think they were going for the Glengarry Glenross aesthetic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I wonder where these negative experiences are coming from. What are people stressed about? Is it money? Certainly, but would that explain the recent rise? People have been poor in the US for a while.

Maybe it comes from the news, both real and fake.

      Only in America
      could you find a way to make a healthy buck
      and still keep your attitude on self destruct.

-MF DOOM [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQnjNOWd1sI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQnjNOWd1sI)

</comment><comment><USER7> >The findings were not all bleak for the United States. Despite having widespread negative experiences, Americans also generally reported more positive experiences, on average, than the rest of the world did.

So we have both. But that isn't in the headline because it wouldn't be clickbaity enough.

I honestly wonder how much of American's stress over the past few years is because of this crap. We are constantly told the sky is falling by new articles only to have it not be the truth.

<comment><USER19> The sky is definitely falling. Maybe you should talk to more poor people

<comment><USER20> Generally speaking the poor report better mental health than the wealth. Anecdotally I also have to say my neighbors are much more jovial and optimistic than the wealthy people I interact with (I live in a very low income area). Should be noted my experiences are probably skewed towards optimistic as I live in a very religious area and generally speaking religious folk are more optimistic than secular folk.

<comment><USER21> What is "better mental health" in this context? It's pretty well established that rates of mental health issues are greater among those below the poverty line - see, for example, these data from 2015: [https://www.samhsa.gov/data/sites/default/files/report_2720/...](https://www.samhsa.gov/data/sites/default/files/report_2720/Spotlight-2720.html)

If you're talking about general "level of happiness", there is evidence for the "money doesn't buy happiness" meme, but that is more the product of the hedonic treadmill than anything else. Our brains are good at convincing us that our current situation is okay, but that doesn't mean that poverty doesn't have very real effects on the basic services needed to function in our society.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Simultaneously lacking in the pro-relaxation/mental health benefits of both the developing world (importance of family and extended family, close-knit community structures) and the developed world (social welfare, healthcare safety net - people don't go uninsured and risk bankruptcy or avoid doctors due to potential bills in other developed countries).

The USA is a great place to try to become wealthy but a terrible place to be poor.

</comment><comment><USER23> When I was living in the US, the thing I hated the most and that stressed me out the most was that I had to drive everywhere. You can't walk places. Well, you can but it's not fun. And no decent public transport. No bike lanes (well a few but you still had to ride on roads without any).

I have never owned a car in Germany. I can walk to a supermarket or a bakery. I find it so much more pleasant than having to drive everywhere.

<comment><USER24> Your scope might be too broad; the US is a large place. Germany is not so small either. In many cities in the US cars are not a necessity and public transit is adequate.

<comment><USER25> Apart from the big transit-friendly metro areas like New York and Chicago, where else will you not be penalized for being carless?

Even in Chicago, I often feel like the city is giving me a middle finger for not owning a car ... Urban planning and zoning regulations in the US as a whole favor cars over pedestrians.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> At the risk of being flippant: they needed a poll for this?

Reader, reflect on the society in which you live, and ask yourself: if something really crappy happened to your family out of the blue, would someone catch you when you fall?

<comment><USER27> So you're suggesting rather than sourcing the poll for the article they should source their feelings?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> A common cause of stress for people I know is getting and paying for healthcare.

</comment><comment><USER29> I wonder how much the stress level would change if Americans had a tax-funded universal healthcare system?

<comment><USER30> I certainly know people who stay in jobs they hate because they fear going without medical cover for self and family; in contrast, over six jobs in 18 years, I've only once lined up a job before quitting and the idea of having to keep a job for the medical insurance sounds like bondage to me (yes, I know, it's not bondage, it's all just relative - that's what it sounds like _to me_ ). Being able to simply quit (and sometimes just knowing it's a genuine option) when I get sick of work has, I suspect, contributed to my mental health.

I've seen people keep jobs they hate because they need to keep providing for their family. In the worst cases, they come to resent those very same loved ones for what they have to go through on a daily basis. It's not healthy for anyone involved.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Opioid crisis, crushing debt, taking away healthcare from the poor to give to the rich (literally killing people for money) and bankruptcies from healthcare costs and lopsided divorce arrangements. Because of wealth capture of the political process and media, America is simultaneously a paradise for the rich and crushing austerity and wage-slavery for the poor. There's people living rough on the sides of highway embankments because they can't afford housing and killing themselves quickly with opioids because their futures seem so wretched and bleak. It's a third-world country, while many Americans think everything's "great."

</comment><comment><USER32> I've noticed many of my peers claim to be Busy.

I know it's impossible to be productive all day... But I'm curious if these are Americans who claim Stress.

They might be stressed and busy, but these are also my peers with awful time management and make bad Decisions.

I believe the stress is self imposed and optional.

</comment><comment><USER33> I have a theory for this. I am a capitalist but I do believe that America has a real wage growth problem for majority of Americans especially on the lower end of income spectrum [0]. Things have changed where now even though people make more money monetarily, the actual purchasing power is much lower. So now, most American families have both spouses working and of course single income households are only by force and not by choice for most middle class/poor Americans. Not to mention the stress of things like healthcare costs, it really adds up to the stress that I would argue most other developed nations don't have.

So I really think that we need a Capitalistic society with social programs that provide the basic needs to EVERY american. For basic needs, we should not compete with each other. We should only compete for innovation and creativity. I want every American to be able to eat, sleep in a decent place and not worry about healthcare. If that can be taken care of, let them excel if they can in whatever they want to excel at.

[0] [https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most- us...](https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers- real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/)

</comment><comment><USER34> are the countries being bombed in various wars excluded? I always wonder about their stress levels and coping techniques. Here high school stress is leading to depression epidemic.

<comment><USER35> The better (safer, healthier, whatever) a society gets, the greater the impact of any problem (inequity, health, etc) on the people, and the more sensitive they become. It's not at all a given that people in countries that are chronically worse off have more negativity.

Personal example: Lived in a country where corporal punishment of 2 years old is the norm. I didn't like it, but seeing it happen didn't negatively affect me much. Then lived in a country where it was definitely not the norm, and highly discouraged. A decade later, seeing someone slap a 2 year old is definitely invokes a strong negative reaction from me. I'm pretty sure that were I to move back to the first country, within a year it wouldn't.

Example on a wider scale: The level of outrage, fear, and paranoia when someone in the US gets measles. Go live in a country where it's more common, and getting measles is viewed as merely an annoyance. That it is the leading cause of vaccine-preventable death isn't enough to justify the extremes of vitriol I see in the US. At the end of the day, far too many things in the US cause more deaths. We don't call fines and imprisonment for parents who allow their kids to become obese (well, _most_ of us don't).

From some people's perspective, this is also at play with the concept of safe spaces in colleges, _perceived_ microaggressions[0], etc. The US has generally gotten more polite in the last few decades, so there is less tolerance for anything that is not perceived as being polite. And if someone is less polite, it has to be explained by a narrative. The concept that people are simply rude is eroding. Instead, they must be racists, misogynists, homophobes, nationalist, etc.

Science and technology do wonders for physical health and physical quality of life. Unfortunately, countries like the US focus a lot more on those without focusing on the required mental perspectives that need to go along with it. You're simply not going to improve people's perceptions of how well they are doing without addressing psychological factors. Not to get too philosophical, but most of a person's sense of suffering is generated by the narrative the person is telling him/herself. In a different country, when someone catches measles, it's "Pity." Or even "Thank goodness he'll get it out of his system and be immune" (which was the mentality when I was growing up). Over here, it's "X should go to jail for refusing to vaccinate the kid!" That mentality will no doubt reduce the amount of measles in a given society, but it is _not_ going to improve the society's mental well being. Other strategies are needed.

[0] I say perceived, because it is often invoked for behavior that has little to do with what you see on the Wiki page for microaggressions - in my work place we've been taught that appearing distracted while someone is talking to you is a microaggression, for example.

<comment><USER25> > You're simply not going to improve people's perceptions of how well they are > doing without addressing psychological factors. Not to get too > philosophical, but most of a person's sense of suffering is generated by the > narrative the person is telling him/herself.

I spent my formative years in both a poor, poverty-stricken country and a rich first-world country. I couldn't agree with this more.

You'd think that a more affluent society would result in healthier, happier people but it really doesn't ... there are so many psychological factors that come into play.

<comment><USER35> Frankly, you don't even need to compare richer vs poorer countries. Just compare today's generation with older generations.

My father was significantly older than me. He didn't have electricity early in his life. He didn't have comforts like an electric fan till he was in his teens. He could afford air conditioners only when he was in his 40's. When he was younger, smallpox was a constant presence in society (measles is nothing in comparison). He went from being close to food insecurity to not having to worry about food and shelter. I could make a really long list.

Now while in general he was a content person, at times it was clear that all these gains (with the possible exception of not having to worry about food and shelter) played little role in his mental happiness. As society progressed, the reference points all got reset.

This isn't all that different from comparing rich with poor societies. If even in a rich society you find that all these gains (which even the poor in society benefited from) haven't made a big impact on one's mental happiness, one shouldn't expect the same when comparing rich with poor societies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I wonder how it compares to even more workaholic countries like Japan or South Korea.

</comment><comment><USER37> Yes, of course.

Americans currently have record low unemployment (especially for minorities), rising wages, a roaring stock market and fewer race riots than when the previous president was in office.

So for some, it is not a stressful time.

</comment><comment><USER38> Duh. All you have to do is fly from New York to Copenhagen and back to understand how angry and stressed we are, as well as what kind of life would be possible if our nation put caring about everybody's quality of life above power and greed.

<comment><USER39> Visiting Denmark (and Finland, Sweden, Netherlands) is what it took to make me realize we're (USA) doing it wrong. Those places just feel... low stress, safe and normal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> > When Gallup investigated the responses more closely, it found that being > under 50, earning a low income and having a dim view of President Trump's > job performance were correlated with negative experiences among adults in > the United States.

> But there still isn't enough data to say for sure whether any of those > factors were behind the feelings of stress, worry and anger.

> "We are seeing patterns that would point to a political explanation, or a > polarization explanation, with the U.S. data, but can we say that > definitively? No," Ms. Ray said.

The United States is under attack from Russia. We are involved in a propaganda war, a real physical war attacking our election infrastructure, and the President encourages it to continue while cutting/removing our ability to secure our elections and defend our democracy. He states that he is intent on not leaving office peacefully in the future and that he likes China's one- party for life.

I get that this may not be conclusively proven to increase stress on Americans, but I would be _shocked_ if it were not a major contributing factor. Every single person I've spoken to IRL about the Trump-related-stress- and-depression concept eagerly agrees that this is weighing heavily on people in a very constant, deep and personal way.

Obviously, personal finances, job security, and other close things are likely equally or more important. But Trump has also eliminated many people's feelings of financial security or job security, as he has personally chosen to hold paychecks from a million people on a racist vendetta, directly removing those people's personal income while still demanding they work.

Surely it can be said that at least for some large portion of Americans, it is true that Trump's policies and behavior on the job _Are_ hurting us.

<comment><USER41> What you said is so mild compared to the rhetoric deployed by right-wing HN commenters every day--few of whom get the same reprimand from the mods that you just got.

<comment><USER42> We don't see nearly everything—not even close. Please help us by flagging such inappropriate comments or emailing firstname.lastname@example.com.

<comment><USER41> Will do, thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> _" When Gallup investigated the responses more closely, it found that being under 50, earning a low income and having a dim view of President Trump's job performance were correlated with negative experiences among adults in the United States."_

I'm sure the media plays a huge part in this. Realistically speaking, American's lives are practically no different than before Trump was elected, yet almost all major media outlets produce Trump-centric outrage bait every day. If people actually looked at their own personal experiences vs what the media tells them to think about, they would probably be a lot less stressed out (about that issue in particular). The New York Times is ironically one of the top purveyors of Trump flavored stress.

<comment><USER44> Blaming a temporary administration for the problem gives them a new enemy every cycle, keeping you distracted from the larger issues and problems.

<comment><USER45> The administration may be temporary, but they have control of our military, our weapons, and our international policy. They have influence over slow- moving change in the country, and direct impact on faster changes via executive orders.

Yes, there are are deep systemic issues that go beyond the temporary leadership, and yes, those are important. But that doesn't mean the leadership should not be a concern of ours.</comment></comment></comment>


Ethics and Data Science - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@dpatil/ethics-data-science-ff21d0c29346 <comment><AUTHOR> Link to free kindle edition - [https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07GTC8ZN7/](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07GTC8ZN7/)</comment>


Do you think successful startup founders spend as much time as you on YCNews? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Paul told me to come here. I do everything Paul says. I'm not sure why I'm not rich yet.

</comment><comment><USER3> Nope, as I posted in another thread, trying to code all the time gets you a microsecond view, when you (most of the time) need a year-long view.

I have a hard enough time distracting myself from micro-optimization etc without trying to intentionally limit my goofing off.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Do you think you may be closer to success if you spend less time on YC News or Digg? Maybe use that time to clean up your messy code. Just a question.

<comment><USER4> Touche.

Anyway, very few people can spend literally _all_ their time immersed in code and maintain their productivity. (I've heard that Bill Joy could, which may be why he invented an OS and made a billion dollars). For most of us, we're _less_ productive if we try to code round the clock for days on end. This applies even to very wealthy people like Bill Gates (hobby: reading biographies of famous leaders) and Larry Ellison (hobby: yacht and fighter jet races).

news.YC is a better way to fill that downtime than, say, watching TV or playing WoW.

Besides, I've already spent all evening cleaning up my messy code, fixed like a dozen bugs, and am currently banging my head against what appears to be a bug in Web.py. A small break is called for.

<comment><USER5> Where DO people like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Bill Joy hang out online? Surely they need to chill out some time, too?

While online discussions like YC news are a big waste of time, I find that they tend to inspire me a lot, too.

<comment><USER6> Both Bill Gates & Steve Jobs have said in interviews they read Engadget =)

What I wonder is if Bill Gates has read PG's Microsoft is Dead essay...

Any top Microsofties in da house...? (yah, right.. =)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


When Military School Offers the Right Kind of Discipline for At-Risk Students - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/11/the-right-kind-of-school-discipline/415506/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> I think it's pretty clear that what a military-style school can bring to the table is a stand-in for paternal care to children without fathers, or with bad fathers. Traditional schooling doesn't really instil confidence or pride, in my experience; it's much more about not rocking the boat, or rocking the boat in the way that the administrators would prefer (which, of course…isn't rocking the boat).

As mapt elsethread indicates, these things can go wrong, just as the traditional, maternal school system goes wrong (zero tolerance? students disrespecting teachers‽).

</comment><comment><USER3> Key quote:

>And ultimately, for all the success indicated in the MDRC study, the same study shows that three years after completing the program, there are few significant differences between graduates and their peers in the control group on measures of crime, delinquency, health, or lifestyle outcomes.

</comment><comment><USER4> This article begins with the premise that programs that treat disruptive children with kindness aren't working. His evidence is an article from the LA Times: [http://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-school- discipli...](http://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-school- discipline-20151108-story.html)

Key text in the LA Times articles includes this:

"some teachers are dubious, in part because high staff turnover has stymied efforts. A highly regarded restorative justice counselor was let go in January because foundation funding ran out, and 10 of the 11 teachers on the school's restorative justice task force last year have left the campus... Schools with enough staff and training, however, report success."

Well yeah. You often get results that roughly match how well you run your program.

Maybe a more important issue is in plain sight: "An ideal span of control in an organization, according to modern organizational experts is approximately 15 to 20 subordinates per supervisor or manager. However, some experts with a more traditional focus believe that 5-6 subordinates per supervisor or manager is ideal." ([http://www.yourerc.com/blog/post/Span-of-Control-How-Many- Em...](http://www.yourerc.com/blog/post/Span-of-Control-How-Many-Employees- Should-Your-Supervisors-Manage.aspx))

A teacher typically manages 25 and up.

</comment><comment><USER5> There is a long history of horrific shit going down in these sorts of environments.

"At-risk students" who volunteer to be there and are cherrypicked from the top of a list of applicants are... not exactly the best statistical environment in which to judge success or failure of the teaching method. Even if such an approach were genuinely successful, the downsides to a slightly higher graduation rate may be considerable.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/troubledteens](https://www.reddit.com/r/troubledteens)

[http://astartforteens.org/](http://astartforteens.org/)

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

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2198956/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2198956/)

My experience in the industry is limited to a six week summer camp. I went through a program wherein we were provided insufficient food & water and subjected to forced march in the wilderness, with constant entreaties to conform to their weird cultlike conflict resolution framework. To get us to behave they frequently threatened us with forced admission to their sister camp, which was marketed as an alternative to juvie, and ran on a level system (a more carceral aspect up to and including stress positions). I became suicidal after about two days on this regime; I 'gave up' and sat down on the trail half a dozen times, but eventually gave in to their insistence was that this was self-defeating and threaten my campmates because I would merely be prolonging the time to the next resupply, and that no authority figure would do anything but try to help them. I lost 40 pounds of bodyweight in 21 days, developed open pressure sores & lost the ability to walk without pain for a while. I staged a breakdown in front of the nurse when we got back to basecamp, to try and get my parents on the phone (I failed). They put me in a subprogram for kids three or four years my junior for the second session. The abuse there was tame, limited to escalating penalties when we did something judged disruptive, like make a disappointed face, until we gave in and apologized in the proper form. Two children that year ran away, despite threats to have the neighbor turn his dogs loose on them; One ended up back with her parents, one in the prison camp. Another (a naive and very Mormon little 10-year-old) was taken to a North Carolina state police station where the counselors got an officer to threaten him verbally with 24hrs of lockup, because his crying was getting out of hand.

I count myself lucky that I didn't face anything harsher, but never in my wildest dreams would I test some child by admission to this largely unregulated the-beatings-will-stop-when-morale-improves BS. Many of them _brag_ about adopting coercive tactics invented by cults to keep people in the program, get them to conform, and 'get your child under control'. Some of these involve things a prison warden would not be permitted to do. Mine seems to have been marketted in parallel as a disciplinary aid (one camp-mate was there on court order) and as a "treatment" for things from ADHD (my ticket) to autism. The deaths that sometimes occur pale in comparison to the amount of PTSD that comes out of these places.

<comment><USER6> I'm wondering who did run the camp you experienced? I would like to believe that actual public military organization run camps or schools (such as the one hilighted in the article which is run by National Guard) would not be such horrorshows as private organizations might be.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Draw "text-mode" diagrams using Braille characters - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mlang/diagrams-braille <comment><USER2> This is interesting. I wrote a Python library a while ago that exploits Braille characters: [https://github.com/dheera/python- termgraphics](https://github.com/dheera/python-termgraphics)

And if you're into robots, I also wrote a ROS topic visualizer: [https://github.com/dheera/rosshow](https://github.com/dheera/rosshow)

</comment><comment><USER3> Braille characters are fun in the terminal. I wrote a toy tool to convert images to Braille years ago[1].

Here's an example of converting a world map[2] to Braille[3].

[1]: [https://github.com/beefsack/go-dot](https://github.com/beefsack/go-dot)

[2]: [https://i.imgur.com/ZoIYe2N.png](https://i.imgur.com/ZoIYe2N.png)

[3]: [https://i.imgur.com/5VR35bS.png](https://i.imgur.com/5VR35bS.png)

<comment><AUTHOR> ImageMagick can convert to Braille already. Just use convert and the ubrl extension.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very cool. Reminds me of one of my favorite Julia packages:

[https://github.com/Evizero/UnicodePlots.jl](https://github.com/Evizero/UnicodePlots.jl)

It uses Braille characters as well as others to render all kinds of plots in a text terminal. So handy sometimes, and so reliable.

</comment><comment><USER5> > brldia circle 1

Is that one of them old-fashioned circles from Indiana back when pi equaled 3? :)

<comment><USER6> It seems that in some fonts the Braille space (code point 0x2800) is not the same width as the other Braille characters. On this Windows computer it seems that "Segoe UI Symbol", a Microsoft font, is being used by default, and has that problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> How do braille displays deal with pages containing these unicode characters? Could something along these lines offer a way to make diagrams accessible to blind users? (a few lines at a time, anyway...)

<comment><USER8> I'm going to guess not well.

Whether written, spoken, or extruded as Braille, words are generally used for a serialized conveyance of information. Images on the other hand are meaningful because of the spatial relationships of their content.

You're probably better off describing the visuals.

<comment><AUTHOR> As a blind person, I have to disagree with your assertion. Do you actually have experience with this stuff, or are you just guessing?</comment></comment></comment>


What will Covid-19 Immunity Certificates really look like? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@dev_zm/what-will-covid-19-immunity-certificates-really-look-like-a6a976b00cb <comment><USER2> Hopefully they'll look like nothing.

</comment><comment><USER3> Papers please.</comment>


Show HN: Octaspire Dern – Programming language - <AUTHOR> http://www.octaspire.com/dern/ <comment><USER2> This page doesn't do a good job of explaining what is interesting or unique about the language or why I might want to learn more about it. I'd suggest revising the 'About' section to try and focus more on answering those questions. Although given it's name means 'obscure language' maybe that's deliberate.

<comment><USER3> Yeah I think this was more of a fun-time hobby project than a serious candidate for the NBL. Quoting the note:

"This is the first language I have ever designed or implemented. There are also a lot of features not yet implemented and probably bugs not yet fixed. The interpreter is currently also just a tree walker, and not a faster bytecode vm."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Note that string delimiters in Dern are [ and ] and not "; this way dern > code can be written inside C-programs without escaping.

Interesting approach. I suppose this makes whitespace inside square brackets significant. And quotes inside of these brackets would have to be escaped if written inside C-programs.

<comment><USER5> Not sure why you think whitespace inside square brackets would be significant? I didn't get that from OP.

I took this square-bracket approach as well in my teaching language ([http://akkartik.name/post/mu](http://akkartik.name/post/mu)). Benefits:

a) Since there's distinct characters for each end, nesting strings is convenient.

b) Since there's distinct characters for each end, the need for escaping is reduced. (I reduced the need for escaping further by having a backslash escape a whole series of backslashes rather than just the very next character. That way each iteration of escaping increases a run of backslashes by one rather than doubling it.)

c) In the context of a teaching language, I found it useful to pun square brackets for function definitions and strings. That allowed me to explain this:

      def factorial x:num -> result:num [
        ...
      ]

as a command ( _def_ ) that takes some primitive arguments and a bit of text, turns it into code and adds it to the list of a computer's functions, somehow. That helps introduce students to the idea of a compiler. (Long before we delve further into it, of course.)

The drawback of punning square brackets for function definitions and strings is that in different contexts I want to permit or be oblivious to comments. The rule Mu's lexer uses pervasively is that if the very next character after the '[' is a newline, it's sensitive to comments when detecting nested square brackets to determine where the string ends. This only makes sense because Mu is statement-oriented; every statement is required to start on a new line, and there's no delimiter like a semi-colon to get around that.

Anyways, this is sort of an extended description of a very narrow set of design decisions. Just in case someone finds it useful.

<comment><USER6> I would think that whitespace becomes significant inside string-delimiting square brackets for the same reason that whitespace is significant inside string-delimiting quotes: whitespace characters are characters like any other. I would expect `[ abcd ]` to be different from `[abcd]` in the same way that `" abcd"` is different from `"abcd"` in languages that use quotes.

Is there something I'm missing that mitigates this intuition? Does this language (or, for that matter, the demo language you wrote for your class) ignore leading or trailing whitespace inside square brackets? What about excess whitespace between words (that is, whitespace beyond a single space or tab)? If so, if indeed leading/trailing/excess whitespace is collapsed inside of square bracket delimited strings, how would I create a string with leading or trailing whitespace or extra space between words if I wanted to?

Honest questions; don't mean to criticize, just eager to learn.

<comment><USER5> Oh I see. Perhaps I misunderstood what undershirt meant by "significant whitespace". Yes, in Mu [ abcd ] is different from [abcd]. I believe that to be true about Dern as well. This is all exactly as for text inside double- quotes in C.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Every variable and function definition in Dern must be documented by a > documentation string. Dern also makes sure that every formal function > parameter is documented in the documentation of function definition.

Interesting. Should this be available as a compiler warning in other languages?

<comment><USER8> Definitely not. I can't imagine exploratory programming in a language that dictates overhead right from the beginning, and even later on some stuff is just too obvious to document.

Compilers should stick to their job: turning human readable code into efficient machine executable code with a minimum of fuss, a maximum of speed and errors where the human readable code leads to either undefined behavior or is simply incorrect.

Enforcing coding styles and documentation requirements should be left to plug- ins for your favorite CI set-up or, alternatively, to stand alone executables or scripts.

The only thing forced documentation will lead to is lots of boilerplate or blank stuff to satisfy the compiler, it will _not_ lead to better documentation.

This is roughly the state of affairs with lots of autodoc docs, it's rare to see good documentation that has been automatically produced but it is very common to see page after page of extremely poor automatically generated documentation. Which then of course gets no love at all because after all, the documentation is already done.

<comment><USER9> Exactly. I've seen my fair share of

      /**
       * Gets the thing for the ID.
       *
       * @param id the ID of the thing
       * @return the thing
       */
      Thing* getThing(int id) {
        return things[id];
      }

<comment><USER10> It seems to be a dynamically typed language. So they require developers to put type annotations into comments so that the compiler cannot make use of them. Oh well.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Recursive Mono and Sans, a free variable type family - <AUTHOR> https://www.recursive.design/ <comment><USER2> "The characters within both subfamilies, Sans & Mono, maintain the exact same width across all font styles, independently of the values set on the Weight, Casual, Slant, and Italic axes. You can therefore use Recursive to create animated font transitions without breaking the layout of UI elements like menus and buttons."

This is a useful feature - is it common in other fonts?

I certainly have run into problems in HTML with bold text causing button widths to change.

<comment><USER3> I've seen that in other contexts as well. Like slide presentations reflowing paragraph text when a word gets bolded. It's definitely a useful feature to be able to guarantee that never happens.

<comment><USER2> A width change that causes reflow is the worst - especially if it happens on mouseover because at specific window widths a button can "run away" from the pointer, or get into a bistable flickering reflow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hard to discriminate between captial letter "O" and number "0". Not that good for actual coding IMO.

P.S.: This world really does NOT need any more look-good-only-under-Chrome websites.

<comment><USER5> If you use the "mono" slider, it adds the angled line inside zero for differentiation while monospacing the characters. Presumably, you'd want monospace characters for programming, so I think that's fair.

Your criticism is true for non-monospacing, though I think any fonts suffer from that.

<comment><USER6> There are people out there who code in variable spaced fonts. Not sure how they can myself but some report feeling more productive that way, and for them this could be more of a consideration.

<comment><USER7> I just started doing this last week! Using Iosevka Aile.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It takes effort to figure out which languages/scripts are supported.

The FAQ says that over 200 languages are supported but what they actually mean is that the font covers the Unicode Basic Latin, Latin-1 Supplement and possibly some of the Latin Extended.

That is, the font does not support yet anything non-Latin.

<comment><USER9> The list is in the penultimate part of the main page. There are no anchor links, so here's the full list:

————

Abenaki, Afaan Oromo, Afar, Afrikaans, Albanian, Alsatian, Amis, Anuta, Aragonese, Aranese, Aromanian, Arrernte, Arvanitic (Latin), Asturian, Atayal, Aymara, Azerbaijani, Bashkir (Latin), Basque, Belarusian (Latin), Bemba, Bikol, Bislama, Bosnian, Breton, Cape Verdean Creole, Catalan, Cebuano, Chamorro, Chavacano, Chichewa, Chickasaw, Cimbrian, Cofán, Cornish, Corsican, Creek, Crimean Tatar (Latin), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dawan, Delaware, Dholuo, Drehu, Dutch, English, Esperanto, Estonian, Faroese, Fijian, Filipino, Finnish, Folkspraak, French, Frisian, Friulian, Gagauz (Latin), Galician, Ganda, Genoese, German, Gikuyu, Gooniyandi, Greenlandic (Kalaallisut), Guadeloupean Creole, Gwich'in, Haitian Creole, Hän, Hawaiian, Hiligaynon, Hopi, Hotcąk (Latin), Hungarian, Icelandic, Ido, Igbo, Ilocano, Indonesian, Interglossa, Interlingua, Irish, Istro-Romanian, Italian, Jamaican, Javanese (Latin), Jèrriais, Kaingang, Kala Lagaw Ya, Kapampangan (Latin), Kaqchikel, Karakalpak (Latin), Karelian (Latin), Kashubian, Kikongo, Kinyarwanda, Kiribati, Kirundi, Klingon, Kurdish (Latin), Ladin, Latin, Latino sine Flexione, Latvian, Lithuanian, Lojban, Lombard, Low Saxon, Luxembourgish, Maasai, Makhuwa, Malay, Maltese, Manx, Māori, Marquesan, Megleno-Romanian, Meriam Mir, Mirandese, Mohawk, Moldovan, Montagnais, Montenegrin, Murrinh- Patha, Nagamese Creole, Nahuatl, Ndebele, Neapolitan, Ngiyambaa, Niuean, Noongar, Norwegian, Novial, Occidental, Occitan, Old Icelandic, Old Norse, Onĕipŏt, Oshiwambo, Ossetian (Latin), Palauan, Papiamento, Piedmontese, Polish, Portuguese, Potawatomi, Q'eqchi', Quechua, Rarotongan, Romanian, Romansh, Rotokas, Sami (Inari Sami), Sami (Lule Sami), Sami (Northern Sami), Sami (Southern Sami), Samoan, Sango, Saramaccan, Sardinian, Scottish Gaelic, Serbian (Latin), Seri, Seychellois Creole, Shawnee, Shona, Sicilian, Silesian, Slovak, Slovenian, Slovio (Latin), Somali, Sorbian (Lower Sorbian), Sorbian (Upper Sorbian), Sotho (Northern), Sotho (Southern), Spanish, Sranan, Sundanese (Latin), Swahili, Swazi, Swedish, Tagalog, Tahitian, Tetum, Tok Pisin, Tokelauan, Tongan, Tshiluba, Tsonga, Tswana, Tumbuka, Turkish, Turkmen (Latin), Tuvaluan, Tzotzil, Uzbek (Latin), Venetian, Vepsian, Vietnamese, Volapük, Võro, Wallisian, Walloon, Waray-Waray, Warlpiri, Wayuu, Welsh, Wik- Mungkan, Wiradjuri, Wolof, Xavante, Xhosa, Yapese, Yindjibarndi, Zapotec, Zarma, Zazaki, Zulu, Zuni

————

Support for non-English letters makes this more than a tech demo IMO, the whole thing is pretty impressive.

<comment><USER8> I have seen this list.

Let's search if "Greek" is supported. It is, because I can see "Creek"? Creek is not Greek, it is the language/script of an American Indian tribe. Then, the list is too long to find a specific language.

What should have happened, is to add in the document an extra paragraph that reads like this:

> This font currently supports the Latin-based Unicode character ranges. See > below the full list of language support.

<comment><USER9> You read too fast. Above the list, you'll find this paragraph:

————

To meet the needs of global communication, Recursive supports a wide range of Latin-based languages, including Vietnamese. It also comes with an extended set of currencies, symbols, fractions, and arrows.

<comment><USER8> It does indeed say that.

I do not think this has been a last-minute addition. I read the paragraph again, and I found it difficult to quickly scan the text that is presented in that font. The letters appear to me (Linux/X11) as too thin and faint.

Does anyone else have this issue?

<comment><USER9> In case you had doubts, I'm not in any way affiliated with the font (though I find it pretty cool, and appreciate the amount of work that has gone into building it up to this point).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If you also don't know what "single-stroke casual signpainting"-style is, here are some links to help you:

Google image search: [https://www.google.com/search?q=single- stroke+casual+signpai...](https://www.google.com/search?q=single- stroke+casual+signpainting&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X)

Nice Youtube video: [https://youtu.be/y3WZNSGBsoc?t=35](https://youtu.be/y3WZNSGBsoc?t=35) [skip to 0:35]

<comment><USER11> Also check out @oliversigns on instagram or this youtube video if you're allergic to social media: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOk4iEOmCL0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOk4iEOmCL0)

Soooo satisfying to watch

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm a bit disappointed there's no x-height control I can decrease to get longer ascenders and shorter lowercase letters. It's a recurring annoyance I have with almost every font being released nowadays, I find their x-heights consistently too big and ascenders consistently too short for my tastes.

</comment><comment><USER13> This looks like a very impressive evolution in font tech. Props!

</comment><comment><USER14> Aside from the technical comments here, "warmly energetic" is an accurate and endearing description.

</comment><comment><USER15> I really like the idea of variable type fonts, especially when they go beyond the simple weight or spacing. This allows for smooth transitions and innovative patterns in UIs.

If anyone knows more such interesting variable type fonts, please link to them.

<comment><USER15> I went through v-fonts.com and found few interesting applications of technology:

[https://v-fonts.com/fonts/cheee-variable](https://v-fonts.com/fonts/cheee- variable) [https://v-fonts.com/fonts/this-man-this- monster](https://v-fonts.com/fonts/this-man-this-monster) [https://v-fonts.com/fonts/whoa](https://v-fonts.com/fonts/whoa) [https://v-fonts.com/fonts/kicker-variable](https://v-fonts.com/fonts/kicker- variable) [https://v-fonts.com/fonts/graduate](https://v-fonts.com/fonts/graduate) [https://v-fonts.com/fonts/fs-pimlico-glow-vf](https://v-fonts.com/fonts/fs- pimlico-glow-vf)

Most use it to modify weight, and sadly weight also affects the spacing between characters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> That might just be a great font for casual tech docs, like programming hands- on tutorials, where you want the typography to invite your readers to experimentation, rather than having the text look like set in stone. Unfortunately, it has a double-story "a", and the "fi" ligature spacing to the right looks off in the page's heading.

</comment><comment><USER17> The cube was fun to play with on my iPad but it took me a while to figure out that there was more content below it and how to scroll down to see it (for those wondering: you can scroll on the little bottom part).

</comment><comment><USER18> Oddly, the left and right curly braces seem to have different vertical alignments in the "sans" (proportional) variant with medium weight and "linear" style.

</comment><comment><USER19> I should really have a Serif version as well. Not a huge fan of the "casual" look, but going in the opposite direction to a "stricter" Serif would be nice.

</comment><comment><USER20> Nice font and all, but the page is unreadable after the demo showing a normal font wrapping, making the page jump, because… well… it makes the page jump around.

<comment><USER9> What browser/device are you reading this on?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I did not understand much of the copy, the animation was very slow, but I do like the font. Will test tomorrow how well it handles without sub pixel antialias.

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm on Firefox 70.0.1 on Ubuntu 16.04, and the only thing I can change is the size, and the light/dark. Nothing else makes a difference. Shame.

<comment><USER23> In Firefox Developer 71.0b7, it works for me on Windows 10, but not Windows 7. So maybe it has something to do with the OS?

<comment><USER24> Yes, the underlying operating system needs to support the new OpenType spec 1.8 to support variable fonts in a browser.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Interesting concept.

I've gotten used to programming fonts with ligatures. But I'm not every use case. We live in an amazing era of abundance...

</comment><comment><USER26> I like it but the x is a little unfortunately swastika-shaped at high casual and high slant.

<comment><USER27> ...seriously?

<comment><USER26> Take a look for yourself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Is this font supported by out of the box Mac or Windows fonts?

</comment><comment> d--b Great font for letters. IMHO, the numbers aren't so good.

<comment><USER29> They look kind of having their weights upside down. Usually the upper side is smaller so for an example 8 looks really weird.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Just needs a _condensed_ axis. Very cool.

</comment><comment><USER31> This is so sick! [in a good way] I wish it supported ligatures.

<comment><USER32> It supports => for me. haven't tested any others

<comment><USER33> <= and => seem to produce two completely different types of ligatures, unfortunately. No cool ligatures for << and >>.

Edit, I see there is a proper greater than or equal to ligature, but it defaults to an arrow when => is typed. Not sure how to key the other.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> This entire page is broken on Firefox 70.

<comment><AUTHOR> It isn't on my system.</comment></comment>


DHH on why ruby, monkey patching, freedom, etc - <AUTHOR> http://vimeo.com/17420638

<comment><USER2> I find it ironic that he talks about how using the "right tool for the job" is a falsehood when his products have C backends. Did I miss something?</comment>


ExpressJS sold by TJ to StrongLoop - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/strongloop/express/issues/2264#issuecomment-50567002

<comment><USER2> _Sold_ or he just gave away? There was actually money involved?

</comment><comment><USER3> Since it's an MIT license what was sold? The trademark?

<comment><USER4> So far I gather that the expressjs.com domain, the GitHub repo, and the npm module were transferred to StrongLoop's control. I don't believe that Express is actually trademarked (and likely isn't trademarkable at all, being such a common dictionary word).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> They probably get the npm name

<comment><USER6> fyi: [http://strongloop.com/strongblog/tj-holowaychuk- sponsorship-...](http://strongloop.com/strongblog/tj-holowaychuk-sponsorship- of-express/)</comment></comment>


Ingenious Designs That Will Fool Your Eyes - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/design/2013/09/these-smart-designs-will-play-tricks-on-your-eyes/?viewall=true

<comment><USER2> If you enjoy these, you should check out some of the installation pieces by Olafur Eliasson. His oeuvre is more about playing with/exploiting perception -- one of my favorite pieces was a part of his exhibit at the Chicago MCA in summer 2009, which was a dark room with a central illuminated waterfall. The combination of a single reference point coupled with a totally matte darkness at the periphery meant that every step someone took that wasn't directly towards the waterfall resulted in them reflexively extending their hands to avoid a (possible) collision. Really exceptional stuff.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'll bite — how's the lamp made?

<comment><USER4> At a guess, I'd say its a round fluorescent tube hidden in the rolled/folded edge of the lamp - shining light up into the dome, which with the _right_ angles should reflect back the light with the same intensity from any point. (Not entirely sure if it needs to be a parabolic shape or not)

The dome itself is most likely double-layered, so that you can hide your wiring in between the two layers.

<comment><USER5> I'd guess the shape is an ellipse. I remember learning way back in geometry that ellipses have special reflective properties: [http://www.math.ubc.ca/~cass/courses/m309-01a/dawson/](http://www.math.ubc.ca/~cass/courses/m309-01a/dawson/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Meh. If you like this sort of thing, you'll enjoy FEZ.

FEZ is a 2012 game, available in the current Humble Bundle at [https://www.humblebundle.com/](https://www.humblebundle.com/) .. which I would characterize as a more interactive and celebratory accretion of spatio- visual mismatch and cunning.

I'd recommend _not_ previewing it or reading about it: just buy it, then play 30 minutes of it. You'll go nuts. It's really trippy. (Mark of the Ninja, in the same bundle, is also great)

Less than the cost of transport to a gallery, and far more engaging. The internet is the art gallery of our era.

<comment><USER7> I haven't played FEZ, but if you like platformers, try Braid.

<comment><USER6> I've played braid and FEZ is definitely very much more connected, being built around oddities of 3D geometry and projections. It's almost like a platformer meets nintendo-retro meets _Flatland_. Honestly, you'd like it, you should try it!</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: I built a successful product using microdata - <AUTHOR> https://blog.rubini.solutions/microdata/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi all,

Founder here.

I just wrote this informative blog post on how I built a product by researching microdata on my target market.

By scouring the web and collecting microdata, you can use clues left by your competitors' customers to build your product around their weaknesses.

Their weaknesses become your UVP.

Hope you like it!

<comment><USER2> The product launch a few days ago made an interesting "Show HN." Because there is nothing to "play with or try out" blog posts are not really in the spirit of "Show HN." Even when the author is posting, blog posts or articles are more suited as regular submissions.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool! Will publish there next time. Thanks for the feedback! =)</comment></comment></comment>


How Linux Kernel Development Impacts Security - <AUTHOR> http://www.eweek.com/security/how-linux-kernel-development-impacts-security.html <comment><USER2> > At CoreOS Fest, Greg Kroah-Hartman, maintainer of the Linux kernel, declares > that almost all bugs can be security issues.

That sounds like the opposite of Linus' thinking, which is "security bugs are no worse than any other type of bug."

They may sound similar, but one implies that most bugs can be dangerous, while the other implies that security bugs are not dangerous.

<comment><USER3> Could have sworn that the qualification from Torvalds about that line is the very same one GKH is stating, that any bug has the potential to be a security bug.</comment></comment>


Autocomplete in TextMate, TextEdit, and other OSX Apps - <AUTHOR> http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20101027005328921

<comment><USER2> Wow. Weird that I've never accidentally triggered this; I'm a vim user.

Another nice, "hidden" feature:

CMD+SHIFT+G when in Finder opens a dialog in which you can manually enter a path with tab-completion. Also works in dialogs when opening/saving files.</comment>


The Web's Walking Dead: AOL & Yahoo - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/can-aol-and-yahoo-come-back-to-life-09152011.html

<comment><USER2> I dont know about AOL but yahoo is far from being dead.

<comment><USER3> Dead in the tech kinda of a way: no expected major hits, no 20% growth a year, just milking what they have now.</comment></comment>


Beyond apps: These startups are tackling real-world problems - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-57599422-76/beyond-apps-these-startups-are-tackling-real-world-problems/

<comment><USER2> Rather than getting defensive in response to this article let's actually try and understand what the author is trying to say.

It's nothing to do with "nobody thought that x would take off until it did!" AirBnB and Dropbox were solving big problems in innovative ways.

> For example, take one of the stars of the show, SpoonRocket, an organic food > delivery service that charges only $6 a meal and was described exuberantly > as "fast food 2.0" and the "the Uber of food." While it's a great idea -- > the service cooks only one meat and vegetarian meal a day in bulk and > delivers with heater-equipped trucks -- the presentation was an almost > comical display of Valley startup priorities.

What the author is trying to say is that the startups that sell are the ones that can compare themselves to other, successful companies and talk about money rather than pointing out how great a product is and what good it's doing for people.

The startups he's praising are addressing problems which will not only make the founders some money but also are creating some social good.

> But what was once a springboard for major players in now-colossal markets > like shared services and consumer cloud storage has of late been consumed by > the mundane, overdone, or just outright indulgent. This year was no > exception: there were not one, but two food delivery services; a laundry > delivery company; a flower delivery company; another supposed email killer; > and a company that hopes to replace physical restaurant menus with digital > versions on your tablet. You can hold your applause.

Here, he's despairing at all the copycat companies which are taking models of existing businesses and modifying them slightly. These companies are adding value in places where, arguably, no value needs to added. They're not changing the world, they're just making the lives of people who already have fairly easy lives easier, because it's easy to replicate and is already tested.

He may not have put his point across very well but I can see why he's upset. What we expect from YC companies is game-changing innovation, really big thinking and super cool, new tech. What we often get is the same businesses copied-and-pasted a few times masquerading as an innovative, <whatever> 2.0 business. That doesn't mean they shouldn't exist or succeed; hopefully they will. It's just not very interesting or exciting.

</comment><comment><USER3> _"... it's still difficult to believe that any of the recent startup school candidates will ever grow into tech darlings like Airbnb or Dropbox did."_

It was once difficult for many people to believe that Airbnb or Dropbox would become ... Airbnb and Dropbox.

</comment><comment><USER4> The backlash on "frivolous" apps is refreshing to see on HN :o)

</comment><comment><USER5> refreshing to see some real problem solving in the valley, after unrealistic companies like "twitter" and "airbnb". an entire service based around a character limit? a site where you rent your spare bedroom to random strangers? These people are crazy and those things will never work. I'm really glad to finally see some companies that I can understand. Except for this weird food delivery one.

<comment><USER6> This is a joke, right? Airbnb has changed the way I, and many other people, travel abroad. It's made a marketplace (in holiday accommodation and, perhaps more importantly, local hospitality) where there wasn't one before.

<comment><USER7> Hosting has long been a respectable way to travel but its marketing wasn't scaled.

AirBnB is a very nice looking Craigslist for hosting. It may have created new behaviors among some millennials, but the _chambre d 'hôte_ crowd has been doing this since the 1800s.

[http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chambre_d'hôtes](http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chambre_d'hôtes)

I strongly preferred this approach versus hostels. I looked rooms up in dog- eared books at the tiny local "tourist office" (often sharing duty as post office or tobacco store). There was always something dirt cheap, though it was never quite clear what you'd find when you got to the room.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The poor, the elderly, etc. is abit of a change from a blinkered focus on ABC1s and their offspring. It's perhaps not so much the means, but the markets they are targeting which are notable.</comment>


Command & Conquer in HTML 5 - <AUTHOR> http://www.adityaravishankar.com/projects/games/command-and-conquer/z

<comment><USER2> Already posted here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3473024>

</comment><comment><USER3> I loved the C&C series. By the way, you need to fix a typo in the url.</comment>


Show HN: a bash based data store written in python  - <AUTHOR> http://blog.alonsebastian.com.ar/post/16970569690/bash-db-a-bash-based-data-store-written-in-python

<comment><USER2> This reminds me that you can do a lot without having to setup an RDBMS. Take Hacker News for instance. However, the OP uses a file as a table, whereas HN uses unix directories as tables and uses files as table records, afaik.

<comment><USER3> So what about managing indices (or at least map-reduce views - CouchDB style).

I'd really quite like the option of having something like CouchDB that kept documents as separate files but still allowed efficient querying.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> hey I did something similar but in pure bash (plus grep and cat) :) <https://github.com/pabloPXL/kissdb>

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, that is reaally cool, despite I needed the native interface with python objects I think full bash sounds cool too ^^

<comment><USER4> Thanks! but I can only see it as a bad hack, as it's just grep doing almost all the dirty work :) btw I got the idea from <http://zachholman.com> and his boom-db...</comment></comment></comment>


NASA Budgets for a Trip to the Moon - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/11/science/nasa-budget-moon.html <comment><USER2> Mars vs. Moon debates are getting ridiculous these days. _Why not both?_

Thanks to NewSpace, getting out there is only going to become cheaper; we can, as civilization, afford both. Let ESA and NASA and China race to the Moon. SpaceX wants to go to Mars. If _either_ succeeds in the next decade, we all win. The knowledge and experience gained is reusable for either, it goes into the same pool. And if we keep fighting over which destination is better, we won't get to any.

<comment><USER3> > Why not both?

Because it costs too much right now. SpaceX is providing NASA with rockets, I'm not sure they'll have a sustainable business model to get to Mars. I hope they do find a way but until costs come way down it's going to be tough.

<comment><USER4> There is no sustainable business model to go to Mars. Unlike LEO, GEO, or maybe even Moon, there's no business opportunity on Mars.

The only way to go there is to accumulate resources from real business, and to improve efficiency.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > The Trump administration is also looking to trim the budget of NASA's earth > science directorate

> The nearly $1.8 billion budget for that part of NASA would be about 6.5 > percent lower than what was enacted for fiscal year 2017

Donald seems to be stuck in the Cold War. I've not heard of one good reason for him wanting to send Americans back to the Moon other than "prestige." There are much more valuable scientific targets than the Moon that we could be targeting, and it's very upsetting that he seems to be using NASA to enhance his own image (e.g. deep cuts in areas where NASA needs budget increases..)

<comment><USER6> How about a moon base we could use as a base camp for missions to the outer solar system or mars?

H3 mining is another thought.

Edit: other ideas

* Autonomous vehicles sent ahead of time to build habitats for people.

* Large underground bases dug into the bedrock positioned at the poles collecting solar energy.

* Long tracks to launch things into space/earth electromagnetically.

* Mining of ice which could get split into H and O for propellant.

* Mining of other materials to be used on site or sent back to earth.

* Attempt to get people to be self sufficient on another world, even if it took a hundred years.

* Depot for deep space asteroid mining ships/drones to drop off their cargo and refuel/repair without having to drop all the way down to Earth.

<comment><USER7> I guess that feels a little like England setting up a base in Greenland as a supply depot to stop at before crossing the Atlantic to the new world. There's way more stuff at their home base so it's hard to see how adding a far off stop in a desolate place will help.

<comment><USER6> I'm thinking more long term. Things I'd like to see:

* Autonomous vehicles sent ahead of time to build habitats for people.

* Large underground bases dug into the bedrock positioned at the poles collecting solar energy.

* Long tracks to launch things into space/earth electromagnetically.

* Mining of ice which could get split into H and O for propellant.

* Mining of other materials to be used on site or sent back to earth.

* Attempt to get people to be self sufficient on another world, even if it took a hundred years.

* Depot for deep space asteroid mining ships/drones to drop off their cargo and refuel/repair without having to drop all the way down to Earth.

<comment><USER8> Pretty much everything on your list is not possible with our current technology. More importantly, it's feasible to develop this technology on Earth.

The problem with going to the moon (or anywhere else in the solar system) is that the _only_ thing we can do right now is science experiments. And there's a lot more impactful science that can be done for far cheaper than sending people outside of our gravity well. If you want to do anything else, then you have to develop a lot of technology to get to the point. But the space bugs want to see humans go to space, and they generally don't want to see effort being expended on the research to let humans do anything useful because it's not space research.

<comment><USER6> Aside from H3 I'd argue everything on that list is within our grasp if we tried to do so.

<comment><USER8> If you define it as "building infrastructure on the Moon to do so," no, it is not available with current technology. Where are you going to get your acids for refining, for example, if you can't scavenge from old piles of organic goop?

<comment><USER6> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refining_(metallurgy)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refining_\(metallurgy\))

>The repeated application of such fire-refining processes was capable of producing copper that was 99.25% pure.

Copper and iron can be refined reasonably enough using heat. Maybe it's possible to "pitch" metallic ore into very close and highly a eccentric orbit around the sun to help melt it down before "catching" it on the other side.

Perhaps acids could be brought up and recycled?

[https://www.space.com/13247-moon-map-lunar- titanium.html](https://www.space.com/13247-moon-map-lunar-titanium.html)

Titanium might be more difficult.

[https://titaniumprocessingcenter.com/titanium-extraction- and...](https://titaniumprocessingcenter.com/titanium-extraction-and- refining/)

Seems like asteroid mining would be pretty straight forward on the surface of the moon. The lack of erosion is capable of showing us exactly where they are.

Like I said it might take a hundred years before we can be totally self sufficient on the moon, but I think it's possible long term.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is just embarrassing, especially for the United States as a whole. The Trump administration should be ashamed for cutting important research and nominating a climate change denier as the head honcho.

Although building a moon base would be cool. It could increase our reach for manned missions. Sort of a first/last pit stop before a long journey.

</comment><comment><USER10> To boldly go where we've never gone before...except in 1969.</comment>


Doas mastery - <AUTHOR> http://www.tedunangst.com/flak/post/doas-mastery <comment><USER2> I just locked myself out of an OpenBSD 6.0 box by putting the 'persist' keyword in doas.conf.

doas: syntax error at line 1

The word 'persist' does not occur in 'man doas.conf', so maybe this feature is so new it is not in OpenBSD 6.0? Watch out before you try it out yourself.

<comment><USER3> This option only got added in recently. I think it would have been better if this were pointed out in the post. But trying not to sound too snide there's something to be said for checking the man page before copying config off the internet.

<comment><USER2> Sure, it was my mistake on two counts (not keeping a root session AND blindly changing the config). That does not necessarily mean I am alone in making that mistake so I thought I would try to warn others.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hope the portable OpenDoas version will implement this feature soon. I'm slowly replacing parts of my Void Linux server with more and more OpenBSD utilities, and have probably already added enough that RMS would conciser giving the system it's own name

<comment><USER5> There is no official portable versions, and any of the current unofficial versions include their own PAM implementations (OpenBSD doesn't use PAM).

Now that OpenBSD doas(1) uses kernel assisted features, i.e: 'persist' is implemented as tty ioctl's, the likelihood of those landing on other systems is remote.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Really love the new persist option. It makes `doas su -` less compelling when you have to run multiple commands and use a complicated password.

<comment><USER7> I find the implementation very compelling too - it uses kernel support. That really simplifies an otherwise very complicated and security-sensitive code path.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> What I don't understand about doas: Why does it keep some variables by default, and why does that include $USER and $HOME?

</comment><comment><USER9> keepenv was removed in the doas from openbsd 6.0.

I expected better from an article that's been published after the 6.0 release.

</comment><comment><USER10> They've added doas to the ramdisk.

Naive Q: Is doas any better than envgiduid and envdir? And if so, how?

<comment><USER10> s/envgiduid/envuidgid/</comment></comment>


Antarctica is leaking from the inside out - <AUTHOR> https://www.popsci.com/antarctica-is-leaking <comment><USER2> How else do things leak?</comment>


Ask HN: Did everyone notice iOS now has Covid-19 tracking? - <AUTHOR> I didn't realize that this had been added. I don't have automatic updates on but it seems to have shown up anyways, under Settings > Privacy > Health.<p>Looks like it's set to off by default. <comment><USER2> If you want to know how it works, you can find the API spec here:

Privacy-Preserving Contact Tracing

[https://www.apple.com/covid19/contacttracing/](https://www.apple.com/covid19/contacttracing/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Needed for Low Energy Bluetooth support for the various Covid-19 apps.

And while they were there, they've also added a centralized tracking id, so that the apps don't need to do decentralized tracking, and can bullshit you about less privacy.

</comment><comment><USER4> This has been in the news for a while now. Good on Apple to disable the tracking by default.</comment>


A syntax comparison across many languages - <AUTHOR> http://rigaux.org/language-study/syntax-across-languages.html

<comment><USER2> Eleven ways to comment to the end of the line; five of them used only by one language each.

<comment><USER3> And the most common way is one of the worst (most inconvenient), although J seems to win the prize.

<comment><USER4> Well, depends on your layout. That might be the case on a US keyboard but for many others (for example German, Spanish, the Nordic countries' layout and many other European and non-European layouts) it would be preferred over for example "//". For "//" you need to use a modifier (just as with '#') but you need to stretch more (or use both hands) and as well tap it two times. That's one of the reasons why I prefer to code using an English layout in my IDE/editor :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Also relevant: <http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Main_Page> Some parts are about language features, others are about implementations of algorithms in many languages.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is quite an amazing achievement.

There are a few other dimension to explore beside syntax. Like "are arrays 0 or 1 based?" etc

Apparently the author is now part of the opalang effort. They used to have a slightly weird syntax for their language and later changed that to have it look more like JavaScript. That's a strange move when concise syntaxes à la Ruby or CoffeeScript seem popular.

</comment><comment><USER7> I haven't looked at everything, but the Perl variable identifier regexp is incorrect, as Unicode characters are allowed as of 5.12, which was released in 2010. For that matter, same goes for Java, except Unicode letters are allowed.

<comment><USER8> Java also allows currency symbols (e.g. £€$) as identifiers.

I know this because I had a colleague who was quite proud of having switched to Dvorak, and another colleague who immediately wrote a code-generation tool that emitted € characters in variable names...which are untypeable on a Dvorak keyboard. :)

<comment><USER9> Java allows a vast array of odd characters, including nulls.

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4838507/why-does-java- all...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4838507/why-does-java-allow- control-characters-in-its-identifiers)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> My big takeaway is that Ruby generally does things the "most-popular" way, and that maybe a lot of those obscure languages are obscure for a reason (object["method"](params) to invoke a method?!?)

<comment><USER11> You mean like JavaScript? Not sure why it's not listed there next to Pike.

        var f = []
        f['push'](2)
        // f -> [2]

Pike also has the more familiar object->method(params) syntax.

It's actually a pretty useful bit of syntax. I've been using it recently when combining multiple objects deserialised from json.

        var report = [name, dob]
        var person = { name: 'Andrew', dob: '1980/03/23' }
        _.each(report, function(prop) {
            console.log(person[prop])
        }

<comment><USER12> Good call...and for those not necessarily using something underscore.js-like (thought almost always nice-to-have):

      var report = ['name', 'dob'];
      var person = { name: 'Andrew', dob: '1980/03/23' };

      report.forEach(function(prop){
        console.log(person[prop]);
      });

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This glosses over some important syntactic differences. For instance, a semicolon is used differently in C than it is in Pascal. In C, it's a terminator; in Pascal, it's a separator.

</comment><comment><USER14> What is "Assembler"? Is that supposed to mean assembly? If so what architecture uses '!' as a line comment token?

<comment><USER15> Not an architecture, an assembler.

<comment><USER14> Fair enough, my underlying point is that `assembly` isn't a language, it's a family of languages which have a set of characteristics which are tied very tightly to the instruction set used (often called an architecture). Comments would be a characteristic of the compiler, which you may call an 'assembler' if you wish, however an assembler is not a language.

<comment><USER15> An assembler is a utility with its own dialect regardless of target hardware.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> #if 0 ... #endif in C/C++ is not a true comment -- commented text is parsed by preprocessor.

</comment><comment><USER17> If there was ever a project that required an _emergency typographer_ , this would be one. That's a terrible presentation for a lot of great information.

</comment><comment><USER18> Oh poor XSLT. I can't decide whether to laugh or cry.

</comment><comment><USER19> <http://hyperpolyglot.org/scripting> is a similiar resource for php, perl, python and ruby only.

<comment><USER20> <http://hyperpolyglot.org/> provides comparisons between various "families" of languages - not just the above. But there isn't a comparison between, say, Ruby and Haskell.</comment></comment>