Cars Kill Cities - <AUTHOR> http://progressivetransit.wordpress.com/2012/01/25/cars-kill-cities/ <comment><USER2> The post is right, and even more so for developing world cities that emerged before cars were around.

However the post is also naive. Cars are usually much faster, provide much better shelter from the weather, and are much less tiring than trying to lug bags from one place to another on buses or other public transport. They also place far fewer constraints on when you can travel.

Of course it's possible to structure one's life so as to deal with all of the issues. I have lived half of my adult life without a car, including 4 years in the SF Bay Area, and I managed.

But let's stop pretending that there isn't a trade off. Cars are very very convenient. The key to reducing the need for cars is not just good public transport - it's services that reduce the reliance on traveling to get chores done. Things like grocery deliveries, laundry pickup, and amazon.com.

It would be a lot easier to rely solely on public transport if you never had to carry anything.

<comment><USER3> Everybody knows this is true, of course. I live three miles from work. To get here this morning I _could_ have walked 3 blocks to the light rail station near my apartment, then another 4 or so blocks from the destination station to my office. This is pretty convenient, especially in St. Louis, where the vast, vast majority of residents don't have options nearly that good.

But I didn't do it. It was 16F degrees when I left the house this morning. I drove my car.

<comment><USER4> Put on some proper clothing and take your bike?

<comment><USER5> Perhaps you're being facetious, but on the off change that you're just not familiar with 16F (-9C), understand that that's cold. I'm a runner, but I don't go out if it's below 20F--I can't take it no matter what I wear. And a given temperature feels much colder on a bike.

Of course, if it's 16F, there's likely some ice and snow about, and riding a bicycle is treacherous in that. And St. Louis is on the eastern edge of the central time zone, so it'll be pitch dark out when he gets off work, also treacherous given traffic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you're interested in this topic, Donald Shoup's _The High Cost of Free Parking_ and Edward Glaeser's _The Triumph of the City_ are both worth reading. The former explains how "free" parking isn't really free and how it distorts a lot of behavior, and the latter is about what cities are good for and how to build healthy cities in general.

Personally, I wonder why people would want to own a car if they can avoid it: [https://jseliger.wordpress.com/2013/08/13/why-would-you- want...](https://jseliger.wordpress.com/2013/08/13/why-would-you-want-to-own- a-car-if-you-could-avoid-it/) , but that may be a minority viewpoint.

<comment><USER7> Lots of people don't want to live in a city.

For me, living in a city is a horrible existence. So living in the unspoilt countryside a car is pretty useful to get around.

A car is freedom. Do you really want to be completely dependent and beholden to some public transport system?

<comment><USER8> That's great but you assume that there is a choice. I want to live in a nice city, but I can't. Trillions of dollars, decades of government policies and dozen of agencies with their "homeownership" programs destroyed our cities and permanently put them at a disadvantage. My city alone lost almost 1 million people so far, where blocks with only 2 or 3 houses left standing are plentiful(this isn't even Detroit!) yet the surrounding suburbs are thriving. This didn't happen out of choice. If people like you paid the full price of suburbia or if the situation was reversed and government rewarded city living instead of suburban living then your lifestyle would change really fast.

<comment><USER4> > I want to live in a nice city, but I can't.

If you want city living badly enough, there are countries that still have viable cities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If self-driving cars become a reality, it is interesting to think of what happens to all this space & infrastructure. If the model is that we don't own cars, but rather share them like taxis, then there is no need for parking: the car will just drop you and go to its next trip. If the model is that we own our self-driving cars, it may be that they can be parked at much greater distances (10+ miles) from where we spend time (in much denser structures than today). We can likely eliminate parking from inner cities, both garages and roadside parking.

If we can design roads and grids for computers and not humans, perhaps we can make them much efficient by trading off simplicity. Could we have a complex system of mostly one-way streets?

What interests me is that not just parking garages go away, but what today is a four-lane-width road (with two lanes dedicated to parking) may become a single-lane one-way street. The sidewalk - which used to be 20% of the space - is now 80% of the space. Looking around busy cities, and trying to imagine what it will look like post-self-driving car, is IMHO mind-blowing.

<comment><USER10> \- Self-driving cars will still need to park at off-peak times. Unless they just keep driving in circles.

\- Having your car park 10 miles away from you after every trip adds some forty miles of travel per commute. That's forty miles of fuel and forty miles of maintenance, every day.

\- I'm also not thrilled about the prospect of already-dense cities shrinking streets to one lane. We call them concrete jungles _now_ \- can you imagine if all the roads were only 15 feet across? Goodbye, sky.

<comment><USER11> _\- Self-driving cars will still need to park at off-peak times. Unless they just keep driving in circles._

"they can be parked at much greater distances (10+ miles) from where we spend time, in much denser structures than today"

 _\- Having your car park 10 miles away from you after every trip adds some forty miles of travel per commute. That 's forty miles of fuel and forty miles of maintenance, every day._

Only if we map 1 car to 1 person. Of course that'd be completely unoptimized - people wouldn't own car, but rather have a "subscription" where they can get a car dispatched at any time (à la Uber). Cars would only park 10 miles away at truly off peak hours; the rest of the time they'd go to service some other customer.

 _\- I 'm also not thrilled about the prospect of already-dense cities shrinking streets to one lane. We call them concrete jungles now- can you imagine if all the roads were only 15 feet across? Goodbye, sky._

As the previous poster said, the extra space would go to sidewalks. Outside patios, trees, grass, parks... the things we could do would be amazing. Some older European cities from pre-car eras are built like that, and it's wonderful.

<comment><USER10> _Only if we map 1 car to 1 person_

Please read my parent. He said:

 _If the model is that we own our self-driving cars it may be that they can be parked at much greater distances (10+ miles)_

That's what I was replying to.

 _Some older European cities from pre-car eras are built like that, and it 's wonderful._

And a fair number of pre-automobile European cities are built with tiny streets. Hence, part of why micro-cars are so popular in Europe.

<comment><USER12> > And a fair number of pre-automobile European cities are built with tiny > streets. Hence, part of why micro-cars are so popular in Europe.

Fuel in europe costs about as much in euro per liter as it costs in USD/gallon. Well, that's a bit exaggerated but last week I paid ~ 1,50 EUR per liter, so a fuel efficient micro car does not only help you navigate narrow streets but also saves quite some money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is easy enough to fix from a policy standpoint:

(1) make free parking a taxable benefit for companies

(2) tax the hell out of gas/car registration, or at the very least tax it enough to pay for infrastructure

(3) no mandated parking minimums in new construction in cities

(4) get rid of publicly paid for parking

But of course this requires transit alternatives and popular support, which does not exist in places like Atlanta. I live in Orange County, and I bike to work (we have perfect weather and mediocre bike infrastructure), but people love their cars here.

<comment><USER14> I think a better alternative for 2 would be congestion pricing for downtown areas. An across the board registration hike would be regressive, and disproportionately affect the rural poor.

<comment><USER13> Ah yes, even better. But that couldn't even fly in NYC, arguably the place with the least car friendly political environment in the US.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I have lived in both car-dependent and transit-based places, and can see advantages to both. Given that the advantages of transit are commonly discussed these days, I thought I'd give some of the advantages of cars.

(1) Cars don't have schedules. You can just jump in your car and go any time of day or night. Cars also don't stop running at 2am, while most transit systems do.

(2) Cars permit sprawl. Sprawl has been bashed to hell and back for some justifiable reasons, but it has one big advantage: it breaks the backs of real estate markets. Sprawling car-dependent regions are much safer from the real estate hyperinflation that plagues cities that are either transit-based or geographically constrained. Bubbles of local real estate inflation surround transit hot spots, creating a two-tier society in which ease of transportation is exponentially (not linearly, as with cars) correlated to income. The poor get loooooong bus->train commutes while the wealthy get fast train->train commutes.

(3) Cars can haul stuff, which gets increasingly important when you have children. Pretty much everything about the suburbs seems idiotic until you have kids, then it seems reasonable.

I can't stress #2 enough. Compare the Los Angeles metro area to the San Francisco bay. The former is a largely car-based sprawling metropolis, while the latter is partly transit-based and also geographically constrained (which for the market does the same thing as transit-dependence). In the LA metro area there are many neighborhoods where poor and working class people can afford to live. In the Bay Area you're spending $3000/month for a crack den. Everyone but professionals and the rich are completely priced out of all but the absolute worst neighborhoods, or are pushed out to the fringes with the longest commutes.

It's funny that transit is often cited as good from an equality point of view as it gives everyone access to mobility without requiring car ownership, but the real estate inflation that it engenders negates this IMHO.

<comment><USER16> Great insight.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I walked around Tokyo marveling at the infrastructure. Fully enclosed (or perhaps 3/4 enclosed) freeways that explode out of the ground, split off to surface streets, and arch up through the sky and around corners. Well- engineered, rubberized mounting systems and the enclosure mean you only heard the faintest hint of cars rocketing by at speed. Highways branching to high- capacity, multi-lane surface streets, which further branch into narrow neighborhood streets (similar to an alley in the US) meant that pedestrian traffic was quite safe, and generally well-respected.

By contrast, American cities have a couple of arterial freeways, a massive grid of wide-yet-low-capacity surface streets, and neighborhood streets that people speed through in an effort to shave seconds off their commute. And when they get to work, they park in huge parking lots, instead of stacked parking structures (ideally under the target building itself).

American transportation infrastructure is terrible.

<comment><USER18> I think the road infrastructure pales in comparison to the subway/rail system. The volume of people it moves is incredible. Also remember that it's all built in an earthquake-prone area!

<comment><USER17> I didn't even bother getting into the rail system, since I assume everyone realizes how advanced it is. I really wanted to put this in though: I've watched Shinkansen pull into the switchyard at night to "go to bed". It's quiet. Here's a bullet train, cruising into a rail yard pretty much in the middle of a neighborhood, idling along after midnight, and you only hear a very muffled motor as it glides by. Compare that to America, where our trains seem to be built solely to meet basic load requirements, and where they honk four times (as long or short as they want) before every crossing that's not guarded with quad-gates.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This post is a rant backed up with only anecdotal evidence and an enraged author with a penchant for catchy headlines.

No solutions are offered because no problem is properly presented.

<comment><USER20> At the other side, the author presented the less fitting anedocte he came up with, saying "see, even if I try hard to refute the hypothesis, I can't". And it's not an extraordinary hypothesis.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm genuinely curious: Here in germany we have car-sharing offers that allow you to pick up a car on the street, ride it to where you want to go and then leave it parked there in the larger cities. The fee is usually about half of the fee of a cab. Then there's the same for bicycles. The combination of public transport and car-sharing in berlin is awesome, at least in the city center: I go most ways by public transport and then grab a car or bike if I need to. If I really need to travel long distance by car, I get a rental and I'm coming out ahead financially, even if I throw in the occasional taxi ride because it's late and I'm lazy. From the posts here I get the impression that this doesn't exist in the US - and I can't imagine that.

<comment><USER21> What you are describing sounds like [https://www.car2go.com](https://www.car2go.com), which is available in some US cities.

<comment><USER22> Which just happens to be a German company :)

We have it in Toronto and it's super useful sometimes to quickly get somewhere within the downtown when transit would be slower and cabs more expensive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> As a life long ATLien, I want to know when Atlanta was walkable, and if it could have even been considered the same city as it is now. For those of you who don't know, the population of metro Atlanta more than doubled between 1990 and 2010.

Yes, all types of transportation suck in Atlanta, but roads and cars are an extensible, scaleable solution with most of the costs being marginal as opposed to fixed, meaning additional demand can be handled easily. Like others have noted, you offered no real solutions to that problem. MARTA is kind of a joke of a system for anyone that values their time. A trip on MARTA will take about twice the time it would take to drive in a car. At the average commuter distance, you recoup the cost of buying a $5,000 car in a year if you value your time at minimum wage. If you actually care about fixing the problem, fix the economics of alternatives. Don't just go about complaining about the fact that you don't like not being able to walk where you want to go, suggest solutions.

And please try to consider this problem outside of the perspective of being a student, because that honestly seems to be the only perspective you've given to this. A lot of the vehicles you see in Atlanta are work vehicles, and that mobility makes a lot of things possible that you probably are a fan of. You may want to consider the dynamics of the local economy further.

Honestly, I have to say this article isn't up to the standards I'd expect of a fellow Tech student, particularly a PhD candidate. You are very well intentioned and undoubtedly intelligent, but simply pointing out what everyone knows isn't very helpful. I'll be interested to see the future posts you promised.

</comment><comment><USER24> Before cars invaded Ahmedabad, India, two wheelers and rickshaws were primary modes of transportation for longer distances. Walking and bicycles were used for shorter distances.. Cars were used on occasions.. Traffic issues were non- existent. People starting using cars as primary mode of transportation because everyone else started doing it.. meaning using two wheelers became less safe, more car traffic, increased pollution effects, etc.

Idea is to go back to using cars as only ocassional mode of transportation and for that one option is govt helps reduce traffic for two wheelers/rickshaws/bicycles.. Dedicated lanes for these would help.

</comment><comment><USER25> FYI, the author of that post address self-driving cars in his next post: [http://progressivetransit.wordpress.com/2012/02/02/self- driv...](http://progressivetransit.wordpress.com/2012/02/02/self-driving-cars- freedom-or-more-of-the-same/)

<comment><USER26> That betrays the basic attitude of these anti-car folks. It's not the cars, but the freedom to live where you want that they detest.

<comment><USER27> People can live where they want, but I'm critical of having to subsidize the excessive amount of infrastructure necessary for the lifestyle choice of unnecessarily travelling very large distances. For me it's even worse because I live in a region where the terrain requires a lot of bridges.

<comment><USER28> "but I'm critical of having to subsidize the excessive amount of infrastructure necessary for the lifestyle choice of unnecessarily travelling very large distances"

Why choose this choice as the the line in the sand?

Are you also critical of having to subsidize the excessive amount of infrastructure necessary for the lifestyle choice of living in a strictly large than necessary place, for example?

Because you subsidize that to a large degree too.

Everyone who has a larger dining room because they have made the lifestyle choice of wanting to host dinner parties. Or large kitchens. Large bedrooms. Large yards. You name it.

It's all strictly unnecessary, and all lifestyle choice. Among other subsidies, all of it takes up valuable space that could be given to the public, or something else done with it. It requires more infrastructure - greater water supplies, greater sanitation requirements, power supplies, gas supplies, what have you.

Yet we subsidize this just the same as you are paying for roads, you are just paying for it in different places.

In truth, we subsidize a large number of lifestyle choices that impact infrastructure (having kids, riding bikes, heck, even buying groceries, you name it).

From what I can tell, it just seems some people are upset that they subsidies don't always match whatever their particular ideology of how cities should be built is.

Just remember there really is no "better" or "worse", when it comes to lifestyle choices, just different (you may impose moral judgements on lifestyle choices depending on ideology and viewpoint of purpose of society, but the truly vast majority of these moral judgements are not universally shared)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> In the East Bay, I ride a 3000w electric scooter. A kWh of power is a good days ride, commute, shopping and socializing (I tend to charge twice a day, because I can).

Please consider joining me: the more scooters there are the safer we all get to be. It's fun! When you get going fast, you can't even hear the motor, just the wind.

</comment><comment><USER30> Do people actually _want_ to live in cities, how many of them? - (and whatever for?)

One narrative here goes, there are lots of cars, so it creates an unfriendly environment, so people have to live outside the city and have cars.

But that narrative doesn't make sense for how the cars got there in the first place.

Another narrative goes: cars enabled people to move about quickly, they enjoyed this. One manifestation of this ability was to escape from cities and still get to work. Thus carparks and reasonably fast roads.

#

Or maybe people just enjoyed moving about quickly even over relatively small distances and it snowballed

For example, I live about five miles away from where I used to work. I could spend 10 minutes walking to the nearest busstop, 15 minutes waiting for that bus, another 10-15 minutes getting to the busstop in town, another 10-15 minutes waiting for the next bus to work, another half hour or so while the bus drives there (takes longer because of stops).

Or I could just get in the car and be there in 16-20 minutes.

An hour and a half vs 16-20 minutes. And this isn't a _bad_ place for public transport. Buses, on average, every 10-15 minutes is pretty good. It just adds up. Heck, given a couple of hours I could probably walk there.

It's far from clear that it makes sense, even under generalised utility, to agree with the author's desire to make cities better places to live at the potential cost to people who may prefer to live elsewhere and drive.

<comment><USER31> You could also bike there in 30 minutes and get some excercise as a bonus.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> High correlation with another post in the board:

[http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_eye/2013/12/10/why_cul_de_sac...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_eye/2013/12/10/why_cul_de_sacs_are_bad_for_your_health_happy_city_by_charles_montgomery.html)

Can be a bit of a catch 22 in today's world, where new cities and developments are created assuming high volume / usage of cars.

You can see how dense cities can work very well with very few cars in places like Amsterdam, but there city setup and infrastructure eases walking / biking and is very unfriendly to cars. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_in_Amsterdam#Car](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_in_Amsterdam#Car)

</comment><comment><USER33> I think what we need are exponential tolls based on distance to city center or density of pedestrian traffic around. I couldn't care less about cars on streets dedicated for them, but everywhere else they need to piss off and quickly. They are death machines.

</comment><comment><USER34> I fond our cities profoundly ugly, but cars serve an essential service. I need a flexible, quick means of secure transport. I need to move a variable number of people from 1-4. I often need to bring tens of kilograms of stuff with me. What else can fill the bill around a large metro area (~3 million people)?

I would love an alternative, to live in beautiful cities, to walk around the way I can overseas.

<comment><USER35> Walking + a cart.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> New York City recently launched it's CitiBike program and set up bike racks in spots that used to be reserved for street parking and you should have seen people flipping out despite the fact that less than 50% of us actually own cars. And let's not forget about the amount of space we dedicate cars being able to move around.

</comment><comment><USER37> At this point for a lot of cities, it would require a large amount of infrastructure change. Mass transit in most cities sucks today, so people use cars. To do this right, the city needs to do a massive up-front investment in public transit. And there is no guarantee that this investment will ever pay off.

<comment><USER38> Yes, it would require a change in infrastructure. No, it is not necessary for the investment to be done upfront. You quickly ramp up cheap mass transit options (bus service segregated from regular vehicular traffic with dedicated lanes, MUCH cheaper than light rail construction) while using permitting/zoning to phase out car-friendly policies.

It won't happen overnight, but its a start.

<comment><USER39> Bus service does not work. People hate buses, no matter how well designed and efficient their routes are. Buses have an extreme social stigma attached to them.

<comment><USER38> Unfortunately, just because you hate something doesn't mean we should continue to support policies for wasteful/inefficient transportation.

<comment><USER39> You know what's wasteful and inefficient? Empty buses driving around all day. My city is full of them!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I lived most of my life in Los Angeles, having a car was a right of passage. I moved three years ago to New York City and I sold my car (finally) last year. It's amazing how liberating it is, no insurance, parking, gas, maintenance. These things eat into your life and you really don't see it until it's gone.. I'd be glad to never own another car, but if I move again to a place that doesn't support it I guess I'll buy another chunk of metal and watch the quarters fly out the tail pipe..

</comment><comment><USER41> Self driving cars my pick for best solution. You can have fewer cars services more people with higher efficiency. It's all wins across the board.

I hope the bloggers solution ideas aren't "better public transportation". Public transportation sucks, even in Europe. A pre-requisite to good public transportation is poor infrastructure for private transportation. I view asking for better public transportation as asking for a faster horse. We can do way better than that.

<comment><USER27> Self driving cars doesn't change much.

Supposing that there would exist car sharing systems such that a single car may be used throughout the day by several people, then we could cut back on parking spots, but I'm sure there will be many that own their own self driving car and share it with no one.

During morning rush hour the only difference from now would be that commuters could do the crossword puzzle instead of focusing on traffic.

<comment><USER42> Incorrect. If you have self-driving cars, the entire flow of traffic could be much more efficient, virtually eliminating traffic jams.

You could drive at the speed limit with a lot smaller distance between cars, etc, packing in a greater density of people without sacrificing speed.

<comment><USER27> I think you'll see some gains in efficiency, but negligible compared to how efficiently we can move people via rapid transit. At the end of the day you're still going to be having most often a single person in a large vehicle that takes up a lot of room on the road.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Car oriented design is not efficient at all for most city trips and we need to dramatically increase funding for alternatives.

Alongside directing our infrastructure dollars toward supporting a more balanced mix of travelling options, the most sensible thing we can do is to expose more of the real cost of car oriented infrastructure to the end consumer via road fees, bridge tolls and ending free parking.

</comment><comment><USER43> If most things could be delivered by drones to where you lived, do you think we would space out, or clump together, or stay the same?

I think, for me, I could use my car payment on taxi service if I didnt need to commute or do errands, and it would be about the same. Except I wouldnt have a car, something that breaks down.

</comment><comment><USER44> Cars kill density, but they don't kill cities. I live in San Diego, a very car friendly city. I can get to almost any store, restaurant, or shop in 15 minutes or less. The key is medium density city with lot's of freeways. High density is not all that it's cracked up to be.

</comment><comment><USER45> For a forum that spends a lot of time talking about disruption with members who I'm sure pride themselves on their rationality, there is a surprising amount of "damn the torpedoes" defense of the status quo here.

</comment><comment><USER46> Did you guys see this one? [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6882352](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6882352)

</comment><comment><USER47> David Byrne's book Bicycle Diaries has some fantastic analysis of the effects of cars on cities (particularly American ones). I would highly recommend it!

</comment><comment><USER48> Wonder when the liberals will wake up and smell the coffee: Private busses are the miracle solution to public transport.

<comment> wh-uws Trying to be as non promotional as possible here.

With my startup I'm working on this problem aiming to make easily setting up private transport a reality.

You can check out my vision here.

[http://www.driveless.co/about.html](http://www.driveless.co/about.html)

My contact if is in my profile if you have any comments or criticism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> We can use solar powered vehicles instead..

</comment><comment><USER50> Eh, IMO, cars are killing democracy, too. I haven't lined up the studies to actually show the causal chain, though. It's something I need to get around to doing.</comment>


Show HN: Torchpad – The simplest way to make a wiki - <AUTHOR> http://www.torchpad.com/ <comment><USER2> The landing page is pretty, but can't try without signup, walking away...

<comment><USER3> Sorry, we are developing the demo editor.

But you can see the example wiki site here:

[http://markdown.torchpad.com/](http://markdown.torchpad.com/)

<comment><USER4> You should add some screenshots so people can at least see what you're trying to sell. That's one of the first things I look for with anything like this so I can get a feel for what's being offered.

Otherwise maybe it's prematurely on HN if you wanted to get best value for hitting the front page?

<comment><USER5> Definitely needs screenshots. It's nice to say that you can "manage your pages clearly in tree structure" but I'd like to see what it looks like without trying.

Also, it definitely needs an "About" page. Who are you people?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> When I'm forced to put things into wikis or content management systems, I usually edit text in my favourite text editor (via the "It's all Text" extension or similar). Unfortunately the javascript-based editor in this wiki is too clever for that extension to work. Fortunately a dance involving _Ctrl-a, Ctrl-c, edit elsewhere and copy back, and Ctrl-v_ does work. So I guess I wouldn't find it too annoying if I had to use this thing :-). Direct access to the git repository would be nice though.

<comment><USER7> You're right, same with edit-with-emacs on chrome. Shame, the editor looks nice but I definitely wouldn't want to give up my own editor functions for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Demo account: firstname.lastname@example.com / Pass: torchpad

<comment><AUTHOR> wow, thank you so much :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> i loved pbwiki until it became pbworks. man that was great. now pbworks is like a $1500 minimum commitment...

i understand that they had to pivot, but bleh.. i hate confluence, the most credible alternative.

can't use you guys because

1) no data export

2) no pricing information (I don't want a "free" product, I want to pay.)

3) no privacy policy / terms

4) no social proof of credibility (this is probably more important than any of the above)

<comment><USER3> Torchpad is based on Git, so it will support git clone in the future.

Torchpad is free, but for some advanced features (like custom domain) need to upgrade to premium member.

We are working on 3 and 4 now.

Thanks for your feedback!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Nice MVP. I like the idea of using git behind it, that is novel and makes 'owning' the data easy. Could be the killer feature.

Other comments: \- what is with the speckled grey textured background? Oy, are we back in 1997? Terrible!

\- if I actually used this, I'd want to brand the page a bit to make it look how I want, I didn't see any template to edit.

\- multiple owners and having users there is very cool, as is logging in via github. (and automatically claiming the subdomain off the github user)

Anyways, keep it up, I think there is demand for a reasonably priced wiki for sure.

<comment><USER11> The idea of a wiki using a Git back-end is certainly not novel:

Gollum: [https://github.com/gollum/gollum](https://github.com/gollum/gollum)

Gitit: [http://hackage.haskell.org/package/gitit-0.1.1](http://hackage.haskell.org/package/gitit-0.1.1)

Git-wiki: [https://github.com/sr/git-wiki](https://github.com/sr/git-wiki)

WiGit: [http://el-tramo.be/wigit/](http://el-tramo.be/wigit/)

etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> _Torchpad is based on Git. You can track any changes. In the future, Torchpad allows you to download the git repository for backup._

It's either in the future or it's in the present. I know it's marketing speak but if you want to appeal to the large number of people who are pedants of the English language it would be better to use one tense throughout

Otherwise, nice concept! Look forward to taking it for a test run

<comment><USER5> Judging from the front page, I don't think English is the native language of the developers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Really like the syntax highlighting in the Markdown editor! Is this an open source lib, or something custom?

<comment><USER3> Hello, It's an open source lib called [http://codemirror.net/](http://codemirror.net/)

But we add a lot of custom features on it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> When I do the search I see "✓" in the query string.

[http://www.torchpad.com/workspace/wikis/demo/search?utf8=%E2...](http://www.torchpad.com/workspace/wikis/demo/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=hello)

That's my first time ever see such in query string!

<comment><AUTHOR> We add the utf8 param to prevent from Internet Explorer bug.

<comment><USER14> Any reason why you have to add utf-8 param? This is interesting, especially the check mark - that's actually my first (or number zero) question :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> renamed the account, made a new page, tried to publish: Failed to load resource: the server responded with a status of 400 (Bad Request) [http://torchpad.com/workspace/wikis/cikplanner/pages/change_...](http://torchpad.com/workspace/wikis/cikplanner/pages/change_status/Ontwikkeling+en+Ondersteuning) PATCH [http://torchpad.com/workspace/wikis/cikplanner/pages/change_...](http://torchpad.com/workspace/wikis/cikplanner/pages/change_status/Ontwikkeling+en+Ondersteuning) 400 (Bad Request) workspace-ae3672136b7c324f491a92f2d662ce00.js:3

</comment><comment><USER16> Also try [http://slimwiki.com](http://slimwiki.com)

<comment><USER17> What's the export format, do you know?

<comment><USER16> We are currently building the export functionality, what would you like? :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Thanks for great product. this is exactly what i've been looking for. but when i use chinese or korean words, last character always disappear. maybe you didnt consider 2-byte words. check it, plz

</comment><comment><USER19> Do you plan on offering self-hosted setups in the future?

<comment><AUTHOR> We don't have the plan for it.

But will support https in the near future.

<comment><USER20> This or git clone + open source is pretty critical. I want to recommend this to my company, but I can't rely on the longevity of a fresh-out-the-gate startup for storing crucial enterprise knowledge.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Do you guys have a repo? I'd like to see how this works first. I need to know more about the permissions system, specifically.

<comment><AUTHOR> It isn't open source. But we will consider for it in the future :)

<comment><USER7> That's a +1 from me, I'd love an open-source version for self-hosting. I'd additionally be happy to pay for the "licence to self host" or something silly like that as long as I can see the code somehow (which is a big deal for me).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Why do I have to sign up to see anything? Please refer to the earlier "stop punishing your users" post

</comment><comment><USER23> Nice work. I can see myself using this once you have https switched on.

</comment><comment><USER24> Great Product. Been looking for something like this in long time.

</comment><comment><USER25> Heads up, your footer on the signup page looks wonky

</comment><comment><USER26> Pretty cool!, landing page is so amazing <3

</comment><comment><USER27> No demo link on the website. - No Sign Up.

<comment><USER3> Try the demo account: firstname.lastname@example.com / Pass: torchpad

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Torchpad now supports HTTPS!

</comment><comment><USER28> Really Goooooood!!

</comment><comment><USER29> great</comment>


Chinese police detain British reporter, unaware he's broadcasting live - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/03/15/video-chinese-police-detain-british-reporter-unaware-hes-broadcasting-live-throughout/?Post+generic=%3Ftid%3Dsm_twitter_washingtonpost

<comment><USER2> Don't repost ([http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1adcv8/video_chin...](http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1adcv8/video_chinese_police_detain_british_reporter/)) stuff from the front page of Reddit. Also, politics doesn't belong on HN, so please stop.

</comment><comment><USER3> I love that they brought him from a location he had permission to film to a location he didn't have permission to film so they could tell him to stop filming.</comment>


This is not a fork: Cassandra 3.7 LTS - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/instaclustr/cassandra#cassandra-37-lts <comment><USER2> FYI we put out a blog post that talks a little bit more about why we decided to create a third party LTS release:

[https://www.instaclustr.com/blog/2016/10/19/patched- cassandr...](https://www.instaclustr.com/blog/2016/10/19/patched- cassandra-3-7/)</comment>


Placebo Button - <AUTHOR> http://placebobutton.com/ <comment><USER2> Brilliant idea and I feel like I've already got what I pressed - "focus". The first thing, of course, is to write a comment on HN and then I'll focus :)).

But the concept might just work.

People believe in crazy, irrational things and it actually seems to help them, so why not a button which does this ?

Here's a story. Last month I've travelled to Romania, which is a beautiful country and one of the main attractions there is the multitude of churches and beautiful monasteries on top of mountains. So I arrived at this monastery where a famous priest was buried and people from all over the country and the world come and visit his grave. They wait for hours in line and eventually they get maybe 30 seconds in front of his grave and they kneel and kiss the cross and make all kinds of wishes. From a rational perspective, what those people are doing is totally absurd - even if the dead priest could manipulate this world from 'the other world', why would people think that in order to be helped they have to kiss his grave ?

But I've heard countless stories of miracle cures - cancers, paralysis, etc, after people visited his grave so maybe there is a force at work which helps them, which I think is the force of placebo.

Stories like this are abundant all over the world so if you're in the Church of the Digital, a digital button might just be a trigger for some force inside our minds.

<comment><USER3> Which church in Romania is this?

<comment><USER2> It's called the Prislop Monastery: [http://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g675106-d457109...](http://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g675106-d4571093-Reviews- Prislop_Monastery- Hunedoara_Hunedoara_County_Western_Romania_Transylvania.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > That means, if I give you a placebo, and tell you it's a placebo, there's a > 1 in 3 chance it will help alleviate symptoms of whatever I say it's for.

I've seen this avert bad trips.

"This is a coin. It's just a regular coin from my pocket, but I want you to carry, and know that as long as you carry this coin - for the rest of the night - you'll be safe."

<comment><USER5> I've heard of this idea before and it sounds great. But I can think of a hack for it that could make the trip even worse.

"This is a coin. It's just a regular coin from my pocket, but I want you to carry, and know that as long as you carry this coin - for the rest of the night - you'll be safe."

(lean in close to whisper into the recipient's ear)

"But if you lose the coin...if you lose the coin, you're doomed, mate. Completely f*cking doomed."

<comment><USER6> My mind automatically read that last sentence in a pikey accent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> in pro audio equipment, there is often a flashy colored button on the panel, unmarked, that the documentation call the "client button". it does absolutely nothing, and the manufacturer suggest you press it when the client is annoying you for "more weight" or "more color" or some other nonsense.

<comment><USER8> This is brilliant, reminds me of the story I heard of how Michelangelo was working on a statue, might have been the David, and the patron walked in and said something along the lines of, "Looks good, but the nose is a little big, can you make it a little smaller?".

Michelangelo knew the nose was just right, so he grabbed a handful of marble dust, went up to the face and pretended to chisel it while slowly letting out his handful of dust.

When he was done, the patron said, "There! It's perfect."

Really wish I had had a button like that back when I was doing audio production.

<comment><USER9> Was it because he couldn't tell, or because he didn't want to push on the issue?

<comment><USER10> Couldn't tell.

See bikeshedding. People just want to feel like they contributed something.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law_of_trivialit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law_of_triviality)

<comment><USER9> Interesting article. In my experience, the converse is often true: Engineers want to solve the difficult issues, while the more trivial get relatively little attention and end up causing most of the issues.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Choose your own well-researched 'tokenadult rejection of placebo efficacy here: [https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byPopularity&prefix=false&page=...](https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byPopularity&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment&query=author:tokenadult%20placebo)

<comment><USER12> Interesting. I wonder if this is affected by the recent discovery of the tube connecting the immune system to the brain though?

<comment><USER13> You jest? If not, explain or source? Thx

<comment><USER14> Not advocating for its veracity, but [1].

[1] [http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/06/150601122445.ht...](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/06/150601122445.htm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Reminds me of a brain hack I employ. Intentionally worshipping Placebo as a god makes me laugh, thus activating his miraculous healing powers: [http://zencephalon.com/placebo](http://zencephalon.com/placebo)

<comment><USER16> This is beautiful and I may have to start calling upon Placebo now an then.

<comment><USER15> Oh, wow, U made The Tarot of the Silicon Dawn? Beautiful deck!

<comment><USER16> Yep! Glad you like it, thanks!

These days I'm mostly busy with a graphic novel: [http://egypt.urnash.com/rita/](http://egypt.urnash.com/rita/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's not the placebo effect working despite the user not having faith in it.

By providing the information you do on the web page, you are suggesting (and perhaps convincing) the user that the placebo will work despite being a placebo. Therefore, it might work by a placebo effect on the effectiveness of the placebo.

You are placebo-ing the placebo. Inception all over again, eh.

<comment><USER18> What if the thing you ask it is to get rid of the irrational mechanisms that makes placebos works on you even though you know they are placebos?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> On the other hand there's [http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM200105243442106](http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM200105243442106), a meta-analysis which shows that while placebos might make people feel better, you don't actually get better – which is about what you'd expect and probably not shocking to most of you... but you'd be surprised at the mystical powers that are sometimes ascribed to placebos.

</comment><comment><USER20> Didn't worked [https://i.imgur.com/4ERBby4.png](https://i.imgur.com/4ERBby4.png)

<comment><USER21> You did not specify who or what should turn red. Probably you are now, when realising that.

<comment><USER20> Damn!!! [https://imgur.com/SU36LXY](https://imgur.com/SU36LXY)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I read a story about a guy who changed his password into his next goal. Every day he had to type it and was reminded by his goal.

This button might also be a great goal reminder...

Edit: [https://medium.com/@manicho/how-a-password-changed-my- life-7...](https://medium.com/@manicho/how-a-password-changed-my- life-7af5d5f28038)

<comment><USER23> I've done that. It's the equivalent of "I love my wife". Guess whose idea it was? :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Make the SEO play here. Create a static link for each button with the text that I type in, so I can link people right to it. Then, with proper title and headings, etc you can probably get some traffic for "random long tail term button"

<comment><USER25> Love it. I think I'll implement that.

<comment><USER23> I would love to see this feature.

My wife gets headaches. A linkable button text allows me to send her a magic "headache relief" button. Much bigger impact than a self-prescribed button.

<comment><USER25> [http://placebobutton.com/?b=Cure%20my%20headache](http://placebobutton.com/?b=Cure%20my%20headache) works now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> There are lots of actual placebo buttons out there in the world on pedestrian crossings, elevators, etc.; see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo_button](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo_button) for an overview.

<comment><USER27> Placebo buttons in pedestrian crossing street lights are plain evil. Also, [https://xkcd.com/277/](https://xkcd.com/277/)

<comment><USER28> But also not 100% the case. Where I live (Calgary, AB) most cross walk signals are only activated by pressing the button. If you don't press the button, you just get the orange hand the whole time.

<comment><USER29> True, and same with the button to keep the door open in elevators. Both where huge surprises to me when I moved here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Noting that some replies here are describing positive results, I wonder if atheist organizations could make use of the principal. Have an understanding that for the one hour every Sunday that you spend together in the while building, you will say things you all acknowledge as nonsense. But keep up the pretense for that hour and do the chants and make the incantations because _we find that it makes us feel happier and more looked after_. Then stream out the doors at the end to resume our devout denial.

Actually, many people may be doing this already.

<comment><USER31> Yes they are.

I have always thought it would be a good idea to rationally take all the parts of religious and social societies and bring them together in a way that provides everything that religion provides without all the useless and bad ideas. Combine this with technology and you would have a hit.

<comment><USER32> That's what the Unitarian church is supposed to be, I think. I attended a few of their services out of curiosity, and they were similar to church services except there was no mention of religion. Instead of hymns there was classical and folk music, instead of bible readings there were readings from secular literature (Thoreau seemed to be a favorite), and so on. There was a lot of talk about self-improvement, doing volunteer work, etc.

<comment><USER33> Unitarian-Universalism is a big tent which includes both a (heterodox, from the perspective of mainstream Christianity, which is Trinitarian) branch of Christianity and a diverse array of non-Christian congregations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I typed in "cure my superstitious beliefs," and it totally worked!!!

<comment><USER35> The placebo effect is not a superstitious belief, however, if that's what you're trying to imply. This isn't a tarot card or horoscope button or something. Placebos are legitimate science.

<comment><USER16> Or flip it:

Placebos are another face on the basic processes underlying what we call "magic", with all of the "mystical" "woo" removed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> "Fix my code" has yet to produce a tangible result, but I shan't give up easily!

 _click_

 _click_

...

<comment><USER37> Maybe I should have tried that instead of "Smite My Enemies" huh.

<comment><USER36> I don't know. A good smiting does wonders for the soul.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> That was just _bizarre_. Had a stomach ache. Typed 'stomach ache', hit the button. Ache gone.

The brain is a strange, strange organ.

<comment><USER39> Lucky you, my sinuses are still plugged.

</comment></comment><comment> d--b This is great, but I have a feeling that it's not very well executed. For the placebo effect to work you still need to take the pill, which means that you suggest something might happen. Here the reaction time is way too fast, so it's obviously a fluke for the mind. Add a progress bar that simulates a long and non linear process, and I think the effect is going to be much greater.

</comment><comment><USER40> So I had a similar idea a long time ago (when I worked at a gaming company) to put a large illuminated button right on the front panel of the machine, simply labelled:

        [ LUCK ]

...that did absolutely nothing. It would have (by design) NOT been connected to anything other than lamp power. I'm convinced it would have been a great hit. My colleagues were not as convinced.

</comment><comment><USER41> Misinterpreted the question, "what do you want your button to do", and typed "Turn red." Needless to say, it turned red.

<comment><USER42> > Needless to say

Ha!

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Many ailments have a stress-related component, as the purpose of our stress response is to handle an immediate threat, diverting energy away from long- term tasks like healing, fighting infection etc.

A placebo is a reassurance, that we don't need to worry, we are being looked after, protected, safe, and everything will be ok.

Thus, the immune system gets its resources back, and gets on with its job. We heal.

 _sorry, no references, just seems a simple explanation of the observed evidence (eg so strong that double-blind experimental design is required to prevent it confounding drug test results)._

</comment><comment><USER44> You think it has cured you even you know it is a placebo because there is a study that says it and you put your faith in it. The study itself is a placebo. A metaplacebo.

<comment><USER45> Now that I know the study is fake, does the whole thing collapse? :)

<comment><USER46> It's turtles all the way down.

<comment><USER47> Can we eat them?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> I typed in "cure my headache", clicked the button, and felt the unmistakable feeling of endorphins flooding my brain. Maybe. Might be mistaken.

<comment><USER49> similarly, I typed 'cure my migraines' and felt relief at the sight of 'Done!'

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Doing it to yourself isn't so much the placebo effect, but rather autosuggestion. It was created by Émile Coué, who used to tell his patients to tell themselves every morning, "Every day, I am getting better" (in French of course).

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autosuggestion](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autosuggestion)

<comment><USER51> The actual quote is,

"Every day in every way, I am getting better and better"

(Original: "Tous les jours à tous points de vue je vais de mieux en mieux")

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> I'm a phd student in marketing and my research is on the placebo effect. Not only does the research back up the idea of a "placebo" button, but also its evil cousin the "nocebo". That is, if you typed in something negative (I.e. This will make my head hurt) then if you are prone to suggestion (as many people are) the. You will feel worse.

</comment><comment><USER53> I already feel much better after pressing the button.

</comment><comment><USER54> I typed up "Placebo Effect" in the little box, clicked, and - wouldn't you know it - I felt cured from Placebo Effect instantly!

<comment><USER55> But how would you bring it back?

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> This button needs to enable url query parameters so I can send custom buttons to other people.

<comment><USER25> Love it. I'm gonna do it. (I made the site a couple years back.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Soon to be available for iPhone, Android, and Windows Phone. Only $2.50 per month. You can opt out of marketing communications for an extra $3.95 per month.

<comment><USER58> It is already available for android (I made it). Right now is free (but it might contain additional premium buttons in the future;). If you would like to try it go here [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=it.nadolski.pl...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=it.nadolski.placebobutton)

<comment><USER57> With in-app purchases!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> It worked with <marquee> and other HTML tags , not sure if bug or feature :D

<comment><USER60> Looks like it just puts HTML onto the page, you can do JavaScript as well at a glance (so long as you add <script></script> and an event to trigger, since pageload already happened)

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> I entered "Self Destruct DO NOT PRESS!"

...FWEW! Just the adrenaline kick I needed.

</comment><comment><USER62> You probably know the joke (from popstar Zizek) :

When a friend of Niels Bohr (quantum theory) goes to his house in the country side he's bewildered by a horse shoe hanging on the great scientific genius's door. When Niels opens the friends asks : "but truly a rational man like you, how could you give any credit to such superstitions" and Niels Bohr answers : "Well I heard that superstition works even if you don't believe in it"

Yes I'm amazed by the power of placebo because "it works even if you know its a one/don't believe in it."

I actually wrote in the placebo field : "Give me a break". And my God it worked. I felt relieved. Like that weight on my chest just faded away. Although I suspect the fact the button/pill is blue has something to do with it.

Anyway who cares... "Give me a steak"

</comment><comment><USER63> A list of items entered into the Placebo Button would be quite interesting, grouped together by similarities.

</comment><comment><USER64> That flashing background effect is a little off-putting. At first I thought something was wrong with the fluorescent lights in my office, then I realized I don't have any fluorescent lights in my office...

</comment><comment><USER23> Could we have a red button, which would be better for "activating" suggestions like increased energy, in addition to the blue button, best for "inhibiting" suggestions like pain relief?

</comment><comment><USER65> How about hint text in the edit box that changes for each page serve: "I will become a better person" "The neighbors will become less noisy" "I will achieve my goals in life"

</comment><comment><USER16> What a beautiful piece of magic for rationalists!

Really. Go read 'The Camel Rides Again' with an open mind: [http://thebaptistshead.co.uk/2007/09/16/the-camel-rides- agai...](http://thebaptistshead.co.uk/2007/09/16/the-camel-rides-again-a- primer-in-magick/) (it's short) and consider how this is any different from the methods described there.

</comment><comment><USER66> I seem to recall an application where the developer inserted a completely pointless delay after clicking the button before reporting completion, because people couldn't quite believe that a computer (or anything) could complete such a big important task in a fraction of a second.

Maybe this button should wait a random period of time. Its doing really important work.

</comment><comment><USER67> I asked it to finish all my client work this week so I could spend more time with my family and also work on my neglected side projects. Looking in git, there are zero new commits, so I'm assuming this didn't work (or the fairies it invokes don't believe in version control, which is equally worrying). 1 star, would not click again.

</comment><comment><USER68> I tried "make the work day go by faster" (I'm currently stuck at the sales desk -- again -- instead of getting real work done, because the lead rep is on vacation -- again). I've been browsing HN for the past 10 minutes of my afternoon break, and it's like the break was over way too soon. So...working, maybe?

</comment><comment><USER69> This is normal human tendencies and I believe even placebo effect is part of daily routine...which could be changed just as habits...there could be certain chances that it will turn once individual brain to be addictive.....its funny that blackmajic is shifting its platform to software...serious upgrade...

<comment><USER47> it may be "magick", but how is it "black magick"? seems more like a "chaos magick" thing, and they've been exploring the digital side of this for a couple of decades already, since the 90s at least (that I know about).

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> I already have begun levitating...In just a few days, I will finally be able to fly--just like Superman.

</comment><comment><USER25> FYI, I added the ability to pass a parameter in, and share your button. So, like, [http://placebobutton.com/?b=Cure%20my%20headache](http://placebobutton.com/?b=Cure%20my%20headache)

Thanks everybody!

</comment><comment><USER71> It remind me this: [http://gajitz.com/push-button-wait-forever-crosswalk- buttons...](http://gajitz.com/push-button-wait-forever-crosswalk-buttons-are- fake/)

</comment><comment><USER72> I wonder if a reminder would work in the same way. Set a recurring reminder on your phone. Dismissing it is your Placebo. The act of swiping that notification off your phone just might fix what ails you.

</comment><comment><USER73> Focusing illusion states "Nothing In Life Is As Important As You Think It Is, While You Are Thinking About It"

I think the Placebo button addresses this, as this is a cause of significant stress in our lives.

</comment><comment><USER74> Crazy as it sounds but as some/many/most illnesses are psychosomatic just by making yourself believe you'll be healthy you actually will be. This is solid science not some mumbo-jumbo.

</comment><comment><USER75> Awesome way to build a database of people's biggest problems.

</comment><comment><USER76> Can I set the text via a url or query arg, e.g. [http://placebobutton.com/?foo+bar](http://placebobutton.com/?foo+bar) ?

</comment><comment><USER77> Just at a glance, it doesn't seem to record the requests. This would be a great stealth survey for problems to solve if it saved the requests anonymously.

<comment><USER78> Most of the requests probably wouldn't be practically solvable (by computers anyway).

It would be an interesting survey though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> I'd like to see the placebo effect correlated with IQ.

</comment><comment><USER80> My favorite version was this:

[http://vhemt.org/philrel.htm#button](http://vhemt.org/philrel.htm#button)

</comment><comment><USER81> So, what did I want the button to do? I tried the following with success: "visual changes on press then revert to original state"

</comment><comment><USER82> You can make this very mind-twistingly self-referential ...

What if you enter in this phrase:

"Pressing this button will cause my placebo effect to go away"

<comment><USER83> Solar eclipse? [0]

[0] [http://oglaf.com/evensong/](http://oglaf.com/evensong/) Warning: Previous and Next Story pages of linked cartoon are NSFW (cartoon sex) and the linked page might even be NS depending on how prudish your workplace is about language.

</comment></comment><comment><USER84> I prefer the Ham Button: [http://hambutton.com/](http://hambutton.com/)

</comment><comment><USER85> A mechanical button would work even better. Now that's science or at least a hypothesis you could test scientifically.

<comment><USER86> Is that true? I wonder how the trueness of that has varied over time. At first, who knew what computers could do ("pray, Mr. Babbage..."), then the magic wore off and mechanical buttons were still what got things done, now we're headed for "what's a mechanical button"...

<comment><USER85> 'course it's true it's a hypothesis.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER87> I can't believe this made it to the top of HN. Shouldn't it be Show HN? BTW, did not work for me for that stats.

<comment><USER25> _I_ didn't post it to HN. I built the site 2 years ago and somebody else just discovered it. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER88> I wonder if being told that "a placebo works, even though you know it is a placebo", is itself a placebo.

</comment><comment><USER89> I clicked it 3 times so my EV would be 1.

</comment><comment><USER90> I typed that I would be very productive today, and I was more productive than I've been in weeks.

</comment><comment><USER91> So if I click it 3 times one of those times my wish will come true? (Well, scientifically speaking?)

</comment><comment><USER92> Typed 'make people stop using javascript'. And it didn't work cause of NoScript :(

</comment><comment><USER93> what if by pressing the button you get the feeling of accomplishment without doing any of the work? [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHopJHSlVo4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHopJHSlVo4)

</comment><comment><USER94> It would be good if I could pre-write the purpose of the button and email it to a friend.

</comment><comment><USER95> It would be nice to see the data.

</comment><comment><USER96> Is "placebo works even when its known that its a placebo" a placebo ?

</comment><comment><USER97> I typed "make it not so quiet in here" and clicked it. It worked!

</comment><comment> chris-at So is there a placebo button that supports "force touch" yet? ;)

</comment><comment><USER98> I typed, "make me a millionaire" and it didn't work :(.

<comment><USER99> I typed "improve click count" and it worked like a charm.

But then I tried "cure RSI" and hundreds of clicks later it only seemed to have gotten worse...

<comment><USER100> Wrong game. Go here:

[http://orteil.dashnet.org/cookieclicker/](http://orteil.dashnet.org/cookieclicker/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER101> may I ask you how much you make with ads? ( just out of curiosity )

<comment><USER25> I built the site; until today I made approximately ZERO dollars. Today I've seen 20k+ hits, and made $60.

<comment><USER101> Thanks for answering. That's way more than I expected!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER102> Does it work if I write a cron job to click the button for me?

</comment><comment><USER103> A placebo won't work if you know it's a placebo.

<comment><USER104> Placebos may still work, even if you know it is a placebo - [http://www.theguardian.com/science/2010/dec/22/placebo- effec...](http://www.theguardian.com/science/2010/dec/22/placebo-effect- patients-sham-drug)

</comment></comment><comment><USER105> I've been pushing this all afternoon. Feels great.

</comment><comment><USER106> I typed "kill me" and it didn't work.

<comment><USER107> Not instantly

<comment><USER106> I typed "kill me right now" and it didn't work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER108> I should grow my startup this way. Seems to work!

</comment><comment><USER109> Now open source the data. :)

</comment><comment><USER110> That sound is fantastic.

</comment><comment><USER23> Mindhacker News.

</comment><comment><USER111> I cured aids

</comment><comment><USER112> > Did you know the Placebo Effect can occur even when you know it's a placebo? > It's true.

Wait... a meta-placebo? :-)

</comment><comment><USER113> I tried "Raise my HN Karma". So far nothing.

</comment><comment><USER114> Why so much code for a single button?

      <table id="btn_table" style="padding-bottom:10px" height="300" width="300">
        	<tbody><tr><td style="cursor:pointer; background-image: url(img/button.png); background-repeat:no-repeat;" onclick="pushbutton()" height="300" align="center" valign="middle">
    			<table height="250" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="250"><tbody><tr><td align="center" valign="middle"><span id="btn_text" style="width:250px; word-wrap:break-word; color:#ffffff; text-align:center; font-family: Arial bold, Helvetica, sans serif; font-size:36px"></span></td></tr></tbody></table>
    		</td></tr>
    	</tbody></table>

<comment><USER115> Because they're not a web developer?

<comment><USER25> Because I'm a LAZY web developer.

<comment><USER116> I want to be able to send someone a link to a specific button.

<comment><USER25> [http://placebobutton.com/?b=Cure%20my%20headache](http://placebobutton.com/?b=Cure%20my%20headache) will work now. :)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


CPU, GPU Put to Deep Learning Framework Test - <AUTHOR> http://www.nextplatform.com/2016/09/01/cpu-gpu-put-deep-learning-framework-test/ <comment><USER2> Am I the only one who hates the GPU form factor? Basically, I guess most people just want a co-processor box that they can attach to, and place on top of their PC. And link another one to it, et cetera. No clumsiness with power cables inside the confined space of the PC. No running out of space after adding 3 units. (GPUs occupy two PCI slots because of their bulky size).

So I have two questions:

\- Do we really need the speed of PCI to connect to GPUs, or would a lower speed connection (USB 3/firewire) be sufficient for most computational applications such as deep learning?

\- How would the performance of these deep learning frameworks scale as we add more and more units?

<comment><USER3> The speed Of the interconnect is absolutely critical. It depends on the problem somewhat, but if you are moving data back and forth cpu to gpu the interconnect becomes the limiting factor very quickly. So much of a limitation that for some problems you might be better of with a cpu or a puny gpu that is on the same die as the cpu.

If you can do everything on the gpu then it isn't a problem but at that point why isn't the gpu your main processor?

<comment><USER4> > If you can do everything on the gpu then it isn't a problem but at that > point why isn't the gpu your main processor?

The GPU is a highly optimized block of SIMD machines with a more limited set of ALU ops and addressing modes. The CPU has a more general architecture.

It's totally reasonable to have a truck, a car and a bicycle.

<comment><USER3> Modern CPUs have multiple cores so they are really four cars bolted together. Why not bolt a car and a truck together and let them share memory (he says completely ruining the metaphor).

Graphics cards are becoming full fledged computers, a sibling poster mentioned AMD adding an interface for SSds to their cards. So why have the big x86 multi core system if all it does is feed data to the symbiotic computer that is the gpu and give us a shell prompt?

I guess I just answered my question. Gpus are symbiots because they don't run Linux. But I would like to see one that does, whatever that would look like.

<comment><USER5> That would probably look (roughly) like Intel Xeon Phi, which according to some was started as a GPU project. (they are also co-processors, but you can connect to one and log into a Linux running on it)

I'm not sure why you'd totally want to get rid of a general-purpose CPU to run Linux, set up data etc and keep the GPU part simpler (and fast) once you've given them equal memory access.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Do note the OS and CUDA version differences between the 980, 1080 and K80 tests. Like the last deep learning comparison posted on HN, they failed to get a consistent baseline system. I don't know how much this would affect performance, but it should be considered.

\- 980: Ubuntu 14.04; CUDA 7.5

\- 1080: Ubuntu 14.04; CUDA 8.0

\- K80: CentOS 7.2; CUDA 7.5

<comment><USER7> The benchmark is not very good because of this. I hope no one takes this seriously. They don't even use the same BLAS libraries for all of the frameworks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's strange that they're using a 2012 i7-3820 instead of a modern i7. They're also missing price when comparing a ~$300 i7, 2x $700 Xeons, a $650 GTX 1080, and a $4k K80.

<comment><USER7> That's not the only inconsistency in it. Different OS'es, BLAS libraries, driver versions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The person responsible for making the table with the benchmarks needs to be taken out back and shot. Goddamnit, who makes a table with 286 figures and only uses lines of equal width throughout the whole goddamn thing. Also, I second haldora's qualms about the lack of consistent software used to make these hardware comparisons.

</comment><comment><USER10> It's quite interesting too see as a consumer card (the GTX 1080) outperforms a professional and much more expensive one (the Tesla K80) by a good margin.

<comment><USER11> The K80 uses 2 generations older architecture (Kepler)</comment></comment>


Bump Now Lets You Swap App Recommendations With A Tap - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/31/bump-now-lets-you-swap-app-recommendations-with-a-tap/

<comment><USER2> I had a better idea the other day: comparing app coolness factors. You would meet somebody who also has an iPhone, and an automatic coolness factor of your apps would be calculated (details are a bit fuzzy, maybe it could be calculated from Facebook Likes per app or something like that). Then you get to compare the coolness of your installation base.

I see an urgent need for this since all iPhones look the same. Therefore there is a need for individualization by installing individual apps.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have never used Bump. I have a question for those who have used it: Is there any utility beyond the novelty of bumping phones together?

<comment><USER4> On the iPhone, photos/contacts/files/etc. can only be shared over email or MMS; so there is some utility in having a more convenient sharing method.</comment></comment>


Infosys accused of racism - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1010965/a-former-executive-is-accusing-infosys-of-racism-that-favours-indians/ <comment><USER2> I'm unsure if there's racism at play here. The business model of Infosys is based on outsourcing to India, with the US employees mostly acting as go- betweens.

Likewise, Huawei's US workforce is overwhelmingly Chinese, but that's probably not a result of racism. Samsung's US R&D is almost fully Korean at the top - not because of racism

In India, as a counter example, Philips, the Dutch company, has most of the upper brass as Dutch. Again, not because of racism, but because of the go- between nature of the job

<comment><USER3> I really don't like how racism comes up so often in these situations when I think the closer term is probably familiarity or customs. A lot of bosses like to work with people that have a similar mindset and work ethic that they do. It makes sense that if you've been born and raised in country X and worked there for 15 years and become a boss you will _probably_ prefer people with work ethics similar to your own. In Japan, as a foreigner working for a Japanese company, I can see how Japanese would _much_ prefer to hire a Japanese over me (they don't outwardly complain about long, unpaid overtime, they do mundane tasks that aren't productive, they don't talk back when erroneously attacked). And I can see an American boss much preferring an American who's more likely to bring up points that they think are wrong. I apologize for the stereotyping but meant it as an example.

<comment><USER4> > I really don't like how racism comes up so often in these situations when I > think the closer term is probably familiarity or customs

As a rule, 90% of what people call "racism" in the US today is closer to xenophobia.

Likewise, 75% of what they call "racist police" is fundamentally a failure of the justice system as a system to restrain, discipline, or be responsible for its own career employees (police, prosecutors, and even judges), let alone properly incentivise them.

<comment><USER5> Xenophobia is a negative spin on an evolved response that is very basic to human nature: homophily [1]. You see it in all human societies.

[1] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homophily](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homophily)

<comment><USER6> > Xenophobia is a negative spin on an evolved response that is very basic to > human nature: homophily

As is murder.

The fact we may have evolved with something doest justify it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > In 2013, India's second-largest IT firm took a $34 million hit—the largest > ever payment in a visa case—after a Texas court found the behemoth guilty of > "systemic visa fraud and abuse."

> Green, the former global head of immigration who has previously spoken out > about the detrimental effect of curbing H-1B visas on the US tech sector, is > accusing Infosys of using the very same work visas to replace or supplant > non-south Asians at the company.

This is probably one of the reasons why there's a lot of people in tech industry (other than CEOs) who want stricter immigration rules in the US.

</comment><comment><USER8> As a person of South Asian origin, I am glad this is out. My friends, Indians and non-Indians applied to these firms after college. Only Indians were called in for interviews. And only international students took the job offers as they promised H1B after their work permit expires.

We thought it was raciest that none of non-Indian friends even get a chance to do interview but they all end up with offers at better companies, so no one looked deep into this.

</comment><comment><USER9> Wow, some of the rationalizing here is priceless. I hope the folks dismissing this apply their logic evenly.

Here's some of what I've read so far:

Economic - There's no discrimination because they only want the cheapest labor possible.

Culture - They want a consistent culture so, of course, they mostly hire Indians "because they work harder"\- paraphrasing from another comment.

Language - It's easier to have everyone speak the predominant language of the company. Never mind that it's not the same language as the country its operating in.

Now, if a predominately white company used these same reasons to explain their lack of minorities there would be an uproar. And rightfully so.

<comment><USER10> >Now, if a predominately white company used these same reasons to explain their lack of minorities there would be an uproar.

Well, yes, because American minorities are part of the same culture/language/economy as other Americans.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> "While roughly 1% of the US population is of the South Asian race and national origin, roughly 93%-94% of Infosys's United States workforce is of the South Asian national origin (primarily Indian). This disproportionately South Asian and Indian workforce, by race and national origin, is a result of Infosys's intentional employment discrimination against individuals who are not South Asian, including discrimination in the hiring, promotion, compensation, and termination of individuals."

What kind of argument is this? When the time to elect the 100th president comes, should all non-South Asian candidates be excluded from the start? (Assuming no South Asian is elected until then. And by then the 1% might have changed, of course).

<comment><USER12> It's an argument that's a lot easier to follow than whatever it is you are trying to say about a hypothetical future presidential candidates and how might be related to their point.

<comment><USER11> It is an argument in the sense that it is a chain of facts and a conclusion is implied.

"x% of all A have property X. We have been taking A's for the purpose of Y. The record shows the y% of our A's have property X".

A = population X = being South Asian x = 1 y = 93-94 Y = working at infosys

And the conclusion seems to be that when making a selection, the selection should be 'fair' for all properties of A, and not 'fair' for the purpose Y.

And I am not even mentioning the fact that the selection is made by infosys, whereas if fairness was that important no selection should be made at all. Maybe we could just ask the government (with their census data) to send the 'fair' distribution of people to work at infosys.

<comment><USER13> That's how legal complaints work. You set forth a chain of facts that plausibly imply a conclusion. Proving the conclusion is what you do at trial, after having the benefit of discovery.

<comment><USER11> Agreed, the legal system is in place to decide who wins, not what makes sense.

<comment><USER13> At least this part of the system makes sense. There is a two-step process: pleading and merits. The first stage is a filter for the second. At the pleading stage, there is a trade-off between getting the right answer and the expense to businesses of defending litigation. The pleading standard (the level of facts you have to allege to get to the merits) is a knob you can turn to trade-off between those two things. If you make the pleading standard liberal, as it is in the U.S., you'll get the right answer more often because you'll actually delve into the emails, witnesses interviews, etc. to see if the defendant actually did do what the plaintiff says he did. If you make the pleading standard more stringent, you reduce the expense of litigation for companies, but you also deny more meritorious claims. _E.g._ companies that discriminate don't exactly advertise that fact. If you require a high standard of proof to simply bring the claim (as distinguished from proving liability), then most people who have actually been discriminated against will not be able to recover.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The only people Infosys discriminates against is people who don't like to be underpaid.

<comment><USER15> Yes this is the thing, they just want to pay less and make sure the onsite guys work overtime for free with the fear of getting offshored/fired. This wont work well with the Americans. This has nothing to do with racism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> From the article:

"While roughly 1% of the US population is of the South Asian race and national origin, roughly 93%-94% of Infosys's United States workforce is of the South Asian national origin (primarily Indian)."

</comment><comment><USER17> Not just Infosys [https://qz.com/889524/the-us-says-oracle-is-encouraging- indi...](https://qz.com/889524/the-us-says-oracle-is-encouraging-indians-to- hire-others-indians-and-its-killing-diversity/)

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm not surprised [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2325502/Map-shows- wo...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2325502/Map-shows-worlds- racist-countries-answers-surprise-you.html)

</comment><comment><USER18> This is completely off topic, but did anyone else think that the guy in the headline picture totally looked like an indian version of Mr. Bean?

The facial expression, the eyebrows, the haircut, everything!

</comment><comment><USER19> The term 'racism' should be socially banned, because of it's misuse and because it can mean so many things. Basicly racism only exists as an combat term.

<comment><USER20> So you're saying Trump campaigning for years about Obama not being born in the United States was not racist, and it's just combative to say that? So using the term 'racism' should be socially banned to protect Trump's feelings, but him acting that way to increase his power over others shouldn't be?

</comment></comment><comment> apk-d Why not just let them hire whoever they want? I'm seriously tired of people sticking their noses into everything.

<comment><USER21> Because hiring discrimination is bad. No one should be shut out of a job because of their race.

It's also illegal in the US.</comment></comment>


Rant about doing... - <AUTHOR> http://luljanbacaj.com/2014/02/24/rant-about-doing/ I read everyone's blog posts on here all of the time... I decided to take the plunge and just started writing some myself. <comment><USER2> Wonderfully written</comment>


Why Joost Failed, How Foursquare Succeeded, and Other Startup Lessons - <AUTHOR> http://thefastertimes.com/startups/2010/06/15/why-joost-failed-how-foursquare-surpassed-the-competition-and-other-lessons-for-startups/

<comment><USER2> Joost failure had nothing to do with technology. Instead they fundamentally misunderstood movie business and had a wrong business model. They did solve half of the problem, cost of bandwidth, but they failed to solve the much harder half -- upfront cost of content.

The story goes is that Joost came to studios with $40 mil to get rights to movies. They were told that that a prime movie rights were $10 mil prepay upfront, so they could choose 4 good movies, or a large library of junk. They chose junk, but neither option was viable.

To do business the way they wanted to, Joost was undercapitalized by a factor of 100.

YouTube and Hulu solved content problem differently. One through copyright infringement, the other though being owned by content owners.

<comment><USER3> I agree it was about content. In addition to gleb's comments the other issue they ran into is that TV licensing (on a program and channel basis) is all about exclusivity deals.

Joost couldn't license a TV series for distribution over IP because the producers always have exclusivity deals with networks in each geographic territory.

And whole networks, such as HBO, have exclusivity deal with just a small set of cable and satellite distributors.

It's really sad - delivery of shows over IP is exciting and the whole business is ripe for disruption but the broadcast media empire (the one that has the most to loose) is holding all the keys.

Oh and don't tell me Hulu is the answer. It's just the very same networks doing their own take, on their terms and at their pace of innovation. Hulu Plus: $10/month AND ads? C'mon, if only we had competition.

<comment><USER4> It wasn't just about content. That Joost client was not only something a) you had to install, but b) was your typical bloated, buggy, and horrid interface, and the delay going from one piece of content to another was grating.

Perhaps with all of these competing outlets for beaming and streaming content, there could be something of a "mechanical license" for rebroadcasting as they do in the music industry for song remakes. I mean, the content owners (I would think) want their work to be available on any medium willing to give them passive income and consumers obviously are willing to pay, either with money (iTunes) or time (Hulu).

Content owners obviously wouldn't like this for their current "big hits" and blockbuster content, but perhaps a clearinghouse like what Getty or istockphoto does to handle all the "back catalog" content would be something begging for a "technical solution" that a startup could do.

Use case: A person who wants to distribute/broadcast some back catalog content uses an automated system to negotiate and obtain the license for a master file (or one of several redistributable or streamable formats provided by the clearinghouse), then chooses the content. In that way, the creativity lies in the curating of content, and the content owner receives passive income on said content without pain of marketing. It's the resale of content.

Yeah, yeah, it'd never work with those jealously guarded movies and TV shows. But you never can tell, really.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Companies like FourSquare remind me of pop songs.

They're catchy, it's hard to describe exactly what makes them work, and if you're lucky, you'll write one your entire life.

What I don't get is why a "hit song" can be considered an entire company. Why is FourSquare trying to raise millions of dollars of investment money? Why not try and come up with another 7 or 8 products?

I mean seriously, what are they looking to become, the next Google? Do they have some sort of BadgeRank algorithm? The next Facebook? Are you going to be able to buy location based ads so you can direct people to your FanBadge pages so you can find out how many people like your Badges?

To me it seems like if investors, instead of investing in a gaming company, invested in just ONE game.

"Here you go, here's $20million, kid. Make sure that Warcraft keeps being the best game. Just keep adding to it, and adding to it, and adding to it, forever."

I'm hoping that FourSquare see themselves as a publisher of fun, little things, and try to develop new, even more fun, little things, and not become a big bloated "what the hell has this thing become" product.

<comment><USER6> I know next to nothing about FourSquare, but it seems like you could make a pretty penny knowing the location of customers, and the businesses they regularly frequent. Coupons, loyalty cards, yellow pages (get paid for referring new customers), etc. It would be straightforward to implement technically, but you would need to have first-mover advantage and a sales force to get shops on-board...

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Has Foursquare succeeded? From what I've heard, they aren't profitable, yet, which means to me that the jury is still out on them.

<comment><USER8> I would consider Foursquare a successful "startup" but not yet a succesful "company". Twitter being the great grandpappy of startups I put in this group.

They have a loyal and relatively large user base and a lot of mind and market share. They also have a feature set that most of their competition is now trying to emulate. They seem to be headed in the right direction but their success as a "company" is still to be seen.

Also for perspective, I can't, off the top of my head, think of a mobile geolocation service that I would consider more successful then Foursquare. I could easily be missing something though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Just post Chris's blog directly. Much cleaner: <http://cdixon.org/2010/06/14/pivoting/>

</comment><comment><USER10> It was on hackernews from cdixon blog a few days ago : <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1431531>

</comment><comment><USER11> I kind of feel bad for Brightkite, getting left out of all this location based social networking talk, these days.

</comment><comment><USER12> Well, part of the reason that Joost failed is that when I tried to install it, the program didn't do much other than crash. I mean that literally, it didn't do anything other than crash. I never once saw Joost run successfully on my bland Vista install.

</comment><comment><USER13> The ability to completely readjust the direction of your startup is fundamental to a successful startup.

</comment><comment><USER14> Joost was only launched in 2007, so what he is talking about Youtube surpassing them?</comment>


Trump silences government scientists with gag orders - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2017/1/24/14372940/trump-gag-order-epa-environmental-protection-agency-health-agriculture <comment><USER2> I have a laundry list of issues with the current administration but this is seriously alarming.

This is an administration that seems intent on openly lying to the public on even the tiniest of issues like inauguration crowd size, and large ones like accusations of voter fraud. An administration set on quashing any dissent and against the idea of a free and independent press. (See constant attempts to [http://delegitimize/](http://delegitimize/) the press and media, plans to defund public broadcasting, threats to open libel laws against the press)

And an administration that pushes aside and denounces experts in their fields for industry hacks and politicians with no knowledge and experience, or gigantic conflicts of interest - see Betsy Devos, Scott Pruitt, Rick Perry, see also claiming climate change is a hoax, wanting to appoint anti-vaxxers to lead a vaccine safety commission.

Trump voters, are you not the least bit concerned? I keep expecting some movement on the right to keep leadership accountable, but instead Republican politicians are falling in line hoping to gain some power in the new order.

<comment><USER3> "Doug Ericksen, the communications director for Trump's transition team at EPA, said he expects the communications ban to be lifted by the end of this week."[0]

and,

"ARS spokesman Christopher Bentley said the ban would not include scientific publications released through peer-reviewed professional journals."[0]

[0]:[https://www.apnews.com/5ada25fc57b44a0989e681d6dc2a3daf/Trum...](https://www.apnews.com/5ada25fc57b44a0989e681d6dc2a3daf/Trump- admin-orders-EPA-contract-freeze-and-media-blackout)

<comment><USER2> That was added since I first read the article.

We'll see if it's actually lifted by then, as we've already seen a lot of misdirection and outright lies from the Trump team.

Also from the article:

"The Trump administration has also ordered what it called a temporary suspension of all new business activities at the department, including issuing task orders or work assignments to EPA contractors. The orders were expected to have a significant and immediate impact on EPA activities nationwide."

"Officials at state and local agencies that rely on EPA for funding said they were left in the dark, saying they had received no information from EPA about the freeze."

Why do they need to quash the speech and operations of employees during the transition, other than to have a chilling effect in the department?

Unless you're already appointing leadership like Scott Pruitt, who is actively hostile to the organization's goals and intent on dismantling it from the inside.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health- science/can-t...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/can- the-epas-main-antagonist-become-its-next-leader/2017/01/17/d24308ca- dcf7-11e6-ad42-f3375f271c9c_story.html?utm_term=.38ea1f99cdd0)

Before the inauguration the transition team sent surveys to the Department of Energy and other agencies seemingly meant to ferret out anyone working on climate science. Trump received a lot of criticism for this. A media blackout would be a good time for him to clean house of anyone who disagrees.

[http://www.politico.com/blogs/donald-trump- administration/20...](http://www.politico.com/blogs/donald-trump- administration/2016/12/trump-transition-wants-names-of-energy-department- staff-who-worked-on-climate-232424)

<comment><USER4> _Why do they need to quash the speech and operations of employees during the transition, other than to have a chilling effect in the department?_

Wasn't the National Park Twitter feed trashing Trump and his policies?[1]. Randomly tweeting that the old Whitehouse webpages got deleted, even though that's pretty typical for a new administration.

Why wouldn't you put a stop to that?

What would happen if a company got a new CEO and some random employee started bashing them via the company Twitter account?

<comment><USER2> Think you are missing a link, but I will assume you're referring to the NPS tweet about crowd size.

Was it the most appropriate thing to do on an agency twitter account? Maybe not.

But that tweet has nothing to do with the EPA or Department of Ag, and intentionally hampering their business and operations. There are other motivations at play here.

That's not even getting into the ridiculous crowd size discussion and "alternative facts" that were being pushed.

I'm genuinely afraid of how Trump and his team are so thin-skinned to a tweet or criticism, considering the real challenges and attacks the office has and will need to face.

<comment><USER4> I don't disagree the crowd size issue is pretty silly.

That said, if some gov't agency started Tweeting negative things about the Obama administration after his inauguration, would any talk about a "chilling effect" if he told them to stop? I'm not his biggest fan, but I wouldn't fault him for that.

The job of the National Parks service is pretty clear. Tweeting their political opinions using their employer's account are not one of them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The same thing happened in Canada during the Harper years.

[http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/episodes/2013-2014/the-silence-of- th...](http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/episodes/2013-2014/the-silence-of-the-labs)

Thankfully it was reversed after Trudeau became PM.

For a look at a few other things under Harper which it seems may be copied by Trump, see [http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/adam-kingsmith/canada- freedom-o...](http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/adam-kingsmith/canada-freedom-of- press_b_2946418.html)

Lots more where that came from.

I'm now living in Sydney, Aus, and to be honest, it isn't considerably different here. Last week a planned protest of the "Lockout Laws" (which has very strict limits on when venues can serve alcohol and allow patrons to enter) was denied because the the organizers did not provide police with "had failed to show mass evacuation and crowd dispersal plans." [http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-01-20/sydney-lockout-laws- co...](http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-01-20/sydney-lockout-laws-court- against-protests-by-keep-sydney-open/8198226)

<comment><USER6> Yeah, that protest business was extremely shady. According to KSO it was approved previously (as noted, they applied on Jan 9th for the protest to take place on the 20th) and approval was revoked at the last minute and taken to the Supreme Court at the request of the commissioner, giving the protest group in question about 1 hour to submit those previously unrequested documents (which didn't need to be submitted for any of their previous protests, somehow).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is this gag order legal? And what would happen if an EPA scientist did talk to the press during the gag order?

<comment><USER8> Presumably with the $1 salary rule reinstated they wouldn't even need to fire the scientist, just demote them and force them to quit (potentially no unemployment that way).

[http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing- room/news/312797-hous...](http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing- room/news/312797-house-gop-revive-rule-that-lets-lawmakers-slash-gov- employees)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is truly unfortunate. I can only hope despite Trump's best efforts these agencies continue to do their jobs and protect the public. And if not I guess the next round of thalidomide babies will be named after him.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is there a source for this? I am not seeing a source in OP's article nor am I seeing any sources in any of the articles that show up on the front page of DuckDuckGo. Also, none of the articles written about this are written in a major news outlet.

<comment><USER2> Here's a link from the Associated Press. [https://www.apnews.com/5ada25fc57b44a0989e681d6dc2a3daf/Trum...](https://www.apnews.com/5ada25fc57b44a0989e681d6dc2a3daf/Trump- admin-orders-EPA-contract-freeze-and-media-blackout)</comment></comment>


Offer HN: To all SF-based startups - dinner's on us - <AUTHOR> http://blog.munchery.com/heres-to-the-crazy-ones

<comment><USER2> I like Chef Young Tran's food especially but I tried out the others and they were all very good. Pretty good experience overall.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> We bet our chefs' food beat the traditional takeout/delivery stuff by a mile. :)

</comment><comment><USER3> Munchery - Great food at my dinner table with great ease!

</comment><comment><USER4> Just downloaded the iPhone app. Sweet.

</comment><comment><USER5> Wow, hot deal, sign us up! :)

</comment><comment><USER6> awesome! i wanna try this out.

</comment><comment><USER7> Good deal.

</comment><comment><USER8> awsome</comment>


Britain: Job-losing workers unload secret office data - <AUTHOR> http://www.mathaba.net/0index.shtml?x=614272

<comment><USER2> This is nothing but free advertising for these so-called consultants.

<comment><USER3> Agreed - this is just made up nonsense.</comment></comment>


Microsoft possibly hiring for next-gen xbox - <AUTHOR> http://news.teamxbox.com/xbox/23563/Microsoft-Hiring-for-NextGen-Console/

<comment><USER2> Anyone else surprised that we haven't heard much at all about the next-gen console systems? It is like Sony and Microsoft collectively agreed not to rush into building new systems.

<comment><USER3> I don't know if they agreed, but IIRC they both said that new controllers (Kinect and Move) are the "next generation", so we shouldn't expect the next next generation for several years.</comment></comment>


Show HN: FindALib - Keep track of all those Javascript libraries - <AUTHOR> http://www.findalib.com

<comment><USER2> Cool, but how do we add libraries?

<comment><AUTHOR> Right now there isn't a way for users to submit libraries, it's all done by me. I'll probably add a suggestions form, but if you have any suggestions now, let me know!</comment></comment>