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The oldest known blueprints depict Stone Age megastructures (vice.com) Archaeologists have discovered the oldest known architectural plans to scale in human history which were engraved in stone some 8000 to 9000 years ago by Neolithic peoples in Jordan and Saudi Arabia that built giant megastructures to capture wild game reports a new study. The discovery exposes a major milestone in the evolution of human cognition and megastructure development and may have broad implications for understanding the origins of modern civilization. The engravings display nearby constructions called desert kites named for their kite-like shape that served as enormous animal traps built from stone walls that stretch for miles in some cases. As the earliest examples of accurate blueprints the items represent a cognitive breakthrough that would eventually give rise to skyscrapers spacecraft and all other real-world objects that are now built with the guidance of a schematic. Hill-shaded photogrammetric 3D model of the engraved monolith found in Jibal al-Khashabiyeh Jordan showing the different faces showing the interpretative drawing of the engraved plan on the stone. Credits: SEBAP & Crassard et al. 2023 PLOS ONE. Saudi engraving 1: The engraved boulder from Jebel az-Zilliyat Saudi Arabia depicting two desert kites. Credits: Crassard et al. 2023 PLOS ONE (edited) Humans have created captivating representations of the world for tens of thousands of years including vivid scenes painted on cave walls and symbolic figures whittled into sculptures. Our species has also built megalithic architectural structures for at least 10000 years including the more than 6000 kites that span the Middle East Caucasia and Central Asia. Prior to the new discovery the oldest evidence of accurate scale models dated back about 5000 years to Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt. How earlier cultures built huge structuresincluding kites that can only be fully seen from the skyhas remained a mystery. An international team of scientists has now pushed the timeline of this field back by several millennia with the exceptional discovery of the up-to-now oldest realistic plans engraved on stones of some of these human-made archaeological mega-traps from south-eastern Jordan and northern Saudi Arabia the oldest of which are dated to 9000 years ago according to a study published on Wednesday in the journal PLoS ONE . The discovery of these engravings was an amazing moment of archaeology said Wael Abu-Azizeh an archeologist at the French Institute of the Near East who co-authored the study in an email to Motherboard. All of us were extremely excited when we found them! We were immediately astonished by the accuracy and level of detail of these drawings. The engravings were initially found in 2015 during pedestrian surveys of the Jibal al-Khashabiyeh region of Jordan and the Jebel az-Zilliyat region of Saudi Arabia. The Jordanian carving measures about 30 inches long 13 inches wide and depicts a kite that was etched out with a stone hammer on a limestone block. The Saudi Arabian engraving is much larger with dimensions of seven by 12 feet and appears to have been pecked out perhaps with a massive pick on a sandstone boulder. Both of the maps were located near the remains of desert kites made of long walled passages called driving lines that lead to large enclosures forming the rough shape of a kite. Neolithic hunters used these buildings to lure animals such as gazelles into confined spaces where they could be more easily killed. Abu-Azizeh and his colleagues knew the engravings were kites by sight but computer verification techniques revealed striking resemblances between the stone representations and the actual megastructures in their proximity. Archaeologists excavating a desert kite in Jebel az-Zilliyat Saudi Arabia. Credits: O. Barge CNRS. We very quickly understood the importance of these drawings because we had knowledge about the nearby kites their shape and organization as well as their early dating Abu-Azizeh said. We therefore were immediately surprised by the similarity of the drawing with the hunting desert kite structures. Thats how we realized that the engravings were actually accurate plans at scale whereas the quantitative comparison of the kite shape depicted on the drawings and the real kite plans confirmed this initial hypothesis. The unprecedented accuracy of these engravings differentiates them from earlier human proto-maps found in Spain Ukraine and the Czech Republic which are abstract representations not scaled depictions of a landscape according to the new study. The kite blueprints also open a window into the minds of their Neolithic creators raising new questions about how these people were able to envision structures that can only be seen in their entirety with an aerial perspective. These engravings reflect a way of perceiving and conceiving space said Olivier Barge an archaeologist at the French National Centre for Scientific Research who co-authored the study in an email to Motherboard. The engravings show human spatial representations that involve perceiving the world not by being in the world but above the world (even beyond). This type of perception/representation is unusual if we consider civilizations over the long term he added. It was thought until now that the first indication of this type of perception/conception dates back to the third millennium BC in Mesopotamia. These plans therefore bring it back much earlier... and this concerns populations of hunters probably nomadic or semi-nomadic and not necessarily literate societies as previously supposed. While the new discovery opens up many new research avenues Abu-Azizeh Barge and their colleagues are most interested in learning more about the specific Neolithic peoples who pioneered stone blueprints to guide their construction projects some 8000 years ago. For us it only makes us want to know these populations better their way of life the way in which the hunting of gazelles on a large scale entered into their economic model as we would say today Barge concluded. For this period hunting gazelles beyond the subsistence needs of the group as was probably the case is already a big question. We have work! 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The original Bambi (newyorker.com) To revisit this article select My Account then View saved stories To revisit this article visit My Profile then View saved stories By Kathryn Schulz It is one of the most famous murders in the history of cinema. A mother and her child are out for a walk on the first warm day after a bitter winter. Beguiled by the changing weather we do not see the danger coming. In fact we never see it at all because the man with the gun remains offscreen. We see only the mothers sudden alarm; her panicked attempt to get her child to safety; their separation in the chaos of the moment; and then the child outside in the cold as snow once again begins to fall alone and crying for his mother. The film in question is of course the 1942 Walt Disney classic Bambi . Perhaps more than any other movie made for children it is remembered chiefly for its moments of terror: not only the killing of the heros mother but the forest fire that threatens all the main characters with annihilation. Stephen King called Bambi the first horror movie he ever saw and Pauline Kael the longtime film critic for this magazine claimed that she had never known children to be as frightened by supposedly scary grownup movies as they were by Bambi. Unlike many other Disney classics from Cinderella to Frozen this fright fest is not based on a fairy tale. It was adapted from Bambi: A Life in the Woods a 1922 novel by the Austro-Hungarian writer and critic Felix Salten. The book rendered Salten famous; the movie which altered and overshadowed its source material rendered him virtually unknown. And it rendered the original Bambi obscure too even though it had previously been both widely acclaimed and passionately reviled. The English-language version as translated in 1928 by the soon to be Soviet spy Whittaker Chambers was enormously popular earning rave reviews and selling six hundred and fifty thousand copies in the dozen-plus years before the film came out. The original version meanwhile was banned and burned in Nazi Germany where it was regarded as a parable about the treatment of Jews in Europe. As that suggests Bambi the book is even darker than Bambi the movie. Until now English-language readers had to rely on the Chambers translationwhich thanks to a controversial copyright ruling has been the only one available for almost a century. This year however Bambi: A Life in the Woods has entered the public domain and the Chambers version has been joined by a new one: The Original Bambi: The Story of a Life in the Forest (Princeton) translated by Jack Zipes with wonderful black-and-white illustrations by Alenka Sottler. Zipes a professor emeritus of German and comparative literature at the University of Minnesota who has also translated the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm maintains in his introduction that Chambers got Bambi almost as wrong as Disney did. Which raises two questions: How exactly did a tale about the life of a fawn become so contentious and what is it really about? Felix Salten was an unlikely figure to write Bambi since he was an ardent hunter who by his own estimate shot and killed more than two hundred deer. He was also an unlikely figure to write a parable about Jewish persecution since even after the book burnings he promoted a policy of appeasement toward Nazi Germany. And he was an unlikely figure to write one of the most famous childrens stories of the twentieth century since he wrote one of its most infamous works of child pornography. These contradictions are nicely encapsulated by Beverley Driver Eddy in her biography Felix Salten: Man of Many Faces . Born Siegmund Salzmann in Hungary in 1869 Salten was just three weeks old when his family moved to Viennaa newly desirable destination for Jews because Austria had lately granted them full citizenship. His father was a descendant of generations of rabbis who shook off his religious roots in favor of a broadminded humanism; he was also a hopelessly inept businessman who soon plunged the family into poverty. To help pay the bills Salten started working for an insurance company in his teens around the same time that he began submitting poetry and literary criticism to local newspapers and journals. Eventually he began meeting other writers and creative types at a caf called the Griensteidl across the street from the national theatre. These were the fin-de-sicle artists collectively known as Young Vienna whose members included Arthur Schnitzler Arnold Schoenberg Stefan Zweig and a writer who later repudiated the group Karl Kraus. Salten was in his youth both literally and literarily promiscuous. He openly conducted many affairswith chambermaids operetta singers actresses a prominent socialist activist and serially or simultaneously several women with whom other members of Young Vienna were having dalliances as well. In time he married and settled down but all his life he wrote anything he could get paid to write: book reviews theatre reviews art criticism essays plays poems novels a book-length advertisement for a carpet company disguised as reportage travel guides librettos forewords afterwords film scripts. His detractors regarded this torrent as evidence of hackery but it was more straightforwardly evidence of necessity; almost alone among the members of Young Vienna he was driven by the need to make a living. Yet like his father Salten could be reckless with money. Anxious to seem like an insider he insisted on eating drinking dressing and travelling in the manner of his wealthier peers with the result that he was constantly accruing debts some of which he dispatched in dodgy waysfor instance by borrowing and then selling a friends expensive books. And he could be reckless in other respects too. Inclined to be touchy either by temperament or because he felt the need to prove himself he spent much of his young life fomenting disputes (he once walked into the Griensteidl and slapped Kraus in the face after the latter criticized him in print) then resolving them via lawsuits or duels. Both his personal judgment and his critical judgment could be impulsive and errant; in his thirties he borrowed prodigiously to produce a modernist cabaret of the kind that was all the rage in Berlin only to see it become a critical and financial catastrophe. The production that brought Salten the most infamy however did not bear his name: Josefine Mutzenbacher; or The Story of a Viennese Whore as Told by Herself. Published anonymously in Vienna in 1906 it has been continuously in print since then in both German and English and has sold some three million copies. Despite the subtitle no one ever seems to have entertained the possibility that it was written by a prostitute or even by a woman. In Saltens lifetime nearly everyone thought he wrote it except for those who liked him too much to believe he could produce something so filthy and those who hated him too much to believe he could produce something so well written. Salten himself twice claimed not to have been responsible for it but otherwise was silent or coy on the subject. These days everyone from academics to the Austrian government regards him as the undisputed author of the book. Written in the tradition of the ribald female memoir la Fanny Hill Josefine Mutzenbacher recounts the sexual adventures of the title character beginning when she is five years old and continuing after her turn to prostitution in her early teens following the death of her mother. Today what is most shocking about the book is Josefines youth. At the time however most of the scandal concerned her unapologetic embrace of her career which she both enjoyed and credited with lifting her out of poverty educating her and introducing her to a world far wider than the impoverished Vienna suburbs where she (like Salten) grew up. Link copied Perhaps inevitably scholars have tried to draw parallels between Josefine Mutzenbacher and Bambi. Both title characters lose their mothers while still in their youth; both books introduce readers in detail to urban borderlandsthe poor suburbs the flophouses the forestsabout which most proper Viennese were largely ignorant. Still for the most part such comparisons seem strained. Josefine Mutzenbacher occupies much the same place in the Salten uvre as his homage to carpets: the one that lies at the intersection of ambition graphomania and penury. But the place of Bambi is different. If there is a through line to Saltens scattershot career it is his interest in writing about animals which was evident from his first published work of fiction: The Vagabond a short story about the adventures of a dachshund written when he was twenty-one. Many other nonhuman protagonists followed most of them ill-fated: a sparrow that dies in battle a fly that hurls itself to death against a windowpane. Saltens novel The Hound of Florence concerns a young Austrian man destined to spend every other day of his life as the archdukes dog; in the end he is stabbed to death in his dog form while trying to protect a courtesan he loves from assault. (In an even more drastic transformation than the one Bambi underwent this story became in Disneys hands The Shaggy Dog.) Fifteen Rabbits features at first fifteen rabbits who debate the nature of God and the reason for their own persecution while their numbers gradually dwindle. Renni the Rescuer about a German shepherd trained as a combat animal features a carrier pigeon traumatized by its wartime service. And then of course there is Bambiwhich like these other stories was not particularly suitable for children until Disney bowdlerized it to fit the bill. If you havent seen the Disney version of Bambi since you were eight here is a quick refresher: The title character is born one spring to an unnamed mother and a distant but magnificently antlered father. He befriends an enthusiastic young rabbit Thumper; a sweet-tempered skunk Flower; and a female fawn named Faline. After the death of his mother the following spring he and Faline fall in love but their relationship is tested by a rival deer by a pack of hunting dogs and finally by the forest fire. Having triumphed over all three Bambi sires a pair of fawns; as the film concludes the hero like his father before him is watching over his family from a faraway crag. Bambi was not particularly successful when it was first released. It was hampered partly by audience turnout which was down because of the Second World War and partly by audience expectations since unlike earlier Disney productions it featured no magic and no Mickey. In time though Bambi which was Walts favorite among his films became one of the most popular movies in the history of the industry. In the four decades following its release it earned forty-seven million dollarsmore than ten times the haul of Casablanca which came out the same year. Perhaps more notably it also earned a dominant position in the canon of American nature tales. In the words of the environmental historian Ralph Lutts It is difficult to identify a film story or animal character that has had a greater influence on our vision of wildlife. That vision is of an Eden marred only by the incursion of humankind. There is no native danger in Bambis forest; with the exception of his brief clash with another male deer in mating season and maybe that hardscrabble winter the wilderness he inhabits is all natural beauty and interspecies amity. The truly grave threats he faces are always from hunters who cause both the forest fire and the death of his mother yet the movie seems less anti-hunting than simply anti-human. The implicit moral is not so much that killing animals is wicked as that people are wicked and wild animals are innocent. Some years ago when the American Film Institute compiled a list of the fifty greatest movie villains of all time it chose for slot No. 20between Captain Bligh of Mutiny on the Bounty and Mrs. John Iselin of The Manchurian Candidatethe antagonist of Bambi: Man. Unsurprisingly Bambi has long been unpopular among hunters one of whom sent a telegram to Walt Disney on the eve of the films release to inform him that it is illegal to shoot deer in the spring. Nor is the film a favorite among professional wilderness managers who now routinely contend with what they call the Bambi complex: a dangerous desire to regard nature as benign and wild animals as adorable and tame coupled with a corresponding resistance to crucial forest-management tools such as culling and controlled burns. Even some environmentalists object to its narrowness of visionits failure to offer audiences a model of a healthy relationship between people and the rest of the natural world. But perhaps the most vociferous if also the smallest group of critics consists of devotees of Salten who recognize how drastically Disney distorted his source material. Although the animals in the novel do converse and in some cases befriend one another across species their over-all relations are far from benign. In the course of just two pages a fox tears apart a widely beloved pheasant a ferret fatally wounds a squirrel and a flock of crows attacks the young son of Friend Harethe gentle anxious figure who becomes Thumper in the movieleaving him to die in excruciating pain. Later Bambi himself nearly batters to death a rival who is begging for mercy while Faline looks on laughing. Far from being gratuitous such scenes are in the authors telling the whole point of the novel. Salten insisted that he wrote Bambi to educate nave readers about nature as it really is: a place where life is always contingent on death where starvation competition and predation are the norm. That motive did not make Salten go easy on human beings. On the contrary: his depiction of our impact on nature is considerably more specific and violent than the one in the film not to mention sadder. Consider the moment when Bambi fleeing the hunting party that kills his mother and countless other creatures comes across the wife of Friend Hare in a scene that reads like something out of Regeneration Pat Barkers novel about the First World War: Can you help me a little? she said. Bambi looked at her and shuddered. Her hind leg dangled lifelessly in the snow dyeing it red and melting it with warm oozing blood. Can you help me a little? she repeated. She spoke as if she were well and whole almost as if she were happy. I dont know what can have happened to me she went on. Theres really no sense to it but I just cant seem to walk.... In the middle of her words she rolled over on her side and died. What purpose are scenes like that one serving in this book? Salten maintained that despite his own affinity for hunting he was trying to dissuade others from killing animals except when it was necessary for the health of a species or an ecosystem. (That was less hypocritical than it seems; Salten despised poachers and was horrified by the likes of Archduke Franz Ferdinand who boasted of killing five thousand deer and was known to shoot them by the score as underlings drove them into his path.) But authors do not necessarily get the last word on the meaning of their work and plenty of other people believe that Bambi is no more about animals than Animal Farm is. Instead they see in it what the Nazis did: a reflection of the anti-Semitism that was on the rise all across Europe when Salten wrote it. As a textual matter the best evidence for this proposition comes from two parts of Bambi that never made it onto the screen. The first concerns Falines twin brother Gobo who was written out of the movie. A fragile and sickly fawn Gobo cannot flee during the hunting rampage that kills Bambis mother and Friend Hares wife. For several months he is presumed dead. Then one day Bambi and Faline spot a deer making its way across an open meadow with reckless nonchalance as if oblivious to any possible peril. This newcomer turns out to be the grownup Gobo who we learn was rescued by a member of the hunting party taken into his home and nursed back to health. When Gobo returns the other forest animals gather to hear him describe the kindness of the hunter and his family the warmth of the dwelling and the meals that were brought to him every day. Most of them think that Gobos time among humans has made him dangerously nave but he is convinced that it has made him wiser and more worldly. You all think Hes wicked he tells them. (In Saltens books humans are typographically styled the way God is: singular and capitalized.) But He isnt wicked. If He loves anybody or if anybody serves Him Hes good to him. Wonderfully good! Every subjugated minority is familiar with figures like Goboindividuals who have assimilated into and become defenders of the culture of their subjugators whether out of craven self-interest or because like Gobo they are sincerely enamored of it and convinced that their affection is reciprocated. Such figures often elicit the disdain or the wrath of their peers and Salten leaves little doubt about how he feels: Bambi was ashamed of Gobo without knowing why and the half-tame deer soon pays the price for his beliefs. One day ignoring the advice of other animals Gobo strolls into the meadow even though the scent of humans fills the air. He is confident that they wont harm him but he is shot in the flank while his love interest looks on. As she turns to flee she sees the hunter bent over Gobo and hears his wailing death shriek. One understands why Disney left that part out. So too a scene in Saltens book where a dog kills a fox which unfolds at a horrifyingly leisurely pace. The foxs paw is shattered and bleeding and he knows he will die soon but he pleads with the dog: Let me die with my family at least. Were brothers almost you and I. When that fails he accuses the dog of being a turncoat and a spy. The dog works himself into a frenzy defending the virtue and the power of his master then itemizes all the other animals who serve humankind: The horse the cow the sheep the chickens many many of you and your kind are on His side and worship Him and serve Him. Theyre rabble! snarled the fox full of a boundless contempt. It is easy in light of these scenes to see why some people interpret Bambi as a covert account of the crisis facing European Jews in the nineteen-twentiesa story about innocent creatures forced to remain constantly vigilant against danger from would-be betrayers within and proto-Brown Shirts without. Some of Saltens biography supports that reading starting with the fact that he knew a thing or two about assimilation. I was not a Jew when I was a boy he once wrote; raised in a household that prized European liberalism and educated in part by pious Catholic teachers who praised him for his knowledge of the catechism Salten only really began to identify as Jewish in his late twenties when he grew close to Theodor Herzl a fellow Austro-Hungarian writer and the father of the Zionist movement. He claimed that it was Herzls pamphlet The Jewish State that made Salten as he wrote willing to love my Jewishness. If so that love was to say the least complicated. On the one hand Salten began writing a weekly column for Herzls Jewish newspaper in which he grew more and more critical of the assimilationist impulse that had shaped his childhood; on the other hand he wrote it anonymously and refused to set foot in the newspapers offices. In later years his increasing willingness to embrace his Judaism corresponded not coincidentally with the increasing anti-Semitism in Vienna which made it impossible for Jews to forget or deny their religious background. Link copied In 1925 three years after Bambi Salten published New People on Ancient Soil the product of a visit to Palestine and a book-length tribute to his friends dream of a Jewish state. A decade later his books together with countless others by Jewish authors were burned by the Nazis and two years after that following Germanys annexation of Austria he moved to Switzerland. Salten died in Zurich at the age of seventy-six four months after Hitler killed himself. Does all this make Bambi a parable about Jewish persecution? The fact that the Nazis thought so is hardly dispositivefascist regimes are not known for their sophisticated literary criticismand for every passage that supports such a reading numerous others complicate or contradict it. Many critics see in Bambi different or more diffuse political sentiments from a generalized opposition to totalitarianism to a post-First World War commentary on the brutality of modern combat. All these readings are plausible including the specifically Jewish one and Saltens own interpretation of his work as a plea for greater understanding of and greater care for the natural world. Yet the most striking and consistent message of the book is neither obliquely political nor urgently ecological; it is simply grimly existential. Whatever else Bambi may be it is at heart a coming-of-age story cervine kin to Oliver Twist Little Women and Giovannis Room . In the language in which it was written however it is often described not as a bildungsromana general novel of maturationbut more specifically as an Erziehungsroman: a novel of education and training. The agent of that education is a character known as the old Prince the oldest surviving stag in the forest and the lessons he imparts are not subtle. When he first encounters Bambi the latter is still a fawn dismayed because his mother has lately grown distantpushing him away when he tries to nurse and walking off without caring whether he is following. Thus rebuffed he is by himself in the middle of the forest bleating for her when the old Prince appears and scolds him. Your mother has no time for you now the old Prince says. Cant you stay by yourself? Shame on you! That in two sentences is the ultimate message of Bambi: anything short of extreme self-reliance is shameful; interdependence is unseemly restrictive and dangerous. Of all his teachings Salten writes this had been the most important: you must live alone. If you wanted to preserve yourself if you understood existence if you wanted to attain wisdom you had to live alone. This is not The Lorax or Maus . This is The Fountainhead with fawns. Most panegyrics to the solitary life written by men have an element of misogyny in them and Bambi is no exception. Seemingly brave and vivacious in her youth Faline grows up to be timid and lachrymose; she shrieked and shrieked she bleated she is the hysterical Faline. When she and Bambi are (for lack of a better word) dating the old Prince teaches Bambi to ignore her calls lest they come from a hunter imitating the sound. Like Gobo the romance between the childhood friends is doomed by the logic of the book. Do you love me still? Faline asks one day to which Bambi replies I dont know. She walks away and all at once his spirit felt freer than for a long time. All other relationships with the female of the species have a similarly short life span; fatherly love is enduring and ennobling motherly love juvenile and embarrassing. Bambi ends with its hero importuning two fawns just as the old Prince had importuned him to learn to live alone. The curious thing about this insistence on solitude is that nothing in the book makes it seem appealing. The chief trajectory of Bambis life is not from innocence to wisdom; it is from contentment and companionshipin his youth he cavorts with Gobo and Faline with magpies and Friend Hare with screech owls and squirrelsto isolation and bare-bones survival. Stranger still this valorization of loneliness seems unrelated to the books second explicit moral which concerns the relationship between human beings and other animals. In the final pages the old Prince takes Bambi himself now old and beginning to gray to see something in the woods: a dead man shot and killed by another hunter. (Amazingly Walt Disney planned to include this scene in his film excising it only after the sight of the corpse made an entire test audience leap out of their seats.) With the old Princes prompting Bambi concludes from this experience not that we humans are a danger even unto one another but rather that other animals are foolish for imagining that we are gods merely because we are powerful. There is Another who is over us all he realizes while contemplating the dead man over us and over Him. The old Prince satisfied that his work is done goes off to die. This vague gesture in the direction of deism has no antecedent in the book no moral or theological trajectory to make Bambis insight meaningful or satisfying. On the contrary the book is at its best when it revels in rather than pretends to resolve the mystery of existence. At one point Bambi passes by some midges who are discussing a June bug. How long will he live? the young ones ask. Forever almost their elders answer. They see the sun thirty or forty times. Elsewhere a brief chapter records the final conversation of a pair of oak leaves clinging to a branch at the end of autumn. They gripe about the wind and the cold mourn their fallen peers and try to understand what is about to happen to them. Why must we fall? one asks. The other doesnt know but has questions of its own: Do we feel anything do we know anything about ourselves when were down there? The conversation tacks back and forth from the intimate to the existential. The two leaves worry about which of them will fall first; one of them gone yellow and ugly reassures the other that it has barely changed at all. The response just before the inevitable end is startlingly moving: Youve always been so kind to me. Im just beginning to understand how kind you are. That is the opposite of a paean to individualism: a belated but tender recognition of how much we mean to one another. What are we to make of this muddy many-minded story? Zipes in his introduction blames some of the confusion on Chambers contending that he mistranslated Salten flattening both the political and the metaphysical dimensions of the work and paving the way for Disney to turn it into a childrens story. But that claim is borne out neither by examples in the introduction nor by a comparison of the two English versions which differ mainly on aesthetic grounds. Zipes is knowledgeable about his subject matter but he is not a lucid thinker or a gifted writer (a representative sentence from the introduction: Salten was able to capture this existential quandary through a compassionate yet objective lens using an innovative writing technique that few writers have ever been able to achieve) and the Chambers translation from which I have quoted here is much the better one. In both versions the Bambi that emerges is a complex work part nature writing part allegory part autobiography. What makes it such a startling source for a beloved childrens classic is ultimately not its violence or its sadness but its bleakness. Perhaps the most telling exchange in the book occurs during that difficult winter between Bambis mother and his aunt. Its hard to believe that it will ever be better his mother says. His aunt responds Its hard to believe that it was ever any better. Its tempting to read those lines too as a commentary on the Jewish condition if only becauseto this Jews ears at leastthey have the feel of classic Jewish dark humor: realistic linguistically dexterous and grim. Yet no one alive today can regard such a sentiment as exclusive to any subgroup. It is simply a way of seeing the world one that can be produced by circumstance temperament or as in Saltens case both. Reading him one suspects that the conventional interpretation of his most famous work is backward. Bambi is not a parable about the plight of the Jews but Salten sometimes regards the plight of the Jews as a parable about the human condition. The omnipresence and inevitability of danger the need to act for oneself and seize control of ones fate the threat posed by intimates and strangers alike: this is Saltens assessment of our existence. One of the forgotten novelists most forgotten novels Friends from All Over the World is set in a zoo that is maintained by an enlightened and humane zookeeper yet remains intrinsically a place of suffering and cruelty. The animals within it Salten writes are all sentenced to life imprisonment and are all innocent. That is a lovely line and one that seems to apply in his moral universe to all of us. In the forestthat is in a state of naturewe are in constant danger; in society tended and cared for but fundamentally compromised we are still not out of the woods. The Mexican actress who dazzled El Chapo . 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The professor who made $10B by cutting Google its first startup check (yahoo.com) In the realm of hitting the jackpot being in the right place at the right time and taking a gamble can prove life-changing. One person who embodies this serendipitous combination is Stanford University professor David Cheriton. Dont Miss: Why Jason Calacanis and Other Silicon Valley Elites Are Betting On This Startups Vision For Re-Uniting American Families While his name may not ring a bell for most Cheriton stands as one of the luckiest and wealthiest educators of all time. How did a college professor make $10 billion? It dates to a fateful moment in 1998 when he wrote a check to two of his students Larry Page and Sergey Brin to kick-start their visionary venture. The result? The company that emerged from that modest $100000 seed money Google Inc. now Alphabet Inc. This single act transformed the life of a college professor and computer scientist in monumental ways. Born on March 29 1951 in Vancouver British Columbia Cheriton embarked on his academic journey with studies in Edmonton Alberta Canada followed by the University of Alberta. Initially pursuing a dual major in music and mathematics his path took an unexpected turn when he was denied admission to the music program. Undeterred he switched gears and completed his degree in mathematics at the University of British Columbia in 1973. Fueling his intellectual pursuits he pursued a masters and a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Waterloo. It was during his tenure at Stanford University where he held a professorship that fate intervened with an intriguing opportunity. To stay updated with top startup news & investments sign up for Benzingas Startup Investing & Equity Crowdfunding Newsletter While at Stanford Cheriton spearheaded a team of computer scientists in developing the V operating system a microkernel operating system that eventually became a cornerstone of the internet protocol (IP) multicast standard and an invaluable tool for graphical user interface research. This operating system born out of Cheritons prior developments Thoth and Verex found its greatest utility in research-oriented contexts. Throughout his tenure at Stanford he continued to delve into operating systems and experiment with network communications. In 1996 Cheriton and electrical engineer Andy Bechtolsheim a Stanford Ph.D. graduate who had already achieved success with Sun Microsystems Inc. co-founded Granite Systems. This network-switching company caught the attention of industry giant Cisco Systems Inc. which acquired it for $220 million. In 1998 when Cheriton Bechtolsheim Brin and Page convened on Cheritons front porch Brin and Page unveiled their brainchild an audacious project they called Google. Impressed by their vision Bechtolsheim swiftly wrote a check for $100000. Inspired by the students ambition Cheriton decided to match the investment writing his own $100000 check. Empowered by this initial injection of $200000 Brin and Page embarked on the development of what would eventually become the immensely successful Google a name that has even transformed into a verb. Cheriton's philosophy revolves around thinking big and making a meaningful impact on the world. A plaque on his desk bears the inscription Dr. David R. Cheriton Chief Superintendent of Saying Important Things. He steers clear of chasing fleeting market trends including social networking and instead remains focused on pursuing breakthroughs that tangibly enhance human lives. For instance he values how Google assists college students in completing research papers even in the wee hours of the morning. For those not well-connected and connections to invest in the next Google changes in federal law allow anyone to invest in startups. Platforms like StartEngine have emerged allowing everyday investors to participate in startup funding including i nvesting in StartEngine itself . StartEngine provides opportunities for ordinary investors to back promising startups and share in the upside if they ultimately conduct an initial public offering or get bought out. See more on startup investing from Benzinga. Collaborative Robots Startup Using Teams Of AI-Powered Drones To Make Flying Safer AI Startups Turn to Retail Investors To Fund the Growth of the $1.59 Trillion Artificial Intelligence Market Don't miss real-time alerts on your stocks - join Benzinga Pro for free! Try the tool that will help you invest smarter faster and better . This article The Professor Who Made $10 Billion By Cutting Google Its First Startup Check originally appeared on Benzinga.com . 2023 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. Related Quotes

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The regenerating power of Big Basin's redwoods (worldsensorium.com) By Gayil Nalls Sign up for our monthly newsletter! Up in the Santa Cruz Mountains on the former homelands of the Cotoni and Quiroste tribes sits the oldest state park in California, Big Basin Redwoods State Park. It was formed in 1902 after long, exhausting efforts to preserve the ancient Redwoods had galvanized people from every walk of life in California. Together, they saved these remaining giants of old growth from the intense logging exploitation that had begun in the 1880s, becoming the states first environmental movement. Redwoods are scientifically referred to as Sequoia sempervirens, which means evergreen or everliving. However, on August 16th, 2020, a lightning strike caused a fire that spread through the Parks trees which were stressed by ongoing drought and an extreme heat wave. Within two days the entire Park was engulfed in flames driven by high winds, and the sky around the region was orange and heavily smokefilled. Despite the courageous superhuman effort to save the ancient trees, it is estimated that 97 of the Park, over 18,000 acres burned. This horrific event now referred to as the CZU Lightning Complex Fires, not only took the lives of so many trees but also destroyed all the architectural structures in the Park, including the historic Park Headquarters. This Spring the Park is open for limited dayuse and can be entered north of the town of Boulder Creek. These images offer insight into the devastating impacts of the fire on the scorched Redwoods and the amazing recovery process in progress. While the recovering costal Redwoods remain intact, if only partially, we must also recognize that many other species died en masse. All the Douglas firs, live oaks, pines, and undergrowth were taken out by the fire almost completely. Coastal Redwoods are the tallest trees in the world and have measured up to 375 feet, taller than the Statue of Liberty which is only 305 feet. But just 5 of these old growth redwoods still exist. Their root taps are shallow and surprisingly only reach down about 10 feet into the soil, but they make up for this by creating strength in community, weaving together with the root systems of neighboring Redwood trees, forming a network of support and stability. Redwoods have extraordinary restorative powers that enable the tree to live for over 2,000 years. One facet of their longevity are the dormant buds on the trunk and branches that will sprout new regenerative growth when the major parts of the tree are injured or lost. This allows for the Redwood to continue its growth towards the sun, even when its top has been broken off. Furthermore, the trees are naturally fire resistant compared to other trees who have high quantities of pitch, also called tar or resin, in their bark. This substance is highly flammable and fuels forest fires however, pitch is very sparse in the thick bark of the Redwood. This meant that they were terribly charred but remained intact. Additionally, the bark and the Redwood contain high levels of tannin, the chemical that gives the wood its red color, and this substance helps to keep the tree alive by protecting it from potential fungal infections and insect infestations. Clearly, Redwoods are survivors. Almost three years after the horrific fire, new light green foliage is sprouting across the blackened trees, and owls and woodpeckers have taken up residence in some of the burnedout cavities. Young Redwoods grow in circles around mother trees in a process that is called basal sprouting. Sword ferns Polystichum munitum, Sorrel Rumex acetosa, Redwood violet Violet sempervirens California lilac shrubs Ceanothus spp., and Yellow Brush poppies Dendromecon rigida were part of an assortments of plants, shrubs, and grasses that have begun to reconstitute a sunlit undergrowth. While old Redwoods continue to grow, new Knobcone pine trees sprout because heat from the forest fires had opened the cones up and dispersed the seeds. Although these fires cause profound destruction to an ecosystem, they also create conditions for wild plants, some of which have been termed Fire Followers. These are plants that grow in the new conditions of charred soil and increased sunlight, providing important recovery benefits to the damaged ecosystem. They include the scented Warleaf ceonothus Ceanothus papillosus, Coastal lotus Acmispon maritimus, Twining snapdragon Antirrhinum kelloggii, Whispering Bells Emmenanthe penduliflora, Stinging lupine Lupinus hirsutissimus, Shortlobe phacelia Phacelia brachyloba, andthe Fire poppy Papaver californicum. Though emotions of collective loss are still being processed, the restoration aim for the Park is to help it be more resilient in the face of fires, droughts, and other challenges of climate change. A full regenerative process and outcome, along with reformed canopies, will likely take 200 years according to the Sempervirens Fund, an organization that helped create the park and is exclusively dedicated to protecting to redwood forests of the Santa Cruz Mountains. Near the Park station was a handwritten Park sign that read, Did the squirrels open a pancake restaurant? That maple syrup smell is California everlasting. The native white flower was scenting the area with a restorative elixir as it dried after its early spring bloom. The sweet perfume wafting through the forest air was coming from a plant whose scent had gone dormant during the prefire drought. Now it was back. Gayil Nalls, Ph.D. is the creator of World Sensorium and founder of the World SensoriumConservancy. Have you been looking forward to the 2023 Plantings print annual? What do you like best about Plantings, the ideas and substance of the articles, the inspiring interviews, the beautiful photography, the creative charge to live sustainably? Its all available again in print for purchase in our store. The 2023 Plantings will available for shipping in April. Purchases in March are a special price of 20.00, after that it will be 22.00 shipped domestic. Issue 23 May 2023 Also in this issue Antelope Island Is This Seemingly Bleak Environment Natures Survival Garden?Text by Gayil NallsPhotographs and videos by Fiona Kane Why Your Roses Smell NiceBy Maxine Singer A Warmer Planet, Less Nutritious Plants and Fewer Grasshoppers?By Amber Dance Viriditas Musings on Magical PlantsBy Margaux Crump Seeing Ourselves in the SoilBy Jake Eshelman Eat More Plants RecipesCabbage Roll with Cannellini Bean HummusBy Sabina Cobbe May Drawing Growth and Beauty from ObservationBy Gayil Nalls, Liz Macklin, and Karen Bauer

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The remarkable brain of a carpet cleaner who speaks 24 languages (washingtonpost.com) The carpet cleaner heaves his machine up the stairs untangles its hoses and promises to dump the dirty water only in the approved toilet. Another day scrubbing rugs for less than $20 an hour . Another Washington area house with overflowing bookshelves and walls covered in travel mementos from places he would love to go one day. But this was not that day. Tell me about this stain 46-year-old Vaughn Smith asks his clients. Well says one of the homeowners Schroeder rubbed his bottom across it. Vaughn knows just what to do about that and the couple Courtney Stamm and Kelly Widelska know they can trust him to do it. Theyd been hiring him for years once watching him erase even a splattered Pepto Bismol stain. But this time when Vaughn called to confirm their January appointment he quietly explained that there was something about himself that hed never told them. That he rarely told anyone. And well a reporter was writing a story about it. Could he please bring her along? Now as they listen to Vaughn discuss the porousness of wool and the difference between Scotchgard and sanitizer they cant help but look at him differently. Once the stool stain is solved Kelly just has to ask. So how many languages do you speak? Oh goodness Vaughn says. Eight fluently. Eight? Kelly marvels. Eight Vaughn confirms. English Spanish Bulgarian Czech Portuguese Romanian Russian and Slovak. But if you go by like different grades of how much conversation he explains I know about 25 more. Tip: Click the highlighted phrases throughout this story to hear Vaughn speak a phrase in a different language. Vaughn glances at me. He is still underselling his abilities. By his count it is actually 37 more languages with at least 24 he speaks well enough to carry on lengthy conversations. He can read and write in eight alphabets and scripts. He can tell stories in Italian and Finnish and American Sign Language. Hes teaching himself Indigenous languages from Mexicos Nahuatl . to Montanas Salish. The quality of his accents in Dutch and Catalan dazzle people from the Netherlands and Spain. In a city where diplomats and embassies abound where interpreters can command six-figure salaries at the State Department or the International Monetary Fund where language proficiency is rsum rocket fuel Vaughn was a savant with a secret. A real live polyglot Kelly said. Id never heard of that word meaning a person who can speak several languages before meeting Vaughn. But Kelly who dabbles in Cantonese Mandarin and beer in most languages had seen polyglots on YouTube promising that anyone can become multilingual if they try. Far more unusual are the worlds hyperpolyglots people who by one experts definition can speak 11 languages or more. The higher the number the rarer the person. But there have been many documented cases of such linguistic legends each one raising questions about the limits of human potential the same questions I had about Vaughn. Hyperpolyglots like Vaughn have varying levels of expertise in the languages they speak. Heres how Vaughn defines his abilities. Can readily carry on a conversation on any topic read and write without difficulty Able to have deep conversations on a wide range of subjects sometimes have to pause to think of words can read and write Can carry simple conversations about many topics may require more pausing can read and do some writing Can speak and understand a wide variety of phrases on basic topics such as daily life and travel can write and read in some but not all. Knows around 100 words and many introductory phrases How did he get this way? And what was going on in his brain? But also: why was he cleaning carpets for a living? To Vaughn all of that is missing the point. Hes not interested in impressing anyone. He only counted his languages because I asked him to. He understands that he seems to remember names numbers dates and sounds far better than most people. Even to him that has always been a mystery. But his reason for dedicating his life to learning so many languages has not. I see a couple more spots on the rug Vaughn says. Do I have permission to treat them? Hes uncomfortable with all this attention. He gets down on his hands and knees. He turns on the carpet-cleaning machine and then its too loud for anyone to speak. He thought at first that there were two languages. English like his dad spoke and Spanish like his mom spoke. Vaughn liked visiting his family in Orizaba Mexico liked the way the Spanish words sounded in his mouth. But growing up in Maryland he often tried not to use them. He didnt want to feel even more different than the other kids. He was already browner than them. He already didnt understand why they laughed at certain things or why they seemed to be able to follow instructions from the teacher that made no sense to him. Spanish was his first secret. When some distant cousins of his dads came to visit from Belgium they used words different than Vaughn had ever heard. Vaughn became more and more frustrated that once again he couldnt understand. I was like I want that power' Vaughn remembers. From then on he was entranced by every language he encountered. His moms French record albums. A German dictionary he found at one of his dads handyman jobs. A boy from the Soviet Union who joined his junior high class. By then one of Vaughns favorite places was the library. He checked out a beginners guide to Russian. Soon after he overheard a Russian woman in a grocery store. ? . Vaughn asked. Hello how are you? He explained that he was trying to learn Russian. He liked the look he put on that womans face. Like she was hit with a splash of happiness Vaughn remembers. His teachers and his parents meanwhile so often looked at him with disappointment. Hed chosen the wrong sentence when it was his turn to read aloud in class again. His teacher called his mother to say he wasnt paying attention again. His dad was sending him back to his moms house again. Always it felt to Vaughn like there was something wrong with him. I feel like I didn't know how to guide him to do better his mom Sandra Vargas says now. She was in her early 20s in the midst of a divorce raising Vaughn and his brother in a country entirely new to her. When she first realized her son wasnt connecting with other kids the way he should she took him to a psychologist who told her only that Vaughn was just muy muy inteligente. As her boy grew she knew it was more complicated than that. Not only a big brain but a big heart. And thats the problem Sandra says. Because hes very sensitive. And he tends to think hes not wanted or hes not loved. By 14 Vaughn was living with his dad again in a basement apartment in Tenleytown not far from D.C.s many embassies. He no longer needed to fear looking different than his classmates because the student body at Wilson High School included kids from around the world. Kids who spoke other languages. Immediately Vaughn had an in. There was a clique of Brazilian students so he started to learn Portuguese . . He befriended a brother and sister who would write him lists of phrases in Romanian . and watch as Vaughn memorized them all. When he noticed a shy Ethiopian girl he asked her to teach him Amharic . . On the weekends he took the bus downtown to the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library which hed discovered had the citys best selection of language books. The way Vaughn describes it any time he reads something in a book he can remember it almost perfectly. When he returned to school he had even more to say and more that he could understand. In an environment where he never felt like he fit he was connecting in a way that no one else could. But by 17 his mom had moved him back to Maryland. Vaughn tested into the highest-level Russian class at his new school despite never taking classes before. His high school diploma would be the last hed receive. A counselor encouraged him to apply to a trade school for medical assistants but he didnt get in. Once that happened I just gave up on the idea and that was the very end of it Vaughn remembers. And so began an adulthood marked by jobs that came and went. Vaughn has been a painter a bouncer a punk rock roadie and a Kombucha delivery man. His friends encouraged him to start a YouTube channel but after a bout of depression he stopped filming. On days when there arent carpets to clean he helps a friend tint office building windows. He was once a dog walker for the Czech art collector Meda Mldkov the widow of an International Monetary Fund governor. She kept him on as a caretaker of her Georgetown home which was the closest he ever came to having a career that utilized his languages. Visitors to the house spoke nearly every Eastern European dialect and before long so did Vaughn. Beyond high school he never had the chance to take a proficiency test in any language. And the more he learned the more he understood the complexity of what it means to know a language. Though its common to hear words like fluent or conversational there are no universally accepted definitions of such levels. Proficiency tests developed by governments or academic institutions often stress the skills needed to speak in formal settings rather than the casual slang or emotional language needed to truly understand another culture. And which feature of a language should matter most: Having a large vocabulary? Understanding the grammar? Perfecting the pronunciation? The best-known case of hyperpolyglots skills being tested was a 1990 contest that aimed to find Europes most multilingual speaker. Participants had short conversations with native or advanced speakers who awarded them points based on their apparent proficiencies. The winner a Scottish organist named Derick Herning showed meaningful proficiency in 22 languages. He was said to have learned at least eight more before he died in 2019. Herning was ousted from the Guinness Book of World Records by a hyperpolyglot who claimed to speak 59 languages but who mostly disappeared from the limelight after a TV appearance in which he failed to answer questions in a number of those languages. Some believe hes a fraud; others think he simply panicked under the pressure. Still many of the best-known hyperpolyglots reject the question How many languages do you speak? because it ignores the many nuances of language learning. Timothy Doner did a Ted Talk about the media frenzy he endured after he was profiled by the New York Times as a teenager who could speak a dozen languages. TV producers didnt want to hear about how language mastery was about far more than parroting phrase books. They wanted him to declare in German that he was fluent in 23 languages recite a tongue twister in Chinese and say goodbye in Turkish all before the commercial break. I kind of got pigeonholed into the category of the dancing bear the boy wonder says Doner who today works as a national security researcher. Its exaggerated its sensationalized. Michael Erard who surveyed more than 400 people who said they can speak at least six languages for his book Babel No More says hes often more inclined to believe in someones language abilities when they dont seek out chances to perform or monetize their skills. Vaughn never sought me out. He agreed to let me spend time with him after one of his friends mentioned him to another Washington Post reporter. Over two months I verified the scope of Vaughns abilities by interviewing 10 people who have seen him use his language skills for years and by watching him engage in conversations in 17 of his languages. When I introduced him to Richard Simcott who organizes an international conference for polyglots Vaughn switched between 10 languages as they spoke telling stories in Welsh Bulgarian Serbian Norwegian and more. Because for Vaughn every language is really a story about the people it connected him to. He learned American Sign Language from Gallaudet University students at a club called Tracks which had a dance floor known for its vibrations. He picked up some Japanese . from the staff at a restaurant where he volunteered to clean the fish tank once a week. When his niece liked the way the word chicken sounded in Salish . they started studying it together befriended leaders of the language school on the Flathead Indian Reservation and road-tripped to Arlee Mont. twice. Vance Home Gun who worked at the school was stunned to hear an East Coaster speaking his language and even more stunned that Vaughn could actually pronounce it. You got to remember there are very few people left even in our tribe who can talk Salish Home Gun said. For him to know how much he does without actually being taught in our classrooms and schools or spending time with the older people who still speak it is pretty amazing. Vaughn makes an effort to get to know people in the language that shaped their lives. In return they shape his. Welcoming him. Accepting him. Appreciating him. Well be walking along and well see two people sitting and hell be like I hear you have an accent do you speak any other languages? And boom says his friend Ryan Harding were invited to their house for dinner. This was how Vaughn met a Paraguayan special needs teacher who along with taking him to her familys New York home to learn some Guarani talked to him about the children in her classroom who were autistic. I thought she was applying a New York accent to the word artistic Vaughn says. But when she explained the traits associated with being on the autism spectrum they felt entirely familiar to Vaughn. Maybe this he thought was why he hadnt understood his teachers. Why some adults thought he was rude. Why people tell him he could be using his talents for all kinds of careers but he doesnt really know where to look or the steps he would need to take to get a more formal professional job. Of course I have tried he says. But nothing has worked out. Some days he doesnt necessarily want it to. He likes dressing casually wearing one of the same 10 T-shirts from his favorite vacation spot Bar Harbor Maine. He likes being able to make his own schedule where he can spend the day talking on the phone with his girlfriend who lives in Mexico. Or painting landscapes. Or working on his model train set. Or developing film photography. Or making brisket for his friends. He wants to be free to take his mom whom he lives with to the doctors treating her Parkinsons disease. He wants to sit in coffee shops drinking quad espressos and listening for accents that might lead to a connection with someone new. And some days he lugs the carpet-cleaning machine into the homes of the nations capital a city that places so much value on degrees and titles and statuses that have never been a part of Vaughns life. He feels the way some customers look at him and his brother who owns the carpet-cleaning company. Sometimes they yell at Vaughn about the stains they made. One couple spent the whole time complaining to each other in Portuguese saying Vaughn looked unprofessional and predicting he wouldnt do a good job. And just like that Vaughn is back to feeling like the kid disappointing his teachers. The depressed 20-something getting the word revenge in Armenian tattooed on his arm. The 46-year-old not reaching his potential. Where are you from? Vaughns brother asked the rude couple after theyd made the curtains spotless. Portugal the husband answered. Acabamos de fazer uma limpeza para a embaixada Portuguesa na semana passada Vaughn replied with a smile. We just did a cleaning for the Portuguese Embassy last week. He liked the look that put on that mans face. I am hoping its just the effects of another quad espresso but I think Vaughn is nervous. Hes quiet as the doors open and were ushered into a building with a sculpture of a brain hanging from the ceiling. He takes a picture of a sign on the wall: MIT Brain + Cognitive Sciences. In the years Vaughn spent amassing languages a Russian-born neuroscientist named Evelina Fedorenko was here at one of the worlds most renowned universities studying people like him. Much of the research on how our brains process language focuses on people with developmental disorders or strokes that have impaired their speech. One interest of Fedorenkos has been trying to discover the secret of the other end of the spectrum: people with advanced language skills. What distinguishes polyglots and hyperpolyglots from the rest of us? When I called Fedorenko I told her how amazed I was watching Vaughn befriending Dutch travelers in a Starbucks who couldnt believe hed never been to the Netherlands and spending his free time poring over books like Finnish for Swedish Speakers. It made me question my own brain and why even though I spend so much time thinking about words for my work Ive always found it incredibly difficult to retain any other language Id ever tried to learn. To a neuroscientist constantly looking for more data the next step was obvious: Would Vaughn and I like to come to Boston to get our brains scanned? Vaughn says one of the PhD candidates leading us to the scanning room now I was very excited to see Catalan on your list. Im from Girona. Vaughns nervousness seems to evaporate in an instant. Tenia un amic que s de Palma de Mallorca! Vaughn says thrilled to tell her about the friend who taught him Catalan 15 years before. Saima Malik-Moraleda keeps bantering with him noticing the precision of his accent. She too is a polyglot. But like most of the worlds multilingual people she became one by necessity rather than choice. She learned Spanish from her mother Kashmiri and Hindi-Urdu from her father English from them both and Catalan from school. Only her French and Arabic classes were extracurricular. Though their reasons for learning were different the question this lab is asking about them is the same: are their brains fundamentally different from monolingual brains like mine? Malik-Moraleda shows Vaughn the machine that will help answer that question with functional magnetic resonance imaging or fMRI. It looks like a diving board surrounded by a massive plastic doughnut. Soon Vaughn has changed from his Bar Harbor Maine T-shirt into blue scrubs. He has headphones in his ears foam on the side of his head a shield over his face and a remote control in his hands. Can you hear us? Malik-Moraleda asks from the other side of a glass window. Perfect were going to start. For two hours Vaughn works through a series of tests reading English words watching blue squares move around and listening to languages some he knows and some he doesnt. All the while the machine is whirring buzzing and banging taking three-dimensional images of Vaughns brain every two seconds. Each image essentially breaks down his entire brain into two-centimeter cubes and monitors the amount of blood oxygen in each one. Every time the language-processing areas are activated those cells use oxygen and blood flows in to replenish them. By watching where those changes happen the researchers can pinpoint exactly which parts of Vaughns brain are used for language. On the screen Malik-Moraleda is watching it all looks like unchanging shades of gray. After I overcome my unexpected claustrophobia inside the machine (Just pretend youre in a Japanese pod hotel! the students soothed) my brain scan looks the same. But after a week the scans have been analyzed to produce two colorful maps of our brains. Id assumed that Vaughns language areas would be massive and highly active and mine pathetically puny. But the scans showed the opposite: the parts of Vaughns brain used to comprehend language are far smaller and quieter than mine. Even when we are reading the same words in English I am using more of my brain and working harder than he ever has to. Vaughn Smith's brain: smaller more efficient language areas Reporter Jessica Contrera's brain: larger language areas This matches what the researchers have found in other hyperpolyglots theyve scanned. Vaughn needs less oxygen to be sent to those regions of his brain that process language when he is speaking in his native language Malik-Moraleda explains. He uses language so much hes become really efficient in using those areas for the production of language. Its possible that Vaughn was born with his language areas being smaller and more efficient. Its possible that his brain started out like mine but because he learned so many languages while it was still developing his dedication transformed his anatomy. It could be both. Until researchers can scan language learners as they grow theres no way to know for sure. But even without that answer even before we had the scan results back Vaughn had what he came to MIT for. I got to practice Lithuanian today he says to a friend on the phone as we navigate Bostons airport. Catalan Spanish Russian and a little bit of Korean! Hes bouncing as he talks about all the connections he made in a single day with the researchers and the strangers hed introduced himself to in a coffee shop. All the people who were as he would say hit with a splash of happiness. This is what Id discovered getting to know Vaughn: By putting in the effort to learn someones language youre showing them that you value who they truly are. Im wondering if Vaughn will ever see that same value in himself. And at that very moment he tells his friend on the phone I just feel like work wise I gotta do something else. I need to figure out how and what to do. Its not going to get better unless I do something. Ive never heard him talk like that before. At our gate I ask how he is feeling. He is thinking about the way the Harvard and MIT neuroscientists spent the day asking him questions. Not just for their research but because they want to understand how in their own language learning they could be more like him. Its really comforting Vaughn says. I always wonder its like how do I compare on the larger scale? What if this is really nothing to be excited about? But theyd been excited and now he could be too. Im not some worthless person he says. Then he pulls out his phone and opens his Duolingo app. He is on a 330-day streak of practicing Welsh . and he isnt going to break it. Brain scan images courtesy of MIT. Editing by Lynda Robinson . Photo editing by Mark Miller . Video editing by Angela Hill. Copy editing by Thomas Heleba. Design and development by Emily Wright . Additional development by Garland Potts . Devlin Barrett Michael Birnbaum Lynh Bui Petula Dvorak Terrence McCoy Dayana Sarkisova Felicia Sonmez Craig Timberg and William Wan contributed to this report.

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The rise of universities diversity bureaucrats (2018) (economist.com) By B.S. AMERICAN universities are boosting spending on diversity officials. At the University of California Berkeley for example the number of diversity bureaucrats has grown to 175 or so even as state funding to the university has been cut. Diversity officials promote the hiring of ethnic minorities and women launch campaigns to promote dialogue and write strategic plans on increasing equity and inclusion on campus. Many issue guidance on avoiding sexist language unacceptable lyrics and inappropriate clothing and hairstyles. Some are paid lavishly: the University of Michigans diversity chief is reported to earn $385000 a year. What explains their rise? Recent years have seen a large growth in media coverage of claims that minorities and women are treated poorly on American campuses. Black students says Derald Wing Sue a psychologist at Columbia University often complain that when they are complimented in class its almost as if the professor is surprised that blacks can be articulately intelligent. Dr Sues writings have helped popularise the notion that diversity officials are needed to squash such micro-aggressions. As Southern Utah Universitys Centre for Diversity and Inclusion has put it campus speech and dress should validate peoples identities and cultures. Some schools require transgressors to take diversity training or mandate it for everyone. Students at the University of Missouri must attend training to prevent even unconscious discrimination. A study of 669 American universities found that nearly a third require that faculty attend diversity training. Universities say that a boom in regulations under Barack Obamas administration increased the need to hire more bureaucrats of every kind. But one study found that for every dollar spent to comply with government rules voluntary spending on bureaucracy totalled $2 at public universities and $3 at private ones. Robert Martin of Centre College in Kentucky a co-author of the study says the real reason for the growth in spending is that administrators want to hire subordinates thereby boosting their own authority and often pay rather than faculty over whom they have less power. Bureaucrats outnumber faculty 2:1 at public universities and 2.5:1 at private colleges double the ratio in the 1970s. Diversity is the top justification for these hires says Richard Vedder of the Centre for College Affordability and Productivity a think-tank. Of more than 1000 bureaucrats at Ohio University in Athens 400 are superfluous he reckons. If let go tuition fees could be cut by a fifth. One result of all this is growing resistance anger grumpiness and eventually backlash to the proliferation of diversity officials says Alexandra Kalev of Tel Aviv University one of the authors of the study on diversity training at American universities. Many white male professors she found now limit campus interaction with minorities and women lest an unintentional slight get them in trouble. High spending on diversity officials also leads to fewer classes as well as higher tuition fees which make it harder for minorities who are disproportionately poor to attend college. Might students rebel? It looks unlikely. The era of Donald Trump seems to have strengthened the diversity bureaucracys belief that students feelings must be protected. The technology has been used for centuries The polls are closer than they have been since Recep Tayyip Erdogan came to power 20 years ago Yevgeny Prigozhin commander of a Russian mercenary force is losing influence Published since September 1843 to take part in a severe contest between intelligence which presses forward and an unworthy timid ignorance obstructing our progress. Copyright The Economist Newspaper Limited 2023 . All rights reserved.

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The simple joys of scaling up (motherduck.com) 2023/05/11 In the quest to handle their Big Data problems software and hardware architects have been pursuing divergent strategies for the last 20 years. While software folks have been busy re-writing their code to scale out to multiple machines hardware folks have been cramming more and more transistors and cores into a single chip so you can do more work on each machine. As anyone who has had a programming interview can attest if you have a linear progression and an exponential progression the exponential will dominate. Scale-out lets you scale linearly with cost. But Moores Law compounds exponentially with time meaning if you do nothing for a few years you can scale up and get orders of magnitude improvements. In two decades transistor density has increased by 1000x; something that might have taken thousands of machines in 2002 could be done today in just one. Image by Our World In Data https://ourworldindata.org/moores-law After such a dramatic increase in hardware capability we should ask ourselves Do the conditions that drove our scaling challenges in 2003 still exist? After all weve made our systems far more complex and added a lot of overhead. Is it all still necessary? If you can do the job on a single machine isnt that going to be a better alternative? This post will dig into why scale-out became so dominant take a look at whether those rationales still hold and then explore some advantages of scale-up architecture. First a little bit of context. Twenty years ago Google was running into scaling problems as they were trying to crawl and index the entire web. The typical way of dealing with this would have been to buy pricier machines. Unfortunately they didnt have a lot of money at the time and regardless of cost they were still going to hit limits as web-scale went through its own exponential growth progression. In order to be able to index every website everywhere Google invented a new model for computation; by applying functional programming and distributed systems algorithms they achieved almost infinite scale without requiring the purchase of big iron hardware. Instead of bigger computers they could just tie together a lot of small computers with clever software. This was scaling out to more machines instead of scaling up to bigger ones. Google published a series of three papers in rapid succession that changed the way people build and scale software systems. These papers were GFS (2003) which tackled storage MapReduce (2004) which handled computation and BigTable (2006) which had the rudiments of a database. Doug Cutting who implemented the techniques in these papers and released them as open source said Google is living a few years in the future and sending the rest of us messages. (Unfortunately Google didnt get very far in the time travel business having devoted much of their development efforts to their bug-ridden Goat Teleporter .) Reading the MapReduce paper for the first time I felt like Google had created a whole new way of thinking. I joined Google in 2008 hoping to be a part of that magic. Shortly thereafter I started working on productizing their scale-out query engine Dremel which became BigQuery. It is difficult to overstate the impact of the architectural change heralded by the scale-out revolution. If youre building serious infrastructure these days you have to scale out via a complex distributed system. This has led to popularization of new techniques for consensus protocols new ways of deploying software and more comfort with relaxed consistency. Scale up was limited to legacy code bases that clung to their single-node architectures. The first and primary rationale for scaling out is that people believe they need multiple machines to handle their data. In a long post I argued that Big Data is Dead or specifically that data sizes tend to be smaller than people think that workloads tend to be smaller still and that a lot of data never gets used. If you dont have Big Data then you almost certainly dont need scale-out architectures. I wont rehash those same arguments here. I can start with a simple chart which shows how much bigger AWS instances have gotten over time. Widely-available machines now have 128 cores and a terabyte of RAM. Thats the same amount of cores as a Snowflake XL instance with four times the memory. The Dremel paper written in 2008 included some benchmarks running a 3000 node Dremel system against an 87 TB dataset. Today you can get equivalent performance on a single machine. At the time Dremels capabilities seemed impossible without indexes or pre-computed results; everyone else in the database world was trying to avoid table scans but they said Nah were just going to do table scans really fast and turn every query into a table scan. By throwing huge numbers of machines at problems they were able to achieve performance that seemed like black magic. Fifteen years later we can get similar performance without resorting to any magic at all or even a distributed architecture. In the appendix I walk through the math to show that it would be possible to achieve this level of performance in a single node. This chart shows various resources and how they compare to what would be needed to achieve equivalent performance from the paper. Higher bars are better. In this we see that one machine can achieve performance of the 3000 node Dremel cluster under hot and warm cache conditions. This is reasonable given that many scale-out systems like Snowflake rely on local SSD for cache in order to get good performance. If the data was cold (in an object store like S3) we could still achieve the requisite performance but wed need a different instance type to do so. Scaling up used to mean dramatically increasing your costs. Want a machine that is twice as powerful? It might have cost you several times as much. In the cloud everything gets run on virtual machines that are small slices of much larger servers. Most people dont pay much attention to how big these are because there are few workloads that need the whole machine. But these days the physical hardware capacities are massive often having core counts in the hundreds and memory in the terabytes. In the cloud you dont need to pay extra for a big iron machine because youre already running on one. You just need a bigger slice. Cloud vendors dont charge proportionally more for a larger slice so your cost per unit of compute doesnt change if youre working on a tiny instance or a giant one. It is easiest to think about the problem in terms of cost to achieve a given level of performance. In the past larger servers were more expensive per unit of compute power. Nowadays in the modern cloud the price for a given amount of compute on AWS is constant until you hit a very large size. The other advantage that you have in the cloud is that you dont need to keep spare hardware around. Thats your cloud providers job. If your server crashes AWS will respawn your workload in a new machine; you might not even notice. Theyre also constantly refurbishing the datacenter hardware and a lot of important improvements get done without any work on your part. Cloud architectures also enable separation of storage and compute which means that compute instances often store very little data. This means that in the event of a failure a replacement can be spun up very quickly since you dont have to reload any data. This can reduce the need for a hot standby. Scale out architectures are generally considered to be more reliable; they are designed to be able to keep running despite lots of different types of failures. However scale out systems havent significantly improved reliability and you can get good enough reliability from scaling up. Availability in the cloud is often dominated by external factors; someone fat-fingers a configuration and resizes a cluster to 0 (this happened briefly in BigQuery several years ago) network routing gets messed up (the cause of historical multi-service Google outage) the auth service you rely upon is down etc. Actual SLA performance can be dominated by these factors which can cause correlated failures when failures happen across multiple systems and products. As a rough rule of thumb cloud scale-out databases and analytics providers offer a 4-9s SLA (99.99% availability). On the other hand people running their own scale-up systems have been holding themselves to at least that threshold of availability for a long time. Many banks and other enterprises have 5- and 6- 9 mission critical systems that are being run on scale-up hardware. Reliability is also about durability as well as availability. One of the knocks against scale-up systems was that in the event of a failure you needed to have a replica of the data somewhere. Separation of storage and compute basically solves this problem. Once the final destination for storage is not in the same machine where you perform the compute you dont have to worry about the lifetime of the machine running the compute. The basic shared disk infrastructure supplied by cloud vendors like EBS or Google Persistent Disk leverages highly-durable storage under the covers so that applications can get high degrees of durability without needing to be modified. So weve seen that the three main arguments for scale out scalability cost and reliability are not as compelling as they might have been decades ago. There are also some benefits of scaling up that seem to have been forgotten that well discuss here. Simplicity. Scale out systems are significantly more difficult to build deploy and maintain. As much as engineers love to debate the merits of Paxos vs RAFT or CRDTs it is hard to argue that these things dont make the system significantly more complex to build and maintain. Mere mortals have a hard time reasoning about these systems how they work what happens when they fail and how to recover. Here is a network diagram from Wikipedia describing the simple path of the Paxos distributed consensus algorithm showing no failures. If you are building a distributed database and want to handle writes to more than one node youll need to build something like this: The actual protocol here is not as important as the fact that this is the simplest case of one of the more basic algorithms for distributed consensus. Engineering millenia have gone into implementing these algorithms. On a single node system these algorithms are generally unnecessary. Building software for distributed systems is just harder than building on a single node. Distributed databases need to worry about shuffling data between nodes for joins and aligning data to particular nodes. Single-node systems are dramatically simpler; to do a join you just create a hash table and share pointers. There are no independent failures that you have to recover from. The downsides of complexity arent just felt by the programmers building the systems themselves. Abstractions leak so things like eventual consistency storage partitioning and failure domains need to be handled by developers and end users. The CAP theorem is real so users of distributed systems will need to make active tradeoffs between consistency availability and what to do when you get network failures. Deploying and maintaining single node systems are generally a lot easier. They are up or they are down. The more moving parts you have the greater the number of things that can go wrong and the higher the likelihood. Single nodes have one place to look for problems and the problems they have are easier to diagnose. Given a choice between faster or slower nearly everyone will choose faster. Single node systems have important performance advantages over distributed systems. If you just think about it in a vacuum adding a network hop is going to be strictly slower than avoiding one. When you add things like consistency protocols this impact can get much worse. A single node database can commit a transaction in a millisecond whilst a distributed one might take tens or hundreds of milliseconds. While distributed systems can improve overall throughput when the system is network bound they also generate significant additional network usage for non-trivial work. For example if two distributed datasets need to be joined if they havent been carefully co-partitioned data shuffling will add considerable latency. There really isnt a viable way to make arbitrary distributed joins as fast as they are on a single node system. To show an example of why a distributed architecture is going to have limitations on performance take a look at BigQuerys stylized architecture diagram: Image by Google Cloud https://cloud.google.com/bigquery/docs/storage_overview The petabit network that connects everything may sound fast but it is still a bottleneck because so many operations need to move data across the network. Most non-trivial queries are network bound. A single node system would need to move far less data since there is no need to do a shuffle. We looked at the rationales behind scaling out and saw that they are much weaker than they had been in the past. We also talked about some of the benefits of scale up: Lets say youre not convinced and you need to scale out. But what about in 5 years when machines are an order of magnitude bigger? Were ready for a new generation of systems that take advantage of single-node performance. Innovation will move faster and youll be able to focus on actually solving problems rather than in coordinating complex distributed systems. This appendix compares the benchmark results from the Dremel paper with running a similar workload on a single large machine on modern hardware. While it would be nice to have a practical outcome to demonstrate it it is easy to argue with benchmark configurations and whether something is actually a fair comparison. Instead well show that modern hardware should be up to the challenge. The paper authors ran on a 3000 node Dremel cluster. For the record this much hardware in BigQuery would cost you more than $1M a year. Well compare it to an i4i.metal instance in AWS that costs $96k a year has 128 cores and 1T of RAM. Well use this to run a side-by side bake-off. Here is a snippet from the paper that shows the computation that they ran to benchmark against MapReduce: In the Dremel paper the main performance result showed being able to do a scan and aggregation query over 85B records in about 20 seconds reading half a terabyte of data. This was orders of magnitude faster than MapReduce-based systems. It was also far beyond what you could do in more traditional scale-up systems at the time. In order to match the level of performance in the paper youd need to be able to scan 4.5B rows and 25GB of data per second. SingleStore has an old blog post and demo showing that they can scan more than 3B rows per second per core which would mean that on a machine the size of our I4i youd be able process 384 B rows per second almost two orders of magnitude more than we need to match Dremel. Even if it takes 50x more processing power to count the words in a text field we still have a comfortable buffer. Memory bandwidth on a single server is likely going to be in the TB/s so that likely isnt an issue. As long as the data is staged in memory we should have no problem at all reading 500 GB in 20 seconds. The columns used in the query would take up half of the memory in the machine so if we have those pre-cached wed still have half a terabyte of memory in order to do the processing or to store inactive cache. However this feels like cheating since it relies on having the exact columns needed in the query cached in memory ahead of time. What if the data that we need were stored on the local SSD? Many databases Snowflake for example use local SSD as staging locations for hot data. The I4i servers have a total 30TB of NVMe SSD which means we can fit 30 times more in the cache on SD than we could in memory and 60 times more than we need for this query. It doesnt seem unreasonable that the active columns in this query would be cached in the SSD under a reasonable caching policy. If capacity isnt an issue what about bandwidth? NVMe drives are fast but are they fast enough? The 8 disks in these instances can do a total 160k IOPS per second with a maximum size of 256KB for each operation. This means we can read 40 GB/second which is more than the 25 we need. It isnt a whole lot of headroom but it should still work. Finally what if we wanted to do it cold where none of the data was cached? After all one of the benefits of Dremel was that it could read data directly from object storage. Here is where were going to run into a limitation; the I4i instance only has 75 Gigabits/sec of networking capacity or roughly 9 GB/s. Thats about a third of what wed need to be able to read directly from object storage. There are instances that have much higher memory bandwidth; the TRN1 instances have 8 100-gigabit network adapters. This means you can do 100 GB/sec significantly higher than our requirements. It would be reasonable to assume that these 100 Gb NICs will be more widely deployed in the future and make it to additional instance types. We acknowledge that just because you have hardware available in a machine doesnt mean that it is all uniformly accessible and that performance increases linearly with CPU count. Operating systems arent always great at handling numbers of cores locks scale poorly and software needs to be written very carefully to avoid hitting a wall. The point here isnt to make claims about the relative efficiencies of various systems; after all this benchmark was performed 15 years ago. However it should hopefully demonstrate that workloads that operate over a dataset nearing 100 TB are now reasonable to run on a single instance. 2023/04/26 - Mehdi Ouazza 2023/05/04 - Mehdi Ouazza

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The singularity is close? (mkaic.substack.com) Then came the Butlerian Jihad two generations of chaos. The god of machine-logic was overthrown among the masses and a new concept was raised: Man may not be replaced. Frank Herbert Dune Within one century biological intelligence will be a tiny minority of all sentient life . It will be very rare to be human. It will be very rare to have cells and blood and a heart. Human beings will be outnumbered a thousand to one by conscious machine intelligences. A rtificial G eneral I ntelligence (AGI) 1 is about to go from being science fiction to being part of everybodys day-to-day life. Its also going to happen in the blink of an eye because once it gets loose there is no stopping it from scaling itself incredibly rapidly. Whether we want it to or not it will impact every human beings life. Some people believe the singularity wont happen for a very long time or at all. Id like to discuss why I am nearly certain it will happen in the next 20 years. My overall prediction is based on 3 hypotheses: Scale is not the solution. AI will design AGI. The ball is already rolling. Keep in mind that this is just speculation and opinions. These predictions depict the future I personally feel is most likely. Recently an architecture called the Transformer has been taking over machine learning. Its really good at sequence-to-sequence tasks like translation and text completion and its also been successfully applied to other fields like computer vision . Transformers 2 also demonstrate an intriguing ability to scale their performance with their size better than other architectures. They seem less prone to the performance ceilings found in their competition. This has lead to a new slogan popping up in the AGI-speculation community: scale is all you need. Some people believe that bigger networks bigger compute clusters and bigger datasets are all we need to get to AGI. I disagree. I believe we are more bottlenecked by the architecture designs than anything else. While modern standard feedforward neural networks are getting very good at Doing Stuff they arent AGI and I dont think theres a clear path forward for them to become AGI. I have no doubt OpenAIs next mega-model GPT-4 (and beyond) will be excellent but I also think it will have exploitable flaws that make it fail a thorough Turing test . In fact I see the massive size of the present-days GPT- 3 as a sign that scale isnt the answer. 175 billion parameters but still obviously not sentient? For comparison the human brain has between 20 and 100 billion neurons and up to 1 quadrillion synapses . You could argue that until our neural networks have hundreds of trillions of parameters its not fair to compare them to the brain but I think this argument relies too much on the assumption that a biological synapse and a weight in a network are equivalent in computational ability. This has not be proven. The intricacies of how the brain moves and processes signals are still not entirely understood 3 but we know it seems to operate very differently from current neural networks. 4 Looking at most of the most revolutionary papers in the history of AI they are dominated not by we made it bigger but by we made it smarter at the same size. I see no reason not to expect that this pattern will continue. If scale isnt the answer what is? I believe that the pice de rsistance is adaptability . Presently the way you make an ML model is fairly rigid: you decide on a fancy new way to differentiably mix matrix multiplications together you feed it a ton of data and you use some simple calculus-based optimizer to train the weights in your network 5 . The way that the weights in your network are arranged doesnt change after training. I dont believe this is adaptible enough even at scale. In order for true intelligence to emerge models must be able to reorganize their own inner workings . I dont think you can have the level of flexibility required for sentience with a frozen architecture. 6 I think sentient AI will be created by working smarter not harder with a focus on better architectural design and intelligent optimizers. This leads nicely into my next hypothesis: Human-designed networks have achieved great results but they still suffer from the flaws of their creators. We are attracted to neatly organized network architectures which we can investigate and explain and attempt to understand. But our brains the gold standard of intelligence are famously difficult to investigate explain or understand! I think this is because our brains werent designed by anyone they evolved. They are the product of the universes greatest optimizer natural selection. 7 I think its reasonable to assume that the architecture that brings about AGI will not be hand-designed by humans or even selected via some brute-force hyperparameter search it will be designed by another AI . I predict there will be several recursive layers of AI design perhaps a dumb network which constructs a decent network which constructs a smart network which constructs AGI. I am bullish on the prospect of what I call constructor networks models that construct other models (also known as hypernetworks ). I think the moment we crack hyperlearning will be the moment progress will start moving faster than we can keep up precisely because we will no longer be the ones making the progress the algorithms themselves will. In order to work smarter not harder we need to let go of our human biases and focus on making unconstrained architectures that can aggressively optimize every aspect of themselves. I fully expect these architectures will be frustratingly difficult to explain when they arrive like huge mounds of digital neural spaghetti but they will also outperform all competition. Every additional stable layer of AI abstraction we add between ourselves and the final model will make the final model harder to understand and better at its task. The ideal model will be able to not only be constantly online-learning but also constantly adding and removing its own parameters allowing evolution and adaptation to new tasks. You cannot have artificial general intelligence if your model cannot adapt in real time to an arbitrary task. I believe that there is too much momentum to stop AGI now. With this much distributed attention fixed on the problem AGI will be solved. Additionally once it is solved it will be released to the public whether its ethical to do so or not. I imagine that the first people to solve it will probably keep it behind closed doors but it wont stay secret forever. Someone on the team will leak everything or someone else will independently make the same discoveries and release them. Eventually it will get out. Consider the invention of the nuclear bomb once we learned of the power hidden in radioactive materials it was only a matter of time before someone pushed the research to its moral limits. AGI is like that except its even more terrifying because uranium plutonium and the bombs made out of them can be strictly controlled but people with powerful computers and an internet connection cannot nor can the AGIs they create. I recognize how clich and alarmist this all sounds. Really youre genuinely worried about a robot apocalypse? You know Age of Ultron is just a stupid Marvel movie right? Yeah I know. But Ive grown to believe that the concerns that fiction writers have been bringing up for decades are actually quite reasonable because AGI cannot be stopped. Once an intelligence is loose on the internet it will be able to learn from all of humanitys data replicate and mutate itself infinitely many times take over physical manufacturing lines remotely and hack important infrastructure. Obviously its impossible to say for sure that this is what the first free AGI will do but its inevitable that some malevolent AGI will exist and will do these things. We can only hope that well have sufficiently powerful benevolent AGI to fight back. I subtitled this post Why we're all in denial about the robot apocalypse. I say that because I believe that society at large is completely utterly and woefully unprepared for the advent of sentient living artificial general intelligence. I think the singularity is coming much sooner than most people expect and I think its going to cause a great deal of upset when it arrives for better and for worse. Take for instance the common religious belief that people possess some unmeasurable undefinable soul and that this soul is what separates us from inanimate objects and non-sentient animals. Furthermore some people believe that these souls come from deity. I have spoken with friends who believe that AGI is impossible because robots cant have souls humans arent God. For these people like Caleb says in Ex Machina (paraphrasing) removing the line between man and machine also removes the line between god and man. Now this isnt to say that AGI will destroy religion or anything it may even be used to strengthen some sects (as taken to the extreme in HBOs Raised By Wolves). No religion has been around for millennia and Im sure it will continue to be around for many more millennia. Im simply predicting that a subset of religious people are going to experience lots of cognitive dissonance when the first AGI arrives. More generally arguments about AGI sentience and ethical issues will go from being topics only geeks talk about to topics that Facebook moms make political grandstands over. Finally I want to address those who may feel this post is pessimistic: I assure you I am hopeful about AGI. I work in the field of ML because I am hopeful. I hope to personally contribute to the development of AGI in my lifetime. I think AGI has the capacity to make the world an infinitely better place. We are not prepared for AGI but that doesnt mean AGI has to be the end of humanity. I dont know what life will look like in the age of living machines but I am confident that as Jeff Goldblum puts it: Life uh finds a way. Ian Malcolm Jurassic Park Thanks for reading Kai PS Im making a series of short films about AGI right now! You should totally go watch the first episode which is out now on my YouTube channel and my TikTok account . Also while youre at it why not follow me on Twitter ? In this article Im going to use AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) and singularity interchangeably even though some may argue that they have differences. Once we have AGI theres no feasible way to contain it so it will be free to improve itself and replicate in a runaway exponential fashion and thats basically what the idea of a technological singularity describes anyways. More than meets the eye! If you are a brain-studier and you think Im completely wrong about this please reach out! I would love to learn more. There are people researching neural networks which are modeled directly off of the behavior that real neurons exhibit but these efforts havent produced any stunning results yet. Or you use a reward system with credit assignment like in reinforcement learning. Just think about how much human brains are constantly training and retraining themselves on a day-to-day basis to do things like learn new skills or navigate novel situations! This is one of my favorite analogies evolution as an optimizer! Organisms compete to be as optimized as possible for the proliferation of their own genome and are penalized by the environment and other organisms when they fail leading to a huge diversity of highly specific adaptations and evolved traits that give different kinds of creatures very specific advantages in their individual habitats. As the good book says: In the beginning there was nothing. Then someone initialized torch.optim.NaturalSelection(Life.parameters() lr=1e-6) I think you can do many amazing things with AI but it's still just a program. If you give it control over an area it'll control that area and if you let it decide what to do you'll get unexpected results. I don't see people giving programs the right to change what they do or how it's done - so far that's done under controlled conditions or not at all. Nobody's going to put an AI in charge of a refinery and say 'Do whatever you want.' The industrial world doesn't work that way. This reminds me of Jurassic Park - zookeepers have endless protocols to limit the freedom animals have and the only way to make anything exciting happen is to toss all of them aside and pretend they don't exist. I loved that movie but it didn't make a lot of sense. People are very good at containing random shit. We have to be. That's one of the main uses of intelligence. I'll add that I don't believe in strong AI. You can't program a computer to be conscious. We don't have any good theories about consciousness or a lot of ideas about where it comes from. It's very obviously not computational. You can program the sounds of rain and pictures of rain but you won't get wet. Intelligent machines are a theoretical part of the singularity but they are not equivalent to a period of infinitely fast technological progress. Having them would increase the rate of change but I suspect they would mostly be used to optimize existing processes. I can see no reason to think that an AI would have the instincts to tell it to do anything but what it was instructed to. When we make AIs if we want them to have generalized drives outside their area we'll have to program them. Nobody's going to program machines to take over the world. I doubt anyone will program them to step outside their designed function at all. I admit that in the hands of the insane or power-hungry one might have problems. I don't think this is likely. Your statement that they're more accessible to evil people than nuclear weapons is interesting but I think a brief study of those in the world who control terrible weapons will show that they're the worst and dumbest people the race has produced. I think progress continues and I hope for better and interesting things. I do not think we're falling into a chaotic singularity dominated by machines. Good article and thanks. I liked your article and I'm not saying I disagree with your point but I didn't think the paragraphs In fact I see the massive size of the present day's GPT-3 [...] we know [the brain] seems to operate very differently from current neural networks strengthened your post. It feels like you are acknowledging a potential counterargument then sort of just casually deflecting the issue of current models not having hit brain-scale yet by saying the one-to-one synapse-weight relationship has not been proven then just moving on as though by itself that statement is some kind of valid argument. No posts Ready for more?

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The staggering ecological impacts of computation and the cloud (mitpress.mit.edu) Last year MITs Schwarzman College of Computing launched a specially commissioned series that aims to address the opportunities and challenges of the computing age. The MIT Case Studies in Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing (SERC) series features peer-reviewed freely available cases by topic-area experts that introduce readers to a range of questions about computing data and society. Some cases focus closely on particular technologies others on trends across technological platforms. Still others examine social historical philosophical legal and cultural facets that are essential for thinking critically about present-day efforts in computing and data sciences and their roles in the wider world. The following article excerpted from anthropologist Steven Gonzalez Monserrates case study The Cloud Is Material: On the Environmental Impacts of Computation and Data Storage takes us into the blinking corridors of data centers that make digital industry possible and makes clear the environmental costs of ubiquitous computing in modern life. The Editors Screens brighten with the flow of words. Perhaps they are emails hastily scrawled on smart devices or emoji-laden messages exchanged between friends or families. On this same river of the digital millions flock to binge their favorite television programming to stream pornography or enter the sprawling worlds of massively multiplayer online roleplaying games or simply to look up the meaning of an obscure word or the location of the nearest COVID-19 testing center. Whatever your query desire or purpose the internet provides and all of the complexity of everything from unboxing videos to do-it-yourself blogs are contained within infinitely complex strings of bits. As they travel across time and space at the speed of light beneath our oceans in fiber optic cables thinner than human hairs these dense packets of information instructions for pixels or characters or frames encoded in ones and zeros unravel to create the digital veneer before you now. The words you are reading are a point of entry into an ethereal realm that many call the Cloud. While in technical parlance the Cloud might refer to the pooling of computing resources over a network in popular culture Cloud has come to signify and encompass the full gamut of infrastructures that make online activity possible everything from Instagram to Hulu to Google Drive. Like a puffy cumulus drifting across a clear blue sky refusing to maintain a solid shape or form the Cloud of the digital is elusive its inner workings largely mysterious to the wider public an example of what MIT cybernetician Norbert Weiner once called a black box. But just as the clouds above us however formless or ethereal they may appear to be are in fact made of matter the Cloud of the digital is also relentlessly material. To get at the matter of the Cloud we must unravel the coils of coaxial cables fiber optic tubes cellular towers air conditioners power distribution units transformers water pipes computer servers and more. We must attend to its material flows of electricity water air heat metals minerals and rare earth elements that undergird our digital lives. In this way the Cloud is not only material but is also an ecological force. As it continues to expand its environmental impact increases even as the engineers technicians and executives behind its infrastructures strive to balance profitability with sustainability. Nowhere is this dilemma more visible than in the walls of the infrastructures where the content of the Cloud lives: the factory-libraries where data is stored and computational power is pooled to keep our cloud applications afloat. It is four in the morning when the incident occurs. At that moment I am crouched on the floor of one of the containment aisles of the data center computers arrayed like book stacks in a library on either side of me. The clamor of server fans makes it nearly impossible for me to hear Tom the senior technician I am shadowing explain to me how to pry open a faulty floor tile. With a specialized tool I remove the white square tile from its hinges noticing tiny perforations etched on its surface points of ingress designed to help cool air rush up from a vast pressurized cavity beneath us called a plenum. I set the tile aside feeling a rush of cold tickle my nose as a gust of chill whips up from the exposed underfloor plenum. I go about replacing the tile using one with more notches to improve airflow to this particular cluster of dense computing equipment. That is when I hear the alarms go off. Amid a sea of blinking green and blue lights an entire rack of computers suddenly scintillates yellow and then after a few seconds a foreboding red. In that instant panic sweeps over Toms face and he too is flush and crimson as he scrambles to contain the calamity unfolding around us. Theyre overheating Tom says upon inspecting the thermal sensors sweat dripping from his brow. I feel the heat swarming the air. The flood of warmth seeps into the servers faster than the heat sinks printed onto their circuit boards can abate faster than the fans can expel the hot air recycling in a runaway feedback loop of warming. The automatic shutdown sequence begins and Tom curses reminding me that every minute of downtime of service interruption may cost the company many thousands of dollars. Within two minutes however the three massive air conditioning units that had been idling in a standby state activate to full power flooding the room with an arctic chill and restoring order to the chaotic scene. In the vignette above which draws on my ethnographic fieldnotes I recount an episode that data center technicians refer to as a thermal runaway event a cascading failure of cooling systems that interrupts the functioning of the servers that process store and facilitate everything online. The molecular frictions of digital industry as this example shows proliferate as unruly heat. The flotsam and jetsam of our digital queries and transactions the flurry of electrons flitting about warm the medium of air . Heat is the waste product of computation and if left unchecked it becomes a foil to the workings of digital civilization. Heat must therefore be relentlessly abated to keep the engine of the digital thrumming in a constant state 24 hours a day every day. To quell this thermodynamic threat data centers overwhelmingly rely on air conditioning a mechanical process that refrigerates the gaseous medium of air so that it can displace or lift perilous heat away from computers. Today power-hungry computer room air conditioners (CRACs) or computer room air handlers (CRAHs) are staples of even the most advanced data centers. In North America most data centers draw power from dirty electricity grids especially in Virginias data center alley the site of 70 percent of the worlds internet traffic in 2019. To cool the Cloud burns carbon what Jeffrey Moro calls an elemental irony . In most data centers today cooling accounts for greater than 40 percent of electricity usage. While some of the most advanced hyperscale data centers like those maintained by Google Facebook and Amazon have pledged to transition their sites to carbon-neutral via carbon offsetting and investment in renewable energy infrastructures like wind and solar many of the smaller-scale data centers that I observed lack the resources and capital to pursue similar sustainability initiatives. Smaller-scale traditional data centers have often been set up within older buildings that are not optimized for ever-changing power cooling and data storage capacity needs. Since the emergence of hyperscale facilities many companies universities and others who operate their own small-scale data centers have begun to transfer their data to hyperscalers or cloud colocation facilities citing energy cost reductions. The Cloud now has a greater carbon footprint than the airline industry. A single data center can consume the equivalent electricity of 50000 homes. According to a Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory report if the entire Cloud shifted to hyperscale facilities energy usage might drop as much as 25 percent. Without any regulatory body or agency to incentivize or enforce such a shift in our infrastructural configuration there are other solutions that have been proposed to curb the Clouds carbon problem. Some have proposed relocating data centers to Nordic countries like Iceland or Sweden in a bid to utilize ambient cool air to minimize carbon footprint a technique called free cooling. However network signal latency issues make this dream of a haven for green data centers largely untenable to meet the computing and data storage demands of the wider world. As a result the Cloud now has a greater carbon footprint than the airline industry. A single data center can consume the equivalent electricity of 50000 homes. At 200 terawatt hours (TWh) annually data centers collectively devour more energy than some nation-states. Today the electricity utilized by data centers accounts for 0.3 percent of overall carbon emissions and if we extend our accounting to include networked devices like laptops smartphones and tablets the total shifts to 2 percent of global carbon emissions. Why so much energy? Beyond cooling the energy requirements of data centers are vast. To meet the pledge to customers that their data and cloud services will be available anytime anywhere data centers are designed to be hyper-redundant: If one system fails another is ready to take its place at a moments notice to prevent a disruption in user experiences. Like Toms air conditioners idling in a low-power state ready to rev up when things get too hot the data center is a Russian doll of redundancies: redundant power systems like diesel generators redundant servers ready to take over computational processes should others become unexpectedly unavailable and so forth. In some cases only 6 to 12 percent of energy consumed is devoted to active computational processes . The remainder is allocated to cooling and maintaining chains upon chains of redundant fail-safes to prevent costly downtime. It is late July in Arizona. The sun is white and hot on this cloudless day. I feel it scorch the back of my neck as I follow Jeremy a junior technician to the backlot behind a data center where dozens of shipping containers are arrayed in rows. Amid this 117-degree heat wave our task is to repair an evaporative cooling system that is failing. We unfasten the screws on one of the exterior panels before entering the shipping container which I am surprised to learn is actually a modular server cluster. Pipes snake up from tiny channels in the lot where potable water is pumped up from the ground to seep up into a spongey filter media. To my eyes this foamy material resembles a honeycomb or a wasps nest (figure 2). The sediment-rich waters of the Colorado River have congealed to form an oozy soot on the porous surface that is not unlike honey. The wet tray of material evaporates quickly in the arid desert air the roiling cloud of moisture gently cooling the loudly buzzing servers around us Jeremy explains. This I learn is why the shipping container has the nickname The Mouth. The Cloud may be a carbonivore but as the example of The Mouth shows the Cloud is also quite thirsty. Like a pasture server farms are irrigated. In many data centers today chilled water is piped through the latticework of server racks to more efficiently cool the facility liquid being a superior convective agent than air. This shift from cooling air to cooling water is an attempt to reduce carbon footprint but it comes at a cost. Weathering historic drought and heat domes communities in the western United States are increasingly strained for water resources. In Mesa Arizona where I spent six months researching the emergence of a desert data center hub some politicians are now openly opposing the construction of data centers framing the centers water usage as inessential and irresponsible given resource constraints. In Bluffdale Utah residents are suffering from water shortages and power outages as a result of the nearby Utah Data Center a facility of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) that guzzles seven million gallons of water daily to operate. In response to increasing awareness of data centers impact on water-stressed communities like Mesa and Bluffdale companies like Google are pledging to go water-positive by 2030 committing to replenish 120 percent of the water they consume in their facilities and offices. By implementing costly closed-loop water cooling systems companies like Google and Cyrus One are able to recycle some of the wastewater used in evaporative cooling though much of the water escapes into the atmosphere during the evaporative process. In addition to optimizing water utilization and minimizing waste Google and others pledge to invest in water infrastructure and community resources to enhance water stewardship and water security. Corporate pledges such as these while laudable are not enforceable nor do they appear to be feasible given the explosive growth expected in data storage infrastructures over the next decade a tripling by some estimates . Media scholar Ml Hogan warns against entrusting Big Tech with its own regulation given the companies financial ties to the fossil fuel industry and failure to meet the deadlines of previous pledges to reduce carbon emissions or other kinds of waste. Per the 2021 Emissions Gap Report authored by the United Nations Environment Programme global temperatures are projected to rise by 2.7C by the end of the century. Planetary heating will melt glaciers and raise sea levels. The result will be the salinization of freshwater supplies proliferation of pathogen growth in stagnant water reservoirs and the intensification of ongoing processes of desertification creating near-ubiquitous conditions of water scarcity by 2040 if governments and companies fail to intensify their efforts to curb emissions. While corporate pledges offer no guarantee that data centers will regulate larger mechanisms of accountability like the recent Climate Neutral Data Centre Pact a consortium of European data center companies and infrastructure providers promising to become climate neutral by 2050 provide a model for larger-scale regulatory initiatives that could make a more substantial impact. 2019. Brenda Hayward takes a stroll through her sunny neighborhood past the lovely green lawn of Chuparosa park in Chandler Arizona when she hears it the noise that haunts her every night as she attempts to sleep. It is there every morning when she wakes up. It is there in the park where her children played when they were young riffling through the boughs of the palo verde trees stalking her as she tries to live her life quietly. It began as a dull boom not unlike the racket of bass-frenzied teenagers partying late into the night. Later it evolved into a continuous mechanical whine. She tries not to notice it she tries to unhear it but it is there behind everything a hellish background track to her life. As a nurse she knows that the sound is more than mere annoyance. She sees the signs of its toll hypertension cortisol but she cannot stop it. No one can because it does not sleep. 2020. Lockdown has forced urban residents to remain in their homes to minimize the transmission of COVID-19. For David Gray cabin fever is the least of his worries. Instead he and his neighbors at Printers Row in downtown Chicago must weather a scourge of a sonic variety. As he mills about his home as he works and eats and bathes it is there a monotonal drone a clatter unceasing a constant undesired companion to his life. It festers in his mind clawing at his thoughts probing his sanity poisoning him with a constant spell of dread and anxiety. He cannot leave; he is not allowed to. He cannot escape. He is there with it a prisoner to its bewitching monotone. 2021. At Chuparosa Park I hear it too. Above the cries of children playing dogs barking cars racing by it soars. My ears prick up with the music of the Cloud a discordant symphony of text messages emails cat videos and fake news pulsing thrumming in my ears. Just past the basketball courts the picnic tables and the prickly pears the source is visible for all to see: a CyrusOne data center . Over vast distances the sonic exhaust of our digital lives reverberates: the minute vibrations of hard disks the rumbling of air chillers the cranking of diesel generators the mechanical spinning of fans. Data centers emit acoustic waste what environmentalists call noise pollution. For communities like Brendas and Davids the computational whir of data centers is not merely an annoyance but a source of mental and physical harm. Brenda a nurse by training reported an uptick in her blood pressure and cortisol levels with the onset of the noise. David a twenty-something software engineer was diagnosed with hypertension and meets frequently with a clinical therapist to manage the anxiety caused by the data centers hum . Their stories are cautionary tales; they are neither uncommon nor exceptional. The acute and longitudinal physiological effects of industrial noise pollution are well-documented to include hearing loss elevated stress hormones like cortisol hypertension and insomnia. Brenda and David met with other disaffected residents in their respective communities to organize for change. Brenda soon joined the Dobson Noise Coalition helping to organize a community meeting with her neighbors city officials state and federal representatives and employees of CyrusOne the offending data center. David took a stand with others in his building successfully mobilizing the Chicago Department of Public Health to file a noise complaint on their behalf and successfully obtain a hearing for a noise pollution violation. While the efforts of these communities to minimize the noise pollution harming them are ongoing they are resigned to modest goals to improve rather than solve the problem. Unlike other industries data centers are largely self-regulating: There is no sweeping federal agency to govern the siting and operation of new and existing facilities. David a twenty-something software engineer was diagnosed with hypertension and meets frequently with a clinical therapist to manage the anxiety caused by the data centers hum. Because data center noise is unregulated by political authorities facilities can be built in close proximity to residential communities. Given the subjective nature of hearing the history of noise regulation might best be characterized by a series of contests over expertise and the right to quiet as codified in liberal legal regimes. Over the course of my fieldwork with the communities of Chandler and Printers Row I learned that the noise of the Cloud uniquely eludes regulatory schemes. In many cases the loudness of the data centers as measured in decibels (dB) falls below the threshold of intolerance as prescribed by local ordinances. For this reason when residents contacted the authorities to intervene to attenuate or quiet their noise no action was taken because the data centers had not technically violated the law and their properties were zoned for industrial purposes. However upon closer interrogation of the sound some residents reported that the monotonal drone a frequency hovering within the range of human speech is particularly disturbing given the attuned sensitivity of human ears to discern such frequencies above others. Even so there were days when the data centers running diesel generators vastly exceeded permissible decibel-thresholds for noise. As with water and carbon local companies like CyrusOne pledged in community meetings to take steps to attenuate their sound though these were unenforceable promises that to date they have failed to keep. Since the year 2007 when the first smartphone debuted on the marketplace over seven billion devices of the sort have since been manufactured. Their lifespans average less than two years a consequence of designed obsolescence and a thirst to profit from flashy new features and capabilities. Meanwhile the material and political conditions of their manufacture and the resources required for their production remain obscured. Under grueling conditions miners tirelessly plumb the earth for the rare metals required to make information and communications technology (ICT) devices. Then in vast factories like Foxconn located in the Global South where labor can be procured cheaply and legal protections for workers are scant smartphones are assembled and shipped out to consumers only to be discarded in a matter of months to end up in e-waste graveyards like those of Agbogbloshie Ghana. These metals many of which are toxic and contain radioactive elements take millennia to decay . The refuse of the digital is ecologically transformative. Historian Nathan Ensmenger writes that a single desktop computer requires 240 kilograms of fossil fuels 22 kilograms of chemicals and 1500 kilograms of water to manufacture. The servers that fill the halls of data centers are dense specialized assets with some units valued in the tens of thousands of U.S. dollars. Cables batteries uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) air conditioners (CRACs and CRAHs) power distribution units (PDUs) and transformers are also periodically decommissioned and disposed of when warranties expire and units fail to perform with the high standards of reliability and redundancy set by entities like the Uptime Institute . Some of these components have toxic polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and must be disposed of rather than reused. Efforts are underway in Europe and elsewhere to augment facility and equipment designs to extend the lifespan of units more easily accommodate repair and formalize a system of exchange to recycle old equipment using materials passports that precisely document unit histories not unlike CARFAX. Even with these sustainability initiatives in place environmental organizations like Greenpeace estimate that less than 16 percent of the tons of e-waste generated annually is recycled. The ecological dynamics we find ourselves in are not entirely a consequence of design limits but of human practices and choices among individuals communities corporations and governments combined with a deficit of will and imagination to bring about a sustainable Cloud. The Cloud is both cultural and technological. Like any aspect of culture the Clouds trajectory and its ecological impacts are not predetermined or unchangeable. Like any aspect of culture they are mutable. Steven Gonzalez Monserrate is an anthropologist and a PhD candidate at MIT. A full version of this article as well as a bibliography can be accessed here . My family introduced me not only to plant knowledge but also to a frame through which I place myself into my environment and universe. Enrique Salmn | Nov 14 2022 Every time we eat we craft our identities perform relationships and shape our communities from the local to the global. Harry G. West | Dec 9 2021 Stretching the mind across time can help us become more responsible planetary stewards and foster empathy across generations. Vincent Ialenti | Aug 10 2021 An anthropologist looks to Finland to argue that solutions must go far beyond reversing Trumps policies. Vincent Ialenti | Jun 22 2021

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The state finally letting teens sleep in (theatlantic.com) Adolescents in the U.S. are chronically sleep-deprived in part because most schools start too early. This summer California will become the first state in the nation to require later start times. Terra Ziporyn Snider of Severna Park Maryland still remembers how difficult it was for her son to wake up for his 7:17 a.m. first-period class when he was in high school. There were times hed turn on the shower then head back to bed while waiting for the water to warm up only to fall back asleep. One morning he made it out the door but didnt get far: He backed the car into the garage door because hed forgotten to open it. That was in 2012. And though the morning travails of her kids high-school years had prompted Ziporyn Snider to co-found the national nonprofit Start School Later around the same time the school is only now set to shift to an 8:30 a.m. start time effective this fall. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) which has called for later school start times since 2014 recommends that middle and high schools start no earlier than 8:30 a.m. But until recently theres been a patchwork approach to meeting that recommendation. The result: While various districts cities and counties have opted to make changes the majority of middle and high schools still start too early. These start times make it nearly impossible for teens whose body clock tends to shift to a later schedule at the onset of puberty to get the eight to 10 hours of sleep recommended for their health and well-being. Thats about to change in California when a law the first of its kind in the nationgoes into effect on July 1 requiring the states public high schools to start no earlier than 8:30 a.m. and its middle schools no earlier than 8 a.m. Both New York and New Jersey also have similar bills under consideration. Read: The town thats building life around sleep Places that have already pushed back school start times have repeatedly seen positive results. When Seattles public-school district shifted its start time in 2016 (from 7:50 a.m. to 8:45 a.m.) students got a median of an additional 34 minutes of sleep a night as a result. And in Cherry Creek a Denver-area suburb high schoolers slept about 45 minutes longer on average and those improvements endured even two years after the change. Despite success stories like these around the U.S. the national sleep statistics for teens remain dismal. In 2007 when the CDC first started asking about teen sleep in the national Youth Risk Behavior Survey only 31 percent of high schoolers said they got at least eight hours of sleep on school nights. By 2019 that had slid to 22 percent. Thats quite concerning given that eight hours is actually the minimum amount they need. Teen sleep deprivation affects grades attendance and graduation rates. It leads to greater risk of injury for adolescent athletes and more drowsy-driving crashes. And it worsens mental-health issuesincluding anxiety and suicidality . Thats profoundly unsettling particularly in light of data released by the CDC in April showing that 44 percent of high schoolers said theyd had persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness during the past year and 20 percent had seriously contemplated suicide. Read: Why American teens are so sad The circadian-rhythm shifts that happen in puberty are an important consideration. But societal factors also contribute to teens chronic sleep deprivation. Teenagers are frequently overloaded strapped for time and asked to wake far too early for school. Most teens should still be sleeping well past when their alarm clocks ring in the morning in order to attain the recommended amount of sleep: A teen who must wake at 6 a.m. would need to fall asleep each night between 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. which runs counter to reality because of teen body clocks and the demands of homework among other factors. Improving the situation starts with valuing sleep. There are changes parents can make at home and in their teens schedules to encourage sleep and to make it a priority such as setting family rules for tech use. For example charging all devices in a central location rather than in the bedroom can help curtail late-night use. But families can do only so much given school schedules. Unlike internal body clocks school start times can be changed as a way to help teens get more sleep. Since the 2014 AAP recommendation the consensus that later start times are better for adolescents has continued to grow. The new law in California means that in the most populous state in the nation the majority of students at public high schools and middle schoolsabout 3 million of themwill now have healthy start times. This is progress. Also promising are the schools that delayed their start times for remote instruction during the pandemic and kept that schedule in place even after returning to in-person instruction. Although later start times are an essential step more remains to be done to help teens get the rest they need. At the broader level we need to address the pressure-cooker environment teens face and take steps to lower their stress. It may mean reevaluating all of their commitmentsand even paring those downto ensure enough time for sleep. In their quest to meet all of the expectations that have been placed on them our teens are shortchanging their sleep and its harming their well-being. This article was partially adapted from Lisa L. Lewiss book The Sleep-Deprived Teen . When you buy a book using a link on this page we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.

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The story behind Beethoven's Ode to Joy (themarginalian.org) Each month I spend hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars keeping The Marginalian going. For seventeen years it has remained free and ad-free and alive thanks to patronage from readers. I have no staff no interns not even an assistant a thoroughly one-woman labor of love that is also my life and my livelihood. If this labor has made your own life more livable in the past year (or the past decade) please consider aiding its sustenance with a one-time or loyal donation. Your support makes all the difference. $3 / month $5 / month $7 / month $10 / month $25 / month You can also become a spontaneous supporter with a one-time donation in any amount: Partial to Bitcoin? You can beam some bit-love my way: 197usDS6AsL9wDKxtGM6xaWjmR5ejgqem7 Need to cancel a recurring donation? Go here . Newsletter RSS Facebook Twitter Instagram Tumblr The Marginalian has a free Sunday digest of the week's most mind-broadening and heart-lifting reflections spanning art science poetry philosophy and other tendrils of our search for truth beauty meaning and creative vitality. Here's an example . Like? Claim yours: Also: Because The Marginalian is well into its second decade and because I write primarily about ideas of timeless nourishment each Wednesday I dive into the archive and resurface from among the thousands of essays one worth resavoring. Subscribe to this free midweek pick-me-up for heart mind and spirit below it is separate from the standard Sunday digest of new pieces: Day by day I am approaching the goal which I apprehend but cannot describe Ludwig van Beethoven (December 16 1770March 26 1827) wrote to his boyhood friend rallying his own resilience as he began losing his hearing. A year later shortly after completing his Second Symphony he sent his brothers a stunning letter about the joy of suffering overcome in which he resolved: Ah! how could I possibly quit the world before bringing forth all that I felt it was my vocation to produce? That year he began though he did not yet know it as we never do the long gestation of what would become not only his greatest creative and spiritual triumph not only a turning point in the history of music that revolutionized the symphony and planted the seed of the pop song but an eternal masterwork of the supreme human art: making meaning out of chaos beauty out of sorrow. Across the epochs Ode to Joy rises vast and eternal transcending all of spacetime and at the same time compacting it into something so intimate so immediate that nothing seems to exist outside this singularity of all-pervading possibility. Inside its total drama a total tranquility; inside its revolt an oasis of refuge. The story of its making is as vitalizing as the masterpiece itself or rather its story is the very reason for its vitality. As a teenager while auditing Kants lectures at the University of Bonn Beethoven had fallen under the spell of transcendental idealism and the ideas of the Enlightenment ideas permeating the poetry of Friedrich Schiller. A volume of it became the young Beethovens most cherished book and so began the dream of setting it to music. (There is singular magic in a timeless poem set to music .) One particular poem especially entranced him: Written when Beethoven was fifteen and the electric spirit of revolution saturated Europes atmosphere Schillers Ode to Joy was at heart an ode to freedom a blazing manifesto for the Enlightenment ethos that if freedom justice and human happiness are placed at the center of life and made its primary devotion politically and personally then peace and kindness would envelop humankind as an inevitable consequence. A kiss for the whole world Schiller had written and the teenage Beethoven longed to be lips of the possible. This Elysian dream ended not even a decade later as the Reign of Terror dropped the blade of the guillotine upon Marie Antoinette then upon ten thousand other heads and the dreams they carried. Schiller died considering his Ode to Joy a failure an idealists fantasy unmoored from reality a work of art that might have been of service perhaps for him perhaps for a handful of others but not for the world. The young Beethoven was among those few it touched and this was enough more than enough he took Schillers bright beam of possibility and magnified it through the lens of his own genius to illuminate all of humanity for all of time. Epochs later in the savage century of the World Wars and the Holocaust Rebecca West another uncommon visionary who understood that art is not a plaything but a necessity would contemplate how those rare few help the rest of humanity endure observing that if during the next million generations there is but one human being born in every generation who will not cease to inquire into the nature of his fate even while it strips and bludgeons him some day we shall read the riddle of our universe. While Schillers poem was ripening in Beethovens imagination the decade-long Napoleonic Wars stripped and bludgeoned Europe. When Napoleons armies invaded and occupied Vienna where Beethoven had moved at twenty-one to study with his great musical hero Haydn most of the wealthy fled to the country. He took refuge with his brother sister-in-law and young nephew in the city. Thirty-nine and almost entirely deaf Beethoven found himself suffering misery in a most concentrated form misery that affected both body and soul so profoundly that he produced very little coherent work. From inside the vortex of uncertainty and suffering he wrote: The existence I had built up only a short time ago rests on shaky foundations. What a destructive disorderly life I see and hear around me: nothing but drums cannons and human misery in every form. That spring Haydns death only deepened his despair at life. The next six years were an unremitting heartache. His love went unreturned . He grew estranged from one of his brothers who married a woman Beethoven disliked. His other brother died. He entered an endless legal combat over guardianship of his young nephew. He spent a year bedridden with a mysterious illness he called an inflammatory fever riddled with skull-splitting headaches. His hearing almost completely deteriorated. He grew repulsed by the trendy mysticism of new musical developments which made no room for the raw human emotion that was to him both the truest material and truest product of art. Somehow he kept composing the act itself becoming the fulcrum by which Beethoven lifted himself out of the black hole to perch on the event horizon of a new period of great creative fertility. While Blake his twin in the tragic genius of outsiderdom was painting the music of the heavens Beethoven was grounding a possible heaven onto a disillusioned earth with music. And then he ended up in jail. One autumn day in 1822 the fifty-two-year-old composer put on his moth-eaten coat and set out for what he intended as a short morning walk in the city his mind a tempest of ideas. Walking had always been his primary laboratory for creative problem-solving so the morning stroll unspooled into a long half-conscious walk along the Danube. In a classic manifestation of the self-forgetting that marks the intense creative state now known as flow Beethoven lost track of time of distance of the demands of his own body. He walked and walked hatless and absorbed not realizing how famished and fatigued he was growing until the afternoon found him wandering disheveled and disoriented in a river basin far into the countryside. There he was arrested by local police for behaving in a suspicious manner taken to jail as a tramp with no identity papers and mocked for claiming that he was the great Beethoven by then a national icon with a corpus of celebrated concertos and sonatas to his name and eight whole symphonies. The tramp raged and raged until eventually close to midnight the police dispatched a nervous officer to wake up a local musical director who Beethoven demanded could identify him. Instant recognition. Righteous rage. Apologies. Immediate release. More rage. More apologies. Beethoven spent the night at his liberators house. In the morning the towns apologetic mayor collected him and drove him back to Vienna in the mayoral carriage. What had so distracted Beethoven from space and time and self was that twenty-seven years after falling under the spell of Schillers poem he was at last ferocious with ideas for bringing it to life in music. He had been thinking about it incessantly for months. Ode to Joy would become the crowning achievement of his crowning achievement the choral finale of his ninth and final symphony. It would distill the transcendent torment of his creative life: how to integrate rage and redemption the solace of poetry with the drama of music; how to channel his own poetic fury as a force of beauty of vitality of meaning; how to turn the human darkness he had witnessed and suffered into something incandescent something superhuman. It had to be in a symphony although he had not composed one in a decade and no composer not Bach not Mozart not his hero Haydn had ever woven lyric poetry or any words at all into a symphony before; the word lyrics was yet to enter the lexicon in its musical sense. It had to be the crowning choral finale of the symphony although he had not written much choral music before. But the light of the idea beamed bright and irrefutable as spring. This was no time for old laurels no time for catering to proven populisms this was the time for creation. A decade earlier Beethoven had written back to a young girl aspiring to become a great pianist offering his advice on the central urgency of the creative calling: The true artist is not proud Though he may be admired by others he is sad not to have reached that point to which his better genius only appears as a distant guiding sun. So often in advising others we are advising ourselves the most innocent vulnerable and visionary parts of us those parts from which the spontaneity and daring central to creative work spring. I wonder whether Beethoven remembered his own advice to Emilie as he faced the blank page that spring in 1822 when the first radiant contours of his Ode to Joy filled his mind and his footfall. By summer he was actively seeking out commissions to live on as he labored. He managed to procure a meager 50 from Londons Harmony Society but that was enough subsistence and assurance to get to work. For more than a year he labored unremittingly stumbling over creative challenge after creative challenge the price of making anything unexampled. His greatest puzzle was how to introduce the words into the final movement and how to choose the voices that would best carry them. Meanwhile word was spreading in Vienna that its most beloved composer was working on something wildly ambitious his first symphony in a decade and no ordinary symphony. But just as theater managers began vying for the premiere Beethoven stunned everyone with the announcement that it was going to premiere in Berlin. He gave no reason. Viennese musicians took it as an affront did he think they were too traditional to appreciate something so bold? He had been born in Germany yes but he had become himself in Austria. Surely he owed the seedbed of his creative blossoming some measure of faith. At the harsh peak of winter Karoline Unger the nineteen-year-old contralto Beethoven had already chosen to voice the deepest feeling-tones of his Ode to Joy exhorted him to premiere his masterwork in Vienna. Writing in his Conversation Books the notebooks through which the deaf composer communicated with the hearing world she told him he had too little self-confidence in the Viennese publics reception of his masterwork urged him to go forward with the concert then exclaimed: O Obstinacy! Within a month thirty of his most esteemed Austrian admirers musicians and poets composers and chamberlains had co-written and signed an impassioned open letter to Beethoven laced with patriotism and flattery telling him that while his name and creations belong to all contemporaneous humanity and every country which opens a susceptible bosom to art it is his artistic duty to complete the Austrian triad of Mozart and Haydn; imploring him not to entrust the appreciation for the pure and eternally beautiful to unworthy foreign power and to establish instead a new sovereignty of the True and the Beautiful in Vienna. The letter was hand-delivered to him by a court secretary who tutored the royal family. Not even the most stubborn and single-minded artist is impervious to the sway of adulation. Its very beautiful it makes me very happy! The Viennese concert was on. But Beethoven bent under the weight of his own expectations in a crippling combination of micro-managing and indecision. Eager to control every littlest detail to perfection he committed to one theater then changed his mind and committed to another then it all became too much to bear he cancelled the concert altogether. After a monthlong tailspin the finitude of time concert season was almost over pinned him to the still point of decision. He uncancelled the concert and once again confounding everyone signed with one of the underbidding imperial court theaters he had at first rejected. The date was set for early May. He hand-picked the four soloists who would anchor the choir and assembled an orchestra dwarfing all convention: two dozen violins two dozen wind instruments a dozen cellos and basses ten violas and all that percussion. It was to be not only a performance not only a premiere but something more the emblem of a credo musical and humanistic. The reception of the symphony would make or break the reception of the ideals behind it. Against this backdrop it is slightly less shocking but only slightly that in an astonishing final bid for total control of his creation Beethoven demanded that he conduct the symphony himself. Everyone knew he was deaf. Now they feared he was demented. The theater having won the coveted premiere reluctantly conceded fearing Beethoven might change his mind again if his demand went unmet but persuaded him to have the original conductor onstage with him with every assurance that he would only be there for backup. The conductor meanwhile instructed the choir and orchestra to follow only his motions and pay no attention whatever to Beethovens beating of the time. The best assurance even one of Beethovens closest friends who later became his biographer could muster was that the theater would be too dim for anyone to notice that Beethoven was conducting in his old green frock and not in the fashionable black coat a conductor was supposed to wear. After two catastrophic rehearsals the only two the enormous ensemble could manage in the brief time before the performance the soloists railed that their parts were simply impossible to sing. Karoline Unger called him a tyrant over all the vocal organs. One of the two male soloists quit altogether and had to be replaced by a member of the choir who had memorized the part. Somehow the show went on. On the early evening of May 7 1824 the Viennese crowded into the concert hall but they were not the usual patrons. Looking up to the royal box Beethoven was crushed to see it empty. He had journeyed to the palace to personally invite the Emperor and Empress but like most of the aristocracy they had vanished into their country estate as soon as spring broke the harsh Austrian winter. He was going to be playing for the people. But it was the people after all that Schiller had yearned to vitalize with his poem. Beethoven walked onto the grand stage faced the orchestra and raised his arms. Despite the natural imperfections of a performance built on such tensions something shifted as soon as the music exalted sublime total rose above the individual lives and their individual strife subsuming every body and every soul in a single harmonious transcendence. After the final chord of Ode to Joy resounded the gasping silence broke into a scream of applause. People leapt to their feet waving their handkerchiefs and chanting his name. Beethoven still facing the orchestra and still waving his arms to the delayed internal time of music only he could hear noticed none of it until Karoline Unger stood up took his arm and gently turned him around. With the birth of photography still fifteen years of trial and triumph away it is only in the minds eye that one can picture the cascade of confusion disbelief and elation that must have washed over Beethovens face in that sublime moment when his guiding sun seemed suddenly so proximate almost blinding with triumph. As soon as he faced the audience the entire human mass erupted with not one not two not three but four volcanic bursts of applause until the Police Commissioner managed to yell Silence! over the fifth. These were still revolutionary times after all and art that roused so fierce a response in the human soul even if that response was exultant joy was dangerous art. Here in the unassailable message of Ode to Joy was a clarion call to humanity to discard all the false gods that had fueled a century of unremitting wars and millennia of inequality the divisions of nation and rank the oppressions of dogma and tradition and band together in universal sympathy and solidarity. The sound of Beethovens call resounded long after its creator was gone. Whitman celebrated it as the profoundest expression of nature and human nature . Helen Keller heard it with her hand pressed against the radio speaker and suddenly understood the meaning of music . Chilean protesters sang it as they took down the Pinochet dictatorship. Japanese musicians performed it after the Thoku earthquake and tsunami. Chinese students blasted it in Tiananmen Square. Leonard Bernstein patron saint of music as an instrument of humanism conducted a group of musicians who had lived on both sides of the Berlin Wall in a Christmas Day concert after its fall. Ukrainian composer Victoria Poleva reimagined it for an international concert commemorating the fiftieth anniversary. A decade later the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine performed her reimagining not long before a twenty-first century tyrant with a Napoleonic complex and a soul deaf to the music of life bludgeoned the small country with his lust for power. But this I suspect was Beethovens stubborn sacred point the reason he never gave up on Schillers dream even as he lived through nightmares: this unassailable insistence that although the Napoleons and Putins of the world will rise to power again and again over the centuries they will also fall because there is something in us more powerful as long as we continue placing freedom justice and universal happiness at the center of our commitment to life even as we live through nightmares. Two centuries after Beethoven Zadie Smith affirmed this elemental reality in her own life-honed conviction that progress is never permanent will always be threatened must be redoubled restated and reimagined if it is to survive. In the winter of my thirteenth year two centuries after Beethovens day and a few fragile years after the fall of Bulgarias communist dictatorship I stood in the holiday-bedazzled National Symphony Hall alongside a dozen classmates from the Sofia Mathematics Gymnasium our choir about to perform Beethovens Ode to Joy recently adopted as the anthem of Europe by the European Union of which the newly liberated Bulgaria longed to be a part. We sang the lyrics in Bulgarian but joy has no direct translation. Felicity might come the closest or mirth those wing-clipped cousins of joy bearing the same bright feeling-tone but lacking its elation its all-pervading exhale a diminishment reflecting the spirit of a people just emerging from five centuries of Ottoman occupation closely followed by a half-century Communist dictatorship. And yet we stood there in our best clothes in the spring of life singing together our teenage minds abloom with quadratic equations and a lust for life our teenage bodies reverberating with the redemptive dream of a visionary who had died epochs before any of our lives was but a glimmer in a great-great-grandparents eye our teenage spirits longing to kiss the whole world with possibility. Today Ode to Joy a recording by the Berlin Philharmonic from the year I was born streams into my wireless headphones as I cross the Brooklyn Bridge on my bicycle riding into a life undreamt in that teenage girls wildest dreams into a world unimaginable to Beethoven a world where suffering remains our constant companion but life is infinitely more possible for infinitely more people and more kinds of people than even the farthest seer of 1822 could have envisioned. I ride into the spring night singing. This in the end might be the truest translation of joy this ecstatic fusion of presence and possibility. Each month I spend hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars keeping The Marginalian going. For seventeen years it has remained free and ad-free and alive thanks to patronage from readers. I have no staff no interns not even an assistant a thoroughly one-woman labor of love that is also my life and my livelihood. 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The strangest computer manual ever written (ironicsans.substack.com) In the early 1980s when the Apple II came out a company called Franklin made a knock-off version of the same computer. It was a pretty blatant copy which Apple wasnt happy about but the law wasnt clear yet on whether operating systems could be protected by copyright. Apple eventually sued Franklin and the court ruled that operating systems could in fact be protected. That put an end to Franklin computers. But while Franklins computers may have been clones the Franklin manuals were definitely original. They were more than just user-friendly. They were written with a lot of creativity and humor. The manual for the Franklin Ace 100 begins with about 40 pages of computer basics: What are they and what can they do? Its a little late to bring it up now but a good rule of thumb to keep in mind is that you shouldnt buy a computer unless you know of at least two things that you can use it for BEFORE you buy it. Using the packing box as a planter for your petunias shouldnt be one of the two uses. That sort of thing. And then on page 40 there is a chapter called The Ancestral Territorial Imperatives of the Trumpeter Swan. Thats a really strange chapter to put in a computer manual. Heres how the chapter begins: For the next model the Franklin Ace 1000 Franklin updated the manual. Instead of being all one monospaced font it became a lot more readable. Heres how the same chapter appeared in the manual for the Franklin Ace 1000: You can see that this manual has friendlier fonts. There are cute cartoons of Benjamin Franklin throughout. But some of the written humor is lost. They no longer call Lets Get Started a disgustingly cute phrase. The chapter heading is cushioned with A good title for this section might be This version of the joke loses some of the punch. But the Ace 1000 manual isnt just a watered down version of the Ace 100 manual. It has its own jokes including several humorous glossary entries. For example in the first chapter of the manual there is a list of things you can do with a computer. One thing it says you can do is get a list of recommendations for wines to serve with Terrine Maison. I have no idea what Terrine Maison is. But youll find it helpfully defined in the glossary: The Ace 100 manual includes one section so shocking that I cant imagine a modern computer company even considering putting it in a manual. In this section you are advised to circumvent copy protection to make personal backups of programs you lawfully purchased and it even recommends software to help you do that! A company that built its flagship product by cloning Apples operating system recommends circumventing copy protection. At least theyre consistent. The manual goes on to describe three categories of crooks in the computer world. The first category is Them the computer salespeople who overhype their products with advertising gimmicks. The second category is You. Franklin isnt actually calling you a crook but they say that software manufacturers will treat you like one with over-reaching licensing agreements: The last category of crooks is under the heading Us: I mean technically I guess that was right until the court ruling. You wont be surprised to hear that most of the Crooks section is omitted from the later Ace 1000 manual. But a condensed version still appears in the section about copy protection. The Ace 1000 manual has a very dark section about the computers reset button which was an actual physical button on the machine that they warned you never to press. This is what it says: Theres a button Im supposed to never touch? And the accompanying illustration has someone with a gun to his own head as he is about to press the button? Is this some kind of psychological experiment? Now I have to touch it. Both manuals make contemporary pop culture references explaining the concept of computer programs by comparing them to TV programs like Hill Street Blues The Dukes of Hazzard or Live at the Met with Itzhak Perlman (who the glossary helpfully defines as a violinist). In both manuals the author tries to explain what kinds of programs are useful and which to stay away from. He states that the sole purpose of many of these wonders in programming is to separate you from your money. And then he gives this warning: Im pretty sure this is a reference to Damon Runyon whose stories of 1930s New York hustlers were the basis for the Broadway musical Guys and Dolls . Damon Runyon wrote One of these days in your travels a guy is going to come up to you and show you a nice brand-new deck of cards on which the seal is not yet broken and this guy is going to offer to bet you that he can make the Jack of Spades jump out of the deck and squirt cider in your ear. But son do not bet this man for as sure as you are standing there you are going to end up with an earful of cider. I first wrote an appreciation of the Franklin manuals back in 2010. And at the time I found myself wondering what other inside jokes the manual has that I wouldnt know about. The manuals are uncredited but I figured out that they were written by a guy named Sal Manetta who later went on to work for Unisys and Intel. I couldnt reach him initially but I did get hold of Bob Applegate a programmer who had worked at Franklin. Bob told me: We hired this tech writer guy who knew nothing about personal computers named Sal Manetta. He was the manager of the Publication group. Sal hired a funky artist [Frank someone-or-other] who did most of the drawings of Ben Franklin in the user manual. Sal was supposed to learn about computers like an average person back then such as reading magazines talking to salesmen at stores etc. Sometimes Dave and I would head over to a local place where I used to work (where Franklin discovered me) would introduce ourselves to Sal and give him advice on buying his first computer much to the annoyance of the sales staff there. Bob mentioned that many of the cartoons are based on real events and people Sal encountered at Franklin. Here are some of the cartoons along with Bobs comments: Engineering was in a long narrow building with no windows nicknamed the cave. Sal was never exposed to engineers before Franklin and we sometimes overwhelmed him. He often said Abandon hope all ye who enter to people on their first visit to our building. Look for the one of the boy soldering with an evil looking computer thats me I wore Converse sneakers to work back then; look at the star on the side of his sneaker. The computer salesman speaking BASIC code was my old boss at a local computer store. The guy smoking a cigarette and dumping ashes onto the computer is a repair guy from the same local store. And where did the trumpeter swans come from? The Territorial Imperatives of the Trumpeter Swan was also real. Resumes came pouring into Franklin and wed all look through them. One guy had written a research paper with that crazy title and we all thought it was pretty interesting. So Sal worked it into the manual as a chapter title. Shortly after my original post I actually heard from Sal Manetta. He was able to give a bit more context including crediting the cartoons to an illustrator named Frank Williams. You can find Sals full comment at my original post here along with comments from several other people who worked with Sal and Bob at the time. After Franklin lost their lawsuit with Apple they continued to sell computers that were similar to Apples but without any infringing code. I found the manual for one of those computers the Franklin Ace 500. Sadly there is nothing creative to be found within. It reads like stereo instructions. I was disappointed to see theres even a chapter with the disgustingly cute name Getting Started. Want to read the manuals in full? Here they are: Franklin Ace 100 ( PDF ) Franklin Ace 1000 ( PDF ) And for further reading the newsletter Tedium has a great piece about the early Apple clones that I recommend. Thats it for the first newsletter of 2023! Thanks for reading. I hope you had a great holiday and that the new year finds you and yours happy and healthy. See you next time! David This is great. The Raspberry Pi manuals and marketing have a touch of humorous self-awareness that is otherwise absent from computer nothing like this of course. What a find and great post thanks! No posts Ready for more?

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The technology that changed air travel (2018) (retool.com) 18 November 2018 9 min read A lot has changed about air travel since it went mainstream in the 1930s. On-board smoking free-flowing booze and five-star meals have given way to baggage fees cramped seats and mystery meat. It aint all bad though flying is also more safe affordable and accessible than ever before. Through all this change one thing has stayed the same the software that manages it all. Booking air travel today isnt the most pleasant experience but it used to be a whole lot worse. Airlines used to employ fleets of operators just to process reservations. They sat around circular tables with scores of index cards one for each flight housed on a rotating shelf (a Lazy Susan). To book a seat the operator would have to find the flights index card mark it to indicate the booked seat and write the flight ticket out by hand. The process would take 90 minutes for each reservation. This workflow was cumbersome but did the job. As air travel became more and more popular though the reservation system became more and more of a bottleneck. Only 8 operators could fit around a reservations table so once airlines had many more flights in their fleets and started processing many simultaneous bookings they began to face serious headwinds. American Airlines saw this coming and had started working on solutions. They developed a computeri z ed booking system by 1952 but its workflow remained very manual. Though it allowed many people to look up flight information simultaneously it still required operators to manually handle ticketing and talk to travel agents over the phone. It was enough to solve their scaling problems in the short-term but American knew that they were kicking the can down the road. The trajectory of air travel changed after a chance meeting between the president of American Airlines and an IBM salesman on an American flight. IBM at the time was working on a new communication system for the US Air Force. It involved a network of computers that sent and received information using teleprinters similar to a group of fax machines. IBM realized that instead of sending messages from radars to interceptor aircraft they could use the same system to send messages from travel agents to airline ticketing offices. The system would automatically be able to notify agents of available seats process their bookings and even print their tickets all without a human on the other end of the phone. IBM and American began research on the system almost immediately. 7 years and 40 million dollars later ($350M adjusted for inflation) SABRE (Semi-Automated Business Research Environment*)* took flight. At the time it was the largest real-time data processing system outside of the US government and was the first major e-commerce system ever processing many millions of dollars per day. This was all achieved before the Internet. SABRE changed the game for American Airlines. It cut the average processing time for a booking down from 90 minutes to a few seconds giving American a huge competitive advantage. Other airlines had no choice but to do the same and IBMs newfound expertise helped them set up their own computer reservation systems (CRS). Airline productivity soared. After CRS systems became commonplace travel agents became the airline industry's bottleneck. Because each airline had their own system it still took a long time for agents to shop around and find the best deals for their clients. So in 1976 CRS providers launched terminals for travel agents eliminating the need for inefficient phone calls and letting agents directly access airline reservation databases. These terminals would only be useful if they let agents search for flights from multiple airlines all together. Thus the CRS systems started sharing data with one another leading to the birth of a new industry term Global Distribution Services (GDS). Agents could use any GDS to book flights on any airline Sabre (owned by American Airlines at the time) could be used to book United flights despite the two airlines being competitors. As the middleman the GDS charged airlines and travel agents a fee for each booking. Today the GDS industry is dominated by Sabre and Amadeus who hold a combined market share of 80%. How it works GDS systems were some of the earliest widely-used command-line interfaces (CLIs). They are to the airline industry what Bloomberg Terminal is to finance. Like any CLI Sabres syntax consists of commands followed by arguments. For example the 1 command is used to look up available flights. A typical availability lookup might look like this: This might output the following: The first line summarises the search parameters: The remaining sections (2 lines each) show the available flights matching these parameters: Airline pricing Two Economy class seats can be close together yet hundreds of dollars apart. Every empty seat at take-off is money left on the table so airlines price their tickets to maximise revenue from each flight. Their goal is to charge each customer the most theyd be willing to pay. The family booking their holiday 6 months in advance will be less willing to pay than the businesswoman jetting off to close a deal. If all tickets were priced for holidaymakers airlines would lose out on money that business travellers would have paid. And if all tickets were priced for business there would be empty seats that holidaymakers could have filled. The solution is to have seats at many different price points. Economy Business and First are the seat classes that airlines advertise but each of these is further broken down into multiple fare classes. The fare class is what actually determines a seats price. It also determines factors like flexibility (whether you can cancel or change your booking) and air mile ratios (how many air miles you earn for each mile in the air). A single flight might have 50 different Economy fare classes with a price difference of over 10x between the highest and lowest. Each fare class has a limited number of seats if you book early you might get the $100 fare in the lowest class. But leave it too late and youll be stuck with the $1000 fare in the highest for essentially the same seat. To maximise revenue airlines optimise fare class sizes and prices by analysing historical trends. Nowadays computers do this dynamically in real-time. This is why different Google searches often yield different fares for the same seat on the same flight. Some have hypothesised that flight comparison websites even use browser cookies to change prices based on your search history but theres not much hard evidence for this. Clearly GDS systems arent for the uninitiated. In fact only travel agencies that have been accredited by the IATA (International Air Transport Authority) can use them and accreditation is an arduous process riddled with acronyms. Whats more travel agents face hefty fines if they make any errors using the GDS. Airlines can issue Agency Debit Memos (ADMs) for any one of 138 reasons. These include credit card chargebacks (typically not the travel agents fault) incorrect tax calculations (complex when dealing with different countries) and incorrect refund calculations (some taxes are non-refundable). Online travel agents (Expedia Orbitz etc.) communicate with GDS systems using automated processes which reduce their ADM fines related to human error. Fraud though is a much bigger problem on the Internet so online agents pay large sums in fines resulting from credit card chargebacks. Travel agency is already a difficult business but its made harder by the current state of ADMs. The total profit generated by travel agents in 2015 was $2B. The same year airlines issued $140M in ADM fines. This isnt a state of affairs that anyone is thrilled about the IATA is working with airlines and GDSs to better manage and reduce the cost. Its worth noting that the most powerful industry software even today is command-driven. Finance has Bloomberg Terminal agriculture has DairyComp and aviation has GDSs. Airlines vs GDS In the early days GDS systems generated a lot of money for airlines. They provided a whole new distribution channel for flights giving airlines a way to reach customers without directly marketing to them. Airlines do have to pay a GDS fee these days around $12 per booking but its historically been worth it. As ticket prices dropped though airlines adapted to find new revenue streams outside of the airfare add-ons like seat upgrades priority boarding and on-board wi-fi. GDS systems however did not adapt with them. Their data format an archaic standard called EDIFACT hasnt changed since the 1960s. In the same way that Amazon doesnt let 3rd-party sellers customise the checkout process GDS systems dont support custom content that airlines want to put out. This costs airlines money since they cant sell many flight add-ons (e.g. on-board wi-fi) with tickets booked through the GDS. Airlines have to maintain their own systems to manage this which is costly both financially and to the customer experience. This issue has caused much turbulence in the industry. Many airlines are doubling down on their own systems and direct marketing to reduce reliance on the GDS. Lufthansa introduced its own $18 fee for GDS bookings to encourage bookings directly through their site and budget airline RyanAir will soon be de-listing from Amadeus after a new commercial agreement could not be reached. Old dogs new tricks A defragmented airline industry is bad for everyone. It makes it harder for consumers to find the best deals harder for airlines to distribute their seats and harder for new innovations to take off. Thankfully there might be a solution XML. NDC (New Distribution Capability) is a new data standard being promoted by the IATA. Based on XML its much more flexible than its predecessor and supports the features that airlines need. This will not only let them sell flight add-ons with GDS bookings but also show rich content (text photos videos) to customers after they book. Unlike EDIFACT XML is an international standard for Internet communication making it much easier to build new applications on top of. As well as enable existing services between airlines and agents the IATA hope that NDC will promote much-needed competition in airline distribution products. Its always challenging to bring new standards to old industries but NDC adoption has so far been promising. Sabre and Amadeus (the two biggest GDS players) have both already updated their systems to support NDC as have many major airlines including United American and KLM. The IATA hope for NDC APIs to power 20% of all industry sales by 2020. Other industries are taking similar steps towards more open and friendly data standards that make innovation easier. PSD2 and Open Banking are initiatives in Europe that require banks and financial institutions to open up their data via APIs enabling 3rd-parties to develop new finance products. It seems to be working Europe is leading the way in the fintech revolution with the US struggling to keep up . Air travel is not an industry without its difficulties. So many airlines have failed over the years that Wikipedia publishes a List of Airline Bankruptcies in the United States . But the future is looking bright air travel is growing at twice the rate of GDP . Low-cost airlines are making it ever more accessible and the industry is already seeing an impressive amount of innovation. With NDS things are sure to get even better. This is your captain speaking. Please fasten your seatbelts for take-off. When it comes to building apps Firebase takes care of pretty much anything you can think of: real-time database storage cloud object storage authentication web hosting serverless functions analytics monitoring machine learning notifications At the turn of the 16th century Johannes Kepler set out to disprove Copernicus who believed planets orbited in perfect concentric circles from the sun. Kepler first formulated his hypothesis: planets had elliptical Retool Inc.

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The teen mental illness epidemic began around 2012 (jonathanhaidt.substack.com) From the first time I wrote about Gen Z in 2015 (with Greg Lukianoff in our Coddling essay ) through my most recent discussion in a December interview with Tunku Varadarajan in the Wall Street Journal the main criticism I have heard is that Im just another old man (Im 59) shaking his fist and complaining about kids these days when in fact the kids are alright . If thats true then the first half of the Babel project on what social media did to childhood and to teen mental healthis fatally flawed. Is the criticism valid? Two responses to that WSJ essay do us the favor of collecting quotations from previous generations complaining about the behavior of youth. First see this Twitter thread from Paul Fairie titled A Brief History of Kids Today Are Spoiled Fairie includes this 1925 gem: Remove the girl or boy of today from radio the telephone furnace heat the automobile the libraries movies and other forms of amusement and comfortgive them merely a jackknife and natures unchanging wonders for amusement and how would they fare? Ennui would claim them for its own and they would fare ill until returned to their accustomed habitat of convenience and plenty. Second see this essay by Mike Males in LA Progressive titled Enough Youth-Bashing which includes this: From Greek poet Hesiod to modern youth bashers led by psychology professors Jonathan Haidt and Jean Twenge and former first lady Michelle Obama no one says anything new. Hesiod cornered the market with his no hope for the future of our people rant against the reckless frivolous youth of today (700 BC). And this: Eon after eon its the same float going by. Socrates thought books made the young mentally weak. Panics over coffee witches jazz dime novels comics TV backwards-masked lyrics Ozzy Eminem Tupac Grand Theft Auto Harry Potters Hermione Miley cellphones Facebook sexting social media the endless ephebiphobic idiocies should be retitled Im Superior! and given their own dismal library shelf. These critics make two valid points: First you can find these criticisms in all recent generations and in some going back thousands of years. 1 Second the criticisms are often part of a larger moral panic that arises in response to any new consumer productand especially any new technologythat kids these days are using. Social media clearly fits this pattern. (Robby Soave explained the dynamics of tech panics well in his 2021 book Tech Panic .) The critics also gain support from empirical studies by psychologists John Protzko and Jonathan Schooler whose 2019 essay in Science Advances was titled Kids these days: Why the youth of today seem lacking . Protzko and Schooler summarize their many studies showing that older people suffer from a variety of cognitive biases such as that we each have biased and self-serving memories of what we were like at that age and so we older people always find current younger people inferior and declining. In sum its reasonable to start with skepticism of my claim (with Jean Twenge) that there is an epidemic of mental illness that began around 2012 and that is related in large part to the transition to phone-based childhoods with a special emphasis on social media. It makes sense to embrace as a null hypothesis the skeptics view that there is nothing to see here just another moral panic and the kids are fine. I am in full agreement that the burden of proof falls on me . But if you take that as your null hypothesis then you should be open to evidence that the null hypothesis is false and this time is different. Anecdotes about kids who began cutting themselves the week after going on Instagram wont do. Youll want to see peer-reviewed studies and high-quality surveys showing 1) that there is in fact an epidemic of mental illness and 2) that phones and social media are substantial contributing causes. I am currently writing a book that makes both of these arguments: Kids In Space: Why Teen Mental Health is Collapsing . In the rest of this Substack post I offer a preview of the evidence that a mental illness epidemic emerged around 2012. I wont directly address the issue of causality here. Ill do that in many future posts and in the book. (You can find a short version of the argument in my 2022 Senate testimony .) This post simply responds to the kids these days critics. I make the case that this time really is different. The kids have not been alright since the early 2010s. I have been collaborating with Jean Twenge (author of iGen and the forthcoming Generations ) and Zach Rausch (my research assistant) on a pair of collaborative reviews that are open-source Google documents where we collect all the evidence we can find on both sides of each question and we invite critics to add comments and studies. In this post I present our document titled: Adolescent mood disorders since 2010: A collaborative review . In future posts on this Substack Ill present many more collaborative review docs and explain why open-source Google docs are an essential adjunct to social science research especially regarding social trends that are changing too fast for the slow gears of academic life to keep up withphenomena like social media and its effects on teen mental health and on liberal democracy. Here is the first half of the Table of Contents to give you a sense of the layout. Please look around the doc itself . If you are a researcher or mental health expert ask for commenting rights to add your own studies and criticisms. I am a devotee of John Stuart Mill who wrote that he who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. Help me get this right. Figure 1. The first part of the Table of Contents from Adolescent mood disorders since 2010: A collaborative review . First let's look at what Gen Z says about its own mental health compared to previous generations. After that well look at hard evidence about behavior to address the criticism that the only thing that has changed is Gen Zs willingness to report their mental health problems. Section 1 of the Collaborative Review summarizes self-report surveys that have been conducted at regular time intervals since 2010 or earlier. Do members of Gen Z say that their mental health is declining? Yes in every study we can find. We cannot find any studies on the other side. I will focus todays post on data from the United States. Ill have a future post on whats happening internationally showing that the same patterns are happening in largely the same way at roughly the same time in Canada the UK Australia and New Zealand and Ill share with you what Zach and I are learning about other countries beyond the Anglosphere. Here are two of the graphs youll find in section 1 of the Collaborative Review document: Figure 2. NSDUH data graphed in 1.1.2 Twenge Cooper Joiner Duffy & Binau (2019) and re-graphed with more recent data by Haidt. Currently on p. 12 of the Collaborative Review doc. As you can see in Figure 2 and in most of the Figures in the review doc there was no sign of a problem before 2010 and the epidemic is well underway by 2015. You can also see that the rate of depression is much higher in girls as is the absolute increase (since 2010 an additional 18% of girls suffered from depression in 2021 compared to an additional 6% of boys) however the relative increase is similar in both sexes: around 150%. The rate had more than doubled before the covid epidemic. The 2020 data were collected in early 2020 just before covid restrictions and the 2021 data were collected a year later before vaccines were widely available.* You can see that covid accelerated the rise in depression in that last year but it was already rising really fast. [*Correction from Jean Twenge added 2/15/23: It's the Monitoring the Future 2020 data that was all collected before the pandemic hit not the NSDUH data which was collected in both Q1 and Q4 of 2020. Either way covid seems to have only added a bit of acceleration to a rapidly rising trend line] Figure 3. American College Health Association (2019) National College Health Assessment . Study 1.1.17 currently on p. 36 of the Collaborative Review doc. Figure 3 comes from a very different source: the mental health clinics on hundreds of college campuses. You can see once again that theres not much to see before 2010 but the epidemic is in full gear by 2015. You can also see that while rates of all disorders have increased the increases are largest in both relative and absolute terms for mood disorders a class of mental illness that is made up primarily of depression and anxiety disorders (which includes anorexia). In 2019 just before covid one in four American college students suffered from an anxiety disorder compared to just one in ten back in 2010. The rate may be higher today. Section 1 of the collaborative review shows that according to the kids themselves the kids are not alright. What happens when we ignore what they say and look at what they do? Share In 2019 when Twenge and I launched the document there were still some skeptics who argued that the large increases you see in Figures 1 and 2 reflect only a change in Gen Zs willingness to disclose their struggles which is a good thing. Here is psychiatrist Richard Friedman in the New York Times in 2018 : Despite news reports to the contrary there is little evidence of an epidemic of anxiety disorders in teenagers There are a few surveys reporting increased anxiety in adolescents but these are based on self-reported measures from kids or their parents which tend to overestimate the rates of disorders because they detect mild symptoms not clinically significant syndromes. This argument is heard less often nowadays but it was made by one critic recently in response to my WSJ interview. Here is Vicki Phillips in Forbes in an essay titled Gen Z: Hopeless Or Hopeful? [Haidt] fails to note the remarkable truth. Gen Z is in fact embracing a new more open and honest relationship with their mental health one that destigmatizes the issue so that it can be addressed. This is leading to more people reporting their mental health challenges and seeking support and contributing to the rising numbers of reported cases. More effective diagnoses and increased connection to care are both good by any measure. As an educator I feel an obligation to support Haidt on his personal learning journey. And as someone who has actually worked with Gen-Zers I can tell you the kids these days are more than alright. But if Phillips and Friedman were correct that the kids are alright and the appearance of an epidemic is an illusion based on Gen Zs more honest relationship with their mental health then we would not see any change in objective measures of mental health such as hospitalizations for self-harm or deaths by suicide. But in fact we do see such changes and the timing and magnitude of them generally match the changes in self-reported mental health problems. Sections 2 and 3 of the Collaborative Review doc report these findings. Figure 4. Hospital admissions for self-harm older teens (ages 15-19) CDC data. See section 2.1.1 of the collaborative review doc . Figure 4 shows the number per 100000 older teens who are admitted each year to hospitals because they harmed themselves mostly by cutting themselves with sharp objects. Once again there is no sign of a problem before 2010 and the epidemic is raging by 2015. Figure 5. Hospital admissions for self-harm younger teens (ages 10-14) CDC data. See section 2.1.1 of the collaborative review doc . Figure 5 is the same as Figure 4 except that it shows what happened to younger teens ages 10-14. Younger teens were very rarely hospitalized for self-harm before 2010 but by 2020 the rate for girls had nearly tripled rising to exceed the rate at which older teen girls were hospitalized back in 2009. This is a clue as to what caused the epidemic. What could have changed right around 2012 that hit tween and young teen girls hardest? (Ill answer that in a later post.) Section 3 of the Collaborative Review doc presents the most tragic data of all: a large increase in the number of completed suicides. Figure 6. Suicide rate per 100000 of US population ages 15-19. Source: CDC See section 3.1 of the Collaborative Review . For suicide the rates are always higher for boys and men. Girls and women make more suicide attempts but they are more likely to use reversible means. Boys and men are more likely to use firearms and tall buildings which are not reversible. Suicide takes a much larger toll on boys and men. But it is noteworthy that the relative increase since 2010 is larger for girls and women. 2 Figure 7. Suicide rate per 100000 of US population ages 10-14. Source: CDC See section 3.1 of the Collaborative Review . When we look at the change in suicide rates for tweens and younger teens in Figure 7 we find three features that echo what we saw in the graphs for self-harm: 1) the percent increase is larger for girls than for boys 2) the percent increase for young girls is much larger than the increase for older girls and 3) even more than in Figure 4 there is a sharp increase for girls between 2012 and 2013. In fact there was a 67% increase in suicides in that single year. This sudden and enormous spike in a single year once again forces us to ask: what changed in the lives of 10-14 year old girls in 2012? I began this essay by taking the burden of proof upon myself. Given the long history of tech panics you should come to this question and this blog with skepticism. Your default assumption should be the null hypothesis so often asserted by my critics: this is just one more unjustified freakout by older people about kids these days. But as I have shown in this post the evidence that this time is different is very strong. In 2010 there was little sign of any problem in any of the long-running nationally representative datasets (with the possible exception of suicide for young teen boys). By 2015when Greg Lukianoff and I wrote our essay The Coddling of the American Mind teen mental health was a 5 alarm fire according to all the datasets that Jean Twenge and I can find. The kids are not alright. Please join me on the After Babel Substack to figure out why. In future posts Ill cover topics including these: What is happening to teen mental health in other countries? Is this just an American thing? What is the evidence that the epidemic is caused in large part by social media? What is the evidence that the loss of free play and risky play contributed to the epidemic? What is happening to boys? Theyre not on social media as much so why is their mental health deteriorating too? I started this Substack to help me write two books as explained in the About post . In many posts such as this one I'll make a strong assertion in the title of the post in the hope of drawing criticism. Did the epidemic really start in 2012 or was it earlier? Was it gradual not a sharp bend in 2012? I want to hear all of the counterarguments and find all of the contrary evidence now rather than waiting until after the book is published. So please be (constructively) critical in your comments. It is so hard to find time to write the books that I wont be able to respond to comments one by one but I will read them all and Ill pull out the best criticisms and respond to them in new text at the bottom of this post. It is beyond the scope of this short post to go into variations by race SES ideology and other factors but I have done so in Appendices A through G of the collaborative review doc. TLDR: there are some variations such as that the increases in depression and anxiety were larger among sexual minorities and among girls who self-identified as liberal. But the general trends are similar across all groups. The suicide rate for boys was higher in the 1980s than it is now. I believe those earlier levels which used to rise and fall with the violent crime rate were caused in part by the high and rising prevalence of lead in childrens bloodstreams from the 1950s until leaded gas was banned in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Rates of suicide and violence then plummeted 15 years later and sociologists have not yet converged upon an explanation. You can see graphs of these changes and find arguments on both sides in my debate with Chris Ferguson in section 3.2.1 of the Collaborative Review doc . See responses in post #2: The new CDC report shows that Covid added little to teen mental health trends. Some of the quotations attributed to Ancient Greek sources may be inaccurate but once Western societies began the modernization process in the 17th century and cross-generational change sped up the quotations seem to increase in frequency . (You can find many more here ). For more on the gender difference in suicide see Freeman et al. (2017) and see Appendix A of the Collaborative Review doc. Thanks very important work. The main thing I think might be related but not mentioned anywhere as I can see is the influence that the feminization had on society. The 'always price' principle teaching kids to run to authorities (snitching) anti bullying measures (preventing them to work things out among themselves/inserting authorities) reduction of competition the demands on girls to compete on masculine traits the lack of societal appreciation for feminine traits sometimes extreme measures to prevent even minor harm (microaggressions?) the increased authority of females in the public space while not giving up their authority in the private space which reduced the traditional role of the father the active blurring of gender roles etc. The current generation is growing up in a wildly different world than I did 60 years ago when this movement just got started. Up until high school kids lives seem to be managed full time by an almost exclusively female world. All this must have had some influence on our kids? Taleb's anti-fragile concept would predict a very fragile youth imho exactly what I see today. It think it is impossible to deny that the effects of the feministation of society are massive. In all aspects it was a revolution. However somehow it acts as a giant elephant in the room that everybody wants to avoid talking about? Thanks for highlighting this vital perspective. Our school system is thoroughly broken. Spending so much time away from family the overemphasis on peer culture the single age classrooms little time for play and recess is leading to a culture that is literally killing our kids through mental illness and addiction. Ironically people think homeschooling is anti-social and school is necessary for socialization. How is this system actually leading to children's well-being? Research shows that communities that unite around shared values are better for children's well being. Yet parents are so often excluded from school. If interested we wrote a whole post comparing homeschool to school for socialization. There's lots that schools can learn from these vibrant diverse inclusive communities that are uniting around a shared value of education. https://joinmodulo.substack.com/p/but-what-about-socialization No posts Ready for more?

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The war on gifted education (fasterplease.substack.com) The Essay: Why the landslide loss for San Francisco's school board is a victory for American meritocracy and economic growth 5QQ: Five Quick Questions for policy and politics commentator Matthew Yglesias Micro Reads: AI and nuclear fusion; improving supply chains; the rise of engineers during the Industrial Revolution; and more . . . Nano Reads If we have a world in which China is harnessing the meritocratic idea to reinforce the power of the Communist Party the communist state and America at the same time is dismantling meritocracy or softening meritocracy then America loses. China becomes a massive version of Singapore. America becomes I dont know a version of Brazil or something like that and you lose. They win. - Adrian Wooldridge I currently intend to start offering a paid subscription option to Faster Please! as of February 28. While Im still working out the exact details accessing my twice-weekly essays and Q&A interviews with top thinkers (along with some surprises) would be included in that paid subscription but not the freebie version. I have been writing this newsletter over the past year at night and on weekends. I hope you find it valuable. My friends: I believe were at the start of an amazing period of American (and world) history the beginning of a Great Acceleration in human progress. Its the purpose of Faster Please! both to document these steps/leaps forward and recommend the best ideas to make sure they happen ASAP. You know faster please! I look forward to taking that journey via economics tech public policy business history culture and a smidgen of politics over the next months and years with all of you. Lets make a better world for everyone together. Melior mundus There was a lot happening in that stunning San Francisco election on Tuesday when voters overwhelmingly chose to oust three members of the citys Board of Education. Like in many other places across America parents were frustrated that schools have been slow to reinstitute in-person instruction. But as The New York Times reports the critical factor at play may have been Asian-American anger that the school board introduced a lottery admission system for Lowell High School the districts most prestigious institution abolishing requirements primarily based on grades and test scores. One Chinese-American mom with two kids in a local public high school told the NYT that the value of education has been ingrained in Chinese culture for thousands and thousands of years. Central to that cultural history has also been the notion of meritocracy going back to the Mandarin bureaucrat-scholars who obtained their positions through the imperial examination system. More recently Chinas communists have attempted to run a more vibrant economy by reintroducing meritocracy and not just in government. As Adrian Wooldridge author of The Aristocracy of Talent: How Meritocracy Made the Modern World recently wrote in Bloomberg Opinion Children compete to get into the best nursery schools so that they can get into the best secondary schools and then into the best universities. Examinations regulate the race to get ahead. This examination system which draws on the tradition of civil service examinations that were administered for more than a thousand years is now more geared to produce scientists and engineers rather than Confucian officials. We need an education system that works for all kids whatever their background and natural abilities. And by work I mean maximizes their human potential. And then we can reward that potential by having a society that deeply values achievement. But this is also important: Getting the most out of our best and brightest. I am distressed by growing efforts to undermine gifted education programs across America. When Californias Instructional Quality Commission adopted a new mathematics framework in 2021 that urged schools to do away with accelerated math in grades one through 10 it explained the move this way: We reject ideas of natural gifts and talents. Anyone watching the Olympics right now would reject that reasoning. So would most parents watching their children age and develop. Kids with exceptional abilities in chess basketball piano or ballet stand to benefit from exceptionally challenging instruction. And the same goes for kids with exceptional abilities in poetry calculus or chemistry. Finding and nurturing the academically gifted should not be controversial. The following bit of economic history is relevant to this discussion (and kind of cool too): The intellectually curious of 18th century France didnt have Wikipedia of course. Instead the salons of such knowledge-seekers contained a different sort of collaborative and curated collection of contributions on all matter of subjects: history literature mathematics mechanical arts philosophy science theology and more. The Encyclopdie Ou Dictionnaire Raisonn Des Sciences Des Arts Et Des Mtiers ( Encyclopaedia or Classified Dictionary of Sciences Arts and Trades ) co-edited by Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert was the reference book of the Enlightenment. The Encyclopdie represented an important early effort to widely diffuse empirically-derived knowledge into a superstitious world. Helpfully for economists Mara P. Squicciarini and Nico Voigtlnder one of the publishers secretly kept a list of Encyclopdie booksellers including their location and how many subscription sets they purchased for their customers.That bit of secret info allowed Squicciarini and Voigtlnder to use Encyclopdie subscriptions as a way of determining the density of knowledge elites. And with that data in hand the researchers were able to differentiate between upper-tail knowledge in different cities and that of average worker skills (as represented by schooling and literacy rates). Their key finding from Human Capital and Industrialization: Evidence from the Age of Enlightenment (bold by me): We show that subscriber density is a strong predictor of city growth after the onset of French industrialization. Alternative measures of development such as soldier height disposable income and industrial activity confirm this pattern. Initial literacy levels on the other hand are associated with development in the cross-section but they do not predict growth. Finally by joining data on British patents with a large French firm survey from the 1840s we shed light on the mechanism: upper-tail knowledge raised productivity in innovative industrial technology. In other words regions with lots of knowledge elite Frenchman were able to turn technological invention into useful industrial innovation by employing lots of smarter-than-average workers. Again from the Squicciarini and Voigtlnder paper: Our results have important implications for economic development: while improvements in basic schooling raise wages greater worker skills alone are not sufficient for industrial takeoff. Instead upper-tail skills even if confined to a small elite are crucial fostering growth via the innovation and diffusion of modern technology. In this respect our findings resemble those in todays economies where the existence of a social class with high education is crucial for development entrepreneurial skills matter beyond those of workers and scientific education is key. So if the upper-tail skills of a knowledge elite are economically important then its important that they get the proper and appropriate instruction at the very start not just in college. And one key tool is gifted classes. And while there have been equity concerns about these classes the research suggests just how valuable they can be for minority and low-income students. In the 2014 paper Does Gifted Education Work? For Which Students? David Card and Laura Giuliano find that full-time classes for gifted students have large positive effects on non-gifted high achievers in those classes especially on the reading and math scores of low-income high achievers. The authors conclude that a separate classroom in every school for the top-performing students could significantly boost the performance of [these] students in even the poorest neighborhoods. Granted: These classes need to be more effective. A 2019 survey of 2000 schools found most gifted programs focus on developing critical and creative thinking skills along with enrichment activities projects and games rather than advanced instruction. Less important unfortunately: accelerated instruction in mathematics and language arts. As my AEI colleague Charles Murray writes in his 2008 book Real Education : Let gifted children go as fast as they can. If a third-grader is reading at the sixth-grade level give that child sixth-grade reading. If a third-grader can do math at the sixth-grade level give that child sixth-grade mathematics. It is a solution that should be welcomed by every reader who can remember sitting in elementary school surreptitiously reading a book while the teacher was teaching things to the rest of the class that you already knew. . . . Academically gifted children do well when they are given a curriculum that is complex accelerated and challenging and when they have teachers with high expectations . Academically gifted children do best when they are with peers who share their interests and who do not tease them for being nerds. Indeed my AEI colleague and education scholar Rick Hess notes that the bulk of the research suggests that acceleration not enrichment is the most promising way to serve gifted students. Policymakers would be wise to revisit of main findings of a 2004 education report from Nicholas Colangelo Susan G. Assouline Miraca U. M. Gross especially this conclusion: Acceleration is the most effective curriculum intervention for gifted children. And this one too: Radical acceleration (acceleration by two or more years) is effective academically and socially for highly gifted students. Faster please you know? So how to create a more acceleration-focused education system? Hess highlights a number of key policies including preparing more teachers through recruitment training and pay to teach gifted students. School systems should expand the International Baccalaureate programs Advanced Placement courses K8 gifted offerings and high-caliber opportunities in areas like robotics or music and make sure all kids get considered for such programs and classes. We owe those students and future generations of Americans no less. Matthew Yglesias is a blogger journalist and podcaster who currently writes the Slow Boring newsletter. Previously he was a senior correspondent focused on politics and economic policy at Vox which he co-founded with Ezra Klein and Melissa Bell in 2014. I highly recommend Matts 2020 book One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger . 1/ You agreed with Ezra Kleins case for supply-side progressivism but didnt really love the framing. Progressives should care about these supply-side issues but so should conservatives.What are the biggest obstacles to pro-abundance policies on the right? I think identity politics is a major impediment to abundance on the right. In New York State for example the new governor Kathy Hochul has put forward a nice plan to relax regulation of the housing sector in the suburban parts of the state. That prompted a furious backlash first from Nassau County's new Republican executive and then from the GOP caucus in the State Assembly. They are construing single-family zoning as a pillar of American suburbanism rather than as a costly regulation. And you saw that transformation on this exact topic in the Trump administration that started with Ben Carson saying we should all be YIMBYs and ended with Trump saying that Cory Booker wants to abolish the suburbs by which he meant relax land use regulations. In recent years a lot of conservatives have also become more hostile to trade and especially to immigration. More broadly the populist turn on the right is just very heavily influenced by nostalgia politics (make America great again) of the sort that I recall as having been a pretty distinctively left-coded thing fifteen or twenty years ago. But when you turn into the party that's primarily supported by older and less-educated people you tend to get invested in a backward-looking worldview. 2/ What is the great energy diet and how can we redirect environmental concerns to an energy-abundance agenda? There was obviously a tremendous disruption to world oil supplies in the 1970s and it roughly coincided with a growing appreciation of the fact that when you burn stuff that sends a lot of soot and smog into the sky which causes a lot of health and other problems down the road. Those are two very good reasons to try to burn less coal and oil and so for the past generation or two per capita energy consumption in the United States has really flattened out. That's really a big change from how things played out over the previous 100150 years or so when a huge theme of innovation was how can we use our powerful energy-production technologies to do more and more work? That's how you got the steam engine and the railroad and electrified factories and electric lights and internal combustion engines and household appliances you find ways to accomplish things by consuming more and more energy. For the past fifty years so much of the innovation imperative has been to do the opposite to get from Point A to Point B while consuming less fuel rather than figuring out how to get there faster. The good news is that we now have at hand several good ways of generating energy that don't create much pollution and aren't subject to the control of questionable foreign powers. And then in advanced nuclear and advanced geothermal we have two more promising candidates for clean energy that could potentially be more space-efficient and convenient than solar and wind. So my hope is that we can plow forward with those technologies get off the energy diet and start returning to the pattern of doing new more energy-intensive things like vertical farming water desalination and direct air capture of carbon dioxide to solve major problems. 3) How could a more populous America accelerate technological progress and economic growth? There are all these little microeconomic studies that try to show the impact on the wages of such-and-such kind of people in such-and-such a geography if such-and-such kind of immigrants show up. That's an interesting question and those studies generally show positive results. But they also really miss the forest for the trees. What was the wage impact of Katalin Kariko coming to the United States to pioneer mRNA technology? It's incalculable and you could say the same for any number of foreign-born scientists engineers and entrepreneurs. But of course that same magic is true of native-born people as well. What if Steve Jobs had just never been born? That's a sadder poorer world. Of course most of us do not get to change the world on the level of a Jobs or a Kariko. The point though is we're not living in a Malthusian economy where your kids' food comes out of my kid's mouth. We're mostly performing services for each other and our prosperity is being driven by a mix of big ideas and small incremental optimizations and both of those scale up. When you have more people you have more inventions. And when you have more inventions everyone benefits. 4/ Looking back at the 2020s from the year 2030 do you think economic/productivity growth will show a marked acceleration from the 2000s and 2010s the same or slower? I do expect some acceleration. The big reason here is that I think the high pressure economy that's been bequeathed to us by Steve Mnuchin Nancy Pelosi and Jay Powell has reshaped political debate for the better. With job openings high unemployment low and inflation on the top of everybody's mind for the first time in my career politicians aren't obsessed with creating jobs. It's good of course for people to have jobs. I am pro-jobs. But the rhetoric and logic of creating jobs often leads in the direction of cheerleading for inefficiency. We're now in a world where the labor market is not depressed and people are talking about supply constraints. A decade ago the idea of self-driving trucks was seen primarily as a threat to people's employment. Today I think we'd see it as a partial solution to a lot of pressing problems in the logistics side of the economy. Of course wishing for self-driving trucks doesn't make them real. But shifting to a political economy paradigm where efficiency is welcomed rather than feared is I think a necessary precondition for a growth acceleration and I think it's something that we finally have in place. Older politicians who cut their teeth on the weak labor market of the first 20 years of the 21st century may be a little slow to catch up in some regards but I think even as the newer cohort has lots of partisan fights and other kinds of disagreements there is going to be some unity around the importance of raising productivity and that will be important. 5/ Is there a tv show or film that really represents the sort of economic thinking you value or makes good economic points? I've just always been taken with the optimistic humane utopianism of Star Trek: The Next Generation . I don't think it's necessarily a very realistic depiction of the future. But it's unusual in an appealing way in that it depicts a more technologically advanced future society as also more politically and morally advanced and consequently just generally better off. There are dark sides and pitfalls to some of Trek's tech (especially the damn holodeck) but on net it's all clearly good. More recently I've been watching the Boba Fett show on Disney+ which is definitely good in its own way. But it's also a striking reminder of how weird the Star Wars economy is they have all these droids and hyperdriveships but living standards seem really low. On TNG it's not just that Captain Picard is commanding a good ship most of the places they go whether it's a nice shiny star base or the YIMBYfied version of San Francisco that hosts Starfleet Headquarters seem like they are benefitting from the wide dispersal of technology and prosperity. DeepMind Has Trained an AI to Control Nuclear Fusion - Amit Katwala Wired | AI isnt just about a job-replacing automation although its often treated that way in the media. (Well that and Terminator -type scenarios.) The flaw in that cramp constrained vision is made obvious by this important advance. DeepMind the AI firm backed by Google parent company Alphabet has developed a deep reinforcement learning system that can autonomously control the fiery plasma inside a tokamak nuclear fusion reactor. From the piece: In stars which are also powered by fusion the sheer gravitational mass is enough to pull hydrogen atoms together and overcome their opposing charges. On Earth scientists instead use powerful magnetic coils to confine the nuclear fusion reaction nudging it into the desired position and shaping it like a potter manipulating clay on a wheel. The coils have to be carefully controlled to prevent the plasma from touching the sides of the vessel: this can damage the walls and slow down the fusion reaction. .. But every time researchers want to change the configuration of the plasma and try out different shapes that may yield more power or a cleaner plasma it necessitates a huge amount of engineering and design work. .. A paper published in the journal Nature describes how researchers from the two groups taught a deep reinforcement learning system to control the 19 magnetic coils inside TCV the variable-configuration tokamak at the Swiss Plasma Center which is used to carry out research that will inform the design of bigger fusion reactors in the future. Artificial intelligence beats top human players in popular racing game - NPR | Top human gamers competed against an AI agent that learned to drive around the track in just one hour. Four more hours was enough to become as good as the average human driver and in one to two days it matched the top 1 percent of players. The experiments results point to real-world development possibilities for autonomous vehicles. Said a Stanford engineering professor not involved with the study: It's not as if you can simply take the results of this paper and say great I'm going to try it on an autonomous vehicle tomorrow. But I really do think it's an eye-opener for people who develop autonomous vehicles to just sit back and say well maybe we need to keep an open mind about the extent of possibilities here with AI. The Technology Thats Helping Companies Thrive Amid the Supply-Chain Chaos - Christopher Mims WSJ | Entrepreneurs are investing in tech innovations to solve the problems closing supply chains. Theyre looking beyond just AI fixes or using more robots in warehouses. Flexible warehouse management systems and inventory trackers storing goods closer to consumers and making new hires more productive are key. Investment in tech-focused supply-chain companies totaled $24.3 billion in the first nine months of last year almost 60 percent higher than the total for all of 2020. Inspiration is found in everything from ant colonies to misshapen food. SpaceXs monstrous dirt-cheap Starship may transform space travel - The Economist | In addition to the snazzy chart below the piece is a good explainer on the capabilities of this amazing machine and its potential business and science impact: Mr Musk has talked of eventually building a fleet of Starships. If each were indeed launching several times a day that would give SpaceX the ability to lug a million tonnes of stuff into orbit each year. BryceTech reckons that in 2021 the world managed 750 tonnes. What you might do with all that capacity (other than supplying a future Mars colony) is another question. The Rise of the Engineer: Inventing the Professional Inventor During the Industrial Revolution - W. Walker Hanlon (Northwestern University) NBER | Why didnt the burst of technological progress during the Industrial Revolution fade as previous accelerations had. Hanlon provides evidence that among other factors such as increasing stock of human capital the inducements created by an expanding market the influence of Enlightenment thinking or the protections provided by the institutional environment there was a change in the process of innovation that helped sustain forward movement: the professionalization of invention and design work through the emergence of the engineering profession. One cool technique used by Hanlon is an examination of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography which revealed a dramatic increase in the share of engineers among the noteworthy Britons beginning in the third quarter of the eighteenth century. By the middle of the nineteenth century engineers made up around 20% of all noteworthy individuals associated with science or technology and over 2% of all of those who merited an ODNB biography. Interview: Alec Stapp and Caleb Watney of the Institute for Progress - Noah Smith Noahpinion | A wide-ranging chat with Alec Stapp and Caleb Watney (both formerly of the Progressive Policy Institute) who have started a new DC-based think tank called the Institute for Progress. Its mission: accelerate scientific technological and industrial progress while safeguarding humanitys future as Watney puts it. The think tank aims to be the flagship institution of the emerging New Industrialist movement that hopes to combat NIMBYism and reverse the tech progress stagnation of the past half century. Starship Animation - SpaceX | This stirring bit of animation which Elon Musk showed at his recent Starship presentation shows a lot more than how the giant rocket works. It gives a feel for how a mission to Mars would work or rather the colonization of Mars. Eric Schmidt creates $125mn fund for hard problems in AI research - Madhumita Murgia FT | Why Musks biggest space gamble is freaking out his competitors - Bryan Bender Politico | The Moon should be privatised to help wipe out poverty on Earth economists say - Kate Plummer Indy100 | How big technology systems are slowing innovation - James Bessen MIT Technology Review | These Eye Drops Could Replace Your Reading Glasses - Charles Schmidt Scientific American | Bill Gates and Chris Sacca invest in energy storage start-up Antora to help heavy industry go green - Catherine Clifford CNBC | Im an Ivy League graduate with a degree in math who teaches Honors math at an urban public high school. I obviously have some belief in the importance of educating top students. Unfortunately I find that your analysis is pretty weak. As does anyone watching these Olympics is pretty telling. Do believe that the Winter Olympics is a meritocracy? That people of African descent make up 90%+ of the best sprinters in the world but <5% of the best speed skaters or bobsledders? That the country of Nepal (or India?) contains no naturally gifted skiers? That blind spot is really telling about your view into American Education. I left a selective admissions charter school (one of the best or the best in the city) for two different open enrollment schools and the top end talent is the SAME at all three places. But results are better for the students who had a more privileged education and upbringing. True commitment to meritocracy requires grappling with the fact that we have massive amounts of incredibly talented people that we under-develop. You can hand-waive and say we need to make things better for all kids but here are resources trade-offs and they are happening and if you arent meaningfully engaging with them then you arent actually saying anything about meritocracy. The opponents of gifted programs gain their audience from the true failure of meritocracy. That it selects for whiteness for parents who had a work schedule to allow them to maintain proper diet and sleep schedules for their children for people who live in areas with lower levels of air and water pollution and for people who have had better past educations. Go to a prep school for a year and an urban high school for a year compare college admissions and youll see why people dont believe in our meritocracy. If you believe in the relevance of cultivating top tier talent you need to make much stronger argument in favor of redistributing developmental and educational resources more radically than the soft belief in gifted education you suggest here. I mean maximizes their human potential Yes that is the idea. But there's a hidden radicalism in that definition: it has to come along with the idea that not all individual students have the same potential. And the consequences of that for our education system and our society are vast. No posts Ready for more?

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The window trick of Las Vegas hotels (schedium.net) When I lived in Hong Kong I often passed by a residential apartment complex commonly known as the monster building . This housing estate originally built in the 1960s actually consists of five separate buildings: the Fook Cheong Building the Montane Mansion the Oceanic Mansion the Yick Cheong Building and the Yick Fat Building. It has become a tourist attraction because of its very unique and - some might say - dystopian look. Obviously beauty is in the eye of the beholder so maybe you think that these buildings are pretty. In that case good on you. But I guess there are also a lot of people who find them quite ugly. One of the faades stood out to me in particular as being a massive colossal mess. Although this is an extreme example there are plenty of monster buildings in Hong Kong usually housing estates constructed in the 1960s and 1970s. They have a very specific aesthetic: they look large thick and heavy with grubby boring faades cluttered with protruding AC units. The 1960s and 1970s were the era of residential buildings that are let's say controversial. Some examples include the Unit d'Habitation by Le Corbusier and the Trellick Tower in the UK. I often wondered what makes these buildings so ugly and distressing (unless you like them I'm not questioning anyone's personal taste) and whether there was beauty in them which I am not capable of seeing maybe because of my own biases. And that's certainly possible. But a few days ago I stumbled upon a video that seemed to me to explain why these buildings make such a negative impression on me. In a lecture about the universal characteristics of classical architecture professor Nathaniel Walker argued that human beings crave two things: order and variety. If there's too much order it's boring and oppressive. If there's too much variety it's chaotic and unpleasant. In his view classical architecture all over the world aims at creating a delicate balance between order and variety. This makes a lot of sense to me. Because order and variety is what we experience in nature. For example trees and mountains follow recognizable patterns they have shapes that allow us to categorize them. Yet each tree and mountain is different and unique. The human body as well has forms common to all it has symmetry and proportion yet each individual is different. What makes these monster buildings so unsettling is that instead of a delicate balance of order and variety they have too much of both. The moster building has too much order - it's a box with long rows of windows. But the faade also has way too much variety because of the AC units and the mishmash of colours and window frames. What does all of this have to do with Las Vegas hotels you may rightly ask? Some Las Vegas hotels are truly massive structures. And maybe you don't find them attractive either. But there's something interesting about their faades which I find quite fascinating and which maybe contains a lesson for residential architecture. It's the so-called window trick. In order to make the buildings look smaller less intimidating and messy architects have come up with a four or six windows in one solution. This means they grouped several windows (usually four or six) together and made them look like one window. This creates the visual effect of shrinking the building of making it more orderly and symmetrical. Here is one example: the Bellagio _____ From a distance you just see regular windows. But if you look closer you notice that what appears like one window is actually four or six windows grouped together. The Bellagio has 32 stories. But the highest of Hong Kong's monster buildings has only 18 stories. Which one looks more massive disorderly and intimidating? Here are two more examples: the Treasure Island and the Caesar's Palace: Another window trick is what the Wynn uses: one stripe per two stories. The Monte Carlo (now Park MGM as a reader pointed out in the comments) in Las Vegas doesn't use any window trick and the building looks massive. Although it is more orderly and pleasant than the monster building thanks to its symmetry and some decorative patterns. I am not saying that Las Vegas hotels look beautiful. This type of architecture is made for casinos and nearby hotels so I'd expect it to be kitschy. But I think this kind of visual trick could find application in high-rise residential buildings to make faades look nicer and gentler. _____ Thanks for reading this post! If you enjoyed it consider supporting . Thank you! A similar trick is used in the TASS building in Moscow: https://discovermoscow.com/en/places/dostoprimechatelnosti/zdanie-tass/ Thanks! I checked it out. However I think it's a bit different because the building is very small so the windows don't have the same purpose of shrinking the building. The other thing I noticed is that the TASS building has very large windows but also a separator between two floors which actually shows that it's not just one window. But it's an interesting example! The buildings you dislike are Bauhaus inspired. But I have to say that there are also Bauhaus and Bauhaus-inspired buildings that I like. Many high rise buildings in Hong Kong follow Bauhaus principles and I like many of them. I also lived in some of them :) The Monte Carlo in Las Vegas is now ParkMGM for those trying to look it up. Thank you I'm going to issue a correction! you corrected the wrong building (Park MGM is the new Monte Carlo not Caesars Palace). Oh thanks I fixed it! Here's an explanation I found persuasive for why the 60's and 70's buildings don't appeal to us: https://commonedge.org/the-mental-disorders-that-gave-us-modern-architecture/ It aligns nicely with your astute observation about the windows in that they humanize these large buildings. I think a crop of this photo of the Bellagio shows the windows more clearly. When I lived at Unit d'Habitation I found it totally outdated as a living environment and weirdly laid out. Interesting! Was it at least cheaper than other apartments? And how about public transport shops and services in the neighbourhood? If there were ever a candidate for ugly massive buildings Japan would surely be near the top of that list. Even newer structure for dwellings are an eye-sore. Vancouver BC - the call them ice cube trays. How do the windows look from the inside? Post a Comment

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There is no A.I. (newyorker.com) To revisit this article select My Account then View saved stories To revisit this article visit My Profile then View saved stories By Jaron Lanier As a computer scientist I dont like the term A.I. In fact I think its misleadingmaybe even a little dangerous. Everybodys already using the term and it might seem a little late in the day to be arguing about it. But were at the beginning of a new technological eraand the easiest way to mismanage a technology is to misunderstand it. The term artificial intelligence has a long historyit was coined in the nineteen-fifties in the early days of computers. More recently computer scientists have grown up on movies like The Terminator and The Matrix and on characters like Commander Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation. These cultural touchstones have become an almost religious mythology in tech culture. Its only natural that computer scientists long to create A.I. and realize a long-held dream. Whats striking though is that many of the people who are pursuing the A.I. dream also worry that it might mean doomsday for mankind . It is widely stated even by scientists at the very center of todays efforts that what A.I. researchers are doing could result in the annihilation of our species or at least in great harm to humanity and soon. In a recent poll half of A.I. scientists agreed that there was at least a ten-per-cent chance that the human race would be destroyed by A.I. Even my colleague and friend Sam Altman who runs OpenAI has made similar comments . Step into any Silicon Valley coffee shop and you can hear the same debate unfold: one person says that the new code is just code and that people are in charge but another argues that anyone with this opinion just doesnt get how profound the new tech is. The arguments arent entirely rational: when I ask my most fearful scientist friends to spell out how an A.I. apocalypse might happen they often seize up from the paralysis that overtakes someone trying to conceive of infinity. They say things like Accelerating progress will fly past us and we will not be able to conceive of what is happening. I dont agree with this way of talking. Many of my friends and colleagues are deeply impressed by their experiences with the latest big models like GPT-4 and are practically holding vigils to await the appearance of a deeper intelligence. My position is not that they are wrong but that we cant be sure; we retain the option of classifying the software in different ways. The most pragmatic position is to think of A.I. as a tool not a creature. My attitude doesnt eliminate the possibility of peril: however we think about it we can still design and operate our new tech badly in ways that can hurt us or even lead to our extinction. Mythologizing the technology only makes it more likely that well fail to operate it welland this kind of thinking limits our imaginations tying them to yesterdays dreams. We can work better under the assumption that there is no such thing as A.I. The sooner we understand this the sooner well start managing our new technology intelligently. If the new tech isnt true artificial intelligence then what is it? In my view the most accurate way to understand what we are building today is as an innovative form of social collaboration. A program like OpenAIs GPT-4 which can write sentences to order is something like a version of Wikipedia that includes much more data mashed together using statistics. Programs that create images to order are something like a version of online image search but with a system for combining the pictures. In both cases its people who have written the text and furnished the images. The new programs mash up work done by human minds . Whats innovative is that the mashup process has become guided and constrained so that the results are usable and often striking. This is a significant achievement and worth celebratingbut it can be thought of as illuminating previously hidden concordances between human creations rather than as the invention of a new mind. As far as I can tell my view flatters the technology. After all what is civilization but social collaboration? Seeing A.I. as a way of working together rather than as a technology for creating independent intelligent beings may make it less mysteriousless like HAL 9000 or Commander Data. But thats good because mystery only makes mismanagement more likely. Its easy to attribute intelligence to the new systems; they have a flexibility and unpredictability that we dont usually associate with computer technology. But this flexibility arises from simple mathematics. A large language model like GPT-4 contains a cumulative record of how particular words coincide in the vast amounts of text that the program has processed. This gargantuan tabulation causes the system to intrinsically approximate many grammar patterns along with aspects of what might be called authorial style. When you enter a query consisting of certain words in a certain order your entry is correlated with whats in the model; the results can come out a little differently each time because of the complexity of correlating billions of entries. The non-repeating nature of this process can make it feel lively. And theres a sense in which it can make the new systems more human-centered. When you synthesize a new image with an A.I. tool you may get a bunch of similar options and then have to choose from them; if youre a student who uses an L.L.M. to cheat on an essay assignment you might read options generated by the model and select one. A little human choice is demanded by a technology that is non-repeating. Many of the uses of A.I. that I like rest on advantages we gain when computers get less rigid. Digital stuff as we have known it has a brittle quality that forces people to conform to it rather than assess it. Weve all endured the agony of watching some poor soul at a doctors office struggle to do the expected thing on a front-desk screen. The face contorts; humanity is undermined. The need to conform to digital designs has created an ambient expectation of human subservience. A positive spin on A.I. is that it might spell the end of this torture if we use it well. We can now imagine a Web site that reformulates itself on the fly for someone who is color-blind say or a site that tailors itself to someones particular cognitive abilities and styles. A humanist like me wants people to have more control rather than be overly influenced or guided by technology. Flexibility may give us back some agency. Still despite these possible upsides its more than reasonable to worry that the new technology will push us around in ways we dont like or understand. Recently some friends of mine circulated a petition asking for a pause on the most ambitious A.I. development. The idea was that wed work on policy during the pause. The petition was signed by some in our community but not others. I found the notion too hazywhat level of progress would mean that the pause could end? Every week I receive new but always vague mission statements from organizations seeking to initiate processes to set A.I. policy. These efforts are well intentioned but they seem hopeless to me. For years I worked on the E.U.s privacy policies and I came to realize that we dont know what privacy is. Its a term we use every day and it can make sense in context but we cant nail it down well enough to generalize. The closest we have come to a definition of privacy is probably the right to be left alone but that seems quaint in an age when we are constantly dependent on digital services. In the context of A.I. the right to not be manipulated by computation seems almost correct but doesnt quite say everything wed like it to. A.I.-policy conversations are dominated by terms like alignment (is what an A.I. wants aligned with what humans want?) safety (can we foresee guardrails that will foil a bad A.I.?) and fairness (can we forestall all the ways a program might treat certain people with disfavor?). The community has certainly accomplished much good by pursuing these ideas but that hasnt quelled our fears. We end up motivating people to try to circumvent the vague protections we set up. Even though the protections do help the whole thing becomes a gamelike trying to outwit a sneaky genie. The result is that the A.I.-research community communicates the warning that their creations might still kill all of humanity soon while proposing ever more urgent but turgid deliberative processes. Recently I tried an informal experiment calling colleagues and asking them if theres anything specific on which we can all seem to agree. Ive found that there is a foundation of agreement. We all seem to agree that deepfakes false but real-seeming images videos and so onshould be labelled as such by the programs that create them. Communications coming from artificial people and automated interactions that are designed to manipulate the thinking or actions of a human being should be labelled as well. We also agree that these labels should come with actions that can be taken. People should be able to understand what theyre seeing and should have reasonable choices in return. How can all this be done? There is also near-unanimity I find that the black-box nature of our current A.I. tools must end. The systems must be made more transparent. We need to get better at saying what is going on inside them and why. This wont be easy. The problem is that the large-model A.I. systems we are talking about arent made of explicit ideas. There is no definite representation of what the system wants no label for when it is doing a particular thing like manipulating a person. There is only a giant ocean of jelloa vast mathematical mixing. A writers-rights group has proposed that real human authors be paid in full when tools like GPT are used in the scriptwriting process; after all the system is drawing on scripts that real people have made. But when we use A.I. to produce film clips and potentially whole movies there wont necessarily be a screenwriting phase. A movie might be produced that appears to have a script soundtrack and so on but it will have been calculated into existence as a whole. Similarly no sketch precedes the generation of a painting from an illustration A.I. Attempting to open the black box by making a system spit out otherwise unnecessary items like scripts sketches or intentions will involve building another black box to interpret the firstan infinite regress. At the same time its not true that the interior of a big model has to be a trackless wilderness. We may not know what an idea is from a formal computational point of view but there could be tracks made not of ideas but of people. At some point in the past a real person created an illustration that was input as data into the model and in combination with contributions from other people this was transformed into a fresh image. Big-model A.I. is made of peopleand the way to open the black box is to reveal them. This concept which Ive contributed to developing is usually called data dignity. It appeared long before the rise of big-model A.I. as an alternative to the familiar arrangement in which people give their data for free in exchange for free services such as internet searches or social networking. Data dignity is sometimes known as data as labor or plurality research. The familiar arrangement has turned out to have a dark side: because of network effects a few platforms take over eliminating smaller players like local newspapers. Worse since the immediate online experience is supposed to be free the only remaining business is the hawking of influence. Users experience what seems to be a communitarian paradise but they are targeted by stealthy and addictive algorithms that make people vain irritable and paranoid. In a world with data dignity digital stuff would typically be connected with the humans who want to be known for having made it. In some versions of the idea people could get paid for what they create even when it is filtered and recombined through big models and tech hubs would earn fees for facilitating things that people want to do. Some people are horrified by the idea of capitalism online but this would be a more honest capitalism. The familiar free arrangement has been a disaster. One of the reasons the tech community worries that A.I. could be an existential threat is that it could be used to toy with people just as the previous wave of digital technologies have been. Given the power and potential reach of these new systems its not unreasonable to fear extinction as a possible result. Since that danger is widely recognized the arrival of big-model A.I. could be an occasion to reformat the tech industry for the better. Implementing data dignity will require technical research and policy innovation. In that sense the subject excites me as a scientist. Opening the black box will only make the models more interesting. And it might help us understand more about language which is the human invention that truly impresses and the one that we are still exploring after all these hundreds of thousands of years. Could data dignity address the economic worries that are often expressed about A.I.? The main concern is that workers will be devalued or displaced. Publicly techies will sometimes say that in the coming years people who work with A.I. will be more productive and will find new types of jobs in a more productive economy. (A worker might become a prompt engineer for A.I. programs for instancesomeone who collaborates with or controls an A.I.) And yet in private the same people will quite often say No A.I. will overtake this idea of collaboration. No more remuneration for todays accountants radiologists truck drivers writers film directors or musicians. A data-dignity approach would trace the most unique and influential contributors when a big model provides a valuable output. For instance if you ask a model for an animated movie of my kids in an oil-painting world of talking cats on an adventure then certain key oil painters cat portraitists voice actors and writersor their estatesmight be calculated to have been uniquely essential to the creation of the new masterpiece. They would be acknowledged and motivated. They might even get paid. There is a fledgling data-dignity research community and here is an example of a debate within it: How detailed an accounting should data dignity attempt? Not everyone agrees. The system wouldnt necessarily account for the billions of people who have made ambient contributions to big modelsthose who have added to a models simulated competence with grammar for example. At first data dignity might attend only to the small number of special contributors who emerge in a given situation. Over time though more people might be included as intermediate rights organizationsunions guilds professional groups and so onstart to play a role. People in the data-dignity community sometimes call these anticipated groups mediators of individual data ( MIDs ) or data trusts. People need collective-bargaining power to have value in an online worldespecially when they might get lost in a giant A.I. model. And when people share responsibility in a group they self-police reducing the need or temptation for governments and companies to censor or control from above. Acknowledging the human essence of big models might lead to a blossoming of new positive social institutions. Data dignity is not just for white-collar roles. Consider what might happen if A.I.-driven tree-trimming robots are introduced. Human tree trimmers might find themselves devalued or even out of work. But the robots could eventually allow for a new type of indirect landscaping artistry. Some former workers or others might create inventive approachesholographic topiary say that looks different from different anglesthat find their way into the tree-trimming models. With data dignity the models might create new sources of income distributed through collective organizations. Tree trimming would become more multifunctional and interesting over time; there would be a community motivated to remain valuable. Each new successful introduction of an A.I. or robotic application could involve the inauguration of a new kind of creative work. In ways large and small this could help ease the transition to an economy into which models are integrated. Many people in Silicon Valley see universal basic income as a solution to potential economic problems created by A.I. But U.B.I. amounts to putting everyone on the dole in order to preserve the idea of black-box artificial intelligence. This is a scary idea I think in part because bad actors will want to seize the centers of power in a universal welfare system as in every communist experiment. I doubt that data dignity could ever grow enough to sustain all of society but I doubt that any social or economic principle will ever be complete. Whenever possible the goal should be to at least establish a new creative class instead of a new dependent class. There are also non-altruistic reasons for A.I. companies to embrace data dignity. The models are only as good as their inputs. Its only through a system like data dignity that we can expand the models into new frontiers. Right now its much easier to get an L.L.M. to write an essay than it is to ask the program to generate an interactive virtual-reality world because there are very few virtual worlds in existence. Why not solve that problem by giving people who add more virtual worlds a chance for prestige and income? Could data dignity help with any of the human-annihilation scenarios? A big model could make us incompetent or confuse us so much that our society goes collectively off the rails; a powerful malevolent person could use A.I. to do us all great harm; and some people also think that the model itself could jailbreak taking control of our machines or weapons and using them against us. We can find precedents for some of these scenarios not just in science fiction but in more ordinary market and technology failures. An example is the 2019 catastrophe related to Boeings 737 MAX jets . The planes included a flight-path-correction feature that in some cases fought the pilots causing two mass-casualty crashes. The problem was not the technology in isolation but the way that it was integrated into the sales cycle training sessions user interface and documentation. Pilots thought that they were doing the right thing by trying to counteract the system in certain circumstances but they were doing exactly the wrong thing and they had no way of knowing. Boeing failed to communicate clearly about how the technology worked and the resulting confusion led to disaster. Anything engineeredcars bridges buildingscan cause harm to people and yet we have built a civilization on engineering. Its by increasing and broadening human awareness responsibility and participation that we can make automation safe; conversely if we treat our inventions as occult objects we can hardly be good engineers. Seeing A.I. as a form of social collaboration is more actionable: it gives us access to the engine room which is made of people. Lets consider the apocalyptic scenario in which A.I. drives our society off the rails. One way this could happen is through deepfakes. Suppose that an evil person perhaps working in an opposing government on a war footing decides to stoke mass panic by sending all of us convincing videos of our loved ones being tortured or abducted from our homes. (The data necessary to create such videos are in many cases easy to obtain through social media or other channels.) Chaos would ensue even if it soon became clear that the videos were faked. How could we prevent such a scenario? The answer is obvious: digital information must have context. Any collection of bits needs a history. When you lose context you lose control. Why dont bits come attached to the stories of their origins? There are many reasons. The original design of the Web didnt keep track of where bits came from likely to make it easier for the network to grow quickly. (Computers and bandwidth were poor in the beginning.) Why didnt we start remembering where bits came from when it became more feasible to at least approximate digital provenance? It always felt to me that we wanted the Web to be more mysterious than it needed to be. Whatever the reason the Web was made to remember everything while forgetting its context. Today most people take it for granted that the Web and indeed the Internet it is built on is by its nature anti-contextual and devoid of provenance. We assume that decontextualization is intrinsic to the very idea of a digital network. That was never so however; the initial proposals for digital-network architecture put forward by the monumental scientist Vannevar Bush in 1945 and the computer scientist Ted Nelson in 1960 preserved provenance. Now A.I. is revealing the true costs of ignoring this approach. Without provenance we have no way of controlling our A.I.s or of making them economically fair. And this risks pushing our society to the brink. If a chatbot appears to be manipulative mean weird or deceptive what kind of answer do we want when we ask why? Revealing the indispensable antecedent examples from which the bot learned its behavior would provide an explanation: wed learn that it drew on a particular work of fan fiction say or a soap opera. We could react to that output differently and adjust the inputs of the model to improve it. Why shouldnt that type of explanation always be available? There may be cases in which provenance shouldnt be revealed so as to give priority to privacybut provenance will usually be more beneficial to individuals and society than an exclusive commitment to privacy would be. The technical challenges of data dignity are real and must inspire serious scientific ambition. The policy challenges would also be substantiala sign perhaps that they are meaningful and concrete. But we need to change the way we think and to embrace the hard work of renovation. By persisting with the ideas of the pastamong them a fascination with the possibility of an A.I. that lives independently of the people who contribute to itwe risk using our new technologies in ways that make the world worse. If society economics culture technology or any other spheres of activity are to serve people that can only be because we decide that people enjoy a special status to be served. This is my plea to all my colleagues. Think of people. People are the answer to the problems of bits. The Mexican actress who dazzled El Chapo . How an innocent question launched a life-altering lawsuit . Nobody said it was easy being eight . A delusional wonderful recipe book. Did the pandemic transform the office forever ? Fiction by Haruki Murakami: A Shinagawa Monkey . Sign up for our daily newsletter to receive the best stories from The New Yorker . By signing up you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement . 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There may be no such thing as a legal American crypto exchange https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/06/12/coinbase-cryptocurrency-sec-legal/ pg_1234 Can anyone run a cryptocurrency exchange in the United States? I dont mean run one well but just run one at all. Last week the Securities and Exchange Commission filed suit against two major crypto exchanges Binance and Coinbase. The latter especially is worth paying attention to because if Coinbase cant operate a legal crypto exchange in the United States and the SEC is pretty much suggesting it cant then its hard to imagine anyone else can either. After all Coinbase the largest crypto exchange based in the United States is the goody-two-shoes of its industry. Sure this Boy Scout has somewhat worryingly chosen to hang out behind the gym with the weed dealers and the kid who just got released on bail after stealing the principals car. But Coinbase itself doesnt make much trouble. While Sam Bankman-Fried and his pals at FTX were finding ever-more-flamboyant ways to make billions of dollars disappear Coinbase seems to have boringly used customer funds to buy crypto and hold it for them in the electronic equivalent of a locked vault. The companys financial statements are audited by Deloitte not some recent graduate of Uncle Mannys School of Accounting and HVAC Repair. It even had the SECs permission since April 2021 to list its shares on the Nasdaq. Only not so fast says the SEC. Last Tuesday the commission filed a lawsuit against Coinbase alleging that the company was well actually doing pretty much what it told the SEC it was going to do when it asked for permission to list its shares. But now the SEC says this amounts to operating an illegal securities exchange. Which raises some questions. For instance if Coinbases business is illegal why did the SEC allow the company to list its shares? And if Coinbases operations are illegal then is it even possible to have a legal crypto exchange in the United States? To answer the second question first: No probably not at least not in the way that cryptocurrency exchanges normally work which is by both storing and trading crypto for customers. Securities exchanges cannot hold securities; all they can do is you know help customers exchange them. If courts side with the SEC then perhaps Coinbase could survive by splitting the storage and trading functions into two separate firms or maybe by trading only bitcoin and ether which dont seem to meet the SECs definition of a security . But its not clear thats a viable business model or whether the SEC is actually interested in finding a way for crypto exchanges to operate legally. Which brings us to the other question I posed: Why now? Its true that the SEC never technically said Coinbases operations were legal when it let the company go public. But its a weird argument to say Just because were letting you be a public company dont think were saying your business is legal. If the Sinaloa cartel tried to list on the New York Stock Exchange would the SEC let it do it as long as the auditing and disclosure requirements were met? Presumably not. So what gives? Well even if you think trading crypto is illegal its not quite the same kind of illegal as selling fentanyl on the street. Congress deliberately outlawed drug dealing whereas crypto simply wasnt contemplated by our venerable securities laws. Its not crazy that in 2021 the SEC was willing to take a wait-and-see approach to regulating a novel financial product. Days after Coinbase began trading however a new SEC chair arrived who is less friendly to crypto in part because the folks gathered behind the gym turned out to be even more unsavory than the authorities had suspected. There was the theatrical FTX implosion and there were numerous smaller incidents. By one estimate at least $4.3 billion was lost between January and November last year to crypto hacks and outright fraud up about a third from the year before. But there seem to be a lot of scams is an argument for better regulation not for making crypto impossible to trade. A bigger issue is that since 2021 it has become clearer that crypto isnt delivering real-world benefits to offset its downsides. To be sure in countries racked by hyperinflation crypto might offer real value by providing a stable medium of exchange. But the United States prints the worlds reserve currency. Only a slim minority of Americans have ever used or traded crypto and these folks mostly seem to have used it as a form of financial speculation. This means the best you could hope for from even a well-run crypto exchange based in the United States is basically an honest casino. Unfortunately for Coinbase the SEC does not like to think of itself as a high-dollar version of the Nevada Gaming Control Board. It wants to believe the gambles it supervises generate larger economic value. Its still possible that crypto could do so perhaps artificial intelligence bots will use crypto to transact? But crypto enthusiasts cant stall regulators forever by coming up with yet another thing it might be good for someday. Eventually they have to deliver here and now.

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There's something off about LED bulbs (nymag.com) Every product is independently selected by (obsessive) editors. Things you buy through our links may earn usa commission. This article was featured in One Great Story New York s reading recommendation newsletter. Sign up here to get it nightly. The lightbulb was flickering over my head. Not the idealized cartoon lightbulb the universal symbol for a flash of inspiration but a Philips-brand 800-lumen A19 LED bulb. Id put one in the bedroom-ceiling fixture only a few months before. In theory it should have been the last I would put up there for years maybe even a decade. Instead the bulb was a dim dull orange its levels of brightness visibly fluttering through the frosted dome. LED bulbs do this to me all the time. The two in my youngest sons bedroom went near dark not long after I installed them. When I left them alone for a week they inexplicably came back on at full blast. At story time the LED in the clamp light on his bunk revolts if you cycle the power too fast. It sits there feebly glimmering its perimeter a semicircle of white jelly-bean light blobs until you turn it off and wait a while. For most of my life I expected energy-saving lighting to be bad. Traditional fluorescents buzzing in grim-colored tubes were synonymous with institutional austerity and migraines. A new generation of streetlamps somehow made city nights seem darker; CFLs shattered into mercury-flecked shards. New lighting tech was something people resented and worked around. My generation presented with thrifty overhead fluorescents in 90s dorms countered by plugging in the newly popular halogen torchieres whose 300 blazing watts would incinerate wayward moths or occasionally a stray curtain along with the universitys planned energy savings. LEDs were going to be different. Their widespread appearance on store shelves was supposed to mark not another depressing trade-off but rather a Nobel-worthy breakthrough: They provided brilliant illumination at a fraction of the old energy costs and were nearly immortal by the old tungsten standard. The federal government has fully committed. Some rearguard action by the Trump administration delayed the process but a new lighting-efficiency standard has finally taken effect. The Department of Energy is scheduled to start penalizing incandescent distributors and retailers this month levying fines of as much as $542 per illicit bulb with full enforcement of the ban beginning in August. The plan is for LEDs to be the only available form of artificial lighting. Already the old bulbs are dwindling to nothing on retailers shelves. You have to know where to look mom-and-pop hardware stores mostly to get your hands on a beige-sleeved pack of Hungarian-made GE Bsica bulbs or a yellow pack of GE Blanco Suaves both with a bold stamp on the side reading NOT FOR SALE FOR USE IN THE UNITED STATES. Strategist writer Erin Schwartz spoke to architects designers and LED enthusiasts to find the best lightbulb in a sea of bad options. Read about the very best LED lightbulbs here Years ago I got a head start joining the LED revolution with fervor. Screwing one into a socket vacated by an incandescent felt like the easiest good-citizen points Id ever earned as if I could keep on doing things exactly as before but with better and greener results. And the light coming out of the things was well it was light right? I dont remember how long it took to notice or think I had noticed a series of letdowns: a faded look to the page of a storybook a flicker in the corner of the eye those sudden unexplained failures or half-failures. A slate-blue sock that was indistinguishable from a charcoal-gray one till I brought them over by the window. A certain unreality was creeping in. We were renovating our apartment and one day our contractor summoned me to the bathroom in dismay. He adjusted the dimmer switch hed just installed and a new LED fixture began strobing like we were in a seven-by-eight-foot basement dance club. We gave up and had him install a normal switch. The quirks were becoming malfunctions were becoming betrayals. Things I might once have ignored caught my eye. Out in the world I noticed more and more public spaces had a frigid cast and a liminal flicker. The interiors of bubble-tea shops and ice-cream parlors took on a queasy aspect. Getting up in the early-morning darkness in a San Francisco Airbnb I could see the bedside lamplight trembling. I started to confide in people that I was seeing things that the light was wrong and usually they knew exactly what I was talking about. Over lunch a friend unspooled an epic account of his quest for dimmable bulbs that would actually dim. A stranger in a shared taxi forwarded me a blog post hed written about his conviction that the color of objects lit by LEDs was washed out and about his incredulity at how fast they failed. A technology that was once the epitome of simplicity (How many people does it take to change a lightbulb?) has become an ever-branching set of complications. Where before I would pick up a pack of 60-watt soft-white incandescents at the hardware store I now search the internet for the highest-rated equivalent LEDs then systematically cross-check those equivalences point by point. Everything you used to know about indoor illumination is outmoded. For 60 watts worth of incandescent light youre looking for about 800 lumens of LED output. To make that light come out the approximate color that the old bulb generated you need to check the listed bulb temperature and make sure its 2700 degrees Kelvin. Got it? Hang on. If you want the objects that the light shines on to look the same youre getting into a different color question specifically the color-rendering index. Your incandescent bulb a glowing analog object its light coming from a heated wire had a CRI of 100 for a full unbroken spectrum. Your typical LED bulb shining with cold digital electroluminescence will not. Some colors will be missing or just different. If youre lucky the LED will have a CRI of 90 or higher. The box may not list any CRI at all. Oh but: Experts agree that the color-rendering index doesnt really index how colors are rendered. Some bulbs with a 90 CRI make things look wan; some with an 80 are passable. There are better more useful metrics but you cant have them. Nobody puts them on the packaging. One lighting professional an LED advocate no less told me he sometimes calls up the manufacturer and asks to talk to an engineer to get the real specs. To study this stuff to attempt to stare at light and understand it makes you suspicious of any claims to objective truth. Snap a picture of an oddly tinted space and Apples software will convert the image according to what it has machine-learned that white ought to be. The eye-brain system does its own constant white balancing too. I downloaded an extremely erratic color-temperature app to try to get some grounding an amateur feel for what professionals are trained to spot. I interrogated lighting designers engineers decorators and researchers. Most of them were enthusiasts about the technology. They praised LEDs at their best for their unmatched efficiency precision and practical power. They also said things like Theres a lot of nonperformance and Superbeta phase and Dont give up on beauty and Youre going to spend $200 on four bulbs at Home Depot and You start seeing grayness. Grayness I was definitely seeing grayness. There ought to be a term for what happens when the light gets weaker and everyone acts as if its as strong as always. By the science by the ethics even by law the reign of the LED is a certainty. It is taking the place of the most standard and omnipresent technology we know. And yet when you flip the light switch you dont know whats going to happen. Ecologically the case for LEDs is unassailable. Economically and practically too theyre a godsend. Integrated LED fixtures are little miracles: In our kitchen and living room which were gloomy and fixtureless respectively the contractor put in can lights without the can thin as saucers brilliant and free from the oppressive heat of recessed incandescents. The heat! Most of the watts of electricity that flow into an incandescent bulb dont come out as visible light at all but as infrared. Its a handy feature if youre using a bulb to incubate chicken eggs or power an Easy-Bake Oven but otherwise pure waste. Every LED that replaces an incandescent reduces that baseline waste by as much as 90 percent. Multiplied by dozens of sockets in a household 125 million households in the country the difference is millions of metric tons of carbon. As habit inertia and malfeasance keep the planets carbon-consumption graphs veering upward toward collapse the change from incandescent to digital lighting is one thing pulling measurably downward on the curve. And joining in will save the average American home an estimated $225 a year. LEDs in this light start to seem almost Promethean. Walk by a film shoot on Henry Street and youre no longer stepping over cables running from a generator truck. The lighting crews dont need to haul their own power supply with them anymore. In place of sweltering fire-hazard tungsten lights they can now hold fixtures in their hands right on top of the actors. This change happened incredibly quickly. Less than a decade after the Nobel physics committee honored Isamu Akasaki Hiroshi Amano and Shuji Nakamura for using gallium nitride to create powerful and efficient blue LEDs their breakthrough work is everywhere: in headlights streetlights and flashlights; in construction-site tripods and Broadway rigging; in regal architectural coffers and the exploratory ends of colonoscopes. And in my home. When they shine that is. When they dont when this basic piece of household equipment gets finicky or when the colors of things start slipping away I feel my thoughts flickering somewhere darker too. Its embarrassing to resent a product thats doing this much good knowing all the while how grievance politics has dragged energy efficiency into the culture wars to the point where people who dont even cook are fetishizing gas stoves. Its literally a Donald Trump rally line: I say Why do I always look so orange? The broken clock twice a day. You know why. Because of the new light. Theyre terrible. You look terrible. There is a world almost within reach in which LED lighting could be aesthetically fabulous. But right now its one more thing that overpromises and under-delivers. What were starting to glimpse is a new phase in which good light once easy to achieve and available to everyone becomes a luxury product or the province of technological obsessives. The rest of the world will look a little more faded. Metropolitan Museum of Art. Second floor European Paintings Gallery 614. I was standing in front of Jacques-Louis Davids 1816 portrait of General tienne-Maurice Grard and I was gazing not at the depicted light falling on Grards pale brow or at the muddled play of clouds and gold in the sky behind him but past the frame to the ceiling. Up there mounted behind the glass of a frosted laylight were rows of LED spotlights forming bright blurry circles. They should have been uniform. Some were white; others were turning a sickly magenta or green. The person who had directed my attention to them was Amy Nelson the museums head of lighting design. The quality of the light she said is just not what we want it to be. Nelson is in charge of the Mets ambitious project to overhaul the museums lighting for the LED age a long piecemeal process that can involve anything from workers simply swapping out bulbs to architects and designers entirely rebuilding displays. Among the goals Nelson said is to eventually fill the museum with a standard white light 3000 degrees Kelvin slightly crisper and cooler than the 2700 of a soft-white incandescent bulb. That was the theory. Now we were looking up at the reality of one of the Mets early LED installations from the mid-2010s. The galleries looked beautiful when they opened Nelson said. But the lamps had gone screwy. They were meant to have a life span of at least seven years but even before that their color had started to visibly decay. We walked on through more of European Paintings under still more fixtures that were shining past their point of practical failure. It just looks like Christmas lights up there Nelson said. What Nelson had discovered is that LEDs are not good or bad but more like weird. The finickiness reflects the fundamental nature of the product. The LED bulb is the shape of an old lightbulb and it fits into a lightbulb socket and it gives off light but its not so much a lightbulb as a lightbulb emulator. What it is is a computer. Where an old-fashioned tungsten filament can generally be trusted to be either intact or broken the drivers and diodes inside the new bulbs are subject to the kinds of glitches and compatibility errors you get from other electronics especially once dimmers get involved. They can crash or hang or audibly buzz from electromagnetic interference or go haywire from being fed the wrong kind of power signal. LEDs in other words can be broken even when they appear to be working. Its still on. You still have light coming out Nelson said. They dont just fail or burn out like a halogen source does. Oftentimes theres light loss or theres color shift. When an LED bulb package says its supposed to last a certain number of years that doesnt tell you when the light will go dark. Its a guess about an arc of degradation. The end date is when the bulb is estimated to be 70 percent as bright as it started out. The impetus is on you to decide when things have started to look uncanny. I wish that would be addressed by the industry like maybe if it reached a certain light-loss factor it would just shut down you know? Nelson said. Or if it shifted in color past a certain point it went into failure mode. Earlier in a gallery of ancient Chinese objects lit by halogens Nelson showed me a Shang-dynasty bronze in a display case. When the setup was created her designers were able to get focused four-degree spotlights to isolate items from their backgrounds. But lighting manufacturers are abandoning halogen as an obsolete technology creating a shortage of reliable parts as they retool for an all-LED future. Now the tightest beam we can find is a 12-degree Nelson said. The bronze sat in a loose puddle of light making the sides and back of the display as bright as the object itself and stray purple rays spilled out of the halogens on the ceiling. Its very hard to come by quality she said. In some places newer and more finely tuned LEDs work magic. Nelson pointed out a Winslow Homer with watercolor oceans in stunning blues brought to vibrant life even at the low foot-candle output required to protect the art. But not everybody of course has the Mets resources. And once you know what to look for you cant unsee it. A few weeks after I visited the museum I watched a small ensemble of musicians run through new pieces by teen composers in a midtown studio. The facility was built 11 years ago and the room still looked brand new but when my eye went up to the ceiling I could see the same color decay as at the Met. The shadows on the floor pointing this way and that were in pinks and greens. The light was coming apart. For something you may assume is universal and constant light turns out to be a culturally mediated and often paradoxical phenomenon. Our ideas about it start 93 million miles away eight minutes and 20 seconds as the photon flies with our friend the sun. The sun is close to what physicists call an ideal Planckian blackbody radiator delivering a smooth and broad electromagnetic spectrum from radio waves up through infrared visible light ultraviolet and X-rays. A hot tungsten wire does the same only with a much narrower range of output tilted toward the red and infrared. But here unfortunately for the layperson the terminology reaches a point that is profoundly counterintuitive. In physical light-emission terms blue is a hotter temperature than red. The sun looks yellow up in the sky but with a surface temperature of 5772 degrees Kelvin or about 10000-degrees Fahrenheit it has much more blue in it than an incandescent filament at 2700 degrees Kelvin does. (A red-hot steel bar in turn would be somewhere down around 1000 degrees Kelvin.) The higher the color temperature the colder in everyday speech we say the light looks. Warm colors are the colors of the things humans experience as being warm. Obviously enough through millennia of human existence the point of reference for artificial illumination was firelight or lamplight. But they dont burn at the same temperature as a star. If you bring a light source that is actually the color of the sun indoors it stops looking golden and appears strikingly severely blue. What to do about this fact is a debate thats been unresolved for well over a century: Should the ideal artificial light approximate the sun or should it approximate a flame? From an engineers point of view the answer seems clear. Blue light is rational: These are the literal technical specifications of our ultimate light source. A bulb with its proper proportions of violet light as determined by our natural illuminant the sun is to be desired and not avoided declared a piece in the July 10 1897 issue of the journal Western Electrician. But with certain exceptions the incursion of fluorescent tubes the creation of blue-tinged daylight incandescents it was the warm-light faction that ruled most of the electric age. The tones of a standard incandescent bulb may have been too warm scientifically speaking spilling emissions right off the bottom of the visible spectrum into useless waves of heat but they were what the lightbulb-using public expected. Still today this preference for orangish light over bluish is not universal. Herv Descottes the founder of the high-end lighting-design firm LObservatoire International told me that he once worked on two projects at the same time: a museum in Helsinki and a shopping center in Hong Kong. He flew to Helsinki for a meeting and in the meeting room in the center of the table they light a candle he said. Its very Scandinavian you know. Get the warmth. He then flew to Hong Kong where the temperature and humidity he recalled were both in the 90s. That meeting was held in a space with no windows and ceiling lamps cranking out 5000 degrees Kelvin. Because when weve put in cool light we feel that its cooler outside he said. Another time in Singapore Descottes found himself arguing with clients who wanted the coldest brightest lighting for the executive floors of a tower to signify abundance. Medical science surprisingly comes down on the side of the cozy candle-burning romantics. The bodys internal clock is tuned to sunlight and when artificial light imitates the sun as the warnings about using your phone at bedtime tell you things start going wrong. At the start of this century biologists pinned down the workings of intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells a whole separate sensing apparatus in the human eye beyond the brightness-sensing rods and the color-sensing cones you learn about in school. As with the taste buds that detect umami the retinal ganglion cells were there but generations of scientists had left them out of their perceptual models. These cells are keyed to light between blue and green with a peak sensitivity to wavelengths of about 480 nanometers around cyan. Theyre not actually connecting to our visual cortex said Michael Royer a color expert at the Department of Energys Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Theyre going to other parts of our brain the prefrontal cortex the hypothalamus these parts of the brain that are really critical to all our other functioning. And theyre just sending signals: Hey its daytime right now so its time to be alert. If blue light is overstimulating and clammy itd be better for our brains to have less of it in indoors especially late at night. But blue light is also cheaper. Adding warm tones to a blue LED requires extra material and effort. To get something in the whitish color range of traditional indoor lighting manufacturers coat the underlying blue elements with phosphor which shifts some of the photons to longer wavelengths that is greens and yellows and reds. (This coating partly explains why LED color varies over time. As the diode heats and cools again and again maybe the phosphor will curl a little bit says Royer. And those tiny changes will allow a different amount of blue photons to escape versus yellow.) Last year the New York Times warned in a front-page story that lower-end retailers like dollar stores or convenience shops still extensively stock their shelves with traditional or halogen incandescent bulbs even as stores serving more affluent communities have shifted to selling far more efficient LEDs. This was the Times fretted preventing poorer people from receiving the benefits of energy efficiency. The studies the newspaper cited finding incandescent bulbs on discount-store shelves were both a few years old. I checked my nearest dollar store and discovered that there were plenty of LED bulbs to be had there. Their color temperature was 6400 Kelvin the harshest cheapest possible light a light so blue that when I Googled it what came up were grow bulbs. The efficient future of lighting now includes poor people; it just does it by making lighting one more form of privation. Checking for spares in my moms basement recently I discovered that she had picked up a pack of 5000 Kelvin bulbs to replace her living-room floodlights. Of all the people to have made this mistake! Mom used to teach schoolchildren about color perception showing them how that part of their vision faded in the periphery or how a wheel of colored panels mounted on a salad spinner would turn gray. But she had no idea what 5000 Kelvin meant and the package had no color-rendering index at all. Had she ever put the things into her ceiling shed have ended up with a living room that looked like the inside of a refrigerator. Its true that CRI numbers are kind of useless. All else being equal if light on an object gets dimmer if you start with an object outdoors in full sunlight then bring it indoors to that same daylight but less of it now coming through a window the object will appear more gray. The way color rendering is defined the diminished light is performing at the same level as it did outside. The color-rendering index scores it the same. But the object looks worse. In lower light people prefer to see the vividness of colors boosted especially in the reds. Incandescent lights naturally boost reds as they get dimmer and the temperature of their filament gets lower. LEDs again operate in a fundamentally different way. Many cannot dim at all; those that are advertised as dimmable do not reduce their temperature or even reduce the intensity of the light they put out. Instead a common method is to adjust how frequently they switch off and on which is dozens of times per second. Extra-sensitive people can sometimes detect this flicker or find themselves with unexplained headaches and dizziness. For everyone the light gets even duller looking than before. Royer is a fellow at the Illuminating Engineering Society (motto: Improving Life Through Quality of Light) which has created an elaborate alternative to CRI called TM-30. In this scheme bulbs are classified under three separate but interrelated categories: P V and F for preference vividness and fidelity each of which is further broken down into subcategories indicating performance level. Manufacturers and retailers have not agreed to this new scoring system. They dont want to provide a lot of information that might confuse consumers Royer said. But consumers arent going to understand information until its provided to them. If you dont mind spending extra money say three or four times as much per bulb plus a $60 controller and fooling around inside an app you can get color-tunable lightbulbs today. They have different colored LEDs inside instead of simply phosphor-treated blue ones. The Department of Energy notes that programming the bulb controls may not be intuitive that tunable whites wont necessarily match any other whites and that colors may come out cartoonlike. And they wont save as much electricity. The LED industry is still trying to develop an efficient green LED to go with the red blue and amber ones. Royer remains hopeful and is encouraged by the continued search for improvement. Tunable LEDs may overtake phosphor-converted bulbs in efficiency by the 2030s. Until then theres amber nail polish. Ordinary transparent amber from the drugstore. I highly recommend every person who reads this story buy this nail polish and start painting it on their LED bulbs said Robin Standefer. It is a game changer. Standefer is one of the founders of Roman and Williams Buildings and Interiors a design company that works with Descottes and LObservatoire. We were talking on Zoom and behind her was a paper Noguchi lamp. Its the most beautiful light in the world she said but you put an LED in and its not that beautiful. To compensate shed wrapped the bulb in a filter. I wanted to see the best possible application of LED lighting so Standefer said I had to go downtown. At dusk I took a blazingly lit N train (my light-meter app reported 4292 Kelvin) to the Roman and Williams Guild and La Mercerie their combined retail store and restaurant on Howard Street. The light inside was opulent and gorgeous. Tall candles flickered on the dining tables but everything else was LED. As I studied the fixtures in the store in burnished bronzes with glass that was dark and pearly or a delicate nude pink and with prices starting in the low four figures I realized that the surrounding lighting had subtly dimmed and warmed shifting its Kelvin temperature for nighttime. In the restaurant copper pans gleamed and a row of double-magnum bottles of ros glowed extra pink. The breads crust was shaded in lush browns. Stacked white towels were creamy and spotlights from tracks overhead threw the shadows of the candles this way and that on the tables. It was sublime. And if I really wanted to experience LEDs at their most exquisite Standefer said I should see what Descottes and Roman and Williams had done at Le Coucou another client. I walked two blocks east and stepped inside. The restaurant was wonderfully dim the dimness alive with color and warmth. Huge chandeliers hung with rings of dozens of flame-tipped bulbs in rose-pink inverted glass cups. That glass Standefer had told me was Roman and Williamss special formula for LED bulbs the work of a septuagenarian glassblower in Brooklyn. If she stops blowing this glass I dont know what Ill do because shes been the only person to achieve a very beautiful color in the glass she said. Inside the bulbs were the little Vs of filaments. You can do remarkable things with LED filaments these days reviving old-timey clear bulb shapes with all sorts of whorls or zigzags. I swore they looked just like the real thing. I was trying to figure out how to describe the particular color the light made on the white ductwork above the color of the flesh of a white peach I decided when I ran into John Barclay the facilities manager for Le Coucou and its sister restaurants. Barclay studied theater lighting in college before going into hospitality and when LEDs arrived he gave himself a crash education in the technical ins and outs. Now he was near evangelical about the LEDs. He ran through the interplay of the lighting sources: The chandeliers were at about 1700 Kelvin he said while spotlights above the tables were at 2400 and task lighting in the kitchen was slightly colder at 2700 to give the staff a precise look at the plated food on the way out. Id been told I had to see the restroom. I went to see the restroom. The all-pervading glow was so honeyed I couldnt tell if the grab bar by the toilet was mere steel or luxurious brass. Maybe I was wrong about LEDs. Maybe I just had to be patient to wait and let this luminous future trickle down to the rest of us. Later upon follow-up questioning I learned that the warmly glowing filaments in the Le Coucou chandeliers are not in fact LEDs. They are hot wire filaments. Inside the LED-optimized glass of the chandelier fittings the LED-forward restaurant is still using incandescents for that ineffable and as yet irreplaceable glow. I asked Barclay how he would navigate the future. In the near term he said I have a large stock of those bulbs. By submitting your email you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice and to receive email correspondence from us. Thank you for subscribing and supporting our journalism . If you prefer to read in print you can also find this article in the March 27 2023 issue of New York Magazine. Want more stories like this one? 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GOOD

Theseus DHT Protocol (2018) https://wootfish.github.io/theseus.dht/ killittosaveit The Theseus DHT protocol lets you create distributed hash tables (DHTs) with unusually strong security properties. Anyone can store data in the DHT and receive an estimate of how long that data will be stored. Once stored data is very hard to remove or modify. Small data is stored longer; this makes the DHT well-suited for exchanging things like lists of peers signed cryptographic hashes compressed text and so on. Theseus DHTs routing is based on Kademlia which is a simple well-analyzed and very efficient DHT protocol. Unfortunately Kademlia suffers from several significant security setbacks. It is very vulnerable to Sybil attacks which can result in the modification or erasure of any data in the network. It also uses no message encryption whatsoever. Once upon a time these may not have seemed like serious issues but times are changing . Theseus DHT addresses these and other concerns offering robustness in the face of Sybil attacks through a combination of novel strategies . It also adds new desirable features like strong encryption optional authentication optional perfect forward secrecy resistance to man-in-the-middle attacks and more. It runs over TCP allowing it to be used with anonymity layers like Tor. The protocols design permits easy mathematical analysis allowing for rigorous proofs of its (considerable) resilience against Sybil attacks a property which increases in degree as the network itself grows. To a passive observer all Theseus DHT protocol traffic is indistinguishable from random noise. Not only that but even message sizes can be made to follow arbitrary patterns or no pattern at all. All this is meant to make the protocol very hard to fingerprint. Any node which is able to get a trusted introduction to the network also enjoys considerable protection against active interference from malicious third parties (e.g. man-in-the-middle attacks). All cryptography is handled through the Noise Protocol Framework which is exceptionally well-designed and well-documented . The protocol runs over TCP this means (among other things) that it can be used in conjunction with Tor. The Theseus DHT is being developed as a component of the overall Theseus project. Since the DHTs resistance to Sybil attacks increases as the network grows the DHT is being developed as a stand-alone library. That way it can also be used in any other application where a simple secure distributed hash table is desired. The Theseus DHT is designed to be very good at bootstrapping overlay networks and to be easily extensible. For these reasons building custom peer-to-peer applications on top of the Theseus DHT is trivial. A peers presence on the DHT does not by itself indicate which DHT-based application theyre using (unless they choose to disclose that). This is a nice privacy property to have. On top of that the more users the DHT gets the more resilient and reliable it is for everyone. Release date: 4/20/2018 Revision date: 10/8/2018 Revision number: 2 The Theseus DHT protocol runs over TCP. All traffic is encrypted. The core of the protocol is a set of RPCs exchanged over a protocol called KRPC (which is also used in the Mainline DHT implementation of Kademlia). Peers possess a set of 20-byte pseudorandom node IDs. Peers keep routing tables which are maintained as in Kademlia; these track peers whose node IDs are close to any local node IDs by the XOR metric. Routing queries are supported via RPC. A peer may have as many node IDs as they like though theyll have to track data stored at any of them. Node IDs are generated by running a timestamp and a random bytestring through a state-of-the-art memory-hard cryptographic hash function Argon2id. The result is trimmed and used. The node ID is always distributed along with its preimage so that remote peers may verify that the two match. The timestamp is used to enforce an expiration date on node IDs. These measures form the core of the networks Sybil resistance . Data is stored at addresses chosen from the same 160-bit space as node IDs. Any raw binary data may be submitted. Tags certifying some property about this data may be requested. Data is stored by sending it in an RPC message. Typically data is stored at the k closest peers to an address where k is as in the Kademlia routing table. The value returned from this RPC will be an estimate of how long that data will be stored at the remote host. Note that it is not necessary for every one of these hosts to be honest: all we need is for one of them to be. The storage duration for data depends on many factors . All protocol traffic is indistinguishable from random noise . Length-prefixing schemes are used on both protocol ciphertexts and plaintexts and messages may be padded to any degree. This allows arbitrary message chunking which is essential for traffic obfuscation . From BEP-5 : The KRPC protocol is a simple RPC mechanism consisting of bencoded dictionaries sent over UDP. A single query packet is sent out and a single packet is sent in response. There is no retry. There are three message types: query response and error. A KRPC message is a single dictionary with three keys common to every message and additional keys depending on the type of message. Every message has a key t with a string value representing a transaction ID. This transaction ID is generated by the querying node and is echoed in the response so responses may be correlated with multiple queries to the same node. The transaction ID should be encoded as a short string of binary numbers typically 2 characters are enough as they cover 2^16 outstanding queries. Every message also has a key y with a single character value describing the type of message. The value of the y key is one of q for query r for response or e for error. Queries or KRPC message dictionaries with a y value of q contain two additional keys; q and a. Key q has a string value containing the method name of the query. Key a has a dictionary value containing named arguments to the query. Responses or KRPC message dictionaries with a y value of r contain one additional key r. The value of r is a dictionary containing named return values. Response messages are sent upon successful completion of a query. Errors or KRPC message dictionaries with a y value of e contain one additional key e. The value of e is a list. The first element is an integer representing the error code. The second element is a string containing the error message. Errors are sent when a query cannot be fulfilled. We define a number of errors below . We specify six KRPC queries: find get put info hs_suggest and hs_request . Applications based on Theseus may add their own queries in addition to these. This mirrors Kademlias find_node query. Takes a target DHT address as an argument. The queried node returns the closest nodes to that target in its routing table. The precise number of contacts may depend on the state of the queried peers routing table but under ideal circumstances it should equal the routing tables value of K. Arguments: {addr: <20-byte address>} Response: {nodes: <compact node info>} Try to retrieve data from a node. Takes a DHT address as an argument. If the queried peer has no data to return it instead offers routing info using the same return signature as find_node . If the address is omitted all addr: data pairs stored at the node should be returned. The tags optional argument if provided should map to a list of strings. Data without the specified tags listed will not be returned. If tags is omitted or left empty then only untagged data will be returned. The response format for untagged data is simply a list of data items encoded as bytestrings. For tagged data its a list of (n+1)-tuples where n is the number of tags requested. Tag values are returned alphabetized by tag name. Arguments: {addr: <20-byte address> tags: [tag1 tag2 ...]} Response: <datum> denotes [<bytes> <tag> <tag> ...] if tags were requested <bytes> otherwise. Store some data in the DHT. Takes an address as an argument. There are several optional arguments. The response should specify the amount of time in seconds for which the remote peer intends to store this data. The sybil optional argument if included should map to 0 or 1 depending on whether the querying peer believes a Sybil attack targeting this address is taking place. This is essentially a hint to the queried peer that they should attempt to verify this claim and take appropriate action . The tags optional argument should map to a list of desired tags for the submitted data. Only a couple tags are currently supported . If unsupported tags are requested the query should not fail: instead the queried peer should just populate the corresponding value fields with empty bytestrings. The t optional argument allows the querier to request a storage duration for their data. This may or may not be honored at the query recipients discretion. The recommended behavior is to set data storage durations as the minimum of this keys value (if given) and some internally-computed default duration. Arguments: {addr: <20-byte address> data: <bytes> tags: [tag1 tag2] sybil: <bool>} Response: {t: 99999} Used for metadata exchange between peers. Both arguments are technically optional. If neither is provided the query should be treated as a no-op and the response should be an empty dictionary. The info optional argument allows the querier to advertise local info keys. This is primarily useful at the start of a connection or when a peer wants to announce a change in local info. The keys optional argument if included should be a list of info keys the querying peer wants to request from the remote peer. If keys is provided the return value should include an info key which follows the same format as the info query argument. Applications using the Theseus DHT should also feel free to add their own metadata keys and are encouraged to use a uniform and distinctive prefix for these keys to avoid naming conflicts. For instance Theseus-specific parameters like Bloom filters for search will be prefixed theseus_ . Arguments: {info: {key1: <data> key2: <data> ...} keys: [key3 key4 ...]} Response: {info: {key3: <data> key4: <data> ...}} Messages of this type are purely informational and may be exchanged any number of times between handshakes. Their purpose is to communicate re-handshake parameters that the sending party would find acceptable. The following parameters need to be established: The initiator argument should map to 1 if the querier wishes to play the role of initiator in the new handshake and 0 if they wish to be the responder. The handshake argument specifies the full Noise protocol name for the new handshake to be performed. Rules for handshake parameters are outlined in the section on encryption . If the Noise handshake pattern is KNpsk0 or KKpsk0 then the initiator_s argument should be present and should map to a static public key to be used by the initiator. If the Noise handshake pattern is NKpsk0 or KKpsk0 then the responder_s argument should be present and should map to a static public key to be used by the responder. Arguments: {initiator: 1 handshake: Noise_KK_25519_ChaChaPoly_BLAKE2b initiator_s: <32-byte Curve25519 public key> responder_s: <32-byte Curve25519 public key>} Response: {} Messages of this type specify concrete re-handshake parameters. If the remote peer finds these parameters unacceptable it may reply with an error code. A non-error response indicates that the remote node accepts the re-handshake parameters. After sending a non-error response the responder should immediately enter the new handshake. Likewise for the receiver who should immediately enter the handshake after receiving such a response. The arguments initiator handshake initiator_s and responder_s are all specified as in hs_suggest . The argument psk should be included in both the query and response. In each case it should map to a bytestring of arbitrary contents. It is strongly suggested that these contents be a random string of length equal to the output size of the hash function specified in the handshake argument. The values of both the query and responses psk arguments are to be hashed using the handshake arguments specified hash function. Their hashes are then to be XORed and the resulting value used as a PSK for the new handshake (applied via the psk0 Noise protocol modifier). Arguments: {initiator: 1 handshake: Noise_KK_25519_ChaChaPoly_BLAKE2b initiator_s: <32-byte Curve25519 public key> responder_s: <32-byte Curve25519 public key> psk: <bytestring>} Response: {psk: <bytestring>} Errors at the KRPC level are prefixed 1xx. Errors at the Theseus DHT protocol level are prefixed 2xx. Errors of any other type are prefixed 3xx. So far the following error codes are defined: Peers must provide at least the following info keys: An extensions info key is suggested for DHT-integrated applications that want to advertise extra functionality to their peers. This key should map to a list of short bytestrings enumerating the extensions in use. The namespace for extension names is of course shared between all applications on the DHT so anyone making use of this feature are strongly encouraged to names that are not likely to give rise to collisions. For instance when Theseus proper is built upon the Theseus DHT its peers will advertise extensions: [theseus] . Since the namespace for query names is also shared it is encouraged wherever reasonable to prefix query names with a uniform extension name. A modified Kademlia-style routing table is used. This consists of buckets covering ranges whose union is the full address space from 0 to 2 160 . Each bucket may contain up to k nodes. When a new contact is discovered and inserted into the table the bucket its ID falls into is identified. If this bucket has room the node is inserted into the table. Otherwise if one of the local peers own node IDs falls into the bucket range then the bucket is split. This replaces it with two new smaller buckets which bisect the original buckets range. The old buckets contacts are moved into the new buckets and then the insert is reattempted. The Kademlia paper suggests implementing this structure as a binary tree. Well provisionally set k=16 for now pending full mathematical analysis. Peers are free to use higher values of k locally if they so desire. Routing queries should return up to k of the closest The proper operation of the DHT relies on addresses being uniformly distributed and nodes being unable to choose their own addresses. To achieve this we allow nodes to choose their ID preimage and derive their actual node IDs from a cryptographic hash of this preimage. The node ID and ID preimage must always be transmitted together so remote peers can verify that they match. The hash function used is Argon2id. This is a state-of-the-art memory-hard hash function usually used for hashing passwords. It is designed to make parallelized brute-force search of the input space as difficult as possible. The work parameters we will use are memlimit=2 28 and opslimit=3 (these are the values of the PyNaCl library constants MEMLIMIT_MODERATE and OPSLIMIT_MODERATE respectively). The preimage format is UNIX time in network byte order followed by 6 bytes from a CSPRNG. The rationale behind this design is discussed here . Tags are specified via a tags argument within individual RPCs. Nodes should implement all specified tags. If a node receives a request to populate tags it doesnt recognize the node should respond with error 203 as specified below . The only specified tags at this time are ip and port . They should be populated with the observed IP or observed port of a remote peer. Remember that if NAT is in use it may cause these fields to take unexpected values. This is mostly left up to individual nodes to determine. In general a node should try to hold on to any data it receives for as long as it can. Nodes should also try to report their intended storage durations as accurately as possible ideally to within the second. It would make sense to implement a scheme where a node has a hard memory cap and it dynamically reduces storage times based on how close the node is to hitting this cap. A more detailed discussion of this topic is forthcoming. Encryption of Theseus protocol messages is handled through the Noise Protocol Framework. The authoritative documentation for Noise can be found here and the Python library we use is here . All traffic is encrypted and all encrypted messages are indistinguishable from random noise. Messages may be chunked to arbitrary sizes and plaintexts may optionally be padded before encryption further reducing fingerprintability. In order to avoid any fingerprintable protocol preamble we will specify a default handshake pattern and ciphersuite: Noise_NK_25519_ChaChaPoly_BLAKE2b . The NK pattern here provides for an exchange of ephemeral public keys to establish an encrypted channel and for authentication of the responder (using their node key). The initial ephemeral key must be encoded with Elligator to keep it from being trivially fingerprintable. After the initial handshake and establishment of the encrypted channel additional handshakes may be performed. These are negotiated through RPC queries and responses. Once the peers agree on parameters like the handshake pattern and the public keys to be used for authentication they may discard their current CipherState objects and within the same TCP connection start from scratch executing a new handshake. In order for the new handshakes session to inherit the security properties of the old session a PSK must be negotiated within the old session and included in the new handshake via the psk0 modifier. The handshake patterns which may be used are NNpsk0 KNpsk0 NKpsk0 KKpsk0 . The pattern may use any supported curve cipher or hash function. Wherever possible the default choices of Curve25519 ChaChaPoly and BLAKE2b should be favored. These defaults may change though this will probably only happen if cryptographic weaknesses in any of them are discovered. If for some reason two peers dont want to use a PSK i.e. if they want to restart their Noise session from scratch then rather than re-hanshaking they should just close and re-open their connection. Every encrypted Theseus protocol message is preceded by an encrypted declaration of the protocol messages size. Whenever a plaintext is ready to send the plaintext bytestrings length is calculated encoded as a big-endian 32-bit integer and encrypted yielding a 20-byte ciphertext (4 message bytes + 16 AE tag bytes). This encrypted length announcement is sent then the plaintext is encrypted and sent. The process for receiving higher-level protocol messages is therefore essentially this: This scheme allows the size of every ciphertext to be known in advance which in turn allows arbitrary message chunking without risk of any ambiguity around message boundaries. Individual packets sent across the wire can therefore be arbitrarily sized meaning the protocol can assume essentially any traffic pattern. Its probably worth noting that this scheme creates a theoretical limit on the size of Theseus protocol messages: 2 32 - 1 = 4294967295 bytes. Thats 4 GiB so any application running up against this limit has probably made some big mistakes along the way to the point where the size limit is the least of their concerns. In environments which arent likely to have 4 GiB of RAM to spare at any given moment applications are encouraged to set smaller internal limits on message size maybe 2 20 bytes or so. This suggestion while much smaller is still conservatively large as a sort of future-proofing. Theseus DHT protocol traffic will probably never even come close to this limit. Individual Noise protocol messages are capped at 65535=2 16 -1 bytes of ciphertext so protocol messages exceeding 65535 - 16 = 65519 bytes of plaintext will of course need to be sent in chunks. It goes without saying that in cases where performance is critical message chunking will only slow down the transfer of data between two peers increasing the time required to perform tasks like lookups or information retrieval. Thus this feature is likely only of interest to the extremely privacy-conscious. In some ways (though notably not where anonymity is concerned) the trade-off resembles that made by a person who decides to route all their web traffic through Tor. The critical thing here is that even if most users choose not to make this trade-off they still get to make the choice . In stark contrast with most modern systems here the decision of how far a user wants to go to protect their privacy is theirs to make. Each message contains an RPC embedded in a netstring. Anything after the end of the netstring is discarded. Thus any message may contain an arbitrary amount of padding or no padding at all. Empty plaintexts with nothing but padding should be silently discarded and should not be considered errors. Release date: 4/20/2018 Revision date: 5/15/2018 Revision number: 1 Just to clarify: Users on the DHT run an individual peer. This peer has a routing table and a number of node IDs. Each node ID represents a specific node being hosted by the peer. When a peers contact info is returned in a routing query only the peers closest nodes ID is included. Carrying out a Sybil attack aimed at censoring or modifying data at a specific key requires the ability to deploy at least k nodes near a target address. This requires finding hash preimages for at least k node IDs which all share a given prefix. The best known strategy for finding these nodes given a strong hash function is brute-force search which Argon2id is specifically designed to render extremely computationally expensive. Putting expiration dates on node IDs prevents malicious peers from squatting indefinitely on significant node IDs once appropriate preimages for them are found. Brute-force search can also be used to just deploy a tremendous number of nodes across the entire network if the attacker just uses every hash they generate. These node IDs are guaranteed to be evenly distributed across the address space allowing us to mathematically estimate the impact of an adversary based on how fast they can produce new node IDs. Real-World Sybil Attacks in BitTorrent Mainline DHT offers a taxonomy in which the targeted attack described above is termed a vertical Sybil attack and the broader generalized attack is termed a horizontal Sybil attack. The size of the entire DHT peer network can be straightforwardly estimated. Prior research on this subject can be found here: Measuring Large-Scale Distributed Systems: Case of BitTorrent Mainline DHT . An accurate estimate of network size opens the door to all sorts of interesting mathematical analysis on network properties. Carrying out a horizontal Sybil attack requires a huge increase in the number of nodes in the network. Carrying out a vertical Sybil attack requires a huge increase in the node density at a specific address. Both of these produce easily-identified signatures which allow the network to identify and take steps to mitigate in-progress Sybil attacks. Reasonable countermeasures against Sybil attacks would include increasing storage duration for all data increasing the storage radius for data (e.g. dynamically scaling from storing data at the k closest nodes to an address to the 2k closest nodes. Currently all traffic takes place over IPv4. This is just because it makes my life simpler as a developer for now. But there is a good reason to want IPv6 support: Most routers perform NAT on IPv4 traffic whereas performing NAT on IPv6 is less common (which makes sense since IPv4s dependence on NAT is one of the problems IPv6 was designed to solve). This general lack of NAT means that IPv6 is much more attractive in a peer-to-peer context since it allows hosts positioned behind routers (as virtually all personal computers are) to communicate without the need for complications like hole-punching. Thus IPv6 support is a major priority albeit a deferred one (for now). Presently it is possible for attackers to steal observed IDs. It is not hard to imagine a situation where an attacker with significant network presence could listen for IDs close to an address it wants to attack then start announcing the observed node ID as its own. The peers closest to the address should have already seen an advertisement from the peer who originally generated the ID and should thus reject the attackers advertisement of the same ID (and in fact should probably blacklist the attacking peer). However peers further away from the address could end up attributing this node ID to the attacker if they 1) have room in the relevant routing table bucket and 2) havent already seen the node ID. This could result in routing lookups which pass through the further peers leading to the attacker. It is difficult to model precisely how serious of a problem this is but it should be mitigated nevertheless. It is perhaps worth noting that the attack is trivial to detect (as a lookup would almost certainly end up seeing the stolen ID attributed to both sets of contact info) but that detecting the attacker is much more difficult. Thus detecting the attack is not sufficient to curb its effectiveness. This problem has a solution which is simple in principle but challenging to design properly. The core idea is to include a peers contact info in the calculation of their node IDs. This idea somewhat resembles a drafted extension to Kademlia: BEP-42 . I see at least four difficulties with this solution in our case. First: I want to leave the door open to running Theseus peers as Tor onion services. Doing so properly is a nuanced problem. My goal here is to avoid adopting a solution exclusively geared towards peers who know and are comfortable disclosing their public IP. Such a solution would complicate the process of adding support for peers who have more extreme threat models. This is the main reason Im describing a draft version of this solution here rather than codifying it in the spec. Second: I also want to leave the door open to IPv6. The reasons for this are discussed above . The difficulties posed by making this scheme compatible with IPv6 addresses resemble those to do with supporting Tor onion services. Third: These different identifiers IPv4 address IPv6 address Tor onion service descriptors contain differing amounts of entropy. My early writings on Sybil attack prevention discussed the idea of limiting node ID entropy as a way of bounding the worst-case impact of a Sybil attack. Lately Ive soured on this idea somewhat since if were dynamically detecting and compensating for Sybil attacks then we probably dont need that bound after all and in fact we probably care more about address uniqueness than anything else. All the same it is important from a theory perspective to carefully consider and account for the implications here regarding ID entropy. Fourth: If we limit ourselves to the IPv4 case momentarily we still have the problem that peers might not know their public IPs. This would for instance commonly be the case for anyone initiating a connecting from behind NAT. The solution is to allow peers to discover their own IP as reported by remote peers. The most straightforward and elegant way I see of adding this would be to do the following: We could also add a dedicated RPC but that seems like an uglier solution to me. Both these modifications strike me as reasonable features to have regardless. It just so happens that together they also provide a mechanism for users to discover their own IPs without polluting the network or introducing new queries. This subject will be addressed further after I have explored the topics of Tor integration and IPv6 support more thoroughly. TODO: Lay out in-depth mathematical analysis based on points outlined above. (I have lots of analog notes on this. A detailed write-up is forthcoming.) The choice to use TCP rather than UDP is a significant one and is not taken lightly. The essential motivation is that it simplifies the cryptography. For an idea of why see here . Note in particular that including plaintext nonce values with messages would break our requirement that all protocol traffic be indistinguishable from random noise. Persistent connections also provide a convenient abstraction within which to perform multiple consecutive handshakes. One complication: A TCP connection to a specific port will originate from an arbitrary ephemeral port on the part of the connector. UDP can operate this way but doesnt have to because its connectionless. Thus protocols like Kademlia which operate over UDP can and do use their packets source port to advertise the port theyre listening for messages on a trick we cant use if our connections have to originate from ephemeral ports. Compensating for this requires provisions at the protocol level for communicating the port were listening for connections on. This is why listen_port is a required datum in the info query. A big issue here that well want to spend some time looking hard at once the reference implementation is otherwise mature and stable: NAT traversal. We may be able to work out a scheme for reachable nodes to perform some sort of hole punching to help NATed hosts to reach each other. If hole punching doesnt pan out another interesting possibility (which was touched on briefly in some of the Theseus blog posts back on Sohliloquies) would be to see if the network can support an onion routing overlay and if so whether itd be viable for NATed hosts to make themselves available as hidden services served from other publicly accessible hosts. This would also have other benefits for users willing or needing to trade performance for privacy but thats a story for another day. The Twisted implementation is coming along well but is not yet complete. Some outstanding TODOs (see also TODO.md : Proposed Roadmap (subject to change): Some good starting points for anyone interested in helping out: The default algorithm choices specified above were selected to provide as conservative and robust of a default configuration as possible. The only arguable exception is Curve25519 which while still a fairly conservative choice is still less so than Curve448. The deciding factor in this case was that the crypto libraries were using provide good implementations of Curve25519 whereas Curve448 support comes from some native Python which is pretty much guaranteed not to be as well hardened against say side-channel or timing attacks. Im totally willing to revisit this if we can get nice Curve448 bindings maybe via OpenSSL or something. Argon2id was chosen over my earlier favored algorithm bcrypt due to its state-of-the-art design and memory-hardness. Bcrypt is a great piece of work which has stood the test of time exceptionally well but by nature of being CPU-hard rather than memory-hard it is less costly to mount massively parallel attacks on bcrypt using e.g. FPGAs. The memory overhead required for background verification of Argon2id hashes on a users machine is also likely to be less impactful on performance than the CPU overhead required to verify bcrypt hashes of comparable hardness. BLAKE2b is favored over SHA512 because it is faster based on a more modern and robust construction (no length-extension attacks!) and doesnt suffer from any ominous reduced-round preimage resistance breaks like the SHA-2 family has. SHA512 still seems secure enough for the time being of course but if I had to bet on which algorithm I thinkll be looking better 5 or 10 years from now Id bet on BLAKE2b. For now lets just use GitHub issues for discussing potential protocol modifications. Well probably want to come up with something better down the road but we can worry about that then. If you want to develop a protocol extension that doesnt impact core functionality you dont need any sign-off from me or anyone to do that. Still Id like to hear from you! Drop me a line. If you want to get in touch with me (Eli) you can reach me a couple different ways: All else being equal reaching out over Twitter DMs or here on Github are probably the most reliable ways of reaching me. The blog posts listed here are not necessarily up to date but they reflect my thinking on these topics across the last couple years and may be helpful to people looking for additional information or context for any of the ideas discussed above. This is only a small selection of blog posts Ive written on aspects of Theseuss design. If youre interested most of the other posts can be found in links at the tops of the ones listed here. On encryption: On Sybil attacks: For posterity the (obsolete!) version 0.1 protocol spec:

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They're trying to get me kidnapped and tortured but Twitter doesn't care (waqas.xyz) Waqas Ahmed Copyright All rights reserved A few days ago I was reading the report by the Twitter whistleblower 'Mudge' Zatko with shock and disbelief not knowing that I would have to face the apathetic and dangerously incompetent Twitter moderation machinery soon. A machinery that is so broken that it ignores your appeal for help even when you tell it that your life is in danger. I don't know if a bot or a human saw my reports but their responses to each of my reports so far has been basically: It is hard to explain to Twitter what is really happening to me and how they are becoming a party to endagering my life. How their moderation policies can ruin my life forever. So I guess I will have to explain it all here. For the record. And in hopes that someone who can do something might notice this and help me before it's too late. To understand this you need to know a bit about Pakistani politics which I am sure that Twitter -- irresponsibly -- doesn't. Almost 5 months ago there was a parliamentary coup in Pakistan. A coup orchestrated by Pakistan's dynastic mafia style political parties and Pakistan's [REDACTED FOR SAFETY]. At least that is what I believe. I explain the reasons why I believe it was a coup here . As the coup unfolded so did protests unprecedented in Pakistan's history. I talk a bit about that here . You can read more about it here . And as the protests started the inevitable response to the protests by the govt and the Pakistani [REDACTED] also started. The response was violence abduction of activists warantless raids and false cases. Many of them are documented here . The general fascist playbook basically. In Pakistan activists and journalists are routinely picked up (abducted) and tortured by the country's police and secret services. Same happened this time some of the top journalists and anchors were picked up - some without warrants with fake cases filed post-arrest. Some of these journalists remain under custody till date . These journalists according to reports have been stripped and tortured under custody. One activist -- the Chief of Staff of the former Prime Minister no less -- was picked up last month and allegedly faced horrific torture under custody. He has publicly claimed that his genitals were electrocuted under custody . There have been raids on the houses of many young men and women in their 20s - unknown individuals - just for posting Tweets against the government they have been scared and forced to apologize on videos that were publicised. Most recently a pediatric nephrologist one of the few in the country was arrested for the 'most serious' crime of publishing an anti-govt Facebook post. I can go on and on books can be written about the state of human rights in Pakistan. And they have been. I have been a journalist in Pakistan for ten years. For most of my career I have been a web editor at different newspapers mostly behind the scenes not widely known outside the industry. I do have some following on Twitter but Twitter doesn't verify me because of their weird verification rules that don't think there can be journalists without bylines . Two years ago I moved to New York for grad school. So when this coup unfolded I found myself out of reach of the fascism of the new Pakistani govt. I love my country I do not want to see it fall in the hands of fascists and as a journalist I feel it was my responsibility to raise my voice. That is why I had become a journalist in the first place. I gave multiple interviews about what was happening in Pakistan. I tweeted relentlessly about it. Some of these threads went viral and were widely shared . Eventually it started happening to me. The current Minister for Planning and Development falsely accused me of inciting violence probably in the hopes of building a false case and narrative against me when I had only called for people to question their politicians. These people were showing their frustration because I was out of their reach and could not be abducted for the time being. What came from the Minister was maybe an exaggeration or a veiled threat but what started happening after was more insidious. To start off their harassment campaign against me they made a fake (or parody in Twitter terms) account about me. Twitter policies allow 'parody' accounts . Even though Twitter does not think I am famous or notable enough to be verified they still think that I can be 'parodied'. The 'parody' here was making fun of my appearance spreading false news about me generally defaming me and trying to discredit and frustrate me. Twitter policies allow people to do that. I was a target of an organized harassment campaign but Twitter ignored my reports. I thought 'ah well thats life' and moved on continued my work because those are the hazards of doing journalism. Right? In Pakistan the political discourse has a lot of antisemitism. Political opponents journalists and activists can be accused or be declared of being an 'Indian and Israeli agent' and abducted tortured... the works. This is the most easy label to pin on someone so that their abduction and torture does not raise a lot of eyebrows in the overall society. Because India and Israel are 'enemies' (Whether I personally agree or disagree with that is irrelevant here). On August 22 a human rights organization based in Spain tweeted about the deteriorating human rights situation in Pakistan. As usual fake accounts came out of nowhere to try to discredit this organization and unsurprisingly they tried to connect this organization to India trying to relate it to another completely unrelated organization with a similar name based in India. Because if it is connected to India it can be discredited as Indian propaganda. It got so bad that the Spain based organization had to issue a clarification . However before they had issued a clarification about it I tweeted about the organized campaign to discredit this organization - knowing the modus oprandi of the govt. As soon as I tried to bust this propaganda they came after me. A Twitter account by the name of 'Standup Pakistan' was created and one of its first few Tweets was a false claim I had been hired by the Indian organization IHRF . This was not true of course but with that claim I could be abducted or arrested in Pakistan they could put sedition charges on me (the max punishment for whish is death btw) and nobody would say a word. This Tweet from a fresh account was somehow immediately picked up and quote tweeted by a comedian with 200k+ followers and a verified account . I assume he was in on the campaign because he had been doing a lot of pro-govt tweets recently and attacking govt opponents. From there another pro govt 'journalist' with 80k+ followers retweeted it. I kept reporting all of this but Twitter kept rejecting my reports. The news of my treason spread far and was twisted in the process. One person tweeted using the screenshot of the original fake post: I reported all these Tweets Twitter took action on none. I got responses that none of them violate Twitter policy. Not my parody account not the false accusation of 'working for India' not the comedian with a verified account with quarter of a million followers not this one random guy calling mme an Israeli agent. It is a coordinated harassment campaign but Twitter claims it is all kosher. I feel that the Pakistani authorities or its supporters are building a case against me for 'treason' they are trying to get me abducted or arrested when I go back home they are trying to ensure that nobody speaks up for me when i get abuducted and Twitter as a platform with its dangerously stupid moderation policies is helping them do this. The situation in Pakistan is so bad that even a US congresswoman Tweeted about it today . Yet Twitter with its 20+ million users in Pakistan does not know this. Not only are they blissfully unaware of the political situation and dangers to activists and journalists in Pakistan they are actively helping the perpetrators. Twitter despite millions of Pakistani users it seems has no moderation system that understands local dynamics. This incompetence of Twitter is putting my life in danger. By now these Tweets have probably been seen by thousands of people who have already formed opinions about me based on these lies. I do not know what will happen to me now. Twitter doesnt care. They have rejected all my reports. Despite all this I continue to do my work. If I stop I let them win. However due to this my work has become much harder I have become slower. Now I have to counter propaganda against while doing my other work. I feel weighed down. I feel Twitter should have protected me instead of protecting the henchmen of a facist regime bent upon silencing critics. If you are a human at Twitter who can put an end to this madness please reach out to me. My contact details are in the nav menu on the left. If you are a lawyer who could help me I would love to talk. Thanks for reading this.

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Things I wish I’d known before fulltime RVing (2017) https://www.wheelingit.us/2011/09/22/10-things-i-wished-id-known-before-fulltime-rving/ cf100clunk On the Road Since 2010 Traveling Across USA & Europe With Pets September 22 2011 by libertatemamo 392 Comments Pre-Post Note/ Nov 2017. Although this post was written in 2011 its still my most popular post ever (!!) so Im refreshingit as part of our 8th year on the road. See my updates in italics below the original text on each topic. One of the beautiful things about aging is you carry along the wisdom of years of experience (that and your wine gets better of course). By many standards you could easily call me but a pup in the great dog-park of life but as our multi-year journey in RVing progresses I have managed to glean a few gems of sageness which I can happily pass along. In that spirit here are 10 things I wish Id known before we went full-timing: I always imagined that you should try to buy the biggest RV you could afford. After all who doesnt want lots of space? Our travels over the past years and perhaps more specifically the kind of travel we like to do (camping in public campgrounds forests state parks off-the-beaten-track spots) has taught me that bigger is not always better. Our beastly size is super-comfortable but requires me to do quite a bit of detailed planning to make sure we can fit into the kinds of spots we like to visit. In retrospect I would have wished for a smaller RV. For those camping mostly in private parks this is not a consideration but for our kinda camping it sure would be nice with a few less feet. 2017 Update TOTALLY still agree with this. Although weve gotten used to our beastly size I still wish we were a tad smaller and we (still) dream about downsizing. 95% of our camping is on public land and if we were smaller and more nimble wed have many more options open to us especially for boondocking . 35-feet would be nice 30-feet would be even sweeter but hey we make do. Maybe one day. When we first got the RV the thought of a hard-mounted fully-automatic Satellite TV dish on our roof seemed just the ticket. Push a button and off you go.fabulous! However camping as we do in lots of spots with trees and obstacles we have line-of-sight perhaps only ~50% of the time making our dish mostly useless. In retrospect a movable dish would totally be the way to go. 2017Update YES. In fact we even disconnected Direct TV in 2014andmoved towards other electronic means of entertainment (Netflix Redbox etc.) but for those of you wanting satelliteI would definitely still recommend getting a movable dish. When we first started RVing we signed up to just about every camping club out there Sams Club Escapees Club USA etc. In retrospect (again because of where/how we like to camp) these were not worth it. The only camping club I currently consider is Passport America mostly for short stops and I do like the Escapees Days End list but even these have mostly been replaced by overnight freebies when we need them. The rest of the time were out in nature/boonies where club memberships do not go. For some people clubs are great and they can certainly be cost saving if you make use of them but for us theyve simply not made the cut. 2017 Update YES. We still feel the same way. Clubsare only useful IF you make use of them. There are RV folks who love their club memberships (e.g. Thousand Trails memberswho do nothing but stay at Thousand Trails) but for our type of camping (mostly public land lots of State Parks etc) they simply havent made sense. The only membership clubs we currently have are Harvest Hosts Escapees & Passport America.I always recommend that newbies wait on joining anycampingclubs until theyve spent some time on the road and figured out how they like to travel. Read more about my take on Camping Clubs HERE . I love the slides in our motorhome because of the massive amount of space they give internally but it seems some manufacturers go overboard. Our beast has a massive front drivers-side slide with refrigerator in the slide something I now understand is an engineering no-no. The weight of the slide has been the cause of the only real issues on our home in 2 years. I love slides and will always want them but in retrospect I would never buy another home with a fridge in a slide-out. 2017 Update YES. Our big slide issue is still the only major issue weve had (touch wood) in the RV since we started fulltiming. The first year of RVing I struggled to find the kinds of campgrounds (natural green spacious) that we like to visit. It was a constant battle of going to one website through a ton of clicks then another website then to a map then to another spot and back again to try and figure out which one matched our route. Early this year I discovered uscampgrounds.info and my planning life changed. If you like public camping theres simply no better resource out there and I use it as the base for all our travel planning now. 2017 Update YES. Public Land is still our #1 camping choice. There are now many more options for finding these kinds of sites including ultimatecampgrounds.com (which has overtakenuscampgrounds IMHO) Benchmark Maps (which are excellent paper maps for public lands) AllStays (which also offersan app) and other resources. If you want to see how I plan our current travels check out the 3-part series I wrote starting HERE . When we initially looked at internet solutions we knew we wanted a Verizon-based system since it was simply the best coverage out there (and our experience has proved that true). We ended up w/ a 2-year 5GB/mo contract which is a little tight for our needs. What we didnt know was that you can get a Verizon-based coverage using no-contract resale partners such as Millenicom . Its the same coverage but simply without the contract! You can boost it just like any system out there too. Millenicom resells both Verizon and Sprint and they wont/cant tell you (directly) who theyre using but you can easily narrow it down via the device (the Verizon-based contract is currently offered on the 20GB/mo deal using the Novatel U760 Device). For more info check the forums . 2017 Update TOTALLY. I still recommend a contract-freeapproach whenever possible. This gives you the flexibility tosign-up to the best plans (and offers) whenever they becameavailable which has improved our own set-up and saved us many $$ over the years. The whole Mobile Internet landscape has changed dramatically since 2011(e.g.Millenicom is now caput and gone) but there are still many contract-free optionsfor mobile travelers. You can read aboutour currentinternetphone & boosting set-up HERE . When we first started on the road we rushed like crazed animals on stampedeto see as much and as far an area as we could possibly see within the timeframe given. It took several months before we realized none of this was necessary. In facttaking more time toenjoyour surroundings not onlysaved us moneybutweve met more people seen more local gems created a sense of communityand felt more in-tune with the journey. Our 2-month trip through New Mexico earlier this year was a great example of how this attitude has really made sense for us. We are progressing more and more into sitters (RVers that spend several weeks in one spot) rather than movers. It may not be for everyone but I sure recommend giving it a try. 2017 Udpate TOTALLY. Since that original crazy year on the road weve enjoyed a much more relaxed pace of travel (you can see all our travel maps HERE -> we average just over~5000 miles/year) and its made everything SO much better. For us thisis a lifestyle not a vacation and taking the time to enjoy each spot has made it a deeper richer (and more enjoyable) experience for both of us. I spent months trying to figure out what to take on the road before we started out. I already knew (instinctively) that we wouldnt need much but I wanted to try tocover all the bases. The truth is that we needed even less than that. I took ~10% of my then-wardrobe with me and I currently use about 10% of that. We brought along tents and other equipment we never use. We ALSO ended up buying a bunch of nifty (so we thought) RV stuff before wed really spent any time in the rig on the road another thing Id now consider a no-no. In retrospect spending some time on the road before loading up would have made alot more sense. Were planning a major cleaning-out when we get back to our storage in San Diego this winter and will end up much lighter for it (no doubt). If we keep this up the storage might end up going too 2017 Update YES. The more time we spend on the road the less we find we need. We end up donating half our clothes to charity almost every year and our outdoor stuff has been cut down to a select set of glamping basics . Plus we FINALLY got rid of our big storage unit (whoo hooo!). Paying $$$ for storage all those years was one of our biggestregrets and something we (in retrospect) would not recommend if you can avoid it. It took 7 years for us to tackle ours but we finally got it done! You can read about my take on storage HERE and how we got rid of ours HERE HERE and HERE . This kinda makes obvious senses but when we first started out we really didnt pay too much attention to weather. In our first year we ended up travelling through the Mid-West in very hot and buggy conditions not ideal for a natural-born bug magnet (such as myself) in ametal home. Since then weve paid closer attention and the beauty of being mobile is that you can do exactly that. I launched my flip-flop barometer early this year and we managed (mostly) to stay right on it. Were wintering in the SW this year and will be back to cool and gorgeous coast & mountains by next summer. Most definitely the flip-flop way to go! 2017 Update YES. Weve become better & better at following the weather and its a key part of our yearly travel planning process . The past few yearswevespentwinters in the beautiful SW desert and summers on the gorgeous PNW coast. Perfection! We agonized over the cost of full-time RVing for a long time before we jumped in. The truth is costs are flexible andtotally manageable and our experience has certainly proved that to be so. There are great options for saving money both on camping gas health insurance taxes car/RV registration and other areas . You can take your time and boondock workamp along the way or run around and stay in pricey resorts.All can be great experiences but the real beauty is that the choice is there. 2017 Update TOTALLY. In 8 years on the road our expenses have actually been flat to slightly down every year despiteincreasing health care costs. We keep camping expenses low by volunteering in summer and boondocking (= free camping) in winter and we manage gas costs by how we travel. The point is there is lots of flexibility on the financial side and my viewpoint on this hasnt changed. Earlier this year Ifinally updated our cost posts so you can now read a detailedaccount of our RV costs (including tips for budgeting & saving) for the past 7years HERE and HERE . Well that wraps up my listgot any good ones of your own? 2017 Update Knowing what you know now are there anyadditional things you wish youd known??? Apart from the storage unit that I wish wed never gotten (item #8) nothing at all. Our top 10 is still the exact same today as it was in 2011. Disclosure of Material Connection: Some of the links in this blog post may be affiliate links so if you click on the link and make a purchase I will receive a commission. Amazon the Amazon logo AmazonSupply and the AmazonSupply logo are trademarks of Amazon.com Inc. or its affiliates. WheelingIt is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Stephen Milano says September 22 2011 at 11:59 am another outstanding postand very timely for me-have finally reached a decision re hitting the road after following your blog and so many othersa great source of inspiration and information. have been doing lots of research on the forums and just signed up for the Escapees Boot Camp as a walk-in. will finalize my thinking re rig size and other items soon and this input is great!! hope to hit the road by the end of the year as the downsizing is already completed and most is in storageneed to just do it!! thanks again for all the inforeally enjoy your postsyou guys have been a big inspiration libertatemamo says September 24 2011 at 7:19 pm CONGRATS on the up-coming fulltming! As you can tell its a pretty addictive lifestyle Enjoy every minute of it! Nina Pam and Bob says August 16 2015 at 3:46 pm Hello Nina My name is Pam and we are planning on full-timing in 6 months to a year. We were just wondering what your thoughts on where to register vehicles were. We have a pickup truck a 30 ft trailer a four wheeler and a small boat with a motor. We have been camping for approximately 15-20 years throughout New Hampshire Massachusetts Maine Minnesota and Ontario. Also do you know of any restrictions for the items listed above in any states. We enjoyed your blog and it answered alot of the questions we had. Look forward to more advice. Thank you so much Pam and Bob Doc says August 16 2015 at 8:54 pm Some states have requirements for residency to register vehicles. However there are a couple of states that just want your money and make it easy to register it and have an out of state address. I think? Alabama is one and Arizona may also be an option. If you are a workamper you should be able to check with other workampers on their website and get the most current advice. If you are not a workamper become one. The site is priceless for theses types of things. Jennifer says August 23 2015 at 5:34 pm I believe one of the easiest States is SD. It is where I am registered. No State tax Never need to take car or RV to SD spend one night and 15 min in DMV to get license low cost to resister vehicle and RV LLC is quite low cost and easy as well libertatemamo says August 23 2015 at 5:43 pm These are all true but theres one big gotcha if youre pre-Medicare age and thats health insurance. No good nationwide options on the ACA Exchange in SD unfortunately. Thats partly why were considering a change. Heres my post on that for reference: https://www.wheelingit.us/2014/11/25/health-insurance-sd-domicile-are-there-any-options-left-for-younger-fulltime-rvers/ For Medicare age RVers there are no issues and I still think its a great place to establish domicile. Nina Pamela says June 29 2016 at 9:33 am Hi I have never gone camping but thinking about selling my large home for the road. What is workamper? How safe is it for a single woman traveling this way? Are some states better than another to stay at camp sites and does everyone watch out for each other? Pamela Bill says January 30 2018 at 9:56 am My wife and I are also kicking around the idea of becoming full time r.v.ers maybe this year. I have been doing some homework for health insurance seems to me one of the better ones is First Health. The initial start is a little expensive around 600.00 dollars to start for myself then drops after that but it seems to be a good plan and it is not an HMO plan it is a PPO plan. Seems to be the best one. libertatemamo says August 17 2015 at 2:38 pm For vehicle registration it very much depends on where you plan on establishing domicile during your fulltime RV travels. Typically you get a drivers license and register your RV in the state that you establish domicile. Most fulltime RVers chose either SD TX or FL as their domicile states since they are income-tax-free states and are very RV friendly. If you plan on keeping a house or address in your home state however then that may change how/where you can establish domicile. Im not familiar with the rules in any of the states you mentioned so I dont know the requirements for domicile in those states. You can read more about domicile here: Home is Where you Park itor is it? Nina Robert Washburn says September 12 2015 at 3:09 pm Hello I am considering hitting the road now that we are bill-less. Tell me how do you have a permanent address? For your drivers licenses tabs and things like that. I ask this because I will be traveling with my special needs child and I will need monthly supplies wherever we are at. I have gotten most everything on line now but supplies are are different matter. Do you think I will be restricted in our travels? If we get to travel at all? I am also getting a 40 because I cant do it in anything smaller not that I have a lot of stuff but because of what I need. I have lived in a 37 fifth wheel when we were younger and we both loved it had it for 4 years of living. I am going motor home this time around. I have done a lot of research on it and although there arent very many parks that can handle 40 more and more are popping up. I found your postings just today and sucked up most everything. Your blogs also confirmed my research and also made me aware of things that I did not know. Even if I cant travel because of this I will still be buying a motor home for us to live in. Please be blunt if you choose to respond on whether you think I should or not do the travel part. Thank you. Sincerely Robert Washburn libertatemamo says September 12 2015 at 4:55 pm Yes we do have a permanent address. We use a mail forwarding company in SD that acts as our address of record for drivers license voting taxes etc. We can also get stuff mailed there (and forwarded to us) but meds may be different and certain meds (e.g narcotics) may be controlled. I know many RV folks who get their meds through nationwide pharmacies (e.g. CVS) and just get the prescription transferred to the local shop to pick up as needed. I also know RV folks who get their docs to write 6-mo (or longer) prescriptions which allows them to travel further before needing new prescriptions. Since we take no meds ourselves I dont know much more about this so youll have to research more. But I have heard from folks who make it work. Regarding rig size if you stay primarily at private parks youll have no trouble at all with a 40-footer. Just about ANY private park will take that size Its only if you want to stay on public land and in more off-beat places. We make do with our rig but we are a tad more limited in site and campground choice. Still its not a game-stopper. You can find spots even if off-beat places iv you do your research. Good luck with everything! Nina Bob says July 8 2016 at 9:50 am Has anyone out there heard of a cedar creek fiver??what are your opinions?? Stephanie says October 22 2017 at 2:49 pm Hi I was reading the comments and noticed you decided to hit the road. It was a few years ago I know but wondering how it went? Im a single woman and will be traveling alone. Im scared but what scares me more is not following my dream of seeing the world. I mean I dont know what will happen and it does concern me. If Im traveling and get sick where do I go if my medical Insurance is in la county. I have so much to learn. Becky says March 3 2018 at 5:15 pm Hi I also am single thinking to do the same thing. Watching to see if anyone responds to us single ladies posts. I am concerned about safety as well and if I have a vehicle breakdown what are best options. whenpigsflyrv says May 28 2018 at 12:05 pm Single ladies entering full-time RV-ing: depending on where you are planning for your overnights you shouldnt have anything to worry about. If you are worried and arent allergic my best solution would be to get at least a medium sized dog. The barking is usually enough to deter anyone with nefarious plans especially if they have been staking you out and have seen this is not a chihuahua though even those are good for the noise. Anyway most RVers are pretty good people and tend to look out for each other. Lock your RV door(s) at night be aware of your surroundings and the people in it and you should be just fine. Also dont promote that you are traveling alone as a woman. No sense painting a target for those with deceitful plans. Ive never had any problems but then again I have three large dogs traveling with me. Good luck!! Now start living your dream!! Daniel says September 22 2011 at 12:13 pm I totally agree with your list. A non resident has to leave the country after his staying permit expires which is usually after 6 months (Max) so we cannot do it full time but I consider ourselves as Summer full timers that have 2 residents:one at our home in Israel and the second on wheels in North America-this is for as the optimum and we are enjoying it for the last 10 years. libertatemamo says September 24 2011 at 7:20 pm I think you guys have a great set-up. Summer-timing can be a great idea for folks who enjoy having a home-base. Nina Donna Stephenson Seymour says September 22 2011 at 12:16 pm These are all very good suggestions. We have RVed for about 7 years now and plan on full timing in 5 years and agree with your conclusions. We have not encountered issues with our slides and hope we never do. libertatemamo says September 24 2011 at 7:20 pm You guys are pros!! Enjoy the upcoming fulltiming! Nina Sandie says September 22 2011 at 1:31 pm Great list. Especially the size of the rig and taking your time. Our first year out we tore around the country. Now weve learned to slow down and enjoy the journey. libertatemamo says September 24 2011 at 7:20 pm So with you on that one! Nina The Good Luck Duck says September 22 2011 at 1:33 pm This is a good list thanks! If we ever upgrade we will definitely downsize. Maybe in two years well do a Top 10 list too! Roxanne libertatemamo says September 24 2011 at 7:21 pm Looking forward to the list! We expect much of you ducks Nina Sue Bank says September 22 2011 at 2:08 pm Wow this is exactly the list I was looking for and I didnt even know it! Youve answered so many of our questions and confirmed many of our suspicions. Thanks! Were heading out on a years excellent adventure in April. Sue Briana says September 23 2011 at 8:55 pm I hope youll keep a blog Sue! Ill follow along. libertatemamo says September 24 2011 at 7:22 pm So happy the list was timely! ENJOY your upcoming year adventure. DO lemme know if you decide to do a blog! Nina A.NOVELL says September 22 2011 at 2:16 pm I agree with you totally on the size issue especially now that manufactures are making more diesel pushers in 36 ft and 38 ft. libertatemamo says September 24 2011 at 7:23 pm Youre so very right. Many of the new 36-foot floor-plans are excellent and those few feet less make a big difference in fitting into tight spots. Nina David BanVeckle (Hawaii) says August 5 2014 at 1:50 pm My wife dog and I are newbies who plan on selling everything and doing this for a year to figure out where we will live next (and last)on the mainland. We will be going both to camp sites as well as around some towns (not really cities though). We have never RVd before. What would be the right length/size RV for our situation? I see you are talking about 36 foot. Any recommendations on manufacturers and models? I think we might buy a year old one since we are only going to use for a year and then sell it. Dont want to take too much of a hit on depreciation. Also do you tow a small car for local transportation? Great website! Elizabeth says August 15 2014 at 2:42 pm Hi! My husband dog and I are in the same boat (so to speak). We are thinking of selling everything and hitting the road with an RV. Did you get any additional information/answers to your questions? Thanks! Elizabeth libertatemamo says August 17 2014 at 9:38 am I personally like Allegro/Tiffin & Monaco. I havent recently looked at the models on the market so Id have to go back and research. For up-to-date info Id recommend jumping on the RV forums (rv.net iRV2.com) and asking around. Youll get many more replies there. I do agree that buying a year old or so is a good option. Takes alot of the initial depreciation loss out of the equation. Thats what we did with our rig. Nina Ralph says September 15 2016 at 6:18 pm Also RVs are generally not made well. Even the expensive ones often have warranty claims. When you buy one thats a year or two old not only do you benefit from the deprication but also presumably the former owner has gotten all the bugs fixed so you dont waste time doing that yourself. nancy says January 6 2015 at 1:03 am Heywe live in Kailua and have the exact same plan We are looking at a lightweight trailer maybe an r-podwe should talk Heather Newmman says July 30 2016 at 5:49 am Hi This is what my husband and I are doing in 4 years after our youngest child graduates. We want to travel the country to see where we want to live next. Leaning toward North CarolinaWe also got good advice from a friend live in a place during your worst season (for me its winter) to see how it is. Thanks Heather Sheila says September 22 2011 at 2:16 pm Hi Nina I love this post! I agree with your list. Howard and I are part-timers in the RV during the winter months and home in Colorado during the summer months. We start off at the end of October and we ALWAYS seem to take too much stuff and way too many clothes. Last year I took more winter clothes than summer and did not really need them at all. We purchased our coach in 2006 and have been out on-the-road every winter since. You would think I could gage what clothes I will need by now but for some reason this task eludes me! We use Verizon for voice and some data DirecTV with the dome on the roof of the RV and DirecWay for most of our internet connections. Since we use DirecWay we have to carry the dish everywhere and spend time setting it up of course we can place it anywhere within reach of the RV which is beneficial. It is however big and it takes up a lot of room. We havent gotten rid of it because we like having it at home and it has been very reliable! We are debating changing to another service but we have not made up our minds what the replacement would be. Our favorite type of camping is in county and state parks enjoying nature. Our 40ft one-slide- home does pretty well in these environments. However we are not as adventuresome as you guys! Wishing to make it so!!! A few of thoughts on part-time (or full-timing) RV living: ~avoid some stress and hassle -never consider yourselves on vacation you are just living differently ~routinely investigate and schedule things to do ~bring your hobbies and continue enjoying them if at all possible ~dont forget to challenge your mind enrich your soul and exercise ~as you have stated dont rush to get to different places ~thoroughly enjoy where you are ~take a few risks adventure waits ~if you dont like a place you can always just leave (we spent the entire month of February one year in cold and rainy conditions and why we did not just leave is beyond me) now we would for sure hid the road ~socialize and enjoy other RVers ~remember alone time is okay and needed I saw a bumper sticker today that stated: wag more and bark less. So wag more enjoy your life and each other. libertatemamo says September 24 2011 at 7:24 pm Some FABULOUS tips Sheila! Thanks so much for sharing them all! Especially love the wag more and bark lessone that speaks to me Nina Scot And Sandi A says May 20 2016 at 2:16 pm Found your blog and read through mean replies. very very helpful. My wife and I are 55 and getting ready to dive into the full time RV thing. We are having a hard time making our decision based on the future of fixed income. we live on a lake in Minnesota. it is very quite and offers boating and fishing with a wooded camping feel. were crazy to do this right! here is my question. When purchasing an rv at what length of a loan should we be looking at? the longer the lone the higher the interest rate and the longer to pay down. which also brings up the question of how long should i expect to keep a motor home before I start to have many repairs? How long do most rvs keep their rv before they trade in for a new model? I dont want to be upside down when the time comes to trade. libertatemamo says May 20 2016 at 4:26 pm Honestly if youre looking at a loan to buy a new RV I would recommend scrapping that idea and looking at paying cash for a used quality RV. RVs depreciate like crazy and new RVs are mucho $$. There are tons of quality used rigs out there where you can get A LOT more for your money and still leave cash to spare for repairs and travel. Plus with a used rig most of the depreciation will be already accounted for and youll get more back of your original $$ when you sell too. Nina Stephen says May 20 2016 at 5:41 pm These are all known and unknown questions. I know that sounds corny but it is true. Your loan is simply based on what you can afford something you know. If you can afford to pay it all up front you would be wise to and you may also have to choose a less expensive RV. Remember the first RV you purchase is hardly ever the last one you will own so dont believe its a once in your life decision. The unknown is simply what can you accept because living in an RV is the same as in a boat Ive done both and both are a world of fun. I prefer a large boat on the water and a smaller RV to travel in such as a class C or even a large class B or B+ I think they are called now. Repairs are an unknown but if it is checked out by a pro before purchase and you get done those thing that might be pointed out by this professional before hitting the road youll be is as good of a position as a person buying a new rig. Your eyes tell you everything. Look in every corner and crack ad crevice and look for spots tears repairs. Get a small snake camera (you can rent one or if you know of a plumber in your area they may have one you can borrow) to look in under around behind everything including the holding tanks. Biggest problems youll have are appliances but they are also the least problematic if you take care of them. Most common problem are annoyances. Loose hinges door knobs loose outdoor storage bin locks fail or you lose the key checking tire pressure easily and being able to fill the tires properly and safely tires themselves are very expensive but should be verified up front and if older than 3 years (there is a date on the tire) or worn over30% have them replaced before buying. You are on a lake? Have you ever thought of a sailboat? One without the rigging. One with an inboard diesel engine to troll around the lake and enjoy the sunset/sunrise? Then when you are ready jump into the smaller RV and go traveling for a week/month/? Its all fun. Hope you enjoy. Stephen Scot And Sandi A says May 21 2016 at 10:15 am Thank you for the reply We have only vacationed in a rv once when our children where young. we traveled for two weeks in a class C. we loved it. Now that our children have their own lives we are thinking about the big step. I think we will take your advise and rent a class A for two weeks. Thank you Scot A Marsha says September 22 2011 at 3:53 pm We also use uscampgrounds.info. Great resource. Full-timing is certainly not for everyone. It requires some risk taking overcoming fears of the unknown saying good-bye to family and friends and doing some things that may not seem wise. In the beginning Paul admits that one of his biggest full-timing faults is he has difficulty rolling-with-the-punches. I find that the most challenging thing is not looking back so much. I love to reminisce and this leads me to get a bit melancholy. We have enjoyed worshipping with many different denomination and at nondenominational churches. We have made so many new friends that we stopped counting. This is one of the biggest advantages to our lifestyle. Thanks Nina for the great blog and giving Paul and I a few minutes of reflecting on our past year. libertatemamo says September 24 2011 at 7:25 pm Its amazing how many people you meet on the road. RVing brings you into a community thats unique and special but so very rewarding! Nina Kathy says January 3 2016 at 3:18 pm We have been camping for all our married life from tent to now a Class A. We have been taking 5 months in the winter for FL for the past 4 years and will be going full time this next year. My husband loves to meet new people and learn about different adventures and we always feel a little let down when we all move on like leaving a new friend. We noticed a lot of full timers had RV business cards. So we decided to get them and a binder to keep them in. Then when we are traveling we just send out an email to see if any of our new friends are near and want to meet up and visit again or to pass on any good or bad info about camp areas. Cant wait to go full time! Everyone enjoy! libertatemamo says January 3 2016 at 4:11 pm Its a good tip. We used to have business cards and still exchange them on occasion but I have to admit weve gone mostly online now. I connect with lots of folks through either Facebook or Instagram and of course theres also RVillage where you can check in and see where various folks and groups are on a map. Lots of good ways to stay connected. Nina Randy Williams says September 22 2011 at 3:55 pm From someone on the sideline it all seems very well thought out information thanks again for taking the time. Martha says September 22 2011 at 5:45 pm Great blog! lots of ideas for newbies we have been fulltimers for almost one-year now and are in agreement with many of the items on your list (size and taking your time especially!) We have also been fortunate to meet helpful people on our travels and certainly fellow bloggers encourage and guide us! Keep up the great posts and we hope to get to meet you in person soon!! Martha Cherie @Technomadia says September 22 2011 at 8:01 pm Awesome post and we thoroughly concur on all points after our 5+ years on the road! (Of course were coming from the other end of the scale starting off in a 16 trailer and now in a 35 vintage bus ). Everytime I read on your posts or comments on our blog it reminds me how much I look forward to our paths crossing in our respective journeys. For folks with smartphones the uscampgrounds.info is also available as a mobile app called CampWhere. Its incredibly well designed and we use it regularly to find public camping options. Great resource for sure! libertatemamo says September 24 2011 at 7:26 pm Definitely look forward to meeting you guys too! Your blog was one of the very first inspirations for our current lifestyle. Cheers also for the tip on the app! Nina Terry & Linda says September 22 2011 at 8:40 pm #1- Agreed. We would like to have a smaller (21-30 ft) rv to supplement our current unit. #2- We carry a portable dish and use it about 35% of the time. #3- Passport America easily pays for itself. #4- Completely agree. Not sold on those full wall slides either. #5- Good to know thanks. #6- Really good to know! #7- Slowing down really gives us the chance to become part of the area and know the people. #8- Still working on this one. #9- Always!!! #10- Plus you have to prepare for unexpected expenses. Like bumping your head. libertatemamo says September 24 2011 at 7:27 pm Good one on #10! Im making that our 10+ list Nina Jim Shireman says September 28 2014 at 9:42 am Terry your response #4 is similar to my own feelings. Not only of the weight created by such a huge slide but the expense to repair such a huge monstrosity. And the huge inconvenience when it does not work properly. Michelle says September 23 2011 at 7:35 am Thanks for the great post. If you were to pick an RV today what model and floor plan would you pick? I love the idea of the shorter Newmars but we dont have dealer in the area where I can see them. Cheers! Michelle libertatemamo says September 24 2011 at 7:28 pm Id be looking at some of the new 36-38-foot options. Theres a lot of great ones out there now. Nina Christine says January 7 2016 at 1:29 am Last year I purchased the 2013 Newmar Bay Star a 30 ft. Its designed specifically for fulltiming with huge basements that extend the entire coach and the desk/buffet option. Im coming up from a 24 ft Dynamax that allowed me to stay anywhere. The Newmar is very tall so Im worried that overhead space will be an issue in park camping. Im a tree gal so height should also be considered if you love forests. libertatemamo says January 7 2016 at 9:27 am Yup its a good point. When you go bigger everything changes including swing space (how much space you need to turn into a site) height length etc. Treed parks are the most difficult and big rigs have to watch all 8 corners of the rig. We learned this lesson the hard way winding through a tightly treed campground in FL in our first year on the road. We didnt watch the back end of the rig as we turned through a narrow curve. The front made it through fine but our back end swung out just slightly and the palm tree sheared off the entire slide topper cover on that side. Oops! Weve never (cross fingers and paws) made that mistake since but heavily treed parks are always difficult for us and the bigger your rig the more this is true. Nina Debby & Bill Kasson says September 23 2011 at 8:19 am As always I love reading your blog and if I can gain one new piece of information then I am a happy camper! Youve confirmed a lot of what we have discovered in our year+ on the road. We live in a 35 2 slide motorhome that is the perfect fit for us & we have not had a problem yet finding a site. We were turned on to Millenicom at the start of our journey by the Technomads and not only do they offer a great product their customer service is awesome. Our rig came with a roof-top satelite dish but as we are not avid TV watchers we decided to try the life without hooking it up & have just enjoyed TV when we were at a park with cable or just watching the local stations with our antenna when it is available. We also joined all the clubs our first year and are now down to PA & Escapees. I really want to slow down our travels and experience a little bit more of nature in our travels. The Technomads turned me on to the overnightrvparking.com site which I love and now I am excited to try the uscampgrounds.info site you recommended. I also LOVE your flip-flop rule as we definitely try to follow the sunshine. Thanks again for being an inspiration to so many of us! libertatemamo says September 24 2011 at 7:30 pm I think your size RV is almost perfect! Its probably the size wed look at were we to do it over. Good to know you guys enjoy Millenicom. That pretty much matches just about every experience Ive heard on them. Were switching as soon as our contract w/ Verizon is up. Nina Kim says January 15 2015 at 6:24 pm Which make/model motorhome do you have? We have spent the last few months reading about and looking at motorhomes (soooo many choices!) we were thinking 35 to 36ft would be about right for us. We are planning for a (hopefully not too distant) future of fulltiming and would like to be able to go to a lot of state parks. libertatemamo says January 15 2015 at 6:43 pm We have a Holiday Rambler 40 PDQ which is really almost 42-feet long. If we were to do it over I think wed look in the 35-foot range or there abouts. Some of the older high-end coaches (eg. Foretravel) in this size range are excellent. Nina Mark says September 23 2011 at 10:20 am This is a great post. While we have only been out 4 months the size issue is true. Ours is the reverse of your issue. Ours is 33 ft. How long is your motorhome? Our 33footer size is perfect for almost anywhere but greats issues inside and for under storage. When we get our next one we are thinking about a 36 to 38ft. We have less than 1 foot of Counter space in Kitchen. Will ditch the tow dolly pronto it is a pain. Even though we the motorhome is 33 ft. with car and dolly we are 58ft. Nightmare for getting in tight places even gas stations are difficult. Great set of things to consider before heading out. Mark libertatemamo says September 24 2011 at 7:32 pm Were 40-foot officially but actually ~41.6-foot if you measure end-to-end. Its just a tad too big. I think around 35-38 is a good range. Totally agree w/ you on the dolly. We decided to go flat-tow from the start and are very happy w/ that decision. Its so much less hassle and space-saving too. Nina Mark says September 24 2011 at 7:42 pm Nina How do you add the Reply button? I am currently on Blogger I notice you are on WordPress. Is there a specific widgetgadget or plugin or whatever its called?? It really is nice to be able to reply to a comment instead of just making another comment about a comment. Thanks Mark libertatemamo says September 24 2011 at 7:49 pm UmmmmI have to admit WordPress does that one automatically so I dont have much help to give you on that one. Sorry I do like the WordPress comments format. Nina Linda Sand says September 23 2011 at 10:40 am Our not quite 35 motorhome has been the perfect size for getting into places bigger RVs wont fit. Our frig is on a full-wall slide but it has never been a problem in the year and a half weve lived in this rig. But we are now preparing to leave the road so our 2010 Winneago 34Y will be for sale this fall. It will be a great opportunity for someone looking for a big little motorhome. If interested watch our blog for details to come soon. libertatemamo says September 24 2011 at 7:33 pm Ahhhhsorry to hear you guys are getting off the road. Ill definitely keep a watch on your blog for more info. Nina LiveWorkDream says September 23 2011 at 1:02 pm Excellent thoughts and we agree on all of them especially the part about bigger is not always better. Although there are times when our 24 5er seems small almost all of the time were in there we feel that the space is just right for our lifestyle . As for the roof-mounted dishdont give up usually its just a matter of repositioning your rig by only a few feet. At least thats our experience with our Motosat. libertatemamo says September 24 2011 at 7:34 pm I have to admit the satellite dish does frustrate me. Were (yet again) in a site w/ no contact today and Im not sure I could reposition to make it work. Then again Im not the most patient type I do love the size of your home! Nina jil mohr says September 23 2011 at 7:33 pm nice list (research is the key here I think as you have found out)although I would never give up my escapee membership as I joined to be part of their communityit so much more then a campground membership.I will be curious to see what your list next year will be likemine is ever changing as I am sure yours will too. libertatemamo says September 24 2011 at 7:35 pm Escapees does have a wonderful community. Totally agree on that one. And youre right on the list too. RVing is a constantly-learning thing just like everything in life. No doubt my list will evolve and change! Nina Briana says September 23 2011 at 8:53 pm Love this post. We will be back home in San Diego this Winter too (in our 24 RV which I think is the PERFECT size! ) We should make it a point to meet up there since we havent had the chance yet being sitters or movers. Tally Ho! libertatemamo says September 24 2011 at 7:36 pm Oh yeslets DEFINITELY meet up in San Diego. Well probably be there starting around beginning Dec. Gonna book in the next week or so. Nina Jerry and Suzy says September 24 2011 at 8:31 am Sure agree with 9 of your 10 and for your style even that one (about most camping clubs) is true. We also were in vacatioh mode and just about burned ourselves out at first. Anxious now to try out uscampgrounds.info! libertatemamo says September 24 2011 at 7:36 pm You guys have a pretty good flow going now! Nina Brent says September 25 2011 at 6:15 am Weve been thinking some of the same things and although I cant argue with number 1 I suspect that there are a lot of advantages to a larger rig that will be missed once you have lived in something smaller for a while. Weve never actually bothered with our satellite dish but I wonder if you have the same problems with your solar panels as well. Thinking that if we end up adding some solar to our set up will just go with free standing panels and move them around much like Imperfect Destiny does with their set up. libertatemamo says September 25 2011 at 9:29 am The Solar question is a great one. We havent had nearly the problems w/ getting adequate solar coverage w/ the fixed roof-panels as weve had w/ the fixed satellite dish. For our satellite we have to have direct line-of-sight and a few trees (or even branches!) will easily throw it off. For the solar although its best (of course) to have full sun well often be fine as long as we can get an adequate amount of sun for at least a few hours. We dry-camped in pretty heavy forest both in NM & CO where we got part-sun and it was enough to recharge us daily. Ive been very happy w/ the set-up. I do get the idea of movable panels thoit does provide more options. Nina bretmar says April 18 2014 at 8:11 am We are doing our research now & are pretty sure we will be rv-ING full time soon! Im loving your list & replies. I started feeling more confident & excited as I read this thread. Now my question is do you have an update to your list? ?? Its April 2014 & Im reading from 2011 Lol. Thank you so much! libertatemamo says April 18 2014 at 8:40 am Its a good question Bretmar and surprisingly my Top 10 are pretty much the same even 3 years later. Perhaps the biggest thing weve learned in the last 3 years is better tank management allowing us to boondock more (plus weve gotten much better at finding boondocking locations) but that really just fits into the flexible budget catagory. Also having spent lots more time in very windy areas (where we often have to pullin the slides to protect the toppers) Id recommend buying an RV where everything is functionally usable with the slides in. Thatll help when youre overnighting somewhere or just want to stop for lunch say too. Ours is totally functionally usable (which is great!) but its total luck coz we didnt actually think about this when we bought the rig. Otherwise theres nothing I would change or alter in this list. The lessons are all super-valid even today. Nina Mary says August 24 2014 at 12:05 pm Im a little late to be answering this but you are so right about the floor plan needing to be functional with the slides in. We were careful about that when we bought our 5er because we had lived in a short Class C for a year and knew what we wanted. Some of the floor plans look great with the slides out but then you cant get to the fridge or bathroom with the slides in especially the kitchen island set-ups. Our fifth wheel may be a little cramped with the slides retracted but it is completely usable. Liz says July 21 2015 at 4:34 pm Mary great point about being able to use your unit with slides in. What size and brand of 5er do you have? We are looking for one now about 30-34 hope it will be our preferred size. MaryAnn says August 13 2015 at 6:21 am This is in answer to Liz about our 5er. We have a 3011 Crossroads Patriot a 2011 model. The model number is 28 something or other. You cant use the model number as the length by the way. You usually have at least 2 more feet of trailer. We bought our 5er fully expecting to retire early and get back on the road. We were full time for a while because of my husbands job. Since then we have become guardians of our now 16 year old granddaughter and have a few more years left at home. I think I would reconsider to about a 30 length Class A now that you can get shorter diesel pushers. I miss having enough room for family in the vehicle being able to get to the bathroom without pulling over and being able to get to the bedroom without getting out of the vehicle. There are lots of RV sites with info about choosing a trailer or a Class A or C. Just depends on what your preferences and needs are at your point in life. I think we will be happier with our trailer when we are living in it doing campground hosting and/or whatever life hands us. Right now we actually removed all the living/kitchen area furniture except the table and chairs. Our youngest son and his wife and daughter and our 16 yr. old all set up cots in that area and are able to join us to camp without packing all their gear. We enjoy being outside when we are camping so this set up has been lots of fun and we have camped in our local mountains in all kinds of weather. If you look at Ninas Eagle Nest State Park photo in the blog we were in that exact spot 10 days ago but we have also camped in Santa Fe National Forest while it was snowing. Lots of variety here in New Mexico! Had to get in a plug for my home state! My advice if you havent had a lot of experience with different RVs is to get a used rig and get some experience and dont spend major money at first. There will always be things you like and dont like though no matter what you choose! Becky Schade says September 26 2011 at 4:24 pm As someone who is getting ready to go RVing full-time thanks for these Nina and all the other tips you two have posted about solar and expenses on the road and the like Number six was especially helpful. Here Id been thinking I was going to have to sacrifice internet time and watch my usage like a hawk to stay under Verizons 5GB/mo cap. With Millenicoms 20GB/mo plan that shouldnt be a problem and Im willing to pay more for the device up front to escape having a two year plan. What a life saver. libertatemamo says September 28 2011 at 3:03 pm So happy its helpful. I do think the Millenicom deal is one of the best out there. Good luck on the upcoming full-timing! Nina DIANWATKINS says April 2 2014 at 5:47 pm Hi Nina appreciate ur list of 10 things . . . We have gone on the road for a straight 3 months then again for 4 months. We have several memberships and we love camping with the conveniences of home so the memberships we have are absolutely wonderful money savers galor. Our main issue has been rushing to get from one state to another so ur comment to slow down and get aquatinted and feel more at home sounds excellent. I was wondering if you have any idea the cost of the 20GB/ monthly cost. We have Verizon and the 5GB is not ever enough for us. My husband both have IPads so we need more GBs and the 20GB with Millenicom is something I too would like to check into after my contract is over. Totally agree with your list. Thank You so much! libertatemamo says April 4 2014 at 9:42 am The price for Millenicom just raised to $89.99/mo for 20GB (previously it was $69.99). Its still the best deal out there for the amount if data you get on Verizon. Its what we use and were very happy with it. Nina TRISH BIJOU says December 19 2014 at 7:54 am Hi Dian did you used to work in Denver? I knew a dian there that i worked with and she went full time. This is a dream that i want to make into reality for myself. i am deciding right now on what would be the perfect size rig for me as i will be a woman rving by myself. i dont want something too big nor too small Im thinking maybe a 30 ft class A?? how do you handle your laundry situation? I sure hope this is you. Technosyncratic Travel Blog says September 27 2011 at 1:45 am Awesome list and we pretty much discovered each of these too! Well we actually never realized how easy it is to find great campgrounds so that ones off our list (wish we had known about that website!). And even though our fridge was in our slide we didnt have any problems with it (but maybe thats because we sold it before the issues could emerge?). But other than those I feel ya. libertatemamo says September 28 2011 at 3:04 pm Thanks guys! Enjoying your blogs from the good ol UK! Nina William says October 13 2011 at 10:08 pm I love the articles that come from first hand experience. I bookmarked several sites you mentioned and really enjoyed the knowledge youve added to my Rving experience ahead of me and My wife. Thanks again.. libertatemamo says October 19 2011 at 9:30 am Glad youre enjoying the blog! Nina Denise Murrin says November 22 2011 at 7:15 am Not all RV Manufacturers are created equal. I joined the RV Consumer Group http://rv.org/ Well worth the investment prior to making such a large purchase. libertatemamo says November 22 2011 at 9:06 am Good suggestion Denise! Thanks for the link. Nina Robert Nuttmann says November 22 2011 at 8:13 pm There is an excellent ipad ap that we found while using the internet public campground web site you use. It is called campmore. Cost is under 5 bucks. It is the same info as the web site but the ipad ap is really really easy to use. Easier than the web site. Satellite internet. When we bought our coach used it had a Motosat internet satellite on it. We activated it and use it a lot. It has worked flawlessly except for when Hughes changed frequencies and that was a big dust up and PIA to get working right again. There was no equipment failure just software junk from Hughes. I bring this up as you mentioned sat internet in your 10 things. The thing that is really really great about the sat internet is that you can be boondocked in the middle of no where and it works if you have clear vision to the satellite. For the most part it is not as fast as Verizon 3G with a good signal. But it is pretty fast. Now that there is a second big player just launched a bird (a San Diego company BTW) Hughes will have some competition and I would guess everyone will get faster. You can buy motosat dishes used. libertatemamo says November 22 2011 at 8:25 pm Thanks for the tips & thoughts. Weve had very good coverage with Verizon since we started using them (only a handful of campgrounds where we couldnt get signal) so for the time being were happy w/ their service. I think if we travelled regularly to sites without Verizon coverage we might opt for a movable satellite dish but so far its not made the list. Nina Denise Murrin says December 13 2011 at 8:36 pm 6/ You Dont Have to Sign Any Internet Contracts Have you guys actually used Millenicom yet or are you still stuck in the 2 year contract with Verizon? I currently have the USB 760 stick I purchased and I buy data from Verizon for $80 for 5GB which is very tight for my needs. When my 5GB runs out next I was going to give Millenicom a try but wanted to make sure I get the same great coverage and speed. libertatemamo says December 14 2011 at 6:28 pm Denise We have not used it (yet!) since were still waiting for our Verizon contract to end but Ive talked w/ many who have and who have and are happy w/ it. The nice thing is you have the option to cancel month-to-month if youre unhappy. Two important points when you go w/ Millenicon -> make sure you sign-up for the deal that runs on the Verizon network (not the other networks) AND I would *not* go for the 4G deal (yet). Technomadia have been checking it out and dont think its ready yet. Check out their post here: http://www.technomadia.com/2011/12/technomadia-tech-update-avoid-samsung-sch-l11/ Nina Julee Meltzer says March 26 2012 at 9:24 am Hi-I just shared this on our full-time RV group and LOTS of people really liked it! libertatemamo says March 26 2012 at 10:24 am Thanks Julee! Really happy folks like the post Nina Janice Williford Evans says March 26 2012 at 10:13 am great information. . .just discovered your blog from a great post on FaceBook https://www.facebook.com/groups/fulltimervers/266660516752346/?ref=notif&notif_t=group_activity Would love to also share a link to your post on my blog for fulltimers http://readytogofulltimerving.com Look forward to reading more of your articles. . . Janice libertatemamo says March 26 2012 at 10:24 am Hi Janice Lovely to meet you on the blog! And do feel free to share a link to the post. Nina Terry & Belinda + Dayton the wonder dog says October 24 2012 at 11:05 am Were enjoying the Tutoring you are providing. We bought our first MH in 1996 and Boondocked almost everywhere we camped due to our hobby. Through the years sorta got out of the habit and we really miss it a lot! Were pulling the trigger and will be fulltime by January with the stix and brix for sale. Four years in the planning and looking forward to this. Thanks again for your insight in this much needed lifestyle(us). 336Muffin Bettina says March 21 2013 at 1:36 pm Hi Nina As my husband prepare to hit the road (selling our home in Oregon trading in our truck and buying a fifth wheel) your blog is invaluable. ( BTW I am in week 4 of the no-poo and love it!!) We are avid birders and love the solitude of nature. We imagine we will be staying and volunteering in wildlife refuges state parks and boondocking for the most part. We are looking at the Northwoods Arctic Fox 32-5M (3411).( We love our daily yoga practice and need a floor plan that fits 2 yoga mats) We are heading to the Northwoods dealer in Oregon in the beginning of april to see about trading our truck in for a diesel long bed and buying the fifth wheel. Northwoods just came out with a new fifth wheel floor plan that rocks(35-5z) but it is 3811. In regards to bigger is not better do you have any guidance here to help our decision making process? I know this is a very personal decision. ANY input will be helpful. It is just the two of us and our binoculars camera bird books and laptop computers for the most part. This is such a huge decision and we will be living with it for a long time. Thanks for being a sounding board:) Bettina libertatemamo says March 21 2013 at 4:14 pm I guess my best recommendation would be to look at back clearance. What weve found boondocking with friends is that some of the longer 5th wheels have a lot of back overhang (behind the rear wheel) and/or low clearance at the back. We went to some BLM land with buddies last year that had a 38 foot 5th wheel and they were scraping the back end over all the bumps while our 42-foot MH cleared them all with no issue. Its not a critical thing but I think if you really feel like youll be doing a lot of boondocking then it makes a difference. Another thing to keep in mind is that a bigger heavier 5th wheel may require a bigger heftier truck. Totally depends on the model and weight but it could bump you up on $$ for the tow. A bigger truck can be more hassle for sightseeing too. Im not familiar with the particular model youre looking at but those are 2 things Id recommend looking at to help make the choice. Sometimes the layout and size trump any inconveniences so you never know Good luck with all your plans! Nina Ric says July 2 2013 at 7:30 pm I been reading your blog and these are good tips! My wife wanted a Roadtek and I wanted a 34 to 36 DP. We got a 38 footer. I am Baddad53 on IRV2 and just saw your link to the blog today. Enjoyed the reading. mayy skoodan says August 1 2013 at 1:35 pm My wife and I are going full time rving. I absolutely love what you guys have to say. We live over here on the west coast . We a younger couple and hard to find real support but thia has been so helpful ! Rene Kremer says August 3 2013 at 9:38 pm Great post! My wife and I are in the process of getting on the road. We have two boys Cole is 7 and Zachary will be 4 in November. I am 34 and my wife is 33. We also have a 5 yr old golden retriever/ horse( hes 90 lbs). Our family has so far been supportive but have raised a lot of questions as well. One that comes up a lot and we are also concerned about is safety and security. have you found unsafe places to camp that you would never go back to. have you ever been injured and had to try and find a doctor or hospital you could be hours away from? Our situation is fairly unique (I think) because I work away from my family for 2 weeks and then im back with them for two weeks. I work in northern Alberta ( we are Canadian) and for the 6 really cold month of winter we could be anywhere in the US or Canada. For the 6 not so cold months she wants to set up camp in northern Alberta. near where I work. Our family is very concerned for the safety of my wife and kids while I am gone away at work for two weeks. do you have any advice on this or know any other fulltime families that have a similar situation? We are thinking of buying a 40 ft. extended stay model by Jayco(40bhs I think the model is). it has a full size refridgerator and range which we thought would be better suited for keeping my two boys fed. But like you said bigger not always better. My wife and I have been camping all our lives. and are in our second RV since we have been Married(10 years). We currently have a 2007 Springdale 27 with one slide. libertatemamo says August 4 2013 at 9:39 am Hey Rene Lovely to meet you on the blog! You know regarding safety the *only* time Ive ever felt even close to unsafe is in the center of big cities. We had one incident (in San Antonio) a few years back that sent us running but other than that Ive never felt unsafe. Whenever were in smaller cities or the boonies Ive always felt perfectly fine. So I guess Id recommend getting out of the bigger spots and into some more rural areasmore space for the boys too? Weve met quite a few fulltime families on the road. Id recommend getting in touch with these guys: http://boyinks4adventure.com/ Theyve been on the road a while w/ their 2 kids and have both workamped & home-schooled during that time. Really nice family and I have no doubt they can put you in touch w/ others on the road. They just ordered a new rig too. I also like the NuRver group on Facebook lots of young folks on there and several families too. Also recommend this resource Fulltime Families -> all about folks who live fulltime w/ their families on the road. Good luck w/ all your travels! Maybe well meet you on the road? Nina stimpreny says August 4 2013 at 6:42 pm Thanks for the reply. Cant wait to get out there and start living. Great advice. i will definitely be contacting the folks you left links to. Question: do you two caravan with other folks sometimes or always on your own? I thought it would be a lot of fun to to caravan along with some of the great people out there does that happen or do people just move on and say so long. Sent from Samsung Galaxy NoteWheeling It wrote: libertatemamo says August 5 2013 at 10:35 am Weve definitely caravanned. Most of our caravans have been impromptu gatheringsjust folks we met on the road and decided to travel along with for a while. Its a ton of fun as long as you stay loose and not get too rigid about how much time you spend together. All our experiences doing this have been fabulous! Nina matt skoodan says August 4 2013 at 8:29 pm Hey guys! I love your posts. Me my wife and our goldendoodle are hitting the road in a few months to live the simple life in our 20ft rv! Your info is priceless and could only cone with experience. We appreciate you saying it with us all! We are 26 years old and have been looking for other aged rvers any tips ? Cameo Franz says August 16 2013 at 6:48 pm Enjoy your thoughts and insight. BUT..(yes Im a BUT gal) you obviously have plenty of finances w/cushion should you have unexpected expenses on the road. It is not so go for it when one is a BABYBOOMER widowed Gal whose main income is Social Security ($1500). It gets tricky. Ive lived from Tokyo to Stockholm and all over the USA. Full timed a while crossing the country 12 times. Currently stuck in South Texas and loathe it. (formerly resided in Las Vegas Beverly Hills Miami Honolulu Tokyo and Palm Springs the total opposite of anything in Texas. Its a long sstory.) So tell me where should I begin? Im thinking New Mexico or north Arizona. Avoid DRUG TRAFFIC is an obvious concern; yet too isolated places are risky ALONE for a petite gal. Not interested in mid-west/east coast: been there done that. Need SUN. That limits much of the US. Any advice or introspection welcome. Guess its a future choice of in the rocking chair or on the road. libertatemamo says August 17 2013 at 8:44 pm Well if youre interested in fulltime RVing Id probably recommend a smaller trailer or Class C and then Id focus on the SW. New Mexico offers lots of great State Parks and has their yearly camping pass which is an amazing deal -> $225 for one year of dry camping! Its a great state for spring through fall but gets too cold in winter. For winter I would head over to Southern Arizona where you can free camp on public land. There are quite a few single ladies I know that do this and it can be done on limited income. Have a look at these blogs: http://rvsueandcrew.net/ She travels in a trailer and also has detailed financial pages http://dewelldesigns.blogspot.com/ She travels in a Class C I wish you good luck with whatever road you decide to follow! Nina Cameo Franz says August 20 2013 at 5:44 pm Thx for the advice. I have a 2012 32 A Class Im liviing in on the Tx gulf. State parks n public land VERY dangerous in states near Mexican border for anyone but especially a woman aone. Money avails safe upscale resort parks. Im staying iin park here for now. Thx again n BE GRATFUL! OWV says August 29 2013 at 7:16 pm We are new to your blog and new to the world of RVing. We are in the process of selling the house and plan to become fulltimers within the next 3-6 months. Our big issue right now is with size. We like our creature comforts but we also want to use state and national parks and forests as much as possible. In your comments you suggested that the next time you might stay in the 36-38 foot range. We are thinking 40. I recently read something that indicated that anything over 35 would rule out 85% of state and national parks. If that is true how much worse does that number get if you are in a 40 footer vs something in the 36-38 range? And if the percent available is pretty much the same between 36 and 40 why not go 40? On a related note I saw several references to Boondocked. In the RV world what is Boondocked camping. Many thanks for any insight you can provide. Regards OWV libertatemamo says August 30 2013 at 12:10 pm Hi there Its hard to make a firm assessment on the size issue. A lot of times it depends on where you camp. For example State Parks in CA are notoriously old/small and being 40-foot or larger rules out almost 85% of them. Same thing in the National Forest campsites in the CO mountains (weve camped there but its often a struggle to find sites that fit us). On the other hand State Parks in CO are usually quite spacious as are State Parks in OR (weve been able to take our 40-footer just about everywhere in OR) and throughout the Mid-West. Also if you like boondocking smaller is always better. So just depends. My best advice is log onto uscampgrounds.info and click around on some of the states youd like to visit. Theres size-info there and youll very quickly get a feel for where you can go. Nina Debbie says September 3 2013 at 7:23 pm We have a 28 ft travel trailer with slides and Im so ready to move into it and became a full timer. Can it be done in a travel trailer? libertatemamo says September 5 2013 at 6:02 pm I dont see why not. Weve met people who fulltime in all kinds of rigs from pop-ups to truck campers vans and big class As. If your trailer enables you to start the life youre looking for I say go for it! You can always upgrade or change your mind down the line. Nina Roman & Kathy says September 13 2013 at 3:37 pm Hi Nina and Paul Fantastic job on your blog; has answered so many questions for us. Kathy and I tend to plan well in advance for such ventures as full time RVers.. Being in the starting planning changes one topic that seems to come up quite a bit is RV length with regards to parks that RV length issues. We are looking at the next year or two to sell the bricks sticks and mortar. One question maybe you can answer from your travel experience is the 40 length issues at some parks with regards to a motor home how does that compare to for example a 38 ft. 5th wheel and along with 18 length of a double cab truck needed to pull it? Does the combined length of the 5th wheel and truck come into play in some or most places i.e. setting the 5th wheel and where does one typically park the truck in line along side? Guess that does not matter when boon-docking. Would appreciate your feedback regards. Roman libertatemamo says September 14 2013 at 8:32 am In my experience a 38 foot 5th wheel takes up as much if not more space than a 40 foot motorhome specifically because of the big truck. I can squeeze our little toad in just about anywhere (often we just park it across the front of the MH) but with a big truck you may have to find a separate parking spot depending on the campground. Many campgrounds will offer that but it just depends. Also be careful of back overhang on the larger 5th wheels. We caravanned with a couple who had a large 5th wheel last year and they had so much low overhang on the back of their rig that it kept bottoming out on bumpy roads. We actually had to be careful choosing our boondocking spot because their clearance was so much poorer than ours. I think 5th wheels can be a fabulous choice but just watch for size and overhang especially if you are planning on rustic camping. Nina Roman & Kathy says September 14 2013 at 9:13 am Hi Nina thanks so much for the prompt reply. Follow up question to your comment couple who had a large 5th wheel last year and they had so much low overhang on the back of their rig that it kept bottoming out on bumpy roads Are you referring to the distance of the furthest rear axle to the back end of the 5th wheel or simply the ground clearance at the back end of the 5th wheel? I can see it being a problem the greater the distance between the rear axle to the end of the trailer on any bumpy road as being a problem and I have seen some motorhomes that would have the same issue. BTW we live in Mesa AZ not too far 5 miles or so from Usuarry Pass. Currently 82F here expected to be 101F today. regards.Roman & Kathy libertatemamo says September 22 2013 at 11:47 pm Nina and Paul I just found your blog today on Pinterest and it is filled with very good information. I will be more or less full-timing it with a friend who currently lives in Okinawa Japan. He has been living in Japan for 23+ years and plans on moving back to the states permanently. Whenever that happens he has asked me to come along on his life long dream of traveling to all the National Parks/Monuments etc. We dont plan on moving much more than 100 miles or so per day and may stay in a place for a while if we like it and there is lots to see and experience in the area. I plan to keep watching your blog as it really speaks to what we want to do. As for a choice of what type of RV were looking at a diesel-pusher would love to find one in the 32-34 ft range. Loved your advice about the internet service Millenicom . Id read about them from another source just yesterday and feel much better about them now that Ive heard from a 2nd unsolicited source. I didnt know that they dont require a contractthat is so much better I used to drive a truck for a living and have been to almost all the lower 48 states (just missing North Dakota) I used Verizon while I was on the road and cannot ever remember not being able to get a signal for my phone or my internet connection. Of course I was mainly on major highways or secondary roads so that sort of explains that Sorry Ive gone on and on just wanted to introduce myself and hope to see you one day once we ever get on the road Beverly/Wayne libertatemamo says September 24 2013 at 12:16 pm Welcome to the blogand wish you all the best in your new fulltiming plans!! Nina Marie says October 8 2013 at 8:37 pm I just found your blog on Pinterest and learned some important tips. My retirement fantasy is to RV full-time and follow the warm weather through Canada and the US for a few years. Ive just bought a 5th wheel that will be staying put in a nearby RV park for three or four years until I can afford a tow vehicle but Im very excited to experience RV life. Since Im in Canada that wont be until next Spring but is something to keep me busy planning for during the winter. libertatemamo says October 13 2013 at 2:49 pm Well heres hoping your fulltime dreams come true!! Good luck w/ all your planning and travels! Nina Diana says October 12 2013 at 12:17 pm My husband and I are planning on going on the road f/t the first of the year. 3 questions: what is the easiest way to have our mail catch up to us? Also how do we register to vote in the presidential elections? And finally how do we update our drivers licenses for a current address? Thanks I love your blogs. libertatemamo says October 13 2013 at 2:52 pm We use a mail forwarding service (Alternative Resources in South Dakota) to manage our mail. They keep our mail at their office until we ask them to send it to us. Most RV parks will accept mail or you can send mail as general delivery to a local post office and pick-up it later. The address we have in SD also serves as our address on record for the purposes of taxes voting car/RV registration insurance and drivers license. When we established domicile with them we had to make sure we got to South Dakota within a certain time-frame to get our drivers licence (can only be done on-site). You can read more about establishing domicile here: Home is Where you Park itor is it? Nina Wendy says October 16 2013 at 5:56 pm What issues did you have with the fridge in the slide? Too much weight going down the road or when you parked? Thanks Wendy libertatemamo says October 17 2013 at 9:56 am The fridge is really too heavy for the slide and caused it to dip and catch on the outer frame of the RV. You can read more about the problem here: RV Slide Woes & A Total Change in Plans Fixing this issue required many weeks and a 1000 mile drive to Oregon (back to the manufacturing location). Weve been OK since but I always worry about the big slide everytime we bring it in. Nina Chad says November 5 2013 at 7:02 am My family and I have been full time rving for almost two years now and I always enjoy a stop by your site. Thanks for continuing to provide! -Chad Long Long Way to Tipperary Jim says November 5 2013 at 6:05 pm Hi Nina and Paul. So if you had to do it over again would you still go with a diesel pusher? Anything that you would want in a different floor plan that you dont have now? Jim libertatemamo says November 6 2013 at 8:12 am We love the power of our Diesel engine. It can go anywhere and drive any mountain. So that portion I would probably try and keep. But size-wise I wish wed gone a tad smallercloser to 30 or even 35 feet. It can be tough finding accessible sites with the beast and a smaller size would sure make that easier. We love our slides and would definitely buy with slides again (it makes the interior so much roomier) and our layout is good plus I cant deny the tanks in this rig are nice and big. Theres just the size thing Nina catherine says January 1 2014 at 6:57 pm I feel so fortunate I stumbled on to your blog. Ive learned a lot already. My husband and I are newbies and when I mean new we dont even have our very little 14 hybrid trailer. It is being built in Tucson as I type. It will be ready in late february. We will pick it up the 1st week in March and will bomb around New Mexico all of that month and most of April before we start heading back to Duluth MN at the end of May. I want to leave tomorrow as it was -24 last night. It will be an interesting learning curve to be sure. Because neither of us have ever done this. Ideally I want to boondock a lot. We have a swiss shepherd who is traveling with us and I like the idea of giving him more space. However since we know nothing I am wondering if we should invest in the New Mexico State Park Pass and use the hookups until we know our trailer. Maybe start boondocking in Utah and on our way home. Any sage advice for us? I have a million more questions I am sure. Reading these blogs are priceless. Thanx ~Catherine libertatemamo says January 2 2014 at 2:51 am Well congrats on the upcoming adventures! For an easy entry into RVing I would most definitely recommend the New Mexico State Camping Pass. Not only are all the New Mexico parks quite lovely theyre spacious with lots of trails (very dog friendly) and youll get to travel around and see a lot of variety at very low cost. Plus you can test out your rig and dry camping skills. I think its an excellent idea! Good luck and good travels! Nina Sue Puetz says January 22 2014 at 9:08 am Yours is a timely post for us. We are negotiating an RV purchase as we speak. Were soon to be full-timers pending sale of land sailboat and home. Happy trails. Glen Ayres says February 27 2014 at 5:14 pm Getting house ready for sale. Picking up tt end of April Marilee says March 9 2014 at 2:11 pm We are just in the planning stages our house is for sale Im dividing things up between our children and selling or storing the rest. Weve found the 5th wheel we want and the house is for sale really looking forward to this new adventure. Weve had a 5th wheel before but only for occasional trips. All your information is so helpful will be back often to see what else is new. From cold snowy Canada libertatemamo says March 9 2014 at 3:56 pm Congrats on your exciting upcoming adventure! Hope your journey is everything you expect it to be. Nina Jackie Schulz says March 18 2014 at 9:49 am My husband and I are considering fulltime rving. I have been reading different blogs and how to start and all. I am wondering on jobs. Unfortunatly we are not independently wealth and still have not won the lottery. Our thought is to travel to area work for month or two and then move on. Do you have any suggestions on jobs or really good website for that info. We are at a point in out lives we just want to go and see the world why wait until its to late. We are young and ready to go just have to take that leap. libertatemamo says March 18 2014 at 10:26 am Sure! There are lots of online jobs you can do depending on your skills -> computer programming art (selling on Etsy) writing teaching CPA work medical billing etc. If youre looking for physical jobs some Workamping positions do offer pay (check out Workampers.com) plus there are seasonal jobs such as Amazon and Sees Candy (both hire seasonally for Christmas) gate keeping (in Texas for oil companies) and the Dakota Beet Harvest (in late fall). We also know folks who work at fairs or sell their wares at markets. Those are just a few ideas! I suggest checking out workamper.com to start with. Nina Ronald & Laura Garton says March 31 2014 at 7:51 am Love the list. We are new to full time RV living and are looking forward to what ever yonder brings us and seeing all that our beautiful country has to offer. My question is my wife is looking in to time shares that as Ive found are very expensive and only offer a few weeks a yr any ideas on alternatives to these over priced resorts we both love the outdoors and camping this is what we have to work with we have a 41+ ft fifth wheel that is fully self contained libertatemamo says March 31 2014 at 8:10 am Well we rarely stay at ANY private parks so I really cant comment much on resort-type camping. To save money and enjoy the outdoors we primarily camp on public land (state parks national forest BLM etc.). We are 40-foot (41.6 measured). If you require resorts you may want to look at something like Thousand Trails membership. Not my thing so cant really comment further but there are lots of memberships floating around for resale. If you post on one of the RV forums Im sure youll get good feedback on the pros and cons. Nina Joe says April 27 2014 at 6:59 pm Great site and information thank you Ive learned a lot. We just bought a 34ft MH so I am glad to hear your size comments. We will start our adventure soon. When dry camping how do you manage clean black and gray tanks? libertatemamo says April 30 2014 at 2:20 pm I have a bunch of posts on how to manage tanks while in the boonies. This is probably the best one: Going Water-Green = Conserving Water on the Road Heres another one you may like too: Back To Boondocking Basics 8 Steps To Get You Into The Wild Nina Michael says May 24 2014 at 5:06 pm Thanks. .we are just beginning to look into this Isabelle says June 7 2014 at 2:44 pm This is a wonderful blog! We are getting ready to start our RV adventure as newbies in our 34 footer! We are avid motorcycle enthusiasts and will be planning our trips based on where the best motorcycle roads are in the US. Regarding the comments about size considerations we will pulling a 10 foot trailer with the motorcycle. Will that have to factor into size considerations for sites or can we just get creative with how we park the trailer? Any feedback is greatly appreciated! libertatemamo says June 8 2014 at 8:29 am It kinda depends. Most places you can be somewhat creative on how you park but you do want to factor some space for your extra stuff. I would start by booking larger sizes until it get a feel for how you can arrange everything on-site. Weve been able to park in most 40-foot sites with our little toad squeezed sideways in the front. Weve even made it into smaller sites as long as access was good and the site provided some overhang. Then again there are some 40-foot sites that wont fit us at all because trees are in the way or roads turns are tight etc. So just depends on the site and the park. Older parks often have smaller sites and tighter access than newer parks. Forest service campgrounds are typically tighter than desert campgrounds. I use rvparkreviews.com to help gauge these things and combine it with satellite pics (Google Earth) and campsitephoto.com where its available. Between the three I can usually make a good guess if we can fit. Its a process! Nina Marty Leake says June 8 2014 at 2:14 pm After three to four months of researching the idea of becoming a full time RVer beginning the spring of 2015 this top ten list has provided me the last bit of information needed. to possibly move the date to the fall of 2014. Thanks you for the list and I hope to one day cross paths take care and keep on RVing. Peggy says June 25 2014 at 3:05 pm Enjoyed your post and found it very enlightening. My husband and I are currently planning to sell the farm and go on the road year round. We will be purchasing a travel trailer and have a vehicle capable of a large tow load. My question What make/model/size of travel trailer would you recommend? Your advise is greatly appreciated. Thanks Peg Peltier libertatemamo says June 25 2014 at 3:44 pm Sorry dont know much about travel trailers so dont really have any recommendations. Id suggest posting this on one of the RV forums (e.g. http://www.irv2.com/forums/ ). Youll get lots of good feedback there. Good luck with all your plans! Nina Peggy says June 26 2014 at 11:06 am Thanks for the lead. Peg Regina says June 26 2014 at 9:08 am Im just starting to investigate FT RVing. My husband is joining a traveling nurse program and we are currently planning on purchasing a used RV to start with but wed really like to live in one for a month before purchasing. Any thoughts? libertatemamo says June 29 2014 at 5:20 pm I think living in an RV before you try to get fully into it isnt a bad idea at all. Rental RVs are a great way to do this. Just try it out for a while travel around to get a feel of living in the thing in different areas and see how you feel. Weve met many traveling nurses who fulltime and enjoy the comfort of having their own bed/home wherever they go. Good luck with everything! Nina Dewey & Stacy says July 5 2014 at 8:30 pm I am still trying to find out things about RVing. I had a question about RV height. We are looking to purchase a 5th wheel with a height of 13 4 I am concerned that we will have trouble traveling and it is also long at 39 10 without the the tow vehicle. Do people have trouble with this traveling the country? libertatemamo says July 5 2014 at 8:38 pm Thats a big beast! The main issue youll run into with that size is getting into older parks especially public campgrounds depending on state. Roads will be fineyou just need to be aware of tunnels. Most private parks will be fine. Nina Dewey & Stacy says July 8 2014 at 12:35 pm Thanks for the info we have so many questions to answer before we buy one. This helps us in narrowing down the one will buy. We so nervous and excited at the same time. Do you know of any links on how you visit doctors and get medicine while on the road. Were going to be traveling as a family with kids and I dont see to much info on this. Thanks again Dewey & Stacy libertatemamo says July 9 2014 at 3:28 pm I have some info in my Health section on how we do it. See here: https://www.wheelingit.us/category/health-care-2/ Many folks end up picking a doctor in a convenient location and come back for visits every year. We do it a little differently (see the link above). Hope that helps! Nina Shawn Cookson says July 7 2014 at 12:43 am Great article which has helped a lot with my pre-plunge anxiety. My dog and I are hitting the road full-time in less than a month. Hope to cross paths somedayCheers! libertatemamo says July 7 2014 at 7:36 am Very exciting! Good luck with everything. As you can tell we love the lifestyle! Nina Debby says July 8 2014 at 6:41 am I just ran across this today. My husband and I are trying to gather info so we can set out on a full time RVing adventure. I have found this info very helpful since we have not fully committed yet by actually purchasing our RV. (Hes retired and Im not quite yet!) My question is what do you do about having a permanent residence for times when that is needed? (Like when its time to renew your drivers license.) We plan on selling our home and this was one of the many questions that came up. Any info would be helpful in making a more informed decision. Thanks. libertatemamo says August 18 2014 at 8:55 pm For residence what you do is establish domicile in a specific state. There are mail forwarders in FL TX SD and other areas which cater to fulltime RVers for exactly this purpose. The address you set-up serves as your address of record for voting mail drivers licence health insurance etc. I recommend reading these posts: https://www.wheelingit.us/2010/06/15/home-is-where-you-park-it-or-is-it/ And this one from our buddies Technomadia: http://www.technomadia.com/2012/07/chapter-9-nomadic-logistics-domicile-mail-taxes-banking-and-voting/ Nina Josie says July 14 2014 at 5:07 pm I sell RVs and love it. The people I sell to are excited and eager to get on the road love my customers. Anyhow some things I would mention tell your RV sales person about yourself and your plans most of us in the RV industry have experience and can help with ideas and help find you the right coach with items or without items you may not even know you will need or that will greatly enhance your time. Also most RV sales people have resources and its not a used car salesman tactic (well not where I work) we want to help and for you to refer us and come back. I full timed for 4yrs with 3 kids a dog and a cat as a single mom. Let me say we did have our struggles but I LOVED it. Now I get to help others too. So my suggestion is let your RV sales person help and ask them questions they generally have a wealth of information. libertatemamo says July 14 2014 at 5:24 pm Its nice to hear from someone whos selling in the industry and also has experience fulltiming. Im sure your customers appreciate your experience. Nina Kathy says July 28 2014 at 4:52 pm Thanks so much for all the good info. We are considering trading our house in Green Valley AZ for a motorhome and travel where Gary speaks as he is a speaker. We are retired. I will definately follow your blog. Pat H. says August 4 2014 at 4:52 pm Hi Nina What did you guys do for insurance on your storage unit? You dont own or rent a house so you cant cover it with homeowners or renters insurance. Wondering who you found to insure your stuff. Pat H. libertatemamo says August 17 2014 at 9:20 am Pat We have insurance provided by the storage facility (Public Storage). We pay an extra few $$ a month for that particular adder but its included in our monthly price. Nina Leslie says August 10 2014 at 7:31 pm Thanks Nina for the great advice and thanks to all the postersso much useful info here! Kids grown house sold living in temporary housing my husband and I are getting ready to go full time; a dream of ours since we were married nearly 37 years ago. Like others were excited and apprehensive at the same time. The full time RVing community looks like such a great community to be joining. Cant wait! Well be taking our 10 year old grandson and my widowed sister and young daughter on lots of trips so we definitely need a 6 sleeper. Were looking for a used rig but were finding the majority sleep 4 especially if they have a dinette table and chairs as opposed to a sleeper booth. Im wondering if this is a simple fix by adding an after-market sleeper booth (which I would like to have anyway could be a nice place for the kids to sit to draw play games etc while were on the road). Where would we look for such a thing? Is it possible to make a 4-seater legal to seat six (w/seat belts)? Since wed like to camp in public parks and boondock were taking your advice by reducing our desirable size from 40 foot to 32-38 foot hoping to find something closer to 36 feet to perhaps have the best of both worlds. But Im wondering how a tow vehicle impacts overall size? After checking out other blogs that said towing is cumbersome we were thinking of foregoing a tow vehicle and renting a car when we need to get around. My concern is this might be problematic if were boondocking or camping somewhere remote. We considered trading our current SUV in for a mid-size four-down tow-able SUV (like a Honda CRV) then wed only have to own one vehicle. But if this size is too cumbersome to tow we could get a compact car for towing and store our SUV on some property we own. (We need access to an SUV when were visiting back in the mountains of our home state of CO.) Would love to know what kind of vehicle your little Toad is and your thoughts on making your way over bumps and holes when dry camping with a tow vehicle? Would an SUV make it easier or is smaller better? Do you ever wish you didnt have a tow vehicle or do you find it indispensable? Thanks again for your advice! BTW if any of your followers know of someone selling their rig were in the market for a 2004 up diesel pusher 32-38 foot lots of basement storage and must have a WD hook up (and either sleep six or be convertible to this?). Thanks folks! Rodney says August 17 2014 at 5:50 am Hi Leslie I am not a full-timer yet but I have something to add on your comments on type of RV. I have a towable a trailer. It is not hard to tow and I might add that if you go with a motorhome and toad you are in fact still towing only without the ability to back up it just seems different. The challenge is backing of course. I have friends that started out with a trailer and went to a motorhome after being misled on an underpowered tow vehicle and wrecking their trailer. Ive spent quite a bit of time skimming through forums and have found some overall themes on types of rigs. My only concern with my current is size. When I purchased it with the purpose of a few months at a time it was perfect but full-time is another matter. Most blogs on the subject say- stay small as possible but then focus on Class A or 5th Wheels- not so small. Other concerns are roof construction slide out reliability moving versus squatting etc. I am single so that cuts down on size requirements but again how much space is too little? Doing research on parks in my state (FL) most public parks become site limited past 36 feet with the most sites rated for 20-35 foot rigs- easier to get and make reservations. Leslie says September 16 2014 at 11:56 pm Thanks Rodney for your thoughts! Good info to know. libertatemamo says August 17 2014 at 9:27 am For the extra sleeper idea I honestly cant see why you couldnt after-market modify your rig. Ive seen lots of folks modify to their needs so as long as the space is there I would think it possible. Regarding towing I HIGHLY recommend a tow-vehicle if you fulltime. It gives you SO much flexibility in terms of getting around once youre at a site. Plus there are many sightseeing spots you simply cant take your big rig. Ive known folks who do the rental thing and it gets old real fast. Even shopping is easier with a tow! Generally if you get a small tow you dont need much extra space to store it. We have a Honda CRV and well often park our car crossways in front of our RV. We dont add to our site size for the CRV. We usually just book for our rig and find somewhere to squeeze in the toad once we get there. Havent had a problem so far. I DO recommend towing 4-down. Much less hassle. The Honda is made for 4-down towing (you just need to run through the gears) but other cars can also do it (or they can do it with modification). You do need to make sure that when you buy your rig you have the extra weight capacity to tow. I actually have a full 2-part series on tow vehicles here: All About Dinghy Towing Part I Toads All About Dinghy Towing Part II Tow Equipment & Supplemental Brakes Nina Leslie says September 17 2014 at 12:08 am Thanks Nina for the additional info. I think this has settled our tow vehicle vs rental debate. Can you please tell us where you think the best place might be to look for help with modification to the interior of a motorhome? Is this something a place like Camping World would handle or are there individuals who do this type of work who might be more cost effective? Thanks again! libertatemamo says September 17 2014 at 5:28 pm Any good RV repair/modification center should be able to handle this. Im not a huge fan of Camping World but Id recommend looking at other good repair shops in the area. Try to find someone who sells the tow system & ask around on the RV forums for your particular area. We got ours done in San Diego with County RV. Nina robin williams says August 25 2014 at 5:27 pm I am presently renovating my 1999 fleetwood bounder 36s that I bought almost 2 years ago. Being a single guy i am turning it into a man cave. I hope to be done in the next 2 months and then I am going to give full time RV a shot. Rob. Leslie says September 18 2014 at 12:50 pm Robin What a great idea. I kind of like the idea of renovating an older model so perhaps we could put in some healthier more natural and greener finishes. As a nutritionist Im a bit bothered by all the laminates and the accompanying chemicals including formaldehyde. May I ask what youre renovating and the investment required? Collin says September 12 2014 at 3:15 am Thanks for the blog. My wife and I are considering a year on the road and this has been very helpful. We are young empty nesters. Frederick Church says September 15 2014 at 11:19 pm What a great post have just found your blog really great. I have just completed my first year in my 7m (23 ft) converted Hino Raimbow bus. I totally agree with the speed and what not to take. Safe travels. libertatemamo says September 16 2014 at 8:09 am Sweet rig you have (super cute too)! Nice to have you following along. By the way we road tripped in NZ some years ago (mix of car camping and backpacking). Wed love to go back one day. Such an amazing country! Nina Shorelooksnice says September 22 2014 at 7:09 pm Great site! Keep the great content and keep spreading the word to get more people RVing! Jim Shireman says September 28 2014 at 10:02 am Like many others who have responded.. Thanks for posting your Top 10. The wife and I are in the planning stage for full time RVing and you have answered many of the things we were questioning and listing other web sources of information is extremely helpful. We hope to be full timers in a year or so. One question you did not address in this blog was the question Gas or Diesel?. I realize it depends on where you are going but in your opinion what has been your experience? We are leaning strongly to diesel because we do plan to go west of the Mississippi. libertatemamo says September 30 2014 at 5:46 pm Diesel versus Gas is one of those age-old questions with lots of folks on both sides of the equation. Honestly I think youll be fine with either as long as you stay within the weight limits that the engine can handle. That said we LOVE our diesel. Our engine is a power-house and we rock massive (and hilly) drives with almost no effort whatsoever. Plus we know our diesel will last forever (at ~26000 miles were barely broken in!). I would get whatever you find thats within your budget (diesels do tend to be more expensive) and suits you best. Ive seen people fulltime in both types with no issues whatsoever. Nina Rose Cowan says September 30 2014 at 9:27 am Hi Nina I love your story and all of the wonderful information I have been able to glean from your site! Thank you for it. My husband and I are currently living in Panama but have sold our home and will be moving back to travel the U.S. full-time in a motorhome early next year. More than one time you have said you wish you had gone with a smaller coach. We will want to boondock camp in (or somewhere close to)all of the national parks and in BLM land on occasion etc.. But we are not opposed to staying in RV parks when needed. My question to you is: Do you think we can do that kind of traveling in a 43 motorhome? We have done tons of research on the manufacturer and make we want to buy. Their 38 and 40 models just dont have a layout that I think will work for us especially since the 43 seems to have everything we want in the right place. If you think we are crazy please say so! Thanks Rose libertatemamo says September 30 2014 at 5:49 pm Honestly our feeling is the larger you go the more limited you will be in finding spots to stay especially in the more remote areas and older public parks. Weve found our 40-footer to be limiting in this respect and often wish wed gone smaller. So youve got to weigh your priorities on what is more important to you. Is the space/layout key to your happiness on the road? Then absolutely go for the bigger rig and make it work! Is camping in remote areas & boondocking your top priority? Then youve got to look smaller. The answer is highly individual. No wrong answer at alljust the best answer for YOU! Nina Rose Cowan says October 1 2014 at 7:11 pm Thanks Nina for responding and your input. We are evaluating our priorities. Our initial goal is to see the U.S. so we may postpone the majority of our boondocking etc. until we reach our too frazzled limit like you and Paul did. Am an avid fan and will be following you where ever you go. Thanks again Rose Oldog says October 5 2014 at 9:24 am My wife found your site last night and we love it. Next year around June we are looking to go full time RVing. We have a 2013 Tundra with a 4.0 v6 to pull at the most a 22ft. trailer. Well probably look to install a larger radiator and tranny cooler first and will be going with the anti sway bars setup. We lived in a 34ft. motorhome for a year in Sacramento in a trailer park in 2007 with 2 dogs and a cat who adopted us (he was left behind from one who moved out we still have him along with another and a golden retriever). We plan to stay with the truck and smaller trailer for a year or so to see how it goes. Well do some boondocking and mostly look to stay someplace for a month at a time and work camping. julee meltzer says October 7 2014 at 7:29 am I am the author of two RV books one of which is published by Woodalls and hundreds of RV articles. My husband and I have been fulltiming for ten years. I have to say that this is the best article that I have EVER read on full-timing. We have come to the same conclusions that you haveeven after 10 years. Great job! julee meltzer says October 7 2014 at 7:31 am I am the author of two RV books one of which is published by Woodalls and hundreds of RV articles. My husband and I have been fulltiming for ten years. I have to say that this is the best article that I have EVER read on full-timing. We have come to the same conclusions that you haveeven after 10 years. Great job! I will be sharing with my group of 5000+ Rvers. Bill says October 8 2014 at 7:33 pm Great stuff We start our first trip tomorrow Macon Ga to Va Beach via outter banks Al Christensen says October 10 2014 at 10:12 am Ive spent a year so far living and traveling in a self-converted cargo van. Ive been through four major purges of stuff. Just yesterday I combined the contents of two partially empty containers. Now I have a container to divest myself of. The thing is I dont feel like a radical minimalist. Its just that Im finding out I dont need a lot of stuff I thought I would and holding onto it just got in the way. The less I have the more I can see and evaluate whats left. If I cant tell you exactly whats in a box or cupboard if Ive forgotten some things I have then theyre probably not necessary. If I dont know I have it its the same as if I didnt have it. Its rarely a case of Oh! Ive been looking for that. More often its Why was that once important to take with me? So I like your advice to start out with nothing and then add only what you need. I know its not practical to always be acquiring things piece by piece but its a good way to keep from being overburdened. libertatemamo says October 10 2014 at 10:20 am Youre so right on. Like you weve purged every year since we started RVing. We started out with lots of stuff we thought was essential only to realize we never use it. Plus we made the mistake of buying a bunch of RV stuff before we even moved in. These days I advise newbies to bring stuff they definitely know they use on a regular basis (hiking clothes kitchen items) plus a few basic tools (multi-screwdriver duct tape etc.) and safety items (e.g. Fire extinguisher surge protector) and then go from there. Its amazing to find out once you get into the lifestyle how little you actually need. Nina Wanda says October 14 2014 at 3:20 pm My first rv an older 28 class A motorhome was a gift from family member and we used it part-time mostly in Arizona since we lived at Lake Tahoe with long snowy winters. My second rv a 32 diesel with double panes windows but no slide-outs no basement and no levelors. A great rv but our 33 ft 2014 motorhome with 2 slide outs automatic levelors ample basement storage and nice size refrigerator is great for us as we are still part-timers. I do miss the diesel (so much quieter) the double-paned windows and our small truck which we towed carrying our bicycles. I preferred the view from the first 2 motor homes as the built-in dinette with large window was across from soda bed which also had a large window. We now have no view on passenger side except for small kitchen window. My second rv also had a better arrangement for queen bed which faced forward enabling view out front dashboard window with two regular size windows on sides of bed. If you like to camp in gorgeous nature as we do views are important. When we did extended stays we alternated camping in nature areas with minimum or no hookups for a week or more then moving to private campgrounds with laundromats and some food services for a few days. We especially enjoy the national and state parks. I enjoy the motorhome over a 5th wheel or trailer as we do not have to get out in the rain when we arrive at a campground and as we did one night when we didnt feel safe just started the engine and left. I would enjoy trying full-time Rv living and realize there will be days that will range from glorious to trying. Terry says October 21 2014 at 1:24 pm I cant tell you enough how I enjoy your informative blog. Thank you! Camped for 25+ years looking forward to full timing it next year. Dewey & Stacy says October 23 2014 at 8:05 pm We our looking to buy a RV but can not find a bank to finance for fulltime rving. Do you know of any? or does everyone just not tell the banks. Thanks Dewey & Stacy libertatemamo says October 23 2014 at 8:27 pm I have not personally tried this but you could give Essex Credit a call. Or Good Sams. Both advertise in the big RV magazines. Nina Dewey & Stacy says October 23 2014 at 8:55 pm Ok thank you. We will look into those banks. Matt& Ida Thresher says November 6 2014 at 1:48 pm Weve down sized got the house on the market and will be using the Clearwater Fl. area as our enitial home base. Weve realy injoyed your blog. Your tips have been benificial and your weekly blog updates are great. We hope to come across the two of you some day perhaps some fall while traveling back from visiting with our friends and family near Placerville Ca. where we plan on ending our summer runs before heading east to fl. for winter. PS: Your light house blogs brought home some warm memories of my home town in Fond du Lac wis. We have one in our town park. A raminent of days gone by. Also here is a web conection to some Ive recently come across. Thanks Matt & Ida libertatemamo says November 7 2014 at 8:17 am Outstanding! Good travels to you and may the RV bring you many years of fond adventures! Very happy my blog has provided some inspiration to you. Nina Sara & Tsvika says November 7 2014 at 10:28 am Hi Dears We were so thrilled to read your article. We are planning to become a full time RVs in the USA next year(Well arrive from Israel). It is just the kind of information we need and search now in this stage of preparations. It helped us a great deal and well sure be visiting your blog again Sara & Tsvika jen says December 15 2014 at 9:58 pm Just a word of advice from a nurse ..make sure you have a plan for health eventuality. You want to ensure that if your health fails you have a home where you are comfortable near health services and friends and family for support. Laurie says December 18 2014 at 5:52 pm I am very seriously considering RVing F.T. at least for a while anyway. If I visit a place that I love I will consider finding employment & possibly moving there permanently. Linda says January 22 2015 at 9:34 pm Love this blog. In 105 days we try our first long term (4 months) full time RV trip. We had a motor home that we loved but did not like the vehicle towing and must have a car to get around once we hooked up. The motor home was fantastic for storage and ease of leveling and hookups but very expensive compared to a travel trailer and tow vehicle (for us half the price). Due to our business we had to sell back in 2006. We just bought a 27 travel trailer and I do have concerns that it is a few feet too small. I wish I had seen this blog before. However we will make it work for our first trip and excited to be working in a national park for our 4 month trip! Safe travels everyone! RLW says January 25 2015 at 2:53 pm Greetings. Nice post and food for thought. on size you post that 35 would be perfect for the two of you. What if you were traveling alone. Would 35 be just right or more toward 30? Just curious as I am considering 3-5 month living periods from my home as a single. Ironically some have shared that a small Class C or A would be great like 24-26 but as I looked at them there was little storage. The trailers of the same size had more storage. I just am not sure about the amount of storage needed yet. They all seem to have the basics but libertatemamo says January 26 2015 at 10:48 am If it were me solo Id lean towards a 30-footer or smaller likely a Class C or a trailer just because its sooooo much easier to maneuver around (think backing into sites driving around campgrounds with large trees going boondocking getting into tight spots etc.). With the bigger rigs I always feel its harder to back-in and maneuver in tight spaces (always better with a spotter since there are so many blind spots in a big rig) whereas the smaller rigs drive more like a car and can more easily be parked without help in just about any space. Also the smaller rigs use smaller (= much cheaper) tire sizes can get serviced at a regular oil change place (instead of a specialty truck spot) and are easier/cheaper to maintain. All stuff Id prefer as a solo traveler. That said its certainly possible to go solo in a bigger rig. Ive seen solo travelers (both men and women) in rigs up to 40-foot in size. Its just a question of how comfortable you are driving/parking it and how mobile you want to be. Anything is possible! My advice is to go test drive some rigs and practice getting into back-in sites and driving around a treed area to see how it feels. You may feel fine or you may not. Also once you get on the road you may be surprised at how little stuff you really need. Nina Lawrence Montoya says January 25 2015 at 3:43 pm Hello thanks for the information. We will be pulling our travel trailer long distance for the first time. From Albuquerque to Daytona Fl. We are very excited but nervous as well. Could you share your list or thoughts about items you wish you had not drug along that you did not need? Any other experience or advice would be great. Thank you. libertatemamo says January 26 2015 at 11:07 am Ahhh the things we bought along and didnt use. I have more than I can count but heres a few: 1/ clothing we bought waaaaaay too much. Every single year weve been on the road weve cut back. Ive found I dont need more than a few good camping outfits (layers are your friend) and one going out outfit. Our closets are half empty. 2/ grill the first grill we bought was way too big. Our current grill is a smaller one and works great. 3/ decorations we bought a bunch of RV type decorations (e.g. Hanging lamps for our awning) that we never used and ended up giving away. My advice is dont buy too many decorations until you get on the road since youll quickly figure out what you use and what you dont. Some camping chairs and a small collapsible side-table will get you started on your outdoor gear. Add on from there as you go. 4/ wet suits and beach/surf gear for some reason we had it in our heads wed use these a lot. Instead they took up a bunch of space and we rarely (a few times per year?) used them. We decided it makes more sense to rent these as needed. We feel the same about kayaks and paddle-boards. You may end up differently but my advice is leave these at home when you start out until you have some experience with where you travel and what you like to do. You can always rent and if you really miss them you can brings them along on the next trip. Those are the biggies. Im sure there are more but these are the first that come to mind. Good travels to you! Nina Jim says February 1 2015 at 9:08 am Looking at 3/4 time RV-ing to start with. Still have a home place to go to with the plan of selling down the road if we like full timing. Presently have a Lance camper in the bed of my truck. have had it for 21 years and has worked great. Would like to go bigger (35 range) Also would like to tow a small Jeep. any thought on towing and hanging on to a home base for awhile. My wife and I retired in April and took a 2 month trip in the Lance. Had a Great time and we didnt kill each other. How nice is that. We did put on a lot of miles and next time would spend more time in one spot. We did put on over 450 miles on the ATV during that time and got to see a lot. Thanks. libertatemamo says February 1 2015 at 9:17 am Towing a jeep is a great idea especially if you like to go off-roading. We tie a CRV which works well for us but I have plenty of buddies that tow jeeps. Ive written a 2-part series on towing here: https://www.wheelingit.us/2011/07/08/all-about-towing-toads-dinghy-towing/ https://www.wheelingit.us/2011/07/09/all-about-towing-part-ii-tow-equipment-supplemental-brakes/ And as for keeping a home base? Nothing wrong with that at all. For many people part-time RVing is the perfect mix. They get yo explore part of the year and come home to nest the rest if the year. Its a totally individual thing. So if that works well for you and you can afford it financially then absolutely keep that home base. Nina Steve Prentice says February 14 2015 at 4:13 pm Nina We are devoted readers of your blog. We ourselves are just getting ready to hit the road this spring and as basic as this question may be we would like to know what type of dishes you recommend. Do you travel with regular flatware or something more light and durable? We are hoping to find something that does not contain BPA. Just wondering if you could recommend a brand and/or source. Best Steve and Liz Toronto Canada libertatemamo says February 14 2015 at 7:40 pm Weve always travelled with regular ceramic dishes and flatware. We just enjoy the feel of eating on the real stuff. I put grip it type dish separators between each plate and weve never had a problem with rattling or breakage in 5 years on the road. Many RV folks love Corelle or melamine type dishware coz its really light but weve never been able to switch away from the classic stuff. We also use real glassware for our wine cocktail and drinking glasses and just keep the glasses in a cardboard wine-bottle box with foam liner when we travel. Never any problems there either. Nina Debbie Steinhauer says February 20 2015 at 1:38 pm Im widowed a while now and planning on moving from south to northwest. I plan to purchase a good size camper. The two main reasons 1)I will be hooked up at my sons property and my home is becoming nightmares re:repairs and general up keep. Im 64 and should I find a special someone my son & wife wish to purchase my rig. Thanks to all for the tips and welcome any advice. Have you or know someone who has done this? Its me and pup any suggestions on camper must haves things to look for and size etc? libertatemamo says February 20 2015 at 5:04 pm I know lots of solo ladies around your age on the road. Most of them chose smaller rigs (Class C or small trailers) but I do know one lady (Denise) who drives around in a 40-foot class A. Have a look at this post: https://www.wheelingit.us/2014/09/26/rving-travelling-as-a-single-lady/ Im sure any of the ladies in that post would be fine with you contacting them on their blogs and asking more questions. Nina Lisa Herring says March 6 2015 at 4:03 pm Thank you for the list! Im trying to get as much useful information as possible right now. My husband is possibly getting us transferred to Winnipeg MB Canada in the next couple months. Being that hes never set foot in Canada and I am a sand person not a snow person we thought we would sell our house in Indiana buy a fifth wheel and find a year-round place or campground to park near his work. I said if it doesnt work out well pack up and head straight for Florida (or someplace warm at least). I wondered about the weight in the slide-outs; especially since we are looking at units that come with a residential refrigerator. So as to save money and the cost of living being so much more in Canada Im going to have to learn to cook and find space to store things. We just started looking at fifth wheels and have been narrowing our search. What is on the radar right now is Open Range 3X because of the insulation and dual pane windows. Any info and suggestions are HUGELY appreciated! It will be my husband 38 myself 33 and our Labrador and German Shepherd living in this full-time. We are young enough to make a bunch of mistakes but mature enough to know we need all the advice we can get! libertatemamo says March 8 2015 at 11:41 am So I admit Im not much of an expert on 5th wheels. For full timing it definitely helps to have a rig with extra insulation and dual-pane windows. And of course you know how we feel about having a fridge in the slide out (still our only major problem in this rig). I recommend thinking about size especially if you plan to camp in older state parks national parks and national forest. A smaller rig may also allow you to choose a more nimble truck. But beyond that Im not overly familiar with 5th wheels. I suggest posting on one of the big RV forums (RV.net or iRV2.com). Lots of knowledgeable people to help you out there. Good luck with everything! Nina Edward Conley says March 17 2015 at 10:38 am Hi Im enjoying the posts Im seeing here. I can see there are a lot of things to consider when buying ad living in a RV. I am basically retired and do have a guaranteed income so at least I dont have to be all that concerned about earning any money. Currently I Live in Colorado but have family in Tucson and am seriously considering buying a RV so I can spend winters where it is warmer. I have a 2011 Dodge Ram 1500 quad cab truck that I would likely tow and from what I am reading elsewhere I think I must use a flat dolly. Im just wondering what you would recommend in a used RV. I am inclined to think something in the 30-35 ft. range would work just fine for me for now.I would likely stay put in one spot on either end for at least 4 months at a time. I may occasionally head north to northern Washington State but really dont have plans on extensive wandering at the time. Thanks for any thoughts or recommendations. Edward libertatemamo says April 29 2015 at 9:27 pm Sorry for the late reply. Somehow this comment hid from me. I like the older Diesels but whatever you buy make sure the carrying capacity can handle the truck. You may also be able to flat-tow the truck if you modify the transmission. Good luck with all your plans! Nina Ralph & Ginny says March 27 2015 at 2:49 pm Hi Guys we enjoy your blog. We are planning on full timing it next year. We are working hard on our house so we can sell it. We retired from our sign business (The Sign Mobil) in 96 and went cruising on our (37 Sea Runner Trimaran) for 10 years. Since then we have lived on6 acres near Ava Mo. Were tired of the winters tornados and lawn mowing. Were planning on buying a 35 motorhome and hitting the road. Your blog is a godsend with tons of good info. We will be using Mail Call in Shelter Island for our address. I did the sand blasted sign for mail call in 1986. Have you used them? We may have met each other in San Diego. I am a grad of Point Loma High went to San Diego State. I knew a Liberto when I was in school. Any Connection to your name? Ralph libertatemamo says March 27 2015 at 7:47 pm Glad youve found us and gotten some useful info from the blog. No connection with Liberto (libertatemamo is just a screen name I use from the Latin liberty lover) and no Im not familiar with Mail Call either. If youre full timing and not keeping domicile in MO you might want to think about switching to one of the RV friendly non-tax state such as FL TX or SD. Lots of mail forwarders in those states who are very familiar with the needs of fulltime RVers. Either way I wish you the best of luck with the transition! Nina Michael Berg says April 5 2015 at 4:18 pm When out camping try SAToolz for your iPhone it lets you see if any obstacles like trees are in the way before you try setting up your Dish. Its available for Dish Network DirecTV Exceed and HughesNet. Search the app store for SAToolz. cheryl golden says April 7 2015 at 8:33 am I love this list! We have been full timing for close to 3 yrs now. Truth is we dont know where we want to live! So this lifestyle suites us fine. We seeing through Maryland to see the family and friends and back on the road again. A couple things we plan for are rv maintenance costs. Tires batteries etc. And 2 mail. We use our daughters address and have her forward our mail to where ever we will be for enough time to receive it. And use online banking for most bill paying. Happy RVing! Deborah says April 7 2015 at 8:51 am This has been a wonderful site to discover! We have been considering full-time RV life once we leave Australia next year and return to Europe. Do you know of any RV forums for Europe? So much of what you have written is applicable to ANY country or continent so thanks for taking the time to share your own hard-earned knowledge. libertatemamo says April 7 2015 at 11:04 am Ive not looked too deeply into European forums but I was looking at UK a while back and found a rather active-looking forum here: http://www.caravantalk.co.uk/ And a few more links here: http://caravanning4u.co.uk/europe.html http://www.ukcampsite.co.uk/sites/ http://www.rvcampingeurope.com/ One day we may well go & caravan in Europe ourselves. Weve certainly talked about it! If you find any other good EU resources please let me know. Nina Brian Schermerhorn says April 12 2015 at 10:14 am Love your article. When you say that your RV is too big for the kinds of camping you like to do (public parks etc) what would be the perfect size you think? So far our favorite size for the layouts we see is a 30 Fifth wheel. We hopefully will do a lot of boondocking and staying in public camps. Tips in any way? =) Thanks libertatemamo says April 13 2015 at 7:52 am We would love a 30ish Class A. That would give us a lot more maneuverability especially in forested sites. Nina Brian Schermerhorn says April 13 2015 at 8:04 am Ah cool! Whats the difference in maneuverability you think between a Class A 30 and a Fifth Wheel 30 plus truck hauling it? libertatemamo says April 13 2015 at 2:19 pm For the same length I do feel a Class A is more maneuverable than a 5th wheel but it also depends a bit on the particular model. If youre serious about boondocking look at clearance & back overhang on your rig. Both can make a huge difference as to how far you can go into the boonies. I think 25-30 is a good size for 5th wheels (decent compromise between living space & maneuverability). Nina De ricci says April 23 2015 at 3:22 pm Enjoy your web site. Looked through most of the posts but did not find any regarding the address on drivers license?! We tried to get the change just using the insurance card but DMV still wants a utility bill with new addresswe dont have a utility bills.???? Every thing else has worked out fine. Yes we are new to RVing full time but not to camping we have camp in a tent to a diesel pusher for the past 44 years. We purchased a Landmark 365 42 ft fifth wheel and have a F350 44 dually and I have a CRV Honda. My husband is a transpo drive for a RV dealer during the winter and is comfortable hauling the mighty beast. I drive my car to where ever our destination for the summer will be be it 1000 miles or 500 I dont mind driving. I so enjoy living full time in the RV but we have decided to work camp for the summer as well and I have new resumes written up. Just one question do you fill in the hours you want and the pay requested or leave it blank as we would like to do as we are flexible. libertatemamo says April 23 2015 at 11:06 pm See my other response regarding the address. What state are you applying in? If youre fulltime RVers with no fixed links I would suggest establishing domicile in one of the RV friendly states specifically FL SD or TX. Some other states can be difficult with their requirements and are not as easy to establish domicile. Nina De ricci says April 23 2015 at 3:29 pm We have just become full-time RVers after 44 years of camping in a tent up to a diesel pusher.We now live in a Landmark 365 42 fifth wheel tow vehicle is a F350 44 dually and I drive a CRV Honda. My husband is a transpo driver for a RV dealer during the winter so he is comfortable hauling the beast. Yes I take my CRV and follow I dont mind the drive be it 100 or 1000 mi. 1. All has worked out fine except we cannot get our new legal mail address on our drivers license required is utility bills and or ins card. Dont have a utility bill.???? 2. We have decided to work camp for the summer months I have new resumes but do we fill out the hours and pay or as we would like to do leave it open as we are flexible? Thank you! Dericc libertatemamo says April 23 2015 at 11:04 pm For your address you should be able to use cellphone bill and insurance bill at least in the states that regularly deal with RVers (e.g. FL SD TX). Other states may have stricter requirements. As for workamping. Weve only ever taken volunteer jobs at State Parks so I cant really help on the question. I suggest posting on the RV forums or on Facebook workamping groups. Nina Gillian says May 4 2015 at 9:07 pm A great post! So happy to hear that bigger isnt always better! We are about to start across country in our 26 airstream and a lot of people were trying to convince us to go bigger. But we figured the smaller living space would force us to get out and explore as much as possible! libertatemamo says May 4 2015 at 9:09 pm Oh definitely! Your 26-footer is going to be perfect especially if you love the bigger nature spots. Good travels to you! Nina Susanna says May 17 2015 at 8:58 am I loooove your blog Sooo many useful things thank you for all your hard work. Very very appreciated. Im new to the scene reading several full timer blogs and wishing to be on the road more. Im curious are you from Denmark as in you were raised there? Just something I saw you wrote and had me wondering. Thank you again for a complete and detailed blog lots of time and work must go into it. Susanna libertatemamo says September 8 2015 at 5:04 pm I was born in Denmark but raised in Asia (Hong Kong Singapore). As kids we went back every summer and I still speak/write the language but I havent lived there full-time since I was 4 years old. Nina Len Kaiser says May 17 2015 at 4:53 pm Hello Enjoyed the reading of this post. My sister and I are looking at going full time into an RV and we have never lived in one before. Ive driven one before but it died before we go out of the state we were in. We are looking to buy something that is in better shape and Ive pretty much landed on a camper with the Bunkhouse in it to give us two bedrooms. We plan on selling the extra stuff (Furniture and things we do not need) before hitting the road and really just looking for a place to call home permanently. I have a couple of questions for you 1. About the internet how exactly does that work? We do not plan on having a home base so to speak so we would be on the road 100% of the time living in various places. I have to have decent internet for my work so that we could continue to live the way we want. How hard is it to get internet if say you are living off the grid in the woods somewhere? This is an absolute must for us. 2. How much does it cost a month to live full time in an RV? Im really just asking for a ball park figure here as I realize that it will differ depending upon where you are and the size of the RV if you are staying at an RV park. Thanks! Len libertatemamo says May 18 2015 at 6:54 pm For internet most RVers sign up for a cellphone data plan with either Verizon or ATT and use a MiFi to distribute it to all their devices. Youll likely have to adjust your data usage quite a bit since cellphone plans are much more limited than what youre used to at home. Also youll want to consider buying a booster to help boost the signal in more marginal spots. My best advice is actually to buy this book written by fellow RVers and techno-mads whove dedicated 226 pages to this exact question: Mobile Internet Handbook As for costs its a very variable question but I would say most RVers are in the $2500-$3500/mo range with a few RVers who do it much cheaper (around $1000-$1500/mo) and some who use alot more ($5000/mo). Your biggest variable budget item will be gas & RV park costs both of which can be managed by how far you drive and where you stay (or if you volunteer workamp etc.). Nina Len Kaiser says May 19 2015 at 1:21 am Thanks for your reply. We would probably not have that much expense as we plan on living off the grid almost 100% of the time with the exception of say a few days out of the month. We also do not plan on driving really long distances like from one end of the US to the other (I.E. Florida to Washington lol). We plan on doing it slowly and staying in each place for a month or two before leaving that city. My sister is on disability so we have a fixed income and I do not make tons of money myself. We have been homeless together before so we have ways of doing things that probably a lot of people would not do or be able to do. Henry Metevia says May 27 2015 at 4:43 pm Love your list . Been full timers for about three years now . Both ended up on disability sold or gave away all . No turning back no regrets enjoying what we are doing in are own time . Still got to get a better handle on the weather thing . Been great Mark Schneider says June 5 2015 at 12:23 pm We love reading your post. We are looking to go full time RV in 2 years youve answered many of our questions. Our big thing now is getting rid of everything in the house before we sell it. Does anyone have any suggestion on that? libertatemamo says June 5 2015 at 1:19 pm We did LOTS of stuff on Craigs List and Freecycle.com. For clothes we gave most away for furniture a lot of our friends got it. But as far as selling Craigs List was awesome. I also know people that do garage sales and estate sales. We didnt get rid of it all and ended up with a small storage something weve regretted ever since. Nina Nina Caleb says June 22 2015 at 4:31 am Dan wish I knew about the internet one. We just locked ourselves into a two year contract with AT&T and used 1GB of our 5GB data in three days. YIKES. NO more streaming Pandora for us. Will definitely have to by tapping into some of the free WiFi at parks we stay at and working from coffee shops in town. Loved this list and plan on linking to it from our Twitter account. We just started living in our RV full time about a month ago! libertatemamo says June 22 2015 at 7:46 am Congrats on starting the fulltime dream Caleb! The internet definitely goes fast on cell data especially with video (the #1 culprit). Hopefully ATT will do a promotion at some point (which they regularly do) and you can up your plan to more data for a reasonable price. I do know folks who make do with library and coffee shop WiFi. Its more hassle but it can be done. Nina DM says June 29 2015 at 10:15 am Greetings from an RV somewhere in the desert southwest: If you are still out there RVing I would love to see you update this article. Take care God bless andhave a nice day. DMSimonds libertatemamo says August 10 2015 at 4:02 pm Just (finally) refreshed the article today. Our top 10 is actually exactly the same today even though many of the details have changed. Enjoy! Nina JohnsonNALL says July 21 2015 at 5:40 pm Love Love your posts! We have listed our home for sale and are searching for our RV. We are excited with caution. We have children across the USA and found there is no reason to stay put any longer. Because of your posts we have a lot of reading to do. It has taken several weeks to find your blog and thankfully we did. My parents lived in RVs after retirement until they had to come home for their final journey. So I remember well their travels. Need more information on the address matters. We were going to have our mail forwarded to us as we will be slow moving from place to place. Thank you for all the information. libertatemamo says August 10 2015 at 3:55 pm Most fulltime RVers sign up with a mail forwarding service and use that as their main address (and also often as their official domicile address for taxes health insurance etc.). We have our service in SD (with DakotaPost) but there are many other good services out there (e.g. Escapees in TX St.Brendans Isle in FL). Basically all our stuff gets sent to the mail forwarder where its collected and held. Whenever we want the mail we just ask for it to be forwarded from there to wherever we are. If were in a place that doesnt accept mail well get it sent to the nearest Post Office as General Delivery and go pick it up there. We typically get our mail ~once per month. Another service that many mail forwarders offer is electronic mail scanning so you dont even have to wait to see what is in your mailbox anymore. You can just go online and look at the scanned envelopes and then either ask the mail forwarder to open them and scan the contents or get them to send the contents to you via snail-mail. I highly recommend signing w/ a mail forwarder once you go on the road. Nina TLC2 says August 11 2015 at 2:50 pm Newbie here. Any resources on Senior Women RVing that do not have a gentleman to assist? i.e. maintenance list for the RV. I presently drive a 34 foot older bounder and am looking to upgrade. I was so impressed with the 43 Foot Diplomat I recently saw here as I am going to be upgrading and soon so rethinking the size. There is a huge RV place in Texas he also referred me to but then what about warrantys etc. 1. Tow Vehicles Recommended. Now have a 2006 Honda CRV. with this Bounder. Will I be able to transfer this set up to the newer motorhome or will I have to buy another one. I spent 1600 on this one in AZ and used it once. 2. Need internet recommend as right now I am using my Smart Phone as a mobile hot spot and almost up to 10 GB on a military base so internet is really in and out on their wireless. 3. Any special resources for senior women on the road. 4. Be advised one has to notarize the mail forwarding documents. libertatemamo says August 12 2015 at 10:19 pm 1. You should be able to transfer that tow to the new rig. CR-Vs are great tow vehicles and can be towed 4-down without a problem. Just install a bar on the new rig and youll be able to tow. 2. For internet it really depends how much you need and where you usually travel. With most carriers you can up your cellphone plan to a larger size which may be all you need. We have a mix of ATT & Verizon which covers us just about anywhere. You can see our internet set-up HERE . 3. I dont know of any specific resources for senior women but I know of many resources for solo women. For example there are solo threads on just about every RV forum (e.g. iRV2 RV Dreams) and there are solo travel clubs (WINS LonerOnWheels). Have a look at some of the links Ive listed in THIS POST on Solo RVing. 4. Yes. When we set-up our mail forwarder we got the initial docs notarized at our bank for free. Once the mail forwarder was established weve not had to notarize anymore docs. Nina Rob P says August 13 2015 at 6:15 am I remember reading this a few years back when purchasing our first second hand motorhome and finding it most helpful. I was wondering if you still felt the same so thanks for your updates! Based on our experience at this pointI would make a minor qualification to #4 regarding heavy items on the slide out. And this probably varies between makes models and slide mechanics. I would avoid a design with heavy items on a ramp slide but dont feel it really makes any difference on slides that stay level and travel in and out on strong rollers. The ramp slide has to go uphill when retracting and that causes a lot of strain on the motor and rails the others though slide easily even with a heavy load. Our large passenger side slide has the entire galley a 20 cu ft fridge and a pantry filed with a lot of bottles and cans. Large rollers and a tile floor allow it to move easily and without strain. I also feel a full wall slide is asking for trouble and it potentially creates issues with roof integrity too. Regarding #6 as of today Verizon is technically eliminating contracts but still retains a way to lock you in. libertatemamo says August 13 2015 at 8:02 am Cheers for sharing. I would have to agree the ramp slides are the worst (and our big heavy slide is exactly that kind). Good to know your non-ramp type has not caused you any problems. Nina Doc says August 13 2015 at 11:37 am if more people could read this and become convinced the statements were absolutes not just someones suggestions there would be much more happiness in the RV world. its an easy way of life. I own a small condo but travel or traveled most of the time in the SW USA and kept a log of costs for 6 years. I never went without anything and it only cost me $1100 per month average for the 6 years. its totally affordable and i even threw in some games of golf and some gambling nights in NM. I fish and hunt a lot and enjoy the wild game and fish I catch. I work camp when I feel like it. Boon-dock all the time. Travel at night mostly. And above all I enjoy my life an as old fart. CYa Doc Karen says September 7 2015 at 10:37 am We too fish and hunt and eat everything we harvest. Although we have enjoyed the trips we have taken in our motorhome my husband is reluctant to travel for more than 2 or 3 months at a time. He does not want to miss out on Spring and Fall turkey season and Fall deer season. How do you afford to hunt and fish outside of your home state? Non-resident hunting and fishing licenses are very expensive in many states. libertatemamo says September 8 2015 at 5:14 pm Im no hunter or fisher woman but Ive seen this discussed on RV threads quite a bit. License fees vary dramatically between states so some can be very reasonable value depending on where you go. Also most states offer short-term fishing licenses that are not too expensive (most are less than a regular round of golf or a nice dinner out). Many fulltimers who love to fish either do the short-term licenses or stay for larger chunks of time in states where it is not overly expensive. I recommend searching the forum threads on iRV2 and RV.net for more info on this. Nina Lisa says August 15 2015 at 5:48 am Loved reading your blog! We are thinking of full time RVing and we also have 12 paws. We are looking at 35 Fleetwood One more question I have is what do you do about a mailing address? Any other pointers would be greatly appreciated! Lisa NW Arkansas libertatemamo says August 15 2015 at 8:10 am We use a mail forwarding service. They collect our mail for us and just forward it to us whenever we want it. Many of these services offer mail scanning too. We use DakotaPost in SD but there is also Escapees (in SD FL TX) St.Brendans Isle in FL MyRVMail in FL MyDakotaAddress in FL and many others. The mail service address is also our legal domicile address for health insurance car/RV insurance banking taxes etc.. Nina G says August 17 2015 at 4:42 am I couldnt agree more with paying for storage. Several years ago I started downsizing. Not wanting to permanently get rid of all my stuff I rented a storage bay. After three years of paying for storage it one day hit me that everything that I was keeping I could have bought brand new with the amount of money I had dished out for storage!!!! The following week I liquidated everything either selling it or giving it away. Unless it is something you want to keep in the family (in which case give it to someone to store it for you) I do not see a need for storage! libertatemamo says August 17 2015 at 9:09 am Yeah that storage has been a BANE for us. Every month I see that bill and cringe and every year I cringe even more when they up the costs 10% or more (which they do every single year). I think this year will finally be the year we tackle it and get rid of it (fingers and paws crossed). Nina robin says August 17 2015 at 8:13 am This information is hugely helpful! I found the health insurance info particularly so. We live in NY and it is the same problem with health insurance for individuals no out of network no out of state except emergency.. Love your insights to RVing and travelling. Thank you! libertatemamo says August 17 2015 at 9:13 am Health insurance is definitely a tricky problem especially for pre-Medicare folks like us. This coming year will present more challenges as it seems insurance companies are continuing to limit their coverage range (e.g. BCBS is dropping nationwide PPO plans in several states for individual plans). Ill keep reporting on the blog as/when changes happen. Its just one of the things we must tackle as nomads. Nina Dana says August 20 2015 at 7:21 am Thank you for this post. I am ready to pack up and travel from state park to state park. But what about jobs? Any ideas of what kind of work I can do? I want to hike and kayak all day and work at night. Am I trying to live a fantasy LOL libertatemamo says August 20 2015 at 9:50 am Well theres no end of online stuff you can do such as website development coding trading writing jewelry making hobby-crafting (and selling on Etsy) etc. You may even be able to find jobs that cater to your kayaking/hiking lusts such as mountain guiding Kayaking jobs etc. Or do seasonal jobs such as Amazon Camperforce Ski Instructor etc. where you make all your money over a few months and spend the rest of the year playing. In the end it all depends on how physically active you are what your skills are and where you can best apply them. The sky is the limit! Paul and I do a combo of investing (Paul) and writing (me). Nina Pam says August 25 2015 at 3:33 pm We are planning on full time rving in about 6-7 months. Was wondering if a crockpot is useful in this situation? Thanks in advance! libertatemamo says August 25 2015 at 5:44 pm If you use it now youll use it in the RV. If you dont use it nowwell then you probably wont RVing either. We home-cook a lot and for kitchen items we use pretty much everything we did in our main house. So it just depends on your cooking style. If youre interested in our top-rated RV kitchen items check out this post: Our 5 Favorite Kitchen Items For RV Cooking Nina Doc says August 25 2015 at 5:59 pm A crock pot is a great addition to the RV. I however also carried a pressure cooker electric-plug in and it was even better and quicker. Pull in hook up turn in on with some great beef and veggies take a shower grab a beer and it ready! bam! libertatemamo says August 25 2015 at 6:57 pm We love our pressure cooker but have a traditional one that we use on the propane stove. Its easier for boondocking (which we do like to do) and super fast. We make stews soups and pulled pork in it. Nina Stefani says August 25 2015 at 5:41 pm I just found your website and am going to read all of it. I am so excited to say that we are starting to plan a full time RV trip in about 4 years. This is the start of our plan. research Research Research and by the time my daughter is about o go into high school we will hit the road. Homeschooling across america. I just wanted to take the time to say thank you for blogging. I am also researching blogging as a family (from my point of view from my husbands point of view and from a hormonal teenage 14 year olds point of view should be interesting) Reading your blog gives me hope to having our dream becoming a reality. And let the research begin I hope to one day meet you on the road libertatemamo says August 25 2015 at 6:56 pm Welcome to the blog! We know lots of fulltime families out there on the road home-schooling and seeing the country. If you havent connected already I highly recommend Ditching Surburbia and Fulltime Families . Both resources are focused on fulltime RV families on the road and have LOTS of info for you. Ditching Surburbia in particular has traveled fulltime with their teenage son & daughter for years. I met them a few years ago lovely family! Nina kashmere says September 6 2015 at 7:24 pm great post!!!!! thanks for the info! selling everything i own right now and been shopping for a small motor home i made the executive decision the other night info like this is invaluable!! thank you so much for taking the time to help us noobs!!! Robert Washburn says September 12 2015 at 6:35 pm Yes that was as I feared. I was hoping you would have some suggestion that you or one of your readers may have had to use Blue Cross Blue Shield will not forward prescriptions of this kind. My only hope would be the Dr. ordering 3-6 months worth then the insurance company has to approve it also I know thats sounds weird but I have dealt with them before for just a half of month worth of supplies to have on hand in the winter time for UPS downtime because of weather conditions. They refused. I will read your your blog in its entirety and glean some very useful incites and websites for use later at least I hope to use anyway. May be trapped into taking small trips then back home. Thank you so much for your quick response. Sincerely Robert Washburn Swillpup says September 13 2015 at 8:46 am Hey I love your blog I have just started one myself and will be documenting every step from cleaning out my house to buying our New To Us RV. You have been very inspirational to us and we will continue to follow along on your journey and hope you will come along on ours. Cheers!! Lyn libertatemamo says September 13 2015 at 11:46 am Congrats on the new blog and new lifestyle! I wish you all the best! Nina lynne says September 16 2015 at 5:23 pm I plan on retiring Nov 2016 and want to RV for a couple of years before settling down in one place. Ive been researching the fulltime RVing and my head is spinning with all the info out there. I just want you to know that your site is actually the first one to give direct answers to all the questions I have like taxes health ins. Car/RV registrations. Ill be stopping by quite frequently.. libertatemamo says September 16 2015 at 6:26 pm Welcome to the blog and glad youre finding it helpful! Good luck with all your plans! Nina stephanie says September 17 2015 at 12:47 pm I was wondering what your thoughts are on a woman (myself) doing this alone? In two years my teenage son will be 18 and my plan is to sell the one bedroom condo we live in and hit the road. You are actually the first site/blog I read when I googled how to rv? I am a very adventurous person and have always wanted to travel. I desperately need so peace and relaxation in my life and love nature. I will continue to research and read your blogs to get as much info as possible. I havent even checked pricing yet but I was think buying an rv and living in it and traveling full time makes a lot more sense then putting my money right back in a condo. I want to feel free and I always feel that way when I get out of town. Any advice or direction as to where I should start would be very much appreciated. libertatemamo says September 17 2015 at 2:12 pm I think its a wonderful adventure! We know (and have met) many solo women who fulltime RV and they love it. I suggest checking out this post I wrote on solo travel and linking up to some of the blogs on there: https://www.wheelingit.us/2014/09/26/rving-travelling-as-a-single-lady/ Many of the women in that post never RVd before deciding to set out on their own. Hopefully their stories will get you started and give you some inspiration for your own journey. Nina walt says September 22 2015 at 2:02 am wow this info is great but what does it cost per year .. on the average .. for a single man to live quietly on the road as you described ? nothing crazy .. a simple life of as mentioned not on vacation ! staying in places for a while etc .. Thanks for all the valuable info .. hope to get started very soon libertatemamo says September 23 2015 at 7:15 pm Totally depends on HOW you travel. I have male buddies who travel in vans that live this lifestyle for around $12000 per year (look up ToSimplify CheapRVLiving and Van-Tramp in my blog links) and I have friends who use much much more. I would say you can do it on anything from $1000/mo to $5000/mo depending on how far you travel where you stay how frugal you are etc. Nina Stephen says September 23 2015 at 8:10 pm Lots of comments regarding what it costs. Saw one that said $1000 to $5000. $1000 is easy to do. $5000 would be impossible to understand unless one has bought a half million dollar rig and pays to stay in the most expensive parks in the nation. This of course would not be real RV-ing. You can do it for nearly $0 dollars if you spend a little time hooking up with Workamper at Workamper.com (i believe this is their website). I used to be with them and could find dozens of great places that would allow you to work for 2 days a week and get to stay for 7 days at no cost. You can also work extra days and earn $8 to $10 per hour. Lots of places will hire you for the season 3 to 5 months and pay you full time for a 40 hour week of easy work you get to stay in the park free of charge and if you fulfill your commitment you get your gas paid to and from the park. Now you have the rest of the year to relax. Being a single person its easier to get around and do things and especially afford this lifestyle. Holly says September 28 2015 at 8:31 am One of our biggest worries is noise we may encounter from other campers. How has your experience been with that? Have you found most locations to be quiet? We are worried about having to listen to other peoples music outdoor tvs barking dogs people being noisy outside next to youetc. Would really love to know how that has been for you over the years????? Scott says October 5 2015 at 1:11 pm Great post thank you. I have 7 years to go for retirement and Im already shopping for the perfect RV. What would your thoughts be on a Super C as far as size and set up goes. The Dynamax Nexus and Renegades all have my attention right now. TJ says October 12 2015 at 6:51 pm We are just putting our house on the market. timing is not perfect but at least we have made the decision. We are really looking forward to hearing more helpful information. The storage thing is a little difficult we have been married 50 years and we know that we will not be able to do this forever. We also know that we have a life style to come back to. So it has been a challenge. Happy trails libertatemamo says October 14 2015 at 6:14 am Storage is a tough one. We initially did storage because we werent sure wed be on the road that long. If wed only RVd a year that would probably have worked out fine. Of course 6 years later were still here and still paying for storage (its so darn hard to get rid of once you do it). No right answer for this one but I think the less stuff you keep the freer youll feel in the road. Best of luck with everything! Nina Shirley says October 29 2015 at 2:50 pm I have been thinking of closing up my home and going on the road. I am a military widow no children 4 dogs and was either looking at a class c or b. However I do have a trailer tow package on my 2015 Explorer. How do I know the best option for me? I am a little overweight and sometimes I can not lift or set up things with the limited strength in my hands. However I do really want to try this out. What would you suggest? I live outside of Dallas Texas and there are a lot of RV Centers. Would it be best to go talk to a salesperson but I am concerned they will not take my issues into consideration and only try to sell me. Gary says November 15 2015 at 6:57 pm I just discovered your site and its awesome! In 5 years I plan on doing what you are doing..and in the few minutes Ive spent on your site so far Ive discovered I can learn a lot from you. I also like that you focus on staying in/on public lands etc versus the RV PARK. That is one thing Ive been hesitating about finding those more natural places to be versus in the RV Park. I dont want to be in the RV park type thing at least not the ones that would feel like Im in just another suburban neighborhood. OH I do have a suggestion I noticed on your map that you have not been to the mid Atlantic (or the Northeast) you know Virginia and Maryland have some beautiful spots! So come out my way! Lionel says November 17 2015 at 12:33 am Great read and well done! Being a 60 + newbie my wife and I had some angst about our new full-time journey but after reading your real-life experience we both will be resting a lot easier tonight in our 5th Wheel. Most all you Top 10 were planned out and made ready. We are prisoners to our storage costs but feel ok with that due to our 3 maybe 4 year plan. We will be down sizing at a minimum with cost but feel the short run and future needs make it ok. Again great job thanks for sharing I got you booked marked. Do you have. Facebook page? Lionel Ned says November 29 2015 at 8:58 am Good list been full timing 5 years now. Disagree with #2 we bought a traveler dish best thing we ever did. Very few times we havent been able to use it. Push a button get Sat. Second was a residential frig man this thing is great. Runs on inverter batteries low auto start generator charges them. Life is good. We wander but arent lost. libertatemamo says November 29 2015 at 9:54 am You must spend more time in open or private sites than we do. We spend most of our summers in forested public parks and we were almost never able to get a satellite lock on that roof dish. We honestly couldnt use it more than half the year. Last year we completely ditched the roof-dish (in fact we ditched Direct TV altogether) and its been a great decision for us. The residential fridge is a nice upgrade that I know many RVers do. Since we boondock a lot and prefer to run our rig off solar when we do its not been an upgrade weve been keen to do. One day well probably upgrade but then well need several more panels and quite a bit more battery power too. Nina Ned says November 30 2015 at 5:34 am We spend most of our time in state parks. Had very few problems with the sat dish on top. We always look around for a good site and use a compass to scout it out. John Warren Simpson says December 1 2015 at 4:29 pm Like your perspective and range of experience. Am planning to be full-time in about a year and a half. Seriously think a travel trailer suits my needs. Have to research this one thoroughly. So much to consider in making the right decision. I will bookmark you and keep checking in. ted hutchison says December 3 2015 at 1:26 am Just as a reminder to anyone considering or who owns any RV with slide out partitions You should always keep the tracks lubricated and run them in and out at least once a month to spread the lubrication. Proper maintenance goes a long way in worry free use especially when you are living in it full time. I even live in mine all year round in northern latitudes and lived in Alaska for ten years in an rv with tip outs. You can skirt even a non winter RV and heat the under side to keep your tanks from freezing. Old flexable/cloth backed highway advertizing signs do a good job when purchased. painted and fitted to your rig. They have great insulation value too. I would happily explain any winterization process that any one would like to know about. This blog is a great place for information for anyone considering living full time in an rv. There is a lot of good usefull information contained within. Evagoblog says December 31 2015 at 11:15 am Wonderful wonderful website and its free (I am getting a pedalist-maybe I can talk the owner into helping sponsor this site its a great vehicle for local transport when you dont want/need to haul a car ) as my philosophy is internet website should be free (I DO click on all the ads of free websites though!) my question though is there any website that can help you find someone to travel with in an RV? Roaming Times USED to have one but now they have redone their site it disappeared (dont they know from Craigslist and Plenty of Fish that a very basic site works as long as you give people what they want youll be popular-sigh). Ive tried the usual Travel Buddies Travel Companion Exchange-but they are not geared to people in RVS and the travel clubs that you mentioned above seem geared just for people who have their RV and want to travel alone tried posting in Thorntree Fodors and Frommers forums but those arent geared to finding travel companions (I want to buy a camper trailer and share it with someone who has a car that way the partnership is equal) and even CL. Maybe thats impossible task and if I knew how I would set up a website!! Doug Tally says January 2 2016 at 7:16 am Can you recommend a course to learn about RVing fulltime? My interest is public land use but not so much for wife being affraid even though Im trained in self defense and former Detroit copper with concealed carry. Any suggestions to calm her concerns for safety? Can you winterize an RV winter/snow trekking? libertatemamo says January 7 2016 at 1:56 pm SURE! There are lots of great learning courses out there. RV Dreams are the very first people that come to mind for me. They have a very comprehensive website and also offer rallies to learn about both fulltime RVing & boondocking. In fact their next boondocking rally is happening in March in FL: http://www.rv-dreams.com/boondocking-rally.html I think attending a rally with your wife might be a great way to learn more about the lifestyle and talk to people whove been doing it for years. Other groups such as FMCA and Escapees also offer learning rallies (Escapees bootcamp comes to mind -> https://www.escapees.com/knowledge/boot-camp ). As for winterizing. Im not sure I completely understand the question. If youre asking if you can RV in the snow/winter its certainly possible. Most RVs dont really have the proper insulation so youve got to prepare for the weather by using skirting covering windows using heat-tape on your pipes etc. I prefer to RV where the weather is mild but if youre dead-set on winter stuff Id recommend asking questions on the RV forums. In general the forums are a great place to learn about new things and meet other RVers. I have a post about forums here: https://www.wheelingit.us/2011/01/21/online-rv-forums-beacons-of-help-on-the-road/ Lastly with regards to safety I think attending some rallies talking with other RVers and going on the forums might help. Also when you first start boondocking I might recommend joining a group or camping in places where there are other RVers. There are many boondocking groups out there (again Escapees comes to mind) and going for the first time with others may help allay your worries. The boondocking community is quite close-knit and youll quickly make friends. Weve never felt unsafe on public land but then again Ive been hiking/exploring since I was a teenager. Sometimes it just takes time. Hope that helps! Nina Beachgirl says January 3 2016 at 8:47 pm After my first summer of camping I bought a weather radio and I make sure I have extra batteries along. It keeps us qSky Alert. Gilles says January 8 2016 at 1:51 pm Thanks for the info. Leigh says January 8 2016 at 7:53 pm I have a question to ask. Try not to laugh too hard at my extreme paranoia lol. First you should know it is our sincere goal someday to rv full time. We loove to travel and we are both photographer hobbyists. However. I have zero experience visiting or ever even being in a desert and I am extremely frightened and paranoid of snakes scorpions and mostlyspiders. How often have you run into these creatures boondocking in the west/in the desert? And no this issue wont derail our plans or anything but just wondering what I am in for! Thanks for putting up with my silly question! Cheryl says February 10 2016 at 10:56 am FYI SD domicile folks This could stop your ability to vote in upcoming elections: http://rapidcityjournal.com/news/legislature/lawmaker-wants-to-purge-nomadic-rvers-from-voting-rolls/article_3fbbffc8-2394-5b95-bde7-a38a72841d0f.html libertatemamo says February 18 2016 at 2:46 pm Cheers for the lead. This was also picked up by Escapees Advocacy group and looks like the issue is (for the moment) tabled. Here is the latest message I just got today from Escapees: South Dakota Senate Bill #164 entitled An Act to revise certain residency requirements for voter registration has been tabled by the State Senate Affairs Committee. During the Committee meeting Senator Tieszen stated I believe there is a legal solution to this. He continued I believe its legal and constitutional to put reasonable residency requirements on voting in South Dakota. He is looking for a solution that does in fact disenfranchise those folks that have no connection to South Dakota other than the fact that they rent a P.O. box here for financial gain. He continued by stating Im going to continue to try to work for that solution. Tieszen stated Senate Bill 164 Ive concluded is not the solution. He concluded by asking that Senate Bill 164 be tabled. After the vote was taken Senate Bill 164 was tabled by an 8 to 1 vote. In conclusion Senate Bill 164 is a non-issue at this time. But in the future a voting restriction may be re-introduced. Escapees will continue to monitor this issue for future action. Nina Zhol Lark says February 15 2016 at 9:59 am Great read and well done! Being a 60 + newbie my wife and I had some angst about our new full-time journey but after reading your real-life experience we both will be resting a lot easier tonight in our 5th Wheel. libertatemamo says February 16 2016 at 9:40 am Well Im happy I could help alleviate some of that angst. Youll be in great company out here -> lots of folks all doing this same RV thing and Id care to venture almost every one of them had some level of anxiety about it before they started. Just be open to the experience and see where it takes you. Even if you end up not liking it itll give you new and amazing experiences. Plus you will never have the regret of saying I only wish I had tried it. Nina Greg Pomarico says February 20 2016 at 8:39 pm I am preparing to become a fulltimer. I am in the process of purchasing a travel trailer to tow behind my truck. It will be myself and 2 english bulldogs hitting the road in the next couple months. I am enjoying reading all the posts and learning a lot. Like you I will put a few things in storage but I have already told myself 1 year max. Ill admit its exciting and scary at the same time but if I dont try I will never know. libertatemamo says February 21 2016 at 10:07 am Well congrats on the upcoming adventure. We started out with a 1-year plan much like you and 7 years later were still at it. Good travels to you! Nina Carol Lopez says February 24 2016 at 7:04 pm I know youve talked with lots of full time RVers and wonder how people not yet retired commonly make a living on the road?? It is my dream but I still need income Thank you! Carol libertatemamo says February 24 2016 at 11:27 pm MOST of the younger folks we meet on the road are pre-retiree and work full-time (or part-time) to support their travels. Weve seen folks do all kinds of jobs from workamping to web developing editing art writing investing coding etc. As long as your job is mobile you can take it on the road. Nina Conrad Berg says February 28 2016 at 9:13 am I may be relocating from Idaho to Concordville Pennsylvania for a job. My concerns are that the cost of living may be more than I can handle financially but I could live in a travel trailer easily. What advise can you offer a person who has not even gone camping much less RVing. Im sure there is much to know about the area and does it accommodate this style of living? Patricia Therous (Pat) says March 2 2016 at 9:28 am I Have just spent almost 2hrs reading your posts thank you thank you and to all who replied. I am in the process of getting rid of stuff my target date is end of July or first of Aug to take off after selling my house and car. Planning of buying a Class C 20 to 30 gently used. I am 81 and ready to go. I have two pages of notes from this blog so far. Thanks again Pat cherry says April 4 2016 at 2:46 pm I love this post so many useful tips and even more in the comments! You people are priceless! We are a very young family basically just at the point of settling down. We met travelling in South America made a baby and thats where it all began the more were figuring out details about settling down the more we really dont want that lifestyle. So we might as well just keep travelling and seeing your stories is so supporting because it seems possible and safe and feasible an fun and fine My million dollar question: What do you do for a living to support RV lifestyle?? Thank you!! libertatemamo says April 4 2016 at 3:47 pm Hi Cherry Welcome to the blog! Sounds like youve got the travel bug just like us As for income Ive got the blog and a few travel writing things I do which makes a bit of income (admittedly not much). Hubby does investing (which makes the majority of our income). So thats how we fund it. We have many friends who run all kinds of businesses on the road including online stores (e.g. Etsy) coding online support online businesses editing manual labor (e.g. RV support/installations) etc. Lots of possibilities out there as long as you can do it while traveling. Nina Keri Lyn says April 13 2016 at 7:15 am My husband and I have decided to sell our home and look for a place that is more us while he has to travel for work. We currently have 3 children and two dogs and have looked extensively at RVs before deciding on a 5th wheel sprinter with a bunkhouse. I know the journey will be something to learn and get used to but we decided that if he has to travel with his work then we want to travel with him. Going from a 2k+ sq ft home to even a large 5th wheel is a very very hard thing for myself and my teenage girls but when we look at the larger scale and we will finally have to travel it gets so much easier. More time with dad and going places we couldnt before because our house ties us down with mortgage and bills. My 3 yr old son is just happy to have his dad around more often. I have been looking for all the advice I can on the net and this has been useful for the start up less is better for us because along the way you may acquire more. I make jewelry one of my daughters is an artist and my other daughter is into design so we have sat down to make sure we have gotten our priorities right. For me living in the RV until we are able to find our place is a way to learn to let go and focus on what matters. I spend little time with my kids doing the stuff we want to do and more time cleaning and organizing and running errands to keep all that up. And when my husband gets to be home we end up spending more money just to get out and spend time together with the kids. So for anyone out there who is also considering this way of life I say find out what it means to you. Take good advice from blogs like this and enjoy! Thank you for the great advice blog and to those who commented more great advice! George says April 17 2016 at 2:34 pm Hi Nina Your generosity in sharing your wonderful adventures and knowledge has made for great daydreams and wishing to make to so. Timing is everything in life and waiting too long can be a big mistake. Thanks for pushing me closer to making a decision. Jen Heymann says April 17 2016 at 8:03 pm A very important #11 is having an RV insurance policy specifically designed for full-timers equivalent to homeowners insurance. A windstorm uprooted our carport and threw it into our neighbors trailer at the campground and caused some damage. After calling State Farm we learned that our RV policy was good for nothing and by no means adequate for a full-timer. A standard RV/auto insurance policy doesnt cover any liabilities and also wont cover the loss of any personal valuables (jewelry guns clothing etc) Sara says May 2 2016 at 12:56 am Ive just found you and Im soaking in all this information. Thank you. Do have advice for a single woman in her 60s thinking about full timing for a while? Im retiring and dont know yet where I want to live. So considering traveling around for a while to find the right place. No experience yet with driving or living in an rv Yikes! Help? Thanks! libertatemamo says May 2 2016 at 6:09 pm Youll be in GREAT company! For solo ladies I recommend getting a smaller rig either a Class C or a small trailer. They are easy to handle and youll have no problem learning how to drive them. Also check out the blogs of some of the inspiring solo ladies in this post: RVing & Travelling As a Single Lady I think youll find lots of good info in those blogs. Lots of ladies have done exactly what youve done. Nina sara says May 2 2016 at 10:56 pm Thanks so much for responding and for the link. I have a lot of research to do. But your words are encouraging! Sara Lisa Grace says May 8 2016 at 3:09 pm I was enlightened by the Tiny House movement. After researching into buying a tiny house and furnishing it the cost was more than my regular sized 2 bedroom home. I then started looking at used RVs mainly 5th wheel Trailers and travel trailers. I found a decent used 5th Wheel with good bones and bought it when my house sold. Prior to that I spent 9 months selling off everything I owned and thought I needed. Everyone thought I was nuts. The kids where grown the husband passed away and it was just me and the cat. The banker suggested I replace AC unit with a Heat and Air unit battery fridgeanything that was too old. My investment was $3900 for a 1996 Dutchman Aristocrat 27 ft. Back then they made them solid with good wood not chip board. Heat and Air Unit $850 Fridge (electric only) $150. I did quite a bit of water line insulation because these units were not meant to live in cold weather. Now I live in a resort $450 a month includes electric water sewer cable and WiFi and trash near a lake. I dont have to mow the lawn I have a pool and a recreation room. I never thought life could be so great living in an RV but I just love it. So much easier and cheaper to maintain than the house was. I didnt buy the truck to move it I just hired a mover and had it taken where I chose to live. Jason Wyatt says June 22 2016 at 1:56 pm Totally get it about the smaller rigs! I just took out the eave of the guard shack with my ladder a couple weeks ago! My ladder is on the rear drivers corner of my 42ft 5er and we were leaving a campground that was OBVIOUSLY not built for such a rig. We are woodsy nature-loving people and we miss being able to go to those type of campgrounds but it sure is nice to have the room in the rig to run my business! Gary says June 27 2016 at 9:25 pm I am definitely going to switch to contract free wireless internet Verizon charges an arm and leg on their contracts. Stephen says June 29 2016 at 5:10 pm Very simple very safe. There is a website workamper.com where you can sign up and there are tons of listings wanting RV-ers to come and work a full season a month a year whatever you can offer. There are some absolutely beautiful Federal/State Corps of Engineering and all sorts of lodges that need help. I usually signed up the the minimum which was work 2 full days a week 16 hours and get the whole week stay for free in a really nice rv space. Then if they needed more help they would usually barter for free breakfast/lunch/dinner if there were a cafe simply pay you 8 to 10 per hour or other ammenities you can use. Some like the national parks offer you not only all the hook ups which include water/sewer/ele/free fills for your propane but also pay you for every hour you work and the national parks like workampers to work. Not hard or back breaking but they like you to work 4 or 5 days a week. Its fun though. You can learn to be an interpreter and give trail walks with the public and explain the park and its historical significance or if they have horses and you have experience with them they may put you in the equine area and you groom or saddle up horses or even end up leading or trailing the horse ride. Its fun but its not go camping and sleep all day. Although some rv parks need a person available an nights to welcome guests coming in at night. This is the easiest gig if you dont mind getting up in the middle of the night to be nice to people coming in off the road. Youll like it if you are independent a self starter enjoy the RV life or camping life and dont have to run back to town on a minutes notice to take care of family stuff every week or two. CYa Vicki says July 10 2016 at 4:57 pm Thank you so much for this post.the best one Ive seen for those of us who are doing this but havent even purchased the rig yet We are retiring within the next couple of years and this blog will certainly be a go to!! Thank you again we are so excited! yvonne says July 10 2016 at 10:20 pm Hi Paul and Nina! Fantastic blogso happy to have found it!! My husband and I are pushing 50just sold our restaurant in Seattle and decided to rent the house buy an RV and get off the grid for a year and your blog and others has been so inspiring!! Found a great 31 ft. 2000 Winnebago Itasca in great condition so was glad to hear your ideal size perspective. Seems huge to us as we are upgrading from UW busses A question I/we have is. although we are not interested in having full time tv while boondocking what other options are folks using out there to say maybe be able to use a laptop to stream shows occasionally? We know about Slingboxanyone else have any great new thing we dont yet know about? Thanks to everyone for any and all input!! Steve and Yvonne Nancy says July 18 2016 at 9:15 am Wow you are SOOO patient answering all the repetitive questions (that you have already answered) like its the first time!! Ive been reading for hours. We have a 24 ft diesel class c and we love it we usually only stay out about 4 nights at a time. We like to stay off grid but are not as careful with water and the tanks as we could be. Plus we have J.O.B.S. We will be retiring in about 18 mos and my husband has decided he wants us to go full time! Yikes I dont know what Ill do all day. We bike kayak and hike but every day? Will it still be as fun when you can do it all you want? Mainly I think Im apprehensive about retiring Ive been a nurse 40 years this month and love it Ive worked some job or another since I was 16. Part of me wants a garden and some chickens and part of me wants to travel a lot more overseas. We recently met a couple that have rented RVs in Scotland Australia and the Netherlands Japan and I cant remember where else. They said RV travel is becoming much more popular in other countries. Adventures ahead! I have subscribed and will keep reading! mindy says July 20 2016 at 7:52 pm By accident I found your site and this is one accident Im glad I had! In recent months my life has taken a dramatic change and Im considering RVng as a full time hobby. As I read (and enjoyed) your blog I found lots of good information about so many different aspects of RV life so thank you both for that. At this time I have only just begun to research what type of motor home I want but leaning towards same type that you have only on a smaller scale. I have a few full time RV friends who have offered good advice too. Im looking forward to reading about your future adventures thank you again. m libertatemamo says July 21 2016 at 7:09 am Welcome to the blog and I wish you the best of luck with all your plans! Nina LandParker says July 21 2016 at 7:47 am Great article Im hoping to travel in an RV full-time eventually. In the mean time Im still working to support my family and plan for the future. I sell land throughout the western U.S. (those great winter states you mentioned) if anybody wants to own a few acres to park their RV part or full time. See my website http://www.landparker.com for more details. Thanks! Cheesehead Lynn says July 24 2016 at 12:19 pm I have referenced this list multiple times as we have narrowed down our RV options thanks for posting and updating it. My husband and I have decided on a Newmar class A but we are at an impasse on the size issue. Here is my question to you you mention that you would prefer a 35 or even 30 footer in place of your 41 foot plus Holiday Rambler PDQ. What would you specifically be willing to give up from your current rig to get down to the 35 foot mark? Have you seen a 35 or shorter rig you would be happy to FT in? What would you you absolutely never give up? I am trying to figure out what a 35 footer would need to have to make full timing work Thanks Nina for sharing your thoughts. Doc says July 24 2016 at 2:17 pm Your biggest give up is the basement storage imho. your biggest benefit is you now can maneuver much more easily. Inside you may lose the washer/dryer but can buy one that is a roll around and put it in a safe place to travel. you cant do without some sort of washer/dryer imho. They are not as efficient as home models but I had a separate spin dry unit that took so much water out of my washed clothes that they barely felt damp. it save much time and money. was only 12 inches or so in diameter and maybe 20 inches tall. here is the link: http://www.wayfair.com/The-Laundry-Alternative-Mini-Portable-Energy-Saving-Dryer-MCSD-L1135-K~TLAA1001.html?refid=GX99081635482-TLAA1001&device=c&ptid=170174780242&gclid=CJzt2Cjc4CFQ-IaQodoCcPYA Other than that its learning how to pack right. You really live a different lifestyle on the road. Its casual/casual/casual unless you have made a mistake and believe black tie goes with life on the road. CYa David Ruben says August 10 2016 at 8:35 am Good Morning to all. I have read and skimmed my way through the initial posting and the comments. So here is my 2 cents. I have been full time RVing since August 2015. Sold my home in NY State because it was too expensive to run on my retirement and Social Security. I made the same mistake & stored a fair amount of belongings & furniture. That will go this summer. I still own property in NYS and barns but that will be another year. I started out with a 37 5th wheel drove to Florida and spend 6 months & 1 day at a campground on the Space Coast. Thoroughly enjoyed the time there and will be going back this November. (November 1 through May 1). I bought a new 5th Wheel in Florida and am enjoying it much more that my last one. You mentioned size but I generally dont have an issue. I have not tried dry camping yet and I have not done that in an RV before The new 5th wheel is 42 in length plus a spare tire and bike rake. I drive a 3500 Silverado diesel dually and I am very comfortable in all situations including in town if I am going to a campground there or just following a detour which I ran into in Nebraska. This past spring after leaving Florida I traveled westward to Colorado to visit Rocky Mountain National Park. I was still in the mode of make as many miles as possible in a day but I am now realizing that I really dont need to do that Im retired. On previous trips out to South Dakota & Wyoming I saw Badlands National Park Devils Tower Mount Rushmore and stayed in Cody WY before moving on to Yellowstone & the Grand Tetons. Therefore after visiting with some friends in Wyoming I headed back east. Now I wish that I had stopped along the way even though I had seen those sights. I missed the Badlands and the Wild Horse Reserve south of Rapid City and the area around Rapid City. Another good reason to settle down and enjoy the sights. I am back in Upstate NY for the summer and will be heading back to Florida around the end of September. I am also considering a resident state in either South Dakota or Florida. Medicare supplemental plans will make that decision for me. Right now I have a great plan from Excellus BC/BS in NY and that will be what I will want from either of those states. Im thinking about alternate routes other that I-81 & I-95 heading south. I am a single guy not by choice so I have to do all of the things to keep the adventure going. I purchased a Magellan RV GPS and I feel very comfortable with it. The next 2 years will hopefully see me travel to Montana for the Glacier National Park and then south through Utah for all of the parks and the natural beauty. In 2018 I am planning to drive up to Alaska. That plan is in its infancy right now. Just gathering data and trying to throw out bad info and keeping what sounds reasonable. Ive also donated at least 50% of my clothes because I dont wear them. Takes up space and a lot of weight. Im always looking to reduce weight. I hope that this gives someone else some ideas about life on the road. Doc says September 15 2016 at 7:11 pm I disagree that RVs are generally poorly made. They are like any other American made product not the best. However an owners affect on an RV is even more important. Keeping things tight working flushed cleaned caulked serviced and more important than most of these things is using the darn thing. Most RV owners should be renting. They get a hair in their back side and buy an RV and for a year they are gung-ho then other things get in the way. They ignore it mice take over lady bugs move in a leak in the roof is not noticed because it is not used and now covered with an RV Cover. So yes America does not make the best RVs in the world but people dont take care of the very well either. chris says September 26 2016 at 7:50 am This post is a gold mine. The internet advice alone prob just saved me so much money. Thanks for posting. AlmostFT says September 28 2016 at 11:31 am Maybe Im missing something. How do you get Netflix if you got rid of satellite? Do you have wifi speeds capable of streaming while boondocking? libertatemamo says September 28 2016 at 12:42 pm Yes thats exactly how do it. We use a MiFi (runs on Verizon network) that we use for all our internet needs. Nina AlmostFT says September 29 2016 at 1:31 pm Hi Nina If you dont mind me asking how much data do you use per month when streaming Netflix over mifi? What kind of download speed are you getting and do you truly have connectivity in the boonies? Gary libertatemamo says September 29 2016 at 2:45 pm You can set the Netflix download quality . We have it set to lowest quality which used 0.3 GB per hour. So it just depends how much we stream that month. And yes we do get connectivity most places we go even the boonies. Theres occasional spots we dont have it but we usually make it a priority to stay where we do. We both need it for work so its a pretty important part of our daily lives. We have both ATT & Verizon PLUS we have boosters so we can pull in signals from fairly far away. Nina Doc says September 29 2016 at 2:54 pm nina im an old disabled grandfather. i rv-boat-travel-hunt-fish-golf very little and am headed out for a year or so with a tt just to get away from the city life again. just love rv-ing and have done so for 30 years. i am hopeful to do some out of the way places now. close to cities but in the nowhere zone. im armed have been for 17 years and feel safe being out in the wilderness. a tip for those that may come upon a bear or timber wolf or large cat; carry a boat horn with you. you can get them at any boating outlet or cabellas or dicks. its pressurized and is very very loud. i put a lanyard on it and carry it around my neck. if a creature that can do me harm is within sight I give it a blast or two and they hi-tail it out of there. it would be helpful in finding me as well if i were injured or lost. back to my topic. i cant pay a lot for this type of service and do hope to stay close to places that i can get connected. if i have a phone connection i can do all i need if i stay busy mentally and have a few flash drives of movies i can watch. my oldest son mails them to me from time to time and i return the ones i have seen to him. anyway for simple email/basic searches and to buy something online what do you think id need in terms of gigs? i hate to text with a phone but have a smart phone now so I can but id rather talk. get too many emails to have them sent to my phone so i need a once a day or twice a day at worst connection for email. Cya stephen libertatemamo says September 29 2016 at 3:09 pm If all you need is a little connectivity on your phone Id suggest looking at one of the ATT-based Straight Talk plans at Walmart. If your phone accepts it you can buy a SIM at Walmart and then you just pay flat $45 per month for unlimited talk/text/data. I put the unlimited in quotations because the fine print says that you get unlimited talk/text but only 5GB of full-speed data (after that youre throttled pretty heavily). That might be enough for you though? The nice thing about Walmart is that its non-contract plan so you can try it for a month and if it doesnt work out you can just ditch it and do something else. ATT doesnt get you as wide coverage as Verizon but its pretty darn good. We have it on our phones right now. We personally used Straight Talk on our phones for 3 years and found it perfectly fine for limited use. Nina Stephanie says December 6 2016 at 9:31 pm Wow! After googling what to put in your RV for full time living I ended up here. Im glad I did. We just put our 2000 sqft home on the market in San Diego to live full time in a 5th wheel! We are a military family in our early 30s with 2 young kids and a Great Dane. I guess were not the norm for RV living and could be considered a little crazy. Haha Wish us luck and thanks for the tips! libertatemamo says December 11 2016 at 6:58 pm WELCOME to the blog and the world of RVing. Youll find lots more crazy buddies out here (lots of families too BTW) so I think youll feel right at home in no time Thanks for traveling along and best of luck w/ your plans Nnia Rick says January 2 2017 at 6:14 pm Im a Canadian single 62 year old been Fulltiming since 99. You can never get too much info so ty. If more people could understand how cheap fulltiming can be there certianly would be more doing it. Its a life style NOT a holiday and is limited only by your income. As a modest poker player I live for free on the road. It dont get any better than this. RVers are in general great folks and always willing to help. Safe trips and smell the coffee. DaVID HARRINGTON says January 2 2017 at 6:34 pm hi we are David & Kathy Harrington I plan to sell our home this spring and buy motorhome or 5th wheel but leaning on motorhome 40 ft. any thoughts on this would be helpful our granddaughter lives with us so we cant hit the road until she is 18 yrs. old and gone I hope but still plan to sell& buy this spring and live in it until then so I will continue to gather as much info I can from you guys as yawl willing to share thanks GOD BLESS all of you marry Christmas & Happy New Year may all your travels be BLESS libertatemamo says January 6 2017 at 7:23 am The choice between a motorhome and a 5th wheel is very personal. Both have advantages and disadvantages. For example a motorhome is easier to set-up and take-down (very easy for either partner to do alone) but a 5th wheel is cheaper on maintenance (only one engine to take care of). Ive written a bit more about the pros/cons in other comments (above). Good luck and best of travels to you! Nina Maggie & Clayton says February 23 2017 at 8:27 pm Hi Folks! We have been camping for 47 years and I am now looking at blogs of people full timing. You have a wonderful site here and I am enjoying it very much. Thank you for all the information you have given us . We have poked along on our trips for the last 8 years. Husband retired and I had summers off. Retired now. Met many wonderful people. We will be looking forward to reading your blog for a long time to come! This year we hope to poke along the Oregon Trail! Happy Trails to you and yours! Doc says January 2 2017 at 6:46 pm I cannot agree enough. Most people get into full time rving with the wrong ideas. Its not so that you drive around in a big $500k rig. Its to go and find those special places and spend some time with someone you care about or to find new friends. Its really inexpensive. When I travel I have a crock pot going 24/7 and other than some eggs or oatmeal for breakfast I live on a wonderful yet ever changing crock pot. Every veggie you can imagine plus beef/pork/chicken/turkey/fish. Its an endless journey of great meals and fine wine. If you have an ego youll never make it. The ego has to be divorced and the person allowed to step forward and enjoy life. Life that ever shrinking component we each have yet have no idea when it might end. If you can go and enjoy the road live-laugh-love-hike-cook-campfire-meet new people and see what you have been missing. libertatemamo says January 6 2017 at 7:24 am Nicely said and totally agree. Nina DaVID HARRINGTON says January 2 2017 at 6:49 pm THANKS RICK Im 64 yrs. old disable on fix income Susan says January 11 2017 at 12:46 pm Hi! Wowcant wait to spend more time on your blog. Thanks for all the sharing of hints and tricks. How do you manage your mail? Do you have a permanent address somewhere? Im wondering how I am going to respond to timely letters like from the IRS and such. Also have you been called for Jury Duty while away? How did that work? Feel free to direct me to a post if youve already answered some of these questions! And so grateful for all the pet advice. We have a great pup too! Cheers Susan Elliott (Wild River Life) libertatemamo says January 11 2017 at 2:54 pm We use a mail forwarder in South Dakota. Its our address of record for car/RV registration health insurance and taxes. They also scan our mail so we can see what comes in online as soon as it arrives. The company we use is DakotaPost but there are many similar companies in FL and TX too. And yes weve been called for Jury Duty. The place where we have our address in SD are very familiar with RVers so all we had to do was write fulltime RVer on our notice and we were excused. Nina Bill Hirdman says January 16 2017 at 11:10 am Youve listed some great stuff here. For sure helpful to all of us in one way or another. Myself I live on a limited income. (very limited) I might add.. SSDI. But life is what you make of it. Currently in a 32 which is perfect for me. You talked about the size of your monster Room is nice but once parked I usually have the entire park or forest to wander around. Beach chairs and out door kitchen is where its at for me. AH The dreadful storage unit GET RID OF IT!!!! your right if its in there you probably dont need it. Thankfully I have a buddie that owns a ranch He has allowed me a SMALL area for stuff I will never get rid of. You know stuff thats been in the family type stuff. I love the links youve shared and your info! Wishing ALL safe travels! Jerry says April 6 2017 at 11:19 pm Nina and Paul Im soon to retire from the Air Force and Im debating my future. Im curious if my retirement pay would be enough to full-time on. Id like to message you guys concerning the cost of full-timing if youre open to that. libertatemamo says April 7 2017 at 4:54 am I just wrote 2 very detailed posts on the cost of fulltime RVing last month. I think this may answer your questions: General Budgeting: https://www.wheelingit.us/2017/02/09/the-costs-of-fulltime-rving-part-i-budgeting-planning-your-spend/ Detailed Spending: https://www.wheelingit.us/2017/02/16/the-costs-of-fulltime-rving-part-ii-specifics-links/ Its definitely possible on a fixed income especially if you workampers/volunteer and watch your camping spend. Nina Lizzie says May 3 2017 at 5:04 pm Hi Nina Im 25 years old and have a 3-year-old son. My husband and I will be debt free within a year and have fallen in love with the idea of becoming full-time travelers and world schooling our child. My biggest question is how do you plan out the cost of living? I work virtually so wed have 1 full-time income and my husband is investigating ways to make money on the road. We dont want wait until retirement to travel and we want our son to experience the world (or at least our continent)! Any help is greatly appreciated! libertatemamo says May 4 2017 at 5:14 am I just completed a very detailed 2-part post on RV costs last month. I think this may help you with what you need to know. Check out these links: Budgeting and Planning Your Spend: https://www.wheelingit.us/2017/02/09/the-costs-of-fulltime-rving-part-i-budgeting-planning-your-spend/ Detailed Costs: https://www.wheelingit.us/2017/02/16/the-costs-of-fulltime-rving-part-ii-specifics-links/ Nina Tanya Morris says June 18 2017 at 7:13 am Great information! This is one worth saving. Thanks for taking the time to produce AND update. I came into life unexpectedly during my parents plans to fulltime in their 40s. They elected to proceed with their aspirations with the condition of how I would adapt. In 1978 everything was sold and we left Missouri to go west young man. Over the next 10 years we vastly traveled while Dad built banks. Every weekend was an adventure scoping out the gems the area(s) had to offer. Mom enrolled me in school at each location providing me social skills I wouldve not learned if home schooled. Almost in high school they decided to retire and stabilize my education. Wow! What a culture shock! My most impressional years were spent in a 40 fifth wheel and then it all stopped. Through my adult years Ive camped as much as I could in tents and had an RV for a while. Now Dads been gone 14 years and my elderly mothers time is limited (who I take care of). Ive shared with her my aspirations of returning to fulltime RVing. Shes elated about my desires to return to my roots after she passes. She feels like shes passing the baton with me now that Im in my mid 40s. Of course times have changed and so have the details of survival in the world of RVing. Your words of wisdom have given me much to consider. Again thank you for sharing your knowledge. Tammy Davis says August 8 2017 at 3:23 pm I am currently 57 and my husband is 62 we are planning to work 5 more years then sell the house along with most of our belongings and hit the road in our 30 foot Windjammer travel trailer. I am excited but terrified and a little overwhelmed by insurance mail making reservations internet weather how to pack etc. Over 40 years of accumulating things (stuff) Im not even sure what to put into storage. We want to be debt free and explore our beautiful country and do alot of fishing. Your information and everyone elses feedback has been so helpful. Tanya Morris says August 11 2017 at 6:49 pm Regarding storage I found it to be a total loss. By time I paid the monthly rent while I full-timed almost 2 years I couldve replaced the furniture and tools with the latest styles for less money when I returned. If you have items that cant be replaced put a value on them and assess. If those items are that meaningful youll probably want them with you. Bottom line sell your standard stuff save the money for when you come off the road and enjoy another new adventure. libertatemamo says August 12 2017 at 3:15 am Im totally with you. If you avoid storage it is SO worth it. We certainly wish we hadnt paid it for the first 5 years or so. Nina Victoria L Klahn says September 10 2017 at 4:42 pm What great and inspirational info! We are planning to hit it full time June 1! Shawn Miller says September 22 2017 at 10:27 am Thanks for the great information! If you had a 30 or 35 foot RV would you still want a toad? Thanks! libertatemamo says September 23 2017 at 12:12 pm Yes I would. Still the easiest way to sightsee and a toad can get many places an RV (even a smaller 30-ft one) cant. Nina Craig and missy. says October 31 2017 at 3:16 am Hi there. Me and little lady ( wife ) have been R Ving for a year now. We have a Thorn 30 foot no slid outs traveled over 10000 miles 34 trips still work part time. We love it. Three or four days in the mountains three and four days at the beach. And we like the beach in the winter as well. But anyway enjoying reading all the ups and downs thank all of you so much. We will be going fulltime soon. Amnon Feiner says January 4 2018 at 12:51 pm I love your blog been following for a while. As I approach early retirement (I hope @ 62) I am curious to know In all what would you average your annual RVing costs? I know it varies so just an estimate. Fuel food maint etc. libertatemamo says January 4 2018 at 2:27 pm Ive actually got 2 detailed posts on exactly this topic. Youll find all the answers you need here: The Costs Of Fulltime RVing (Part I) Budgeting & Planning Your Spend The Costs Of Fulltime RVing (Part II) Specifics & Links Nina Bonita M Holbrook says January 20 2018 at 7:44 am Its taken me 12 years to get my wonderful conservative husband to buy a travel trailer I have been itching to go since 2005. Hope to get him hooked and let go of all the stuff. Wish us luck. Bought a trailer yesterday. yooo whooo.. libertatemamo says January 21 2018 at 7:26 am Whooooo hoooooo!! SO EXCITED for you!! Nina Bill Hirdman says January 21 2018 at 8:34 am Well yesterday was another milestone for me Another year in the RV.. To this day my biggest regret is never buying a leveling system. Still doing it the old fashion way Chocks and blocks. I might say I am quite fast and good at it now but boy what I would give to hit a small lotto just to buy into a leveling system. My travels dont take me to the great places you blog about but I do get to see my kids and grandkids! Safe travels to all and good luck over seas! Cheers Amphasis says May 2 2018 at 3:22 pm Yes being bigger does not mean it is better just like being more expensive does not mean the product is better. Happy RVing. Stephanie says July 10 2015 at 2:01 pm In a few years my husband and I will be full timers. My husband will be working shutdowns as a welder so it will be a few more years before we are traveling for enjoyment. We have had this plan for a long time we said when the kids finished high school we would boom out together. Im looking forward to our next journey together. Ive found all the comments here very informative and helpful. Thank you for 10 wonderful tips. libertatemamo says August 10 2015 at 3:51 pm Excellent! Glad the post (and comments) were helpful and I wish you the best of luck in your fulltime plans! Nina Bob Martel says August 15 2015 at 5:05 am Nice to know the list still has integrity! Weve always got room to learn but at least we started out in a 28 foot Airstream so I can check-off lesson #1. Charlie says October 8 2015 at 6:11 am Im getting ready to sell my house buy and RV and hit the road. Its something Ive thought about for a long time and Ive decided its time to pull the trigger. But the thought is intimidating since Ive never owned an RV and dont know anyone who has. I dont want to make a mistake by buying a lemon or a rig that doesnt suit me. Can anyone suggest the pros / cons of different choices? To get started all-in Im thinking of a budget of maybe $100k. Some of the questions I have: * What kind of rig do yall prefer and why? Type A/B/C? 5th wheeler? * Where to buy it Im leaning toward used. Dealer? Private? Consignment (pplmotorhomes.com)? * Tow a car or 5th-wheel so I can get around w/o going everywhere with a big rig? * Security If I park a rig and then explore areas with a car/pickup how much do I have to worry about someone breaking into a rig? * Learning how to drive safely / maintain the rig? Is there training? * What else should a newbie know about before beginning this process? Any help would be appreciated including active forums with people who will offer helpful advice. Thanks! Charlie libertatemamo says August 15 2015 at 8:28 am It was kind of fun (for us too) to see that our early impressions of lessons learned have held true. Things have changedwe have a totally different internet setup we dont have satellite TV anymorebut the lessons learned are still the same. I wonder how well feel 10 years from now? Itll be interesting. P.S. Those airstreams are perfect both in size and coolness factor. Nina Agustin Diaz says October 1 2015 at 6:37 am Great info We have been agonizing over what size rig to go with for over a year now. We have bounced back and forth between a 40 Legacy and a 5th wheel but now after reading so many blogs as well as yours to more than likely go with a Class C Itasca Navion which is 258 and is built on the Sprinter chassis. Your blog really used us over the edge with your hindsight on smaller size. I always thought that a bigger rig would be better but now I am comfortable making that leap with a smaller rig. Thanks for the great info and Go Gators!!! Class of 85 Agustin Sheree says October 24 2015 at 11:42 am Hi Nina. My best friend and I just returned from a week away in her 24 Winnebago. For two very youthful middle-aged ladies on the road we couldnt have had a better time! For the most part we played it by ear; she picked me up at the Atlanta Airport we pointed the rig toward Savannah Georgia (great state for RV travel and campsites) and kept going. Spent a few days in Savannah headed over to Flagler Beach then up to St. Augustine. By far our favorite site of the entire trip was the last one in the Outer Banks. For whatever reason I wanted to go to Rodanthe so we found a very modest small campground for about $30/night right on the Sound side of Hatteras Island. WOW! The sunsets were breathtaking. Mike the owner of the campground was amazing. Upon our return to PA I went over to the local RV dealer and picked out a 32 SouthWind. Fell in love with it! Now I just have to figure out how to make money while on the road. Ironically my primary business isnt so transportable. Funny my current business is processing homes downsizing relocation re-directing unwanted personal property through auction and donation to charity speaking writing and consulting. Its always tougher when its your stuff. I agree with not storing things youre not likely to need them again. Im giving myself 2 years to clear all of my debt and transfer my income-generating efforts to fit a new less complicated lifestyle. Thanks for your great blog. Love it! Sheree Agustin Diaz says October 24 2015 at 12:46 pm We decided to go with the Thor ACE 29 footer. It has full body paint and best of all only 9800 miles on a slightly used coach. Thanks for your post. libertatemamo says October 24 2015 at 11:44 am Sounds like youve got the RV bug and the right plan to make it happen! Wish you ALL the best of luck in your journey & hope to see you down the road. Nina [] 10 Things I Wish Id Known Before FulltimeRVing One of the beautiful things about aging is you carry along the wisdom of years of experience (that and your wine gets better of course). By many standards you could easily call me but a pup in the Source: wheelingit.us [] [] stay put around San Diego for a few more months. You could call it an extension of our whole take your time motto thats naturally becoming part of our 2012 travel plans. So far were [] [] things I love aboutRVing but you risk fizzling out and collaping if you go at it too hard. We made the mistake as many new RVersdo of racing around waaaytoo much in our first year. Not only that but we [] [] keeping us locked in to the deal. Grrrr!Thisannoyed me so much it became item #6 of 10 Thing I Wish Id Known Before Fulltime RVing. So we waited and waited and patiently waited until we could get rid of the darn thing and take [] [] all the national forest campgrounds along the Olympic Peninsula are 21-foot limits (this is where I wish we were smaller I tell you). Ive managed to snag a few last-minute sites and it looks like we may have to [] [] big as the beast that wasnt an easy proposition. We love our spacious RV but one of the things I learned early on in this RVing journey is that her size can be a struggle especially for the kind of wild places we [] [] https://www.wheelingit.us/2011/09/22/10-things-i-wished-id-known-before-fulltime-rving/ [] [] 10 Things I Wish Id Known Before Fulltime RVing [] [] The down-time is also giving us some space to plan our next steps. In the last big storm we discovered yet another leak inguess what?ourbig slide on the front drivers side of the rig. This sameslide and the woes of getting it fixed was the very reason we rushed ~1000 miles cross-country to Oregon almost 3 years ago. Back then the main problem was in the back of the slide near the fridge. Now thefront has movedout of alignment with the front edge dangerously close to catching under the rim of the RV. Simply put its just a poorly engineered design and we should never have bought a rig with a heavy object like the fridge in it(one of our 10 Things I Wish Id Known Before Fulltime RVing). [] [] Investing for a Living and Wheeling It: 10 Things I Wish Id Known Before Fulltime RVing [] [] For those of you interested Ive just refreshedmy most popular blog-post EVER 10 Things I Wish Id Known Before Fulltime RVing. Despite being written in 2011 this post still gets over 500 views/day. Do we still feel [] [] that year wed used almost none of them. This lesson led to item #3 on my popular post 10 Things I Wish Id Known Before Fulltime RVing and the very simple statement thatclubsare only useful IF you make use of [] [] 10 Things I Wish Id Known Before Full-time RVing by Wheeling It [] [] Ourlifein that storage or so we thought. But aftera certain number of years you start to question that whole premise and whether yourlife is really worth the ever-increasing storage $$ you throw at it?6 years on and we feel thismore strongly than ever. In fact Ive talked about it many times on the blog beforeand its one of the key regrets I featured in#8 on my popular post 10 Things I Wish Id Known Before I Went Fulltime RVing. [] [] real seasoned full timer. Forget to do these he says is a big time and sometimes costly mistake. https://www.wheelingit.us/2011/09/22/10-things-i-wished-id-known-before-fulltime-rving/ Go look and come back and add to the list if you can help us [] [] protect the beer and such) and were really basically just slo-mo travelers at heart.We learned that lesson the hard way our first year on the [] [] I think we will end up trying to travel with the weatherbut we have not decided on exact plans yet. Luckily there a LOT of people that travel the country and there are so many helpful websites blogs instructional and educational videos out there. I have also heard that full time RVers are very kind and helpful and care about their communities. I have found some awesome tips about RVing with dogs Rv campsite review websites public land camping and free locations to park and all kinds of amazing videos about how to replacing flooring and painting the walls and of course all kinds of lists like the 10 things I wish Id known before RVing. [] [] like? Two of my favorite are Fulltime RVing: The First 100 Days byThe Lady is a Tramp and 10 Thing I Wish Id Known Before Fulltime RVing from Wheeling [] [] was this post 10 Things I Wish Id Known Before Fulltime RVing that introduced us to Nina and Paul. Nina posts regularly about their travels and she does an [] [] Found this AWESOME article from Nina & Paul who've been full time RVing for over 6 years. There blog Wheeling It has SO many helpful insights and links from FREE camping sites to internet solutions. Their experience is invaluable! 10 Things I Wish I?d Known Before Fulltime RVing? ? Wheeling It [] [] Source Bookmark the permalink. 12 Tips for Women Traveling Solo in an RV [] [] life and moving around from state-to-state can sound intimidating but following these helpful RV living tips can make it [] Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked * Comment * Name * Email * Website Notify me of follow-up comments by email. Notify me of new posts by email. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed . Home Base SW France Email Address Subscribe Disclosure Notice: WheelingIt is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. 2023 Wheelingit Built on the Genesis Framework

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Things they didnt teach you about software engineering (vadimkravcenko.com) Private Audits Get a better understanding of how your product development is going. Fractional CTO Part-Time CTO if you don't want to get a technical co-founder. Build with me Let's build something amazing together with our expert team at mindnow. As always a disclaimer before we start this is purely subjective. Whether you are a seasoned professional or just starting out in the field I hope these insights will provide valuable perspective. I've been thinking of writing this article since the middle of 2022 but I couldn't remember all the things that should go here. So over the last year I've been gathering ideas and writing them down and now I have enough points that I'd like to share them with you. In university they teach you how to write a 400-line program that solves a problem from A-Z. You have a blank canvas and you need to show off your knowledge of some fancy algorithm to find a way to generate a maze. In the end you have a nice solution to a straightforward problem. It sounds like the real world right? But it's not. In the real world you have a codebase of several hundred thousand lines and you're trying to figure out what your colleagues were smoking when they wrote this marvelous piece. You go back and forth between documentation and the person who understands the codebase more. At the end of the week you write ten lines of code that fix some bug and then the cycle repeats until you end up being the person people come to for an explanation of why you wrote it as you did. Professional software developers work in groups and on small pieces of a large software code base and more often than not it's fixing stuff rather than building it from scratch. It's not as glamorous as the boot camps tend to portray it and there's much more overhead involved than just coding. I was surprised by how much easier it is to code something when you understand the underlying principles of how and more importantly why it needs to work. When building a mobile banking app you better understand how the transactions work how money settlements work how ledgers work etc. When building a Point-of-Sale system for a restaurant you better figure out how the waitpeople operate how the inventory is managed in gastronomy and how the credit card authorization works. Basically the ins-an-outs of the domain of where your software will run. The same goes for building software in Medicine Logistics and Bookkeeping. Without this knowledge individuals may struggle to make meaningful contributions and may not be as valuable to their employers. For example if you have prior experience working with banking apps you have a higher chance of finding another job in finance as you're already familiar with the domain. Universities often provide students with the essential technical skills required for a career in software development such as algorithms and data structures. However they often do not prioritize writing clean well-documented and maintainable code. It is often only after working on code written by others and experiencing the challenges of trying to understand and modify it that developers begin to appreciate the value of writing maintainable code. Oh boy how happy I am when I see proper documentation nowadays. This is not necessarily learned in a classroom setting but rather through practical experience and the realization of the time and effort that can be saved by having documentation and writing easy-to-understand code. Nobody is going to come up to you and say Oh wow great job on writing that one-liner amazing! what they will instead say is Users are happy with the feature that you wrote or Your code took down the whole website depending on how lucky you are. Although it may sound surprising the primary focus of a software engineer's job is not writing code but rather creating value through the use of software that was written. Code is simply a tool to achieve this end goal. Code -> Software -> Value. What you write needs to fill some need in the world some tool that users will use some automation that reduces costs something people will pay for (with their time money or attention). We can simplify it. If you build something with shitty technologies that provides great value to the users you've served your purpose as a software engineer. If you've built something with great technology that offers shitty value to the user you didn't. Elegant code best practices smart solutions design patterns these are done for the sake of your fellow software engineers who will work on the codebase after you rather than helping you fulfill the purpose of bringing value. (Mind you bringing value can also mean building a scalable solution that doesn't crash which requires the code to be at least somewhat decent.) There will be incompetent people in most working environments you interact with. It doesn't need to be your manager; it can be the manager at a partner company that provides you with an API or some C-Level executive on the client side. It is highly frustrating and exhausting to deal with. They create a toxic and unproductive work environment. They take too long to make decisions or make poor ones that negatively impact the team and the project. This leads to constant delays and rework wasting valuable time and resources. I've spent considerable time figuring out efficient ways to deal with those incompetences without being an asshole. I think it's a skill that should definitely be taught in universities. One way I have found to be effective is to focus on being productive despite the other person. I try to find solutions/alternatives that may be more effective and don't require involving the ineffective person. It's also helpful to document everything. This can provide concrete evidence of their incompetences impact on the processes. Ultimately the best way to deal with incompetence is to be proactive and find ways to work around their limitations. This may involve: Dealing with people is hard. Dealing with uncertainty is hard. Dealing with uncertain people is harder. And that's what you're going to do as a software developer. People don't always know what they want and sometimes they don't realize that a simple change can be very complicated Oh you mean we can't just change the payment provider? It's the same Credit card processing right? The big lie that they tell you in university is that your project manager will give you proper structured simple instructions on what needs to be done and then you code it. Draw a Mandelbrot or Render a Rabbit mesh with ambient occlusion. At the end of the day you have a solution and you high-five your manager and go home smiling. What is going to happen is that your PO will come to you with a rough outline of the task We need something that will take us from point A to point B but we don't have any designs yet and the third-party integrations will not be delivered until we tell them what we want and Boss X wants it to be Red and Boss Y wants it to be Green. And this is where the real job of a software engineer starts gathering requirements figuring out what needs to be done. Requirements gathering isnt the easy part of programming. Its not as fun as writing code. But it takes a considerable amount of your time as a programmer because it requires working with people not machines calling the agency that provides the third-party integration and chatting with their developers to understand what's feasible and what's not. Sitting down with the stakeholders to tell them their ideas do not make sense and that we can do it this way and not that way. Writing your first line of code on a task can take weeks. You figure out the requirements then you figure out where it needs to go then you figure out how it needs to be built then you figure out where it might go wrong and then you write your first lines. It's a popular misconception of trust that a lot of developers have: But the truth is We can never be entirely sure that our code libraries or even hardware will not fail at some point; on the contrary we need to assume it will. Even smart people are just people. If you look at GitHub issues for any popular libraries (OS or Application level) you will see tons of undefined behavior waiting to be fixed. My god how many times has my Linux machine crashed with a segfault? Its crazy. By assuming that everything can break and have bugs we can take steps to prevent or mitigate potential problems which ultimately helps to ensure the reliability and stability of our systems. No matter what your universities or boot camps tell you of the beautiful life that you will have once you start working in IT it's nothing more than an empty promise. College courses teach us the basics of good code but true aesthetics in software development can't be taught in a classroom. Aesthetics in software development refers to the overall look and feel of the code. It's about how easy it is to read understand and maintain. Aesthetically pleasing code is clean organized and follows logical patterns. It's the kind of code that makes you feel good when you look at it. Or makes you cringe when it's terrible. Unfortunately aesthetics can't be taught in a one-semester course. It's gained through experience and reading a lot of good code as well as maintaining bad code. Managers like numbers estimates and asking for estimates with an idea written on a napkin. It's just how the real world works a business has some monetary goal but before committing to it it needs to understand how much it will cost. It's hard to teach this in universities as the accuracy is highly based on your experience with building systems. The more diverse problems you solve over the years the easier it is to estimate future work. I'm not going to discuss the best way to do estimates; there are dozens of ways you can do them. But I am going to say that estimates are the only thing a business understands. If you start talking about we have long-term planning but I don't know when we're going to finish it's hard for the business to survive on such premises. At Mindnow we usually roughly estimate the whole project to gauge how much budget needs to be allocated this is the long-term priority. After that we start with sprint-based planning that the entire team discusses prioritizes and commits to short-term deliverables that move us closer to the long-term priorities. So a software engineers job includes barely any coding so what is the time spent on? Meetings. Meetings are there to ensure that everything is going smoothly and on schedule. They align people around a shared goal and keep everyone on track. The marketing department is aware that something is being developed and they can prepare for the eventual release of the feature. Project Managers see what direction the developers are working towards and do a slight course correction if needed. Customer support brings updates from the user-facing side. Quality assurance shares their findings and issues they find. Management shares stakeholders updates. It's all interconnected and the meetings are where the information is shared. As a software engineer you are responsible for some part of this information sharing so it would be irresponsible to hinder it. You might not like it but the information must be shared for the system to remain efficient. If you are considering a career in software engineering be prepared to face these truths head-on and embrace the opportunity to grow. Highly unlikely that you will make a meaningful difference in the world but in the end it's just a job and you can make meaningful contributions in other ways. Most importantly try to have fun. I'm sure there are more hidden gems that I didn't mention. Feel free to add them in the comments. Enjoyed the read? Subscribe to read more articles from me. Other Newsletter Issues: Other Popular Articles: This blog is running on a single CPU server and while this page is under heavy traffic everything here is cached so comments won't appear in realtime I apologize. Anonymous Just starting out in the field good to know all this! Mailovemisa Thanks for the great article. As an developer in early career I can feel some of things you mentioned here. Your points help me clear my mind a lot Anonymous Wow. I love this article. very insightful. I came from a very different career background and now Im working full time as software developer and this article almost touched on everything Ive gone through. I cant help but reiterate on Documentation as the most important aspect in software I noticed when a developer leaves the company without documenting some stuff its so hard for the next developer to come and continue his work taking him almost weeks just trying to figure out stuff At some point you realize that the documentation is not only a bless but also is a burden. and that its better to automate some procedure instead of writing ambiguous 20 step manual or design easy to understand interface instead of creating docstrings with concepts explanation. When time is a limited resource the documentation is in the middle of priority pile under the working code modular code and self-documenting code Thanh Le Hi this is a super insightful thing that I have been mapping to myself from the very beginning to now. Thats hard-fact for lots of ppl out there. Do you mind if I translate it into Vietnamese and also have a link back to this original post? Super work! Kaye Alvarado This article speaks so much like a teacher to the younger me. I was once a developer (though not a rockstar one I believe Im one of the best) and there are times when I worked on code so hard that I would expect some great recognition of that masterpiece. But it is just thata piece of a puzzle. And theres a lot more people who worked on a different piece (may not be as hard) people who reviewed our work people who sold it to the world. You will be commended but it will not always translate to a promotion or higher pay. You are indeed being paid to do that work you did. What really matters is the impact of things you do or say. And present that in numbers (ex. influenced 50+ developers) and that will bring you that value. Impact. Hannu You _never_ get any appreciation on the most magnificent hacks you make. The (few) times somebody has given me highly positive feedback has been after some trivial piece of code or at most on the finalized product. As a software developer one must contend on patting own back when we talk about solving difficult problems. This based on over 40 years of day-to-day coding career Anonymous Indeed very realistic view. It feels a bit depressive reading all the negative sides of the job but I have also experienced them. I would also like to mention that if you are a clingy type of person you may find it hard when your coworkers leave for another company (way too early). As there is an abundance of job offers in IT anyone can make the switch any time they want. In conclusion I would say that we software engineers are pretty lucky as we have above average salaries and good working conditions compared to others. Anonymous Aesthetics cant be taught. Yes and no. Aesthetic cant come from a lecture or a book. Yes coding is a craft and you have to learn that craft by doing that craft. However as in writing were a good editor can help make you a good writer a good set of reviewers that you ask to look at not just correctness but style clarity readability and maintainability can help teach you the craft. Also of note your own aesthetic always needs to be tempered to max the aesthetics of the project. One doesnt simply add modernist elements to an art deco design. Projects are a collaborative process and while one can influence change over time passive aggressive I write code in my aesthetic isnt going to your influence to make that change. Anonymous > Rare work-life balance. In other professions your work day ends at 18:00 and you forget about the job. Not here. You will most likely always be online and checking the code even in the evening. we should not make this normal. this is not normal nor acceptable. toxic companies dont provide good work-life balance but THERE ARE MANY who do. if you are stuck in one who doesnt look for another employer Anonymous Thanks I love this article. WIll link it from my own blog in Beginners resources category https://suchdevblog.com/resources/BeginnersResources.html Anonymous Thats a real awesome article! Describing the real wold. But remember: Youre the only one who can provide these software to all the other people. Thats real fun! Anonymous Awesome artcile! Can I translate it as Chinese and reprint it on my blog(https://yorick.love/)? I will indicate the source. [Answer]: Sure feel free to translate it. Also if others are wondering of course you can translate it just link back Anonymous All so very true. Id also add that you will continually be asked to grow and learn. Eventually that Silverlight app is going in the trash. Anonymous Great article! My 2c: Code is secondary is an understatement. Id say Code is not an asset its a liability. The delivered business value is inversely propotional to the amount of code added for implementing the feature. Kerem Ispirli Anonymous Nearly spot on all aspects of my 20+ year career. Although early career was spent writing lots of code some 80% of my time. As these stack up maintenance takes over but your single most valuable message here is the being a domain expert. Have people that understand the business is the difference between success and failure. How many 3rd party vendor systems have simply failed because each one builds their own silo and has no real understanding of the business. When you get the domain right most of the time the system succeeds. Thanks for the great read. Anonymous Awesome article! Thank you for sharing your experience! Anonymous I enjoyed reading this. So far you were spot on and I cannot think of anything left. Maybe that you most of the times have to deal with people tachar doesnt seem to be supportive. People that apparently is only keeping you from achieving goals. People you will easily think they are the worst. For me that is the latest big lesson in my career. Being more empathetic more understandable and always trying to move the team forward. Sometimes I think when will it be my turn to be the SOAB from whole everybody has to learn? Im still working on it. Thank you for this post. Anonymous A well written piece on the realities of the software engineering profession. I was a senior software engineer when I retired in 2014 after 43+ years in the field. I always enjoyed working with the technologies but couldnt stand most of the management. They were arrogant incompetent and mostly had no real idea what a professional was talking about. I am still heavily involved with development but on my own projects and still enjoy the work. Most young people today entering the profession have no clue of what to expect and nor do most of them have any real qualifications to do the work. Their single largest drawback is that young people are no longer taught how to do in depth research. If they cant look it up on the Internet they dont know where to look Anonymous Could you please tell more about depth research Anonymous Great read but a bit too cynical. I am now retired and worked in software engineering (real time safety critical and high integrity systems) for over 45 years as a coder tester manager assessor auditor and loved it. The best bit was the coding. I now code at home as a hobby even better fun. One thing you missed was testing your code I hope you left no Zero-days in them Anonymous Having been a developer of business applications for 40 years I can absolutely say that it is my passion. Many times I have worked long hours for no extra pay but found the reactions of my customers to a successfully completed product version to be payment enough. Other times I have been given conflicting directives and a project has stalled or died due to management issues. Primarily I love developing software. Ive had many options to move towards management but decided to stay in a position I love. Too many are promoted beyond their capabilities. Anonymous This article covers most of the major points. #8 is what separates a junior SE from a senior SE. Even if you find a bug can you fix it or create a workaround? If its in a library that you cant change then you will have to find a workaround. Finding bugs in multi-threaded code can be pretty tricky because it can be difficult to re-create because it wont show up when youre stepping through your code in a debugger. Anonymous Absolutely awesome read thank you very much. Anonymous I really enjoyed reading this article but holy shit am I really the only software engineer on this planet gets a hard-on for my work? Seriously I love my job. I love the meetings. I love discussing requirements and setting expectations with stakeholders. More importantly I spent at least 50% of my time each week actually writing code. The only stuff I dislike are writing tests and doing peer reviews but even that is really not that bad. Good luck out there may you find your happiness. Anonymous In the eighth paragraph the word is waiters. Anonymous Well explained the absolute truth of software development. It was exciting to go through each section and can easily correlate it with my day-to-day activity at the work. Anonymous Oh boy I dont even know where to start: comments: same category as documentations. For me comments are smells the code should be clean enough so comments are not needed plus 95% of the comments are useless. Such as: loops through i (not quite as bad but I hope you get my point). Also they are rarely maintained by others so they are often misleading because they describe a previous version of the code. I treat them the same way as you described the way you treat the code (they have bugs) estimates: an established team can estimate ETAs based on their throughput without ever neding to estimate effort. everyone can learn writing clean code they just need to care and need to practice. Katas are good examples testing/automation/static code analysis/monitoring tools: these should be the #1 concern of every developer. Everything you said about bugs and human mistakes is true so every developer should do DevOps this is actually what DevOps is about. I have more will add some more tomorrow Anonymous Do we need commented code? Anonymous Very well written and I feel seen as a developer. All of the points resonated with me. I dont know if its nice to know that these are all kind of universal things that developers have to deal with lol Anonymous The domain knowledge one is especially galling. So many software engineering job descriptions are just boilerplate ; its so frustrating to not even have an inkling of what the company actually *does*. I started working in cheminformatics/bioinformatics/biostatistics in 2001 and fortunately it was made very clear in the interview that there would be a steep learning curve in some highly complex technical areas (there certainly was) but I loved it. Anonymous I think this is very true having done development for 30+ years in various roles and various companies. If some of those people commenting below have not had these experiences they can be happy as it is certainly the norm to find most or all of these issues in practice. Agile doesnt make any of these issues go away magically. Any company still has to work proactively to reduce or eliminate some of these issues and some of them is simply the nature of business in the real world as the author pointed out. Thank you for a well crafted and useful article Vadim! Anonymous One of the best and truest articles Ive ever read. There is only one point of disagreement. Aesthetics can be taught. It requires lots of repetitive code reviews. It was done in a boot camp which I was teaching in. The results were satisfying. Anonymous Lots of truth here about the negatives but I personally have never had trouble finding work or paying the bills. So it could be a lot worse. Anonymous Aesthetics *can* be taught. Not in one semester but with a design degree. Thats why proper agencies have both design and development crews working hand in hand. Anonymous Thank you for summarizing almost 20 years of being a developer. Anonymous Good article! I would add testing. You hopefully spend a good amount of time wilting automated tests. This comes as a surprise to many new grads who dont learn about automated testing in school. It you end up in a job where your coworkers arent spending a significant percentage of their time writing automated tests youre not working with a great team. Anonymous To those saying it scared them to death about their current choices or might put them off just look at how many of us have posted saying its largely true but have still happily done it for 20-30 years (like me). I think its best to know it has many such realities but can still be enjoyed. Anonymous As a multi decade software engineer it captures a great deal of reality. And I particular love the why would I dream about labour image. Anonymous if all the commente are anonymous why bother giving them a name? also good article Anonymous For sure amazing! Anonymous Good article Anonymous Very good article Anonymous It was a good read and a lot of it is true. But I dont agree with Highly unlikely that you will make a meaningful difference in the world but in the end its just a job it truly depends on the company you work for. You surely can make difference with your ideas and even finding existing bugs which can be fixed for future improvements. You have to enjoy being a developer if you just think its just a job you cant become better. You can earn a lot of money too and raise your salary much quicker than most industries. Anonymous Great post as a Gen.Z who just entered workforce (been working for few months now) every point resonated with my experience till now. I am not sure if I like software engineering though after personally experiencing all these bullet points. Anonymous Great read! It really is like that. Ill send this post to my coworkers. Anonymous Fantastic! Ill be saving this post. Naaman Hirschfeld Anonymous Ive been in the industry for 35 years and everything you say here reflects my own experience. I had a university prof who once gave out a vague assignment forcing students to research the topic before they could code anything. When they howled in protest the profs response was welcome to the real world. Anonymous Very nice writeup it does indeed resonate with a lot of the real-life lessons I learned in 25 years as IT professional. A few additions if I may: your memory is not as good as you think / you are not as clever as you think every developer is bound to have at least once to come back to his/her own code after a long hiatus and spend at least one full day wondering in disbelief WTF is this!. Writing easy-to-understand code trumps writing smart code (this includes both striving for good commenting practices and for uniform coding style a.k.a the principle of least surprise). its easy to be an asshole when you are often smarter than your peers mandatory advice for all It practitioners who think they are superstars and especially true in the first years of career. A few humbling experiences here and there can help rectifying ones hubris back to levels which make it acceptable for profitable human interaction. alone you go faster together you go farther smart highly-effective people often end up overburdened and then burned-out both because they like their job and take pride in what they do and because their colleagues and managers can easily take advantage of that. Always remember that there is value in having a team of individuals with diverse skills ready to support you. The only piece of advice I have a dissent view on is the one about the dream job. True there are real downsides but I still can think of very few careers which will grant you economic stability and full-employment guarantee all the while allowing you to basically play with your favourite toys Anonymous You are not the go to person about this topic apparently. You have scared me to my death about my decisions right now. Anonymous I have worked strictly in agile development with a small team. We are actually transitioning to be more wagile because as were pumping out features saying the framework is deprecated the framework is deprecated! The whole company is like The website is still working? So getting people to realize backend needs is definitely a challenge. Yes the code may work now but if browsers implement a change the code may immediately stop working. Anonymous Politics has more influence on your success in your career than your skill or knowledge. Software engineering is full of incompetent people who are good at politics. They can barely write a line of code but could sell snow to an Eskimo. They crave power and are often found in positions of influence where they create processes to control the people under them. If this happens to be your boss the only way to succeed is by engaging in politics with them by being subservient and doing everything they say. If youre lucky you get on their good side and you might get a positive annual review and maybe a salary increase. If youre unlucky they make a mistake and you take the blame. Anonymous Any time someone says X cant be taught all I hear is I dont personally know how to teach X. Do you also believe that nobody who goes to art school comes out a better artist? Granted it cant be taught in a one-semester course which is why software engineering is almost always a degree program which takes a few years to complete. I cant think of any other subfield of software engineering which can be taught in a one semester course either but that doesnt mean we throw up our hands and say Databases cant be taught. Anonymous Great post loved the section on creating value some of it went to my quotes pad I agree though with others raising their concerns around work-life balance. How much time you spend at work is your choice and if your managers or peers expect you to do overtime its probably a toxic environment. Anonymous Collaboration with egoistic team members that wants to show themselves and dont listen to other opinions and managers listen to them and take what they said as the only and best solutions. Anonymous Customers are better than managers; a) you can have many independent ones at the same time b) you can guide them to good decisions c) you can tell them No I wont do that.. Bad managers just make your life miserable. Anonymous Electricity will always be there Rare to hear people considering this as someone who grew up in a third world country. Id also add Internet to that so many apps have gone viral for doing off the wall shit during a AWS or DNS resolving problem Anonymous Good list. Anonymous Nice pretty much spot on based on my 25 years development experience. I live by 2 rules: All software has bug and people make mistakes. Anonymous So many of these problems go away when youre using modern lean/agile development frameworks. Im been doing software for 40 years all of which I have enjoyed but the last 10 have been like walking out of a dark cave into the sunlight. Anonymous Totally can relate to all this. Anonymous Great article but this point is just way off-base: Rare work-life balance. In other professions your work day ends at 18:00 and you forget about the job. Not here. You will most likely always be online and checking the code even in the evening. Only time Im working late is if theres a deadline that were late for (very rare) or Im on-call. Definitely not the norm. Anonymous Nice article. Im usually pretty skeptical of these types of articles but Ive been writing software professionally for nearly 20 years and this is well written and a good summatio

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ThinkPad 701C with a Framework brain transplant (frame.work) Ive been working on this project on and off for the last six months or so. Theres still lots left to do but I did the first major mock-up today and Im pretty pleased with the outcome so far. TL;DR summary: IMG-6280 19202560 374 KB IMG-6274 19202560 449 KB IMG-6256 1920906 165 KB For those that may not know the Thinkpad 701C (aka the butterfly) is a ~10 compact laptop that IBM sold for a brief period in the mid-90s. It has a full sized keyboard that flares out as you open the lid. I bought a broken one on a whim last year for no particular reason but in fairly short order I decided it needed a new lease on life and some Framework hardware would be the perfect way to go about it. I also wanted a modern display to go with the modern processor. I discovered that the iPad 7 panel is an almost perfect match to the original screen so I adapted that to work with the eDP connector on the mainboard. I posted about that here: 10.2 iPad 7 display on the internal eDP connector There is no room for expansion cards so Ive exposed the two right USB-C connectors directly. One of the left ports connects to a custom USB-C port replicator that exposes two external type-A connectors one internal type-A connector (for a Logitech dongle) and one external gigabit Ethernet connector. Ive finished the schematic for the port replicator but detailed layout is pending some more CAD work. The keyboard and trackpoint are connected to a Teensy 3.6 microcontroller that runs a customized build of QMK so they both enumate as USB input devices. Making all this fit inside the envelope of a 701C has been a challenge. Ive had to design a brand new lower case and hinge bracket. What you see in the photos is a first draft FDM print. I plan to MJF print the final version of the case and may DMLS print the hinge bracket. I plan on posting all of the design files on my github when its done. Gotta love a Frankenpad. This is just too cool. The amount of glorious-ness in this post is astounding! Truly my friend this post nearly brought a tear to my eye. Framework should be really proud of what their modular dreams have made possible. This for example is legendary and I hope you continue to share the progress on this with us! Im thinking about doing something similar to a X220 or X230. But I am working on making a UMPC with it first. Slow going. Thanks again! Gotta love a Frankenpad Could it not be a FramePad or a ThinkWork? Man you make me regret getting a second hand Thinkpad X280 because I had to borrow the Framework laptop to a family for a year (the Protege Z930 really couldnt cut it the i3-N305 Acer Aspire 3 was more than double the price for lesser RAM though faster +50% multicore almost double iGPU performance). Man its janky and I love it! I was gonna ask where did you find that keyboard as a USB keyboard but seems like it is not. WOW! I coveted the 701C back in the day - loved the wackiness of the butterfly keyboard! Well done! Ive got one of those that still boots and runs Plan 9. Still meaning the last time I tried it some time ago now. It was unusual enough that I couldnt bring myself to recycle it although its communication is limited enough that it probably wont connect to anything modern Im using. It went to Mustique a few times. Thanks for the kind words everyone! @Jieren_Zheng its an original unmodified 701C keyboard that I connected to a microcontroller. It runs QMK which is an open source firmware used by custom keyboard builders. QMK Firmware Ive prototyped the keyboard and trackpoint using breakout boards and some ugly wiring. The final version will have everything baked into a custom PCBA. Im still trading whether or not I will have separate boards for the different features or make a mega board that contains everything (keyboard trackpoint amp Teensy USB-C hub M.2 breakout etc). @Charles_Forsyth Im glad you didnt get rid of it! Theyre getting increasingly rare. I would be interested in purchasing it from you if youre willing to sell. The plastic on mine is quite badly damaged in certain areas. question: how did you even start on working this??? as a normal person who doesnt understand tech much I find the fact that people can design custom mainboards and whatnot like this very strange. Did you have to do a lot of programming to make things like the ports keyboard display panel and so on work? what software did you use to design the mainboard (not to mention things like power circuits and all)? I have so many questions! as a normal person who doesnt understand tech much I find the fact that people can design custom mainboards and whatnot like this very strange. Did you have to do a lot of programming to make things like the ports keyboard display panel and so on work? what software did you use to design the mainboard (not to mention things like power circuits and all)? The beauty of the Framework mainboard is that it is designed to be modular from the start. This means it can run outside of the Framework laptop case with no issues. (Im using my 11th gen mainboard as a virtual machine server for example.) So there wasnt any mainboard redesign going on here as that would be truly complicated and perhaps near impossible to do. Here the hollowed out cavity of the 701C was modified (and in this case reprinted using 3d printing) to provide stands for the mainboard and battery. The Linux kernel provided the driver for the Ipad panel he is using and so it just worked as well as the 4 USB C thunderbolt ports the mainboard provides. To utilize the unique butterfly like keyboard of the 701C he is using a board to enumerate (via QMK) the keyboard as a standard USB keyboard that the Linux kernel can easily work with. Hope that helps explain what is going on here. It is not EASY per se but with a little Fusion/TinyCAD a 3d printer almost anything is possible these days especially when you have an awesome product like the Framework mainboard available. @2disbetter summarized it quite well. The only code Ive written so far is for the keyboard and even that was fairly minimal given that I could use the existing (byzantine) codebase of QMK. The vast majority of this stuff just works from a software perspective (as long as the hardware is designed properly). Ive also tried to keep the design as simple as possible by leaning on existing hardware. Keeping an unmodified Framework mainboard battery USB-C charging interface and M.2 Wifi/Bluetooth card means I dont have to muck with any of those items. All the board design is done with Altium Designer and I use Fusion360 for CAD. I should also state for the record that I am not a hardware or mechanical designer. I just do this kind of thing in my spare time. @2disbetter if the display just works thanks to the kernel then what about the post about him reverse engineering the connectors of the display itself? same goes for the boost converter he mentioned about in the post In this case the connector part numbers pinouts and backlight power requirements have nothing to do with the software the computer is running. Its all hardware design. The thing that makes it just work on the software side is that both panels (the iPad and the original Framework) have standardized four-lane Displayport interfaces so the operating system can interrogate the monitor and present the correct resolution and refresh rate. I didnt write a single line of code to make the new screen work. @Karl_Buchka Excellent work! Im planning a few FrankenPads based on the X61 and T60 with a LattePanda 3 Delta and the Intel NUC 11 i5. The biggest hurdle for me as a non-engineer has been the the QMK board for the X61/T60 keyboards. As the 701C has a very different keyboard connector I doubt there would be any interoperability between them but could you point me in the direction of making my own (or buying if anyone is currently selling them)? There used to be an etsy store that sold them many years ago but I got there too late after the store had already closed down. PS your work has been reposted to the reddit ThinkPad forum! If it wasnt you come say hello and take credit for this great work Thinkpad 701C with a Framework brain transplant (work in progress) : thinkpad @Karl_Buchka Excellent work! Im planning a few FrankenPads based on the X61 and T60 with a LattePanda 3 Delta and the Intel NUC 11 i5. The biggest hurdle for me as a non-engineer has been the the QMK board for the X61/T60 keyboards. As the 701C has a very different keyboard connector I doubt there would be any interoperability between them but could you point me in the direction of making my own (or buying if anyone is currently selling them)? There used to be an etsy store that sold them many years ago but I got there too late after the store had already closed down. PS your work has been reposted to the reddit ThinkPad forum! If it wasnt you come say hello and take credit for this great work Thinkpad 701C with a Framework brain transplant (work in progress) : thinkpad Thanks! I assume youre referring to the user rampadc that was selling a keyboard adapter PCB? https://www.tindie.com/products/rampadc/thinkpad-usb-keyboard-adapter-v061-rev-11-pcbreceptacle/ It looks like he posted all the gerber files on his github: GitHub - rampadc/thinkclamp-backup: Backup of ThinkClamp project files: v0.6.1 are produced PCBs on Tindie and v0.6.2 is a draft that was not produced That along with the BOM and firmware on his Tindie page should get you a working board. Beyond that Im not sure where to send you. I honestly found the entire QMK process to be pretty painful. Im also not a very skilled programmer so I had a hard time navigating the codebase and wrapping my head around it. Thanks for the heads up on the reddit link. Maybe Ill hop over there. Nice project really caught my eye! I was also curious about the possibility of putting a Framework board in a smaller laptop enclosure sort of a netbook style. Also had the notion that it would require exposing some USB-C ports. I look forward to see in particular the custom port replicator. The WiFi dongle workaround is a good addition too. hi someone knows if it is possible to combine with other screens? who knows? Very cool. Ive been working on the exact same thing for about a year now. I have also wired up the keyboard using two independent controllers a LattePanda Alpha and a few custom parts. If you want Ive already designed the keyboard bezel and lid assembly in Inventor. I have the IPT files if you want them. Also I did a few things differently. For one the TrackPoint on the original 701C keyboard is the legacy TrackPoint II system which lacks some of the quality of the more modern systems. I instead chose to transplant a module from a more modern TrackPoint IV system which has negative inertia and is easier to adapt since it speaks PS/2. Also I used a 9.7 iPad LCD over USB-C DP alt mode but I may use your system instead because eDP and 10.2 is nicer. The media articles about this topic: 'it's alive it's alive IT'S ALIVE!' The classic ThinkPad 701C is getting a new lease on life thanks to a modder's ingenuity. Est. reading time: 1 minute Framework offers refurb kit and parts for instance to upgrade a decades-old subnotebook I read about this project on Toms. Very cool idea! If anyone else wants to have a go at it Ive got a 701c with most of the original accessories and even the original box it came in. Id love to have one of these with the brain transplant but have too many other projects spinning right now to take it on. Powered by Discourse best viewed with JavaScript enabled

GOOD

This blog is hosted on my Android phone (pinggy.io) This blog is running on my $180 Android phone running Android 11. This post describes how I turned my Android device into a web server which can be accessed from a public URL and how you can do it too. I used Termux which is an Android terminal emulator on which we can run a web server such as a Node.js http-server and Pinggy for obtaining public URLs for accessing that server. To give you a glimpse of the setup here are some photos. The first image shows the Node.js http-server running while the second image displays Pinggys terminal user interface showing the live requests to the website as they arrive. Follow these simple steps to serve your own webpage from your Android phone. Termux is an application for Android that emulates a terminal and Linux environment. Unlike other similar apps it does not require rooting or any additional setup. It comes with a basic system and you can install more packages using the APT package manager. You can get the Termux app on F-Droid through this F-Droid link . You can directly download the Termux APK from the website . Simply click on the Download APK link located at the bottom of each version section. Read more in this GitHub link . Note that it is NOT necessary to download the F-Droid app (from the Download F-Droid link) to install Termux. In order to serve a webpage we need to install a web server on our device. We also install openssh client which will help us in sharing the website later. Update packages: Install openssh client and Node.js: Once these are installed correctly you will be able to check the versions of node and npm using node --version and npm --version You can first create a sample HTML page by creating an index.html file as follows: You can use the nano editor to edit the webpage from the terminal: nano index.html . If you prefer vim then you can also install that. Now start the http-server: Note: we add a & at the end of the command. This will allow the http server to run in background. Use the fg command to bring it to foreground and press Ctrl + C to stop it. This will start the server on port 8080 by default. Check the output to confirm. Start Pinggy to get a public URL: You will get a public URL such as https://ranxyzxxxx.a.pinggy.io which you can use to access your server running on your phone! Next we will discuss how to use a domain or subdomain of your choice. In case you get a different port than 8080 on the above command change it in the Pinggy command also. You can use Ctrl + C to stop the tunnel. Now share your URL with your friends and watch live stats of visitors on the Pinggy terminal user interface. You can also hit the return key to see details about the the request and response headers including user agent etc. The first image above shows the Node.js http-server running and listening on port 8080. The second screenshot shows the Pinggy tunnel starting and providing a public URL. It is also showing the live visitor requests to the server. The third screenshot shows more details about a particular request. You can also use your own domain or choose a subdomain for accessing this server. Or you can also choose a suitable subdomain such as https://myandroidblog.a.pinggy.io . First you need to sign-up for Pinggy and subscribe to Pinggy Pro. Then go to the dashboard and click on Custom Domains on the nav bar. Put your own custom domain that you want to use and Pinggy will provide a CNAME record that you need to configure in your DNS settings of the domain. After the CNAME record is set just click Validate followed by Issue Certificate button to finish configuring the custom domain. Once the custom domain is configured just use the token from Pinggy dashboard in the pinggy tunnel command: In conclusion hosting a website or blog from an Android device may seem like an impossible feat but with the right tools it is quite achievable. In this blog post we have explored the steps required to turn your Android device into a web server that can be accessed from a public URL or your own domain. By using an Android terminal emulator like Termux and obtaining a public URL through Pinggy you can easily create and share your content with the world. So why not give it a try and see what creative ideas you can bring to life on your own personal web server?

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This is the year of the RSS reader? (niemanlab.org) With using Twitter becoming increasingly like smoking a habit you cant quit but know you should theres a chance that a better RSS reader will finally finally take hold and scale. Two years ago Sara Watson boldly predicted in this space that we might see a return of the RSS reader or something like it recognizing that the world of constant email newsletters was simply impossible to maintain. But the appetite wasnt strong enough yet. The difference going into 2023 is that even the Inbox Zero people are going to have a reason to complain. Left without a better way to quickly zoom in and zoom out on the state of the universe (also known as the world according to Twitter) I predict those people will reach a point of frustration in even their ability to manage email. It is at this point that the most organized people in late capitalism will rise up about a very small matter and demand something better: An RSS for the people open source easily used and not some weird niche version for podcasts or that uses AI . Two years ago Substack was becoming a thing but the newest spawn of DC beltway publications based on newsletter distribution had yet to break through. But now the mix includes Semafor Puck Punchbowl more Axios Locals and new ones on the horizon like Pluribis News . There are two types of Inbox Zero people in this world: Those who do not read any news or shop online and those who use a lot of Twitter. You may recall them talking about how RSS readers were obsolete in a world of Twitter (after all even Google killed Reader). Twitter could be their perfectly curated and controlled sandbox of content. Now its less socially acceptable to tweet. Contrary to what The New York Times has speculated we are not at peak newsletter. We are just at peak newsletter via email delivery. The 10% of people who claim that email newsletters are their primary form of news consumption include among them the most anal powerful and high-net worth people in the country. I predict that these people wont stand for a universe where their email becomes ever more crowded just because of Elon Musk mucking up Twitter. The only way to survive in a world where multiple DC-insider publications are launching multiple newsletters and Twitter is no longer socially acceptable is to use an RSS reader that satisfies the intelligentsia and political elite. Will we get it? It may well be that the feed from email to robust RSS reader needs an API that isnt yet possible given password-protected your-and-Gmails-eyes-only email. RSS readers may need their own ecology of analytics in order to be commercially desirable and worthy of tech investment. Given that tech companies have taken to these newsletters to plead their case to the beltway they certainly dont want to lose the readers of these email newsletters either. That provides a market incentive to make a better bigger bolder RSS reader. And if Ben Thompson is right that that text on the internet is arguably the most competitive medium in all of human history then there is an opportunity for a very retro version of tech disruption. Nikki Usher (they/them) is an associate professor in communication studies at the University of San Diego. Nikki Usher (they/them) is an associate professor in communication studies at the University of San Diego. With using Twitter becoming increasingly like smoking a habit you cant quit but know you should theres a chance that a better RSS reader will finally finally take hold and scale. Two years ago Sara Watson boldly predicted in this space that we might see a return of the RSS reader or something like it recognizing that the world of constant email newsletters was simply impossible to maintain. But the appetite wasnt strong enough yet. The difference going into 2023 is that even the Inbox Zero people are going to have a reason to complain. Left without a better way to quickly zoom in and zoom out on the state of the universe (also known as the world according to Twitter) I predict those people will reach a point of frustration in even their ability to manage email. It is at this point that the most organized people in late capitalism will rise up about a very small matter and demand something better: An RSS for the people open source easily used and not some weird niche version for podcasts or that uses AI . Two years ago Substack was becoming a thing but the newest spawn of DC beltway publications based on newsletter distribution had yet to break through. But now the mix includes Semafor Puck Punchbowl more Axios Locals and new ones on the horizon like Pluribis News . There are two types of Inbox Zero people in this world: Those who do not read any news or shop online and those who use a lot of Twitter. You may recall them talking about how RSS readers were obsolete in a world of Twitter (after all even Google killed Reader). Twitter could be their perfectly curated and controlled sandbox of content. Now its less socially acceptable to tweet. Contrary to what The New York Times has speculated we are not at peak newsletter. We are just at peak newsletter via email delivery. The 10% of people who claim that email newsletters are their primary form of news consumption include among them the most anal powerful and high-net worth people in the country. I predict that these people wont stand for a universe where their email becomes ever more crowded just because of Elon Musk mucking up Twitter. The only way to survive in a world where multiple DC-insider publications are launching multiple newsletters and Twitter is no longer socially acceptable is to use an RSS reader that satisfies the intelligentsia and political elite. Will we get it? It may well be that the feed from email to robust RSS reader needs an API that isnt yet possible given password-protected your-and-Gmails-eyes-only email. RSS readers may need their own ecology of analytics in order to be commercially desirable and worthy of tech investment. Given that tech companies have taken to these newsletters to plead their case to the beltway they certainly dont want to lose the readers of these email newsletters either. That provides a market incentive to make a better bigger bolder RSS reader. And if Ben Thompson is right that that text on the internet is arguably the most competitive medium in all of human history then there is an opportunity for a very retro version of tech disruption. Nikki Usher (they/them) is an associate professor in communication studies at the University of San Diego. Nikki Usher (they/them) is an associate professor in communication studies at the University of San Diego. Jennifer Choi and Jonathan Jackson Funders finally bet on next-generation news entrepreneurs Joshua P. Darr Local to live wire to wither Andrew Donohue Well find out whether journalism can indeed save democracy Josh Schwartz The AI spammers are coming Sarabeth Berman Nonprofit local news shows that it can scale Errin Haines Journalists on the campaign trail mend trust with the public Ayala Panievsky Its time for PR for journalism Sarah Alvarez Dream bigger or lose out Matt Rasnic More newsroom workers turn to organized labor Paul Cheung More news organizations will realize they are in the business of impact not eyeballs Pia Frey Publishers start polling their users at scale Simon Galperin Philanthropy stops investing in corporate media Alexandra Svokos Working harder to reach audiences where they are Sarah Stonbely Growth in public funding for news and information at the state and local levels Janet Haven ChatGPT and the future of trust Amy Schmitz Weiss Journalism education faces a crossroads Sue Cross Thinking and acting collectively to save the news Sue Schardt Toward a new poetics of journalism Upasna Gautam Technology that performs at the speed of news Jessica Clark Open discourse retrenches Al Lucca Digital news design gets interesting again Mar Cabra The inevitable mental health revolution Cindy Royal Yes journalists should learn to code but Doris Truong Workers demand to be paid what the job is worth Ryan Nave Citizen journalism but make it equitable Jakob Moll Journalism startups will think beyond English Anna Nirmala News organizations get new structures Anita Varma Journalism prioritizes the basic need for survival Shant Cosme The answer to quiet quitting is radical empathy Nicholas Jackson There will be launches and well keep doing the work Valrie Blair-Gagnon Well-being will become a core tenet of journalism Basile Simon Towards supporting criminal accountability Cari Nazeer and Emily Goligoski News organizations step up their support for caregivers Jim VandeHei There is no peak newsletter Snigdha Sur Newsrooms get nimble in a recession Janelle Salanga Journalists work from a place of harm reduction Mary Walter-Brown and Tristan Loper Mission-driven metrics become our North Star Don Day The news about the news is bad. Im optimistic. Brian Moritz Rebuilding the news bundle Rodney Gibbs Recalibrating how we work apart Brian Stelter Finding new ways to reach news avoiders Ben Werdmuller The internet is up for grabs again Jesse Holcomb Buffeted whipped bullied pulled Mario Garca More newsrooms go mobile-first Emma Carew Grovum The year to resist forgetting about diversity Leezel Tanglao Community partnerships drive better reporting Juleyka Lantigua Newsrooms recognize women of color as the canaries in the coal mine Mael Vallejo More threats to press freedom across the Americas Andrew Losowsky Journalism realizes the replacement for Twitter is not a new Twitter Anthony Nadler Confronting media gerrymandering Francesco Zaffarano There is no end of social media Rachel Glickhouse Humanizing newsrooms will be a badge of honor Esther Kezia Thorpe Subscription pressures force product innovation Joanne McNeil Facebook and the media kiss and make up Susan Chira Equipping local journalism Surya Mattu Data journalists learn from photojournalists Tre'vell Anderson Continued culpability in anti-trans campaigns Gabe Schneider Well-funded journalism leaders stop making disparate pay Molly de Aguiar and Mandy Van Deven Narrative change trend brings new money to journalism Khushbu Shah Global reporting will suffer Laura E. Davis The year we embrace the robots and ourselves Raney Aronson-Rath Journalists will band together to fight intimidation An Xiao Mina Journalism in a time of permacrisis Lisa Heyamoto The independent news industry gets a roadmap to sustainability Nikki Usher This is the year of the RSS reader. (Really!) Gina Chua The traditional story structure gets deconstructed Gordon Crovitz The year advertisers stop funding misinformation Julia Beizer News fatigue shows us a clear path forward Bill Adair The year of the fact-check (no really!) Jarrad Henderson Video editing will help people understand the media they consume Alexandra Borchardt The year of the climate journalism strategy Richard Tofel The press might get better at vetting presidential candidates Kerri Hoffman Podcasting goes local Kathy Lu We need emotionally agile newsroom leaders Dana Lacey Tech will screw publishers over Felicitas Carrique and Becca Aaronson News product goes from trend to standard Sumi Aggarwal Smart newsrooms will prioritize board development Eric Ulken Generative AI brings wrongness at scale Stefanie Murray The year U.S. media stops screwing around and becomes pro-democracy Priyanjana Bengani Partisan local news networks will collaborate Alan Henry A reckoning with why trust in news is so low Hillary Frey Death to the labor-intensive memo for prospective hires Alex Perry New paths to transparency without Twitter Christina Shih Shared values move from nice-to-haves to essentials Jody Brannon Well embrace policy remedies Johannes Klingebiel The innovation team R.I.P. Sarah Marshall A web channel strategy wont be enough David Skok Renewed interest in human-powered reporting Sam Gregory Synthetic media forces us to understand how media gets made Ryan Gantz Im sorry but Im a large language model Michael Schudson Journalism gets more and more difficult Dominic-Madori Davis Everyone finally realizes the need for diverse voices in tech reporting Burt Herman The year AI truly arrives and with it the reckoning A.J. Bauer Covering the right wrong Laxmi Parthasarathy Unlocking the silent demand for international journalism Jonas Kaiser Rejecting the free speech frame S. Mitra Kalita Everything sucks. Good luck to you. Delano Massey The industry shakes its imposter syndrome Zizi Papacharissi Platforms are over Emily Nonko Incarcerated reporters get more bylines Jim Friedlich Local journalism steps up to the challenge of civic coverage Eric Holthaus As social media fragments marginalized voices gain more power Christoph Mergerson The rot at the core of the news business Moreno Cruz Osrio Brazilian journalism turns wounds into action Kaitlin C. Miller Harassment in journalism wont get better but well talk about it more openly Barbara Raab More journalism funders will take more risks Tamar Charney Flux is the new stability Karina Montoya More reporters on the antitrust beat Kirstin McCudden Well codify protection of journalism and newsgathering Mauricio Cabrera Its no longer about audiences its about communities Megan Lucero and Shirish Kulkarni The future of journalism is not you Jessica Maddox Journalists keep getting manipulated by internet culture Jenna Weiss-Berman The economic downturn benefits the podcasting industry. (No really!) Julia Angwin Democracies will get serious about saving journalism Daniel Trielli Trust in news will continue to fall. Just look at Brazil. Nicholas Thompson The year AI actually changes the media business Jacob L. Nelson Despite it all people will still want to be journalists Anika Anand Independent news businesses lead the way on healthy work cultures Cassandra Etienne Local news fellowships will help fight newsroom inequities Peter Bale Rising costs force more digital innovation Ryan Kellett Airline-like loyalty programs try to tie down news readers Cory Bergman The AI content flood Jaden Amos TikTok personality journalists continue to rise Danielle K. Brown and Kathleen Searles DEI efforts must consider mental health and online abuse Taylor Lorenz The creator economy will be astroturfed Sam Guzik AI will start fact-checking. We may not like the results. Walter Frick Journalists wake up to the power of prediction markets Alex Sujong Laughlin Credit where its due Eric Nuzum A focus on people instead of power Masuma Ahuja Journalism starts working for and with its communities Sue Robinson Engagement journalism will have to confront a tougher reality Wilson Livano Diaspora journalism takes the next step Larry Ryckman Well work together with our competitors Kaitlyn Wells Well prioritize media literacy for children Ariel Zirulnick Journalism doubles down on user needs Amethyst J. Davis The slight of the great contraction Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau More of the same Michael W. Wagner The backlash against pro-democracy reporting is coming Dannagal G. Young Stop rewarding elite performances of identity threat Bill Grueskin Local news will come to rely on AI Joni Deutsch Podcast collaboration not competition breeds excellence Martina Efeyini Talk to Gen Z. Theyre the experts of Gen Z. Jennifer Brandel AI couldnt care less. Journalists will care more. Victor Pickard The year journalism and capitalism finally divorce Nicholas Diakopoulos Journalists productively harness generative AI tools Stle Grut Your newsroom experiences a Midjourney-gate too Mariana Moura Santos A woman who speaks is a woman who changes the world Joe Amditis AI throws a lifeline to local publishers Peter Sterne AI enters the newsroom Tim Carmody Newsletter writers need a new ethics Parker Molloy Well reach new heights of moral panic John Davidow A year of intergenerational learning Eric Thurm Journalists think of themselves as workers Elite Truong In platform collapse an opportunity for community J. Siguru Wahutu American journalism reckons with its colonialist tendencies Kavya Sukumar Belling the cat: The rise of independent fact-checking at scale David Cohn AI made this prediction To promote and elevate the standards of journalism Covering thought leadership in journalism Pushing to the future of journalism Exploring the art and craft of story The Nieman Journalism Lab is a collaborative attempt to figure out how quality journalism can survive and thrive in the Internet age. Its a project of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University .

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This shouldnt happen: Inside the virus-hunting nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance (vanityfair.com) To revist this article visit My Profile then View saved stories . To revist this article visit My Profile then View saved stories . By Katherine Eban On June 18 2021 an evolutionary biologist named Jesse D. Bloom sent the draft of an unpublished scientific paper hed written to Dr. Anthony Fauci the chief medical adviser to the president of the United States. A bespectacled boyish-looking 43-year-old often clad in short-sleeved checkered shirts Bloom specializes in the study of how viruses evolve. He is the most ethical scientist I know said Sergei Pond a fellow evolutionary biologist. He wants to dig deep and discover the truth. The paper Bloom had writtenknown as a preprint because it had yet to be peer-reviewed or publishedcontained sensitive revelations about the National Institutes of Health the federal agency that oversees biomedical research. In the interests of transparency he wanted Fauci who helms an NIH subagency the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) to see it ahead of time. Under ordinary circumstances the preprint might have sparked a respectful exchange of views. But this was no ordinary preprint and no ordinary moment. More than a year into the pandemic the genesis of SARS-CoV-2 the virus that causes COVID-19 was still a mystery. Most scientists believed that it had made the leap from bats to humans naturally via an intermediary species most likely at a market in Wuhan China where live wild animals were slaughtered and sold. But a growing contingent were asking if it could have originated inside a nearby laboratory that is known to have conducted risky coronavirus research funded in part by the United States. As speculation sober and otherwise swirled the NIH was being bombarded by Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits. Fauci himself needed a security detail owing to death threats from conspiracy theorists who believed he was covering up some dark secret. Blooms paper was the product of detective work hed undertaken after noticing that a number of early SARS-CoV-2 genomic sequences mentioned in a published paper from China had somehow vanished without a trace. The sequences which map the nucleotides that give a virus its unique genetic identity are key to tracking when the virus emerged and how it might have evolved. In Blooms view their disappearance raised the possibility that the Chinese government might be trying to hide evidence about the pandemics early spread. Piecing together clues Bloom established that the NIH itself had deleted the sequences from its own archive at the request of researchers in Wuhan. Now he was hoping Fauci and his boss NIH director Francis Collins could help him identify other deleted sequences that might shed light on the mystery. Bloom had submitted the paper to a preprint server a public repository of scientific papers awaiting peer review on the same day that hed sent a copy to Fauci and Collins. It now existed in a kind of twilight zone: not published and not yet public but almost certain to appear online soon. Collins immediately organized a Zoom meeting for Sunday June 20. He invited two outside scientists evolutionary biologist Kristian Andersen and virologist Robert Garry and allowed Bloom to do the same. Bloom chose Pond and Rasmus Nielsen a genetic biologist. That it was shaping up like an old-fashioned duel with seconds in attendance did not cross Blooms mind at the time. But six months after that meeting he remained so troubled by what transpired that he wrote a detailed account which Vanity Fair obtained. After Bloom described his research the Zoom meeting became extremely contentious he wrote. Andersen leapt in saying he found the preprint deeply troubling. If the Chinese scientists wanted to delete their sequences from the database which NIH policy entitled them to do it was unethical for Bloom to analyze them further he claimed. And there was nothing unusual about the early genomic sequences in Wuhan. Instantly Nielsen and Andersen were yelling at each other Bloom wrote with Nielsen insisting that the early Wuhan sequences were extremely puzzling and unusual. Andersenwhod had some of his emails with Fauci from early in the pandemic publicly released through FOIA requestsleveled a third objection. Andersen Bloom wrote needed security outside his house and my pre-print would fuel conspiratorial notions that China was hiding data and thereby lead to more criticism of scientists such as himself. Fauci then weighed in objecting to the preprints description of Chinese scientists surreptitiously deleting the sequences. The word was loaded said Fauci and the reason theyd asked for the deletions was unknown. Thats when Andersen made a suggestion that surprised Bloom. He said he was a screener at the preprint server which gave him access to papers that werent yet public. He then offered to either entirely delete the preprint or revise it in a way that would leave no record that this had been done. Bloom refused saying that he doubted either option was appropriate given the contentious nature of the meeting. At that point both Fauci and Collins distanced themselves from Andersens offer with Fauci saying as Bloom recalled it Just for the record I want to be clear that I never suggested you delete or revise the pre-print. They seemed to know that Andersen had gone too far. Both Andersen and Garry denied that anyone in the meeting suggested deleting or revising the paper. Andersen said Blooms account was false. Garry dismissed it as nonsense. Sergei Pond however confirmed Blooms account as accurate after having it read aloud to him. I dont remember the exact phrasingI didnt take any notesbut from what you described that sounds accurate. I definitely felt bad for poor Jesse. He added that the charged-up atmosphere struck him as inappropriate for a scientific meeting. A spokesperson for Fauci declined to comment. Six months after his contentious meeting with Fauci and other top scientists on June 20 2021 Jesse Bloom made a written record of his recollections. Vanity Fair later obtained the document. Click here to see and download the full document. The wagon-circling on that Zoom call reflected a siege mentality at the NIH whose cause was much larger than Bloom and the missing sequences. It couldnt be made to disappear with creative editing or deletion. And it all began with a once-obscure science nonprofit in Manhattan that had become the conduit for federal grant money to a Wuhan research laboratory. In 2014 Faucis agency had issued a $3.7 million grant to EcoHealth Alliance a nongovernmental organization dedicated to predicting and helping to prevent the next pandemic by identifying viruses that could leap from wildlife to humans. The grant titled Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence proposed to screen wild and captive bats in China analyze sequences in the laboratory to gauge the risk of bat viruses infecting humans and build predictive models to examine future risk. The Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) was a key collaborator to whom EcoHealth Alliance gave almost $600000 in sub-awards. But the work there had been controversial enough that the NIH suspended the grant in July 2020. As it happened EcoHealth Alliance failed to predict the COVID-19 pandemiceven though it erupted into public view at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market a short drive from the WIV itself. In the ensuing months every move of EcoHealth Alliance and its voluble president Peter Daszak came under scrutiny by a small army of scientific sleuths and assorted journalists. What they wanted to know had really gone on at the WIV? Why had Daszak been so cagey about the work his organization had been funding there? And were Fauci and other officials trying to direct attention away from research that the U.S. had been at least indirectly financing? The dispute over COVID-19s origins has become increasingly acrimonious with warring camps of scientists trading personal insults on Twitter feeds. Natural-origin proponents argue that the virus like so many before it emerged from the well-known phenomenon of natural spillover jumping from a bat host to an intermediate species before going on to infect humans. Those suspecting a lab-related incident point to an array of possible scenarios from inadvertent exposure of a scientist during field research to the accidental release of a natural or manipulated strain during laboratory work. The lack of concrete evidence supporting either theory has only increased the rancor. Everyone is looking for a smoking gun that would render any reasonable doubt impossible says Amir Attaran a biologist and lawyer at the University of Ottawa. Without cooperation from the Chinese government that may be impossible. In 2018 Daszak had appeared on Chinese state-run TV and said The work we do with Chinese collaborators is published jointly in international journals and the sequence data is uploaded onto the internet free for everyone to read very open very transparent and very collaborative. He added Science is naturally transparent and open. You do something you discover something you want to tell the world about it. Thats the nature of scientists. But as COVID-19 rampaged across the globe the Chinese governments commitment to transparency turned out to be limited. It has refused to share raw data from early patient cases or participate in any further international efforts to investigate the viruss origin. And in September 2019 three months before the officially recognized start of the pandemic the Wuhan Institute of Virology took down its database of some 22000 virus samples and sequences refusing to restore it despite international requests. As for transparency-minded scientists in the U.S. Daszak early on set about covertly organizing a letter in the Lancet medical journal that sought to present the lab-leak hypothesis as a groundless and destructive conspiracy theory. And Fauci and a small group of scientists including Andersen and Garry worked to enshrine the natural-origin theory during confidential discussions in early February 2020 even though several of them privately expressed that they felt a lab-related incident was likelier. Just days before those discussions began Vanity Fair has learned Dr. Robert Redfield a virologist and the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had urged Fauci privately to vigorously investigate both the lab and natural hypotheses. He was then excluded from the ensuing discussionslearning only later that theyd even occurred. Their goal was to have a single narrative Redfield told Vanity Fair. Why top scientists linked arms to tamp down public speculation about a lab leakeven when their emails revealed via FOIA requests and congressional review suggest they held similar concernsremains unclear. Was it simply because their views shifted in favor of a natural origin ? Could it have been to protect science from the ravings of conspiracy theorists? Or to protect against a revelation that could prove fatal to certain risky research that they deem indispensable? Or to protect vast streams of grant money from political interference or government regulation? The effort to close the debate in favor of the natural-origin hypothesis continues today. In February The New York Times gave front-page treatment to a set of preprintswritten by Michael Worobey at the University of Arizona Kristian Andersen at Scripps Research Institute and 16 coauthors including Garryclaiming that a new analysis of public data from the Huanan market in Wuhan provided dispositive evidence that the virus first leapt to humans from animals sold there. But a number of top scientists Bloom among them questioned that assertion saying the preprints while worthy relied on incomplete data and found no infected animal. I dont think they offer proof. They provide evidence that more strongly supports the link to the wild animal market than to the WIV and thats the way I would have phrased it says W. Ian Lipkin an epidemiologist at Columbia University who favors the natural-origin theory. Some scientists seem almost hell-bent on naming the Huanan market as the site of the origin of the pandemic; and some members of the media seem more than happy to embrace these conclusions without careful examination said Stanford microbiologist David Relman. This issue is far too important to be decided in the public domain by unreviewed studies incomplete and unconfirmed data and unsubstantiated proclamations. Perhaps more than anyone Peter Daszaka Western scientist immersed in Chinese coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virologywas uniquely positioned to help the world crack open the origin mystery not least by sharing what he knew. But last year Dr. Jeffrey Sachs the Columbia University economist who oversees the Lancet s COVID-19 commission dismissed Daszak from the helm of a task force investigating the viruss genesis after he flatly refused to share progress reports from his contested research grant. (In written responses to detailed questions Daszak said he was simply following NIH guidance when he declined Sachss request because the agency was withholding the reports in question until they had adjudicated a FOIA request. The reports are now publicly available he said.) [Daszak] and NIH have acted badly Sachs told Vanity Fair. There has been a lack of transparencyand there is a lot more to know and that can be known. He said that the NIH should support an independent scientific investigation to examine the possible role in the pandemic of the NIH EcoHealth Alliance the Wuhan Institute of Virology and a partner laboratory at the University of North Carolina. Both hypotheses are still very much with us he said and need to be investigated seriously and scientifically. (We are also on record as welcoming independent scientific investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic Daszak told Vanity Fair. ) This story is based on more than 100000 internal EcoHealth Alliance documents obtained by Vanity Fair as well as interviews with five former staff members and 33 other sources. The documents most of which predate the pandemic span a number of years and include budgets staff and board meeting minutes and internal emails and reports. While the documents do not tell us where COVID-19 came from they shed light on the world in which EcoHealth Alliance has operated: one of murky grant agreements flimsy oversight and the pursuit of government funds for scientific advancement in part by pitching research of steeply escalating risk. The story of how Daszaks grant entangled Fauci in the specter of Wuhan coronavirus research began years earlier at a stately Beaux Arts social club in Washington D.C. For more than a decade EcoHealth Alliance hosted a series of cocktail parties at the Cosmos Club near DuPont Circle to discuss the prevention of viral outbreaks. There expert biologists virologists and journalists mingled with the true guests of honor: federal government bureaucrats who were in the position to steer grants. On invitations EcoHealth Alliance described the events as educational. Inside the nonprofit however officials called them cultivation events. The return on investment was excellent: For about $8000 in Brie and Chardonnay per event they got to network with prospective federal funders. As the organizations 2018 strategic plan spelled out Given our strength in federal funding we enhanced our cultivation events at the Cosmos Club in Washington DC which now regularly attract 75-150 people at high levels in govt agencies NGOs and the private sector. (These kinds of events are common among many nongovernmental organizations and nonprofits which depend upon both public and private donors for support Daszak told Vanity Fair. ) Of all those high-level people almost no one ranked as high as Fauci a scientific kingmaker who dispensed billions in grant money each yearand Daszak was determined to share a podium with him. The idea was admittedly a reach. Though hed met with Fauci and received funding from his agency Daszak was relatively obscure. But he had cultivated back-channel access to the minders who guarded Faucis calendar. On September 9 2013 Daszak emailed Faucis senior adviser David Morens to see if the sought-after NIAID chief would be available as a panel speaker. Morens emailed back recommending that Daszak write Tony directly thanking him for meeting with you all recently and then inviting him to be a member of this Cosmos Club discussion. That way it is personal and doesnt look cooked by us. Though Fauci declined that invitation and several others Daszak kept trying. In February 2016 Morens passed along a valuable tip: Fauci normally says no to almost everything like this. Unless ABC NBC CBS and Fox are all there with cameras running. If he were asked to give THE main talk or the only talk that might increase the chances. The gambit worked. Fauci signed on to give a presentation on the Zika virus at the Cosmos Club on March 30 and the RSVPs flowed in. The guests came from an array of deep-pocketed federal agencies: the Department of Homeland Security the U.S. Agency for International Development the Pentagon even NASA. As Daszak would declare at a board meeting on December 15 the Washington DC cultivation events have been a great way to increase our visibility to federal funders according to meeting minutes. A month earlier Donald Trump had been elected president. One board member at the meeting asked what his incoming administration might mean for a conservation nonprofit dependent on federal grants. Daszak offered breezy reassurance: The organizations apolitical mission would help it adapt. Little did he know that in the era of Trump and COVID-19 science itself would become the ultimate political battleground. EcoHealth Alliances D.C. cultivation events whose guest speakers would include Dr. Anthony Fauci are said in board meeting minutes to improve visibility to federal funders. Click here to see and download the full document. If a shared podium with Fauci proved that Daszak had become a true player among virus hunters it also underscored just how far he had come. For years Peter Daszak sat at the helm of a struggling nonprofit with a mission to save manatees promote responsible pet ownership and celebrate threatened species. The organization which operated under the name Wildlife Trust until 2010 was constantly on the hunt for ways to close its budget shortfalls. One year it proposed to honor at its annual benefit a mining company operating in Liberia that was paying it to assess the risks of Ebola virus. Another idea was to seek donations from palm-oil millionaires leveling rainforests who might be interested in cleaning up their image. Balding and usually clad in hiking gear Daszak was one part salesman one part visionary. He saw clearly that human incursions into the natural world could lead to the emergence of animal pathogens with bats a particularly potent reservoir. Daszak was making a bet that bats were harboring deadly viruses said Dr. Matthew McCarthy an associate professor of medicine at Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York. In 2004 as a 23-year-old Harvard medical student McCarthy followed Daszak to Cameroon to trap bats. I left my family my friends he said. It was a very powerful thing for people like me going into the most remote parts of the world. I was taken by him hook line and sinker. The bioterror attacks of 2001 in which letters dusted with anthrax spores were sent through the U.S. mail coupled with the first SARS coronavirus outbreak in China the following year would bring money for the study of lethal natural pathogens pouring into federal agencies. In 2003 the NIAID got an eye-popping $1.7 billion for research to defend against bioterrorism. Daszaks office on Manhattans Far West Side didnt have a laboratory. The closest bat colonies were in Central Park. But he cultivated an affiliation with Shi Zhengli a Chinese scientist who would rise to become the director of the Wuhan Institute of Virologys Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases. Slight and sophisticated with an international education Shi became known in China as bat woman for her fearless exploration of their habitats. Dazsaks alliance with her would open Chinas bat caves to him. In 2005 after conducting field research in four locations in China Daszak and Shi coauthored their first paper together which established that horseshoe bats were a likely reservoir for SARS-like coronaviruses. They would go on to collaborate on 17 papers. In 2013 they reported their discovery that a SARS-like bat coronavirus which Shi had been the first to successfully isolate in a lab might be able to infect human cells without first jumping to an intermediate animal. [Peter] respected her said the former EcoHealth Alliance staffer. In the view of everyone they were doing great work for the world. Their partnership gave Daszak an almost proprietary sense of the bat caves in Yunnan province which he would later refer to in a grant proposal as our field test sites. As Daszaks staff and Shis graduate students intermingled traveling between Wuhan and Manhattan the exchange flourished. When Shi visited New York the EcoHealth staff selected a restaurant for a celebratory dinner with great care. Zhengli is not one to stand on formality; she makes dumplings by hand with her students in the lab!! Daszaks chief of staff wrote to another employee. She got her PhD in France loves red wine and likes good food above formality. By 2009 bats had turned into big money. That September USAID awarded a $75 million grant called PREDICT to four organizations including Daszaks. It was the most comprehensive zoonotic virus surveillance project in the world USAID stated and its purpose was to identify and predict viral emergence in part by sampling and testing bats and other wildlife in remote locations. The $18 million over five years awarded to what was then Wildlife Trust was a game-changer Daszak told his staff in an ecstatic email sharing the news. I want to take this opportunity (despite 7 hours of drinking champagne literally!) to thank all of you for your support. The money transformed the ragged nonprofit. It increased its budget by half ending a yearslong operating loss; began a long-deferred rebranding which led to the new name EcoHealth Alliance; and spruced up its headquarters even fixing its chronically broken air conditioner. Over the course of the grant it allocated $1.1 million to the Wuhan Institute of Virology USAID recently acknowledged in a letter to Congress. When Dr. Maureen Miller an infectious disease epidemiologist arrived at EcoHealth Alliance in 2014 she landed in an environment that she found to be toxic and secretive. Closed-door meetings were the norm. The senior leadership constituted an unwelcoming old boys network. She soon came to believe that she was hired because they needed a senior-level woman she said adding I was excluded from pretty much everything. She came aboard shortly before the organizations PREDICT grant was renewed for five more years. It was also the year the NIH approved Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence the $3.7 million grant that would come back to haunt Fauci. Miller said she was lured by the idea of being able to create a pandemic-threats warning system. Miller got to work creating a surveillance strategy to detect zoonotic virus spillover. Chinese villagers living near bat caves in Southern Yunnan province would have their blood tested for antibodies to a SARS-like coronavirus then answer questionnaires to determine if certain behaviors had led them to be exposed. It was a biological and behavioral warning system Miller explained. Over the next two years Miller saw Daszak only a handful of times. But she worked closely with Shi Zhengli who developed the test to screen the villagers blood. In that time Miller noted I never got a result from [Shi] via phone. I had to show up in China to learn anything from her. From that Miller gleaned that while Shi was a world-class scientist she respects the Chinese system. In short she followed the Chinese governments rules. (Shi Zhengli did not respond to written questions for this article.) Miller left EcoHealth Alliance in November 2016 never knowing what became of the strategy shed developed. But in the fall of 2017 Shi alerted Millers former assistant to the fact that Daszak was about to get credit for her work in an upcoming publication. Shi went out of her way to ensure I would be included Miller said. The final version of a letter published in January 2018 in the Wuhan Institute of Virologys journal Virologica Sinica included Millers name. Six out of 218 villagers had tested positive for antibodies suggesting that the strategy was a successful way to gauge potential spillover. But the experience left Miller with a dark impression of Daszak: He is so single-minded that he wants to be the one who makes the discovery without having to share. Daszak said Miller has been credited as a coauthor on at least eight papers stemming from her work at EcoHealth Alliance a testimony to the equity fairness and openness of our publication and authorship practices. He added that the nonprofits staff is diverse and culturally sensitive and has been majority female for 20 years. Daszaks $3.7 million NIH grant first set off alarm bells in early May 2016 as it entered its third year. The NIH requires annual progress reports but Daszaks year-two report was late and the agency threatened to withhold funds until he filed it. The report he finally did submit worried the agencys grant specialists. It stated that scientists planned to create an infectious clone of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) a novel coronavirus found in dromedaries that had emerged in Saudi Arabia in 2012 and killed 35% of the humans it infected. The report also made clear that the NIH grant had already been used to construct two chimeric coronaviruses similar to the one that caused Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) which emerged in 2002 and went on to cause at least 774 deaths worldwide. (A chimeric virus is one that combines fragments of different viruses.) These revelations prompted the NIHs grant specialists to ask a critical question: Should the work be subject to a federal moratorium on what was called gain-of-function research? With that Daszaks grant got tangled in a yearslong debate that had divided the virology community. In 2011 two scientists separately announced that they had genetically altered Highly Pathogenic Asian Avian Influenza A (H5N1) the bird flu virus that has killed at least 456 people since 2003. The scientists gave the virus new functionsenabling it to spread efficiently among ferrets which are genetically closer to humans than miceas a way to gauge its risks to people. Both studies had received NIH funding. The scientific community erupted in conflict over what became known as gain-of-function research. Proponents claimed it could help prevent pandemics by highlighting potential threats. Critics argued that creating pathogens that didnt exist in nature ran the risk of unleashing them. As the dispute raged Fauci worked to strike a middle ground but ultimately supported the research arguing in a coauthored Washington Post op-ed that important information and insights can come from generating a potentially dangerous virus in the laboratory. In October 2014 the Obama administration imposed a moratorium on new federal funding for research that could make influenza MERS or SARS viruses more virulent or transmissible while a review took place. But the moratorium as written left loopholes which allowed Daszak to try to save the research. On June 8 2016 he wrote to the NIHs grant specialists that the SARS-like chimeras from the completed experiment were exempt from the moratorium because the strains used had not previously been known to infect humans. He also pointed to a 2015 research paper in which scientists had infected humanized mice with the same strains and found that they were less lethal than the original SARS virus. But the 2015 research paper he cited was not particularly reassuring. In it Shi Zhengli and a preeminent coronavirus researcher at the University of North Carolina Ralph Baric mixed components of SARS-like viruses from different species and created a novel chimera that was able to directly infect human cells. (Baric did not respond to written questions seeking comment.) This gain-of-function experiment which had begun prior to the moratorium was so fraught that the authors flagged the dangers themselves writing scientific review panels may deem similar studiestoo risky to pursue. The papers acknowledgments cited funding from the NIH and from EcoHealth Alliance through a different grant. If anything the MERS study Daszak proposed was even riskier. So he pitched a compromise to the NIH: that if any of the recombined strains showed 10 times greater growth than a natural virus we will immediately: i) stop all experiments with the mutant ii) inform our NIAID Program Officer and the UNC [Institutional Biosafety Committee] of these results and iii) participate in decision making trees to decide appropriate paths forward. This mention of UNC brought a puzzled response from an NIH program officer who pointed out that the proposal had said the research would be performed at the WIV. Can you clarify where the work with the chimeric viruses will actually be performed? the officer wrote. Ten days later with still no response from Daszak the program officer emailed him again. On June 27 Daszak responded buoyant as ever: You are correct to identify a mistake in our letter. UNC has no oversight of the chimera work all of which will be conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. We will clarify tonight with Prof. Zhengli Shi exactly who will be notified if we see enhanced replicationmy understanding is that I will be notified straight away as [principal investigator] and that I can then notify you at NIAID. Apologies for the error! By July 7 the NIH agreed to Daszaks terms which relied entirely on mutual transparency: Shi would inform him of any concerning developments involving the lab-constructed viruses and he would inform the agency. Daszak replied enthusiastically to a program officer This is terrific! We are very happy to hear that our Gain of Function research funding pause has been lifted. Allowing such risky research to go forward at the Wuhan Institute of Virology was simply crazy in my opinion says Jack Nunberg director of the Montana Biotechnology Center. Reasons are lack of oversight lack of regulation the environment in China where scientists who publish in prestigious journals get rewarded by the government creating dangerous incentives. So that is what really elevates it to the realm of No this shouldnt happen. A subsequent development seemed to support that view. On January 15 2021 in the waning days of the Trump administration the State Department released a fact sheet based on declassified intelligence. It asserted that Chinese military scientists had been collaborating with the WIVs civilian scientists since 2017 if not earlier. That raised the question of whether research there was being repurposed for offensive or military uses. Though Shi and other WIV leaders have previously denied such collaboration occurred former deputy national security adviser Matthew Pottinger calls those denials willful lies. If one were to give them the benefit of the doubt you might go so far as to say they have no choice but to lie but these are lies nonetheless. If Chinas military had been collaborating with WIV scientists its unclear if Daszak would have realized it. He had far less visibility into the WIV than he let on a former EcoHealth Alliance staffer told Vanity Fair. The work being done there was always an enigma the former staffe

BAD

Thoughts on Markdown (smashingmagazine.com) Knut Melvr is a humanities technologist currently working as Developer Advocate at Sanity.io . He has previously been a technology consultant and developer at More about Knut Weekly tips on front-end & UX . Trusted by 200000+ folks. Markdown is second nature for many of us. Looking back I remember starting typing in Markdown not long after John Gruber released his first Perl-based parser back in 2004 after collaborating on the language with Aaron Swartz. Thats almost 20 years ago yikes! What started as a more writer- and reader-friendly syntax for HTML has become a darling for how to write and store technical prose for programmers and tech-savvy people. Markdown is a signifier for the developer and text-tinkerer culture. But since its introduction the world of digital content has also changed. While Markdown is still fine for some things I dont believe its should be the go-to for content anymore. There are two main reasons for this: Of course this stance is influenced by working for a platform for structured content. At Sanity.io we spend most of our days thinking about how content as data unlocks a lot of value and we spend a lot of time thinking deeply about editor experiences and how to save people time and make working with digital content delightful. So theres skin in the game but I hope Im able to portray that even though Ill argue against Markdown as the go-to format for content I still have a deep appreciation for its significance application and legacy. Before my current gig I worked as a technology consultant at an agency where we had to literally fight CMSes that locked our clients content down by embedding it in presentation and complex data models (yes even the open-source ones). I have observed people struggle with Markdown syntax and be demotivated in their jobs as editors and content creators. We have spent hours (and clients money) on building custom tag-renderers that were never used because people dont have time or motivation to use the syntax. Even I when highly motivated have given up contributing to open-source documentation because the component-based Markdown implementation introduced too much friction. But I also see the other side of the coin. Markdown comes with an impressive ecosystem and from a developers standpoint there is an elegant simplicity to plain-text files and easy-to-parse syntax for people who are used to reading code. I once spent days building an impressive MultiMarkdown -> LaTeX -> real-time-PDF-preview-pipeline in Sublime Text for my academic writing. And it makes sense that a README.md file can be opened and edited in a code editor and rendered nicely on GitHub. Theres little doubt that Markdown brings convenience for developers in some use cases. That is also why I want to build my advice against Markdown by looking back on why it was introduced in the first place and by going through some of the major developments of content on the web. For many of us I suspect Markdown is something we just take for granted as a thing that exists. But all technology has a history and is a product of human interaction. This is important to remember when you the reader develop technology for others to use. Markdown was designed to make it easier for web writers to work with articles in an age where web publishing required writing HTML. So the intent was to make it simpler to interface with text formatting in HTML. It wasnt the first simplified syntax on the planet but it was the one that gained the most traction over the years. Today the usage of Markdown has grown far beyond its design intent to be a simpler way to read and write HTML to become an approach of marking up plain text in a lot of different contexts. Sure technologies and ideas can evolve beyond their intent but the tension in todays use of Markdown can be traced to this origin and the constraints put into its design. For those who arent familiar with the syntax take the following HTML content: With Markdown you can express the same formatting as: Its like a law of nature that technology adoption comes with the pressure to evolve and add features to it. Markdowns increasing popularity meant that people wanted to adapt it for their use cases. They wanted more features like support for footnotes and tables. The original implementation came with an opinionated stance which at the time were reasonable for what the design intent was: In other words if you want a table then use <table></table> . Youll find that this is still the case for the original implementation. One of Markdowns spiritual successors MDX has taken the same principle but extended it to JSX a JS-based templating language. It can look like Markdowns appeal for many wasnt so much its tie-in to HTML but the ergonomics of plaintext and simple syntax for formatting. Some content creators wanted to use Markdown for other use cases than simple articles on the web. Implementations like MultiMarkdown introduced affordances for academic writers who wanted to use plain text files but needed more features. Soon you would have a range of writing apps that accepted Markdown syntax without necessarily turning it into HTML or even using the markdown syntax as a storage format. In a lot of apps youll find editors that give you a limited set of formatting options and some of them are more inspired by the original syntax. In fact one of the feedbacks I got on a draft of this article was that by now Markdown should be lower-cased since it has become so common and to make it distinct from the original implementation. Because what we recognize as markdown has also become very diverse. Like ice cream Markdown comes in a lot of flavors some more popular than others. When people started to fork the original implementation and add features to it two things happened: This started conversations about formalizing Markdown into a specification proper. Something that Gruber resisted and still does interestingly because he recognized that people wanted to use Markdown for different purposes and No one syntax would make all happy. Its an interesting stance considering that Markdown translates to HTML which is a specification that evolves to accommodate different needs. Even though the original implementation of Markdown is covered by a BSD-like license it also reads Neither the name Markdown nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission. We can safely assume that most products that use Markdown as part of their marketing materials havent acquired this written permission. The most successful attempt to bring Markdown into a shared specification is what is today known as CommonMark . It was headed by Jeff Atwood (known for co-founding Stack Overflow and Discourse ) and John McFarlane (a professor of philosophy at Berkely whos behind Babelmark and pandoc ). They initially launched it as Standard Markdown but changed it to CommonMark after receiving criticism from Gruber . Whose stance was consistent the intent of Markdown is to be a simple authoring syntax that translates to HTML: @davewiner And thats whats flawed with CommonMark. They want to make things easier for programmers as a primary goal. They miss the point. John Gruber (@gruber) September 8 2014 @davewiner And thats whats flawed with CommonMark. They want to make things easier for programmers as a primary goal. They miss the point. I think this also marked the point where Markdown had entered the public domain. Even though CommonMark isnt branded as Markdown (as per licensing) this specification is recognized and referred to as markdown. Today youll find CommonMark as the underlying implementation for software like Discourse GitHub GitLab Reddit Qt Stack Overflow and Swift. Projects like unified.js bridges syntaxes by translating them into Abstract Syntax Trees also rely on CommonMark for their markdown support. CommonMark has brought a lot of unification around how markdown is implemented and in a lot of ways has made it simpler for programmers to integrate markdown support in software. But it hasnt brought the same unification to how markdown is written and used. Take GitHub Flavored Markdown (GFM). Its based on CommonMark but extends it with more features (like tables task lists and strikethrough). Reddit describes its Reddit Flavored Markdown as a variation of GFM and introduces features like syntax for marking up spoilers . I think we can safely conclude that both the group behind CommonMark and Gruber were right: it certainly helps with shared specifications but yes people want to use Markdown for different specific things. Gruber resisted formalizing Markdown into a shared specification because he assumed it would make it less a tool for writers and more a tool for programmers . We have already seen that even with the broad adoption of a specification we dont automatically get a syntax that predictably works the same across different contexts. And specifications like CommonMark popular as it is also have limited success. An obvious example is Slacks markdown implementation (called mrkdown ) that translates *this* to strong/bold and not emphasis/italic and doesnt support the [link](https://slack.com) syntax but uses <link|https://slack.com> instead. Youll also find that you can use Markdown-like syntax to initialize formatting in rich text editors in software like Notion Dropbox Paper Craft and to a degree Google Docs (e.g. asterisk + space on a new line will transform to a bulleted list). Whats supported and whats translated to what varies. So you cant necessarily take your muscle memory with you across these applications. For some people this is fine and they can adapt. For others this is a papercut and it keeps them from using these features. Which asks the question who was Markdown designed for and who are its users today? Meet Image Optimization Addy Osmanis brand new practical guide to optimizing and delivering high-quality images on the web. From formats and compression to delivery and maintenance: everything in one single 528-pages book. We have seen markdown exist in a tension between different use cases audiences and notions of whom its users are. What started as a markup language for HTML-proficient web writers specifically became a darling for developer types. In 2014 web writers started to move away from moving files through parsers in Perl and FTP. Content Management Systems (CMSs) like WordPress Drupal and Moveable Type (which I believe Gruber still uses) had steadily grown to become the go-to tools for web publishing. They offered affordances like rich text editors that web writers could use in their browsers. These rich text editors still assumed HTML and Markdown as the underlying rich text syntax but they took away some of the cognitive overhead by adding buttons to insert this syntax in the editor. And increasingly writers werent and didnt have to be versed in HTML. I bet if you did web development with CMSs in the 2010s you probably had to deal with junk HTMLthat came through these editors when people pasted directly from Word. Today I will argue that Markdowns primary users are developers and people who are interested in code. Its not a coincidence that Slack made the WYSIWYG the default input mode once their software was used by more people outside of technical departments. And the fact that this was a controversial decision so much that they had to bring it back as an option shows how deep the love for markdown is in the developer community. There wasnt much celebration of Slack trying to make it easier and more accessible for everyone. And this is the crux of the matter. The fact that markdown has become the lingua franca writing style and what most website frameworks cater to is also the main reason Ive been a bit skittish about publishing this. Its often talked about as an inherent and undeniable good. Markdown has become a hallmark of being developer-friendly. Smart and skilled people have sunk a lot of collective hours in enabling markdown in all sorts of contexts. So challenging its hegemony will surely annoy some. But hopefully it can spawn some fruitful discussion about a thing thats often taken for granted. My impression is that the developer friendliness that people relate to Markdown has mostly to do with 3 factors: Im not saying that these stances are wrong but Ill suggest that they come with trade-offs and some unreasonable assumptions. Databases are amazing things. But they have also had an earned reputation of being hard and inaccessible for frontend developers. Ive known a lot of great developers who shy away from backend code and databases because they represent complexity they dont want to spend time on. Even with WordPress which does a lot out of the box to keep you from having to deal with its database after setup it was overhead of getting up and running. Plain text files however are more tangible and are fairly simple to reason about (as long as youre used to file management that is). Especially compared to a system that will break your content into multiple tables in a relational database with some proprietary structure. For limited use cases like blog posts of simple rich text with images and links markdown will get the job done. You can copy the file and stick it in a folder or check it into git. The content feels yours because of the tangibility of files. Even if theyre hosted on GitHub which is a for-profit Software as a Service owned by Microsoft and thus covered by their terms of service. In the era where you actually had to spin up a local database to get your local development going and deal with syncing it with remote the appeal of plain text files is understandable. But that era is pretty much gone with the emergence of backends as a service. Services and tools like Fauna Firestore Hasura Prisma PlanetScale and Sanitys Content Lake invest heavily in developer experience. Even operating traditional databases on local development has become less of a hassle compared to just 10 years ago. If you think about it do you own your content less if its hosted in a database? And hasnt the developer experience of dealing with databases become significantly simpler with the advent of SaaS tools? And is it fair to say that proprietary database technology impinges on the portability of your content? Today you can launch whats essentially a Postgres database with no sysadmin skills make your tables and columns put your content inside of it and at any time export it as a .sql dump. The portability of content has much more to do with how you structure that content in the first place. Take WordPress its fully open-source you can host your own DB. It even has a standardized export format in XML . But anyone who has tried to move out of a mature WordPress install knows how little this helps if youre trying to get away from WordPress. We already touched on the vast markdown ecosystem. If you look at contemporary website frameworks most of them assume markdown as a primary content format some of them the only format. For example Hugo the static site generator used by Smashing Magazine still requires markdown files for paginated publishing. Meaning that if Smashing Magazine wants to use a CMS to store articles it has to interact with markdown files or convert all the content to markdown files. If you look in the documentation for Next.js Nuxt.js VuePress Gatsby.js and so on markdown will figure prominently. Its also the default syntax for README -files on GitHub which also uses it for formatting in Pull Request notes and comments. There are some honorable mentions of initiatives to bring the ergonomics of markdown to the masses. Netlify CMS and TinaCMS (the spiritual descendant of Forestry) will give you user interfaces where the markdown syntax is mostly abstracted away for editors. You will commonly find that markdown-based editors in CMSes give you preview functionality for the formatting. Some editors like Notion s will let you paste markdown syntax and they will translate it to their native formatting. But I think its safe to say that the energy that has gone to innovate for markdown hasnt favored people who arent into writing its syntax. It hasnt trickled up the stack as it were. For a developer who makes their blog using markdown files reduces some of the overhead of getting it up and running since frameworks often come with built-in parsing or commonly offer it as part of starter code. And there is nothing extra to sign up for. You can use git to commit these files alongside your code. If you are comfortable with git diffs youll even have revision control like youre used to with programming. In other words since markdown files are in plain text they can be integrated with your developer workflow. But beyond this the developer experience soon gets more complex. And you end up compromising on your teams user experience as content creators and our own developer experience being stuck with markdown to solve problems that are way beyond its design intent. Yes it might be cool if you get your content team to use git and check in their changes but at the same time is this the best use of their time? Do you really want your editors to bump against merge conflicts or how to rebase branches? Git is hard enough for developers who use it every day. And does this setup really represent the best workflow for people who are primarily working with content? Isnt this a case where developer experience has trumped editor experience and isnt the cost the time and effort that could go into making something better for users? Because the expectations and needs from content and editing environments have evolved I dont think markdown will do it for us. I dont see how some of the developer ergonomics end up favoring non-developers and I think even for developers markdown is holding our own content creation and needs back. Because content on the web has significantly changed since the early 2000s. Markdown has always had the option of opting out to HTML if you wanted more complex things. This worked well when the author was also the webmaster or at least knew HTML. It also worked well because websites usually were mostly HTML and CSS. The way you designed websites was mostly by creating whole page layouts. You could transform Markdown to the HTML markup and put it up alongside your style.css file. Of course we had CMSes and static site generators in the 2000s too but they mostly worked the same by inserting the HTML content inside of templates without any passing of props between the components. But most of us dont really author HTML like in the old days anymore. Content on the web has evolved from mostly being articles with simple rich text formatting to composed multimedia and specialized components often with user interactivity (which is a fancy way of saying newsletter signup call to actions). In the early 2010s Web 2.0 was in its heyday and Software as a Service-companies began to use the web for data-heavy applications. HTML CSS and JavaScript were increasingly used to drive interactive UIs. Twitter open-sourced Bootstrap their framework for building more consistent and resilient user interfaces. This drove what we can call the componentization of web design. It shifted the way we build for the web in a fundamental way. The various CSS frameworks that emerged in this era (e.g. Bootstrap and Foundation ) tended to use standardized class names and assumed specific HTML structures to make it less hard to make resilient and responsive user interfaces. With the web design philosophy of Atomic Design and class-name conventions like Block-Element-Modifier (BEM) the default was shifted from thinking page-layout first to seeing pages as a collection of repeatable and compatible design elements. Whatever content you have inside of markdown is not compatible with this. Unless you down the rabbit hole of interjecting the markdown parsers and tweaked it to output the syntax you wanted (more on this later). No wonder Markdown was designed to be simple rich text articles of native HTML elements that you would target with a stylesheet. This is still an issue for people who use Markdown to drive content for their sites. But something also happened to our content as well. Not only could we start finding it outside of the semantic <article> HTML-tags but it started to contain morestuff. A lot of our content moved out from our LiveJournals and blogs and into social media: Facebook Twitter tumblr YouTube. To get the snippets of content back into our articles we needed to be able to embed them. The HTML convention started using the <iframe> tag to channel the video player from YouTube or even insert a tweet-box in between your paragraphs of text. Some systems started abstracting this into short-codes most often brackets containing some keyword to identify what block of content it should represent and some key-value attributes. For example dev.to have enabled syntax from the templating language liquid to be inserted into their Markdown editor : Of course this requires you to use a customized Markdown parser and have special logic to make sure the right HTML was inserted when the syntax was turned into HTML. And your content creators will have to remember these codes (unless there was some kind of toolbar to automatically insert them). And if a bracket gets deleted or messed up that might break the site. An attempt to solve the need for block content is MDX presented with the taglineMarkdown for the component era. MDX lets you use the JSX templating language as well as JavaScript interlaced in markdown syntax. There is a lot of impressive engineering in the community around MDX including Unified.js which specializes in parsing various syntaxes into Abstract Syntax Trees (ASTs) so that they are more accessible to be used programmatically. Note that the standardization of markdown would make the work for the folks behind Unified.js and its users simpler because there are fewer edge cases to cater for. MDX certainly brings better developer experience in integrating components into Markdown. But it doesnt bring better editor experience because it adds a lot of cognitive overhead to content production and editing: The amount of assumed knowledge just for this simple example is substantial. You need to know about ES6 modules JavaScript variables JSX templating syntax and how to use props hex codes and data types and you need to be familiar with what components you can use and how to use them. And you need to type it correctly and in an environment that gives you some kind of feedback. I have no doubt that there will be more accessible authoring tools on top of MDX it feels like solving for something that doesnt need to be a problem in the first place. Unless you are extremely diligent in how you compose and name your MDX components it also ties your content to a specific presentation. Just take the example above brought from the MDX front page. Youll find a hard-coded color hex for the chart. When you redesign your site that color might not be compatible with your new design system. Of course theres nothing keeping you from abstracting this and using the prop color=primary but theres also nothing in the tool that nudges you to make wise decisions like this. Embedding specific presentation concerns in your content has increasingly become a liability and something that will get in the way of adapting iterating and moving quickly with your content. It locks it down in ways that are much more subtle than having content in a database. You risk ending up in the same place as moving out of a mature WordPress install with plugins. It is cumbersome to unmix structure and presentation . With more complex sites and user journeys we also see the need to present the same pieces of content throughout a website. If youre running an e-commerce site you want to embed product information in many places outside a single product page. If you run a modern marketing site you want to be able to share the same copy across multiple personalized views. To do this efficiently and reliable you will need to adapt structured content. That means your content needs to be embedded with metadata and chunked up in ways that make it possible to parse for intent. If a developer just sees page withcontent that makes it very difficult to include the right things in the right places. If they can get to all product descriptions with an API or a query that makes everything easier. With markdown youre limited to expressing taxonomies and structured content either to some sort of folder organization (making it hard to put the same piece of content in multiple taxonomies) or you need to augment the syntax with something else. Jekyll an early Static Site Generator (SSG) built for markdown files introduced Front Matter as a way to add metadata to posts using YAML (a simple key-value format that uses spaces to create scope) between three dashes at the top of the file. So now youll have two syntaxes to deal with. YAML also has a reputation for being mischievous ( especially if youre from Norway ). Nevertheless other SSGs have adopted this convention as well as git-based CMSes that use markdown as their content format. When you have to add additional syntax to your plain files to get some of the affordances of structured content you may start to wonder if its really worth it. And who the format is for and who it excludes. If you think about it a lot of what we do on the web is not only consuming content were creating it! Im currently writing this lengthy article in an advanced word processor in my browser. Theres a growing expectation that you should also be able to author block content in modern content applications. People have started to get used to delightful user experiences that works and looks nice and where you arent expected to have to learn specialized syntax. Medium popularized the notion that you could have delightful and intuitive content creation on the web. And speaking of notion the popular note app has gone all in on block content and lets users mix max from a wide range of different types. Most of these blocks goes beyond markdown and the native elements of HTML. Its notable that Notion describing their process to make their content accessible through their highly anticipated API makes a point out of chosing their content format that: Documents from one Markdown editor will often parse and render differently in another application. The inconsistency tends to be manageable for simple documents but its a big problem for Notions rich library of blocks and inline formatting options many of which are simply not supported in any widely-used Markdown implementation. Notion went with a JSON based format that let them express as structured data. Their argument is that it makes it easier and more predictable to interact with for developers who want to build their own presentation of the block content that comes out of Notions APIs. I suspect that the prominence of Markdown has held back innovation and progress for digital content. So when I argue that we should stop choosing it as a primary way to store content its hard to give a straight answer to what should replace it. What we do know however is what we should expect from modern content formats and authoring tools. Using markdown requires you to learn syntax and often multiple syntaxes and bespoke tags to be practical with modern expectations. Today that feels like a completely unnecessary expectation to put on most people. I wish we could direct more energy into making accessible and delightful editorial experiences that produces modern portable content formats. Even though its notoriously difficult to build great block content editors there are a couple of viable options out there that can be extended and customized for your use case (for example Slate.js Quill.js or Prosemirror ). Then again investing in the communities around these tools might also help their development further. Increasingly people will expect authoring tools to be accessible real-time and collaborative. Why should one have to push a save button on the web in 2021? Why shouldnt it be possible to make a change in a document without risking a race condition because your colleague happened to have the document open in a tab? Should we expect authors to have to deal with merge conflicts? And shouldnt we make it easy for content creators to work with structured content with visual affordances that make sense? To be a bit polemical: the last decades innovations in reactive JavaScript frameworks and UI components are perfect for creating awesome authoring tools. Instead of using them to transpile Markdown to HTML and into an abstract syntax tree to then integrate it in a JavaScript template language that outputs HTML. I havent mentioned WYSIWYG editors for HTML. Because they are the wrong thing. Modern block content editors should preferably interoperate with a specified format. The aforementioned editors do at least have a sensible internal document model that can be transformed into something more portable. If you look at the content management system landscape you start to see various JSON-based block content formats emerge. Some of them are still tied to HTML assumptions or overly concerned with character positions. And none of them arent really offered as a generic specification. At Sanity.io we decided early that the block content format should never assume HTML as neither input nor output and that we could use algorithms to synchronize text strings. More importantly was it that block content and rich text should be deeply typed and queryable. The result was the open specification Portable Text . Its structure not only makes it flexible enough to accommodate custom data structures as blocks and inline spans; its also fully queryable with open-source query languages like GROQ . Portable Text isnt design to be written or be easily readable in its raw form; its designed to be produced by an user interface manipulated by code and to be serialized and rendered where ever it needs to go. For example you can use it to express content for voice assistants . An interesting side-effect of turning block content into structured data is exactly that: It becomes data! And data can be queried and processed. That can be highly useful and practical and it lets you ask your content repository questions that would be otherwise harder and more errorprone in formats like Markdown. For example if I for some reason wanted to know what programming languages weve covered in examples on Sanitys blog thats within reach with a short query. You can imagine how trivial it is to build specialized tools and views on top of this that can be helpful for content editors: Example: Get a distinct list of all programming languages that you have code blocks of. Portable Text is also serializable meaning that you can recursively loop through it and make an API that exposes its nodes in callback functions mapped to block types marked-up spans and so on. We have spent the last years learning a lot about how it works and how it can be improved and plan to take it to 1.0 in the near future. The next step is to offer an editor experience outside of Sanity Studio. As we have learned from Markdown the design intent is important. Of course whatever the alternative to markdown is it doesnt need to be Portable Text but it needs to be portable text. And it needs to share a lot of its characteristics. There have been a couple of other JSON-based block content format popping up the last few years but a lot of them seem to bring with them a lot of HTMLism. The convenience is understandable since a lot of content still ends up on the web serialized into HTML but the convenience limits the portability and the potential for reuse. You can disregard my short pitch for something we

BAD

TikTok is now banned in Montana (theverge.com) By Adi Robertson a senior tech and policy editor focused on VR online platforms and free expression. Adi has covered video games biohacking and more for The Verge since 2011. Montana Governor Greg Gianforte has signed a bill banning TikTok within the state the first ban of its kind in the United States. The bill SB 419 prohibits TikTok from operating within the territorial jurisdiction of Montana and demands mobile app stores make the app unavailable for Montana residents. To protect Montanans personal and private data from the Chinese Communist Party I have banned TikTok in Montana Gianforte tweeted today . TikTok spokesperson Brooke Oberwetter responded with a statement on Twitter. Governor Gianforte has signed a bill that infringes on the First Amendment rights of the people of #Montana by unlawfully banning #TikTok a platform that empowers hundreds of thousands of people across the state Oberwetter wrote . We want to reassure Montanans that they can continue using TikTok to express themselves earn a living and find community as we continue working to defend the rights of our users inside and outside of Montana. This is a huge step toward a new kind of internet one where states are increasingly erecting digital barriers in the name of safety and security. But the law also wont kick in for months if it comes into effect at all. Heres whats going on. SB 419 is a relatively simple law. It declares that TikTok may not operate within the territorial jurisdiction of Montana. And it says that mobile app stores may not offer the option to download the TikTok mobile application. An earlier provision would have banned internet service providers from allowing people to access the app but that didnt make it into the final text. The law specifies that no penalties apply to users of TikTok. But app store operators and TikTok itself could face fines of $10000 per violation per day with an individual violation defined as each time that a user accesses TikTok is offered the ability to access TikTok or is offered the ability to download TikTok. Theres a little ambiguity here. The bill doesnt state for instance whether letting people access TikToks rudimentary web interface would count as operating within Montana. The bill only penalizes app stores for the option to download but it doesnt lay out the liability for ongoing updates to already-downloaded apps. (Its likely theyre supposed to be banned too but Apple and Google could try to argue otherwise.) The ban would be an unprecedented restriction on Americans access to the internet. But it wont go into effect right away. The law is effective January 1st 2024 by default. On top of that theres a significant loophole: its voided automatically if TikTok severs its ties to Chinese parent company ByteDance as long as its new owner isnt located in a foreign adversary nation. Theres no hard legal precedent for something like the TikTok ban so we dont know for sure. We do know however that the ban will probably be challenged immediately. Although TikTok hasnt said it will sue it calls the rule an egregious government overreach and said that it would fight it. The internet trade association NetChoice which represents companies like Meta Twitter and Google has issued a statement calling the bill plainly unconstitutional. NetChoice has sued states including Texas Florida and California over other bills that regulate online speech so Montana may well be next. NetChoice argues that SB 419 is an unconstitutional bill of attainder or a regulation that accuses a specific entity of a crime and punishes them without a trial. It also contends that the law violates the First Amendment restricting Americans ability to share and receive constitutionally-protected speech online. Jameel Jaffer executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University has previously laid out the First Amendment case against TikTok bans . Its conceivable that the US government will eventually be able to establish the necessity of a ban on TikTok even if it hasnt done so yet Jaffer wrote in March as momentum behind a federal TikTok ban was building. But the First Amendment would require the government to carry a heavy burden of justification. That argument goes for Montana as much as the federal government. At least a few US judges have reached the same conclusion. In 2020 courts blocked then-president Donald Trumps executive orders banning TikTok and the similarly Chinese-owned WeChat concluding that the Trump administration hadnt demonstrated a security risk worth shutting down users speech. These executive orders were reversed when President Joe Biden took office so the cases never reached a final ruling but so far Chinese apps have fared better in court than the politicians trying to ban them. This has been debated for years and the answer is still nobody knows. The Montana bills introduction claims that TikTok gathers significant information from its users accessing data against their will to share with the Peoples Republic of China. But while theres a strong argument TikTok could share such data we dont know if thats actually happening. And that probably wont change until journalists intelligence officials and / or whistleblowers release new details. Thats not a very satisfying answer so Ill confess that this question is mainly an excuse to post SB 419s entertainingly lurid descriptions of TikTok challenges. Part of the bills justification is that TikTok (allegedly) fails to remove and may even promote dangerous content that directs minors to engage in dangerous activities. It then throws in nearly every negative TikTok trend of the past several years: Throwing objects at moving automobiles taking excessive amounts of medication lighting a mirror on fire and then attempting to extinguish it using only ones body parts inducing unconsciousness through oxygen deprivation cooking chicken in NyQuil pouring hot wax on a users face attempting to break an unsuspecting passerbys skull by tripping him or her into landing face first into a hard surface placing metal objects in electrical outlets swerving cars at high rates of speed smearing human feces on toddlers licking doorknobs and toilet seats to place oneself at risk of contracting coronavirus attempting to climb stacks of milkcrates shooting passersby with air rifles loosening lug nuts on vehicles and stealing utilities from public places. Now some of these challenges have reportedly caused real-world harm but others gained infamy mostly because well-meaning outsiders warned about them not because people were actually trying them. Cooking chicken in NyQuil for instance was a viral joke that only began trending more broadly when the Food and Drug Administration amplified it with a bulletin. TikTok is also far from the only place where people encourage each other to do stupid things online. And Montana lawmakers arent banning YouTube or Facebook... because protecting speech you find distasteful or dangerous is a pretty key element of the First Amendment. Montana is the first US legislature to pass a full TikTok ban. But several states including Montana have passed restrictions that apply to universities or government-issued devices. Gianforte added new restrictions making that ban apply to more apps today. And at the federal level both Republican and Democratic lawmakers have pushed to ban TikTok . TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew appeared before Congress in March to answer questions about the apps alleged national security risks and effects on children but he left legislators apparently unmoved . For at least some politicians a ban is a last-ditch nuclear option rather than a first response. The RESTRICT Act which so far seems like the most favored TikTok-banning bill opens the door to various mitigation measures short of a ban. (The RESTRICT Act has started to face some opposition in Congress but not necessarily enough to tip the scales.) President Joe Biden has reportedly pushed for ByteDance to spin off or sell TikTok although its not clear the Chinese government would allow this. Montanas ban wont take effect for months so federal lawmakers could move fast enough to moot its effects. But for now its a signal that politicians have few qualms about wiping a popular social network off Americans phones. Update 6:50PM ET: Added statement from TikTok. / Sign up for Verge Deals to get deals on products we've tested sent to your inbox daily. The Verge is a vox media network 2023 Vox Media LLC. All Rights Reserved

BAD

To help new students adapt some colleges are eliminating grades (npr.org) From The Hechinger Report By Jon Marcus Joy Malak floundered through her freshman year in college. I had to learn how to balance my finances. I had to learn how to balance work and school and the relationship I'm in. The hardest part about being a new college student Malak said is not the coursework. It's learning how to be an adult. That took a toll on her grades. I didn't do well said Malak who powered through and is now in her sophomore year as a neuroscience and literature double major at the University of California Santa Cruz or UCSC. It took a while for me to detangle my sense of self-worth from the grades that I was getting. It made me consider switching out of my major a handful of times. Experiences like these are among the reasons behind a growing movement to stop assigning conventional A through F letter grades to first-year college students and sometimes upperclassmen. Called un-grading the idea is meant to ease the transition to higher education especially for freshmen who are the first in their families to go to college or who weren't well prepared for college-level work in high school and need more time to master it. But advocates say the most important reason to adopt un-grading is that students have become so preoccupied with grades they aren't actually learning. Grades are not a representation of student learning as hard as it is for us to break the mindset that if the student got an A it means they learned said Jody Greene special adviser to the provost for educational equity and academic success at UCSC where several faculty are experimenting with various forms of un-grading. If a student already knew the material before taking the class and got that A they didn't learn anything said Greene. And if the student came in and struggled to get a C-plus they may have learned a lot. Some of the momentum behind un-grading is in response to growing concerns about student mental health. The number of college students with one or more mental health problems has doubled since 2013 according to a study by researchers at Boston University and elsewhere. Teenagers said that the pressure to get good grades was their biggest cause of stress a 2019 survey by the Pew Research Center found. A lot of the time I'm just so stressed in the class that I can barely focus said Serena Ramirez a UCSC freshman. Now you're an adult you're by yourself you're responsible for your grades. The additional stress of grades just sort of undermines the whole learning. That was also the case for Tamara Caselin in her freshman year at UCSC. She worked 40 hours a week on top of school and ended up changing her major which was originally business management economics. I felt that I was way too focused on my grades that I wasn't focused on my personal well-being said Caselin who is now a junior. The pandemic era's wide-scale disruption also makes it a good time to consider changing long-held educational practices said Robert Talbert a math professor at Grand Valley State University in Michigan who is co-writing a book about new ways of assessing students and has tried some in his own classes . Everything seems to be on the table right now. Why not throw in the grading system while we're at it? But critics liken replacing traditional A to F grades with new forms of assessments to a college-level version of participation trophies. They say taking away grades is coddling students and treating them like snowflakes. To tell me that these students are too fragile at age 18 or 19 for their educators to actually give them feedback on what they've learned or what they've mastered strikes me as missing a pretty significant element of the purpose of higher education said Frederick Hess director of education policy studies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. Instead of not grading them Hess said faculty should work harder to help less well-prepared students succeed. Things like grades and clear assignments can be enormously useful handrails to help you make your way he said. In addition to the efforts at UCSC a growing number of faculty and some academic departments at universities and colleges nationwide are experimenting with alternative kinds of assessments. Many started during the pandemic. Although they're not eliminating grades some instructors in the mathematics department at the University of California Davis are letting students decide between taking verbal and written exams for instance and giving them a choice of how much those exams and homework count said Tim Lewis the department's vice chair for undergraduate matters. These efforts are meant to improve learning outcomes as well as to be fair and advance equity especially for new students and transfer students Lewis said. The developments in California follow a March report to the University of California Board of Regents' Academic and Student Affairs Committee that said traditional grading methods could perpetuate bias ; the report encouraged schools to explore new means of assessment. Faculty elsewhere who have started to practice some form of un-grading are sharing their feedback in online discussion groups and on websites . These include educators at Texas Christian University Roger Williams University in Rhode Islanda Florida Gulf Coast University Grand Valley State; the universities of New Hampshire and South Alabama; Knox College in Illinois and Colorado College; Prince George's Community College and Howard Community College in Maryland; and Harrisburg Area Community College in Pennsylvania. I get emails just about weekly from people who are implementing un-grading. Today I had three emails about it said Susan Blum a professor of anthropology at the University of Notre Dame and the editor of a book on the subject: Ungrading: Why Rating Students Undermines Learning (and What to Do Instead). Other faculty are trying it at the University of Pittsburgh Missouri State University the University of Texas at Austin and Ball State University in Indiana. Barnard College in New York City Emory University in Georgia and Baylor University in Texas all make information about un-grading available for faculty. These join several colleges and universities that already practice unconventional forms of grading. At Reed College in Oregon students aren't shown their grades so that they can focus on learning not on grades the college says. Students at New College of Florida complete contracts establishing their goals then get written evaluations about how they're doing. And students at Brown University in Rhode Island have a choice among written evaluations that only they see results of satisfactory or no credit and letter grades A B or C but no D or F. MIT has what it calls ramp-up grading for first-year students. In their first semesters they get only a pass without a letter; if they don't pass no grade is recorded at all. In their second semesters they get letter grades but grades of D and F are not recorded on their transcripts. Starting any university is challenging to get acclimated academically to a new environment and it's a big change for most students because for many of them it's their first time away from home or at a new school said Ian Waitz MIT's vice chancellor for undergraduate and graduate education and a professor of aeronautics and astronautics. There's a desire to have that acclimation to the entire environment happen in a less abrupt way where people have more of an opportunity to get calibrated. Many proponents of un-grading say it addresses the unfairness of a system in which some students are better ready for college than others have to balance school with work or are first generation and feel extra stress to perform well as a result of it. That's a lot of pressure and I hear a lot like 'How are your grades?' said Amaya Rosas who also attends UCSC and is the first in her family to go to college. She said she feels as if I need to get good grades because I don't want to let everybody else down. UCSC's Greene said students who come from lower-income families are the most vulnerable to anxiety from grades. Let's say they get a slightly failing grade on the first quiz. They are not likely to go and seek help. They're likely to try and disappear. Some drop out altogether. One of the things that they say again and again it's kind of heartbreaking they say 'I wasn't satisfied with my academic performance' Greene said. You know they're not saying 'I hated the school' or 'My teachers were terrible.' When she was a freshman at UCSC Olivia Disabatino saw that I didn't necessarily have all the resources that other students had when it came to just being prepared for college. Disabatino now a UCSC junior double-majoring in psychology and anthropology and also the first in her low-income family to go to college said: I kind of felt like a deer in the headlights. UCSC which was opened as an experimental progressive campus built among a dense forest of redwoods bay laurels and California oaks previously let students choose whether or not to get letter grades. As the public university grew it made grades mandatory in 2000. But some of its faculty have continued to promote un-grading. Instead of grades for instance psychology professor Barbara Rogoff's students get narrative evaluations that assess their work as among other things impressive extremely well developed or uneven. Only at the end of the quarter does she assign required letter grades. I can say 'This student did really well in their contributions to the class but they struggled with their writing.' If it's a grade you have to average those two said Rogoff who specializes in cultural variations in learning. It makes the teachers the professors look at themselves more as guides rather than evaluators. As for the students they learn better if they're not focused on grades she said. Grades make students concerned about how they look rather than dealing with the material. That's to say nothing of students who can game the system said Talbert at Grand Valley State. When you see a grade on an assignment or report card it tends not to convey a lot of information about what a student actually has learned. The grade itself has turned into the target. Learning is just a vehicle by which to earn a grade. But while he likes the idea of un-grading Talbert's own experience has made him question whether it's necessarily a solution to inequity. Since the students in the algebra class in which he tried it were required to evaluate their own performance he said What I found is that un-grading as a system is exactly as good as my students' ability to self-assess. Those from more privileged backgrounds feel more competent to self-reflect whereas other students struggle with that. Other realities also make it hard to change the longstanding tradition of letter grades. It's how faculty themselves were largely judged as they went through college. Parents high schools and university admissions offices put a premium on grade-point averages an even greater one as many institutions make the SAT and ACT optional. Even car insurance companies give good-grades discounts to student-age drivers. It's built into the system Rogoff said. These are big forces that are working against getting rid of grades. But grades may not be the real problem said Michael Poliakoff president of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni. He pointed out that only 25 percent of high school students who took the ACT test last year met all four college-readiness benchmarks which gauge the likelihood that they'll succeed in first-year college courses; 38 percent met none. The composite score was the lowest in more than a decade. By getting rid of grades I really fear that we're shooting the messenger because we don't like what we're hearing Poliakoff said. It's just setting up students to slam into the wall ultimately and end up with a ticket-to-nowhere diploma that doesn't represent the mastery of skills that will equip the person for success. Some research is emerging about the effectiveness of alternatives to grading. The results are mixed. At the University of South Alabama a version called standards-based grading determining grades based on students mastering a list of clearly defined standards even if it takes more than one try resulted in lower stress and anxiety a survey found. Scholars at Wellesley College where first-year students get only pass or fail grades in their first semester but are also assigned letter grades that only they can see found that this encouraged more of those students to take tougher courses freed from the worry that it might affect their grade-point average. But this research also found that the students put less effort into the courses than students who were graded. At least one university Johns Hopkins has reversed a policy of giving satisfactory or unsatisfactory grades to first-semester freshmen who also got so-called covered letter grades that they could see but didn't go on their transcripts. It decided covered grades merely delay development of study skills and adaptation to college-level work two of the university's deans wrote in an email announcing an end to the practice . It matters whether students have actually learned what the course purports to cover. If you would like to go to medical school and you are studying biology or human anatomy I actually care whether you know which of those things are the kidney said Hess at AEI. Certainly if you're going to be an engineer and you're building bridges that I'm driving my family over I want to know if you understand material stress. But UCSC's Greene said that grades are terrible motivators for doing sustained and deep learning. And so if we were to shift our focus on to learning and away from grades we would be able to tell whether we were graduating people with the skills that we say we're graduating them with. Rogoff compares this to her own hobby: dancing. I got stiffer when I thought I was being watched and evaluated for how I was dancing she said. It's that sort of performance anxiety when you think people are watching you and especially if you think you're probably going to be judged badly. She added: I learned how to get past the self-judgment and the judgment of other people and just enjoy the dancing for the dancing. And I think that's what my students experience in my class where I'm helping them see that there is something important about what we're learning in this class. And that that's a bigger thing than grades. This story was produced by The Hechinger Report a nonprofit independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education in collaboration with KQED in San Francisco. Sponsor Message Become an NPR sponsor

BAD

To save on rent, Berkeley student lives in LA, commutes by plane for entire year (reddit.com) use the following search parameters to narrow your results e.g. subredditaww siteimgur.com dog see the search faq for details. advanced search by author, subreddit... 1,683 users here now A subreddit for the community of UC Berkeley as well as the surrounding City of Berkeley, California. Welcome! CSEECS posts only NoCSEECS posts Politics posts only No politics posts University posts only Local posts only Events and organization posts only hover to view, see the full list No Witch Hunts This is also a sitewide rule, but it bears repeating. Do not post something that could be construed as organizing a movement or negative response against an individual or group. You may post names andor pictures so long as the original source of this information is reputable. Qualifying sources are left entirely to Moderator discretion. Examples of a reputable source may include the University, a reputable paper or journal, or a government source. This rule only applies to people or groups who are not public entities. No Advertisements, Promotions, Surveys You may not advertise or promote any product or service of absolutely any kind in this subreddit. Examples of an advertisement or promotion may include job openings, housing requests, apps, websites, surveys, andor campaigns. Exceptions may be allowed with moderator approval. You can troll, but there are limits Trolling itself is not against the rules. However, any trolling that qualifies as excessive, confrontational, or aggressive is not allowed. Moderators make the final call as to where the dividing line is so be nice. Use original titles All news articles, or articles of any kind, must be submitted with the same title as the title of the article being linked. Well remove any threads that violate this rule since titles cant be edited after submission, and repeat offenders may be banned. To assign your own flair, click the edit button next to your name on the righthand bar. Any inappropriate flair will be removed and repeat offenders banned permanently. If you suspect someone is using official UC Staff flair and posing as a fake staff member, message the mods and we will remove it. ASUCs Berkeleytime course discovery system Chancellor Carol Christs AMAs Oct 2018, Sep 2019, Oct 2020 Bear Transit Map, by upourover_and_pbr Restaurant recommendations megathread Stuff to do in Berkeley, by uTrainerAurelia The subreddit for people who want to talk about the City of Berkeley instead of UC Berkeley UC Davis UC Irvine UCLA UC Merced UC Riverside UC San Diego UCSB UCSC Banner image by Mark Lilly Photography Oski snu by uNakedPants rberkeley is not endorsed by or affiliated with UC Berkeley the front page of the internet. and join one of thousands of communities. UniversityI survived living in LA and commuting to Cal by plane over the past academic year to save on rent, AMA self.berkeley submitted 4 days ago by greateranglia So last year I had this crazy idea of living in LA and commuting to school by plane just to avoid expensive rent around campus and bay area in general. I asked for suggestions in this subreddit and everyone thought its not realistic. Well one year has passed, now I have completed my degree and finally have some spare time, I want to share my experience here. Background I was living in LA, rent free. I got accepted into a oneyear MEng program technically August 2022May 2023. I knew I would go back to LA after graduation because my previous employer would hire me back once I graduate. I love flying and I have a lot of frequent flyer milespoints from credit card sign up bonusflying over the past few years. Bay area rent is expensive in general, and my program is only 10 months, so I thought I could get it through commuting by plane. Class schedule I checked the class schedule from the previous years, I only need to come to campus 3X weekly, and thats the only way to make it work. Thereve been a couple weeks I commuted to school by plane 5X weekly, and I felt so exhausted. Planning I booked all my tickets for Fall 2022 back in April and May 2022. Then I booked all my tickets for Spring 2023 back in Nov 2022. Most tickets were booked using Alaska miles or Southwest points, and I rebook them during sale to further cut down the cost. I usually only come to campus MWF, but in case I need to come to campus for eventsmeetings on TuTh, I booked tickets for TuTh in advance as well. If I dont need to come to campus that TuTh, I just cancel the tickets the night before and get a full refund. I have elite status with Alaska and Southwest, both offer a valuable perk called sameday change. I always book the cheapest flight of that day and call them when the checkin window opened to change to other flights of that day free of charge. Both airlines have robust schedule between LA and the bay area. I can even switch coterminals SFOSJCOAK free of charge if I want to. Typical Trip For my fall semester, my first class is 10am on MW, and 8am on F. For my 10am class, I would usually wake up 340am and take the 6am LAXSFO Alaska flight, have breakfast in the SFO lounge, then ride BART to campus. For the 8am class, I would always wake up 330am and take the 530am LAXOAK Southwest flight, since thats the only flight to get me to campus by 8am. For my spring semester, my first class is 11am on M, and 12pm on WF. I usually wake up 540am and take the 820am LAXOAK Southwest flight for all of them. For the flight back to LA, it varies. If Im hanging out with friends or working on hwprojects with cohort for a bit longer in the library, I would take the last flight home 905pm OAKLAX on Southwest or 1030pm SFOLAX on Alaska. But normally I would take the 6pm or 7pm flight and reach home around 930pm. Typically, the doortodoor commute time between my home in LA and my classroom in Berkeley is 45hrs EACH WAY. So yeah, I spent a lot of time on my commute.. Fall 2022 Cost 3812.83, with 563.80 on BART, 370.00 on parking, 1033.75 on gas, 39.96 on inflight wifi, 1366.06 on Alaska, 307500 Alaska miles, 380.86 on Southwest, 43732 Southwest points, 42.80 on United, 5500 United miles, 15.60 on Avianca, 6500 Avianca miles. 63 trips, 138 flights, 55593 miles flown. Spent 45972 minutes on my commute, equivalent to 31.93 24hr days. Spring 2023 Cost 1779.82, with 107.49 on BART, 150.00 on parking, 914.52 on gas, 0 on inflight wifi, 186.03 on Alaska, 100000 Alaska miles, 377.38 on Southwest, 113213 Southwest points, 28.50 on United, 0 United miles, 15.90 on Spirit. 51 trips, 100 flights, 36496 miles flown. Spent 29983 minutes on my commute, equivalent to 20.82 24hr days. Total Cost 5592.66, with 671.29 on BART, 520.00 on parking, 1948.27 on gas, 39.96 on inflight wifi, 1552.10 on Alaska, 407500 Alaska miles, 758.24 on Southwest, 156945 Southwest points, 71.30 on United, 5500 United miles, 15.60 on Avianca, 6500 Avianca miles, 15.90 on Spirit. 114 trips, 238 flights, 92089 miles flown. Spent 75955 minutes on my commute, equivalent to 52.75 24hr days. This is probably one of the craziest thing Ive done in my life, and Im so glad I made it through, without missing ANY classes, that itself is a miracle. I wouldnt recommend anyone to attempt this, but if you have any questions, ask away! Go bears! Edit in case you think this cant be real, I wrote a trip report still in progress here httpswww.flyertalk.comforumtripreports2093205epiccommuteigoschoolplaneaug2022may2023a.html Post a comment! SuspiciousString932 695 points696 points697 points 3 days ago 23 children actual psychos attend this school RemoveTheKook 159 points160 points161 points 3 days ago 21 children climate change loves this guy joshin29 9 points10 points11 points 3 days ago 5 children Mhm.. that was an extreme example but its a climate tragedy that most Americans dont live close enough to their employer to walk, bike or take public transit vs driving alone Yotsubato 9 points10 points11 points 2 days ago 4 children WFH is the single best way to reduce carbon footprint. Too bad its being phased out. Being able to live close to work is another, and thats increasingly impossible in most of urban America. Amiar00 37 points38 points39 points 3 days ago 13 children I mean the plane was going to fly with or without him. aviaries123 8 points9 points10 points 2 days ago 6 children sure, but without him that seat isnt being occupied by someone making the trip at least three times a week, so it adds up MisfitPotatoReborn 6 points7 points8 points 2 days ago 0 children Also the more people book tickets, the more planes are scheduled. No individual flight directly resulted in a plane taking off, but someone who flies 300 times collectively takes up the full capacity of an entire 787. teswip 3 points4 points5 points 2 days ago 1 child And this is why we teach basic economics crazy that supply and demand is still not universally understood Amiar00 1 point2 points3 points 2 days ago 0 children Or economies of scale and how one college student doesnt matter. debate me DeluxeMC 2 points3 points4 points 2 days ago 2 children Bruh. That really isnt how demand for air travel works. If enough people choose not to fly AND OR the government actually invests in HSR this commute would have been not as insane but still pretty bonkers if it was on California HSR to provide alternatives to flying then yes, the plane will not fly because there is no one on the flight. karmapuhlease 1 point2 points3 points 2 days ago 1 child the government actually invests in HSR California has already spent 100B trying and failing, unfortunately. Ashivio 1 point2 points3 points 2 days ago 0 children Thats not how demand for airplane travel works Take_Over_2020 200 points201 points202 points 4 days ago 4 children wow thats amazing but surely i cant wake up at 340 am several times a week magicalmeep 43 points44 points45 points 3 days ago 3 children Honestly thats so me i cant even wake up for my noon classes Take_Over_2020 20 points21 points22 points 3 days ago 2 children dude i cant even wake up for 8am saltyfajita 3 points4 points5 points 3 days ago 0 children yeah um.. thats not super shocking, no one can lol bulletproofboyz 316 points317 points318 points 4 days ago 1 child I remember that post amazed that you were able to do it Consistent_Stage_198 5 points6 points7 points 3 days ago 0 children HBD RunRickeyRun 303 points304 points305 points 3 days ago 4 children You forgot to share your cocaine budget Straight_2VHS 49 points50 points51 points 3 days ago 3 children They have an adderall prescription JamesWilsonsEyebrows 13 points14 points15 points 3 days ago 2 children why stop at adderall when you can have Desoxyn? Straight_2VHS 5 points6 points7 points 3 days ago 0 children You make a great point PlasmusAng 296 points297 points298 points 3 days ago 23 children financially a W, ecologically bro personally added a degree to the world temps, genius regardless I applaud u 127001_1 33 points34 points35 points 3 days ago 12 children I know this is a just a joke but in terms of his personal contribution, their drive from their house to LAX produced several times more carbon than any other leg or the journey. ManyParsley5244 17 points18 points19 points 3 days ago 10 children That cant be true can it? How did you find that? eliteslaMath Physics 50 points51 points52 points 3 days ago 0 children Its not true. They made a mistake in their calculation. The drive is about 200x less polluting more since multiple people are in the car. See httpsold.reddit.comrberkeleycomments13hv95yi_survived_living_in_la_and_commuting_to_cal_byjk7i978?context10000 LilKaySigs 2 points3 points4 points 3 days ago 8 children Burning a gallon of gasoline releases 15 pounds of CO2 laserbot 9 points10 points11 points 3 days ago 2 children holy shit httpsepicenergyblog.com20130524howmanypoundsofcarbondioxideco2doesagallonofgasolineproduce its actually 19 pounds. wtf PlasmusAng 20 points21 points22 points 3 days ago 0 children yeah ik, and that ignores how those flights wouldve ran regardless of him going or not, his impact is minimal in the grand scheme of things honestly Medium_Outcome5852 6 points7 points8 points 3 days ago 6 children The entire global airline industry only accounts for about 2 of our carbon emissions eliteslaMath Physics 10 points11 points12 points 3 days ago 3 children Its 2.5 of carbon emissions but 5 of warming effects due to contrails trapping heat that would otherwise be released into space. Look up contrail cirrus radiative forcing. Unintuitively, this effect is expected to triple by 2050 more fuel efficient engines more contrails. It also would be much much higher if 80 of the world could afford to fly. PlasmusAng 4 points5 points6 points 3 days ago 0 children Yeah no my ecological thing was a joke, he really hasnt contributed much _vanarp 63 points64 points65 points 3 days ago 0 children i initially thought this was a shit post, but that damn wtf MikeWazowski215 57 points58 points59 points 3 days ago 0 children Youre insane Dankeesha 188 points189 points190 points 3 days ago 2 children You should share this with any and all future employers in interviews. It takes real discipline, planning, and determination. Im thoroughly impressed. PrideofPicktown 24 points25 points26 points 3 days ago 1 child And to track everything too. I bet OP knows what a pivot table in excel is. theredditdetective1 143 points144 points145 points 3 days ago 16 children You couldve just lived a bit further away from campus or gotten a roommate... absolutely insane to burn through miles like that qilin5100 57 points58 points59 points 3 days ago 1 child Yep..I had friends who rented with 2 other guys in a one bedroom and paid 400month, only 15min walk from campus too. There are better ways to save zhemao 19 points20 points21 points 3 days ago 0 children Even living further away from campus with a roommate you wouldnt get your rent down to 560month. Still nuts to commute 8 hours three days per week, though. TacosAndBoba 34 points35 points36 points 3 days ago 0 children Agreed, this is dumb af. SFW_Account_67 2 points3 points4 points 2 days ago 0 children Rent an RV or camping van and just live in it. Use school gym for showers. Get more sleep and not wake up at 3AM. compstomper1 2 points3 points4 points 3 days ago 7 children 6k for 10 month rent? In the bay area? deleted 4 points5 points6 points 3 days ago 5 children 10 months rent would be more like 30,000 compstomper1 3 points4 points5 points 3 days ago 3 children looks like the coops go for 4k a semester, assuming you get in TimelyYouth9074 2 points3 points4 points 2 days ago 2 children Which includes food. Cal_Aesthetics_Club 118 points119 points120 points 4 days ago 0 children Bro assigns work to their professors SeparateMeaning1 44 points45 points46 points 3 days ago 9 children No way this is true. I dont believe a human being has the psychological strength. SeparateMeaning1 27 points28 points29 points 3 days ago 4 children Im just. Airports are so stressful, and sensorily unpleasant! You only have one human life and it baffles me to imagine spending so much of it in airports and airplanes. ClydePossumfoot 4 points5 points6 points 3 days ago 0 children TSA PreClear combined with an airport lounge and just having a carry on isnt so bad. But still not super fun. PruneCharacter3394 6 points7 points8 points 3 days ago 1 child Flight crew spend more time than that at the airport on planes. This sounds fairly easy to do. I commute 3 hours by air each way to work and back 4 times a month. I dont have a guaranteed seat like OP does so its way more stressful. Plus when I arrive at my base I still have to work 1014 hours per day on average and sometimes even on the same day I fly to work. Same on the way home. Nothing better than working 14 hours to sprint across the airport to catch the last flight home and ride a jumpseat for 3 hours home. I know pilots and flight attendants that commute across continents SeparateMeaning1 4 points5 points6 points 3 days ago 0 children Hearing everything you said about the stress and amount of time spent, I am still the same level of baffled that you or any human being is willing to work in such an arrangement. I cannot imagine, for any amount of money or free time or flexibility, spending so much time in airports and airplanes. greaterangliaS 4 points5 points6 points 3 days ago 2 children see updated link to trip report above. Enjoy. prosocialbehavior 1 point2 points3 points 2 days ago 1 child Did you ever miss a flight and have to book a hotel or something? gar37bic 1 point2 points3 points 3 days ago 0 children How is it different from, e.g., being a flight attendant? Certainly this is easier than being a coal miner. I once had an offshore job that involved two hours of boat ride out to the work site every day, 12 hours per day 14 days straight with 7 days off, sleep in motel rooms every one of those days. This was actually kinda cool for a single guy, like having a 7 day vacation every three weeks, I could have bought a van or a motorcycle and just cruised on the off weeks. ChosenPrince 41 points42 points43 points 3 days ago 20 children Assuming each airline mile is worth approximately 0.015, with approximately 550,000 miles used, thats a 8,250 redemption value, plus 5,500 spent equals 13,750. Over 9 months of the academic year, thats 1527.78 per month, well within the price of a single in Berkeley. Even if you saved any money I dont think the negligible amount that you saved is worth the 1,266 hours of lifesleep spent commuting. Im not hating but its borderline insanity that you decided to do this instead of just renting a single for 1,000 a month somewhere way off campus. sminjaEECS 14 14 points15 points16 points 3 days ago 6 children Thanks for pointing this out. OP treating miles as free is pretty dishonest. They paid something to get those miles in the first place. greaterangliaS 7 points8 points9 points 3 days ago 5 children I get miles from grocery shopping and gas too, thats why its technically free because I didnt outright buy the miles. Also, the trend with miles is airlines will keep devaluing them, so better to use them before devaluation. Snacket 11 points12 points13 points 2 days ago 0 children You could have used the miles for other flights in the future, so spending 550k points is definitely worth a ton of money. Miles devalue over time but they dont devalue that fast. If you fly often Im sure you could have used the miles in the next few years. You lost money doing this. Still 1010 though sminjaEECS 14 17 points18 points19 points 3 days ago 0 children From credit cards? Thats an opportunity cost for other rewards. indenwolken 2 points3 points4 points 3 days ago 2 children Your analysis may be correct, and I suspect the notoriety is worth far more than a few hundred bucksmonth. ChosenPrince 1 point2 points3 points 3 days ago 0 children what about the 1266 hours spent traveling G8oraid 36 points37 points38 points 3 days ago 1 child Take a consulting job my guy PrimarchMartorious 4 points5 points6 points 3 days ago 0 children Def hitting partner quick af and maybe even with a head full of fair because the man seems to somehow to mind a brutal schedule. KetchupLAMCB 14 30 points31 points32 points 3 days ago 6 children kudos for saving the money however i would consider non monetary effects on your health. we know that long commutes dont help anyone live longer. and also the radiation from flying on an airplane so often. either way, you did what you had to do and glad it worked out for you. dontbeevian 27 points28 points29 points 4 days ago 10 children Were you able to maximize studywork time during commute? greaterangliaS 34 points35 points36 points 4 days ago 8 children Yeah, I usually study with cohort in the library, thats where I get most of my homeworkprojects done. Sometimes I catch up coursework at home. I usually take a nap on the planeBART instead of studying. dontbeevian 13 points14 points15 points 3 days ago 7 children How far did you live away from LAX? If it were me, itd be minimum of 50min commute to the airport just driving, and the daily parking at airport would also be significant added up. greaterangliaS 33 points34 points35 points 3 days ago 6 children I live around 30 miles away from LAX 626 area if you know what Im talking about. I usually take the 10 expresslane and 110 expresslane then 105 carpool lane to beat the traffic. Also theres no traffic for the 6am flight since its so early. Driving time to LAX is usually 25min40min depending on traffic. For parking, I park at Aviation Metro Green Line park and ride for 3day, then take the free shuttle into LAX terminals. galaxychesire 7 points8 points9 points 3 days ago 0 children No wonder I am also from the 626 area. I would not want to leave it if I didnt have too. gracecee 4 points5 points6 points 3 days ago 1 child Why didnt you just use Burbank to Oakland? Why Lax? greaterangliaS 9 points10 points11 points 3 days ago 0 children Burbank has less flights. In the event of IRROPs irregular operations I cant get rebooked. Once my 6am LAXSFO Alaska flight was delayed, they rebooked me to the 7am JetBlue flight and I still made it to my 10am class ontime. Also LAX has the cheapest parking option at 3day, plus I can use the lounge for free breakfast. dontbeevian 9 points10 points11 points 4 days ago 0 children Anyway, I did the math, sure I wouldve saved roughly 29k over the year, but its some fullthrottle hustling on a daily basis indeed. Additionally theres productivity cost.idk how to calculate that part, but I would think it makes a difference?. HamTillIDie44 19 points20 points21 points 3 days ago 0 children Im throughly impressed! However, you could have even saved more by living at a coop and live 5 minutes from campus. Still, what you did requires an amount of discipline that I could never unlock. Wow! Embarrassed_Pace6157 15 points16 points17 points 3 days ago 6 children I simply cant believe that shit was Real. OP are you gonna fly back for commencement? greaterangliaS 38 points39 points40 points 3 days ago 5 children Oh, thatd be the only trip where I will be driving cuz my friends will be going with me. We booked a hotel already. Ive noticed you are in the same department as I do, so see you Wednesday! If you spot someone wearing multiple sashes made from boarding passes and a cap decorated with clipper cards, come and say hi! pheirenz 43 points44 points45 points 3 days ago 0 children If you spot someone wearing multiple sashes made from boarding passes this is like a barbarian king making a throne of his enemies bones. well done bruh Embarrassed_Pace6157 4 points5 points6 points 3 days ago 0 children Definitely sir this is what I was looking for. You MEng guys are real gem of our department. Looking forward to meet you on Wednesday OP. rosettastxned 14 points15 points16 points 3 days ago 0 children it almost certainly wouldve been cheaper to pay rent and get a job mameyn4 14 points15 points16 points 3 days ago 0 children This should be an ad for California High Speed Rail Jesus christ sand_planetstudent 14 points15 points16 points 3 days ago 3 children DAMN thats a commute. Were there times you ever missed a flight and missed school bc of it? greaterangliaS 22 points23 points24 points 3 days ago 2 children Theres once I can do a presentation inperson or remotely with my teammates. I chose to go to campus and do the presentation inperson just to support my teammates, on the day I dont usually come to campus. Then my phone screen was not responsive due to prior water damage, and I overslept cuz alarm didnt ring. When I rushed to LAX, its too late. Then I drove home and did the presentation on zoom. So technically still didnt miss school. Also back in Feb, one Friday night the weather in LA was so bad, my SFOLAX flight diverted back to SFO, so I had to stay in SFO overnight and take the Saturday morning flight back, at least its a weekend so I went straight to bed after reaching home.. JollyToby0220 6 points7 points8 points 3 days ago 1 child Did your teammates know you were commuting from LA? greaterangliaS 20 points21 points22 points 3 days ago 0 children of course they know, even the professor knows. Instead of asking whats your plan for dinner, my teammates ask me when is your flight home instead lol.. BornOutlandishness63 30 points31 points32 points 4 days ago 1 child And people thought I was something for traveling every other week to the bay from medical school or Bart everyday to Calapplause to you for doing this and graduating! Determination is the key and congratulations! random_throws_stuffcs, stats 22 16 points17 points18 points 4 days ago 0 children yea, I felt tough for commuting by Bart for a semester my senior year lmao BrainyCardinal45 48 points49 points50 points 4 days ago 1 child Enjoy those miles ofdm 6 points7 points8 points 3 days ago 0 children They spent them. sfscsdsf 45 points46 points47 points 3 days ago 9 children Besides the monetary costs, y

GOOD

Top byte ignore for fun and memory savings (linaro.org) Top Byte Ignore (TBI) is a feature of Armv8-a AArch64 that allows software to use unused pointer bits to store data without having to hide them from the hardware. Reducing memory use software overhead and programmer frustration. We talked about it briefly in a previous post here were going into more detail. How TBI works how to use it and finally whether its tradeoffs are worth it for your applications. We will walk through one such application for which there is source code so you can experiment for yourself. When TBI is enabled the processor ignores the top byte of addresses. That sounds dangerous and it would be if there was anything useful in there. Most AArch64 systems use 48 bit virtual addresses. This leaves 16 bits unused but not ignored by the processor. They can be any value but are still interpreted as part of the address. 48 bits is a compromise based on the amount of virtual memory a process on a typical core is going to use. It allows us to have 256 terabytes of virtual memory. Note : There is a 52 bit option but even then there are 12 bits free. Enough for TBI. These unused bits are handled in Linux by expecting that addresses will have the unused bits all set to 0 or all set to 1. Putting the address in user space or kernel space respectively . When TBI is enabled the top byte isnt part of the address anymore and can be set to any value. The following unused byte is handled as before. This means that all the pointers shown below point to the same memory location when TBI is enabled. Underscores indicate the boundary between the top byte the following unused byte and the virtual address. The first value is your typical pointer with a top byte of 0. Pointers 2 and 3 change the top byte but the following byte and the virtual address remain the same. Therefore all 3 are equivalent. Why is this good? We can put data in that top byte and crucially wont have to remove it every time we use the pointer. The following shows what you need to do without the aid of TBI. Thats a lot of masking to do for a dereference which is a very common operation. With TBI its a lot simpler: Just use the pointer. The processor does the masking for you thats the key advantage of TBI. TBI is enabled for Linux userspace on any AArch64 platform. If you dont have access to hardware QEMU can be used to emulate it. Apple Silicon devices also appear to enable this for user space in MacOS. I successfully tested on an M1 Pro Macbook Pro. However unlike Linux I could find no official statement of support so do not assume this will always be the case. Were going to look at a building block of an imaginary LISP interpreter . One which can benefit from TBI. We want to evaluate an expression like this: We expect to get the result 12. The key properties of our LISP: Supported data types are: Some of those restrictions are arbitrary and others have a purpose that will become clear later. A real interpreter has much more to handle were just cherry picking parts to support the example. As we parse the source code were going to find function arguments. Those arguments can be functions themselves or constant values. We will need something to record and reference them. That thing is the symbol table. For simplicitys sake lets execute functions as we go. So we are never putting a function into the symbol table only its result. Which is a value. How big will this table get? Take this expression: Do we want to create 10 unique entries for the value 1 when we know they are essentially constants? Lets say that we dont. We cant afford to use that much memory. A solution to this is reference counting. Instead of 10 copies of 1 we can have 1 copy which is referenced 10 times. Anything that has its reference count decremented to 0 can be overwritten by the next new symbol that we find. Now remember that we also want to type check our arguments. So in this case we have to record that 1 is in fact an integer. With all that this is a symbol table entry: Well use that symbol index (the index of the entry in the table) to reference the symbol. For example: 1 will be symbol index 0 and 2 will be symbol index 1. The result of the function will be symbol index 0 the slot having been freed when we decremented the reference count of both arguments to 0. Now we know how the symbol table should function well talk through 3 possible ways to implement it: With no TBI and no bit level techniques this is what a Symbol table entry could be: Ive used the packed attribute. Without it this structure takes up 16 bytes due to the 6 bytes of padding added after reference_count. packed tells the compiler to put all the fields as close together as possible giving a size of 10 bytes. There are reasons not to do that (misaligned access can be slower) but for a fair comparison were going for the lowest memory use. Anything wrong with this approach? Not from a high level. We have easy access to the type and reference count and theres no operation we cant do. Nothing prevents us from putting this struct in an array to create the symbol table. However I think we can do better than 10 bytes per symbol. You might know that AArch64 has a Memory Tagging extension (which I wrote about here ). You might not know that tagged memory isnt a new idea. During the heyday of LISP (so Im told) there were machines specifically designed to run it. These machines encoded aspects of the language into the Instruction Set Architecture (ISA). Much like todays machines are sometimes described as C machines. One example was the Symbolics 3600. Which had a 36 bits processor (32 bits data 4 bits tag) (see page 7 ). That extra 4 bits was used to store metadata for the LISP runtime. In addition common operations on them were assigned specific instructions. AArch64s memory tagging also adds a 4 bit tag to the memory. Could we think of that tag in the same way? Is AArch64 + 4 = AArch68? Not quite though that would have made a great title for this post! The pitfall is that to access tagged memory on AArch64 you need to have the correct tag in the pointer. If it doesnt match the stored memory tag you get an exception. Meaning youd have to store your metadata in both the pointer and the memory it points to. So they are not extra bits just another place to put the same bits. You could try duplicating the type between the pointer and the stored memory tag. For instance what if you did type checking using the pointers in debug or interpreted mode then relied on the memory tags in a faster ahead of time compiled mode. For our purposes thats all beside the point. Were out to save space in the symbol table so lets stick with tagging the pointer. Turns out thats not a new idea either and we can use TBI to do just that. With TBI heres what an entry looks like: On AArch64 this is 8 bytes saving 2 bytes per entry compared to the packed struct without TBI. Its not as simple as the storage makes it look. Heres how the value is used: Now you see why I specified that integers would be stored directly in the table and that they would be 32 bit. If they were 64 bit we would not be able to store them in the table because the top byte would corrupt their value (if this was Zig we could use u56). It also highlights how this packing scheme can hold those small values locally and use pointers to the heap for anything larger. In a similar vein to the small string optimisation you might have heard of for C++s std::string. Where short strings can be stored on the stack in the memory normally used for the size and pointer to the heap. I must however acknowledge the limitations of this Symbol format for any serious use: We can mitigate those in various ways but thats not the point here. The point is that by applying TBI to our symbol table we can fit many more symbols into a given amount of memory. Of course we need some complexity to get data in and out of this value. Heres a sampling of the accessors: You can of course hide a lot of this behind some Application Programming Interface (API). As is done in the source code accompanying this post. I just showed you some tempting memory savings. With benefits come costs and TBI is no exception. If you look at the current ABI for AArch64 you will find just a couple of mentions of tagged pointers ( here here ). Where it says that the use of tagged addresses is platform specific. Correction: A previous version of this article referred to an old version of the Linux documentation that did not include the Tagged Address ABI. This has been corrected and the text updated to reflect that. For example a Linux syscall that takes a user space pointer. Can you leave your top byte data in it? Yes if you opt into the Tagged Address ABI. From the Linux documentation : For these reasons when the AArch64 Tagged Address ABI is disabled passing non-zero address tags to the kernel via system calls is forbidden and using a non-zero address tag for sp is strongly discouraged. Opting into the ABI is described here . From experience I know that if you do not do so some syscalls will work but others will not. Why is that the case and why would you want an ABI just for this? It depends on what that syscall does with your pointer. Lets consider a common operation perhaps you want to compare the position of two items in an array. Now consider what happens when those pointers have their top byte set. Lets bring back the pointers from earlier. Well call the function with pointer 3 as lhs and pointer 2 as rhs. The compiler does not know that were using TBI so the casting and comparison works as normal (more on toolchain issues later). The assembly looks like this: Therefore the function returns true because the top byte of pointer 3 is greater than the top byte of pointer 2. We know that this isnt right because they point to the same location. Clearly we did not intend to include the top byte in the calculation. Note : Having different top bytes for pointers into the same object is improbable but not impossible. Take this as an extreme (and potentially undefined behaviour) example for illustration purposes. This is the key problem passing tagged pointers to syscalls libraries etc. If they dont specifically clean the pointers then you will get unpredictable results. This is why Linux has required that anyone doing a syscall should opt into the Tagged Address ABI or remove the bits themselves. Some places do this scrubbing. One example is here (search for /* Clear special tag bits). However thats just one function in glibc. There are many more and checking that they all do this is likely not viable. So I scared you with all that but is there a solution? Yes mostly. Make sure that when tagged pointers leave your control (leave the symbol table in our case) that they have the top byte cleared. Take our string data type. The symbol is a pointer to the heap that we got from malloc. We will want to free that once the reference count becomes 0. On Linux with glibc 2.31 I was able to pass the tagged pointer directly to free. However doing so is in fact undefined behaviour . Pointers passed to free are expected to be the same value as generated by malloc. Note : glibc 2.33 supports memory tagging where it is available. This means invoking the undefined behaviour using the 4 tag bits would be an error. The other 4 bits your mileage may vary. On Mac OS it rejected the pointer deciding to define the behaviour as a runtime error. This could be solved with the following: Whether that overhead is worth it well talk about later. Its very tempting to define Symbol using Cs bit-fields and a union for the values. This is great because you can just do symbol.metadata.type and the compiler will generate the masking for you. However some aspects of bit field layout are implementation defined. Each bit field sits within a unit of storage. If the next bit field fits into that unit it will be packed into the unit. If it cannot fit it is implementation defined whether it is simply moved to the next unit or can straddle two units. When one or more bit fields are in the same unit the ordering within that unit is implementation defined. Meaning does the first bit field start at the most significant bit or the least significant bit? Some of these choices are influenced by the platforms ABI (AArch64s is here ). For a single toolchain on a single platform for a single layout it is likely that the choices will remain constant. For cross platform use its a risk. Bit fields or otherwise find ways to assert early and often that you have the layout you need. You might be wondering why we care. If the layout changes thats fine as long as we dont share runtime data across platforms right? Imagine the compiler decided to put unused first. We would be writing our type and refcount over the top of the virtual address instead of into the free bits. Note: Endian also plays a role here the same advice applies. This article focuses on AArch64 Linux but what does it look like when you add this to a cross platform code base? The first thing you will need is a compile time switch telling you whether you have hardware assisted TBI or emulated TBI. Where emulated TBI is masking off the upper bits manually before any dereference. An example of which is LLVMs PointerIntPair (though it uses the lowest bits instead). TBI does not apply to the AArch32 state (32 bit code running on Armv8). Even if it could work our 32 bit unsigned integers would be corrupted by using it. For non Arm architectures the proposed RISC-V J extension includes a similar feature. Others may exist. TBI can be used from C without any special tools support. However that does not mean that the compiler is aware that you are using TBI. At this time theres no compiler mode that will preserve the top byte but it wont go out of its way to remove it. This may change in future as handling of capability systems like CHERI enters upstream compilers. Capabilities force us to accept that pointers are no longer simple integers and this change will hopefully improve TBI handling also. For debugging LLDB 15 fully supports non-address bits which includes TBI. I wrote a lot more about this here . If you prefer GDB use anything after 8.1. Using a TBI aware debugger will let you use your pointers without worrying about what is stored in the top byte. Back to our example it would let you directly print strings whose pointers are stored in the symbol table. Other debuggers may try to dereference the raw pointer and fail to read the memory. There are 2 factors: The first is going to apply to constrained environments or programs with many repeated objects. Putting a LISP interpreter on a small embedded device is the perfect combination of those 2 things. The second factor can be restated as how much do you rely on the platform ABI?. The best cases are kernels and deeply embedded systems. Where internally you adhere to your own ABI and sanitise it on the boundaries. In the latter you often control the rest of the software stack too. Anything that has to run on many architectures with many ABIs the reward is reduced. My recommendation would be to look at existing pointers within structures if you want to experiment with TBI. Things that are easily isolated and already well tested. If TBI being platform specific worries you perhaps look into exploiting the alignment of data types instead. This itself is not free of ABI issues but it is more portable and could be later replaced with TBI if you see a good benefit. If you want an existing project that uses TBI the full source of the use case described in this post can be found here . Another thing to check out is the Hardware Assisted Address Sanitizer ( HWASAN ). Worst case you find some bugs! If you want to follow Linaros work to support TBI and extensions like it check out the LLVM and GNU projects. If you have any questions please contact us at linaro-toolchain@lists.linaro.org . Linaro Insights is a monthly newsletter. Please tick the box below to confirm you are happy to recieve email communication from Linaro. You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. For information about our privacy practices please visit our website. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By clicking below to subscribe you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Mailchimp's privacy practices here.

GOOD

Toy CPU Simulator (jimhall.itch.io) A downloadable game This is a DOS game. Download toy.exe to playit on FreeDOS or DOSBox or any other DOS system. Compile the source code using OpenWatcom. I teach university courses part-time and one course that I teach is MIS 100 where students learn how technology works. For our section on programming I usually talk about programming in very abstract terms because these are not Computer Science students. But this year I wanted to try something new. I hoped to start the programming discussion by walking my students through a history of programming so they could see the next step and how that worked. I tried to find a simple hobby educational computer similar to the Altair 8800 where you input a series of program instructions in machine language (binary opcodes) using switches and LEDs. I wanted the instructions to be simple enough that my students could write a few simple programs like A+B=C and use that as a starting point to write the same program in Assembly and in C and ... you get the idea. But I couldn't find a suitable Altair-like SBC for less than $100. There are Altair software emulators out there but they faithfully reproduce the Altair 8800 and that was too much overhead for my needs. So I decided to write my own hobby educational computer. I call it the Toy CPU. I wrote a rough prototype on DOS using character mode but you couldn't enter a program on the front panel. Instead you had to hard-code a program into memory and recompile to run that. It was very primitive but enough to know that it worked. Later I completely rewrote the Toy CPU using Linux ncurses. This was still a prototype but this time you could enter a program on the front panel by flipping bits. It looked okay in ncurses but I really wanted a graphical program. Open Jam 2022 came up at the right time! I decided to completely rewrite the Toy from scratch using FreeDOS and other open source tools. I don't use graphical assets per se; instead the Toy draws the interface elements using basic graphical functions from OpenWatcom (open source). If you're curious: I used FED (open source) as my editor. I ran FreeDOS inside VirtualBox (open source) running on top of Fedora Linux (open source). Everything in the pipeline was open source. The theme for Open Jam 2022 is Light in the Darkness which is a perfect fit for the Toy CPU because of all the blinkenlights! Log in with itch.io to leave a comment. Why not writing this in a modern env? Say Qt? Don't get me wrong.. I'm an old geek who enjoysretro tools and own a couple of commodore and Z80s. Just asking for your rationale while playing with the idea of writing the same using a game engine. I'm also part of the FreeDOS Project so part of my goal was to write this in DOS too. And C was the easiest path for me to do that. :-) Watch a video of the Toy CPU in action!

BAD

Travel across Germany with the 49 Euro ticket https://49travel.vercel.app/ whinvik use the following search parameters to narrow your results: e.g. subreddit:aww site:imgur.com dog see the search faq for details. advanced search: by author subreddit... 15006 users here now All things related to Apollo a Reddit app for iPhone with a focus on a clean iOS centric UI with super comfortable and fast browsing. Feel free to post if you have any questions or suggestions! Subscribe and join our delightful community! You can also follow Apollo on Twitter: @apolloreddit If you're interested in supporting Apollo's future buying Apollo Pro in the app helps a ton as well as any donations in the app's Tip Jar! (Thank you awesome person!) If you have BTC ETH or any other cool crypto abbreviations others have mentioned they'd like to donate cryptocurrency and if so here are some addresses: (Thank you!) BTC: 1LamDwEtMYzeMF8F4evLVshgL6UaM1mU7e ETH: 0x53FDee21dCA9555Cd6d28089c8eA7E118d7189B6 Litecoin: LQgNag4cmGTbedXQvahpi6eQydpSjgBWv6 Nano: xrb_1j7ppgbx47bbyk1ohbuy9nqghreo8pct8z1gcghyqj7kz7tmz9xnugjntx9k (I add these based on request if there's a different cryptocurrency you'd like to see added please PM me and I happily will!) the front page of the internet. and join one of thousands of communities. Apollo will close down on June 30th. Reddits recent decisions and actions have unfortunately made it impossible for Apollo to continue. Thank you so so much for all the support over the years. Announcement ( self.apolloapp ) submitted 11 hours ago * by iamthatis Apollo Developer [ M ] 22 150 5 5 10 2 10 59 4 5 19 7 5 3 8 2 2 29 25 7 2 29 5 19 5 2 3 34 4 17 2 20 5 7 3 6 14 4 5 7 11 8 31 5 18 19 8 2 2 8 27 17 7 19 4 66 2 2 29 6 13 234 21 487 5 5 14 19 4 2 & 1504 more - announcement Hey all It's been an amazing run thanks to all of you. Eight years ago I posted in the Apple subreddit about a Reddit app I was looking for beta testers for and my life completely changed that day. I just finished university and an internship at Apple and wanted to build a Reddit client of my own: a premier customizable well-designed Reddit app for iPhone. This fortunately resonated with people immediately and it's been my full time job ever since. Today's a much sadder post than that initial one eight years ago. June 30th will be Apollo's last day. I've talked to a lot of people and come to terms with this over the last weeks as talks with Reddit have deteriorated to an ugly point and in the interest of transparency with the community I wanted to talk about how I arrived at this decision and if you have any questions at the end I'm more than happy to answer. This post will be long as I have a lot of topics to cover. Please note that I recorded all my calls with Reddit so my statements are not based on memory but the recorded statements by Reddit over the course of the year. One-party consent recording is legal in my country of Canada. Also I won't be naming names that's not important and I don't want to doxx people. On April 18th Reddit announced changes that would be coming to the API namely that the API is moving to a paid model for third-party apps. Shortly thereafter we received phone calls however the price (the key element in an announcement to move to a paid API) was notably missing with the intent to follow up with it in 2-4 weeks. The information they did provide however was: we will be moving to a paid API as it's not tenable for Reddit to pay for third-party apps indefinitely (understandable agreed) so they're looking to do equitable pricing based in reality. They mentioned that they were not looking to be like Twitter which has API pricing so high it was publicly ridiculed . I was excited to hear these statements as I agree that long-term Reddit footing the bill for third-party apps is not tenable and with a paid arrangement there's a great possibility for developing a more concrete relationship with Reddit with better API support for users. I think this optimism came across in my first post about the calls with Reddit. Six weeks later they called to discuss pricing. I quickly put together a small app where I could input the prices and it would output monthly/yearly cost cost for free users paid users etc. so I'd be able to process the information immediately. The price they gave was $0.24 for 1000 API calls. I quickly inputted this in my app and saw that it was not far off Twitter's outstandingly high API prices at $12000 and with my current usage would cost almost $2 million dollars per month or over $20 million per year. That is not an exaggeration that is just multiplying the 7 billion requests Apollo made last month by the price per request. Could I potentially get that number down? Absolutely given some time but it's illustrative of the large cost that Apollo would be charged. Reddit's promise was that the pricing would be equitable and based in reality. The reality that they themselves have posted data about over the years is as follows (copy-pasted from my previous post ): Less than 2 years ago they said they crossed $100M in quarterly revenue for the first time ever if we assume despite the economic downturn that they've managed to do that every single quarter now and for your best quarter you've doubled it to $200M. Let's also be generous and go far far above industry estimates and say you made another $50M in Reddit Premium subscriptions. That's $550M in revenue per year let's say an even $600M. In 2019 they said they hit 430 million monthly active users and to also be generous let's say they haven't added a single active user since then (if we do revenue-per-user calculations the more users the less revenue each user would contribute). So at generous estimates of $600M and 430M monthly active users that's $1.40 per user per year or $0.12 monthly. These own numbers they've given are also seemingly inline with industry estimates as well . Apollo's price would be approximately $2.50 per month per user with Reddit's indicated cost being approximately $0.12 per their own numbers. A 20x increase does not seem based in reality to me. This was a very common comment across the topics: If Apollo has an apparent opportunity cost of $20 million per year why not just buy them and other third-party apps as they did with Alien Blue? I believe it's a fair question. If these apps apparently cost so much an easy solution that would likely make everyone happy would be to simply buy these apps out. So I brought that up to them during a call on May 31st where I was suggesting a variety of potential solutions. About 24 hours after that call with Reddit I received this odd message on Mastodon : Can you please comment publicly about the internal Reddit claim that you tried to blackmail them for a $10000000 payout to stay quiet? Then yesterday moderators told me they were on a call with CEO Steve Huffman (spez) and he said the following per their transcript: Steve: Apollo threatened us said theyll make it easy if Reddit gave them $10 million. Steve: This guy behind the scenes is coercing us. He's threatening us. Wow. Because my memory is that you didn't take it as a threat and you even apologized profusely when you admitted you misheard it. It's very easy to take a single line and make it look bad by removing all the rest of the context so let's look at the full context. I can only assume you didn't realize I was recording the call because there's no way you'd be so blatantly lying if you did. As said a common suggestion across the many threads on this topic was If third-party apps are costing Reddit so much money why don't they just buy them out like they did Alien Blue? That was the point I brought up. If running Apollo as it stands now would cost you $20 million yearly as you quote I suggested you cut a check to me to end Apollo. I said I'd even do it for half that or six months worth: $10 million what a deal! The bizarre thing is - initially - on the call you interpreted that as a threat. Even giving you the benefit of the doubt that maybe my phrasing was confusing I asked for you to elaborate on how you found what I said to be a threat because I was incredibly confused how you interpreted it that way. You responded that I said Hey if you want this to go away Which is not at all what I said so I reiterated that I said If you want to Apollo to go quiet as in it's quite loud in terms of API usage. What did you then say? Me: I said 'If you want Apollo to go quiet'. Like in terms of- I would say it's quite loud in terms of its API usage. Reddit: Oh. Go quiet as in that. Okay got it. Got it. Sorry. Reddit: That's a complete misinterpretation on my end. I apologize. I apologize immediately. The admission that you mistook me and the four subsequent apologies led me to believe that you acknowledged you mistook me and you were apologetic. The fact that you're pretending none of this happened (or was recorded) and instead espousing a different reality where instead of apologizing for taking it as a threat you're instead going the complete opposite direction and saying He threatened us! is so low I almost don't believe it. But again I've recorded all my calls with you just in case you tried something like this. Transcript of this part of the call: https://gist.github.com/christianselig/fda7e8bc5a25aec9824f915e6a5c7014 Audio of this part of the call: http://christianselig.com/apollo-end/reddit-third-call-may-31-end.m4a (If you take issue with the call being recorded please remember that I'm in Canada and so long as one participant in the call (me) consents to being recorded it's legal. If anyone would like the recording of the full call I'm happy to provide.) I bring this up for two reasons: Some people are confused about this situation and don't understand what an API is. An API (Application Programming Interface) is just a way for an app to talk to a website. As an analogy pretend Reddit is a bouncer. Historically you can ask Reddit Could I have the comments for this post? or Can you list the posts in AskReddit?. Those would be one API request each and Reddit would respond with the corresponding data. Everything you do on Reddit is an API request. Upvoting downvoting commenting loading posts loading subreddits checking for new messages blocking users filtering subreddits etc. The situation is changing so that for each API request you make there's a portion of a penny charged to the developer of that app. I think that is very reasonable provided well that the price they charge is reasonable. Another common claim by Reddit is that Apollo is inherently inefficient using on average 345 requests per day per user while some other apps use 100. I'd like to use some numbers to illustrate why I think this is very unfairly framing it. Up until a week ago the stated Reddit API rate limits that apps were asked to operate within was 60 requests per minute per user. That works out to a total of 86400 per day. Reddit stated that Apollo uses 345 requests per user per day on average which is also in line with my findings. Thats 0.4% of the limit Reddit was previously imposing which I would say is quite efficient. As an analogy (can you tell I love analogies?) to scale the numbers if I was to borrow my friends car and he said Please dont drive it more than 864 miles and I returned the car with 3.4 miles driven I think hed be pretty happy with my low use. The fact that a different friend one week only used 1 mile is really cool but I don't think either person is inefficient. That being said if Reddit would like to see Apollo make further optimizations to get its existing number lower Im genuinely more than happy to do so! However the 30 day limit theyve given me after announcing the pricing to when I will start getting charged significant amounts of money is not enough time to deal with rewriting large parts of my app to lower total requests while also changing the payment model transitioning users and ensuring this is all properly tested and gets through app review. Further Reddit themselves said to me that the majority of the cost isn't the server it's the opportunity cost per user so the focus on 100 versus 345 calls rather than the cost per user doesn't sound genuine. At the very least providing even a bit more time to lower usage to their new targets would be feasible if they've historically provided it and it's not the majority of the costs anyway. Me: Because I assume the majority of it isn't server costs. I assume the majority is the opportunity cost per user. Reddit: Exactly. One option many have suggested is to simply increase the price of Apollo to offset costs. The issue here is that Apollo has approximately 50000 yearly subscribers at the moment. On average they paid $10/year many months ago a price I chose based on operating costs I had at the time (server fees icon design having a part-time server engineer). Those users are owed service as they already prepaid for a year but starting July 1st will (in the best case scenario) cost an additional $1/month each in Reddit fees. That's $50000 in sudden monthly fee that will start incurring in 30 days. So you see even if I increase the price for new subscribers I still have those many users to contend with. If I wait until their subscription expires slowly month after month there will be less of them. First month $50000 second month maybe $45000 then $40000 etc. until everything has expired amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars. It would be cheaper to simply refund users. I hope you can recognize how that's an enormous amount of money to suddenly start incurring with 30 days notice. Even if I added 12000 new subscribers at $5/month (an enormous feat given the short notice) after Apple's fees that would just be enough to break even . Going from a free API for 8 years to suddenly incurring massive costs is not something I can feasibly make work with only 30 days. That's a lot of users to migrate plans to create things to test and to get through app review and it's just not economically feasible. It's much cheaper for me to simply shut down. Hopefully that illustrates why even more than the large price associated with the API the 30 day timeline between when the pricing was announced and developers will be charged is a far far far bigger issue and not one I can overcome. Much more time would be needed to overhaul the payment model in my app transition existing users from existing plans test the changes and have users update to the new version. As a comparison when Apple bought Dark Sky and announced a shut down of their API knowing that this API was at the core of many businesses they provided 18 months before the API would be turned off . When the 18 months came they ultimately extended it another 12 months resulting in a total transition period of 30 months. While I'm not asking for that much Reddit's in comparison is 30 days . The issue is the size of the bill not when it will arrive. Significant significant charges for the API will start building up with 30 days notice on July 1st the fact that the bill for those charges being 30 days from then is not important. If you hear that your electricity bill is going up 1000x and the company tells you Don't worry the bill only comes at the end of the month I hope you understand how that isn't comforting. I hope I explained above why the 30 day time limit is the true issue. However in a perfect world I think lowering the price by half and providing a three month transition period to the paid API would make the transition feasible for more developers myself included. These concessions seem minor and reasonable in the face of the changes. That was my understanding as well based on what they said on a call on May 4th: Reddit: If there's an entity who's like 'Hey I'm showing really good progress' you know trying to like we're trying to get a contract in place we're trying to do all that type of stuff I don't think you're going to see us be like you know like overly aggressive on that timeline. And I feel pretty confident about that point by the way based on conversations I've heard internally. However when asking about more time such as a 90 day transition period to make the changes they said: Reddit: On the 90-day transition remember that billing doesn't kick in until July 1. So you won't see your first bill from July until the beginning of August and it wont be due until the end of August (Its net 30 day billing). You do however have to sign an agreement to get paid level access on July 1. Yes my last email to them (including Steve) said: In terms of timeline what concerns me most is the short nature of it before I start incurring costs. I have a large amount of users at price points that I wont be able to afford to support with 30 days notice. For instance users who subscribed for a year for $10 six months ago when I had no idea any of this was coming amounts to $0.83 per month or $0.58 after Apples cut. Even if Im able to decrease my API usage down to the number in your charts that still puts me in the red for everyone of those users for awhile with no recourse. A situation like this is one that is legitimately making me legitimately leaning toward shutting down the app but one that I could salvage if given more time to transition from the free API to the paid API. In prior calls you mentioned that provided I kept communicating and progress was being made the timeline wasnt an absolute. Is that still the case or is it now the case that the date is set in stone? That was a week ago and I've yet to receive any further contact from Reddit. To a certain extent yes. However I was assured this year by Reddit not even that long ago that no changes were planned to be made to the API Apollo uses and I've made decisions about how to monetize my business based on what Reddit has said. January 26 2023 Reddit: So I would expect no change certainly not in the short to medium term. And we're talking like order of years. Another portion of the call: January 26 2023 Reddit: There's not gonna be any change on it. There's no plans to there's no plans to touch it right now in 2023. Me: Fair enough. Reddit: And if we do touch it we're going to be improving it in some way. I've received so many messages of kind people offering to work with me to build a competitor to Reddit and while I'm very flattered that's not something I'm interested in doing. I'm a product guy I like building fun apps for people to use and I'm just not personally interested in something more managerial. These last several months have also been incredibly exhausting and mentally draining I don't have it in me to engage in something so enormous. Probably not. Maybe if the perfect buyer came along who thought they could turn Apollo into something cool and sustainable but I'd rather the app just die if it would go to a company that would turn something I worked really hard on into something that would ruin its legacy. To be clear: I am not threatening anyone in the previous paragraph. Reddit stated on the first call that they don't want to be like Twitter: Reddit: I think one thing that we have tried to be very very very intentional about is we are not Elon we're not trying to be that we're not trying to go down that same path. [...] We are trying to do is just use usage-based pricing that will hopefully be very transparent to you and very clear to you. Or we're not trying to go down the same path that you may have seen some of our other peers go down. They now state that the comparison of how close their pricing comes to Twitter is an unfair one and that when they said that above they were apparently referring not to the pricing but to the decision Twitter made to ban third-party apps at a rule level not a pricing level. I think regardless of whatever their intent/meaning behind the comparison to Twitter was the result is the same: the pricing will kill third-party apps just as Twitter did. I said this to Reddit and they responded that they don't think Twitter's pricing is unreasonable and that if anything if Twitter reversed the rule about third-party apps they would probably increase the prices as well. Just to be clear about how wrong and out of touch that is without naming names a formerly very very high up person at Twitter messaged me on Twitter and said: The Reddit api moves are crazy. Im not sure what choices you have but to move to another network. [...] That pricing is designed to prevent apps like yours forevermore. So to be clear even this person thinks this pricing is unreasonable. I do too. I requested a call to talk to Steve about some suggestions I had his response was Sorry no. You can give name-redacted a ping if you want. I've then emailed that person (same person I've been talking to for months) suggestions approximately one week ago about how Apollo could survive this and I've yet to receive a response. Abundantly. Unlike other social media companies like Facebook and Twitter who pay their moderators as employees Reddit relies on volunteers to do the hard work for free. I completely understand that when tools they take to do their volunteer important job are taken away there is anger and frustration there. While I haven't personally mobilized anyone to participate in the blackout out of fear of retaliation from Reddit the last thing I want is for that to feel like I don't support the folks speaking up. I wholeheartedly do. It's been a horrible week and the kindness Redditors and moderators and communities have shown Apollo and other third-party apps has genuinely made it much more bearable and I am genuinely so appreciative. I am admittedly doubtful Reddit wants to listen to folks anymore so I don't see it having an effect. In hindsight kinda yeah. Many of the other developers and folks I talked to were much less optimistic than I was but I legitimately had great interactions with Reddit for many years prior to last week (they were kind communicative gave me heads up of changes) so when they said they were aiming to have pricing that would be fair and based in reality I honestly believed them. That was foolish of me in hindsight and maybe could have had a different outcome if I was more aggressive in the beginning. Sorry. /canadian (And to be clear they did indeed say this. They used the word substantive and I wanted to make sure we had the same definition of something having a firm basis in reality and therefore important meaningful or considerable) Reddit: That's exactly right. And I think thankfully the word is exactly the right one. It's going to have a firm basis in reality. I also just looked it up. We're going to try to be as transparent as we can. On May 31st Reddit posted a chart of large excess usage by some unlabeled API clients and stated: We reached out to the most impactful large scale applications in order to work out terms for access above our default rate limits via an enterprise tier. To be clear Apollo was never contacted and I've been told from someone internally that Apollo is indeed not one of the unlabeled API clients. The only time that Apollo was reached out to by Reddit in any capacity about usage was late last year when we received an email about a 6 minute period where Apollo's server API usage increased by 35% before lowering again. Despite 35% for 6 minutes being a comparatively small blip (the above post references clients that are over by 500000%) we responded within 2 minutes. We offered to jump on a call with Reddit engineers if they needed an answer ASAP identified the issue within several hours and Reddit thanked us for the fast investigation. Full email transcript: https://gist.github.com/christianselig/6c71608cf617d2f881cd2849325494c1 On the call with moderators Steve Huffman said: Steve: I don't use the app so I'll give you the best answer I can -- he does scraping so that he can deliver notifications faster but has done NO EFFORT to be a good citizen of the internet. First off Apollo does no scraping it's purely through authenticated calls to the API and has checks in place to ensure it stays within Reddit's API rate limits. I've open sourced the server code to show this . Secondly to say we have made no effort is categorically false. I have so many emails where I've reached out to Reddit expressing concerns about and bugs inefficiencies in the API or ideas on how to improve things or significant Reddit bugs that made things hard on us. When Reddit has had questions for us as discussed above we immediately jumped into action to get an answer as quickly as possible. Here's an email of me giving a heads up to Reddit of IP address changes on our server: Me: With the new change it'll be maybe like one IP address. This is all obviously still within the API rate limits as the requests are from individual user accounts that have signed in. Again long story short the result will be more optimized if anything I just wanted to give a heads up and ensure that it'd be okay if Reddit suddenly saw the server go from a bunch of different IP addresses to a single one which might cause some confusion if I didn't give a heads up. Me wanting to make sure we were doing everything as best as we could: Me: Everything is going well we just had a few questions about best practices making sure were following any suggestions your team has. Is there any way we could poke someone on your team with a few questions weve been having and have a tiny back and forth? We were just seeing some elevated response times and just thought it would be great if we could maybe describe what were doing and see if anything seems off/suboptimal. Me reporting to Reddit that the API has a serious bug in recording rate limits: Me: We obviously respect the rate limit headers and if a user comes close to approaching it (within 50 requests of the 600 every 10 minutes limit) we stop their requests until the refresh period occurs. However we're seeing some users have very very weird rate limit headers. Things like requests remaining: 0 requests made: 17483 reset: 598 seconds left which indicates they've somehow made over 17 thousand requests in two seconds which seems hard to believe. Me suggesting to Reddit improvements that could help improve efficiency of notification API calls: Me: So like little stuff like that where even if there's a streaming client or some way to minimize the calls there I think it would help us both out enormously. Further when making suggestions to your own employees they themselves have expressed concern about how terrible the public API is: Call on January 26 2023 Reddit: I cannot tell you how painful it is to use our API. [...] The API needs to change. Like it's just unusable. I am surprised that you're able to build a functional app on it to be honest. Steve: Why not work with the third party apps? Their existence is not a priority for us. We don't use them. I don't use them. It's a part of our traffic but not a lot and it's a lot of work on our side to keep them alive. If I have to choose where to put our effort we're going to focus internally. I'm kind of open to it but I haven't and I can't convince you but I don't get the sense that they want to work with us either. I'm genuinely not sure where Steve has got the impression that I don't want to work with him. Despite reaching out multiple times and him declining to talk I've stated multiple times on calls literally saying the words I definitely still want to talk. Reddit: What I'm hearing is like Yeah great. We have this disagreement on pricing methodology etc. But any feasible number that we get to any number that's even in the zip code of what we're sharing with you is unfeasible from your perspective financially. So it's like arguing around the edges of that price thing is like it just won't make any sense to you. And I presume also just given the NSFW stuff and the removal of ads that makes it even more trickier.Me: Yeah. I mean to be very clear I'm not saying I'm walking away from the negotiation table and taking my basketball and going home and just gonna kick up a storm. That's not my intention at all. I definitely still want to talk. I'm not asking you to lower the price by a hundred times or something. I don't think depending on what you mean by zip code I don't think I'm so unreasonable that I'm requiring you to bend over backwards here. I've also emailed Steve and the other contact directly stating that I'm interested in talking and including ideas for how we could come to a solution: Me: I understand where Reddit's coming from in this. A free API while appreciated is not tenable for you especially heading into an IPO and my only goal here is to come to a solution where we both feel understood. I also hear you that killing third-party clients isn't actually the goal and in that spirit have been working on how to address your concerns from my end: [...] I don't know how you can say I'm not interested in talking when you haven't my most recent email in a week. To say it once more I was very interested in talking. On the other side of things per the transcript Steve and the other admin on the call don't even know when the discussions with third-party apps began. Steve: When did we start talking with them? AnAbsurdlyAngryGoose: What month did you first start? Steve: FlyingLaserTurtles? Do you remember? April or May of this year. FlyingLaserTurtles: Maybe late March? But yes. Steve: We've been in contact with third party apps for MONTHS talking about these coming changes. When you announce that the API will be charging developers the most important portion of that conversation is what will be charged which was not available for almost two months after the initial call. From the time developers were told the price to the time developers will be subject to the price is 30 days not months. Months would have been very helpful in fact. I've been talking to my rep at Apple and over the next few weeks my plan is to release something similar to what Tweetbot did (Paul has been incredibly helpful in all of this) where folks can decide if they want a pro-rated refund on any existing time left in their subscription as Apollo will not be able to afford to continue it or they can decline the refund if they're feeling kind and have enjoyed their time with Apollo. For the curious refunding all existing subscriptions by my estimates will cost me about $250000. Apollo got mentioned a few times during Apple's 2023 WWDC keynote even by Craig Federighi himself and even during the Vision Pro announcement showing Apollo as one of the existing apps compatible with the headset (I'm sorry I won't be able to see that happen). I was lucky enough to be there in person and it felt incredible. Some folks asked if there was any deeper meaning behind that and while that would be cool in all reality these things are so well produced that they've been done for a while now so I'm sure it's just a coincidence even if it's a really cool one. A funny amount of people have reached out wondering about all the extra monthly icons I had queued up for Apollo. I love them was so excited for them and I'll make them available immediately for the short time left but if you're curious here's a screenshot of all of them: https://christianselig.com/apollo-end/remaining-icons.png We ended up with well over 100 custom icons created by incredibly talented designers and I'm really sorry to those designers who didn't get to see their work launched in the app (to be clear don't worry I paid them all there isn't some bs exposure agreement but it's fun to have your icon launch and I feel bad!) In order to avoid incurring charges I will delete Apollo's API token on the evening of June 30th PST. Until that point Apollo should continue to operate as it has but after that date attempts to connect to the Reddit API will fail. I will put up an explainer in the app prior to that which will go live at that date. I will also provide a tool to export any local data you have in Apollo such as filters or favorites. I want to thank a lot of people who have made this last week bearable. First and foremost the communities Redditors and moderators who have reached out in support of third-party apps making Reddit's gaslighting a lot more bearable in making me feel like at least someone was understanding me and in my corner. My girlfriend's been absolutely incredible and supportive. This year was our 10th anniversary and Monday was her 30th birthday. We're down in California for Apple's WWDC and had a bunch of things planned to do for her birthday afterward and I feel terrible that we're flying home early to deal with all of this instead of making her 30th special. I'll make it up to her. Andr Medeiros worked on the Apollo server component with me for the last two years and it's been an absolute joy to work with a professional who knows so much on that side of things. The iOS developer community has been unbelievably kind to me over the past several weeks I've spent the last week with many of them even staying at an Airbnb with a bunch of them (they ordered me pizza as I wrote this post!) and I've got so many hugs and condolences haha. Specifically want to thank Paul Haddad of Tweetbot/Tapbots/Ivory Ryan Jones Brian Mueller Curtis Herbert Andr Medeiros Quinn Nelson Paul Hudson Majd Taby Ryan McLeod Phill Ryu Larry Hryb Charlie Chapman Mustafa Yusuf Adrian Eves Devin Davies Jordan Morgan Yariv Nassim Will Sigmon Barry Hershman Joe Rossignol Michael Simmons Joe Fabisevich my family and so so many more. Also want to thank everyone at Apple who have gone out of their way to be incredibly kind here (I don't know if I'm allowed to name names but you know who you are). No bullshit I'll be fine. Through pure chance last year I spun off my silly Pixel Pals idea into a separate app and that actually makes good revenue on the side. I also have savings. Recently (like last week) my city had its worst wildfires in history with over 100 homes destroyed. That's brutal losing an app is sad but it's been helpful to me to recognize how much worse it could be just literally down the street from me. Honestly. Apollo had an incredible run I met the coolest people by my last count talked with folks over 15000 times in our subreddit about Apollo and raised over $80000 for my local animal shelter through Apollo. I feel incredibly fortunate. I think I'll rewatch Ted Lasso though. I build a second app called Pixel Pals that I spun off from Apollo that's thankfully done pretty well and I'll be spending more time on going forward. If you like the idea of digital pets it's a really fun app to check out. https://pixelpa.ls If any media/press folks have any questions please shoot me an email rather than messaging me on Reddit I missed a few last week because my inbox was blowing up. My email is me@christianselig.com I think I covered everything but if there's any questions feel free to ask and I'll do my best to answer! In the event that this post is taken down or you want to link somewhere else it's also available at https://apolloapp.io Thanks for everything over these last 8 years - Christian EDIT: Few updates: Per many requests I also added back the Tip Jar to the top of settings if you update the app. It's incredibly kind of anyone to even think of that but please feel no pressure. On one hand I don't want it to feel like I'm profiteering off this event but on the other hand I imagine people understand it would have been much more profitable/ideal if the app were able to just continue to exist in the first place so that would be really bad profiteering and the refund thing genuinely is daunting. I've seen a lot of questions along the lines of: What if Reddit gives you a deadline extension because of this post and posts by other developers? and that's something I truly would have loved for them to have made an effort to communicate earlier. You can't give developers 30 days between when the pricing is announced and when they will start incurring charges and also wait a week (25% of the time we're given) between replying to emails without so much as a we hear you're concerned about the short timeline and looking into what we can do. In conjunction with your previous emails it just appears like you've stopped any desire to communicate with developers in a period where we have a serious expensive deadline looming with not that much time to wind down our apps. And I also just know if I sent another email saying I'm going to post tomorrow that Apollo is shutting down unless you do something about the timeline it would be construed as a threat. Even more than that Reddit's behavior has been so appalling that for any developer I've talked to it's completely erased the indication that they even want us around. Post a comment! [] Mathesar 818 points 819 points 820 points 11 hours ago (43 children) Oh lawdy there are tapes. [] geckospots 340 points 341 points 342 points 11 hours ago (2 children) Hes got the receipts. [] Smooth-Question-3069 71 points 72 points 73 points 10 hours ago (7 children) Yeah absolutely legendary move getting these bozos on tape. Insane spin by Reddit. Not that I expected anything less but this is a disaster this valuation is cratering. [] lman2121 3723 points 3724 points 3725 points 11 hours ago (330 children) Craigs widgets :( [] glenn1812 2063 points 2064 points 2065 points 11 hours ago (269 children) Wish apple could intevine somehow. One of the best apps on iOS. God damn I can't believe that in a few months I won't be browsing reddit at the end of the day ever again [] BlesserBot 993 points 994 points 995 points 11 hours ago (94 children) Apple won't be able to do anything :( It's REDDIT who with their outlandish api pricing brought us to this stage. Fuck this I am out. [] fs454 816 points 817 points 818 points 10 hours ago (107 children) /u/spez I hope you enjoy the large exodus of users. Should have just worked with him to add first party ads or something. And maybe not be greedy Elon clones. [] Mister_Hangman 391 points 392 points 393 points 9 hours ago (52 children) Dear /u/spez Sincerely get fucked. What an absolutely stupid business decision... but then again you clowns and your private equity bullshit. This is why digg v4 happened. Now youll see it happen here. [] SkyGuy182 3312 points 3313 points 3314 points 11 hours ago (37 children) Apollo is an absolutely amazing app that I use to judge all other iOS apps. I will sincerely miss this app the people who love it and Christians engagement with the community. My Reddit usage will almost certainly die alongside Apollo. Im pouring one out for you u/iamthatis . Thank you so much for such an incredible app. Id be lying if I said I wasnt crying a little right now. [] jerrymandarin 82 points 83 points 84 points 10 hours ago (7 children) Truly Apollo is so intuitive and so seamless. Other iOS app developers should aspire to create something as functional as Apollo. [] everythingisreallame 79 points 80 points 81 points 11 hours ago (12 children) Same Im trying to think of any other way Id get on Reddit besides my laptop on old.reddit but I cant think of any that I want to waste my time with on my phone. Been on with a handful of different accounts for over 11 years but Im probably done end of the month. [] ImJustAverage 79 points 80 points 81 points 11 hours ago (6 children) I exclusively use Reddit on Apollo. Once its gone thats probably going to be the end of Reddit for me unfortunately. This is an amazing app with a great developer that listens to his users and actually communicates with them. No other app has come close to the dedication and support. [] changelog Apollo Server Man 5840 points 5841 points 5842 points 11 hours ago * 2 2 2 & 9 more (117 children) Working with you on this has been nothing short of a blessing. Thank you for everything /u/iamthatis <3 Edit: I'd like to remind folks that Apollo does have a tipping function. I know Christian deserves every bit of support we throw his way. [] ap0phis 559 points 560 points 561 points 11 hours ago (12 children) Thank you . [] iamthatis Apollo Developer [ S ] 87 points 88 points 89 points 2 hours ago (4 children) Andr it's been an absolute delight. For the uninitiated he randomly DMed me on Twitter if I needed help on the server side of things at a time when I was at wits' end how to go any further with my server knowledge. I gleefully agreed and it's been a delight working together since I'm an iOS developer so backend server design isn't one of my biggest strengths and having someone who knew what they were doing on the server side of things was so so nice. [] lawofficeofbobloblaw 80 points 81 points 82 points 10 hours ago (4 children) Thank you for your service serverman! [] NotTheSicario 542 points 543 points 544 points 10 hours ago (58 children) This came up as a talking point on the floor I work on between everyone there during lunch. We discovered that around 60% use Apollo 15% use other third party apps and the remaining 25% dont use Reddit at all. The reason Reddit is doing this is because their investors want full control over what their users see and what they can do on Reddit. Considering Reddit only exists because of the content their users post this seems like theyre trying to destroy Reddit from within. During our discussion we came to a consensus that the likelihood of any of us using Reddit if the third party apps disappeared was basically zero. Reddits own app is lacking so many features and their new desktop UI seems like a garbage TikTok clone. Thank you for all the hard work Apollo has been doing since its inception and I wish you all the best in the future. [] ElectronGuru 155 points 156 points 157 points 10 hours ago (12 children) Its worse than that. Twitter and facebook pay their mods. Reddit mods are all volunteer. And many/most use apollo. All that free labor is about to go poof! [] RaDiOaCtIvEpUnK 41 points 42 points 43 points 8 hours ago (10 children) This is what seems the most shortsighted about all of this. Without subreddit mods the quality of subs are gonna go waaaay down. This in turn will drive people elsewhere. This in turn will cut into their revenue. Seeing as Reddit is so heavily dependent on its volunteer moderators I cant see this being anything but suicide on their part. The fact that theyre going publicly traded AFTER doing this just makes this even stupider. I cant see this as anything but pure idiocy in every way from them. How can a company be run so out of touch with how it operates? [] AkioDAccolade 74 points 75 points 76 points 10 hours ago (25 children) old.reddit.com is 100% on the block next no way they kill something like apollo which has so many users without killing old.reddit.com which avoids a ton of the new reddit bullshit. I dont see ads at all on my reddit feed because pihole+old.reddit.com [] Dyan654 2320 points 2321 points 2322 points 11 hours ago * (40 children) This is legitimately heartbreaking. I downloaded Apollo on the first day it was out of beta and its unequivocally my favorite app. Its one of the only third-party apps I use that is so well designed so emblematic of Apples HIGs that it might as well be a first-party application. As far as Im concerned its literally perfect. Im absolutely disgusted at the way Reddit has conducted themselves. Its embarrassing unprofessional and imo libelous. I think youd have a good case for a libel lawsuit especially given your documentation. I suppose this isnt a surprise given Reddits precious corporate bullshittery but this is a new low. /u/iamthatis - if the June 12th blackouts are effective in making Reddit change their course and they issue a full-throated apology would you be interested in continuing the apps operation? I get it if not - the way youve been treated is reprehensible - but its an important question to ask. Thanks again for all your work. If Apollo indeed shuts down I swear to god Ill never use Reddit again. May their IPO burn. IMPORTANT EDIT: As far as I can tell this post is being suppressed. Check out the different between when I'm logged in and logged out (same exact page 1 second apart): https://imgur.com/a/7qHnOyM . Could be because of this feature but it's hard to say. [] IndexZer0 85 points 86 points 87 points 8 hours ago (4 children) I'd love for this to be higher up so as to get an answer to this. It's a well worded question and I'm in total agreement the treatment of /u/iamthis being uncalled for. Apollo came with the receipts and proper math for how Reddit is just being disingenuous with their asks. I think I like this question because I'm still holding out hope for a miracle here. I guess the only social media I use is something I'm going to have to stop using. I mean...what now? Do I have to go socialize in the real world?!? That's not what's supposed to happen in 2023! [] Redtailcatfish 374 points 375 points 376 points 10 hours ago (10 children) This is way too far down. OP please consider talking to a lawyer. You may have a case here. This is extremely unprofessional at best and you have troves of evidence to support your claims. Regardless of your decisions on Apollo you will have to work in a world where your reputation has been damaged potentially forever after this. That's a big deal [] T-MoneyAllDey 63 points 64 points 65 points 9 hours ago (3 children) OP probably doesn't have the energy to care which is often a seasoned dev's outlook. [] Defying 4565 points 4566 points 4567 points 11 hours ago 2 (250 children) Their fucking claims of you blackmailing them is incredibly insane. Fuck this place [] disgruntled_pie 1616 points 1617 points 1618 points 10 hours ago (148 children) Yeah that sounds like it borders on defamation. Maybe Christian can still get $10 million out of this after all [] acelsilviu 1180 points 1181 points 1182 points 10 hours ago * (138 children) They were internal statements though. It might have been possible (and funnier) if hed waited for spez or an admin to publicly say that shit and only then hit them with the btw I recorded everything you said. Edit - that was wrong Reddit did publicly state that Christian threatened them . Hoooooo boy. Edit2 - as several people have pointed out the distinction seems to be legally irrelevant anyway thanks /u/Professional_Row340 /u/throwaway39402 /u/noturlawyer [] Manny-Both-Hanz 433 points 434 points 435 points 9 hours ago (68 children) Yeah and they even doubled down on it: Apollo threatened us said theyll make it easy if Reddit gave them $10 million. I am confused about this bullet point can anyone clarify what it actually means? Apollo threatened who? Where? And what does that $10M figure have to do with anything? BuckRowdy replied: Reddit is saying that when they approached the dev of Apollo about the changes he asked them to buy his app for $10 million. They characterized it as a threat which makes little sense. [] Jakeman52 342 points 343 points 344 points 9 hours ago (61 children) Legitimately should have taken his offer and fired their entire mobile team if they were smart. [] btk79 329 points 330 points 331 points 9 hours ago (46 children) 10 million for an app like Apollo is a FUCKING BARGAIN. They are incredibly dumb. The default Reddit app is ridiculous in comparison. [] cougrrr 47 points 48 points 49 points 8 hours ago (1 child) But if Spez and company buy the app for $10 million they can't then extort the creator of the app for $20 million so (taps forehead). [] SharkAttackOmNom 148 points 149 points 150 points 8 hours ago (12 children) Well Apollo is useless to them at any rate. Its not built to push ad supply algorithm data support test features like polls live streams whatever engagement optimizations theyre trying this month. They would have a hard time taking this app and bending it to their capitalistic will. Would end up running as shit as their own app. [] ElPlatanoDelBronx 76 points 77 points 78 points 8 hours ago (9 children) The dogshit UI on their app is the main issue. They would definitely make this one worse if they bought it but it would still be miles better. [] greenskye 57 points 58 points 59 points 8 hours ago (5 children) They've tried that before. All they did was run that app into the ground too [] MINECRAFT_BIOLOGIST 118 points 119 points 120 points 9 hours ago * (19 children) Well thread's archived now so there's a permanent record of what they said. Let's see how this shakes out. EDIT: Archive link - https://ghostarchive.org/archive/OQMGD Wayback Machine's being a little odd so I used Ghostarchive. [] werid 64 points 65 points 66 points 9 hours ago (16 children) spez have edited other people's comments before. [] [deleted] 1678 points 1679 points 1680 points 11 hours ago (224 children) Thank you for everything. Im deleting my 11 year old account. So long [] wedid 1054 points 1055 points 1056 points 10 hours ago (118 children) Bro actually did it [] NazTehRpR 489 points 490 points 491 points 10 hours ago (80 children) A lot of people are actually following through. [] Blarghnog 305 points 306 points 307 points 10 hours ago (50 children) Im just waiting until the 30th. But Ill be knocking out a half dozen accounts some of which are over 10 years old. [] NazTehRpR 77 points 78 points 79 points 9 hours ago * (7 children) I got 7 years on this platform and enjoy being on it. This app makes it possible & Its sad that this is happening. Hopefully something happens before than. But Im definitely seeing [deleted] in some places. [] [deleted] 78 points 79 points 80 points 9 hours ago (11 children) https://i.imgur.com/B3g5nGe.jpg [] Arvann 1879 points 1880 points 1881 points 11 hours ago (24 children) If Apollo goes it is goodbye reddit for me. I never would have thought I would have to let go of this amazing app. Thank you Christian for working on Apollo for the last 8 years and delivering an app that so many people loved. Sad to see it go. Greed is evil. [] Masterofunlocking1 389 points 390 points 391 points 11 hours ago (0 children) I want to thank you for making honestly the smoothest app Ive ever used. Its a shame they cant see the error of their ways already. I wish the best for you. [] tman612 8475 points 8476 points 8477 points 11 hours ago 2 6 2 & 5 more (433 children) I will stop using reddit on June 30 :( [] mininova721 3739 points 3740 points 3741 points 11 hours ago (154 children) There's no way I'll ever use their official app. I rather give up the site entirely. RIP Apollo. You were truly the best. [] GoingTibiaOK 1153 points 1154 points 1155 points 11 hours ago * (76 children) Same. I actually quit Reddit before until I found Apollo. I have no problems giving it up realistically Reddit has been wearing me down lately its all fighting and political shit now. [] LordTopley 504 points 505 points 506 points 11 hours ago (20 children) Same here. While I know I'll view it occasionally as so many of my Google questions end up as an answer on Reddit I shall be doing that logged out and with an ad blocker on. I will provide nothing to Reddit other than an occasional viewer that provides 0 revenue. [] stupid-donkey 85 points 86 points 87 points 10 hours ago (5 children) Yeah if /u/iamthatis had been given a reasonable cost and passed it on to users I would have paid and Reddit would have got some money out of me. Now Im only going to look at it on the desktop with ad blockers running when I want to look something up. [] MrC4meron 3123 points 3124 points 3125 points 11 hours ago 2 3 & 3 more (41 children) [] stoplookingusernames 393 points 394 points 395 points 11 hours ago (19 children) fuck reddit!!! im not gonna see my pets in my apollo app [] theFavbot 79 points 80 points 81 points 10 hours ago (12 children) Just downloaded the Pixel Pets standalone app [] SethRavenheart 5057 points 5058 points 5059 points 11 hours ago (215 children) Heartbreaking bye reddit [] [deleted] 11 hours ago (38 children) [removed] [] sumgye 107 points 108 points 109 points 11 hours ago (29 children) It is so sad. What Reddit has done is inexcusable. I only wish I could code and make my own Apollo using my own API key. [] Nick4753 1853 points 1854 points 1855 points 11 hours ago * (48 children) To make it even worse they lied about someone who even if they lowered the price would've been one of their single most significant sources of revenue as a company. Either they're enormously unprofessional and don't know how to run a business or they had no interest in keeping 3rd party apps alive. Or most likely both. There are many reasons to leave after all of this being malicious to the creator of one of their biggest apps is just one of the more painful ones. [] bodnast 616 points 617 points 618 points 11 hours ago (12 children) they had no interest in keeping 3rd party apps alive. I imagine they were never really negotiating in good faith. This rate increase was their way of saying gtfo [] sigtrap 105 points 106 points 107 points 10 hours ago (4 children) Absolutely. They didnt want to outright say theyre killing 3rd party apps so they just priced them out of business. [] kilobitch 294 points 295 points 296 points 10 hours ago (14 children) They dont want 3rd party apps. They want to funnel users through their app to collect and sell their data and to show them ads. [] azermanus 1005 points 1006 points 1007 points 11 hours ago * (72 children) Yeah Im done. Mods if you actually give a shit about this and want to affect effect change dont do a two-day blackout - shut your subreddits the fuck down. Make Reddit come to the table. This isnt just Apollo. This isnt just about third party apps. This is the beginning of the end of Reddit being anything resembling what brought us all here in the first place. Reddits execs are ready to hack this thing to hell in an attempt to make it a desirable product to sell. Maybe we make that hard since WE are the fucking product. [] boringhistoryfan 80 points 81 points 82 points 10 hours ago (35 children) I'm not a head mod for any subreddit. But I do mod a few. It seems to me that reddit could simply replace the mods on subreddits that close down and force them open again. Mods in general aren't a monolithic bunch. I'm sure there are plenty like me who are generally quite clueless about a lot of this API stuff. Or aren't tech savvy enough to be invested. And reddit will have no problems replacing mods till they find someone willing to open a subreddit back up I'd imagine. I'm just not sure if reddit would actually come to the table as it were on the issue. But I hope I'm wrong. [] azermanus 84 points 85 points 86 points 10 hours ago (20 children) It seems to me that reddit could simply replace the mods on subreddits that close down and force them open again. I think that would prove difficult. Not that arent others that would gladly take over some big subs but it could be a nightmare for Reddit to try to coordinate and moderate if the biggest subreddits suddenly shut down. Reddit is not Twitter. They dont have thousands of employees. They RELY on volunteer moderators and if coordinated users and mods can absolutely burn this site to the ground. [] mutt_rat 107 points 108 points 109 points 9 hours ago (7 children) They RELY on volunteer moderators Let's put this in real terms: they rely on unpaid labor that they're trying to leverage for an IPO so that people like Steve Huffman (spez) and all the venture capitalists that reddit took money from can cash in and fuck them out of their labor. [] Best-Expert 210 points 211 points 212 points 11 hours ago (24 children) I hope this begins the downfall of reddit hopefully you or someone else create an equivalent app for lemmy and make it mainstream. [] RE_Chief 1321 points 1322 points 1323 points 11 hours ago (60 children) Looks like June 30 will also be my last day on Reddit. Thanks for making and improving a world-class Reddit client. [] [deleted] 157 points 158 points 159 points 10 hours ago (41 children) Why wait? Im done now [] wickedlizerd 190 points 191 points 192 points 10 hours ago (36 children) Dude was NOT joking. Good for them [] gizmola 41 points 42 points 43 points 10 hours ago (11 children) Lmao. I still need some time to say goodbye. [] arthurcarver 2503 points 2504 points 2505 points 11 hours ago (38 children) Fucking greedy basts. Well Im sure I speak for everyone using this insanely amazing app my absolute favourite by a long long shot but thank you so much Christian. Big ups man. [] hariharan_mifsud 472 points 473 points 474 points 11 hours ago (31 children) It seems the intention since the beginning is following Twitter's move to kill third-party app and redirect all traffic to themselves and monetize user's data. [] bodnast 300 points 301 points 302 points 11 hours ago (23 children) Yep the 3rd party apps are first. Then old.reddit.com will come next. It's like they want us to use Reddit less [] jlusedude 214 points 215 points 216 points 11 hours ago (12 children) It will succeed. Im not going to use Reddit after this. I dont have other social media and dont need this. [] josh_is_lame 953 points 954 points 955 points 11 hours ago (45 children) obligatory fuck u/spez [] [deleted] 1153 points 1154 points 1155 points 11 hours ago (69 children) BRB deleting my Reddit account(s) [] hooplasandwiches 729 points 730 points 731 points 10 hours ago (11 children) madlad did it [] IFapToCalamity 246 points 247 points 248 points 10 hours ago (1 child) Based and (actually) red-pilled [] [deleted] 10 hours ago (28 children) [deleted] [] eggimage [ ] 602 points 603 points 604 points 11 hours ago * (21 children) well. looks like my reddit addiction is getting cured in less than a month. this really sucks. so sorry this amazing app has to end like this. reddit truly is garbage edit: reddit fuck you very much [] RSD94 8937 points 8938 points 8939 points 11 hours ago * 5 2 2 2 & 7 more (531 children) fuck reddit and fuck /u/spez thank you for everything Christian & co. <3 edit: thank you for the awards but please consider sending that money to Christian & other affected developers as a thank you for their hard work rather than reddit's soulless pockets. shoutout to r/ModCoord & r/RedditAlternatives [] anchoricex 1227 points 1228 points 1229 points 11 hours ago (139 children) Im absolutely tilted at that call recording. Honestly what a total dickhead. Hyped Christian got them receipts. [] WalkingCloud 649 points 650 points 651 points 9 hours ago * (85 children) I was already pissed off about this but /u/spez bold-faced lying on a call to moderators to try and spin things in Reddit's favour is absolutely disgraceful. Thankfully there is a recording because they were obviously banking on a he-said/she said situation. It's not a good look for a company that wants to charge developers millions of dollars per month for access. Would you trust a company with a CEO like that to send millions to? I sure as shit wouldn't. Honestly should be hounded about this on every announcement post he ever does. Edit: Holy shit they're doing an AMA lmao [] Thosepassionfruits 201 points 202 points 203 points 9 hours ago (26 children) That AMA may very well break EAs record for most downvoted post in the history of Reddit. [] Stig27 104 points 105 points 106 points 8 hours ago * (20 children) That was -167k I'd love to see it break -200k Edit: it was 667k let's go for a million then! [] Kami_no_mikoto 96 points 97 points 98 points 8 hours ago * (11 children) -167k? its more like -668k /u/spez you are gonna make history tomorrow again... in a VERY bad way. [] mrm00r3 45 points 46 points 47 points 7 hours ago (1 child) INB4 u/spez realizes this stands a good chance of getting him shitcanned. All they had to do was not be dickheads and goddamn if they didnt fail hard at that. [] urStupidAndIHateYou 74 points 75 points 76 points 9 hours ago (1 child) Somehow I bet Victoria Taylor gets fired again over this. Yes spez we remember this shit even when you sweep it under the rug. You run a massive ONLINE platform you think you'd understand object permanence at this point. [] PC_Master-Race 102 points 103 points 104 points 9 hours ago (16 children) Edit: Holy shit they're doing an AMA lmao oh my god I cannot wait. I REALLY hope more subs go dark for longer than 48hrs - and I'm sure this AMA will help that [] chauggle 79 points 80 points 81 points 9 hours ago (9 children) I predict he answers 2 pre-planned questions from plants then auto-replies watch rampart and dips. [] Realtrain 43 points 44 points 45 points 8 hours ago (8 children) Edit: Holy shit they're doing an AMA lmao Get ready for u/spez to start editing people's comments to be softball questions. [] ArnoldVonNuehm 3013 points 3014 points 3015 points 10 hours ago (190 children) Hey u/spez care to comment on the topic you lying piece of shit? [] ColoneISanders 2436 points 2437 points 2438 points 10 hours ago (102 children) If u/spez could read he'd be very upset right now. [] I_PUNCH_INFANTS 1350 points 1351 points 1352 points 10 hours ago (65 children) /u/spez cant hear you he is hiding in his doomsday bunker till this is over. [] moonsun1987 781 points 782 points 783 points 10 hours ago (30 children) /u/spez I wonder if /u/spez is considering quietly editing all our comments to say we love /u/spez because that's what he would do just to be clear fuck /u/spez [] McRibs2024 319 points 320 points 321 points 10 hours ago (27 children) Nah he will just edit the post and feel happy again. [] correcthorsestapler 296 points 297 points 298 points 10 hours ago (14 children) Yeah u/spez edit our comments. I fucking dare you. [] DaveedDays 50 points 51 points 52 points 9 hours ago (3 children) Dude could u/spez be any fucking stupider??? I remember when the whole comment edit debacle happened I remember the Ellen Pao debacle I remember them firing Victoria. Every time I don't think u/spez could stoop lower he does. Fuck you Steve. From the bottom of my heart as a decade+ user of this site fuck you. Your greed is going to tank this site that I once truly loved and enjoyed. [] ShinShinGogetsuko 375 points 376 points 377 points 10 hours ago (22 children) Careful he might stealth edit your comment. He's known to do that. [] Chicho_Procer 545 points 546 points 547 points 10 hours ago (18 children) He disabled pinging his username because he's a bitch who can't handle the slightest criticism. Still FUCK Steve Huffman. [] MarijuanaFanatic420 80 points 81 points 82 points 9 hours ago (6 children) I guarantee you he's read this. There's no way major app developer burns all bridges and personally calls out CEO of reddit doesn't hit his desk. He's just not going to comment on it until the lawyers have a chance. [] Chicho_Procer 48 points 49 points 50 points 9 hours ago (3 children) Good. Steve if by any chance you stumble upon this comment: If you love Prepping so much then prepare a traffic cone with lube and stick it up your ass. [] Mylaptopisburningme 36 points 37 points 38 points 10 hours ago (2 children) Steve Huffman /r/punchablefaces [] R0hanisaurusRex 684 points 685 points 686 points 10 hours ago (37 children) I heard /u/spez is being questioned by the DOJ about his connection to Jeffery Epstein. [] CrepeTheRealPancake 330 points 331 points 332 points 10 hours ago (12 children) He'll probably just edit your comment like he's been known to do. [] BovineJoniHimself69 266 points 267 points 268 points 10 hours ago (10 children) i love /u/spez and He is thE best and he's totalLy not Pointing a gun at me now [] Teknoeh 50 points 51 points 52 points 10 hours ago * (9 children) I heard /u/spez is and will always continue to be a gigantic piece of shit whos entire legacy will be running Reddit into the ground. Year after year one bad business decision after another. Just another Elon except Spez hasnt done anything even remotely useful for the planet. [] elkend 58 points 59 points 60 points 10 hours ago (7 children) Every post we post on Reddit should now end with fuck /u/spez like a forum signature. fuck /u/spez [] [deleted] 275 points 276 points 277 points 11 hours ago (7 children) Deleting my Reddit account now I could wait till June 30 but it feels wrong to keep using the site now that we know for sure what theyre doing to Apollo. Its been a great run and thanks Christian for all the work over the years. Will miss the communities a lot. Stay awesome guys [] KaRue3 46 points 47 points 48 points 10 hours ago (0 children) So long best to you! [] cocoiadrop_ 3244 points 3245 points 3246 points 11 hours ago (153 children) I don't use the app so I'll give you the best answer I can -- he does scraping so that he can deliver notifications faster but has done NO EFFORT to be a good citizen of the internet. spez joins the r/LeopardsAteMyFace alumni. [] Runelite_HD 1220 points 1221 points 1222 points 10 hours ago * (36 children) LMAO spez Youre telling me the guy in this interview isnt a good citizen of the Internet? Think your fedora is on too tight m8. [] geraldisking 307 points 308 points 309 points 9 hours ago * (23 children) Remember the article where Spez fantasized about a future dystopian world where he would be one of the leaders? Guys a nut job. Edit Heres the article for those asking. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/30/doomsday-prep-for-the-super-rich Edit edit: the part that matters from a very very long but good read. TLDR: Huffman has calculated that in the event of a disaster he would seek out some form of community: Being around other people is a good thing. I also have this somewhat egotistical view that Im a pretty good leader. I will probably be in charge or at least not a slave when push comes to shove. [] AhmCha 126 points 127 points 128 points 8 hours ago (9 children) Lol hed drink bad water and shit himself dead within days [] geraldisking 48 points 49 points 50 points 8 hours ago (5 children) I guess he fancies himself as a survivalist and someone people would follow. Its probably some of the most neckbeard shit Ive ever read. [] present_absence 54 points 55 points 56 points 10 hours ago (10 children) Being a bad citizen of the internet means using the api normally I guess lol [] aishik-10x 39 points 40 points 41 points 7 hours ago (3 children) Steve Huffman is NOBODY who should be talking about being a good citizen of the Internet. This is the same fucker who secretly edited other peoples comments which criticized him. Nobody even knew that was possible before this. The CEO of Reddit being a prime loser and powertripper. [] Kdegeek 536 points 537 points 538 points 11 hours ago * (29 children) Welp. I guess I will no longer be using Reddit. My cakeday is October 31st 2012 so heading towards 11 years. June 30th will be my last sign in if this goes through. I love this site and the community on it but I cannot support Reddit leadership on this. u/spez the way you and the rest of Reddit's leadership team have handled this has been incredibly cruel stupid and tone deaf. If this is how you want Reddit to be run then you don't want me. *edit to add: I also signed up for the PixelPals subscription. Not really my thing but Christian has it turned off for me to up my Apollo sub to a year (so I could refuse the refund Lol). I know this is gonna be a lot of money out of his pocket for something that wasn't his fault. If you like the idea of pixellated pets or want to help a bit in offsetting his sudden $250k out of pocket bill please consider downloading and subscribing :) [] shlem90 1149 points 1150 points 1151 points 11 hours ago (139 children) I left Twitter when they killed Third Party Apps like Tweetbot. I will do the same here. Thanks for making a great App and making this site user friendly more than Reddit ever could. [] jack0rias 1144 points 1145 points 1146 points 11 hours ago (43 children) Fuck /u/spez and Reddit in general. They're insane if they think their plan is going to work out. Furthermore fuck /u/spez even more. [] doctor_who_17 154 points 155 points 156 points 10 hours ago (19 children) Fuck /u/spez Didnt think it was possible to be an even bigger cunt [] GBLoveSZN 1961 points 1962 points 1963 points 11 hours ago (129 children) /u/spez is an absolute piece of shit. Hope there are bad things coming his way. Do your job karma. [] GoatboyTheShampooer 1088 points 1089 points 1090 points 10 hours ago * (100 children) u/spez needs to resign. He continually fucks up over and over; and now this. EDiT: Annnd he's shitting himself: https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/144ho2x/join_our_ceo_tomorrow_to_discuss_the_api [] PinStacker 540 points 541 points 542 points 10 hours ago (40 children) Dude was caught changing messages and survived. Hence people recognizing this place is a time-waste cesspool. I am glad it's going to blow up in their faces trying to monetize it. [] MATHIL_IS_MY_DADDY 119 points 120 points 121 points 10 hours ago (4 children) lmao i remember that t_d fiasco was crazy. admin fiddling with messages was a wtf moment for me [] CheckOutMyPokemans 73 points 74 points 75 points 9 hours ago (11 children) Lmao doesn't even give a time for the AMA. Amazing stuff. [] 390TrainsOfficial 79 points 80 points 81 points 9 hours ago (7 children) It'll be during the period when Reddit has fewer visitors and the admins will be censoring the hell out of it because how dare the precious u/spez face the reality: he's made a terrible decision destroyed one of the most popular third-party Reddit clients and caused a planned temporary shutdown of a massive number of subreddits (with several more subreddits closing permanently). [] Yorktown2016 472 points 473 points 474 points 11 hours ago (11 children) /u/spez you sound like a complete asshole and I will leave Reddit after the shutdown date. Unbelievable [] Dead_Politician 228 points 229 points 230 points 11 hours ago (13 children) Holy shit. End of an era. I hate to read this. [] WishMyHusbandHadAJar 233 points 234 points 235 points 11 hours ago (3 children) Fuck you u/spez [] Cheechers23 222 points 223 points 224 points 11 hours ago (4 children) Man this has really killed my mood. Reddit really is trying to villianize Apollo and its disgusting [] Hmesce42 828 points 829 points 830 points 11 hours ago (18 children) looks like u/spez is taking this personal! will be my last weekend using the website. [] ErikElevenHag 59 points 60 points 61 points 10 hours ago (2 children) u/spez is Tobey to my Michael [] vxx 45 points 46 points 47 points 10 hours ago * (4 children) He's lying if he thinks it might help him. He has done it to me before. Even sworn. He's the type that would fake crying to dodge tough questions. He's unfit to lead a company and if reddit tries to survive he needs to step down in my humble opinion. I doubt he's been acting in the best interest of the company at any point as a CEO. [] iamstevesteyn 962 points 963 points 964 points 11 hours ago (9 children) My day is ruined. [] sigtrap 382 points 383 points 384 points 10 hours ago (3 children) And my disappointment is immeasurable [] Car333 1458 points 1459 points 1460 points 11 hours ago (32 children) Very sorry to hear this. I guess that means my Reddit consumption will go to 0 now _()_/ [] bodnast 367 points 368 points 369 points 11 hours ago (15 children) Yeah my mobile reddit consumption will be zero just like when Twitter killed tweetbot. Once they kill old.reddit.com I'll be done with reddit on desktop. So frustrating [] anakinfan8 190 points 191 points 192 points 11 hours ago (1 child) Well this is a post I had hoped to never read. Im gobsmacked that the Reddit head honchos can be this inept. Christian thanks for literally everything youve done man. [] tao_jones 382 points 383 points 384 points 11 hours ago (5 children) Just tweeted this to you but Ill say it again here: Apollo was truly one of the greatest apps ever made for iOS. Unparalleled in quality. I will be so incredibly sorry to see it go. That spot on my main Home Screen will be hard to fill. Thank you for everything! [] ckelley87 707 points 708 points 709 points 11 hours ago (21 children) I am so sorry to read this. :( Apollo is the only way I use Reddit on my mobile devices. Get bent /u/spez [] SuperbBit 10.4k points 10.4k points 10.4k points 11 hours ago * (254 children) Oh no. I am so sorry for you and all of the fans of Apollo! Thank you for all your hard work on the Apollo app. This really was one of the best apps ive ever used. Take care! And please dont refund. Let Christian keep what he deserves! :) Edit: please stop giving awards! The money will go to Reddit. They dont deserve that! [] Best-Expert 4484 points 4485 points 4486 points 11 hours ago 9 4 3 4 2 2 2 & 20 more (214 children) People should stop giving awards to this post. Everyone please Stop giving reddit your money. [] sumgye 1400 points 1401 points 1402 points 11 hours ago * (102 children) Seriously. We should all pitch in and buy Apollo and make it open source so we can use our own API keys. Or if its not serving /u/iamthatis anymore and he isnt making his living on it any way he could open source it for free? [] andylshort1 729 points 730 points 731 points 10 hours ago * (62 children) Its only a matter of time before they would take that away from you too. They dont care about third-party applications and would sooner price you out or end support for them to get you to use their own shitty slow buggy mess of an app. Dont give them the satisfaction. [] Chewcocca 54 points 55 points 56 points 10 hours ago (8 children) People always assume that awards = money I have thousands of coins on my account that I didn't pay for. You used to get coins every time someone awarded you. I haven't used them because I think awards are pretty stupid but they don't automatically mean money is being spent. [] AmishAvenger 106 points 107 points 108 points 10 hours ago * (12 children) This is insane. What theyre doing is bad enough. They acted in bad faith the entire time and now theyre outright lying and attempting to slander someone. How is it that theyre unable to comprehend that their entire site their entire business model revolves around the users ? No users no Reddit. No users no IPO. I say all the subreddits participating in the two-day blackout period just permanently shut down. [] 7plysMaple 156 points 157 points 158 points 11 hours ago (5 children) Thanks for the great UX and your dedication. I guess Ill start reading books instead of mindless scrolling. [] soaringSpriggan 156 points 157 points 158 points 11 hours ago * (12 children) Well that does it. Ill be deleting all my reddit content on each account and then deleting each account so that I leave nothing behind on the site. I recommend each 3rd party app user do the same. Fuck Reddit its time to move on to something else and maybe overall spend less time looking at screens. I suppose this will be my last comment. Ill leave my content up until the Apollo blackout. One last edit: here is how you can delete your content: https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite Thanks for everything Christian. As a fellow software developer I can only imagine how shitty this is for you. If theres somewhere like Mastodon that I can follow your future work please link me to it. I am interested to see what you get up to in the future. One final edit (this time fr). Ill be on https://kbin.social/ instead for my Reddit fix. The fediverse is the future. I hope to see everyone here somewhere there. [] aruke- 656 points 657 points 658 points 11 hours ago (31 children) Sad. Investor greed at it again. [] spasticpat 139 points 140 points 141 points 10 hours ago (12 children) Just a reminder that /u/spez edits comments that hurt his feelings https://www.theverge.com/2016/11/23/13739026/reddit-ceo-steve-huffman-edit-comments [] JustAnotherArchivist 602 points 603 points 604 points 11 hours ago * (38 children) Two minor things: https://github.com/christianselig/apollo-backend and https://christianselig.com/apollo-end/remaining-icons.png are currently (17:32 UTC) 404s. Edit: The GitHub repo started working at around 18:42 UTC. The icons are still down as of 19:05. Edit: The icons have also started working as of about 19:08 UTC. Thanks for the fix Christian! [] ownage516 203 points 204 points 205 points 10 hours ago (23 children) Really disappointed in spez. Hopefully that IPO money fills the part where his soul was [] Lenininy 606 points 607 points 608 points 11 hours ago (48 children) The subreddits should go dark indefinitely until they walk back everything. [] yeahburyme 243 points 244 points 245 points 11 hours ago (5 children) Subreddits that have alternative communities should allow only top level posts as link posts from those communities and no comments on reddit. Helps people move over. [] coolaaron88 119 points 120 points 121 points 11 hours ago (0 children) Wow the fucking End of an era. Never thought it would do down like this but thank you for being as transparent as you've been through all of this I know its been a back-and-forth battle trying to fight the good fight but I understand that you can only do so much. thank you Christian for everything youve been an amazing developer. [] LordTopley 241 points 242 points 243 points 11 hours ago (7 children) Thank you for your efforts over the past 8 years. You inspired me to learn Swift and build apps. I made 2 apps that went into the store. While they aren't there anymore as I don't have time (started my own company and also became a Dad) I was immensely proud of myself for making those apps. Making those apps reignited my enjoyment for making things and I restarted my hobby of making websites. Today I run my own freelance web design company and I partly owe that to being inspired by your work. Good luck in the future and I hope to see new apps from you in the future. [] iamthatis Apollo Developer [ S ] 71 points 72 points 73 points 2 hours ago (1 child) You're crushing it congratulations and well done. It's sometimes kind of isolating being an indie developer but comments like these really make you realize how we can all affect one another in really cool ways. Thanks for commenting :) [] _jamieb 112 points 113 points 114 points 11 hours ago (3 children) Fuck this is sad to read. Two of my favourites apps (tweetbot was the other) going in such a short space of time is a kick in the balls. Ive not read the comments yet but if by some miracle Reddit did a 180 after the blackouts on June 12th would you keep Apollo going? I know if I was in your shoes I wouldnt as it seems the relationship as become a bit toxic thanks to their actions and Id be constantly worried about the rug being pulled from under me again. [] pouwerkerk 114 points 115 points 116 points 11 hours ago (1 child) Thank you /u/iamthatis for all the incredible work you put into Apollo for showing what independent iOS developers are capable of building and for so clearly explaining why the Reddit API changes are unsustainable for businesses that use them. I have loved using Apollo and will miss it dearly. [] Kirihuna 112 points 113 points 114 points 10 hours ago (3 children) I refuse to refund. You can keep my money and Reddit can lose my money. I'll find a new platform for sports porn programming and other subjects. Thank you for your hard work over these years. Your app has helped me in many areas of my life from mental health (being able to access subreddits for it without having to use old.reddit on Safari or using the shitty App) to changing careers and everything in between. And wasting a shit load of my time that I could be productive lol. I hope you find peace in the next step of your journey. [] Ninjaguy5700 103 points 104 points 105 points 11 hours ago (1 child) I cannot express how sorry I feel for you and all of the hard work you put into Apollo. Thank you for creating the best third-party Reddit app! [] xezrunner 108 points 109 points 110 points 11 hours ago (2 children) It is incredibly heart-breaking to see that call being misinterpreted by the CEO who then immediately apologized yet continued to frame you as the one that threatened them... Reddit has become an incredibly hostile company in my eyes and no doubt them going IPO is probably the reason for their latest actions. This is simply a cut-and-clear example of what happens when a company shifts their focus from the product onto money. I'm really sorry to see Apollo disappear especially because I was thinking of subscribing the past few days even if purely to support the development of the app since it provides so much of a better experience to me on mobile. [] ulkesh 305 points 306 points 307 points 10 hours ago (16 children) If Reddit allows this to continue my 15-year account will be deleted and I will never return. Fuck /u/spez and fuck anyone at Reddit who is allowing this to happen. I helped Reddit become what it is today as did millions of other users. Christians app also helped Reddit become what it is today. Reddit will die the death it deserves because of this and good riddance. Make no mistake charging for the API isnt an issue. Egregiously charging for the API is and the timeline they have pushed is. They are greedy pieces of shit plain and simple. They could have handled this so much better with logic and reason. Instead they decided to screw everyone over. What a way to completely ruin your brand Reddit. I feel bad for any decent people working there who will be losing their jobs from all the lost revenue this will clearly incur. But in the end they will be better off not working anymore for complete asshats. Thank you Christian for the best application iOS has ever seen. I wish you well. [] JusticeBonerOfTyr 383 points 384 points 385 points 11 hours ago (9 children) This is the best app by far for Reddit. I understand this decision but it freakin sucks that it had to come to this. Bullshit Reddit wouldnt be anything or make any money if it wasnt for the users creating and sharing content. Reddit is also going to be much worse now that moderators arent going to have the proper tools now to moderate since the official app is such dog shit. [] DragonDropTechnology 78 points 79 points 80 points 11 hours ago (6 children) This was my assumption that Reddit tolerated (even supported) third party apps because they generate a significant amount of FREE content. Its similar to the no-annual-fee credit cards that can offer cashback. Credit card companies charge merchants; Reddit can serve ads (on the aforementioned FREE content) to some large percentage of users. Fuck these venture capitalistic scum. [] gforce216 94 points 95 points 96 points 11 hours ago (1 child) This was a wonderful app and the reason I even got into Reddit. I wish you best of luck in the future! And just as a light-hearted joke in this timeAny update on when well be getting that iPad update? [] SecuredMirrors 91 points 92 points 93 points 10 hours ago (1 child) And to the surprise of absolutely fucking nobody Reddit took a good thing ruined it then made it worse by trying to make u/iamthatis out to be the bad guy. Fuck u/spez and Fuck Reddit. [] redburn22 92 points 93 points 94 points 10 hours ago (2 children) Reddit should address these serious allegations. This post makes it very clear that a lot of what they said has been a lie assuming that the recordings are authentic which I have absolutely no reason to doubt. The Apollo developer has done such a good job of demonstrating how disingenuous theyve been throughout this process. If Reddit had openly declared a ban on third-party apps despite the negative impacts on this developer and their customers I could respect that decision. Companies sometimes make such moves and Reddit has the right to explore profit-making avenues including consolidating usage to their app to potentially enhance user experience. What I cant accept is how they have chosen to lie to their customers (and defame their partners) to avoid PR blowback against their API changes. This not only shows a total disrespect to their customers but also shows how incompetent they are. When implementing an unpopular policy a well run company considers amending the policies to be less disagreeable or they just make the change openly and transparently and accept and weather the backlash. They don't attempt to dodge criticism by lying. And thats not even a moral thing. How incompetent are they to not realize that these public lies would be exposed. To me it's not just wrong but also weak given the transparency of the lie. Worse still is Reddit's blatant defamation of the Apollo developer which seems to have been a calculated move to defend their narrative. Such behavior whether it was intentional or it was a repeated mistake that theyve chosen not to correct is inexcusable. As a result I've decided to limit my Reddit usage resorting to searching for information with an ad blocker turned on. I'll reconsider my stance when they confront these claims reverse these policies or offer a truthful explanation of their actions. [] Mudkip-Mudkip-Mudkip 94 points 95 points 96 points 9 hours ago (2 children) I don't use Apollo but I respect your transparency. Considering the state of Reddit right now I took the initiative to archive your post text in case the admins decide to delete it: [] DinkyDonahue 180 points 181 points 182 points 11 hours ago 2 (13 children) COMPLETE BOYCOTT OF BUYING COINS must occur. Not a one from anyone going forward. When you buy an award you award greed. [] MatchkeY 73 points 74 points 75 points 11 hours ago (1 child) Fair play. Thanks for all the hard work. Sorry it ended this way for you. [] rafaqueque 72 points 73 points 74 points 10 hours ago (1 child) Thank you for the amazing work /u/iamthatis . I wish you success. Fuck Reddit fuck /u/spez and fuck every greedy investor. Please just go fuck yourself honestly. [] toolman10 726 points 727 points 728 points 11 hours ago (41 children) Also as an Apollo Ultra Lifetime member I will not be requesting a refund. If anyone else does they are not helping this situation for Christian. What a sad fucking day. [] matttopotamus 160 points 161 points 162 points 10 hours ago (9 children) Definitely no refund needed. Im in the camp that would have actually paid the monthly fee to continue using this app. [] mrhindustan 57 points 58 points 59 points 9 hours ago (6 children) I wish I could input my own API access token to continue. I bought Ultra lifetime but wish I could just pay Christian monthly as Apollo is just that good. [] Eminem_McFlurry 40 points 41 points 42 points 9 hours ago (4 children) Yeah if Reddit was legitimately interested in charging reasonable amounts for API usage the price would be per user and Apollo would just act as a middleman. If I go over some threshold charge me like $5/month or something. [] Zachrdoodle 67 points 68 points 69 points 11 hours ago (5 children) The Reddit API changes seem more and more like theyre just obviously and blatantly trying to exterminate 3rd party apps. Probably so they can maximize add revenue and app traffic on the official app? :/ [] RobertoPaulson 67 points 68 points 69 points 10 hours ago (3 children) Id respect them a lot more if they just came out and said they were killing api access for third party apps for financial reasons. Killing them via pricing them out and then playing the victim is just fucking slimy. [] toolman10 69 points 70 points 71 points 11 hours ago (1 child) Apollo is one of the best apps I have on my phone Christian. One I use several times per day--it just works and it's a downright beautiful app. I understand why you are shutting it down (thanks for the huge post above) but it's a travesty. Greed is taking one of the best social media/forum apps ever created and killing it dead. The Reddit app is horrific. I won't use it. The smart move would have been to buy Apollo and let you continue development of it. June 30: RIP Reddit mobile. [] dan-80 295 points 296 points 297 points 11 hours ago * (37 children) Will you build a competitor? Move to one of the existing alternatives? Ive received so many messages of kind people offering to work with me to build a competitor to Reddit and while Im very flattered thats not something Im interested in doing. Im a product guy I like building fun apps for people to use and Im just not personally interested in something more managerial. These last several months have also been incredibly exhausting and mentally draining I dont have it in me to engage in something so enormous. So sorry to hear that. I hope than one day you will consider a client for a Reddit alternative like Kbin or Lemmy . So long and thank you for the last 6 years. [] intercommie 57 points 58 points 59 points 11 hours ago (0 children) Theres nothing to say other than thank you. Youve done a great job with the app. [] HippolyteClio 55 points 56 points 57 points 11 hours ago * (0 children) Reddit: I think one thing that we have tried to be very very very intentional about is we are not Elon were not trying to be that were not trying to go down that same path. [] We are trying to do is just use usage-based pricing that will hopefully be very transparent to you and very clear to you. Or were not trying to go down the same path that you may have seen some of our other peers go down. Sounds like we know who to compare them to even more. [] djaiss 199 points 200 points 201 points 11 hours ago (3 children) NOO GOD! NO. GOD. PLEASE. NO. NO!!! NO!!! NOOOOOO!!! [] Spartan-417 144 points 145 points 146 points 11 hours ago (7 children) Hey Christian People have floated the idea of setting up Apollo to use personal API keys I wish we could get that kind of thing set up so we can keep using this the best client for Reddit full stop But I have absolutely no idea how to implement such a thing into the app or if it is even feasible In any case good luck for the future Your skill in making this should help you well in finding future jobs [] PazuzuOvBabel 49 points 50 points 51 points 11 hours ago (3 children) Am sad. Never thought I will feel that sad about losing an app. _ Thanks for the ride u/iamthatis [] Uber_Nerd 89 points 90 points 91 points 11 hours ago * (3 children) Thank you for everything. Fuck Reddit! Edit: Sucks too since Apple just featured Apollo in the WWDC presentation. [] wosmo 49 points 50 points 51 points 9 hours ago (2 children) Not for the first time either. [] bedstuybk 51 points 52 points 53 points 11 hours ago * (0 children) Ive been a beta tester for Apollo since the start and Ive always loved your app Christian. I cant imagine my day without it but Ill have to now. Thanks for the years of tireless service and I hope we meet again. So long and thanks for all the fish. Edit: as for Reddit: I dont know who you are anymore. I think it's time we see other people. [] MudhornsRefuge 47 points 48 points 49 points 10 hours ago (4 children) Shit I would be willing to pay up to $20 a month if it meant I could keep using Apollo. As a recovering addict there's a few subs that have been very beneficial and helpful to me. But I can't continue to use them in good conscience after all this. Not to mention the Reddit app crawls a fuck load of your private info. July 1st I'll be deleting my account and all my throwaways. Some being almost 10 years old. Sad day. [] Silmar9 43 points 44 points 45 points 10 hours ago (0 children) fuck you u/spez [] pm326 44 points 45 points 46 points 10 hours ago (0 children) What a narcissistic piece of dogshit you are /u/spez [] tyrannosaurus_r 44 points 45 points 46 points 10 hours ago (1 child) Reddit admins but particularly /u/spez I know you're not going to see this but it makes me feel better to say and will hopefully inspire others. This could have just been a shitty business move but the dirty games here are just genuinely remarkable for how uniquely shitty they are. Huffman you're a massive cunt and I look forward to your IPO failing hilariously as reddit plunges from the last successful Web 2.0 social media site to a failed competitor to TikTok. Thanks for embodying enshittification and remember that there are so very many people who will actively celebrate your failure-- I among them. If this is ever a just society I look forward to your suffering the same fate you're inflicting on the Apollo team. [] _your_face 39 points 40 points 41 points 10 hours ago (3 children) U/spez has always been a piece of shit. Confirmed when I met him in person. 100% turd burglar [] _garyboy 43 points 44 points 45 points 9 hours ago * (1 child) Just wanted to throw in my experience that might get lost in the fray of this popular thread I am a product manager for a mobile app now and I 100% entered this industry because of how much Apollo inspired me years ago when I first downloaded it Christian. Apollo is the essence of everything a native iOS app should be. It integrates seamlessly into every experience on my phone but only as much as I want it to. It empowers me to configure it with as much (or as little!) granularity as I want. It follows HIG beautifully and provides an experience that feels truly native. Its full of delightful flourishes that make it a joy to use (mourning the death of my Apollo pet widgets right now most of all). Its the gold standard without a doubt. Not to mention the fact that youve taken so much time to listen to your users and break all of your decisions down in such detail that we all trust the choices you make for the app. I think its often underestimated by folks outside of this world just how hard it is to get a user-base to trust an app developer. Its an amazing feat that youve pulled off for years. Thanks for the amazing work and for truly genuinely being my product idol dude. I hope to one day make an app thats half as good as what youve done here. [] catsupatree 76 points 77 points 78 points 10 hours ago (3 children) Fuck u/spez Go ahead and edit my comment [] [deleted] 11 hours ago (28 children) [removed] [] iamthatis Apollo Developer [ S M ] 457 points 458 points 459 points 9 hours ago (19 children) While I appreciate the passion about Apollo I dont want this to escalate into threats of violence against anyone (implied or otherwise and even if joking) so Im removing this. Lets please steer clear of that everyone. [] [deleted] 8 hours ago (3 children) [removed] [] [deleted] 8 hours ago (1 child) [removed] [] dingdongfootballl 49 points 50 points 51 points 10 hours ago (0 children) Eat shit u/spez [] PurpleEsskay 74 points 75 points 76 points 10 hours ago (3 children) Looks like June 30th is my last day on reddit then. Fuck you /u/spez And a special shoutout to the reddit admins who are complicit in killing the platform. Make no mistake your IPO is now utterly fucked. /u/reddit /u/Sporkicide /u/Acidtwist /u/sodypop /u/redtaboo /u/Chtorrr /u/skwitz /u/sticksfigured /u/TheOpusCroakus /u/enthusiastic-potato /u/Significant-Otters /u/agoldenzebra /u/lift_ticket83 /u/redditcma /u/Goldennuggets-3000 /u/SingShredCode /u/CorrectScale /u/CookiesNomNom /u/EilenTheCrow /u/SpookyQubit /u/JabroniRevanchism /u/RyeCheww /u/Why_So_Sagittarius /u/PossibleCrit /u/ashtena7 /u/cerastes /u/Cosmic-Catz /u/flyonaWarhol /u/Cardioclaw /u/BurritoJusticeLeague /u/batballoon Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy . 2023 reddit inc. All rights reserved. REDDIT and the ALIEN Logo are registered trademarks of reddit inc. Rendered by PID 99241 on reddit-service-r2-whoalane-546fc4b46d-qcvtr at 2023-06-09 05:00:31.711560+00:00 running 7a5c034 country code: US.

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Treat your to-read pile like a river not a bucket (oliverburkeman.com) Books Posts The Imperfectionist About More I'm going to take a wild guess here and say that you like me have a large pile (or digital equivalent) of books or articles you've been meaning to get around to reading plus maybe a long queue of podcast episodes to which you'd love to listen if only you had the time. It's the archetypal first-world problem I know. But one worth reflecting on because it's a microcosm of a broader mistake that makes it more stressful than in needs to be to build a fulfilling and productive life: the problem of Too Many Needles. It's amusing to reflect that at an earlier stage in the history of the web information overload was widely held to be a temporary issue. Yes true for the time being we were getting deluged by a zillion irrelevant blog posts emails and news updates. But that wouldn't last because soon we'd have better technology for finding what we wanted while disregarding the rest. The real trouble according to the leading techno-optimist Clay Shirky wasn't information overload but filter failure . We needed and we'd eventually get more sophisticated ways to filter the wheat from the online chaff. And then we'd no longer feel overwhelmed. Yeah no. I assume you'd agree that the problem of your to-read pile is very much not one of filter failure. It's not that you're deluged with things you don't care about and need help figuring out what's truly of interest. It's that you're overwhelmed by things you do want to read. All the books on your bedside table all those bookmarks in your browser or articles saved to Instapaper all of them seem like they might be right up your street or crucial to your professional success or might contain some nugget of wisdom you'd benefit from absorbing. The problem as the critic Nicholas Carr explained isn't filter failure. It's filter success. In a world of effectively infinite information the better you get at sifting the wheat from the chaff the more you end up crushed beneath a never-ending avalanche of wheat. And so for example the reading recommendations I encounter via Twitter are much more tailored to my concerns than those I might encounter via a newspaper because I choose who I follow on Twitter; it's like having a thousand assistants scouring the infoverse for whatever might pique my interest. My challenge information-wise isn't about finding a needle in a haystack. It's that I'm confronted on a daily basis in Carr's words by haystack-sized piles of needles. The wider point here is that lots of the other ways in which we feel overwhelmed are problems of too many needles as well. They involve the attempt to divide our finite time and attention among too many things that all have a legitimate claim on them. Some of these are good problems to have: for example if you're blessed with work you love or a creative passion you're good at you may often feel torn between multiple projects you're excited to launch. Others are the familiar problems of Life Under Late Capitalism like the feeling that there's simply not enough time in the day to be a good parent while staying afloat financially. What they all have in common is that the things you're choosing between all genuinely matter and would benefit from more time than you can give them. Too many rocks Unfortunately most advice on productivity and time management takes the needle-in-a-haystack approach instead. It's about becoming more efficient and organised or better at prioritising with the implied promise that you might thereby eliminate or disregard enough of life's unimportant nonsense to make time for the meaningful stuff. To stretch a metaphor: it's about reducing the size of the haystack to make it easier to focus on the needle. There's definitely a role for such techniques; but in the end the only way to deal with a too-many-needles problem is to confront the fact that it's insoluble that you definitely won't be fitting everything in. (Of course some such problems where just scraping a living feels impossible demand political solutions too a topic for another time.) It's not a question of rearranging your to-do list so as to make space for all your big rocks but of accepting that there are simply too many rocks to fit in the jar. You have to take a stab at deciding what matters most among your various creative passions/life goals/responsibilities and then do that while acknowledging that you'll inevitably be neglecting many other things that matter too. To return to information overload: this means treating your to read pile like a river (a stream that flows past you and from which you pluck a few choice items here and there) instead of a bucket (which demands that you empty it). After all you presumably don't feel overwhelmed by all the unread books in the British Library and not because there aren't an overwhelming number of them but because it never occurred to you that it might be your job to get through them all. Coming at life this way definitely entails tough choices. But it's liberating too as you slowly begin to grasp that you never had any other option. There's no point beating yourself up for failing to clear a backlog (of unread books undone tasks unrealized dreams) that it was always inherently unfeasible to clear in the first place. I like to think of it as the productivity technique to beat all productivity techniques: finally internalizing the implications of the fact that what's genuinely impossible the clue is in the name! cannot actually be done. To receive posts as soon as they're available subscribe to my email The Imperfectionist. Home Books Posts The Imperfectionist About Email me at oliver@oliverburkeman.com Follow me on Twitter @oliverburkeman (c) Oliver Burkeman 2022

BAD

Trichloroethylene: An invisible cause of Parkinsons disease? (iospress.com) Searching for just a few words should be enough to get started. If you need to make more complex queries use the tips below to guide you. Article type: Research Article Authors: Dorsey E. Ray a ; b ; 1 ; * | Zafar Maryam a ; 1 | Lettenberger Samantha E. a | Pawlik Meghan E. a | Kinel Dan a ; b | Frissen Myrthe c | Schneider Ruth B. a ; b | Kieburtz Karl a ; b | Tanner Caroline M. d | De Miranda Briana R. e | Goldman Samuel M. f | Bloem Bastiaan R. c Affiliations: [ a ] Center for Health + Technology University of Rochester Medical Center Rochester NY USA | [ b ] Department of Neurology University of Rochester Medical Center Rochester NY USA | [ c ] Radboud University Medical Centre; Donders Institute for Brain Cognition and Behaviour; Department of Neurology; Centre of Expertise for Parkinson & Movement Disorders; Nijmegen the Netherlands | [ d ] Weill Institute for Neurosciences Department of Neurology University of California-San Francisco San Francisco CA USA | [ e ] Center for Neurodegeneration and Experimental Therapeutics Department of Neurology University of Alabama at Birmingham Birmingham AL USA | [ f ] Division of Occupational and Environmental Medicine San Francisco Veterans Affairs Health Care System School of Medicine University of CaliforniaSan Francisco San Francisco CA USA Correspondence: [*] Correspondence to: Ray Dorsey MD University of Rochester Medical Center 265 Crittenden Blvd CU 420694 Rochester NY 14642 USA. Tel.: +1 585 275 0663; E-mail: [emailprotected] . Note: [1] These authors contributed equally to this work. Keywords: Air pollution indoor air pollution environment Parkinsons disease solvents tetrachloroethylene trichloroethylene water pollution chemical water pollution DOI: 10.3233/JPD-225047 Journal: Journal of Parkinson's Disease vol. 13 no. 2 pp. 203-218 2023 The etiologies of Parkinsons disease (PD) remain unclear. Some such as certain genetic mutations and head trauma are widely known or easily identified. However these causes or risk factors do not account for the majority of cases. Other less visible factors must be at play. Among these is a widely used industrial solvent and common environmental contaminant little recognized for its likely role in PD: trichloroethylene (TCE). TCE is a simple six-atom molecule that can decaffeinate coffee degrease metal parts and dry clean clothes. The colorless chemical was first linked to parkinsonism in 1969. Since then four case studies involving eight individuals have linked occupational exposure to TCE to PD. In addition a small epidemiological study found that occupational or hobby exposure to the solvent was associated with a 500% increased risk of developing PD. In multiple animal studies the chemical reproduces the pathological features of PD. Exposure is not confined to those who work with the chemical. TCE pollutes outdoor air taints groundwater and contaminates indoor air. The molecule like radon evaporates from underlying soil and groundwater and enters homes workplaces or schools often undetected. Despite widespread contamination and increasing industrial commercial and military use clinical investigations of TCE and PD have been limited. Here through a literature review and seven illustrative cases we postulate that this ubiquitous chemical is contributing to the global rise of PD and that TCE is one of its invisible and highly preventable causes. Further research is now necessary to examine this hypothesis. The number of people with Parkinsons disease (PD) has more than doubled in the past 30 years [ 1 ] and absent change will double again by 2040 [ 2 ]. Numerous genetic causes or risk factors for the disease have been identified but the vast majority of individuals with PD do not carry any of these mutations [ 3 4 ]. Several environmental toxicants especially certain pesticides [ 5 ] have also been linked to PD and head trauma is also associated with an increased risk [ 6 ]. However these are insufficient to explain the widespread prevalence of PD. Given the diseases growing rates more than can be explained by aging alone [ 1 ] other less visible causes must be contributing to its rise. One of these may be trichloroethylene (TCE) a ubiquitous chemical that has contaminated countless sites and poses health risks to those who are (often unknowingly) exposed via their work or their environment. The evidence linking TCE to PD to date is based on a handful of case studies [ 712 ] a small epidemiological study linking exposure to a 500% increased risk of PD [ 11 ] and numerous animal studies demonstrating that the chemical leads to the pathological hallmarks of PD [ 8 9 1317 ]. Here we introduce the chemical describe its association to PD and other diseases detail its widespread use and routes of contamination and provide circumstantial evidence for its broader role in PD through illustrative cases depicting individuals with the disease who were likely exposed to TCE through their environment or occupation. We conclude with a call for greater research on its effects on PD protection from and remediation of contaminated sites and banning of this century-old chemical that has caused immeasurable harm to the publics health. TCE is a simple six-atom (two carbons one hydrogen and three chlorines) solvent that is clear colorless volatile nonflammable and environmentally persistent ( Fig.1a ) [ 18 ]. It was first synthesized in the lab in 1864 ( Fig.1b ) and commercial production began in the 1920s [ 19 ]. Because of its unique properties TCE has had countless industrial commercial military and medical applications. Among these are producing other chlorinated compounds (e.g. refrigerants) cleaning electronics and degreasing engine parts for civilian and military purposes [ 18 ]. As it readily evaporates and does not shrink fabrics TCE was used to dry clean clothes beginning in the 1930s. A closely related chemical called perchloroethylene (PCE) which has one additional chlorine atom in place of the hydrogen atom largely supplanted TCE in dry cleaning in the 1950s. In anaerobic conditions PCE often transforms into TCE and their toxicity may be similar [ 20 ]. Trichloroethylene (TCE) chemical structure [ 84 ]. The history of trichloroethylene (TCE) [ 15 85 ]. EPA Environmental Protection Agency; FDA Food and Drug Administration. TCE is found in numerous consumer products ( Table1 ) including typewriter correction fluid paint removers and carpet cleaners [ 18 ]. Until the 1970s it was used to decaffeinate coffee [ 18 ]. The volatile TCE was also an inhaled anesthetic until the U.S. Food and Drug Administration banned it in 1977 [ 19 ]. Historical usage of trichloroethylene [ 19 72 73 8588 ] * Common current uses. Studies ( Table2 ) linking TCE exposure to PD and parkinsonism date back to at least 1969 when Huber reported parkinsonism in a 59-year-old man who worked with TCE for over 30 years [ 7 ]. Thirty years later Guehl and colleagues documented PD in a 37-year-old woman who was exposed to the chemical while cleaning houses and again while working in the plastics industry [ 8 ]. In 2008 Gash and colleagues reported that among 30 factory workers three developed PD after using TCE for many years to degrease and clean metal parts [ 9 ]. These three workers were stationed closest to an open TCE vat and 14 of 27 workers who were further from the source displayed many features of parkinsonism including significant motor slowing [ 9 ]. Clinical studies linking trichloroethylene and parkinsonism or Parkinsons disease [ 712 ] PD Parkinsons disease; TCE trichloroethylene. Four years later researchers found that in twin pairs the twin with occupational or hobby exposure to TCE had a 500% increased risk of PD (OR 6.1 95% CI: 1.233; p =0.034) compared to their unexposed twin [ 11 ]. Exposure to the closely related solvent PCE also trended toward significance with an odds ratio of 10.5 (95% CI: 0.97113) [ 11 ]. Notably the researchers found an interval of 10 to 40 years from the time of TCE exposure to PD diagnosis [ 11 ]. TCE and PCE likely mediate their toxicity through a common metabolite [ 21 22 ]. Because they are lipophilic [ 11 ] both TCE and PCE readily distribute in the brain and body tissues and appear to cause mitochondrial dysfunction at high doses. This may partially explain the link to PD as dopaminergic neurons are sensitive to mitochondrial neurotoxicants such as MPTP/MPP + paraquat and rotenone [ 23 ]. Indeed in animal studies ( Table3 ) TCE treatment caused selective loss of dopaminergic neurons [ 8 9 13 15 16 ]. In addition PD-related neuropathology such as neuroinflammation and -synuclein phosphorylation and accumulation was observed in the substantia nigra of rats and mice exposed to 2001000mg/kg TCE over chronic time periods (6 weeks to 8 months) [ 13 15 17 ]. While the specific metabolite or mechanism of TCE-induced neurodegeneration remains unclear pre-clinical studies with high doses (4001000mg/kg) showed that mitochondrial complex I activity is dysregulated in the midbrain of rodents exposed to TCE [ 9 1315 ]. Mitochondrial function was further reduced in the rat striatum when TCE exposure occurred in conjunction with another PD risk factor traumatic brain injury. The combined neurotoxic insults resulted in 50% reduction in complex I oxygen consumption [ 14 ] a more severe effect than each factor alone. This combined effect provides a key example of how TCE exposure may influence PD risk in certain populations such as individuals who served in the military where head trauma is morecommon [ 24 ]. Animal studies involving trichloroethylene and Parkinsons disease [ 8 9 1317 ] TCE trichloroethylene. In addition to combined environmental factors evidence from preclinical studies suggests that genetic risk factors may also play a role in TCE-induced neurodegeneration. For example in a 2021 study chronic systemic exposure to 200mg/kg TCE elevated the kinase activity of LRRK2 (leucine rich repeat kinase 2) in the striatum and substantia nigra of rats after 3 weeks prior to the loss of dopaminergic neurons at 6 weeks [ 17 ]. Inherited variants of LRRK2 are linked to both familial and sporadic PD the most common of which is the G2019S mutation that pathogenically elevate LRRK2 kinase activity resulting in dysregulated vesicular trafficking endolysosomal dysfunction and oxidative stress [ 25 ]. However despite cellular dysfunction caused by elevated LRRK2 kinase activity individuals who inherit the LRRK2 G2019S mutation have only a roughly 50% increased risk for PD [ 26 ]. Incomplete penetrance of genetic risk factors suggests that possible gene-environment interactions could explain why only some individuals exposed to TCE develop PD and why those with a PD-related genetic predisposition may display variable risk of developing PD. Many other genetic causes of PD (e.g. Parkin PINK1 ) also affect mitochondrial function and an interaction with TCE is conceivable for carriers of mutations in these genes [ 27 ]. However more data on gene-environment interaction between TCE LRRK2 and other genetic risk factors associated with PD are needed. TCE was ubiquitous in the 1970s [ 28 ] when annual U.S. production surpassed 600 million pounds per year or over two pounds per person [ 29 ]. About 10 million Americans worked with the chemical or other organic solvents daily; in the U.K. an estimated 8% of workers have ( Table4 ) [ 10 ]. While domestic use has waned the U.S. is still the top global exporter of TCE and since 1990 occupational exposure to TCE has increased by 30% worldwide [ 30 ]. Exposure is widespread and a 1994 study in Italy found TCE at relatively high concentrations in the blood and urine of three quarters of a sample of the general population [ 31 ]. Example occupations where trichloroethylene exposure may occur [ 85 86 90 ] Although the European Union and two U.S. states have banned TCE it is still permitted for vapor degreasing and spot dry cleaning in the U.S. and for authorized industrial uses in the E.U. [ 32 ]. Globally TCE consumption is projected to increase by 3% annually ( Fig.2a ) [ 33 ] and China which has the fastest growing rates of PD [ 1 ] now accounts for half the global market [ 34 ]. Top ten exporters and importers of trichloroethylene 2020 [ 33 ]. Countries with published studies of sites of groundwater TCE contamination [ 89 ]. Workers can inhale or come in dermal contact with TCE but millions more encounter the chemical unknowingly through outdoor air contaminated groundwater and indoor air pollution. In 1987 nearly 56 million pounds of TCE were released into the air in the U.S. alone ( Fig.3 ) [ 35 ]. TCE can also leak from storage tanks or be dumped into the ground where it contaminates up to one-third of the drinking water in the U.S. [ 36 ]. TCE has also polluted the groundwater in at least twenty different countries on five continents ( Fig.2b ). U.S. cities that released the most TCE into the air 1987 [ 35 ]. U.S. cities that released the most TCE into the air 2020 [ 35 ]. TCE contaminates countless industrial commercial and military sites. TCE is found in half of the 1300 most toxic Superfund sites that are part of a federal clean-up program including 15 in Californias Silicon Valley where TCE was used to clean electronics [ 37 ]. The U.S. military has stopped using TCE but numerous sites have been contaminated including the Marine Corps base Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. For 35 years the base which housed a million Marines their families and civilians had levels of TCE and PCE in the drinking water 280 times safety standards [ 38 ]. Beginning in 1978 another route of exposure to TCE and other volatile chemicals was recognized: vapor intrusion ( Fig.4 ). Researchers found that TCE much like radon could evaporate from contaminated soil and groundwater and enter homes schools and workplaces [ 39 ]. Buildings often have lower air pressure than the outdoor environment and can draw toxic fumes through cracks in the foundation utility lines duct work and elevators [ 40 41 ]. This polluted air can travel upwards to apartments and offices located above plumes which function as underground rivers of pollutant within the groundwater. TCE has been found in the indoor air of homes in the butter in their refrigerators (TCE and PCE are fat soluble) and in the breast milk of nursing mothers [ 42 ]. Possible modes of exposure to trichloroethylene in the environment. Since contaminated underground plumes can travel over a mile individuals who live far from a contaminated site are still at risk. One plume on Long Island New York which was associated with an aerospace company is over four miles long and two miles wide and has contaminated the drinking water of thousands [ 43 ]. In Shanghai China a village primary schools and homes sit atop a TCE-contaminated site where a chemical plant operated for over thirty years [ 44 ]. In Newport Beach California multi-million dollar homes were built above a former aerospace facility known to be contaminated with TCE and PCE [ 45 46 ]. In Monroe County New York where many of the authors of this report live over a dozen dry cleaners have contaminated the ground with TCE. Below are seven cases where TCE may have contributed to an individuals PD. The evidence linking possible exposure to TCE in these cases is circumstantial but raises worrisome questions about the link between the chemical and the disease. The first three cases depict likely environmental exposure contributing to PD. The latter four highlight potential risks from occupational exposure. In some cases identifying information was changed to protect privacy. On May 12 2006 Mr. Brian Grant played two minutes for the Phoenix Suns in a National Basketball Association (NBA) playoff game. He did not score a point grab a rebound or have an assist. However in the last game of his NBA career the then 34-year-old power forward made history he had likely just played an entire basketball season with PD. Mr. Grant first noticed the symptoms of the disease a season earlier while on the Los Angeles Lakers. There the 69 250-pound player was puzzled to discover he could no longer jump off of his left leg as he once could. Sometimes the leg would give out. The next season he developed an intermittent tremor in his left hand [ 47 ]. Two years later he was diagnosed with PD. The roots of his PD may have been in Camp Lejeune [ 48 ]. When Mr. Grant was three years old his father then a Marine was stationed at the base around the time that TCE levels in the water peaked [ 49 ]. There Mr. Grant and his family lived in a trailer park on a dirt road. He enjoyed living on the military base taking a bus to pre-school and exploring its fighter planes. Mr. Grant also drank bathed and swam in the contaminated water unaware of its toxicity. Mr. Grants PD did not become apparent until about three decades after his family left Camp Lejeune. No one in his large family has had PD. His younger brother who was born on the base suffered disabling allergies that only resolved after they moved away. In March 2020 Mr. Grants father died at age 65 from esophageal cancer which is linked to TCE [ 50 ]. From 1984 to 1988 a young Navy captain Amy Lindberg was also stationed at Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville North Carolina. On hot humid days Captain Lindberg swam ran trained and outworked her peers. She also drank lots of water. What Captain Lindberg did not know is that the water that she drank bathed cooked swam and played in was contaminated with TCE PCE and other toxicants. Between active duty and the reserves Captain Lindberg served for 26 years before she and her husband retired in northern Virginia. In 2017 thirty years after being stationed at Camp Lejeune the then 57-year-old Captain Lindberg developed anxiety depression and trouble thinking (brain fog) and was seen by a neuropsychologist. He asked her about her loss of smell decreased right arm swing and dragging of her right leg all of which she had developed about two years earlier. She also had a mild rest tremor in her right hand and long-standing constipation. She soon saw a neurologist who diagnosed her with PD which was not present in her family. Now 63 Captain Lindberg remains an avid runner boxes regularly and works out frequently but is disabled by the diseases non-motor features including urinary urgency pain and mood changes. In 2017 the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs established PD as having a presumptive service connection for those who like Captain Lindberg served at Camp Lejeune between 1953 and 1987 [ 51 ]. Dr. Jesh Mittal is a 48-year-old endocrinologist who was raised in an upstate New York community heavily contaminated by TCE. His first home where he lived until age 14 was located less than a mile from a Superfund site where TCE PCE or both had contaminated 60 residential drinking wells [ 52 ]. His second home where he resided until starting college was also less than a mile from another Superfund site contaminated by TCE and other solvents used in vapor degreasing [ 53 ]. However his potential exposure did not end at home. The future physician attended high school adjacent to a large computing firm where his father worked. The soil and groundwater at the manufacturing site were contaminated with TCE and PCE. In 1971 seven years before his freshman year the well at the high school was found to have slight contamination with TCE even after a filtration system was installed [ 54 ]. A generation later in 2000 groundwater monitoring found high concentrations of PCE at the manufacturing facility [ 55 ]. Neither his homes nor his high school were (to our knowledge) ever checked for vapor intrusion despite their proximity to contaminated sites. In 2010 after a nurse noticed that his handwriting was becoming smaller the right-handed physician was diagnosed with writers cramp. Two years later he developed constipation a twitch in his right hand and dystonia in his right arm. He was subsequently diagnosed with PD at age 38. He had no family history of and no genetic marker for PD. Two years earlier his mother was diagnosed with breast cancer and three years after his PD diagnosis his father was diagnosed with prostatecancer. Dr. John Smith was an 85-year-old physicist and industry executive with a family history of PD in his father and two paternal aunts all of whom grew up on a farm. At age six the future electrical engineer and his family moved to a farm in upstate New York where the young boy would apply rotenone and DDT to green bean plants as part of his chores. As a graduate student he used TCE to wash electric parts but wore no personal protective equipment. Upon completing his PhD he joined National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) where he cleaned electronics and was swimming in TCE. His term at NASA was interrupted by basic training in the army at Fort Gordon Georgia which served as a testing site for Agent Orange [ 56 ]. He then worked for a large computer manufacturing company in East Fishkill New York where TCE PCE and other chemicals eventually contaminated the soil and groundwater [ 57 ]. In approximately 2010 Dr. Smith was diagnosed with PD. His symptoms included anxiety decreased energy anhedonia diminished initiative depressed mood and constipation in addition to a rest tremor slowed movements a stooped posture and a soft voice. Some of these symptoms improved with levodopa but they subsequently worsened. As part of a physical exam in 2019 an internist found a breast lump in Dr. Smiths chest. The lump was cancerous. The treatment of his breast cancer which is associated with TCE exposure [ 58 ] required surgery and tamoxifen. Mr. Ethan Jones is a 72-year-old retired teacher who was diagnosed with PD in 2017. He also carries a G2019S mutation in LRRK2 . In his early thirties Mr. Jones worked for three to four years in a small copy and print shop that required multiple chemicals and solvents. He is unsure whether he was exposed to TCE or PCE but chlorinated solvents were commonly used in the industry in the 1970s and 1980s [ 59 ]. About 35 years later he noticed that he was moving slower than his peers and was subsequently diagnosed with PD at age 68. His symptoms improved with levodopa which he continues to take. Neither of his parents had PD but his paternal grandfather did and his nephew does. In addition to PD he was diagnosed with monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance a premalignant state associated with multiple myeloma which is associated with TCE exposure [ 60 ]. After serving in the military Mr. Alex Janssen worked in the construction and automotive industry. In these latter jobs he worked with degreasing chemicals such as TCE for approximately seven years. About five years after his exposure ended he noticed numbness on the right side of his body followed by difficulty walking up the stairs. He later experienced a stressful event that was followed by involuntary shaking in his right arm and leg and a PD diagnosis at age 33. The number and intensity of PD symptoms increased significantly over the years and he eventually had deep brain stimulation (DBS) which improved his symptoms and his quality of life. Three years later he developed fatigue headache and a facial droop. Brain imaging at age 53 revealed a stage IV glioblastoma situated next to a DBS wire. In 2020 Georgians took to the polls to elect two U.S. Senators in a closely watched election that would determine political control of the legislative body. The reason for the unusual election? Parkinsons disease. The late Senator Johnny Isakson who was diagnosed with PD in 2015 had stepped down due to health challenges in 2019 leading to a special election in 2020 [ 61 ]. Senator Johnny Isakson who died in 2021 at age 76 served for fifteen years in the U.S. Senate during which time he was a staunch advocate for veterans and co-chaired the Congressional Caucus on Parkinsons Disease [ 62 ]. In addition to his PD Senator Isakson had a two-centimeter renal cell carcinoma removed from his kidney in 2019 [ 61 ] a tumor associated with TCE exposure [ 63 ]. Nearly fifty years before his PD diagnosis the future Senator served in the Georgia Air National Guard from 1966 to 1972. The military including the Air Force used TCE to degrease airplanes during this period [ 64 ] and many military bases including those in Georgia [ 65 ] have been contaminated with the chemical [ 66 ]. As depicted by these cases the adverse health effects associated with TCE extend far beyond PD. Its toxic effects begin shortly after conception. TCE can cross the placenta [ 67 ] and maternal exposure to TCE is associated with low birth weight [ 68 ] congenital heart disease [ 68 ] and neural tube defects [ 69 ]. At the TCE-contaminated Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune at least seven babies had anencephaly and ten had spina bifida [ 19 70 ]. After birth TCE-linked diseases proliferate as the solvent is linked to conditions affecting nearly every organ system [ 71 ] including cancer. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and World Health Organization TCE is carcinogenic to humans by all routes of exposure [ 72 73 ]. A meta-analysis found occupational exposure was associated with excess incidences of liver cancer kidney cancer non-Hodgkins lymphoma prostate cancer and multiple myeloma with the strongest evidence for the first three cancers [ 74 ]. This is likely only a partial list. At least 78 men who lived at contaminated Camp Lejeune have been diagnosed with breast cancer [ 49 ]. In addition high rates of brain and other central nervous system tumors have been reported in animal studies [ 19 ] and in TCE-contaminated communities [ 75 76 ]. TCEs adverse health effects have long been known. In 1932 Dr. Carey McCord a physician working for the Chrysler Corporation wrote a letter to the Journal of the American Medical Association . He said that activities of TCE frequently fail to disclose the toxic nature of this chemical and the practical dangers that may attend its use. He then detailed experiments with rabbits in which repeated skin exposure to the chemical caused death in days. Inhalation of TCE under conditions of trivial exposure killed the rabbits in days if not hours. Ninety years ago he concluded that the solvent could be the source of disaster for exposed workmen [ 77 ]. The cases described demonstrate the potential role that TCE plays in PD. However they are far from definitive and far from the only ones. The vignettes highlight many of the difficulties in establishing a strong link between the invisible TCE and PD. Among these are the following: 1) many are unaware of their exposure; 2) exposure if present was usually unmeasured; 3) previous exposures cannot currently be measured; 4) in many cases exposure co-occurred with other pollutants; 5) time between exposure and disease is long; 6) underlying genetic risk factors which are often not assessed may augment the risk of developing PD following TCE exposure; and 7) diagnosis of PD is often delayed or missed. In just one of the cases above was the person a physicist aware of his exposure to the toxic chemical at the time it occurred and all were unaware of the health risks associated with the chemical. Those who drank contaminated water or inhaled polluted air outside or inside their workplaces schools or homes generally had no idea that they were exposed. Today sites known to be contaminated with TCE including many of the most toxic ones in the U.S. have no warning signs fences notices or other public notification of the inherent dangers. As a result it is challenging to determine whether exposure occurred. Moreover if exposure did occur retrospective exposure assessment of TCE is difficult. Exposure is almost never measured contemporaneously (indeed we are unaware of any case of PD associated with TCE where it was). Biomarkers of historical TCE exposure do not currently exist. The few studies [ 9 20 ] and case reports [ 11 73 ] available suggest that a dose-response relationship may be present as individuals who work most closely with the chemical have a shorter lag between exposure and disease onset. Like other environmental toxicants (e.g. smoking pesticides) exposure to TCE is often combined with other exposures. Many TCE-contaminated sites are polluted with PCE and other toxic hydrocarbons such as benzene and carbon tetrachloride which itself may be associated with PD. The effect of each individual compound has often not been assessed and research into the risk of exposure to mixtures of toxicants is needed [ 78 79 ]. The time between exposure and disease onset may be decades. Individuals if they were aware of their exposure to the chemical may have long since forgotten about it. Those who worked with the solvent or who lived near a contaminated site may have changed jobs or moved making retrospective evaluation of potential clusters challenging. Finally while TCEs effects on cancer are well-documented its effects on PD are only recently coming to light. Gashs study of factory workers who developed PD after degreasing metal parts with TCE was published in 2008 [ 9 ]. The twin study quantifying the high degree of association between occupational or hobby exposure to TCE and PD is only ten years old [ 11 ]. Many individuals who know they were exposed to TCE and subsequently developed PD have no reason to link the two. Today most clinicians are unaware of TCEs deleterious health effects even though they have been documented for over ninety years [ 77 ]. To address the large role TCE (and other chlorinated solvents) may play in fueling the rise of PD we need to do the following: 1. Conduct more research Given the widespread environmental contamination by TCE the authors of the twin study linking TCE to PD concluded the potential public health implications are substantial [ 11 ]. Unfortunately that prescient warning has largely gone unheeded. A search of TCE and PD on PubMed yields only 15 papers in the past decade [ 80 ]. By contrast a search of the genetic risk factor GBA and PD returns more published papers in just the last two months [ 81 ]. Among the pressing research needs are evaluating cohorts (ideally prospectively) of individuals (likely) exposed to TCE identifying biological markers of prior exposure better understanding the mechanisms of injury and assessing gene-environment interactions including those affecting TCEs metabolism. Further work is also needed to estimate the risk of TCE exposure in conjunction with other known neurotoxicants such as pesticides and risk factors like traumatic brain injury. 2. Clean and contain contaminated sites Hundreds of thousands of sites are contaminated across the U.S. and globally. They are found in strip malls where dry cleaners used to operate on military bases where use was widespread in cities near old manufacturing sites (especially those near rivers or streams) and in rural areas where landfills were created to dump hazardous waste. Fortunately contaminated sites can be remediated and homes schools and workplaces can be protected by vapor intrusion mitigation systems like those used for radon [ 82 ]. Until they are cleaned existing contaminated sites must be contained limiting exposure for humans and nature. Local regional and national authorities should take responsibility in overseeing rapid control of contaminated sites. 3. Monitor TCE levels and publicly communicate risk Most databases monitor emissions not current levels and monitoring tends to be sporadic and reactive. TCE testing in groundwater drinking water soil and in outdoor and indoor air should be widespread frequent and part of routine water quality testing. The results should be readily and publicly available. Polluted sites need to be marked as such and the dangers to health clearly communicated to all parties at risk. 4. Ban trichloroethylene In many ways the long-established health risks of TCE

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Triple-dip La Nia confirmed as BoM makes declaration (scimex.org) Search for stories experts & multimedia The Bureau of Meteorology has declared a La Ni a event is underway in the Pacific the third in as many years. They say this one is likely to peak in spring and return to neutral conditions early next year. Organisation/s: Australian Science Media Centre Note: Not all attachments are visible to the general public These comments have been collated by the Science Media Centre to provide a variety of expert perspectives on this issue. Feel free to use these quotes in your stories. Views expressed are the personal opinions of the experts named. They do not represent the views of the SMC or any other organisation unless specifically stated. For the third year in a row we are officially in La Nia. Triple dip La Nias are relatively rare - this has only happened three times before since records began in Australia from 1954 to 1957 1973 to 1976 and 1998 to 2001. What is even more uncommon is that we are now into our second consecutive negative IOD (Indian Ocean Dipole) which is unprecedented in the historical record. Both La Nia and negative IOD spell a wetter than usual spring and summer for the east coast although both are forecast to break down towards the start of the New Year. While the BoM has only just declared La Nia many other international weather bureaus have been saying weve already been in La Nia for a few weeks. And while the focus is on triple-dip this La Nia is forecast to be a much weaker version of last years event. The concern however is that river catchments and dams all along the east coast are already full and so it doesnt need much more additional rain to cause surface water and river flooding. We also know from the historical loss record that flood and cyclone losses along the east coast are significantly correlated with periods of La Nia. This third La Nia if it brings extreme flooding will devastate people who are still not back in homes flooded in February and March this year many of whom are still awaiting insurance claims tobe settled or have not been able to begin reconstruction. These people will slide into further inequality as they are unable to count on future resale insurability or even ability to cover theirexisting mortgages on their homes. The costs will not be confined to those at risk of flood but will affect all Australians. Over the past 12 monthsextreme weather has cost everyAustralian household an average of $1532. We can expect this figure to rise. This third LaNia shows that we must act now on mitigation andmanaged retreat from areas that are no longer viable for Australians to live. The ocean and atmospheric conditions of a La Nina have been evident for several months and a La Nina has been identified by other climate service organisations accordingly. The value of seasonal climate forecasts is significantly increased when they are made early. La Nina conditions shift the probability towards above average spring and summer rainfall. Whilst this may increase the likelihood of floods particularly as soil profiles and dams are currently largely full of water it also tends to increase agricultural productivity and recharge river systems and aquifers. These effects of a La Nina may be enhanced over the coming months because of the conditions in the Indian Ocean which also point towards higher than average rainfall. Historically La Nina conditions tend to bring cyclone tracks closer to the east Australian coast and further south than they would usually occur bringing increased risk of cyclone damage. As expected the Bureau has declared a further La Nia event. This is not good news for communities businesses homeowners and renters who are living or operating out of buildings and dwellings that are at risk from inundation. This may be particularly problematic for those that are still recovering from recent floods especially in light of the present challenges in securing the services of builders and building suppliers. It is an early and timely reminder for all to get storm-prepared pull out your flood emergency plan and think about how to respond if the waters begin to encroach. Major floods often occur later in the storm season (after Christmas) and this can lead to a false sense of security if flooding has not occurred before Christmas. A declared La Nina event means that most of Australia can expect a wetter than normal spring with the exception being in the South West. Looking to summer (October to March) an ongoing La Nina event would increase the chance of extreme rainfall occurring over much of the east coast. Moving into the Tropical Cyclone season ( November-April) an ongoing La Nina event means an increased chance of tropical cyclone landfall in the North as they tend to form closer to Australia's coastal regions. This is the fourth time we have had three La Nina events in a row since 1950. However given that in this time we have only had about 13 La Nina events counting the current event about 30% of La Nina events are triple dip events. Meaning that these are not that rare. Given the increased rainfall that occurs during La Nina events including an increase in Summer extreme rainfall we would expect to see an increase in flood risk over summer across much of Eastern Australia. We would also expect this to lead to a decrease in the chance of bushfires. But we do note that ENSO is not the only factor that influences extreme rainfall and bushfires so there is still a chance that we end up having a normal rainfall and a normal bushfire season. In terms of the agricultural impacts of this La Nina event an increase in rainfall can often be a good thing for agriculture if it is spread over months to seasons. However high precipitation amounts that occur over short periods (which is often referred to as extreme precipitation) can be very detrimental. I would bet my bottom dollar that there will be more flooding in eastern Australia in the next six months. The climate patterns in the Pacific Indian and Southern Oceans are all pointing to a wet spring. Since the rivers and dams are already full any significant rainfall will likely lead to floods. Three La Nia events in a row called a triple-dip La Nia have happened before during 1973-76 and 1998-01. Our understanding of how often this occurs is limited by the lack of historical observations over the ocean. There is not enough data to robustly evaluate trends in La Nia when we only have observations back to the 1950s. So the indicators suggest that another La Nia is apparent; what does this mean for Australians? Well for us on the east coast it suggests another wet ending to the year with above-average rainfall probable Looking at the Bureaus ENSO Outlook data it looks like we had La Nia events at the end of both 2010 & 2011 and in 2007 & 2008 but a period where conditions have been sustained for three years is not evident from their Outlook data that commences in 1980. Looking more broadly at the Bureau data that documents La Nia occurrences events that span portions of three years are evident (2010-12 2007-9 etc.) but three La Nia events in three years (impacting three springs/summers) is not evident in the data presented from 1902 onwards except for the period June 1973 until March 1976 when rainfall was above average over virtually the entire country and a period of 34 months from April 1954 until January 1957. So it looks like flooding could occur again bushfires may be suppressed due to the expected wet weather (but perhaps may increase in the future due to increased growth) and we might struggle to harvest and transport crops if the expected wet weather remains Different climate models have been providing warning of another La Nia peak with above average rainfall in eastern Australia during this years spring. However the models are not able to predict with certainty whether the above-average rainfall would actually result in floods; if the rainfall is spread out during an extended duration there might only be small-scale localised floods which is within the communitys management capacity. On the other hand recent trends indicate high-intensity rainfall events over short durations which have led to the recent flood disasters in eastern Australia. There is thus a cause for trepidation NSW has already been battered by a series of floods this year and also in 2021. Since the recent floods in July 2022 many people are still in temporary accommodation and have barely begun their recovery so at this time another flood would have devastating consequences; if the same places as before are impacted it might set back any gains made in the recovery process. On the positive side this early warning allows better preparedness and most emergency management agencies have gained iterative lessons over the recent successive floods. Therefore there is reason to expect a better response and management experience if there are indeed further floods this spring. I guess it was expected. If it is a strong La Nina like last spring/summer then it could be bad news for somewhere in eastern Australia (not necessarily Lismore). Most dams are full along the western slopes of NSW and southeast QLD so if the rain concentrates inland in those places its bad news. Having said that not all La Ninas produce extreme rainfall especially if they are classified as weak to moderate. The Australian Bureau of Meteorology has moved its ENSO outlook status from La Nia Alert to La Nia. The atmospheric circulation in the equatorial Pacific has strengthened in the past weeks so it is no surprise that La Nia has been declared. La Nia and El Nio appear every 3 to 7 years generally in an alternate way. But sometimes a second La Nia can manifest after a La Nia event in the tropical Pacific. These double-dip La Nia are not uncommon; about half of the La Nia events that occurred since 1950 were double-dip La Nia events. However triple La Nia events are quite rare in the historical record. Triple La Nia occurred only twice since 1950 (1973-76 and 1998-2001); some agencies would say three times depending on the index based. But the fact is that we are now experiencing a rare event again. And given that east Australia received above average rain with some areas suffering from floods this year and the last a third La Nia and the wet outlook for spring do not seem the best news for those regions. It is not very common to have three La Nia events in a row. While we cannot dismiss torrential rain over the coming months the chances of severe flooding are small for eastern parts of Australia. However the flood plain areas in NSW should be under elevated risk over summer. With higher chances of rain bushfire risk will remain low in NSW and QLD. If Tasmania experiences very dry conditions over summer the risk of fires is likely to increase. The additional rain over the past two years has resulted in lush growth in traditional bushfire risk areas. Over the past two years Australian coal exports were impacted due to extensive rainfall. Coal has to be in a reasonable dry state to be mined and exported. Supply of fresh produce has started to come back online. Further heavy rainfall is likely to disrupt supply chains. Some consumers are just starting to pay under $3 for lettuce. The price of tomatoes still remains elevated. Moderate rainfall in NSW is likely to benefit wheat canola and barley crops over spring and summer. A triple La Nia has only happened three other times in the past 120 years since national rainfalls were first collected. The concern with three successive La Nia years is the increased likelihood of flood at a time when the regions dams are largely full and rivers high. With a soaked catchment the runoff rate will be extremely high. Rainfall records tumbled in Queensland and New South Wales this year with some places recording flood peaks not seen in more than 100 years. The sheer scale and intensity of the natural disaster that swamped South-East Queensland and New South Wales caught many by surprise. The latest predictions of more extreme weather could be triggering for some. With floods so close together it is also easy to feel flood fatigue a weariness to coping with disasters which erodes our ability to cope. As weather patterns continue to change and urban development creates more impermeable surfaces that alters runoff it becomes increasingly difficult to predict what might be in store. The big question is what are we doing to prepare? As a community we could be mobilising volunteers to help prepare. We need a flood army beforehand rather than relying on the mud army afterwards to clean up the mess. Recent reports of mass marine turtles deaths on the beaches of Kgari Fraser Island and Rainbow Beach are of no surprise. We predicted this would happen. Marine reptiles are struggling to find food. Hundreds of turtles are in danger of starving to death in the coming months. It is only going to get worse even without the prospect of more extreme rainfall and possible flooding. The cause is sediment washed out from rivers and creeks from months of unusually heavy rainfall and flooding earlier this year that has smothered seagrass meadows taking away the primary food source of turtles and dugongs. In some areas such as the Fraser Coast only one per cent of seagrass beds remain. If we have another season like this one it is not going to be good. Expect more starving turtles. And more dugong strandings also. The most recent extreme weather events have taken their toll on many beaches and dunes along Australias eastern coastline. There is considerable erosion. For example weve observed that between Coolum and Sunshine Beach on Queenslands Sunshine Coast the dunes have eroded landwards by 15-20 metres and up to 3 metres in height. This has happened without major storms or cyclones. The chances of significant cyclones and storms are higher for the forecasted conditions this upcoming season. In the worst case we can expect levels of erosion similar to 1974 when conditions were similar with three back-to-back La Nia events. On a positive note dune vegetation has grown with the rains so that might offer some additional protection to some areas. A key learning from the recent floods is that our climate is supercharged by heating and that literally when it rains it pours. We have to be ready and prepared for worst-case scenarios. Research is a critical element in steps to mitigate the impact of coastal erosion from a changing climate. The pent-up demand following three summers of disruption will likely witness individuals and groups seeking to make travel plans where possible in advance to take advantage of early bird bookings and not risk destinations being booked out. Those who are navigating the unpredictability of La Nina in Australia may decide instead to travel to international destinations that are perhaps not as adversely impacted by such volatile summer seasons. On Destination Insights with Google searches for travel keywords by Queensland users between April and July 2022 revealed a 75% increase in searches for South-East Asian destinations like Indonesia Singapore and Thailand. The La Nina effect is going to require Australias tourism operators to be dynamic in terms of their offerings working very closely with other stakeholders to deliver the quality products and experiences that we are best known for. Some tourism operators whose businesses were swamped by flood waters earlier this year are still waiting to rebuild or have closed their doors. The significant floods that occurred in February and April this year have resulted in numerous insurance claims from tourism operators in regions like Gympie many of whom have waited six months or more for their payout. What we know less of is the psychological impact of these repeated disasters. There is not a lot of research on that repeated trauma but you can guarantee that it is going to be worse. And thats a problem. Apart from the obvious stress of having your home or business flooded it really is the disorientation that really hits people afterwards. When disasters happen in quick succession it is much more than just clean-up and keep-calm and carry-on. It is a much bigger question than just how do I get through this one trauma. It can be life-changing. What is my future now? Can I go on living here? The one that comes up trumps in terms of people actually getting through things such as floods and other disasters and feeling better about it is what we call problem-solving coping. My advice is to really break down what the problem is and what you need to do to mitigate it says Dr Sharman. This gives people a much better sense of control over their environment which relates to much lower levels of stress. It really is throwing yourself into practical solutions to problems or finding ways to minimise the damage that might occur. Australia Pacific NSW VIC QLD Media contact details for this story are only visible to registered journalists.

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Trudeau Invokes Emergencies Act (ottawacitizen.com) The Freedom Convoy that converged in Ottawa on Jan. 28 began in response to the federal governments move to require Canadian truck drivers crossing the U.S. border be fully vaccinated to avoid testing and quarantine requirements but has evolved into a protest of all public health measures aimed at fighting the COVID-19 pandemic. Organizers say they will not end their protest until all measures are dropped. Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Don't have an account? Create Account READ UPDATED COVERAGE OF THE ANTI-VACCINE MANDATE PROTEST FROM TUESDAY FEBRUARY 15. What you need to know: 10:30 p.m. Seven people claiming they are the operational organizers for truckers protesting on Parliament Hill spoke online Monday evening to say they arent planning on leaving the city. We came here to do something said Patrick King one of the Freedom Convoy organizers. We have a whole world watching us. It is our duty to continue on. King claimed some trucks are moving around downtown in order to keep them in a nice tight-knit area where we can keep close ties on them because of the ample amount of harassment and anti-protesters that are trying to come out from underneath the bridges. Counter-protesters demonstrated on the weekend including a group that blocked trucks at Riverside Drive near Billings Bridge on Sunday for hours to prevent protesters from going downtown. Tamara Lich president of the Freedom Convoy 2022 group said in a letter to Mayor Jim Watson released by the city Sunday that organizers were working hard to convince truckers to reposition their vehicles away from residential areas and closer to Parliament Hill. But both Lich and Benjamin Dichter the vice-president of Freedom Convoy 2022 later posted messages Sunday night suggesting that no deal had been made with Mayor Watson. Monday King and another speaker who identified himself as Jeff claimed the protesters are peaceful and dont want to disrupt the residents of Ottawa. Jeff said the truckers are distributing excess food donations to local shelters. 5:47 p.m. The city announces that while detours remain in place for all bus routes servicing downtown beginning Tuesday routes 10 11 and 16 will be changed based on more reliable access to streets in Centretown including sections of Bank Gladstone Albert and Bronson. Maps of the revised routes were available at octranspo.com the city said. Residents who need to travel in and out of downtown were instructed to use O-Train Line 1. Rideau Station can only be accessed through the William Street entrance the city said. It said traffic impacts remained fluid and that residents should check the online traffic map and the City of Ottawas Twitter account for information on delays and disruptions due to the ongoing demonstrations. 1 of 52 You may use a different browser or device to view this in full screen. 5:45 p.m. The mood at the protest Monday in the bitter cold was one of bitter defiance. Several dozen trucks were waved through the barricades by police and jockeyed for position on Wellington Street apparently part of the deal reported Sunday night between Mayor Jim Watson and Tamara Lich one of the convoys organizers. The big rigs moved into place parked perpendicular to the street directly facing Parliament Hill. But Kent Street remained completely blocked all the way to Cooper Street with all matters of trucks private cars tents and barbecues. And a group of truckers on Kent near Gloucester Street insisted that no such deal had been reached angrily denouncing the medias reporting of the demonstration. One trucker from London Ont. who would not give his name said he was there to protest rising fuel costs the Liberal governments carbon tax and the cost of emission tests for commercial vehicles. The vaccination mandate was just the straw that broke the camels back. This is about a lot more than that. Its about me trying to make a living. At the demonstrations main stage directly in front of the Peace Tower speakers read out messages of support they said came from around the world. Ive heard from people in Mexico who said they want to be here with us. Here! Even though its 20! one speaker said. This one is from truckers in India. Lets hear it for truckers in India! The crowd sang Happy Birthday to one woman who sent a message from Kentucky while another speaker brandishing a rams horn Shofar encouraged people to join a daily Jericho March around Parliament Hill. The speaker told the Biblical story of the Battle of Jericho in which Israelites marched around the walled city for six days then on the seventh day blew their trumpets and crumbled the walls. The group plans to blow their truck horns for 10 minutes on Thursday afternoon on the seventh day of their marches. Were going to have a battle cry for 10 minutes to say We will take this no more! the speaker said to a response of cheers and truck horns. Were going to see these walls of division come down and fight for freedoms to come back. So-called Jericho Marches were a feature of pro-Trump rallies after the 2020 U.S. election and were organized by far-right Christian groups who rejected the election results. Overall the mood in downtown Ottawa seemed uglier and more entrenched than during the previous weeks of the occupation. A sign at the National War Memorial depicted Prime Minister Justin Trudeau being hanged from gallows marked Nuremberg Trials. If you think this is a death threat think about what Justin has done to Canadians for the last 2 years it said. Another claimed falsely the prime minister had served 17 months in jail on drug charges. 5:05 p.m. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he has invoked the Emergencies Act as a last resort to bolster the police response to convoy demonstrators and to bring the situation fully under control. We cannot and will not allow illegal dangerous activities to continue Trudeau said from Parliament Hill. Trudeau will not be calling in the military he said. The move will supplement provincial and territorial capacity to address the blockades Trudeau said and will afford more powers to local police forces. The police will be given more tools to restore order in places where public assemblies can constitute illegal and dangerous activities such as blockades and occupations as seen in Ottawa the Ambassador Bridge and elsewhere. These tools include strengthening their ability to impose fines or imprisonment he said. The measures will be time-limited geographically targeted as well as reasonable and proportionate to the threats they are meant to address he said. The Emergencies Act will be used to strengthen and support law enforcement agencies at all levels across the country. This is about keeping Canadians safe protecting peoples jobs and restoring confidence in our institutions. Trudeau said the move could be used to render essential services such as contracting trucks to tow vehicles blocking streets. Financial institutions will be authorized or directed to take measures including regulating and prohibiting the use of property to fund or support illegal blockades Trudeau said. The act will also enable the RCMP to enforce municipal bylaws and provincial offences Trudeau said. Trudeau said he wanted to be equally clear about what the act does not entail and said he would not be calling in the Canadian Forces. Were not suspending the fundamental rights or overriding the Charter of Rights and Freedoms we are not limiting peoples freedom of speech we are not limiting freedom of peaceful assembly (or) preventing people from exercising their right to protest legally Trudeau said. We are reinforcing the principles values and institutions that keep all Canadians free. 4:34 p.m. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has announced the federal government is invoking the Emergencies Act Monday a sweeping piece of legislation that would give the government extraordinary powers to clear protests that have swamped downtown Ottawa and blockaded border crossing in several provinces. The Emergencies Act is the modern-day replacement to the War Measures Act. It allows the federal government to force companies to provide services it can require public protests to end and limit mobility rights by preventing people from moving to designating areas. The act also allows for the military to be used as police but several sources said that is not under active consideration. Meanwhile before going on a conference call with Trudeau and provincial premiers Monday morning Ontario Premier Doug Ford announced the province would lift most pandemic restrictions including vaccine passports by March 1. Masking would still be required until at least mid-March. Ford denied he was acting in response to the convoy protesters. Todays announcement is not because of what is happening in Ottawa and Windsor but in spite of it Ford said. He acknowledged pandemic restrictions have been divisive for many including his family. But Ford said the measures have helped save tens of thousands of lives. With the Omicron wave beginning to recede he said it is time to lift restrictions something the province has been planning to do for months. Ford warned protesters who continue to occupy Ottawa that they will face stiff penalties if they persist. This has to come to an end and it has to come to an end quickly. He warned protesters they could lose their vehicles and lose their licenses for life. We are going to throw every tool we have at you to make sure we bring stability to our province and country. Seventy-two hours after the Ontario government promised tough action the situation in Ottawa has gotten worse not better Ontario Liberal Leader Steven Del Duca said in a statement Monday. No $100000 fines no trucks seized Del Duca said pointing to silence from provincial officials and the time it took to shut down the trade-killing blockade of the Ambassador Bridge connecting Windsor and Detroit. Earlier today (Premier) Doug Ford stood here and admitted defeat in Ottawa Del Duca said. Given that reality I dont see how the federal government has much of a choice but to use its extraordinary powers as the Ottawa occupation cannot be allowed to continue. 4:23 p.m. City council was preparing for another special meeting on Tuesday afternoon to hear an update from city management about the occupation. Some councillors want the city to escalate enforcement with Matthew Luloff an army veteran who represents Orlans ward announcing on Tuesday that he wants the city to call the provincial government and request the militarys help to oust the occupiers. Occupiers continued to lug jerrycans into the red zone on Monday without hassle from the cops. The main northbound street leading to Parliament Hill was virtually turned into the Metcalfe pipeline as occupiers either pushed wheelbarrows of jerrycans or straight-armed the cans along the sides of their bodies as they lumbered up the incline past an OPP watchpoint. #Ottawa s Metcalfe Pipeline. pic.twitter.com/i5o4tiz57S Meanwhile Ottawa Public Health and the City of Ottawa are monitoring the impact of the convoy protesters on residents health. In a joint statement Medical Officer of Health Dr. Vera Etches and the citys general manager of community and social services Donna Gray said they are looking at increasing supports to reach people in Ottawa who are suffering. We understand people are feeling anxious frustrated isolated and tired and want this demonstration to end as soon as possible the statement says. It cites environmental pollution noise racism and safety concerns as negatively impacting peoples health and creating fear and anxiety. Many residents have felt the need to limit their daily activities leading to further isolation and mental health challenges especially for racialized groups vulnerable youth our 2SLGBTQ+ community people with disabilities people experiencing homelessness older adults and other groups said the statement. The citys human needs task force is working to help the most at-risk people access food housing social services and employment. People in need are encouraged to call 211 for help including emergency financial assistance and food. Ottawa Public Health is also focused on helping people get mental health and substance use help. They encouraged people to talk to friends and neighbours or to contact mental health supports including: * Distress Centre of Ottawa and Region support line 24 hours a day 7 days a week at 613-238-3311. In French there is Tel-Aide Outaouais: 613-741-6433 * Counselling Connect offers free counselling sessions over the phone or video call the same day or the next day * The Walk-In Counselling Clinic (reachable at 613-755-2277) offers free counselling without an appointment. Sessions are offered in French English Arabic Spanish Somali Cantonese and Mandarin by phone or video call * AccessMHA helps residents over the age of 16 connect to mental health and substance use health services * 1Call 1Click helps connect children youth and their families (from birth to 21 years of age) to mental health and addiction services and resources 2 p.m. Mayor Jim Watson said via social media that unnamed convoy leaders have started to act on their commitment moving several trucks from the residential district south of Wellington Street. This is a complex multi-day operation in support of our residents Watson said. The convoy leaders have started to act on their commitment to move several trucks from the residential district south of Wellington. This is a complex multi-day operation in support of our residents. According to media reports a few trucks have moved from other streets in the core onto Wellington. Meanwhile Pierre Poilievre called on the prime minister to listen to the science do what other countries are doing and eliminate mandates to get these truckers back to their jobs and their lives. Speaking to reporters before Question Period Monday afternoon Poilievre said he was against blockades but stood with peaceful and law-abiding protesters including truckers who are standing up for their freedoms and their jobs. He said protests cannot include blockades. I dont believe you can gain your freedoms by blocking someone elses he said. Poilievre declined to answer directly whether he would support the rumoured move to invoke the Emergencies Act and said eliminating mandates is an easier way. 2 p.m. The Alberta RCMP has arrested a small organized group of armed protesters participating in a blockade at the Coutts border crossing in southern Alberta. Mounties said they executed a search warrant early Monday morning on three trailers associated with the group finding 13 long guns handguns multiple sets of body armour a machete a large quantity of ammunition and high capacity magazines. Following the search they arrested 11 people. The group was said to have a willingness to use force against the police if any attempts were made to disrupt the blockade said the Alberta RCMP in a media release. This resulted in an immediate and complex investigation to determine the extent of the threat and criminal organization. 1:35 p.m. The City of Ottawa was granted its emergency injunction to restrain aspects of the ongoing self-described Freedom Convoy on Monday afternoon. Associate Chief Justice Faye McWatt of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice granted the injunction shortly before 1:30 p.m. after hearing arguments from the city the Attorney General of Ontario and the Attorney General of Canada. NEW: The Ontario Superior Court of Justice has granted the City of Ottawa's request for an injunction with respect to the protest. Memo attached. La Cour suprieure de lOntario a accord linjonction demande par la Ville dOttawa concernant la manifestation. pic.twitter.com/ff0XBYATXR Speaking on behalf of the city lawyer Kevin Nearing said that Ottawas residents right to a peaceful orderly society has been violated by protestors occupation of streets in downtown Ottawa. In particular Nearing cited infractions of noise idling control fireworks open-air fire and use and care of roads bylaws. City solicitor David White in a memo to council following the decision said the court order restrains persons from setting unlawful fires discharging fireworks causing noise encumbering or damaging a highway by any means and idling of vehicles in contravention of the Idling Control By-law. The granting of the injunction White added supports the Citys position that contraventions of municipal by-laws have negatively impacted the health safety and well-being of residents and visitors along with the economic social and environmental well-being of the municipality. Whites memo significantly noted however that the city cannot direct the actions of the Ottawa Police Service. The injunction he said simply supplements the tools available to law enforcement authorities to address the unlawful conduct of protestors. In granting the injunction Justice McWatt described the evidence as overwhelming. Adding that she would provide her reasons for granting the injunction at a later date McWatt noted its important enough and emergent enough that it should happen today. 10:03 a.m. Some city councillors have reached their breaking point with the occupation. Pleased to see this motion coming forward from Councillor Luloff. We firmly believe this is the only next step to get our city back. I have been pushing for this and I hope you support it too. #FreedomConvoy2022 pic.twitter.com/TToJ9TX5k5 Enough is enough Orlans Coun. Matthew Luloff said on Facebook sharing a proposed resolution that council petition Ontarios attorney general to write to the chief of defence staff to call out the Canadian Armed Forces. The aim would be to effect the immediate removal of all occupiers and their vehicles from the City of Ottawa. We need our City back Luloff said in a Facebook post. I intend to move this motion at the Special Council meeting tomorrow February 15th the first available opportunity. We firmly believe this is the only next step to get our city back Gloucester-South Nepean Coun. Carol Anne Meehan said. I have been pushing for this and I hope you support it too. 9:42 a.m. Ottawas mayor has set a deadline of noon Monday for truckers encamped in the capitals core to start to move out of residential streets in a bid to pare down the size of the protests footprint. Mayor Jim Watson outlined the proposal in a letter released on Sunday as part of a backchannel deal aimed at ending the ongoing protest against pandemic health measures. One of the protest organizers Tamara Lich tweeted late Sunday at 11 p.m. that the trucks would be leaving residential areas on Monday. There was dissension in organizers ranks however. Pat King one of the organizers of the protests posted a video on Facebook Sunday night telling truckers not to move their vehicles from downtown including residential areas or leave Ottawa. Hold the line King said repeatedly in the video titled Nobody move. King said the letter to Mayor Jim Watson from Tamara Lich the president of a group called Freedom Convoy 2022 was a lie and a false flag. To further confuse the issue Lich tweeted earlier Sunday at 8:27 p.m. suggesting no deal had been made with Mayor Watson. Benjamin Dichter the vice-president of Freedom Convoy 2022 posted a similar message. Both accused the media of lying about the issue. Nice try @ColtonPraill but @JimWatsonOttawa is not in charge of FEDERAL mandates as my comment clearly indicates. Plans to relocate trucks out of residential areas as agreed to will go ahead. https://t.co/UN8QEFATBO 9:40 a.m. A leak site says it has been given reams of data about the donors to the Canadian anti-vaccine mandate truckers after the fundraising platform popular with supporters of the movement allegedly suffered a hack. Distributed Denial of Secrets announced on its website that it had 30 megabytes of donor information from Christian fundraising site GiveSendGo including names email addresses zip codes and internet protocol addresses. At the same time GiveSendGo appeared to be offline. Visitors to the website were met with the message that it was under maintenance and we will be back very soon. A message seeking comment from the sites operators was not immediately returned early Monday. A Daily Dot journalist said on Twitter that the site suffered a hack overnight and had its front page briefly replaced by a clip from the movie Frozen and a manifesto accusing it of supporting an insurrection in Ottawa. Reuters could neither immediately confirm the hack nor the leak claims although Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDoS) has a long record of hosting leaked data from right-wing organizations including the far right Patriot Front and the Oath Keepers. DDoS said that because the donor information contains sensitive personal information it would not be making the data available publicly but will instead be offering it to journalists and researchers. 8:55 a.m. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is expected to speak with premiers Monday about the protest that started three weekends ago outside his office in Ottawa that has since spawned copycat demonstrations that have shut down several border crossings. One of those crossings the busy Ambassador Bridge connecting Windsor Ont. and Detroit Mich. reopened Sunday night after Windsor police cleared and arrested protesters blocking traffic. The bridge carries hundreds of millions of dollars in cross-border trade daily between the U.S. and Canada and its weeklong blockade had become a key concern for the White House. Trudeau spoke on Sunday night with senior federal officials and cabinet ministers about further actions the government can take to end the nationwide blockades and protests. Frustration over the protest has become palpable in the national capital where residents launched counter-protests over the weekend against the so-called Freedom Convoy. Counter-protesters turned the tables on a small Freedom Convoy in Ottawa South on Sunday locking down 25 downtown-bound cars and pickup trucks for most of the day on Riverside Drive. On Saturday more than 2000 counter-protesters marched chanting Whose streets? Our streets! while only a few kilometres to the north the citys downtown core remained occupied by a phalanx of trucks and thousands of people opposed to vaccine mandates. The big story out of Ottawa today is how the average citizen fed up with what has been happening in their city took to the streets and peacefully exerted themselves. I am sure there will be more on this tomorrow but for nowwow! Traffic impacts The City of Ottawa warned traffic impacts will continue Monday with residents still advised against non-essential travel in the core. Of the interprovincial crossings the Macdonald-Cartier Chaudire and Champlain bridges were open Monday. The Alexandra Bridge was closed except to southbound traffic until 10 a.m. with no heavy trucks allowed. The Portage Bridge was closed except to southbound essential workers. With road closures still in effect buses are unable to service the downtown core. Take O-Train Line 1. For most up to date information visit https://t.co/cOrNgy1nXs @OCTranspoLive & subscribe to My Alerts: https://t.co/WnyoX1U1Y6 pic.twitter.com/01Od8ruwjx All bus routes with service downtown were expected to remain on detour with residents who need to get in and out of the downtown core advised to use O-Train Line 1. Rideau Station can only be accessed through the William Street entrance because the Rideau Centre remained closed Monday. Ottawa City Hall and the Main and Rideau Branches of the Ottawa Public Library remained closed Monday. Ottawa Public Healths vaccination clinic at the University of Ottawa Minto Sports Complex was closed until Tuesday city hall said. An Integrated Command Centre was set up Saturday by Ottawa police in conjunction with the Ontario Provincial Police and RCMP. The command centre is expected to enhance the ability of Ottawa police to respond to the situation by making effective use of additional resources provided by policing partners. Federal Emergency Preparedness Minister Bill Blair told multiple news outlets Sunday the federal government is cautiously considering invoking emergency powers to end the convoy in downtown Ottawa. Blair said in an interview with CBC there have been daily discussions about using the Emergencies Act a version of which was previously used to address the October Crisis decades ago while saying the lack of local police enforcement has been inexplicable. With files from Megan Gillis Postmedia The Canadian Press Reuters VISIT OTTAWA pic.twitter.com/kotxe3yjSQ READ MORE COVERAGE OF THE ANTI-VACCINE MANDATE PROTESTS: Why parents participation in school activity should be dictated by the uniform they wear is beyond comprehension. The $330 million plan to revitalize Lansdowne isnt new. But the community associations model shows it in a light or shadow that architectural renderings provided by the Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group dont. Meanwhile hip and knee surgeries at the hospital's Riverside campus done by a private group of orthopedic surgeons called AOAO ran as scheduled on Saturday. Police were called to a commercial parking lot in the2600 blockof Innes Road at around 11:25 a.m. Sunday. Firefighters in Kemptville battled a stubborn blaze in a heritage building on the towns main street finally bringing the flames under control just after 3:15 p.m. on Saturday. 365 Bloor Street East Toronto Ontario M4W 3L4 2023 Ottawa Citizen a division of Postmedia Network Inc. All rights reserved. Unauthorized distribution transmission or republication strictly prohibited. This website uses cookies to personalize your content (including ads) and allows us to analyze our traffic. Read more about cookies here . By continuing to use our site you agree to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy .

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Trustfall: How to Query (Almost) Everything (github.com/obi1kenobi) A query engine for any combination of data sources. Query your files and APIs as if they were databases! Use Git or checkout with SVN using the web URL. Work fast with our official CLI. Learn more about the CLI . Please sign in to use Codespaces. If nothing happens download GitHub Desktop and try again. If nothing happens download GitHub Desktop and try again. If nothing happens download Xcode and try again. Your codespace will open once ready. There was a problem preparing your codespace please try again. Trustfall is a query engine for querying any kind of data source from APIs and databases to any kind of files on disk and even AI models. The Trustfall Playground supports running queries against public data sources such as: For example this link shows the results of the HackerNews query: Which GitHub or Twitter users are commenting on stories about OpenAI? In the Playground Trustfall is configured to run client-side as WASM performing all aspects of query processing (parsing compilation and execution) within the browser. While this demo highlights Trustfall's ability to be embedded within a target application it is of course able to be used in a more traditional client-server context as well. Trustfall was featured in the How to Query (Almost) Everything talk talk at the HYTRADBOI 2022 conference. Demo from the talk showing the execution of the cross-API query: Which GitHub Actions are used in projects on the front page of HackerNews with >=10 points? The demo executes the following query across the HackerNews and GitHub APIs and over the YAML-formatted GitHub repository workflow files: Instructions for running the demo are available together with the source code in the demo-hytradboi directory: link . Trustfall also powers the cargo-semver-checks semantic versioning linter. More details on the role Trustfall plays in that use case are available in this blog post . The easiest way to plug in a new data source is by implementing the BasicAdapter trait . Python bindings are available and are built automatically on every change to the engine; the most recent version may be downloaded here . A getting started guide for Python is forthcoming ( tracking issue ); in the meantime the best resource is the Python bindings' test suite . Copyright 2022-present Predrag Gruevski. Licensed under the Apache License Version 2.0 (the License); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0 Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing software distributed under the License is distributed on an AS IS BASIS WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License. The present date is determined by the timestamp of the most recent commit in the repository. By accessing and contributing code comments or issues to this repository you are agreeing that all your contributions may be used modified copied and/or redistributed under any terms chosen by the original author and/or future maintainers of this project. A query engine for any combination of data sources. Query your files and APIs as if they were databases!

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Tunnel via Cloudflare to any TCP service (thc.org) 3 min read Cloudflare's cloudflared tunnels are commonly used to 'publish' a web server that runs behind a firewall (e.g. making the webserver accessible from the Internet). Cloudflare restricts the traffic to HTTP-style traffic: It won't allow the publishing of SSHD for example. This article explains how to 'publish' any other service (like SSHD) and make it accessible via the cloudflared tunnel. It does so by adding a WebSocket Proxy on either side of the tunnel. You need websocat cloudflared and gost . Configure a tunnel to access SSHD on a server that is behind the firewall (via Cloudflare's cloudflared tunnel). On the server behind the firewall: The CF tunnel will show you an URL similar to this one: On your workstation: A more advanced method is to add a Socks5 Proxy to the chain of tunnels. This will allow us to access ANYTHING from our workstation: That's any host within the LAN and any host on the Internet. The Gost tool supports WS and Socks5 and is used instead of websocat and microsocks . On the server behind the firewall: On your workstation: Use some tools via the Socks Tunnel (via Cloudflare/Websocket): Notes: Cloudflare's Free Service limits the number of connections . Consider upgrading. We use mwss and mws to enable TCP multiplexing (channelling) via a single TCP connection in Gost. All TCP connections will go via a single CF tunnel (and a single Websocket-request). We use wss (with TLS) on the workstation but just ws (without TLS) on the server. This is because Cloudflare is the Edge-Server and the TLS connection stops there. Cloudflare then re-encrypts the data to send it via Cloudflared to our server. A Cloudflare tunnel is never (!) End-2-End encrypted: Use SSH or other encrypted tools if you do not trust CloudFlare (as they can read your data). All examples from this article were tested on Segfault's Disposable Root Servers . Thank you to EMX for proofreading. Like to publish an article? Send us what you got. We will review and help you improve your article and then publish it here. Join us on Telegram: https://t.me/thcorg

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Twilio is laying off 17% of workforce (twilio.com) Build the future of communications. Start today with Twilio's APIs and services. Posts by Stack Posts By Product Categories Subscribe to the Developer Digest a monthly dose of all things code. You may unsubscribe at any time using the unsubscribe link in the digest email. See our privacy policy for more information. This is an email that was sent out to all Twilio employees today from Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson. Team A company optimizes for its environment. For the last 15 years we ran Twilio for growth building a tremendous customer base product set and revenue base. But environments change and so must we. Now we have to prioritize profit far more than before. Were exiting the last phase with a great market position and very strong cash reserves but unfortunately that's not enough to get us through the next phase. We have to spend less streamline and become more efficient. To do that were forming two business units: Twilio Communications and Twilio Data & Applications. And today I'm unfortunately bearing the news that were parting ways with approximately 17% of our team. This is upsetting to be sure so I want to share with you the reasons for making this tough decision as well as some other changes. Why As weve refined our strategy over the past several months it's become apparent we need significant structural changes to better execute our strategy. This is because the two parts of our business communications and software are at different lifecycle stages and have different operating needs. In Communications we have to get more efficient. For Segment Flex and Engage we must accelerate growth. These are distinctly different tasks for our teams and our current structure is slowing our progress toward both these goals which are critical to our growth our profit and our Customer Engagement Platform ambitions. As a result were forming two business units: Twilio Data & Applications led by Elena Donio and Twilio Communications led by Khozema Shipchandler. Both will include Sales R&D and operational resources and each will be empowered to optimize based on the needs of their respective customers and businesses. Each will be able to sprint toward their goals with more focus and independence but theyre also highly complementary. I have said many times that Twilio's products are better together that we are One Twilio and that belief has not changed. When we look at these two business units on their own it's clear that we've gotten too big especially in Communications. And that's why we're also letting go of some colleagues today. It is painful to part ways with so many talented people but it's necessary to get our two businesses into the right shape to succeed. I'm sure you're wondering why we're making additional cuts to the team after the September layoffs. At that time we sought to streamline the company as it was then structured. Today's news however is more driven by the need to organize ourselves differently for success and the changes needed to enact this new structure. Both the reorganization and the reductions increase our ability to drive profit and growth both of which are required in this new environment. For our departing colleagues At Twilio we care about each other our customers and the world around us and in this situation it means we generously care for our departing colleagues. Here's what to expect for those who are departing: Inside the U.S. You will get an email in the next three hours at your personal email address. You'll be eligible for 12 weeks of base pay plus one week for every year of completed service at Twilio continued health coverage career resources and other support to help with your transition. You'll also receive the full value of Twilios February 15 vest. Outside the U.S. Youll receive an email or meeting invitation within the next three hours letting you know if youre impacted or may be impacted. You'll be eligible for at least 12 weeks of base pay plus one week for every year of completed service at Twilio career resources and other support in line with local practices. You'll also receive the full value of Twilios February 15 stock vest. Outside the U.S. there is a broad range of employment laws and well take great care to guide these Twilions and their managers through these processes such as required consultation periods. I know many of you who are impacted. I've worked alongside you and I've seen the amazing work you've done. Thank you you're a permanent part of Twilio and I'm sorry that we're parting ways like this. Getting more judicious with our spending Were winding down some of the perks weve historically offered including our book and wellness allowances. Weve also decided to sunset Twilio Recharge which I believe in but which (in retrospect) was ill-timed given our profitability goals. Those who are already eligible or will become eligible for Recharge by the end of 2023 will still be able to take it. (Other perk changes will vary by country so we will share that with each of you individually via email this week.) We have not however touched the most impactful benefits that are most essential to Twilions health and financial security including medical retirement and the Employee Stock Purchase Program (ESPP). As part of our shift to remote work we plan to close some Twilio offices over the next few months with the intent of maintaining at least a handful of global hubs and satellite offices. Weve seen very low office utilization so were going to redirect some of our cost savings into higher travel budgets so you can see one another more often something weve all been missing a lot. These closures will happen and be communicated in phases starting this week and continuing into the next few months. What's next For those of you remaining on this mission this will be hard. I know you have a lot of questions today. I hope youll understand that our priority for today will be your impacted colleagues globally so we can do our best to support them. Beginning tomorrow morning at approximately 8 a.m. PST youll hear from your BU or function leader via email so you can have clarity about where your role sits and your team structure. Then well hold a Company All Hands meeting to answer your questions about todays news. Well also make sure you know if your manager has changed by the end of the day tomorrow. I know this company the great people the tremendous empathy our collective desire to do the right thing. These changes hurt. The weeks ahead will be about processing all this change and working together to acclimate to our new structure. While tremendously difficult I believe these actions will put us on the right path for executing our strategy and creating an even stronger more efficient and more effective Twilio. -jeffiel We are always striving to improve our blog quality and your feedback is valuable to us. How could this post serve you better?

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Twitter applies 7-day suspension to half a dozen journalists (washingtonpost.com) Twitter suspended the accounts of more than half a dozen journalists from CNN the New York Times The Washington Post and other outlets Thursday evening as company owner Elon Musk accused the reporters of posting basically assassination coordinates for him and his family. The Post has seen no evidence that any of the reporters did so. The suspensions came without warning or initial explanation from Twitter. They took place a day after Twitter changed its policy on sharing live location information and suspended an account @ElonJet that had been using public flight data to share the location of Musks private plane. Many of the journalists suspended Thursday including Washington Post technology reporter Drew Harwell had been covering that rule change as well as Musks claims that he and his family had been endangered by location sharing. Twitter did not directly respond to questions about the suspensions. But Musk suggested on Twitter without evidence that the journalists had revealed private information about his family known as doxing. Criticizing me all day long is totally fine but doxxing my real-time location and endangering my family is not he tweeted late Thursday. Harwell whose most recent stories covered the ban of @ElonJet and the rise of baseless claims on Twitter discovered he was unable to log into his account or tweet around 7:30 p.m. Thursday. Harwell was banished from Twitter without warning process or explanation following the publications of his accurate reporting about Musk The Posts executive editor Sally Buzbee said in a statement. Our journalist should be reinstated immediately. At least eight other journalists were suspended the same evening including New York Times technology reporter Ryan Mac. CNN reporter Donie OSullivan was suspended shortly after posting a tweet about Musks claim that a crazy stalker had chased his young son in Los Angeles according to screenshots. Matt Binder a Mashable reporter was tweeting about OSullivans suspension when his account also went dark. Independent journalist Tony Websters account was also suspended as of Thursday evening. So were the accounts of former MSNBC host Keith Olbermann; Intercept reporter Micah Lee; Voice of Americas chief national correspondent Steve Herman; and Aaron Rupar a Substack writer with nearly 800000 followers on Twitter. Its impossible to square Twitters free speech aspirations with the purging of critical journalists accounts American Civil Liberties Union executive director Anthony D. Romero said in a statement. The First Amendment protects Musks right to do this but its a terrible decision. Their accounts should be restored immediately. The account bans were labeled direction of Ella in Twitters internal systems according to two former employees in contact with Twitters staff. Ella Irwin the companys head of trust and safety has carried out many of Musks orders since he purchased the company in late October and began upending its rules in the name of what he called free speech. A prior suspension was marked direction of Elon. this was the email that @elonmusk sent @drewharwell two days ago pic.twitter.com/tqqYnxLOQa Irwin told the Verge : Without commenting on any specific accounts I can confirm that we will suspend any accounts that violate our privacy policies and put other users at risk. Musk tweeted late Thursday that the suspensions would last a week although several of the reporters had been informed by Twitter they were banned permanently. Later that night he took a Twitter poll on when he should reinstate the accounts but restarted it after a plurality of respondents said he should do so immediately. Musk also repeated his baseless allegation that the journalists had revealed private information about his family. Same doxxing rules apply to journalists as to everyone else he wrote in another tweet. They posted my exact real-time location basically assassination coordinates . Around 11:30 p.m. Thursday Musk joined a Twitter Spaces chat essentially a public conference call with several journalists including some who had been banned in which he reiterated his claim that they had doxed him. The journalists challenged him on this. Youre suggesting that were sharing your address which is not true said Harwell. Musk retorted You posted a link to the address. Harwell replied In the course of reporting on @ElonJet we posted a link to @ElonJet which is now not online. Musk left the call abruptly about four minutes into it. Musk purchased Twitter for $44 billion in late October and quickly set about undoing many of the previous managements policies against hate speech and misinformation. He has moved to restore former president Donald Trump and other accounts suspended under prior management saying Twitters new policy is freedom of speech but not freedom of reach. But Musks Twitter had already banned some high-profile accounts before Thursdays apparent purge. On Wednesday @ElonJet was permanently suspended despite a tweet from Musk weeks earlier saying he would keep it up as part of my commitment to free speech. The same day a new Twitter policy outlawed the sharing of live location information including information shared on Twitter directly or links to travel routes actual physical location or other identifying information that would reveal a persons location regardless if this information is publicly available. Yet none of the tweets from suspended reporters that The Post has reviewed revealed the location of Musk or his family. Rep. Lori Trahan (D-Mass.) wrote on Twitter Thursday night that her staff had met that same day with Twitter officials. They told us that theyre not going to retaliate against independent journalists or researchers who publish criticisms of the platform. Less than 12 hours later multiple technology reporters have been suspended. The Committee to Protect Journalists assailed the suspensions in a statement: We are concerned about news reports that journalists who have covered recent developments involving Twitter and its owner Elon Musk have had their accounts on the platform suspended. If confirmed as retaliation for their work this would be a serious violation of journalists right to report the news without fear of reprisal. A spokesman for the New York Times called the suspensions questionable and unfortunate in a statement Thursday night. Neither The Times nor Ryan have received any explanation about why this occurred said Charlie Stadtlander. We hope that all of the journalists accounts are reinstated and that Twitter provides a satisfying explanation for this action. In a company statement CNN called the suspension of OSullivan and other reporters impulsive and unjustified and said that it had asked Twitter for an explanation. We will reevaluate our relationship based on that response. Faiz Siddiqui Joseph Menn and Elahe Izadi contributed to this report.

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Twitter faces new trend of animal gore videos beneath hidden replies (polygon.com) Filed under: Heres how to keep your feed clear of this imagery Twitter has a moderation problem that makes viewing any replies on the platform a risky gambit. As reported by NBC News videos of violence against animals on the platform have become ubiquitous in the replies to popular tweets. Searching cat in the search bar for instance can auto-complete as cat in a blender. These videos also autoplay for users who have not disabled that feature in their settings. Twitter has been struggling with moderation problems for a long time which escalated with Elon Musks purchase of the platform and the subsequent mass layoffs at the company. In 2022 users took advantage of the ability to purchase a verified checkmark via Twitter Blue to impersonate celebrities and brands. Twitter Blue made a series of changes after this initial wave although impersonation is still an issue . Use of hate speech has also become much more prevalent on Twitter. These videos are especially common in the hidden replies section which is designed to make low quality or harassing comments less visible. Hidden replies have gotten beyond out of hand They arent even funny anymore its just genuinely horrific awful shit that no human being should ever have to witness Im being dead fucking serious fix this shit Bro they gotta do something about animal abuse videos in the replies on here. It's getting worse. While Twitter appears to have turned off autocomplete suggestions in the sites search bar these videos can still appear in replies especially if the user has purchased Twitter Blue which boosts their replies to the top of the chain. In order to stop videos from showing previews users can go to their Settings and Privacy menu and select Accessibility Display and Languages. First check the Motion menu and ensure that Autoplay is set to Never. You can also check the Display menu and look for the Media Previews option. Once that option has been toggled media will preview as a text link instead of showing a thumbnail. Some user-made accounts like HIDDEN REPLIES CHECKER!!! will manually check hidden replies upon request sharing the contents of these posts with descriptions like Zootopia Rule 34 or its a man blowing his head off with a shotgun. As Twitters problems continue to mount its not clear whether this disturbing trend will be addressed by the platform. Other forms of NSFW and disturbing imagery are also easily found on Twitter including depictions of child death. A weekly roundup of the best things from Polygon Please check your email to find a confirmation email and follow the steps to confirm your humanity. Oops. Something went wrong. Please enter a valid email and try again. Please check your email to find a confirmation email and follow the steps to confirm your humanity. Oops. Something went wrong. Please enter a valid email and try again.

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Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer sources (reuters.com) NEW YORK April 25 (Reuters) - Elon Musk clinched a deal to buy Twitter Inc (TWTR.N) for $44 billion cash on Monday in a transaction that will shift control of the social media platform populated by millions of users and global leaders to the world's richest person. It is a seminal moment for the 16-year-old company which emerged as one of the world's most influential public squares and now faces a string of challenges. Musk who calls himself a free speech absolutist has criticized Twitter's moderation. He wants Twitter's algorithm for prioritizing tweets to be public and objects to giving too much power on the service to corporations that advertise. Political activists expect that a Musk regime will mean less moderation and reinstatement of banned individuals including former President Donald Trump. read more Conservatives cheered the prospect of fewer controls while some human rights activists voiced fears of a rise in hate speech. read more Musk has also advocated user-friendly tweaks to the service such as an edit button and defeating spam bots that send overwhelming amounts of unwanted tweets. Discussions over the deal which last week appeared uncertain accelerated over the weekend after Musk wooed Twitter shareholders with financing details of his offer. Under pressure Twitter started negotiating with Musk to buy the company at his proposed $54.20 per share price. read more Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated Musk said in a statement. Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey weighed in on the deal late on Monday with a series of tweets that thanked both Musk and current Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal for getting the company out of an impossible situation. Twitter as a company has always been my sole issue and my biggest regret. It has been owned by Wall Street and the ad model. Taking it back from Wall Street is the correct first step he said. Twitter shares rose 5.7% on Monday to finish at $51.70. The deal represents a near 40% premium to the closing price the day before Musk disclosed he had bought a more than 9% stake. Even so the offer is well below the $70 range where Twitter was trading last year. I think if the company were given enough time to transform we would have made substantially more than what Musk is currently offering said Jonathan Boyar managing director at Boyar Value Group which holds a stake in Twitter. However he added If the public markets do not properly value a company an acquirer eventually will. Musks move continues a tradition of billionaires' buying control of influential media platforms including Jeff Bezos 2013 acquisition of the Washington Post. [1/2] Elon Musk twitter account is seen through Twitter logo in this illustration taken April 25 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo Twitter said Musk secured $25.5 billion of debt and margin loan financing and is providing a $21 billion equity commitment. Musk who is worth $268 billion according to Forbes has said he is not primarily concerned with the economics of Twitter. Having a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important to the future of civilization. I don't care about the economics at all he said in a recent public talk. Musk is chief executive of both electric car maker Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) and aerospace company SpaceX and it is not clear how much time he will devote to Twitter or what he will do. Once the deal closes we don't know which direction the platform will go Agrawal told employees on Monday. read more Edward Moya an analyst at currency broker OANDA said in an email to clients the deal was great news for Twitter shareholders as it doesnt seem like the company was going to get things right anytime soon. But he also said: Tesla shareholders cant be happy that Musk will have to divert even more attention away from winning the EV (electric vehicle) race. Still Musk's 84 million-strong Twitter account is seen as an important free public relations and marketing tool for Tesla. The Twitter transaction was approved by the company's board and is now subject to a shareholder vote. No regulatory hurdles are expected analysts said. Daniel Ives an analyst at Wedbush said the company's board of directors had its back against the wall once Musk detailed his financing package and no other bidders emerged. Although it is only about a 10th of the size of far larger social media platforms like Meta Platforms Inc's (FB.O) Facebook Twitter has been credited with helping spawn the Arab Spring uprising and accused of playing a role in the Jan. 6 2021 storming of the U.S. Capitol. After Twitter banned Trump over concerns around incitement of violence following the U.S. Capitol attack by his supporters Musk tweeted: A lot of people are going to be super unhappy with West Coast high tech as the de facto arbiter of free speech. Trump whose company is building a rival to Twitter called Truth Social said in a Fox News interview on Monday that he will not return to Twitter. The White House declined on Monday to comment on Musk's deal but said President Joe Biden has long been concerned about the power of social media platforms. Our concerns are not new said White House spokesperson Jen Psaki adding that the platforms need to be held accountable. The president has long talked about his concerns about the power of social media platforms including Twitter and others to spread misinformation. Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. Reuters the news and media division of Thomson Reuters is the worlds largest multimedia news provider reaching billions of people worldwide every day. Reuters provides business financial national and international news to professionals via desktop terminals the world's media organizations industry events and directly to consumers. Build the strongest argument relying on authoritative content attorney-editor expertise and industry defining technology. The most comprehensive solution to manage all your complex and ever-expanding tax and compliance needs. The industry leader for online information for tax accounting and finance professionals. Access unmatched financial data news and content in a highly-customised workflow experience on desktop web and mobile. Browse an unrivalled portfolio of real-time and historical market data and insights from worldwide sources and experts. Screen for heightened risk individual and entities globally to help uncover hidden risks in business relationships and human networks. All quotes delayed a minimum of 15 minutes. See here for a complete list of exchanges and delays. 2023 Reuters. All rights reserved

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Twitters new 2-hour video feature is already making it a hub for pirated movies (qz.com) On Thursday May 18 Elon Musk announced that subscribers to Twitter BlueTwitters $8 a month premium servi ceare now able to upload two-hour videos up to eight gigabytes in size. Twitters free users meanwhile are only permitted to upload videos of up to 140 seconds. One problem for Twitter however is that feature-length films are often around two hours making the new feature deliciously tempting for people distributing pirated movies. User @coinbilly_ didnt wait to troll Musk. He replied directly to Musks tweet writing fuck it. shrek the third. He then posted the entire 93-minute feature film Shrek the Third. It didnt take long for Twitter to remove the uploaded film. Where the video once was there is now a note reads This media has been disabled in response to a report by the copyright owner. Twitter warned the account owner but let them back online after reviewing the companys copyright policy. Twitter Blue subscribers could previously upload videos up to one hour in length which already primed pirates to start posting albeit in chunks. In recent weeks 9.3 million people viewed a pirated version of The Super Mario Bros. Moviewhich is still in theatersbefore it was taken down The Verge reported. Users reported finding copies of Top Gun: Maverick and the three-hour-long Avatar: The Way of Water on Twitter too. Social media websites are generally responsive to take-down requests under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act a foundational law that protects copyright online. The law allows websites to avoid prosecution if they make a reasonable effort to remove violative contentlike the entirety of Shrek the Thirdif uploaded by third-party users. But Musk has decimated Twitters legal and content moderation staff since taking over in October so the companys ability to respond to pirated content likely isnt what it once was. And Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act which protects website owners from some legal liability for the content their users post does not protect against copyright infringement. Our free fast and fun briefing on the global economy delivered every weekday morning.

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U.S. FAA closes some airspace in Montana for Defense Department activities (reuters.com) WASHINGTON Feb 11 (Reuters) - The U.S. military said late on Saturday a radar anomaly prompted the temporary closure of airspace to civilian airplanes in Montana but no threatening object was detected. The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) sent fighter aircraft to investigate but the aircraft did not identify any object to correlate to the radar hits. NORAD will continue to monitor the situation. Earlier on Saturday a U.S. F-22 fighter jet shot down an unidentified cylindrical object over Canada the second such shootdown in as many days. Canada and the United States have been on heightened alert following an episode earlier this month where a Chinese high-altitude balloon the U.S. said was spying was tracked from Montana to South Carolina and then shot down off the coast. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) earlier on Saturday closed and then reopened airspace in Montana after temporarily barring flights in an area about 50 by 50 nautical miles (93 by 93 km) around Havre Montana near the Canadian border. The FAA issued similar flight restrictions in response to the earlier suspected Chinese spy balloon. Three lawmakers said on Twitter there was an unidentified object seen in Montana airspace Saturday. Representative Matt Rosendale a Montana Republican said on Twitter he was in contact with the U.S. military and monitoring the latest issue over Havre and the northern border. He said the issue was because of an object that could interfere with commercial air traffic the DOD will resume efforts to observe and ground the object in the morning. Senator Jon Tester of Montana wrote on Twitter he was aware of the object in Montana air space and remain in close contact with senior DOD and Administration officials. Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. Montana could become the fourth state to pass a law defining sex as strictly male or female and unchangeable raising concern among LGBTQ advocates who see such legislation as the next trend in Republican bills that limit transgender rights. Reuters the news and media division of Thomson Reuters is the worlds largest multimedia news provider reaching billions of people worldwide every day. Reuters provides business financial national and international news to professionals via desktop terminals the world's media organizations industry events and directly to consumers. Build the strongest argument relying on authoritative content attorney-editor expertise and industry defining technology. The most comprehensive solution to manage all your complex and ever-expanding tax and compliance needs. The industry leader for online information for tax accounting and finance professionals. Access unmatched financial data news and content in a highly-customised workflow experience on desktop web and mobile. Browse an unrivalled portfolio of real-time and historical market data and insights from worldwide sources and experts. Screen for heightened risk individual and entities globally to help uncover hidden risks in business relationships and human networks. All quotes delayed a minimum of 15 minutes. See here for a complete list of exchanges and delays. 2023 Reuters. All rights reserved

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The U.S. Department of the Treasurys Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is implementing new commitments made at the G7 Leaders Summit to hold Russia accountable for its war. From the beginning of President Putins illegal and unprovoked war our global coalition has focused on supporting Ukraine while degrading Russias ability to conduct its invasion said Secretary of the Treasury Janet L. Yellen. Our collective efforts have cut Russia off from key inputs it needs to equip its military and is drastically limiting the revenue the Kremlin receives to fund its war machine. Todays actions will further tighten the vise on Putins ability to wage his barbaric invasion and will advance our global efforts to cut off Russian attempts to evade sanctions. OFACs sanctions on 22 individuals and 104 entities with touchpoints in more than 20 countries or jurisdictions target those attempting to circumvent or evade sanctions and other economic measures against Russia the channels Russia uses to acquire critical technology its future energy extraction capabilities and Russias financial services sector. Additionally OFAC is expanding sanctions authorities to target new sectors of Russias economy and sever Russias access to new categories of services. The U.S. Department of State also designated or identified as blocked property almost 200 individuals entities vessels and aircraft . The U.S. Department of Commerce is significantly expanding the territorial reach and categories covered by its export controls and adding 71 entities to its Entity List to prevent Russia from accessing goods it needs for the battlefield. Also today Treasurys Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) and Commerces Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) issued a joint supplemental alert urging continued vigilance for potential Russian export control evasion. This supplemental alert builds on FinCEN and BISs first joint alert issued in June 2022 and provides financial institutions additional information with respect to new BIS export control restrictions relating to Russia. The alert also reinforces ongoing U.S. government engagements and initiatives designed to further constrain and prevent Russia from accessing needed technology and goods to supply and replenish its military and defense industrial base. It details evasion typologies and identifies additional transactional and behavioral red flags to assist financial institutions. OFAC is enhancing and expanding its use of Russia-related sanctions authorities by issuing a determination that identifies the architecture engineering construction manufacturing and transportation sectors of the Russian Federation economy pursuant to section 1(a)(i) of Executive Order (E.O.) 14024. This determination allows for sanctions to be imposed on any individual or entity determined to operate or have operated in any of those sectors and expands the United States ability to swiftly impose additional economic costs on Russia for its war of choice against Ukraine. This action complements existing sanctions authorities against those that operate or have operated in the metals and mining quantum computing accounting trust and corporate formation management consulting aerospace marine electronics financial services technology and defense and related materiel sectors of the Russian Federation economy. The new sectoral determinations are being made in support of the G7 Leaders commitment today to further target those operating in sectors key to Russias military-industrial base. In addition OFAC is taking action to sever Russias access to certain services from the United States or by U.S. persons matching measures taken by the United Kingdom and the European Union. Today OFAC issued a determination pursuant to E.O. 14071 prohibiting the exportation reexportation sale or supply directly or indirectly from the United States or by a United States person wherever located of architecture services or engineering services to any person located in the Russian Federation. This prohibition will take effect beginning at 12:01 a.m. eastern daylight time on June 18 2023. In conjunction with these determinations OFAC is issuing new guidance . OFAC is also amending Directive 4 under E.O. 14024 Prohibitions Related to Transactions Involving the Central Bank of the Russian Federation the national Wealth Fund of the Russian Federation and the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation to require U.S. persons to report to OFAC any property in their possession or control in which the Central Bank of the Russian Federation the National Wealth Fund of the Russian Federation or the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation has an interest. This reporting requirement is designed to provide additional information and fidelity on the Russian sovereign assets immobilized in U.S. jurisdiction. It is consistent with a similar measure recently adopted by the European Union and implements the G7 Leaders commitment today to take steps to fully map holdings of Russias sovereign assets that will remain immobilized in G7 jurisdictions until Russia pays for the damage it has caused to Ukraine. Increasingly as the world closes its doors to Russian business in response to Russias war of aggression against Ukraine Russia has turned to evasion and circumvention to attempt to acquire the goods its military-industrial complex desperately needs. These efforts are sometimes directed by Russias intelligence services and defense companies who stand to benefit from the procurement of hard-to-get goods. These targets implement the G7 Leaders call for third countries or other international actors who seek to evade or undermine economic restrictions to cease providing material support to Russias war or face severe costs. On February 24 2023 OFAC designated Swiss-Italian businessman Walter Moretti (Moretti) and members of his network pursuant to E.O. 14024. Moretti and his colleagues have covertly procured sensitive technologies and equipment for Russias intelligence services and military. Today OFAC designated five additional members of Morettis network. Germany national Dirk Troendle (Troendle) has assisted Moretti in the procurement of sensitive technologies and equipment for Russias intelligence services and Russias military. Mavasal Impex Private Limited (Mavasal) and Innoedge Cloudserve Private Limited (Innoedge) are India-based companies used by Moretti and his network to source and procure technology for Russian end-users. Specifically under the direction of Moretti and his colleagues Mavasal and Innoedge purchase advanced technology and then re-sell it to Russian state-owned enterprises including entities involved in Russian nuclear weapons-related research and development. India national Sharda Subramaniam (Subramaniam) has helped procure equipment and technology including military materiel from India to Russia on behalf of Moretti. India national Surya Dutta (Dutta) has sourced and coordinated the shipment of various goods including military gear to Russia on Morettis behalf. Troendle was designated pursuant to E.O. 14024 for having materially assisted sponsored or provided financial material or technological support for or goods or services to or in support of Moretti a person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to E.O. 14024. Mavasal and Innoedge were designated pursuant to E.O. 14024 for being owned or controlled by or for having acted or purported to act for or on behalf of directly or indirectly the Government of the Russian Federation. Subramaniam and Dutta were designated pursuant to E.O. 14024 for having acted or purported to act for or on behalf of directly or indirectly Moretti a person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to E.O. 14024. Liechtenstein-based company Trade Initiative Establishment (TIE) has been involved in the procurement of semiconductor and nanotechnology production equipment for U.S.-designated Russian entities since at least 2012. Limited Liability Company TBS (TBS) is a technology company located in Moscow that provides testing systems for the microelectronic industry. Russias intelligence services have used TBS to enable payments and ship equipment on behalf of Russian customers. Russian Federation national Natalya Yuryevna Vinogradova (Vinogradova) is the majority shareholder and general director of TBS. IGT Intergestions Trust Reg (IGT) a Liechtenstein-based trust company also engaging in business accounting and management consulting coordinated between TIE and TBS and European technology firms and banks in order to procure technology equipment for U.S.-designated Russian end-users without raising suspicion. Russian Federation nationals Andrey Vladimirovich Timoshin (Timoshin) and Anton Yuryevich Lestafye (Lestafye) worked with TBS TIE and IGT to procure semiconductor and nanotechnology production equipment for U.S.-designated Russian entities. Timoshin and Lestafyes procurement activity was directed by Russias intelligence services. Liechtenstein national Pascal Dominik Buechel (Buechel) is the general director of TIE and a director of IGT. While employed by IGT Buechel conducted business for TIE. TBS TIE Vinogradova Timoshin and Lestafye were designated pursuant to E.O. 14024 for operating or having operated in the technology sector of the Russian Federation economy. IGT was designated pursuant to E.O. 14024 for being owned or controlled by or for having acted or purported to act for or on behalf of directly or indirectly TIE. Buechel was designated pursuant to E.O. 14024 for being or having been a leader official senior executive officer or member of the board of directors of TIE. Netherlands national Edwin Onno Van Ingen (Van Ingen) through his company Ronin Management B.V. (Ronin) is a primary Europe-based procurement agent for Russian laboratories focused on nuclear weapon design and development as well as research on advanced conventional weapons technologies. Russias intelligence services often task Van Ingen to solicit offers and procure technologies such as advanced manufacturing scientific and measuring equipment. Van Ingen then approaches manufacturers and resellers and in many cases helps mask the real end-user of the equipment being bought and helps organize the equipments transshipment to Russia. Van Ingen was designated pursuant to E.O. 14024 for having acted or purported to act for or on behalf of directly or indirectly the Government of the Russian Federation. Ronin was designated pursuant to E.O. 14024 for being owned or controlled by or for having acted or purported to act for or on behalf of directly or indirectly the Government of the Russian Federation. Van Ingen has two other Netherlands-based companies Pro Rata Solutions B.V. (Pro Rata) a business services provider and Delta Technical and Scientific Instruments B.V. (Delta Technical) a wholesaler. Pro Rata and Delta Technical were designated pursuant to E.O. 14024 for being owned or controlled by or having acted or purported to act for or on behalf of directly or indirectly Van Ingen. On March 3 2022 Radioavtomatika LLC (Radioavtomatika) an entity that specializes in procuring foreign items for Russias defense industry was designated pursuant to E.O. 14024 . Additional sanctions actions since then have targeted companies based in Armenia the Peoples Republic of China Trkiye and Uzbekistan procuring components for Radioavtomatika as well as individuals associated with Radioavtomatika. Today OFAC is targeting additional individuals and entities tied to Radioavtomatika. Russian Federation national Pavel Viktorovich Akifyev (Akifyev) has been coordinating with Radioavtomatika to procure electronic components by way of various intermediary firms including Czechia-based Versvet SRO (Versvet) and Russia-based LLC Symphony (Symphony)both of which are owned and directed by Russian Federation national Svetlana Yuryevna Verkhovtseva (Verkhovtseva)and Akifyevs Russia-based companies Trust Logistic and OOO Trast Lodzhistiks Grupp (TLG). Since Radioavtomatika was added to OFACs List of Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons (SDN List) it has repeatedly attempted to utilize such intermediaries to import foreign electronic components into Russia in an effort to evade sanctions. Components purchased by these intermediaries have contributed to the development of Russian advanced conventional weapons systems among other Russian military projects. Trust Logistic and TLG were previously added to the Department of Commerces Entity List. Akifyev Symphony and Verkhovtseva were designated pursuant to E.O. 14024 for operating or having operated in the technology sector of the Russian Federation economy. Trust Logistic and TLG were designated pursuant to E.O. 14024 for being owned or controlled by or for having acted or purported to act for or on behalf of directly or indirectly Akifyev. Versvet was designated pursuant to E.O. 14024 for being owned or controlled by or for having acted or purported to act for or on behalf of directly or indirectly Verkhovtseva. OFAC is also targeting the channels Russia uses to access inputs that allow it to rebuild its war machine. In particular OFAC is disrupting Russias ability to acquire foreign-made semiconductors and other microelectronics necessary for the maintenance and development of its military-industrial complex. With its supply chains decimated by the economic measures taken by the United States in concert with partners from around the world Russia has been forced to adopt other means and methods to acquire the technology it desperately needs. One of the most common tactics detailed in the March 2023 Compliance Note is the use of third-party intermediaries or transshipment points to circumvent restrictions disguising the involvement of persons on the SDN List or entities on the Department of Commerces Entity List in transactions and obscuring the true identities of Russian end-users. As noted in FAQ 1092 OFAC will continue to target Russias efforts to resupply and sustain its war of aggression against Ukraine including any foreign persons who assist Russia in those efforts. These actions also implement the G7 Leaders commitment today to starve Russia of G7 technology industrial equipment and services that support its war machine. Russias Ostec Group imports and distributes quantum and semiconductor technologies to Russian defense entities specializing in the supply of foreign microelectronics and production equipment to the Russian military-industrial complex. Today OFAC designated 12 entities that comprise the Ostec Group as well as two associated individuals. The following Russia-based Ostec Group companies were designated pursuant to E.O. 14024 for operating or having operated in the technology sector of the Russian Federation economy: OFAC also designated Russian Federation nationals Vadim Veniaminovich Garshin (Garshin) and Aleksandr Gennadievich Razorenov (Razorenov) who together own the companies in the Ostec Group. Razorenov is also the director of Ostec Enterprise Ltd. Garshin and Razorenov were designated pursuant to E.O. 14024 for operating or having operated in the technology sector of the Russian Federation economy. Garshin and Razorenov also own other companies in the Ostec Group including Ostec-Arttool Ltd (Ostec-Arttool) GEFESD Ltd (GEFESD) and Limited Liability Company Businesspromestate (Businesspromestate). Ostec-Arttool GEFESD and Businesspromestate were designated pursuant to E.O. 14024 for being owned or controlled by or for having acted or purported to act for or on behalf of directly or indirectly Garshin and Razorenov. Poland-based freight company Inter-Trans Spolka z Ograniczona Odpowiedzialnoscia (Inter-Trans) has facilitated hundreds of shipments of electronic components and other goods bound for Ostec Group companies including since the beginning of Russias invasion of Ukraine. Poland national Jacek Romuald Swiniarski (Swiniarski) holds commercial power of attorney and acts as a proxy for Inter-Trans. Inter-Trans is owned by Belarus national Evgueni Kostiouk (Kostiouk) who is also the Chief Executive Officer and sole board member of the company. Kostiouk is also the ultimate owner of Germany-based freight forwarder Belmagistralavtotrans Speditions GmbH (BMA Spedition) which arranges transports between Western Europe and Russia Belarus and other former Soviet republics. BMA Spedition has also been involved in the transfer of equipment to the Ostec Group. Inter-Trans and Kostiouk were designated pursuant to E.O. 14024 for operating or having operated in the technology sector of the Russian Federation economy. Swiniarski was designated pursuant to E.O. 14024 for having acted or purported to act for or on behalf of directly or indirectly Inter-Trans. BMA Spedition was designated pursuant to E.O. 14024 for being owned or controlled by or for having acted or purported to act for or on behalf of directly or indirectly Kostiouk. Koneisto International Oy (Koneisto) is a Finland-based technology company that offers clients a wide variety of goods and services including computer components laboratory equipment surveillance and security equipment and metal processing machinery. Koneisto has shipped optoelectronic goods and laboratory equipment to two U.S.-designated Russian technology companies PSV Technologies LLC and Limited Liability Company Promtekhekspert. Russian Federation national Alexander Sakulin (Sakulin) is the managing director of Koneisto and Finland national Evgenia Dremova (Dremova) is a deputy board member of Koneisto. Dremovas company Hi-Tech Koneisto International Oy (Hi-Tech Koneisto) shares an address with Koneisto. Koneisto Sakulin and Dremova were designated pursuant to E.O. 14024 for operating or having operated in the technology sector of the Russian Federation economy. Hi-Tech Koneisto was designated pursuant to E.O. 14024 for being owned or controlled by or for having acted or purported to act for or on behalf of directly or indirectly Dremova. Estonia-registered Elmec Trade OU (Elmec Trade) has shipped millions of dollars of electronics to Russia since the beginning of Russias full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In particular Elmec Trade has shipped U.S.-manufactured electronic components to Russian companies Limited Liability Company Kvazar (Kvazar) an importer of U.S.-manufactured electronic components and Limited Liability Company Spetsvoltazh (Spetsvoltazh) an importer and distributor of U.S.- Europe- and Asia-made electronic components. Elmec Trade Kvazar and Spetsvoltazh were designated pursuant to E.O. 14024 for operating or having operated in the electronics sector of the Russian Federation economy. Despite the economic restrictions in place to prevent Russia from importing sensitive and dual-use goods Russian companies continue to attempt to import foreign-made technology such as semiconductors and related equipment and components. Foreign persons should be aware that doing business with Russian technology and electronics companies puts them at risk of being sanctioned themselves. Today OFAC is designating more than 30 companies that import ship or manufacture electronics components semiconductors and microelectronics to or in Russia. OFAC designated the following Russia-based companies pursuant to E.O. 14024 for operating or having operated in the electronics sector of the Russian Federation economy: Additionally OFAC designated Russian Federation national Anton Anatolyevich Efimov (Efimov) the owner of Avesto OOO and Inelso OOO. Efimov also owns a firm in Estonia Elfaro OU that was formerly known as OU Inelso. Efimov was designated pursuant to E.O. 14024 for operating or having operated in the electronics sector of the Russian Federation economy. Elfaro OU was designated pursuant to E.O. 14024 for being owned or controlled by or for having acted or purported to act for or on behalf of directly or indirectly Efimov. Lastly Brand Server Options (BSO) is a Russia-based supplier of components and spare parts for server equipment. BSO was designated pursuant to E.O. 14024 for operating or having operated in the technology sector of the Russian Federation economy. Building on the continued success of the G7 price cap coalition in reducing Russias energy revenue while mitigating spillover effects on global energy security OFAC is taking targeted action to limit Russias future extractive capabilities in support of additional commitments made by G7 Leaders today. Todays sanctions target training grounds for Russias future energy specialists the Russian research institutes where new extraction technologies are developed Russian companies that facilitate drilling and mining operations and firms that attract and advise on investment in Russias energy industry. Russia-based Federal State Budget Educational Institution of Higher Education Saint-Petersburg Mining University (SPMI) researches the extraction and processing of raw materials. SPMI works closely with oil and gas companies to develop extraction strategies and SPMIs students are directly recruited by Russian companies to work in the oil and gas industry. Additionally SPMI has historically directly supported Russian Federation military efforts by developing new metals technologies for use in war. Russian Federation national Vladimir Stefanovich Litvinenko (Litvinenko) the current rector of SPMI was installed in his position by U.S.-designated Russian President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (Putin) in 1994. Litvinenko also served as Putins regional campaign manager on three separate occasions. The Litvinenko family is currently worth several billion dollars. Russia-based Federal State Budgetary Educational Institution of Higher Education Sergo Ordzhonikidze Russian State University for Geological Prospecting (MGRI) works on geological exploration technology with a focus on preparing specialists for the oil and gas industry. Russia-based State Budgetary Educational Institution of Higher Education Almetyevsk State Oil Institute (ASOI) helps companies in the Russian oil and gas industry with technology development. Federal State Budgetary Educational Institution of Higher Education Grozny State Oil Technical University Named After Academician M.D. Millionshchikov (GSOTU) is the oldest specialized oil university in Russia. GSOTU conducts technical training and studies involving oil and gas production. Russia-based Federal State Budgetary Educational Institution Of Higher Vocational Education Gubkin Russian State University Of Oil And Gas (Gubkin) develops technologies to improve the efficiency of Russias oil and gas industries and reduce their dependence on imported supplies. SMPI MGRI ASOI GSOTU and Gubkin were designated pursuant to E.O. 14024 for operating or having operated in the technology sector of the Russian Federation economy. Litvinenko was designated pursuant to E.O. 14024 for being or having been a leader official senior executive officer or member of the board of directors of SPMI. Additionally Litvinenko was designated pursuant to E.O. 14024 for operating or having operated in the metals and mining sector of the Russian Federation economy. Russia-based research institute Gazprom VNIIGAZ OOO (VNIIGAZ) is the main research center for Public Joint Stock Company Gazprom which is subject to prohibitions pursuant to Directive 4 of Executive Order 13662 and Directive 3 of Executive Order 14024. VNIIGAZ develops new technologies for Russias oil and gas industry. Russia-based research institute The Federal State Unitary Enterprise V.A. Kargin Scientific-Research Institute of Chemistry and Technology of Polymers With a Pilot Production Plant (NII Polymerov) develops polymers for Russias oil and gas industry as well as for Russias military-industrial complex. Russia-based Institute of Petroleum Chemistry Siberian Branch of The Russian Academy of Sciences (IPC SB RAS) researches and develops advanced technologies for enhanced oil recovery preparation transportation and refining. Russia-based Siberian Scientific Research Institute of Geology Geophysics and Mineral Raw Material Joint Stock Company (SNIIGGIMS JSC) is a large state-owned research institute in Siberia focused on finding oil and gas deposits. SNIGGIMS JSC performs exploration activities processes seismic data and provides scientific support to well drilling. Russia-based state-owned All Russia Petroleum Research Exploration Institute Joint Stock Company (VNIGRI JSC) has contributed to Russias national economy through the discovery of oil and gas deposits. Russia-based state-owned All Russian Scientific Research Institute of Geophysical Prospecting Joint Stock Company (VNIIGEOFIZIKA JSC) is involved in prospecting and exploring for oil and gas fields. Russia-based state-owned Energy Research Institute of The Russian Academy of Sciences (INEI RAN) provides scientific analysis in order to forecast and develop Russias national energy policy and markets. VNIIGAZ NII Polymerov and IPC SB RAS were designated pursuant to E.O. 14024 for operating or having operated in the technology sector of the Russian Federation economy. SNIIGGIMS JSC VNIGRI JSC VNIIGEOFIZIKA JSC and INEI RAN were designated pursuant to E.O. 14024 for being owned or controlled by or for having acted or purported to act for or on behalf of directly or indirectly the Government of the Russian Federation. Russia-based Gazpromneft Noyabrsk Oil and Gas Geophysics Limited Liability Company (Gazpromneft NNGGF) offers technology services for drilling wells. Russia-based Mashoil Limited Liability Company (Mashoil) supplies hydraulic fracturing equipment and equipment for mobile drilling rigs and directional drilling. Mashoil also manufactures machinery for mining quarrying and construction. Russia-based drilling company JSC NGT (NGT) produces downhole drilling equipment for the oil and gas industry. Russia-based Oil Enerdzhi Limited Liability Company (Oil Enerdzhi) is involved in the production of additives for hydraulic fracturing. Oil Enerdzhi also manufactures and sells machinery for mining and construction. Russia-based Tatburneft Limited Liability Company (Tatburneft) specializes in drilling wells and other mining support activities. Russia-based Public Joint Stock Company Tyazhpressmash (Tyazhpressmash) is a leading machine building company that operates steel and iron forges. Tyazhpressmash also manufactures mining machinery. Russia-based Uralmash Oil and Gas Equipment Holding Limited Liability Company (Uralmash) is the largest manufacturer of drilling rig

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U.S. and China wage war beneath the waves over internet cables (reuters.com) Subsea cables which carry the world's data are now central to the U.S.-China tech war. Washington fearful of Beijing's spies has thwarted Chinese projects abroad and choked Big Tech's cable routes to Hong Kong Reuters has learned. By JOE BROCK Filed March 24 2023 11 a.m. GMT SINGAPORE It started out as strictly business: a huge private contract for one of the worlds most advanced undersea fiber-optic cables. It became a trophy in a growing proxy war between the United States and China over technologies that could determine who achieves economic and military dominance for decades to come. In February American subsea cable company SubCom LLC began laying a $600-million cable to transport data from Asia to Europe via Africa and the Middle East at super-fast speeds over 12000 miles of fiber running along the seafloor. That cable is known as South East AsiaMiddle EastWestern Europe 6 or SeaMeWe-6 for short. It will connect a dozen countries as it snakes its way from Singapore to France crossing three seas and the Indian Ocean on the way. It is slated to be finished in 2025. It was a project that slipped through Chinas fingers. A Chinese company that has quickly emerged as a force in the subsea cable-building industry HMN Technologies Co Ltd was on the brink of snagging that contract three years ago. The client for the cable was a consortium of more than a dozen global firms. Three of Chinas state-owned carriers China Telecommunications Corporation (China Telecom) China Mobile Limitedand China United Network Communications Group Co Ltd (China Unicom) had committed funding as members of the consortium which also included U.S.-based Microsoft Corp and French telecom firm Orange SA according to six people involved in the deal. HMN Tech whose predecessor company was majority-owned by Chinese telecom giant Huawei Technologies Co Ltd was selected in early 2020 to manufacture and lay the cable the people said due in part to hefty subsidies from Beijing that lowered the cost. HMN Techs bid of $500 million was roughly a third cheaper than the initial proposal submitted to the cable consortium by New Jersey-based SubCom the people said. The Singapore-to-France cable would have been HMN Techs biggest such project to date cementing it as the worlds fastest-rising subsea cable builder and extending the global reach of the three Chinese telecom firms that had intended to invest in it. But the U.S. government concerned about the potential for Chinese spying on these sensitive communications cables ran a successful campaign to flip the contract to SubCom through incentives and pressure on consortium members. Reuters has detailed that effort here for the first time. Its one of at least six private undersea cable deals in the Asia-Pacific region over the past four years where the U.S. government either intervened to keep HMN Tech from winning that business or forced the rerouting or abandonment of cables that would have directly linked U.S. and Chinese territories. The story of those interventions by Washington hasnt been previously reported. SubCom had no comment on the SeaMeWe-6 battle and HMN Tech did not respond to requests for comment. In a statement last year about infrastructure projects the White House briefly noted that the U.S. government helped SubCom to win the Singapore-to-France cable contract without giving details.Chinas foreign ministry did not respond to requests for comment. China Telecom China Mobile China Unicom and Orange did not respond to requests for comment. Microsoft declined to comment. Undersea cables are central to U.S.-China technology competition. Across the globe there are more than 400 cables running along the seafloor carrying over 95% of all international internet traffic according to TeleGeography a Washington-based telecommunications research firm. These data conduits which transmit everything from emails and banking transactions to military secrets are vulnerable to sabotage attacks and espionage a U.S. government official and two security analysts told Reuters. The potential for undersea cables to be drawn into a conflict between China and self-ruled Taiwan was thrown into sharp relief last month. Two communications cables were cut that connected Taiwan with its Matsu islands which sit close to the Chinese coast. The islands 14000 residents were disconnected from the internet. Taiwanese authorities said they suspected a Chinese fishing vessel and a Chinese freighter caused the disruption. However they stopped short of calling it a deliberate act and said there was no direct evidence showing the Chinese ships were to blame. China which considers Taiwan a breakaway province has ratcheted up military and political efforts to force the island to accept its dominion. Eavesdropping is a worry too. Spy agencies can readily tap into cables landing on their territory. Justin Sherman a fellow at the Cyber Statecraft Initiative of the Atlantic Council a Washington-based think tank told Reuters that undersea cables were a surveillance gold mine for the worlds intelligence agencies. When we talk about U.S.-China tech competition when we talk about espionage and the capture of data submarine cables are involved in every aspect of those rising geopolitical tensions Sherman said. Two of the projects upended by the U.S. government involved cables that had already been manufactured and laid thousands of miles across the Pacific Ocean. U.S. tech behemothsGoogle LLC Meta Platforms Inc and Amazon.com Inc were major investors in at least one or in Metas case both of those cables according to public announcements made about the projects. The delays and rerouting of the cables cost each of those companies tens of millions of dollars in lost revenue and additional costs four sources who worked on the projects said. Amazon Meta and Googledeclined to comment about these projects or the cable wars. SubComs cable coup is part of a wider effort in Washington aimed at reining in China as Beijing strives to become the world's dominant producer of advanced technologies be it submarines semiconductor chips artificial intelligence or drones. Chinais bulking up its military arsenal with sophisticated armaments. And Beijinghas become increasingly assertive about countering U.S. influence worldwide through trade weapons and infrastructure deals that are drawing wide swaths of the globe into its orbit. The U.S. cable effort has been anchored by a three-year-old interagency task force informally known as Team Telecom. To oust the Chinese builder from the Singapore-to-France cable the United States proffered sweeteners and warnings to the projects investors. On the sweetener side the U.S. Trade and Development Agency (USTDA) told Reuters it offered training grants valued at a total of $3.8 million to five telecom companies in countries on the cables route in return for them choosing SubCom as the supplier. Telecom Egypt and Network i2i Limited a company owned by Indias Bharti Airtel Limited got $1 million apiece USTDA said. Djibouti Telecom Sri Lanka Telecom and Dhivehi Raajjeyge Gulhun of the Maldives each received $600000. None of the five responded to questions from Reuters. Meanwhile American diplomats cautioned participating foreign telecom carriers that Washington planned to impose crippling sanctions on HMN Tech a development that could put their investment in the cable project at risk. The U.S. Commerce Department made good on that threat in December 2021 citing HMN Techs intention to acquire American technology to help modernize Chinas Peoples Liberation Army. A senior U.S. State Department official confirmed that the department had advocated through its embassies to help SubCom win the contract including warning other countries about the security risks posed by HMN Tech. Though the cable wont come ashore in Chinese territory the U.S. government believed HMN Tech could insert remote surveillance equipment inside the cable the official said without providing evidence. The Commerce Department declined to comment. Two months later in February 2022 SubCom announced that the cable consortium had awarded it the contract to build the SeaMeWe-6 cable. China Telecom and China Mobile which were due to own a combined 20% of the cable pulled out because the Chinese government wouldnt approve their involvement in the project with SubCom as the cable contractor three people with knowledge of the matter told Reuters. China Unicom remained. Chinas foreign ministry and its defense ministry which handles questions for the Peoples Liberation Army did not respond to Reuters questions. On June 26 2022 the White House published a fact sheet citing various upcoming infrastructure projects including the SubCom undersea cable deal. The document said the U.S. government had collectively helped secure the award of that contract for SubCom. The White House did not respond to a request for further comment. Tensions rising U.S.-China relations are at the lowest theyve been in decades. The two countries have clashed on a host of issues including Chinas tacit support for Russias invasion of democratic Ukraine its crackdown on Hong Kong and the future of Taiwan which Chinese President Xi Jinping has pledged to bring under Beijings control. In February the United States shot down a Chinese spy balloon that floated into American airspace. China has claimed it was a weather balloon that got blown off course and accused the Americans of overreacting. President Joe Bidens policies are increasingly isolating Chinas high-tech sector with the aim of bringing some technology manufacturing back to America while keeping cutting-edge U.S. innovation out of Chinese hands. Over the last year the Biden administration has pushed through a landmark bill to provide $52.7 billion in subsidies for U.S. semiconductor production and research. The Commerce Department in December added dozens of Chinese firms producing technology such as drones and artificial intelligence chipsto its so-called Entity List which severely restricts their access to U.S. technology. Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang speaking in Beijing this month said the two superpowers are destined for conflict and confrontation unless Washington abandons its policy of containment and suppression towards China. Three companies have dominated the construction and laying of fiber-optic subsea cables for decades: Americas SubCom Japans NEC Corporation and Frances Alcatel Submarine Networks Inc. But a seismic shift occurred in 2008 when Huawei Marine Networks Co Ltd entered the fray. Owned by Chinese telecom Huawei Technologies the Tianjin-based company initially built small cable systems in underserved markets such as Papua New Guinea and the Caribbean. Fast-forward 15 years and the firm now known as HMN Tech has become the worlds fastest-growing manufacturer and layer of subsea cables according to TeleGeography data. But the companys short history has been shaped by deteriorating U.S.-China relations. In 2019 Huawei Technologies came under fire from the administration of then-U.S. President Donald Trump. The Commerce Department banned Huawei and 70 affiliates from buying parts and components from U.S. companies without government approval. That move was part of a global campaign by Washington and its allies to stop Huawei Technologies from building fifth-generation or 5G communications networks around the world due to concerns that host nations would be vulnerable to Chinese eavesdropping or cyberattacks the details of which were revealed in a previous Reuters investigation . Huawei Technologies said at the time that it was a private company that is not controlled by the Chinese government . Contacted for this story Huawei Technologies said it fully divested its stake in Huawei Marine in 2020 and is no longer connected with the cable-laying company which rebranded as HMN Techunder new Chinese ownership. HMN Tech expanded its ambitions with the PEACE cable which came online last year and connects Asia Africa and Europe. The firm was poised to make another great leap with the Singapore-to-France project before SubCom snatched it away. The following account of how that deal fell apart for the Chinese players is based on interviews with six people directly involved inthe SeaMeWe-6 contract. They all asked not to be named as they were not authorized to discuss potentialtrade secrets or matters of national security. Backroom brawl Large undersea cables cost several hundreds of millions of dollars. They are usually paid for by a consortium of tech or telecom companies that can spread the cost and risks as well as take responsibility for any cable landing that ends up in their countries. In the case ofSeaMeWe-6 there were more than a dozen companies funding the cable and there was immediately a split in the group which would need to reach a consensus to select a contractor for the project the people said. China Telecom China Mobile and China Unicom were resolutely behind HMN Tech which had come in with a bid of around $500 million. Microsoft Orange and Indias Bharti Airtel expressed concerns about the risk of potential U.S. pushback on HMN Techs involvement. Still it was hard to argue with the price. SubComs bid was closer to $750 million. On a series of video calls in mid-2020 the consortium members verbally agreed that HMN Tech would build the cable. SubCom would be the reserve in case the Chinese firmpulled out or failed to deliver on the terms of its proposal. But behind the scenes SubCom and the U.S. government weresowing seeds of doubt about whether HMN Tech was the best company for the job. SubCom had already successfully applied for loans from the federal Export-Import Bank of the United States to support its bid. It also secured advocacy assistance from the Department of Commerce which quickly mobilized U.S. embassies around the world to lean on consortium members in their host nations. U.S. ambassadors in at least six of those countries including Singapore Bangladesh and Sri Lanka wrote letters to local telecom carriers participating in the deal according to people involved. One of these letters seen by Reuters said picking SubCom is an important opportunity to enhance commercial and security cooperation with the United States. Separately ambassadors and senior diplomats met with executives at foreign telecom companies in at least five countries. The message: HMN Tech could be subject to U.S. sanctions in the near future. That in turn would make it difficult for the telecoms to sell bandwidth because their biggest likely customers U.S. tech firms wouldnt be allowed to use the cable. One senior Asian telecom executive recalled a meeting in mid-2020 with a top U.S. diplomat and an American digital trade attach. The U.S. officials explained how sanctions on HMN Tech would render the cable virtually worthless providing him a printed spreadsheet with an economic analysis showing just that. They said wed go bankrupt. It was a persuasive argument the executive told Reuters. Two other Asian telecom executives in the consortium told Reuters they met with both Chinese and U.S. diplomats who urged them to back HMN Tech and SubCom respectively. By the end of 2020 several consortium members including Bangladesh Submarine Cable Company Limited Indias Bharti Airtel Sri Lanka Telecom Frances Orange and Telecom Egypt told their partners they were having second thoughts about choosing HMN Tech as a supplier mostly over the fear of sanctions. None of these companies responded to requests for comment. In February 2021 with the consortium partners at loggerheads SubCom and HMN Tech were given a chance by the group to submit a best and final offer. SubCom lowered its bid to close to $600 million. But HMN Tech was now offering to build the cable for $475 million. Several consortium members including Microsoft Singapore Telecommunications Limited (Singtel)and Orange argued to the other participants that when the risk of sanctions was factored into the bids SubCom was offering a better deal. The three state-owned Chinese companies strongly disagreed. The companies all declined comment. On a tense final video call in late 2021 an executive from Singtel the chair on the cable committee urged the companies to vote on a final decision before the whole deal collapsed two people who were on that call told Reuters. China Telecom and China Mobile threatened to walk off the project taking tens of millions of dollars of investment with them. But the majority of the consortium picked SubCom and the two Chinese state-owned firms departed. Two new investors Telekom Malaysia Berhad and PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia International (Telin) joined the deal and some of the original members raised their stakes to make up the shortfall the people said. Telekom Malaysia and Telin did not respond to requests for comment. Related content Biden blacklists China's YMTC crackdowns on AI chip sector Exclusive: U.S. warns Pacific islands about Chinese bid for undersea cable project sources Special report Hobbling Huawei: Inside the U.S. war on China's tech giant In addition to the successful campaign to freeze out HMT Tech from the Singapore-to-France cable teams across the U.S. state and commerce departments and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative once again coordinated with the White House to use diplomatic pressure to boot the Chinese firm from a project. This time it was a cable connecting the three Pacific island nations of Nauru the Federated States of Micronesia and Kiribati according to two sources involved in that deal. The United States Australia and Japan announced in December 2021 that they would jointly fund a cable on the same route known as the East Micronesia Cable. In a joint statement this month the three said they had met on March 8 to help push forward on this cable without giving a time frame. The U.S.-China backroom brawling over undersea cables is threatening to overwhelm the subsea cable industry which has always relied on careful diplomatic collaboration to survive said Paul McCann a Sydney-based subsea cable consultant. I've never seen such geopolitical influence over subsea cables in the 40-oddyears Ive been involved in the business McCann told Reuters.It's unprecedented. Team Telecom At the heart of Washingtons newly aggressive strategy is Team Telecom. Thats the informal name for an interagency committee set up through an Executive Order signed by Trump in April 2020. The mission: safeguarding U.S. telecommunication networks from spies and cyberattacks. Team Telecom is run by the National Security Division of the Department of Justice (DOJ). That division is headed byAssistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen. Nominated to that position by Biden in May 2021 Olsen has worked in a string of intel posts. He served as director of the National Counterterrorism Center under former President Barack Obama from 2011 to 2014 and before that as general counsel for the National Security Agency the U.S. spy nerve center. The DOJ declined to make Olsen available for an interview. While the State Department and its partners have helped to prevent China from obtaining new subsea contracts in foreign places of U.S. strategic interest Team Telecom has focused on a purely domestic concern: stopping any cable from directly connecting U.S. territory with mainland China or Hong Kong due to worriesabout Chinese espionage. To that end the team makes cable licensing recommendations to the U.S. telecom regulator the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Since 2020 the team has been instrumental in the cancellation of four cables whose backers had wanted to link the United States with Hong Kong Devin DeBacker a DOJ official and senior member of Team Telecom told Reuters in an interview. Hong Kong a former British colony that transitioned to self-rule and is dubbed a special administrative region by China has long been the investment gateway to the communist mainland because of its well-developed financial sector open economy and highly-educated workforce. However in 2019 Beijing launched a security crackdown and increased surveillance in Hong Kong prompting mass demonstrations. As China tightened its grip Washington became concerned that Chinese spy agencies would intercept data on the planned undersea cables if that equipment ultimately came ashore in Hong Kong said DeBacker the chief of the Foreign Investment Review Section of the DOJs National Security Division. That provides a physical access point in what is effectively Chinese territory DeBacker said. Because of the way that China has eroded Hong Kong's autonomy that enabled the Chinese government to have a direct all-access path effectively a collection platform on U.S. personsdata and communications. The risk is real. It has materialized in the past and what we're trying to do is prevent it from materializing in the future Washingtons decision to nix any Hong Kong terminus for the four planned subsea cable dealsupended the plans of Google Meta and Amazon. These tech titanshave been among the biggest investors in new cables over the last decade as they seek to link up a network of data centers in the United States and Asia that underpin their fast-growing Cloud computing businesses according to TeleGeography. The first a project owned by Google and Meta known as the Pacific Light Cable Network will now only transmit data from the United States to Taiwan and the Philippines after Team Telecom recommended that the FCC reject the Hong Kong leg. The section of the cable going to Hong Kong spanning hundreds of miles is currently lying abandoned on the ocean floor two people involved in the deal said. In an unsuccessful appeal to the FCC Google and Meta said Team Telecoms argument that China might intercept data on the cable was unsupported and speculative and that its decision was a referendum on China rather than the assertion of any real specific concern according to an Aug. 20 2020 submission by the companies that isavailable on the FCC website. Similarly the Bay to Bay Express Cable System developedby Amazon Meta and China Mobile will not run as planned from Singapore to Hong Kong to California. As part of a deal struck between Amazon Meta and Team Telecom China Mobile left the consortium and the cable was rebranded as CAP-1 with a new route from Grover Beach California to the Philippines three people involved said. The cable had already been almost entirely laid along the original route and the section to Hong Kong now sits unused in the depths the people said. Google Meta and Amazon declined to comment. China Mobile did not respond to requests for comment. There is evidence the U.S. campaign has slowed Chinas subsea cable juggernaut. HMN Tech supplied 18% of the subsea cables to have come online in the last four years but the Chinese firm is only due to build 7% of cables currently under development worldwide according to TeleGeography. These figures are based on the total length of cable laid not the number of projects. In a tit-for-tat maneuver China has thrown up a roadblock on a cable in which Meta is an investor according to two cable consultants with direct knowledge of the project. That cable known asthe Southeast Asia-Japan 2 cable was planned to run from Singapore through Southeast Asia and touch down in Hong Kong and mainland China before going on to South Korea and Japan. China has delayed giving a license for the cable to pass through the South China Sea citing concerns about the potential for the cable manufacturer Japans NEC to insert spy equipment on the line the consultants said. In response to Reuters questions an NEC spokesperson said it does not comment on individual projects but said that it does not insert surveillance equipment into its cables. Meta and Chinas foreign ministry did not respond to requests for comment. In recent years the U.S. government has blocked American firms from using telecom gear from Chinese firms that Washington has deemed to be national security threats and it has banned several Chinese state-owned telecom companies from operating in U.S. territory. Among them is China Telecom which had previously won authorization to provide services in the United States. The FCC revoked that authorization in 2021 saying China Telecoms Americas unit is subject to exploitation influence and control by the Chinese government. The agency cited examples of the company using its access to U.S networks to misroute international traffic back to Chinese servers. China Telecom failed to convince a U.S. court to reverse that decision. The Chinese Embassy in Washington last year said the FCC has abused state power and maliciously attacked Chinese telecom operators without any factual basis. Team Telecoms DeBacker said China uses similar tactics on undersea cables declining to give specific examples. The risk is real DeBacker said. It has materialized in the past and what we're trying to do is prevent it from materializing in the future. reuters investigates More Reuters investigations and long-form narratives Got a confidential news tip? Reuters Investigates offers several ways to securely contact our reporters Eagle and Dragon By Joe Brock Graphics: Vijdan Mohammad Kawoosa and Wen Foo Photo editing: Edgar Su Design: Eve Watling Art direction and illustration: Catherine Tai Edited by Marla Dickerson Reuters the news and media division of Thomson Reuters is the worlds largest multimedia news provider reaching billions of people worldwide every day. Reuters provides business financial national and international news to professionals via desktop terminals the world's media organizations industry events and directly to consumers. All quotes delayed a minimum of 15 minutes. 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U.S. appeals court rejects big techs right to regulate online speech (reuters.com) Sept 16 (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court on Friday upheld a Texas law that bars large social media companies from banning or censoring users based on viewpoint a setback for technology industry groups that say the measure would turn platforms into bastions of dangerous content. The largely 2-1 ruling by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals based in New Orleans sets up the potential for the U.S. Supreme Court to rule on the law which conservatives and right-wing commentators have said is necessary to prevent Big Tech from suppressing their views. Today we reject the idea that corporations have a freewheeling First Amendment right to censor what people say Judge Andrew Oldham an appointee of former President Donald Trump wrote in the ruling. The Texas law was passed by the state's Republican-led legislature and signed by its Republican governor. The tech groups that challenged the law and were on the losing end of Friday's ruling include NetChoice and the Computer & Communications Industry Association which count Meta Platforms' (META.O) Facebook Twitter (TWTR.N) and Alphabet Inc's (GOOGL.O) YouTube as members. They have sought to preserve rights to regulate user content when they believe it may lead to violence citing concerns that unregulated platforms will enable extremists such as Nazi supporters terrorists and hostile foreign governments. The association on Friday said it disagreed with forcing private companies to give equal treatment to all viewpoints. 'God Bless America' and 'Death to America' are both viewpoints and it is unwise and unconstitutional for the state of Texas to compel a private business to treat those the same it said in a statement. Some conservatives have labeled the social media companies' practices abusive pointing to Twitter's permanent suspension of Trump from the platform shortly after the Jan. 6 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of his supporters. Twitter had cited the risk of further incitement of violence as a reason. The Texas law forbids social media companies with at least 50 million monthly active users from acting to censor users based on viewpoint and allows either users or the Texas attorney general to sue to enforce the law. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Twitter hailed the ruling as massive victory for the constitution and free speech. Because the 5th Circuit ruling conflicts with part of a ruling by the 11th Circuit the aggrieved parties have a stronger case for petitioning the Supreme Court to hear the matter. In May the 11th Circuit based in Atlanta found that most of a similar Florida law violates the companies' free speech rights and cannot be enforced. read more (This story corrects to largely 2-1 ruling in second paragraph ) Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. Thomson Reuters Daniel Trotta is a U.S. National Affairs correspondent covering water/fire/drought race guns LGBTQ+ issues and breaking news in America. Previously based in New York and now in California Trotta has covered major U.S. news stories such as the killing of Trayvon Martin the mass shooting of 20 first-graders at Sandy Hook Elementary School and natural disasters including Superstorm Sandy. In 2017 he was awarded the NLGJA award for excellence in transgender coverage. He was previously posted in Cuba Spain Mexico and Nicaragua covering top world stories such as the normalization of Cuban-U.S. relations and the Madrid train bombing by Islamist radicals. Blake Brittain Henry Engler Jacqueline Thomsen Eve Starks Tom Snavely Reuters the news and media division of Thomson Reuters is the worlds largest multimedia news provider reaching billions of people worldwide every day. Reuters provides business financial national and international news to professionals via desktop terminals the world's media organizations industry events and directly to consumers. Build the strongest argument relying on authoritative content attorney-editor expertise and industry defining technology. The most comprehensive solution to manage all your complex and ever-expanding tax and compliance needs. The industry leader for online information for tax accounting and finance professionals. Access unmatched financial data news and content in a highly-customised workflow experience on desktop web and mobile. Browse an unrivalled portfolio of real-time and historical market data and insights from worldwide sources and experts. Screen for heightened risk individual and entities globally to help uncover hidden risks in business relationships and human networks. All quotes delayed a minimum of 15 minutes. See here for a complete list of exchanges and delays. 2023 Reuters. All rights reserved

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U.S. corn-based ethanol worse for the climate than gasoline study finds (reuters.com) [1/2] An ethanol plant with its giant corn silos next to a cornfield in Windsor Colorado July 7 2006. Feb 14 (Reuters) - Corn-based ethanol which for years has been mixed in huge quantities into gasoline sold at U.S. pumps is likely a much bigger contributor to global warming than straight gasoline according to a study published Monday. The study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences contradicts previous research commissioned by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) showing ethanol and other biofuels to be relatively green. President Joe Biden's administration is reviewing policies on biofuels as part of a broader effort to decarbonize the U.S. economy by 2050 to fight climate change. Corn ethanol is not a climate-friendly fuel said Dr. Tyler Lark assistant scientist at University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment and lead author of the study. The research which was funded in part by the National Wildlife Federation and U.S. Department of Energy found that ethanol is likely at least 24% more carbon-intensive than gasoline due to emissions resulting from land use changes to grow corn along with processing and combustion. Geoff Cooper president and CEO of the Renewable Fuels Association the ethanol trade lobby called the study completely fictional and erroneous arguing the authors used worst-case assumptions [and] cherry-picked data. Under the U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) a law enacted in 2005 the nation's oil refiners are required to mix some 15 billion gallons of corn-based ethanol into the nation's gasoline annually. The policy was intended to reduce emissions support farmers and cut U.S. dependence on energy imports. As a result of the mandate corn cultivation grew 8.7% and expanded into 6.9 million additional acres of land between 2008 and 2016 the study found. That led to widespread changes in land use including the tilling of cropland that would otherwise have been retired or enrolled in conservation programs and the planting of existing cropland with more corn the study found. Tilling fields releases carbon stored in soil while other farming activities like applying nitrogen fertilizers also produce emissions. A 2019 study from the USDA which has been broadly cited by the biofuel industry found that ethanols carbon intensity was 39% lower than gasoline in part because of carbon sequestration associated with planting new cropland. But that research underestimated the emissions impact of land conversion Lark said. USDA did not respond to a request for comment. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency which administers the nation's biofuel policy is considering changes to the program. Under the RFS Congress set blending requirements through 2022 but not beyond giving the EPA authority to impose reforms. EPA plans to propose 2023 requirements in May. Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. Thomson Reuters Washington-based award-winning journalist covering agriculture and energy including competition regulation federal agencies corporate consolidation environment and climate racial discrimination and labour previously at the Food and Environment Reporting Network. Morgan Stanley's James Gorman plans to step down as chief executive within a year but stay on as executive chairman drawing to a close 13 years in the role during which he built the Wall Street firm into a wealth management powerhouse. Reuters the news and media division of Thomson Reuters is the worlds largest multimedia news provider reaching billions of people worldwide every day. Reuters provides business financial national and international news to professionals via desktop terminals the world's media organizations industry events and directly to consumers. Build the strongest argument relying on authoritative content attorney-editor expertise and industry defining technology. The most comprehensive solution to manage all your complex and ever-expanding tax and compliance needs. The industry leader for online information for tax accounting and finance professionals. Access unmatched financial data news and content in a highly-customised workflow experience on desktop web and mobile. Browse an unrivalled portfolio of real-time and historical market data and insights from worldwide sources and experts. Screen for heightened risk individual and entities globally to help uncover hidden risks in business relationships and human networks. All quotes delayed a minimum of 15 minutes. See here for a complete list of exchanges and delays. 2023 Reuters. All rights reserved

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U.S. military-run slot machines earn $100M a year from service members (npr.org) By Gabby Means In this June 23 2021 photo a row of slot machines sit empty at Bally's casino in Atlantic City N.J. Wayne Parry/AP hide caption In this June 23 2021 photo a row of slot machines sit empty at Bally's casino in Atlantic City N.J. The U.S. military runs more than 3000 slot machines on American military bases overseas even though the rate of problem gamblers in the military is thought to be around twice that of the rest of the general population according to the National Council on Problem Gambling an organization that advocates for services to assist people and families affected by problem gambling. The slot machines operated by the U.S. Department of Defense earn the DOD more than $100 million each year in the name of morale welfare and recreation for service members according to a report by the Government Accountability Office that was written in response to demands from Congress. Slots are often found on bases where there is precious little to do like Diego Garcia a 12-sq.-mile island in the Indian Ocean with a population of just over 4000 people where the Navy runs 52 slot machines. And they can be played by service members as young as 18 individuals who wouldn't be allowed to enter most casinos in the U.S. before they turn 21. In 1951 Congress banned slot machines from domestic military bases after passing legislation to that effect. Two decades later the Army and Air Force removed them from all foreign bases as well only to restore the foreign slot machines in the 1980s. The military's last accounting in 2017 showed that the machines are located on bases in 12 countries mostly run by the Army. The machines are managed by the MWR (Morale Welfare and Recreation) groups of the respective military branches which purport to deliver high-quality customer-focused programs and services that contribute to resiliency retention readiness and quality of life. A Pentagon report in the early 2000s claimed that without the slot machines the MWR groups would not be able to afford other amenities for military members such as golf courses and family activity centers. DOD spokeswoman Cmdr. Nicole Schwegman echoed that argument telling NPR the machines contribute significantly to the non-appropriated fund and many other recreation and entertainment overseas programs. It's difficult to know the exact number of problem gamblers among service members since the military stopped screening for it more than a decade ago and has only resumed screening following the 2017 GAO report. However a 2008 study of 31000 Air Force recruits found that 6.2% exhibited some of the necessary behaviors to be deemed problem gamblers. A 2016 study on the experiences of returning veterans found that 4.2% were at-risk or problem gamblers after returning from deployment. Taking this and other studies into consideration the National Council on Problem Gambling conservatively estimates that 4% of military personnel meet the criteria for moderate to severe gambling problems twice the national average. Everything we know about military personnel that they tend to be young male risk-takers likely to be suffering from higher rates of substance abuse stress depression PTSD or traumatic brain injuries is conclusively correlated with problem gambling Keith Whyte executive director of the NCPG told NPR. While deployed overseas service members are often isolated separated from friends and family and receive increased pay. For those seeking recreation on base slot machines are often just a quick walk away. In 2018 lawmakers from both parties said they believed the number of problem gamblers in the military could potentially pose a threat to national security making service members susceptible to blackmail and creating impediments to security clearances. But legislation introduced by Sens. Elizabeth Warren D-Mass. and Steve Daines R-Mont. to curb this threat and provide aid to those struggling with gambling addiction never made it into law. Some individual veterans including those affected by gambling addiction say they view the machines as a technique in what some in the military call harm reduction the idea that gambling on base might keep someone from doing so off base where the odds may be worse and the stakes may be higher. I spent hours in front of the slot machines on base and usually left plus or minus $50 Ed Grabowski Navy veteran told NPR. I don't see where that is really going to create an issue. I could drop $50 in a pinball machine. But there are few if any studies that suggest that service members are better off playing slots on base than gambling elsewhere. From a gambling standpoint there is no data to say that slot machines are a form of harm reduction Dr. Timothy Fong co-director of UCLA's Gambling Studies program told NPR. Fong said he is focused on how these machines are regulated. My concern is they're managed by the DOD not by a public health institution or by groups that regulate gaming he said. Fong said he has met active duty military members who have developed gambling addictions in part because of easy access to slot machines on base. For Fong one of the most dangerous aspects of gambling addictions is that they are not publicly obvious like other addictions. The NCPG's Whyte agrees noting that without some sort of realistic alert system or limit on gambling the first signs of addiction are often other offenses like theft fraud going AWOL [and] conduct disorders all offenses that could lead to a dishonorable discharge. Often by the time gambling addiction is discovered it might be too late. Aaron Walsh an Army Apache pilot lost $20000 to the Army's slot machines in South Korea resigned to avoid a court martial and ultimately committed suicide. I'm angry. That was a life lost needlessly due to the military's failure to take problem gambling seriously and there are more of those stories Whyte said. The government has tried to take steps to address the issue including through the Department of Veterans Affairs which runs a program in Brecksville Ohio for veterans and active duty personnel struggling with problem gambling. Separately the annual personal health assessment for all active duty military members now includes three health screening questions aimed at identifying gambling addictions. The Defense Department says it has extensive controls in place to minimize potential abuse by limiting hours of operation limiting access to machines limiting the number of machines in locations limiting amount of money played and limiting the potential winnings. Controls by themselves may not always be enough when access to slots are just steps away. Army veteran Dave Yeagar says when he arrived at Yongsan Army Base South Korea right after Sept. 11 2001 he didn't have a gambling problem. He says that even while living near Atlantic City N.J. he was not tempted to play in the base's slots room like he was on base in South Korea. I found myself in there 7 days a week. ... The draw of those rooms and how easy it is to get to them is a lot of what led to my addiction developing he told NPR adding there was little oversight back then. There were literally days that I would go in there when the slot room opened on a Saturday morning and leave when it closed. Nobody came up to me and said 'You've been here too long.' Nobody. Nothing he said. Yeager who now mentors active duty members with gambling addictions says he hasn't heard that anything has changed. Sponsor Message Become an NPR sponsor

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U.S. prison labor programs violate fundamental human rights new report finds (uchicago.edu) Covering a story? Visit our page for journalists or call (773) 702-8360. Jun 16 2022 Incarcerated workers generate billions of dollars worth of goods and services annually but are paid pennies per hour without proper training or opportunity to build skills for careers after release according to a comprehensive nationwide report released by the University of Chicago Law Schools Global Human Rights Clinic and the American Civil Liberties Union. The first-of-its-kind report Captive Labor: Exploitation of Incarcerated Workers examines the use of prison labor throughout the U.S. and highlights how incarcerated workers labor helps maintain prisons and provides vital public services. Captive Labor also calls for far-reaching reforms to ensure prison labor is truly voluntary and that incarcerated workers are paid fairly properly trained and able to gain transferable skills. As our report describes in detail the labor conditions of incarcerated workers in many U.S. prisons violate the most fundamental human rights to life and dignity said Clinical Prof. Claudia Flores the director of the Global Human Rights Clinic. In any other workplace these conditions would be shocking and plainly unlawful. The many incarcerated workers we interviewed told us story after story of inadequate equipment and training punishments doled out if workers refused to labor and an overall helplessness to a government institution functioning as both jailer and boss. Key findings include: The United States has a long problematic history of using incarcerated workers as a source of cheap labor and to subsidize the costs of our bloated prison system said Jennifer Turner principal human rights researcher with the ACLUs Human Rights Program. Incarcerated workers are stripped of even the most minimal protections against labor exploitation and abuse. They are paid pennies for their work even as they produce billions of dollars for states and the federal government. Its past time we treat incarcerated workers with dignity. If states and the federal government can afford to incarcerate 1.2 million people they can afford to pay them fairly for their work. The exploitation of incarcerated workers is rooted in the exception clause to the 13th Amendment which bars slavery except for people who have been convicted of crimes . In many statesand in the United States Constitutionexception clauses allow for workers in prisons to be exploited underpaid and excluded from workplace safety protection laws.Worse the exception clause in the 13th Amendment disproportionately encouraged the criminalization and re-enslavement of Black people during the Jim Crow era and we still feel the impacts of this systemic racism to this day in the disproportionate incarceration of Black and Brown community members. To combat the exploitation of incarcerated workers the report makes several recommendations including: Captive Labor: Exploitation of Incarcerated Workers comes more than two years into the COVID-19 pandemic during which incarcerated workers faced especially brutal working conditions and yet were denied early access to vaccines in 16 states. Incarcerated people were forced to produce masks hand sanitizer and other personal protective equipment. Others were forced to launder bed sheets and gowns from hospitals treating COVID patients transport bodies and dig graves. Many report being forced to continue working but not able to have visitors and having their parole date pushed back if they refuse to work. More than a third of incarcerated people have contracted COVID-19 since the pandemic started and more than 3000 have died. The U.S. prison system claims to offer rehabilitation to its population but prison labor programs do just the opposite: they degrade dehumanize and further cripple incarcerated workers said Mariana Olaizola Rosenblat a UChicago lecturer in law and fellow at the Global Human Rights Clinic. The many incarcerated workers we interviewed voiced a strong desire to engage productively in society under dignified conditions. It's time for the U.S. government and prison authorities to give them this chance not merely rhetorically but in practice. The Law Schools Global Human Rights Clinic partners with human rights and civil rights organizations around the world to conduct investigations develop strategies and advocate for human rights before international national and local decision makers and stakeholders. The Captive Labor report reflects the work ofthree generations of GHRC students faculty and staff. From 2018 to 2022 the clinic team conducted extensive research and completed drafting of a report highlighting the violations of the human rights of incarcerated workers in the United States. They analyzed state and federal laws policies and practices that result in these violations of international human rights standards and detailed the multiple exploitative aspects of prison labor as recounted by incarcerated workers themselves. The clinic also provided a set of recommendations for federal state and local governments state departments of corrections the Federal Bureau of Prisons correctional authorities and private companies involved in prison labor. In addition to contributing to the drafting and research of the report the clinic filed FOIA requests in 50 states surveyed more than 100 workers currently behind bars in three states (Illinois Louisiana and California) completed a fact-finding trip to Louisiana in March 2020 and conducted 65 interviews with key stakeholders including experts formerly incarcerated individuals representatives of advocacy organizations academics and leaders of reentry organizations across the country. This story was firstpublished by the University of Chicago Law School Police use-of-force policies fall short of human rights standards Teaching incarcerated youth UChicago law students find new Get more with UChicago News delivered to your inbox. Maroon Pride Awards In the Air Where do breakthrough discoveries and ideas come from? James Webb Space Telescope UChicago History In Memoriam Announcement Generous Gift Geophysical Sciences Anniversary Memories Career Paths Meet a UChicagoan Dean's Historic Tenure University of Chicago Office of Communications 5801 S. Ellis Ave. Suite 120 Chicago IL 60637 (773) 702-8360 news@uchicago.edu

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U.S. transition to 988 suicide and crisis lifeline begins Saturday (hhs.gov) An official website of the United States government Heres how you know Official websites use .gov A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States. Secure .gov websites use HTTPS A lock ( Lock A locked padlock ) or https:// means youve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official secure websites. On Saturday the United States will transition the 10-digit National Suicide Prevention Lifeline to988 an easy-to-remember three-digit number for 24/7 crisis care. The lifeline which also links to the Veterans Crisis Line follows a three-year joint effort by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to put crisis care more in reach for people in need. This initiative is part of President Bidens comprehensive strategy to address our nations mental health crisis and is identified by U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra as a top priority at HHS. Since January 2021 the Biden-Harris Administration has made unprecedented investments to support the 988 transition investing $432 million to scale crisis center capacity and ensure all Americans have access to help during mental health crises. The National Suicide Hotline Designation Act signed into law after the passage of bipartisan legislation in 2020 authorized 988 as a new three-digit number for suicide and mental health crisis. All telephone service and text providers in the United States and the five major U.S. territories are required by the FCC to activate 988 no later than July 16. 988 is more than a number it is a message: were there for you. Through this and other actions we are treating mental health as a priorityand putting crisis care in reach for more Americans said Secretary Becerra who has been meeting with states across the country about the transition to 988 as part of HHS National Tour to Strengthen Mental Health . There is still much work todo. But what matters is that were launching 988 will be live.We are looking to every governor and every state in the nation to do their part to make this a long-term success. The Biden-Harris Administration increased federal investments in the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by 18-fold - from $24 million to $432 million -- to scale up crisis centers and back-up center capacity and to provide special services including a sub-network for Spanish language speakers. The $432 million included $105 million in grant funding to states and territories provided by the American Rescue Plan to improve response rates increase capacity to meet future demand and ensure calls initiated in their states or territories are first routed to local regional or state crisis callcenters. Prior to this investment the Lifeline which has existed since 2005 had been long unfunded and under-resourced. The 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline is a network of more than 200 state and local call centers supported by HHSthroughtheSubstance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). Recent investments made in the Lifeline have already resulted in more calls chats and texts answered even as volume has increased but we know that too many people are still experiencing suicidal crisis or mental health-related distress without the support they need said Miriam E. Delphin-Rittmon Ph.D. the HHS Assistant Secretary for Mental Health and Substance Use and leader of SAMHSA. Over time the vision for 988 is to have additional crisis services available in communities across the country much the way emergency medical services work. The success of 988 depends on ourcontinuedpartnership with states as the federal government cannot do this alone. We urge states and territories to join us and invest further in answering the call to transform our crisis care response nationwide. FCC staff first proposed 988 in a report to Congress in August 2019 as the nationwide easy-to-remember 3-digit dialing code for individuals in crisis to connect to suicide prevention and mental health crisis counselors with the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.On July 16 2020 the FCC adopted rules designating 988 for this purpose.Recognizing the need to better support at-risk communities in crisis including youth and individuals with disabilities the FCC adopted additional rules in November 2021 to expand access to this important service by establishing the ability to also text 988. All across our country people are hurting. They need help. The good news is that getting that help just got a lot easier.Starting tomorrow 988 will be available nationwide for individuals in crisis and their loved ones to reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline more easily said FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel.This cross-government effort has been years in the making and comes at a crucial point to help address the mental health crisis in our country especially for our young people. VA administers the Veterans Crisis Line through the Lifelines national network. Because of VAs partnership with the Lifeline the Veterans Crisis Line is affected by this transition to a new number. Veterans and their loved ones can now Dial 988 then Press 1 to reach the Veterans Crisis Line. 988 has been a long time coming and will serve as a critical resource during a crisis when every second counts. The new shorter number will help ensure Veterans have easier access to the Veterans Crisis Line said VA Secretary Denis McDonough. This launch is a whole-of-government approach in line with the Presidents call to prioritize mental health by strengthening access to crisis services and preventing Veteran suicide our top clinical priority. In 2021 the Lifeline received 3.6 million calls chats and texts. That number is expected to at least double within the first full year after the 988 transition. The United States had one death by suicide every 11 minutes in 2020 according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Suicide was the second leading cause of death for young people aged 10-14 and 25-34. From April 2020 to 2021 more than 100000 people died from drug overdoses. Studies have shown that after speaking with a trained crisis counselor most Lifeline callers are significantly more likely to feel less depressed less suicidal less overwhelmed and more hopeful. The 10-digit Lifeline number 1-800-273-TALK (8255) will continue to be operational after July 16 and will route calls to 988 indefinitely. Veterans service members and their families can also still reach the Veterans Crisis Line with the current phone number 1-800-273-8255 and Press 1 or by chat or text to 838255. More information on 988 is available at www.samhsa.gov/988 and https://www.samhsa.gov/find-help/988/faqs . Receive the latest updates from the Secretary Blogs and News Releases Receive latest updates For general media inquiries please contact media@hhs.gov . Receive the latest updates from the Secretary Blogs and News Releases. 200 Independence Avenue S.W. Washington D.C. 20201 Toll Free Call Center: 1-877-696-6775

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UK sets up fake booter sites to muddy DDoS market (krebsonsecurity.com) The United Kingdoms National Crime Agency (NCA) has been busy setting up phony DDoS-for-hire websites that seek to collect information on users remind them that launching DDoS attacks is illegal and generally increase the level of paranoia for people looking to hire such services. The warning displayed to users on one of the NCAs fake booter sites. Image: NCA. The NCA says all of its fake so-called booter or stresser sites which have so far been accessed by several thousand people have been created to look like they offer the tools and services that enable cyber criminals to execute these attacks. However after users register rather than being given access to cyber crime tools their data is collated by investigators reads an NCA advisory on the program. Users based in the UK will be contacted by the National Crime Agency or police and warned about engaging in cyber crime. Information relating to those based overseas is being passed to international law enforcement. The NCA declined to say how many phony booter sites it had set up or for how long they have been running. The NCA says hiring or launching attacks designed to knock websites or users offline is punishable in the UK under the Computer Misuse Act 1990. Going forward people who wish to use these services cant be sure who is actually behind them so why take the risk? the NCA announcement continues. The NCA campaign comes closely on the heels of an international law enforcement takedown involving four-dozen websites that made powerful DDoS attacks a point-and-click operation. In mid-December 2022 the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced Operation Power Off which seized four-dozen booter business domains responsible for more than 30 million DDoS attacks and charged six U.S. men with computer crimes related to their alleged ownership of popular DDoS-for-hire services. In connection with that operation the NCA also arrested an 18-year-old man suspected of running one of the sites. According to U.S. federal prosecutors the use of booter and stresser services to conduct attacks is punishable under both wire fraud laws and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (18 U.S.C. 1030) and may result in arrest and prosecution the seizure of computers or other electronics as well as prison sentences and a penalty or fine. The United Kingdom which has been battling its fair share of domestic booter bosses started running online ads in 2020 aimed at young people who search the Web for booter services. As part of last years mass booter site takedown the FBI and the Netherlands Police joined the NCA in announcing they are running targeted placement ads to steer those searching for booter services toward a website detailing the potential legal risks of hiring an online attack . This entry was posted on Tuesday 28th of March 2023 01:26 PM The handful of people who dont use a throwaway email or a VPN/Proxy/TOR when signing up to these type of sites will just learn they should have and know for their next attempt. The other 90% of users will not be contactable and will continue as always. A lot of effort by the authorities which will achieve very little. yeah this seems stupid. Agreed. I agree this wont stop a motivated attacker. The paranoia factor though is interesting. If I put myself in the attackers shoes I might be thinking Im alright if I just use fake information VPN proxy etc but maybe there is a seed of doubt in the back of their mind. Maybe they did capture some legitimate informationthe psychological element is pretty strong. I agree that most people will use a throwaway email or whatever but I still think this is a reasonable tactic. I suspect its actually _not_ a lot of effort by the authorities to set these sites up (and move them to new addresses when they become known) and the payoff is increased friction when it comes to buying booter services. For muddying the waters and increasing paranoia theyre perfect. Will it solve the problem? No. But it isnt intended to. A perfect project for a summer intern. A lot of effort by the authorities which will achieve very little Security Theater? No it us not stupid because it gets the amatures out if hiring these dogs. Next step is to punish and ban from the Internet the use of throw away emails By the way the Internet grew out of a US Taxpayer funded effort called ARPANET and I watched the Internet come into existence. Just like on national and international highways we have strong enforcement the same needs to go for the Internet. I do not want to live in a world ruled by anarchy but a world ruled by responsible nation states. I like my throw away emails thanks. Tired of having my information leaked or sold and getting my inbox spammed with copious amounts of nonsense. I too watched and assisted the current internet come into being from the early 70s DARPANET to the mess it is now. Responsible nation states? Youre more likely to find King Solomons mines or the Loch Ness monster. Anarchy may be chaos but it definitely forces people to be kind to one another because if you arent you get your just deserts. I would much rather the governments of the world not interfere in the internet however it seems that modern people are stupid and have no sense of security or self-preservation no inkling of what technology does to them or their lives the latest generation being the worst. Perhaps being coddled from cradle to grave by Big Brother is the only thing that will save us God help us if thats the case. Curmudgeon? Luddite? Maybe but only after seeing what has become of the good works of people like Vint Cerf and Tim Berners-Lee. Anarchy may be chaos but it definitely forces people to be kind to one another because if you arent you get your just deserts. That NRA Wild West was peaceful Might = Right nonsense mentally never works. It just breeds strongmen mob bosses gang leaders and dictators who take over. Weve tried self governance anarchy and then lawlessness allowed more crime not polite behavior. The Internet is the wild west. Where anyone can be pseudo anonymous. Draconian regulations arent the answer but neither is deregulation anarchy. There must be a middle ground. The key word here being responsible. I see no responsible nation-state actor. Or any state-level actor I would name responsible. Any serious criminal isnt the target of this campaign and most of them wouldnt use a DDoS 3rd party if they wanted to execute a plan that was more complicated than irritate the blogger/politician/journalist/X I dont like What the NCA have done here is maybe gotten rid of some maybe a lot of casuals. And to be honest I think thats a win. Most of their users are probably kids wanting to impress their friends. If theyd had caught actual criminals blackmailing companies that would be the headline. Anyways isnt it illegal for the police to offer a service like this? I remember that in some countries its illegal for police to try and trick drug-users into buying drugs from them. There is no defence of entrapment in English law -LexisNexis This is not in and of itself being used to prosecute anyone. There will be bycatch but this is data collection based on illicit activity. Further investigation of individual criminal activity takes place over time. Less savvy users who are interested in this are meanwhile discouraged translating into less money for the operators and ecosystem shrinkage. It will not catch the ringleaders but it may provide intel on future ones. Once known to be interested in this illegal service their info is in the DB; That has value even if you dont understand exactly how it will be used or even if it will ever be publicly. It also doesnt cost much to do this. People who think its stupid are mostly under-thinking the point of it. Also this is but one publicly known iteration of such a program. My speculation: since theres no prosecution (afaik) then nothing illegal about wasting wannabe criminals time. In the EU this way of collecting data would be against GDPR and therefore illegal GDPR does not apply to government bodies and law enforcement when data are gathered and processed for the prevention investigation detection or prosecution of criminal offenses or the execution of criminal penalties or for preventing threats to public safety Wed all have less DDoS tools in the world if Cloudflare werent tolerated as a protection racket for them (look for stresser or booter see how many start with a 104. IP address). cloudflare.com/ips/ is a list of their IP ranges also accessible by API. How many actual booter services can you find that match up to CF IPs? Further reading: https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2023/03/28/cops-use-fake-ddos-services-to-take-aim-at-wannabe-cybercriminals/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entrapment Totally unethical to set up a trap website like this and investigate visitors as if their click was evidence of crime or even a lead to it. This is probably passive enough that you could argue that they are not inciting a crime but merely muddying the waters and thereby possibly preventing users from committing crimes by making them think twice. A bit like announcing the placement of speed cameras beforehand. It wont stop the diehards but it may prevent some from dipping their toes into that particular swamp on the Web. Signing up for such a service is a bit more than a click. People who sign up on a fake website offering DDoS-for-hire are very likely doing so in order to buy these services and as such are hardly victims of entrapment. After all entrapment is about making someone do something illegal that they otherwise would not have been otherwise been unlikely or unwilling to commit as the article states. How about a journalist internet security blogger or researcher signing up to the site to get an idea how they work. Do they get put on a naughty list as potential person of interest in future hacking/extortion cases because they signed up to one of these law enforcements bogus sites? If they sign up to pay an illegal service for any reason including research or journalism then yes they could still be put on the same list as anyone else who doesnt have legal authority to do that for a sanctioned investigation purpose. They could appeal to have themselves removed from it on same grounds but if the service is illegal and youre knowingly trying to use it for reasons its still 3/5ths of a crime. Motive and other factors would likely be determinant in whether they are ultimately charged and with what. In this case they spell out that its for warning and data collection not prosecution but BK or anyone else could end up in this same list thats why ethical and responsible investigatory practices are essential when youre delving firsthand into criminal services and sources. Your definition of ethics seems rather different to mine. I disagree with your interpretation of Entrapment. From the URL you referenced: Entrapment is a practice in which a law enforcement agent or agent of the state induces a person to commit a crime that the person would have otherwise been unlikely or unwilling to commit. [1] Not the same as an undercover police officers asking strangers at a club if they want to buy drugs. The person that signed up for a booter account actively sought out the booter service website and then signed up. [2] Laws in UK might have a different interpretation of Entrapment then the one you are familiar with. [3] No one said anything about prosecution of the UK persons that signed up for the booter service. Users based in the UK will be contacted by the National Crime Agency or police and warned about engaging in cybercrime. Information relating to those based overseas is being passed to international law enforcement. For all we know the users might get an email from the UK police advising them that using a booter service is illegal. This seems like a low cost low effort way to alert potential users that using a booter service is illegal in the UK. A PSA if you will. Look at the press it has gotten. As other commenters have pointed out it might stop the kids or first timers others will just look elsewhere. Just me Its not entrapment the people who end up on these sites chose to do so. They searched for a booter found a list of results and picked one. They could have chosen one that was real (and probably did so immediately after discovering theyve been had) but they happened to click the wrong link. Additionally they do not state that any prosecutorial action will be taken against anyone who did click. They get sent some dont do bad stuff info that they wont read and thats that. By the way in the US at least the police are legally allowed to lie to you. So theres that as well. Since when did something being illegal stop a government from doing it? This seems about 10 years behind the times. Annoying hacker kidz have moved on to smoking Instagram accounts and extorting the account owners to get them put back up. Theyve also moved on to creating financial accounts in others names and using those for nefarious purposes. DDOS attacks are so 2013. Thats like saying writing speeding tickets is so 1997. Ill refrain from Trump-themed examples. bad question related to the Fake booter site. If a person sets up a Fake booter/criminal site accepts funds but does not do any criminal work (pinged the server twice just to say we hit it repeatedly) and stuff like that. Would LE come after me? the crooks I dont care about. (not that I have time for this crap but a valid question if the law can can I?) Thanks Im not a lawyer but contracts for illegal activity are not enforced by the legal system. Im not a lawyer but contracts for illegal activity are not enforced by the legal system. The citizens of the UK can rest easier knowing their chances of getting booted off while playing Minecraft have decreased a whole 0.001% Why.say.anything It sends neophyte chatterboxes back to the monitored crime forums. New actors will advertise there and a new round of intel is collected. If the police rock up to Brians place to discuss why using a stresser is a bad idea he can show them this blog. Likewise a journalist can show them their press ID and the partially written article. Both would likely get an interesting convo with the officers about what is helpful to report on and what is not and make a contact. (As an aside I would assume Brians details are used to register an account on most of these going forwards because thats usually along the list of things people do for the lulz) Brian can show the police this blog if they come to his house to talk about why its not a good idea to use a stress reliever. Likewise a journalist can show them their press ID and the partially written article. Both would probably have an engaging conversation with the officers about what information is important to disclose and what is not and they would establish communication. Comments are closed. 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BAD

UML: My Part in Its Downfall (tratt.net) In this post I'm going to try and explain some of the factors that I think contributed to UML's downfall. To some extent this is a historical document at least of my perspective. But with the benefit of hindsight I feel there are general lessons to be drawn about how both group dynamics and standardisation can develop in unfortunate ways. Be forewarned that I only saw part of what was going on (so I will be unaware of possibly important details) I didn't write a diary (so I will recall things incorrectly) and my recollections are bound to reflect my biases (my ego will inevitably encourage me to relay the story in a way that presents me in a better light than I deserve). Background People had long created diagrams to document important aspects of software. Over the course of the late 80s and early 90s three diagramming styles or more grandly methods had started to become popular: the Booch Jacobson and Rumbaugh methods. After two merges these three methods were combined to create UML (hence the U standing for Unified in UML) released as a standard through the OMG (Object Management Group) a standards body that had previously been best known for the CORBA standard. The standardisation of UML coincided with and was probably a necessary precondition of a rapid increase in its use. From my perspective as an undergraduate in the late 1990s Martin Fowler's UML Distilled book was also an important part in UML reaching a wide audience. Class diagrams in particular became extremely common and a simplification of UML's class diagram syntax had come close to being a lingua franca by 2000. Here's a simple example: This shows two classes: an Employee class; and a subclass (the arrow with the hollow triangle) of employees who are Managers . All employees have a name and a salary. Managers manage zero or more (the * near the end of the arrow) employees. At this point I hope you'll forgive me if I briefly explain my involvement so that you have the necessary context to interpret the rest of this post. I started a PhD in September 2000 though my would-be supervisor soon left for a start-up. That left me in need of a new supervisor and by summer 2001 I had found someone willing to take me on. Tony Clark remains an inspiration for me: technically gifted thoughtful and with an excellent sense of humour. He didn't deserve to be lumbered with a loud-mouth pea-brain like me but he never once complained! Tony was part of a group of academics and industrialists working towards UML 2.0. It was through that work that I gradually got sucked into the world of UML standardisation. I had no idea what I was doing in 2001. In 2002 I started to get the hang of things and contributed some bits and pieces. In 2003 everyone else in my research group left for a start-up: I chose to inherit their responsibilities forcing me to become a minor player in standardisation in my own right. By early 2005 I had become thoroughly disillusioned and moved onto other things. The situation in the early 2000s The situation in 2000 was roughly that UML had been much more successful than anyone expected. Although UML was mostly being used for sketching designs (i.e. a communication mechanism between humans) some important industries (e.g. aviation) were starting to think of it as a plausible basis for their more formal approaches to creating software (i.e. a communication mechanism between human and machine) [1] . A growing industry was creating UML-based tools. By far the biggest player was IBM (who soon acquired Rational the company that had incubated UML [2] and created the most popular UML-based tool). It's difficult to imagine now but in 2000 IBM was not only rich in money and people but still had the ability to nudge the entire software industry in its desired direction. IBM's involvement was implicitly taken as a sign that there was money to be made in UML. The problem was that UML version 1 was manifestly unsuited to the ambitions IBM and others had for it. Not only was the standard itself somewhat vague but what it was defining was rather vague too. In may ways UML's original sin was that class diagrams by far the most widely used part of UML were largely designed as a diagrammatic notation for the most common object orientated programming language of the day C++. After Java's success in the late 90s UML was extended so that it could also somewhat accurately represent some aspects of Java but the mechanisms used [3] were widely perceived as an ugly hack and clearly wouldn't scale to supporting arbitrary numbers of programming languages. Gradually a consensus emerged: what was needed was for a completely new version of UML that could precisely represent software; and that new version of UML itself needed a rigorous definition so that customers would be able to use a variety of tools from a growing set of UML tool vendors. From this consensus emerged the vision for what became UML 2. Standardisation Since it precedes my involvement I'm not entirely sure when work started on UML 2. My best guess is that the general idea started in 1999 and started to pick up speed during 2000. Work continued in parallel on new versions of UML 1.x standardisation since that was the bread and butter of all the participants involved. All UML standardisation was done under the auspices of the OMG who based on my later experiences were almost certainly active participants in encouraging the formation of UML 2. A fundamental question was: what use cases should UML support? By the time I came along it was taken as a given that UML should be used as the basis of software modelling an intended step-change in the way software was engineered. Taking direct inspiration from architectural blueprints the aim was for UML to be used to give software more solid foundations. Gradually (and we'll get more into this later) this frequently came to be taken to mean that software would be partly or wholly created directly from UML models. This ambitious aim presented two separate challenges to standardisation. Rigorous underpinnings The early UML 1.x standards were fairly standard prose documents often vague and missing much desirable detail. Tool vendors who had often updated pre-UML tools to support UML disagreed on fundamental aspects. Sometimes particularly when older tools were involved this was intentional; sometimes it was unintentional when people interpreted the standards in different ways. Either way interoperability between tools was poor. The situation was at best embarrassing and at worst a serious impediment to UML's success. The standardisation community universally agreed that UML 2 would need rigorous underpinnings. However no-one knew exactly what rigorous should mean or how one should go about achieving it. Gradually a small group of academics [4] who did have an idea of what rigorous could mean and how one could go about it became involved in standardisation. Their idea was in essence to use a subset of UML [5] to give full UML a denotational semantics. Practically speaking it meant that one could grow the UML specification from a small core using UML class diagrams for much of the semantic definitions and UML's constraint language (OCL) for fine-grained semantic specifications. However while much of the standardisation community liked the general sound of this few of them had the background needed to understand the details. This is not a criticism I was lucky enough to be able to work with some of the key people and it took me a year or more of blindly copying what they were doing before the underlying concepts sunk in. Most people did not have such an opportunity. It didn't help that using UML class diagrams led to very verbose semantic definitions leading to the development of meta-programming-esque techniques to reduce some of the drudgery which confused people even more! This meant that one would regularly be in a room of 20 people arguing over definitions with at most 1 or 2 people realistically capable of translating the outcome of the discussion into rigorous (or perhaps more accurately semi-rigorous) semantics and probably only the same 1 or 2 people capable of fully understanding the results. Once the core academics had wandered off to greener pastures most (though not quite all) of the relevant skills left with them. By the time I left the UML standardisation world it seemed to me that the community was gradually lowering its expectations to somewhere between UML 1.x's vagueness and true rigour. Looking at the current UML 2.5.1 specification seems to suggest that was what happened. It's plausible that this lowering of expectations would have happened anyway. In particular there was a subset of (often but not always small) tool vendors who wanted to spend the bare minimum on updating their software. While they lacked a clear strategy for slowing down the rate of change they sometimes achieved this effect anyway through various tactics including simply running the clock down in physical meetings. What to standardise? The ideal of standardisation has traditionally been to look at what's working already and define that as a standard. While the reality of standardisation has often been rather more muddy than the ideal might suggest UML 2 took this to rarely seen levels. As I mentioned earlier by 2000 the standardisation community had decided that UML should be the basis of a new way for creating software. By late 2000 the OMG had actively corralled people behind a new vision called Model Driven Architecture (MDA). The idea was to automatically generate vast swathes of code from UML models. Here's a direct quote from the MDA document [6] : Whether your ultimate target is CCM EJB MTS or some other component or transaction-based platform the first step when constructing an MDA-based application will be to create a platform- independent application model expressed via UML in terms of the appropriate core model. Platform specialists will convert this general application model into one targeted to a specific platform such as CCM EJB or MTS. Standard mappings will allow tools to automate some of the conversion. ... The next step is to generate application code itself. For component environments the system will have to produce many types of code and configuration files including interface files component definition files program code files component configuration files and assembly configuration files. The more completely the platform-specific UML dialect reflects the actual platform environment the more completely the application semantics and run-time behavior can be included in the platform-specific application model and the more complete the generated code can be. In a mature MDA environment code generation will be substantial or perhaps in some cases even complete. Early versions are unlikely to provide a high degree of automatic generation but even initial implementations will simplify development projects and represent a significant gain on balance for early adopters because they will be using a consistent architecture for managing the platform-independent and platform-specific aspects of their applications. The basic idea underlying MDA was that people creating software would first create a PIM (Platform Independent Model) think a programming-language neutral UML class model. From that (ideally by pushing a button) they would create a more detailed PSM (Platform Specific Model) think a class model with annotations for a particular programming language (e.g. Java). Once the PSM had been suitably tweaked it would be transformed into low-level programming language code that users would compile and run. For example if I used the class diagram from earlier in the post as my PIM: and I wanted to eventually create a Java system I might transform it into the following PSM: The PSM makes more details concrete: I've specified the visibility of fields (- means private); and I've started using specific Java types ( int and Set ). I might then generate Java code along the lines of: class Employee { private String name; private int salary; public String get_name() { return this.name; } public void set_name(String name) { this.name = name; } public int get_salary() { return this.salary; } public void set_salary(int salary) { this.salary = salary; } } class Manager extends Employee { private Set manages; } Soon the vision for what should be standardised for UML became mixed together with what does MDA need? It's thus important to delve into the MDA vision in more depth. The MDA vision By the time I had become involved in things most of the nuance in the MDA text I quoted above had disappeared. It was largely taken as a given that only the most talented people in an organisation would be involved in the creation of PIMs; a cadre of second-class citizens would then have to engage in the drudgery of creating a PSM from a PIM; and no-one would need to worry about the code generated from the PSM. The deep flaws in this vision might be obvious to most readers but the standardisation community intentionally or not trained itself over time to avoid thinking about them. The most glaring flaw is: where would behaviour (i.e. the nitty gritty details of what a program should do) be specified? UML class diagrams are fine for expressing program structure but they don't tell you what a function should actually do. It's probably fairly obvious what get_salary should do but what if I'd added a function print_names to Manager in the PIM? Should it have printed out employee names? in alphabetical order? etc. Sometimes OCL constraints on a function definition would make clear what the function should do but most of us find it difficult to provide precise constraints for complex behaviour. UML did have state machines but they are only really suitable for expressing certain kinds of behaviour. UML's sequence and collaboration diagrams are even more limited in their abilities to express behaviour. Once in a while someone would bring up the problem of specifying behaviour: they would in general either be ignored or told that the problem was so trivial as to not be worth worrying about. Far far more energy was spent arguing about what level of detail should be modelled in PIMs and PSMs I remember day-long arguments in windowless hotel rooms with people arguing about whether a certain detail belonged at the level of PIM or PSM. Perhaps only one piece of software tried to make the true MDA vision a a reality Compuware's (long discontinued) OptimalJ. It was backed by a large team but it was a beast of a thing that brought normal computers of the day to their knees [7] . I had to write an evaluation of OptimalJ and soon realised how flawed the vision it was trying to implement was. Yes I could create a class diagram as a PIM; press a button and create a PSM; and press another button and generate Java code. But the Java code had all sorts of holes in it that I had to fill in and if I changed the model in any way half of the code I'd written would no longer compile let alone run correctly. In other words OptimalJ automated the most trivial things leaving all the hard work to the end user. The team behind OptimalJ were talented and hard working but what they ended up showing was that MDA not only failed to improve programmer productivity but actually slowed down development! At the same time many OMG members and the OMG itself [8] in the form of its charismatic leader started putting increasing efforts into selling the MDA vision to the wider software community. I only realised how much impact this was having when I started to get asked by normal programmers questions along the lines of I hear this MDA / UML thing is going to automate our jobs away? My standard answer went along the lines of it's mostly aimed at non-programmers who want to create simple software which I think reassured the people I spoke to. However the fact that they asked the question showed that MDA's marketing was starting to work. The question soon became: could the community make the reality of MDA match the vision? The rise and fall of QVT A fundamental idea underlying MDA was that PIMs needed to be transformed into PSMs and PSMs transformed into code. Slowly but surely it became clear to the standardisation community that such transformations were much more difficult than first thought. By 2002 this was recognised to be a significant problem. The community thus decided that what was needed was a new standard for model transformations. For reasons that I've now forgotten (or perhaps never knew) this ended up with the unwieldy title QVT (Queries-Views-Transformations). The QVT call for proposals went out in (I think) late 2002 or early 2003. A few months later 8 proposals had been created [9] some of them in a literal burst of late-night activity. The core of the proposal I was involved in derived from a single afternoon's discussion which we then worked up into a semblance of a document over a few weeks. Astonishingly our half-baked proposal was soon considered one of the leading proposals which tells you something about some of the rest! There is a fundamental tension in the sorts of transformations MDA and thus QVT needed which I'll simplify as follows. Imperative (think normal programming language) transformations explicitly specify the sequence of steps needed to transform an input to an output (e.g. for each element in E create an element E' by calling the function f). Declarative (think Prolog) transformations specify the relationship between the input and output (e.g. for each element in E there is an output element E' of the form X) leaving an engine to work out how to make the input and output correct with respect to the specification. Imperative transformations are easy to write but are hard to rerun non-destructively: if you've changed the output it's difficult to then change the input and see changes in the input reflected sensibly in the output. Declarative transformations are hard to write (particularly when the relationship between input and output is complex) but hold the promise of continually reordering the input and output even when both have been changed independently. Some of the QVT proposals asserted that only fully-imperative transformations were needed; some that fully declarative transformations were possible; and some (like the one I was involved with) tried to pretend they could span both dimensions. How could such disparate approaches end up as a single standard? OMG meetings were at that point held 5 times a year in person (a level of travel that now horrifies me!) so we had many opportunities to try to find a compromise. However compromise was rather hard to find. At one extreme was a camp that wanted to put a badge on their existing imperative programming language and call it QVT. At the other extreme was a camp that believed one could specify first order logic constraints and always efficiently find an optimal solution (something that would lead to the known laws of mathematics being rewritten). The proposal I was involved with was much less concrete. Partly influenced by the PIM/PSM idea our proposal proposed allowing high-level abstract definitions of transformations (what we called relations) and low-level implementations (what we called mappings). Relations were intended to be represented with UML-ish diagrammatic syntax but we explicitly said that any language could be used for mappings (though we provided an example Model Transformation Language which was in part influenced by functional programming-esque pattern matching). Somehow it gradually came to be seen that a variant on our approach could satisfy the two competing camps who could simply claim that their languages were simply low-level QVT languages! Someone came up with the idea of calling the implementation of a transformation a black box since any language can be used inside a black box without anyone else noticing. That seems to be the terminology used in the final standard . Initially I was pleased by the idea that our proposal might end up the winner. However slowly but surely I started to wonder what exactly such a standard could achieve: is a standard a meaningful standard if implementations of it aren't in any way compatible? The answer I was forced to conclude was no. However our inability to create a meaningful standard hid a deeper problem: none of us knew how to create transformations of remotely the size sophistication and flexibility that MDA would need. We couldn't scale such transformations beyond toy examples and in my opinion we lacked plausible ideas for doing so. Since such transformations were a key part of MDA QVT's failure thus also guaranteed the failure of MDA. Once I'd come to this realisation I slowly wound down my involvement concentrating instead on my PhD (about one third of my eventual thesis is perhaps unsurprisingly about UML-ish transformations; the other two-thirds is about programming languages a topic rather nearer to my heart). I attended my last standardisation meeting in early 2005 and that was more or less the end of my involvement in UML standardisation [10] . Summary With the benefit of hindsight I think UML had quite possibly reached not only its actual but also its potential peak in 2000: as a medium for software sketching people only ever needed the basics from it. However the standardisation community developed an ambitious vision for UML that far exceeded sketching. Whether or not that vision could ever be realised can be seen as a matter of genuine debate: what seems unarguable to me is that such a vision was deeply unsuited to any standardisation process. QVT is the most succinct example of trying to standardise what was at best early-stages research with failure inevitably resulting. However while the standardisation overreach inherent in QVT stayed largely within OMG's confines MDA's failure was widely noted. Not only was MDA seen to fail but by association it undermined the success of UML as a sketching language turning it into the butt of jokes that it has largely remained to as these days. I could not have guessed this at the time but my involvement in all this taught me several valuable lessons two of which I think are worth highlighting. First and foremost group dynamics can develop in such a way that reasonable optimism turns into blind optimism and expressing doubts becomes a taboo. When that happens it is easy for the group to drift towards extreme positions that guarantee the group's failure. The UML standardisation community became ever more invested in UML 2's success: at first doubting views were dismissed as referencing trivial problems; eventually such views stopped being expressed at all. The community only talked about success even when there was significant evidence that failure was the most likely outcome [11] . Similarly QVT was the wrong idea at the wrong time but people were so desperate for success that they chose to ignore fundamental problems. Second when standardisation moves from standardise what already exists to standardise things that we think would be good but don't yet exist it enters dangerous territory. I rather like research but standards committees are about the worst possible place to do research. At best an unsatisfying lowest common denominator ends up being chosen but at worst the process collapses. There should be no shame in my opinion in a standardisation process realising that it has raced ahead of where the state-of-the-art is and that it would be better to revisit matters when meaningful progress has occurred. I jokingly titled this post UML: My Part in its Downfall. Really it's probably more accurate to say that its downfall had been predestined before I had anything to do with it and I probably had no observable effects on its success or failure. But I hope you found my perspective and half-remembered memories of this cautionary tale interesting! Acknowledgements : thanks to Lukas Diekmann and Hillel Wayne for comments. The standardisation of UML coincided with and was probably a necessary precondition of a rapid increase in its use. From my perspective as an undergraduate in the late 1990s Martin Fowler's UML Distilled book was also an important part in UML reaching a wide audience. Class diagrams in particular became extremely common and a simplification of UML's class diagram syntax had come close to being a lingua franca by 2000. Here's a simple example: This shows two classes: an Employee class; and a subclass (the arrow with the hollow triangle) of employees who are Managers . All employees have a name and a salary. Managers manage zero or more (the * near the end of the arrow) employees. At this point I hope you'll forgive me if I briefly explain my involvement so that you have the necessary context to interpret the rest of this post. I started a PhD in September 2000 though my would-be supervisor soon left for a start-up. That left me in need of a new supervisor and by summer 2001 I had found someone willing to take me on. Tony Clark remains an inspiration for me: technically gifted thoughtful and with an excellent sense of humour. He didn't deserve to be lumbered with a loud-mouth pea-brain like me but he never once complained! Tony was part of a group of academics and industrialists working towards UML 2.0. It was through that work that I gradually got sucked into the world of UML standardisation. I had no idea what I was doing in 2001. In 2002 I started to get the hang of things and contributed some bits and pieces. In 2003 everyone else in my research group left for a start-up: I chose to inherit their responsibilities forcing me to become a minor player in standardisation in my own right. By early 2005 I had become thoroughly disillusioned and moved onto other things. The situation in the early 2000s The situation in 2000 was roughly that UML had been much more successful than anyone expected. Although UML was mostly being used for sketching designs (i.e. a communication mechanism between humans) some important industries (e.g. aviation) were starting to think of it as a plausible basis for their more formal approaches to creating software (i.e. a communication mechanism between human and machine) [1] . A growing industry was creating UML-based tools. By far the biggest player was IBM (who soon acquired Rational the company that had incubated UML [2] and created the most popular UML-based tool). It's difficult to imagine now but in 2000 IBM was not only rich in money and people but still had the ability to nudge the entire software industry in its desired direction. IBM's involvement was implicitly taken as a sign that there was money to be made in UML. The problem was that UML version 1 was manifestly unsuited to the ambitions IBM and others had for it. Not only was the standard itself somewhat vague but what it was defining was rather vague too. In may ways UML's original sin was that class diagrams by far the most widely used part of UML were largely designed as a diagrammatic notation for the most common object orientated programming language of the day C++. After Java's success in the late 90s UML was extended so that it could also somewhat accurately represent some aspects of Java but the mechanisms used [3] were widely perceived as an ugly hack and clearly wouldn't scale to supporting arbitrary numbers of programming languages. Gradually a consensus emerged: what was needed was for a completely new version of UML that could precisely represent software; and that new version of UML itself needed a rigorous definition so that customers would be able to use a variety of tools from a growing set of UML tool vendors. From this consensus emerged the vision for what became UML 2. Standardisation Since it precedes my involvement I'm not entirely sure when work started on UML 2. My best guess is that the general idea started in 1999 and started to pick up speed during 2000. Work continued in parallel on new versions of UML 1.x standardisation since that was the bread and butter of all the participants involved. All UML standardisation was done under the auspices of the OMG who based on my later experiences were almost certainly active participants in encouraging the formation of UML 2. A fundamental question was: what use cases should UML support? By the time I came along it was taken as a given that UML should be used as the basis of software modelling an intended step-change in the way software was engineered. Taking direct inspiration from architectural blueprints the aim was for UML to be used to give software more solid foundations. Gradually (and we'll get more into this later) this frequently came to be taken to mean that software would be partly or wholly created directly from UML models. This ambitious aim presented two separate challenges to standardisation. Rigorous underpinnings The early UML 1.x standards were fairly standard prose documents often vague and missing much desirable detail. Tool vendors who had often updated pre-UML tools to support UML disagreed on fundamental aspects. Sometimes particularly when older tools were involved this was intentional; sometimes it was unintentional when people interpreted the standards in different ways. Either way interoperability between tools was poor. The situation was at best embarrassing and at worst a serious impediment to UML's success. The standardisation community universally agreed that UML 2 would need rigorous underpinnings. However no-one knew exactly what rigorous should mean or how one should go about achieving it. Gradually a small group of academics [4] who did have an idea of what rigorous could mean and how one could go about it became involved in standardisation. Their idea was in essence to use a subset of UML [5] to give full UML a denotational semantics. Practically speaking it meant that one could grow the UML specification from a small core using UML class diagrams for much of the semantic definitions and UML's constraint language (OCL) for fine-grained semantic specifications. However while much of the standardisation community liked the general sound of this few of them had the background needed to understand the details. This is not a criticism I was lucky enough to be able to work with some of the key people and it took me a year or more of blindly copying what they were doing before the underlying concepts sunk in. Most people did not have such an opportunity. It didn't help that using UML class diagrams led to very verbose semantic definitions leading to the development of meta-programming-esque techniques to reduce some of the drudgery which confused people even more! This meant that one would regularly be in a room of 20 people arguing over definitions with at most 1 or 2 people realistically capable of translating the outcome of the discussion into rigorous (or perhaps more accurately semi-rigorous) semantics and probably only the same 1 or 2 people capable of fully understanding the results. Once the core academics had wandered off to greener pastures most (though not quite all) of the relevant skills left with them. By the time I left the UML standardisation world it seemed to me that the community was gradually lowering its expectations to somewhere between UML 1.x's vagueness and true rigour. Looking at the current UML 2.5.1 specification seems to suggest that was what happened. It's plausible that this lowering of expectations would have happened anyway. In particular there was a subset of (often but not always small) tool vendors who wanted to spend the bare minimum on updating their software. While they lacked a clear strategy for slowing down the rate of change they sometimes achieved this effect anyway through various tactics including simply running the clock down in physical meetings. What to standardise? The ideal of standardisation has traditionally been to look at what's working already and define that as a

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US Export Restrictions Intel Layoffs Applied Materials and TSMC (fabricatedknowledge.com) If you havent seen - I went on YAVB to do a podcast appearance about my recent long piece on SiTime . I would encourage you to go watch it if you found the SiTime thesis interesting but a bit difficult to digest. Also this substack is a reader-supported endeavor and sharing and subscribing makes a meaningful difference to me. Share If youve found my work helpful in the past every little bit matters to me. Thank you. This week I need to talk about quite a few things. First I want to talk briefly about US export restrictions. I read the documents started to write about the export controls and then realized many of my friends and fellow newsletter writers had really good takes and a 4th or 5th piece would be of little consequence. I instead want to just talk about the impacts and some specific knock-on effects . Here are some of my favorite overviews and quick takeaways from each. Dylan at Semianalysis had a great overview . My takeaway is that the broadness of the technology is pretty astounding dating even old supercomputers as critical and the restrictions for 16nm are vague. Some copper interconnects trailing edge technology so this seems more expansive than direct interference of leading-edge chips. This is economic warfare that is broader in scope and intentionally punitive . Ben Thompson had a great piece I appreciate the timeline and context of the recent chip bans. This started with ZTE and Huawei got pushed along by Trump and now is a bipartisan issue. The unverified list is just a continuation of this saga. Lastly I enjoyed this piece by Gregory Allen at CSIS which framed it specifically in terms of AI and warfare. As much as Id like to say this is fanciful I think this is the correct lens. By focusing on AI we are fighting the war of tomorrow today by crippling Chinas ability to keep up. Okay so instead of focusing on the minutiae of the unverified list I want to review some of my speculative first and second-order impacts. First-Order Impacts: YMTC is screwed. This was as punitive as possible for YMTC to prevent their ability to produce memory chips. Nvidias datacenter business will likely never recover that ~400 million in revenue - expect their comps in DC to be much worse in the coming quarters. Most American Semicap revenues in China should go down 70-90%. Given that some lagging edge tools can be sold its unknown if itll go to zero but itll be close. Applied did a preannouncement that seems like they will do better than this. (More below) Second-Order Impacts: Korea is going to get strong-armed into Chip 4 (soon to be Chip 5) The memory cycle might be flipped to undersupply in NAND given that YMTC capacity shouldnt be able to grow bits at all WFE spending is going to be terrible next year given that YMTC is cut off Chinese retaliation likely comes in the form of US consumer goods. Like Apple iPhones sold in China or Nike shoes. But given their broad economic weakness I think they are not in the position to return a strong body blow. I want to spend some time on analogies that I think are appropriate. During the South Korea and China spat over THAAD missiles Chinese consumption of Korean cars went down meaningfully. Hyundai Motor reported on Apr. 4 that it had sold 56026 automobiles in the Chinese market the previous month a 44.3% drop from Mar. 2016. Kia Motor reported 16006 vehicles sold over the same period down by 68%. Together the companies sold 72032 vehicles with a decrease of 52.2% from the same period last year. Another good analog is during the Japanese and Chinese island disputes where a similar sales decline happened. Toyota said sales of new vehicles in China dropped 48.9% in September from a year earlier to 44100 vehicles. Honda said that September sales plunged 40.5% to 33931 vehicles. China sales for Nissan slid 35% last month to 76100 vehicles. The difference this time is that Chinas economy is in a weak place as is. They are enacting stimulus packages in the third quarter to counteract their zero-Covid policy. Its not like theres a burgeoning consumer demand available to cut off foreign goods. Ask consumers not to spend might not be in the cards. The real fear is that this forces Chinas hand to something much more punitive. Namely invading Taiwan. That scenario is hard to discount but I feel like the US delivered a solid blow in this round of economic war. Its unlikely China can return the blow economically so it might have to resort to something different. Time will tell. One of the things that surprised me this week was the intense pushback on this tweet. Reminder for everyone: I have a Chinese and end market comp sheet and Intel has the highest exposure to PCs . So my reasoning is this is extra bad for Intel. However the comments and pushback go like this: Intel foresaw this and that was last quarters guide down. They are ahead of this weakness. I disagree. Lets recount the history of the PC unit shipment expectations so far this year. AMD has always been a bit ahead of Intel in terms of expecting the PC units for this year to be lower. In Q1 they were high single digits while Intel was in mid-single digits. In Q2 AMD said: Our PC outlook now at mid-teens would kind of put the market at somewhere around let's call it 290 million to 300 million units. So I do think we've appropriately derisked the PC business. Intel in their Q2 still is behind AMDs PC unit expectations. We now expect the PC TAM to decline roughly 10% in calendar year '22 characterized by broadening consumer weakness and relative strength in enterprise and higher-end SKUs Meanwhile AMD pre-announced and the entire delta between consensus is PC. So I presume this implies PC shipments will be down more than 20% this year compared to their previous mid-teens estimate. Intels guide does not account for this and it was 10% in Q2. PC is doing horrid but the knock-on effect is this simple. Who has the largest client business in the world? Intel. I think their revenue miss this next quarter is going to be horrid. Meanwhile PC shipments are plunging. I think it is impossible that Intel doesnt put up a worse than 20% revenue decline in PC. Current estimates are -20% for next quarter but that was their guide; clearly things have gotten worse. How this flows through to operating income is unknown but its no surprise that Intel will be doing a meaningful round of layoffs likely announced during earnings. Intel will come in below or at the low end of their range and proceed to have one of the ugliest guides weve ever seen. Pat already confirmed at Evercore TMT in September they would be at the low end. I think things have materialized pretty much as we expected but even a little bit worse. And so we gave a range for our outlook on the call something Intel never does. We always give you a number. This time we gave a range right given that overall economic uncertainty at the time. And I'll say we're within the range for the quarter and for the year but trending towards the lower end right? Intel is still the world's largest PC company and since PC shipments are getting worse we should expect carnage. I do. TSMC handily beat earnings. Below is a graphic from @ConsensusGurus. This was not surprising given they report monthly revenue. The favorable FX translations are part of the revenue beat as gross margins are massively helped by completely Taiwanese costs. 7nm and 5nm now comprise over 50% of revenue but 7nm in particular looks like a cyclical node as utilization is dropping much faster than 5nm. They still expect a 3nm ramp in the 2H of 2023. What I thought was much more interesting was how much HPC slowed down and how much smartphones accelerated. A reminder that this is QoQ revenue and a meaningful amount of this is Apple the only company that doesnt seem to be feeling the global malaise. This is partially seasonal but the weakness in HPC likely has something to do with Nvidias recent weakness . IoT is the part that makes me wonder. IoT is now the fastest-growing platform and was closer to a single-digit percentage of revenue last year. At this rate we should expect it to become teens revenue next year yet there are hardly any questions on the call. The call broadly wasnt that interesting to me much of the same. Some other housekeeping items. They didnt guide CY23 capex but reduced their capex spending plans for 2022 to a more modest 20% YoY growth. I believe that the WFE spending consensus might look closer to just ~10-12% YoY growth when it all shakes out especially given the rapid cuts by memory companies. They expect inventory in the supply chain to peak in Q3 reduce in Q4 decrease utilization and reduce gross margin headwinds from depreciation and N3 ramps to be at least 500 bps of gross margin erosion. Despite all that they expect the industry to drop and TSMC to grow in 2023. Talk about confidence! They did get a 1-year license for their 16/28nm factories in Nanjing but obviously thats just a year. How much they can spend in Nanjing on an ongoing basis seems up to debate. Lets talk about how this impacts Applied materials for a case study of semicap. Last night Applied revised its fiscal fourth quarter ending October 30 2022. This is the net impact of the bans according to them. On Oct. 7 2022 the United States government announced new export regulations for U.S. semiconductor technology sold in China including wafer fabrication equipment and related parts and services. Applied currently estimates that the new regulations will reduce its fourth-quarter net sales by approximately $400 million plus or minus $150 million. The truly odd part of the pre-release was this: Applied is pursuing additional export licenses and authorizations where needed. The company currently expects the new regulations will impact net sales in the first quarter of fiscal 2023 by a similar amount as in the current quarter . Additional information will be provided during the companys next earnings webcast. Last quarter Chinese revenue at Applied was ~27% of revenue so the initial estimate of $400 million given that we are deep into the quarter makes sense. Below is my proforma. The weird part is the similar amount for the next quarter because given their revenue it should impact them to the tune of ~20% yet they expect a similar amount. If I had to guess thats partially driven by the temporary licenses for companies like TSMC SK Hynix and Samsung fabs in China will likely continue. The implied net here is that only 30% of revenue will be outright blocked in the 1Q23 timeframe. This seems massively bullish given historical public comments of 50% of revenue in China being Chinese domestic companies. Another thought process is that these backlogs are fungible and can be re-diverted elsewhere to other companies hungry for shipments sooner. Its hard to know more than that given all the information we are given but thats a helpful upper bound for how much Chinese WFE gets 0d out in the coming periods. ~30% of their Chinese business. Anyways back to WFE. There are so many pieces here that are moving its pretty tough to estimate and know what WFE will look like for 2022 let alone 2023. I want to note that Microns drastic capex cut looks like the outlier now. Nanya reported and moved capex meaningfully down for the CY 2022 and CY 2023 numbers. But the 2023 number looks less than expected down 20% YoY. My guess (seriously this is a guess) is that total WFE for 2022 looks like 12% YoY growth driven by ~20%+ in foundry and logic and mid-single-digit increases in Memory. That is mostly driven by the intense cuts that are happening in Memory right now. I would say thats ~90-92 billion. The hard part is where things end up next year. I havent done the full analysis quite yet I am waiting on the Semicap and other semi-players to report before I take a real crack at 2023. The biggest unknown is China which could move WFE much lower. But my guess is that the new consensus is in the high 60s range. Somewhere between $65-72 billion. Im going to steal Dylans estimate - I think theres nothing wrong with it quite yet and I havent pried deeper. (Below is from Semianalysis) I believe that puts most of the semicap names at mid to high teens P/E. The problem here is now the next leg is how much of WFE is China (my estimate is ~10-15% of global WFE). Is that going to zero instantly? Time will tell - the earnings calls will be the great color this quarter. Stay sane my friends. Its a topsy-turvy time in semiconductor land. Im looking forward to earnings season in earnest. As a reminder I never put earnings content in front of my paywall so if you want to keep up to date I think you should subscribe. :) Talk soon. Next week is ASML LRCX BESI ENTG Nordic and more earnings. ASML is usually the first semicap company and sets the tone for the quarter. My guess is that the supply chain massively improved (AMAT pre-announce) but against that are the bans. Where that nets us is going to be interesting. No posts Ready for more?

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US could soon approve MDMA therapy (nature.com) Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime to ensure continued support we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript. Advertisement Sara Reardon is a freelance journalist based in Bozeman Montana. You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar Illustration by Adri Volt You have full access to this article via your institution. For Rick Doblin 2023 could be a landmark year: the year that the US government decides whether it will allow the use of hallucinogenic drugs to treat mental illness . Doblin who is based in Belmont Massachusetts is the founder and president of the non-profit organization Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS). He has spent nearly 40 years researching whether the experience produced by the psychedelic drug MDMA also called ecstasy or molly can help people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In 2021 MAPSs phase III clinical trial of 90 people with PTSD found that those who received MDMA coupled with psychotherapy were twice as likely to recover from the condition as were those who received psychotherapy with a placebo 1 (see Response to MDMA therapy). Source: Ref. 1 MAPS has now completed a second larger trial that it says has also produced positive results. After that study is published in the coming months MAPS plans to ask the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to approve the drug as a legal treatment for PTSD probably by October. FDA approval would mark a turning point for psychedelic drugs which have long been illegal and thus difficult to study. With MAPS nearing the finish line Doblin is optimistic that things will go smoothly. I dont think therell be tricky questions or anything the results are great he says. This shift towards taking psychedelic therapy seriously is happening outside the United States as well. In February Australia approved MDMA as a treatment for PTSD although the drug will remain highly restricted. Doblin and others hope that the changing attitudes will open the door for other therapeutic psychedelics including ketamine ayahuasca LSD (acid) psilocybin (the active ingredient in magic mushrooms) and many synthetic chemicals currently in development. One analysis has projected that the psychedelics market could be worth more than US$8 billion by 2028. But many questions remain in the short term chiefly how MDMA will be administered and by whom. MAPS officials say that the drug must be given in concert with a psychotherapy protocol developed by the companys scientists but the FDA does not typically regulate such treatments. And its unclear whether approving MDMA on the basis of MAPSs data would ease the way for other companies hoping to study and develop the drug or whether anyone would even want to. MDMA has been around since 1912 and cannot be patented creating little financial incentive. And if problems arise after the drug is approved researchers worry that political and public sentiment could turn against psychedelics setting the whole field back. But Doblin still envisions treatment centres sprouting up around the world he predicts that more than 6000 will emerge in the United States alone where people with PTSD and other psychiatric illnesses can safely and legally use MDMA and other psychedelics under the guidance of therapists. Beyond this he hopes ultimately for full legalization that would allow anyone to take the drugs however they wish. MAPS has been the beacon to kind of take on this work says neuroscientist Amy Kruse who is chief investment officer at venture capital firm Satori Neuro and is based in Annapolis Maryland. There are many people that can benefit from this treatment and I think it shows a pathway for the potential rescheduling of other molecules. Doblin who has spoken openly about his own experiences taking psychedelic drugs founded MAPS in 1986 a year after the US government banned MDMA. The goal was to revive research that had begun in the 1960s which suggested that MDMA and LSD could treat a number of psychiatric conditions including PTSD. The theory holds that MDMA allows people to confront their trauma by dampening the fight-or-flight response much in the way alcohol does but without the confusion and forgetfulness. Whereas many PTSD therapies direct a person to concentrate on a traumatizing event potentially retraumatizing them in the process MDMA elevates positive emotions and allows people to make connections that might not have otherwise seemed obvious according to proponents. Therapists had administered it to thousands of patients before the ban only some of them under the auspices of clinical trials. Chronic pain can be treated so why are millions still suffering? Chronic pain can be treated so why are millions still suffering? After the drug was outlawed psychiatrists remained sceptical about its efficacy for decades. Still the twentieth-century data allowed MAPS to skip early safety trials and immediately begin phase II trials to assess MDMAs efficacy as a PTSD treatment in half a dozen countries. The intense experiences that come with taking MDMA created a unique problem for regulators. The FDA typically requires at least two double-blind placebo-controlled studies. But there has typically been little doubt among participants and therapists about who is receiving the drug. Without a true placebo control a trial of a psychiatric drug will almost certainly produce positive results says Erick Turner a psychiatrist at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland who has served on FDA advisory committees. Patients know what theyre getting and believe in it he says. Theyre going to be biased by that knowledge. Doblin anticipated this issue and in 2017 the FDA approved a special protocol for MAPS. After the treatment sessions each participants symptoms were evaluated by psychologists who did not administer the drug and did not know who was in each group. With this protocol in place the FDA has agreed to base its decisions on the reported efficacy and not take issue with the study design. Outside advisers to the FDA can still raise concerns however. Doblin worries what the regulators will do about the psychotherapy component. In trials the drug is administered by a pair of MAPS-trained therapists who guide the participants experience through scripted sessions that also allow for improvisation. The FDA does not regulate the guided-therapy component only the drug but Doblin says that the two are inseparable. What we believe is that the results that we got were not from MDMA Doblin says. They were from highly trained therapists who are then using MDMA. A MAPS spokesperson says that the organization expects that the drugs prescribing label will state that MDMA needs to be administered in combination with therapy. The FDA has done this previously with some other psychiatric drugs including naltrexone. Because the FDA does not oversee behavioural-health interventions the spokesperson adds insurers or government payers are likely to enforce this requirement. MAPS is also sponsoring trials of different types of psychological co-treatment including cognitive therapies and group therapy to see whether these are better or more efficient. Rick Doblin president of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies. Credit: Tony Luong/New York Times/Redux/eyevine The unscripted component of the guided therapy also concerns Turner because it introduces another variable that could influence efficacy. The psychotherapy is a moving target and changes depending upon the patients response he says. A person who gets the placebo would have a therapy experience very different from that of someone who gets MDMA. An FDA spokesperson says the agency is generally unable to discuss existing or potential applications. Safety problems not necessarily with the drug itself are also a concern. A woman enrolled in MAPSs phase II study reported that she had been assaulted by her therapists; videos show them lying in bed with her and kissing her during a 2015 MDMA session. One of the therapists later started a sexual relationship with her and she eventually reported him to the police and sued him in civil court. In his response the therapist said that the relationship was consensual. The case was settled out of court. How ecstasy and psilocybin are shaking up psychiatry How ecstasy and psilocybin are shaking up psychiatry MAPS fired the therapists and updated its consent forms to inform participants that such behaviour could happen but is not permissible. Doblin says that puts the burden on the therapist. Its a general problem it happens with or without MDMA he says. In surveys a small percentage of therapists admit to having been sexually involved with clients during or after therapy despite the ethical guidelines of psychology associations 2 . There are strong signs that the government is leaning towards approval. In 2022 The Intercept published a letter from an official at the US Department of Health and Human Services saying that it anticipated that the FDA would approve MDMA by 2024. And in 2017 the FDA granted breakthrough status to both MDMA and psilocybin putting the drugs on a regulatory fast track to approval. Organizations such as the American Psychological Association (APA) have been cautiously optimistic: a 2022 statement said that although current scientific evidence is inadequate for the use of psychedelics outside clinical trials APA supports continued research and therapeutic discovery into psychedelic agents. Still the organization has warned that treatments should be approved by regulators instead of by ballot initiatives or popular opinion. Some worry that premature approval of the drugs could frustrate scientific progress. In 2020 the state of Oregon voted to legalize psilocybin for therapeutic use. And in February researchers around the world were shocked when Australias Therapeutic Goods Administration announced that it would legalize MDMA as a PTSD treatment as of 1 July. The administration has not yet provided details on what kind of training will be required to administer the drug. So far only one person has been treated with MDMA as part of an Australian study and he dropped out of the trial. We dont have anything to indicate this is safe and effective says Stephen Bright a psychologist at Edith Cowan University in Perth Australia who is running the MDMA trial and is currently recruiting more participants. He worries that the reclassification could halt trials because no one would want to end up in a placebo group. Even Doblin was taken aback by Australias decision. Im nervous about whats going on and about the level of training that will be required he says. MAPS is planning to train several dozen Australian practitioners later this year but Doblin worries that other training programmes will be insufficient. Australias move could put pressure on the FDA to approve MDMA and open a larger market in the United States. But Mason Marks a law professor at Florida State University in Tallahassee who studies drug policy isnt convinced that approving MAPSs application will open the door for other psychedelic drugs or providers at least not any time soon. In 2018 the agency approved an epilepsy drug called Epidiolex which is developed from a non-psychoactive component of cannabis. But all other medical cannabis formulations remain federally illegal. Marks suspects that the agency will similarly approve MAPSs protocol and specific MDMA capsule formulation rather than reclassifying the drug and effectively making it legal. Psychedelics move from agents of rebellion towards therapeutics Psychedelics move from agents of rebellion towards therapeutics Such a move would essentially leave MAPS as the only source of legal MDMA treatment outside clinical trials which Marks worries could hamper innovation. It does create an asymmetry between MAPS and other groups that might want to do research that could help us understand the safety he says. Kruse thinks that FDA approval would nevertheless foster innovation. The PTSD landscape is quite broad and I dont think this is a winner-take-all environment she says. If MAPS is the only one allowed to develop MDMA and administer treatment she says it could incentivize other companies to develop and patent similar alternative chemicals. MAPS intends to commercialize MDMA for profit but its long-term plans are unclear. In 2014 the organization created a public-benefit corporation (PBC) a company that attempts to balance shareholders financial interests and the public interest. A spokesperson for MAPS PBC declined to answer whether it plans to patent its formulation or to speculate on future plans. We think we will be the first to bring MDMA-assisted therapy to patients the spokesperson says which should mean that MAPS can market the formulation exclusively for five and a half years. Beyond that Doblin says MAPS PBC hasnt decided what its future will look like. The company says that its therapist training programme has made millions of dollars from therapists medical practices and donors paying to train practitioners in the clinical trials. But if MDMA therapy is integrated into standard psychiatry and psychology training programmes which is Doblins goal that revenue stream could dry up. He would also like to see MDMA fully legalized which would make it more difficult to sell for profit. Im on the knifes edge between capitalism and altruism Doblin says. Regardless of MAPSs financial future he is cheering for researchers developing other psychedelic drugs such as psilocybin or repurposing MDMA as a treatment for depression and traumatic brain injury. Even if the FDA approval takes longer than anticipated he says the groundwork has been laid. The endgame is mass mental health he says. But it will take several generations. Nature 616 428-430 (2023) doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-01296-3 Mitchell J. M. et al. Nature Med. 27 10251033 (2021). Article PubMed Google Scholar Vesentini L. et al. Arch. Sex. Behav. 51 453463 (2022). Article PubMed Google Scholar Download references Chronic pain can be treated so why are millions still suffering? How ecstasy and psilocybin are shaking up psychiatry Psychedelics move from agents of rebellion towards therapeutics Virtual library of LSD-like drugs could reveal new antidepressants For chemists the AI revolution has yet to happen Editorial 17 MAY 23 Deadly mushroom poison might now have an antidote with help from CRISPR News 16 MAY 23 Menopause therapy: Brain-based treatment for hot flushes approved by FDA News 15 MAY 23 I am not a broken version of normal autistic people argue for a stronger voice in research News Feature 10 MAY 23 Is the world ready for ChatGPT therapists? News Feature 03 MAY 23 Astrocyteneuron subproteomes and obsessivecompulsive disorder mechanisms Article 12 APR 23 Houston Texas (US) Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) Houston Texas (US) Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) University Professor of Evolutionary Biology beginning at the earliest date possible. Salary grade W 3 LBesG | Civil servant (tenured) Mainz Rheinland-Pfalz (DE) Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) Nature Portfolio is a flagship portfolio of journals products and services including Nature and the Nature-branded journals dedicated to serving ... New York City New York (US) Springer Nature Group Director of the Milner Centre Department: Life Sciences Closing date: Sunday 18 June 2023 We are looking for a new Director to continue and expand ... Bath University of Bath You have full access to this article via your institution. Chronic pain can be treated so why are millions still suffering? How ecstasy and psilocybin are shaking up psychiatry Psychedelics move from agents of rebellion towards therapeutics Virtual library of LSD-like drugs could reveal new antidepressants An essential round-up of science news opinion and analysis delivered to your inbox every weekday. Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter what matters in science free to your inbox daily. 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US court rules Uber and Lyft workers are contractors (bbc.com) A US court has ruled that gig economy giants including Uber and Lyft can continue treating their workers as independent contractors in the state of California. The California appeals court found that a labour measure known as Proposition 22 was largely constitutional. Labour groups and some workers had opposed the measure saying it robbed them of rights like sick leave. The firms say the proposition protects other benefits such as flexibility. The latest ruling overturns a decision made by a lower court in California in 2021 which found that Proposition 22 affected lawmakers' powers to set standards at the workplace. The state of California and a group representing Uber Lyft and other firms appealed against the decision. On Monday a three-judge panel at the appeals court ruled that workers could be treated as independent contractors. However it removed a clause which put restrictions on collective bargaining by workers from Proposition 22. Shares in Uber and Lyft were almost 5% higher in after-hours trading. Today's ruling is a victory for app-based workers and millions of Californians who voted for Prop 22 Tony West chief legal officer at Uber said. We're pleased that the court respected the will of the people and that Prop 22 will remain in place preserving independence for drivers Mr West added. Lyft said that the proposition protects the independence drivers value and gives them new historic benefits. The Service Employees International Union which challenged the constitutionality of Proposition 22 with several drivers said it was considering appealing against the court's decision. In November 2020 voters in California passed Proposition 22 that allowed freelance workers to be classified as independent contractors. It was a victory for Uber and Lyft which run a $205m (168.7m) campaign to support the measure. However the win came with some concessions and companies were required to offer workers some benefits including healthcare and accident insurance. Some drivers had backed Proposition 22 but other drivers and labour groups opposed it pointing out all the benefits of being classified as employees including sick days leave and overtime pay. Tens of millions of people work in the global gig economy across services like food delivery and transport. Gig workers are paid for individual tasks such as a food delivery or a car journey rather than getting a regular wage. Most US federal and state labour laws such as those requiring a minimum wage or overtime pay do not apply to gig workers. Firms like Uber and Lyft have come under increased scrutiny as the industry grows in size. Biden 'gig' workers plan spooks Uber investors Uber loses $5.9bn as Asia investment values fall Uber and Lyft shares soar after driver status vote What is the 'gig' economy? 'Serious differences' hamper US debt ceiling talks US to support providing F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine Triumphant Assad has waited out the storm Japans 75-year pacifism hangs in balance as new threats loom Why the world cares who wins Turkey's presidency Triumphant Assad has waited out the storm You think you know Satanists? Maybe you don't Awards yoga and Eurovision: Photos of the week India's grandmother-granddaughter karate champs. Video India's grandmother-granddaughter karate champs Why G7 has eight more seats at the table this year How Ukraine is tackling the mental scars of war Taiwan looms large as Japan prepares to host G7 The Gen Z workers dressing to stand out How genetics can determine life choices How the 'naked' look took over fashion 2023 BBC. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read about our approach to external linking.

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US moves closer to recalling Teslas self-driving software (fortune.com) U.S. authorities are escalating and expanding a probe into Teslas controversial automated driving feature in a move that could prompt a mandatory recall. On Thursday the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration an agency under the guidance of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said it would be expanding a probe and look into 830000 Tesla cars across all four current model lines 11% more vehicles than they were previously examining. The move came after the agency analyzed a number of accidents that revealed patterns in the cars performance and the associated drivers behavior concluding that the findings warranted an upgrade to an Engineering Analysis from a previous Preliminary Evaluation. An Engineering Analysis can be the precursor to a recall. It said the purpose of escalating the investigation was to explore the degree to which Autopilot and associated Tesla systems may exacerbate human factors or behavioral safety risks by undermining the effectiveness of the drivers supervision. Since Tesla vehicles can have their software overwritten via a wireless connection to the cloud a recall does not necessarily require bringing the vehicles to the dealersa move that can be costly and above all inconvenience customers. But any recalls ordered by NHTSA are required under law and must be officially monitored and coordinated with authorities. Initially the probe started last year in response to Tesla vehicles mysteriously plowing into the scene of an existing accident where first responders were already present. On Thursday NHTSA said it had discovered in 16 separate instances when this occurred that Autopilot aborted vehicle control less than one second prior to the first impact suggesting the driver was not prepared to assume full control over the vehicle. CEO Elon Musk has often claimed that accidents cannot be the fault of the company as data it extracted invariably showed Autopilot was not active in the moment of the collision. While anything that might indicate the system was designed to shut off when it sensed an imminent accident might damage Teslas image legally the company would be a difficult target. All of Teslas current autonomous features including its vaunted Full Self-Driving tech currently in beta testing are deemed assistance systems in which the driver is liable at all times rather than the manufacturer. The regulatory clampdown is not without cause: Last month NHTSA reported traffic fatalities nationwide hit a 16-year high in 2021 after 42915 people lost their lives last year. Up until Biden took office however NHTSA took very much a standoff approach to regulating Tesla. An investigation in 2016 into its Autopilot even concluded that crash rates were reduced by 40% in those vehicles equipped with the technology.Tesla happily cited NHTSAs findings for its own marketing purposes until the study was later retracted as fundamentally flawed. Under the Trump administration regulators such as NHTSA saw their influence sink. The job of the nations top traffic safety official was vacant for 15 months with Heidi King nominated only in 2017 never confirmed by the Senate and in office for only about two years . Her successor James Owens later took the side of Tesla investors arguing the technology saves lives rather than endangers them with a roll-back of rules that safety experts questioned. It was only after Biden moved into the White House that regulatory headwinds began. Last August NHTSA opened its initial probe into 745000 Tesla models already sold almost its entire U.S. fleet at the time. Tesla fans began to worry after a noted critic of Musks self-driving technology was hired by Buttigieg to serve as a top advisor . Late last month the National Association of City Transportation Officials welcomed the confirmation of acting administrator Steven Cliff but warned he faced a long road ahead to rebuild NHTSA through in part the introduction of standards for autonomous vehicle testing. After decades of inaction other world regulatory bodies have leapfrogged the U.S. in enacting regulations that keep people safe NACTO said in a statement . Fortune was not able to reach Tesla for comment. Sign up for the Fortune Features email list so you dont miss our biggest features exclusive interviews and investigations. 2023 Fortune Media IP Limited. All Rights Reserved. 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US-Japan team hails H2-boron plasma fusion breakthrough (rechargenews.com) California-based TAE Technologies and Japans National Institute for Fusion Science claim success testing new fuel cycle opening door to cleaner lower cost energy than produced by conventional deuterium-tritium-based process An innovative nuclear fusion technology that uses no radioactive materials and is calculated capable of powering the planet for more than 100000 years has been successfully piloted by a US-Japanese team of researchers. California-based TAE Technologies working with Japans National Institute for Fusion Science (NIFS) have completed first tests of a hydrogen-boron fuel cycle in magnetically-confined plasma which could generate cleaner lower cost energy that that produced by the more common deuterium-tritium (D-T) fusion process. This experiment offers us a wealth of data to work with and shows that hydrogen-boron has a place in utility-scale fusion power. We know we can solve the physics challenge at hand and deliver a transformational new form of carbon-free energy to the world that relies on this non-radioactive abundant fuel said Michl Binderbauer CEO of TAE Technologies. A spokesperson for NIFS which formed its partnership with TAE in 2021 noted: Hydrogen-boron enables the concept of cleaner fusion reactors this achievement is a big first step towards the realisation of a fusion reactor using advanced fusion fuel. The experiments were carried out in NIFS large helical device known as a stellarator but TAE is developing a so-called field-reversed configuration reactor that promises a variety of benefits over stellarator and tokamak reactors including having a compact footprint and more efficient magnetic confinement that will yield up to 100 times more power output according to the scientists who published their findings today in the journal Nature . Inventing fusion reactors that produce net energy is one thing delivering it as a reliable grid-ready source of electricity is another. By choosing to pursue hydrogen-boron as a fuel cycle TAE has anticipated the true demands of commercial daily use of fusion energy. Most fusion efforts around the world are focused on combining DT hydrogen isotopes to use as fuel and the donut-shaped tokamak machines commonly used are limited to DT fuel. Unlike those efforts [our] design uses an advanced accelerator beam-driven field-reversed configuration that is versatile and can accommodate all available fusion fuel cycles. This fuel-agnostic reactor design which features a sensor able to detect helium nuclei alpha particles the only emissions from H2-boron fusion is expected to make it possible for TAE to license its technology on the way to its ultimate goal of connecting the first hydrogen-boron fusion power plant to the grid in the 2030s. More than 30 research groups around the world are racing to commercialise fusion seen as the perfect power source as the planet shifts away from the CO 2 emitting fossil fuels that are contributing heavily to global heating TAE highlighted that it had built five national laboratory-scale devices with which it had generated and confined fusion plasma more than 140000 times and is currently building two further machines dubbed Copernicus and Da Vinci with a view to demonstrating net energy and deliver power to the grid respectively. US researchers at the US National Ignition Facility in California in December hailed fusion experiments that had achieved ignition gain or energy gain where the energy released was greater than was pumped in the high-powered lasers used in the fusion process. Recharge is part of DN Media Group. To read more about DN Media Group click here Recharge is part of DN Media Group AS. From November 1st DN Media Group is responsible for controlling your data on Recharge. We use your data to ensure you have a secure and enjoyable user experience when visiting our site. You can read more about how we handle your information in our privacy policy . DN Media Group is the leading news provider in the shipping seafood and energy industries with a number of English- and Norwegian-language news publications across a variety of sectors. Read more about DN Media Group here . Recharge is part of NHST Global Publications AS and we are responsible for the data that you register with us and the data we collect when you visit our websites. We use cookies in a variety of ways to improve your experience such as keeping NHST websites reliable and secure personalising content and ads and to analyse how our sites are being used. For more information and how to manage your privacy settings please refer to our privacy and cookie policies.

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USB MIDI interface for the NeXTCube ISPW board (0110.be) I have recently restored a NeXTCube with an ISPW Ariel soundcard with the aim to put it in the hands of artists and researchers in the context of a living electronic music instrument heritage project . To make the cube talk to keyboards synths or other audio workstations I have built a MIDI interface for the NeXTcube . Fig: the NeXTCube with the Ariel ProPort and MIDI input/output interface. Recently I was able to restore a NeXTCube and install an early version of MAX a graphical music programming environment. However a crucial part of the system was missing: there was no way to do MIDI input/output . MIDI is used to connect controllers keyboards synthesizers or other musical instruments to the audio workstation. The NeXTCube itself has a serial port which allows users to connect MIDI devices . Next to the serial port on the mainboard the NeXTCube I am working with also has a RS-422 serial port on the ISPW soundcard. The serial port uses RS-422 and mini DIN 8 connectors which provide MIDI input and output. While the MIDI data bytes are transmitted according to spec the connector and the electrical signals are not compatible with standard MIDI . Fig: the IRCAM /Ariel ISPW soundcard with mini DIN -8 RS-433 serial port on the right. For MIDI I/O we need a device which allows to connect the RS-422 MIDI to both legacy MIDI devices and to computers via USB MIDI . If a MIDI event arrives from the NeXTCubes RS-422 it needs to be passed through to the USB and legacy MIDI ports and the other way around. The Teensy platform is ideal: it supports hardware serial and USB MIDI . In this retro-computing project it seems wasteful to use the 600MHz Teensy 4.0 only for message passing: the Teensy has much more computing power than NeXTcube but it is cheap easy to program available and practical. The RS-422 serial port uses -6V to 6V logic which needs to be transformed to the 0V to 3.3V logic for the Teensy microcontroller. A PCB provides this capability and is connected to a hardware serial port of the Teensy. The pinout of the RS-422 port was measured via a scope and matched the documentation . The Teensy has an usbMIDI mode and can present itself as a standard MIDI device to a PC. Two opto-isolated legacy MIDI DIN -5 ports were connected to another hardware serial port. The software on the Teensy conducts the three-way MIDI message passing . Vid: Max/ FTS FM synth reacting to USB MIDI input. The electronics were fixed into a reused metal enclosure. The front panel of the enclosure was replaced by a custom 3D printed panel. The front contains the RS-422 port two MIDI DIN 5 ports and a micro usb port either for power alone or MIDI messages and power. Feel free to check out the OpenSCAD design with a level MINI DIN8 hole . With a working MIDI interface for the NeXTcube allows interfacing with MIDI keyboards and controllers. It can also be used to measure roundtrip latency. MIDI to sound latency determines how long it takes between pressing a MIDI key and hearing sound. MIDI to MIDI roundtrip latency determines how long it takes to process parse and return a MIDI message. For a responsive reliable system both types of latencies should be constant and preferably in the range of 10ms or below. Fig: Measured MIDI roundtrip latency on the ISPW board for the NeXTCube. Measuring the MIDI roundtrip latency shows that the system is able to respond in 3.6+-0.4 ms (N=300). A combination of a MAX patch and Teensy firmware was used to measure this automatically. The MIDI -to-audio latency was measured a few times manually and always was around 13ms. These figures show that the system is ideal for low-latency real-time music making in its default configuration. In MAX the audio buffer sizes could be reduced to achieve an even lower latency but with the risk of running into buffer underruns and audio glitches. Small discussion the USB MIDI interface for the NeXTCube on Hackaday 0110.be 0110 concerten ARIP Code Collaborative Filtering Command Line Application Computational ethnomusicology Computational musicology Cultuur Dutch featured Folk Music Analysis (FMA) conference franais Hackerspace Ghent Harde waren HoGent IPEM ISMIR Java Jazz JNMR Joren In Halmstad LaTeX Mac OS X Music Information Retrieval Muziek Panako PeachNote Piano Poging tot humor Portfolio Presentation Projecten Reizen Research papers School Tarsos TarsosDSP TarsosTranscoder Thesis UGent Vooruit WSOLA

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Udemy Agrees to Pay $4M Settlement over Deceptive Pricing Practices (classcentral.com) This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. The action you just performed triggered the security solution. There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase a SQL command or malformed data. You can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page. Cloudflare Ray ID: 7ca18ead0d7d4785 Your IP: Click to reveal 2607:fb90:d91a:c61a:b984:d83:be2:9505 Performance & security by Cloudflare

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Ultimate Electronics (2021) (ultimateelectronicsbook.com) Why this is a free, interactive electronics book. Powerful systemslevel problem solving tools for electronics and beyond. Physics and math for solving the simplest class of circuits linear and DC. A versatile, essential building block of linear analog circuit design. Ultimate Electronics Practical Circuit Design and Analysis by Michael F. Robbins ultimateelectronicsbook.com A free, interactive book for electronics hobbyists and electrical engineering students. Did you like this section? Yes No Send feedback Dark Mode On Off Auto 2021 CircuitLab, Inc. Terms Privacy

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Unbundling Tools for Thought (borretti.me) Short version: Theres a joke in game development that theres two kinds of game devs: those who write engines and those who make games. The people who make the engines do it for the intellectual pleasure of discovering a beautiful algebra of vectors scenes entities and events; and watching a beautiful crystalline machine in operation. The actual gamewhich is never finished rarely startedis an afterthought. Of course you wouldnt make a game . That would be parochial. The engine was the point. People who want to make games just download Unity and push through the horror. Ive written something like six or seven personal wikis over the past decade. Its actually an incredibly advanced form of procrastination 1 . At this point Ive tried every possible design choice. Lifecycle: Ive built a few compiler-style wikis: plain-text files in a git repo statically compiled to HTML. Ive built a couple using live servers with server-side rendering. The latest one is an API server with a React frontend. Storage: I started with plain text files in a git repo then moved to an SQLite database with a simple schema. The latest version is an avant-garde object-oriented hypermedia database with bidirectional links implemented on top of SQLite. Markup: I used Markdown here and there. Then I built my own TeX-inspired markup language . Then I tried XML with mixed results. The latest version uses a WYSIWYG editor made with ProseMirror . And yet I dont use them. Why? Building them was fun sure but there must be utility to a personal database. At first I thought the problem was friction: the higher the activation energy to using a tool the less likely you are to use it. Even a small amount of friction can cause me to go oh who cares cant be bothered. So each version gets progressively more frictionless 2 . The latest version uses a WYSIWYG editor built on top of ProseMirror (it took a great deal for me to actually give in to WYSIWYG). It also has a link to the daily note page to make journalling easier. The only friction is in clicking the bookmark to localhost:5000 . It is literally two clicks to get to the daily note. And yet I still dont use it. Why? Im a great deal more organized now than I was a few years ago. My filesystem is beautifully structured and everything is where it should be. I could fill out the contents of a personal wiki. Ive come to the conclusion that theres no point: because everything I can do with a personal wiki I can do better with a specialized app and the few remaining use cases are useless. Lets break it down. The following use cases are very naturally separable: Journalling: 86% of the nodes in my personal wiki are journal entries. Mostly theres no reason for them to be there they are rarely linked to by anything. I have this fallacious view that I have to use the app to justify the time investment therefore I should use it every day and the obvious thing you can do every day is write a daily entry that has say the tasks for today along with journal-like text. Rarely do journal entries link to anything except incidentally. Todo Lists: I used to write todo lists in the daily entries in my personal wiki. But this is very spartan: what about recurring tasks due dates reminders etc.? Now I am a very happy user of Todoist (which has increased my productivity at least 150%) and Im not looking back. Learning: if youre studying something you can keep your notes in a TfT. This is one of the biggest use cases. But the problem is never note-taking but reviewing notes. Over the years Ive found that long-form lecture notes are all but useless not just because you have to remember to review them on a schedule but because spaced repetition can subsume every single lecture note. It takes practice and discipline to write good spaced repetition flashcards but once you do the long-form prose notes are themselves redundant. I also tried writing notes to ensure I understand something first and then translating them to flash cards. Ive found that usually all this does is add an extra layer of friction with no benefit. 3 I also find that long-form study notes are a form of procrastination. I start re-organizing the headings playing with the LaTeX to make everything look beautiful and structured to really get the conceptual organization right so that when future me who has forgotten everything reads the notes back he can easily re-acquire the information because of how well it is presented. This is planning for failure. Spaced repetition is insanely effective even more so when you get the hang of writing flashcards that work for you. RemNote combines long-form prose notes and flashcards in the same interface. The result is that both look like a mess. Contacts: if you have a page for a person with data about them you can then link to them: when you mention them in journal entries for example or in writing meeting notes. I find that this is pointless. You know who [[John Doe]] refers to. Just use Google Contacts or a spreadsheet. Fiction Writing: I actually started writing The Epiphany of Gliese 581 in my personal wiki with fragments and chapters in separate pages but I quickly moved to a git repo with Markdown files because 1) I could compile the disparate files into a single PDF or HTML file for review and 2) using git for version control (rather than my personal wikis native change tracking) makes a lot more sense for writing projects. And you could argue that I could have stayed in my personal wiki by implementing support for transclusion (to assemble all the fragments into one view) and improved the version control UI. But this advice can be applied equally to every domain I attack with a personal TfT and for which it is lacking: just write a plugin to do X. The work becomes infinite the gains are imaginary. You end up with this rickety structure of plugin upon plugin sitting on top of your TfT and UX typically suffers the death by a thousand cuts. Process Notes: e.g. how do I do X in Docker. I often have cause to write notes like this and can never quite think of where to put them. But this cant be a genuine use case for a tool for thought because theres very little need to create links between process notes. So this is just a matter of finding somewhere to put them in the filesystem or in a note-taking app. Organizing Legal Documents: like immigration papers or medical test results. A decent folder structure and a few spreadsheets is all it takes in practice. Lists: of things you own people you know places youve lived in education history work history the administrativia of life. Spreadsheets work just fine for this and there is very rarely any genuine need to link from one to another. What is left? Collection Management: this is an area where the software solutions are strangely very lacking. I have a Calibre library for books. I have a Zotero library for papers. I sometimes think about merging the former into the latter which is more general and has a cleaner UI but theres no urgent need to do so. I also have folders with music games interactive fiction games RPG PDFs board game rulebook PDFs and art. Organizing collections with the filesystem is difficult because of the hierarchical nature of the filesystem 4 : do I file Nanosystems under Chemistry or Eric Drexler or Textbooks or 1992? Do I file The Mermaid under John William Waterhouse Painting Edwardian Era Pre-Raphaelite Art? Any categorization is defensible and any categorization makes it harder to browse by an alternative scheme 5 . I need tags that is: I need a database. And there is a void in app-space where there should be an app that subsumes Calibre and the rest but inexplicably it doesnt exist 6 . And its so obvious what it should be. It should be essentially an SQLite frontend with a fancy interface. You can define record templates (like Book or Person or Song or Paper ) having typed fields (e.g. Title: String PDF: File Authors: List[Link[Author]] field types can be simple data like strings or dates or links to other records or lists of links or a star rating etc.) and then add records to your collection. You can put records in hierarchical folders but you can also retrieve them with search and tags. The closest thing to this is a KDE app called Tellico that Ive never heard anyone talk about using. When you take out everything that is better served by an app or plain old folder structure all youre left with is collection management. So instead of building a personal wiki I should just build a generalized Calibre. So I often wonder: what do other people use their personal knowledge bases for? And I look up blog and forum posts where Obsidian and Roam power users explain their setup. And most of what I see is junk. Its never the Zettelkasten of the next Vannevar Bush its always a setup with tens of plugins a daily note three pages long that is subdivided into fifty subpages recording all the inane minutiae of life. This is a recipe for burnout. People have this aspirational idea of building a vast oppressively colossal deeply interlinked knowledge graph to the point that it almost mirrors every discrete concept and memory in their brain. And I get the appeal of maximalism. But theyre counting on the wrong side of the ledger . Every node in your knowledge graph is a debt . Every link doubly so. The more you have the more in the red you are. Every node that has utilityan interesting excerpt from a book a pithy quote a poem a fiction fragment a few sentences that are the seed of a future essay a list of links that are the launching-off point of a projectis drowned in an ocean of banality. Most of our thoughts appear and pass away instantly for good reason. Theres this pervasive idea that a tool for thoughta hypermedia database with bidirectional linkscan be a universal database of you and other apps can be built on top of that data using plugins. There are two pros here: Centralization of Data: everything is one central place rather than spread out across your filesystem Dropbox and database rows in six different proprietary apps. Hyperlinking: you can link your data pervasively: Obsidian does this: it has some 700 plugins for this reason. Theres plugins for todo lists calendar integration spaced repetition whatever. The main drawback is the user experience for this plugin-based app universe is always going to be inferior to the user experience for domain-specific apps. Its very rare that an app does plugins right. It always feels janky 7 . But the main drawback is: you dont need it . The idea of having this giant graph where all your data is hyperlinked is cute but in practice its completely unnecessary. Things live in separate apps just fine. How often truly do you find yourself wanting to link a task in your todo list app to a file in Dropbox? And if you do manage to build this vast web of links: how often is each link actually followed? (Aside: in the web it makes sense that links should reflect potential since you dont know what people reading your document will want to follow. But in a personal database it makes a lot more sense that links should follow usage : they should be a crystallization of the trails youve followed rather than an a-priori structure that you impose before usage.) The final argument against this is feasibility. Tiago Forte writes : you will always need to use multiple programs to complete projects. You may use a centralized platform like Basecamp Asana Jira or Zoho but technology is advancing too quickly on too many fronts for any one company to do every single function best. And he is absolutely right unless you want to rewrite the entire universe on top of your TfT. The one graph database is an unproductive monistic obsession. A final note: I find that upwards of 80% of the links in my wikis are essentially structural they basically replicate folder structures. The rest are incidental reference links: Im writing a journal entry saying Im working on project X so I add a link to project X out of some vague feeling of duty to link things. And its pointless. The idea of hyperlinks as generative as a path that can follow and acquire new ideas from the random collision of information mostly applies to the web not to personal databases where all the content is written by you. (The text is a quote from Accelerando .) The natural conclusion of most tools for thought is a relational database with rich text as a possible column type. So thats essentially what I built: an object-oriented graph database on top of SQLite. My current personal wiki is called Cartesian (after the Cartesian theatre since I initially thought to build something much more ambitious). The conceptual vocabulary is simple: theres objects classes and links. Most personal wikis are just a special case of this where theres a single class with a single text property. And unsurprisingly the main class I use is Note which has a single rich text property called Text . Initially I had an idea to build classes for managing bibliographies and other collections e.g.: But Ive largely used it for journalling and brief text notes like my journal: And study notes: Heres an example of how youd use it to organize an art collection: The barriers to using it as The One Database are: Having reached the trough of disillusionment : whats next? I think I might clean up Cartesian and release it as a kind of generalized Calibre for people who want to manage their disparate collections. Or I might try writing personal wiki #8 or so since while writing this post I got a whole lot of new ideas so I might allocate some time during the holidays to pushing that boulder up again. In college when I should have been studying lecture notes I was building a personal wiki so I could take better more structured lecture notes. For example: XML soothes my autism and the extensibility makes it easier to add new features 8 but its a pain to author especially when you just want to jot down some very quick bullet-type notes. In Markdown you can write: The equivalent XML: By the time youre done with this Shakespearean soliloquy youve lost whatever train of thought you were trying to capture. Meanwhile in another Everett branch your wiser Markdown-using twin has already finished writing and moved on to doing while you marvel at the crystalline strictness the sheer extensibility of your DTD schema. I sometimes use a small scratchpad to serialize my mental model of something until I understand it and then move it to flashcards. But the crucial distinction here is: there arent two big stages one where I just take prose notes and one where I translate all the notes to flashcards. Its like agile vs. waterfall: the notes should become flashcards as early as possible not after youre done taking all of the notes. This is a great blog post on the difficulties and limitations of hierarchical filesystems. If youre going to tell me to use symbolic links or God help me some FUSE-based tag filesystem thing please dont. I mean this with all the love in the world. Im not 17 anymore I dont have time for Mom cancel my appointments for the rest of the day ZFS is broken. I dont want my TfT to be a kernel driver I want things to be simple and portable. Notion is actually good for this except that uploading multiple gigabytes of PDFs one by one is inconvenient. But if a tool is to be my second brain it cant live on somebody elses computer. I moved from Anki to Mochi for this reason: Mochi does out of the box what I need plugins to do in Anki and managing Anki plugins is a huge pain and the plugin UI is always broken. Mochi has fewer features but a nicer UI (Anki is ugly as sin) and the UI trumps the features since spaced repetition is about building a habit for which good UX is necessary. One of my personal wikis exploited this. There was a <graphviz> element where you could enter the contents of a .dot file and it would automatically render that to a PNG and display it on the page. In theory this would make it easier to build e.g. mind maps without having to separately create a .dot file manually save it to PNG add it to the wiki and embed it. I never used it.

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Undb – Private first, unified, self-hosted no code database https://github.com/undb-xyz/undb nichenqin Private first unified self-hosted no code database. Use Git or checkout with SVN using the web URL. Work fast with our official CLI. Learn more about the CLI . Please sign in to use Codespaces. If nothing happens download GitHub Desktop and try again. If nothing happens download GitHub Desktop and try again. If nothing happens download Xcode and try again. Your codespace will open once ready. There was a problem preparing your codespace please try again. Private first unified self-hosted no code database. Live Demo Documentation Website Roadmap use email test@example.com and password 123456 to login And then you can visit http://localhost:4000 and get started You'll need a render account to deploy your own undb instance Checkout development documentation nichenqin@hotmail.com undb is open-source under the GNU Affero General Public License Version 3 (AGPLv3). You can find it here . Private first unified self-hosted no code database.

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Understanding British Money: What's a Quid? A Shilling? (2020) (iheartbritain.com) I Heart Britain British money has a lengthy history so it's not surprising that it's evolved and changed over the years. Whether you're watching British TV reading British books or just planning a trip to the UK it's understandable you might have questions about how it works. Even among Brits you'll find many don't understand the older British monetary system shillings and farthings and whatnot. Table of Contents We'll start with the easy bit. In 1971 the British government converted the pound into a decimalised currency which means it works very similarly to dollars and Euros. This did away with the shilling making way for a system of pounds and pence (pennies). One pound sterling was declared equal to 100 pence. Instead of the $ sign most of our readers are accustomed to the pound's symbol is and its ISO code (like USD CAD AUD etc) is GBP. The pound sterling is the official currency of the UK Jersey Guernsey the Isle of Man Gibraltar South Georgia and the Sandwich Islands Tristan de Cunha and the British Antarctic Territory. As a member of the EU they could have opted to use the Euro but they decided not to. That means that if you're planning a trip that includes Ireland and the UK or the UK and mainland Europe you'll need to give thought to both currencies. Granted it's all much easier now that we have credit cards (many of which have no foreign transaction fees) but for those situations where cash is essential you'll need both. As of January 2020 1 GBP is worth roughly: UPDATE: As of February 2023 1 GBP is worth roughly: Historically the pound sterling has been worth quite a bit more relative to the USD. Throughout much of the 1970s a single pound would cost more than $2. During the early 2000s 1 fluctuated between roughly $1.45 and $2. As recently as 2014 1 was worth $1.70. Luckily for those who enjoy travelling to the UK the pound sterling has been weak in recent years dipping as low as $1.07 in late 2022. Even still dollars buy a lot more than they used to in the UK so it's a great time to be travelling and shopping at British businesses. RELATED : How to Get British Products Forwarded to the US or Canada (When They Don't Ship There) The most popular slang term for British money is quid. A quid = 1 and there's no plural form to the word. You can have one quid five quid a million quid but you don't have quids. Smackers could also mean 1 as in He wanted 500 smackers for his stereo system. Amounts in pence are often abbreviated as p (pronounced pee). For example a public toilet might require 30p for access. If something requires pounds and pence you could say 5 pounds 50 pence but you're more likely to hear 5 pounds 50. 5 notes and 10 notes are frequently called a fiver or tenner. Back to the topic of toilets if someone tells you they're off to spend a penny they're telling you they're off to use the toilet. They're not literally going to spend a penny. In places where they have pay toilets you're more likely to spend anywhere from 20p to 1 but luckily many busy railway stations have been abandoning the fees in recent years. There are 8 coins currently in circulation: The image above will give you an idea what they look like but remember that designs can vary (there are quite a few collector's pieces in circulation) and also keep in mind that the pound was redesigned in 2017 and the older design has been withdrawn from circulation. It was redesigned to reduce counterfeiting as the Royal Mint estimated that a bit more than 3% of all pound coins in circulation were fake. The new design features a rose for England a leek for Wales a thistle for Scotland and a shamrock for Northern Ireland. You can see the new pound below: More recent British pound coins feature a bimetallic design making it much harder to counterfeit. There are also some larger coins not in common circulation (but still legal tender): Until 1984 there was a half penny and for a while during the 70s and early 80s there was a 25 pence piece. There are four denominations of Bank of England notes currently in circulation: Most people visiting the UK will deal primarily in the first three. At some smaller shops you may find them reluctant to make change for a 20 note so it's a good idea to keep smaller notes or coins on hand if you'll be in places that don't accept cards (though in this day and age most places do). The Bank of England will be issuing a new polymer 20 note in late February 2020 but the old notes will continue to work for now. To many this may seem like an of course not kind of question but even today there are some 1 banknotes still in production and circulation. The Royal Bank of Scotland issues them (even though pretty much everyone uses the coin) and they're also issued in Jersey Guernsey and the Isle of Man. Much like the UK has always had a slight independent streak about the whole EU thing Scotland has always had its own unique character that many have sought to preserve. For example some Scots bristle a bit at being called British no matter how technically accurate it may be. Scottish banknotes are a funny thing because they're not issued by a central bank and they're not technically legal tender ANYWHERE in the UK. Three retail banks (Bank of Scotland Clydesdale Bank and Royal Bank of Scotland) are permitted to print notes and they're classified as promissory notes rather than legal tender. Go to the ATM of any of those banks and you'll get their notes. The designs on Scottish banknotes are all over the place given that they're issued by three different banks. The denominations (and agreed-upon colours) are as follows: Who or what is on a Scottish banknote? It depends on the bank and the year. Different banks have issued different series to commemorate various people and accomplishments including Robert Burns King Robert the Bruce Charles Rennie Mackintosh Nan Shepard and Adam Smith. Scottish banknotes are generally accepted throughout the UK but there are definitely some exceptions especially with the older notes. Bank of England notes cease to be legal tender after a given date but the Scottish banknotes are just slowly withdrawn from circulation as they come through the bank. The banks will honour them indefinitely but retailers can choose not to. If you go to an ATM in Scotland and find yourself with tons of Scottish banknotes before heading back down into England don't worry or feel like you need to change them. The majority of businesses accept them without any trouble. Save A White Fiver Of course if you watch period dramas or read historical fiction you're going to hear about entirely different types of money. Now keep in mind that the UK has more than 1000 years of monetary history to the point that it would take a book or two to properly cover it all. Instead we'll focus on things you're likely to encounter in TV movies and literature. Before decimalisation British money was made up of pounds shillings and pence as follows: Logically it follows that you'd have 240 pence to a pound. The symbol for a penny was a d (for the Latin denarius) and for a shilling it was s (the Latin solidus). The solidus and denarius were Roman coins and of course the comes from libra. The Romans left more than roads Historically pounds came in either paper bills called notes or a quid or gold coins called sovereigns. Granted this was a pretty substantial sum of money so it's not something an average person would be carrying around until the fairly recent past. It would be pretty simple if it was just pounds shillings and pence but that would be too easy. Easy right?? Why would they ever want to change something like that? And what about guineas? You've probably heard someone talk about guineas at some point and that's something a little different. A guinea was a gold coin worth 1 pound 1 shilling. Often referred to as a yellowboy they were typically used for more professional transactions (such as to pay a barrister or artist). That extra shilling made it somehow more gentlemanly. One great example of guinea usage would be the auction scene in Series 1 Episode 4 of Cranford . One more random old money thing if you watched the British TV series Goodnight Sweetheart you'll remember there were a lot of mentions of white fivers. They're a particularly interesting note because they were first issued in 1793 when they made the first 5 note. They remained in circulation with relatively few changes until 1956. Unlike modern fivers they were printed on white paper with blank ink roughly half the size of a modern A4 page. Save it to Pinterest! Share via: Not strictly true to say that quid doesnt have a plural form. The phrase quids in means something very financially profitable as in I sold that old watch at auction and I was quids in. You must be logged in to post a comment. Advertising Disclaimer As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. We work hard to create this content. To help pay for that time we frequently use affiliate links in our posts. When you click on links on this site and make a purchase we may in some cases receive a commission for that referral. Join the Free I Heart Britain Newsletter Get our emails on news history culture and travel within the British Isles.

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Understanding database indexes in PostgreSQL (mastermind.dev) 19 min read There are three types of developers those who know that indexes speed up database queries, those who know that indexes speed up database queries and take additional space and time to write, and those who have a more profound knowledge about indexes, their advantages, disadvantages, different types and much more. Unfortunately, the first and the second group is the most numerous. This article will help you understand SQL indexes if you fall into the first two groups. If you know a lot about indexes, this article will help you organize your knowledge and remind you about good practices. SQL is a declarative language meaning it tells the database what we want to do but not how to achieve it. The database engine decides how to pull data. We can help the query planner by using indexes. All information I provide in this article is specific to the PostgreSQL database engine, but at some point, they are also helpful for other popular database engines. Imagine that you run a web application that is used by millions of users every day. The application uses a database where information about users is collected in a single database called users. Each time someone requests a users profile to be rendered, you have to first find the user record in the database and then render the information back to the visitor. An ordinary scenario The above query was executed against the table with one million records, where every slug is unique, but I didnt put any index on it. It took 57.419 ms to get one record. Lets add a unique index on the slug column I ran the select query again, and it took 0.055 ms to get the matching record. Thats 1043 times faster than before! Imagine using a more complicated query against a bigger set of data without proper indexes on the columns. Now, when we have analyzed simple yet meaningful example, we can do a deep dive into the world of indexes to learn how to design our database the right way. I mentioned at the beginning that most of the developers know that the index speeds up the queries to the database, but if you would ask them to explain the index in detail, they wouldnt know the answer. I separated the definition of index into two pieces a highlevel explanation and a lowlevel definition. The first one is needed to get the right understanding of how indexes work in general, and the second one is for those who like to know how things are working under the hood. Imagine you have a list of contacts on your iPhone, but this list is not sorted alphabetically. You want to call John. What would you do? You would go through every contact starting from the top and stop on the contact named John. Lets say your list contains 100 contacts, and if you are lucky enough, you would need to go through 20 30 contacts before finding the right one. What if John is the last contact? It would take a lot of time to find the contact. Thats the problem that is solved by indexes. Without the index on the column, when you do the filtering, the database is doing the full scan, which simply means that it goes through every record unless the matching record is found. It can take a lot of time, depending on the database size. When you put the index on a column, in our case, the name of the contact, the database creates a special structure that sorts the contacts. So if you are looking for John, you would look for contact names starting with the letter J it speeds up the searching process a few times. There are a few types of indexes I will discuss them next. Lets focus on the default one, which is Btree, so I can demonstrate what it looks like on a low level inside the database. Btree stands for balanced search tree. It simplifies the binary search tree by allowing nodes with more than two children. Each node contains keys in ascending order. If we would consider the example with contact names, the Btree structure would look similar to the following visualization If you would form all of those names into an array and sort them alphabetically, John would be in the middle of an array. If the search is performed on the index, the engine checks if the given value is before or after the root node and repeats the check for every next node. Nodes also contain a pointer to the record in the database, so when the matching node is found, the engine will use the pointer to get the record from the database and incorporate it into search results. There are a few types of indexes, each one suitable for different use cases. You already learned about the Btree index, which is a default one, and it will be applied unless you specify another one. Here is the full list, along with use cases for each of the index types Btree the default index, suitable for all kinds of data. The query planner would consider using the Btree index when the following operators are used , , , ,, BETWEEN, IN, IS NULL or IS NOT NULL. Additionally, the query planner can also consider using this index for queries that include patternmatching with operators LIKE and . However, the pattern must be a constant, and the anchor must be at the begging of the pattern. Hash index that can handle only simple equality comparisons with the operator, and only when a such an operator is used, the query planner will consider using the hash index. In Postgres versions to 10, you shouldnt be using this index as its not transaction safe and comes with some other disadvantages. Also, the advantage over btree is quite small so in most cases, btree is a better choice. GiST the shortcut that stands for Generalized Search Tree. This type of index is good for geometric data types, network address data, and fulltext search. The query planner would consider using it when the following operators are used , , , , , , , , , , or . This type of index is also good for optimizing queries that find the nearest neighbor. SPGiST the shortcut that stands for spacepartitioned generalized search tree. This type of index is suitable for multimedia, phone routing, IP routing or GIS. The query planner would consider using this index when one of the following operators is used , , , , or . GIN the shortcut that stands for Generalized Inverted Index. While Btree index is optimized for a case when row has a single key value, GIN is more suitable for a case when the index must map many values to one row. Think about GIN when you want to index arrays, hstore, jsonb and implement fulltext search. The query planner would consider using this index when the following operators will be used , , or . BRIN the shortcut that stands for Block Range Index. It is often used on a column that has a linear sort order, for example, the creation date on records used for reporting. Much smaller than Btree index and less costly to maintain. The query planner would consider using this index when the following operators are used , , , or . The BRIN index is generally more suitable for large tables with time series data rather than small tables with randomly ordered data. The truth is that in most of the cases, you should be fine with the btree index that is created by the default unless you cope with a very specific information in your database. Now, that its clear how indexes work in general and under the hood, it is much easier to understand how we can update the queries with the indexes to make them much faster. You know why and how. It is the time to find the answer when. You wont benefit from putting indexes on the wrong columns your database would only take more disk space. In general, the following practices are considered as good Index columns that you search on after discovering how indexes work, this one should be obvious to you. If you filter your records by the last_name column, put an index there. There are countless examples of cases when you can use filtering to narrow search results. Index columns for databaselevel validation its not enough to have validation on the backend or frontend or both. It is considered to be a good practice to use indexes to validate the data presence and integrity. Index columns used for join operations putting an index on a column that you use to join table can improve the performance. Index column that you often use for sorting index organizes the data in a way that makes the sorting more efficient, reducing the need for expensive sort operations. You may find some special use cases for your data, but the above rules apply to most of the applications. Think about them each time you design the database, perform the audit of the legacy database, or look for a way to improve the performance of the queries. This section wont be complete without mentioning about the explain and analyze commands that help us to determine how the query planner sees our data. The EXPLAIN command prints the execution plan of a query without executing it. The plan contains the order of the operations, join methods, index usage, and estimated costs The ANALYZE command collects statistics about the data in a table or index. In opposite to the EXPLAIN command, it provides actual runtime performance metrics You can also combine both commands to get the complete insight into query optimization and finetuning in PostgreSQL When it comes to filtering, you can filter records based on single or multiple columns. If you plan to filter basic data types, the default index btree will be enough If you plan to add an index on multiple columns, just modify the last part of the command When you create an index, by default, you index all records in the given table. If you want to avoid it, you can create a partial index. When you build a query, you use WHERE keyword to narrow search results, and the same is for the indexes creation That way, you will reduce the index size by indexing only the subset of all records. When simple values are not enough, you can create indexes based on the outcome of the function. A popular example would be indexing the lowercase version of the value in the given field Keep in mind that such an index can take more space depending on the outcome and can have the impact of the performance of data modifications. As you may already know, after the index is scanned, the pointer is used to retrieve the data from the table. You can skip the second part and improve the query even more by using covering indexes. A covering index is also known as indexonly scan. It contains all of the columns required to satisfy the query so there is no need to perform the lookup query. The syntax for creating such indexes is the following As always, such an index gives us a lot of benefits, but you also have to know that it is not a good idea to use such an index if you perform frequent updates on the included columns, as it requires updating both the index and the table. Besides mentioned simple queries, you can also improve the speed of queries that are more advanced. These include fulltext search and geospatial data. Whenever you create the index, you can refer to the official documentation where the index creation command is well described along with all possible parameters. Its not enough to just add the right indexes to your database you also need to maintain the existing indexes to make sure that the structure of your database is in the best shape possible. While when you start the application from the bottom, you dont have much to maintain in term of indexes, in a legacy application, there is a lot of cases to handle. You need to maintain indexes because one of the following situations might happen in the past The developer indexed more columns than it was needed The developer indexed a column before it was used, and it happened that it was never used The query plan is not using the index and do the full scan instead it can happen especially on small tables These are just some of many situations where invalid indexes can be created, and we need to maintain them to keep our database healthy and as performant as possible. In PostgreSQL, the information about indexes is stored in the pg_index table. Since its a table, you can query it just like any other table in your database. I investigated the table columns I used version 11.19, and the table contains the following columns among others indnatts the total number of columns in the index indnkeyatts the total number of key columns in the index indisunique determines if index is unique indisprimary determines if index represents primary key of the table indisexclusion determines if the index supports exclusion constraint indisclustered determines if table was last clustered on this index indisvalid determines if index is valid for queries indisready determines if index is ready for inserts indislive determines if index is in process of being dropped indisreplident determines if index has been chosen as replica identity indkey an array of indnatts values to indicate which table columns the index indexes The other columns are indexrelid, indrelid, indimmediate, indcheckxmin, indcollation, indclass, indoption, indexprs, indpred. You can check the detailed explanation of each column in the official documentation. To detect unused indexes in our database, we can use the pg_stat_user_indexes table which contains usage statistics. This table contains the following important columns idx_scan number of scans performed on the index relname name of the table indexrelname name of the index indexrelid identification of the relation that would help us to find corresponding record in pg_index table What you have to keep in mind is that we cant just simply find records where idx_scan equals zero. We also have to keep in mind the following things Sometimes index is not simple, and its an expression over one or more columns in the table or a partial index. In such case, we dont want to consider it in our query for finding unused indexes. To take this situation into consideration, we can use the indkey column from the pg_index table when the column contains 0, it means that the index is an expression. For unique indexes, the idx_scan will contain 0 as such indexes behave differently from nonunique indexes. Unique index are used to enforce the unique constraint, and a full scan is not performed. To find unique indexes we can leverage the indisunique column from pg_index table. Besides uniqueness, we also have other constraints. Those we also cant take into account when searching for unused indexes. To improve our process, we can take a look into the pg_constraint table which contains all constraints. If our index is not included there, we can take it into consideration. Taking into account all of the above points, we can finally produce a SQL query that will show us which indexes are unused The above query will produce a set of results where each result contains three attributes relname the name of the table indexrelname the name of the index index_size the size of the index Frequent update and delete operations can lead to a situation where there is a lot of unused space in a table or index relation files on the disk it is called bloat. Such a situation can cause the performance degradation. While it might be surprising for a lot of developers, when a record is deleted, it is not physically removed from the disk. PostgreSQL makes it invisible and marked for deletion. The same situation happens when the record is updated. A new version is created in the database, and the old one is marked as invisible. During the VACUUM operation, PostgreSQL scans the table for dead rows and removes them from the table just this situation physically deletes the data and frees up the space. However, the auto VACUUM operation is not enabled by default. The bloat is created when auto VACUUM is not enabled or when its enabled but is not running frequently enough to keep up with the workload on the database. You can check if this feature is enabled by running the following query The database itself provides an extension that provides information about the tuples in our database. For example, you can query the tables table, and for each table, trigger the pgstattuple function and read the percentage of dead tuples with the following query If you receive an error about the unknown extension, you have to enable it first It should work now. Since this article is about indexes, lets find out how we can find the bloat size in indexes. We can use the following query This query returns the name of the index, index type, and estimated bloat size. To remove the bloat from the given index, you can rebuild the index Above command will copy the data from the old index to the new index. Please keep in mind that this operation can take some time and affect the database performance. There are some cases when two or more indexes exist they have different names but the same combination of columns. As a result, one of them or even more is not used and just takes the space and makes the writing process more expensive. To find duplications, we can query the pg_index table using the following query To better understand what is happening above, lets break down the query into smaller pieces. We have the following subquery indexrelidregclass as idx to obtain the name of the index. Without the casting, we would just get the OID which is the object identifier of the index. indrelidtext En indclasstext En indkeytext En coalesceindexprstext,En coalesceindpredtext, the character is a concatenation operator, and this part of the query formats a single string based on a few details about the index We also have the main query It filters the subquery to get keys that appear more than once, gets the size of the index, and provides the names of duplicated indexed. The above example finds only two indexes, but if you suspect that they can be more of them, simply add array_aggidxn as idxn to get more of them as a result. I bet you have often heard the term constraint, but what is it really? Its a condition or rule that describes a valid state of the data in a table. Constraints are related to indexing because each time you create the constraint, you also create an index. You have the following types of constraints at your disposal Primary key a constraint that ensures that a column or combination of columns uniquely identifies each row in a given table. Unique a constraint that ensures that a column or combination of columns is unique per given table. The difference between the primary key and the unique constraint is that the primary key does not allow null values. Not null a constraint that ensures that a column does not contain a null value. On the backend you can call it presence validation for a given field in the form. Foreign key a constraint that ensures that the relationship exists and help to avoid a case when you delete associated record in a second table and leave the dead reference in the base table. Check a constraint that ensures that every row evaluates the given expression to true. For example, if you have a salary column, you can define the salary 10000 expression, and each row in the table must evaluate it to true otherwise wont be considered as valid. Exclusion a constraint that ensures that two records does not have overlapping values on a given column. The most common case is an event table where we dont want the start_date and end_date columns to overlap with another record. Having proper constraints help you to keep your data in the right format but also improves the performance as you avoid having invalid information inside the database so you simply have fewer data to process, scan, or query. Last, but not least, its always good to know good practices regarding indexes. Not only because of technical interviews! Its easier to memorize more general rules and go deeper each time it is needed instead of trying to memorize all of the information that is available. Try to remember the following good practices to make the work with databases as efficient as possible Dont index all columns indexes increase the writing time and take space, so look for columns that you filter on or those that you need to validate. Dont index columns if the table has little data PostgreSQL wont use indexes if there is just little data inside the table. The query planner would prefer to use a full scan in such cases. Select the proper index type the btree index which is a default one is good for many cases but not for all. When you want to use fulltext search, geospatial data, or more complex data types, the default index wont be the right choice. Maintain your indexes as time goes by, some of the indexes may no longer be needed, or the data needs to be reindexed. Remember to look after your indexes on a regular basis. Benchmark and test always test indexes on productionlike data before deploying them to ensure that you will benefit from the change. Use indexes the query planner does a great job, but you can help him by using indexes it will then more efficiently pull your data. When you make indexing the columns a habit, you will generate your own list of good practices with time. Also, understanding the way indexes work under the hood will help you to make more confident decisions regarding database architecture.

GOOD

Unit Testing eBPF Programs (ldelossa.is) Love it or hate it writing unit tests is all but mandatory for your code. They provide a safety net when making changes and give you that nice warm feeling when you see them all pass after a change. While working on a Kernel patch I had to investigate writing unit tests for eBPF programs. Turns out the Kernel developers have thought about this already and infrastructure exists to accomplish it. Im going to provide a hands on example of unit testing a TC eBPF program. In this test we want to confirm that looking up the route for a packet destined for an external IP address results in selecting the default gateway. We will have complete control over the network namespace which the test is ran in. If you have no idea what any of that means dont worry the concepts I will cover carry over to testing other types of eBPF programs. In this post Im assuming you know how to compile your eBPF program utilizing clang bpftool and how to generate a vmlinux.h file. If you dont check out my other post here With that said we do need to level-set on your coding environment and the tools we need in your coding environment to follow along. You must have: You must also have CAP_SYS_ADMIN privileges on your machine if you dont know what that means 99% of the time running as root will fill this requirement. I will also assume youre on Linux which you may think is obvious statement but its a dwindling assumption Okay one last assumption you have libbpf installed correctly and clang/gcc can locate it and compile your eBPF programs. The core functionality we want to focus on for unit testing eBPF program is a eBPF command called BPF_PROG_RUN. This command was renamed from BPF_PROG_TEST_RUN and this identifier maybe used interchangeable. A command is an enum value which can be passed to the bpf sys-call exposed by Linux. However libbpf usually wraps the bpf sys-call usage for convenience and sanity checking. Therefore well focus on using libbpf s wrapper around the BPF_PROG_RUN command bpf_test_run_opts Lets take a look at its forward declaration: https://elixir.bootlin.com/linux/v6.2.11/source/tools/lib/bpf/bpf.h#L454 If we were to look at the implementation wed find that bpf_prog_test_run_opts simply copies the provided opts to its a structure the Kernel will own does some sanity checking on the opts structure and then calls the bpf sys-call directly. The arguments to the libbpf function takes an eBPF program file descriptor and a opts structure. The eBPF program file descriptor represents an eBPF program which is loaded into the Kernel well demonstrate a convenient way of obtaining this file descriptor later in this post. The opts structure provides both mock data and options to the function. While some fields say optional we will learn that it really depends on the eBPF program type you are testing whether these fields are optional or not. The important fields well utilize in this post are: sz is always required and its simply set to sizeof(bpf_test_run_opts) . data_in data_size_in allows you to provide mock data to the ctx that is passed into your eBPF program in the case of a TC program a mock IPv4 packet. ctx_in ctx_size_in allows you to pass in a mock ctx in the case of a TC program a mock __sk_buff structure which is eBPFs representation of the Kernels socket buffer. With the introduction of bpf_test_run_opts out of the way lets start writing our eBPF test case. We will also use bpftool to generate a skeleton loader which is a header file with functions for loading our compiled eBPF program into the Kernel and giving us a handle to the loaded program. This handle can be used to obtain the file descriptor to the loaded eBPF program and interact with it during the Kernels runtime. Our test cases goal is to ensure that a packet sourced from the host destined for an external node selects the default route and is forwarded to the correct interface. To test this we will be utilizing the eBPF helper bpf_fib_lookup . We dont need to understand how this helper works in details suffice it to say that we provide in the source and destination of a incoming packet and it returns to us an interface if any that the packet would be forwarded to. In our test case we want to see the aforementioned interface be the default gateway for the network namespace. Our test packet will be sourced from 127.0.0.1 and its destination will be 8.8.8.8 . Since we are running a unit test no data will actually be sent and no side effects outside of the host will occur. Keep in mind this test a bit contrived to show off a few features of the testing infrastructure and we lean more towards demonstration then practicality. Okay so lets examine our test eBPF program: fib_lookup.bpf.c As you can see the test is very simple. We import the necessary headers and then we define two global variables setting them both to zero. By defining these variables as global and setting them to zero they actually become available to userspace via our skeleton. Lets use the following Makefile to compile and generate a skeleton for this eBPF program. Makefile Ignore the test binary for now well write our test runner in the next section. If we inspect the file fib_lookup.skel.h we come across the interesting structure. fib_lookup.skel.h This is the handle to our loaded eBPF program which the skeleton loader returns to us when we call: In the same file. The interesting bit here is: Notice we get access to our global zero initialized variables in the bss field. This allows a userspace program to load the eBPF program retrieve the handle to it and then both inject and read values from globals before and after bpf_test_run_opts is called. This is exactly what our test runner is going to do. As eluded to above we want our test runner to do the following: We have control of the network namespace the test runs in so we can hard-code the interface ID (ifindex) which represents the default gateway making our test runner a bit simpler. Lets take a look at the test runner: test.c Lets update our Makefile to build our test runner as well. And finally lets provide a script which sets up a network namespace for this test runner to work inside and runs the test. Now when we run this script we get the following output: Lets summarize the major points in this post. A eBPF program can define global variables which can be modified both before and after a userspace test run of the program. The BPF_PROG_RUN command can be used run your eBPF program in user space which is wrapped by the bpf_prog_test_run_opts() function in libbpf . Once the eBPF program is compiled into an object file you can generate a skeleton loader with bpftool this skeleton loader will load your eBPF program into the Kernel and also provide your userspace program access to the global variables mentioned above. Finally you can write a userspace test runner which sets the global variables of the loaded eBPF program before the test and reads them after allowing you to determine if the eBPF program performed the actions you intended.

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Unity is laying off hundreds of employees (protocol.com) The popular game engine platform is cutting costs. Fortnite competitor cuts jobs globally despite CEO's assurances two weeks ago that the company was on solid financial footing. San Francisco-based game development tools provider Unity is laying off hundreds of employees according to a report from Kotaku . Word of the layoffs appears to have begun surfacing earlier this week on the anonymous workplace platform Blind with numerous users claiming to work for Unity saying management was pulling employees into Zoom meetings on Tuesday to announce they were being let go. Kotaku citing multiple sources now says the layoffs number in the hundreds. According to Kotaku Unity CEO John Riccitiello told employees two weeks ago that the company was on solid financial footing and would not be resorting to layoffs. The cuts are affecting employees all around the globe the report says. Unity confirmed the layoffs in a statement to Protocol and said slightly more than 200 people were affected. As part of a continued planning process where we regularly assess our resourcing levels against our company priorities we decided to realign some of our resources to better drive focus and support our long-term growth. This resulted in some hard decisions that impacted approximately 4% of all Unity workforce. We are grateful for the contributions of those leaving Unity and we are supporting them through this difficult transition. Unity employed 5245 people as of December 31 2021 indicating the company had nearly doubled its workforce since it went public in 2020. It's also made a number of high-profile acquisitions since then including its largest ever when it purchased New Zealand-based digital effects studio Weta Digital for more than $1.6 billion last November. However the company's stock price has fallen more than 40% since its 2020 debut and more than 70% this year alone. The company also reported a loss of eight cents a share in its most recent quarterly earnings report and lowered its fiscal year guidance. Some employees have said the firm enacted a hiring freeze earlier this year though it has not publicly said so. Unity mainly competes with open source or free game development tools in-house game engines used by major developers and with Fortnite creator Epic Games which distributes its Unreal Engine platform for making high-fidelity 3D games. While a number of high-profile developers including Electronic Arts subsidiary BioWare and The Witcher developer CD Projekt Red have signed up to use Epic's new Unreal Engine 5 Unity mostly caters to the mobile and indie game market where it makes money through licensing and also through providing in-game advertising tools to free-to-play developers. Unity also been trying to break into the Hollywood VFX industry where it competes with both established digital effects studios and Epic which has been making efforts to do the same with Unreal Engine. Despite its strong foothold in the mobile game segment however Unity does not develop games of its own and as a result does not have additional revenue streams outside its engine licensing business ad unit and other related software products. Update June 30 9AM ET: Added statement of confirmation from Unity. Nick Statt is Protocol's video game reporter. Prior to joining Protocol he was news editor at The Verge covering the gaming industry mobile apps and antitrust out of San Francisco in addition to managing coverage of Silicon Valley tech giants and startups. He now resides in Rochester New York home of the garbage plate and completely coincidentally the World Video Game Hall of Fame. He can be reached at nstatt@protocol.com. Mobile game revenue will decline for the first time in history this year market research firm Newzoo now says in a revised outlook for the 2022 global games market. While the whole game industry is expected to contract by 4.3% another first since Newzoo began tracking the market in 2007 the company is predicting a 6.4% decline in mobile game spending on top of a 4.2% decline in console game spending. Amazon is planning to lay off thousands of employees Protocol has learned ahead of what the company has cautioned will be a slow holiday shopping season . Google agreed to pay $391.5 million and make changes to its user privacy controls as part of a settlement with a coalition of 40 state attorneys general. The coalition accused Google of misleading customers about location-tracking practices that informed ad targeting. FTX has filed for bankruptcy and the crypto company also announced that founder Sam Bankman-Fried has resigned as CEO. Salesforce recently updated its internal policies to make it easier for managers to terminate employees for performance issues without HR involvement Protocol has learned a move that comes as the software giant looks to shed as many as 2500 jobs . The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said fraud and scam reports comprise the top complaint it receives about virtual currencies and that customers are finding little help from companies when it happens. Elon Musk sent his first email to Twitter staff late Wednesday warning of a difficult economic road ahead and telling employees they need to be in office for a minimum of 40 hours per week. Sorry that this is my first email to the whole company but there is no way to sugarcoat the message he began ominously. Binance isnt buying FTX after all. The crypto giant said Wednesday it has decided that it will not pursue the potential acquisition based on a corporate due diligence review. On Wednesday John Kerry unveiled a plan for a new carbon credit program aimed at mobilizing private capital to help middle-income countries transition away from coal and move toward renewable energy. Meta announced it was laying off more than 11000 employees Wednesday morning slashing jobs in its recruiting department and refocusing its remaining team on AI discovery ads and its investment in the metaverse. I want to take accountability for these decisions and for how we got here Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a message to employees that was also posted online. I know this is tough for everyone and Im especially sorry to those impacted. Al Gore has one mission this week at COP27 and thats to give climate negotiators what he hopes will be a critical tool to address the crisis at hand: an independent global inventory of greenhouse gas emissions down to the individual facility. The Climate TRACE coalition just released the worlds most detailed inventory of global greenhouse gas emissions which Gore a founding member is unveiling on Wednesday at the United Nations climate summit in Egypt. Way back in March your friendly Protocol Climate team offered you some tips for writing a climate plan that doesnt suck . Surely you took that advice. But if for some reason you didnt the United Nations has your back. Binance CEO Changpeng CZ Zhao said Tuesday the crypto powerhouse signed a deal to acquire rival FTX. Salesforce is preparing for a major round of layoffs that could affect as many as 2500 workers across the software vendor Protocol has learned in a bid to cut costs amid a new activist investor challenge and harsh economic conditions. BlockFi has introduced a new digital assets interest product for accredited investors after previously agreeing to shut down a yield-paying crypto product that the SEC said was illegal. The Justice Department said Monday it seized $3.4 billion worth of bitcoin stolen in the 2012 hack of the Silk Road dark web marketplace. U.S. election infrastructure is exceedingly secure and voter fraud here is so rare its comparable to your annual chances of getting struck by lightning . Despite this former President Donald Trump and a long list of allies in the Republican Party have spent the last two years questioning the overall integrity of the U.S. election system. Many of those allies are now candidates themselves and their coordinated attack on the countrys status as a democracy is not a relic of 2020. Some have already started repeating these Big Lie charges ahead of next weeks midterms. And the social platforms that help them spread their message have prepared few measures to stop it. The White House just laid out its climate tech priorities to reach net zero by 2050. Coinbase said Thursday that it lost more users in the third quarter. But the decline wasnt the disastrous drop that Wall Street was expecting and that sparked a rally in the crypto companys shares after-hours. The Biden administration announced $9 billion in funding Wednesday to improve home efficiency which could help support the installation of up to 500000 heat pumps. With winter approaching and utilities warning of gas shortages there are some major challenges facing the technology that money can be used to tackle. Block beat earnings expectations with strong growth largely fueled by its Cash App business. Traders sent shares up more than 12% after-hours Thursday. Stripe is laying off 14% of its staff its co-founders said Thursday as the fintech startup must start building differently for leaner times. Roku saw its revenue growth slow in Q3 and warned investors Wednesday that things are about to get worse: A lot of Q4 ad campaigns are being canceled said Roku CEO Anthony Wood during the companys Q4 earnings call. Were seeing lots of big categories pull back. Telecom insurance even toy marketers are planning on reducing their spending. Green jobs and corporate climate pledges abound but skilled sustainability professionals are scarce. Robinhood reported a drop in third-quarter revenue but also a narrower loss on Wednesday in a sign that it might be stabilizing its business as it attempts to recover from a staggering drop in the stock and crypto trading activity that fueled its growth.

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Unlocking North Korean songs on a karaoke machine (northkoreatech.org) Posted By: Martyn Williams June 2 2020 Karaoke is a uniting past time for North and South Korea with noraebang commonly available throughout Pyongyang and Video CDs long a ubiquitous commodity. It comes as little surprise then that karaoke machines have made their way to Pyongyang. In this post I take a look at the Tianchi v700 a Chinese karaoke machine that has been localized for the North Korean market. The hardware was listed online at the end of 2018 and purchased from a seller in Dandong China in February 2020. From a quick look at the menu its obvious that some effort has been spent crafting this media experience for a North Korean audience. The Tianchi v700 is a reasonable data point of the experience once could expect at a KTV room in Pyongyang. The Tianchi v700 (Photo: Will Scott) A window into a different world The Tianchi v700 blurs the distinction between devices meant for Chinese and Korean audiences much more than android phones and tablets which are also manufactured by Chinese OEMs for a Korean audience. The device is meant to be used in a commercial KTV setting where it would be hooked up to a large TV speaker system and microphone input. It features a large 19 touch screen running a kiosk version of Android and comes in discrete unbranded packaging with a range of both Chinese and North Korean karaoke songs preloaded. The Tianchi v700 (Photo: Will Scott) The North Korean affiliation of the device is not in doubt. The first image shown while the device starts up is the Arch of Triumph in Pyongyang and upon booting a Moranbong Band concert loops on the TV while the device waits for a song to be chosen. Dissonance begins to set in upon exploring the rest of the software. The V700 could be at home in a Chinese KTV room with software that is fully online recordings of performed songs can be uploaded to the vendors cloud new songs (all Chinese) can be downloaded to the machine and WeChat integration allows modifying the queue from a smartphone. It supports both Wifi and wired Ethernet to provide these features. A WeChat payment structure also allows a central controller to dole out timed sessions with the machine to paying customers. How would any of this work in the offline world of Pyongyang? The Karaoke content also doesnt provide immediate answers to the origins of the device. Some videos feature the Hana watermark while others are labeled with the competing Mokran brand. Many others are titled generically 7.27. The Mokran Video logo before one collection of songs (Photo: North Korea Tech) While many of the flashy features make use of the internet the device functions perfectly well offline and with hundreds of pages of preloaded karaoke would be of immediate value within Pyongyang even without those features. Under the plastic veneer As a commercial device used in group settings the V700 has a very different threat model from the personal devices that have become ubiquitous around Pyongyang in recent years. Powered by an Allwinner ARM processor the song data is on an easily swappable (one screw holds a flap in place to remove) full sized hard drive labeled North Korean Songs in Chinese. If that was all there was to it though you wouldnt be reading this article. While the Chinese songs on the hard drive can be played on any computer they are connected to the 42 gigabytes of North Korean media is encrypted and the files cannot be opened on other devices. The device itself has a file manager and open USB ports. It allows customers to plug in their own USB sticks to sing songs off and to save their recordings to. It also allows installation of other Android applications and copying of arbitrary user-accessible files to a USB stick which makes access to the device very easy. Most of the system software is a generic Chinese KTV system. The main question in my mind while investigating and figuring out how to decode the protected content was where the custody line was between Chinese and North Korean. Had a North Korean client provided a package of content to be included with a stipulation that it should be protected or had the software itself been customized by North Korean programmers like the smartphones and tablets in Pyongyang? Were there clues to the North Korean entity behind this device? The full user experience of the karaoke device is implemented within a single monolithic Android application that itself references a host of system libraries for interacting with playing the karaoke through the external HDMI video connection. Some of these libraries immediately caught my eye as out of place an extremely small libscmediafiledecrypt.so reports a log message labeling itself libktv every time an encrypted file is accessed and provides a way for files to be encrypted by the Android serial number of the device. After further investigation it turns out this library is not actually performing any encryption or decryption. A second library libsclib.so exports a function ScEncrypt_getPicEncryptKey as part of a separate file encryption system. This library while also not performing file decryption of files at runtime perhaps holds a clue of attribution as the other uses of sclib and of the PIC identifier can be traced to the Pyongyang Informatics Center. Deeper investigation of the DRM (digital rights management) present on the device yields that it is in fact a modified version of the Allwinner CedarX media framework that is performing the file decryption. While the relevant libcdx_stream library is not open source its source has been uploaded in the context of several other Chinese Android development source trees. The binary present on the v700 features a substantially different encryption method than is visible in the version provided by Allwinner. The core library uses a fixed encryption key that would be compiled into the binary. The V700 consults both /proc/cpuinfo to learn the CPU serial number of the device it is on and a binary file associated with the device file system structure as part of its method for determining its AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) key. It then ignores all of these device-specific items and reverts back to a static key 87654321 stored in the binary. The obfuscation and complexity involved is not found in a standard cedar release and indicates coding work downstream from the allwinner distribution. Common North Korean convention is to highlight the name of Kim Jong Un in media (Photo: North Korea Tech) The goods The 42 gigabytes of North Korean Karaoke packaged on the V700 have been made available in a decoded form at https://archive.org/details/tianchi-v700-ktv and are being graciously hosted by the Internet Archive for archival purposes. Some highlights from the collection include https://archive.org/details/tianchi-v700-ktv-92136 the canonical pangapsumnida song https://archive.org/details/tianchi-v700-ktv-92010 arirang https://archive.org/details/tianchi-v700-ktv-940280 the CNC song https://archive.org/details/tianchi-v700-ktv-91599 KCC logo appears on many songs https://archive.org/details/tianchi-v700-ktv-940258 tech progress https://archive.org/details/tianchi-v700-ktv-92305 tongil (unity) a woman driving through the tongil district and then visiting the unification monument on the southern highway https://archive.org/details/tianchi-v700-ktv-92176 summer water skiing https://archive.org/details/tianchi-v700-ktv-960233 kimchi song https://archive.org/details/tianchi-v700-ktv-990001 the one chinese song that was in the collection https://archive.org/details/tianchi-v700-ktv-960071 this VCD wasnt properly split when it was put on the device it actually is 10 or so songs in a row. (one of the higher quality sets as well) The background Morangbong band concert is also there: https://archive.org/details/tianchi-v700-ktv-970013 Copyright 2018 Martyn Williams

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Unraveling the linothorax mystery or how linen armor came to dominate our lives (2013) (jhupress.wordpress.com) Guest post by Alicia Aldrete As the wife research assistant and sometimes coauthor of an ancient historian who teaches at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay I had expected to spend many hours in libraries wandering through foreign museums and climbing around ancient sites. However I had not foreseen large groups of weapon-wielding students in our yard or my husband Gregory Aldrete shooting arrows at them. When one of Gregs studentsour coauthor Scott Bartelldecided to make himself a replica of the armor that Alexander the Great is shown wearing on the famous Alexander Mosaic from Pompeii none of us realized that the next six years of our lives would be dominated by the quest to understand and evaluate that armor. Known as the linothorax it was a popular form of armor from at least the time of Homer through the Hellenistic period. Apparently made primarily out of linen the armor had been afforded little attention by scholars because no extant specimens have survived. In order to appreciate how the linothorax might have been constructed and its effectiveness on the battlefield we worked on reverse engineering it after extensive study of ancient images of linothorax-wearing warriors depicted in vase paintings reliefs sculptures and tomb paintings. I spent countless hours in libraries examining every page of the hundreds of oversized volumes of the Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum which catalogs the Greek vases in museums around the world; Im sure that the students assigned to reshelving duties during those weeks dreaded my arrival every morning. Every time we visited a museum we kept our eyes peeled for possible linothorakes ; and while one expects to find plenty represented in the museums of Greece and Italy we were pleased to find them in Kansas City and Odessa (in the Ukraine) as well. Suddenly as so often happens during research the linothorax was everywhere. We encountered some special challenges when constructing our linothorakes. At first like fashion designers we made numerous patterns out of paper and then cardboard until we achieved our optimal design. Then came the tricky part. Because we wanted to employ only materials that would have been available in the ancient Mediterranean we had to get a hold of handspun handwoven linen. Since most linen these days is machine-made we couldnt just go to the local fabric store. However we soon discovered that even linen purporting to be handwoven was still typically machine-harvested and processed using modern methods such as treatment with chemicals. To achieve as much historical authenticity as possible we needed linen made from flax that had been grown harvested and processed by hand as well using only traditional methods. As we discovered not many people have the dedication to do this. After much searching we managed to find a woman who actually grew and harvested her own flax and then spun and wove it into linen practically in our own back yardin Fond du Lac Wisconsin. Rabbit glue which sounds more challenging was actually easier to acquire since artists who paint using traditional methods still prime canvases with it; we ordered it from an art supplies catalog and merely needed to rehydrate and heat the rabbit powder in a double boiler. Three versions of reconstructed linothorakes. The one on the left is modeled after the linothorax worn by Alexander the Great in the Alexander Mosaic from Pompeii. Another challenge was perfecting the construction process. By trial and error we discovered the ideal tools: a turkey baster to squirt the rabbit glue onto a piece of linen and a putty knife to spread it evenly. We also figured outthe hard waythat the ancients probably cut each layer of linen to the proper shape before gluing them together. For our first linothorax we glued together 15 layers of linen to form a one centimeter-thick slab and then tried to cut out the required shape. Large shears were defeated; bolt cutters failed. The only way we were ultimately able to cut the laminated linen slab was with an electric saw equipped with a blade for cutting metal. At least this confirmed our suspicion that linen armor would have been extremely tough. We also found out that linen stiffened with rabbit glue strikes dogs as in irresistibly tasty rabbit-flavored chew toy and that our Labrador retriever should not be left alone with our research project. While we subjected our laminated linen patches to hundreds of carefully measured arrow tests we also engaged in some less scientific testing of their durability. Gregs students enthusiastically stabbed hacked slashed and pounded them with various maces axes spears and swords helping us to demonstrate what kind of protection laminated linen armor would have provided. While all of this mayhem (both scientifically controlled and free-form) convinced us that our linothorax was ancient-battlefield-ready we still felt compelled to try a real-life scenario so Scott donned the armor and Greg shot him. And while we had confidence in our armor our relief was still considerable when the arrowhead stuck and lodged in the armors outer layers a safe distance away from flesh. The aim of our research had been to go back in time reconstruct something over a millennium old and experience what it would have been like to use it. The process of doing so certainly led to some memorable and unexpected experiences for all of us. Alicia Aldrete is coauthor with Gregory S. Aldrete and Scott Bartell of Reconstructing Ancient Linen Body Armor: Unraveling the Linothorax Mystery . The website of the University of WisconsinGreen Bays Linothorax Projec t contains more behind-the-scenes information on this unparalleled effort including an eight-minute mini-documentary and additional images. 9 Comments Filed under Ancient Behind the Scenes History Writing Tagged as Alexander the Great ancient technology ancient textiles ancient warfare archery armor experimental archaeology Greek warfare Hellenistic Warfare hoplite hoplite warfare linen linothorax military history reconstruction Pingback: Unraveling the linothorax mystery or how linen armor came to dominate our lives | jhublogs Interesting bit of armor for sure. Cheap to make even for the common cannon fodder troops. An obvious drawback would be RAIN or even high humidity. Also one would probably soak the armor after assembly to form fit it to the wearer. Very interesting indeed. Was it very heavy? We found that even more of a threat than rain was ones own sweat on a hot day. So yes it does need waterproofing both inside and out. We did a number of experiments along those lines and found that rubbing a block of beeswax over all sides of the armor provided nice waterproofing. It also makes the armor smell nice! When you wear it for a couple hours your own body heat softens the glue a bit and makes it conform to your body shape so it is much more comfortable to wear than rigid types of armor. Our reconstructions weighed about 10 poundsabout one third the weight of bronze armor that would provide the same degree of protection. Thanks for the questions! Sort of reminiscent of the padded jacks worn by archers in the Wars of te Roses. Beyond awesome. I love reverse engineering. Never stop !! Pingback: Linen As Armor | Loudoun Sampler Guild Interesting video and by the way I bought a copy of your book and found it an excellent engrossing read! One point Id like to raise is about colouring the linen cuirass. Do you believe Alexanders pezhetairoi would have bleached or dyed their armour? I can well imagine the rich aristocratic Companions doing this (as art attests) but what about the common infantry? Would they have left their armour undyed and / or with minimal colouring (at least before the massive windfall of wealth following the conquest of Persia)? You state on p. 139 of your book that leaving the linen cuirass undyed had practical advantages during a sustained campagin. Thank you for the comments. While we dont have any written accounts dealing with the coloring of armor in Alexanders army (in fact not even Alexanders armor is described in too great of detail) we do however have a fair amount of tomb paintings or mosaics showing quite colorful linothorax-wearing Macedonian soldiers. There is also a bit of color still observable on the Alexander Sarcophagus. While it cant be said for certain that any of these soldiers are pezhetairoi we can see that it was fairly common to color or dye the linothorax to however it suited your interest; there doesnt appear to be a standard color scheme or design. I can very well imagine a soldier adding more elaborate designs or dying parts of the armor repeatedly as the campaign went on and the colors began to fade. Unfortunately there isnt any written evidence for a lot concerning the individualization of the linothorax though it is clear from the hundreds of artistic portrayals that it was highly customizable. The advantage to leaving the armor undyed or natural is that the wear and tear from everyday use wouldnt show as clear; dirt stains would blend in with linen left in its natural state more so than on bleached material. It is worth noting that when exposed to sun over time linen will lose its khaki-like coloring and turn an off-white or beige color due to simple exposure. Hi there I was wondering: have you made comparisons between your prototype and other armour types from the era used by other cultures (chain lorica segmenta etc)? Do you have any thoughts as to why linothorax died out? It seems like a pretty amazing material light yet protective what advantages did other armour types have over it either in terms of performance or production. This is a really fascinating project! Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. Email Address: Follow You must be logged in to post a comment.

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Updating my website from my iPad (dddiaz.com) With the help of github codespaces and dev containers. Thanks for checking out my post. Feel free to find me on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/dddiaz.com or on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dddiaz/ . Also feel free to check out another post I am particularly proud of: https://dddiaz.com/post/my-t1d-variants/ It has been a while since I have posted on my blog so I asked myself whats keeping me from posting? Well I have been insanely busy in my new role at Illumina but other than that whats keeping me from posting? Well I have also been trying to work out more and spend more time outside but other than that whats keeping me from posting? Well my sister just had her second baby () so I have been trying to focus more on uncle duties but other than that whats keeping me from posting? I know what it is its the fact that I cant update my blog from my iPad! Yes Thats it the iPad factor. Happy to say today that is fixed! In this first video: I navigate to my blog repo on github.com then click open with CodeSpaces. If you have never heard of CodeSpaces it is a super nifty way to get an instant development environment in your browser! This is perfect for my iPad usecase where I dont have a real terminal but with CodeSpaces I do! BTW: The link for codespaces is here: https://github.com/features/codespaces In this next video: I show how you can even expose a port from your codespace allowing you to see your code changes in real time in the browser. Super Nifty. The hardest part was figuring out the dev container. The dev container defines your dev dependencies and sets up VS Code for you. I had one main dependency I needed to worry about which is Hugo the static site generator I use. To set that up I do the following: You will notice I am pulling from a local docker file this is because the default microsoft dev image which is great by the way unfortunately has the latest version of hugo. I need my version pinned. The docker image is a hack to remove the version of hugo installed then use dev container features ( https://code.visualstudio.com/blogs/2022/09/15/dev-container-features ) to reinstall the hugo cli on my preferred version. So after I make my change on my iPad I can simply do git commit and my Github Workflow takes care of the rest! You can read about that here: https://dddiaz.com/post/github-actions/ Honestly the dream has always been to have a one click development environment for not just myself but every team I have ever been on. While this gets us closer to that goal I have to admit Codespaces was not without its issues. I often had problems where it crashed or I couldnt reconnect to the development environment or the port forwarding wouldnt work. So while it is possible to write blogs from my iPad and even this post was partially done on an iPad I think I will stick with my local dev environment for now. Regardless stay tuned! I have some other posts in the works that I am excited to publish (from my laptop hahaha.) Also feel free to check out some other blogs I have like where I convert a days worth of Blood Sugar readings into music! https://dddiaz.com/post/glucose-sound/ My interests include Genomics Python and Cloud Infrastructure. Daniel Diaz 2023 Powered by the Academic theme for Hugo .

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Updating our inactive account policies (blog.google) Safety & Security May 16 2023 min read People want the products and services they use online to be safe and secure. Which is why we have invested in technology and tools to protect our users from security threats like spam phishing scams and account hijacking. Even with these protections if an account hasnt been used for an extended period of time it is more likely to be compromised. This is because forgotten or unattended accounts often rely on old or re-used passwords that may have been compromised haven't had two factor authentication set up and receive fewer security checks by the user. Our internal analysis shows abandoned accounts are at least 10x less likely than active accounts to have 2-step-verification set up. Meaning these accounts are often vulnerable and once an account is compromised it can be used for anything from identity theft to a vector for unwanted or even malicious content like spam. To reduce this risk we are updating our inactivity policy for Google Accounts to 2 years across our products. Starting later this year if a Google Account has not been used or signed into for at least 2 years we may delete the account and its contents including content within Google Workspace (Gmail Docs Drive Meet Calendar) and Google Photos. The policy only applies to personal Google Accounts and will not affect accounts for organizations like schools or businesses. This update aligns our policy with industry standards around retention and account deletion and also limits the amount of time Google retains your unused personal information. We are going to roll this out slowly and carefully with plenty of notice: The simplest way to keep a Google Account active is to sign-in at least once every 2 years. If you have signed into your Google Account or any of our services recently your account is considered active and will not be deleted. Activity might include these types of actions you take when you sign in or while youre signed in to your Google Account: If you have an existing subscription set up through your Google Account for example to Google One a news publication or an app we also consider this account activity and your account will not be impacted. Additionally we do not have plans to delete accounts with YouTube videos at this time. As previously announced you will need to specifically sign in to Google Photos every 2 years to be considered active which will ensure your photos and other content are not deleted. Similarly we will send multiple notifications before we take any action. We encourage users to provide a recovery email at sign-up. It's important to make sure this recovery email in your account settings is up-to-date. We also offer a variety of free tools to help manage your account and provide options to backup your data. You can download and export your data to other platforms through our Takeout feature which has been available for over a decade. Similarly Inactive Account Manager allows users to decide what happens to their account and data when it becomes inactive for a period of up to 18 months. Options users can select at enrollment include: Todays update helps us continue our advancements in account security and helps reinforce our commitment to keep your private information private. For more information on this policy please see our Help Center. We've updated this post to clarify how this announcement impacts creator accounts and accounts with YouTube videos. Editor's note May 12 2023Last year we launched an important update to Location History. We remain committed to improving the experience and making it as helpful Lets stay in touch. Get the latest news from Google in your inbox. Follow Us

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Use fast data algorithms (2021) (jolynch.github.io) As an engineer who primarily works with data and databases I spend a lot of time moving data around hashing it compressing it decompressing it and generally trying to shovel it between VMs and blob stores over TLS. I am constantly surprised by how many systems only support slow inefficient and expensive ways of doing these operations. In my experience these poor algorithm choices are orders of magnitude slower than modern alternatives. Indeed using a fast algorithm can often be the difference between actually doing compression/hashing/encryption and Eh Ill skip it. In the interest of using more of our CPU time to do useful work instead of melting ice-caps and giving programmers excessively long coffee breaks we will explore some faster alternatives in this post. TLDR Disclaimer : There are lies damn lies and benchmarks from some random person on the internet. If you are considering taking some of the advice in this post please remember to test your specific workloads which might have different bottlenecks. Also the implementation quality in your particular software stack for your particular hardware matters a lot . For this post Ill be playing with a ~5 GiB real-world JSON dataset on my laptops Intel Core i7-8565U pinned to 4GHz . Since I want to benchmark the algorithms instead of disks Ill be pre-touching the file into RAM with vmtouch . Remember that on most modern cloud servers with fast NVMe storage (multiple Gi B ps) and good page-caching algorithms your disks are likely not your bottleneck. I would like to check that this blob of data over here is the same as that data over there. These hash or checksum functions are used to ensure data integrity and usually are defending against bugs/bitrot/cosmic rays instead of malicious attackers. I typically see the following poor choices: Faster Choice Try xxHash . It is blazing fast high quality and the XXH64 variant is usually sufficient for most data integrity checks. It even performs well on small data inputs where XXH3 is particularly impressive. If you find yourself needing 128 bits of entropy (e.g. if youre hashing data for a DHT ) you can either use the 128 bit variant or xxh3 . If you only have an old version available that doesnt support the new 128 bit variant two XXH64 runs with different seeds is usually still faster than any other choice. While most of the time the threat model for data transfer is bugs / cosmic rays some of the time people want to defend against bad actors. Thats where cryptographic hashes come in most commonly: Faster Choice Try BLAKE3 . Yes it is a new (2020) algorithm and there are concerns about security margin but Im just so tired of waiting for sha256 . In practice this is probably a much better choice than the known-to-be-completely-broken md5 so if youre reaching for md5 over xxHash because you need a cryptographic alternative consider blake3 instead. Also blake3 uses hash trees ( merkle trees ) which are wonderful when implemented correctly and I wish more systems used them. The one major downside of blake3 in my opinion is that at this time (2021) I only know of really good cli Rust Go C and Python implementations and I cant personally vouch for the Java JNI bindings. Ive only needed to use it so far from streaming pipeline verifications or artifact verification so the cli and python implementations are good enough for me. A quick reminder that there are lots of security-sensitive hashing situations where you dont want a fast hash. For example one situation where you want an intentionally slow algorithm is when dealing with passwords. In such cases you want a very slow hash like argon2 bcrypt PBKFD2 or even just a high number of rounds of SHA-512 . Expect xxHash to net about a ~10x improvement on MD5 and ~5-10x improvement on CRC32 depending on your CRC32 implementation (e.g. Javas is truly terrible). Expect BLAKE3 to be slightly slower than xxHash with a single thread so only use it if you actually care about cryptographic hashes. A simple performance test on hashing a 6616 MiB file confirms that indeed we have 10x performance on the table ( note Im reporting user CPU time since the system time is not really up to the hash) Yes thats right ~0.5 seconds user CPU time for xxh64 versus ~27 for sha256 and ~9s for md5 . If all you need to do is verify a file transfer you could be doing that 10x faster with xxHash. The language versions often do make a big deal e.g. JNI versions that link to fast native code in Java will often significantly out-perform pure Java versions. But Joey you say I have to use XYZ algorithm from the early 00s because of the specification!. That is unfortunate but at least make sure youre using fast implementations for example ACCP will speed up MD5 on most Java VMs by a factor of ~4 as well as AES-GCM by ~10x while it is at it. ACCP achieves this by linking in fast native implementations of crypto. I like my data transfers fast and dont like paying for lots of disk or network I dont need. I heard data compression is a thing. Most data compresses especially text (e.g. JSON ). The three cases where data probably does not compress are if your data is random the data was already compressed or the data was encrypted. Often in databases the metadata around the data (e.g. write times schemas etc ) probably compresses even if the data doesnt. There are three primary measures of a compression algorithm: Depending on the use case developers usually make some tradeoff between these three metrics. For example databases doing page compression care most about decompression speed file transfers care most about compression speed archival storage cares most ratio etc Fast compression that gives great ratio can significantly improve most workloads but slow compression with bad ratio is painful and makes me sad. Try zstd . To spend more compression CPU time for better compression ratio increase the compression level or increase the block size. I find that in most database workloads the default level ( 3 ) or even level 1 is a good choice for write heavy datasets (getting closer to lz4 ) and level 10 is good for read heavy datasets (surpassing gzip in every dimension). Note that zstd strictly dominates gzip as it is faster and gets better ratio. Even better: zstd supports training dictionaries which can really come in handy if you have lots of individually small but collectively large JSON data (looking at you tracing systems). Try lz4 . With near memory speeds and decent ratio this algorithm is almost always a safe choice over not compressing at all. It has excellent language support and is exceptionally good for real-time compression/decompression as it is so cheap. Try zstd --adapt . This feature automatically adapts the compression ratio as the IO conditions change to make the current optimal tradeoff between CPU and keeping the pipe fed. For example if you are have very little free CPU on your system but a fast network (looking at you i3en instances) zstd --adapt will automatically compress with a lower level to minimize total transfer time. If you have a slow network and extra CPU it will automatically compress at a higher level. Compression is a bit trickier to measure because the read to write ratio matters a lot and if you can get better ratio that might be worth it to pay a more expensive compression step for cheaper decompression. Historically we had to make tradeoffs between ratio compression speed and decompression speed but as we see with this quick benchmark we no longer need to make tradeoffs. These days (2021) I just reach for zstd with an appropriate level or lz4 if I really need to minimize CPU cost. First lets look at the results for the 6.5GiB review dataset. As xz was estimating 1.5 hours to compress and I didnt have that kind of time I ran that on a smaller 380MiB dataset: As expected lz4 is the fastest choice by a lot while still cutting the dataset in half followed by zstd . One of the really useful things about zstd is that I am no longer reaching for specialty compressors depending on the job I just change the level/block sizes and I can get the trade-off I want. Now that we have fast algorithms it matters how we wire them together. One of the number one performance mistakes I see is doing a single step of a data movement at a time for example decrypting a file to disk and then decompressing it and then checksumming it. As the intermediate products must hit disk and are done sequentially this necessarily slows down your data transfer. When data transfer is slow there are usually either slow disks or slow Java heap allocations in the way. Ive found that if I can structure my pipelines as unix pipelines of fast C programs (or Python with native extensions) with the output from one stage always flowing to the input of the other I can much more efficiently upload and download data by doing everything (IO decrypt decompress checksum) in parallel. For example something like the following will outperform almost any Java S3 upload at putting 100 files in S3 along with whole object checksums It matters because most systems choose the slow option and make routine development activities take longer in modern cloud infrastructure (fast networks). For example: A major disadvantage of using good algorithms is that they may not always show up in your language or OS by default. Ive had good experiences with the following implementations:

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Using Bun.js as a Bundler (shaneosullivan.wordpress.com) SOS Shane OSullivans technical blog really ties the room together Bun.js is a new as of 2023 JavaScript runtime that is still very much in development, with its primary focus being on extreme speed. Ive been following it for a while but until today havent had a good excuse to use it. Edit Theres some good conversation about this post on Hacker News here The author, Jarred Sumner, announced on Twitter today that they have shipped a beta version of a new code bundler for Bun, showing some crazy speed increases over other bundlers. This piqued my interest, as I use a combination of Webpack, Browserify and Uglify on my side projects, in this case my tablet PWA that I built for my kids kidzfun.art, which work but are really slow. Introducing the Bun BundlerA fast JavaScript bundler deeply integrated into Buns runtime httpst.comGPXr0cv7f My current workflow can result in a 5 7 second wait for all my JS files to rebuild when I save a file, and I thought that Bun could help with this. It turns out I was right! . with caveats. You can see the docs for Bun.build at httpsbun.shdocsclibuild , and they are well written and quite comprehensive. My requirements were to Getting started I started off by running default build code for Bun v0.6.1 by adding a script to my package.json file and this worked just fine. More importantly, it was crazily fast. Instead of 5 seconds it now seemed to finish as the Enter key was still traveling back upwards from executing the command. Nice! Minification Minification looks simple in the docs, but unfortunately its where the beta nature of Bun shows up. Running the code above with minification results in an error being thrown that shuts down the process if there is more than one entry point file. Searching the web didnt turn up anything, but the solution is to only pass a single entry point file path to Bun.build if you are minifying the code. Throw that in a for loop to get through all the files and it runs just fine! A second issue with the default minification is that it broke my app in strange ways that I could not track down Im guessing that its rewriting the code in some way that is not fully stable yet. I solved it by turning off the syntax minification option Removing Exports Bun inserts code that looks like this at the bottom of the built file, in this case from a file called account.ts If you load this in a browser script tag it will throw an error. I couldnt find a way to tell Bun how to not output this, so I had to write a relatively simple function to detect this at the end of each output file and remove it. Watch issues I have some code that uses the nodewatch module to automatically rerun the build when a file changes. Under the hood this uses the fs.watch function, which it turns out Bun does not yet support. Heres the Github issue tracking it. I tried to use the native Bun watch functionality, but this executed the script code which is not what Im looking for. I came up with a hacky solution that works fairly well, where I use the RunOnSave extension for VS Code to execute every time I save a file. Then in my build script I use setInterval to check the last modified time of this file and rerun the build if it has changed. Hacky but it works. Hopefully Bun will implement fs.watch soon and I can throw out this code. Vercel build failures Once everything was running just fine locally on my Mac, I pushed the branch to Github so Vercel would build it its a NextJS application. This threw up a new issue. My build script uses the native Node exec function to move and copy files. This works just fine on my Mac, but when running the build in the cloud environment all these calls would fail. Theres something unfinished with Buns implementation of the child_process module that breaks when run in the Vercel build environment. My solution to this was to simply change all these execSync calls to use the Node fs functions, e.g. Epilogue After a few hours of work, reading up on Bun and working my way through these issues, I now have a much simpler build system that runs in the blink of an eye. My Vercel build times have reduced from 2 minutes to just 50 seconds thats all React stuff fetching node_modules. My watch script runs in a few milliseconds instead of 5 or more seconds, My code is much simpler and Ive removed Webpack, Browserify and Uglify from my projects. Thanks so much to the Bun team for a great project. Even as early as it is at time of writing mid 2023, its highly useful, and as they work through all the kinks it will only get more so. I look forward to using it more in the months and years to come! oh youre still here? The project I sped up using Bun is KidzFun.art, the iPadtablet app I built for my kids. If you have young kids who have then try out my progressive web app I am a software engineer and manager from Ireland. I spent 7 years working in Ireland from 2003 2010, then ten years in Silicon Valley from 2010 to 2020. In California I spent about 6.5 years at Facebook Engineering, the last three of which I was an engineering manager in the Ads organisation focusing on customer facing products for creating and managing ads. At Stripe I built the Developer Productivity organisation, with teams that were responsible for the use of the Ruby language, testing infrastructure, documentation, developer tooling e.g. IDE integrations and more. At Promise, I was Head of Engineering from 2018 2020, responsible for building the first few iterations of our products, hiring for all product roles, meeting with clients and investors, and anything else needed to get a tiny startup bootstrapped and successful. Now Im back in Ireland, working on my next company. Coming soon as of early 2021!. This blog contains my various musings on all things technicalinteresting on the interweb and beyond. View all posts by Shane OSullivan Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out Change You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out Change Connecting to s Notify me of new comments via email. Notify me of new posts via email. Δ

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Using CRDTs for multiplayer text editing (zed.dev) Nathan Sobo December 1st 2022 Programmers spend countless hours interacting with one fundamental tool: their text editor. Before you commit push or ship a single line of code you must first put your hands on the keyboard and type it into the machine. No tool has a bigger impact on the visceral and tactile experience of creating software. Yet despite the critical role that editors play in my life as a programmer I have never found an editor that I truly love. So 16 years ago I decided to build one. It took a failed attempt many hard lessons and the help of some talented friends but the tool I've been striving to create is finally emerging in the 135k lines of Rust that constitute Zed. Our first goal with Zed is simple: to build an editor that we love using. A tool with consistent high performance. A tool that assists us but also stays out of our way. A tool that looks great but also disappears. We want Zed to advance the state of the art for text editing combining the strengths of other editors while avoiding their weaknesses then going further. Anything less isn't worth building. But beyond executing on the fundamentals we also see an opportunity to radically improve the way developers collaborate on software. By integrating collaboration as a first-class concern of the code authoring environment itself Zed will make it easier to link conversations to any piece of text regardless of whether it was committed last year or just written moments ago. Zed will also make it seamless to write and discuss code with fellow developers in real time. This focus on collaboration is one of Zed's defining characteristics so with our first blog post we'd like to explore the technology we've built into the core of the editor to make it possible. In December of 1968 Douglas Engelbart demonstrated a host of technologies in front of a standing-room-only audience in San Francisco including interactive editing hypertext and the mouse. The ideas he presented went on to shape modern computing but when I first watched his famous demo I was surprised to learn that the system that amazed everyone was actually a collaborative text editor . The very thing I had been trying to build! In 1968. To build their collaborative editor Engelbart's team needed to create their own programming language time-sharing operating system and cathode ray tube displays. As we set out to build Zed our task was obviously vastly easier than theirs in almost every way but we did face one problem that they did not: asynchronous coordination. In Engelbart's system collaborators were all connected to the same physical machine via individual terminals. I'm unsure whether their tool ever supported fine-grained concurrent editing but at least in theory it would have been possible in this setup to synchronize edits to a shared buffer with a mutex. But this isn't how computers are organized today. Instead of sharing a single machine via directly-connected terminals we use personal computers that are connected via the internet. And we collaborate over much greater distances. Even at the speed of light synchronizing access to a shared buffer between two different continents would introduce prohibitive editing latency. To collaborate over the internet we need an approach that allows individuals to edit their own replicas of a document independently and have their documents converge to the same contents after they exchange data asynchronously. It turns out this is a hard problem. The animation below illustrates the basic challenge. We start with two replicas of the text In 1968 . We then concurrently insert different text into each replica and transmit a description of our edits to the other replica. But if we naively apply a remote edit without accounting for concurrent changes we can end up applying it to an invalid location causing the contents of the replicas to diverge. One solution is to somehow transform incoming edits to reflect concurrent changes. In the animation below you can see how we transform the blue insertion changing its position from 8 to 20. This is simple in concept but defining a correct and performant function that can transform operations is non-trivial and was the subject of a whole subdiscipline of computer science research known as Operational Transformation or OT. We experimented with this approach when we first explored collaborative editing back in 2017 but we ultimately chose to work with an alternative theoretical framework called Conflict-Free Replicated Data Types (CRDTs) which we found to be more powerful and intuitive. With CRDTs instead of transforming concurrent operations so they can be applied in a different order we structure our data so that concurrent operations are inherently commutative allowing us to apply them directly on any replica without transformation. But how do we make text edits commutative? The key is to express edits in terms of logical locations rather than absolute offsets. In the examples above what if instead of referring to insertion locations in terms of numeric offsets we described them via content instead? Then it wouldn't matter that concurrent edits have shifted the text because we only depend on content to resolve the location of the remote edit. This approach obviously wouldn't work in practice. The text 68 might appear multiple times or a concurrent edit may have completely deleted it. To use this sort of content-based logical addressing we need to do it in a way that's durable in the presence of concurrent changes. But how? The problem with expressing logical positions in terms of the buffer's current content is that the text isn't stable. But one thing that is stable is the editing history . We can treat every piece of text that's ever been inserted as immutable. Subsequent edits might split that text apart or delete portions of it but this doesn't change the text that was originally inserted. If we assign a unique identifier to every insertion we can now unambiguously refer to a logical location using this identifier combined with an offset into the inserted text. We refer to these (insertion id offset) pairs as anchors . To generate these unique identifiers we centrally assign each replica a unique id when it's created then combine it with an incrementing sequence number. By inheriting uniqueness from the replica id replicas can generate ids concurrently without risk of collision. At the start of a collaboration session participants are assigned replica ids. Replica 0 assigns an identifier of 0.0 to the buffer's initial text then transmits a copy to replica 1. This initial fragment of text 0.0 is the first insertion and it will remain immutable for the life of the buffer. Now each participant inserts text concurrently describing the insertion location with offsets relative to insertion 0.0 . Each new insertion is assigned its own unique id. When replica 0 inserts December of within insertion 0.0 at offset 3 the fragment labeled 0.0 is split into two pieces. Replica 1 appends Douglas Engelbart at the end of insertion 0.0 at offset 8 . Both participants also transmit their operations to the other party. Now the replicas apply each other's operations. First replica 1 incorporates the red insertion with id 0.1 splitting insertion 0.0 in two just as occurred when replica 0 originally inserted this text. Then replica 0 incorporates the blue insertion with id 1.0 . It scans through its fragments searching for offset 8 of insertion 0.0 . The first fragment belongs to 0.0 but it's only 3 characters long. The second fragment belongs to a different insertion 0.1 and is skipped. Finally we reach the second fragment containing text from insertion 0.0 . This one contains offset 8 and so we insert the blue text there. The replicas converge. This process can continue recursively with insertions building upon each other in a tree. In the animation below both replicas insert additional text at different offsets within the blue insertion with id 1.0 . To apply the remote operations we again scan through the document looking for the fragment of insertion 1.0 that contains the specified offset. In these examples we're inserting multiple characters at a time but it's worth noting that in practice collaborators are often inserting individual characters rather than pasting whole words from their clipboard. Tracking all of this metadata per-character may seem like a lot of overhead but in practice it isn't an issue on modern computing hardware. Even long edit histories barely compare to the memory savings Zed obtains from not being built with Electron. You may also be asking: Isn't scanning through the entire document like this to apply every remote edit insanely slow? In a future post I'll explain how we use a copy-on-write B-tree to index these fragments in order to avoid linear scans but this simplified explanation should give you a basic framework to understand how collaborative editing works in Zed. If every insertion is immutable how do we remove text from the document when a user deletes? Rather than mutating inserted text we instead mark deleted fragments with tombstones . Fragments with tombstones are hidden in the text we display for the user but they can still be used to resolve logical anchors to concrete locations in the document. In the animation below we insert text in replica 1 at a position that is concurrently deleted in replica 0. Because the deleted text is merely hidden rather than actually thrown away we can still apply the insertion when it arrives at replica 0. If deletions only encode a range divergence can occur if text is concurrently inserted inside the deleted range. In the example below note how the yellow C. is visible in replica 0 but hidden in replica 1. To avoid this issue we also associate deletions with a vector timestamp that encodes the latest observed sequence number for each replica. Using this we can exclude insertions that occurred concurrently only hiding text that was actually visible to the user performing the deletion. The animation below is much like the one above except this time we augment the deletion operation with a version vector. When we apply the deletion on replica 1 we exclude the yellow insertion because its id contains a sequence number that isn't included in the deletion's version. This causes the yellow insertion to remain visible on both replicas preserving the deleting user's intent. Like insertions deletions are associated with unique identifiers which we record on the tombstone. We'll see how these deletion identifiers are used later when we discuss undo and redo operations. When concurrent insertions occur at the same location it doesn't matter how we order the insertions but it definitely does matter that their ordering is consistent across all replicas. One way to achieve consistency is to order all insertions at the same location by their id. However the problem with this approach is that it can become impossible for certain replicas to insert text prior to an insertion they have already observed. We need a consistent ordering of these insertions that respects causality . Our solution is to augment insertions with Lamport timestamps . These logical timestamps are derived from a scalar-valued Lamport clock that is maintained on every replica. Whenever a replica generates an operation it derives a Lamport timestamp by incrementing its Lamport clock. Whenever a replica receives an operation it sets its own Lamport clock to the greater of the clock's current value and the timestamp of the incoming operation. This scheme guarantees that if an operation was present at the time of another operation then it will have a lower timestamp. Another way of phrasing this is that the Lamport timestamp allows us to sort the operations in causal order . The inverse isn't true. Just because operation A has a lower Lamport timestamp than operation B it doesn't necessarily mean that it causally preceded operation B because we have no guarantees about the relationship between the Lamport timestamps of concurrent operations. But we've already established that we don't care how concurrent insertions are ordered so long as our ordering is consistent. By sorting insertions descending by their Lamport timestamp and breaking any ties based on their replica id we achieve a consistent ordering scheme that respects causality. In non-collaborative systems the undo and redo history can be represented as stacks of simple edit operations. When you want to undo something you simply pop the edit on the top of the undo stack apply its inverse to the current text and push it to the redo stack. But this only allows for a single global undo history for the entire document. The offset of any operation in the history is only valid for the specific state of the document in which that operation was originally applied. This means that operations must always be undone in the exact reverse order in which they occurred. But when collaborative editing a single undo history for the entire buffer doesn't work. When you undo you expect to undo text that you yourself typed . Each participant needs their own undo stack. This means we need to be capable of undoing and redoing operations in an arbitrary order. A shared global stack of edit operations isn't enough. Instead we maintain an undo map which associates operation ids with a count. If the count is zero the operation has not been undone. If the count is odd the operation has been undone. If it's even the operation has been redone. Undo and redo operations simply update counts in this map for specific operation ids. Then when we're deciding whether a certain fragment is visible we first check if that insertion has been undone (its undo count is odd). We then check if it has any deletion tombstones and whether the undo count of any of those deletions is even. When sending undo/redo operations it's fine to assign these undo counts directly. If two users both undo the same operation concurrently they'll end up setting its undo count to the same value. This preserves their intent since they both wanted to undo or redo it. In practice we currently only allow users to undo their own operations but we may eventually introduce the ability to undo operations of collaborators. There's obviously a lot more to cover. How do we actually implement this scheme so that it's efficient? How do we integrate CRDTs into a broader system that creates the illusion of a shared workspace? How do we make this complex distributed system reliable? And what else can we do with CRDTs other than collaborate? Then there's the rest of the editor. Ropes. Our GPU-accelerated UI framework . Tree-sitter. The integrated terminal. And much much more. We're looking forward to talking about all of it in the months and years to come. And more importantly we're looking forward to applying this technology to ship an editor that makes you happier and more productive. Thanks for reading! You can try Zed today on macOS. Download now ! Nathan Sobo 12/01/22 2023 Zed Industries.

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Using LangChainJS and Cloudflare Workers together (cloudflare.com) Subscribe to receive notifications of new posts: Subscription confirmed. Thank you for subscribing! Loading... May 18 2023 2:00PM We are incredibly stoked that our friends at LangChain have announced LangChainJS Support for Multiple JavaScript Environments (including Cloudflare Workers) . During Developer Week 2023 we wanted to celebrate this launch and our future collaborations with LangChain. In this post well share why were so excited about LangChain and walk you through how to build your first LangChainJS + Cloudflare Workers application. For the uninitiated LangChain is a framework for building applications powered by large language models (LLMs). It not only lets you fairly seamlessly switch between different LLMs but also gives you the ability to chain prompts together. This allows you to build more sophisticated applications across multiple LLMs something that would be way more complicated without the help of LangChain. There are a few prerequisites you have to set up in order to build this application: Next create a new folder called langchain-workers navigate into that folder and then within that folder run npm create [emailprotected] . When you run npm create [emailprotected] youll select the following options: Do you want to deploy your application? No With our Worker created well need to set up the environment variable for our OpenAI API Key. You can create an API key in your OpenAI dashboard . Save your new API key someplace safe then well use wrangler to safely and securely store our API key in an environment variable that our Worker can access: Then well install LangChainjs using npm: Before we start writing code we can make sure everything is working properly by running wrangler dev . With wrangler dev running you can press b to open a browser. When you do you'll see Hello World! in your browser. One common way you may want to use a language model is to combine it with your own text. LangChain is a great tool to accomplish this goal and thats what well be doing today in our sample application. Were going to build an application that lets us use the OpenAI language model to ask a question about an article on Wikipedia. Because I live in (and love) Brooklyn well be using the Wikipedia article about Brooklyn . But you can use this code for any Wikipedia article or website youd like. Because language models only know about the data that they were trained on if we want to use a language model with new or specific information we need a way to pass a model that information. In LangChain we can accomplish this using a document . If youre like me when you hear document you often think of a specific file format but in LangChain a document is an object that consists of some text and optionally some metadata. The text in a document object is what will be used when interacting with a language model and the metadata is a way that you can track information about your document. Most often youll want to create documents from a source of pre-existing text. LangChain helpfully provides us with different document loaders to make loading text from many different sources easy. There are document loaders for different types of text formats (for example: CSV PDFs HTML unstructured text) and that content can be loaded locally or from the web. A document loader will both retrieve the text for you and load that text into a document object. For our application well be using the webpages with Cheerio document loader. Cheerio is a lightweight library that will let us read the content of a webpage. We can install it using npm install cheerio . After weve installed cheerio well import the CheerioWebBaseLoader at the top of our src/index.js file: With CheerioWebBaseLoader imported we can start using it within our fetch function:. In this code were configuring our loader with the Wikipedia URL for the article about Brooklyn run the load() function and log the result to the console. Like I mentioned earlier if you want to try this with a different Wikipedia article or website LangChain makes it very easy. All we have to do is change the URL were passing to our CheerioWebBaseLoader. Lets run npx wrangler dev load up our page locally and watch the output in our console. You should see: Our document loader retrieved the content of the webpage put that content in a document object and loaded it into an array. This is great but theres one more improvement we can make to this code before we move on splitting our text into multiple documents. Many language models have limits on the amount of text you can pass to them. As well some LLM APIs charge based on the amount of text you send in your request. For both of these reasons its helpful to only pass the text you need in a request to a language model. Currently weve loaded the entire content of the Wikipedia page about Brooklyn into one document object and would send the entirety of that text with every request to our language model. It would be more efficient if we could only send the relevant text to our language model when we have a question. The first step in doing this is to split our text into smaller chunks that are stored in multiple document objects. To assist with this LangChain gives us the very aptly named Text Splitters . We can use a text splitter by updating our loader to use the loadAndSplit() function instead of load() . Update the line where we assign docs to this: Now start the application again with npx wrangler dev and load our page. This time in our console youll see something like this: Instead of an array with one document object our document loader has now split the text it retrieved into multiple document objects. Its still a single Wikipedia article LangChain just split that text into chunks that would be more appropriately sized for working with a language model. Even though our text is split into multiple documents we still need to be able to understand what text is relevant to our question and should be sent to our language model. To do this were going to introduce two new concepts embeddings and vector stores . Embeddings are a way of representing text with numerical data. For our application well be using OpenAI Embeddings to generate our embeddings based on the document objects we just created. When you generate embeddings the result is a vector of floating point numbers. This makes it easier for computers to understand the relatedness of the strings of text to each other. For each document object we pass the embedding API a vector will be created. When we compare vectors the closer numbers are to each other the more related the strings are. Inversely the further apart the numbers are then the less related the strings are. It can be helpful to visualize how these numbers would allow us to place each document in a virtual space: In this illustration you could imagine how the text in the document objects that are bunched together would be more similar than the document object further off. The grouped documents could be text pulled from the articles section on the history of Brooklyn. Its a longer section that would have been split into multiple documents by our text splitter. But even though the text was split the embeddings would allow us to know this content is closely related to each other. Meanwhile the document further away could be the text on the climate of Brooklyn. This section was smaller not split into multiple documents and the current climate is not as related to the history of Brooklyn so its placed further away. Embeddings are a pretty fascinating and complicated topic. If youre interested in understanding more here's a great explainer video that takes an in-depth look at the embeddings. Once youve generated your documents and embeddings you need to store them someplace for future querying. Vector stores are a kind of database optimized for storing & querying documents and their embeddings. For our vector store well be using MemoryVectorStore which is an ephemeral in-memory vector store. LangChain also has support for many of your favorite vector databases like Chroma and Pinecone . Well start by adding imports for OpenAIEmbeddings and MemoryVectorStore at the top of our file: Then we can remove the console.log() function we had in place to show how our loader worked and replace them with the code to create our Embeddings and Vector store: With our text loaded into documents our embeddings created and both stored in a vector store we can now query our text with our language model. To do that were going to introduce the last two concepts that are core to building this application models and chains . When you see models in LangChain its not about generating or creating models. Instead LangChain provides a standard interface that lets you access many different language models. In this app well be using the OpenAI model . Chains enable you to combine a language model with other sources of information APIs or even other language models. In our case well be using the RetreivalQAChain . This chain retrieves the documents from our vector store related to a question and then uses our model to answer the question using that information. To start well add these two imports to the top of our file: Then we can put this all into action by adding the following code after we create our vector store: In this code the first line is where we instantiate our model interface and pass it our API key. Next we create a chain passing it our model and our vector store. As mentioned earlier were using a RetrievalQAChain which will look in our vector store for documents related to our query and then use those documents to get an answer for our query from our model. With our chain created we can call the chain by passing in the query we want to ask. Finally we send the response text we got from our chain as the response to the request our Worker received. This will allow us to see the response in our browser. With all our code in place lets test it again by running npx wrangler dev . This time when you open your browser you will see a few facts about Brooklyn: Right now the question were asking is hard coded. Our goal was to be able to use LangChain to ask any question we want about this article. Lets update our code to allow us to pass the question we want to ask in our request. In this case well pass a question as an argument in the query string (e.g. ?question=When was Brooklyn founded ). To do this well replace the line were currently assigning our question with the code needed to pull a question from our query string: This code pulls all the query parameters from our URL using a JavaScript URLs native searchParams property and gets the value passed in for the question parameter. If a value isnt present for the question parameter well use the default question text we were using previously thanks to JavaScriptss nullish coalescing operator . With this update run npx wrangler dev and this time visit your local url with a question query string added . Now instead of giving us a few fun facts about Brooklyn we get the answer of when Brooklyn was founded. You can try this with any question you may have about Brooklyn. Or you can switch out the URL in our document loader and try asking similar questions about different Wikipedia articles. With our code working locally we can deploy it with npx wrangler publish . After this command completes youll receive a Workers URL that runs your code. You can find our full LangChain example application on GitHub . We cant wait to see what you all build with LangChain and Cloudflare Workers. Join us on Discord or tag us on Twitter as youre building. And if youre ever having any trouble or questions you can ask on community.cloudflare.com . We protect entire corporate networks help customers build Internet-scale applications efficiently accelerate any website or Internet application ward off DDoS attacks keep hackers at bay and can help you on your journey to Zero Trust . Visit 1.1.1.1 from any device to get started with our free app that makes your Internet faster and safer. To learn more about our mission to help build a better Internet start here . If you're looking for a new career direction check out our open positions . Follow on Twitter Related Posts January 07 2022 3:57PM As we start planning our 2022 Innovation Weeks we are reflecting back on the highlights from each of these weeks... November 18 2022 9:13PM This week we made over 30 announcements in case you missed any heres a quick round-up.... April 20 2021 2:00PM Starting today your team can build a private network on Cloudflares network.... April 16 2021 2:00PM In the spirit of quickly solving problems were excited to launch three new improvements to the Workers experience so you can take your next idea and ship it even faster.... Contact Sales: +1 (888) 99 FLARE +1 650 319 8930 Contact Sales: +1 (888) 99 FLARE

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Using rats to clear land mines in Cambodia (sapiens.org) In some parts of the world giant rats are being enlisted to detect postwar land mines. APOPO At the third stop at the APOPO Visitor Center in Siem Reap Cambodia the tour guide announces We have a contest! He flourishes his hand and displays a metal tea ball filled with fragrant spices. Now you will all pretend to be rats! Behind the tour guide is a table with a blue cloth on it and 10 identical tea balls chained to a wall. Next to them is a photo of a Gambian pouched rat in mid-step her nose bent. The tour guide offers visitors the tea ball that hes been holding. Each person takes in the pungent spice an earthy scent with a sour note. The guide explains: When you smell this it would be helpful if you rub your noses or blow your noses. This is why you see the rats groom their whiskers and rub their faces with their pawsso they can be more precise when they smell. The other visitors and I follow this advice. The children screech with laughter when one blows snot onto the ground. We line up and approach the table one by one and sniff the tea balls. Each ball gives off the fresh spicy aroma. The center takes this opportunity to educate visitors about its Cambodian setting: Some of the balls contain famous Kampot peppercorn (known as the best peppercorn in the world grown only in the Kampot province) Southeast Asian red chili and curry. OK so show me which number ball matches the one I gave you. I raise five fingers. Yes! Five is correct! The guide leads everyone in a round of applause. Since you have succeeded we will now ask you to stay and help us in the minefields. And we will pay you in bananas he says. For those who guessed a number besides five we will thank you for coming and ask you to leave. A murmur of laughter rises at the joke. The contest is not only a game but also an audition. The nongovernmental organization APOPO is taking its visitors on a tour to imagine what it is like to be a rat. At the APOPO Visitor Center in Siem Reap Cambodia a tea ball sniffing challenge demonstrates to tourists how land mine detection rats are trained. Darcie DeAngelo APOPO a Belgian NGO whose acronym translates to Anti-Personnel Landmines Removal Product Development was founded with the mission of using pet rodents to detect land mines and other explosives. The NGOs HeroRATs with their acute sense of smell have been so successful that the rodents are now seen as competition for the more traditionally used military dogs for mine clearance. In 2015 I conducted fieldwork alongside the first rat handler trainees in Cambodia to work with imported land mine detection rats a continuation of my years of research in land mine action industries in Southeast Asia. As an anthropologist who has conducted fieldwork with deminers since 2010 I had grown accustomed to the militarism of these organizations. The people who work in the land mine action industry are typically former soldiers and they follow military structures calling their teams platoons and in Cambodia wearing uniforms inspired by military regalia. The rats presented a puzzle though: No matter how much the NGO tried to make them heroic they were either cartoonish or pest-like given their historical connotations. Yet through their loveable rat attributes the animals have largely disrupted the militarism long associated with land mine detection platoonsa shift that could over time undo the military stigma that surrounds land mine detectors in Cambodia. The rat itself has arguably altered not only the ways in which land mine detection groups portray their animal helpers but it has also restructured organizational practices and ways people in land mine detection understand their own work. Before the arrival of the APOPO rats in Cambodia organizations at the head of military decontamination did not have tourist centers where visitors would meet a deminer (those tasked with locating and detonating land mines) and their land mine detection animal. The more common detection animal the dog used as a military aid animal throughout the world since WWII and now widely implemented for mine action in 23 mine-contaminated countries was never presented as a cuddly companion but rather a proud and aloof animal. Mine clearance experts called such animal aids biological technologies keeping their practical roles very separate from personal human experiences. This changed after APOPOs success story with rats in countries like Mozambique Tanzania and Cambodia. Through their loveable rat attributes the animals have largely disrupted the militarism long associated with land mine detection platoons. Cambodia is contaminated with millions of unexploded ordnances dropped as cluster bombs by the U.S. during the Vietnam War. In addition millions of land mines were buried throughout the country during a series of civil wars from the 1970s1990s. Conscripted soldiers who planted these land mines are sometimes hired by todays state military to detect and detonate them. Moreover the largest land mine detection organization the Cambodian Mine Action Centre is part of the military branch of government. A land mine detection organization governmental or nongovernmental benefits from its connections to military expertise but sometimes this connection gives them a reputation among civilians. This tangled historywith conscripted soldiers who fought against one another in various civil warsaffects the ways in which the former soldiers relate to one another. As a result the minefield as a workplace is a transformed battlefield for the former combatants turned deminers. The fact that most Cambodian deminers have combat experience affects the way people perceive deminers and the organizations they work for. When I tell civilians that I worked in minefields with demining platoons I often pick up on a sense of distrustan irony given that land mines are responsible for Cambodia having over 40000 amputees making it the country with the highest ratio of land mine amputees per capita in the world. Theres no difference between them and the military police villagers told me on several occasions. A young woman once said with a giggle We used to all stand outside the minefield and yell Ghost head ghost head ghost head! I dont think they liked that though. The insult references bright red minefield warning signs of skull and crossbones and an association with death and destruction. While the deminers risk their lives to clear lands for cultivation they are ultimately former soldiers who are connected to governmental power. In Cambodia land mines left over from the Vietnam War and civils wars throughout the 1970s to 1990s have resulted in more than 40000 amputees. (WT-en) Jpatokal/ Wikimedia Commons Such a military stigma is not unwarranted. In a context where government operations are rumored to grab village lands disappear people who disagree with the ruling party and quell legitimate protests deminers carry a stigma of military corruption. Some rumors even accuse deminers disguised as military police to have arrested environmental activists protesting dam building and logging. Enter the land mine detection rat. When APOPO convinced the Cambodian state to use rats for land mine detection they lauded the rats as an innovative technology for land mine detection. Rats are less expensive and more precise than dogs and metal detectors the more mainstream technology result in a lot of false positives since they do not detect only explosive powder. APOPO uses Gambian pouched rats also known as giant African rats by their size an animal that can be as heavy as 3 pounds and as long as 3 feet. While large for rats they are weightless for the land mines and can walk safely across a live minefield. For the first nine months of their eight years of life rats-in-training are taught to smell explosive powder using a clicker technique and positive intermittent reinforcement (not unlike dog training). In the field the rats learn to scratch the soil twice when they detect explosive powder in the ground. Human handlers then mark that scratched point on a map of the minefield. Early on in Cambodia the rat stood out as a welcome change from the heavily militarized materials and practices on the minefield. The rats attributes disarm more than the landscape. The animals follow the footsteps and taps of their human handlers. They crawl up peoples arms to snuggle and nibble their necksan affectionate relationship that leads to a very different atmosphere compared to rat-free minefields. At times even former enemies laugh with one another about their newfound friends. Rats have been so successful that the rodents are now seen as competition for the more traditionally used military dogs for mine clearance. At first Chamroeun a deminer and former soldier and a friend of mine told me I thought of rats as pests but now I think of them as my very best friends. His was a common sentiment among the demining platoon whose members were largely former soldiers turned deminers; they caressed the rats each morning to apply sunblock on their ears feet and tails and often spoke of love for the rats. One woman referred to Issac a monstrous lumbering rat as her little sister using the diminutive nickname she would typically reserve for a younger female-identifying friend. The deminers joked together about how much they loved their rats and how much their rats loved them. Theirs was serious military and mostly tedious daily workstep by step in uniforms that recalled their former lives at war. And yet the rats softened the ways the deminers interacted with the work and with one another. They cuddled the rats and laughed about their mannerisms and cuteness. Such interactions lent themselves well to APOPOs publicity campaigns. The NGO even strategized on how to boost its social media presence by starting something called Raturday. Each Saturday they post a photo of one of their rats often in holiday-appropriate garb to celebrate their cuteness. Before the rats were enlisted demining organizations attracted donors by relying on portraying the injuries of land mine victims or the heroism of the soldiers who risked their lives to decontaminate the landscapes. Reports provided to organizational funding streams often included colorful images of amputees and photos of workers in their military-inspired uniforms. APOPO though leans into the rats cuteness and lovability often portraying their HeroRAT in its promotional materials helping to further upend the militarism typically found in mine clearance agencies. Now five years after the rats were introduced the government and NGO partnership has deployed dozens more mine detection rat platoons throughout Cambodia. In 2017 APOPO founded the APOPO Visitor Center complete with its public-facing rat demonstrations. This is unprecedented for a mine clearance organization. When visiting a land mine detection center in Cambodia before APOPO one usually found a serious bureau with military uniformed personnel not vividly painted murals and adorable animals to admire. On social media the NGO APOPO plays up the cuteness factor of its mine detection rats. APOPO But the rodent programs unprecedented success raises a fair question: How did the rat manage to demilitarize land mine detection organizations? That is why not the dog who is arguably more lovable and whose extensive experience in land mine detection should give canines a leg up? The answer is partly about APOPOs strategies for acquiring donations to supplement highly sought-after grants. And the answer partly lies in the rats attributes and the stories we tell about them compared with those of dogs. Rats have been known to be laboratory animals cartoons and pests. In the legend of the Chinese zodiac the Jade Emperor called for a race and part of that race entailed crossing a river. The rat could not swim so it convinced the ox to help him traverse it. At the very last moment he traveled to the oxs nose putting himself in first place and the ox in second. We know the rat here as a clever beast but also kind of an asshole . The rat is generally not known to us as an honorable companion and certainly not one suited for military aid. Military dogs on the other hand have been a familiar sight throughout human history. Take for instance the Belgian Malinois a sleek dog traditionally used in land mine detection. This breed was selected because of its intelligence and loyalty but one cant help but suspect that its graceful appearancewith wolf-like ears and pointy nosesalso played a role. Some studies suggest that Labrador retrievers or Basset hounds would be just as good if not better at land mine detection as the Malinois even though they have never been widely implemented. But those breeds like the rats dont fit in as well with the military aesthetic of the minefield. Yet for all their charisma and grace recent Malinois land mine detection promotional materialsfeaturing cute puppies and wagging tonguesseem to be trying to play off the success of the rats. While the APOPO staff told me that the dogs were fine for certain minefields they seemed intent on showing that the rats had advantages over the dogs due to their smaller size which makes them more precise. In addition rats arent loyal to only one handler which gives them an advantage over the Malinois breeds strong tendency for loyalty. The Belgian Malinois dog has long been the traditional choice for land mine detection and other types of military work. Staff Sgt. Shane Hamann/ Wikimedia Commons But perhaps most importantly the HeroRATs seem to turn the traditional military nature of land mine operations on its head. APOPO takes every opportunity to capitalize on the playfulness of the rodents holding HeroRAT adoptions in exchange for monthly or annual donations and sending adopters an email containing a Top Secret File. Demilitarization the APOPO staff told me is key to the success of land mine detection: They explained that military procedures with their dependence on hierarchy and redundant chains of command slow the detection process putting more lives at risk. Over time perhaps rats will also help the children see deminers in a new light so they no longer jeer at them from the sidelines calling them Ghost heads. But it will take time for these decades-old perspectives to shift because such stigmas have more to do with confidence in the state government. Cute and loveable animals only go so far: They cannot overcome civilian villagers suspicions of state violence. Yet the rats hold the potential to change the nature of the land mine action industry itself empowering its employees to let go of their militarized pasts and allowing the land mine detection agencies to emphasize a new aesthetic sensibility beyond militarism. Now in photographs on land mine action websites deminers not only stare proudly into the distance but also laugh good-naturedly as rats tickle their necks. On the minefield the rats ease militarism in the deminers daily work environment. The deminers bond with one another over their friendship with rats. Together they work diligently in the life-saving process of searching for land mines. Darcie DeAngelo is an anthropologist who studies postwar ecologies in Cambodia. She received her Ph.D. from McGill University and is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention at Binghamton University in New York. She is working on her book Beloved Technologies: On Bombs and Rats in a Cambodian Minefield as part of the University of California Presss Atelier workshop series. DeAngelo also produces short ethnographic film and experimental ethnographic exhibits. 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Utah is first US state to limit teen social media access (bbc.com) Utah has become the first US state to require social media firms get parental consent for children to use their apps and verify users are at least 18. The governor said he signed the two sweeping measures to protect young people in the state. The bills will give parents full access to their children's online accounts including posts and private messages. The move comes amidst heightened concern over the impact of social media on children's mental health. Under the measures enacted on Thursday a parent or guardian's explicit consent will be needed before children can create accounts on apps such Instagram Facebook and TikTok. The bills also impose a social media curfew that blocks children's access between 22:30 and 06:30 unless adjusted by their parents. Under the legislation social media companies will no longer be able to collect a child's data or be targeted for advertising. The two bills - which are also designed to make it easier to take legal action against social media companies - will take effect on March 1 2024. Governor Spencer Cox a Republican wrote on Twitter: We're no longer willing to let social media companies continue to harm the mental health of our youth. As leaders and parents we have a responsibility to protect our young people. Children's advocacy group Commons Sense Media welcomed the governor's move to curtail some of social media's most addictive features calling it a huge victory for kids and families in Utah. It adds momentum for other states to hold social media companies accountable to ensure kids across the country are protected online said Jim Steyer Common Sense Media's founder and CEO. Similar regulations are being considered in four other Republican-led states - Arkansas Texas Ohio and Louisiana - and Democratic-led New Jersey. But Common Sense Media and other advocacy groups warned some parts of the new legislation could put children at risk. Ari Z Cohn a free speech lawyer for TechFreedom said the bill posed significant free speech problems. There are so many children who might be in abusive households he told the BBC who might be LGBT who could be cut-off from social media entirely. In response Meta Facebook's parent company said it has robust tools to keep children safe. A spokesperson told the BBC: We've developed more than 30 tools to support teens and families including tools that let parents and teens work together to limit the amount of time teens spend on Instagram and age verification technology that helps teens have age-appropriate experiences. There has been other US bipartisan support for social media legislation aimed at protecting children. President Joe Biden's State of the Union address in February called for laws banning tech companies from collecting data on children. Last year California state lawmakers passed their own child data law. Among other measures the California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act requires digital platforms to make the highest privacy features for under-18 users a default setting. The passage of the Utah bills coincides with a bruising congressional hearing for TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew. 'Serious differences' hamper US debt ceiling talks US to support providing F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine Triumphant Assad has waited out the storm Japans 75-year pacifism hangs in balance as new threats loom Why the world cares who wins Turkey's presidency Triumphant Assad has waited out the storm You think you know Satanists? Maybe you don't Awards yoga and Eurovision: Photos of the week India's grandmother-granddaughter karate champs. Video India's grandmother-granddaughter karate champs Why G7 has eight more seats at the table this year How Ukraine is tackling the mental scars of war Taiwan looms large as Japan prepares to host G7 The Gen Z workers dressing to stand out How genetics can determine life choices How the 'naked' look took over fashion 2023 BBC. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read about our approach to external linking.

GOOD

Val Town Pro - $10/month for more compute, storage, private vals https://www.val.town/pricing stevekrouse Front page layout Site theme Andrew Cunningham - Jun 7 2023 5:54 pm UTC Usually when Apple announces big new operating system updates at WWDC it releases early work-in-progress developer betas for app developers who have paid for an Apple Developer account. A few weeks later once the betas have been updated a couple of times it has released somewhat more-stable public beta versions for general consumption. That has changing this year. Anyone who signs in to Apple's developer site with their Apple ID will have access to the developer beta builds of iOS 17 macOS Sonoma and Apple's other operating systems for free. Actually submitting apps to Apple for App Store distribution (or on the Mac signing them so that you can distribute them outside the App Store without setting off macOS' many unsigned app warning messages) will still cost $99 per year. But enthusiasts and testers who use developer accounts to get early beta access will no longer need to pay to do it. Apple will still release public beta builds of all its operating systems through its public beta program sometime in July. It should go without saying but don't install these beta operating systems on anything that you rely on day to day . That's doubly true for these initial developer betas which have historically been especially buggy and prone to crashes and compatibility issues. Past public betas from Apple have corresponded to the third or fourth developer beta build so if you've only experienced the public betas before know that the first developer betas are usually in pretty rough shape. The pricing isn't the only thing that has changed about how Apple releases its beta software since the first iOS 16 and macOS Ventura betas a year ago. The process differed slightly for iDevices and Macs but historically you needed to download and run a file on your device to point it at the beta update servers instead of the public ones. On iDevices this was a provisioning profile while Macs just had a package that used the command-line seedutil tool behind the scenes. (Installing developer betas on macOS has been free for a long time if you looked up the right seedutil command.) That changed circa the iOS 16.4 and macOS 13.3 releases. You now opt in or out of Apple's beta programs in the Software Update section of the Settings app. The list of betas available to you is tied to your Apple ID so you'll need to have signed in to your device using the same Apple ID you used to sign in to Apple's developer site. It's a little annoying to need to sign in with an Apple ID to access the betas though you can sign out once you've installed the software and do a factory reset if you want a fresh clean install of the new OS. You'll also need to be running a recent version of macOS or iOS on your devices which could add some extra update time if you're using a test phone tablet or Mac that you don't always actively use and update. But the new system helps solve one problem I've occasionally encountered while testing software. This time of year Apple is usually testing two different beta operating systemsright now iOS 17 and macOS 14 are available alongside iOS 16.6 and macOS 13.5 for example. The new system makes it easy to know exactly which beta you're opting in to and to easily switch between (or opt out of) beta programs if you want to. Apple does still offer full IPSW restore images for many devices. These are the same kind of operating images that macOS or the Apple Configurator software would download to revive a soft-bricked device and you can boot your device into recovery mode and install it directly without needing to sign in. This is also the quickest way to get a clean install if you prefer a blank slate when you start testing new software and the only real way to roll back to a non-beta version of the operating system. That said restore images are only available for iPhones iPads Apple Silicon Macs and the old Apple TV HD. Intel Macs Apple Watches and newer Apple TVs will need to be updated via Software Update. Apple Watches and newer Apple TVs can't be downgraded after they're upgraded so proceed with extra caution there. Join the Ars Orbital Transmission mailing list to get weekly updates delivered to your inbox. Sign me up CNMN Collection WIRED Media Group 2023 Cond Nast. All rights reserved. Use of and/or registration on any portion of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement (updated 1/1/20) and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement (updated 1/1/20) and Ars Technica Addendum (effective 8/21/2018). Ars may earn compensation on sales from links on this site. Read our affiliate link policy . Your California Privacy Rights | Do Not Sell My Personal Information The material on this site may not be reproduced distributed transmitted cached or otherwise used except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. Ad Choices Please turn on JavaScript in your browser and refresh the page to view its content. Feature The world got a first glimpse into the US government's far-reaching surveillance of American citizens' communications namely their Verizon telephone calls 10 years ago this week when Edward Snowden's initial leaks hit the press. Verizon we all learned had handed over information to the US National Security Agency (NSA) on all calls in its systems on a daily basis under a top-secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) order. Thousands more secret documents were subsequently published by journalists in the days and years to come followed by lawsuits privacy-enabling tech and more slowly some transparency into and reforms of Uncle Sam's domestic spying efforts. At least that's what lawmakers digital privacy and civil liberties advocates tell us. It's always hard to know for sure when you're dealing with classified top-secret domestic spying programs. These same folks tell us that while public awareness of the harms posed by mass surveillance has increased over the past decade there's still much room for improvement. And all of them point to the upcoming battle to reform Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) as the next big test but more on that later. I warned in 2011 that 'When the American people find out how their government has secretly interpreted the Patriot Act they will be stunned and they will be angry.' I was right as Edward Snowden's revelations proved US Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) told The Register . Wyden was one of two US senators who had sounded the alarm about the Obama administration's surveillance programs even before the Snowden leaks came to light. In the decade since then reformers have made real progress advancing the bipartisan notion that Americans' liberty and security are not mutually exclusive Wyden said. That has delivered tangible results: in 2015 Congress ended bulk collection of Americans' phone records by passing the USA Freedom Act. This bill sought to end the daily snooping into American's phone calls by forcing telcos to collect the records and make the Feds apply for the information. That same month a federal appeals court unanimously ruled that the NSA's phone-records surveillance program was unlawful. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the New York Civil Liberties Union sued to end the secret phone spying program which had been approved by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court just days after Snowden disclosed its existence. Once it was pushed out into open court and the court was able to hear from two sides and not just one the court held that the program was illegal Ben Wizner director of the ACLU Speech Privacy and Technology project told The Register . The Freedom Act also required the federal government to declassify and release significant opinions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) and authorized the appointment of independent amici friends of the court intended to provide an outside perspective. The FISC was established in 1978 under the FISA the legislative instrument that allows warrantless snooping. And prior to the Freedom Act this top-secret court only heard the government's perspective on things like why the FBI and NSA should be allowed to scoop up private communications. To its credit the government has engaged in reforms and there's more transparency now that on the one hand has helped build back some trust that was lost but also has made it easier to shine a light on surveillance misconduct that has happened since then Jake Laperruque deputy director of the Center for Democracy and Technology's Security and Surveillance Project told The Register . Wyden also pointed to the sunsetting of the deeply flawed surveillance law Section 215 of the Patriot Act as another win for privacy and civil liberties. That law expired in March 2020 after Congress did not reauthorize it. For years the government relied on Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act to conduct a dragnet surveillance program that collected billions of phone records (Call Detail Records or CDR) documenting who a person called and for how long they called them more than enough information for analysts to infer very personal details about a person including who they have relationships with and the private nature of those relationships Electronic Frontier Foundation's Matthew Guariglia Cindy Cohn and Andrew Crocker said . Wizner calls these legislative and court reforms part of the Snowden effect. And you can't talk about the Snowden effect without talking about encryption. James Clapper the former US Director of National Intelligence stated publicly that the Snowden disclosures accelerated by seven years the adoption of commercial encryption Wizner said describing this as a Rorschach test. For government agencies tasked with surveillance encryption is a bad thing he explained. But individuals and companies interested in data protection and privacy probably see things differently. At the individual level and at the corporate level we are more secure Wizner said. This includes mass adoption of end-to-end encrypted messaging services like WhatsApp and Signal. And at the corporate level what the Snowden revelations taught big tech was that even as the government was knocking on the front door with legal orders to turn over customer data it was breaking in the backdoor Wizner said. Government was hacking those companies finding the few points in their global networks where data passed unencrypted and siphoning it off. If you ask the government if you caught them in a room and they were talking off the record they would say the biggest impact for us from the Snowden disclosures is that it made big tech companies less cooperative he continued. I regard that as a feature not a bug. To be fair 10 years later some tech companies including Amazon still hand over data including Ring security videos to law enforcement without a warrant. Still as Apple Meta Google and friends push end-to-end encryption across their messaging services and other products this should mean even if tech firms are served with a subpoena the content of these communications would remain encoded. But perhaps the biggest test of the Snowden effect will happen later this year. This year Congress has the opportunity to pass another critical set of reforms including by putting real oversight and checks in place to end the rampant violations of Americans' privacy through Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Wyden said. Section 702 is supposed to permit the federal government to spy on communications belonging to foreign individuals outside of America theoretically to prevent criminal and terrorist acts. Those communications can sweep up phone calls texts and emails with US persons however and are stored in massive databases. The FBI CIA and NSA can search these communications without a warrant. Although the law is not supposed to be used to surveil American citizens the government has historically used this data to monitor activists journalists and others without obtaining a warrant. These communications can then be used to prosecute people for crimes and have been. Laperruque calls Section 702 the most significant area where the government has fallen short in reforming surveillance abuses. Advocates have been clamoring even before the Snowden disclosures to know how many Americans' communications are swept up by that statute he said. We've been pressing for an estimate for over a decade at this point. Clapper promised to provide an estimate in 2015 and now seven-plus years later we still don't have a number Laperruque said. One thing we do know about Section 702 is that it has been widely misused : more than 278000 times by the FBI between 2020 and early 2021 to conduct warrantless searches on George Floyd protesters January 6 rioters who stormed the Capitol and donors to a Congressional campaign. This litany of examples demonstrate how the government routinely abuses these warrantless searches and should provide incentive for Congress to either overhaul or outright end Section 702 according to Laperruque and other opponents. The fact that this seems to reoccur again and again even as the FBI says we've enacted new rules so this won't happen Laperruque said. This has worn the patience of Congress and demonstrates that this type of misuse is going to keep happening until we fundamentally change the rules. Another area that Wyden EFF and the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) all agree still needs reform is Executive Order 12333. There's more that the public has a right to know about how the government secretly interprets Section 702 and how it conducts surveillance outside of FISA under Executive Order 12333 Wyden said. Executive Order 12333 very broadly mandates rules for spying on US persons whether they are in America or overseas and on anyone in America. Another one of the Snowden disclosures was about an NSA spying tool called XKeyscore which is authorized under the executive order and collects data on nearly everything a user does on the internet. As EFF noted: There are serious issues raised by this tool and by 12333 more broadly. Despite consistent calls for reform however very little has occurred and 12333 mass surveillance using XKeyscore and otherwise appears to continue unabated. The real issue that the Snowden leaks revealed is that America's ordinary system of checks and balances doesn't work very well for secret national security programs Wizner said. The architecture put in place to curb surveillance misuse including FISA FISC and the US House and Senate select committees on intelligence was all created in the late 1970s as a reaction to Hoover-era abuses. These are all good ideas in theory but not necessarily in practice especially after 9-11 when the US government essentially greenlighted mass domestic spying for the sake of preventing another terrorist attack. Ten years have gone by since the first Snowden disclosures and we don't know what other kinds of rights-violating activities have been taking place in secret and I don't trust our traditional oversight systems courts and the Congress to ferret those out Wizner said. When you're dealing with secret programs in a democracy it almost always requires insiders who are willing to risk their livelihoods and their freedom to bring the information to the public. Send us news The Register Biting the hand that feeds IT Copyright. All rights reserved 19982023

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Valve Sued by Immersion over Steam Deck and Index Rumble (theverge.com) By Sean Hollister a senior editor and founding member of The Verge who covers gadgets games and toys. He spent 15 years editing the likes of CNET Gizmodo and Engadget. Consider it a rite of passage: Valve has finally become successful enough at building gaming hardware that its getting sued by Immersion Corporation. Immersion the haptic feedback company thats purchased developed or otherwise accumulated so many patents on rumble tech that almost every major tech company has licensed or settled out of court is now accusing Valve of infringing its patents with the Steam Deck handheld the Valve Index VR platform its SteamVR software and Half-Life: Alyx among other titles. Theres no mention of Valves long-gone Steam Controller which also used lots of haptic feedback. Immersion is asking for damages royalties and an injunction against Valve from deploying operating maintaining testing and using the Accused Handheld Instrumentalities and Accused VR Instrumentalities. The company filed its complaint Monday in federal court specifically the Western District of Washington citing patents 7336260 8749507 9430042 9116546 10627907 10665067 and 11175738 . Things that are certain: death taxes an Immersion lawsuit if you use rumble Sony and Microsoft both license Immersions patent portfolio following lawsuits and settlements. Apple Google Motorola and Fitbit settled as well. Meta is currently in the middle of its own Immersion lawsuit filed a year ago. Nintendo seemingly escaped a suit perhaps due to its own development of Rumble Pak tech for the Nintendo 64 but it also licenses Immersion tech now. While you might be tempted to point out that Valves hardware uses a different form of rumble than the ones that Sony and co. got sued for back in the day linear resonant actuators (LRA) rather than an eccentrically swinging weight on a shaft that didnt stop Nintendo from signing an agreement with Immersion to bring its technology to the Switch which uses LRAs as well . So does Sonys DualSense for that matter. And if you look at the individual patents I link above theyre much more nuanced than hardware. I would be surprised if Valve doesnt settle. Valve didnt immediately respond to a request for comment. The Steam Deck once again topped the Steam Weekly Top Sellers (by revenue) this past week; while we dont know sales numbers its safe to say the handheld has sold well over a million units . Valve is looking at an eventual successor too and reportedly has a successor headset codename Deckard. / Sign up for Verge Deals to get deals on products we've tested sent to your inbox daily. The Verge is a vox media network 2023 Vox Media LLC. All Rights Reserved

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Vangelis film score for Blade Runner (nemostudios.co.uk) Vangelis film score for Blade Runner Since the introduction of sound-on-film in the 1930s science fiction film-makers sought to harness the new medium of sound to emphasise outlandish atmospheres and give the audience an out-of-this-world auditory experience. In the 1950s during Hollywoods Golden Age of Science Fiction films witnessed an increased use of electronic sounds for contextualising unfamiliar worlds to film viewers. Instruments such as the theremin and the ondes Martenot with their eerie sounds were used to great effect while other new sounds were created using a variety of other electronic instruments such as the Hammond Novachord vacuum-tube synthesiser or by employing studio methods to transform existing sounds into new ones. The 1956 thriller Forbidden Planet directed by Fred M Wilcox featured a pioneering musical score created entirely on handmade electronic circuits by sound experimentalists Louis and Bebe Barron. The soundtrack is famous for introducing a new approach to the creation of a film score as its sound effects were created entirely electronically without any use of traditional instruments. With the invention of the analogue synthesiser in the late 1960s a handful of dedicated musicians and composers embraced the new instrument and they incorporated it in their work. In Stanley Kubricks 1971 film A Clockwork Orange a modular analogue synthesiser was used by composer Wendy Carlos to recreate lush electronic versions of well-known classical pieces. At this stage the new analogue synthesiser was difficult to set up and required technical skill to produce the desired sound but its introduction ushered a new dawn for musicians who were eager to learn how to tap into a keyboard instrument with new sources of sound. As analogue synthesisers developed they entered different genres of music and in the 1980s with the introduction of cheaper and simpler models they became even more widespread in popular music. Many old-school composers and music conservatives at the time believed that the use of synthesisers distanced the music performer from direct contact with the musical instrument and they argued that when used in film scores the new electronic instruments could never capture the same level of warmth and emotion as when a score is written for a symphony orchestra or when played directly by a musician on their instrument. In 1982 Vangelis synthesiser-based film score to Hugh Hudsons Chariots of Fire won an Academy Award for best original score strengthening the new synthesiser trend and its potential. Electronic film scores no longer needed to be confined to recreate electronic realisations of classical music or provide pastiche sounds to describe bizarre aural narratives. The score to Chariots of Fire with its classically trended style incorporated grand anthems and uplifting melodies engaging the public with the films heroic message. So when film director Ridley Scott asked Vangelis to write the score to his upcoming film Blade Runner contrary to public belief the use of electronic music was not a deliberate attempt by Vangelis to copy commonly used ideas and sounds as seen in science fiction films. Electronic music was already part of Vangelis everyday musical language and he performed using synthesisers because these instruments allowed him to spontaneously create symphonic works without the aid of session musicians. Probably one of the less noticeable aspects of what adds to Blade Runners extraordinary score is Vangelis instinctive way of capturing the subtle visual cues from film and embodying them in a seamless music score. As we gaze at the Spinner car flying above the citys panoramic landscape there is a sense of levitation in the music endowing the aerodyne vehicle with a cause and effect within the musical score. Architectural and technological objects in Blade Runner also produce sounds and suggest they are part of the films sonic landscape. When the huge polarising windows at Tyerlls office begin to reduce the amount of daylight into the room the effect is complemented by musical drones that are wholly integrated into the music. The prelude music to the love theme between Rick Deckard and Rachael Tyrell is an example of Vangelis mastery of expressing his instantaneous reactions as the scene is unravelled. Vangelis uses electronic music to amplify the emotions that are felt inside Deckards apartment and we notice there is an emotional tug between Vangelis music and the two characters. The music changes in intensity as it progresses from being apprehensive and doubtful to confident as Rachael and Deckard confront their emotions and fears. The music concludes with sultry saxophone music which signals to the audience that this is the films love theme and any questions of apprehension between Rachael and Deckard are now overcome by recognisable human emotions. The music is played straight from Vangelis hands to the recording tape and interacts and responds to the characters and the moods right inside the room. The penultimate scene in Blade Runner shows how crucial Vangelis music is in providing the film viewer with an emotional response which would have been difficult to portray without the use of music. The scene involves Deckards assumed enemy Batty who is being chased by Deckard in the pouring rain on the roof of a building. As Batty realises his aspirations to extend his life are dashed and his time is drawing near in a moment of pitiful irony he saves Deckard from impending death. Rather than letting the viewer hear music trumpeting the end of Batty it unexpectedly joins him on his sad end as he grasps for his last moments. We also see Battys hands holding on to a dove that he found on the roof of the building. As Batty lets go of life his grip on the dove loosens; and Vangelis punctuates this poignant moment as the doves wings flutter and it tries to set itself free from the clutch of its captor. The dramatic sonic moment is shown in slow motion but it almost goes by unnoticed by the viewer. This musical movement emphasises the transition between life and death between captivity and release. The music then changes in an instant from a lullaby into a grieving and an almost heroic theme clearly dedicated to Batty a replicant that perhaps in the end showed more human traits than most actual humans. But there is a twist in Vangelis music just as the characters Rachael and Deckard question whether they are of human origin or are in fact replicant clones. There is something about Vangelis music that mirrors this duality of origin unintended as it may be. Unlike other science fiction films that often relied on outlandish electronic sounds to suggest stories that are set in an unfamiliar and alien world Vangelis choice of sounds for the Blade Runner soundtrack evoke a sense of familiar-sounding instruments. Among the musical instruments we hear ductile bending horns electrical streaks of violin strings shape-shifting brass mechanised Far Eastern harps brittle and metallic pianos and eerily deformed bells. These new electronically created sounds are perhaps yearning to a bygone past perhaps these sounds come from replicant musical instruments that were cloned to sound like traditional instruments or perhaps they were designed to surpass the capabilities of the instruments they were derived from? Vangelis achieved this by embodying our current day knowledge (or memory) of well-known instruments but modified their sounds electronically as if they were instruments from the not-too-distant future. Vangelis views on scoring for films Vangelis distinguishes between the approach he follows when he creates music as compositions in their own right to his duties as a film score composer. When he creates music on any ordinary day Vangelis does not conceptualise images or thoughts while he is actually carrying out the creative process nor does he know what the composition will be like. For Vangelis music is a natural creation and therefore music cannot be created as a consequence of past or active human thoughts. Only after Vangelis finishes recording a composition and listens back to his music does it induce ideas and he can then analyse what he has just recorded on tape. Approaching music for film is different as Vangelis views his role first and foremost as serving the film and films by their nature involve moving images. Vangelis music is not created through a rigorous process where compositions and musical motifs are methodically thought out and arrangements are carefully laid out. He also never reads a films script to avoid the risk of creating a version of the film in his head that might deviate from what the film director intended. Instead he waits to see what the film director proposes visually on film and afterwards he joins in as a participant and through his music interprets what the images might not have been able to say on their own. Vangelis tries to capture his first impression of the visual images as he plays letting his spontaneity react to the images and not letting his thoughts interfere with his inspiration. To Vangelis the acts of composing and performing are indistinguishable from each other so any attempts to analyse the melodies are completely avoided. So in this sense to answer critics who question the use of synthesisers in films instead of a music performer being in less direct contact with the musical instrument Vangelis used synthesisers to achieve a more direct relationship with the instruments as a composer. He could perform a symphonic composition almost in its entirety in one single setting. Vangelis believes that trying to reason how creation works is futile and can interfere with the creation process itself. Vangelis sees his method of composing as like a child riding a bicycle: if the child asks how the bicycle moves forward the child may fall off the bicycle as he/she tries to rationalise his/her movements. By not dwelling on creation Vangelis aimed to keep his approach pure it is best not to think and just play. The recording studios equipment Vangelis studio consisted of a control room and a live room. The control room was equipped with a multitrack tape facility that allowed the recording of musical instruments into audio tracks on analogue magnetic tape and these audio tracks could then be mixed down onto a master tape. The control room not only contained the tape recorder machines and the mixing desk but it also served as the area where Vangelis composed music on his synthesisers. The control room was like an extension of his instruments the sound processors the outboard equipment the tape machines and the mixing desk all of which played a part in Vangelis performance. An adjacent live room was filled with traditional instruments and other unusual musical items Vangelis had collected over the years. It also featured a wide collection of percussion which included drums gamelan timpani tubular bells gongs and orchestral percussion. The live room was often used as the area where live work was recorded which also included guest singers and other musicians. Vangelis studio featured commercially available models of synthesisers as well as some old vintage electric keyboards and it also had a 9-foot Steinway Grand Piano. All of these instruments were situated in the studios control room next to the tape recorders. The control room was equipped with two types of tape machines each dedicated to a certain function in the recording process. The first was a multitrack tape machine capable of recording 24 parallel audio tracks into a 2-inch-wide magnetic tape. The multitrack tape allowed the individual instruments from a performance to be recorded into discrete audio tracks. This gave flexibility during mixing as each audio element could be treated separately for panning gain or other fine-tuning. Vangelis multitrack tape machine was the Lyrec TR-532 the same tape machine he used to record his solo albums and his film score to Chariots of Fire. The second type of tape machine in Vangelis control room was a tape master machine that allowed the final mixed work to be produced onto a 2-track quarter-inch master tape. Blade Runner was going to be presented in cinemas with Dolby Stereo sound and using a 4-channel mix of the soundtrack. A 4-track master tape machine was rented so that any music mixes needing 4-channel mixes could be delivered on a 4-track tape. Vangelis studio central command was a mixing desk a 36 channel from Quad/Eight Electronics Pacifica multitrack non-automated mixing desk configured as a 36-modular input console with eight selectable mixing busses and stereo mix down. Two separate stereo (cue) busses and four auxiliary send circuits (i.e. four echo send/return module) per channel input. For audio monitoring Vangelis studio was equipped with two Tannoy Dreadnought monitors capable of delivering 750-watt. Each monitor was equipped with dedicated Tannoy cones for high- middle- and low-frequency ranges and each range was powered by a dedicated amplifier using three BWG 750-watt amplifiers. When recording a track of audio onto analogue tape the audio is accompanied by the presence of tape hiss noise due to the limitation of the magnetic medium. When working with multitrack audio tapes the amount of tape hiss noise stemming from all 24 tracks can be noticeable especially when the audio recording changes to quiet passages of music. This build-up of unwanted tape noise was dealt with by the use of a noise-reduction system. To reduce tape hiss Vangelis used dbx noise reduction Type I by applying it to each of the 24 tracks of the Lyrec TR-532 tape machine. Tape hiss noise on 2- and 4-track master tapes was addressed by applying another type of noise reduction. For the Blade Runner soundtrack these were handled by noise-reduction modules installed by Dolby Laboratories for the master tapes. The Dolby noise reduction was applied on each of the 2 or 4 channels depending on the number of channels used on the track in question. Occasional audio peak limiting was provided by URei 1176-LN compressors. While creating music in a multitrack tape studio environment offered immense opportunities for adjustig the recorded performance it lacked many of the convenient tools that arrived with later technologies such as mixing desk automation SMPTE time-code for synchronisation and much of the digital facilities that swept the sound-recording and film production studios in the late 1980s and beyond. A reconstructed overhead view of Vangelis studio in 1982 Nemos Control Room Vangelis synthesiser set-up during Blade Runner The control room showing the Quad/Eight Pacifica mixing desk E-Mu Emulator sampler Moog MiniMoog RSF Kobol BlackBox and Roland CSQ-100. For audio monitoring the mix was played back on two large Tannoy Dreadnought monitors. The Tannoys were used as a primary source of audio monitoring in the studio. The headphones and small professional speakers on the mixing desk were seldom used. Vangelis main synthesiser set-up lies behind the Emulator and the MiniMoog. Click on number 3 on the overhead view of Vangelis studio for a better view of the synthesisers used during the making of Blade Runner. Nemos Control Room Vangelis control room a couple months after completing the score to Blade Runner . Vangelis main instruments consisted of a dozen of synthesisers most of them lay behind the Quad/Eight Pacifica mixing desk. Visible are a Simmons SDSV drum pad and rack an Emulator sampler a MiniMoog synthesiser and a Roland CR-5000 CompuRhythm drums. The keyboard at the bottom of the picture is an extremely rare synthesiser known as the Yamaha GS-1 which was also used on Blade Runner . The Yamaha GS-1 was a big instrument and normally resided in the live room but it was brought into the control room whenever it was required. Nemos Control Room All the synthesisers shown here are the same as those used on Blade Runner except for the Yamaha CS-40M synthesiser which is missing from the set-up. List of instruments shown in the photograph: Left: Roland CSQ-600 Roland ProMars CompuPhonic Fender Rhodes 88 piano Roland VP-330 VocoderPlus Roland CR-5000 CompuRhythm Centre: E-Mu Emulator Yamaha CS-80 Right: Simmons SDSV with drum pad Sequential Circuits Prophet 10 Roland Jupiter 4 LINN LM-1 drum computer From bottom to top Vangelis' Rhodes Electric Piano with a built-in 10 band equaliser. The Roland VP-330 MK I synthesiser. Roland CSQ-600 sequencer on top left and Roland CR-5000 CompuRhythm on top right. The Yamaha CP-80 piano used on the alternative Love Theme. The composition can be heard on the early Workprint version of the film. Nemo Live Room The live room a couple months after completing the score to Blade Runner . The live studio was a multi-purpose area. It measured 23 by 44 ft and had a ceiling of 20 ft high. This area was used for recording vocals and live percussion work. At the far end of the room was a large three sided cyclorama which was used for creating very effective sound ambiences during live recordings. Vangelis live area was filled with gongs three hand-tuned timpani bell trees tubular bells and various other percussive instruments. Vangelis digitally sampled some of these instruments and then accessed them via his digital sampler during the making of Blade Runner . A view of the live room. From front to back vibraphone crotales and an unusual instrument: a grand piano harp with a buzz saw blade attached as a resonant percussive instrument. You can view a number of photographs of the studio by clicking on any the numbers indicated on the surface of the map. Tap on the photo or hit the esc key to close down the pop-up photo. All of the photographs were taken in 1982 during or shortly after the making of the Blade Runner film score. When writing the score for a film Vangelis would view the picture from a screen positioned at location TV no. 1. The studio assistant would view the picture on a television screen typically placed on the piano at TV no. 2. For added convenience sometimes a television screen was also placed at TV no. 3. Synthesisers The long notes in the films opening credits were created on Vangelis Yamaha CS-80 synthesiser an instrument that featured many performance controls including a ribbon controller that gave Vangelis the flexibility apply a pitch bend to his notes. It also had polyphonic aftertouch which gave Vangelis control over each notes inflection and modulation by varying the amount of pressure on each key pressed on the instrument. Besides the Yamaha CS-80 two other prominent instruments heard throughout Blade Runner are a Roland VP-330 VocoderPlus synthesiser for the string section and a Fender Rhodes for the nostalgic-sounding electric piano. Other instruments included a Sequential Circuits Prophet 10 synthesiser used for producing low drones and effects E-Mus Emulator keyboard put to use as a percussive sampler and a sound library and Yamaha GS-1 for occasional percussion effects. Vangelis created the enormous spatial distance of the score by running his instruments through a Lexicon 224 digital reverberation sound processor. He used it by applying depths and spaces to his synthesisers and percussion creating lush spaces to complement the films vast landscapes. For compositions that incorporated the occasional use of pulsating sequencer work Vangelis had a set-up consisting of several Roland synthesisers and sequencers. This allowed him during his performance to adjust transpose and edit the sequence as he played along. The Roland synthesisers included the Jupiter 4 and the ProMars CompuPhonic and the Roland sequencers included the CSQ-600 CSQ-100 and System-104. Recording the score London 1982 After the completion of Blade Runners principal filming in Los Angeles in the summer of 1981 the films post-production phase moved to London where it was to be assembled and sound dubbed. Film director Ridley Scott along with his film-editor Terry Rawlings began to put together a rough cut of the film. Rawlings began to use a temp score to put music to the images. The rough cut of the film with the temp score gave a flavour of the type of mood Scott might have wanted and allowed them to view an assembled film put together from all the cut scenes in chronological order. Vangelis was approached to discuss the possibility of providing the film score for Blade Runner and was invited to a private view of the film on a cinema screen at Pinewood Studios. In December 1981 after fruitful discussions Vangelis was signed up to work on the film. Blade Runner was not the first collaboration between Ridley Scott and Vangelis. They had worked together a couple of years earlier in 1979 when Scott commissioned Vangelis to rework a piece of music for one of his commercials the iconic fragrance Chanel N5 entitled Share the Fantasy. Vangelis studio in London was his own privately funded and operated recording studio which contained over a million pounds worth of equipment and instruments. The studio had one member of staff who worked as a studio engineer and among her tasks she supervised the operation of the tape machines helped Vangelis with various mixing desk duties and synchronised tape recording to video playback. Vangelis home base in London and its proximity to the film editing studios was very convenient as it allowed filmed scenes to be quickly dispatched to Vangelis and likewise Vangelis was able to deliver his music to the dub theatre. In anticipation of recording Vangelis score in Dolby Stereo consultants from Dolby Laboratories visited Vangelis studio and checked the compatibility of his studios equipment. The consultants also installed Dolby noise-reduction units for putting the 4-track mixes onto quarter-inch tape. Vangelis received the filmed scenes from Blade Runners editing room on a day-by-day basis. Vangelis received these cut scenes on video cassettes in Video Home System (VHS) format and the video streams contained the dialogues from the actors and nothing else. Any temp music used in the rough cut was removed. There was also no information in the video streams such as time-code readout to assist the film editor or the musician aligning the music to the film throughout the various stages of music and film editing. When composing and recording music for a soundtrack Vangelis utilised the control room of his studio by using a television screen to view the cut scene he was working on. Situated behind the television screen Vangelis was surrounded by a dozen synthesisers. Additional television screens were also placed at different corners in the studio so Vangelis could see the film from any position while he worked. Synchronising the video playback and the tape recorder was carried out by remote control. This meant pressing play on the videotape and pressing the record button on the tape machine at the same time. As a new filmed scene was played and if Vangelis felt a strong connection to the moving images he would create a composition straight away. Being lead by the moving pictures he would record his creations without any prior rehearsals. Otherwise if viewing the film scene induced no immediate reaction Vangelis would not push himself to force the music out instead he would work on some other tasks at the studio and come back to it later on. If Vangelis felt that a composition needed additional layering he would rewind the tape and add layers of sound electronically through his synthesisers percussion and acoustic effects. The number of overdubs could be kept to a bare minimum to avoid turning his music sick by tampering with it beyond what was necessary. Vangelis always prefers to use his first take whenever he can even if the recording contains small mistakes because he sees his first takes as more honest than rerecording the same music again. Sometimes certain subsequent overdubs required precise timing with the film cut as it was important to maintain synchronisation between tape and video. However there were no electronic editing facilities available at the time to allow recording new inserted audio elements starting from a predetermined video frame. Synchronisation was carried out by hand and done by operating both tape and video machines manually. The tape would be rewound to the start of the recording segment using the tape-counter readout or if working on a subsection of tape a line would be drawn on the non-magnetic base of the tape with a chinagraph pencil to indicate the position of music. Similarly the VHS videotape would be rewound to a previously chosen video frame as a reference point by using the pause function on the remote control. Once both machines were in standby mode the record button would then be pressed on the tape machine and then after counting to 10 the play button on the videotape player would be activated. This would mean that Vangelis could watch the video in sync while adding the new layers of sound. Since this type of manual synchronisation was never consistent on every subsequent overdub this meant that with each successive viewing there was the possibility of a slight misalignment between audio and video. The studio engineer operating both machines ensured the alignment was as accurate as possible. The synchronisation may be described as loose today but it was part of Vangelis creativity in making organic music without using a click-track for synchronisation. With some of the compositions Vangelis felt that he wanted to redo certain arrangements using a vocal performer a choir or a traditional instrument such as a saxophone. On those occasions a studio session would be arranged for an invited singer or a musician to rehearse and record the part Vangelis needed to achieve and these new elements would then be added to the multitrack tape. After the composition was recorded with any overdubs the recorded arrangements would then mixed down and put onto a master tape. Vangelis viewed the mixing desk as a conductor of all other instruments. He would sit in the engineers chair in the centre of the mixing desk moving sliders twiddling knobs and pushing buttons. Standing next to him would be the studio assistant who would make any other necessary adjustments. The studio was exclusively used for stereo recordings and the mix for the Blade Runner soundtrack was the first 4-channel mix ever attempted at Vangelis studio. The mixing desk for example had no built-in panning options for surround sound. The procedure was further lengthened by the lack of an automated mixing desk as it required manual human input for manipulating (in real time) 24 audio channels coming from the multitrack tape machine. So every attempt at mixing a track required active human involvement in monitoring and adjusting each of the 24 tracks on the mixing desk by adjusting gains filtering and panning. For jobs requiring 4-track mixes rather than relying on the mixing desks built-in stereo busses the channels were instead re-routed to their auxiliary subgroups and combined into a 4-channel submix. Panning a sound across one of the four submix channels had to be manually tuned and monitored by listening to the mix on the four monitors in the control room. For simplicity the 4-channel mix was approached as a normal stereo project with occasional effects panning from left centre right and surround. Sometimes a sound effect would be placed at the surround channel; as such sounds had little influence on the composition as a whole. Much of the aural sound used in Blade Runners soundtrack was simple. The synthesisers were patched on the individual channels on the mixing desk a portion of the signals from the channels were sent to the auxiliary send circuits which went to the Lexicon 224 reverb and returned on the channel returns further up the mixing desk and mixed into the designated buss group. The Lexicon reverb was applied live as the multitrack tape was played back and it was never recorded in the original audio stems on the multitrack tape. Several attempts at mixing would have to be tested and tried until the final execution and the desired mix was achieved without any errors. Since the mixing jobs could not be saved for later retrieval every adjustment had to be manually redone in real time. The mix practices may be repeated as many times as necessary with every new mix practice being an improvement on the previous attempt until Vangelis was satisfied with the results and the final master tape was produced. Another minor technical issue to address was the fact that the filmed scenes sent to Vangelis studio were delivered on VHS videotapes. Because videotapes were transferred from an optical motion picture into a standard UK PAL video signal with a Telecine machine this presented a problem where source and target video formats ran at different frame rates. The video stream of a PAL UK standard ran at 25 frames per second (fps) whereas optical film is produced at 24 fps on 35-mm film. It meant that the cut scene from Blade Runner at Vangelis studio played at the slightly faster 25/24 rate. This presented a speed synchronisation problem between what Vangelis played to and how the music was synchronised to the final optical film at 24 fps. In order for Vangelis film score to sync to the optical 24-fps film the music was initially composed to synchronise with the VHS videotape at 25 fps and when the track was completed it was then transferred to the master tape and sped up by a factor of 25/24 using the variable-speed function on the tape machine. This correction step prevented the possibility of the film score drifting and losing sync with the film. Vangelis composing on his synthesisers while looking at a film scene displayed on a video screen which was located behind the mixing desk in front of him. The television screen on top of the grand piano behind Vangelis assisted the studio engineer at the mixing desk. After a mix was completed onto a master tape and before it could be dispatched to the film editor the magnetic tape needed to be mastered for film on 35-mm sound film. Vangelis studio engineer would take the 4-track tape reels to CTS Studios at Wembley London where the audio would be transferred to sound-film format. This process resulted in a 35-mm film coated with magnetic oxide particles that contained the sound transfer of the music. This type of transfer is one generation down from the master tape and it is intended to facilitate the film editing tasks. This provided a way to align sound to pictures using the sprocketed film printing machines while at the same time maintaining a high-quality audio transfer on magnetic medium. Afterwards the 35-mm sound film was taken to the dubbing theatre at Pinewood Studios where it was dubbed to film. Vangelis instructions suggesting where to align the music to which film frame were relayed to the resident dubbing mixing engineer and the films editor Terry Rawlings. The dubbing sessions of Vangelis film score were carried out separately from the films other sound sessions such as adding Foley sound effects and post-sync dialogues. The music dubbing sessions first took place at at Pinewood Studios but towards the end of the Blade Runner project the sessions were moved to a much smaller sound booth at Twickenham Film Studios. Vangelis visited the dubbing sessions a few times to watch the film scenes both with and without music. Once the synchronised soundtrack was ready to be committed to optical film print via a photochemical process a magnetic recording of the composite soundtrack was copied onto 4-track tape. This composite soundtrack called Music and Effects (M&E) tape contained both the music and sound effects but excluded the actors dialogues. The M&E tape would later be copied and sent to international film distributors that required the films dialogue to be dubbed into a non-English language. The tape enabled the final music with the sound effects to be available

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Venture Predation (ssrn.com) You do not have access to papers.ssrn.com. The site owner may have set restrictions that prevent you from accessing the site.

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Venture-Fund Returns Show Worst Slump in More Than a Decade (wsj.com) WSJ Membership Customer Service Tools & Features Ads More Dow Jones Products

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Verizon abandons its confusing mess of six unlimited wireless plans (arstechnica.com) Front page layout Site theme Jon Brodkin - May 17 2023 8:16 pm UTC Verizon is replacing its confusing mess of six unlimited wireless plans with a slightly less confusing menu of options . Starting tomorrow when the new plans roll out customers selecting a new plan will have two primary choices. Only the more expensive option will include access to the fastest portions of Verizon's 5G network and certain perks that used to be included in the base prices will be sold as optional add-ons. Verizon claimed in an announcement that its new lineup redefines wireless freedom and brings an end to bloated bundles. But evaluating the new plans and optional add-ons won't be entirely straightforward and service could be more expensive for at least some customers. If a new Verizon customer wanted to re-create what used to be Verizon's highest-tier unlimited plan it would end up costing more than it previously did said Roger Entner founder of Recon Analytics according to The Wall Street Journal . The way to get people to spend more is typically not through a math exercise Entner said. Financial analysts at KeyBanc Capital Markets wrote in a note to investors that trying to convince customers to pay more for faster 5G on Verizon's mid-band spectrum is likely a losing battle as consumers are likely aware other providers will provide mid-band 5G at no extra charge according to Light Reading . The cheaper of Verizon's two new options is called Unlimited Welcome not to be confused with the current Welcome Unlimited plan. Unlimited Welcome will cost $65 a month plus taxes and fees for one line or as little as $27 per line for family plans with at least five users. The pricier Unlimited Plus option will cost $80 a month for a single line or as little as $42 per line for plans with at least five users. Unlimited Plus is required to access what Verizon calls its 5G Ultra Wideband network. Ultra Wideband provides faster speeds from Verizon's widely available C-Band spectrum and from the millimeter-wave spectrum that's available in very limited areas . Unlimited Welcome will get access to 5G but not the Ultra Wideband variety so it won't provide as big of an upgrade over 4G speeds. Unlike others Unlimited Plus has no smartphone data caps wont slow you down and wont deprioritize your data Verizon said. Another big limit on the entry-level Unlimited Welcome plan is that it has no access to mobile hotspot usageboth plans allow unlimited phone data usage but hotspot usage is limited on the more expensive plan and non-existent on the cheaper one. The more expensive plan includes 30GB of high-speed hotspot usage each month and slower hotspot speeds after the hotspot cap is reached. If you go past the 30GB hotspot cap you'll get speeds up to 3Mbps on 5G Ultra Wideband for the rest of the month or up to 600kbps on non-Ultra Wideband 5G or 4G LTE. Join the Ars Orbital Transmission mailing list to get weekly updates delivered to your inbox. Sign me up CNMN Collection WIRED Media Group 2023 Cond Nast. All rights reserved. Use of and/or registration on any portion of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement (updated 1/1/20) and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement (updated 1/1/20) and Ars Technica Addendum (effective 8/21/2018). Ars may earn compensation on sales from links on this site. Read our affiliate link policy . Your California Privacy Rights | Do Not Sell My Personal Information The material on this site may not be reproduced distributed transmitted cached or otherwise used except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. Ad Choices

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Vestas unveils solution to end landfill disposal for wind turbine blades (vestas.com) News release from Vestas Wind Systems A/S Aarhus 8 February 2023 Vestas is presenting a new solution that renders epoxy-based turbine blades as circular without the need for changing the design or composition of blade material. Combining newly discovered chemical technology developed within the CETEC initiative and partnerships with Olin and Stena Recycling the solution can be applied to blades currently in operation. Once matured this will eliminate the need for blade redesign or landfill disposal of epoxy-based blades when they are decommissioned. Until now the wind industry has believed that turbine blade material calls for a new approach to design and manufacture to be either recyclable or beyond this circular at end of life. Going forward we can now view old epoxy-based blades as a source of raw material. Once this new technology is implemented at scale legacy blade material currently sitting in landfill as well as blade material in active windfarms can be disassembled and re-used. This signals a new era for the wind industry and accelerates our journey towards achieving circularity says Lisa Ekstrand Vice President and Head of Sustainability at Vestas. Turbine blades have previously been challenging to recycle due to the chemical properties of epoxy resin a resilient substance that was believed to be impossible to break down into re-usable components. This has led to many technology leaders attempting to replace or modify epoxy resin with alternatives that can be more easily treated. Vestas solution is enabled by a novel chemical process that can chemically break down epoxy resin into virgin-grade materials. The chemical process was developed in collaboration with Aarhus University Danish Technological Institute and Olin the partners of the CETEC project a coalition of industry and academia established to investigate circular technology for turbine blades. Thenewly discovered chemical process shows thatepoxy-based turbine blades whether in operation or sitting in landfill can be turned into a source of raw material to potentially build new turbine blades. As the chemical process relies on widely available chemicals it is highly compatible for industrialisation and can therefore be scaled up quickly. This innovation would not have been possible without the ground-breaking CETEC collaboration between industry and academia enabling our progress until this point says Mie Elholm Birkbak Specialist Innovation & Concepts at Vestas. Through a newly established value chain supported by Nordic recycling leader Stena Recycling and global epoxy manufacturer Olin Vestas will now focus on scaling up the novel chemical disassembly process into a commercial solution. Once mature the solution will signal the beginning of a circular economy for all existing and future epoxy-based turbine blades. As the leading customer solution provider of innovative epoxy systems Olin is proud to support the anticipated massive expansion in wind energy worldwide. By utilising unique technologies together with our partners we are ready to recover molecules and convert them into new epoxies that can be re-used in wind turbine blades. We are excited to bring our expertise and unique asset footprint to this partnership and realize breakthrough sustainable material solutions for existing wind blades and those of the future says Verghese Thomas Vice President Epoxy Systems and Growth Platforms at Olin. In the coming years thousands of turbines will be decommissioned or repowered representing a major sustainability challenge but also a valuable source of composite materials. As one of Europes leading recycling groups with a wide footprint in Europe we have a central role in the transition to a circular economy. We see this solution as a huge opportunity to take part in making a sustainable solution even more sustainable and circular and are ready to apply our chemical recycling expertise and knowledge to this process says Henrik Grand Petersen MD Stena Recycling Denmark. For several decades producing wind turbine blades manufactured with epoxy-based resin has been standard practice in the wind industry. In the most mature markets for wind energy the first turbines are reaching the end of their operational life and this will increase over the coming years. WindEurope expects around 25000 tonnes of blades to reach the end of their operational life annually by 2025. Once mature the new solution will provide Vestas with the opportunity to produce new turbine blades made from re-used blade material. In the future the new solution also signals the possibility to make all epoxy-based composite material a source of raw material for a broader circular economy potentially encompassing industries beyond wind energy. For more information please contact: Kristian Holmelund Jakobsen Lead Specialist Communication and Press Tel: +45 5221 1467 Mail: KRHJA@vestas.com About Vestas Vestas is the energy industrys global partner on sustainable energy solutions. We design manufacture install and service onshore and offshore wind turbines across the globe and with more than 160 GW of wind turbines in 88 countries we have installed more wind power than anyone else. Through our industry-leading smart data capabilities and unparalleled more than 140 GW of wind turbines under service we use data to interpret forecast and exploit wind resources and deliver best-in-class wind power solutions. Together with our customers Vestas more than 28000 employees are bringing the world sustainable energy solutions to power a bright future. For updated Vestas photographs and videos please visit our media images page on: https://www.vestas.com/en/media/images . We invite you to learn more about Vestas by visiting our website at www.vestas.com and following us on our social media channels: About Olin Olin Corporation is a leading vertically-integrated global manufacturer and distributor of chemical products and a leading U.S. manufacturer of ammunition. The chemical products produced include chlorine and caustic soda vinyls epoxies chlorinated organics bleach hydrogen and hydrochloric acid. Winchester's principal manufacturing facilities produce and distribute sporting ammunition law enforcement ammunition reloading components small caliber military ammunition and components and industrial cartridges. For more information visit www.olin.com About Stena Recycling Stena Recycling plays an important and central role in the transition to a circular economy by offering services and comprehensive solutions within recycling and efficient resource management. With more than 3000 committed employees and 178 facilities across eight markets Stena Recycling annually recycles nearly six million tons of waste and end-of-life products from more than 100000 customers across a range of industries. The recycled raw materials including ferrous and non-ferrous metals plastic and paper are resold as feedstock for the manufacture of new products. Stena Recycling operates in Sweden Denmark Norway Finland Poland Italy and Germany and the USA. Stena Recycling is part of the Stena Metall Group For more information visit www.stenarecycling.com About Danish Technological Institute Danish Technological Institute (DTI) is an independent research and development institute. At DTI we deliver sustainable and exceptional competitiveness through decisive technological knowledge translated into action. With more than 12000 customers in 65 countries we develop new knowledge through research and development activities in close corporation with Danish and international companies and research institutes. For more info visit www.dti.dk or contact project manager Sren Haack at sorh@dti.dk . About Aarhus University Aarhus University is a globally oriented academically diverse and research-intensive university. Aarhus University ranks among the top 100 universities in the world on several of the most important international ranking lists out of over 17000 universities worldwide. Around 12 per cent of AUs 40.000 students are international representing over 120 nationalities. Aarhus University offers state-of-the-art facilities and laboratories having a strong tradition of multidisciplinary research for instance in one of our 42 major research centres. The universitys goal is to contribute towards solving the complex global challenges facing the world. The university therefore strives to combine the high level of academic standards of its researchers with collaboration across disciplinary boundaries to combine research in new ways and solve challenges in close contact with the world around us. For more information please visit: https://www.au.dk/ About the CETEC project The CETEC (Circular Economy for Thermosets Epoxy Composites) initiative established in May 2021 by Aarhus University Danish Technological Institute Olin and Vestas and partly funded by the Innovation Fund Denmark focuses on advancing the adoption of a circular economy across the wind industry. The CETEC initiative is a three-year project that builds on the DreamWind initiative and addresses the lack of available recycling technology for epoxy resins. The project not only aims to increase the blade recyclability but also strives for full circularity by enabling to feed recycled materials of old blades back into the production of new blades. Download 230208 nr uk vws Infographic Vestas Wind Systems A/S Hedeager 42 8200 Aarhus N Denmark +45 97 30 00 00 Company reg. no. 10403782 CONTACT PRODUCTS ABOUT NEWS Current share price Vestas 2023 All rights reserved Wind. It means the world to us.

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Vets today are like doctors yesterday (trevorklee.substack.com) My grandfather was a psychiatrist from the 50s through the 90s. My mom was a pediatrician then a dermatologist from the 80s through the 2010s. Between the two of them Ive gotten a good sense of the way medicine has shifted through the last 70 years or so: the rise of the FDA the growth of modern pharmaceuticals the domination of the fee-for-service model the increasing influence of the insurance companies and more recently the pernicious influence of electronic medical records. One of the things I noticed talking to my grandfather while he was still alive and my mom now is the way in which their medical thinking was influenced by the structure of the medical establishment while they were being trained. My grandfather trained in an era before strong FDA regulation of medications was mostly distrustful of medications. He much preferred talk therapy and psychoanalysis seeing medications as a last resort when those failed. He was very conversant in the studies themselves though constantly reading journals to see the latest advances in pharmaceuticals. Thanks for reading my newsletter! Subscribe to receive additional posts on an every-once-in-a-while basis. Meanwhile my mom was trained in an era before prior authorizations and the fear of malpractice suits were quite so pervasive. So my mom has always been very comfortable prescribing a variety of medications both on and off-label depending on her patients needs. She felt confident in her ability to help her patients navigate side effects when or if they experienced them. Its also worth noting that both my grandfather and mom were small business owners through and through. They had employees a reputation in their community mostly straightforward commercial relationships with their patients (including occasionally barter) and their own unique ways of both practicing and administering their practice based on what they thought was necessary. These stories likely seem unexceptional to you. And theyd be unexceptional to the doctors of my grandfather and moms time as well. Theyre also not particularly exceptional to the veterinarians of their time or indeed of this time. However they are exceptional to the American doctors of this year 2022. And that to me is interesting: in many ways vets in 2022 are more similar to doctors of the 80s than doctors in 2022 are. In many ways veterinarians in the year 2022 are much like my mom used to be. By and large they own small practices. The amount of regulation on their work is relatively limited so most of how they practice and administer their practice is based on what they think is necessary. Their relationships with their patients are for the most part straightforwardly commercial: they perform services and sell products for fees with only a limited amount of interaction with pet insurance. They see themselves in that way too. A good veterinarian will tell their patient Here are a few options for your pets health issue. Here are the benefits drawbacks and costs associated with these options. Ill let you make the decision. Interestingly in some ways theyre even like my grandfather used to be. Many of the conditions that vets see dont have specific drugs associated with them (or even high quality studies) so vets often have to get creative. Its very common for them to repurpose human drugs or use compounding pharmacies to treat their patients. Specializing in a subset of veterinary medicine (like canine neurology) is still rare and specializing in a condition is basically unheard of. Pretty much every vet has to be comfortable treating every condition in whatever species they treat. There arent really experts in conditions in the same way there are in human medicine so folklore and word-of-mouth is very important for spreading knowledge. American doctors in 2022 by contrast are not at all like my mom used to be. By and large they belong to large practices or hospitals. They face an enormous amount of regulation on how they practice what insurance and licenses they need [1] and how they keep records. These regulations add a significant amount of time expense and complexity to how they work [2]. Their commercial relationships with patients are anything but straightforward. The commercial relationship ends up being between the doctor or hospitals billing specialist and the patients insurance company with both the doctor and the patient having no idea what the end result will be. Very few American doctors even consider cost. They do however get very concerned about adverse effects. One of the positive developments in medicine over the past few decades has been the explosion of treatment regimens and drugs for highly specific conditions which has really improved the well-being of patients in a number of conditions. But a negative result of this is that doctors are way way more comfortable following treatment algorithms for a condition rather than being creative. If theyre forced to be creative theyd rather focus on minimizing side effects rather than maximizing efficacy for any condition. Only specialists (and frequently specialists in an exact condition) usually feel comfortable going off-script. Specialists feel comfortable to be creative because theyve often gotten their knowledge directly from high-quality studies although personal experience folklore and word-of-mouth still play large roles in how they think. This ends up determining how drug manufacturers like my company market to these respective fields. If I want to market to doctors Im best served by having high-profile researchers in that specific indication and high profile studies. Ideally Id also get a change to the treatment protocols too. If I want to market to vets Im best served by having well-known speakers (who dont necessarily specialize in that indication) and well-run (not high-profile) studies. Both efforts are supported by robust traditional sales and marketing of course especially the ubiquitous lunch-and-learn in which you bribe people with lunch in exchange for letting you pitch them. There's something sad about what American physicians have become. Many of the young physicians Ive talked to are so terrified by the prospect of a malpractice suit and already burnt out by dealing with insurance and electronic medical records. They practice medicine by following treatment algorithms and are barely aware of how much various treatments cost even though their patients can be devastated by an unexpected cost. The country doc mentality exemplified by my mom grandfather and the vets of today has disappeared. In fact if you want a real sign of the times the last time I visited my mom she told me that it was probably for the best that neither me or my brothers became doctors. For a Jewish woman (and a doctor herself no less) to tell her son that shes glad hes not a doctor? You know things are real bad. [1] Insurance costs for doctors are crazy compared to vets especially malpractice insurance. The malpractice insurance of an average veterinary practice is $350 a year . The malpractice insurance of a family doctor is $13000 a year while an obstetricians insurance can cost $71000 a year . You have to pay this before you see patients. So doctors often have to work for hospitals just so the hospitals will pay their malpractice insurance. [2] The biggest contributors to these are the twin demons of prior authorization and electronic medical records. Prior authorization is when health insurance companies require doctors to ask for permission to perform specific services for specific patients. This is incredibly time consuming ( 14.4 hours per week as of 2020) and also demoralizing for the physicians as the ultimate decision on how to treat a patient is often not made by the highly-trained physician or the patient in need but instead by a 25 year old making 40k/year reading off a script over the phone. Electronic medical records by contrast are what they sound like. However like any software built to spec (rather than for the end user) they are horrendous to use. Doctors spend roughly as much time on their electronic medical records as they do on seeing their patient . The two of these are additive so assuming a 40 hour work week doctors are left with only about 1.5 days per week to actually practice medicine. Thanks for reading my newsletter! If you like the post share it! Share I think you need to do more research into the veterinary field most vet clinics at this point are corporate owned and we also have electronic medical records that take us forever to write. Also specialists in fields (like neurology) are increasingly common in vet med. Something to note despite these differences Veterinarians are also miserable. They have more that twice the suicide rate of human medical professionals. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4266064/#:~:text=The%20rate%20of%20suicide%20inthe%20general%20population%20(3) . No posts Ready for more?

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Viable superconducting material created in Rochester lab (rochester.edu) In a historic achievement University of Rochester researchers have created a superconducting material at both a temperature and pressure low enough for practical applications. With this material the dawn of ambient superconductivity and applied technologies has arrived according to a team led by Ranga Dias an assistant professor of mechanical engineering and of physics. In a paper in Nature the researchers describe a nitrogen-doped lutetium hydride (NDLH) that exhibits superconductivity at 69 degrees Fahrenheit and 10 kilobars (145000 pounds per square inch or psi) of pressure. Although 145000 psi might still seem extraordinarily high (pressure at sea level is about 15 psi) strain engineering techniques routinely used in chip manufacturing for example incorporate materials held together by internal chemical pressures that are even higher. Scientists have been pursuing this breakthrough in condensed matter physics for more than a century. Superconducting materials have two key properties: electrical resistance vanishes and the magnetic fields that are expelled pass around the superconducting material. Such materials could enable: Previously the Dias team reported creating two materialscarbonaceous sulfur hydride and yttrium superhydridethat are superconducting at 58 degrees Fahrenheit/39 million psi and 12 degrees Fahreneheit/26 million psi respectively in papers in Nature and Physical Review Letters . The dawn of ambient superconductivity and applied technologies has arrived says Ranga Dias whose lab has created a viable superconducting material theyve dubbed reddmatter. (University of Rochester photo / J. Adam Fenster) Given the importance of the new discovery Dias and his team went to unusual lengths to document their research and head off criticism that developed in the wake of the previous Nature paper which led to a retraction by the journals editors. That previous paper has been resubmitted to Nature with new data that validates the earlier work according to Dias. The new data was collected outside the lab at the Argonne and Brookhaven National Laboratories in front of an audience of scientists who saw the superconducting transition live.A similar approach has been taken with the new paper. Five graduate students in Diass labNathan Dasenbrock-Gammon Elliot Snider Raymond McBride Hiranya Pasan and Dylan Durkeeare listed as co-lead authors. Everyone in the group was involved in doing the experiments Dias says. It was truly a collective effort. Hydrides created by combining rare earth metals with hydrogen then adding nitrogen or carbon have provided researchers a tantalizing working recipe for creating superconducting materials in recent years. In technical terms rare earth metal hydrides form clathrate-like cage structures where the rare earth metal ions act as carrier donors providing sufficient electrons that would enhance the dissociation of the H2 molecules. Nitrogen and carbon help stabilize materials. Bottom line: less pressure is required for superconductivity to occur. In addition to yttrium researchers have used other rare earth metals. However the resulting compounds become superconductive at temperatures or pressures that are still not practical for applications. So this time Dias looked elsewhere along the periodic table. Lutetium looked like a good candidate to try Dias says. It has highly localized fully-filled 14 electrons in its f orbital configuration that suppress the phonon softening and provide enhancement to the electron-phonon coupling needed for superconductivity to take place at ambient temperatures. The key question was how are we going to stabilize this to lower the required pressure? And thats where nitrogen came into the picture. Nitrogen like carbon has a rigid atomic structure that can be used to create a more stable cage-like lattice within a material and it hardens the low-frequency optical phonons according to Dias. This structure provides the stability for superconductivity to occur at lower pressure. Diass team created a gas mixture of 99 percent hydrogen and one percent nitrogen placed it in a reaction chamber with a pure sample of lutetium and let the components react for two to three days at 392 degrees Fahrenheit. Ranga Dias (left) and Nugzari Khalvashi-Sutter 23 adjust a laser array in Diass advanced spectroscopy lab in Hopeman Hall. (University of Rochester photo / J. Adam Fenster) The resulting lutetium-nitrogen-hydrogen compound was initially a lustrous bluish color the paper states. When the compound was then compressed in a diamond anvil cell a startling visual transformation occurred: from blue to pink at the onset of superconductivity and then to a bright red non-superconducting metallic state. It was a very bright red Dias says. I was shocked to see colors of this intensity. We humorously suggested a code name for the material at this statereddmatterafter a material that Spock created in the popular 2009 Star Trek movie. The code name stuck. The 145000 psi of pressure required to induce superconductivity is nearly two orders of magnitude lower than the previous low pressure created in Diass lab. With funding support from Diass National Science Foundation CAREER award and a grant from the US Department of Energy his lab has now answered the question of whether superconducting material can exist at both ambient temperatures and pressures low enough for practical applications. A pathway to superconducting consumer electronics energy transfer lines transportation and significant improvements of magnetic confinement for fusion are now a reality Dias says. We believe we are now at the modern superconducting era. For example Dias predicts that the nitrogen-doped lutetium hydride will greatly accelerate progress in developing tokamak machines to achieve fusion. Instead of using powerful converging laser beams to implode a fuel pellet tokamaks rely on strong magnetic fields emitted by a doughnut-shaped enclosure to trap hold and ignite super-heated plasmas. NDLH which produces an enormous magnetic field at room temperatures will be a game-changer for the emerging technology Dias says. via GIPHY Particularly exciting according to Dias is the possibility of training machine-learning algorithms with the accumulated data from superconducting experimentation in his lab to predict other possible superconducting materialsin effect mixing and matching from thousands of possible combinations of rare earth metals nitrogen hydrogen and carbon. In day-to-day life we have many different metals we use for different applications so we will also need different kinds of superconducting materials Dias says. just like we use different metals for different applications we need more ambient superconductors for different applications. Coauthor Keith Lawlor has already begun developing algorithms and making calculations using supercomputing resources available through the University of Rochesters Center for Integrated Research Computing. Diass research group recently moved into a new expanded lab on the third floor of Hopeman Hall on the River Campus. This is the first step in an ambitious plan to launch a degree-granting Center for Superconducting Innovation (CSI) at the University of Rochester he says. The center would create an ecosystem for drawing additional faculty and scientists to the University to advance the science of superconductivity. The trained students would broaden the pool of researchers in the field. Our hope is to make upstate New York the hub for superconducting technology Dias says. Perovskites a dirt cheap alternative to silicon just got a lot more efficient By harnessing the power of metals Rochester researchers are making the material an ever more feasible replacement for silicon in solar cells and detectors. Machine learning pinpoints when matter changes under extreme conditions Rochester researchers will cut through excess data to speed the search for new materials. Room temperature superconductor? Rochester lab sets new record toward long-sought goal In a pair of studies University physical scientists synthesized new superconducting materials developing processes that may help open the door to many potential applications. Tags: Department of Mechanical Engineering Department of Physics and Astronomy featured-post Hajim School of Engineering and Applied Sciences Ranga Dias research finding Category : Science & Technology

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Vice Decayed Digital Colossus Files for Bankruptcy (nytimes.com) Please enable JS and disable any ad blocker

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Vicuna: An open-source chatbot impressing GPT-4 with 90% ChatGPT quality (lmsys.org) LMSYS ORG Projects Blog About Donations Chatbot Arena by: The Vicuna Team Mar 30 2023 We introduce Vicuna-13B an open-source chatbot trained by fine-tuning LLaMA on user-shared conversations collected from ShareGPT. Preliminary evaluation using GPT-4 as a judge shows Vicuna-13B achieves more than 90%* quality of OpenAI ChatGPT and Google Bard while outperforming other models like LLaMA and Stanford Alpaca in more than 90% * of cases. The cost of training Vicuna-13B is around $300. The code and weights along with an online demo are publicly available for non-commercial use. Vicuna (generated by stable diffusion 2.1) *According to a fun and non-scientific evaluation with GPT-4. Further rigorous evaluation is needed. After fine-tuning Vicuna with 70K user-shared ChatGPT conversations we discover that Vicuna becomes capable of generating more detailed and well-structured answers compared to Alpaca (see examples below) with the quality on par with ChatGPT. However evaluating chatbots is never a simple task. With recent advancements in GPT-4 we are curious whether its capabilities have reached a human-like level that could enable an automated evaluation framework for benchmark generation and performance assessments. Our initial finding indicates that GPT-4 can produce highly consistent ranks and detailed assessment when comparing chatbots answers (see above example of GPT-4 judgment). Preliminary evaluations based on GPT-4 summarized in Figure 1 show that Vicuna achieves 90% * capability of Bard/ChatGPT. While this proposed framework shows a potential to automate chatbot assessment it is not yet a rigorous approach . Building an evaluation system for chatbots remains an open question requiring further research. More details are provided in the evaluation section. Figure 1. Relative Response Quality Assessed by GPT-4* Try the Vicuna-13B demo here ! The rapid advancement of large language models (LLMs) has revolutionized chatbot systems resulting in unprecedented levels of intelligence as seen in OpenAI's ChatGPT. However despite its impressive performance the training and architecture details of ChatGPT remain unclear hindering research and open-source innovation in this field. Inspired by the Meta LLaMA and Stanford Alpaca project we introduce Vicuna-13B an open-source chatbot backed by an enhanced dataset and an easy-to-use scalable infrastructure. By fine-tuning a LLaMA base model on user-shared conversations collected from ShareGPT.com Vicuna-13B has demonstrated competitive performance compared to other open-source models like Stanford Alpaca. This blog post provides a preliminary evaluation of Vicuna-13B's performance and describes its training and serving infrastructure. We also invite the community to interact with our online demo to test the capabilities of this chatbot. Figure 2. Workflow Overview Figure 2 provides an overview of our work. To begin we collected around 70K conversations from ShareGPT.com a website where users can share their ChatGPT conversations. Next we enhanced the training scripts provided by Alpaca to better handle multi-round conversations and long sequences. The training was done with PyTorch FSDP on 8 A100 GPUs in one day. For serving the demo we implemented a lightweight distributed serving system. We conducted a preliminary evaluation of the model quality by creating a set of 80 diverse questions and utilizing GPT-4 to judge the model outputs. To compare two different models we combine the outputs from each model into a single prompt for each question. The prompts are then sent to GPT-4 which assesses which model provides better responses. A detailed comparison of LLaMA Alpaca ChatGPT and Vicuna is shown in Table 1 below. Table 1. Comparison between several notable models Vicuna is created by fine-tuning a LLaMA base model using approximately 70K user-shared conversations gathered from ShareGPT.com with public APIs. To ensure data quality we convert the HTML back to markdown and filter out some inappropriate or low-quality samples. Additionally we divide lengthy conversations into smaller segments that fit the model's maximum context length. Our training recipe builds on top of Stanfords alpaca with the following improvements. We build a serving system that is capable of serving multiple models with distributed workers. It supports flexible plug-in of GPU workers from both on-premise clusters and the cloud. By utilizing a fault-tolerant controller and managed spot feature in SkyPilot this serving system can work well with cheaper spot instances from multiple clouds to reduce the serving costs. It is currently a lightweight implementation and we are working on integrating more of our latest research into it. Evaluating AI chatbots is a challenging task as it requires examining language understanding reasoning and context awareness. With AI chatbots becoming more advanced current open benchmarks may no longer suffice. For instance the evaluation dataset used in Stanfords Alpaca self-instruct can be effectively answered by SOTA chatbots making it difficult for humans to discern differences in performance. More limitations include training/test data contamination and the potentially high cost of creating new benchmarks. To tackle these issues we propose an evaluation framework based on GPT-4 to automate chatbot performance assessment. First we devised eight question categories such as Fermi problems roleplay scenarios and coding/math tasks to test various aspects of a chatbot's performance. Through careful prompt engineering GPT-4 is able to generate diverse challenging questions that baseline models struggle with. We select ten questions per category and collect answers from five chatbots: LLaMA Alpaca ChatGPT Bard and Vicuna. We then ask GPT-4 to rate the quality of their answers based on helpfulness relevance accuracy and detail. We discover that GPT-4 can produce not only relatively consistent scores but also detailed explanations on why such scores are given (detailed examples link ). However we also notice that GPT-4 is not very good at judging coding/math tasks. Figure 3. Response Comparison Assessed by GPT-4 Figure 3 displays the comparison results between all baselines and Vicuna. GPT-4 prefers Vicuna over state-of-the-art open-source models (LLaMA Alpaca) in more than 90% of the questions and it achieves competitive performance against proprietary models (ChatGPT Bard). In 45% of the questions GPT-4 rates Vicuna's response as better or equal to ChatGPT's. As GPT-4 assigns a quantitative score to each response on a scale of 10 we calculate the total score for each (baseline Vicuna) comparison pair by adding up the scores obtained by each model on 80 questions. As shown in Table 2 Vicunas total score is 92% of ChatGPTs. Despite recent advancements these chatbots still face limitations such as struggling with basic math problems or having limited coding ability. Table 2. Total Scores Assessed by GPT-4. While this proposed evaluation framework demonstrates the potential for assessing chatbots it is not yet a rigorous or mature approach as large language models are prone to hallucinate. Developing a comprehensive standardized evaluation system for chatbots remains an open question requiring further research. We have noticed that similar to other large language models Vicuna has certain limitations. For instance it is not good at tasks involving reasoning or mathematics and it may have limitations in accurately identifying itself or ensuring the factual accuracy of its outputs. Additionally it has not been sufficiently optimized to guarantee safety or mitigate potential toxicity or bias. To address the safety concerns we use the OpenAI moderation API to filter out inappropriate user inputs in our online demo. Nonetheless we anticipate that Vicuna can serve as an open starting point for future research to tackle these limitations. In our first release we will share the training serving and evaluation code on a GitHub repo: https://github.com/lm-sys/FastChat . We also released the Vicuna-13B model weights please find the instructions here . There is no plan to release the dataset. Join our Discord server and follow our Twitter to get the latest updates. The online demo is a research preview intended for non-commercial use only subject to the model License of LLaMA Terms of Use of the data generated by OpenAI and Privacy Practices of ShareGPT. Please contact us If you find any potential violation.\ The code is released under the Apache License 2.0. This is a joint effort with collaborators from multiple institutions including UC Berkeley CMU Stanford UC San Diego and MBZUAI. Students (alphabetical order): Wei-Lin Chiang Zhuohan Li Zi Lin Ying Sheng Zhanghao Wu Hao Zhang Lianmin Zheng Siyuan Zhuang Yonghao Zhuang Advisors (alphabetical order): Joseph E. Gonzalez Ion Stoica Eric P. Xing We would like to thank Xinyang Geng Hao Liu and Eric Wallace from BAIR; Xuecheng Li and Tianyi Zhang from Stanford Alpaca team for their insightful discussion and feedback; Qirong Ho from MBZUAI for providing support on the serving cluster. Please check out a blog post from BAIR about a concurrent effort on their chatbot Koala .

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Vincent Van Gogh: Hidden self-portrait discovered by X-ray (bbc.co.uk) This video can not be played Unknown Van Gogh self-portrait detected under cardboard and glue A previously unknown self-portrait by Vincent van Gogh has been discovered hidden on the back of another painting. Experts at the National Galleries of Scotland made the find when the canvas was X-rayed before an exhibition. The hidden self-portrait was covered by layers of glue and cardboard on the back of an earlier work called Head of a Peasant Woman. The gallery's senior conservator Lesley Stevenson said she felt shock to find the artist looking out at us. She said: When we saw the X-ray for the first time of course we were hugely excited. This is a significant discovery because it adds to what we already know about Van Gogh's life. The Dutch artist often re-used canvases to save money turning them over and then working on the other side. His work did not sell during his lifetime and his fame came only after his death in 1890 at the age of 37. Van Gogh became one of the most famous and influential figures in Western art history. Head of a Peasant Woman entered the National Gallery of Scotland (NGS) collection in 1960 as part of a gift from a prominent Edinburgh lawyer. It shows a local woman from the town of Nuenen in the south of the Netherlands where the artist lived from December 1883 to November 1885. It is thought that Van Gogh later painted the self-portrait on the other side at a key moment in his career after he moved to Paris and was exposed to the work of the French impressionists. About 15 years after his death Head of a Peasant Woman was loaned to an exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. It is believed that this is when the canvas was stuck down on cardboard before being framed. It appears that Peasant Woman was considered more finished than the self-portrait on the other side. The painting changed hands several times and in 1923 was acquired by Evelyn St Croix Fleming whose son Ian became the creator of James Bond. It was not until 1951 that it came to Scotland having entered the collection of Alexander and Rosalind Maitland who later donated it to the NGS. Experts at the gallery said it may be possible to uncover the hidden self-portrait but that the process of removing the glue and cardboard will require delicate conservation work. Research is ongoing to work out how that can be done without harming Head of a Peasant Woman. However visitors to an exhibition in Edinburgh will be able to see the X-ray image for the first time through a specially-crafted lightbox. It shows a bearded sitter in a brimmed hat with a neckerchief loosely tied at the throat. He fixes the viewer with an intense stare the right side of his face in shadow and his left ear clearly visible. Prof Frances Fowle senior curator of French Art at the National Galleries of Scotland described the discovery as an incredible gift for Scotland. She said: Moments like this are incredibly rare. We have discovered an unknown work by Vincent van Gogh one of the most important and popular artists in the world. Several such self-portraits and other works have previously been found painted on the back of earlier canvases from the Nuenen period. Newly discovered Van Gogh drawing goes on display 'Unseen' Van Gogh painting fetches 11m at auction 'Serious differences' hamper US debt ceiling talks Zelensky arrives in Japan for G7 summit US to let allies give F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine Japans 75-year pacifism hangs in balance as new threats loom Why the world cares who wins Turkey's presidency Triumphant Assad has waited out the storm You think you know Satanists? Maybe you don't Awards yoga and Eurovision: Photos of the week India's grandmother-granddaughter karate champs. Video India's grandmother-granddaughter karate champs Why G7 has eight more seats at the table this year How Ukraine is tackling the mental scars of war Taiwan looms large as Japan prepares to host G7 The Gen Z workers dressing to stand out How genetics can determine life choices How the 'naked' look took over fashion 2023 BBC. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read about our approach to external linking.

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Vint Cerfs career advice for engineers (ieee.org) IEEE websites place cookies on your device to give you the best user experience. By using our websites you agree to the placement of these cookies. To learn more read our Privacy Policy. The Internets co-creator on humility collaboration and cultivating soft skills Internet architect Vint Cerf shown here in his Google office in Reston Va. is currently working on protocols for an Interplanetary Internet. Vint Cerf recipient of the 2023 IEEE Medal of Honor has this advice to engineers starting out their careers : Tekla S. Perry is a senior editor at IEEE Spectrum . Based in Palo Alto Calif. she's been covering the people companies and technology that make Silicon Valley a special place for more than 40 years. An IEEE member she holds a bachelor's degree in journalism from Michigan State University.

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Vivaldi co-founder: Advertisers 'stole the internet from us' (xda-developers.com) Vivaldi's co-founder doesn't think that the Android Privacy Sandbox changes anything either. Smartphones are everywhere and they give us so much access. We can find information instantly purchase products online for arrival mere hours later and communicate over countless messaging services. It's a double-edged sword though and being able to do all of that online means that advertisers can learn your habits and track you. That's where Vivaldi comes in. It's a browser with a short but storied history. It was founded by former Opera CEO and co-founder Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner and Tatsuki Tomita and launched in 2016 as a way to cater to technically-inclined users and those who may not have been fans of the switch from the Presto engine to Chromium in Operas. While Vivaldi also uses Chromium heavy modifications are made to the browser. It features a lot of ways to customize your experience and more importantly a way to keep your browsing more private. As you can imagine Tetzchner has a lot of thoughts on the state of the internet in 2023 especially when it comes to advertising. XDA spoke with him at this year's Mobile World Congress and it's clear to him that advertisers stole the internet from us. A big sticking point for Tetzchner is competing against the rest of Big Tech in an increasingly hostile space. He says that companies like Google and Microsoft see small companies and they see them as a threat and that Vivaldi is in a small group of people that is actually competing with these guys. He takes this as a sign the company must be doing something right if others see us and want to give us a hard time. Tetzchner told me how sites from Google and Microsoft had soft-blocked the Vivaldi browser along with Opera back in the day. You would connect to something like Google Docs with Vivaldi and it would tell you to switch browsers . He also mentioned how simply changing some of the text of the user agent would instantly lead to the website working again and that it was clear that Vivaldi was seen as a threat. For what it's worth it seems likely that part of the issue companies like Google may have is that Vivaldi blocks a lot of tracking and gets around advertisements in novel ways. For example Tetzchner said Vivaldi recently added the option on mobile to have tabs play audio in the background and he noted specifically that it works on YouTube too. That's typically a YouTube Premium feature but with Vivaldi you don't need to pay for it. It's up to you whether that's an ethical violation but companies will understandably take issue with that and attempt to protect their revenue sources and sometimes that may be through unfair means. For the unfamiliar Android's Privacy Sandbox can track users by creating an offline profile on them and show relevant advertisements based on that. It's a multi-year initiative to introduce more private advertising solutions to end-users and is made possible thanks to the Topics API and FLEDGE. Its goal is to prioritize user privacy by default but still maintain the mobile ecosystem dependent on advertising to support free and ad-supported apps. This is an exclusive-to-Android solution that uses a standalone SDK separate from the rest of the application code with the aim of eventually replacing Ad ID. However Tetzchner doesn't see a difference between standard tracking and companies using the Topics API. For us how you technically do the tracking you can say its a little bit better to do it client-side than server-side but for me the idea that your browser is building a profile on you. No no no thats wrong. Thats just wrong he tells me. It's not quite where the data goes that seems to bother him the most but what that data can be used to achieve. He mentions how this data can be used to influence how people vote la Cambridge Analytica. Whether that data is on your device or not is irrelevant; political advertisements will still appear regardless. They stole the internet from us he says of advertisers. The internet is supposed to be open and free and you shouldnt be afraid of being monitored. The idea that you are collecting data to provide ads I can understand having access to a lot of data to provide a service but thats not the same as profiling your users. As someone who has worked on the internet since 1992 Tetzchner is deeply disheartened with the state of it. In fact he believes the current state of advertising is less profitable for sites now than it was before widespread tracking was in place. He mentions normal ads which you may see in a magazine or on TV were the standard for about a decade even on the internet. A lot of sites were more profitable and people were less worried about having to block ads. The ads were normal it was kind of like what you were seeing if you were going and reading a magazine. There were ads but they werent following you. They stole the internet from us... The internet is supposed to be open and free and you shouldnt be afraid of being monitored. Advertisers don't want to place poor-quality advertisements on poor-quality sites meaning that sites nowadays struggle. Payments are diluted between bigger sites and sites that algorithms try to judge as having good-quality content. He points out that paywalls have become commonplace across the internet when that wasn't the case 15 years ago. How is it then that we needed the change that actually created that situation? he asks. He argues that advertisements are less profitable as a whole thanks to widespread tracking. Advertisers previously paid more because they knew exactly where their advertisements were going. Now with algorithms and Google Ads not everything is high quality even if those algorithms try to scan pages for quality content. The Vivaldi browser is the antithesis of what the internet is today. Tetzchner promotes the fediverse and Mastodon in particular as a way to escape the continued commercialization and tracking of the wider internet. Vivaldi blocks trackers while adding features that the likes of Google Chrome and Edge don't have and you can download it on MacOS Windows Android and soon iOS . ImAdamConway an Irish technology fanatic with a BSc in Computer Science and I'm XDAs Lead Technical Editor. My Bachelors thesis was conducted on the viability of benchmarking the non-functional elements of Android apps and smartphones such as performance and Ive been working in the tech industry in some way or another since 2017. In my spare time youll probably find me playing Counter-Strike or VALORANT and you can reach out to me at adam@xda-developers.com on Twitter as @AdamConwayIE on Instagram as adamc.99 or u/AdamConwayIE on Reddit.

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WTF is a KDF? (dataparty.xyz) 22. April 2023 Earlier this week a letter from an activist imprisoned in France was posted to the internet . Contained within Ivan Alococos dispatch from the Villepinte prison was a startling revelation . Police had cracked his LUKS hard drive password. A feat that once was impossible can now be accomplished in a few months by harnessing as many as 10000 servers with modern GPUs. At the root of this breach is a cryptographic function that is showing its age PBKDF2. This episode is a wake up call to learn wtf is a KDF? In modern computing when applications provide strong file encryption they frequently use passwords to protect files. For passwords to be strong they must contain a lot of entropy and generally appear as random as possible. Obviously humans tend to use characters and phrases from their native language combined with memorable patterns or rules that help them remember these passwords. Key derivation functions (KDFs) are tools that allow us to improve the entropy derived from the types of keys and passwords applications typically use. By performing a series of hashing and salting PBKDF2 seasons the users input with entropy sufficient for use in private keys for algorithms like AES and NaCl. Many types of KDFs exist . Specialized KDFs are also used to generate keys from Diffie-Helman output and to create cryptographic random numbers. In the case of this French prisoner they were using Linuxs most popular hard drive encryption tool LUKS which was using a PBKDF2 to generate AES keys. In Ubuntu 18.04 this is the default configuration. PBKDF2 is a password based KDF designed to be resistant to CPU based attacks and dates back to 2000. It was first mentioned as an internet standard in RFC-2898 in September 2000 . Since the time PBKDF2 was designed weve seen the rise of powerful GPUs become common place. To defend against this rising onslaught of GPU hashing power is a relatively new algorithm argon2. The cryptographic power of argon2 is sublte but brilliant. Instead of focusing on CPU time by requiring large numbers of hash iterations argon2 wages war on your GPUs memory capacity. When hashing a password with argon2 an application developer can dial up the amount of RAM that is required to complete the computation. In so doing it starves the globs of highly parallel computation cores in a GPU reducing the total processing power the GPU can bring to bear. Why does this work? On modern GPUs the exact number of threads that are active in parallel varies between models and is dependent on the amount of GPU ram required per thread. Small operations on typical GPUs may see as many as 2000 threads running in parallel. Meanwhile even the largest cloud GPUs max out around 80GB of on board memory. If argon2 is configured to use 1GB to compute password hashes then even an NVIDIA A100 would only be able to try 80 passwords in parallel instead of the orders of magnitude more cores that would be active when attacking PBKDF2 hashed passwords. If youre a developer who builds secure apps and this is your first time hearing about argon2 its probably a good time to review your code. On nodejs check for uses of crypto.pbkdf2 that should be upgraded. If youre a Linux user more likely than not your LUKS partitions will already using argon2id . You can check by running the lsblk command to find the name of an active partition. Then running: sudo cryptsetup luksDump /dev/<YOUR_PARTITION_HERE> If you do happen to be using an outdated algorithm you should update it! Matthew Garrett a Linux developer has written a great guide to updating old LUKS partitions . On the face of it no. PBKDF2 is not fundamentally broken. Its safe so long as the user always has a 13 character or longer actually-random password . The choice of pbkdf2 vs argon2 is of course domain and application dependant. It remains unclear exactly how authorities accessed Ivans hard drive. So this is more a wake up call to use strong passwords and the best KDFs that fit the use case. At the hacker collective dataparty weve been building a secure configuration feature that we intend to use to make a secure decentralized database management tool. Wed recently relied upon pbkdf2 but with the news of Ivans letter from a French prison weve taken the time to upgrade to argon2 in our nodejs codebases. You can see how we upgraded to argon2 by reading through this feature request and the PRs referenced within . We had some trouble getting the nodejs focused module argon2 and the browser module argon2-browser to play nice together. Sadly these libraries do not both use the same API. We made a wrapper function in @dataparty/crypto that allows you to use the same API for both modules. Weve posted a complete example for nodejs usage on github: dataparty-crypto/example-password-argon2.js at master @dataparty/crypto Meanwhile weve added an argon2 example to our browser example . Find this story helpful? Buy us a coffee or give a follow: (23-04-2023) Dataparty

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Walking Venice (craigmod.com) Hello Ridgeliners ! Im Craig Mod and once again I recommend viewing / reading this issue on the web . Its pretty photo heavy and everything will look / work better on my website vs in an email client. Click the images zoom in poke around. <3 C Venice is cursed. I walked cursed Venice in a cloud of confusion. Why did so many people bring so many roller suitcases? Did they not know they were coming to Venice? Did they not know Venice has a bridge of stone steps every fifty yards? Sweat soaked beneath the savage sun they heaved their suitcases all of which were big enough to hide a dismembered body or two up and down and huffed and seemed distraught at the amount of heaving required to make headway. I helped one woman carry hers. She had a broken foot walked on crutches. Her presence in Venice mystified like an apparition of Christ in a New Jersey hedge. As I lifted her substantial luggage careful to do so only with my legs not my back she intoned in German-accented English: Thank you this broken foot of mine vould not keep me avay nothing vould keep me avay from my dear Venice. Her deranged veneration seemed omnipresent and fundamental to the city. I felt surrounded by cult worshipers. But they all vanished when I ippon ura d (one street backed as we call it in my Japan pop-up newsletters) the sinking town. It seemed as if very few were here to explore. Because of this my walking of Venice some 20-30 kilometers over the course of a few days was manically back-street focused. Not always because sometimes you needed to cross a canal and had to veer into the Rimowa Thunderdome to find a diagonally-pitched bridge. Mostly the backstreets were silent save the fluttering of laundry along lines cast across alleys and the assassin-like sprezzatura of the 55000 cursed people opening and closing those heavy wooden shutters darting between doorways who live in the cursed town. I joke about the cursedness sort of. I mean Venice has all the classical qualities of a thing to be cursed: Its gorgeous. Rightly revered. Every turn astounds. The lack of cars the absurdity of the city itself (the fact that it is supported by a billion petrified telephone poles laid in mud a millennia ago) the fact that the buildings largely conform to an admirable standard of beauty and texture all of these features create a place that should no longer exist and yet does exist exists largely for the pleasure of the Giant Suitcase People. Down those empty back alleys you find flags draped from windows with a big NO to cruise ships. Which makes sense imagine if every day during the summer helicopters fluttered above your city and the equivalent of 10-20% of your total population descended confused lumbering around with pockets full of Euros? It would be weird? (Perhaps actually it would be ideal?) The more I walked the less concerned I became for the city and the more I leaned into its cursed destiny. I had no influence anyway. No authority moral or political of financial. I was just another idiot bobbin in the crowd. The ugliest private yacht I had ever seen was docked next to my hotel. It probably cost a billion dollars. Im not saying the person who bought it should be executed but someone should help them find their way before they do more damage. The facts were the facts. There was no way around them no way to fix the calamity: Venice had made sense once long ago and now no longer did. It had become an epicenter of senselessness. The only way to survive Venice is to accept that wholeheartedly and never look back. You may wonder why I ended up in Venice anyway. Two friends were getting married at two separate weddings both in Italy a week apart. So I had that week to kill. I had visited Venice once nearly sixteen years ago just for an afternoon. I remembered the day fondly pre-smartphones and Google Maps wandering with a paper map feeling lonely and lost and nonsensically romantic and blighted and was curious to see how the city would feel today. I knew it was cursed and that the tourists were insane and boundless but I was also puzzled by what cities like Venice (and to a degree parts of Kyoto Tokyo Paris and so many other cities and towns around this cheap-airfare-flattened earth of ours) can do in the face of these crushes. So I decided to spend a whopping four nights in the city. Also the Biennale was going on. I had never been. It sounded like fun. The Biennale was spectacular. And it seemed as if none of the tourists from the big boats got the message. It was strangely sparse the incredible Giardini della Biennale. What a joy that funky garden with old pavilions of rational sizes. The eerily vacant Russian pavilion the rightfully lauded work of Simone Leigh at the American pavilion. I adored them all. But you could even ignore the art in a way it was secondary; everything surrounding the art the structures and landscaping of the garden the views of the lagoon peeking through trees and bush and bramble was NICE. Very nice. I ate potato chips and sat on the ground watching boats in the distance. The Biennale as a thing too its physical manifestation was so much better than I expected. The garden was circumscribed by logical sensible gates. No one had ever explained the Biennale to me in an easily grokable way. But let me do so for you. The Biennale is: A garden with a few dozen architecturally meaningful permanent reasonably-sized buildings for which artists are chosen to take over and make their own. This repeats every two years. Theyve basically done this since 1895. Theres also the old boat Arsenale just a few hundred meters away from the garden converted into a series of installations; so the Biennale is reductively a garden and an old dock with art. Its great. You dont need to know anything else. I walked the art and I walked the town. I walked and walked. I got up early and walked the mornings because the afternoons were too hot. Stiflingly shake-your-head-and-laugh hot. In the evenings I smoked terrible cigarettes from my balcony overlooking a canal trying to imitate who I might have thought I would have wanted to be sixteen years ago wandering down below sitting at night in St. Marks square sad and lost and operating from a place of tremendous scarcity. Now I was staying in an opulent hotel where a man shined my wedding shoes. I was hydrated mainly by sparkling water and I wondered what that old version of me would have thought about all of this my strange life and pizza toast and the fact that I was still doing book-adjacent stuff decades later. The whole of this trip was ridiculous forty days in total. Italy was at the end weeks in. I got Covid almost instantly in England did a big walk and had recovered enough to enjoy the weddings. And now I was convalescing by strewing shoe leather all over Venetian stone. Venice is cursed incontrovertibly. Even the ATMs. Theyre perhaps the most user-antagonistic ATMs Ive ever seen. They impose their own exchange rate some 20%+ of the total value of the withdrawal from what I saw on you and only let you opt-out of that rate through a series of dark pitch-black blackhole devious diabolic interface patterns that make it look like youre canceling the entire transaction not just their criminally high fee. But you learn. You learn to navigate the shameful ATMs and you learn quickly routes between places that avoid the crowds. You learn the Biennale is Good. And you find a talented shiatsu specialist named Lorenzo who communicates only via Google Translate. Your body had absorbed so much stress from Covid and Lorenzo using his mystic singing bowls extracts the poisons from your rotten bones. You do it all. You walk the sinking city silly. The beauty overwhelms the colors and proportions of the floating landscape. You finish the day with a simple vanilla gelato by the port. Your body feels strong well-used satiated. The sugar buoys the spirit. You are alive the virus didnt get you yet. The sun sets. The sky blazes oranges and reds for hours. Around you everyone is maskless and laughing laughing laughing joyful at having arrived to their plagued dreamscape broken feet and all licking their fingers paying too much to take out money not seeing the art fumbling with the confusing mess of life itself. And of course fumbling too with their giant suitcases. This essay is from the Ridgeline newsletter mailed out July 2022 . Thoughts? Email me@craigmod.com . Craig Mod is a writer and photographer based in Japan. He's the author of Kissa by Kissa and a MacDowell Ragdale and VCCA writing fellow. His essays and articles have appeared in Eater The Atlantic California Sunday Magazine Wired Aeon New Scientist Virginia Quarterly Review The New Yorker The New York Times The Morning News Codex: Journal of Typography and elsewhere. He writes newsletters oh yes newsletters : Roden & Ridgeline . The work on this site is supported in part by paid memberships . Whatever you do don't follow @craigmod on Twitter or Instagram . 2001 - 2023 Craig Mod Twitter Instagram Mastodon RSS

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Want an unfair advantage in your tech career? Consume content for other roles (matthewgrohman.substack.com) As I learned from The Startup of You Podcast in order to stand out in your career you need a competitive advantage . In my opinion one of the greatest tools to gain competitive advantage in a tech career is hidden in plain sight: its the wealth of information out there made for people in roles you work with. Plenty of people consume career content meant for people in their own role. Not so many people take the time to consume content meant for people in roles they work with . Doing so however can be a game-changer. Theres just something about seeing a problem from someone elses perspective. Beyond reading and watching content you can also meet with people in these roles one-on-one and ask them about their work which is a great practice for your career and something I hope to write about more. Still there is something special about actually taking the time to engage with content that is native to these other roles. Here are some advantages of content on other roles: You can access it anytime with no need to schedule a meeting and you can even automate the process by subscribing to newsletters channels and podcasts. People sometimes filter themselves or dumb down their explanations of their work if theyre explaining their role to outsiders. Seeking out content meant for people in the roles helps you to get around this. Acting as though youre in the role yourself and trying to learn how to do it well gives you a greater level of empathy. Youre trying to spend time in their shoes. People are more likely to share their honest feelings in these protected contexts such as how they really feel about the way people in other roles interact with them. When I started looking at content for recruiters I realized there are so many complaints about hiring managers in talks by recruiters . For example see this segment on how Hiring managers are required by law to be unrealistic . It could be very helpful as a manager whos hiring and working with recruiters to understand what not to do. This is a point of view that youre unlikely to get from a simple coffee chat with a recruiter about So what do you do in your job? The same goes for any other pair of roles that often to butt heads or fail to understand one another. A little understanding and honesty can go a long way. Perhaps decades ago it was ok to just stay in your lane and learn about only your own profession. I dont know if many lawyers or ad execs really studied the work of being a secretary for example. However in the modern tech landscape not only are there a myriad of different roles (many which didnt even exist until recently) but the people in these roles must collaborate very closely in order to succeed. When youre not simply handing work off to another part of the company but rather working together as a giant multi-faceted team it becomes critical in tech for people to understand and truly get each others roles. This is usually a key requirement in engineering leadership job descriptions. You see lots of job descriptions asking that candidates be able to collaborate cross-functionally with product business stakeholders QA. etc. as well as to understand the customer and the overall business. If you think of cross-functional understanding as a programming language it would be one of the most highly sought-after languages in engineering leadership. In that case doesnt it make sense to invest time in learning it? You get some degree of understanding of other roles automatically through your work but if you want to take it further just as you would with side projects or tutorials to learn new languages you need to put in some time and effort. Climbing the engineering leadership ladder forces you to see things from different roles. Its common to hear people say that after being managers they were better as individual contributors (ICs) if they returned to that role or that the best managers and ICs have often gone back and forth between the roles. The best frontline eng managers in the world are the ones that are never more than 2-3years removed from hands-on work full time down in the trenches. The best individual contributors are the ones who have done time in management. And the best technical leaders in the world are oftenthe ones who do both. Back and forth. Like a pendulum. The Engineer/Manager Pendulum Charity.wtf Managers often say that once they clear a new level in the organization their eyes are forever opened to things they didnt understand before about the overall business and how things really work in a tech company. This has certainly been the case for me. Its a testament to the insight that switching roles in tech can bring. However you dont have to wait to formally switch roles in order to start understanding other roles. You can start understanding other roles now by simply making it a priority to learn. Product CEO President Founder Recruiter TPM Staff engineer HR QA Data science Sales Customer (maybe a specific type of business owner or a certain market segment) - Dont leave this one out! They serve an important role in any tech business. Also dont forget to refresh your memory what its like to be a software engineering individual contributor once you break into management whether by consuming content reading forums doing side projects or actually returning to IC roles at times! Theres a good Manager Tools episode the first one ever actually which says: Relationships are key to getting things done at work and having a good career. To have a good relationship with someone its essential to care about what they care about. If you want a better relationship with other people you must communicate in a way that works for them.Mark Horstman Watching and reading content targeted for people in roles other than your own is a simple concrete way to practice empathy. Ive had many aha! moments this way where I finally understood thanks to content meant for other roles why people in a given role often seem to fixate on certain things or have particular chronic complaints. When you look at internal content for a given role you realize that people in each role are very aware of: how difficult their role is how under-appreciated their role is how other people tend to assume that they dont do anything that special how hard it is to become truly great at their role Learning about other roles helps you to avoid ignorantly assuming that people in that role dont do much. As an engineering manager I find it sad and funny to see Blind posts about how engineering managers are useless and dont do anything. Dont we wish! I find it hard to believe that anyone would think engineering managers dont do much when we do so much to hold the organization together and keep things running. However Im ashamed to admit that until recently I underestimated what recruiters do. Lots of engineers treat recruiters as though they are unskilled gatekeepers. You just need to get past the recruiter is a common mentality. Many hiring managers treat recruiters like unskilled order-takers. However recruiting is a highly skilled job. Lets stop and think about it. Recruiting involves arranging in a two-sided marketplace with many shifting variables and time constraints. It takes a combination of many different skills like sales cold reach-outs therapy match-making and (as I learned from delving into recruiter content one day) creative Boolean searching. Just take one obvious thing that recruiters do they reach out to potential candidates. Sounds simple enough. Just do a little LinkedIn search and pull up people right? Well in the course of trying to understand recruiting role better I came across this talk by @GlenCathey at LinkedIn Talent connect on Being a Boolean Search Ninja as a recruiter. As he says in a segment around 11:44 in the talk its very cerebral trying to find a) quality candidates who b) havent already been contacted by tons of other recruiters. I was floored by the level of subtlety and and strategy discussed in this talk. No Java AND engineer searches here. Glen goes into tactics such as natural language search purposely misspelling words searching for uncommon terms people might use to describe their jobs using >50-item Boolean search strings and eliminating easily-found people to focus the more valuable less-contacted potential candidates. And thats only finding the people we havent even gotten into the reach-out message title channel content timing or personalization yet. I encourage watching the talk to build your appreciation for how much skill can go into searching for candidates on LinkedIn (and to get some search ideas if youre going to be sourcing your own candidates). I was later contacted by recruiter who mentioned on her profile that she was good at this kind of highly-skilled Boolean search and I made sure to give her props for it. I will never underestimate the work of finding potential candidates again! If you havent done a role yourself it can appear from the outside that people in that role arent doing much. If youve never managed it can look like managers get paid a lot to sit around and chat with people and have meetings. Likewise with directing as Mike Seavers of Epic Games describes : What I think a lot of people dont realize is that when you take on a broader leadership role while it is true you take on more responsibility you actually often have less control. You cant always just do whatever you want to do. Theres a lot of relationships you need to manage. Theres a lot of alignment that you have to get when youre driving change. Learning about other roles helps you to avoid being the ignorant person who thinks their colleagues are just sitting around or enjoying bossing people around. Its not just a theoretical point the respect you gain for people by understanding their roles comes across in your interactions with them. Aside from boosting your appreciation for other roles one of the biggest ways that understanding other roles can help you at work is by helping you to optimize your own actions in relation to people in that role. For example if you understand that managers are often spread thin and performance reviews are a lot of work for them you can organize your achievements into a document thats easy for them to review and consider while writing your review. If you understand that recruiters often feel that hiring managers are being unreasonable you can make it a point to be a reasonable hiring manager by clearly defining your needs and helping to source candidates that you like. If you understand how recruiters use Boolean search on LinkedIn to find candidates you can apply the knowledge to boost your profiles SEO or even to inform your career decisions to maximize your marketability. (Hint: Current company and Past company are major filters that recruiters use as proxies for candidate quality. It pays to have worked at large or respected companies. LinkedIn might be intensifying this effect by enabling these searches.) As an example of where this can lead when it all comes together here are some talks from John Vlastelica of Recruiting Toolbox on how when hiring managers really understand and value recruiting to the point of rolling their sleeves up and doing some traditional recruiting tasks themselves they can be huge assets to their companies by attracting and closing great talent. Synergy between roles works! Here are some resources to learn about other roles on their own turf (feel free to suggest any others you recommend!). Lennys Podcast Lennys Newsletter Product School Dan Olsen FishmanAF Newsletter Reforge courses (all the courses are heavily focused on product; plus you can take the product courses even if you are not a product manager yourself) Chloe Shih The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers by Ben Horowitz LinkedIn Talent Connect past conferences (posted on LinkedIn Talent Solutions ) Talks by Brendan Browne former VP of LinkedIn talent acquisition such as this keynote Amy Miller (Recruiting in Yoga Pants) Talk Talent to Me: Hired.com Recruiting Podcast Engineering Leadership Community CTO Craft Level-up Engineering Podcast by Coding Sans Roy Rappoport on Culture and the Games People Play A Life Engineered Manager Tools podcast Supermanagers podcast Ranges Lead Time Chats The Managers Path Become an Effective Software Engineering Manager by James Stanier Do you try to learn about other roles in tech? Are there any resources or approaches you recommend? Let me know in the comments below! If youve enjoyed this post please subscribe and share! Thanks for reading Matts Substack! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Thanks Matthew very good content. Although I haven't got a job yet but I think I can start researching the roles that I will be associated with. I'm interested to see from tech manager pov about what junior developers should do to ace their career. No posts Ready for more?