Bill Gates is officially redeemed from presentation purgatory - <AUTHOR> http://blog.duarte.com/2010/02/news-alert-bill-gates-is-officially-redeemed-from-presentation-purgatory/

<comment><USER2> Whoever did the slides did a great job.

<comment><USER3> While the pictures are cool, I feel that using them as the background for some of the slides distracting. For instance, on the slide that says "26 billion tons of CO2" with the sun peaking around the earth, does the background picture really add much?

<comment><USER4> I think they're so many light years ahead of "here's a whole fuckload of text" that it doesn't really matter.

And if you're going to have slides which don't have lots of bullet points you need something to give them visual panache.

<comment><USER5> Just submitted this, a personal favorite.

Ten amazing presenters and their presentations. Many different styles.

Steve Jobs, Dick Hardt, Guy Kawasaki, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Lawrence Lessig, Malcolm Gladwell, Tom Peters, Seth Godin, Andy Kaufman, Rupert Everett

[http://www.knowhr.com/blog/2006/08/21/top-10-best- presentati...](http://www.knowhr.com/blog/2006/08/21/top-10-best- presentations-ever/)

Also, the 10 best that the Readers nominated. Hans Roling, Sir Ken Robinson, Al Gore, Majora Carter, John F. Kennedy, My Name is Joe?, Ze Frank, Douglas Englebart, Steve Jobs, and lastly, Crosby, Stills & Nash

[http://www.knowhr.com/blog/2006/10/01/top-10-best- presentati...](http://www.knowhr.com/blog/2006/10/01/top-10-best- presentations-the-readers-choice/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Lawrence Lessig does presentations like this [1]; I've always been a fan.

A great example of this type of presentation done well is Cal Handerson's keynote at Djangocon in 2008 [2], "Why I Hate Django". Previous discussion on this presentation here [3].

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Lessig#Lessig_Method>

[2] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6Fr65PFqfk>

[3] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=305630>

</comment><comment><USER7> Looks great.

I heard in an interview once that Gates would like to win a Nobel prize. This looks like the vice president's route.

</comment><comment><USER8> Unfortunately, his basic premise is incorrect. Key to every Carbon Management program I've ever read about involves Carbon Sequestration - I.E. Net Negative Carbon reduction. (Think about Planting Trees, growing carbon hungry algae, etc..)

Still, a really great presentation.

<comment><USER9> Sequestration without first bringing production to zero is a Sisyphean endeavor.

<comment><USER8> That doesn't make a lot of logical sense. If I can develop an economy in which my gross reduction is 10x my gross production of carbon, resulting in a 9x NET reduction of carbon - why does it really matter if my Carbon Production is zero or not?

People tend to lose sight of the fact that it's NET reduction of carbon that we're interested in, not GROSS reduction. I'm fine with an industry putting a million tons of Carbon into the atmosphere as long as it pulls out 1.1 million tons through some mechanism.

The fact that Bill's entire presentation is based on a false premise, and that nobody in this thread other than me has called him on it, is disturbing.

Pretty slide presentation aside.

<comment><USER9> Was it a false premise to rein in toxic waste dumping, rather than just concentrating on clean-up technologies?

There's that old adage about 'an ounce of prevention', which I think is even more apt in cases such as this, where the 'pound of cure' is an as-yet- undeveloped technology.

Mathematically, yes, you could focus on sequestration. But policy-wise, it's inviting disaster to defer today's problems as something to be solved with tomorrow's advancements.

And even if a suitable 'pound of cure' is found, it will almost certainly be dramatically more expensive to fix the problem, to say nothing of fixing the collateral damage caused in the interim.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Gates Favorite statistics is Childhood Deaths... Guess all that thrash metal never leaves the blood. (<http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/bill_gates_unplugged.html>)

<comment><USER11> I don't understand the thrash metal reference but I'm curious. Google only leads me back here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't know what exactly was lacking from Bill's software presentations, but I really don't think it was passion about the subject matter.

<comment><AUTHOR> He has come a long way since this: [http://presentationzen.blogs.com/presentationzen/2005/11/it_...](http://presentationzen.blogs.com/presentationzen/2005/11/it_was_one_of_t.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> His presentation asthetic reminds me of the Bing.com interface which in turn reminds me of Corbis - which Gates privately owns.

He's always had a passion for imaging, interesting to see it just appearing in his presentations and in modern Microsoft products . . .

<comment><USER14> I thought he created Corbis because he wanted to corner the digital art market for picture frames and wall displays.

The technology didn't catch up so Corbis became a stock photography house.

<comment><USER13> You're probably right. I remember reading in his book "the road ahead" about his obsession with actually using the Corbis collection in his own home, with photos that updated all over the walls etc . . .

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> More like "Bill Gates no longer makes his own PPTs"

<comment> brown9-2 You think he made them himself when he was presenting Microsoft corporate stuff?

If anything, the difference is now he can have a small team of professionals helping him, compared with a bureaucratic army of Microsoft's marketing department.

<comment><USER15> No marketing department could be that incompetent. Remember: they graduated in marketing and should have strong communication skills.

<comment> brown9-2 Decision made by committee can lead to really crazy things

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is there video of this presentation online?

<comment><USER17> No yet afaik.

When there is, it will be at <http://www.ted.com/talks>

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Amazing slides indeed!</comment>


Urban Airship to shut down SimpleGeo - <AUTHOR> http://urbanairship.com/blog/2012/01/12/update-on-our-plan-to-integrate-location-and-context-services-into-our-push-messaging-platform/

<comment><USER3> > In order to deliver on this aggressive vision in the shortest amount of time > possible, we need to focus our product development efforts.

Let me get this straight. You want to focus on developing your product, but you want your customers to focus on migrating to another provider so that you can focus on _your_ product. This is a pretty shitty way to treat a paying customer. A two and a half month notice is basically a fuck you, I'd be surprised if you kept any of those customers.

<comment><USER4> > I'd be surprised if you kept any of those customers.

So would I, considering they're shutting down the product...

Roughly three months warning, plus free service during that time, plus free Urban Airship Pro for six months seems pretty reasonable to me. What length of time would you have considered fair?

<comment><USER5> 3 months of warning for the shutdown of a product with no drop-in alternatives is really an insult. Look closely at the migration page ([https://support.urbanairship.com/customer/portal/articles/31...](https://support.urbanairship.com/customer/portal/articles/311996-simplegeo- migration-options)) and you'll get a sense of the effort to replace SimpleGeo. For instance, the recommendation for users of the Context product is to read the Wikipedia page on R-trees, then download various census etc. data to replicate the functionality in-house.

This isn't about users being too lazy to switch to option B, this is about SimpleGeo building an innovative service and then abandoning its paying users.

<comment><USER6> Can't say I agree with you about us "abandoning" our users. SimpleGeo was acquired by Urban Airship and the decision was made to discontinue the service. Disappointing, sure.

<comment><USER7> I don't see how your comment explains anything or makes it seem better. You sold the company to a company that wasn't committed, and your users are suffering for it.

I like that phrasing, "The decision was made." Like it was an unstoppable edict from God himself. I can't speak for anyone else but I never support the future endeavours of a dev that treats me like that.

I'm your customer, and if you sell me to another organization you better make damn sure that organization has my interests at heart, or you'll never see me as a customer again. YOU dropped the ball. Passing the buck only makes you feel temporarily better, it doesn't actually make anything better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I really love SimpleGeos logos, but I have never grokked what problem they really solve for the user, but I totally get what urban airship solves. I've done a couple of app project with geo data but I don't see any benefit of having that part as a separate service.

This is such fantastic logo and identity design work: <http://softfacade.com/simplegeo.html>

<comment><USER9> Thanks for posting this link! I've always wondered who designed the beautiful icons on their pages, and it's even more remarkable to see them in high-res.

<comment><USER10> They charge like $30k+ for website design - they better be good. SimpleGeo made someone money - a web design firm!

<comment><USER11> SoftFacade didn't design the SimpleGeo website, I did :)

<comment><USER12> Could you post your contact info on your HN profile, so I can get in touch with you?

<comment><USER13> <http://www.callmejeffrey.com/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> So they didn't buy SG to get the founders, and aren't going to use the tech, so all that's left is customers, which they're not going to keep using a transition strategy like this.

I don't get it...

<comment><USER15> they are going to use the tech, just as a feature of their push product, rather than as its own offering.

<comment><USER16> Yeah, the straightforward reading is that they are folding the tech into their flagship product instead of running multiple products.

<comment><USER14> That's what they're trying to do, but by forcing the users to adapt rather than adapting on the product side. Certainly doesn't feel like a user-centric approach.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> We were actually just starting to use SimpleGeo for storage and lookup. We need to geocode the points and their added benefit of weather/location info was a plus. Does anybody know of a good alternative?

Edit: Here is a great list of alternatives [https://support.urbanairship.com/customer/portal/articles/31...](https://support.urbanairship.com/customer/portal/articles/311996-simplegeo- migration-options)

</comment><comment><USER18> It's depressing how little trust you can put in web services these days. I'd considered using SimpleGeo for a project and, like most people who did, it would have been a major component. Phew!

Antics like this make me distrust all web services in the future. They've got to have a really strong income stream and most definitely not a target of a talent acquisition, if I'm to rely on them.

</comment><comment><USER19> We all know SimpleGeo was a failure. It doesn't count as an acquisition. It failed, and the founders moved on to Urban Airship.

<comment><USER20> The co-founders left to work on new ventures. There's Joe Stump's Sprint.ly, and Matt Galligan's Circa.

<comment> X-Istence For anyone that is trying to find something on Circa ... seems it is still in stealth. Might save you some time Googling.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I think what really happened is that Urban Airship discovered the SimpleGeo service was really crappy and decided it needed to shut it down as soon as possible to avoir eternel peril...

SimpleGeo has rewritten its platform several times (project GISele, then project Penelope), it was done by people who thought they knew how to do geosearch, but they really had no idea, for example they never offered polygon search, they also only offered tag search a few weeks prior to being acquired, and it was done by a girl who left the company like a week after her feature went live.

This company was probably a scam from day one, it only got money because its founders were reknown.

<comment><USER22> Not sure where you're getting your information, but it's almost entirely wrong. GISelle is the same tech as Penelope. It was renamed because there was a trademark issue. Polygon search has been implemented for some time, but was delayed for product reasons (it's actually live, just undocumented). Tag indexing was launched with SimpleGeo storage from day one. Indexing of all properties by default happened several months before the acquisition. Both features were developed by people who are still at the company.

The company was acquired because it has real, defensible technology. If you're going to talk shit, at least get your facts straight.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Really disappointed to hear this news. The SimpleGeo Context API gas been a really great resource for geographic data that isn't otherwise easily/affordably available, like neighborhood boundaries.

<comment><USER23> zillow distributes free kml files for the neighborhood boundaries.

Edit: here is the link <http://www.zillow.com/howto/api/neighborhood- boundaries.htm>

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I've looked at those a while ago and it seemed that few cities, particularly NYC, the data was some what low quality. It was either really lacking in certain areas or the neighborhood boundaries were far off from what people who actually live in the city consider to be the boundaries.

Although perhaps they've gotten better, I'll give them a look.

<comment><USER23> That link is old, but another resource to look into is <http://www.openstreetmap.org/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I definitely wasn't happy when I heard the news as I now have to rebuild some production code. However, I always had the feeling that relying on a smaller provider for critical data was a risk -- the SimpleGeo API was just too easy to pass up.

It appears that Factual might be picking up some of the slack. I'm also looking into Google Maps API again. Oh well -- no sense worrying about it; just need to learn and move on.

</comment><comment><USER25> "Why did SimpleGeo fail?

1\. You could mean "to dwindle, pass, or die away". To this definition, I would say that no, in fact, SimpleGeo did not die, as it's going to be thriving at Urban Airship, working towards a larger goal of building a powerful mobile infrastructure company." - Matt Galligan, SimpleGeo Co-Founder

<http://www.quora.com/Why-did-SimpleGeo-fail>

</comment><comment><USER26> SG alternative for geo storage, query and visualization:

<http://www.giscloud.com/>

<http://dev.giscloud.com/RestGuide>

<http://dev.giscloud.com/RestApiReference>

</comment><comment><USER23> Anyone know of any sites using SimpleGeo for their location infrastructure?

<comment><USER27> I'd been considering using it through Heroku to be able to find nearby bus/train stops in a public transit mobile web app. I see that SpacialDB is in private beta as a Heroku addon (<http://addons.heroku.com/spacialdb>) - <USER2> anyone have SpacialDB experience? I'm looking to find nearby points out of a database of ~5000 locations, namely all the public transit stops in the Boston area.

<comment><USER28> Hi Andrew, would love to have you to try out SpacialDB, just send me an email at info~at~spacialdb~dot~com and I'd be very happy to send you a beta invite.

With SpacialDB, we wanted the best of both worlds, traditional GIS and Web, RT & Mobile-Centric APIs.

The way we did this was to let users provision databases, then import any geodata (points,lines,polygons 2 or 3D) into SpacialDB and either use a raw PostgreSQL connection (from a pool) or our REST API ([http://devcenter.spacialdb.com/Layers- API-v1-Documentation.h...](http://devcenter.spacialdb.com/Layers- API-v1-Documentation.html)) to query it - its super useful for building geo- apps quickly.

In fact, initially that's why we built it; we need a quick way to get going for a lot of the disaster response work we do at nomad-labs (geospatial.nomad- labs.com)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> _(cough)_ acquhire

</comment><comment><USER30> Any good alternative to SimpleGeo? Is Factual even the same?

<comment><USER31> quote from article: "Factual has been providing SimpleGeo with their Places data since June 2011"

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Are you stuck between a rock and a hard place due to this announcement? Get ahold of my employer, Skookum Digital Works, if development is a bit tight before the transition and you need some helping hands.

<http://skookum.com>

Sorry for the shameless plug, but it's mutually beneficial if time is tight.</comment>


Leonardo da Vinci's resume - <AUTHOR> http://www.cenedella.com/leonardo-da-vincis-resume-4 <comment><USER2> Lots of people concentrate on the language, but it's the approach and attitude that's critical. Quoting from the article:

        You'll notice he doesn't recite past achievements.
        He doesn't mention the painting of the altarpiece
        for the Chapel of St. Bernard; he doesn't provide
        a laundry list ... (snip)

        No, he does none of these things, because those
        would be about his achievements, not the Duke's
        needs.

        Instead, he sells his prospective employer on what
        Leonardo can do for him.

I see _so_ many job applications that are exactly a laundry list of achievements, and _nothing_ about what the applicant could do for me.

        And that's exactly what your resume needs to do,
        too. Not the laundry list/standard bio that talks
        about you, but the marketing piece that talks
        about the benefits to your future employer and
        how you fit into his or her needs and desires.

This got a lot of discussion some years ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2234231](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2234231)

More recent submissions, less so:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3857531](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3857531)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4662582](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4662582)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7497155](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7497155)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9393330](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9393330)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9395139](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9395139)

Have HN's tastes changed? Has it simply not been noticed?

<comment><USER3> > I see so many job applications that are exactly a laundry list of > achievements, and nothing about what the applicant could do for me.

There is another side to this, which is that many job ads don't provide anything like enough information for candidates to do that.

Most job ads tell us what skills are desired, and a tiny bit about the industry the company works in, and even less about the specific project the candidate would be focused on. It's difficult for me to tell you, "I can bring your galambosian robotics framework to the next level by applying the latest Fibonacci refactoring techniques!" if all I know is "we're a leading-edge company working on bringing killer robots to the masses!"

Furthermore, the cover letter will in many cases be screened by an HR wonk who isn't qualified to judge any of that.

So the approach of a cover letter that points up specific expertise that _may apply_ to the position is often the best a candidate can do. "My work on galambosian robotics frameworks has definite application to the world of killer robots" is at least as much "pointing out past achievements" as "telling what I can do for you", but without a lot more information than companies are willing to give, it's difficult to make it better.

The hiring process is profoundly broken.

<comment><USER2>
      > The hiring process is profoundly broken.

That's certainly true, and we agree on that. More, you make good and valid points.

Having said that, there is more that candidates can do. They can find out what the company does, for a start. Then if the ad says what skills are required, state clearly that you have the skill _and provide evidence._

Those two things along will put you ahead of 90% of other applicants.

"I work well in groups, but also work well alone." \- you and every other applicant will claim that. _Provide evidence._

Leonardo didn't have a detailed job description to work from, he put in some thought about what his potential employer would want, and then demonstrated that he could provide it.

      > we're a leading-edge company working on
      > bringing killer robots to the masses!

Then you'll need control systems, real-time software, image analysis, goal- oriented planning systems, _etc._ Do you have those skills? Say so _and provide evidence._ You won't know exactly what frameworks they use, but you can demonstrate the ability to move between frameworks taking with you your underlying design and problem solving skills.

I agree entirely that the hiring process is broken, but you can get _well_ ahead by being different and relevant. And if your application doesn't get past the HR wonks, is it _really_ somewhere you want to work?

<comment><USER4> >They can find out what the company does, for a start.

If there's an agency involved, this can be anywhere between somewhat challenging and damn near impossible.

"You'll be joining our client who is one of the world's leading suppliers of [meaningless marketing-speak goes here]"

Obviously, HN job posts don't have this problem. But for Plain Old Contracting it can be a serious issue at the CV stage.

<comment><USER2> That's an excellent point, and yet another reason why agencies are the spawn of the devil. Yes, they need to protect their own interests, and yes, they can't be populated by specialists who can both understand the job specifications and evaluate potential applicants, but even so, they are, in general, astonishingly poor at what they do.

Question is, is there enough value in disrupting that particular market?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Basically, it's a cover letter.

<comment><USER6> This.

If your actual resume consists mostly or exclusively of theoretical future accomplishments, employers will be justified in wondering whether you've actually successfully done anything. If your _cover letter_ consists mostly of rehashing what you've done in the past rather than what you can do in the specific role, employers will be justified in being sceptical about whether you've actually considered whether you're actually the candidate they need.

<comment><USER7> Leonardo existed in an age where the key players were few and everyone of import knew each other. He didn't have to recite past accomplishments, because all the people he was writing letters to already knew what they were.

Had he been an unknown nobody, he'd have had to bring additional context to his appeal for employment just like everyone else.

<comment><USER8> Actually, he wrote this employment letter in 1482, before he made anything of serious artistic importance. He may have been somewhat known in the artistic community, but he was by no means very well known.

<comment><USER7> I mean, here in this age, nobody's going to know who you are as an artist before you make something important. But in the 1400s, just being an artist is a huge enough accomplishment that people are going to know who you are. Also too, what's important to us now is not the same thing as what would have been important to 1400s upper crust society.

The main point I'm trying to make is that 1400s Europe was a really small world. So different than the one we find ourselves in that, if you want to take anything at all from Leonardo's cover letter, adopting his language will probably get you much farther than adopting his actual technique, which was devised to fit the needs of the 1400s.

<comment><USER8> It may have been smaller, no doubt, but this statement is not correct:

 _But in the 1400s, just being an artist is a huge enough accomplishment that people are going to know who you are._

Artists in da Vinci's day were more akin to craftsmen. Da Vinci himself was basically raised in an artist's workshop (by Andrea del Verrocchio) and worked alongside dozens of other students on their master's projects. This is in stark contrast to today's artists, who are basically expected to be the sole creative genius (barring people like Damien Hirst, of course, who is known to use assistants.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Apart from all the other points raised, this reads a lot like a list of "I know all these unpatched zero-day exploits in the enemy's engineering".

</comment><comment><USER10> "Faccio il tifo per te" instead of "Sto tifo per te".

Anyhow, thanks for sharing it, I will rewrite my resume based on this approach.

</comment><comment><USER11> Of course he didn't have to deal with recruiters who only match on keywords and HR people whose eyes are easily glazed over. Or respond to job ads or emails filled with buzzwords that are required. I too wish I could just write a positive note to the CEO.

<comment><USER12> "Thanks Leo, We are seeking for a junior position, that already have experience with 5 years of Church painting, and 3 years of Mayans/Aztec Arts."

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Thanks for sharing it with us.

I wasn't aware of such document from Leonardos's life was available.

Quite interesting, specially since history and languages across centuries are some of my interests.

Also interesting to wonder how a typical HR department would take such a letter in our time.

<comment><USER14> It would be fine as long as you attached your resume as well. (And, of course, given that they were looking for experts in siege warfare).

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think Leo is overselling his chariots a little bit. Looks like resume padding never goes out of style.

I like how at the very end he says as almost an aside, "I'm pretty good at this art stuff too if think you'd need some of that?"

</comment><comment> super-serial So did he get the job?

Or was his letter looked over because the Duke's assistant was looking for a technology using "sulfur"... and Da Vinci didn't mention it in his resume.

</comment><comment><USER16> I get the impression he wouldn't bother with LinkedIn.

</comment><comment><USER17> Born April 15, 1452, this week 563 years ago

</comment><comment><USER18> War: the engine of invention.

</comment><comment><USER19> I am totally writing a resume based on this.

<comment><USER19> This type of comments are frowned upon on HN, as they add nothing to the discussion and create noise. So don't make such comments anymore.

<comment><USER19> Understood.</comment></comment></comment>


Go-style concurrency in C - <AUTHOR> http://libmill.org/

<comment><USER2> Ohh I like that; look pretty nice, lightweight, the 'channels' look quite handy. The only 'downside' I can think of is the lack of namespacing for the function names and such.. I would have liked a co_* for coroutines, ch_* for channels etc.. Of course that would break the 'Go' name mapping...

It's a bit sad to see that these sort of language extension constructs have to be done with preprocessors hacks and stuff, while C11 had a chance of seriously improving C, and instead added all kind of useless crud...</comment>


Ask HN: How Wix.com or Wordpress.com Handle SSL-Certificates? - <AUTHOR>

Ask HN: How Wix.com or Wordpress.com handle SSL-Certificates?
I am developing a software for niche market. The software works like a website builder and my clients can use their custom domains. I use Apache and I have a single virtual host. The application fetches the right configuration and content with $HTTP_HOST variable.
Everything works fine, but the problem begins with SSL certificates. I am searching a solution where I can add new domains without changing Apache configuration, something like this (I know, it doesn't work).
<VirtualHost *:443>
ServerName ${HTTP_HOST}
SSLEngine on
SSLCertificateFile /path/to/${HTTP_HOST}.cert
SSLCertificateKeyFile /path/to/${HTTP_HOST}.key
</VirtualHost>
I have googled a lot but found no solution. Is there any solution? How the all the website builder like, wix.com, jimdo.com and wordpress.com handle this problem? <comment><USER2> Traditionally, you had to bind each SSL certificate to it's own IP address. Today, if both you and your client support Server Name Indicator (SNI) it works to specify the certificate inside each VirtualHost.

EDIT: I realize after posting that you may be asking about the syntax of VirtualHost in Apache, and not about how TLS works in this use case.

<comment><AUTHOR> No you didn't gott my question. Image you have 500 SSL certificate and one server? How do you manage this?</comment></comment>


Meme Instructions Make Bombs, Not Glow Sticks - <AUTHOR> http://www.snopes.com/bernie-sanders-glow-sticks/ <comment><USER2> I had a hard time parsing this - couldn't tell if the Bomb part was false, or the glowstick part.

<comment><AUTHOR> > The instructions given in the above-displayed meme don't create a glow > stick, but it will create an explosion. Mixing chlorine and isopropyl > alcohol creates a violent chemical reaction, which — when it is confined to > a sealed container — has dramatic, potentially dangerous results. A video > posted by the Backyard Scientist in 2013 demonstrated the phenomenon:

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

<comment><USER3> Also from the Snopes site -- what actually happens if you close the container tightly and confine it to a bottle:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H13dLQnLFfI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H13dLQnLFfI)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> My goodness. Future terrorism delivered as memes. Terrible genius?!

</comment><comment><USER5> I find it hard to believe anybody could actually fall for this.

<comment><USER6> Why? I can see how people ignorant of chemistry (most people, in other words), might.

<comment><USER5> You really think most people might fall for this?

People might be ignorant, but that chemistry ignorance extends to being afraid of words like "chlorine", and for that matter, trying chemistry experiments they found on the internet. Furthermore _" cap the bottle TIGHTLY, and shake it up"_ should set off alarm sirens for anyone who's ever heard of a dry ice bomb (what teenager hasn't?) They might not understand the chemistry behind it, but they'll see the end result coming from a mile away.

Shit, _I_ can't claim to understand the chemistry behind it, but as soon as I read it (weeks ago, not on this snopes article) I knew exactly what it would do.

Doubtlessly thousands of people have seen this 'meme', but who has fallen for it?

<comment><USER7> I tested it on some friends who aren't particularly smart. Just smart enough to get in trouble. Just shared the instructions, then when they said we should try it I shared the results.

The problem comes up when people don't understand what they're resharing, but do it because "it's cool". The same problem happens when people share something "just in case."

Sharing is seen as a form of endorsement. It is generally taken to mean "I have done this" or "I want to do this" when it usually means "this caught my attention for 5 seconds."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Gives me flashbacks to the Temple Of The Screaming Electron.

</comment><comment><USER9> The internet's asshole problem rears its ugly head.

Now if only people read the warnings on pool chlorine more carefully, they probably wouldn't even think about doing dumb shit like this.</comment>


Ask HN: VM Server options for BSD based operating systems - <AUTHOR>

Hello all<p>I have been looking at possible VM Server solutions for a FreeBSD box that I have. I'm wondering if anyone has any recommendations as to what to use to host VM's while still using BSD? <comment><USER2> You'll notice the current options aren't great. Virtualbox is OK for casual/desktop use only. Qemu doesn't support hardware virt. The best hope for the future is Bhyve but it is nowhere near production-ready.

<comment><AUTHOR> Shoot I was afraid of that. Last time I looked into it was back in FreeBSD 6.2/7 and outside of jails (which I found primitive) there wasn't anything else.</comment></comment>


Show HN: A simple open-source Android puzzle game - <AUTHOR> Hello HN!
I made a simple puzzle game for Android! Link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=fr.neamar.turnmeon
I built "Turn me on" as a tribute to the old games of before: back then, you didn't have to log in every day, you didn't have to invite three friends to play, you didn't have infinite progression, you didn't have to watch ads til kingdom come. The game would just build on top of a basic idea, and once you're done with the game, it wouldn't try to get you back at any cost every week.
This is a one time experience, kinda like an escape game. See this game as digital detox: once you've finished the 43 levels, you're done. You can resume your work, or go back to your life, hopefully a little happier than before.
Turn me on is also open-source, and implemented in Flutter! If you're curious, you can visit https://github.com/Neamar/turn_me_on/
Feedback welcome! <comment><USER2> I've been part of the early testers and I can fully recommend the game! It's simple at first, gets harder really fast but the learning curve is well adapted.

Perfect game to pass time without the modern games addictive bullshit :)</comment>


Boot Buddy – MacOS High Sierra - <AUTHOR> https://sqwarq.com/boot-buddy/ <comment><USER2> Is this more than a graphical wrapper around the 'createinstallmedia' tool tucked inside the installer app package?

[https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372](https://support.apple.com/en- us/HT201372)

<comment><USER3> That's all it appears to be, at least according to strings(1).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What about that DetectX software on this site, anyone use that?

</comment><comment><USER5> call me paranoiac but I would be worried if thre was a spyware into this, I don't see no sources I can compile or inspect!</comment>


"house is on fire - we're out! shit" - Twitter proves itself again - <AUTHOR> http://uk.techcrunch.com/2009/01/09/house-is-on-fire-were-out-shit-twitter-proves-itself-again/

<comment><USER2> Not to be a curmudgeon, but how is this Twitter "proving itself"? There was a fire; the guy and his family luckily survived; and then he tweeted about it, and other people responded after the fact. Why is this surprising/notable?</comment>


I'm 32 and spent $200k on biohacking - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/im-32-and-spent-200k-on-biohacking-became-calmer-thinner-extroverted-healthier-happier-2a2e846ae113 <comment><USER2> I'm all for sleeping, eating well, exercising and meditating but the laundry list of drugs seems insane. Most of them are harmless or maybe even mildly beneficial but he doesn't mention any of the side effects of drugs like modafinil or lithium.</comment>


Ask HN: Seeking an account of a self-professed philosophical zombie - <AUTHOR> I've been struggling to find a particular article that I remember reading several years ago on HN. Its subject was a man who claimed to have lost his inner life after either witnessing or inadvertently causing another person's death.
If my memory serves, the subject was a priest or minister living in the 19th century. There were no outward signs of his reported affliction and he was capable of communication (i.e. he was not in a coma or otherwise visibly impaired). I believe the subject even remarked upon the apparent paradox of being able to report the absence of an inner life.
I'd be grateful if any of you can help me find it. All of my search engine queries were fruitless. <comment><USER2> Maybe a case of the Cotard delusion?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotard_delusion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotard_delusion)</comment>


Galileo satellites experiencing multiple clock failures - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-38664225 <comment><USER2> What are the legacy GPS system stats? Its kinda important to compare before deciding the Russians hacked them.

Its surprisingly difficult to find real, detailed data about the GPS system. The block II first production run of GPS sats that were launched around 1990 and decommissioned in at most 17 years had a design life of a pitiful 7 years and used dual Rb clock and Cs clocks. I'm not sure the modern block details are declassified. Anyway the failure rate for Galileo seems consistent with a "less than a decade design life" I'm not sure block IIIa is even finished designing yet.

People have this peculiar idea that "the gps satellite" was launched one time in the 80s and its been running ever since... not so, gosh there must have been a hundred or so launched over the last couple decades.

I have some limited experience with Rb-standards and on the ground in telco land you'll get an amazing song and dance from the mfgr about how in theory they should run for eternity but being a vacuum tube (actually conceptually closer to a fluorescent light) they do wear out and end up on ebay after a decade or so for ham radio microwave and EME operators to do peculiar things with them cheaply. Not good enough to run a data center is still stable enough to help bounce signals off the moon.

I have no experience with hydrogen standards they don't even appear on ebay in my price range. Again perhaps its normal for them to wear out, etc.

So Rb standards "should" die off on a regular basis. Possibly the biggest classified secret of the entire GPS project MIGHT be you have to massively overspec your clocks or you get an economic kill shot of spending a billion bucks (rubles, euros) on something that only runs six months LOL shoudda just licensed our technology that learned the lessons the hard way in developmental block I satellites in the mid 80s.

<comment><USER3> _Not good enough to run a data center is still stable enough to help bounce signals off the moon._

Out of curiosity, why does a data center need a Rb clock?

<comment><USER4> Very accurate time is important for some applications: [https://www.wired.com/2012/09/google- spanner/](https://www.wired.com/2012/09/google-spanner/)

<comment><USER5> Not at this level. The Rb resonance in question is ~6.8 GHz, which means that counting it (which is functionally all atomic clock is really doing) will give you accuracy higher by definition than the cycle time of the CPU running your timing-sensitive application.

GPS needs that because at the speed of light in vacuum that corresponds to ~2cm of wavelength, which is only 2 orders of magnitude from the design accuracy of the whole system.

<comment><USER6> Cycle-to-cycle accuracy of an atomic clock (then called a timing and frequency standard) is _never_ dominated by the resonance frequency, and you never extract the timing information from the radio-frequency that interacts with the physics directly.

The reference frequency used externally for timing is the reference oscillator which typically was 5 or 10 MHz, but nowadays tends to be 100 MHz as HF electronics became better.

For an older _Caesium_ clock, a block diagram is explained on this page: [http://www.leapsecond.com/museum/hp5062c/theory.htm](http://www.leapsecond.com/museum/hp5062c/theory.htm)

{a Rb clock is very similar electronically, only you are not looking at count- rates of Cs atoms flying through your spin filter but you are observing the optical attenuation of a rubidium gas, both vary with radio-frequency waves being injected into the package. Also Cs is a primary standard and Rb is very stable - but adjustable and susceptible to extarnal magnetic fields.}

From the reference frequency, a series of synthesizers / multipliers generate the radio frequency that is relevant to the physics process. And this frequency is then modulated slightly (137 Hz label in Figure 5) so that correlation in the physics process from being too high, or too low in resonance frequency, can be observed (Figure 9, you vary between f2 and f1 137 times per second).

A good GPS steered quartz oscillator will use around 100s of loop time- constant, the time constant for the control loop in a caesium clock will be much higher.

<comment><USER5> I'm not following your ire. I don't understand why you think adding all the detail above is inconsistent with "functionally, all an atomic clock is really doing is counting cycles (and, OK, tracking phase) of a known transition of some isotope or another. You're just describing how.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Esa is also in contact with the Indian space agency which is using the same > clocks in its sat-nav system. So far, the Indians have not experienced the > same failures.

Since the same technology and the same manufacturer is being used, it's a weird problem to have after the satellites are already in space.

<comment><USER8> Would it be paranoid to contemplate sabotage?

After all, a global system has clear military value. In contrast the Indian system is limited in coverage to India and nearby nations.

<comment><USER9> my thoughts too, Stuxnet but for GPS satellites. Too much of a threat to the US GPS system? Maybe a target for Russia but unlikely because they have no competing system. The only thing that leads away from it being US orchestrated is that they found Stuxnet, so if they found this you could be pretty sure that US/EU relations would be very shaky. Of course perhaps then Russia make it look like a US attack to divide a wedge between allies.

<comment><USER10> >> Russia ... have no competing system

Russia has GLONASS, China has BeiDOU, India IRNSS, Japan QZ

<comment><USER9> apologies, I thought GLONASS was military use, I then checked and got stuck in wikipedia, meaning to come back and edit my comment, too late now though.

<comment><USER11> If you have a recent smartphone, you might be a GLONASS user and not even know it!

<comment><USER12> If it's an Android smartphone, recent versions of MobiWIA - Eclipsim's GPS Status & Toolbox app divide the satellite signal bar display into four sections (GPS, GLONASS, Beidou, and Galileo). Since my phone only supports GPS and GLONASS, the latter two don't show any bars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> With functioning clocks, Galileo is accurate to within a metre, according to this article. That's crazy - I had no idea it was that accurate.

<comment><USER14> With India, China and Russia launching their own positionning systems, I wonder if it would be possible to interpolate an even higher precision by listening to all 5 signals at the same time.

(I don't know enough about signal processing to know if that's a possibility or not.)

<comment><USER15> Not only is it possible, it's already done in many (most?) smartphones made over the past few years, at least for the Russian GLONASS system. As China's BeiDou and Galileo become operational, those will presumably be incorporated too.

However, I'd guess that most of the improvement in user experience comes from the higher reliability than higher accuracy. Even if the errors from all systems were completely uncorrelated (which they are not), averaging the location reported by four systems gives you at most a factor of 2 in improved accuracy. On the other hand, if your chance of being able to lock onto enough satellites (within a given number of seconds) for one system is 80%, the chance that you can lock on to at least one of the four systems becomes 99.8%.

<comment><USER16> I'm having trouble to grasp how you get a factor 2 improved accuracy if you have data from four uncorrelated systems all having the same accuracy.

Where can I find more information about this?

<comment><USER15> If your N samples are independent and distributed with the same error sigma, then the error of the averaged result is sigma/sqrt(N). (And of course, sqrt(4) = 2.)

You can calculate this directly by computing the variance of a sum of independent Gaussian random variables. Can't find a great link for further reading, but someone else might be able to help you out.

<comment><USER17> I'm glad there are people who know what all this means so I can tap a button, say "navigate to the grocery store" to my phone, and not spend brain cycles learning and maintaining knowledge of the wide range of math/programming/engineering specialties I'd otherwise have to master.

<comment><USER15> Everyone should know the central limit theorem though, simply for its own sake! It's worth the brain cycles :)

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

<comment><USER17> I had an intuitive sense of this. People saying "half the population has a below average IQ!" always elicited a head tilt from me. I just didn't know there was enough to say on the subject to fill a 8k word wikipedia article.

I'll file this next to the formula I whip up when I want to figure out how much a trip costs based on mileage and fuel prices.

<comment><USER18> The intuition should be that "Half the population has below average X" is _untrue_ for the vast majority of situations, because most real things have a skewed distribution.

AFAIK IQ is a peculiar case because of how IQ is defined.

<comment><USER19> A lot of natural processes produce results that are normally distributed. So given a large sample, a continuous value range, no bounds (or far away bounds) and a lack of obvious skew the intuition "half the population is below average" has a good chance to be (approximately) true.

Of course IQ is a made up thing that we just defined to behave that way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Is there a way to fix such problems with a software update?

<comment><USER21> It sounds like a manufacturing issue to me, so I don't think so. The batch they ordered could have been faulty, but I'm assuming that ESA uses samples taken from multiple runs to minimize failures, so that's fairly unlikely.

<comment><USER22> It could be a design issue too. Like are they accidentally over-voltaging the clock with a transient or some sort of power sequencing issue? Or does some component have tin somewhere? Really hard to say at this point.

<comment><USER21> I really hope it's not a design issue, but that could definitely be the case. Why tin specifically?

<comment><USER23> Tin forms whiskers, small hairlike growths on the metal that can cause short circuits. We've already lost a satellite to this phenomenon, although I would hope it's not a problem anymore with current metallurgical techniques

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whisker_(metallurgy)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whisker_\(metallurgy\))

<comment><USER24> If I remember right, tin whiskers were determined to be the cause in the crazy Toyota runaway accelerator pedals a few years back. I think it's mainly an issue with lead-free solders, which RoHS has forced into widespread usage over the last decade.

<comment><USER25> ESA is not part of the EU -- it's an international organization, and is exempt from national law in the same way as an embassy. Even if RoHS applies to spacecraft, it probably doesn't apply to ESA's spacecraft.

That's not to say acquiring non-RoHS components isn't made more difficult by RoHS.

<comment><USER22> RoHS does not apply to spacecraft. In fact, companies specialize in things like replacing RoHS solder balls on BGA parts with lead solder ones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> /r/conspiracy: The CIA probably fed them bad components or software for the clocks. Higher levels of positioning accuracy is potentially dangerous and can be misused by third parties, so the argument goes.

/r/conspiracy: #2 The CIA is downvoting this post.</comment>


Ask HN: Why Is the Favicon a Dog? - <AUTHOR> Screenshot: https://i.postimg.cc/BQrJkj0L/BE5-A3-D9-E-4-B41-4-E44-A34-B-905983-AFA523.jpg <comment><USER2> Something strange is happening with your browser. The favicon for HN is the orange YCombinator logo - the same one that you see next to "Hacker News" at the top of the page.

Here's a direct link to HN's favicon: [https://news.ycombinator.com/favicon.ico](https://news.ycombinator.com/favicon.ico)

Maybe if you clear your cache and re-load the page you'll get the right icon.</comment>


And Twitter Goes Down Again - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/11/AR2009021100753.html <comment><USER2> "yes, it asks for your user name and password and no, we won't do anything wrong with it"

But you'll store it right? And that means if someone breaks into your database they've got my password for Twitter.

This sites that ask for a password are dangerous. Suppose the Twitter does a really great job of salted hashing of passwords so that it wouldn't matter if someone broke into the Twitter database.

Then along comes a third-party service that needs to integrate with Twitter and so asks for my password. All the good work done by Twitter on password security is gone.

But from the public's perspective there's no difference between the two. Both seem to need to know the password, one creates security risk, the other doesn't.

The only solution to this problem is that Twitter provide an authentication service for its users.

<comment><USER3> But they say they take password security "extremely seriously".

What could possibly go wrong?

<comment><USER2> You are correct, what could possibly go wrong?

Oh wait, they take password security so seriously that the login form which sends my Twitter username and password does so over HTTP and not HTTPS! Hooray, my password goes across the wire in plain text.

<comment><USER4> It's not advertised because mass use would take down their servers but someone on HN pointed this out (even your tweets will be encrypted [at least until they are globally published]:

<https://twitter.com>

<comment><USER2> No, I'm talking about Twiddict. Even if you hit <http://twitter.com/> they do the password authentication over https. Twiddict does not.

<comment><USER4> OK. Didn't read clearly. OAuth will be rolled out eventually.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A lesson from Curiosity - <AUTHOR> http://ninjasandrobots.com/curiosity

<comment><USER2> The difference is the Curiosity folks had billions-with-a-B in taxpayer money to spend on going somewhere and seeing what's out there.

I've got only my own means.</comment>


An Intro to Regular Expressions - <AUTHOR> http://blog.bitmakerlabs.com/2014/02/10/prep-course-extra-credit-an-intro-to-regular-expressions/

<comment><USER2> Russ Cox's regex pages are a good place to look for a more in depth treatment. Knowing the fundamental representations helps you separate the sugar from the syntax. [http://swtch.com/~rsc/regexp/regexp1.html](http://swtch.com/~rsc/regexp/regexp1.html)</comment>


Stop asking me for my email address - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/10/stop-asking-me-for-my-email-address/

<comment><USER2> "But for now, the sweet lady at the boutique just has this: firstname.lastname@example.com." \-- Haha

I actually think that them asking for my email is okay. Or give them a fake or my junk email.

Because, sooner or later, they want to tap our actual identity, or ask our Facebook account or Twitter account. Query our information there...</comment>


Show HN: SuperPower - speaker deck and app for introducing programming to kids - <AUTHOR> http://stonly.github.io/superpower/cdeck/

<comment><USER2> ...also, what are you using for the python interpreter?

<comment><AUTHOR> I used [https://github.com/cykod/CoderDeck](https://github.com/cykod/CoderDeck) for the javascript/html/css interpreter (DeckJS + [http://codemirror.net/](http://codemirror.net/))

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Nice presentation! What age-group are you targeting?

<comment><AUTHOR> I have 2 engagements coming up to present programming to kids 10 - 17.</comment></comment>


I can't believe I'm praising Tcl (2008) - <AUTHOR> http://yosefk.com/blog/i-cant-believe-im-praising-tcl.html <comment><USER2> Good article, but it has collected an incredible amount of spam in the comments over the years since it was written.</comment>


Pinterest wants to Pin the blame on you - <AUTHOR> http://y2kemo.com/2012/03/pinterest-wants-to-pin-it-on-you/ <comment><USER2> ...how in the hell does this terms of service surprise you? This is standard user-generated content TOS language, and Pinterest is a user-generated content company. Whenever did you think that you weren't responsible for what you post to Pinterest? Why would they assume the liability?</comment>


Facebook tries hiding Like counts to fight envy - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/26/facebook-hides-likes/ <comment><USER2> At the risk of sounding conspiratorial, I suspect that the recent trend of social media platforms hiding engagement metrics has less to do with fighting 'envy' than simply allowing for more authentic looking proliferation of promoted content. I came to this conclusion from using Instagram after their recent change to hide 'likes'. Even more conspiratorially, I imagine it also helps the platform hide and demote content that is ideological unfavourable or competitive to the platform.

<comment><USER3> [throwaway for obvious reasons]

As one of the people who initiated the hidden likes test on Instagram, I can confidently and authoritatively say you're incorrect. There was no ill intent. It was solely to see if we could make people feel less self conscious by decreasing social comparison. Our hope was to decrease the pressure normal people feel about sharing their lives with their friends and family. We thought this might improve some long-term metrics, but once we discussed the rationale for the test with leadership, the well-being opportunity trumped any impact on metrics--positive or negative.

Also, we [IG] did this first, and we started it for the right reasons. Blue followed our lead. Believe it or not, there are people who give a shit about well-being at FB.

[edited because jazzy was right that I was too harsh]

<comment><USER4> Not sure why your comment is so aggressive and defensive. OP acknowledged they were being conspiratorial.

Also there might not be any explcit intent for your team to impelemt the above but sometimes these things emerge as slow influence that comes from the guiding hand of top level influence over time. A healthy dose of skepticism regarding social media is more than warranted, you can't be upset that anyone would be led to think that after the 2 decades of such decisions made by social media giants

<comment><USER5> And I think very few people or companies do things for a single reason. There is always a list of pros and cons.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My anecdotal experience is that people, in general, are less engaged with Facebook. What used to be news about friends are now shares of some political news source. And the number of people liking or commenting has gone down.

In my circles, what used to be one hundred likes now is a dozen. Most posts only have one or two likes.

If this trend is similar across Facebook to hide the counts makes sense to hide the lack of interest.

Or, it could be that Facebook has changed and they are changing their business model. My bet is that hey really want to hide the lack of interaction and still don't care for the results of their actions.

<comment><USER7> How much of that is just you and your crowd getting older and your social circle getting smaller?

Make some younger and cuter FB friends that have growing social circles because they're in uni and you'll see some impressive numbers on the scoreboard again.

I think this explains a lot more of HNer commentary on FB than people like to admit. "In my personal experience, only old people use FB. My feed is full of parents posting about their children, ugh. FB didn't use to be like this when I was in uni 12 years ago!"

<comment><USER8> My anecdotal experience is that the "younger and cuter" crowd has moved on to Instagram, or even Snapchat. Many more options in social media than 12 years ago.

<comment><USER9> There are less options compared to back then.

Nevermind MySpace,friendster, Hi5 or xing you had the biggest aol. Then you had messenger programs (aim, icq, yahoo, msn, etc). You had irc.

You had blogging or photo communities like flickr or meetup.com for events.

Facebook, twitter and reddit were around just not as popular.

<comment><USER8> Around the time of the parent comment, 12 years ago, Facebook was eating everyone else's lunch.

Friendster was dead, Myspace was in decline (mainly because FB opened up to everyone besides college students), nobody I knew in the USA used Hi5 or xing.

Flickr, meetup, and IRC existed and still exist but they were never the primary social network for the "younger and cuter" college crowd.

If you wanted to connect with your cute classmate 12 years ago, it was almost certain she had a Facebook. It would no longer be certain today.

I actually miss the 2007-era Facebook. No likes, no timeline algorithm, no shares/reposts made for a fun experience at the time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't believe it's to fight envy. Don't give them that much credit. I can't speak for Facebook as I'm not familiar with their interface, but I can for Instagram.

Prolific users tend to hit a wall that paralyses them. As their audience grows, they go from comfortably posting whatever takes their fancy to fretting over metrics and all the gaming that goes on. Is this photo good enough? Is it spectacular? Will it struggle to get stats and embarrass me?

I've seen people go from regular users to just seizing up and posting nothing for weeks on end. Longer they pause, the bigger the pressure to resume. One friend of mine was basically full-time on Instagram as an influencer and then just stopped for months and months.

I think if they're hiding likes, it's almost entirely because it's hurting their overall engagement, not because they care about people.

<comment><USER11> I believe that the plan to hide likes on Instagram is to help FB get a larger cut of the influencer revenue stream. If influencers can't readily prove their value to ad-buyers without getting analytics data from Instagram, buyers will turn to Instagram either for those data or simply place ads directly with Instagram.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'd bet a large chunk people who read HN have spent the past decade or more working on one thing: increase user engagement. I am one of them for sure.

All the networks seem to be realizing that wasn't such a grand idea and are now experimenting with unraveling these features. It's an implicit admission we've all been wasting our time making the world a worse place.

<comment><USER13> Maybe I'm wrong but I was under the impression that the vast majority software is written for business use, not for consumer use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Instagram is their envy-based asset so this makes sense since they don't want to cannibalize their businesses.

<comment><USER15> So much this. Instagram is, as far as I can see, the most psychologically unhealthy parts of social media, distilled. Why anyone would want to use it I don't know.

<comment><USER16> I have a strict no-influencer and no memes/politics policy in mine and the resulting feed is a delight. Hobby ideas, good food, friends and family goings on, etc.

All depends on who you follow.

<comment><USER10> I have multiple accounts and with my personal one, I follow people I know and as you say, it's family outings and so on. Makes it much easier when catching up with acquaintances to have some idea of what's happening in their lives (just had a holiday, renovating their house, tried a restaurant, etc).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> How about just removing likes altogether? Facebook is OPTIMIZED for petty flamewars, because that equals engagement and ad views, and the karma system is at the heart of it. I participate in many rock climbing forums (MountainProject, various subreddits) and the climbing groups on Facebook have a unique level of vitriol. It is just a fun sport, not politics, not religion, but somehow FB foments vicious debate in spite of it. I actually saw one group for climbing partners in Canada that the admin shut down because he was sick of how it decayed. I've never seen anything like it.

<comment><USER18> >Facebook is OPTIMIZED for petty flamewars, because that equals engagement and ad views,

Political disengagement is the modal average political affiliation. Incentives that make partisans angrier and shoutier on your platform are likely to backfire with the politically disengaged.

So maybe in the short run this is true, but over a longer time horizon, fostering an environment where "petty flamewars" proliferate is going to alienate a lot of users, to the point where attrition may outweigh any engagement benefits gained.

<comment><USER19> I know I'm not the only one who doesn't use Facebook because of crap like this. I didn't go as far as deleting my account, but I haven't logged on in >1 year simply because it had gotten to the level of YouTube comments.

I don't know what specifically Facebook did to encourage that level of vitriol, but for whatever reason I consistently saw more rudeness and bickering on Facebook than anywhere else I spend time online. For instance, I was in a group for vintage Ducati motorcycles, and half the comments were bickering about petty details, whereas posting on a forum would almost always lead to helpful information or compliments on the bike.

Facebook may just be starting to reap what they sowed; petty flame wars definitely drive up engagement for a short period until they start driving other users away. The people involved in the argument definitely check back much more often to ensure they got the last word in, and users leaving isn't always as visible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This will escalate the impact of trolls on news articles. Currently, a well- received article might have hundreds or thousands of Likes and Loves, next to a 3-5 Laughs from those wishing to troll/deride the content. At least now you can click and see what the distribution is and verify yes, its just a few trolls. With this change, a single troll would surface a laugh which is seemingly on par with the other reactions. It's a poor metric, but this makes it worse.

<comment><USER21> What do you think about getting rid of the "laugh" reaction? I feel like that could make Facebook less toxic in one stroke, since it is so often used to troll and deride, as you observe. There are non-troll uses of the laugh reaction, to be sure, but the like/love reactions can absorb these.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I think they are doing this not because it's helpful to the users. People share garbage all the time. They sometimes feel bad that only one or two people liked their garbage. Now they have no idea, so they will share more garbage and use the site more. I'm done with Facebook entirely. I've been using it since 2011. I never go on it anymore for the past few years. I never update and I deleted everyone who wasn't a close family member as well as make everything private. It's not a product I care to use anymore. I never got on the instagram train and don't plan to. This is from a guy who has 130k subscribers on my YouTube channel and 2500 followers on Twitter. I just don't like Facebook's platform or Instagram. I also hated that Instagram gave my teenage daughter tons of creepy followers. Facebook is most certainly a detriment to society.

</comment><comment><USER23> I hope this is a step on the road of phasing out "likes" entirely. I really hate the concept. Even on HN, where it works comparatively well (comment score isn't directly visible, new users can't downvote etc) it bothers me, softly nudging me towards making comments that I know will get easy upvotes or not expressing controversial sentiments. At the end of the day you can't really get around the fact that these systems encourage people to post "popular" content. That helps filter out the true trash, but ultimately leads to monoculture, in my opinion.

<comment><USER24> I don't know if the 500 karma rule for enabling downvotes is enough any more with the number of throwaway accounts I see on here. If would be nice if the vote history were visible for a given account to see if people were using temporary accounts for trolling the vote system. A single user with several throwaway accounts, each over 500 karma, could add a false perception of actual user activity.

<comment><USER25> I'm not sure is that easy to achieve 500 karma with a throwaway account... Not to mention with many

<comment><USER24> Here are 2 of them with 4000 and 7000 karma. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21051459](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21051459)

Acquiring karma is a game. If you know how to play to game you can get a 1000 in a week easily. Its much easier to gain karma than lose karma though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I am interested in seeing the effects on Politicians and News Media (not actual journalists but the talking head/news reader/podcaster/blogger/standup comedian/outrager class).

Social media metrics deeply influence their behavior (and the behavior of their fan clubs). Too many of them justify what they do because they think the like counts validate it.

</comment><comment><USER27> > If the test improves people's sense of well-being _without tanking user > engagement_ , it could expand to more countries

So presumedly Facebook has a metric that models a user's well being and values engagement more.

</comment><comment><USER28> > hidden from everyone else who will only be able to see who but now how many > people gave a thumbs-up or other reaction.

if you can see a list of who has reacted, you can still tally it up to see what the number of reactions are

</comment><comment><USER29> Likes have turned into emperor new clothes for content.

Chocolate cake while cool everyone will like it.

Me sharing my dog is missing or I have a garage sale gives actual value to the platform.

</comment><comment><USER30> Thank God I can see still the likes. To know if I'm valuable or not and my peers approve of me.

</comment><comment><USER31> Comment count is still visible, which is probably just as much an enviable metric.</comment>


For Sale: Soviet Military Ferrite Core Memory Stack Cube and Manual - <AUTHOR> http://www.ebay.com/itm/USSR-Soviet-Russian-Military-Ferrite-Core-Memory-Stack-Cube-MANUAL-QUITE-RARE-/150928595047?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item23240b9867 <comment><USER2> Nothing next to this: [http://www.ebay.com/itm/1967-vintage-London-MELLOTRON- Progra...](http://www.ebay.com/itm/1967-vintage-London-MELLOTRON-Programme- Effects-Generator-from-the- BBC-/321183275203?nma=true&si=tmAbGv85A7IcLM0%252Fnkfudu6qpfk%253D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557)

My birthday is soon. Email in profile.

<comment><USER3> Wow, what a find. A tape based sampler. Amazing. That would be so much fun to restore to working condition.

<comment><USER4> You can build 'em out of essentially scrap parts fairly easily, actually. There's also dumps of the Melloton's sample reels floating around if you particularly want that sound rather than producing your own.

Peter Christopherson and Chris Carter of Throbbing Gristle made their own tape loop sampler out of car tape decks, some simple soldering and a keyboard controller in the late 70s. They could control the pitch, rewind, forward, etc. and otherwise trigger various tape loops which was the basis of the band's sound.

There's no reason to stop with tapes, though. MiniDisc is cheap, dead and has seamless shuffle (!!!) which means a whole stack of 'em could be chained to a mixer and played similarly. Still, you won't get the odd mechanical quirks and failings of using a cassette based system, especially if you start munging with manipulating playback speeds which may or may not be interesting to you.

<comment><USER5> Watch this documentary on history of synth[1] -- Chris is in it...

My favorite though, is Skinny Puppy.

[1] - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXm8O5cKrhI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXm8O5cKrhI)

<comment><USER3> thanks! watching the whole thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wonder if it is radioactive. :-) There was a brief flurry of selling various rare Russian military parts that had been scavenged from equipment that had been left behind in the towns around Chernobyl.

Probably not, and it is a fun artifact. I've got a number of PDP-8 core memories (actually in PDP-8's :-) which are much less rare. That said, if you're looking for a parent/child project, or just a fun project, you can make a bit of "core memory" out of a #2 iron nut, a couple of full bridges, and an opamp. We did this with the kids for a science project once and its a lot of fun. You get to learn about hysteresis, the inherent 'analog' nature of digital machines, and with careful planning you could impractically hide information in the spare nuts drawer in the garage :-).

</comment><comment><USER7> For the money, I'd prefer a Curta calculator:

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

[http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_trksid=p2050601.m570.l1311.R...](http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_trksid=p2050601.m570.l1311.R1.TR2.TRC1.A0.Xcurta+calcu&_nkw=curta+calculator&_sacat=0&_from=R40)

</comment><comment><USER8> the search in Russian for "Блок памяти БП-20" leads to this

[http://www.ngpedia.ru/cgi- bin/getpage.exe?cn=61&uid=0.381138...](http://www.ngpedia.ru/cgi- bin/getpage.exe?cn=61&uid=0.38113870145753&inte=6)

which points to "АСВТ-М" series of machines used in all areas of economics, government, education, and military as well.

[http://www.icfcst.kiev.ua/MUSEUM/PHOTOS/M-6000_r.html](http://www.icfcst.kiev.ua/MUSEUM/PHOTOS/M-6000_r.html)

Usually the military components would have "ВП" stamp ("Военная приемка" \- "accepted by military QA") - at least that was the case with electronic components from torpedo and cruise missiles at the navy base hardware dump that we sourced our hobby electronics components from in the childhood, and this doesn't seem to have it :

[http://sovietsouvenirs.com/catalog/images/ic/core_memory-15-...](http://sovietsouvenirs.com/catalog/images/ic/core_memory-15-01.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER9> That's 4K _words_ ; each word seems to be 18 bits (assuming that's what "width" means). That's 9 kB by today's standards.

<comment><USER10> Actually traditionally it's 9 KB, or 9 KiB if you're into the modern binary prefixes.

9 kB would be 9,000 bytes, but this seems to be (4,096 * 18) / 8 = 9,216 bytes, which is exactly 9 KB.

Or maybe I'm just a hopeless old f*rt for caring about things like this, and the world needs to get off my lawn.

<comment><USER11> I obsess over these pedantic differences too and I'm <30 so don't feel too bad. _repeatedly pitches 3.5 " floppies onto your lawn_

NERD SHAME EDIT: It's been a while... 3.5"

<comment><USER12> What must really drive you nuts about your 3.5" floppies are the fact that they are not 1.44 MB, or 1.44 MiB, or anything else that resembles 1.44 x some factor. They are actualy 1000 x 1024 x 1440 bytes (so 1440 KiB). The 1.44 on them is derived from a mixture of SI and Binary units.

<comment><USER13> > 1000 x 1024 x 1440

I think you accidentally included a "1000 x".

<comment><USER12> Yep, looks like I did. I'm having a hard time remembering memory and disk sizes so small. Actually, I think I meant for the 1440 to 1.44, so it is 1.44 x 1000 x 1024 (showing mixing the base-10 and base-2 units). So a MB in the 1.44 MB floppy is 1024 x 1000. Or, to put it another way, to get the number 1.44 out of 1474560 bytes, you first divide 1474560 by 1024, then by 1000. Weird.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Someone please buy this and loan it out to the Computer History Museum!

<comment><USER7> These aren't that rare. You can buy yourself a single board for significantly less:

[http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_sacat=0&_from=R40&_nkw=ferri...](http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_sacat=0&_from=R40&_nkw=ferrite+core+memory&LH_Complete=1&rt=nc)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Is it just me or is that "art". Nice design.

Weren't the Russians making vacuum tubes for decades after the US stopped and "perfected" them?

<comment><USER16> The Mig-25 was fairly famous for using vacuum tubes - initially this was seen as rather funny in the West then people realised that they actually had some distinct advantages, including alleged resiliance to the EMP from nuclear explosions:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikoyan- Gurevich_MiG-25](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikoyan-Gurevich_MiG-25)

<comment><USER7> As well as the audiophile-pleasing sound on those planes.

<comment><USER17> You can't really "measure" or double-blind test how well this thing kills people. Only if you have well developed taste can you appreciate the finer details, the warmth, the clarity, the fidelity.

<comment><USER18> > _Only if you have well developed taste can you appreciate the finer details, > the warmth, the clarity, the fidelity._

There are reports of ground crews for MiG-25's drinking the hydraulic fluid for the planes, which was apparently based on ethanol. Truly an aircraft for those with a discerning palette.

<comment><USER8> >Truly an aircraft for those with a discerning palette.

or a lifesaver for aircrews stationed in "dry" countries like Yemen :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's kinda awesome, that the literal title of the manual is "Exploitation manual" :)

<comment><USER20> I suspect it's just the standard (for the time) term in Russian for what would be called a deployment manual and/or service manual in English. I've worked with old French documents titled "Manuel d'exploitation" that are essentially how to make the device/software work in production (installation/in use/maintenance).

<comment><USER21> As an >30 russian I can confirm. "Руководство по эксплуатации" is the standart term in USSR for any type of the end user manuals. Now user manuals just the "user" manuals (Руководство пользователя).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> That's crazy, you can see it's handmade. I wonder if it still works?

<comment><USER23> Might be fun to hook it up to an Arduino and see if you could read/write. I imagine it needs its own power supply.

<comment><USER24> Core memory is _non-volatile._ If you hooked it up to a computer, you could read out what was written into it. Theoretically.

NASA recovered the Challenger's core memory out of the ocean and was able to read it out months after the disaster.

"On March 19, 1986, NASA announced that four of five Challenger General Purpose Computers (GPC) had been recovered from the Atlantic and moved to the IBM Federal Systems Division facility in Owego, NY. The GPCs were cleaned under controlled conditions and submerged in deionized water at Kennedy Space Center prior to air shipment March 16, 1986, to Owego. The GPC ferrite core memories were examined for any possible residual data -- a process that at the time was expected to take several months. This information was in the form of data--not onboard voice--and this path was pursued to add any possible additional information to the accident investigation. Many weeks later, it was found that the additional data frames did not measurably add to the information already gathered during the investigation."

Ref: [http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/conspiracy/q0258a.shtml](http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/conspiracy/q0258a.shtml)

<comment><USER22> I was going to respond that to the parent, but you beat me :)

Imagine hooking up and figuring out you can read it? Even better, imagine it contains nuke launch codes (in the best soviet-from-secret-agent-movie tradition)?!

<comment><USER25> And imagine teenagers ended up acquiring it, and getting access to those launch codes! _cue Hollywood movie scenario_

<comment><USER16> Only to discover that the code to launch the missiles at the Soviets was set to 00000000

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Brings back memories.

I remember IBM 360 "large core storage" devices at the Naval Electronics Lab on Point Loma (San Diego, where I worked as a high school student)--boxes that held a MEGABYTE of core (I think several milliseconds per byte access, so more like a fast DASD), which cost a MILLION dollars. ($1/byte)

We systems programmers thought we were in hog heaven, since most 360 mainframes of the day (1971) had 32KB or 64KB main memories. (Yes, KB.)

</comment><comment><USER27> So this thing runs in space? They went to space with this?

<comment><USER3> Judging by the time it was made it was at least intended to be used in a hostile environment. By 1983 the days of core memory were long gone so any application involving ferrite would have to be special to justify the additional cost over using semiconductor ram.

<comment><USER28> I think it was supposed to withstand the electromagnetic pulse of a nuclear explosion - Special toys for the military in preparation of WW3.

"Soviet Cold War–era military aircraft often had avionics based on vacuum tubes due to limited solid-state capabilities and a belief that the vacuum- tube gear would survive better." says [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_electromagnetic_puls](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_electromagnetic_puls)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I know of someone who has a piece of EDSAC (or maybe EDSAC 2) on his shelf. It looks very similar to:

[http://www.chezfred.org.uk/University/ComputerXHistory/First...](http://www.chezfred.org.uk/University/ComputerXHistory/FirstComputers-1/1960-EDSAC- DSCN1489.htm)

He happened to be in the vicinity as it was being decommissioned. It's sometimes used as a doorstop.

</comment><comment><USER30> I would love to buy this and interface to it via the GPIO pins of the Raspberry Pi.

Perhaps the Pi could even piggyback onto the stack cube itself, and you could house it inside some kind of a glass container with inputs and output ports accessible from the outside.

It'd certainly be a conversation starter, and let's face it, who doesn't love core memory?

</comment><comment><USER31> Reminds me of a project of a friend (which I submitted a while ago): Magnetic core memory using Arduino

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

previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3888926](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3888926)

</comment><comment><USER32> I had a heap of these at home as a kid, only they were slightly different in that they ferrite rings and the wires were encased in a gel to reduce mechanical strain (so likely a later design). Had I only known they would be selling for thousands of dollars...

<comment><USER33> Mine wasn't; after a while every time I set it down, little broken cores would rain down. They apparently decay over time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> My dad used to work on mainframes at IBM. When I was about seven years old he took me to work one day and showed me memory like this. Except he could open the door and you could look at a whole cabinet full of crisscrossed wires.

</comment><comment><USER35> Reminds me of this video of Adam Savage showing off his byte: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQWcIkoqXwg](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQWcIkoqXwg)

</comment><comment><USER36> Page archive for future reference — [http://archive.is/fj080](http://archive.is/fj080)

</comment><comment><USER37> I wouldn't be surprised if Newark/Arrow/Avnet are still stocking these.

</comment><comment><USER38> 4096 words @ 400kHz

Logical "1" \- 20-60mV Logical "0" \- 10mV (not more)

</comment><comment><USER39> Yeah I love the look of this, but a 2K buy it now price, not exactly letting people find its true value. (not getting into free market stuff, just saying these kind of "i think its worth $X thousand, buy it or not" stuff isn't exactly the point of eBay)

<comment><USER40> eBay has been slowly moving away from being an auction house (the internet's garage sale) for years now. They have been moving towards becoming the "storefront" for people selling things without needing an actual physical store. Hence the attention to "Buy It Now" and "Add to Cart" over "Bid".

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I'm wondering if it still contains data, if it's working.

</comment><comment><USER42> This is a very cool find. Thanks for sharing.

</comment><comment><USER43> Absolutely overpriced.

<comment><USER23> Overpriced in terms of today's RAM prices (yes!), or overpriced for a Soviet 4K RAM module of its type? I've never seen one before so I have no idea.

<comment><USER44> Wikipedia [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic- core_memory](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic-core_memory) states that: "in 1980, the price of a 16-kW (kiloword, equivalent to 32kB) core memory board that fitted into a DEC Q-bus computer was around US $3,000."

This one is a 4kW or 9kB from 1983, I'll let you do the math!

<comment><USER45> If you consider inflation and, more importantly, rarity, I think it's not that overpriced.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> beautiful!

</comment><comment><USER47> Seems like the kind of thing that you'd keep in your attic forever.

<comment><USER48> True, I've got a 4k x 12bit core store in mine, and it's been there over 30 years :-)</comment></comment>


Fedora 14 Linux Released - <AUTHOR> http://digitizor.com/2010/11/03/fedora-14-linux-released/

<comment><USER2> I still can't believe that RedHat/CentOS is used so much in businesses over other distributions. WTH? I've not installed Fedora intentionally in a long time, and would stay the hell away from it if I weren't forced to use it at times. Many of its packages aren't that up-to-date so they contain security issues as a tradeoff for "stability". Is there any chance that others might have recognized this also and Fedora is in a slow decline?</comment>


For 40 Years, This Russian Family Was Cut Off from All Human Contact (2013) - <AUTHOR> https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/for-40-years-this-russian-family-was-cut-off-from-all-human-contact-unaware-of-world-war-ii-7354256/ <comment><USER3> >Lacking guns and even bows, they could hunt only by digging traps or pursuing prey across the mountains until the animals collapsed from exhaustion.

This reminds me of a show I watched on the Science channel when I was young about how humans have evolved. They showed various African civilizations and detailed how they hunt in parties by simply keeping pace with the animal until the animal just collapses. It goes on to say that that is one characteristic of human evolution that has made us drastically more successful at surviving than other species

<comment><USER4> Are there examples of how humans are/were able to outrun an animal until it collapses? I find it difficult to imagine unless you corner the animal and have enough manpower to not be run over.

<comment><USER5> If you watch big animals hunting (wolves, bear are the ones we have here), they also stand significant chance of being injured by prey (horns..), and as a result tend to harry the prey until it is exhausted and basically gives up.

The other strategy is a quick surprise coup de grace, like lions. We have lions/pumas here but they're hard to spot and I've never seen one hunting but I assume it's like a scaled up version of a house cat, or big felines seen on TV.

<comment><USER6> Where are you that you have all these top level predators?

Edit: Wait, nvm. This is probably the west coast of North America, and by lions you mean mountain lions. I was thinking the ones with the manes right away.

<comment><USER7> Russian Far East is also similar, except with tigers.

<comment><USER6> So _that 's_ the fabled land of "lions and tigers and bears, oh my!"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wow... this was an incredible read, thank you for sharing.

I can't imagine what it would be like to grow up in that environment.

Humans are amazing... one of my favorite lines from the article:

The family's principal entertainment, the Russian journalist Vasily Peskov noted, "was for everyone to recount their dreams."

<comment><USER9> This is doubly strange because "recounting dreams" is, in modern society, a pretty surefire way to _bore_ other people. But it may be that when you live this kind of pre-modern life you don't have all the random coins of so much life, media, and other humans around you, so the most reliable source of surprising material is dreams.

<comment><USER10> Most people are _bad_ at recalling dreams, which doesn't help. It's not a bad experience, if you're interacting with people who are good at it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Surviving in the wilderness for prolonged time is really, really hard. Even more so in a cold place like Siberia. Shows like Bear Grills are fun entertainment, but have little to do with actual survival. The show 'Alone' paints a more realistic picture: most contestants are airlifted because of medical reasons, and the winners end up emanciated in less than 3 months. And bear in mind that these are trained survivalists.

EDIT Also reminds me of the story of Hiroo Onoda, a Japanese soldier that hid in the Phillipine jungle for 30 years after WWII, not knowing Japan had surrendered. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroo_Onoda](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroo_Onoda)

<comment><USER12> The only way to actually survive is to hunt big game. Fish is too lean. Vegetables have no calories. Small rodents have very few calories. Fatty meat is a necessity.

In alone, they are forced to transport heavy camera equipment. They start out right before winter. The local laws prevent them from actually hunting. The show is a joke. There is no surviving actually done. Just enduring starvation. The optimal way to win is to select fatty food as many of your 10 items as possible, make a shelter, and expend as few calories as possible. But that isn't entertaining to watch, so they won't select you to be on the show.

<comment><USER13> > Vegetables have no calories.

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

"Typical examples include tubers and roots, grains, legumes, and seeds."

Yeah, don't go scarfing iceberg lettuce when stuck in the woods, but we've been finding and eating starchy root vegetables for probably millions of years.

<comment><USER14> We've also spend a tens of thousands of years selectively breeding plants to produce more calories. You won't find such calorie rich wild plants. Foraging for plants is really hard.

<comment><USER13> We started breeding them presumably because they offered clear nutritional benefits. That we made them _better_ doesn't change this.

<comment><USER15> Not to say there isn't nutritional benefits to wild wheat and carrots and whatever (I've no idea to be honest), but I don't think the nutritional value was at the front of their mind when our ancestors began understanding agriculture. If it stopped them being hungry I think that's all that mattered, because it was the wilderness and that's basically all wild animals think about. I can definitely see it being a supplement to hunting initially, in order to reduce the number of hunts required, and only afterwards as we made improvements to our techniques and crops would the nutritional requirements from the crops become a focus point.

I don't know shit about this topic though, I'm just trying to put myself in their shoes (or feet as the case would be).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The Altai region is beautiful, I hope to visit one day.

This bloke hiked up to Agafia's and filmed it:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3w_NOkOLUQQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3w_NOkOLUQQ)

<comment><USER17> That was a very fascinating video to watch - thanks for that. Only thing is it delivered a pretty gnarly case of motion sickness after a few minutes ..

What was really interesting was the observation, towards the end, that once he'd hiked for 4 days and then arrived at Agafia's place and been there for a day, he felt like he'd arrived in civilisation!

One wonders what the plan for the area is, once Agafia leaves this mortal coil. She's not alone at the moment - it seems she gets regular visitors - <USER2> would this be enough of a settlement to form the basis for a new township to be founded? I confess, the idea of moving to that valley is _very_ attractive these days, if but for the harsh environment I clearly know nothing about ..

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> > _The rest of the family were saved by what they regarded as a miracle: a > single grain of rye sprouted in their pea patch. The Lykovs put up a fence > around the shoot and guarded it zealously night and day to keep off mice and > squirrels. At harvest time, the solitary spike yielded 18 grains, and from > this they painstakingly rebuilt their rye crop_

Think of how long they watched this little shoot of rye grow... that must have been a really scary period.

<comment><USER19> It's like the ancient version of those sci-fi shows where they're in deep space and the ship breaks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm definitely not that person, but that level of dedication to religion is absolutely amazing to me. Outside of my family, and maybe that was the real motivator, I don't have a single thing in my life that I am that devoted to.

Humans are marvelous, fascinating creatures.

<comment><USER21> One of my key takeaways from this story was just how "minor" the schism that produced this appears to me. I am a Christian and take doctrine very seriously but I find the issues that the Old Believers [0] were concerned about utterly baffling.

In the linked article, the table of the "main" differences are shockingly trivial from my perspective and include:

1) How "Jesus" is spelled 2) How to hold your fingers when making the sign of the cross 3) Procession direction (CW vs CCW) 4) etc.

That either side was willing to kill or die over these things is something I simply can't understand.

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

<comment><USER22> Well, I think those are just markers. I think the real issue began with mass murdering of Old Believers during Nikon reforms, which were mainly about power (to separate from Constantinople).

<comment><USER7> By the time Nikon reforms happen, the Russian Orthodox Church already had its own independent patriarch.

And in fact, the reforms were about making things _more_ like what the Greek church was doing at the time. Russian traditions, meanwhile, were based on _old_ Greek ones, and basically better conserved. It went above and beyond matters of dogma and ritual, even down to stuff like clothing and hairstyles.

Tsar Aleksei was also a Grecophile, and to him this was less abstract than just church issues - he was seriously eyeing Constantinople as a potential "Orthodox Reconquista", with himself as the new Constantine - _the_ emperor of the Orthodox faithful. Military feasibility aside, this all is a lot easier if tsar's take on Orthodoxy itself is more consistent with what the Greeks see as such.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Things started to get a lot harder when their metal items started to fall apart. Metal smelting and forging are always the part of those primitive technology youtube channels where things get really complicated.

</comment><comment><USER23> I've always enjoyed this article - I lived in the Yukon for 4 years and we would go on ~10 day moose hunting trips in the fall where we wouldn't see a person, or even signs of people (roads, power lines, fire pits) the whole time. It would be below freezing overnight, and sometimes chunks of ice would come down the river.

We always wondered if we could survive a winter with just what we had.

Anyway, but biggest questions from this article are how did they light fire, and how did they boil water? I assume steel pots, but what would they have done once those were damaged?

<comment><USER24> I think the article mentioned using birch bark containers when their pots wore through. To heat water in them, they probably heated rocks in the fire and dropped them into the bark bowls full of water. I'm not sure how they made fire, but it was probably tedious so maybe they kept it going constantly--no shortage of wood.

<comment><USER23> > _I 'm not sure how they made fire, but it was probably tedious so maybe they > kept it going constantly--no shortage of wood._

From experience, I know it's a full time job when the temperature drops to -40. You don't want to sleep for more than a few hours at a stretch. One mistake and you're in big trouble at those temperatures.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Previous discussions in 2013: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5134023](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5134023)

<comment><USER26> and even more discussions - it's one of the beloved recurring HN topics.

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=For%2040%20Years%2C%20This%20R...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=For%2040%20Years%2C%20This%20Russian%20Family%20Was%20Cut%20Off%20from%20All%20Human%20Contact&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix&page=0)

<comment><USER27> (Quick tip: links like that can become more useful with "comments>0":)

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=comments%3E0%20For%2040%20Year...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=comments%3E0%20For%2040%20Years%2C%20This%20Russian%20Family%20Was%20Cut%20Off%20from%20All%20Human%20Contact&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix&page=0&storyText=none)

<comment><USER26> thanks @dang would never discover it "comments > 0"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> That website is pretty brutal for reading, with the ads rotating and their different heights shifting the content up and down constantly.

<comment> AA-BA-94-2A-56 I was using ublock origin and it was fine

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The article mentions how the children died of kidney failure. One thing I remember reading was that their bodies had adapted to the lack of salt, so it was the salted food they ate after contact that killed them.

<comment><USER29> I had the same thought. Dying within days of each other post-contact from kidney failure after a lifetime in the wilderness is a little coincidental.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Here's a Vice documentary from 2014 about Agafia : [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tt2AYafET68](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tt2AYafET68)

<comment><USER31> I feel a profound sadness watching this. Not because of the difficulty of her life. She prefers it her way. But because she is good. And there is so much bad in the world outside. She deserves all the kindness. Edit: We all do, actually. Kindness.

<comment><USER17> I've followed Agafia's story for a few years, and I have a similar conclusion to yours - she demonstrates the core value of human nature, that it really can survive on a simplicity of needs. I was struck by the realisations of many that visited her, that she was a civilising force in the rugged landscape in which she lived. This seems to be an irrefutable aspect of human nature, given the right ingredients for its exposition. Just the simple act of cutting grass for her goats reveals human kindness at its core.

I also think its pretty neat that she encourages visitors. Altruistic, as in - she wants to share the beauty of the world she's made for herself - or is there some selfish desire for human interaction, unfulfilled, which motivates this act? Either way, she's a beautiful human being.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> > ... , and though he steadfastly refused to believe that man had set foot on > the moon, he adapted swiftly to the idea of satellites. The Lykovs had > noticed them as early as the 1950s, when "the stars began to go quickly > across the sky," and Karp himself conceived a theory to explain this: > "People have thought something up and are sending out fires that are very > like stars."

</comment><comment><USER33> more previous discussion highlights:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12374973](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12374973)

</comment><comment><USER34> Really interesting story, it's from 2013, someone might want to add that to the title here.

<comment><USER35> Yep, I saw the headline and thought it must be that one story I read about back in 2013. It's still a captivating read, however.

The stories about the Japanese soldiers marooned on Pacific islands for decades still thinking they were at war with the Allieds are right up there with this one.

<comment><USER20> It's the human endurance piece of these stories that is just fascinating for me. There are times in my very cushy life that I worry about how hard I have it, and don't believe that I can go on.

Then this comes along. Humans really, genuinely are remarkable creatures.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> This is the most interesting story I have read in a long time. Thank you for sharing.

</comment><comment><USER36> Fascinating story, it is unbelievable what humans can survive

</comment><comment><USER37> The website crashed.

Interesting!

</comment><comment><USER38> > and though he steadfastly refused to believe that man had set foot on the > moon

Prescient for somebody who doesn't even know what a soundstage is.</comment>