Nobody Knows What an iPad Is Good for Anymore - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2015/01/nobody-knows-ipad-good-anymore/ <comment><USER2> Bit of a stupid title. The iPad has changed my my mom's life and those of her siblings (all retired). My father clings to his PC and constantly asks for tech support. My mom went from having to be taught how to use a mouse (double click was her nemesis) to be able to play games, browse the web, send email and most recently - Facetime! It has significantly improved her quality of life and I am really glad this tech exists.

I am in my 30s and the iPad is pretty useful for me as a device that just works and provides access to books, the web and YouTube. Heck, we use it as an awesome remote when we cast YouTube or Netflix to our apple tv, ps3, chromecast, etc.

<comment><USER3> I agree about the title. As best I can tell, when they say "nobody" they mean "nobody in the marketing department." In short, there's no single overarching theme that describes what iPads are good at, so it's hard to advertise.

Personally, I use my iPad pretty much the same as you do. When it comes to casual web browsing, reading, or videos, the experience is a lot better than a laptop.

<comment><USER4>
        I agree about the title. As best I can tell, when
        they say "nobody" they mean "nobody in the marketing
        department." In short, there's no single overarching
        theme that describes what iPads are good at, so it's
        hard to advertise.

Mainstream media continues to be surprised by the numerous use cases of a Turing machine.

<comment><USER5> And we continue to be surprised by them not undertanding it.

<comment><USER3> I'm no longer surprised by any of the foolishness that journalists get up to, but it's still fun to point it out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Well, number 1, an iPad is good for reducing the amount of free tech support you do for your parents, at least in my case. Reducing doesn't mean eliminating, unfortunately, but buying my parents iPads was still some of the best money I ever spent.

I have three iPads myself. I use two of them every single day, for work, for entertainment, for study, for the weather, etc.

btw, Apple just announced a record quarter with incredible iPad sales. For whatever reason, Apple has a very odd history with the press. You basically shouldn't bother with any story about Apple unless it comes from Daring Fireball. He's kind of an Apple cheerleader, but he also seems to be the only person in the world who will fact-check a story about Apple before publishing it.

</comment><comment><USER6> I really dislike the idea that people need to be told what they should use their technology for. Tablets are just computers and they run software, like every other computer. What you do with it is up to your imagination.

My girlfriend and I keep an iPad plugged into our stereo receiver via an auxiliary cable and use it as a Spotify terminal. My dad's iPad is his primary computing device. It seems like a lot of other people in this thread have similar stories. So, clearly, saying "nobody" knows what an iPad is good for is a little bit of a stretch.

<comment><USER7> Another example: Toddlers love iPads. I've talked to new parents who are astonished how easily their 15-month-olds navigate the Youtube iPad app (most of them set up playlists for their toddlers). There's also a huge collection of toddler-friendly games and apps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm a developer, but my iPad is my primary computing device while at home. My laptop died about a year ago, and I decided to save money and just use the iPad that I got as a Christmas bonus. About the only thing I ever feel I lack is legacy support for older Windows games. With the occasional keyboard pairing for longer emails, I would say that the only thing it really lacks is the ability to archive photos from my camera. Maybe I'm in the minority here in that I specifically don't do any development or really intense computing tasks at home, but I think that my use case mirrors much of the non-technical world. I know of many people who use iPads as their primary computing devices.

I think it's more accurate to say that tech journalists don't know what an iPad is good for anymore.

</comment><comment><USER9> _an interactive playbook for hockey coaches, a touchscreen map for storm chasers, a training assistant for sumo wrestlers, a field guide for identifying fish when you're scuba diving, a cutting-edge tool for fixing wind turbines._

The author answers his own question...enterprise. iPads are seeing massive adoption in Architecture Construction and Engineering (Plangrid comes to mind), not to mention medical and insurance practice. Go to any enterprise rent a car and they are using tablets exclusively for contracts with clients.

The consumer/causal user use case may not be there but there is a real need to be able to take a powerful computer with you that has network capabilities, screen sharing/powerpoint display, cameras all without needing to lug around a keyboard and mouse (yes I consider a laptop lugging around).

Especially when you consider power on/off time there is a big difference in use case that makes it perfect for enterprise.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is a dumb article. Sales growth has slowed because iPads are computers and don't have a 2 year repurchase cycle. There are only so many people out there who don't own a tablet of some kind and an iPad will last a lot longer than an iPhone.

The iPad 2 is still a very good tablet for a lot of people. Not a huge reason to upgrade until it breaks.

Also, nerds might not love it, but my wife adores her Kindle Fire HD and uses it all the time. For recipes, surfing the web, and watching videos, that is all she needs.

<comment><USER11> >> iPads are computers and don't have a 2 year repurchase cycle

If you regularly update to the latest OS release, you will barely get past the second year. In my experience, "the final major version OS to run on any iOS device" is generally annoyingly slow.

It might be better these days, but it wasn't the case with my original iPad, iPhone 3G and 4. I'm glad I told my wife not to update her 4S to 8 (i.e., the final major version that will be available for the 4S), because updating to 7 had already noticeably slowed down her phone.

<comment><USER10> There are literally millions of computers happily running Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, old versions of OS X, Android 2.x, and 2+ year old releases of Linux.

For what a lot of people do on computers, old software still works just fine. Yes, you don't get all the latest updates, but millions of people don't care at all. Certainly millions don't care enough to spend money to upgrade. More than that, a lot of people don't really notice the difference.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't agree with the analogy. There's a bigger qualitative difference between PCs and mobile devices than between cars and trucks.

The need for a real PC has never gone away for me. A tablet or phone is something I can waste a little bit of time on or use on an airplane. They're great for that, but they're passive devices for consumption, not production.

Real work (anything that requires more than a small amount of input) and even real entertainment (playing a full-sized game, reading/watching longer pieces) is not comfortable for me on a mobile device. It would be a significant compromise to go without a real PC. The efforts to make a tablet act like a computer (like attaching a physical keyboard) don't go nearly far enough to bridge the gap.

<comment><USER13> Based on what you said, I think the analogy still holds. You talk about work - that's the truck. Others talk about just browsing/Facebook/etc - that's the car.

iPads (and iPhones) are awesome for some stuff - if I want to send a "fax" I just take a photo and email/message it (say to my insurance company). Scanning documents on my desktop is... not easy. Even doing the exact same operation (take picture and send) is fraught with difficulty.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I can't use an iPad for much more than reading books, casual web browsing, casual chess and a game or two.

For work I split 75%/25% between a PC and Mac, both with multiple large high- resolution monitors, proper keyboards, trackballs and a Wacom tablet. I couldn't imagine coding on an iPad or working on anything serious enough. The closed nature of the platform, with lack of file system access, user accounts, peripheral connectivity and lack of expansion (memory being a key issue) makes the ipad inconvenient at best.

But wait! There's nothing whatsoever wrong with this scenario. I am perfectly happy with what the iPad does for me. Sure, it can't match my 16 core PC with 24gigs of SDRAM, three monitors and five hard drives. It doesn't have to!

Different devices for different uses. And the ipad is great for what I do with it. Ideal? No, of course. Editing text is a pain in the ass, the screen is too small and some websites absolutely suck on it (Please STOP disabling zoom!). The iPad is very useful. I am sure people outside engineering/design might find a lot more use out of it.

<comment><USER15> Not to mention it's much easier to lie in bed or on the couch with an ipad than with an awesome general computing setup...

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Barring the title, the article touches upon some right notes. Ipad quarterly sales are down by about 21% YOY going by the latest quarterly earnings report from Apple (1). With the Iphone 6 and Iphone 6 plus coming out, I guess there's not much reason, except for certain use cases, for people to buy an Ipad. Apple surely recognizes that and is probably looking to reverse the trend with the rumored Ipad Pro (2).

(1) [http://venturebeat.com/2015/01/27/apple-breaks-its-sales- rec...](http://venturebeat.com/2015/01/27/apple-breaks-its-sales-records- with-74-5m-iphones-in-q1-2015-but-ipad-sales-decline-21-to-21-4m/)

(2) [http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/ipad/big-screen-ipad-pro- plus...](http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/ipad/big-screen-ipad-pro-plus-release- date-rumours-leaked-images-stylus-3492180/)

<comment><USER17> I used to work for Gazelle, a company that buys used iPhones, iPads, etc. from consumers. We found that the iPads we bought were generally in much worse shape than the iPhones. We believed this suggested that people were using their iPads quite a bit. Anecdotally, among my friends and family iPads are in almost constant use. So even if we don't know what iPads are good for we seem to use them a lot.

I wonder how much of this is just that people are not upgrading their iPads as often as they upgrade their phones. I'm still relatively happy with my iPad 2 and I've had three different iPhones during the time I've owned it. A lot of my friends are in similar situations. I think we all kind of agree that iPads are too expensive to justify frequent upgrades, especially when they're still useable.

I bought an iPhone 6 Plus thinking it would replace the iPad but found that, while I still really like the 6 Plus' size, it doesn't really work that well for prolonged reading or the lazy internet surfing the author mentions in the article.

<comment><USER18> I think your observations re: Gazelle point to the situation that telecom companies drive shorter upgrade cycles for phones, often hiding their cost and allowing three year upgrades. In contrast people generally pay full price for tablets, and upgrade less frequently.

<comment><USER17> Yes, that's definitely true. Plus iPads are not essential in the way phones are. They're luxury items.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Just since it hasn't been mentioned - I'd never buy my kids an iPhone 6+ to share, but when our coming up on 4-years-old iPad2 finally becomes unfeasible we'll absolutely get a new iPad. Not to mention the general and more formal education market...

<comment><USER20> I agree, our 4 year old loves our iPad. Sure he could use a phone but the much bigger screen is great.

I also have some Windows 8 tablets, and sometimes he uses my MBP, but generally those are far too complex for young children. The iPad is great, and there is a wealth of great educational apps and games for kids.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> My son's school (Junior Kindergarten to Gr 5) uses iPads as part of their learning environment. We (the Parent Council) are helping fund the purchase of AppleTV devices for the classrooms so students can share what they're doing on the iPad with the whole class.

By all estimations from teachers and students alike, this has been a wonderful tool for teaching and learning.

Now, I don't own any apple products at all, so (having never held an iPad myself) I'm not really sure what they can actually do, so the question "what is this device good for" is one I cannot really answer from personal experience ... but I think in-school work is probably an excellent use-case.

<comment><USER22> I had a discussion with a former co-worker that is the Lead for A/V and smart class rooms at my former work. They looked at Apple TV to do just that and decided that there were to many security/room for mischief issues for Apple TV. I can't remember who, but they are evaluating a air-play device that offers more granular control. might not be as big of a deal in k-5 as it is in higher ed though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I had the same experience, I bough one and a week later I sent it back. It was annoying to hold on my lap because you can't put the screen at the angle you want, my macbook has 5hr plus battery life, it is on when I open it, it never has viruses, it just works... like an iPad.

My in laws however, who curse their windows machine when they have to reinstall every year because of unbearable slowness and crap piling up, that is a very different story.

<comment><USER24> Yeah, I feel bad for normal users who buy pc laptops. The come loaded with antivirus crapware that they threaten the user to buy after 30 days, and usually become virus laden and slow after a few months of use because normal users are so naive when downloading programs. For that reason alone, the Ipad is a better device for most people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> For me the killer app for an iPad is reading and highlighting/annotating documents. The ability to download a bunch of PDFs (in my case, mostly corporate filings) into a Dropbox folder, and immediately sync that folder to the iPad so I can start reading and highlighting (with changes automatically saved back to Dropbox) has completely changed my workflow, making me a lot more efficient.

</comment><comment><USER26> strangely, in my experience, people under 25 and over 45 love ipads, whereas everyone between 25 and 45 really don't have a use for them (including myself).

wonder if this is a wider trend or i just have a very self-selected peer group (i'm early 30s). everyone in my social circle is 25-45 and either needs to type very quickly or wants nothing to do with computers or gadgets beyond the basics.

</comment><comment><USER27> This article certainly resonates with me. For a long time, tablets never made sense to me.

I've had 13" laptops for a decade now (iBook G4 12", MacBook 1st Gen Intel, Lenovo X220), and they were always highly portable and had decent battery life. Along came smartphones with ever increasing screen sizes, leading up to my trusty Note 2.

I've tried a number of tablets. 7" is too similar to my phone. 10" is too close to the laptop. I need a separate bag for it anyway, and it feels about as practical as the laptop at home. I never considered tablets being devices to work on, and I'm that guy who will use his laptop on the couch just because I'm still used to it.

Along came tablets with stylus. Being able to scribble and take notes on a screen just made sense, even if there was no OCR and it's all just bitmaps. I followed suit on the retina jump, switching from a 10" Android Thinkpad Tablet to a Note 10 2014. I have to say, the tablet _with stylus_ is about the best computer I've ever used. I use it to display scores when singing, to draw bitmap sketches when designing, to read PDF _and scribble away in it_ , etc.. LectureNotes is the killer app that made me buy into the whole device class.

Granted I still play Hearthstone on it, I watch Youtube and Twitch, I browse the web and do internet stuffs, but that would never be worth the maintenance effort of owning a separate device between my phone and my laptop. At some point I'd like to try a Windows Tablet, I heard they have better PDF viewers and decent OCR. iOS devices on the other hand feel completely out of place to me nowadays. Phones are nice if impractically small, but tablets are nothing more than beautiful toys, and they're all overpriced by a factor of 4 relative to the use I see in them. They'd be nice as a fourth device, but not as a first or second one.

</comment><comment><USER28> As a student, the iPad has changed my life. I no longer need to purchase giant 3 ½ pound tombs that cause back and shoulder pain. I just get them for my iPad and they're all on one lightweight device.

It just renders text books so perfectly. I have a smart phone, but there's no replacement for that big, 9.7 inch screen. It makes web pages and PDFs so pleasurable to read.

I think the sales have slowed because the upgrade cycle for tablets is similar to the upgrade cycle for computers. I've had my iPad with retina display for over 2 years and, unless it breaks, I don't see a reason to get a new one.

One side effect of having an iPad is that it has allowed me to have a clunkier PC life. I have a workstation set up with a 15inch MacBook, a second monitor, mount, usb hub, keyboard, mouse and the works. I no longer have to worry about its portability because I have my tablet.

</comment><comment><USER29> My computing devices are: an iphone (4s), an ipad (air 2), and a windows computer with a 27" monitor. I also have a kindle, but that's not general purpose.

I could probably replace the computer and ipad with a macbook, but 1) it would cost more money and 2) wouldn't be as mobile and easy to use as the ipad (for surfing in bed / on the couch, watching movies while eating, listening to music) or as usable as the windows computer (for coding and playing games) because of the smaller screen size and the relatively crappy keyboard / mouse. I could remedy the latter limitations with a docking station, separate monitor and keyboard, but now the solution is not just more expensive but much more expensive and even more cumbersome as compared to the ipad.

</comment><comment><USER30> The iPad is a tool for consumption rather than production. For those without an iPhone, I think the iPad is a terrific device for consuming content.

I think that if the iPad could serve to bridge the gap between consumption and production, then its place would be clear.

I own a Surface Pro 3 and I adore the ability to switch between consumption and production. However, its presentation and implementation leave a lot to be desired. It's often jarring switching between the clean Windows Store apps that were designed for touch, and the "Desktop" apps that dump you into the familiar, but frustrating, desktop where the mouse and keyboard dominate.

I feel that, if done well, a multipurpose device could supplant the incumbents.

</comment><comment><USER31> I use my ipad daily, for work and entertainment. When I'm working from home it's nice to have on my coffee table so I can see when I get a new email, or alert from the office. I leave my laptop in my office connected to a bigger monitor and would just go downstairs if I needed to reply to an email, or something. Then in the evening, I read hacker news, tv guide app, awesome Netflix/hulu remote with the chromecast. When I go to holidays at my relatives I always bring it to facetime my dad who lives in Hawaii. It's lite and easy to pass around the room so he can have a little visit.

I'm not able to write code or really produce much, but it's a great tool IMO.

</comment><comment><USER32> I don't really buy this. I see literally dozens of people a day using tablets – mostly iPads. They're reading books, playing games, watching videos, using Facebook. I think it's pretty clear what it's good for.

I suspect that iPad sales have declined not as a result of the iPhone 6(+), but because the market is becoming saturated. There's little reason to upgrade past a certain point – sure, iPad 1 -> 2, and iPad 2 -> Retina were improvements. But aside from general performance improvements, there haven't been many changes since. In this situation, it's hard to see why most users would upgrade.

</comment><comment><USER33> The latest episode of 99% Invisible does a great job of covering this topic. I highly recommend it.

[http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/of-mice-and- men/](http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/of-mice-and-men/)

A great analogy used in the piece (spoiler?) compared PCs to bicycles and tablets and phones to tricycles. Anyone can just hop on a tricycle and go around the block, but you need to learn and practice riding a bicycle. The thing is, you cannot commute to work on a tricycle. The counter argument is that modern smart phones and tablets are closer to 3-wheel recumbent bikes than tricycles.

</comment><comment><USER34> The biggest issue for me is: iCloud sync/Documents in the Cloud. When I used the iPad I had to manage my global/individual app settings daily and still found annoying holes where an both first and third-party apps wouldn't sync across my iCloud data. What's worse is that Apple doesn't give the user enough feedback when it's syncing data. (It's supposed to be magic, I suppose..)

I found that Third party sync services seemed worked much better than iCloud for me.

It just got too annoying. I couldn't ditch my iPhone, so the iPad had to go.

</comment><comment><USER35> I think it should replace all the textbooks in the university. It is incredible the amount of dead trees that goes into making all those textbooks that are in turn are very difficult to transport and use.

Perhaps textbook social learning app? Something, native, fast and reliable. So you can do your homework in your study group and have the results to be shared between all people in one place with a textbook.

I think iPad fell short with its textbook software - can someone make a platform. There is the issue of expensive and profitable dead tree textbooks though.

</comment><comment><USER36> My Mom practically pays all her bills, watches youtube, does whatever she wants with her iPad. Same for other family members who aren't computer savvy and just need to get by.

</comment><comment><USER37> It's fair to say that the initial enthusiasm and popularity of tablets is crashing to reality.

When they first came out they sold like crazy even though we didn't know what they were for.

Finally we are seeing where they can fit in, but it is less than we dreamed, partially supplanted by smartphones and phablets; and came at a significant cost after many failures.

As a result many people have tablets they don't and can't imagine using (myself included), anecdotal evidence that leads to mistaken conclusions.

</comment><comment><USER38> It's much better for reading, that alone is enough for me. I have a new big iPhone but still use my iPad to read every day.

</comment><comment><USER39> My iPad Air is much better than any phablet for reading books on Kindle-and lets me honest, the way tablets and phones are designed these days, its not like carrying an iPad Air _and_ my trusty 5s takes up a lot of weight or space. There's practically no weight/space penalty these days for carrying a dedicated phone and tablet.

</comment><comment><USER40> It's an amazing platform for making music. The touch screen means every instrument can have it's own custom controller interface (used to need tons of hardware for hands-on tweaking).

Of course, it's also a great computer replacement for people who don't do much beyond surf/email/casual-game.

</comment><comment><USER41> Never found a use case with a tablet that worked for me. I have my main PC, a laptop and a large phone.

Then again I was never one to sit on a couch and watch tv with a laptop so I figured I was not in the right demographic for an ipad.

</comment><comment><USER42> With Duet Display, it makes an excellent portable second monitor for a MacBook...

</comment><comment><USER43> The iPad is good for letting me keep my work and play separate. I play on the iPad -- I work on my (linux) laptop.

</comment><comment><USER44> Kids.

</comment><comment><USER45> iPads are great consumption devices. But one place I've seen them that shocked me was as point of sale devices. They seem to be taking over the cash register market.

</comment><comment><USER46> Did we ever know? I will concede that it was good for the random user doing some casual internet use while watching TV before phones got big enough for that, but I would contest if it ever had a single unique use other than that even at launch. Any device with a single purpose seems likely to fail, I think.

>Innovations like automatic transmission

I'd count that (or indeed, tablets) an 'innovation' in the same way as PRISM or systemd. Sure, it is one in that it's new and a different approach and even helps a very specific class of users, but not a net positive. I guess that's just the state of the world though, that we will always be forced to accept 'innovation' that does nothing but make life hard for the power user, the enthusiast, the person with an above-room-temperature IQ.

>had to be "far better" than a phone or a laptop

That's where it gets interesting, I think. As stated above, better than a phone contemporary to its launch, yes, but it was never better than a laptop bar "easier to pick up and carry around", which rarely applied to what are so often sofa-bound devices, or shoved into a backpack on a long journey at most.

<comment><USER47> > I guess that's just the state of the world though, that we will always be > forced to accept 'innovation' that does nothing but make life hard for the > power user, the enthusiast, the person with an above-room-temperature IQ.

I like how not wanting to use computing devices in the same way you like to is a mental defect in your world. Wow.

<comment><USER48> The way the GP put it is a little harsh, yes, but i can see where they're coming from. Personally, i think a device that "just works" is great. Really. For certain people (i agree, not low-IQ people, just non computer enthusiasts). And this is where the iPad shines. My gripe, though, would be that it doesn't cater to the power user who wants to modify components and software / create (whether that be a novel, a song, or a piece of software) in the same way that a general-purpose (and i'd go as far as to say open- source/libre software) computer does. I like hacking at my editor and being able to plug in an Arduino, and an iPad wouldn't let me do that.

Having said all of that, my response is: if that is a deal-breaker for you (like it is for me), don't buy an iPad. Simple. The iPad has it's target market very well defined and served (even if i do lament the fact that it's such a DRM / walled garden / evil spying companies experience, where the user is the product).

<comment><USER3> I can't really see where they're coming from. The existence of an easy tool doesn't eliminate the more powerful tools, and even advanced users sometimes want easy tools.

I'm a computer power user by any reasonable definition. I program for a living, I customize a lot of stuff, and I get pretty upset whenever I try to run an unsigned binary and my Mac decides this is too unsafe and makes me jump through hoops to make it happen.

But I also use my iPad a lot. If I'm reading on the couch or watching a video, it gets the job done much better.

It's fine to say that it's not for you, but it's ridiculous to say that simpler tools must only be for people who are incapable of using advanced tools.

<comment><USER28> > I get pretty upset whenever I try to run an unsigned binary and my Mac > decides this is too unsafe and makes me jump through hoops to make it > happen.

In my experience, a simple right click -> open (as opposed to double click) gets the job done. Is this what you're refering to?

<comment><USER3> Doesn't that only open it once, and if I want to keep using it I have to go flip the setting in System Preferences? And in Apple's infinite wisdom, that setting now resets if you haven't exercised it in a while, which is pretty crazy.

<comment><USER28> No, once you open it that way (on an admin account) it's supposed to allow you to open it normally from then on. I beleive you if you say it has bugged on you though.

<comment><USER3> Either way, I'll be sure to try it out next time I run into it and see what it does.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


PopCorn Time - <AUTHOR> http://popcorn-time.se/#

<comment><USER2> >Our user's safety comes first!! Therefore we added a free Built-in VPN so you can use Popcorn Time ANONYMOUSLY!

Eeeh. As somebody else on HN said before, I'm wary of people paying money out of their own pocket so that I can enjoy pirated media.

</comment><comment><USER3> Isn't that a clone of the original PopcornTime? Those guys are still alive and kicking right here: [https://popcorntime.io](https://popcorntime.io)

They also have their source-code as a git repo (now self-hosted since they got DMCA'd on GitHub): [https://git.popcorntime.io/](https://git.popcorntime.io/) And a status page: [http://status.popcorntime.io/](http://status.popcorntime.io/)

<comment><USER4> So this one probably is fork of the original PopcornTime with a built-in VPN? Thats all right?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> So, I'm a bit confused: it looks like Time4Popcorn (a Popcorn Time fork) has rebranded as Popcorn Time based on the Facebook link on the bottom of the page, and used the original Popcorn Time's website (at popcorntime.io). Despite the fact that the original Popcorn Time project still exists. Is this some sort of weird open source turf war, or what?

EDIT: In case you missed it, scroll to the bottom: [http://imgur.com/S6CBHqI](http://imgur.com/S6CBHqI)

</comment><comment><USER6> I mean, it's cool tech, a pretty site, etc, but it's still encouraging you to break the law. And no HN, I'm not getting dragged into another debate about that :)

</comment><comment><USER7> Is there anything of particular interest happening on the site now? There doesn't seem to be any new release or any kind of announcement, and this has been featured on HN before.

While the free VPN feature is cool, it's been there for at least a month already.

For those who haven't seen it before and are disinclined to go to the site: PopCorn Time is a slick client app around watching streaming torrents of popular movies. ThePirateBay for the masses.

</comment><comment><USER8> I would watch this very closely if I were the MAFIA, but I wouldn't shut it down. A centralized location for viewing torrented movies could provide a way to monetize torrented media. I would gladly kick in a couple bucks when I watch a movie to help support the art if I got the convenience Popcorn Time purports to have (I've not used it).

I realize that takes a level of strategic thinking the MAFIA aren't known for, but it's worth hoping.

<comment><USER9> >I realize that takes a level of strategic thinking the MAFIA aren't known for

i bet they (the existing distribution channels/companies) have thought about it, and have projected that there is less profit to be made that way, due to the fact that their entrenched business model is incompatible (thus require a lot of new investment). If it was more profitable, it would've been done already!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> They were closed down, but they're back under a new domain name. Hence the promotion here.

[http://au.ibtimes.com/articles/572006/20141107/popcorn- time-...](http://au.ibtimes.com/articles/572006/20141107/popcorn-time- beta-5-0-pirate-bay.htm)

Also, trying to do Netflix over Tor isn't going to scale.

</comment><comment><USER11> Since the original popcorn time shut down there's been numerous forks. I'm curious to know if they're using RootVPN (I think that's the name of it) that was advertised by TPB. Looks like they also touched up on the UI as well compared to the original Popcorn Time (based on the screen-shots).

</comment><comment><USER12> Didn't know that it comes with a torrent VPN

</comment><comment><USER13> isn't it last year's news?</comment>


A man says he's stockpiling billions of our photos - <AUTHOR> https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/10/tech/clearview-ai-ceo-hoan-ton-that/index.html <comment><USER2> Is there recourse for those who have had their images repurposed for face detection?

I don't know if GDPR applies, but the images were collected without consent at the very least. Plus the copyright to these images belongs either to the platform they were originally published on or to the photographer (or both).</comment>


Why Hong Kongers Are Sawing Down Sensor-Laden Lampposts - <AUTHOR> https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2019/08/hong-kongers-are-sawing-down-sensor-laden-lampposts/159568/ <comment><USER2> China has leveraged "smart city" technologies to build open air Panopticons.

</comment><comment><USER3> Saved you a click: They don't want to be identified.</comment>


Waves in Saturn's rings give precise measurement of planet's rotation rate - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2019-01-saturn-precise-planet-rotation.html <comment><USER2> Question for the astrophysicists: is Jupiter's high mass and rotation rate sizable enough to detect and measure frame drag on the rings?

<comment><USER3> The Schwarzschild radius of Saturn is 3 *(Msat/MSun) km ~ 0.85 m, so it's much smaller than Saturn Radius ~ 6x10^7 m. As such, I believe any GR effect is probably absolutely negligible at the location of Saturn's rings.

<comment><USER2> Well even in earths orbit GR is not negligible, say even for the purposes of GPS

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Amazing that the idea was first suggested in a PhD thesis, even before we could observe the rings directly!</comment>


Duke Officials Silenced Med Student Who Reported Trouble in Anil Potti's Lab - <AUTHOR> http://www.cancerletter.com/articles/20150109_1 <comment><AUTHOR> What drives me absolutely crazy about the story is this:

"Duke officials admitted that mistakes were made, but didn't respond to specific questions."

Note the passive tone. These are not junior people we are dealing with. These are very senior deans and professors that will face absolutely no accountability whatsoever for trying to cover up a case of serious misconduct - and the incredibly brave student that spoke out was threatened into silence.

It reminds me of the Schon scandal at Bell Labs. Again, someone faked a huge amount of data, and bosses were all too happy to put their names at the end of all the high impact papers he produced... yet again, when the fraud came to light, none of the bosses suffered absolutely any repercussion.

<comment><USER2> What's criminal is that this impacted cancer trials. Yes, mistakes were made, and yes, people should go to jail for this.

<comment><USER3> Don't forget, somebody was possibly denied the job and his or her trajectory possibly changed because of this lying SOB.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think everyone more or less agrees that Anil Potti is a disgrace to science, and he has been practically blacklisted from mainstream science.

What this article shows though, is that his bosses were directly involved in the cover up - and lied through their teeth about the lack of a whistleblower to the people who went through clinical trials based on made up data.

Now, Potti took the fall - what will happen to those people who tried to silence the whistle blower? I'm not suggesting they are as guilty as Potti, but if you are willing to share in the credit, you must be willing to take a portion of the blame when things turn sour.

<comment><USER4> > if you are willing to share in the credit, you must be willing to take a > portion of the blame when things turn sour

Ah...reminds me of a good Wire quote from Lieutenant Daniels: "You should never take credit when the crime rate drops, unless you want to take the blame when its rises."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The Retraction Watch blog maintained by two medical journalists has done some very interesting reporting about the Anil Potti case over the time that the case has been in the news.[1] For a while, Retraction Watch had to take down its blog entries about Potti because of a bogus DMCA takedown notice, but the blog posts have now been restored, and provide background to the interesting (and dismaying) story kindly submitted here.

[1] [http://retractionwatch.com/?s=Anil+Potti](http://retractionwatch.com/?s=Anil+Potti)

<comment><USER6> Who filed the DMCA takedowns? Can we find out?

<comment><USER7> An indian news site copied their posts and then DMCA'd their site:

[http://retractionwatch.com/2013/02/05/wordpress-removes- anil...](http://retractionwatch.com/2013/02/05/wordpress-removes-anil-potti- posts-from-retraction-watch-in-error-after-false-dmca-copyright-claim/)

<comment><USER8> What the hell. That's crazy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Unfortunately, it's par for the course. There's a major problem in academia: there's too much to gain from publications of successful research ($$$, fame, citations). The result of all this data massaging is years of wasted research and millions (billions) of dollars chasing ghosts. (By the way: also in companies, but to a lesser extent)

[http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/28/us-science- cancer-...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/28/us-science-cancer- idUSBRE82R12P20120328)

"A former researcher at Amgen Inc has found that many basic studies on cancer -- a high proportion of them from university labs -- are unreliable, with grim consequences for producing new medicines in the future.

During a decade as head of global cancer research at Amgen, C. Glenn Begley identified 53 "landmark" publications -- papers in top journals, from reputable labs -- for his team to reproduce. Begley sought to double-check the findings before trying to build on them for drug development. [...] Result: 47 of the 53 could not be replicated. "

<comment><USER10> I really want to think that this particular attempt at reproduction is not quite as bad as it sounds, because replicating this stuff can be very hard, depends on special reagents (cell lines, viri, etc. etc.)....

On the other hand, these are by definition high impact studies, ones Amgen wanted to try to develop drugs upon, and they wouldn't have gone public unless they were reasonably sure they'd given them a legitimate try. And I already assume at least 1/2 of biomedical research is junk ... and it wasn't just because I found organic chemistry easy and fun, I switched my major to chemistry in part because I didn't like the ... vibes, for lack of a better word, I got from the (MIT) biology department, aside from my adviser Phillip Sharp (who was clearly going to get a Nobel soon, and from solid research; Lord Baltimore, though ... did not impress).

<comment><USER11> If the purpose of these science experiments is to "move the ball down the field" (add to the sum of human knowledge/science), wouldn't it be fair to say that if the results can't be duplicated by other scientists, then the original authors haven't succeeded in increasing human knowledge?

<comment><USER10> Well, it depends on the process. Normally when this sort of thing happens, those trying to build upon another's research will contact the lab that did it and try to figure out what's wrong.

My favorite professor, Jerry Lettvin, discovered a marvelous thing about frog's eyes: unlike/in addition to the basic edge detector sort of things we've got, they have a specific "bug detector", simulated in the lab with a bowl over the frog's head, and something black that's moved into the frog's vision via a magnet on the other side. And of course probe(s) in the optic nerve.

Another lab had difficultly reproducing this (this was seriously novel, and in theory easy and cheap to reproduce), so Jerry practiced for a while doing the procedure with side-cutters ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diagonal_pliers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diagonal_pliers)), and then showed up at that lab in his usual not clean shaven, simple and slightly dirty blue work shirt and black pants, and got the experiment to work with the lab's equipment (e.g. probe(s) and oscilloscope) ... and the side- cutters he brought ^_^.

(The frogs were, BTW, reported to apparently not be terribly hurt by this, and after healing up exhibited normal frog behavior. Then again, if I was in that lab, I'd be harvesting them for their tasty legs, as I did with all the bull frogs I shot with my BB gun growing up, in addition to dissecting them :-).

<comment><USER12> This is fairly common--if work is genuinely original there is likely a good deal of technique involved. There is a lot of laboratory science that is more like craft, and it's always been this way. Reproducibility of novel results should be expected to be poor, and getting to the point of reproduction will often be difficult.

So "failure to reproduce on the first few attempts" does not mean "bad science".

In genomics, however, failure to reproduce was the norm for many years. There were a few spectacularly good early results that held up, but the ubiquitous use of cross-validation (which unless done with insane care is simply invalid) and analysis of significance that was frequently just wrong meant that a lot of results were published that were the numerical equivalents of early Royal Society papers on deformed cows and the like: meticulous descriptions of anomalous one-offs.

A lot of what is happening is generational: the older generation of biological researchers were never trained or equipped with anything like the analytical tools required to cope with the large numerical datasets that labs started generating in the '90's thanks to new technologies in the wake of the Human Genome Project.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> That is incredibly brave of Bradford Perez. So much on the line, in a position of very little power, and still followed his conscious. Whistleblowers are often very admirable.

<comment><USER10> Only a bit. When push came to shove, he chose his career over stopping the fraud being used to (mis-)treat patients, who suffered for another couple of years, becuase he manifestly did not blow the whistle when Duke went into cover-up mode.

His 3rd year was already blown (and that sort of thing happens when you get in the lab of an incompetent†); instead of putting the interests of the patients first, he submitted a false affidavit to the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in a go along, get along attempt to get funding to redo his 3rd year (I surmise from the article that he was unsuccessful).

I'd be a lot easier on him if this wasn't feeding into patient care at the same exact time he was reporting this. I don't insist every scientist who discovers "misconduct" do a Margaret O'Toole† and move from the lab to answering phones for her brother's moving company (Gentle Giant, they were great in the early '90s), but there was a lot more at stake than research that would get invalidated in due course as people tried to build upon it.

I suppose it's only fitting that currently his life is being turned upside down as a star witness for the inevitable lawsuits.

† I had a girlfriend who found it impossible to do undergraduate research (UROP) in Imanishi-Kari's lab, it was _very_ poorly run. I doubt Imanishi-Kari committed fraud _then_ , just shoddy, incorrect research, but per the Secret Service, the government's experts on paper and inks, she certainly did when the investigation got serious.

<comment><USER14> I think it's important to point to the best person in the room and say, be more like that guy. He may not be a paragon of scientific values, but at least he's well above the rest.

You're basically asking the junior developer to question all the senior developers, the lead developers, and the executive managers. There is only so many people a person can say are wrong. It's not possible for him to know everything, for all he knew he was wrong, and the professors were merely unwilling to take the time to explain it (or bring in an outside professor to explain it). That smelled wrong enough for him to get out, but he probably had a nagging thought in the back of his mind that he simply didn't understand.

<comment><USER10> Nope, what he found was very clear, enough that he felt compelled to remove his name from all that the laboratory was doing, in part to protect his reputation, and to completely abandon this attempt at his 3rd year in med school with no guarantee he'd get funding for a retry. He outlined this in a 3 page document that other uninvolved scientists have found very impressive, and that is clearly, along with his depositions providing a major foundation for the current legal case(s) (Duke has big pockets and very dirty hands, this is not going to end well for them). He was being very certain in my book.

There's also the responses of the PI and the PI's mentor. A real scientist doesn't take such questions as "a personal insult" as the now almost completely disgraced PI did (state medical boards that are desperate like North Dakota will still license the PI as a doctor, at last count). The PI's mentor wasn't that sort of unprofessional, but the article says he didn't respond well to this. Note also one of the Duke higher ups, apparently unprompted, introduced the word "misconduct" in all this.

If you're going to be a "life and death doctor" as I put it, for him one of the harshest examples of that, oncology, you're going to be making a _lot_ of decisions that patients lives hinge on. A degree of certainty and decisiveness, what some call doctors' "God Complex", is required. I judge that he was sufficiently certain in his judgement of the research, _and its implications for patients being treated based on it at the time_. It's that last bit that I believe requires you to go above and beyond in determining if you're correct or not, and then doing what's right for the patients.

<comment><USER14> Ever hear of Imposter Syndrome? [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome)

And for that matter it's inverse: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Keith Baggerly and Kevin Coombes of the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center tried to replicate the work and were instrumental in getting the investigation going. They have a very helpful synopsis here: [http://bioinformatics.mdanderson.org/Supplements/ReproRsch-A...](http://bioinformatics.mdanderson.org/Supplements/ReproRsch- All/Modified/StarterSet/)

</comment><comment><USER16> There's just something wrong with a system when a "a third-year medical student and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute scholar" is considered "lowly status."

Years of innovative thinking from highly intelligent individuals wasted by tenured illusions of grandeur and beaten into institutional submission to serve the status quo...

<comment><USER10> Maybe.

Thing is, he's the equivalent of a grad student, which is the official place to start your apprenticeship in learning Science, which is what he was doing (see what he does praise the PI for). The only people in a lab who are lower in status are undergraduates and technicians.

<comment><USER16> I understand his educational status. But my point was, for example, dismissing an idea suggested by a child simply because the idea came from a child, not on a qualitative basis.

Clearly higher learning institutions can, have, and do serve an important role in modern society. As one would expect from a concentrated collection of intelligent, educated people.

Maybe it's not a new phenomenon and just indicative of the information age, but there seems to be a trend where they—large reputable institutions that would have previously been a source of innovative ideas—have become increasingly been a source of suppression (subjugation, even?) of enterprising, forward-thinkers who upset the status quo.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> >In 2006, Potti et al. had published a revolutionary paper in Nature Medicine, proposing using genomic signatures to guide the use of chemotherapeutics.

>Another Potti paper, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, proposed using genomics to assign early-stage lung cancer patients to treatment regimens.

>In both cases, the reported scales of improvements were dramatic.

Academic papers about medical treatment affect life/death of millions. This is frightening.

<comment><USER4> I wonder if academic journals should be treated similarly to Linux distros (or other software projects really) where less proven/stable features are considered beta and published in journals like Arxiv (say, the Fedora to draw a Linux reference). Once the research has been proven or repeated, it can be published in more "stable" journal like NEJM or Nature. That way the original author still gets the credit, but you have more confidence that what you're reading in those stable journals is indeed truth.

<comment><USER10> Problem is, a lot of this stuff is expensive to reproduce, and you certainly can't get a grant to do that, so what normally happens is either the research is so unimportant it's ignored (a product of publish or perish, I suppose from both sides), or if it's "high impact" enough, other labs try to build upon it. If the foundation is rotten, they'll figure that out soon enough, and at worst case word will filter through the grapevine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Duke really hasn't covered itself in glory in recent years.

<comment><USER19> What else have they done?

<comment><USER18> I'm thinking of the lacrosse thing, where 88 faculty members publicly turned on four students without trying to figure out what the facts were.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's almost like higher learning institutions have been taken over by a class of people with little experience in research, teaching, or education...

</comment><comment><USER21> OT, but if you screen is a certain multiple of pixels, the social media stuff on the left-hand side overlaps the text I am trying to read.

</comment><comment><USER22> We have built an entire society of people who cannot see farther than their own noses.

And then we put them in positions of power.

</comment><comment> taylor-smith Go to hell Duke</comment>


Rust Recent and future pattern matching improvements - <AUTHOR> https://blog.rust-lang.org/inside-rust/2020/03/04/recent-future-pattern-matching-improvements.html <comment><USER2> > In Rust 1.42.0, we are stabilizing subslice patterns.

This seems like a new language feature that should be associated with a 2020 edition or something.

<comment><USER3> New language features are only tied to editions if they are backwards- incompatible.</comment></comment>


Many of the NSA's Loudest Defenders Have Financial Ties to NSA Contractors - <AUTHOR> https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/05/12/intelligence-industry-cash-flows-media-echo-chamber-defending-nsa-surveillance/ <comment><USER2> Pres. Eisenhower gives dire warning: 'We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether saught or unsaught by the Military Industrial Complex' (Jan. 17, 1961) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y06NSBBRtY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y06NSBBRtY)

<comment><USER3> Most people view the term "Military Industrial Complex" from the view of the primary definition of complex - "consisting of many different and connected parts".

It seems however, that Eisenhower intended that phrase to use the psychoanalytic definition of complex - "a related group of emotionally significant ideas that are completely or partly repressed and that cause psychic conflict leading to abnormal mental states or behavior". More of a dysfunctional mental state of the nation than an actual physical interaction.

<comment><USER4> It seems to me the two complexes reinforce one another. Something akin to Sinclair's observation: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it."

But that is in interesting point that you make. I had never considered it from that angle before. Works either way for me. And even better together. Eisenhower: America's Derrida.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The problem with most of these examples is that all of these "NSA contractors" are just giant multi-billion dollar revenue companies. I'm sure MSFT is an NSA contractor on one level, but most people would find it weird to classify Microsoft as "A NSA contractor".

This is just a consequence of powerful people happening to have a lot of money to invest and thus becoming board members for companies in domains in which they have expertise (policy).

<comment><USER6> SAIC, CSC, CACI, Booz, Leidos? These are multi-billion dollar government welfare recipients.

<comment><USER7> Is corporate welfare somehow worse than individual welfare? I gather from the tone of your comment that you think it is, but this being the internet, tone is easy to confuse.

<comment><USER8> Individual welfare at least supports the more vulnerable and less well-off elements of our society. Large defense contractors have revenues in the billions of dollars, high level managers are likely millionaires, and they employ an entire army of upper-middle class workers.

The defense sector is mostly about providing welfare to the already rich and privileged.

<comment><USER7> Ok, but let's take it to a different industry. Are corporate farmers more or less deserving of government money than individuals?

Also, I'm not convinced that individual welfare accomplishes what you think it does. I don't think that just supporting the "more vulnerable ... elements of our society" is good at all. If we want to improve anything, they need to advance in society instead of merely being supported in it.

<comment><USER9> The "corporate" or the "farmer" part. One is a corporation, the other is a person working for and/or owning the corporation. Once you realize that corporate farmer isn't some magical combination the question is uninteresting. But, for the record - the farmer is an individual and is just as deserving (however much that is) as anyone else regardless of his profession. But we don't owe him _that_ livelihood and aren't under and obligation to support his enterprises in that area.

As to "advance in society", it's pretty easy for (most of) us to take a two- day course in some flavor of the week and have a piece of paper that helps to do so. For someone working a subsistence job it's not so trivial. Many people may waste it but it only has to help create a few productive taxpayers to be a net win to all of us.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> How again is "lobbying" different from "legalized corruption"? [serious]

<comment><USER11> Lobbying isn't an inherently dirty thing. It started (and largely remains) a way for people with knowledge of a field outside the politician's bailiwick to inform them of pros/cons to an issue they may not be aware of.

Corruption has indeed seeped into the process, but I would prefer experts in a field (on both sides) to inform politicians than have them be clueless on the issues in question. The EFF, the ACLU? Lobbyists. Good lobbyists, but lobbyists nonetheless.

<comment><USER12> The problem is the process is innately corrupt though. If we wanted an uncorrupted process, we would set aside tax money to pay researchers in the field grants solely to study and advise, with laws preventing them from taking subsidies and the like elsewhere. Perhaps with a process to allocate existing researchers to new issues. Corporation feels that we need more spying on our citizens because it makes them profitable? They could raise that issue, an existent researcher could look into it; but the continued funding of that researcher is not tied to their findings or results in any way.

As it is, the side with the most money gets the most lobbying, and that's not even considering the negative effect of campaign donations and the like.

<comment><USER13> Lobbying is an inheritly tricky problem because you want to allow everyone to exercise free speech, if suddenly only government funded researchers are allowed to make comments on policy you no longer can participate in democratic governance.

The problem is governents have way too much control over nearly every facet of the economy and it is much cheaper and easier to buy a senator and get some new regulations passed than it is to build a successful product or service that everyday people want to opt in for.

When you mandate decisions, you tend to get bad and corrupt decisions that benefit the few over the many.

<comment><USER9> It's not the issue of the speech in lobbying, it's that lobbying in politics means gifts of money.

I can "lobby" a police officer not to give me a ticket, but when I offer him a $20 all of a sudden he'll call it a bribe and slap the cuffs on me. (Despite my explanations that money is speech, and thus protected...)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> As an European I often wonder, how do people in the US cope with this level of corporate driven politics... I have the impression in Europe this kind of connections do exists but are seen as a serious problem and actively worked against in the legislation and even with this those connection are increasing and "growing" in weight on politics.

I have the impression what Europe is trying to work against is the normal modus operandi in US politics.

Are Europe and the US approaching some kind of middle point in the level of inter-connectivity of corporations and politics: Europe reaching it from the lower levels and the US by reaching it from higher levels?

It is really absurd how since the 60s resp. 70s after the nations coped more or less with the devastation of the 2 World Wars, politics has been reduced essentially to economic interests and agendas AND in the process gave it self up to the economic agents: large corporations which are defining politics. Are economics, money, corporations over-represented in politics?

<comment><USER15> If I understand the article correctly, the people they are talking about don't hold public office. They are private citizens who are pro-NSA and who have corporate ties to the NSA, and are speaking publicly.

So I don't think this article is an example of politicians having corporate motivations, but rather talking heads on TV having corporate motivation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I don't know about the others, but I've been reading Stewart Baker for years, at the Volokh Conspiracy and then later at lawfare blog.

He's an authoritarian loon, and I don't agree with a word his ever written, but I'd be willing to bet he believes all of it. He's far too unreasonable to be playing a cynical PR game.

Not to say that potential conflicts shouldn't be noted, they absolutely should.

<comment><USER17> I was thinking something similar, which is that I felt the article was implying that if these people _didn 't_ have a financial connection to the NSA their opinions would be different, and I don't think that is the case.

Until Senator Feinstien had her laptop hacked by the CIA I think she actually took what they said at face value and bought into the narrative.

So I can certainly believe that folks donate money to representatives that hold opinions compatible with theirs. I certainly give money to politicians who I feel will represent my view of how things should be run. But when their opinions change, or they move away from what I would like I simply stop giving them money[1].

So what is the cause and what is the effect? That the NSA funnels funds to people who have both a megaphone and a compatible point of view? I don't find that particularly noteworthy.

[1] and as we're talking small amounts of dollars here I am not sure its all that big a deal for them :-)

<comment><USER16> >> That the NSA funnels funds to people who have both a megaphone and a compatible point of view?

I don't think you even need to go that far. The underlying phenomenon here is the revolving door. Senior government officials retire into government contractors for their former agencies because that's by far the most lucrative positions open to them. The exception would be if you were completely disgruntled, Snowden isn't going to end up at Booz Allen.

What that means is that we have a shared underlying cause for the two things we are seeing: former senior officials that remain supporters of their agency end up at government contractors and former senior officials that remain supporters of their agency are happy to defend them publicly.

As for the solution to the revolving door, I'd say first we need to raise the salaries of senior government administrators. Every study I've seen shows that low skill government employees are over-compensated and high skill government employees are under-compensated (both as compared to the private sector). Second, we should probably cut down on government contracting. I don't a good reason for it to have grown so large.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I find recent NSA related craps utterly outdated, dull and juvenile. At this point, distinction between news on NSA's secret projects and government's public release of secret documents seems blurry and overlapping.

NSA has been working on quantum computing for decades. Recent success of both Israel and NSA in harnessing quantum computing for practical purposes is well known for at least couple of years. When quantum computing can blow off present mathematical proof of concepts in security, why waste time talking about decade old NSA technology? Why not discuss about the bleak future of information security? Why not prepare for the coming years?

<comment><USER19> >Why not discuss about the bleak future of information security? Why not prepare for the coming years?

Because then you have to acknowledge that threats exist that are not the US government, and that is not kosher because the goal is to reduce US power.

<comment> bob-2 > the goal is to reduce US power.

Better put: the goal is to reduce US abuse of power. Accountability is the focus, not disarmament.

<comment><USER20> You are essentially arguing that other Western nations have no agency and are forced to do the US's bidding.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> at-fates-hands The whole point of the article is completely irrelevant at this point.

The NSA already built their huge data center in the desert. They've been scooping up data for years. They've been using methods to usurp wireless phone security in order to snoop on what should be secure networks. There's suspicions they've cracked TOR's encryption as well.

Alert the media, the people who support the NSA have financial ties to them.

Even with the recent court ruling, Pandora's box was opened decades ago, and I see no palatable future where anybody is able to close it.

</comment><comment><USER7> This headline doesn't seem like it's actually news. Replace "NSA" with literally anything else, and it still makes perfect sense.

People who have financial incentives to keep something around typically try to do so.

<comment><USER21> In some cases, that's just fine. In others it is a perverse incentive we should reconsider. Prisons, domestic spying, etc.

<comment><USER7> Whether it's a good or bad thing is irrelevant. I agree that we should be aware and try to deter some instances, but saying that having skin in the game causes incentives seems like a weird conclusion to me. It should be obvious.

<comment><USER21> I don't think that's a weird conclusion at all. The companies have fiduciary obligations to keep, after all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I think the main point here is the one Todd Gitlin makes: "the onus for disclosure ultimately lies with reporters and news programs, who should be asking these experts to reveal potential conflicts of interest and to explain the basis of their assertions about national security."

We all have a conflict of interest here (not least because since we are all being spied on by our governments) but that doesn't mean our opinions aren't valid. But the conflicts of interest need to be disclosed with the opinions so the readers/viewers have a chance to weight the opinions presented.

<comment><USER23> If you have ever watched CNBC or Bloomberg I am sure you have been whenever an analyst talks about a stock a disclosure screen pops indicating whether the analyst, their family or their firm have an financial stake in the company.

It would be interesting to see that especially for very senior former government officials who often clock themselves in their former agencies and not as board members of x,y, and z. There is certainly more credibility as been former 4 star general than a board member of a government contractor.

Now having spent some time earlier in my life working around the DC establishment I know that being a general is now basically a political position even though it is accorded the same respect that generals garnered 70 years ago. So I just expect that former senior government officials are now trading on their connections to government...since that is the most valuable asset to have. And this goes for everything, not just the military and intelligence agencies. When there is as much money as there is in Washington being connected to the people who hand it out is extremely valuable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Yes, HSA advocates are secretly biased, and unlike politicians and their campaign ads, their bias is covert.

But that's not the story we need reported on, because this story is preaching to the choir.

The _real_ story is understanding the American public's malleability in the face of advertising/punditry in general. There is a real story analyzing in- depth (and with open-minded sympathy) why real believers in the practice believe that it is actually truly the right thing to do.

I suspect that the public won't understand what's at risk until the IRS starts using NSA collected data to conduct (automated, universal) audits.

</comment><comment><USER25> If I support the NSA can I get some of that money?

</comment><comment><USER26> This shouldn't be news. Everyone should know it from the beggining.

Show me some government program that doesn't have corruption involved.

</comment><comment><USER19> >Baker at one point told intelligence committee lawmakers that The Intercept's Glenn Greenwald was simply on a campaign to "cause the greatest possible diplomatic damage to the United States and its intelligence capabilities."

The problem with liars is that sometimes they tell the truth.</comment>


What Andrew Sullivan's exit says about the future of blogging - <AUTHOR> http://www.vox.com/2015/1/30/7948091/andrew-sullivan-leaving-blogging <comment><USER2> The emergence of blogging allowed individual voices outside of control of the larger media to reach their own audiences. Because of this 10 years ago noone wanted to have AOL as their walled garden. Everyone wanted to search and discover themselves. Google brought an algorithm that allowed voices to emerge, but it also spawned the SEO industry to manipulate that distribution channel and make it more difficult. Today most people never leave Facebook and FB's new feed rules will make sure that you have to pay to be heard. So maybe Facebook has become like AOL, has become like the print magnates even prior to that. Time for disruption again?

<comment><USER3> Sure, let's blame all of society's problems on Facebook some more. That's a new idea. I hate how much this idea get's promoted here. That fact is that 99% of blogs are complete shit. Along with the democratization of opinions came a lot of crud. Of courses there are good quality ones commenters will be frothing to post about, but expecting an ecosystem of junk to remain consistently successful is purely utopian.

<comment><USER4> >That fact is that 99% of blogs are complete shit. Along with the democratization of opinions came a lot of crud.

But good stuff came out of that crud. Now people do their writing on Facebook and Reddit. Those have much lower or no placement in Google.

I find google results impoverished compared to 6-10 years ago. You used to get commentary from people, and it wasn't half bad. Now most searches return commercial results.

I often give up and go search relevant subreddits for many types of queries.

99% of Reddit and Facebook are crap too. Anything produced by humanity in general will be. But good stuff gets produced too.

<comment><USER5> It seems to me that somewhere around 2007-2009 the spammers won, and Google's search quality plummeted. It hasn't recovered. If anything it's kept gradually getting worse. A handful of top sites show up for damn near every search, followed by page after page of spam sites and clickbait. Remember when the second page would sometimes have some nice and relevant links on it?

<comment><USER4> I think that's only half the equation though. I follow a few niches where non- spammers produce content regularly, and you get good results. My own niche is one. The barrier to entry to create reasonable content is high, so spammers have stayed out. The second and third and even fourth pages routinely produce good results.

But in niches where there's no reason for experts or ordinary people to create text on standalone sites, the results are junk. I remember this being different.

Now to find good stuff I have to search Hacker News, Reddit, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Andrew Sullivan's exit really doesn't mean very much. Blogging is a lot of work and doesn't pay very well, so it's kind of a surprise he lasted this long. I know a whole lot of people who tried to write a blog, but it's such a grind they pretty much gave up after six months or so (on the outside). The time between posts gets longer and longer in some sort of asymptotic death spiral, and eventually they put up a short post that says, basically, "I quit".

The problem is to keep people interested in your stuff the content has to change multiple times per day. You can't just write a single post every couple days when you feel like you have something important to say - most of your potential readers will drift away.

The vast majority of people trying to make money gave up trying to produce that much content by themselves and joined some sort of group blog (or have "guest bloggers", like Kos). At that point it's less a blog and more of an online magazine. I'm thinking sites like Huffpo and Gawker. As a business/creative model, how are they different from the online presence of _The Atlantic_ or _National Review_?

Most of the people who still produce all the content on their blog are really just news aggregators. Provide a link, write a joke or a sentence indicating why it's important, and your done with that post.

</comment><comment><USER7> Scale may be a problem for blogging, but Andrew Sullivan's exit says nothing about it. He simply wants to devote time to other things in his life.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm not Sullivan's biggest fan, but... if Sullivan can't make it as a blogger, who can?

Sullivan has a wealthy, educated audience that should be catnip to advertisers -- particularly with his particularly distinct influence among gay and politically liberal niches. He's possibly the most well-known blogger today and his Dish audience piggybacks from his previous work with The Atlantic. And while it's not easy to run a website, the capital required is minimal compared to virtually any other form of publication.

If he can't make it, can anyone? Much less a publication with heavier administrative and staff costs like virtually every newspaper or magazine.

<comment><USER9> It's realistic to me that individual bloggers can't live on advertising. The well-known corrosive effects of ads are too big to deny. I'd particularly cite the need it creates to pump out tons of "views" to tons of "eyeballs" which is corrosive to _any_ sort of quality that might let one stand apart from a crowd of others doing the same thing. (And please note how I phrased that, it's very important. I'm not saying they can't have quality in some snobbish sense, I mean it leaves them unable to cultivate any unusual quality that might let them dominate some micro-niche under such constraints.) But I've got at least one guy in my Patreon lineup that I'm essentially sponsoring to write his blog. In that particular case it's not political, but there's no particular reason why that couldn't work.

But I would say at least speaking for myself that for politics, I would expect to either see some very original, quality thinking, or some sort of substantial research being done if I'm going to be paying for it. Party-line punditry's supply already verges on the infinite. (Not a crack at Sullivan. I never read his blog, I have no opinion about the writing I've never read. Just an observation from the other political blogs I read.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I had never heard of him prior to 2 weeks ago. He is exceptionally thoughtful. His reason for quitting blogging seemed reasonable, especially given the timeframes involved. I don't think it says anything about blogging in general that one intelligent person is moving to a new position.

On the other hand, I don't know that I'd call the blogosphere vibrant or even very interesting: Crappy mobile browers/keyboards, link aggregators, Facebook, and Twitter basically shot the web as we knew it dead for the mainstream. My intuition is that this is a natural consequence response to decentralization when the tools to gather your information into one place are poor. You wind up with link aggregators, and then comments on them, and then the link aggregators become the content. Like what's going _right now_ in this thread, instead of a blog link bouncing around between disparate interlinked blog posts.

<comment><USER11> The original blogosphere concept may be fading, but I don't think that bloggers or readers are suffering because of it. In a sense individual bloggers are like AP reporters and aggregators are the new newspapers. Dozens of AP stories are filed every day and local newspapers pick and choose which ones to include in each edition. The major difference between the traditional newspaper model and link aggregators is that we can easily see all stories filed by an individual blogger, whether they get picked up by our "hometown" paper or not[0]. Sharing a link to a blog post on facebook will never replace quality journalism of course, but I think we've come full circle back to this model because it works. Most people don't have the time or inclination to follow a multitude of different blogs or maintain their own. They just want news and opinion selected for them, by trained editors or a community, and the ability to comment on those stories.

An open exchange of long form ideas between a network of people who each run their own blog has an important place in internet culture, but it doesn't scale very well. It was a golden age, for a time, but the aggregation model as the potential to open those ideas up to a much broader range of people.

[0] I'm actually not sure if the AP allows people to easily "follow" all stories filed by specific reporters, but it doesn't seem like it.

<comment><USER12> But most aren't reading the blogs,they ate skipping that and chattering in the aggregator comments section.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I like Sully and read the Dish daily but I'm glad I won't have to watch the next 2-10 years of him trying to justify his Hillary Derangement Syndrome when her policy positions basically mirror Obama's, whom he reliably supports.

</comment><comment><USER14> Given the style of blogging, I'm not surprised. High output, fast thinking...it seems more like one of many _types_ of blogging, rather than blogging itself. And it seems like the type of thing that could easily imbalance your life, which may explain the need to make an exit. Hope he finds what he's looking for. Personally more blogging is in my future but several posts a day is probably out of the question.

</comment><comment><USER15> It doesn't say anything about the future of blogging in my opinion. I think the future of blogging is bleak for people who want to make a career (aka a salary) doing it. There is so much noise and so much bullshit online, not to mention amplified/fake stories and zero fact checking (read Ryan Holiday's book Trust Me Im Lying). It doesn't mean people are going to stop reading them or blogging, but the traffic / ad space $ will probably continue to go down as more content continues to spews online.

<comment><USER16> You don't make a career from the blog itself- you get headhunted because of the attention and the awareness gets you, and you get hired or solicited for all sorts of interesting, lucrative projects.

<comment><USER15> im not sure i agree - i think a lot of blogs (in the past anyways) were created with the intension of selling them - i also think there is a handful of bloggers out there that make a salary off blog traffic + book sales (www.nakedcapitalism.com / www.zerohedge.com / [http://www.ritholtz.com/blog](http://www.ritholtz.com/blog) / etc.)

<comment><USER16> Right, allow me to refine my statement– tonnes of bloggers start with the intention of selling them, but few bloggers actually make it to that sort of scale.

The same thing applies to webcomics, to musicians, etc. These are the exception, not the rule. There are thousands of blogs started every day! So if you're serious about making a living from your blog, it's worth having the "big blogger" dreams, but you'll probably end up doing other things to pay the bills along the way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> That he won't be doing much of it. Other than that not a whole lot.

</comment><comment><USER18> I not only miss blogging, but RSS feeds as well. Seems like everyone is ditching it in favor of Twitter and FB

<comment><USER19> Blogging and RSS feeds are still out there. Ask not why it seems like everyone is moving to Twitter, ask why your perception and tastes have shifted to perceive that as the primary channel?

When I look at this through the Clay Shirky "publish-then-filter" mindset, what I see is that we have a problem with our filters--whether those filters are RSS aggregators, search engines, follower lists, inboxes, subscription services, it doesn't matter. Look to the work of people like Paul Ford (@ftrain) and little hacks like SavePublishing.com.

Solving this filtering problem and creating a focus of attention--that's a huge opportunity. Not Uber huge, or monetarily huge, but huge as a public service to free up the mental capacity of a lot of talented people whose filters are very likely tuned by default to the commercial aggregators.

<comment><USER18> Go to major sites like Wired, heck even any Medium blog. Where is the RSS feed???

Now go to their Twitter feed or Facebook feed. Oh there are their latest urls!

it's not a matter of perception. It's the truth. It's hard to find the latest content for a site/blog through RSS. But it's easy to find it in their twitter/FB

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I guarentee that Glenn Greenwald would still be blogging if he hadn't gone Salon -> Guardian -> Intercept. And I don't see how what he did wouldn't still be still possible...

</comment><comment><USER21> Ah, nothing?

</comment><comment><USER22> I hadn't even heard of Andrew Sullivan until I bumped into his defense of Brendan Eich.

Honestly, good riddance. I hope that Sullivan and Eich both fade into obscurity.

<comment><USER23> Does it matter that Andrew Sullivan was one of the early and very vocal champions of gay marriage? Or that he is quite openly gay and married himself? If you haven't heard of him, you might not have known that and it may change the way you view his defense of Brendan Eich. In addition to being a champion of gay marriage, Sullivan is a proponent of liberalism in the old sense of the word. I think his defense of gay marriage was always so compelling because he gave respect to people who disagreed with them while showing how wrong they were on the issue.

<comment><USER24> It's fine to pick and choose the things you stand for, but the man has to be taken as a whole (IMHO). I want to like Andrew Sullivan for some of the things he stands for, but he was also a vocal proponent of the Iraq war and many other issues that I stand against. Someone who says this about the Iraq war:

> the allied campaign was a model of restraint and liberation, the most > precise invasion in world history

makes me think they've really lost touch with reality. I'm not here to say that Saddam Hussein was some angel, but to put our role in those words leaves me wanting better critical thinking.

Andrew Sullivan is a man and he has his good and bad. So let's not "one issue" the man and suppose that he's good simply because he's for gay marriage (a position that he stands to gain from I might add).

I'd rather see better, true "liberals", elevated over Andrew Sullivan. Glenn Greenwald comes mind ...

<comment><USER4> What year did Sullivan say that? I recall thinking, circa 2004-6, "gosh, Andrew Sullivan is wrong about Iraq. How does he not see how wrong he is?"

But the thing was, he changed. Gradually, he came to notice that the modern Republican party was doing lots of bad things.

Certainly, this puts him nowhere near writers like Daniel Davies and James Fallows, who clearly saw the war was going to be a disaster, _before_ it happened.

But at least Sullivan was able to change his mind. Though maybe he didn't fully recant Iraq. I can't recall the details now. I just recall my impression of the time that, whatever he was, he wasn't a zealot. He genuinely seemed to be thinking through and considering his opinions.

But yeah, far more a fan of Greenwald. Or Ioz, if anyone remembers him.

Anyway, the point of my reply is that I don't think the Sullivan of today would agree with that quote, and I suspect he wrote that not long after the invasion. That doesn't make it a smart thing to have been written, but simply quoting that gives an inaccurate view of Sullivan. Unless I'm wrong on the details of when he said it and what he changed his mind about.

<comment><USER19> I ran across this the other night. Pointing you to it because it seems to offer a complementary counterpoint to your benefit of the doubt point of view.

[http://pando.com/2015/01/28/andrew-sullivan-is-not-the- futur...](http://pando.com/2015/01/28/andrew-sullivan-is-not-the-future-of- journalism/)

<comment><USER4> That piece doesn't address Sullivan's change circa 2006-08. IIRC, he Began to oppose the Iraq war, and the republican party, where he had been a strong supporter previously.

I never shared Sullivan's views. I could be misremembering how much he shifted in that period, since I didn't follow him closely. But the article doesn't address those years, only earlier times. (which sound pretty bad, if the characterization is accurate)

Edit: here is a piece that comments on Ames and Sullivan. It's how I remember his later writing. No moral hero, but a man clearly aware that he made an enormous error on iraq.

[http://thedailybanter.com/2013/01/andrew-sullivans- political...](http://thedailybanter.com/2013/01/andrew-sullivans-political- transformation-bravery-or-spineless-populism/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Nothing at all.

I don't see comments on his blog. That's not really blogging.

Bloggers, who take comments, actually entertaining community dialog are doing just fine. Sullivan will have no impact as that just isn't what he does.

<comment><USER26> I don't want to read someone having a conversation with their community, I want to read what they themselves think without the lurking context of the subset of their audience that demands to speak up and be heard right then and there.

I also frequently don't like the results of community feedback shaping a blog; a lot of times it just puts the writer on the defensive all the time, and can easily become toxic and contribute to burnout. If you can read even the best comments on the best blogs and not want to just give up on humanity forever, you're a better man than I (either that, or you were one of the people writing those comments and thought they were awesome).

There's already plenty of places on the Internet for people to discuss things written elsewhere on the Internet, like right here for example. Or Reddit or Facebook or Twitter or any number of other places where you have persistent communities of commenters. If it's just comments at the bottom of an article, you end up with a lot of drive-by comments that are even more dumb or pointlessly cruel or boring or strangely insistent about your potential to make $2500/day at home on your computer, just like I did! Because you totally can.

<comment><USER25> He's broadcasting, not blogging.

And I like writers on the defensive. When they write crap, and they take comments, the crap comes up awful quick.

Notice how a lot of sites don't take comments? Notice how many of them are very seriously moderated?

One could argue trolls, and that's a fair case. However, not actually being out there enough to take feedback on one's words tends to make nice, magic, bubbles, filled with unicorns and rainbows.

Sullivan occupies one of those bubbles.

And it's not just comments. It's dialogs, even among peers. Sullivan largely just broadcasted.

Either way, his departure means pretty much nothing.

<comment><USER27> Have you actually read his blog? Readers email him all the time. He typically posts 2-3 of those emails every day and responds to them publicly. Often, he'll go back and forth with multiple readers in this way.

Here's a post from _today_ that contains emails from 9 people: [http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2015/01/31/busted-with-an- egg...](http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2015/01/31/busted-with-an-eggcorn- ctd-10/)

He has a regular "Dissent of the Day" post where he goes out of his way to post critical emails from readers. For your perusal: [https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aandrewsullivan.com%20...](https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aandrewsullivan.com%20dissent%20of%20the%20day)

Your comments in this thread are nothing but incuriosity dressed up as intelligence.

<comment><USER28> Moreover, the fact that a reader had to email him served as sort of as a pre- screen, wherein someone had to take those extra 2 or 3 steps to put something together instead of just dropping whatever thoughtless or halfbaked idea came to the forefront of their mind in the comment box and hitting enter because you're logged in with facebook. I don't think having comments allowed on a blog are indicative of quality discourse at all.

<comment><USER27> Yeah. Andrew probably write something once every few months about why he prefers to interact with readers this way vs. comment threads. He's even polled his audience in the past and the _audience_ overwhelmingly favors interacting in this way, often echoing your exact sentiment.

Ironically, the parent serves as an example for the kind of thoughtless, knee- jerk commentary that comment threads can (and do) breed.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Deform: A Python lib for generating HTML forms - <AUTHOR> https://deformdemo.pylonsproject.org/ <comment><USER2> Not so ugly, not so bad.

Interesting library for forms.

Maybe in the future we'll include in the second edition of the book "Cool tricks in Python"</comment>


The Deep Fake artists must be stopped before we no longer know what's real - <AUTHOR> https://nationalpost.com/opinion/jordan-peterson-deep-fake <comment><USER2> This is the age of the Internet. Now that the technology is here, it can't really be stopped.

<comment><USER3> Didn't they stop child porn? Now it can be found no where on Internet, not even on darknet.

So what makes you say it can't be stopped?</comment></comment>


Effects of a diet based on inulin-rich vegetables on gut health and nutrition - <AUTHOR> https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/advance-article/doi/10.1093/ajcn/nqz001/5479239 <comment><USER2> N=26. No control group eating, say, lots of low-inulin vegetables. Highlighting studies such as this one is not the right way to popularize science. This study should be of interest to other researchers. Once N is several orders of magnitude higher and lots of comparison groups have been included, then tell a general audience what's going on.

PS related to "inulin-rich" is "high FODMAP".

<comment><AUTHOR> they already state those in the paper: "Our trial had some limitations, including the absence of a control group (each individual being their own control in our study), the limited number of subjects, their young age (leading to extrapolation to the aging population), and the decision to focus on hydrogen-producing individuals as an inclusion criterion. However, we can clearly conclude that, by increasing the consumption of selected vegetables, it is possible to boost the intake of fructans and thereby create a shift in the gut microbiota composition. "

<comment><USER3> I think spenrose is saying "We shouldn't be upvoting this" or maybe "I hope newspapers don't report on this like it's a clear, solid answer", not "This paper is flawed in ways that the authors didn't recognize".

Personally I'm fine with this being on HN because I think this audience understands issues around low N (and commentators do a good job of pointing them out), but I agree that it would be problematic if this were picked up by the New York Times or something.

<comment><USER2> That is what I'm saying.

"this audience understands ...": 1. I think a quick scan of their responses will refute that, but in any case 2. my point is that there is no value to this study for non-researchers. General sophistication doesn't matter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> One of the easiest ways to add inulin to your diet is to make heavy use of garlic to your regular meals. Garlic contains one of the highest concentrations of inulin of any common vegetable. It also has a flavor that enhances nearly all savory dishes.

Before cooking anything dice up a lot of garlic ahead of time. Then heat up a little bit of oil in the pan, add in the garlic and let it sauté until it just starts to brown. Then add in whatever you were planning on cooking.

Don't be afraid to add more garlic. More garlic almost always equals more flavor. This is a big reason why Italian cuisine is so consistently delicious. It's not unusual for me to use 15-20 cloves of diced garlic when making dinner for two.

<comment><USER5> First, preparing 20 cloves of garlic every night sounds pretty arduous. Second, I bought garlic once in the French Riviera, and the cloves were huge...

<comment><USER6> You can buy pre-peeled garlic in large, refrigerated packs.

<comment><USER7> These are usually from PRC, so I avoid them and just use fresh local garlic that you lightly crush with the broadside of a knife and the peel just falls off negating the need for prepeeled.

For inulin there's the research site 'American Gut' also geneticist Tim Spector's book about foods rich in inulin like sun chokes, leeks, onions, etc. Spector and the American reseacher guy have a documentary on YouTube about a Tanzanian hunter gatherer tribe with the world's most diverse gut microbes who basically only eat meat, berries and tube roots they dig up if anybody is interested.

<comment><USER6> _fresh local garlic that you lightly crush with the broadside of a knife and the peel just falls off negating the need for prepeeled._

That's what I do as well but I have never eaten a meal with a double-digit number of cloves of garlic. The most I've ever used in a meal was 6 and that gave me a ton of gas; never again!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It was kind of funny that one of the results was reported as "a trend to increase hedonic attitudes towards some inulin-rich vegetables." Let's look at just a representative handful of the way said vegetables were cooked and presented: mashed Jerusalem artichoke, spinach, pumpkin cream, stuffed artichoke bottoms, tomato coulis, gratin dauphinois, green beans, shallot sauce. I would develop a "hedonic attitude" toward those if I had all the time in the world to cook like that.

</comment><comment><USER9> > The volunteers showed greater satiety, a reduced desire to eat sweet, salty, > and fatty food, and a trend to increase hedonic attitudes towards some > inulin-rich vegetables.

This is odd, because whenever I eat garlic or onion I start craving sweets for hours afterwards.

<comment><USER10> Do you have issues with fructose? Because carving for sweets is a typical symptom and garlic and onion can be problematic if you have a fructose intolerance.

<comment><USER9> I don't think so, I eat (and like) fruit fine? I'm not sure what the symptoms would be, but I generally like fruit (and they satisfy for my sweet cravings very well).

EDIT: I misread your comment, I thought you meant craving sweets after onion/garlic is a symptom of fructose intolerance.

EDIT 2: I read it again and I'm now not sure if you mean that or not :P

<comment><USER10> > EDIT 2: I read it again and I'm now not sure if you mean that or not :P

Yes, I meant it.

If you can eat fruits without issues, then you most likely shouldn't have a fructose intolerance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > Only flatulence episodes were reported during the dietary intervention

Never fails to make me chuckle...

<comment><USER12> They may be indicating a possible digestive intolerance. Raw onion and garlic is difficult for me to digest (allium intolerance?), cooking helps but still can be difficult in high quantities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I love garlic but it makes my stomach hurt so much that I can't sleep. Don't know what's up with that.

<comment><USER14> My wife recently developed a sensitivity to garlic and onion. Fresh garlic and onion are problematic as she feels very lethargic but dehydrated powders and granules are a no-go if she wants to sleep well at all and not feel like she woke up after a night of very heavy drinking (dehydration and headache).

Interestingly if she has a glass of wine—especially a red—the effects are amplified.

It's a very strange change and makes eating out quite challenging given how ubiquitous both are in food preparation and seasonings.

<comment><USER15> Sounds like it may be related to fructose sensitivity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> tldr; eat artichoke, garlic, shallots, leeks, scorzonera/salsify and it will reduce cravings for fatty foods. side effects include gas

</comment><comment><USER17> which vegtables?

<comment> john-tells-all "chicory root contains the highest concentration of inulin ... Vegetables such as sugar beets, leeks and asparagus all contain adequate concentrations of inulin. Onions and garlic are also home to a healthy supply of inulin, as are dandelion root, elecampane root and a variety of herbs. Bananas and wheat contain inulin, too."

from [https://www.prebiotin.com/foods-provide- inulin/](https://www.prebiotin.com/foods-provide-inulin/)

<comment> semi-extrinsic If you have digestive problems, some of these are good and some can be very bad (e.g. asparagus if you have any restrictions).</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Learning AWS with Ansible? - <AUTHOR> A newbie to AWS and Ansible here. I would like to learn EC2, RDS, ALB management using Ansible. Please suggest some good free or paid resources related to the topic. I Googled around a bit and found this book https://leanpub.com/ansible-for-aws. But was wondering what community would suggest to learn from. <comment><USER2> Use terraform for managing cloud resources, ansible for setting up hosts. Also consider packer and salt stack</comment>


Core MySpace Executive Team "Definitely Out." Expect Announcement Soon. - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/21/core-myspace-exececutive-team-definitely-out-expect-announcement-soon/ <comment><USER2> I wonder how they'll handle Tom's existing account which already has hundreds of millions of friends if they fire him.

<comment><USER3> I wonder if anyone would notice...

Although strictly speaking he has a public account and a private account. So'd they probably take control of his public account, and leave him to his private one.

<comment><USER4> Yeah one hand I'd doubt anyone would really care if Tom wasn't on their friends list.

But News Corp could definitely use it. Tom is the public face of Myspace,and Myspace news ends up on Tom's account. It would be a very easy way for the new CEO to communicate with the users. All they would need to do is change the name of the account to the new CEO's.

<comment><USER5> Wanted: CEO, with the first name of 'Tom', or willingness to change first name to 'Tom'.</comment></comment></comment></comment>