Users complain their Dell 6430u laptops smell like cat piss - <AUTHOR> http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/laptop/f/3518/t/19512174.aspx <comment><USER2> Maybe this is something that's only smellable by a certain subset of the human population.

I invited a family member to try Chipotle once. She complained of a soapy taste in the food. We both thought maybe a staff member had been careless about rinsing hands after washing with soap.

I later learned that some people have a genetic predisposition to perceive cilantro, an herb common in Mexican food, as a soapy taste [1] [2].

Maybe in the case of these laptops, nobody who was involved in production / QA had the right gene to be bothered by the smell. But once it's sold to thousands of people, that's both a much larger population, and one that's from all over the world (as opposed to the people in the factory who would would probably mostly be local workers from one country or region).

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cilantro#Leaves](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cilantro#Leaves)

[2] [http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/14/dining/14curious.html?_r=0](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/14/dining/14curious.html?_r=0)

<comment><USER3> There's also the genetic predisposition to perceive brussels sprouts _(and other foods)_ as too bitter: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supertaster](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supertaster)

IIRC this is one of the SNPs that personal-DNA-sequencing companies like 23andMe can test for.

<comment><USER4> There's a simple test you can do with a strip of paper ([http://supertaster.com/](http://supertaster.com/)) tainted with that particular flavor. Most people can't taste it at all, but those that do are gagging from the awful taste.

I'm in that group and brussels sprouts are easily the strongest, most offensive vegetables out there.

<comment><USER5> I think there are people in the middle. I can taste PTC, but it is only slightly bitter, and I don't mind brussels sprouts (don't particularly love 'em), I can definitely taste the bitter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If it were on Apple boards they would have deleted the message I guess, and pretended nothing ever happened :)

EDIT: in case people who downvote me don't understand the reference, see yesterday's news regarding Larry Lessig's complaint being censored on Apple forums, apparently for the interest of keeping the forums _clean_. Wouldn't that kind of _" cat piss"_ complaint fall in the exact same _" unhelpful comment"_ category ?

<comment><USER7> Anyone who downvotes you hasn't tried to use their forums.

I hadn't seen yesterday's news though so here's a link for anyone else interested: [http://lessig.tumblr.com/post/65338904338/wow-or-from-the- wh...](http://lessig.tumblr.com/post/65338904338/wow-or-from-the-when-apple- became-the-borg-department)

<comment><USER8> Or you know is tired of seeing every thread turning to an Apple flame.

<comment><USER6> This is actually very much relevant to the recent news. Yesterday you have Apple removing valid complaints from one user about their products, while Dell has a very different company approach to let the information flow transparently among their followers. This thread would not even have appeared if there were no such transparency.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Fascinating. I was shopping for new sneakers the other day and was shocked at how many people over the last couple of years had reported new pairs of New Balance shoes having exactly the same "smells like cat urine" problem (see: [http://ask.metafilter.com/182458/Something-peed-in-my- sneake...](http://ask.metafilter.com/182458/Something-peed-in-my-sneakers), [http://reviews.newbalance.com/9328/M990/new-balance-new- bala...](http://reviews.newbalance.com/9328/M990/new-balance-new- balance-990v3-reviews/reviews.htm), [http://www.zappos.com/product/review/7944390/page/1/start/5](http://www.zappos.com/product/review/7944390/page/1/start/5), or just Google "new balance odor").

The prevailing theory is that it has something to do with the glue they use when assembling the shoe. I wonder if the same glue is hidden in these laptops somewhere...

<comment><USER10> I have found that orange-flavored Trident gum and a certain type of evergreen bushes commonly used in landscaping around shopping centers also smell like cat urine from a short distance.

Cat urine smell is such a pervasive entity.

<comment><USER11> "cat urine" and "gum" should not be used in the same sentence. I'll leave that one out of my breathe freshener options.

<comment><USER12> Many people find the smell of durians equally repugnant... and you can buy durian flavored gum.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This was a fun read. My favorite post:

'''When you write that the "problem has been resolved," do you mean that when I open my computer it will no longer smell like a pack of well hydrated feral cats have used it for target practice resolved, or do you mean that you have resolved the mystery of what has caused the problem? Jus' 'asking.'''

<comment><USER14> The reply is even more interesting . This is by an official rep. Really impressed by Dell.

"As mentioned above, no biological hazard was involved and we do know that a manufacturing process was the root cause. That process was changed which resolved the issue on newly manufactured units. As for everyone out there with a unit that still exhibits the symptoms, we haven't forgotten about you and will make things right. Keep watching this thread and as soon as more info if available, we'll let everyone know."

<comment><USER15> What's so impressive? It is just a delaying tactic from June till now. And still no resolution.

<comment><USER16> Agreed. Especially unimpressive is the long delay between when they apparently discovered the cause and now, when they _still_ haven't revealed it, even as the rep has stated for weeks that it'll be "any day now".

I also wasn't super impressed with the first few replies from lower level reps that kept suggesting blowing it out with compressed air even after it was clear that there was a larger problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's part of a hardening process that has been employed by weapon smiths for time immemorial, known as "quenching". After you form the laptop case / sword / rifle barrel, and it is still hot, it is to be submerged in urine. I'm surprised it's taken laptop manufacturers so long to catch up.

<comment><USER18> I thought quenching was done with water...

<comment><USER17> Water should only be used in extreme situations where no horses, humans, or cats can be coaxed into a milking. Urine has well known properties which it lends to the steel.

<comment><USER19> Well known properties like smell?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Reminds me of my sisters Volkswagen beetle. It's got some material under the leather that smells exactly like crayons. It's impossible to get rid of. Not as bad as cat piss but really strong. Gives me a feeling of nostalgia every time I'm in it haha. Google "Volkswagen smells like crayons" and you'll find a lot of VWs in the early 2000s have the same smell.

<comment><USER21> My Ford Escape's air conditioning smells like cat pee sometimes, when it's first waking up. Not too badly, but the resemblance is quite distinct.

<comment><USER22> A friend vomited into her cars aircon vent on the dash once while worse for wear. The phrase blowing chunks came to mind when she turned on the aircon a few days later. That car was no longer the chosen transport method for group outings.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I know there's a family of compounds found in wine that can smell like cat urine[1]. If this laptop has a rubberized component, some googling[2] indicates these same compounds may be employed in their manufacture.

1\. [http://www.wineanorak.com/mercaptansinwine.htm](http://www.wineanorak.com/mercaptansinwine.htm)

2\. [http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20130310034151AA...](http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20130310034151AAO2Bw5)

</comment><comment><USER24> For what it's worth, wine enthusiasts refer to this cat pee smell as 'boxwood' and pay extra for it.

<comment><USER25> Does cat urine smell different from regular urine?

<comment><USER26> Very much so (ammonia content, for one). See any IPA brewed with a large proportion of Simcoe hops as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Part of me wonders whether or not this is some sort of collective joke by Reddit or 4chan or something. Another part of me is not surprised. Dell isn't particularly notorious for their astute QC.

<comment><USER20> The last time I ordered a Dell product it arrived and would not boot. Did absolutely nothing. Was completely DOA. That put a bad taste in my mouth. Their displays have treated me well though, and their server products are great.

<comment><USER27> I actually quite enjoy their displays as well. But their laptops have been nothing but headaches for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Apple Macbooks smelled like body odor in 2005:

[https://discussions.apple.com/thread/207887](https://discussions.apple.com/thread/207887)

<comment><USER29> Aha! To the people who said apple would have removed something like this if it was on their forums :P

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> My guess is that Dell laptops have incorrectly vulcanized rubber. During vulcanization, sulfur compounds are added to rubber to make it more elastic. Cat urine also contains a high amount of sulfur compounds. If Dell's suppliers got the vulcanization process wrong, sulfur could be leeching out of the laptop's rubber components.

</comment><comment><USER31> 5 pages of comments, how bizarre. What could possibly go wrong in manufacturing to make electronics smell like cat piss?

<comment><USER32> Happens all the time with shady third-party manufacturers in countries other than your own.

You get a perfectly nice sample unit that meets all specs and looks beautiful. When the container arrives off the boat with 100,000 production units you find materials have been substituted with cheaper materials, scrap plastic, and scavenged components.

Walk into any dollar store and you'll smell something similar to this, cheap plastics off-gassing all kinds of wonderful substances. I picked up a flashlight once that literally smelled of kerosene, probably because that's what the overseas factory used as a plasticizer to get that "rubbery" feel on the handle.

<comment><USER33> That happened at a former employer of mine. Parts came in covered in chicken shit and straw. Long story short: our main vendor in China outsourced to a make-shift forging operation set up in a barn.

<comment><USER32> There are other..um...examples out there.

[http://www.snopes.com/medical/toxins/hairband.asp](http://www.snopes.com/medical/toxins/hairband.asp)

[http://consumerist.com/2007/05/25/costco-recalls-dirty- under...](http://consumerist.com/2007/05/25/costco-recalls-dirty-underwear- punching-bag/)

[http://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/n74vq/so_i_bought_a_2...](http://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/n74vq/so_i_bought_a_20_punching_bag_from_china_the/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> "Urea, I found it!"

\-- Apologies to Archimedes

</comment><comment><USER35> Funny, but when I read the first staff comments I thought it was actually a bot responding :)

After comment #4 auto-pilot goes offline

</comment><comment><USER36> It's a FEATURE. If they didn't want cat urine-scented, they should have opted for the plain 6430, not the u.

<comment><USER37> Product Scenting Suffixes as follows:

       [u] - "urine",
       [s] - "sock,worn",
       [bc] - "burned,capacitor",
       [br] - "burned,resistor",
       [a] - "asbestos"
       [m] - "methapetamines",
       [c] - "cocaine,regular",
       [cw] - "cocaine,wall street",
       [cc] - "cocaine,columbian",
       ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Is Dell's assembly line located inside an industrial laundry building by any chance?

<comment><USER39> Might it have been made in China from auto scraps?

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> The Rockefeller Smell Study aims to map the genetic basis of some of these psychophysical differences. [http://vosshall.rockefeller.edu/smellstudy](http://vosshall.rockefeller.edu/smellstudy) They have already mapped one such genomic locus that changes perception of androsterone from sweaty/urinous to pleasant/floral. [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/17873857/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/17873857/)

</comment><comment><USER41> Is this in celebration of National Cat Day here in America?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Cat_Day](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Cat_Day)

</comment><comment><USER42> Hopefully this is an issue that can easily be resolved with one of their "critical updates"

(funny enough I went to their driver page ([http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/download.aspx](http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/download.aspx)) and it shows an error. Maybe they forgot to install the driver that drives their driver page?)

</comment><comment><USER43> A fake SaaS that does big data with your garbage and a keyboard that smells like cat piss, we're having so much fun in the tech community!

</comment><comment><USER44> Reminds me of my old Dual USB Macbook. Still smells to the point the whole room it's in stinks after all those years.

[http://lowendmac.com/menagh/06/1019.html](http://lowendmac.com/menagh/06/1019.html)

[https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1320241](https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1320241)

</comment><comment><USER45> I work in an enterprise IT shop during the day and we received 300 of these laptops which we are sitting on until Dell comes up with a resolution. It's not a faint odor, or one that only a few people will notice. It's a rudely foul room clearing gag inducing vapor released as the case heats up. We can't hand them out as they are.

</comment><comment><USER46> My entire house smells like cat piss! I'm not a Dell fan, but I do have a very territorial cat.

</comment><comment><USER47> I've heard of this before with cheap plastics, like "pony beads", for instance. What I really wonder, though, is if this will be forever linked in the consumer collective mind with Dell returning to privately owned status.

</comment><comment><USER48> It was actually a carefully planned tie-in with Uber's cat delivery promo.

</comment><comment><USER49> The problem can be fixed by emptying the recycle bin..er..litter tray.

</comment><comment><USER29> I am surprised that people are giving theories here about the cause. Because on page for Dell-Steve reported that the cause is a manufacturing process that they now replaced.

</comment><comment><USER50> Specifically cat urine, not other urine? I must be thankfully smell-deficient because I wouldn't be able to tell the difference, and I grew up with cats for 20 years

<comment><USER51> "Growing up with cats" is a disadvantage in this case - people don't really notice the 'default' environment that they're used to, your nose 'turns off' that specific smell and doesn't record it. My relatives who have cats (especially in the plural) are unable to distuinguish their own items that smell of cat from similar items that don't.

It's similar for smoking - nonsmokers can easily identify traces of smoke smell (like, this particular jacket was worn recently to a place where people smoked) that are not noticeable by the smoker itself.

<comment><USER50> This is a good point, and one I hadn't thought of. But I wasn't smelling cat pee often either.

If we had two sets of items, one of which we had some cats pee on, and one of which we had some humans pee on, you think you could sort them into cat/human groups with a high degree of success?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Ahh, memories. Reminds me of when ThinkPads were still made by IBM. We used to call them StinkPads back in the day.

</comment><comment><USER53> This might be caused by polyurethane degradation which happens when the material gets hot.

</comment><comment><USER54> They are probably totally pissed.

</comment><comment><USER55> Yesterday when some apple users said their Macbook battery life had been impacted by the Mavericks upgrade the consensus on HN was that "people blame all kinds of problems on software upgrades". When some Dell users say their laptops smell funny, then Dell has a QA problem.

<comment><USER56> Was it a software upgrade that caused the laptops to smell like cat piss?

<comment><USER57> That _would_ be one hell of a bug.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> So Dell Laptops stink?

Hasn't that been common knowledge for at least a decade?

<comment><USER59> You owe me a new monitor, I washed it with my coffee!

Really, hilarious comments in this thread. Thanks, y'all!

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> There is only one logical explanation. Hidden meth lab.

</comment><comment><USER61> Do users have a cat?

</comment><comment><USER62> I heard this is a new feature in Win 8.1.

</comment><comment><USER63> My Macbook Air smells like pumpkin pie.

</comment><comment><USER64> Comments are hilarious. Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER65> Dell littertude

</comment><comment><USER66> Does this feature cost extra?

</comment><comment><USER67> I have 5 cats and they occasionally wizz on my clothes when I'm not looking. Next time I get caught unawares and smell like cat piss in public, I'll say I bought a Dell. Thanks Dell!</comment>


People can sense Earth's magnetic field, brain waves suggest - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencenews.org/article/people-can-sense-earth-magnetic-field-brain-waves-suggest <comment><USER2> Does this actually prove it's a "sense"? It stands to reason that magnetic fields could subtly affect brainwaves, as brainwaves are electromagnetic in nature, but does that indicate that the body actually does anything useful with this perturbation?

They have well demonstrated that they affect the brain on some level, but I think making the jump to call it a sense requires some actual effect on our physiology or behavior that the body takes advantage of as a means to DO something.

I'm inserting my own definition and understanding of what a sense is here, but I'd wager there there aren't too many ways of defining a sense without somehow including perception as a critical aspect. At least not any that people would buy wholesale or would be easily demonstrated scientifically.

A counterexample to this would be ionizing radiation. Radiation is present in our environment, we generally do not perceive it (at least not on any conscious level, and excluding the sense of heat and visible light, both frequencies along the electromagnetic spectrum), and it certainly has effects on the body that are easily perceivable (tanning/sunburn, cancer, etc). Can we sense it? I don't think many folks would argue that we can.

I also notice that the article uses quite a few weasel words, throwing "suggests" and "hints" in to justify the title. Not fantastic journalism IMO.

<comment><USER3> That defines good journalism.

Bald claims with insufficient evidence would be bad journalism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Cultures whose language requires absolute direction awareness ought to yield individuals who can consciously identify changes in magnetic fields.

It seems like an obvious course of investigation. One wonders whether there was any attempt to recruit such individuals. Not all of them live in inaccessible places -- just most.

</comment><comment><USER4> Aren't EEG caps full of wires and other metal components? If so, then this study reads like an onion article.

<comment><USER5> I imagine the machines are also quite loud, which would be sensory input. I haven't read the paper, but I wonder how they handle that.

<comment><USER3> No, they aren't. You might be thinking of MRI machines. Or bulldozers. Or something.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If people can sense it, does that mean magnetic field changes can effect people ?

<comment><USER3> "Effect" meaning "bring about" ? That generally requires mating behavior.

Can it affect people? Evidently so. That is what you just read about.</comment></comment>


Megalisting Used Books on Amazon - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/14/books/review/Sussman-t.html?pagewanted=2

<comment><USER2> Somehow, the article fails to mention _Margin of Safety_ , an investment book less than twenty years old, which sells for about $1000:

[http://www.amazon.com/Margin-Safety-Risk-Averse- Strategies-T...](http://www.amazon.com/Margin-Safety-Risk-Averse-Strategies- Thoughtful/dp/0887305105)

Here's a piece on why it's so pricey:

[http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_32/b3996085....](http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_32/b3996085.htm)

And here's a recent update on Klarman, who is still doing very well.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/13/business/yourmoney/13klar....](http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/13/business/yourmoney/13klar.html?pagewanted=all)

In case $1000 is out of your price range, there's a Rapidshare of a scanned .pdf:

[http://rapidshare.com/files/126088249/Margin.of.Safety.by.Se...](http://rapidshare.com/files/126088249/Margin.of.Safety.by.Seth.Klarman.1991.FullScan.pdf.html)

<comment><USER3> On Scribd: [http://www.scribd.com/doc/5176674/Margin-of-Safety-by- Seth-K...](http://www.scribd.com/doc/5176674/Margin-of-Safety-by-Seth- Klarman-1991-FullScan)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The first page of the article:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/14/books/review/Sussman-t.htm...](http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/14/books/review/Sussman-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1)

<comment><AUTHOR> Oops, thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> _And Alloway of Motte & Bailey says he's able to outwit the megalisters' computers, provoking price wars and then buying up books at below market value, holding them until prices readjust._

And yet in the mind of most people, small and independent bookstores are the good guys and big book-selling corporations are evil. Baffling.</comment>


"Don't waste your time in crappy startup jobs." - <AUTHOR> https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/07/08/dont-waste-your-time-in-crappy-startup-jobs/

<comment><USER2> Really long article, but missed an important point. Technology has atomized the required scale of a new company with reasonable ambitions. It costs cents on the dollar to accomplish what would have taken a scale (10mm+) investment to get done in 1995. The dark side of this is that 1) Only companies with superb prospects will attract large capital investments required for job stability. 2) Lots of risky jobs will be created at little companies versus big "safe" companies.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I think this blog article provides a lot of great concrete actionable advice for evaluating startup jobs. How do HNers feel about the advice?

</comment><comment><USER3> Reddit discussion [http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/wan60/dont_wast...](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/wan60/dont_waste_your_time_in_crappy_startup_jobs/)</comment>


The Elements of Computing Systems ("From NAND to Tetris") - <AUTHOR> http://www1.idc.ac.il/tecs/

<comment><AUTHOR> I just got this book a couple days ago. I didn't have a chance to look at it until today because I was off at ErlangCamp, but it looks _really_ good.

The first chapter starts with logic gates (NAND, XOR, etc.), and then adds an emulated chip, than assembler for it, then a VM built on it, then an OS and a compiler for the VM. The course is designed to tie together the whole CS stack, whose pieces tend to get discussed in isolation.

Some of the coursework is online, and it would probably be really useful to those of us who are mostly learning CS through self-study.

<comment><USER2> The other nice thing is that, while each chapter builds on the last, you don't _have_ to do them in that order. For example, you build your compiler to compile for the virtual machine you build, but they provide a VM to use also. This way, if you have build a computer from scratch before but haven't built a compiler, you can do it in that order.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are your pain points with Visual Studio Team Services? - <AUTHOR> What are the things that take too long to do in Visual Studio Team Services or you can't do at all? <comment><USER2> Honestly, that it's not Github/BitBucket/etc. It looks pretty cool, but there's a great ecosystem out there already that I'd rather use for CI/Build/SCM.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's too integrated. Every tool in the suite isn't as good as the best tool for that purpose outside of the suite. I'd go even further and say that most functions of the suite aren't even the top 3 for best tool.

</comment><comment><USER4> No public repos.</comment>


Tipping in America: How Does Your State Stack Up? - <AUTHOR> https://www.simple.com/blog/simple-insights-lets-talk-tipping/?

<comment><USER2> America is so backwards. Why not just pay your restaurant staff a reasonable wage. I hate the dishonesty of the pricing when you are expected to pay 10 -20% more than what you see. Who benefits from this system?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Why is the Bay Area so low?

<comment><USER3> High cost of living means pinching more pennies, and high earners aren't eating out enough to compensate? Just conjecture... FWIW, I do my part to bring the average up!</comment></comment>


Toy fanatic builds a house from LEGO - <AUTHOR> http://www.archdaily.com/33604/toy-fanatic-builds-a-house-from-lego/

<comment><USER2> Cross referenced to <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=794019></comment>


Gender Shouldn't Matter but Apparently it Still Does - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/04/gender_shouldnt_matter_but_app.html

<comment><USER2> This confuses me. There seem to be certain personality traits associated with gender beyond standard stereotypes. Why is it a bad thing for a manager/owner to employ specific talents or personality traits in accomplishing an objective?Gender is just one component that makes a person who they are, and is observable.

This is not an argument in favor of disparity of wages, but rather an argument in favor of disparity of deployment based on expected performance conditional on known attributes.

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't read that in this article. I thought the data was showing that even in roles where that were more male or female dominated, there was either no difference in how effective the people were seen to be at their roles (or the women were seen as more effective).</comment></comment>


The Evolution of Pleasure and Pain - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/56/perspective/antonio-damasio-tells-us-why-pain-is-necessary <comment><USER3> Pain and pleasure may not be as distinct as common sense assumes. The purpose of both seems to be to draw one's attention.

A simple example would be eating chilli which is painful the first time. After one has learnt to enjoy it then the experience becomes pleasurable.

More controversially perhaps is when I stub my toe these days. Instead of yelling and hopping around the room I try to transfer as much of my attention to the affected toe as I possibly can. I won't say it feels exactly nice now but it's a heck of a lot better than when I was a kid trying to distract myself from the pain.

It seems plausible that if one could get very proficient at paying attention then the experience might be comparable to a highly intense pleasure (a pleasure _too_ intense to be comfortable, at least to begin with).

<comment><USER4> > chili

More precisely, peppers get their flavor from stimulating the pain receptors on the tongue. Somehow, this morphs into pleasure.

<comment><USER5> Probably has something to do with endogenous morphine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> >How does consciousness emerge out of nerve cells? Well, it doesn't. You're not dealing with the brain alone.

I'm not sure that this gives any real insight. Perhaps some other types of cells in the body are also involved in creating consciousness, but then the question is "How does consciousness emerge out of cells?".

Saying the brain is "just a computer" understates the complexity of computers with arbitrary software. Just because the brain (and any other cells involved) isn't implemented as a simple Turing machine, it doesn't follow that it does anything that couldn't be alternatively implemented using a simple Turing machine.

</comment><comment><USER7> I dislike the title here: Pain isn't necessary. The path evolution took - <USER2> pain exists makes sense - but the author's statement in the title is absurd.

I can easily imagine a future where we have obsoleted pain as a communication channel. Pain is a neurological version of a healthcheck system and not even a particularly good one; it's slow, has no off or way to silence false reports, and lacks context. Pain doesn't tell you what the problem is; only that there is a problem. Any engineer who had to deal with such a low-bandwidth protocol would be complaining about it loudly.

Pain is not necessary. And I hope it is replaced soon.

<comment><USER8> I'd argue having an easy way to snooze the alarm would lead to more health damage than dealing with acute pain promptly (i.e. burst appendix is something you really need to take care of now, not when it's most convenient).

However, I agree on having an off switch for chronic pain would probably be better than what we have now.

<comment><USER9> As someone who has dealt with chronic nerve disorders for the better part of a decade, I can tell you that numbness is preferable to raw chronic neuropathic pain.

<comment><USER10> Counter point from my perspective as someone with a sports related spinal injury is that pain is an essential proprioceptive device allowing me to keep active within the boundaries of my injury.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I see pain and suffering as the necessary tools for carving out meaning in our own lives.

<comment><USER12> I would agree, but I carve a giant exception for chronic, relentless pain. After developing a condition with chronic pain, it's a constant struggle deciding whether to continue to exist or not. Any benefit of meaning is lost, and there is only misery and darkness from which you cannot escape. Modern medication can provide relief, but these days it's a battle to even get that because we have decided that the risk that somebody might "get high" is worth allowing people to suffer.

In related comment, the trend of medical professionals (let's be honest, it's politicians and lawmakers primarily driving it) to ignore and turn their backs on chronic pain patients is comparable in my opinion to allowing torture to continue. Internal wounds are just as real as external wounds, but humans typically only acknowledge in others what is visible. We pity the man with no legs, but we disregard the man with paralyzing and crippling pain.

<comment><USER13> I agree with you. In my opinion, people turn their back on chronic pain because, just like with depression (or other mental health conditions), it's something they can't see or measure. They have no idea what it's like to be in your shoes. Most people have never experienced it, so they don't really have any kind of reference.

I would argue that chronic pain is an evolutionary "bug", similarly to eczema, psoriasis, peanut allergies, and chronic depression. Most people can probably understand the notion that there are plenty of minor genetic issues that we all are affected with. I have a friend who has a sensitive stomach, she routinely feels sick and vomits. People understand that we all have unique genetics, but they somehow have a hard time understanding that we all have unique brains and nervous systems. I think the current political climate might be partially to blame: it's almost taboo to suggest that our brains are, in fact, unique, that we don't all experience the world the same way, in large part because of our genetics.

Biology is quite fragile. Humans have about 20,000 genes. Each one of these genes exists in multiple variants in the human population. You are a random combination of subsets of your parent's genes. We've evolved in such a way that most combinations of genes work reasonably well together. However, it shouldn't be so surprising that some random combinations of genes do not, in fact, work well together, and give rise to "genetic bugs". It shouldn't be so hard to conceive that it's possible that some people are made in such a way that they are more sensitive to pain than others. Maybe the regions of their brains that handle pain are hyperactive, maybe it's something in their nerves, maybe it's their pain sensors that fire too much. We don't have the medical technology to really assess these things, but that doesn't mean they can't exist.

<comment><USER14> > it's almost taboo to suggest that our brains are, in fact, unique, that we > don't all experience the world the same way

We can only hope (and work towards) that will change. Of all the things I've read in the last year, Andy Clark's "Surfing Uncertainty" [0] has most changed my view on the experience of being.

You can read a synopsis at the link, but my quick take is that its core premise is that based on the totality of our life experience, our brain creates models of the world and our interactions with it. Our everyday experience of the world is then the interaction between what our brain predicts will happen from the model, error corrected via our sensory input.

So yes, everyone is unique and experiences the world differently. Where this is relevant to pain is realising how much of pain is in our head (so to speak). I started thinking about this originally when I was trying to work out why I would voluntarily put myself through the "pain" of long-distance running...

[0] [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25823558-surfing- uncerta...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25823558-surfing-uncertainty)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> My girlfriend has chronic neuropathic pain. Like everything else in life, moderation is key. Some pain is useful but too much of it is not a good thing.

<comment><USER16> I lived for some years with incredible chronic back pain. It really is a kind of nightmare. If you're lucky, your doctor will give you something addictive and dangerous for a bit of temporary relief. But more probably, it's just a burden you're expected to shoulder and get on with your life.

<comment><USER17> As someone in a similar situation, how were you able to get rid of it?

<comment><USER16> For me it was muscular and joint issues. Initially, it was a combination of steroid injections and kratom for the pain (a TENS unit also helped). I had a very good friend of mine die of opiate overdose and get really skittish at the thought of an opiate prescription for pain management. Also, opiate painkillers make me very lazy and totally kills my ability to focus -- a death knell for a programmer -- while the kratom keeps my head clear and my motivation up.

Those things combined allowed me to start working out every day, both cardio and weightlifting. I also began seeing a physical therapist at the VA regularly. Finally, I also worked at a company that generously bought standing desks for those that wanted them. That allowed me to strength train my way out of the muscular issues. I still do deal with joint pain, but I found it _much_ easier to deal with by itself. On bad days I take kratom to help with the pain, but those are far and few between nowadays.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Developer Friend Office Furniture - <AUTHOR> Hello everyone,
I need some help. I'm building out my first ever software development office that'll hopefully house 4 developers. My company has purchased Dell Precision units for everyone along with two 27-inch iMac with Retina 5K for Mac and iOs development.
Now we need furniture. I've done some research but have found lots of conflicting details about height adjustable desk, Herman Miller chairs etc.
So I want to ask real developers what furniture (chairs, desks etc) that makes your working in the office super comfortable and adds to ensuring you deliver your best code.
Again advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks <comment><USER2> Height adjustable desks are a huge ergonomic win but also a major increased cost. Pneumatic dynamically-adjusting ones are even better for the sit-stand option.

Not everyone's the same height, you see, and even at the same height people have different leg to torso ratios. A typical desk is 30-36" high. I'm most comfortable with mine adjusted to 24".

For chairs, I suggest setting a budget for each engineer and letting them choose their own.</comment>


The story behind the $10 'laptop' - <AUTHOR> http://www.rediff.com/money/2009/feb/09the-story-behind-the-dollar-10-laptop.htm <comment><USER2> Not much "story" there but interesting none the less.

Reminds me that when Clive Sinclair launched the ZX Spectrum all those years ago it retailed for £250 (paid up front with quite a wait for delivery) but they were being built for him by Timex at about £12 each. An admirable price/cost "spread" but does underline the fact that useful computing devices can be knocked out at very low prices - although everyone would have to adjust their expectations accordingly.</comment>


Confessions of an accidental job destroyer - happy-go-lucky https://www.technologyreview.com/s/611477/confessions-of-an-accidental-job-destroyer/ <comment><AUTHOR> It might come off kind of callous, but I don't think there's any benefit to society in having people employed doing jobs that are so easily automatable(or otherwise improved by technological means), it's just a waste of resources. But firing non-essential employees due to automation plus capitalism just doesn't work. Workers pay income tax but robots don't, so I'm a fan of heavily taxing automation in order to fund public service jobs. If 100,000 warehouse workers could all become social workers, or care for the elderly, or even do manual labor but for public infrastructure, that could be pretty rad for society.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you use the TouchBar for anything useful? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> No. I only got it for the 2 extra thunderbolt ports.

I use to accidentally trigger siri all the time until I finally removed it. Now I accidentally trigger the mute/unmute button all the time instead.

The fact it changes based on what window is focused hurts it more than anything for me, keyboard brightness and media controls use to be immediately available no matter what I was working on now it's contextual. If I have to focus to iTunes to change the track I might as well just do it in the UI.

</comment><comment><USER3> I like the one-touch volume and brightness sliders. I have in the past run custom bars with BetterTouchTool but it did not feel polished.

Where is built-in support for the menu bar, and perhaps a CMD-hold for sysinfo on the right (time, CPU, memory, energy, drives, network) and contextual information (transcoding, SSH session, lint, Xcode simulator stats, etc) on the left so I can go full-screen on more apps? I thought that was where it was going, but it's been stagnant since release.

Apparently a "pro" system means quicker access to emojis, browser tabs and predictive text.

</comment><comment><USER4> Mine broke after a few weeks. Now I have to use the menu item to adjust volume, but other than that it hasn't bothered me.

</comment><comment><USER5> Nope. I accidentally log out and have to press the top right corner 2 or 3 times to hit the escape key.

</comment><comment><USER6> Yes.

</comment><comment><USER7> Nope.</comment>


Hacker Bible – Chaos Computer Club (1988) - <AUTHOR> https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.offiziere.ch%2Ftrust-us%2Fhabi2%2Findex.html

<comment><USER2> wow thats cool

if it was for modern architecture/oses this would be invaluable.</comment>


Compressive Sensing: the best bits - <AUTHOR> http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/2009/4/the-best-bits

<comment><USER2> Single page, printer friendly ...

[http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/id.6791,y.2009,no.4,...](http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/id.6791,y.2009,no.4,content.true,page.1,css.print/issue.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER3> <http://bit-player.org/2009/not-up-to-norm></comment>


"w00t" crowned word of year by U.S. dictionary  - <AUTHOR> http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071212/wr_nm/usa_language_dc;_ylt=AgOYbyVHpW3r39qm9oMK8YcjtBAF

<comment><USER2> Yikes. Sometimes I feel like we're devolving... soon we'll communicate using grunts.

I don't think anyone even pronounces that word... never heard anyone say it.

<comment><USER3> w00t is no better or worse than 'yay!' (or yikes). I've also heard plenty of people (nerds) say it in real life.

<comment><USER2> yikes |yīks| exclamation informal expressing shock and alarm, often for humorous effect : I had a dip in the 40-degree pool (yikes!).

From Oxford Dictionary.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Merriam-Webster President John Morse said, "People look for self-evident > numeral-letter substitutions: 0 for O; 3 for E; 7 for T; and 4 for A," he > said. "This is simply a different and more efficient way of representing the > alphabetical character."

More efficient?

</comment><comment><USER5> In other news: U.S. Dictionary sells four copies this year. Beats projections by 33%

</comment><comment><USER6> w00t!</comment>


More Stanford Online Classes by January - <AUTHOR> http://www.nlp-class.org/ (see the other ones in the footer) <comment><USER2> This is really fantastic news. I'm in the machine learning class going on right now and really love it. If you're at all curious about machine learning check out the class--it's very practical and hands on.

I'm curious about the probabilistic graphical models class--do folks familiar with the subject think it's a good followup to machine learning?

<comment><USER3> It's a good followup. Those models are widely used in computer vision, natural language processing, and other AI and applied ML areas, so those classes all go together.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do I find projects to contribute to on github -- as a Junior dev - <AUTHOR>

I am not skilled enough to identify where mature projects need work -- but I know there must be smaller projects out there that could use even a junior-dev's level of expertise. How do I find such projects? <comment><USER2> What languages do you like to work with?

One related thing I can suggest is to contact the author first and see if they're interested in help. Because a lot of projects admins are non- responsive to pull requests. Perhaps because they're just busy, they don't really put much time into the project or any other reason. It's kinda frustrating to submit a contribution to a project and then get zero response to your pull request.

If you contact them first and they don't even response - that's probably a good tip that they won't respond to your pull request either.

</comment><comment><USER3> Send me an email at zchlatta (at) gmail.com with a bit more information about yourself and what technologies you work with. I'm working on a few open source projects that could use another developer on them.

</comment><comment><USER4> If you are skilled in C++, then I will strongly recommend Opus, and Daala, the open source codecs backed up Mozilla. I have just started contributing and the engineers respond on irc channel rather very well.</comment>


The Damage of Social Media - <AUTHOR> http://www.travelfordifference.com/damage-social-media/ <comment><USER2> There's something about the text-based medium in particular that encourages the total dissolution of empathy. If you took any two users flaming each other on Twitter and put them on a phone call, you'd see a quick return to civility (i.e. just voice without even going to video is probably enough in most cases).

These platforms should be modern mediums for sophisticated public discourse. Instead, the inclination to daemonize, defame, and bully is so strong that you get the opposite effect -- there's a total shutdown of public discourse as most people won't go on record to say anything that might not be consistent with the party line.

This doesn't change anyone's mind -- it just has the effect of normalizing discourse to the lowest common denominator and driving anyone with a deviant opinion behind closed doors. Soon enough, everyone is screaming into an echo chamber.

<comment><USER3> > _there 's a total shutdown of public discourse as most people won't go on > record to say anything that might not be consistent with the party line._

> _...driving anyone with a deviant opinion behind closed doors. Soon enough, > everyone is screaming into an echo chamber._

Funny, I've always thought downvotes on HN encouraged the same, albeit to a lesser degree. It's one thing to use downvotes as a moderation tool, submerging comments from others with whom you don't agree. It's another thing to "penalize" (FWIW) a person because you disagree with him/her. That it seems acceptable is a smaller symptom of the bigger problem.

Reminds me of the Black Mirror episode #1 this season.

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5497778/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5497778/)

<comment><USER4> Maybe you mistyped, or maybe it's just too late and I'm not parsing things right, but I'm having a hard time distinguishing between the two options here:

 _" It's one thing to use downvotes as a moderation tool, submerging comments from others with whom you don't agree. It's another thing to "penalize" (FWIW) a person because you disagree with him/her."_

Regarding how down votes are used on HN, there are those who use them to express disagreement (PG weighed in a while ago [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171)), though there are others who think this isn't the best use of down votes.

Maybe we need "non-substantive", "don't agree", and "flag/uncivil". I can see how that could overcomplicate things, though.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, it was too late...for me. Sorry, I wasn't very clear.

By "punishing people", I meant the whole "karma" thing. So, using downvotes to score comments is considered a form of thread moderation. Ok, that's one thing. However, also assigning a score to _people_ based, in part, on whether others frequently agree with them really encourages group-think. There is at least some perceivable utility in downvoting comments, but what's the value of scoring whether people frequently agree with someone?

BTW, I'm not going meta here, as I think it's very relevant to this thread.

> _there are others who think this isn 't the best use of down votes._

Yeah, I am also one who believes that, even with comments, downvotes for disagreement have a similar--though perhaps lesser--effect of discouraging diversity of ideas. I guess the heart of it is that disagreement is considered a legitimate reason for downvoting, whether it's comments or karma that is impacted.

Upvotes plus the current flags for incivility/inappropriateness should be enough for moderation, and would remove the disincentive for the expression of diverse ideas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> obj-g If you can't take the heat, etc. It's silly to say "think about whether you would say this to someone in person or not" \-- that's the whole point, you're NOT saying it to someone in person, you can say what you want without the usual repercussions. It's ultimately a good thing, even if some people get hurt. And since when do you have a right not to be upset? But you do have a right to keep off the internet if you can't handle it, not to post pictures of yourself and your real name, not to base your life completely around the internet and social media. I keep it anonymous, like the old days of the internet. I have pretty bare social media profiles, mostly as a big rolodex. If I post something else, opinions, what have you, I do it anonymously. Why does everyone need everybody else to know exactly who and where they are and everything about themselves? Because they think they're special and that others care. And then they get trolled. And so it goes.

<comment><USER5> This is about as sociopathic a view as one would expect from SV-oriented people. The impact of what you do, as a person, on other people is of paramount importance. Abstract statements like the above do not acknowledge, much less value, the actual impact of online behavior.

I hope you grow out of these views. You may find life to be more rewarding.

<comment> obj-g Sorry, SV-oriented?

<comment><USER5> Silicon Valley, as a generalized concept.

<comment> obj-g I think you've really misjudged me and what I'm saying. I think freedom on the web is more important than hurt feelings and that people ought to have a bit thicker skin in general or else stop making themselves so available to others. If a site wants to ban people or purge messages, that's their prerogative and they're welcome to do so. I don't need any cliche life lessons and sentiments from someone calling me a sociopath for it, lol.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is nothing that has not been said before, and does not illuminate anything about "the damage of social media." Yes, lack of real-world speech consequences allows people who lack empathy to amplify their voice. Yes, kids spend a lot of time on the Internet.

But this article lacks anything for us to do about it. The subset of "travelfordifference.com" readers probably has little overlap with the people who post in /b/.

This article lacks focus, lacks a clear audience, and lacks a clear path to action.

As well, there are some misconceptions in this article.

>You do have the right to say what you please and your opinion certainly is valid.

You don't always have the right to say what you please and just because you do say it doesn't make your opinion 'valid'. There are plenty of invalid "opinions."

>But there is a time and place for everything, and upsetting someone through your words is not achieving a thing.

There is not a time and place for everything. For example, there is no time and no place for slander. And upsetting someone validates the speaker's ability to affect another person -- thus, the 'upsetter' is accomplishing their goal.

>If someone is demonizing you, attacking you or upsetting you.. they are not worth your time, your emotions or your words. Your life is better than theirs. Be the bigger person and show social media how it should be done.

Just because someone is attacking you verbally does not mean your life is better than theirs. In fact, if you are severely, adversely affected by online hate-speech, your life is not better than theirs, and you need to change that. "Being the bigger person" does nothing. Social media very, very rarely rewards calm discourse on its own.

<comment><USER7> > You don't always have the right to say what you please and just because you > do say it doesn't make your opinion 'valid'. There are plenty of invalid > "opinions."

The First Amendment, at least in the US, protects the right of the people to say what they please. It is a very important right, because it prevents that form of power from being concentrated in a small group, and certain topics never being brought up.

You may perceive many opinions as invalid, but you don't know how people arrived at them - from their perspective, they're perfectly valid. This is true for all humans, as we do not possess perfect information. Effectively all of our opinions are invalid. This is not useful, and we're saying other peoples' opinions are valid not because they're 100% factually correct, but as a sign of respect and understanding that information processing is difficult and that we acknowledge that the opinion is reasonable from their end.

<comment><USER8> >You may perceive many opinions as invalid, but you don't know how people arrived at them - from their perspective, they're perfectly valid.

Of course. But this has no relationship at all with their actual validity.

>a sign of respect and understanding that information processing is difficult and that we acknowledge that the opinion is reasonable from their end.

But it's not about opinion, it's about the effect of those opinions on other people.

I don't really care if some people think the EU is an organisation of Satanic Communists who plan to take over the world, and that Britain has been cheated out of its empire and self-respect by EU membership.

They're perfectly entitled to their opinion, even if I think it's nuts.

I most certainly do care if those people have the political effect of depriving me of my right to travel and work in neighbouring countries. Then it's no longer just about opinions, but about someone imposing a crazy world view on other people and having a real effect on their lives.

The opinions can be dismissed. The political effects can't.

And that's the real problem. Free speech doesn't just mean the freedom to criticise the government - it also means the freedom to try to persuade others of the validity of a point of view, and to convert that persuasion into political power.

Which is a problem, because it allows bad faith actors. Currently as a voter I have more legal redress if I buy a toaster and it stops working than if a politician wilfully and knowingly lies to me during a campaign of persuasion. Similarly, there is very little redress against media outlets that lie or make up content to further a political agenda.

I'd suggest both of those need to change. The action of deliberately and knowingly misleading the public should be not be protected by free speech laws. Politicians and media companies that do it should be held accountable.

The rationale is simple - professional liars benefit no one except themselves. There is no case to be made for allowing wilful, deliberate dishonesty in public discourse.

<comment><USER9> The assumptions behind "unlimited full free speech" is that 1) speech is just speech and has no consequences, and 2) it is all or nothing, either anyone can say anything they want, anywhere, or there's no free speech.

Another point is that both politics and consumerism is about swaying people to make them do what is profitable for the candidate or the seller, so all in all it's better to have a very malleable population. Strong individualism, a mark of many Western societies, significantly contributes to the general lack of empathy and solidarity; as a consequence, the "losers" of the individualistic competition are just ignored ("they must be stupid, or lazy"), and this makes them all the more prone to being manipulated.

When you are in the business of selling little stories to people, you don't want to face a well-educated community with strong ties.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The OP mentions that the spark that caused the outrage they faced was an incident involving their pets. I'm not surprised at all.

It's a very incendiary topic because people have _very_ strong opinions about animal wellbeing and animal rights. Discussion forums (and Facebook groups, etc) that concentrate on pets and animals also tends to draw in a crowd of crazy cat ladies and other individuals with very polarized opinions.

I never discuss my pets, especially issues related to their health and wellbeing (or other "incidents") on the internet. You will get mean responses from people and you may get straight up harrassment from SJWs and other "activists". If you are a public figure (even slightly), this may ruin your life or your career.

This gets much worse on international forums, because different cultures have different ideals of animal wellbeing. E.g. some americans consider declawing cats to be alright, a lot of british people think that cats shouldn't be kept indoors at all, some americans breed white tigers because they're "rare" (and even run a "charity" to support them) and the british don't eat horse meat at all. And then there's a bunch of people who think that animals should not be "owned" at all. Mention any of these three things on a public, internationally attended forum on animals and you are going to get a flame war.

Just don't mention your pets (or other activities related to animals) on public internet forums. Nothing good can come out of it.

</comment><comment><USER11> Given they are sharing this vile post

[https://www.facebook.com/SavionMusic/posts/1261727890587736](https://www.facebook.com/SavionMusic/posts/1261727890587736)

of total incendiary bullshit, they really are calling the kettle black.

This is a prime example of fake stories that serve no purpose other than to make people feel bad, make minorities feel worse and create divides.

<comment><USER12> We're meant to accept _those_ fake viral stories on social media because they fit the narrative. For example, take this tweet from a senior reporter at CNN attacking famed right-wing news cesspit Breitbart for covering the fakery: [https://twitter.com/DylanByers/status/798263162508177410](https://twitter.com/DylanByers/status/798263162508177410) The FBI actually said there was a surge in hate crimes _in 2015_. This in no way confirms the post-election surge of social media stories as he pretends it does. (Which makes his tweet a fake viral claim that a story about fake viral hate crime claims is fake. Confusing, I know.)

<comment> obj-g Not to mention if you actually look at the number of hate crimes per year they are almost incredibly low. Something like (you can google yourself for exact numbers) 500 hate crimes against Muslims in 2015 (400 in 2002, I think). Considering how many people live in the United States, it's kind of amazing. And hate crimes against Jews are always the highest. But now, just days after the election, we're supposed to believe that the number has tripled, quadrupled, whatever, in just a matter of days. It begs one to really think about the veracity of some of the claims. As if people only suddenly became openly racist. I think the type of person who would call someone a nigger is gonna do it no matter who runs for president or who wins. And I wager a large percentage of the reports are well-meaning (from an SJW perspective) BS.

<comment> dao- There's no reason to think that the number of reports about low-threshold hate speech and similar incidents on social media and the number of incidents on FBI record should be the same. They can be vastly different and still true for what they count, because they count different things. They are related, though, and if one number goes up I'd expect the other number to go up as well.

<comment> obj-g No, you're right. I just wanted to point out how low the numbers are according to the FBI. It's actually surprising to me, I would expect more. I didn't mean to say that because the number of recent reports on social media seemingly quadruples those numbers that they're not true -- I didn't word my comment properly. I'm not making any truth claims, just that the amount of reports and the content of the claims feel suspicious to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> _Your opinion does not need to be a personal attack and it certainly does not need to upset anyone in any way. If it does, you and I are clearly doing something wrong._

I agree with this article in general but this particular statement stands out for me because I can't imagine a world where everything we say has to be carefully worded as not to upset anyone. Maybe I'm missing something here.

<comment> obj-g But SJWs can imagine it perfectly. And that's the future they want for us.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> As the cost of publishing goes down, barrier of entry goes down, and you have a flood of unverified content.

Where I come from, people started pranking on Twitter about incoming tsunamis and all sort of mischief.

</comment><comment><USER15> Unlike traditional media, social media spreads free opinion [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_the_West](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_the_West)

<comment><USER16> Speaking for what someone thinks or feels is NOT an opinion. It's untrustworthiness!

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The real damage occur last week on the presidential election if you can say so.</comment>


Game about Squares and Dots – Google Play - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.funlab.squares <comment><AUTHOR> Hasten to add, this is not mine... I just found it.

There are more: [https://play.google.com/store/search?q=%22Game%20about%20Squ...](https://play.google.com/store/search?q=%22Game%20about%20Squares%22&c=apps)

<comment><USER2> Just checked some of them Squares & Dots for now looks best of them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Just like 2048, all have ripped Andrey Shevchuk's original game. I this becoming a shameless trend or what?

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

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I know. That's why I posted this.

Shame on them.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Plan Together – A Collaborative Map-Based Urban Planning Platform - <AUTHOR> https://plantogether.city/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hello HN,

In the last year or so I have noticed an increase in Urban Planning and City Design 'consciousness', especially on Hacker News. That is why I am very excited to share Plan Together with you.

Plan Together is a simple website which allows citizens to collaboratively discuss and plan the future of their communities. Users are able to post items to a map, each tagged as a suggestion, news, criticism or praise. Other users can comment on these items; leading to ideas, understanding and unique viewpoints to surface. To better understand how this works, please visit the site.

I am very excited about this project. It is my hope that by empowering users to talk about the world around them it can change their attitude towards their communities. Most people believe their voice and input end with their house or apartment; I want the scope of their belief to include their streets, parks, communities, and cities. As Plan Together grows and municipal officials and planners begin to use the platform's information gathering, community outreach and analysis tools; a new continuous, iterative, relationship-based urban planning paradigm will hopefully emerge.

Feedback is appreciated and I hope you have fun on Plan Together!

Thanks, David</comment>