Ask HN: Is there a place to learn Hadoop/Hive/Big data analysis through cloud? - <AUTHOR> My laptop doesn't have enough disk space/memory to run a virtual machine that contains Cloudera/Hortonworks effectively so I am wondering if there are any free cloud-based alternatives? <comment><USER2> As mentioned by maa5444, Databricks community edition is a good way to learn Spark as you get a free 6GB node. If you want to focus more on Cloudera/Hortonworks, I would just spin up VMs in AWS or your preferred cloud. The costs of running test nodes (say 32/64 GB ram 100GB disks) are not super high if your are economical with shutting them down when not in use.

</comment><comment><USER3> hi try [https://community.cloud.databricks.com/](https://community.cloud.databricks.com/)

<comment><USER3> or [https://notebooks.azure.com/](https://notebooks.azure.com/)</comment></comment>


Best NASDAQ and NYSE stocks based on fundamental analysis - <AUTHOR> http://www.demofinance.com/

<comment><USER2> It appears that site ranks stocks based on some formuala using P/E, growth rates and other fundamentals. However, there is no information on the components of that formula or what criteria have been used for the ranking - making it less useful. How do we know it is a valid model for ranking stocks?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Collection of NASDAQ and NYSE stock with historic data since 2005</comment>


Why cleaner air may be bad for your sourdough bread - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-wheat-sulfur/why-cleaner-air-may-be-bad-for-your-sourdough-bread-idUSKCN24H1O6 <comment><USER2> Timely -- given the COVID sourdough boom -- but misleading title. If you know about cultivating a sourdough "mother" you know that it relies on spores from the air.

This article has nothing to do with that. A better title would have been "Cleaner air may be bad for grain production". The point is that as coal power plants shut down there is less acid rain. Acid rain is actually good for crops in the sense that they need sulphur, which acid rain provides. Farmers are now having to provide sulphur in the form of fertilizer.</comment>


Is Linux "at the end of its life cycle"? - <AUTHOR> http://opendotdotdot.blogspot.com/2010/11/microsoft-linux-at-end-of-its-life.html

<comment><USER2> So Windows, which is older than Linux, is past the end of its life cycle?

<comment><USER3> Elephants vs. dogs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Did anyone consider that this might have been dreamed up by someone who is pro-Linux who thought that the anti-MS sentiment hasn't been high enough lately, so they stirred the pot? Yeah, I kind of doubt it, too... or maybe this comment was meant to stir up pro-MS sentiment amongst the people that don't want to be manipulated by pro-Linux anti-MS reverse-psychology.

<comment><AUTHOR> What if the article was meant to stir up bad feelings amongst free-as-in- freedom GNU devs at both MS and open-source devs?

What if it was meant to stir up bad feelings by MS users who want us to think that it was stirred up by GNU devs? or maybe it was the GNU devs who want us to think that it was MS devs who really wanted us to think that it _was_ GNU devs?

<comment><USER5> Without Steve Jobs, this picture is incomplete.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Some of us think it was barely alive

"Not only is UNIX dead, it's starting to smell really bad." - Rob Pike circa 1991

<comment><USER7> Which is unfortunate, because Plan 9, while carrying some awesome "beyond- POSIX" ideas, was born dead.

I think both GNU/Linux and Windows are not dead, just mature. Unfortunately, their maturity means it's really hard to teach them new tricks (for example, like non-hierarchical filesystems, which were recently discussed on HN), so, when considering all those fancy new (and sometimes not so new) ideas, those mature OSes certainly feel somehow old and limited.

<comment><USER6> Plan9 has a slowly growing community.

One Plan9 product got $35m VC money this year - Coraid</comment></comment></comment>


To use private APIs or not to use private APIs? - <AUTHOR> http://www.mikeash.com/?page=pyblog/friday-qa-2009-01-02.html

<comment><AUTHOR> My only problem with this article is that the author doesn't consider the possibility that private APIs aren't as robustly tested as public APIs. Having had to deal with the public API issue, I know that those things have to be _bullet-proof_.</comment>


Digital picture converted to string art patterns - <AUTHOR> http://artof01.com/vrellis/works/knit.html <comment><USER2> Probably more interesting to HN readers is this blog post describing an algorithm for doing this:

[http://www.thevelop.nl/blog/2016-12-25/ThreadTone/](http://www.thevelop.nl/blog/2016-12-25/ThreadTone/)

<comment><USER3> This is super cool.

I wonder if you could convert it to colour as well, if you changed the rule from a single thread for the whole thing to three threads for the whole thing (CMY). Might be quite an interesting effect since you'd need to sort of "smudge" colours across the image the same way you're essentially smudging the blacks.

Edit: Wait a minute, actually it wouldn't work because you can't combine colours. Put magenta thread on top of cyan and you'd get... magenta.

<comment><USER4> You might be able to run the algorithm once on each color component.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Super cool! But that's not knitting, and the circle isn't what most would consider to be a loom, either.

EDIT: Ok, it's a knitting loom (not a weaving loom), but the artist still isn't "knitting" using it.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'd guess that the calculations are essentially a reverse radon transformation. Each string should be analogous to the sensor reading for a cat scan of a density field matching the portrait.

<comment><USER7> I didn't see it mentioned, but I assume you have to do it with a single unbroken string, so it's a bit more involved maybe. I'd imagine you'd first generate all the lines that best approximate the image, then insert additional lines to turn it into one unbroken string where they're least disruptive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Kinda like the radon transform [1] used in tomography.

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

</comment><comment><USER9> > Over 2 billion calculations are needed to produce each pattern; not much of > a load for today's computers, but definitely an impossible task for the > human brain. So, this is a new and unique type of knitting that could not > have been implemented a few decades ago, without computers.

It's hard to take this assertion at face value. Compare that to what a human go player can do vs. a computer. (2 billion computations would be on the order of seconds on a normal computer)

Still a cool project!

</comment><comment><USER10> Very similar to this: [https://rogerjohansson.blog/2008/12/07/genetic- programming-e...](https://rogerjohansson.blog/2008/12/07/genetic-programming- evolution-of-mona-lisa/)

</comment><comment><USER11> Reminds me of this (automated nail/string art based on photos):

[http://www.laarco.com/](http://www.laarco.com/)

</comment><comment><USER12> That example timelapse is really cool! Great idea.

</comment><comment><USER13> Is the program to dictate how to thread these available anywhere? I'd like to try doing my own!

</comment><comment><USER14> How come vimeo became the site for artsy videos?

<comment><USER15> I expect it was due getting early traction with indie filmmakers, particularly through its early support for high-definition videos.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I wouldn't comment except that the OP's comment history here is also highly critical, so: they already posted this like 8 months ago. It's also not knitting as most people understand the term. I mean, it's kinda neat, but the title here is misleading, and it's the second time they've used it. Promotional?

<comment><USER17> By no means! We invited gus_massa to repost it. This is part of our ongoing experiments in recovering good stories that fell through the cracks the first time round—described at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380) and many other posts linked from there.

Also, it's fine to repost a story if it's good for HN and hasn't had attention yet. Otherwise too many great submissions would languish unseen. This is important enough to be in HN's FAQ: [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html).

<comment><USER16> I see. I think an indicator like "[repost]" might cut down on the number of times you'd have to explain it. :)

And it's still a bad title given the content.

<comment><USER18> Putting [repost] would probably have an impact on the vote ratio up and down given that in many online communities 'repost' is seen as a negative thing perhaps.

<comment><USER19> Maybe [invited repost]?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Some people who take psychedelics continue hallucinating indefinitely - <AUTHOR> https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/09/11/lots-of-people-going-around-with-mild-hallucinations-all-the-time/ <comment><USER2> I'm the one who provided the third quoted anecdote in the article. What I didn't mention was the HPPD coincided with a sort of depersonalization/derealization effect. Basically I got very checked out from my own life. I felt as if I was a spectator watching my life happen and I didn't really feel any connection or agency towards anything coming into my sensorium. It was a really weird and hard time for me. Those feelings as well as the hallucinations came and went together for me. After about 1-2 years I was completely back to normal. During that time I still microdosed occasionally, but that didn't seem to have any effect on those symptoms either way. I didn't have experience anything like that until I took pretty large doses (>200ug). I was taking 100ug doses on a regular basis without having any lasting effects, it appeared to me that the high doses came with the aftereffects. I also didn't experience anything like that with psilocin (mushrooms). I'm willing to answer any questions about my experience if anyone has any

<comment><USER3> Something I'm surprised hasn't come up yet is the ability to flex... "something" in your brain and turn hallucinations on and off.

I grew up in a Buddhist family and was meditating since an early age. I'm not sure if this was related at all but since I was young I could look at things when I was bored and do something in my brain that would cause the patterns to move. If I then needed to concentrate I could focus and it would go away.

I did some research and found out that there is a common effect with meditators that they can meditate while on drugs in order to mitigate or in some cases even deactivate some of the effects. So if you want to experiment it might be good to learn a bit so you have an extra tool to work with your mind while you're altering it.

YMMV of course.

<comment><USER4> I didn't realize this was a thing! I'm generally able to do this too, especially when meditating. It started after trying psychedelics in college, which probably 'activated' something in my brain that said "you can make the carpet swirl". It's sort of like looking at a Magic Eye photo. I just tried to do it now, but having just woke up, I don't think I can concentrate enough to do it.

How early did your parents start you on meditation?

<comment><USER3> When you grow up in a buddhist family it's more like something that's always there. My parents were heavy meditators (1 hour+/day) so I would often just hang out with them. They probably half taught me a few dozen times when I was young, it's a culture thing. Kinda like growing up a Christian household I'm sure you accumulate random knowledge about the bible, god and jesus. When I was older I went through some more official training but it was purely an interest thing, they let me pick my own path. These days I meditate but I do it in a purely secular non religious way.

<comment><USER4> That's really cool. Appreciate you sharing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _So I wonder: psychedelics make you more likely to believe woo, and more likely to have certain classes of visual hallucinations. But some people believe woo without taking psychedelics, and some people have those same visual hallucinations without taking psychedelics._

Interesting, I believe it and have always wondered about this. I think people's sensory experiences vary wildly by nature, but we have no access to them so can't really prove anything.

Some people are audiophiles, others foodies, others fashionistas, etc.

Your athletic ability can vary from Usain Bolt to completely uncoordinated; some people have photographic memories (e.g. Lebron James apparently); some people can factor large numbers in their heads (computation), or recite huge strings of digits (non-episodic memory).

Some people are prediposed to like drugs and others don't. (e.g. reading a lot of rock n' roll biographies it becomes apparent that the alcohol and heroin addictions aren't randomly distributed; it's somewhat "innate")

It would be surprising if our sensory experiences did NOT vary widely.

This sounds silly and is totally unsubstantiated, but I always believed my senses are "accurate". I told a friend in high school this and he said it was stupid and impossible :)

\----

Although I can also conjure some low-level hallucinations when "looking at the back of my eyelids" when falling asleep. I imagine that's pretty normal/common since low light is sort of like sensory deprivation.

But they are very elaborate hallucations with all sorts of geometric forms and motion. Elaborate but not intense, if that makes sense.

<comment><USER6> Iirc those symbols in your vision with your eyes closed aren't hallucinations. They're reflective of the blood pressure and flow around your eye/eye lid. Though I definitely have an ability to relax by paying attention to them. I can't offer a source for this though.

<comment><USER5> I think everybody has the blood flow thing.

But the degree to which they turn into "hallucinations" varies.

By that I mean very elaborate geometric shapes with a lot of motion and rotation. Sort of like a Persian rug in 3D and 4D (time), with a lot of scale. Fractals, etc.

I suspect there is some common physiological reason why people find fractals "trippy" and say pictures of cars in traffic are not "trippy".

Drugs tickle your brain in a certain ways, but as the OP suggests, they're not the only way your brain can be tickled like that. And some brains are more predisposed to such hallucinations than others.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The article alludes to it, but understates how difficult it is to ask questions about things similar to psychosis with no frame of reference.

For instance, it is possible to look at a person, see someone else, and be kind of aware of the discrepancy, but not to experience as a _visual_ disturbance but more of a disturbance in the part of the mind that identifies people. Upstream of the visual input, so to speak. But it's triggered by seeing.

Or one can see something as being in motion, without actually seeing it move. Like, things look normal, but seem to squirm. Again, the mind can separate qualities which are normally inherently connected. Every aspect of physical reality is interpreted by a module that can more or less go haywire _separately_.

So when someone depicts by illustration what hallucination is like, that is a subset, possibly a small subset of the possibilities, whether drug induced or otherwise.

And there's also the limitations and unpredictability of memory. Who knows whether the memories people have of hallucinations are complete or accurate?

<comment> drunken-serval > For instance, it is possible to look at a person, see someone else, and be > kind of aware of the discrepancy, but not to experience as a visual > disturbance but more of a disturbance in the part of the mind that > identifies people.

Yes. I've had a psychotic break and saw my hands as animal paws. At the same time, some part of my brain was vaguely away something was very wrong and as a result, I successfully hid these symptoms for 4 months until they cleared up. For that time, I was an animal pretending to be human.

The memories from my animal self are as real as anything I've experienced as a human. None of it feels abnormal to me.

This isn't just an experience I've had. I've talked to other people in my support group who are bipolar or schizoaffective (bipolar type). They have similar experiences.

My theory is, there's some part of the brain where reality and imagination cross. In me, they merged for a time. So far, antipsychotics have kept this from repeating.

<comment><USER8> I'd love to hear more about your experience. What else was different from your normal self?

<comment> drunken-serval Let's see... I had a tail no one could see but I could feel it. I also the life memories from the other person I was. It's like I've lived two lives.

It's easy to tell which memories are real because I'm human in the real ones.

I'll send you an email. The full story isn't something I want to go into here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Alright, I'll bite.

I developed HPPD in 2017, and I've been seeing unusual things for a bit over 2 years. The HPPD was triggered by dropping on the order of 1000-1400 micrograms of LSD - and for context a reasonable dose was 50 micrograms. This was way too much, and I fried for a few days. I'm not sure when I came down because HPPD decided to show up and it took me a while to realize that the HPPD was, well, persistent.

The effect is pretty minimal - I see faint geometric shapes in the sky, blank walls, monochromatic screens, such like that. When I look at things like pine trees or complex shapes the patterns vanish. The patterns are actually quite pretty, though it gets irritating at times. It's hardly crippling, but maybe I've gotten lucky.

A few months before I developed HPPD, I also developed tinnitus due to a combination of incredibly severe stress, severe life-long depression, and a doctor prescribed high dosage of Zoloft. I got my ears tested and I have perfect hearing in my left and near perfect in my right, so this isn't auditory damage. In contrast to HPPD, tinnitus can be crippling. Tinnitus is a neurological condition so there's no limit on how bad it can get - and when it gets so loud that you can't hear people over the tin, you get pretty desperate.

With both HPPD and tinnitus, the only real treatment is to learn to not let it get to you. As you become more stressed and anxious the symptoms worsen, so if you fixate on it then you'll quite literally drive yourself mad.

HPPD is vaguely frustrating, but I know that it was my actions that caused this. However I'm livid about the tinnitus because it was most likely a legally prescribed drug with known side effects, and doctors hand out scripts for that stuff like it's candy. It's easy to say "oh no, the psychedelics are going to break our brains!" \- but doctors regularly prescribe ototoxic drugs, SSRIs that are _incredibly_ habit forming and aren't effective in the long run.

If you don't want HPPD, maybe take it easy on the drugs, but in the grand scheme of thing there are numerous medical practices that are dramatically more damaging than seeing some mildly weird shit.

Happy to answer questions if that would help anyone here.

<comment><USER10> I have never heard Tinnitus described as a neurological condition. I had pretty bad Tinnitus as a result of a jaw injury. It has gradually faded but it made sleeping difficult for a very long time.

<comment><USER9> I'm on the run so can't respond in depth, but check out ototoxic drugs which attack the auditory nerve. SSRIs may not be directly ototoxic but numerous studies have shown that sertraline can cause tinnitus, due to the role that serotonin plays in filtering audio signals. So there are multiple causes of tinnitus, and the impact of SSRIs is partially known but not fully understood.

<comment><USER11> Seconding you're point on SSRIs. I'm currently reading Ed Bullmore's Inflamed Mind, and he makes the point forcefully that there's no way of measuring SSRI levels in regular clinical practice, they way blood pressue, cholosterol or white/red blood cell levels are tested.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I have _always_ steered clear of psychedelics. I know some people are super into legalization, but I wager it's a bit irresponsible considering we barely understand their long (and short, for that matter) -term effects. There's some evidence where psychedelics (particularly LSD) may have triggered schizophrenia in some patients[1].

Musician Daniel Johnston (he passed away a few months ago) is a notable case.

[1] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6870484](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6870484)

<comment><USER13> Latent schizophrenics shouldn't take psychoactive drugs of any kind. Schizophrenics (like other people suffering from mental illness) are prone to self-medicate as well though. And the evidence that someone prone to schizophrenia who develops it because of drug use but wouldn't have otherwise developed schizophrenia is scant or non-existent.

<comment><USER14> According to the article, it's not just schizophrenics, it's literally everyone who is at risk.

Legalization would be highly irresponsible until we understand why.

<comment><USER15> He used "latent" for that reason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> es-hn I've used LSD and psilocybin, though not for many years, and have had minor, infrequent, non-disruptive hallucinations.

They usually consist of momentary visual deformations of repeating patterns, e.g., tiles on a BART platform will appear to shift or move. These visual variances are a small taste of a full-on trip, in which _everything_ can shift, move, or dance.

It's nice to see others have shared this experience.

Related: Psychedelics caused me to have a _permanent_ , positive attitude adjustment. I recommend them highly.

<comment><USER16> Counterpoint: The YouTube engineer who, over the summer, took LSD and went on a stabbing rampage.

[https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/davidmack/youtube- engin...](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/davidmack/youtube-engineer-lsd- rampage-arrested)

<comment><USER17> That's probably more related to working for YouTube where the comments are absolute vitriol. Actually reading this article this person was clearly not mentally equipped for a trip, ended up taking 2 additional doses after already "becoming delusional" and then going on a rampage when his friends tried to get him to stop. All because they rented a house on the fourth of July and thought what better thing to use to party with loud explosions than the most introspective and revelatory substance ever discovered by mankind. What? How about a little respect for the aperture in the navel of the Universe? I wouldn't chug a liter of Ayahuasca and go mow the lawn, what sort of world do people think this is? No consequences is the lie that got us here if you ask me. Of course there are consequences. Nurture altruistic intentions.

<comment><USER18> My worst trip (which I still don't regret) was when I took a strip of acid, and then a friend who was 4 tabs in pulled out some tannerite that he hadn't mentioned beforehand and started shooting at exploding targets. I was totally lost in the swirl of drugs, vaguely aware of the explosions and worrying about the safety of my friends. I think I could've handled it a lot better if I had known about the exploding targets before the entheogens kicked in, but still, the 4th of July probably isn't the best time for those particular drugs :/

<comment><USER8> Most kinds of drugs, really. Alcohol and explosives are a legal but often unfortunate combination.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I've always thought of this as more of an anxiety attack and possibly a bit of PTSD from what is often an incredibly powerful and upsetting experience.

I think most people experience minor visual disturbances or have what can be loosely defined as 'trippy' experiences from time to time and just ignore them or compensate for them, but imagine having recently had a tremendously upsetting experience that began with similar sensations and how that could tweak someone's anxiety so that they hyper focus and worry about it to the point that it becomes a serious issue for them.

</comment><comment><USER20> I kind of got this after a heavy meditation session 6 months ago after reading Mindfulness in Plain English and listening to Om (the band.) Never seriously meditated before but after that I became pretty good at meditation and so depending on my mood and whether I meditated in the morning I slip into a meditative state right away when concentrating and see pretty small perceptual abnormalities.

I was seriously ready to kill myself back then so pretty small tradeoff.

</comment><comment><USER21> > Third, it talks about HPPD-like visual hallucinations in people who have > never taken psychedelic drugs. It says many people have them. [...] My only > argument that this doesn't disprove HPPD is how many people – including my > survey respondents – describe these oddities starting (or getting much > worse) right after they use psychedelics.

This is what I believe, and I think there's a simple reason why people often report the symptoms getting worse after taking psychedelics. They are more noticeable once you've seen the full-blown effects of the drug in comparison. Prior to that, you wouldn't have any reason to pick out those hallucinations and might unconsciously ignore them. But once you've seen the full effect then even mild instances are too obvious to ignore.

</comment><comment><USER22> Around the mid 1990s I hung out with a few ravers and hippies (different music, similar overall vibe), and several told me they'd done so much acid that they tripped all the time.

I had chalked it up to either exaggeration or the awakened latent schizophrenia thing until now, but maybe there was more to it. Apparently the relevant subreddit has existed for 11 years! I feel out of the loop, but I'm super glad these conversations are happening. As others have pointed out, we could have been so much further along in research on this stuff if it wasn't for the boneheaded War On Drugs.

</comment><comment><USER23> If you want to scare yourself off psychedelics for life, /r/hppd has some pretty horrifying posts from people reaching out for help. I am grateful that my own extremely minor experience with similar symptoms taught me to stay clear.

</comment><comment><USER24> I've done a bit of psilocybin over my life. The only permanent hallucinatory change I've experienced is "seeing stars" occasionally (maybe once a year). I distinctly remember the first time it happened while on mushrooms.

I had shorter semi-permanent hallucinations when I was taking them the most. Breathing walls, halos around lights, etc. All of those effects tended to go away once I stopped.

A stranger permanent change has been my unconscious or dream state. I've had full blown psychedelic dreams on occasion since taking psilocybin. Those dreams happen maybe once a year.

For context my peak usage was nearly 20 years ago and I used to do quite a bit. Much more than what I've heard as 'common' nowadays.

</comment><comment><USER25> I'll admit it is rather weak sauce, but the one time I smoked salvia was enough to put me off psychadelics forever. The entire room that I was in morphed into a Roadrunner and Coyote canyonland for about five minutes, just as Chuck Jones would have it drawn up. No desire to repeat that kind of disassociation from reality.

<comment><USER19> Salvia is not weak sauce and is something that very few people enjoy compared to LSD and mushrooms.

<comment><USER26> That depends on how it is used. Smoking raw and untreated leaves provides a very minor and brief high. A tea (the traditional technique), or treated/fortified leaves, is where it becomes potent.

The parent commenter likely used fortified leaves given that they had such a distressful experience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I've gone through multiple periods of doing lots of LSD in my life. In my senior year of high school I probably tripped once a week with anywhere from 1-4+ hits, while also smoking pot every day.

After about 3 months I had developed perma-tracers (I could draw shapes in the air with a lit cigarette), after about 6 months I saw after-images at night, usually while driving. (For example, a ghostly day-glow purple stop sign behind the actual stop sign). It wasn't enough to be actually disruptive to my life, besides the slight anxiety about it.

At about 9 months I developed a stutter which increased in frequency over the next few months, until it was an actual speech impediment. I stopped smoking pot and decreased my LSD use to a few times a year and it all went away within 6-9 months and never came back. It has never come back with LSD use, but it /did/ come back during a year in my 30s where I smoked a lot of pot and used no psycehdelics, so take that anecdata as you will.

These days I notice that if I do LSD more than about 4 times within 1 month, I'll develop some tracers and visual distortions that persist very slightly when sober, and more persistently when only stoned on pot. Tiled bathrooms breathe a little, lights sparkle and shimmer. But it always resolves within about a month of abstinence and has never caused me any trouble.

There are no (as far as I can tell) cognitive distortions or anything else while sober, and the visual distortions range from mildly amusing to slightly alarming. I've had tons of panic attacks (unrelated in my life) but none of them had the quality of any sort of "flashback", just plain old anxiety.

There has been a little bit (but not a ton) of research done on HPPD, and bluelight and other harm reduction forums had good discussions with those dealing with it for many years. For many (most) people it resolves on its own.

My completely out of my ass theory is that it basically works like water making a groove in dirt in that some neural pathways get overly "primed" to fire and fall into a habitual pathway.

/Most/ people I know that have either experimented heavily with LSD /or/ with intensive meditation have reported some sort of visual or auditory after effects that persist while sober and resolve on their own, but most people I've talked to haven't been too bothered by it.

That's not to discount the people that have experienced disruption to their life from HPPD, but this definitely seems to be the exception to the rule of either not having any persisting effects or not finding them that bothersome.

edit: typos

</comment><comment><USER28> I took lsd for the first time two weeks ago and sometimes when I zone out, geometric patterns like carpet appears to morph. I'm not really good at understanding my own thought process, so I can't really tell if it affects me in other areas. From my extremely limited experience however, I would warn against casually taking any psychedelics. For me at least it was a needless experience, with needless aftereffects.

<comment><USER29> I've been interested in taking a guided "tour" into DMT but uhh, maybe not now.

<comment><USER28> I recommend asking yourself if an idiot would do what you are going to do. Do the opposite. I took lsd by myself, with no one home at 5pm. And only while the effects started to take place did I begin researching the effects. I did not know that you can't sleep when on acid for instance. So maybe don't listen to me. I'm also not so hot mentally, so take what I say with a grain of salt.

<comment><USER30> You essentially did everything wrong. I'm a bit amazed actually.

<comment><USER10> I'm sorry but that is funny.

Checklist for a first badtrip.

1) be alone. 2) take it too late to sleep at a reasonable hour. 3) start researching only after taking it.

<comment><USER31> Point (3) specifically is easily the worst, because you start researching after you get anxious, and what you find will make you even more anxious, because if you are looking for potential side effects and issues, that's exactly what you are going to find. The positive feedback loop with this one is pretty bad.

<comment><USER28> I also did point (4). I talked to my grandma on the phone. I called her an hour before I took it, but she called back an hour after I took it. The surprising thing is that I actually didn't have a bad trip. It was just pretty meh after I tried everything in the vicinity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I take psychedelics once or twice a year, and sometimes I just have these weird moments where, for example, I'll look at a door and go "What the hell is that? We all walk through portals every day!" I think they bring out a sense of wonder in the mundane, which can be amazing but also occasionally disconcerting.

</comment><comment><USER33> I have this. It used to freak me out sometimes (am I tripping?), but I have grown to accept it, even find fun in it. It's been 5 years since I last took a hallucinogen.

One scary thing about this is that I worry my emotions are permanently changed too, but I just don't notice it as much. Visual's lasting effects are very clear to me because I see them. Emotions are so complicated that I will never know how it permanently affected me. I am definitely a different person from before I started taking them.

</comment><comment><USER34> I sustained pretty severe HPPD after taking LSD and drinking alcohol at the same time. I had taken a number of hallucinogens before that time. It took two years and went away. I still have tinnitus, however.

I took a 300mg MDMA pill 2 years ago (on accident - I didn't realize pills were this strong - and had no experience with MDMA prior to that), and have permanent low-level anxiety at all times now. The quality of my life has been reduced like 30%.

<comment><USER35> Strangely enough, a friend of mine who I tripped with in Thailand said that his lifelong tinnitus went away from the mushrooms we took. /anecdote

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> For people interested in experiencing closed eye visuals without drugs, try sitting in a dark room with eyes closed facing a strobe light. ~3-10 Hz seems most effective.

(Should go without saying, but this is not recommend for epileptics)

The vague regular input to the whole eye causes your brain to look for patterns in the noise. Tested this on several friends and they all start seeing geometric fractal-ish patterns within 60 seconds.

I've been hoping someone would manufacture affordable "strobe glasses" with a bunch of white leds that pulse at a rate adjustable with a simple knob, but I've looked for years and all of the options I've seen have been pretty pricey and include features of questionable utility. Seems like they could be made for ~$20 if there was enough of a market to make them at scale. I think they would be great for meditation.

(See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_machine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_machine) for more info. The turntable-driven Dream Machine was a particularly cool design)

</comment><comment><USER37> The one thing that that picture of HPPD does not adequately explain is time. In my opinion you should think of the (distorted) square as a superposition of the total time spent, not a snapshot.

Another thing to mention for (some?) people with some sort of psychoactive or hallucinatory experience is that "real" things can complicate matters. An example: If you wear glasses with coloured reflections and are not used to it, then it can compound your paranoia about the _other_ things that are "not real" that you are seeing. A similar thing about streetlights: Foggy or misty nights already do funny things to the lights and you can overexaggerate this effect by confusing real and not real things.

One should be careful about these things. In my case I had these kind of experiences at university and without psychoactive substances. Doing abstract mathematics certainly can complicate matters, but it is not a prerequisite. Also, crazy people may be crazy, but often their fears are logical in the sense that you can't really disprove them. I mean, how do you really prove to someone that they were not kidnapped by aliens? In the end you just need to show the value of Occam's Razor in your own life.

I think the best case scenario is maybe analogous to eventually writing an interesting movie (I think the _Twilight Zone_ was inspired by such experiences) and NOT getting to some super hyper special plane of existence. I do also think that the creative cycle has both a logical and an illogical component. The latter is like training the model, where you cycle through senseless things with funny connections until the logical part takes over and makes it concrete. It's like the difference between "OMG what is this weird static electricity thing OMG it's so weird" (which is a fair observation) and going to "So, what we can say about electricity is that x, y and z. And this is how to build a circuit."

</comment><comment><USER38> I'm just not sure whether or not some of the things I see were always there, and I just didn't notice, or just didn't care.

Like, for example, blurred after images ("trails") when I wave my hands around.

I see them all the time. I'm just not sure they are new. I suspect I experienced that visual effect prior to doing psychedelics, then when on psychedelics they looked really cool and "trippy" and now I'm just conscious of it as a result of that.

Or else permanent low grade hallucinations.

But it really doesn't seem so.

I see patterns in the dark visual space that occurs when my eyes are closed. Pretty sure everyone will see something - subtle colors, moving shapes, etc if they stare at the backs of their eyelids for a bit. But you don't really notice unless you deliberately pay attention to it while meditating, or while on some drug, or even feverish, or go into or out of sleep, or whatever.

I wonder if it's all just a matter of taking common and inevitable visual distortions a little too seriously.

<comment><USER39> > I see patterns in the dark visual space that occurs when my eyes are closed.

I never took any psychedelics, but also experience this; it can get a bit trippy sometimes when they coalesce into shapes or patterns.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> > mild hallucinations like seeing a flower growing on a person's face or > seeing the legs of a chair walk

Wow, I would have said those are rather substantial hallucinations.

</comment><comment><USER41> I read a lot of comments about people recommending the use of psychedelics. I don't understand why some people with a healthy mind are so eager to alter (often definitively) their precious mind/self/brain.

</comment><comment><USER42> > Hallucinogen Persisting Perceptual Disorder is a condition marked by visual > or other perceptual disturbances typical of psychedelic use that continue > for weeks and months after coming off the psychedelic, in some cases > permanently. Have you ever had this condition?

'Visual or other perceptual disturbances' is very different than hallucinating.

HPPD is probably real, but also probably not a big deal for most people. It most likely just results at staring at empty space a bit more from time to time when something odd pops up.

There are bigger risks with psychedelics such as trigger an underlying mental condition or suffering emotional trauma ('bad trip').

</comment><comment><USER43> after drinking ayahuasca a couple of times in large quantities and meditating full time (16 hours a day on average) for a year i also see things. it's not a hallucination though, i'm certain this energy is really there. it doesn't bother me and i hold down a job as a software engineer despite the funky visuals. i also find myself playing with this energy at times. for anybody else with this issue, hopefully you'll just get used to it like i have

<comment><USER44> One thing that stuck with me is how when you do mushrooms or LSD, everyone experiences their own personal trip so to say.

Ayahuasca on the other hand, although I don't have any personal experience with, I have heard accounts of groups of people experiencing the same visualizations/hallucinations which to me seems pretty trippy!

<comment><USER43> i'd say an ayahuasca trip is also deeply personal and personal issues will come to the surface like any unresolved issues from the past. there are commonalities experienced too though, like experiencing death (ego death), meeting with/becoming god if you're lucky and a deep feeling of love. it can also be terrifying at times but overall my first ayahuasca experience was the most profound experience of my life and an amazing exploration of consciousness.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I think it's no question that psychedelics are mind opening. But maybe a psychosis is something that happens to an open mind too. Personally I explained some mildly strange visual effects/thoughts (long after my acid trips) to the fact that I know what's possible to happen with my mind and my mind knows it too. And only for that reason that weird place is just a another new option now. If I wouldn't have experienced them, my mind may never come up with them.

<comment><USER46> >I think it's no question that psychedelics are mind opening.

Having used more than my share: there's plenty of question that psychedelics are mind opening. Just because something feels profound doesn't mean it is. People in the 1800s used to think nitrous and ether sniffing was profound.

You'd think after all these years of people experiencing profundity there would be some great work of art or philosophy that people are able to take back to reality from their drug experiences, but as far as I can tell it's just burn out "trippin balls" stories, people losing their minds in various unedifying ways, and weirdos like Kerry Mullis talking to aliens.

<comment><USER45> Isn't there some great deal of art coming from psychedelic experiences. Many bands of the sixties and seventies or art of Alex Grey. Shamans had an very important role in groups and tribes for a long time. Religious revelations could have been results of altered states of consciousness (eg moses 10 commandments).

On a more personal and emotional note I always had the feeling when tripping of great profundity but being unable to take the wisdom to the other side. I guess I would make be a bad shaman.

<comment><USER46> Yeah, that's kind of my point. Alex Gray and Deep Purple aren't exactly Vermeer and Mozart.

If psychedelics are all that profound, rather than just a drug producing chemical simulacrums of profundity, you'd have better examples than these.

<comment><USER45> Aren't they in a way the Mozarts of their time? I'm not sure what you expect and demand of psychedelics. When will be something profound enough for you? For many it was and is.

<comment><USER46> >Aren't they in a way the Mozarts of their time?

Absolutely not. Avro Part and György Ligeti are the Mozarts of their time. And they were very, very far from being Mozart.

I expect and demand that drugs which people tout as some amazing breakthrough in human consciousness demonstrate something beyond "I thought it was cool." If something you can buy for $4 in pill form really creates higher states of consciousness, and the words "higher states of consciousness" actually means something, you'd expect there to be 1000 Mozarts by now, rather than ... dipshits saying Iron Butterfly's drum solo is, like, totally cool man.

<comment><USER45> It's all very subjective what you state.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I have heard several people with massive audiences discussing positive effects of psychedelics.

However, I don't recall any of them discussing potential negative side effects, except for briefly mentioning a possibility of having a bad trip that might cause PTSD.

It would be great if they would mention that there's a possibility of permanently altering your perception, to the point of seeing severe hallucinations for the rest of your life.

I'd also like to see them discuss the risk of inducing an onset of schizophrenia that someone mentioned in this thread.

Sure, maybe people who developed schizophrenia after taking psychedelics were predisposed to it already, but what if they could have avoided an onset if they had not taken the drugs? Wouldn't it make sense to warn people about this?

It just seems extremely irresponsible to talk about the potential positive effects without addressing the potential negative effects.

Especially considering that the main potential positive effect, resolving psychological issues that the person isn't able to resolve on their own, is likely to appeal to people who I'd guess are at a higher risk of the potential negative side effects due to already being mentally unstable.

</comment><comment><USER48> Somewhere I read the theory that persisting trips might be a _learned_ thing. Very simplified example: everyday experience makes us convinced that walls can not warp. The experience during a trip might show one otherwise. Now the brain can accept the concept of warping walls in even in everyday life.

A very quick search did not turn up anything useful. Anyone knows what theory I am talking about?

<comment><USER48> It might have been in the comment section of [https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/06/06/hppd-and-the- specter-o...](https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/06/06/hppd-and-the-specter-of- permanent-side-effects/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Psychedelics effect is very dependent on your mind state. I would never advise psychedelics to someone who's not stable, or predisposed to schyzophrenia, or in general to anyone under 25 - but for me personally, using LSD and shrooms have had very significant and long-lasting positive effects on my life.

I do see patterns sometimes, and one time when I was posing for a artist and have stared at the same trees outside the apartment for 3 hours straight, I have gone into a very heavy trip state, but it's never disrupted my life in any way. The key is, every time I saw hallucinations unders psychedelics (or without) I could easily "feel" my imagination creating them, and just allowed it. Now I'm so used to the tripping state that I even take LSD when I go out clubbing and dancing - I've stopped taking all other "club culture" drugs (alcohol, cocaine, MDMA, mephedrone) because of their health effects, and LSD has very gentle stimulating effect, and you don't have any kind of hangover afterwards.

</comment><comment><USER50> Having experienced both microdoses and full blown hallucinatory trip doses, I've arrived at the conclusion that hallucinatory doses are arguably overdoses of these substances.

They're both active and useful at micro dose levels, I highly doubt anyone has ever experienced HPPD from a psilocybin microdose in their breakfast smoothy.

As with any powerful drug, dosage matters more than anything.

</comment><comment><USER51> Ever since I did LSD I see strange ripples sometimes when I watch moving water. I ended up coming down watching the waves as the tide came in. Every time a wave crashed the water would ripple strangely in all directions. I don't know really how else to describe it, but it's been years now and it'll still happen. Not always, but still sometimes.

</comment><comment><USER52> Ate a couple tabs a day for a couple months in high school. It will stick for a couple years. When I say stick. If you look at wallpaper, it would slightly swirl.

Take everything said about these thing with a massive grain of salt. The entire point is exploring how you are an individual from the rest of a time churning universe.

<comment><USER18> I'm tempted to do some unpublished science with a sample size of one on that. Given the ridiculously rapid tolerance one builds to LSD, I'm a bit skeptical and taking the claim with the grain of salt you prescribed ;)

Assuming good faith, do you regret eating all that acid?

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> I'm not sure you can draw that kind of conclusion from a survey administered to a self-selected group of people, and I'm pretty sure that talking about it like that to the group of people who will be filling out the next survey will tend to shape the responses. Interesting topic, though.

</comment><comment><USER54> Really interesting to see this on HN!

I got HPD from a fairly large dose of 4FA once. I had persisting light sparkles pretty much exactly like the first image in the article.

I researched online and discovered the term HPPD but information was extremely sparse then. I see there's a fair amount more now which is encouraging.

From the advice I found I got myself some Lion's Mane supplement, meditated and exercised a few times a week. A few weeks later I just kind of forgot about it and noticed one day that the HPPD had disappeared.

The effect wasn't hugely detrimental on a practical level, but it was very strange coming to terms with the fact that this may well be a permanent change.

</comment><comment><USER35> Some people have "Profound Life-changing spiritual experiences" and it would be nice if those stuck around for longer than the week or two afterward. IME they seem to fade as you get wound back up in the culture and everyday grind.

<comment> alexanderthe- IME, this.. however, not everyone who experiments with psychedelics is fortunate enough to experience them. I know it's cliché, but integration is key. Our work is here, so you have to make use of those lessons as best you can.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Perhaps similar (I had this for months): [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mal_de_debarquement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mal_de_debarquement)

</comment><comment><USER56> Dang, perhaps change the title on this to reflect the title of the post? That said, HPPD is an important topic.

> Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or > linkbait; don't editorialize.

</comment><comment><USER57> As I don't have a direct contact for the author, I'm noting here that I added this to a Kialo argument about differences in human experience: [https://www.kialo.com/some-people-may-be-experiencing-a- perm...](https://www.kialo.com/some-people-may-be-experiencing-a-permanent-or- long-term-alteration-of-their-senses-due-to-psychedelics-- 30317.60?path=30317.0~30317.1_30317.60)

</comment><comment><USER58> I thought that there was just one clinic that had most of the HPPD cases and that was in Israel and specialized in giving people a way to get out of the IDF.

</comment><comment><USER59> Limmy ...still trippin'....[https://youtu.be/BHbZD68SGoE](https://youtu.be/BHbZD68SGoE)

</comment><comment><USER60> > A Reddit user helpfully illustrated what his (particularly severe) HPPD > looked like (note especially the subtle square grid in left picture):

I have always seen artifacts around light, even before psychedelic use. Ordinary things would have an aura. This is probably due to how visual information is processed by your optic nerve.

<comment><USER61> Astigmatism can potentially contribute significantly to that, depending on the pattern seen. Mine causes it and it's particularly noticeable at night with street lights.

<comment><USER60> That definitely could explain it. Having taken LSD a few times in my life, I sometimes wake up and see form constants and tracers. But it's only immediately after waking; then it disappears. This too is a rare occurrence, maybe once every 100 days or so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Anyone sees halos or starbursts around lights? I've developed that and a bit of visual snow. It freaked me out in the beginning, but now it's like meh. Vision is fine, I had it checked.

</comment><comment><USER63> That's a terriblY misleading headline. Did you even read the article?

</comment><comment><USER64> >Many people reported that if they stared at a textured area like a carpet long enough, illusory geometric patterns would start to form.

I have always had this, is this not normal?

</comment><comment><USER65> This sounds quite in tune with some of Daniel Dennett's ideas also, especially from 'Consciousness Explained'.

The gist is that our consciousness is only, and all, that we can say, or in any other way act on the world. So if people really believe in the things they say, those things must be quite real to them.

And perhaps visual hallucination come from some incomplete separation of the 'inner' visual loop - thoughts, memories - from the outside visual information.

</comment><comment><USER66> psychedelics are not toys.

neural systems are prone to hysterisis. past experiential history modulates present response. It Is Possible To entrain your wetware to respond in very inconvenient ways, if you delve to deeply[HPPD]

</comment><comment><USER67> Now I know there is a name (HPPD) for this.

</comment><comment><USER68> Free rounds!</comment>


German politician meets with Snowden in Moscow - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/01/world/europe/german-politician-meets-with-snowden.html

<comment><USER2> German media/politics currently discusses if Snowden should be offered asylum in Germany. With every new speculation on the whole spying affair, offering Snowden asylum gets more popular in Germany.</comment>


Bloomberg – Blockchain Company's Smart Contracts Were Dumb - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-06-17/blockchain-company-s-smart-contracts-were-dumb <comment><USER2> A lot of this is predicated on the practicality of writing contracts in conventional code, so let's talk about the state of writing "bug free systems," and the cost. In some cases, there are options that come pretty close. All have huge trade offs and drawbacks.

Model checkers work. You can, with effort, prove programs correct. This works very well for small programs but grows exponentially more complex in the number of branches and variable constraints. Even if you had the computational power you'll quickly hit an inflection point where you're as likely to have a bug in your proof as you are the underlying code.

Life-critical systems style code review works. NASA is very good at writing bug-free C code via a style guide that subsets the language, static analysis/formal methods, and a review process that makes waterfall look agile.

Voing works. In aerospace, code that's responsible for controlling actuators and surfaces is often implemented in three different ways, driving three different actuators. If one implementation returns a different result, majority wins. Same principle for other applications - the output need not be an actuation.

The biggest problem isn't that bug free system are a pipe dream - it's that making one is very expensive, and the cost grows massively as your tolerance for error decreases. This is a community that wants to drive adoption, and that means competing with the status quo. If one of your selling points is that you're saving the cost and complexity of dispute resolution and human constructs, you've gotta factor in the cost of writing bug free contracts in the first place.

<comment><USER3> You're also talking about systems 20,000x larger than what The DAO contract was [1]. The total DAO contract is roughly 2,000 LOC by my estimate [2].

IMO it probably won't be overly onerous to develop reliable contracts of this size using many of these techniques. It's just so few people have the discipline to delay implementation for design and planning at the level required when it needs to be bug free. Most software developers have no training in how to even begin designing and developing using these techniques.

[1]: Shuttle's primary flight software contains 400,000 LOC [http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/flyout/flyfeature_...](http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/flyout/flyfeature_shuttlecomputers.html)

[2]: [https://github.com/slockit/DAO](https://github.com/slockit/DAO)

<comment><USER4> > You're also talking about systems 20,000x larger than what The DAO contract > was [1].

It sounds like the contract was underspecified.

In my experience, the basic core logic of a system's usually a pretty small part of the overall codebase - the edge cases and error handling tend to be the bulk of the code.

This tends to be the case in legal contracts, too - 100 pages of boilerplate to make sure the two pages of contract are air-tight.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Writing perfect, bug-free code is merely the first hurdle when designing a smart contract. You also need the code to cover all possible situations correctly. It's here that smart contracts run into the mess we call the 'real world', and there's no proof of correctness that covers that. Smart contract creators need to be perfect programmers, but must also take their programming blinkers off and consider actual usage too.

For example, a few weeks ago, there was a news story about an ethereum prenuptial agreement : [http://www.coindesk.com/prenup-ethereum-marriage- obligations...](http://www.coindesk.com/prenup-ethereum-marriage-obligations/) : [https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1MEGeLr7lWiNEE2U2lGdGFvSm8...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1MEGeLr7lWiNEE2U2lGdGFvSm8/view)

Ok, obviously a dumb idea, and not serious (I hope?) But take just one of the contract terms: ' _It is stipulated that both the parties should spend at least 100 minutes every 10 days on a date-night_ '

As someone in r/buttcoin wrote at the time: "In the last ten days, User 1 spent 5 nights at home, 1 night in a wrecked car and 4 nights in Lakeville Hospital. Date night clause has been broken. Marriage terminated."

My point is that coding is the least of the problems with a smart contract. There needs to be a way to handle unexpected circumstances. In the real world, courts do that. In smart contracts, you're out of luck.

</comment><comment><USER6> You really can never say in code we trust entirely, because we say the same thing about our state of the art encryption today that the Nazis said about enigma in WW2 "It would take more than every human lifetime combined to crack this code!" But then the next paradigm of computing sets in, and you have a Turing machine built, or a Quantum brute force attack become possible on RSA 4096 rendering it as useless as enigma code. The fact of the matter is you can't declare a system that can not update it's own software "Autonomous" \- someone will attack.

</comment><comment><USER7> > Instead, Libya's arguments take the form of: We didn't really mean what > those contracts said. We didn't understand them.

[...]

> What JPMorgan did was explicitly allowed by the rules, but that doesn't mean > that it was allowed.

This seems like both the biggest feature and the biggest bug of our legal system. On the one hand, the court system exists to adjudicate cases that aren't clear-cut, and often establish precedent in the process. On the other hand, that makes it extremely difficult to construct a system where all the rules _are_ clear cut and have "let the buyer beware" all over them, and not have someone "cheat" and ask the court system to reverse a result that didn't go in their favor. Heads I win, tails the court system might say I win anyway.

If you want a contract where the "spirit of the law" prevails, write it that way. For example, the electricity regulations mentioned in the article could have been written to say "if you find way to arbitrage this and produce infinite money, you're wrong; this is governed by the spirit of the law as interpreted by $governing_body".

But there _should_ be a way to write a "letter of the law" agreement, too, where people can actually rely on the rules. There should exist a sufficiently strong disclaimer that anyone agreeing to it will get summarily rejected from a court saying "you should have known better". There should exist agreements where someone giving their word is ironclad and irreversible.

You can build systems that incorporate human judgment and reversibility on top of such an ironclad rule-based system. But the reverse isn't true: you can't build an ironclad system on top of a system where anyone can cheat by saying "no fair, I lost my money and I didn't really _mean_ it" to a court.

Sometimes, people find it comforting to have a "soft" system backing them up that will look at the human factors involved; for some systems, I do too. But in some cases, you want the comfort of knowing that you can rely on the rules as stated and not someone saying "actually, now that I've lost money I don't like the rules anymore, give me my money back".

<comment><USER8> What would be the use case for "letter of the law" agreements, and how do you avoid massive problems due to buggy contracts as we're seeing?

<comment><USER9> You don't. There are two _conflicting and irreconcilable_ centres of gravity in law - justice/fairness, and the exploitation of power asymmetries for profit.

Which is why it's literally not possible to reduce a contract to code, and it never will be.

Even if you could produce perfect bug-free code at reasonable cost - a fantasy in itself - you still have to contend with the irreconcilable motivations of the parties to the contract, and the fact that contracts are used to hide motivations as often as they are to reveal them.

It's perfectly possible - common, even - that the motivations are conflicting, irreconcilable, and ambiguous, to the extent that the true _practical_ meaning of a contract can only be defined by an external higher legal and political authority.

Or by one party rolling over. Because making that more likely is what many lawyers get paid for. (And what some of them live for.)

<comment><USER7> > There are two conflicting and irreconcilable centres of gravity in law - > justice/fairness, and the exploitation of power asymmetries for profit.

I don't think that's a reasonable dichotomy. "Letter of the law" isn't exclusively useful for people looking to exploit power asymmetries or create unfairness. It's also useful for smaller entities to protect themselves from threats that larger ones have enough insulation to just weather and survive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I want to understand the mindset and ideologies of people who think DAO is a good idea. Holding this belief is correlated with a lot of other ideas in particular, strands of right libertarian thought, and a heavy emphasis on technology and technocracy (i.e. government by technical expertise).

Beneath that though, i think there's an undercurrent of something that feels like misanthropy: a strong desire to replace political human beings interacting in order to resolve conflicting interest, reconcile conflicting experiences and pursue common interest with purely economic agents that interact with each other through free (read: mechanistic) markets and algorithmic contracts.

It feels like there is an unspoken need to be able to tell every human being who has a problem "too bad", and a need for a societal structure that is maximally ""rational"" and unassailable by human political action.

Obviously this would be a strawman if i said any particular person or group specifically held these beliefs. It's an amalgamate of various ideas I've seen pop up in the same places at the same time. Call me a skeptic of any thought that leans in this direction.

<comment><USER11> While the cryptocurrency conversation online is dominated by right- libertarians, I think you'll find that a lot of hard/radical leftwing direct- action types are _very_ much obsessed with cryptocurrency and structures like the DAO. I personally don't look at the cryptocurrency scene/DAO with anything more than bemusement, but I think that community is often presented in a very unpleasant light (look at the weird nerds!).

A more charitable stereotype might be that cryptocurrencies and automated contracts appeal to anyone who thinks that they can design (through their technical expertise) a better world than the current political elites. I'm not saying that they're right or that their line of thought hasn't been historically responsible for atrocities, but I don't think it's fair to paint them as sociopaths.

<comment><USER10> Certainly didn't mean to imply that you have to be a sociopath to like cryptocurrency! That would be unfair and ridiculous. I think it's more like an allergy to what one considers politics.

The benefits of cryptocurrency i've seen argued for in left libertarian circles don't propose some narrative where it supplants the current structures of government. I think a lot of leftists would reason (certainly, I reason this way) that cryptocurrency's much touted benefits are in conflict with capitalism and could not support capitalism at all. This is at odds with the right libertarian ambitions for the technology: right libertarians love capitalism and the crypto enthusiasts on that side of the spectrum think it would be great for capitalism! It's a fundamental disagreement. I've heard about bitcoin being used to great effect by left wing insurgencies like Rojava. It is useful in its current form as a subversive means of transmitting resources.

I'm not familiar with the left wing arguments for cryptocurrency as a transformative tool for structuring new societies. It sounds like technocracy and vanguardism and, well, we know how that's played out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "Do what I say, not what you think I mean. No takebacks, because crypto. Oh, shit, wait, actually, do what you think I mean. No, really."

</comment><comment><USER13> This has been marked a dupe.. Where is the duplicate?

</comment><comment><USER14> >Just because rules are dumb and you are smart, that doesn't always mean that you get to take advantage of them.

Then they rules are a sham. They are meaningless. If the "rules" in a contract are just vague suggestions, then the contract is basically useless.

<comment><USER15> No, it doesn't. It simply means that the rules in the contract are not _the only rules_ that govern the agreement.

<comment><USER14> If that were the only problem, we could rectify it by explicitly enumerating those rules in the contract. However, it unquestionably lowers the utility of contracts if they are forced to have certain terms (explicit or implicit) included.

<comment><USER15> Indeed, it does unquestionably lower the utility of contracts that each individual contract does not have the ability to create for itself its own entire public policy and jurisprudence. We've generally decided contracts shouldn't have that much utility.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> >By definition! If the code could be hacked, the code allowed for the hack

wat? can't people just realise it was a loophole and hence unacceptable?

<comment><USER17> Loopholes are generally legal, by definition.

<comment><USER16> A single instance, yes but we're talking about a platform. It's closer to bug than a feature.</comment></comment></comment>


Flickr to delete free accounts with 1000+ images - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/s10wen/status/1081467383796195328 <comment><USER2> They're not deleting the _accounts_ , but any content above and beyond the new 1000-image limit.</comment>


Florida Pedestrian Bridge Constructed 5 Days Ago Collapses, Multiple Casualties - <AUTHOR> https://jalopnik.com/florida-pedestrian-bridge-constructed-barely-a-week-ago-1823806666 <comment><USER2> As one can see in the installation video from last weekend, the bridge in question was the first span of a larger project, in which at least one other span would have to be installed above an adjacent canal to complete the crossing.

A rendering [1] shows the completed crossing to be an asymmetric harp-type cable-stayed bridge, with cables supporting both the portion above the road (the piece in question), and the piece that's yet-to-be constructed to go above the water. In this design, it's usually not possible to (temporarily) install the cables solely on one side of the tower, as the loads on one side of the tower would collapse the tower.

Therefore, it stands to reason that the cables were either to come into play at the very end, or if the bridge were constructed by cantilevering out from the central tower and attaching cables as you go.

In other words, without trying to pass judgment on the cause, the cables are either a red herring (because the sub-spans are self-supporting), or the bridge was assembled in a terribly incorrect sequence.

[1] [http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami- dade/w...](http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/west- miami-dade/article204506084.html)

<comment><USER3> On the rendering, it seems to me that the part over the water is significantly shorter than the now collapsed part. It also doesn't look heavier per meter to me, and the tower seems to be perfectly vertical. That would make it impossible to fully 'hang' the part over the road from the tower.

=> It is quite possible that the span over the road was designed to be self- supporting.

That would be a non-standard design, but we are so good at building such bridges that 'being non-standard' almost has become the standard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Apparently the elevated walkway was installed in less than 1 day (with major parts of it being pre-fab). But it sounds like it wasn't the complete project, which was expected to be finished in 2019:

> _Once it's finished in early 2019, the new pedestrian bridge will link FIU's > Modesto A. Maidique Campus directly to the small suburban city of > Sweetwater, where the university estimates 4,000 of its students live._

[http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami- dade/w...](http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/west- miami-dade/article204506084.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> Is it common for pedestrian bridges to be so overbuilt? Given the weight and span it sounds like it has a cross sectional area of about 75 square feet of concrete (a little less for the steel components, but still a lot) for a mere 15 foot traffic deck. It's not crossing an especially large span nor need to carry any substantial weight other than its own, so why does it need to be so heavy?

Are they expecting trucks to run into it maybe?

<comment><USER6> They have to calculate for worst-case scenario. Imagine it were completely full of people. Dancing. Plus, people do ride motorcycles on them if they can get them on.

<comment><USER7> I have a few friends that easily outweigh my full size motorcycle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Are bridges collapsing common? Looks like those involved had at least two other bridge related incidents in the past - [http://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/fiu-bridge-collapse- constr...](http://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/fiu-bridge-collapse-construction- firms-accused-of-unsafe-practices-10176596)

<comment><USER9> Not major infrastructural bridges, there's a list on Wikipedia: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bridge_failures](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bridge_failures)

The US seems to have a lot, but there are a lot of bridges in the US. Construction is pretty risky though, there are often elements that are incompletely supported - engineers do plan for this and ensure they are strong enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It appears that the intended final design includes suspension cables, but it looks like it was installed without them attached?

<comment><USER9> It looks like a typical cable-stayed bridge. Often spans are installed in advance of cables by omitting heavy elements, like the deck, so the span is self supporting. The cables are then installed and anchored and the deck is fitted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> >The $14.2 million project was designed as a cable-supported bridge by MCM and Figg Bridge Design. Figg was hired to design the replacement for a bridge on I35 in Minnesota that collapsed in 2007 and killed 13 people.

1 paragraph later.

>"In our 40-year history, nothing like this has ever happened before," Figg said.

EDIT - As others have pointed out... I misread these statements.

<comment><USER12> They designed the _replacement_ that was installed in 2008. The bridge that collapsed was designed by a different company in the 1960s.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-35W_Mississippi_River_bridge...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-35W_Mississippi_River_bridge#Design_and_construction)

<comment><USER11> Oh I see... I've edited my comment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Famous video of "Galloping Gertie" Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapse in 1940:

[https://youtu.be/j-zczJXSxnw](https://youtu.be/j-zczJXSxnw)

</comment><comment><USER14> People died and FIU offered...yes, thoughts and prayers (look at the end of the article). Sigh.</comment>


Please turn this ship around, Phil Schiller - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/keleftheriou/status/1274797917614731265 <comment><USER2> Apple support wants to talk ! \---- Replying to @keleftheriou We'd like to look into this further. If you're interested, DM us some additional details and we'll go from there. [https://twitter.com/AppleSupport/status/1274817193868484609](https://twitter.com/AppleSupport/status/1274817193868484609)

<comment><USER3> What could they possibly do, other than make things worse for him? If the problem goes up to directors, then doesn't that imply that Apple won't change?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Oh boy that e-mail chain looks interesting! But I'll reserve my judgement until it gets released.

</comment><comment><USER5> Please, someone at the DOJ, take antitrust seriously. This demands a breakup.

Put the hardware and OS in the hands of different companies and let alternative software solutions spring up.

Edit. To the downvoters: neverminding the excessive tax, do you consider the toll on innovation this kind of gatekeeping causes? All the wasted human capital spent bending to this draconian ruleset?

All for access to general computing devices that the public uses. Stuff that used to be wide open, but that is now under lock and key.

This isn't fucking fair.

<comment><USER6> Yes, but separating the software and hardware is not the answer. Instead the app store should be regulated or there should be alternative app stores.

<comment><USER7> Yes, yes it is. That will force open hardware specs, right-to-repair, limit damaging DRM, and encourage competitive software and hardware markets. And even multiple software stores, if that's what the market wants.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The head-scratcher for me is that people would rather battle this out with Apple so they can release compiled binary apps for projects that simply display text and images and buttons instead of just using the web for free.

It's only the extreme minority of apps in the app store that couldn't be perfectly usable experiences on the web. Even moreso if developer momentum moved there on mobile.

<comment><USER9> The larger looming issue is we're seeing big tech selectively enforce their rules and guidelines. They've become arbiters of truth and virtue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I hope the email chain is released, it would be helpful to know the thinking process in Apple.

<comment><USER11> It looks like what people were thinking is really what's happening and apple is not looking out for users</comment></comment>


Brazil looks to break from US-centric Internet - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfgate.com/news/world/article/Brazil-looks-to-break-from-US-centric-Internet-4819946.php <comment><USER2> I'm glad I hit refresh and saw that the sensationalist title was edited, but even without that I think this article is a bit over the top. What they're doing is simple-

* Building more direct connections between themselves and other countries, to reduce the amount of traffic going through the US.

* Encouraging companies to host data directly in Brazil, so their privacy laws can be enforced for their citizens.

* Developing an encrypted email service to reduce US spying.

It's not surprising, and it's certainly not going to balkanize the internet. What it could do is cost US companies a ton of money in lost revenue as services move out of the country.

<comment><USER3> Going by your summary, this is plain common sense. And I think the Internet will be stronger for it.

Viva la Brasil

<comment><USER4> Thanks. I don't want to sound as an asshole but...

"Viva la Brasil" \- is spanish and should be "Viva el Brasil"

And we speak Portuguese the correct would be "Viva o Brasil"

And looks like it's impossible to do this without sounding like an asshole, sorry for that.

<comment><USER5> BTW, I think at least in Peninsular Spanish you'd say "Viva Brasil" (omitting the article).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> My country never fails to embarrass me.

Brazil is the world leader in saying that it's going to do something awesome and completely forgetting about doing something in order to make that happen.

Nothing is going to happen.

Example:

In order to have a seat in one of the trips to the international space station, Brazil should develop and build some of the windows of it.

We didn't and not because we don't know how, it was because of politics. In order to make it appear that we didn't fail to the population, the president bought a X million dollars flight ticket to a random guy that today earns money by giving speeches about how dreams come true with hard work and that you can become an astronaut just like him.

The biggest part of the population thinks we earned it by doing something useful for the mission.

I can go on and on about this events if you need more.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/08/world/americas/08rio.html?...](http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/08/world/americas/08rio.html?_r=0)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazilian_Space_Agency#Internat...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazilian_Space_Agency#International_Space_Station)

p.s: look the schedules for the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics and you have a second example.

<comment><USER6> > Nothing is going to happen.

I'm a bit more pessimistic than that. They'll spend a ton of money buying (because we can't build -or even design - it ourselves) before we withdraw and declare success.

> and not because we don't know how, it was because of politics.

Politics contaminate our universities and research centers so deeply that it masks any selection for actual competence. I seriously doubt we could develop a window. Putting someone on the tourist track was the only way a Brazilian could fly. The tab was about US$ 20 million.

For all that it's possible to know, the AEB repeatedly attempted the incredibly stupid idea of launching satellites into LEO using solid-rocket fuel engines. Naturally, all attempts failed, but that didn't stop them from trying until they got 21 people killed on a launch pad explosion. Some conspiracy theorists say it was sabotage, but I don't think such a design warrants the effort - physics alone can take care of it.

<comment><USER7> As someone that is friend of people of Serpro.and know some of Air Force research I feel offended.

Brazil do have researchers and brains and money, and politics get in the way.... We have even particle accelerators of our own design! Also, the rocket project was not scrapped, it is only waiting for new engineers to be trained, since.the last accident killed all of them.

Did you knew, that the card to pay a phone is a Brazilian invention? Or the language Lua that drives games like World of Warcraft, Baldur Gate, Far Cry 2... Or that no country matched Petrobras drilling techniques yet, or that our army use locally invented radars, anti-air equipment and so on. Or that the air force has. a locally invented portable air traffic controller station ( for those curious: it runs Debian ), or that CNPQ is investing heavily in research about how to cure heart problems with stem cells, or that the state universities in Sao Paulo are so good with image recognition that French universities send their students here to learn.

Brazil has one of the best academia in the planet, heritage of the emperor Pedro II that had the vision and.created the current system, and created stuff like the agronomical research institute.

Also we have lots of brilliant people, here ( Carlos lattes for example, that died some time ago ) or elsewhere (I forgot the name of the guy that researches uniting brain with machines, now he works for Duke.University), also we obviously have money

Don't insult researchers, we clearly have political problems that end killing cool stuff like the OSORIO battle tank, but don't claim our academia is incompetent, if it was, other countries would not hire people trained.ed here.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, I agree that Brazil has a ton of brilliant minds and a very inventive people. But unfortunately, here in Brazil, ignorance is a bliss and a very profitable business.

Also, Brazil is the only country that treat treats his researchers like a fast food workers. Poor salaries (when gov. pay something) which obligates them in working on two or three part-time jobs, no gratitude (the phone card, the BINA system, which government didn't helped the inventor on recognizing the patent) and so on. That's why a researcher/cientist stays no more than 2 or 3 years in Brazil after graduation or research publishing.

<comment><USER7> That part, is unfortunately true.

My father met the telecom guys (phone card and BINA), and the government not only did not helped, but did things that made their situation worse, in the end no inventor got any money for his invention.

It is just that the guy saying that the other poster was wrong, and that we don't know how to do stuff, is not only wrong, but insults people that (maybe in a stupid manner) insists in doing stuff here.

There is a reason why one of the biggest Free Software conferences is here in Brazil, and why Maddog (from Linux Foundation) comes here so much (I personally bumped into him in conferences I got invited as speaker about 6 or 7 times, even one totally failed conference where I had like 20 people watching, Maddog was there!), the government invests heavily into IT research. (there is Serpro, Cobra, military, and several other cool stuff! The military in particular has several very insteresting non-weapon projects, the brazillian military seemly loves to make stuff that is good for civilian use)

<comment><USER9> Can you cite examples of non-weapon projects of Brazilian military? (seriously, I'm curious here)

<comment><USER7> ITA (a university that belongs to Air Force) famously let students to opt out of military, and many went around doing cool stuff.

I once saw a presentation of their students once, there are even people that went on to make games and stuff like that.

Also the military here likes to help Linux in general, even submitting patches, the air force in particular loves Debian and Ubuntu (last I checked, they moved 100% of their servers to Debian and 100% of workstations to Ubuntu)

Then we have some air traffic control software being developed, firewalls, anti-virus, whatnot... This is what I learned on tech conferences (thus obviously it is related to tech)

Also I've heard of the military helping people make vehicle engines.

And then we have Taurus (a weapon manufacturer) that had some business with my family, and seemly the military asked them to do some civilian stuff too (like use their armour technology to make clothes for perilous jobs, for example Motorcycle helmets, also they use their gun steel technology for other things, like construction, building factory machines, car parts...)

I think this has to do with that fact that the military here has some... funding issues. And thus need to cooperate a lot with civilian sector to get anything done.

Oh, and famously, the army built some stuff for the federal government that ended being on schedule, and used less money than budgeted (that they returned), although this was supposed to be normal, it was so exceptional that people think it is totally amazing and awesome (here federal government projects IF they don't fail outright, tend to blow both the budget and deadlines, and have shitty quality, result of hiring contractors and not checking ever if they are doing a good job or not, plus corruption).

<comment><USER9> I am a brazilian and I didn't know ANYTHING about those things. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> _" Brazil's wiretapping mania is a holdover from the country's 20-year dictatorship[...] The president of the Supreme Court, who believes he also was spied on, called police methods totalitarian. In September, Brazil's president suspended the head of the spy agency over allegations that it eavesdropped on officials._"

[2008] [http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122331824781908463.html](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122331824781908463.html)

 _" Eavesdropping incidents are not new. A decade ago a presidential conversation was caught when the office of the national development bank was bugged while the Telebrás phone company was being privatised, presumably so that a bidder could gain an advantage over rivals. Other incidents have occurred since, suggesting that Abin agents and phone-company employees can all too easily be bribed."_

[http://www.economist.com/node/12060388](http://www.economist.com/node/12060388)

</comment><comment><USER11> While it's great that countries around the world are belatedly waking up to the fact that the US wields a disproportionate amount of influence on the Internet, which it also uses to shore up its strategic military or commercial objectives, as users we ought to distrust any other country just as much as the US.

IMHO Catch-all Internet surveillance is a drug that no country's intelligence or law-enforcement apparatus can stay away from.

I'm based in India and am under no illusion that my government - given the chance or the technical capability - will attempt to secretly monitor its own citizens in a manner far worse than possibly the US.

So while I distrust the US, I also distrust India when it comes to any kind of "control" over the Internet. And so I hope, will Brazilians.

As users we ought to take our own independent and personal choices on how best to safeguard our online lives.

<comment><USER12> Does India "render" people"?

The difference is the USA acts across the planet, insisting its laws apply to all the world, applying its mockery of a justice system to the majority who never voted for it.

What goes on in India is for Indians. As a Brit I have no fear of Indian justice. US "justice" and attitudes scare the crap out of me.

<comment><USER13> Yes, let's look to the British to tell us how a country should keep to its borders, handle international relations, balance domestic surveillance/privacy concerns, run fair and impartial international trials, and teach us about India.

<comment><USER14> If you are from US, then you might as well because present UK at least seems less imperialistic. However, this could be simply because it wields less power than it did in past centuries.

<comment><USER15> Well, I guess power corrupts etc... etc...

Although, as far as the UK is concerned, I have noticed that once Brits leave the island, the preponderance of their liberalism and tolerance seems to evaporate, leaving only an unpleasant core of xenophobia and bigotry. Or perhaps that is just some sort of self-selection / sampling bias, driven by the sort of people who tend to head off into the wide open yonder?

<comment><USER16> British ex-pats are famous for it for some reason.

I don't think it's all of them (I'd say us but I returned to the motherland a while back), just the ones you notice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> >"It's sort of like a Soviet socialism of computing," he said, adding that the U.S. "free-for-all model works better."

I find it rather annoying that everything that the current Brazilian government does gets labeled as "socialist" or "soviet" or something along those lines. Isn't having the NSA spying on everyone what you would expect of the KGB? So why can't Brazil take measures to protect its interests?

<comment><USER18> There is no privacy in Brazil, you have to put your fingerprints in a database for having an ID card or driver license issued. Biometric access is being enforced for voting and a lot of other trivial citizenship exercises.

There is no doubt that the PT party ("workers party" in Portuguese) has a leftist doctrine that is a mix of "Chavismo" and ancient "soviet" crap that is out of fashion even in Russia. The only reason Brazil is not as trashed as Venezuela is that Brazilian press and other civilian institutions are a little stronger.

Lula (the former president) and Dilma (his puppet and actual president) endorse some of the worst dictatorships governments in the world. Lula even endorsed nut jobs like Ahmadinejad from Iran.

The EUA gives these clowns as a "friendly government" label for lack of a better term. Brazil is not a democracy, it is a dumbocracy.

<comment><USER17> I can never tell if these rants are meant to be taken seriously.

<comment><USER19> They're not to be taken seriously: you have just been introduced to the rabid Brazilian right-wing.

<comment><USER18> I know I should not respond to ad hominem, but here we go.

When I was young I used to blame "the right" for every real or imaginary problem in the world. I dreamed of revolution. When you are 20, if you are not socialist you don't have a heart, but if you are still socialist at 30 you don't have a brain.

I have a book for you (seriously): "Guide to the Perfect Latin American Idiot". This book cured me from "Open Veins of Latin America" and all the leftist crap around here.

Rabid? Sure I'm pissed off with myself for being so naive (even voted for Lula in his first term, just to see the most corrupt government since the end of the military dictatorship) - but not nearly as rabid as the left wing criminal organizations like the MST:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCegy3HMVEw](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCegy3HMVEw) [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyQKO7B85C0](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyQKO7B85C0)

(watch from 0:22s) when they destroyed 7,000 orange trees and got along with it. They damaged heavy machinery, burned down computers, looted employees houses and stole fuel. And got along with it.

These terrorists are funded using my tax payer money by my own schizophrenic government. Everybody that dares to scream "the king is nude" is labeled as a rabid right wing zealot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > break from US-centric Internet

This is in part what the delegates tried to accomplish during the "infamous" ITU summit last year. But Google et al launched a major FUD campaign to _Save the Internet_ , when in reality it was to save American interests and keep control over the net.

<comment><USER21> Well, the proposal was no better that what the americans are doing. I am not from the US but if I have the choice between being the internet being run by the US or china/russia plus a bunch of other dictatorships I will go with the US (but I still abhor the NSA surveillance).

Of cause, I would prefer a better option where there was a system that was not dominated by any countries but I dont see the ITU proposal as being good for the internet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This poses a very interesting psychological problem.

Assuming the NSA is the bully of the situation, I wonder if the fact that the rest of the world will (hopefully) claim more and more independece, will lead NSA to back up and have a more reasonable position, or will cause it (and the government that backs it) to have a more and more bullier attitude position.

After what happened, it's clear that the guys running it have a god-like image of theirselves, and I doubt that within this perspective, one would cast at least some doubt over his actions.

</comment><comment><USER23> _a move that many experts fear will be a potentially dangerous first step toward politically fracturing a global network built with minimal interference by governments_

One could argue that it would be a 'dangerous' _second_ step.

</comment><comment><USER24> I have been thinking about this for a good few years now and I think the idea has some value however it comes at a cost. What makes internet so good is its population. It is the population of the entire world without borders and immigration control. You can talk to anyone and approach anyone or at least you have the ability to.

Knowledge rules and it is directly propotional to the number of people available on the internet. Once nations start going down the track of setting up virtual borders (believe this is what this would lead to), all flow of information will be condemned as it is in the real world. A national network would be used in making solid cases for embargos and sanctions against people and their knowledge, which they were at full liberty to share and disclose as they saw fit. Surely this is not currently at the scale of Great Firewall of China, however, it can easily become that. Consider this move as the first brick.

Surely internet surveilance exists and anybody who thought it wasn't ever since its creation was either stupid or indifferent to the idea. The difference between then and now is that we have proof of this. A nation isolating itself into a pocket of its own internal communication network will not solve this problem. I personally think that it is a step back not a step forward. I believe TOR had the right idea but it is no silver bullet. People of Brazil might think that this is a good thing but rest assured all that would change is they'd be transitioning from global internet surveillance to local internet surveillance.

</comment><comment><USER25> This is what US overreach in spying has led to, and probably more will follow Brazil in doing this soon, and I can't blame them. Hopefully the US government will realize that greed and lust for power aren't always good things, and can sometimes lead to very bad things, and the opposite of what they were expecting to get (breaking the camel's back and all that).

</comment><comment><USER26> "Brazilians are among the most voracious consumers of social media, ranking No. 3 on Facebook and No. 2 on Twitter and YouTube."

While I'm afraid of president's real will, I can't stop thinking about, if we are 3 on FB, 2 on Twitter and Youtube then why not host some of the data here? We got a huge ping delay to those company servers anyway.

</comment><comment><USER27> >"It's sort of like a Soviet socialism of computing," he said, adding that the U.S. "free-for-all model works better."

This is interesting. If Internet did really follow a free-for-all model, NSA would've never happened. In the same way free market benefits U.S. but takes its toll on Rwanda, the "free-for-all" internet of today benefits the Silicon Valley at the expense of the privacy of non-american people. If the United States had already taken measures to inhibit NSA's surveillance instead of justifying its actions and chasing Snowden, Brazil wouldn't have to move in that direction. It's basically U.S. unwillingness to build a truly free Internet that pushes other countries towards "independence". We should also be aware that the source of the news is a San Francisco-based newspaper, which adds yet another layer of enconomic interests to the story.

</comment><comment><USER28> The root cause of all this is the leaked document about a possible backdoor installed within Petrobras IT infrastructure. Since this company has a lot of employees at high/strategic positions nominated directly by the government, we assume that there is a continued information exchange between them and the government, and that this information is so sensitive it could expose high scale politicians to the media in an uncontrolled way (a situation which the current political party in power tries to avoid at all cost). In short, the government knows there is a lot of dirt under the Petrobras rug, and all those actions we read in the article refers to putting heavy furniture on top of it.

<comment><USER26> That's true, I really hope Dilma to piss Obama off so he could show us why Petrobras is about to break.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I live in Brazil and nothing going to happen, trust me. Next.

</comment><comment><USER30> I'd make a comment about how I was trying to keep my data in my own country, but I'm not, Australia is happily going along with PRISM. It's not even reported in the news here.

</comment><comment><USER31> So what's to stop the NDA / GCHQ hiring moles to put trojans inside these networks / organisations and getting the info anyway? I thought this was already happening.

</comment><comment><USER32> Go Brazil!

</comment><comment><USER33> The balkanization of the internet is inevitable, now that we have two push forces towards that, a strong desire to stay away from other countries intelligence agencies and copyright.

<comment><USER34> This is my concern as well. It's somewhat inevitable that the Internet will end up politically divided.

The boundary-less state the fledgling has had was, in American historical corollary, the great western expansion. Eventually though structure, regulation and political boundaries are inserted by institutions designed to do those things.

Brasil building more connections to the rest of the world is a good thing for global infrastructure. Diversity and multiplicity is awesome.

It'll be disappointing once they start tuning their national boundary firewalls and routers to avoid or block services and end up cutting N America out of S America (presuming Chile, Argentina etc. will start moving toward a Brasil-supplied internet).

<comment><USER33> The history with an open and free for all internet that we have enjoyed does inspire me, it is somewhat amazing in retrospect that it was so, despite not having an international organization to defend these principles.

The fact that it happened, perhaps due to those ideas of freedom to share knowledge and connect with each other over wast distances and boundaries, makes me believe it will happen again, in another form.

We will find each other, just like we did on bbs, irc and in various in-game chats and forums, perhaps next time in a field of ciphers, stenography and darknets, small lights of communities will spring up.

Next stop, hyperboria.</comment></comment></comment>