Every Senator Who Voted Against Net Neutrality and When to Vote Them Out - <AUTHOR> https://gizmodo.com/heres-the-name-of-every-senator-who-voted-against-net-n-1826085987 <comment><USER2> If we weren't particularly interested in having net "neutrality" back, what can we do? Inverse the list on the axis of all senators and vote them out?

I just don't get why we don't see the government shoving itself more and more into things as a good thing.

Look at the bludgeon that the GDPR hands people to burden and litigate startups.

But, alas, net neutrality is the ~•`"right"°™~ thing to do - thanks for being the arbiter Gizmodo.</comment>


Hidden figure in Leonardo da Vinci notebook revealed - <AUTHOR> http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/collectioncare/2016/01/fugitive-figure-in-leonardo-da-vinci-notebook-revealed.html <comment><USER2> Or more like an erased figure is "revealed"

</comment><comment><USER3> Ewwww, this website... Interesting article but the title is quite misleading, it is erased, not hidden.

</comment><comment><USER4> Don't get me wrong, Leonardo's work was very important, but I am okay with not knowing something he didn't believe was worth knowing.

<comment><USER5> Have you ever deleted something, and then wished you hadn't? I have drawn things on paper that I erased to try and make a new go at it, only to regret having erased it in the first place.

The recovery of an erased item in such an historical document is reason enough for me, and a great hack to be applied to other documents too.

<comment><USER4> Right, that's life, and I'm fine with that, but also fine with people wanting to know.

Any chance you're the same eggy from SE?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hey, even Leonardo got stuck in meetings and felt the need to doodle around.</comment>


Why are so many internet protocols text-based? - <AUTHOR> https://cs.stackexchange.com/questions/47539/why-are-so-many-internet-protocols-text-based <comment><USER2> Textual data and exchanges are often self-describing. They're easier to debug and monitor visually. Try debugging or reverse-engineering binary exchange with some obscure proprietary protocol to see why this matters.

In the end it is more about human convenience on the highest levels of OSI and less about transfer efficiency.

</comment><comment><USER3> No one there mentioned the Unix Philosophy.

"Text is the universal interface."

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy#Doug_McIlroy_on_Unix_programming</comment>


Hacking how to find a life partner - <AUTHOR> http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/02/pick-life-partner.html

<comment><USER3> Stories like this perpetuate a slowly dying myth -- that people are naturally married and should feel unfulfilled if they're single. Some people are very happy married, but the vast majority aren't (they're either unhappily married or single), and that may be a natural statement about the human condition.

In the U.S. those who are single are increasing and are approaching an absolute majority, and a majority are either single or unhappily married. There may be a reason for this, rooted in the human condition.

Source: [http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/facts_for_f...](http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/facts_for_features_special_editions/cb13-ff21.html)

Quote: "53.6%: Percentage of unmarried U.S. residents 18 and older who were women in 2012; 46.4 percent were men. Source: America's Families and Living Arrangements: 2012"

(53.6 + 43.4) / 2 = 48.5% overall

<comment><USER4> Maybe we should work on making it easier to be happy, married. Because raising children is definitely a better proposition with more than one parent - <USER2> outcomes for everybody.

<comment><USER3> Yes, perhaps, but it's well-established that having children strains a relationship like nothing else. The simple way to make it easier to be happily married is not to have children, but this advice will likely not be followed -- it contradicts human nature.

<comment><USER4> That strain is maybe due to a dysfunctional idea of marriage at present. That can be changed.

<comment><USER3> Yes, in a two-step process:

1\. Make people aware that marriage isn't remotely how it's popularly portrayed -- it's more a business arrangement than a romantic fantasy.

2\. Popularize the idea that it's natural and expected, not a problem to be solved, that nearly half the population is single.

<comment><USER4> The 2nd is your opinion. Lots of single guys I know are miserable. There definitely an under-served population here, and saying its natural and expected isn't the whole solution.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A World of New Possibilities - <AUTHOR> https://www.mattswain.co.uk/ <comment><AUTHOR> The mind is where the magic happens. Thoughts, perception, emotion, determination, memory, imagination all take place in the mind.

But do we pay enough attention to our minds, and more importantly our thinking?

Our minds are filled with thoughts every second and every minute of every day. In fact, we have thousands and thousands of thoughts each day and it's probably the thing we do most often.

The National Science Foundation in a 2005 study found that the average person had 80% negative thoughts and a staggering 95% were exactly the same repetitive thoughts as the day before. This goes to show how our thinking stems from habits and we have fallen into some bad ones; our mental models are not working for us.

There are 3 steps we can do to improve this: 1\. Thinking different 2\. Focused Reflection 3\. Bold actions

We have responsibility for our thinking. Winston Churchill said that 'the price of greatness is responsibility over each of your thoughts'. If we want to live life to the fullest, then care for your thoughts as if they are your most prized possessions.

Thinking without limits is all about developing our thinking. I share ideas/concepts/thoughts that will let your thoughts break their bonds and let the mind transcend limitations. Join the community and think without limits at www.mattswain.co.uk</comment>


"Vertical farms have nailed leafy greens." - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.co.uk/article/the-produce-company-that-supplies-google-hqs-kitchen <comment><AUTHOR> How does the math work out on indoor farms?

This particular article gets into numbers around water, but also mentions growing fruit such as strawberries which are 92% water. But they claim they can grow 350x per acre what outdoor can do and with 1% the water...

grown indoor or outside... the water in a pound of strawberries is a constant...

currently in CA, an acre of strawberries yields ~60,000 lbs of strawberries per year... 350x that is... 21,000,000 lbs of strawberries per ace...

so per acre, it would require a min of 231,377 gallons just for the fruit alone

currently it takes about 12 gallons of water in CA to yield 1lbs of strawberries, but that's the entire plant, fruit and all... 1 acre uses 720,000 gallons per year...

...to get 21m lbs of strawberries, you need 252m gallons of water

1% of that is 2.5m gallons

2.5m gallons weighs 20,850,000 lbs

21m lbs of strawberries is really just 19,320,000 lbs of water

so 92% of the water consumed in total goes to fruit...

which means they have strawberry plants that require virtually no water

and then you have the inputs... if it costs $40/lb right now... a test acre of strawberries alone... would cost $840,000,000 at their current rate...

and then their best case scenario mentioned would be $1 per pound so... $21m/acre

it currently costs $23,000 per acre in CA to grow 60,000 lbs....

so 350x that... and you're still at $8m an acre

so in their best case scenario... their inputs are still 2.6x today's current costs... startup costs are billions... and water numbers are off...

it would be interesting to see what they're telling investors and what is actually possible given that inputs like water are a constant no matter how a fruit is grown on a per pound basis

<comment><USER2> I feel a bulk of it is just marketing hype. Certain things don't scale well, but they sure sound good and shine bright. Snow flakes and bad math, Let's IPO and pass it on to retail investors.

Bringing production closer to the point of consumption/end user does indeed make sense. All the inputs in an indoor growing environment definitely twist things up once you really do the math. Vertical outdoor would make more sense. As soon as you incorporate HVAC, lighting, growing media, hydro set up, rent in urban areas, cost of human labor, nutrients, water purification/recycling, genetics, dehumidification if required, pesticides, air filtration, opex, and on it goes...it becomes rather messy and impractical in the short term.</comment></comment>


How to lose time and money - <AUTHOR> http://www.paulgraham.com/selfindulgence.html <comment><USER2> "People fright at the concept of losing their money, yet they slave away their time without a second thought."

-Seneca the Younger, from Letters from a Stoic (highly recommended)

I think slaving away doing something you hate is far more harmful than "wasting" time having fun. I get more out of playing hacky sack and/or listening to podcasts than any homework or school work.

So, in relation to this article, I think we should maybe consider "losing time" as doing _anything_ that you deeply don't want to do but are doing just to get more money.

The relationship between time and money is a fascinating one. Great article PG.

<comment><USER3> > I get more out of playing hacky sack and/or listening to podcasts than any > homework or school work.

Maybe you're studying the wrong thing?

<comment><USER2> I'm in high school. I'm not knocking education, I'm very thankful for it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think this ties into the idea of MMORPGs. I used to play them a lot until I realized they were not fun, just addictive; they make you feel like you're accomplishing something by leveling and gaining skills, when really it's only your character that's improving - you're not getting better at anything.

<comment><USER5> I felt this way a decade ago when my wife and I rented Season 1 of the show 24. I never enjoyed it, but felt strangely compelled to find out what happened in the next episode, and would stay up too late watching. After one season I decided that was enough of that addiction.

<comment><USER6> I really hated the politics and rhetoric of 24, but was somehow compelled beyond my will to watch every single episode. I knew it was unhealthy as I'd stay up way too late and ended up getting weird & anxious (head full of of right-wing fantasy combined with prolonged sleep depravation).

Unlike you I didn't kick the addiction & i've now seen every season.

Damn you and your insidious cliff-hangers Jack Bauer! :P

<comment><USER7> I didn't watch it because it got cliché pretty fast like LOST. The worst offender I reckon was Dragonball Z [0]. I realised this pattern and that greatly put me off many games and movies, eg WoW, FarmVille, etc. It was a grind. I want something novel.

[0] Do: Scream, build up tension, to be continued, until Infinity. Replace scream with drama (twists).

<comment><USER8> Ouch. I watched that back on TV a decade ago when I had no idea what I was getting into. Longest "15 minutes" ever. They're supposed to be fighting on a planet that's about to explode... but the planet patiently waits to blow up until their fight is over... which takes almost forever. Ugh.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If Paul Graham realized that people can easily lose lots of money by investing, why did he devote himself to investing large amounts of his own money in high-risk businesses?

I'm not being facetious, I just think that seems contradictory. If I had a lot of money and that same knowledge, I would invest very conservatively.

<comment><USER10> The first couple YC batches were small enough that the money invested was probably a very small portion of what PG/Robert/Trevor earned from Viaweb.

For later batches, it had become evident that YC's model was promising, and YC also raised money from outside LP's.

<comment><USER11> What's an LP?

<comment><USER12> Limited Partners

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Sometimes I think the feeling of getting "basically nothing" done by the end of the day is not the right timeframe - there are projects that have gone on for weeks that ultimately were a complete waste of time. But while working through those projects I felt something productive was happening, which made it difficult to think of them as "basically nothing". I'm not talking about failed ventures that could have turned into something great, these projects were pretty much always going to amount to nothing (they just appeared at the outset to be different to what they were)

<comment><USER14> _Sometimes I think the feeling of getting "basically nothing" done by the end of the day is not the right timeframe - there are projects that have gone on for weeks that ultimately were a complete waste of time._

I suspect pg means that he spent the day checking / responding to e-mails, reading HN, maybe paying some bills, noodling around the Internet, checking e-mail again, and then discovering that it's getting close to bed time, rather than working on long-term projects where the work he's doing hasn't immediately borne fruit.

The Internet is particularly insidious in this respect, because reading HN, looking at the NYT, and so forth can feel work-like without actually accomplishing anything substantial.

<comment><USER15> _The Internet is particularly insidious in this respect, because reading HN, looking at the NYT, and so forth can feel work-like without actually accomplishing anything substantial._

It's true, but it also builds vague background knowledge in a hard-to-quantify way (and I'm honestly not sure how it stacks up to the time invested). I _very_ frequently find myself drawing on knowledge that I ran across during internet time-wasting, whether it was a relevant article I found on HN, or a Wikipedia article I found in one of those random-walk-through-link sessions (or the journal articles I found via the Wikipedia articles...). On the other hand, I also spend a lot of time "keeping up with the internet", so it's not free. But it's certainly shown up in papers I've published in my day job.

It's an interesting tradeoff; I'd say I'm less concentrated and diligent than most of my colleagues on what I'm "supposed to be doing", but I'm also more broadly aware of what's going on outside of our little academic bubble. They get more done on their main projects, but I'm the person to come to if you want to be pointed to relevant articles/libraries/demos/posts on $topic_foo. It's not even so much that it saves me time researching later, as that I'm not sure I'd even be able to make some of the cross-connections between subjects without this undirected information-gathering.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I think for me this manifests itself in wasting time on reddit and twitter. Whenever I have a blank chrome tab, my unconscious reaction is to punch in one of these time-wasters.

</comment><comment><USER17> Dealing with a shitload of emails is even considered to be the only social acceptable way to work in IT, so that losing time is now institutional. Rebel.

</comment><comment><USER18> I feel the same way about watching TV all day, except replace TV with reddit x.x

</comment><comment><USER19> This is really a question of short-term gain versus long-term gain as well as tasks versus goals. For short-term fulfillment, we can entertain ourselves or keep ourselves occupied in some manner, regardless of whether it's productive.

The key is figuring out how it fits into our overall strategy or goals. Is that activity or task contributing to that long-term gain? More importantly, am I actively managing it as opposed to going on blind auto-pilot (e.g. for that investment or project)?

There's no substitute for hard work, just as there's no substitute for self- awareness.

<comment><USER20> I like this comment more then the article. The terms "waste time" are used but what does that mean? How do you define wasting time? Easy, you measure what you were doing to your long term goals. I't is easy to say that "playing game x" is wasting time, unless your goal is to be the worlds best player.

Of course if you set bad long term goals for yourself you maybe always be "wasting time."

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> One of my alarms is looking at my long-term objectives and see if my work made me move in the right direction. I have my objectives written down in a prominent place, so I can make sure I stay focused.

</comment><comment><USER22> This is a very important article. Today, many people don't know anymore what well-spent time is. Distractions are everywhere around us ... but if you overcome them you are probably still on the wrong path. Everybody gets in this trap. One must learn and try to get out. Often, a conservative view combined with a high degree of openness is the only way to survive in this jungle of attention and still leave a trace in the dynamic space of tech.

</comment><comment><USER23> I always thought that the best way to avoid losing a lot of money is to diversify and avoid leverage. Derivatives is leverage big time, it's speculation, not investing, you can lose much more than you invested. Diversify and avoiding leverage as a VC would be to invest a relatively small amount of money over many potential companies. So can avoiding leverage to conserve your investments work the same way with time? Leverage as a small company might be like sub'ing out your work to others. I've never read anything positive with that approach. How about at the personal level of the article - some wasteful activities can be avoided but stuff like email is not going away. So leverage this down time by multitasking. It would take me 4 hours of planning for 2 hour of programming. While I wade thought these emails I am also going to think about, plan, research, and write down what my 2 hours of programming is going to be. During these non productive downtimes, I can get really boring jobs done, the time passes quicker, and I have a head start when my productive time starts.

</comment><comment><USER24> I think a good simple way to determine whether I'm doing fake work or not is to ask myself two questions, "Is this challenging?" then "will this help me reach my goals?"

I find that if I say no to either then I'm probably doing fake work (or doing real work poorly).

</comment><comment><USER25> But is it actionable? I have to answer email, sometimes.

</comment><comment><USER26> That's why my wife and I abandoned TV long time ago. First week was hard, but after that we have always been happy with how we spend our time.

</comment><comment><USER27> very timely advice. I was just thinking about investing a chunk of change. Thanks.

<comment><USER28> There's nothing wrong with investing, just investing foolishly.

<comment><USER27> or being too optimistic, or relying on bad advice.

<comment><USER28> Are those things not being foolish?

<comment><USER27> Yes. Of course.

I happen to prefer more specific descriptions of what may go wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This short essay is not pg at his best in my view. Spending time having fun is Plain Good, and necessary, even for the most focused startup founder. But watching TV don't count obviously. Playing cards with friends at a terasse does.

<comment><USER30> There are many positive activities that can be both productive and fun, including a card game with friends. In that case, you are investing in to those relationships and fulfilling a very basic human desire for socialization.

It's not that you're not getting anything done. You're just getting different things done. Compare that to a day in front of the TV. Can you say you've gotten anything out of it? Did you learn anything? Were you able to relieve stress or relax? Perhaps in small quantities TV can provide those benefits, but would trading your entire day be worth it?

Now to take your card playing to an extreme, would it be beneficial for someone like the president to spend an entire day playing cards with non- political friends? Sure the president needs a vacation every once in a while, but assume that this is not a vacation day. There are many more important things that should be done, and even with the relaxation and socialization benefits that card playing with friends has, I believe the president's "wasting time" alarm would go off. There are elections to win and speeches to give. But what about spending an entire day reviewing a minor bill? Sure, bills are important. After all, the president should know about what new laws are being considered. Even so, an entire day _could_ go by without the president thinking "this is a waste of time". After all, he's not playing. He's working.

<comment><USER29> > [playing cards] you are investing in to those relationships and fulfilling a > very basic human desire for socialization.

I think your point of view, and pg's, is very utilitarian. Utilitarianism has its uses in many human activities, including writing code, but should not be invoked when talking about playing cards with friends. When I play card, I do NOT "invest" in relationships, I have no intent to fulfill anything. I am just having a great time with friends. Playing cards, or fishing, or chatting idly, is just a way to spend time doing nothing. And doing nothing, ie spending time without any "investment intent", is the way to enjoy fully your time.

Take another case: if you spend time reading a lengthy novel, say Proust, what is it for? Do you read it because you want to tell your friends you read it? Do you read it because you think it is an "investment", adding up to your knowledge of world literature? Do you read it because you want to learn how to write a novel? Learn about Proust? Understand why so many people admire this book? NONE of these reason is valid. All of them are "intents", "investments". All of them will actually destroy in the egg the only valid outcome of reading this novel, which is pure reading pleasure. (You'll have to pass some barriers to feel this pleasure, in the beginning)

The same holds for painting, music, etc. If you go to a Concert hall listening to Mozart or go to the Louvre and take this activity as an investment in your knowledge of art and your ability to talk cleverly about it, _you better stay home watch TV_.

The flip-side of this is that by actually reading lengthy novel, playing cards idly with friends, etc., and doing so without intent, you will in fact learn a lot about life, about humans, and also how to handle relationships. But the "without intent" part is essential.

To take your example about the president: I would LOVE the presidents of big or small countries to spend a lot of time doing nothing, chatting with "non- politician" friends, read lengthy novels. They would probably do less mistakes.

We live in a world where we are made believe that every second counts, like in TV series. It is not true. The only reason to live on earth is to be happy, happiness is a state of mind that need some idle time to spawn, let's stop running behind our ghost's shade.

[Edit: typo, clarity]

<comment><USER31> But isn't utility pleasure? If reading a novel gives you pleasure, then you derive utility from it. Same thing for playing cards. Investing into making yourself a better person is simply investing in future utility, ie. extra pleasure that you may be able to derive from being successful, owning a house, having stronger relationships, etc. These have to be balanced against the worth of immediate utility, which may mean that you'll spend a night playing cards with friends for some immediate pleasure, and the next night learning a language, in prevision of future rewards.

My impression is that you are reducing utilitarianism to a Mr Spock kind of pseudo-logical thinking. You seem to be forgetting that the ultimate goal of utilitarianism is happiness. It's not about gaining knowledge or even self- improvement. Playing cards for pure fun is not at odds with utilitarianism.

(Disclaimer: I am not a philosopher nor do I have more than a basic knowledge of utilitarianism)

<comment><USER29> > pleasure == utility

Well, not sure I follow you on this terrain... Let's find something that we would agree is useless, and enjoyable. Maybe fishing alone and putting fish back in the river?

Or you would say that this is also useful. But then anything is useful and the word itself has no meaning (and become useless, hehe).

I may be too much influenced by Eastern streams of thoughts, where we have zen, taoism, etc., all saying that nothingness, emptiness, uselessness are things we should value more, because they are the ground on which everything grows. (Simple example: without silence on which a composer is building, no music is possible)

So, to go back to pg's essay, which is more of a short blog post, I found it was lacking an open door toward these possibilities that "lost time" is not always lost.

<comment><USER30> How would you measure the utility of something? I think our definitions of utility are not the same. I see utility as ANYTHING one derives usefulness from. Utility == value. Value is subjective. You value Zen. Taking the time to appreciate nothingness IS valuable to you, therefor spending the day meditating has utility to you.

The short essay isn't really about declaring activities to either be productive or wasted. It's about learning to identify "empty" activities that waste time with the false promise of being productive. Whether your time is wasted or productive is a personal matter for you to weigh against your own goals and values.

P.S. My apologies to anyone who might take offence to my poor understanding of Zen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> "The solution is to develop new alarms."

...and get rid of some other ones.

</comment><comment><USER22> PS: I have never played MMORPGs. Did I miss anything?

<comment><USER33> The social aspect and the feeling of being in a living and breathing fantasy world is quite intoxicating at first. I do agree that you need to be mindful of the fact that it is just a game and should be played for fun. It is not an achievement and is not helping to further your life any more than any other form of entertainment. It can be very easy to sink a lot of time into those things, but they are fun while they last.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> If I give you 5M$ now, what would you do? Now, do exactly that, without those 5M$.

<comment><USER35> I tried. The credit card company complained.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> If Alanis Morissette read PG's essays on time management and knew he also built HN, she'd probably write more meaningful song lyrics.

<comment><USER37> _Isn't it ironic..._</comment></comment>


Arguments Supporting Warrantless Surveillance Wither When Exposed to Sunlight - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/03/once-again-arguments-supporting-warrantless-surveillance-shrivel-when-exposed <comment><USER2> Reading Tim Cook's full interview with Time ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11318905](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11318905)) I wonder if anyone at the DOJ is even having an honest discussion about the potential damage they would be doing to public safety if they won in court in the San Bernardino case.

Which, granted, is a different case from what the EFF is talking about here but the same question applies: Is the DOJ even considering all the implications of what they do, and how they may be making us less safe by things like requiring back doors and (separately) enabling man in the middle scenarios?

<comment><USER3> The DOJ/FBI does not care about the damage. If they win, they get the benefits.. but all of the costs--weakened security, lost money, damage to companies, etc--are ALL external.

Don't kid yourself, when all of these things happen, the FBI will not stand up and criticize itself... it'll blame the company that made/maintained the backdoor.

When your company (or the company you work for) is compromised because of the backdoor the government mandated, it'll be your company's name on the notice being sent to your customers saying you lost their data; your company in court for the damage caused; your company that will foot the bill.

<comment><USER4> Not only will they receive the direct benefits, but FBI will actually benefit from everyone else's suffering as well. Just like bored firefighters starting fires (a real thing that has happened many times in many places), they're eager to "help" those individuals and businesses who will lose lots of money after they've destroyed security online.

<comment><USER3> Yes, absolutely.

Also consider that criminal organizations that profit from stolen data will become more active (more data lost > more data to sell > more profits > more activity toward compromising data).. which means more organizations for the FBI to investigate.

And there's the potential that victim companies could face prosecution also.. for example, if a company had a minor violation of HIPAA (et al) and was compromised due to a backdoor.. instead of the damage being minor and the company fixing the problem without any patient data being compromised.. instead it becomes a significant incident with real losses of patient data.. potentially opening the company up to prosecution for violation of HIPAA (or other laws).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> >The government's ponderous declassification process released this letter far too late to have much more than historical impact. But, in the end, the secrecy clouds parted, and the pattern is clear; we're back in a place we've been time and again. One-sided legal arguments lead to one-sided legal interpretations. The government's secret process let it get away with drafting an entire 22-page letter that did not even cite let alone grapple with these issues.

If there is one thing history teaches us, it is this pattern that repeats itself over and over. For example look at the Stasi of East Germany. The Stasi did everything it did to protect the state and the 'people'. When we look at these totalitarian governments of past, we are shocked and can not believe people allowed it to go on. It is much harder to see these patterns in the present context of our own culture and even harder to do something when things go wrong.

Next time you are in Berlin visit the old Stasi headquarters.

[http://www.stasimuseum.de/en/enindex.htm](http://www.stasimuseum.de/en/enindex.htm)

</comment><comment><USER6> Secrecy is key. In any conceivable circumstance, where one branch of government operates in total secrecy from the other two, the spirit, at least, if not (but most likely) the letter of the Constitution and its explicit power checks have been violated. When one starts writing and interpreting its own laws in secret from the other two, well... I don't see how it amounts to anything less than a (non-violent?) coup, where one branch has gone completely rogue.

But as time and again, no heads will roll, no one will go to prison for making the Free World significantly less free. And I'm pretty sure domestic surveillance now is significantly more advanced than it was back when this letter was written.

Is there anything left to hold on to?

Edit: I should stop reading. I'm starting to believe that ignorance is indeed bliss.

<comment><USER7> These things have clear patterns. King George abuses his subjects so they kick him out and adopt a constitution prohibiting the things he did. From time to time, usually in response to some kind of hyped up threat, they crop back up. Hoover's FBI, The House Un-American Activities Committee, Nixon and now the response to 9/11\. They go too far and eventually get shut down, but often not before a decade or more. Then we try to pass a law to prevent what they did from happening again, hopefully _this time_ learning from our mistakes and making the law against it airtight.

Our major mistake _last time_ seems to have been allowing the process to be secret.

<comment><USER8> > Then we try to pass a law to prevent what they did from happening again, > hopefully this time learning from our mistakes and making the law against it > airtight.

We have evidence in countries like North Korea that government can keep total power and control against their population for a very long time.

I know you don't intend it to be, but your response seems kind of like a "things will sort themselves out so let's not worry ourselves". It's this sort of apathetic response to wrongdoing that is the precursor to many evils in history.

<comment><USER9> The oppression in NK is one of the things that the second amendment is for. As it stands, the people of NK have no options.

Arms in the hands of citizens is not a guarantee against abject oppression, but it's a deterrent. Banning general ownership of arms is a step that a despot _must_ take.

Naturally, a lot of people think the insurance is not worth the risk. And at the level of national politics it can be hard to separate the honestly concerned, the secretly malicious, and the useful idiots.

\----

With crypto, it's pretty easy. The folks who want to ban crypto have an agenda to spy and control, or they are co-opted. Well, there are also a few useful idiots, too . . . .

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The author of the memo, John Yoo, was also famously pro-torture, including the most shocking answer on the treatment of suspected terrorists that I've heard from any part of the political establishment (so I'm excluding the large numbers of Americans who think, for instance, that we should just make Islam illegal):

        Q: If the President deems that he's got to torture somebody,
           including by crushing the testicles of the person's child,
           there is no law that can stop him?

        A (John Yoo): No treaty.

        Q: Also no law by Congress—that is what you wrote in the August
           2002 memo

        A: I think it depends on why the President thinks he needs to do that.

<comment><USER11> I'm anti-torture personally, but I'm not sure that the quotes you've put here portray a bias one way or another so much as a legal opinion (erroneous or otherwise). What am I missing?

<comment><USER10> > I'm not sure that the quotes you've put here portray a bias one way or > another so much as a legal opinion (erroneous or otherwise)

John Yoo's legal opinions were used by the Bush administration to justify a system of torture up to and including permanent injury, sexual assault, and death. If he had issued these opinions in a vacuum, I would agree with you. Instead, he sought opportunities to provide legal cover for systemic human rights abuses.

The consequences of his actions seem predictable, and in my view that makes him partially morally responsible for them and it is fair to call him an advocate of them, in deed and word.

You can read about it in the CIA torture report and the DOD torture report:

[https://www.amnestyusa.org/pdfs/sscistudy1.pdf](https://www.amnestyusa.org/pdfs/sscistudy1.pdf)

[http://www.armed- services.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Detainee-...](http://www.armed- services.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Detainee-Report-Final_April-22-2009.pdf)

There are a multitude of US laws against torture, but Yoo and his intellectual cohort seem to think that the "Unitary Executive" is not bound by most laws, as long as that executive proclaims the actions are part of a war (which does not need to be declared by Congress, under Unitary Executive theory that rejects the War Powers Act).

Finally, I posted this snippet to point out that John Yoo has a history of dismissing limits to executive power to an extreme degree. Even if his theories are viewed outside of the moral consequences of his actions, I think it's important to know that his view on surveillance goes WAY, WAY beyond just warrantlessly listening to the phone calls of innocent people, all the way to, according to him, crushing the testicles of innocent people. I think this helps frame the discussion of the history of the Bush administration's abuse of civil liberties, though you are welcome to disagree.

<comment><USER11> Thanks :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I kind of agree with the overall conclusion, but the EFF is overstating their _Youngstown Steel_ argument. As a preliminary issue, it's important to note that we're talking about spying that might be outside FISA but is inside the 4th amendment.

Spying is a routine military activity that is intrinsic to foreign relations, an area where the Constitution gives the President unique powers. Seizing steel mills, on the other hand, is a major intrusion into domestic activity within Congress's usual domain. It's not so clear why Youngstown would direct the conclusion here.

More generally, there are a _lot_ of people who believe that the framers intended to give the President great powers when it came to foreign relations and the exercise of military power, and didn't intend for Congress to be able to check those powers. One of the motivating rationales of having a unitary executive was so that the government could respond to internal and external threats decisively without waiting for hundreds of senators and congressman to get on board. It was set up that way to address the concerns of people who thought that a democracy would be weak and indecisive in the face of foreign threat.

<comment><USER13> > _there are a lot of people who believe that the framers intended to give the > President great powers when it came to foreign relations and the exercise of > military power, and didn 't intend for Congress to be able to check those > powers_

Foreign relations, yes. The exercise of military power, no. Especially not creating a permanent wartime condition, secret courts, etc. where military power, including spying, is exercised within the US and against the people.

<comment><USER14> Your comment is unresponsive to Rayiner's in two ways.

First, it has simply never been the case, since the time of the Presidencies of the founders themselves, that espionage was limited to times of war, or for that matter to countries with whom we had declared war. The President has always been able to spy on other countries.

Second, Rayiner himself concedes the distinction between spying on US citizens (an activity restricted by the Fourth Amendment) and spying on foreigners abroad (an activity _not_ restricted by the Fourth Amendment).</comment></comment></comment>


Tactile keyboard for iPhone - <AUTHOR> http://www.mobilemechatronics.com/itwinge.html

<comment><USER2> who thought covering half the screen was a good idea?

</comment><comment><USER3> So... it turns an iphone into a blackberry? I'm terribly amused.</comment>


Ask HN: What are examples of high priced SaaS products? - <AUTHOR> Are there examples of SaaS products that have a XXXX/mo price point? <comment><USER2> The perception about an SaaS product's price might depend on how customers value them.

I want to mention SiftScience as the example. Note that it's a B2B SaaS product. The company I am working for is running an eCommerce business. They utilize SiftScience to fight credit card frauds. They paid them around $50K/mo for detecting frauds out of 1 million transactions/mo. At the first time, I think it's expensive enough, because credit card fraud is one of hundreds problem in the company and it is not the only payment options for buying the products. The company can just hire skilled programmers to build only fraud detection for less than $50K/mo salary.

Not until I know their future plan that they are going to jump into financial industry. The money will move very fast. Credit cards will dominate the payments and the chance is there will be more credit card frauds too. The company wants to build the customers' trust before the product starts to launch in order to attract many users. So, we need to reduce fraud cases as much as we can. Using SiftScience sounds like outsourcing the fraud detection works to other. With it, we can increase how many transactions will be monitored instantly. Hiring high skilled programmers might be a late choice here, but we can do it in the future if the product is successful. With that case, I can say that SiftScience fraud detection product's price is worth it.</comment>


"O Uommibatto": How the Pre-Raphaelites Became Obsessed with the Wombat - <AUTHOR> https://publicdomainreview.org/2019/01/10/how-the-pre-raphaelites-became-obsessed-with-the-wombat/ <comment><USER2> We named our company after Wombats ([https://www.wombatsecurity.com/](https://www.wombatsecurity.com/)). We always got fun responses from customers in Australia, most of them loving it.

Company was also acquired a few months ago, and I'm using some of the proceeds to put together a man cave, which I've informally called the "Wombat Cave" :)

</comment><comment><USER3> At work we have a collection of (plush) Wombats of all sizes, and we have one major product named after them. They are really cute, and sometimes featured on the blog: [https://www.wombatdialer.com/blog/](https://www.wombatdialer.com/blog/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Also DEC database (Datatrieve) engineers:

[https://www.ibphoenix.com/resources/documents/history/doc_29...](https://www.ibphoenix.com/resources/documents/history/doc_295)

"Epergne: Who knows? ...clearly someplace wombats sleep."

</comment><comment><USER5> These animals are also famous for their cube-shaped poop!

[https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2018/11/wombat- po...](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2018/11/wombat-poop-cube- why-is-it-square-shaped/)

</comment><comment><USER6> A previous job had a monitoring system called Watcher Of Many Batches And Transactions. The British Army had a Weapon Of Magnesium, Battalion, Anti Tank once too. Wombats fascinate everyone!

<comment><USER7> I love that second one. First there was the BAT (Battalion, Anti-Tank), a recoilless rifle that had to be towed by a Jeep or equivalent. Then they came up with a light-weight, man-portable version that used magnesium alloys, so of course it had to be "Weapon Of Magnesium, Battalion Anti-Tank".</comment></comment>


A Thermodynamic Answer to Why Birds Migrate - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-thermodynamic-answer-to-why-birds-migrate-20180507/ <comment><AUTHOR> A curious point, energy is one thing but there needs to be the nutrients at hand to capture the energy in the first place.

The Amazon jungle though does well with its furoius exosystem recycling all it can, and seemingly dependent on wind blown sand from the Sahara to provide some nutrients.

Could birds being so mobile could move nutrients around the world?

<comment><USER2> That's not a crazy idea; there are plants which rely on the mobility birds for reproduction and spreading. Take peppers for example. The seed pods are attractive to birds due to their bright colors. The capsaicin that deters many insects and most mammals (except for us batshit-crazy humans who enjoy the sensation of chemical warfare upon our tongues for some reason) can't be tasted by birds. The seeds themselves are protected from the bird's digestive tract by a membrane. Digestion softens said membrane enough to allow for easy germination, and the ready-to-germinate seeds are then spread around the area by the bird passing the seeds while in flight. And so the pepper plants spread.

<comment><USER3> While humans like capsaicin, we can't stand nearly as much as birds can. Sure people eat ghost papers and make amusing videos of themselves in pain. Birds however aren't bothered by even 1% capsaicin by weight, far more than any normal human would voluntarily consume.

<comment><USER2> Which was part of my point, above. Birds are incapable of tasting capsaicin at all. So they'd have to be hit with a dose thereof unrealistically larger than anything they'd ever encounter in their natural environment before it begins to cause problems for them, and at that point, other compounds in the peppers probably would've started causing problems long ago. And so, they happily eat the tasty seed pods which the plant so helpfully color-coded as edible, and then poop the seeds around their environment, thereby helping those tasty plants become more numerous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> TLDR, birds have nothing to eat, and freeze to death if they stay in cold weather for too long. They are mobile, and move to places where that is not the case.</comment>


Request for Google+ invite here - Let's help each other.  - <AUTHOR>

Let's request google+ invites here in this thread. I want one, skbohra123 @ gmail.com <comment><USER2> I've got invites to share (see <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2712165>)

Invited everyone here so far, will try to check back every now and again to get any new ones.

<comment><USER3> I'd definitely like to check it out. email@example.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Got the invite. But it just has a button "Learn more about Google+" taking to the same Google+ landing page. The text says "Already invited? We've temporarily exceeded our capacity. Please try again soon."

Am i missing something?

<comment><USER2> Google has shut down all invitations for the night. Not sure when they'll be re-opening, but you probably won't be able to use the link until then.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Almost every cool person out there has a google+ account except me. =( I would love an invite.

Here is my email: m4rkuskk+thanks4invite [at] gmail.com

</comment><comment><USER6> In exchange for a Google+ invite to jack[@]jackwebbheller.com, I will happily send you the worst three jokes you have heard via email.

</comment><comment><USER7> Well I would love one but since I am an Google Apps customer I am out of luck. camille () rousselfamily . com

</comment><comment><USER8> Waiting to try it out. Will be glad if some one can pass an invitation to thejaravi {at} gmail {dot} com

<comment><USER8> dont need an invitation now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I invited few people from the thread. Will invite everyone who replies this comment :)

<comment><USER10> would love an invite, please! edit: i just updated my profile to include my email address but it's HN profile @gmail.com.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Looking forward to playing with Google+. My email is firstname.lastname@example.com. Thanks!

<comment><USER2> sent

<comment><USER12> Feel like sending another one? My email: <http://i.imgur.com/qKZce.png>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I would also gladly take one, help this norwegian out – typografi [at] gmail.com :)

<comment><USER13> Got one, thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Love to get started if anyone has invites... my HN user at gmail.com. Thanks!

<comment><USER14> Thanks! I'll pass the invites along as soon as I get rolling.

<comment><USER2> Sounds good. I'm guessing once enough people get invites, some might start doubling up on handing out invitations. Oh well, probably won't hurt to get invited twice :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If anyone still has an invite I'd like to try it out. Jerrytap (at) gmail.com

<comment><USER16> sent.

<comment><USER12> Oh, pretty please. My email: <http://i.imgur.com/qKZce.png>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've got invites to share, if anyone wants, just tell me the e-mail.

<comment><USER12> My email: <http://i.imgur.com/qKZce.png> :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'd be very grateful for an invite. Javier (at) javierbarreto.com

</comment><comment><USER19> If anyone has an invite left I'd love to get one. firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment><USER20> I would really like a Google+ invite: email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER21> I would gladly take one - plamsalktm[at]gmail[dot]com .

</comment><comment><USER22> I'll gladly take one: scott.walkinshaw [at] gmail.com

<comment><USER16> sent you one!

<comment><USER12> I'd be so happy! <http://i.imgur.com/qKZce.png>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I will also love one too. andrewreds AT gmail DOT com

<comment><USER23> thanks :) Google+ is soooo much better then Facebook :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Would love to try it. filliperosini [at] gmail.com

<comment><USER25> Would love to get one. aditya15417 [at] gmail.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I would also like one, email: laksman [at) gmail

</comment><comment><USER27> Can't wait to try it out tones [at] berkeley.edu

</comment><comment><USER28> I'd like an invite as well: firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment><USER29> Please...... stergitos<at>gmail

</comment><comment><USER10> do you only get one chance to invite? my "send invites" in the bottom right corner disappeared.

<comment><USER16> No it seems like they are doing A/B testing. You might now be seeing a "Send feedback" button right? Just add people to you circles and they'll be invited.

<comment><USER10> Great, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> firstname.lastname@example.com Please share an invite and I'll help out inviting our fellow HNers. Thanks!

<comment><USER31> sent

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Mee Too! email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER33> Yes please! Binarymax at gmail

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks David for inviting me.

</comment><comment><USER34> firstname.lastname@example.com

Please help me make my brother jealous!

</comment><comment><USER35> nelsonkeating [at] gmail.com

Thanks tons!

</comment><comment><USER36> firstname.lastname@example.com thanks in advance!

</comment><comment><USER37> my HN userid @ gmail.com, thanks!

</comment><comment><USER38> germino.kevin gmail com Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER39> me too (my HN userid) @gmail.com

<comment><USER39> Thanks for the invite!

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> g.marcilhacy (at) gmail.com

</comment><comment><USER41> balbaugh{at}gmail{dot}com

</comment><comment><USER42> email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER43> firstname.lastname@example.com</comment>


New AWS region coming soon: eu-central-1 - <AUTHOR> http://www.nilsjuenemann.de/2014/07/new-aws-region-eu-central-in-germany.html <comment><USER2> Honestly this is great news! As the article says, many German companies insist on their data being hosted in a data center in Germany when buying SaaS (for whatever reason). So far, there haven't been any viable options when it comes to "full-stack" IaaS service providers here (except Profitbricks maybe, which doesn't even come close to AWS in terms of functionality or pricing though), so I'm really excited to see Amazon entering this market.

Of course the problem remains that Amazon is a US company and thereby required to cooperate with US authorities and hand them over customer data if requested, so some businesses might still not want to host their data there. Still, I'm excited that they're finally coming to Germany !

</comment><comment><USER3> Note, a region is not a data center. A region is a collection of two or more Availability Zones (AZ). You can think of an AZ as a data center.

[http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/images/aw...](http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/images/aws_regions.png)

<comment><USER4> But even an AZ is not necessarily one physical data center; it may be many.

<comment><USER3> Agree, but it is somewhat unclear.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'll wait to see how this pans out first, thanks...

[http://phys.org/news/2014-06-microsoft-court- overseas.html](http://phys.org/news/2014-06-microsoft-court-overseas.html)

<comment><USER6> Have you been reading the rest of the news over the last year or so? If they want it, they are taking it. That is of course unless governments aren't already sharing.

I had a potential client from the Netherlands (pre-NSA) say no thanks as we are a US based company and he didn't want the possibility of the US government obtaining his data. Fair enough I wasn't going to change his mind. Those who travel frequently internationally know (or should) about a program called Global Entry. Basically let's you go though the border using a machine instead of talking to an immigration officer. At the time it was available to US citizens (with a squeaky clean record) and Dutch citizens. What kind of information sharing must the Dutch be doing with the US to allow us to basically open our borders?

Back to data centers and pretending governments aren't in bed with the NSA for some reason or another and a non US company owns the data center. Who do you think is providing the pipe going into that data center? Almost certainly a US company (or it is 1-2 hops away).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm excited about the pricing, hopefully it's not more expensive than Ireland... Maybe even cheaper, although I won't get my hopes up with electricity prices in Germany being so high.

</comment><comment><USER8> I am happy that this is called central. I would like to see more recognition to Central Europe in geo-political world as current line between west and east Europe do not make much more sense anymore. Central europe culture and economy ties makes it strong candidate to new order - West Europe Central Europe and East Europe. I am thrilled to see what Amazon will have to offer!

</comment><comment><USER9> It looks like they have removed most of the DNS records, but eu- central-1.amazonaws.com still gives an authorative answer.

</comment><comment><USER10> Awesome! But would still love to have a location in Amsterdam directly on the AMS-IX.

<comment><USER11> Luckily most locations in Amsterdam worth their salt is connected to AMS-IX, [https://ams-ix.net/connect-to-ams-ix/colocations](https://ams-ix.net/connect- to-ams-ix/colocations)

If AWS setup deployment in Amsterdam, I can't imagine it wouldn't be in one of those places.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Thought it said "us-central" at first. Was hoping for a Dallas datacenter!

</comment><comment><USER13> Hopefully this will drive many DE ISPs out of business. Strato, 1&1 and Hetzner are incapable of providing anything besides dumb webhosting and cheap bare metal stuff. I've wasted so many hours trying to explain these companies how the world is changing, they never got it and now it's too late to build anything that could compete with AWS.

They (1&1, Strato, HostEurope, Hetzner, …) don't even try to provide OpenStack packages or something leightweight-ish using Docker, except if you pay every single hour of their manual work. 1&1 build something called ProfitBricks.de which focusses of "designing your infrastructure in the browser", however they build a big Java EE legacy framework with a nasty SOAP-API. Their sales pitch is something like "we are cheaper than amazon/they rip of their customers".

And still they neither contributed support to LibCloud or fog.io so neither Chef, Puppet, Ansible nor SaltStack work out of the box with it. I don't understand those people.

<comment><USER14> Hetzner can give you extremely cheap physical hardware, prices which you cannot hope to approach with AWS.

You don't need any of the buzzword-y technologies you list to be supported directly by the host. If you want Docker, you can run it yourself.

VMs are over-rated.

<comment><USER15> I don't have a horse in this race, but IMO the point is more about AWS- provided infrastructure that lets people scale more easily than otherwise possible; things like Elastic Map Reduce, S3, DynamoDB, SQS + SNS, RDS, etc are less-easily replaced by home-grown equivalents. There are great open- source solutions for every one of those things, but the point is having to not manage them.

If you're using the cloud as "just another data center", I feel like you're missing many of the benefits of software-defined infrastructure and disposable systems.

<comment><USER14> Tying yourself to a specific provider is dangerous.

RDS and EMR are fine, since you can reproduce the exact same API anywhere else. S3 is also fine, since its API is simple enough and even reproduced by other vendors. Something like DynamoDB I wouldn't touch.

Things like AWS are great for when you don't yet know what you need, for absorbing load peaks and for getting something running very quickly. They are however the most expensive thing you can buy for what you get.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A WebGl experience to show data from Montreal's Bixi System - <AUTHOR> http://bixcuit.methodinthemadness.eu/

<comment><USER2> So, as a long time developer, what's your thought on WebGL ?

<comment><AUTHOR> To be quite straightforward it needs some polish. We've got incompatibilities, instabilities, and so on... Currently I would say that Unity is a better choice, but WebGL is nevertheless the future.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: logging into News.YC on android? - <AUTHOR>

I can only remember two times that I've been able to log into HN from my android browser. Has anyone had more luck with this? Seems like cookies generally work in the android browser so I can't figure this out. Any pointers? <comment><USER2> I assume it's because HN sends the Set-Cookie header as part of an HTTP 302 redirect and expects the cookie to appear in the redirected request. Apparently this is against the HTTP spec, and won't work in certain browsers:

[http://www.persistall.com/archive/2008/01/25/cookies-- redire...](http://www.persistall.com/archive/2008/01/25/cookies--redirects-- nightmares.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER3> I've managed to do this via Opera. It's not a solution I like -- I much prefer the built-in web browser -- but it seems to work.

</comment><comment><USER4> I have never been able to log into HN from my G1, so I'm interested in the answer.</comment>


Scale Invariance as an Alternative to Dark Matter and Dark Energy - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/11/171122113013.htm <comment><USER2> I would like to know what scale invariance is. The abstract doesn't describe it, can anyone point to a good summary?

<comment><USER3> Wikipedia's page looks to be solid at first glance: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scale_invariance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scale_invariance)

<comment><USER2> LMWTFY. Actually, I had read this and it wasn't helpful. There is nothing about how x -> lamba x passes through field equations for example, and yields an additional term that represents additional expansionary acceleration. Only the abstract from the paper is available in the OP link, I was wondering if anyone had insight into how these findings came about, generally.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> So what future testable predictions does this theory make? Explaining existing phenomena is not enough for good scientific theory.

<comment><USER5> Dark matter makes the prediction that there is some kind of matter which makes no or little interaction with ordinary matter. None of those has been found so far. This makes it an assumption.

This theory makes no such assumption. One could say that it is simpler so it would fit Occams razor. Even further, it predicts that you can't find dark matter at all (although this can't be proven, so there's that) as much as special relativity predicts that you can't find "aether".

I think, "simpler" would be compelling enough, but I can't judge whether it is the case really.

On another note, does anybody know whether "inflation" makes testable predictions? From my little knowledge it also explains only already known phenomena. Nevertheless it is a widely accepted theory.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Feedial v0.2, responding to feedback - <AUTHOR> https://feedial.com/build/build-02

<comment><AUTHOR> Very interested in criticisms or feature requests</comment>


Ask HN: What are the best resources/guides to learn SEO - <AUTHOR>

The web is filled with SEO guides but which ones have you found really useful? <comment><USER2> <http://seobook.com/> <http://seojuicer.com/> <http://www.kalzumeus.com/blog/> (sometimes has seo content)

</comment><comment><USER3> <http://www.delicious.com/tag/seo></comment>


Just Encountered Scariest Phishing Attempt Ever! Why Not to Use Chrome. - <AUTHOR> http://imgur.com/gallery/LJwIU0s

<comment><USER2> Not sure why this is a case not to use Chrome. Chrome is just like any tool, it isn't stupid proof. Users still need to practice safe internet use.

</comment><comment><USER3> Firefox the way to go</comment>


Experiencing Self vs. Narrating Self (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://mihankes10.blogspot.com/2017/02/experiencing-self-vs-narrating-self.html <comment><USER2> Link gives me a 404.

<comment><USER3> [https://web.archive.org/web/20190114063123/https://mihankes1...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190114063123/https://mihankes10.blogspot.com/2017/02/experiencing- self-vs-narrating-self.html)

This link works.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Medieval crusaders believed that God and heaven provided their lives with meaning. Modern liberals believe that individual free choices provide life with meaning. They are all equally delusional."

This essay seems to be mostly posited to critique the belief in individual narrative- i.e. the idea that we are free individuals who have the will to choose rationally, as the idea of liberalism is based in.

While I'm down for that argument, the above passage is of particular confusion for me. If no external, nor internal force provides meaning to life, what is there? If the passage was to claim there is no meaning at all, why not just say that clearly?

<comment><USER5> Not the author, but I think there's a difference between claiming there is no meaning and claiming that the different narratives of meaning are an illusion. Saying it as the author did shows that there is a process happening but maybe the "meaning" we come up with isn't the useful piece. Simply saying "there's no meaning" can either end the discussion or take you in a thousand different philosophical directions. Taoism's 10,000 things could be rephrased as 10,000 narratives of meaning.

Maybe the value/meaning of our cognition lies in this process, but not in the narratives we associate with it.</comment></comment>


Show HN: SpaGO, a self-contained ML/NLP library entirely in Go - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/nlpodyssey/spago <comment><USER2> Nice !

Could you rename it to space cadet ?</comment>