Don't Enforce R as a Standard - <AUTHOR> http://timotheepoisot.fr/2015/04/02/do-not-enforce-R/ <comment><USER2> To give the other side of the argument:

Most scientists have little or no quality training in software development, but scientific research is increasingly reliant on software. At present, software is a glaring black box in a great deal of research, because very few reviewers have the skills to thoroughly scrutinise it.

A software monoculture always has negative consequences, but fragmentation can be equally problematic in many cases. A reviewer saying "This would be better in R" usually means "I have no chance of understanding your code, because it's not in R". For better or worse, R is currently the statistical computing lingua franca in most fields.

I believe that the scientific method is in real trouble, due largely to the immense complexity of much modern-day research. Scientists have access to immensely powerful analytical and statistical tools, but most lack the training and infrastructural support to use them in a rigorous manner. Bad practices in software and statistics are the norm, rather than the exception; I'm sure most of this is just an honest shortcoming, but I'm equally sure that the lack of CS and stats experience amongst reviewers is a gift to would-be Bogdanovs and Obokatas.

Science has always been a collaborative effort, but I think most fields are in desperate need of greater support from computer scientists and statisticians. Ultimately I would like to see those professions become deeply integrated into all scientific fields, with the expectation that all papers should credit a statistician and (where applicable) a computer scientist. Likewise, editors and reviewers need far closer ties to CS and statistics professionals. Of course, these issues are intertwined with many other problems in funding and peer review.

Until then, the hegemony of R may simply be a price we have to pay for better research in the short-term. A software monoculture at least gives reviewers a fighting chance of spotting issues with software that might affect the validity of results.

<comment><USER3> I think its more like, "I have no chance of understanding your code, BECAUSE IT'S IN R." The vast majority of R users and I bet 95% of ecologists, can't read and understand R modules. Its the PHP of Data Science.

The point, then is to supply code with simple instructions so that anyone can run it. Secondary goal: write it in a language a human can actually read.

If you're doing science and you want people to understand your code, you use Python, not R.

<comment><USER4> If you want people to understand your code, you need to treat it like writing: rewrite, rewrite, rewrite. The language itself is almost irrelevant: you can write horrible code in Python and beautiful code in R.

<comment><USER3> True, but if you write decent or so-so Python code, it is readable to anyone who knows a C like language. So-so R code is still impenetrable.

The language matters. One is optimized for ... honestly I have no idea what R is optimized for. I don't think R works that way. It just is. Python though, its optimized for readability.

<comment><USER4> Badly written R is impenetrable. So is badly written R. I suspect your standards for so-so R code are vastly different to mine.

R and Python really are very similar as languages. R is more functional, but that shouldn't impede your ability to understand code (once you master some of the basic idioms of FP)

<comment><USER3> I can't actually comment on what is good/bad R code, because I've never seen any R code beyond a few lines that I could follow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm torn on this. I've spent nearly the last 20 years in some form or another in academic/research computing.

On the one hand, attitudes like the third reviewer's are a primary reason for the state of HPC today, where new advances in research are just as often finding a way to run 30 year old code on a modern supercomputer as they are writing new software to take advantage of the fantastic array of new hardware. The number of times you hear "sorry, we can't change that. Livermore wrote that 15 years ago, and nobody knows how to change it anymore" is enough to drive a rational person over the edge.

On the other hand, the state of academic peer review being what it is, I don't fault the reviewer for suggesting the paper be resubmitted using more common methodology. A conscientious reviewer has a lot of papers to review, and spends a good amount of time on the ones that aren't written by crackpots. While the author was of course fully in their rights (and may even have advanced the field) to use their own software written in a relatively uncommon language, for the results and methodology to be understood, that's asking a lot of a reviewer.

I'm genuinely unsure as to how I would have responded to the review request. I have much sympathy for both people involved.

<comment><USER6> The correct response from the reviewer would have been "I am not capable of reviewing code written in Julia, therefore I must decline this review request" rather than "I am not capable of reviewing code written in Julia, therefore I must recommend rejecting the paper".

<comment><USER7> Have you submitted to academic journals before?

Reviewer comments are not a list of absolute requirements; they're thoughts and suggestions that help both the authors and editors improve the manuscript. They will include a recommendation for publishing, and they can make that recommendation contingent on particular issues, but that's somewhat unusual.

It's not completely clear what's happening in this case, but I'm strongly inclined to think this was a 'minor comment' from a reviewer.

       The three reviews were helpful and constructive, but these two comments infuriated me.

I think the author is simply taking exception that these comments are prevalent attitudes, not that they were significantly contributing to the editorial decision.

It's very common to address reviewer comments without actually changing anything. Basically, you say you disagree for reasons X, Y, and Z. The editor can disagree, ask for further clarification from the reviewer, or simply accept the argument. Nothing is set in stone.

As for the implication that there are other reviewers waiting in the wings with suitable experience, good luck.

<comment><USER6> Yes, I have some publications, and am familiar with the process.

I was attacking a theoretical review to make a point I wanted to make. The blog post doesn't say the reviewer recommended rejection on the basis of implementation in Julia, or that the editor's decision cited the language choice. My point was that if those things were true (which is not clear from the post), that would be bad. I make that point because in my experience, it's not uncommon for reviewers to take similarly unreasonable positions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> These were the same types of people that said to me "don't use R, no one uses it" several years ago.

I know there must be a balance between bleeding-edge and stability, but if in _research_ you cannot use the new tools, then there will not be any progress at all.

<comment><USER9> That's true. In my field, there's plenty of Matlab and it's arguably not even the best tool for the job: someone started using it, people improved on the work and now, no one cares about rewriting that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why did R take over the world of statistics anyways? I remember about 8 years ago I had an interest in statistics. Everything was SAS, SPSS etc which i just didnt have the budget for... I happened to find R as it was a freely available for linux, impression I got was no one used it, well some limited use in academia, but no professional usage.

Fast forward it seems like the most widely used tool in computer data analysis. Did something fundamentally change?

<comment><USER11> The biggest boon for R was the rise of "data science". Data scientists have actually existed for decades, but they had different titles (quants, actuaries, quantitative researchers, etc) and came from fields that preferred enterprise software for various reasons.

Data scientists, on the other hand, largely rose from tech companies that hired software engineers and preferred open-source software. When I started in the field ~10 years ago there were very few reasonable open-source options outside of R. Matlab and SAS were prohibitively expensive, Octave was too immature, Python didn't have basic functionality like data frames. In short, it was our only viable option, so we used it. A lot of people started using it for the same reasons, so R's library support became the best. This is what keeps me semi-locked into R - I'll probably eventually move to Python or Julia, but R hit the critical mass first and in a huge way.

<comment><USER12> R's library support predates your timeline.

<comment><USER11> The most impactful, important packages I use were all developed after 2005: ggplot2, plyr, glmnet, gbm, reshape, knitr. Out of curiosity, which ones are you referring to?

edit: I may be using the word library imprecisely here, which may be causing miscommunication. I mean 'packages', to be clear.

<comment><USER6> Prior to those packages, R was the language in which most new statistical methods would be published. So it has had very good library support for statistics for a long time. Only more recently has it also gained excellent data manipulation support.

<comment><USER13> Which kinda violates the principles expressed by the writers of said open source project, but I'm all for it on the basis that if I never again have to use base reshape, stack or gsub then it would be a good thing.

I believe An Introduction to R specifically notes that one should use other software to provide R with appropriate data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The author writes that the software wasn't the focus of the manuscript and that the reviewers should not have commented on the software at all but that it actually not true. If you look at the preprint manuscript, you'll find that the software is prominently advertised in the abstract of the paper. In this situation, it is perfectly reasonable for the reviewer to comment on the implementation of the software. And as much as I like Julia, I think he is right when he says that an R package would be more useful.

</comment><comment><USER15> "...it can be written in lisp or cobold for all I care"

The typo is too good. Cobold is the sprite that plays its tricks on us even 56 years after its first appearance.

<comment><USER16> I assumed it was intentional.

<comment><USER15> That makes it even better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The only reason I still use R is because of the hadley-verse packages. (Namely dplyr and ggplot2). R's base packages are incredibly terrible and counterintuitive, especially compared to Python's pandas and scipy.

</comment><comment><USER18> My non-academist opinion is that the biggest problem in science is that there is little incentive for scientists to reproduce each other's results. Anything that makes it easier for other labs to rerun an experiment is a good thing for your field overall. The goal of a paper should be to communicate as plainly as possible how to reproduce the experiment. That probably means a good-enough standard programming language that everyone learns in school and uses in their work.

<comment><USER19> I agree, unless it's something that can't be done well in the current language. Or, if like me, you're an economist and the default language used by academics is horrible, horrible Stata, which needs to be replaced by R.

<comment><USER8> For me, both are horrible. I use Stata a lot and thought a lot about switching to R (there is even a nice tutorial by Matthieu Gomez at [http://www.princeton.edu/~mattg/statar/](http://www.princeton.edu/~mattg/statar/) ).

However, I believe that moving to R is not the answer, as you will still be riddled with a lot of the problems that you faced in Stata such as a quirky syntax (except backticks. I hate those backticks). Maybe Python will catch up (I doubt it, what we need is a DSL, not something too general that requires loong commands to do a simple regress). My best bet would be Julia, but it's still a long way to go regarding things like missing values.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is really just an example of Bike Shedding.

Reviewing research papers is really, really hard work to do well. It takes a massive time commitment to truly digest and understand novel work to the level where you can provide a quality critique and review.

It's much easier to throw out facile critiques like the ones these reviewers provided. It shows that you know your stuff and did your job as a reviewer, without requiring you to actually understand the authors' innovations or lack- there-of.

<comment><USER14> You are implying that the rest of the review, which we haven't seen, was useless and shallow. However, the author himself said that the reviews were actually "helpful and constructive". I agree that cases of bike shedding exist, but there is no evidence that this was the case here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I think the author is being overly sensitive here, and the reviewers are actually giving good advice.

Most methods papers in most fields are ignored by the vast majority of researchers. Just like the author doesn't have the time to rewrite his code in R, his prospective audience doesn't have the time to learn a new software package just to try out his proposed method.

If the author actually wants to change the way research is conducted in his field, he needs to make it easy for others to try his method out and possibly change the way they do research. As of today, that means an R package.

Or, the author can dig in his heels, refuse to write an R package, and be ignored. Maybe that isn't fair, but as I've learned through my own experiences, that's the way it is.

</comment><comment><USER22> I think it's just that R has become the de-facto standard since the previous tools used were either terrible, or closed source and expensive.

And it's probably taken them so long to adjust to R, that they don't want to change again any time soon.

And you're right, the tool shouldn't matter, and I definitely agree with your stance on open source, but keep in mind those attitudes do exist. Speaking of attitudes concerning open source, here's one of my favourite blog posts about the subject: [http://www.catuhe.com/post/Le-syndrome-du- Puppy.aspx](http://www.catuhe.com/post/Le-syndrome-du-Puppy.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER23> Even the language we use to talk about arithmetic, algebra, and calculus had to--at one time--be agreed to and standardized, so that mathematicians could have a common ground on which to speak to each other about their ideas and how they reached them.

The program is not just "a tool". It's your proof. You may have written a proof in the paper, but that was just a practice run. It's the one you wrote in the code that is the real proof, because there is little garaunteeing that seasoned software developers write code that matches the spec, say nothing about" amateur" programmers in the sciences.

Now, that does not preclude innovation. People still invent new mathematical notation systems. It's usually with the express purpose of solving problems that can't easily or at all be stolved in current systems. It is the bleeding edge of the science of math. But physicists are still expected to use the math their colleagues will understand, or spend a lot of time explaining their new system (QM anyone?).

There is, of course, the issue that math is significantly less rigorous and specific than code. Math doesn't compile and doesn't run. Or rather, it gets compiled and ran by people. Part of avoiding new, arbitrary notations is so that your work is accessible for verification. That gives running code, especially coffee with a comprehensive set of unit tests, a distinct advantage over math. But that doesn't obviate the bed for verification.

If you are using any nontrivial piece of custom software in your science, it needs to be scrutinized just as much as the rest of the math in your paper--if not more so, since it does the actual work.

The first reviewer is almost certainly right. If they can't understand your code, then they aren't the equivalent of lay-users complaining about open source software. First of all, it is still an issue of much debate whether or not releasing source code to user's for software products is necessary. If you are writing code for your science, you have an absolute duty to open source that code (even if in a non-extendable way, we still need to see the code). You wouldn't make a claim without providing the math. And you wouldn't provide math other people couldn't understand, arguing "some math is better than no math".

I don't think that standard should be R, or that it necessarily has to always be the same thing. It can adapt over time. But until you manage to release a few papers on how Julia improves over R, in explicit detail... "when in Rome, do as the Romans."

</comment><comment><USER24> Does this story tell us more about R as a standard, or more about the refereeing process? I've dealt with referees for a long time and I'd have to go with the latter. This is to me yet another case of a referee viewing his/her preferences as the only correct way to do things.

</comment><comment><USER25> Peer review is a huge part of our culture here at Climate. It's often unreasonable to expect a single reviewer to review a complex paper, so we sometimes address this by assigning each reviewer a domain.

Something like:

Reviewer 1: Review scientific theory (domain expert)

Reviewer 2: Review scientific methods and conclusions (senior scientist)

Reviewer 3: Review code for scientific accuracy (senior programmer)</comment>


ZeroNet – Decentralized websites using Bitcoin crypto and BitTorrent network - Syrup-tan https://github.com/HelloZeroNet/ZeroNet <comment><AUTHOR> Anyone interested in ZeroNet's architecture may want to take a look at their presentation: [https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1_2qK1IuOKJ51pgBvllZ9...](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1_2qK1IuOKJ51pgBvllZ9Yu7Au2l551t3XBgyTSvilew/pub?start=false&loop=false&delayms=3000#slide=id.g9a1cce9ee_0_4)

</comment><comment><USER2> While I like seeing that this uses relatively strong technologies like Tor, BitTorrent, and Bitcoin, does this beat Freenet for any use case?

<comment><USER3> Depends - it should win out for speed and ease of use. But anonymity, no, in order for a user to possess certain content, they have to download it explicitly and know they're sharing it. It's trivial to know who visits a given website and, for example, send DMCAs to all of them. Freenet prevents this in multiple ways - proxying your connections through others and using encryption to prevent those without the keys from reading the data or even knowing what it is. Freenet probably provides the best anonymity of any current network as it's done in such a way that once a file is on the network, there's just no way to trace it back to its source.

The people using Play on it might find themselves in some fun legal issues soon, depending on country.

You could use it over Tor I suppose - that's what the authors propose, but that seems less than optimal to me and doesn't even approach the sort of anonymity Freenet could.

<comment><USER4> Looking at it briefly, Tor support is a bit misleading. It only protects content authors and seeders, and not viewers. (Someone could just inject an external image reference to reveal their true IP address as HTML seems to be not sanitized.) This seems to be the key difference from Freenet.

<comment><USER3> Well, that's an easy fix - view the page in the Tor browser too. Or better yet, run the whole rig inside a VM which is forcibly routed over Tor transproxy. Of course - this is sort of Tor abuse and freenet is the better solution for this purpose, but if you need to view something over this in (relative) anonymity, it is still possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Mark my words. This is the ethereum killer.

The problem with ethereum is the novelty factor. Everything under the hood is difficult for the average developer to grasp and it's not clear whats going on as it is quite new and work is on going. Another issue is that there seems to be no clear 'voice' from Ethereum and instead you have many people claiming to be an Ethereum expert. It killed all of the hype and excitement I had in December and January.

Why I think this is an ethereum killer is the tech that powers it is very much mature, proven to work quite well and will be easier for developers and users alike.

But more importantly the end result is what matters. This has been in development since 2014, roughly same time as Ethereum but the end result is far more impressive than what Ethereum offers and ironically it is because ZeroNet offers less is what makes it so attractive. For example, using Tor, bitorrent, bitcoin, already existing and well established technologies provide excellent privacy and anonymity. Sure, ethereum might be a much stronger cyrtographic platform but I think accessibility, speed, scalability, adoptibility gained from ZeroNet's setup is what ultimately blows Ethereum out of the water.

The codebase seems super light and accessible too compared to Ethereum.

Anyways, I could be wrong of course but I think ZeroNet could be it. Look how long Tor, BitTorrent, Bitcoin protocols have survived and grown in adoption rates. Ethereum is trying to pull off all three and as a result it's losing developer passion imo. For instance the forums are less active and ironically attracted lot of politically fueled angsty types who believe in conspiracy theories.

<comment><USER6> My understanding is that the primary value of Ethereum other then its decentralized nature is the capacity for smart contracts. A cursory examination of this project doesn't look like it supports that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Right. ZeroNet and Ethereum don't compete with each other. Ethereum will never be a decentralized CDN the way ZeroNet or IPFS are.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What are ZeroNet's main advantages over IPFS?

<comment><AUTHOR> ZeroNet makes it easy to serve dynamic content with its p2p SQL support.

<comment><USER8> I don't know.. That just seems inelegant.

SQL was great years ago. But after working with things like MongoDB, MNesia, and blockchain tech, SQL based databases just seem inelegant.

<comment><USER9> I don't think it is SQL over P2P but rather it just uses SQL internally for syncing. Or at least that is the impression I get from reading: [https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1_2qK1IuOKJ51pgBvllZ9...](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1_2qK1IuOKJ51pgBvllZ9Yu7Au2l551t3XBgyTSvilew/pub?start=false&loop=false&delayms=3000#slide=id.g9a1cce9ee_0_4)

Sqlite is preferred for embedded databases which seems to be what this app is using it for.

<comment><USER8> That's not as bad as I was thinking. It sounded like (and documents are sketchy) that this was some sort of shared SQLite db over their net. It sounded rife with potential problems and interesting injection issues. I've dealt with enough bad SQL statements and poor websites with injections and all. Poor bobby tables.

Now, I thought about how to handle a similar dynamic data issue with IPFS: We had Usenet years ago and it's still creaking along in a few places. What if we bring that tech back, to an IPFS era? I'd be eminently glad to get rid of 'forums', and go back to what we had prior.

The only piece that was missing is how we maintain all the different groups and posts. That's now solved by a blockchain containing the root pointing towards other 'chains, and then to posts themselves. I'm seeing it in my head how to construct this, but it could be relying on faulty understandings too :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I had this running as a node on a RPi2 for a few months. Very light duty and did not consume a lot of resources. Every so often zeronet pages would go dark when the owners made the keys private.

<comment><USER11> Hmm. I'm curious about this - it seems that since this is torrent-based, archivability should be trivial - as long as on person still possess the data, regardless of what the author does, it should be possible for other users to reach that data.

The issues you speak of (with a page going dark) are strictly due to things like DNS changes, right? So other users can still visit webpages by connecting directly to the torrent some other way - right?

<comment><USER12> Yeah. There's no reason a site would "go dark" unless either there's no more seeders for the site (everyone deleted it off their computer, or the people who have it aren't running ZeroNet anymore) or the Namecoin .bit domain expired and no longer links to the ZeroNet address (at which point you could still access it through the long address that will never expire).

As long as someone has the page, it won't go down.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Does it use bittorrent mutable keys BEP?

<comment><USER13> The answer is no.</comment></comment>


Confirmed: He Who Sits the Most Dies the Soonest - <AUTHOR> http://m.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/04/confirmed-he-who-sits-the-most-dies-the-soonest/256101/

<comment><USER2> This was a statistical work from data on 220,000 people in a large Australian longitudinal study, and it claims to show that sitting time correlates with increased mortality independently of level of physical activity. Some thoughts:

[http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2012/04/sitting-time- corr...](http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2012/04/sitting-time-correlating- with-mortality-independently-of-exercise.php)

This is not the first study to propose this correlation, of course. There are a range of others from past years. One has to wonder what the mechanism is here, however - my suspicion is that it actually does all come back down to the level of physical activity in the end. In these massive studies the level of exercise and activity is reported by the participants. A person who stands and works is going to be somewhat more active than a person who sits and works, even though that time may not be categorized as physical activity, or reported differently.

Exercise is much like calorie restriction - the effects are so large in comparison to other factors we have easy access to that they are likely to creep into any study.

You might look at a recent study on activity and Alzheimer's disease that was one of the few to use measuring devices rather than reports of activity. One point that emerges is that a fair degree of ongoing low level activity and exercise won't be classified as such by the participants of study without machine measurement. Housework, taking out the trash, the small increase in energy expenditure from standing while waiting versus sitting while waiting, that sort of thing repeated day in and day out. How much you are sitting really does sound a lot like a proxy for how much activity you are undertaking when you are doing things that most people don't really count as activity.

<comment><USER3> I'm guessing the reporting on things other than just standing varies widely too. Personal anecdote from a person who spends a lot more of the day standing than most people I know: What counts in my brain as simply "returning books to the library" would count as exercise - specifically, "hour of brisk walking" for most people I know. And for many of them it would count as unusually strenuous exercise, whereas for me it's just everyday transportation and doesn't really count as exercise at all. Even if were to be specifically asked to keep track of it, I suspect I'd still end up underreporting it. I was recently surprised to discover my brother lives more than a mile away from me. I make that walk all the time, and had thought it was about half as much.

It makes me worry that participant self-reporting cannot seriously be considered a reasonable way to measure levels of physical activity.

At least, not without research specifically designed to validate it for that purpose. Which might exist. I really haven't looked into it. If it does, please ignore all previous inane babble.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This reminds me of another correlational study I was tickled pink to read, and I just had to quote it in one of my essays <http://www.gwern.net/Nicotine#fn7> :

> "…Based on these figures, and expected deaths from all causes, the authors > calculated that an individual who spends a lifetime average of six hours a > day watching TV can expect to live just under five fewer years than someone > who does not watch TV. These figures compare with the impact of other well > known lifestyle factors on the risk of death from cardiovascular disease > after the age of 50, including physical activity and obesity. For example, > other research has shown that lifelong smoking is associated with the > shortening of life expectancy by more than 4 years after the age of 50, with > the average loss of life from one cigarette calculated to be 11 minutes - > equivalent to half an hour of TV watching, according to the authors' risk > framework."

Now isn't _that_ a kick in the rear? If you gave up half an hour of TV to smoke a cigarette, you... did nothing to your life expectancy, if the correlations are to be taken causally.

<comment><USER5> Make sure you stand while smoking it, though. :-)

<comment><USER6> At a bar with a whiskey?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This story keeps popping up on HN and elsewhere. And the common solution I've read is "Please, just get a standup desk!" as if standing up and not moving is healthier than sitting and not moving. I've seen no study that supports that conclusion. I think the message should be: moving is healthier than not moving, which is hardly news.

<comment><USER8> [http://health.yahoo.net/experts/menshealth/most-dangerous- th...](http://health.yahoo.net/experts/menshealth/most-dangerous-thing-youll- do-all-day)

"British researchers found that (sitting) bus drivers were twice as likely to die of heart attacks as (standing) trolley operators."

The idea is that bus drivers and trolley operators are similar in all the other important respects (e.g. socio-economic backgrounds).

<comment><USER9> My father was a bus driver and he had a heart attack in his late 50s. The number of men he worked with who also had heart attacks was staggering. When he visits the hospital for his regular check-ups he always meets other bus drivers. It's really quite alarming.

<comment><USER6> Diesel fumes?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> These studies keep appearing, but they're never detailed enough for me. Correlation is not equal to causation. It's meaningless to say "people who sit more die more" unless we know _why_ this is the case. At the very least, I want to see a laundry list of controls: physical exercise, weight, diet, stress, etc. More than a few of these articles contain useless warnings like, "sitting leads to obesity." Great, then don't say sitting kills you, say _obesity_ kills you.

</comment><comment><USER11> I work at a standing desk and I've noticed several benefits:

* No leg pain. Extended sitting hurts blood flow to my legs, causing leg pain.

* Less back pain. Even in chairs designed to promote good posture, I somehow manage to slouch or arch and give myself back problems.

* Strong calves.

* I'm more likely to drink water. I'm already standing, so there's a smaller barrier to filling up my bottle at the water cooler.

<comment><USER12> How long did it take to notice these results? Are you normally an active person or is standing your primary form of 'exercise'?

<comment><USER11> I'm normally active. I thought standing all day would tire me out, discouraging me from normal exercise. But it's been the opposite; I'm much more inclined to exercise after work now. Probably because my leg and back pain have disappeared.

The first two weeks are tough. Your legs get tired, feet sore, etc. But after that, the benefits kicked in. I also bought decent sneakers and an anti- fatigue mat to stand on (~$20).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Ok, but WHY ? 40% more chance of dying in the next 3 years, but WHY ? because the chair broke ?

They just did statistics and conclude that sitting is harmfull. Ok. But i'm sure we can also find that, for example, more men died than women. Does that mean being a man can kill you ?

I don't mean being sat most of the time isn't harmfull, but i mean this study doesn't PROVE anything.

<comment><USER14> Yes, being a man gives you more chance of dying, but this study showed the increased risk of sitting even when taking this into account. Their result summary says they adjusted for factors including "sex, age, education, urban/rural residence, physical activity, body mass index, smoking status, self-rated health, and disability": <http://archinte.ama- assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/172/6/494>

<comment><USER13> okay, but still, why ? Statistics aren't reliable for they can state anything.

<comment><USER15> What you're showing here is a very typical fundamental misunderstanding of what statistics is. It's not that they can "state anything", it's that everything they state comes with a confidence interval, so they are -probabilistically- very reliable actually.

<comment><USER13> Hu, i meant, you can make statistics "state" anything you want is you twist them right.

BUT STILL, WHY ARE WE DYIN YOUNGER IFF SEATED OFTEN ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Honestly, I'd like to see more studies like this to the point where it is irrefutable that sitting all day causes harm because the way it is now, I feel like a lot of companies basically force their workers to sit all day. They don't allow work from home, or allow it only one day a week, etc, yet they also don't provide any sort of office environment that enables sitting. At the office I work at now, for example, there is no one who stands and it would take a re-working of the entire office to allow it, as there are dividers that can be seen over when standing, so it would be rather awkward, I think, to be standing as you would then be staring down at the person across from you. It would be interesting to hear a case where a company is held liable for forcing someone to sit all day, year after year, I think that could at least nudge a lot of organizations in the right direction towards allowing more remote work options where a person can better control / configure their work environment.

</comment><comment><USER17> Oh god, and I sit on my chair for more than 15 hours a day. Does anyone knows the probability of dying after 3 years.

If it's 0.0005% likely that I'll die in the next 3 years, how does 40% or 100% changes that? It still very unlikely that I'll die.

<comment><USER14> Well there were 5,405 deaths among the group of 222,497 people aged 45 and above. That's an average chance of death in 3 years of 2.4% for this age group.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The solution: standing desks.

The misconception: that you need to stand _all day_. Alternate! Sit sometimes, stand sometimes.

How? Get an adjustable desk or table that moves up and down, allowing you to stand periodically while working. For example: [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000QA0EHI/ref=as_li_ss_tl?...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000QA0EHI/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=wukixcom-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B000QA0EHI) (get two: one for your front, one for your side).

</comment><comment><USER14> This article made me get off my chair, put my chair on my table, and put my laptop on the chair.

<comment><USER19> Some food for thought:

 _The really important thing is not to live but to live well._ -Socrates

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> not confirmed. suggested by study results.

<comment><USER13> yup, nothing is proven here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> What about lying down doing work on a laptop in bed?

<comment><USER22> No idea about life expectancy, but chances are your posture will be terrible and it won't do your back any good, which can definitely come back to bite you later on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Is there room for compromise?

[http://www.amazon.com/Ergonomic-Kneeling-Posture-Office- WL-S...](http://www.amazon.com/Ergonomic-Kneeling-Posture-Office-WL- SB-101-GG/dp/B000TMFSQK)

</comment><comment><USER24> Isn't standing all day, bad for people that have vascular problem?

</comment><comment><USER25> > Its most striking finding was that people who sat more than 11 hours a day > had a 40% higher risk of dying in the next three years than people who sat > less than four hours a day.

I don't normally call bullshit on stories, but this statistic is f'ing stupid, I've spent 14 years in school and 3 years in college after that some 3 years as web designer. Its fair to say all that time, I've spent more than 11 hours a day, sitting. So, statistically speaking 40% of my schoolmates, college mates and colleagues should be dead by now, unfortunately thats is not the case.

<comment><USER26> That's a "40% _higher_ risk", not a 40% risk.

<comment><USER25> So, how _high_ is the risk if out of 1000 people, nobody died due to sitting?

<comment><USER22> As a smoker, looking at myself shows that cigarettes cause 0% chance of death in a sample of 1 - you wouldn't neccesarily expect your 1000 person sample to show results as accurate as a much bigger sample size (222,497).

But more importantly - this research was done on people over the age of 45, your 1000 people were aged 5-24. Using your age range I imagine we could prove that smoking 60 a day and eating McDonalds for every meal isn't particularly dangerous.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Could AI drive adoption of the English language internationally? - <AUTHOR> I'm reading a lot about AI talent leaving for the US and we all know that new services/features often become available in English first. Could this drive English to become an even more dominant language in the world and maybe even overtake native languages in non English countries? <comment><USER2> Interesting question. I'm not sure this development will be driven by AI in particular but in a way it's already happening.

English is the first language in history that's spoken by more non-native speakers than native speakers, which in turn might have an interesting impact in that previously ungrammatical (i.e. "wrong" by native standards) word and phrase usage by non-native speakers might be incorporated in the standard language.

In some communities (exhibit A: Hacker News, software engineering and software entrepreneurship communities) English not only is the lingua franca anymore but the de facto default language (in lieu of the local language).

This development originally started with the cultural sway the Anglosphere had - and still has, probably even more so today - but today is accelerated even more by information technology (which for various reasons is very US-centric) and software in particular. Pretty much as is the case with science, if you want to be successful in the software business you have to be able to understand English to some extent at least, even if it's just because the most relevant resources usually are available in that language.

As a side note: An interesting development I've come across more often recently is documentation for open source components in some areas being available either exclusively or at least primarily in Mandarin Chinese. So, perhaps that development might shift somewhat in future and if you're interested in specific areas you might need at least some command of that language, too.

</comment><comment><USER3> >I'm reading a lot about AI talent leaving for the US and we all know that new services/features often become available in English first.

Not only AI. Modern science is in the English language. If you need to be in science you need to know English.

P.S. English is not my native language.</comment>


Ask HN: best commercial email provider - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking for an email provider to free myself from Gmail and my own mailserver setup.
Requirements are: rockstable, fully encrypted (IMAPs, storage), reliable and a good webinterface.
Thanks in advance. <comment><USER2> fastmail.fm</comment>


Do Loops Explain Consciousness? Review of 'I Am a Strange Loop' (2007) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.ams.org/notices/200707/tx070700852p.pdf <comment><USER2> Another useless article about "consciousness".

 _" We share a conviction that no philosopher or scientist living today has the foggiest notion of how consciousness, and its inseparable companion free will, emerge, as they surely do, from a material brain."_

That's reasonable enough. Nobody seems to have a clue about how "consciousness", whatever it is, really works. If someone did, it would have been implemented in a computer by now.

 _" We mysterians are persuaded that no computer of the sort we know how to build—that is, one made with wires and switches—will ever cross a threshold to become aware of what it is doing."_

Nah. Now he's just mouthing off. There's a long history of this sort of thing from philosophers. Aristotle claimed humans were special because they could do arithmetic. Now we know that arithmetic is simple, in the sense that it takes a very small parts count. Hubert Dreyfus, in 1972, said computers couldn't play even a decent amateur game of chess. Now, any laptop PC can trounce grand masters.

What AI isn't doing well yet is predicting the consequences of actions: "what will happen next", and "what will happen next if this decision is made". Basically, the technology to get through the next 15 seconds of life. This is the beginning of common sense, and really ought to be worked on more. We have the tools now to go at that problem. Self-driving cars have to do some of this, and answers may come out of that technology. This is an essential technology for robots which operate in an unstructured world.

Once that problem has been solved, we might be in a position to talk about "consciousness" from a non-clueless perspective. Higher level thinking is mostly a strategy module for the "next 15 seconds" control system.

At least the article doesn't use the world "quantum".

<comment><USER3> Higher level thinking is model building from sensory input. I have not seen any system out there that learns to reason about 3D space by just going around touching/feeling things and then incorporating that feedback with other senses. Everything starts with a model built-in and then tweaks parameters through some kind of optimization mechanism. Which is fine but that's not really intelligence in the sense of coming up with novel models and incorporating it into pre-existing models.

<comment><USER4> Absolutely not. You can, in your house, build a robot that uses sensory input to construct a map of its surroundings and then navigate that map.

Check out various algorithms to do so, such as [1]. Model building from sensory input is very simple, and in my opinion only tangentially related to consciousness.

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D*)

<comment><USER3> Oh ok. In that case ya we got all this figured out. I mean there is D*. Thanks for clearing up all the confusion. /sarcasm

<comment><USER4> Well, your whole argument is that we couldn't do it, while plainly we can. So, answer with /sarcasm all you want, but it isn't a good argument.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Former neuroscientist here, whose lab studied consciousness. I'm not sure about the book, but the review is light on details.

We know biology is connected _somehow_ to conscious awareness (sleep, illusions, blindsight, TMS, etc.) but we still haven't jumped the gap separating the objective from the subjective. It's called the Hard Problem for good reason.

<comment><USER6> I tend to think subjective consciousness is just one of those fundamental forces/components of the universe, like space-time. It's so different than anything else we observe, I don't know how we ever bridge that gap between the material and the subjective. It just _is_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> My impression of I Am a Strange Loop was that it contains a subset of the ideas in GEB, and lacks the off the wall charm (and delicious mathematics) that GEB contains. I sometimes recommend it to people who tried to read GEB and gave up, but I don't think there's much to learn from I Am a Strange Loop if you're already familiar with Hofstadter and GEB.

<comment><USER4> Can you un-acronym GEB?

<comment><USER8> Gôdel Escher Bach Douglas Hofstadter, 1979

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del,_Escher,_Bach](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del,_Escher,_Bach)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> First, isn't there a better word for consciousness, as used in this book? Because I have the feeling that different people (even scientists) mean different things by it.

Second, I think the main problem is that most people consider consciousness as something which lies outside of the physical realm, and that there is, supposedly, a one-way communication link from the physical world to our consciousness. However, since we are in fact (physically) talking about the concept of consciousness, this seems highly unlikely. It is thus more likely that consciousness is a part of physics, and we should perhaps treat it as such.

<comment><USER10> This is the standard reductionist position, and the standard strawmannirg of people who don't agree with it.

To explain it crudely, yes, it all ultimately reduces to the neuronal substrate and no one in their right mind disagrees. The point is that only looking at this level ignores the important and large set of data that is humans' first-hand observations of consciousness, what you're able to perceive, study, and observe about conscious experience, the kind of observations that Searle makes. To just write off first hand observation data as irrelevant strikes me as anti-scientific if not ideological. I mean, why wouldn't you try to develop a system of consciousness that starts with this data, in tandem with neuronal studies (there's no inherent contradiction)?

<comment><USER11> The problem is that first-hand observations aren't irrelevant, they're _perverse_. They're the mind viewing itself through its own intuitive folk- theory of mind, _which is nowhere near an accurate psychology_.

<comment><USER10> > They're the mind viewing itself through its own intuitive folk-theory of > mind

Why do you think I'm suggesting any theory of mind at all? You're stating too much.

I'm just suggesting look for patterns and produce models of what you can observe about human subjectivity. Hofstadtr's "strange loop" being an example of one such model.

<comment><USER11> >I'm just suggesting look for patterns and produce models of what you can observe about human subjectivity.

Well yeah, but the whole problem with subjectivity is that it consists in the mind's model of the environment feeding back into the sensory inferences as inductive bias while the feature data extracted _from_ the sensory inferences _also_ trains the model of the environment.

Which is _why_ people's first-hand "observations" aren't really observations in the scientific sense: "sensings" or "appearances" are actually theory-laden inferences.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _there is no way to teach calculus to a chimp, or even to make it understand the square root of 2._

Legends ever say that the first man who tried to make primates to understand the square root of 2 was drowned by them.

</comment><comment><USER13> On the subject of loops:

Common Lisp's loop is so powerful that people invented functional programming so that they'd never have to use it.

G_Morgan in reddit

[http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/a481l/so_to_get...](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/a481l/so_to_get_back_to_the_point_go_vs_algol68_tbh_i/c0fs2nk)

<comment><USER14> Lisp users thought that the standard LOOP was dumbed down from the real MIT LOOP, so they invented a new one, even more powerful:

[https://common-lisp.net/project/iterate/](https://common- lisp.net/project/iterate/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I have a short article that covers some similar topics. In the third paragraph I make a strong argument against materialism by examining consciousness.

[http://www.gmw6.com/belief_through_reason.html](http://www.gmw6.com/belief_through_reason.html)

<comment><USER16> > it seems disingenuous to either believe that many separate things can have a > synthesized experience.

This isn't an argument, it's merely an assertion of a point of view, and one that isn't obviously true. The evidence on the other side of the argument seems much stronger than your argument about our visual field. When you look at all of the examples of brain damage causing peoples personalities to change dramatically, well you have a high hill to climb to say that who we are isn't material in nature.

<comment><USER15> the quoted text foreshadows the argument about visual fields. I'm not saying that the brain isn't important, just that it cannot solely explain our conscious experience. This alone is sufficient to defeat materialism.

<comment><USER4> So... magic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The undercurrent running through "I Am a Strange Loop" was the grief of losing his wife to brain cancer.

The playful discourse evident in GEB was no more.

</comment><comment><USER18> book was really bad, hofstadter tryin to make an extra buck piggybacking off the success of GEB, dont waste your time

<comment><USER19> Huh, are you the famous philosopher John Searle?

<comment><USER20> Who created a HN account just to to smack talk Hofstadter? That seems likely.

<comment><USER19> Gardner calls Searle "the scoundrel of Hofstadter's book." He is now also the scoundrel of this thread.

<comment><USER21> What a strange loop indeed</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to Write an Essay in 1 Hour - <AUTHOR> https://davidperrenoud.github.io/offline-editor/ <comment><USER2> Wow.. that's a real bummer. They often had some of the best prices on books.</comment>


Mdmath – LaTeX Math for Markdown inside of Visual Studio Code - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/goessner/mdmath <comment><USER2> I wonder if Pandoc being written in Haskell is what's stopping it from being the default Markdown engine everywhere. Or am I misunderstanding the technical needs here?

<comment><USER3> I tried to switch from markdown.pl to Pandoc and encountered some problems, one of which remains an open issue ([https://github.com/jgm/pandoc/issues/1841](https://github.com/jgm/pandoc/issues/1841)): [https://twitter.com/arntzenius/status/745946799836381184](https://twitter.com/arntzenius/status/745946799836381184)

A telling comment on that github issue is "Actually, it's a bit unclear what the behavior should be." I think the real problem is the idea of "a default Markdown engine" is pretty impossible when Markdown doesn't even have a formal spec. Complex human-readable formats without a spec are never gonna be compatible between different implementations without extraordinary effort. (Hence the [http://commonmark.org/](http://commonmark.org/) effort, which I applaud, but doesn't seem to have a 1.0 spec out yet.)

<comment><USER4> That's sort of convincing me that Markdown + arbitrary HTML is a fundamentally unstable idea. What's the use case for it? GitHub allows a subset of HTML tags; sites like Reddit allow none.

I mean, I use Pelican's Markdown support in my own blog, but I wouldn't be unhappy about having to use <i> instead of underscores.

<comment><USER3> I use markdown for writing blog posts, and I need arbitrary HTML _all the time_. For tables; or for custom syntax highlighting; for drop-down menus that let readers choose what PL they want to see examples in ([http://www.rntz.net/post/2016-06-06-not-everything-is-an- exp...](http://www.rntz.net/post/2016-06-06-not-everything-is-an- expression.html) ); to put the numbers on section headings into the left- margin; etc, etc.

Basically, markdown has (at least) two use-cases:

1\. A safe (if you do HTML sanitization properly) way to let people mark-up their input on web comment sites like HN, StackOverflow, etc. This is probably the most common use-case.

2\. A web authoring tool. This was the intended use-case.

Supporting arbitrary HTML is absolutely inadmissible for (1); not having arbitrary HTML is basically inexcusable for (2). And yeah, I could write the posts in straight HTML, but honestly that's a pain. Why _shouldn 't_ there be a tool that makes writing styled-text-with-lists-and-headings easy but lets me drop down to HTML when I need to?

<comment><USER4> Because intermixing Markdown and HTML is ambiguous, and if you're authoring HTML, you clearly know HTML already?

I'm not actually sure I believe this yet. But I think I'd see a lot more use case for something that lets me do a very tiny amount of things, maybe just headings and bold and italic, and avoids not only ambiguity but any risk of ambiguity.

It just feels like we've reinvented HoTMetaL ([https://support.novell.com/techcenter/articles/img/ana199609...](https://support.novell.com/techcenter/articles/img/ana1996090111.jpg)) but with bonus ambiguity.

<comment><USER5> Are you saying you shouldn't use HTML with markdown? Markdown was explicitly designed _not_ to cover each and everything HTML, and so that you could fallback to HTML; it's kind of the entire point of markdown (or have I misunderstood you?).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Oh man, this is PERFECT for me. Previously I would just run VS Code and periodically build my current markdown document while writing LaTeX in it, and have a browser window refresh on changes (using the LivePage addon for Chrome). This saves a lot of trouble for me, very excited!

</comment><comment><USER7> Very awesome. However, the $ signs indicate financial stuff. It would be nice to have a different delimiter like the code blocks use back-tics. For example using back-ticks couple with single-quotes? It doesn't work since it clash with the code block just for example more legible:

`' x^2 + 4 _x + 4 '`

Remember: the whole idea behind markdown is it should be _first and foremost* legible from plain-text. One idea behind typography is it shouldn't be noticed at all to the reader.

<comment><USER8> "$" ("$$" to be exact) is actually used in TeX to indicate opening and closing of statements/mathematical expressions. I think the author of this project is trying to conform to TeX syntax as much as possible so that TeX users like me would feel at home :).

<comment><USER9> The story is that Knuth chose '$' to denote math mode because math typesetting at the time was prohibitively expensive.

<comment><USER8> ahaha, that's a good piece of anecdote.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have looked into markdown editors a lot, and the best I found was this plugin for Atom:

[https://github.com/shd101wyy/markdown-preview- enhanced](https://github.com/shd101wyy/markdown-preview-enhanced)

I know Atom kind of sucks, but this plugin is amazing. Mostly because it supports PlantUML which is also amazing.

Highly recommended.

<comment><USER11> > _I know Atom kind of sucks_

I've tried really hard to like Atom. It's a shame that 'modern open-source configurable' seems to mean 'Electron app' (cf. Hyper) - I'm convinced it's not the best in terms of potential, but since that's where the collective effort, it seems unfortunately the best available.

(I revert to vim after getting fed up with Atom, I just can't help feeling that better could be achieved by forgetting legacy platforms and backwards compatibility - I'll try Kakoune if it stops being called the author's "experiment" and gets versioned releases.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Couldn't you just write your "LaTeX Math" for LaTeX instead?

<comment><USER13> As I see it, it is more for "I just wrote/ended up with this code doing a complex math equation. But I just can't read it even with all these comments." cases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is really cool for quick things, but for anything short of quick notes, I don't want to have to manually number my equations. I generally don't write top-to-bottom, I write subsections at a time.

Labels seem straightforward enough, but I'm at a loss for a markdown-y way to do a ref.

$$\exist 0 \in R \mathrm{s.t.} a + 0 = a \forall a \in R$$ (eqn:addid)

In addition to a zero as per (*eqn:addid), one must also show the existence of an inverse.

It's decent, but I don't love it. And further overloading the splat will be miserable.

</comment><comment><USER15> Oh wow! Man this is so rad. This can help me kick my dependence on Typora / Dropbox Paper for class notes and continue the VSCode loving.

</comment><comment><USER16> I've been using the free-tier of Classeur [1] for taking notes during class, which I then export to a PDF. It's basically an online Math/Mardown editor with pretty much the same feature-set.

Maybe I'll try this out and see how I like it.

[1] [http://classeur.io/](http://classeur.io/)

</comment><comment><USER17> Neovim users can do something similar:

[https://github.com/donRaphaco/neotex](https://github.com/donRaphaco/neotex)

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

</comment><comment><USER18> This is wonderful. However, I always loved markdown because of its being so simple and fast.

Isn't Latex Turing-Complete?

<comment><USER19> TeX has \def which basically allows you to write lambda expressions, so yeah it's Turing complete. The basic math notation isn't though, and I'd be surprised if this extension allows you to use \def (or really any of the more powerful features of TeX).

<comment><USER20> If it's using the full selection of functions available to KaTeX, here's the list:

[https://github.com/Khan/KaTeX/wiki/Function-Support-in- KaTeX](https://github.com/Khan/KaTeX/wiki/Function-Support-in-KaTeX)

\def isn't included in the core set, from what I can see.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Surprised I haven't seen anyone post Markdeep here yet: [https://casual- effects.com/markdeep/](https://casual-effects.com/markdeep/)

Seems to cover a lot of the same ground, though it's not restricted to visual studio code.

</comment><comment><USER22> I really wish the author had chosen asciidoc which has well defined semantics for latex math incorporation and also supports asciimath

</comment><comment><USER23> That's neat, but I managed to do something similar (except for the graphics, I haven't tried that) with Markdown + Mathjax.

<comment><USER24> As I understand it, this is basically that; except with Khan Academy's KaTeX library instead (it's got ridiculously fast rendering compared to MathJax).

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Is there a latex editor that can show the end product side by side while you're writing the document?

<comment><USER26> Both [http://sharelatex.com](http://sharelatex.com) and [http://overleaf.com](http://overleaf.com) support that by re-rendering a pdf preview as you make changes. Overleaf also has a WYSIWYG editor with inline latex, although I find it doesn't work for everything.

<comment><USER27> The best WYSIWYG LaTeX I've come across is [http://mathquill.com](http://mathquill.com)

<comment><USER11> If you press and hold `/`, that's a Christmas tree generator.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Nitpick: Title should indicate VSCode

</comment><comment><USER29> Can someone do this for atom?

</comment><comment><USER30> i would appreciate something like this for Atom.

</comment><comment><USER31> doesn't understand \boldsymbol :/</comment>


Ask HN: What could we use to manage access to databases? - <AUTHOR> We have 10+ Postgres databases, and 50+ people who need access to them.<p>What could we use to manage access to databases? (add, delete, edit users, edit database access, ...) <comment><USER2> Products like HashiCorp Vault seem exactly what you need: you can manage and automate the creation/revocation of credentials and grants.</comment>


Rate-limit anything - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/digplan/ratelimits <comment><USER2> This is a simple form of rate limiting. In some cases you may want to look at [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaky_bucket](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaky_bucket)</comment>


Led by Donkeys Buy The Brexit Party Domain Before Nigel Farage - <AUTHOR> https://thebrexitparty.com/ <comment><USER3> I doubt that Farage would care about buying such a domain given that he knows that his party only exists due to the UK's reluctance to deliver Brexit.

He even said in a ITV interview that he would have to 'rebrand' his party after Brexit happens. So I find that it is unlikely that he would care about buying this domain especially a .com one.

<comment> pale-hands The Brexit Party Ltd. care enough that they have threatened legal action.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wouldn't they want thebrexitparty.co.uk? .com doesn't seem too sovereign.

<comment><USER5> They have thebrexitparty.org

<comment><USER6> Just another example of the .org domain being eroded - they're not an NGO, not a non-profit - they're a for-profit limited company, and therefore shouldn't be using a .org.

<comment><USER7> Eh? If you follow the actual initial rules of tLDS then it should be a .org.

It's a non for profit organization.

It's not a business or a public company so .com doesn't apply, it's not an ISP or a company that provides networking services so .net doesn't apply.

It's not a military organization, educational institution or a government agency so .mil, .edu and .gov are not applicable.

Like it or not political parties was exactly the intended target for a .org domain registration.

<comment><USER6> Eh? The Brexit Party Ltd is a limited company, not a political party. They are _acting_ like a political party, but they are a limited company, regardless. See, for instance, the fact that Farage is their immutable leader - he himself has explicitly stated that there will be no leadership contests within the party, as it is not a party, and he is the Person with Significant Control, with a 60% shareholding, with four anonymous individuals or organisations holding the remaining 40%.

It is absolutely a for-profit.

They have no party members, other than the three members of the Ltd co - <USER2> supporters are merely subscribers. They have no voting power, unlike in political parties.

Here's their entry in companies house, which makes this explicit - you'll find no such entry for, say, the Conservative and Unionist Party, or the Labour Party, or the Liberal Democrats, as they are political parties, not companies.

[https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/11694875/officers](https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/11694875/officers)

So, no, they shouldn't be a .org, it's misleading, just as it has evidently mislead you.

Frankly, I find it extremely worrying that a private company stands to potentially govern. Will their accountability lie with the public, or their shareholders?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If the domain was bought after the brexit party was founded - I wonder if its ownership can be claimed by the brexit party. At least with EU domain (and domains of individual countries under EU law) this falls under this case. Meaning that if you claim domain just to sell it for profits and cannot prove you have other purpose - its ownership will be transferred to the "name owners".

<comment><USER9> I'm not so sure, I think it falls under the Parody definition in the European Copyright Directive. So it should be fair use?

The Brexit party already have the .org and so have a primary domain already, they don't need or require the .com.

<comment><USER10> Getting an official sounding domain is a bit beyond fair use.

<comment><USER11> Not stopping anyone else: [https://www.labourmanifesto.co.uk/](https://www.labourmanifesto.co.uk/)

But I think Led By Donkeys is clear political satire (even if they have a political goal), and they're not here to make a quick buck.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Wouldn't cyber squatting laws just hand over the domain to their party if asked? They are even being asked for money, even if only in jest, which strengthens their case.

</comment><comment><USER13> very uninteresting

</comment><comment><USER14> With all due respect; from HN's posting guidelines..

>Stories on HN don't have to be about hacking, because good hackers aren't only interested in hacking, but they do have to be deeply interesting.

Which is fair enough. Also;

> What does "deeply interesting" mean? It means stuff that teaches you about > the world. A story about a robbery, for example, would probably not be > deeply interesting. But if this robbery was a sign of some bigger, > underlying trend, perhaps it could be.

>The worst thing to post or upvote is something that's intensely but shallowly interesting: gossip about famous people, funny or cute pictures or videos, partisan political articles, etc.

IMO this posted 'article' goes against the guidelines. It is not 'deeply interesting', teaches us nothing about the world, and is verging on politically partisan (yes let's have a chuckle at the brexit party because someone bought a domain name - teehee!)

I mean, what's the news here? Someone bought a domain name. Which just happens to be a domain name the brexit party /might/ have been interested in but probably not because it's a .com

Yet here we are, with it being upvoted. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯</comment>


TAXA, YC S14, launches first Title III equity crowdfunding campaign - <AUTHOR> http://www.wefunder.com/taxa <comment><USER2> I don't think we should be modifying plants until we know the side-effects of these changes.

<comment><AUTHOR> With any new technology the risk of not applying it should also be offset against the risk of side-effects from using it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Congrats. First one of these I've seen on here since the rules go into effect today

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, it was a lot of work getting ready for launch. Will be writing a post later on all the things you need to do to get live with one of these campaigns.

<comment><USER3> Awesome!</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What OS platform for Long Term Support 10 years - <AUTHOR> Requirements are unix-like VPS functionality where the main tools are shell scripting, cronjobs, a few python scripts, and zero outward-facing services. We want this thing secure and hands-off in respect to sysadmin maintenance, good for 10+ years. <comment><USER2> I can't find it, but I remember reading an article about FreeBSD running uninterrupted for 10-15 years on an airport system, but which eventually failed because of a hardware malfunction. Punchline was ~"would have happily strolled along longer, if the hardware was as good as the software".

You could also try something down the Gentoo route with known-good and solid LTS kernels.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice to hear as we're currently running on FreeBSD on a Digi Ocean Droplet, presumably hardware failure is mitigated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Ubuntu with its ability to auto upgrade is nice enough? Then your software..compile everything with static libraries and put them into /opt or something? ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯</comment>


Twitter acquires BackType (YC S08) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.backtype.com/2011/07/backtype-has-been-acquired-by-twitter/ <comment><USER2> I don't get it. Are startups now just a new resume? How are BackType users supposed to react to this? How are users supposed to trust other API startups if they can just get the rug pulled out from them like this?

I'm happy for the team, but is there not any way they could have transitioned the project to other developers and still joined twitter fulltime?

<comment><USER3> Start-ups are businesses. They make money for their investors and founders. Handing off the code sounds like hippie poppycock to me. I suppose they can do it if they want to, but they don't have to.

<comment><USER4> Sure, but it reinforces the notion that you can't put too much faith in a startup sticking it out.

Normally that's because people think they might go bust and you'll lose that thing you got used to having. It also applies to when a startup gets acquired and the service is then shut down. Folks who've been stung by this once might think twice before using/buying stuff from a small company in future.

<comment><USER5> So far, I haven't heard a PEEP from anyone paying backtype. If what you say is true, where is all the press about how horrible this is for their customers?

<comment><USER6> We're using the BackType API and it is frustrating that they're discontinuing the API. They've also just announced the discontinuation of the service with no word about timescales that this entails. For all we know they could discontinue it tomorrow.

Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be anyone offering a real alternative to the BackType APIs. There is Topsy which doesn't seem to have as much data coverage. Other alternatives require handling live streams of considerably more data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> [ YC08 ]

BackType has raised a total of $1.32m according to <http://www.crunchbase.com/company/backtype>

No speculation as to the size of the acquisition, but I guess anything between $10-100m is possible, which would give YC a return of about 3% (6% adjusted down to 70% twice) of that, or somewhere between $300k and $3m?

"YCombinator: turning $15k into $300k in 3 years"

Not bad.

Edit: This is based on the idea that BackType is successful, and had other options (which may not be the case, since their QuantCase/Compete graph is going down)... if they were about to go bust, the price could be considerably lower... but if they were doing well, I imagine investors would have blocked a sale lower than $10m.

<comment><USER8> I've been told by people close to the company that it was in the $50-100 million range. Given how aggressive the Backtype guys are, this doesn't shock me at all.

$100 mil split three ways is quite a prize.

<comment><USER9> I assumed it was sub 10M. If in fact they sold it for north of 30M, I would be really impressed. This is a team of 3, I believe. Nice work, BT.

<comment><USER10> it's 4 people: <http://twitter.com/backtype/team/members>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Old readwriteweb article

"Secrets of BackType's Data Engineers - How do three guys with only seed funding process 100 million msgs a day?"

[http://www.readwriteweb.com/hack/2011/01/secrets-of- backtype...](http://www.readwriteweb.com/hack/2011/01/secrets-of-backtypes- data-engineers.php) HN discussion <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2097926>

I am not a Clojure fan, but I found BackType engineer Nathan Marz's fusion of Datalog, Clojure and Hadoop to create Cascalog very impressive, and was looking forward to Storm.

<comment><USER12> Given Twitter's history with Open Source, I'm guessing we'll still see Storm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> A) Congratulations to the BackType team! I wonder if they're the first Clojure-heavy startup to be acquired. It will be interesting to see what happens to their technology stack after a couple of years.

B) Does this impact the open-sourcing of Storm?

<comment><USER14> Flightcaster is even earlier. FC might have been the first.

<comment><USER13> Oh you're right - I totally forgot about Flightcaster's acquisition!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I wish that when a headline announced "Big company acquires little startup you've never heard of" that it would be accompanied by some explanation of what the little startup actually does, and why it is interesting.

<comment><USER16> You would typically know about it if you're into social media analytics and metrics and its effects on advertising and so on.

Their technology stack is very cool. The amount of data it needs to process is staggering. And this whole field is relatively new so there are tons of potential in it.

<comment><USER17> Yes but even the fairly niche demographic of HN extends to those with interests outside of social analytics.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Congrats guys! I worked with Nathan, and he's a brilliant guy. Well deserved success.

</comment><comment><USER19> "we will discontinue the BackType product and API services"

Besides Google Alerts, what alternatives are out there?

<comment><USER20> I was using some of BackType's API's myself. Now I'm taking a look at <http://corp.topsy.com/developers/api/>.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I wonder what affect this will have on the open sourcing of Storm.

<comment><USER22> I think you meant effect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Black shirt acquired! Congrats guys!

<comment><USER12> If you're referring to the "I made something people want," is it true? It sounds like they really want the engineers, which they didn't _make_ (their parents did, I guess they deserve the shirt then?).

 _Yes, I'm joking._ Congrats to the team! They should wear their shirts proudly!

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Congrats to the guys of BackType.

I have been very tempted to apply to their internship during the winter.

</comment><comment><USER20> Looks like they shut their free api down around noon today. Not even a tweet. Boo.

</comment><comment><USER25> Congrats guys. Well deserved.

</comment><comment><USER26> Congratulations to BackType!

</comment><comment><USER27> and yet no profit has been had...good job twitter, good job

<comment><USER28> Companies rarely buy other companies for their profits. Most of the time it's a strategic move e.g. Twitter purchasing Tweetdeck to protect itself from aggressive moves by UberMedia

<comment><USER27> It baffles me how, with the number of investors involved and the huge amount of money on the line, Twitter is making any strategic move other than "how do we get profitable"</comment></comment></comment>


The world should think better about catastrophic and existential risks - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/briefing/2020/06/25/the-world-should-think-better-about-catastrophic-and-existential-risks <comment><USER2> Do people _actually_ care enough about "threats to humanity's potential" to actually support this kind of thing? I imagine more people would _say_ they care than would actually want to pay tax dollars towards it.

<comment><USER3> People care about #1 and the close relatives (very close usually); the rest is nice to say you care at parties and people might even want to contribute to it if the are either filthy rich anyway or get paid to do so (or both). There are exceptions (covid doctors/nurses most notably the last months; although I personally know doctors (and I only know 3) who all refused to work on the frontlines as ... looking out for #1), but in general, no-one wants to pay/help unless they get screwed themselves (Boris Johnson with covid as an example) which then humbles them (hopefully).

Most of the rich countries' people are healthy (although it seems the US(and UK lately?) is trying to change that with obesity, diabetes being so prevalent?) so it's easy to think ; screw that, I will never get anything so I'm not paying taxes or doing anything for those 'lazy sods'. Until they get something.

I think covid is not (yet ...) bad enough to change that way of thinking; especially here in europe (without the uk) there is strong pressure against helping 'lazy people' (between '' because they are not lazy generally, it's just inequality) with handouts, even though many rich people suffered first hand through how fast you can go from healthy to a complete wreck (or dead).

The scare (I hope a scare will be enough..) needs to be far worse than this; the people who lived through WOII are dying off (faster with covid) so most people in the western world hardly lived through any real trauma in general. Imho also the reason words like 'trauma' are now used in completely wrong ways; people getting traumatised by, on a war or 'spanish flu' type pandemic scale, things that mean really not much at all. This is great because it means we live in prosperity (in the west!), however we are not prepared, at all for any larger calamity.

And we forgot the calamities of yore (not sure if they still teach history in schools; I have a bad feeling it's not very ... well done) so it's easy to focus on the direct family and say 'f you!' to the rest of the world. I don't think that will change unless there is a real unifying event, far worse than this. Unfortunately it might come as the 2nd or 3rd wave of covid. And if not, as #1, I hope to be dead when that finally happens. But it will happen and we won't be prepared at all because our governments love dismantling things 'we don't need' (do we even have an army of any significance in the EU?) to save money and memory is _really_ short for the 'bad things'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The article manages to describe tail risk without using the term, and the author avoids mentioning Nasim Taleb, the current leading author/speaker on low probability/high risk events, so-called Black Swans. I suppose Taleb has offended enough people at this point to earn this treatment. Instead Nick Bostrom gets a nod for his sci-fi singularity fantasies.

<comment><USER5> Am i the only one who really likes Taleb and his aggressive approach ? :-) I couldn't care less about "Offended feelings" of charlatans, posers and fakes. Given the mess that the so-called "people in charge" have made of everything i wish more academics/intelligentsia were as aggressive as him in calling out mistakes/errors in our patterns of thought and force us to face them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Scientists have been basically screaming at the public since the 60s or so. 60 years later, people still don't take climate change seriously enough for the majority to vote in politicians who care about it.

Just look at how we're actually having protests against something as simple as staying inside. We can think better about existential risks but that won't help if we don't actually take action. Given our track record, my bet is that barely anything will be done.

Not enough people care.

</comment><comment><USER7> Without paywall: [http://archive.is/SH3EU](http://archive.is/SH3EU)

The article mentions Toby Ord and his _The Precipice_ \- I think a must-read book:

[https://theprecipice.com/](https://theprecipice.com/)

</comment><comment><USER8> Seems like the best risk mitigation strategy is to become multi-planetary. We would eliminate the vast majority of existential risks.

<comment><USER9> We can't stop ourselves from trashing this planet. I don't know why people think we would be more succesful elsewhere.

<comment><USER8> One organism's trash is another's habitat. None of us would be around if the early cyanobacteria hadn't polluted the earth with oxygen.

<comment><USER10> That might be the strangest apologetics for pollution that I've ever seen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What, like relying on the CCP for our pharmaceutical, mfg. and rare earth processing? Maybe something like that?</comment>


What is the best bedtime? - mck- http://time.com/3183183/you-asked-whats-the-ideal-time-to-go-to-sleep/

<comment><AUTHOR> Early sleep and early rising is not for everyone

What bugs me is people that say 'you will adjust, just go to bed earlier.'

After 15 years of rising early i still, as always, find the hours after 8pm to be my most productive. I am very focused and energetic, and my mental clarity is at its peak.

<comment><USER2> I totally agree. It's different for each and every person. There is never ONE optimal solution for everyone. We aren't identical machines. -Irving of [http://www.youngandceo.com](http://www.youngandceo.com)

<comment><USER3> (Btw: signing your posts is something of a faux pas here. Including your website is worse, it makes it look like that's the real reason you posted.)

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the feedback. I appreciate it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The funny thing about these articles is that they usually oversimplify the problem. For example, they treat time as an absolute. They discard the influence of timezones, daylight savings vs std time, length of the daylight. At least in this article they acknowledge existence of different types of people.

</comment><comment><USER5> Among the people I see in my office probably 80% or more have significant sleep disturbances, common is "night owl" syndrome, people who can't get to sleep early enough to get adequate sleep when having to arise at 06:00 to take care of kids, dogs and get themselves ready for work.

The problem is often not lack of tiredness, but simply feeling "not sleepy" when one is "supposed to be". Their minds are active, they feel activated and can't settle down. Can be a tough problem to solve. Morning bright light treatment sometimes help. Melatonin before bedtime might help. Talk to you health care people find out the options.

But of course, anxiety and depression are top causes of insomnia. Various therapies are often quite helpful.

Worth pointing out that there are a huge range of conditions that cause sleep disturbances, and many are impossible to determine without specific evaluation. Some conditions are downright weird so don't be embarrassed if you feel freakish on that account. Believe me, I've heard many strange sleep histories, but I've not considered a single one of them to be unbelievable.

We should check out what's going on. I refer 2 or 3 people every week for sleep evaluations, afterwards almost all say, "hey that wasn't a bad experience at all."

Poor sleep can be lead to bigger health problems--it's a long list I won't go into it now, but a good part of the time helping sleep helps alleviate other conditions.

Basic healthy sleep rules: give an hour to wind down and to wake up. Avoid the "blue light" body snatching phones, computers and all the rest of those evil things ;) Especially in that PM winding-down time.

In any case, if you have frequent or continuous sleep disturbance, don't suffer silently, talk to your primary care doc, just describe the trouble, don't try to explain it, that's the doc's job. Don't underplay the problem, it may be serious. It's just taking good care of yourself, and since it is _your top priority job_ , don't wait do it.

</comment><comment><USER6> Meh, nothing new here. [http://www.supermemo.com/articles/sleep.htm](http://www.supermemo.com/articles/sleep.htm) is still far more relevant.

<comment><USER4> Nice article !

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have no doubt that these rubbish articles (probably backed by books, too) ruin lives.

This idea that we all should adhere to the exact same rhythm is ridiculous and it just serves to stigmatize people who despite all efforts can't fit in, especially if they're late risers.

Personally, I'm at my best when I can wake up about 3-4 hours after sunrise, after about 7-8 hours of sleep. I wake up without an alarm clock, I feel refreshed and ready to start the day. I perform better during the day, and I usually don't feel tired again until it's bed time.

Now, of course there are lots of occasions where this sleep pattern is simply not possible, but no matter how long the disruption lasts, it always feels grindy and awkward. Then I definitely need an alarm clock, I tend to sleep more overall, and I often feel purged about halfway through the day. Nobody can tell me this is what being healthy is supposed to feel like.

Of course a lot of people feel fine rising early, but the obvious mistake here is to derive from it that everybody must do the same. Even as we move away from an agricultural society there is still social pressure to synchronize the entire population as if they were tilling fields.

<comment><USER8> Did you read the article? Because it doesn't claim everyone should adhere to the exact same rhythm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Umm at nap naps ocklock obv

</comment><comment><USER10> It's almost 4 am here and I'm still hacking away... minimum distractions in the middle of the night... and reply #2 to a HN post :)</comment>


Betas (TV Series 2013– ) - <AUTHOR> http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3012184/ <comment><USER2> Note that this show is terrible.

They are trying to make Silicon Valley and startups look like Hollywood and scriptwriting. The first episode has the main characters (startup co-founders) hanging out at a trendy bar and programming there. Of course one is a stereo- typical aspie guy with no social skills but is a genius with computers. Then they go to a house party thrown by a big name VC that I think is supposed to be Ron Conway; the house is filled with professional models glomming all over the VC and everyone is generally gorgeous. The guys sneak in to pitch him on their new social networking app that somehow has data "hacked" from some government database or something. They just _know_ that if only they can get 5 minutes of their time with this VC, they will be able to land funding-- which will... make their business successful somehow?

You know, exactly like real startup life.

<comment><USER3> Heh, sounds like the (great) movie Primer shows a more accurate view of tech start-ups (and I assume the similarities end there...).

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390384/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390384/)

<comment><USER4> Yeah, except for Primer's funding model, which was based on ethically- questionable securities trading practices involving a time machine, it was just like an SV startup.

Betas probably hits a little close to home for some people around here, I imagine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There's also going to be a Mike Judge-created HBO series called "Silicon Valley": [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Valley_(TV_series)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Valley_\(TV_series\))

<comment><USER6> It's hard to imagine Mike Judge failing at anything. I'll be anxiously awaiting this.

<comment><USER4> How about failing at producing his content for a company that will make it available to people who use streaming rather than cable?

<comment><USER7> Well I don't see any evidence that he's tried to do that so he hasn't exactly failed at it, has he?

<comment><USER4> Good point. If someone wants to start a symphony orchestra for the deaf, who am I to criticize?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> People on here seem to think the show is terrible. Is the Big Bang Theory equally terrible? It similarly makes fun of stereotypes and many people love that show and many scientists often think it's atrocious. Maybe the same thing is happening here.. hitting a little to close to home for some people.

<comment> k-mcgrady >> "Is the Big Bang Theory equally terrible?"

I don't know about equally, but it is terrible. Watch a clip with the laugh track off (you can find them on YouTube) and you will realise how unfunny it is.

<comment><USER9> Thats funny because it is the only comedy tv show I like.

<comment><AUTHOR> And you all know the IT crowd?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is the title really a reference to that strange psychosexual thing people have about alphas and betas, As and Bs? What is it referring to, in the context of the show?

<comment><USER11> > Is the title really a reference to that strange psychosexual thing people > have about alphas and betas

But, _wolves_ do that, so it must be true! I read it on the Internet!

<comment><USER10> I thought it was gorillas?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Most notably, this is an Amazon original show and available for free to Amazon Prime members on their streaming video service.

</comment><comment><USER13> This show is filled with trite stereotypes. For example: an Indian(?) programmer with terrible social skills has dinner with his parents where they try to arrange a marriage for him. Seriously? The main character is self- obsessed, shallow, and boring, just like this show.

Did Amazon do a bunch of analytics and figure out that this is what people want to watch? (IIRC that's how House of Cards was conceived). It's terrible on so many levels.

</comment><comment><USER14> I didn't realize Amazon had exclusives. Is this new that they're getting into their own original series, like Netflix?

<comment><USER15> Yup. Their other show, Alpha House, stars John Goodman and Clark Johnson (of The Wire). It's good; not great, but I'm watching it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Alpha House...Betas....where are we going with this?

<comment><USER17> Not to mention there's a show just called "Alphas"</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Would you paid for a better version of Mint.com/PersonalCapital.com? - <AUTHOR> Mint.com/PersonalCapital.com are nice but they have ads or trying to upsell you some other services. Also, P&L could be better.<p>I'm wondering if you would be to pay a subscription and how much for having all your personal finances in one place? <comment><USER2> I would consider paying if you respect my data and privacy, i.e. not selling or exploiting it.

I stopped using mint for this reason, plus security concerns.</comment>


10 Communication Secrets of Great Leaders - <AUTHOR> http://www.linkedin.com/share?viewLink=&sid=s1016258766&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Eforbes%2Ecom%2Fsites%2Fmikemyatt%2F2012%2F04%2F04%2F10-communication-secrets-of-great-leaders%2F&urlhash=o42f&pk=member-home&pp=5&poster=4447702&uid=5593551856501522432&trk=NUS_UNIU_SHARE-title Key to Innovation is Communication <comment><AUTHOR> I have always been the "extrovert" in my team (PayGuard)..... always passionate and excited to share my ideas. The greatest thing I have ever learned from all our meetings is knowing when to just shut up and listen. I came to the realization that my team members are just as smart or even smarter than I am. I also realized how lucky I am to be working with such people.</comment>


Highest resolution map ever made of the Gulf of Mexico - <AUTHOR> http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/05/new-seafloor-map-gulf-of-mexico/ <comment><USER2> Perhaps link should be changed to the source article?

[https://eos.org/project-updates/a-1-4-billion-pixel-map- of-t...](https://eos.org/project-updates/a-1-4-billion-pixel-map-of-the-gulf- of-mexico-seafloor)

</comment><comment><USER3> Is it just me, or does it seem kind of weird that there is a link to another article about how the blasts of compressed air used to make these maps kills a great many creatures.

[http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/06/seismic-survey- ai...](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/06/seismic-survey-air-gun-oil- gas-exploration-zooplankton-spd/)

<comment><USER4> I think it's just you , About 3/4 of the way through reading the article I was actually wondering what effect this survey would of caused to marine life that was close to what must be an incredibly loud noise to reach the seafloor and then bounce back to receivers close to the surface.

Not only can loud sounds cause deafness in humans but a loud enough sound will kill you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> For those who want to explore this map themselves go to: [https://marinecadastre.gov/nationalviewer/](https://marinecadastre.gov/nationalviewer/)

<comment><USER6> I had to disable my ad blocker for this to work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Should make a cool color 3d print.</comment>