Rosetta's big day in the Sun - ColinWright
http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Rosetta/Rosetta_s_big_day_in_the_Sun
======
PhantomGremlin
I'm glad the ESA is getting its day in the sun (pun intended).

To steal from Joe Biden: 'this is a big fucking deal'. Why? Because, first,
we've never gotten this amount of detail from a comet before, and second,
because it's _different_.

Being different is good. To a large extent ESA's Galileo is a ripoff/copy of
the USA's GPS. But not this. It's not a Mars lander or a flyby of the outer
planets, both of which NASA has already done. It's something else. It's new
scientific research, which will lead to new discoveries and new theories.

------
jessriedel
Since the sun exposure is going to be decreasing from here on out, does this
mean the Philae lander is a fully lost cause?

(I know that the Rosetta team would emphasize that the Philae lander is
responsible for only a pretty small part of the overall set of scientific
objective)

~~~
gamekathu
no it is never a "lost cause"!

Philae lander has upto several months before the comet goes out of perceptible
solar exposure. During this time, Philae will conduct numerous experiments and
relay those data to Rosetta, which in turn to us. Already lots of data has
been generated, and upto Philae's operational timeline more will be available.
From that data, hopefully in the coming years, scientists will be able to gain
significant knowledge of the birth of universe, and most importantly about the
origins of life and water.

~~~
robin_reala
Right, but it hasn’t spoken to Rosetta in over 3 weeks:
[http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/2015/07/20/rosetta-and-
philae-s...](http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/2015/07/20/rosetta-and-philae-
status-update/)

------
ChuckMcM
Wow, 300kg per second of water ejection. Seems like a pretty decent delta V
for the comet, which makes me wonder how orbital calculations work at all on
these things if they start randomly thrusting in various directions like that.

~~~
mikeash
The mass rate doesn't tell you anything without a speed to go with it. I don't
know what speeds you'd see here, but at a random guess I'd say it's probably
under 10m/s. That gives you a thrust of 3000N if it's all in the same
direction, which it surely isn't.

67P is estimated to have a mass of about 1e13kg, so 3000N will accelerate it
at 0.3 nanometers/s^2. If it spent a year at this acceleration, the total
delta v would be about 1cm/s.

I'm sure some of these numbers are pretty inaccurate, but that would seem to
indicate that it's not much of an effect.

------
Gravityloss
Mankind will go to space and stay there, and a vital part of it is to utilize
the comets and asteroids there.

In many ways they are much easier to get to and from than moons and planets.

~~~
gamekathu
IMO it is not because they are easily accessible thats why scientists are
interested in them, it is because these comets and asteroids are formed from
the very inception of the universe (big bang!) and thus contain critical data
related to the origins of complex matter, which leads to life!

~~~
andyjohnson0
A minor nitpick. The comets and asteroids are worthy of study, but they
weren't formed at the big bang (except in the trivial sense that all matter in
the universe came into existence then).

The comets and asteroids in our solar system were created at some point after
the solar system accreted out of a molecular gas cloud 4.5 billion years ago.
At such they contain lots of evidence about conditions in the primordial solar
system. But the universe itself is about 13.5 billion years old and none of
the structures in the solar system (including the comets and asteroids
themselves) existed at the big bang.

~~~
gamekathu
right, my bad! my point is that they are the oldest accessible source of
information


Commencement address by Bill and Melinda Gates - ashbrahma
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/june/gates-commencement-remarks-061514.html
======
sz4kerto
"Bill and I talk about this with our kids at the dinner table. Bill worked
incredibly hard and took risks and made sacrifices for success. But there is
another essential ingredient of success, and that ingredient is luck –
absolute and total luck.

When were you born? Who were your parents? Where did you grow up? None of us
earned these things. They were given to us."

Totally true, and very important to remember, especially for the HN crowd.

~~~
rayiner
Melinda's comments are truly amazing:

> Melinda: Let your heart break. It will change what you do with your
> optimism. On a trip to South Asia, I met a desperately poor mother who
> brought me her two small children and implored me: "Please take them home
> with you." When I begged her forgiveness and said I could not, she said:
> "Then please take one." . . . When I talk with the mothers I meet during my
> travels, I see that there is no difference at all in what we want for our
> children. The only difference is our ability to give it to them.

This is such a tremendously important message that I don't think you can even
hope to accurately perceive the world without really internalizing it.

The other day, someone told me a story. He was working maintenance in an
apartment building, and went into a unit one day. Inside the unit, he saw a
couple passed out on the couch, and a baby screaming in his crib. He went over
to the baby, and saw a cockroach crawl out of his diaper. The diaper was stuck
to the baby's skin. He called 9/11 immediately, the police came, and the
building fired his maintenance company for not going to the building
management first. This wasn't South Asia, it was here in the U.S.

I heard that story, and then thought about how our daycare e-mails me daily an
itemized list of the time of every diaper change and whether it was wet and/or
BM. I thought about how unfair it is that she started life with a leg-up, from
the hospital where she took her first breath, and yet how I'm totally driven
to give her every unfair benefit I can ("you know honey, we _could_ afford
private school from pre-K if we budget carefully"). Intellectually, we want
life to be fair for everyone, but being a parent means having this
overwhelming urge to clear the path ahead for your offspring, burning down the
forest if you have to.

I'm certainly not going to send my daughter to an inner-city public school to
make a point. What gets to me is our inability as a society to acknowledge the
cognitive dissonance, and speak about this issue honestly outside of
graduation speeches. To talk about traits like intelligence and patience in
terms of what they are: winnings in the genetic lottery, rather than as the
result of moral virtue. To acknowledge that "equality of opportunity" is a
vicious fiction and understand that not as a call to any particular political
ideology, but as a fact of the universe that we must reconcile with any
political ideology.

~~~
hkmurakami
This is why I have some trouble with the term "winning the birth lottery". On
one hand I did nothing to earn my good circumstances, but on the other hand,
my immigrant parents worked extremely hard to afford me the huge advantages I
have today. To me, labeling this as just "luck" seems disrespectful to my
parents.

So while I do not necessarily buy in completely to the idea of the birth
lottery, I do believe that I do have a elevated level of responsibility to do
good with the advantages and resources at my disposal.

~~~
crassus
Moreover, calling it "luck" discourages others from adopting these repeatably
beneficial habits and ideas for pulling a family out of poverty.

How could I make sure my offspring have a better life than I did? If my only
option is "luck", then why bother trying?

~~~
Fomite
Working hard is making sure you don't toss your winning ticket away. More
people, working to keep their families out of poverty, changes the odds of the
lottery.

But that doesn't change that it _is_ a profound fortune to be born into such a
family.

------
qeorge
Reminder: you aren't Bill or Melinda Gates, but you are still rich from
software. Maybe you could spend some of your funny money on someone else's
healthcare?

I just sponsored a hysterectomy for $180 (1 year of Netflix) in 3 clicks on
Watsi. That's _crazy_.

Maybe you can sponsor someone too: [https://watsi.org/fund-
treatments](https://watsi.org/fund-treatments)

~~~
ISL
We made a donation to watsi today too, as part of our in-house flossing
contest. A dry-erase marker and a bathroom mirror keeps the tally, and about
once a month, someone wins. When the tally gets reset, the total number of
flosses is donated, in dollar form, to a charity.

You win, because $1/floss is worth it in aggregate to prevent future dental
bills. Someone else wins, because they get the treatment they need to live a
better life.

~~~
carlsednaoui
I love this idea!

------
graycat
I've long guessed, and this OP reinforces that, that much of what Bill and
Melinda are doing now was driven by Melinda 'selling' Bill on some values that
Melinda deeply held and got from her nuns and the Catholic church. But, yes,
the story of Bill's visit to Soweto showed that some of Bill's own experiences
made him fertile ground for Melinda's values and goals.

I may be underestimating Bill's initial drive for their work now, but
generally I have to guess that Melinda is the main hero here. Oh, not to
forget, one little thing Melinda did: She talked both Bill and Warren into
handing over, what, ballpark $100 billion? Then for her second day, the set up
a value that all wealthy people should give about 50% of their wealth to
philanthropy and got, apparently, quite a list of wealthy people to do just
that.

Another good thing to respect about them clearly seems to be their marriage;
it looks like on of their beet examples. Perhaps not just coincidentally,
their love and relationship, if more widely followed, would have helped those
woman and children abandoned in South Asia. My view is that their example of a
good marriage is huge not just for themselves but for their goals of curing
poverty, that is, it is easy to see that letting marriage break is one of the
biggest wastes in civilization, in particular, leading to poverty and the
problems they are now trying to solve.

Why so many people are so eager to bust up their marriages, or just not be
very devoted to each other at all, seems to be a grand determination to
extract miserable defeat from the voracious jaws of magnificent victory and
just inexplicable.

Congratulations to them both.

------
jenius
This is so, so good. An upvote alone is not enough to get across how much I
appreciate this. These are the principles I've built the plans for my entire
life around, these principles are at the core of who I am as a person. Seeing
such an eloquently put and important message like this appreciated by so many
people is absolutely incredible. Huge, huge respect for bill and melinda gates
for the work that they have done and the good message they are spreading.

------
purephase
Here's the video:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wug9n5Atk8c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wug9n5Atk8c)

------
tubbs
I know it's cliche to have the founder of Microsoft be your idol person when
going into software development, but Bill Gates is certainly worthy of that
position. We at HN (an overwhelming portion, anyway) are so comfortable in our
lives. Even little sacrifices could change the world for some of those less
fortunate. Imagine what big sacrifices could do - they could change entire
villages, countries, even continents. Think big. Even if you aim to help
millions and only affect a few, your work was not in vain.

This was a really inspiring read, thanks OP.

------
pcunite
Incredibly introspective and appropriate coming from one of the most
successful people on earth.

[http://youtu.be/wug9n5Atk8c?t=22m00s](http://youtu.be/wug9n5Atk8c?t=22m00s)

------
xophe
"Optimism is often dismissed as false hope. But there is also false
hopelessness."

A poetic touch from a tech genius of our generation.

------
eshvk
This was truly phenomenal. I grew up in some of the poorest places, went
through a lot of shit before things got better. It is really really hard to go
through all that and come out with optimism and hope for the world, or even
think you can make a difference as one human. Good on the Gates for believing
that and having the resources to push this forward.

------
illini123
> Let your heart break. It will change what you do with your optimism.

~~~
gd2
Let your heart break.

That was the headline summary.

------
leaveyou
Powerful. So much money and still big souls. There is hope.

------
rpandey1234
Here are some of the highlights of the speech on Youtube tagged by time:
[http://www.deebrief.com/#!/consume/53a37a3ba109a8020091e663](http://www.deebrief.com/#!/consume/53a37a3ba109a8020091e663)

------
aik
Commencement address video:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wug9n5Atk8c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wug9n5Atk8c)

------
pitchups
> "If we have optimism, but we don't have empathy – then it doesn't matter how
> much we master the secrets of science, we're not really solving problems;
> we're just working on puzzles." Brilliant and moving!

~~~
jejones3141
I wonder how much empathy was involved in writing the AARD code.
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AARD_code](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AARD_code))

~~~
pcunite
I'll take a sinner turned saint over continued arrogance any day.

~~~
CamperBob2
(Shrug) It's easier to trust people who don't do things like that in the
normal course of business. Can a leopard change its spots?

~~~
csallen
This leopard-changing-its-spots analogy is the wrong way to look at things. It
assumes that ethics and morality are permanently writ onto our cores, and that
to change those values, one would have to become another person entirely. This
is a false belief.

As I mentioned in a comment below, numerous studies have shown that a person's
ethics are heavily influenced by their present circumstances and environment,
not some unchangeable inner nature.

~~~
davidp
> a person's ethics are primarily dictated by their present circumstances and
> environment

Citation needed. I can accept "influenced by" or even "heavily influenced by"
without too much argument, but "primarily dictated by" is an extraordinary
claim, requiring extraordinary proof.

~~~
ThomPete
It is rather normal for people to change their political stance over the years
as they go from young people who think they live forever to people with kids
and responsibilities.

Its probably not as obvious here in the US with a two party system but other
places like Denmark and Sweden you see this change more clearly.

------
bby
bill go hard

------
indianheart
I wonder why these scumbags choose my country ( India ) for painting poor life
conditions always ? Agreed, there are cases of extreme poverty, but so in US,
Africa, Brazil ( yeah, hosting world cup !) , Eastern Europe etc. Why pick
India for prostitution ? As if in US there is no prostitution. Why not pick on
own country. Just look at backpage.com thousands and thousands of girls doing
open prostitution. How is that good thing ? or not a poor thing ? I wonder if
there was political agenda for picking India ( since we are good friends with
Russia ). Bill Gates is not a hero. Did you read stories from Paul Allen (
another co-founder those who don't know )?

here is the link :
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2011/04/15/microsof...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2011/04/15/microsoft-
billionaire-paul-allen-talks-bill-gates-revenge-and-cancer-video/)

Why Stanford , a prestigious university, would invite such scumbags ?

If Gates favors so much of charity why not donate everything except $1 Billion
? Are $1 billion not sufficient to live for rest of the life ?

Is his charity ( which comes to around 30 %) a simply proxy for tax saving ??

Whatever may be reason , please stop painting India a bad country.

I am from India , lived in America for 10 yrs before returning , travelled all
over US and I can tell you there are classes, hungry people, children / women
related crimes all over the place. So first look at your own country, how they
are killing people in other countries and then lecture others.

Worst commencement speech in history of Stanford I would say.

------
imranq
hmm, that's interesting. I posted this last week, but no bites...maybe because
I'm a newbie.

Anyway, a great duo-commencement speech, which inspires and provides some
real-world advice

~~~
imranq
Somehow I have negative karma, why downvote this?

~~~
prawn
They're just internet points. Sometimes one submission will go somewhere while
yours won't. It happens and those who seem to gripe about it will often get
down voted.

------
roadnottaken
"a college in the suburbs of Boston"

love this

------
onmydesk
Im going to be down voted for this.

To me, the speech was fairly embarrassing. Its as though some rich people saw
some poor people on a poor person safari. Now they come back to tell of what
they saw, as if everyone in their audience would be just as amazed at such
things as they were.

Perhaps for a stanford graduate audience that is true?

Theres suffering in the world!? :O

Thats what I was left with. No-one rational could disagree with their points,
the validity of the foundations purpose, etc etc and all of that.

But the speech made me cringe a little.

~~~
javert
Came hear to find out if Bill and Melinda were saying the same old things they
usually say over and over. Yep.

There is one social model that has been truly successful in human history and
has truly brought unlimited masses out of the darkness and into the light, and
it is not based on altruism. It is based on (a) rule of law, not of men and
(b) individual rights, especially property rights.

The Gates would do well to start preaching this model instead of the one that
has failed over and over and over all throughout history, which is: you have a
duty to be your brother's keeper (altruism).

~~~
crapshoot101
I'd bet a 100 bucks there's an objectivist / Randian here; we all read the
book as kids, but we recognized that the Randian model couldn't particularly
deal with children, or family for example. Wealth creation is a laudable goal,
but not the only one.

~~~
javert
Yes, I'm an Objectivist.

You have some common misconceptions, allow me to teach you something new.

\- I know a great many PhDs who are Objectivists (hopefully myself soon, too).
It's really not a philosophy for teenagers and that is just something people
spread to put it down without using a real argument.

\- Objectivism can deal with children and family just fine. Lots of
Objectivists have children and families, including Ayn Rand's closest
philosophical associate, Leonard Peikoff.

\- Objectivism does not say that wealth creation is the only goal. It says
(summarizing) that self-preservation is the root of all values, and
experiencing your values (in myriad ways) produces enjoyment. Wealth creation
is just one way to experience your values, not the only way. Another way is,
for example, through family. There are lots of Objectivists who choose non-
lucrative career paths.

~~~
tripzilch
How does it deal with the elderly and the disabled?

A society is to be judged by how well it treats those who are worst off.
Optimize for that. Not the average, the median or the mode.

------
caruana
That was very moving, I'm not sure how it hasn't been voted onto the front
page.

------
bayesianhorse
Remind me, which university did Bill Gates graduate from, again? ;-)

------
tnuc
Bill Gates has good intentions and in some cases is doing well.

If only he wasn't so swayed by the likes of Geoffrey Sachs and Bono. There is
a great book written by Nina Munk about Sachs, if only Gates could try and
change his mind and look at it a little differently.

[http://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/The-Idealist-A-Cautionary-
Ta...](http://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/The-Idealist-A-Cautionary-Tale-From-
Africa)


Evolving Beta - gibsonf1
http://blog.streamfocus.com/2008/04/18/evolving-beta/
======
pchristensen
Good response - I'm curious what other feedback people have given, especially
about using it (not just the superficial UI issues)?

~~~
mike_organon
Some features we expected. We added task deadlines (and its effect on
prioritization) based on feedback, and assigning resources is coming very
soon. Plus, someone wanted to understand how to migrate into StreamFocus
slowly, continuing to use their existing tools. Our tool isn't a full
desktop/office suite that needs to manage everything; rather it can be adopted
incrementally. And we were asked about import from Outlook, integration with
email, etc., which we'll look into.


PullRequestRoulette how not handle a community pull request - shakaran
https://github.com/gothfox/Tiny-Tiny-RSS/pull/142
Should each source forge have a code conduct? Is more important code than people? Not every project manager has the same moral
======
omegote
It's sad, but I'm afraid the way the repository owner behaves is not uncommon.
Frequently people tend to overprotect their repositories and projects as if
they were their own children.


Birds found using human musical scales for the first time - mhb
http://news.sciencemag.org/biology/2014/11/birds-found-using-human-musical-scales-first-time?utm_content=bufferc81d2&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

======
bradleysmith
very cool!

original source doc:
[http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/10/29/1406023111](http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/10/29/1406023111)


Twitter works just fine – but for investors - DrNuke
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/30/twitter-works-just-fine-but-for-investors-anything-except-total-market-domination-is-a-disaster

======
airnomad
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10144549](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10144549)


Show HN: Audit your ISP with a speedtest cronjob - igomeza
https://github.com/igomez10/speedInspectorRPI
======
brianjking
Thanks for sharing. I'm not sure I'd run this in a Docker instance on it's
own. Also, I submitted a pull request here
[https://github.com/igomez10/speedInspectorRPI/pull/1](https://github.com/igomez10/speedInspectorRPI/pull/1)
as it should be noted that on a Raspberry Pi outside of the Raspberry Pi 3 B+
you will max out at 100mbps. On the 3 B+ despite the gigabit adapter you'll
max out at 300mbps.

I use a Speedtest monitor via Home Assistant which I run on a Raspberry Pi
Model 3 along with the rest of my home automation setup. Check out Home
Assistant at [https://home-assistant.io](https://home-assistant.io).

~~~
igomeza
Thannks for taking the time of reading it and submitting improvements, I
checked Home Assistant and it looks amazing. Also, thanks for noting on the
speed limits, I totatlly forgot about RPI adapter limitations. I was having
slow speeds (~2-4mbps) so +100mbps didnt seemed that bad in the beginning.

------
wattengard
I have integrated this into my Home-Assistant setup. The speedtest runs every
30 minutes and logs to an influx-database. I also run a pingtest every minute,
logging to the same database. Helped me identify some strage behaviour from my
router in one case.

------
silvether
Would a USB Ethernet adapter on a PI allow me to test a full Gigabit
connection? I want to try this with speedtest-cli and iperf3.

~~~
wattengard
I believe the USB on rpi is limited to USB2, so that's a 480Mb/s theoretical
limit.

------
captn3m0
I run a similar setup, except with the Prometheus speed test exporter, so
prometheus takes care of the cron part.


The plight of Japan's hikikomori - pseudolus
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20190129-the-plight-of-japans-modern-hermits
======
Legogris
I knew before seeing the source that it was BBC. They've had some strange
fixation with dystopian Japan and perceived issues in contemporary Japanese
culture for years now. Very rarely reporting about similar classes of stories
from other foreign countries like that.

The same stories get recycled again and again.

[https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-47033704?intlink_from_url=&...](https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-47033704?intlink_from_url=&link_location=live-
reporting-story)

[https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01knsnp](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01knsnp)

[https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04rxggk](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04rxggk)

[https://www.bbc.com/news/business-39981997](https://www.bbc.com/news/business-39981997)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9IRmUEsz6g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9IRmUEsz6g)

[https://www.bbc.com/news/business-12347219](https://www.bbc.com/news/business-12347219)

[https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03fh0bg](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03fh0bg)

[https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-23182523](https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-23182523)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dr5y1iP9TfU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dr5y1iP9TfU)

(This one is ironic:
[https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b064ww32?ns_mchannel=social...](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b064ww32?ns_mchannel=social&ns_campaign=bbc_radio_4&ns_source=twitter&ns_linkname=radio_and_music))

~~~
thirdsun
The banner at the top of this story seems to indicate that it's part of a BBC
series called "Japan: Untold stories", which could explain the frequency of
similar stories: [http://www.bbc.com/future/columns/japan-untold-
stories](http://www.bbc.com/future/columns/japan-untold-stories)

------
JoeDaDude
Tom Cahill, in his book "Mysteries of the Middle Ages" [1] explains explains
how in ancient times, people had very different attitudes towards hermits,
shut-ins, and the like:

"Though often represented as a period of repression... the Middle Ages offered
- at least in religious roles - more options than now allowed. ...in the
Middle Ages such social oddities were welcomed and assigned a place of honor.
While the rest of us went about our worried lives, they prayed for us
continually, speaking to God on our behalf."

[1]
[https://books.google.com/books?id=_vikHFhqIwIC&source=gbs_na...](https://books.google.com/books?id=_vikHFhqIwIC&source=gbs_navlinks_s)

------
bjourne
It seems to me that being a young man has become harder. More pressure to
achieve and more status trinkets to get. Not like fancy cars, but having a
cool job, work out and travel a lot and so on. My dad had it easier than me,
and I in turn have had it easier than what my sons will have it.

~~~
WickedFlick
In the documentary 'Flight from Death', Prof. Sheldon Soloman touches on the
idea that there are serious psychological consequences of the rising
expectations we as a society put on people in a world of diminishing
opportunity, which I found rather profound. Here's the relevant clip, if
you're interested:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXZB9t_ypO4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXZB9t_ypO4)

~~~
maroonblazer
At about the 3:00 minute mark in that clip he claims that we don't have a set
of values in place that makes it acceptable for a person to simply be someone
of integrity. I.e. our culture demands that you be rich, famous, thin and
good-looking.

This is a ridiculous claim. While our culture certainly places an outsized
(IMO) emphasis on celebrity and wealth most people, most of the time, aren't
fixated on becoming the next Musk or Kardashian and are able to lead
exceedingly satisfying lives.

If the the conditions of the hikikomori - or the West's version of them - are
rooted in their anxiety about living up to what they see on TV and in
celebrity media then a healthy dose of Buddhism or Stoicism is probably called
for.

~~~
bjourne
My view isn't that the kids these days are asking for more than their fair
share. What they want is what their parents had; a wife and family, a home and
a decent job. But the hoops they have to jump through to get there are much
higher than there were for us in the old generation. So they give up and spend
their time on video games and porn. They aren't chasing the billionaires of
the world - they are chasing Al Bundy!

------
NKosmatos
How do these people live/survive? Do they have income coming in from somewhere
or do their families support them? I know a few people that would like to stay
inside and do stuff they really like (play games, read books, draw, write...)
but they don’t have the means to do it. Another issue has to do with the
actual physical/materialistic reality. Don’t they need to buy food, put the
garbage out, visit the doctor, buy stuff...how is it possible for someone to
stay months or years inside the house?

~~~
welder
"Japanese parents feel a strong obligation to support children no matter what
and shame often prevents them from seeking help, says Kato."

------
mrhappyunhappy
My wife’s uncle became a social recluse after his wife passed away. Everyone
in the family sees him as just this odd person, but I’m pretty sure he is
either depressed, mentally ill or both. After his wife passed he would not go
out of the house for long stretches. He is retired and collects a good pension
so money is not an issue. Despite living maybe 20 feet across the street from
us, we hardly ever see him. He goes to his mother’s for dinner every day but
to catch a glimpse of him is a rare sight. I’d say I’ve seen him maybe twice a
year these past few years. It’s unknown what he does at home and how much
technology plays a role in his behavior, but I suspect he is a gamer or has
some sort of addiction.

I have personally struggled with gaming addiction for years, leaving at times
and then getting sucked right back in without any self-control. Just recently
I got hooked on Elder scrolls online and it took some struggling to let go. I
can say for certain that gaming deepens whatever emotional state of isolation
one can experience. Despite having fun, the feeling of loneliness gets
stronger. I think if I didn’t have my wife and kid I would probably spend my
life hunched over a screen dying while I play an mmo. I would get so depressed
I’d probably let go of any form of self-care and fade into a blob of flesh and
bodily fluids.

For all the bringing together that technology is supposed to do, I feel like
it had a complete opposite effect. Sure, for some it’s awesome to stay in
touch with people you wouldn’t have stayed in touch with otherwise, but in
general it has made society more closed and people isolated from one another.

~~~
tcbawo
Your story reminds me of a story about heroin addicts in Russia who started
taking krokodil (a homemade version that causes slow body death and decay).
Addicts retreat into their addictions to hide from their problems. It gets
harder and harder to break the cycle, because they don't address the core
issue and they are creating more problems from themselves (physical, legal,
social isolation). In the case of krokodil, stopping the drug meant dealing
with the pain/shame of open sores and rotting flesh. Many people think of
addiction in terms of physical symptoms and mental toughness. In many cases,
human addiction is a tragedy on a mass scale. The people that work with
addicts are truly doing God's work.

~~~
yowlingcat
It's different in Russia than in America, but this makes me think about the
McKinsey news item that came up the other day, and how they essentially guided
Purdue to juice opioid sales. Of course, once prices go up and addicts cannot
afford their prescription that was likely not issued in the best faith, it is
no wonder that they turn to cheaper, but frequently impure and lethal
fentanyl. I agree with you that people who work with addicts are truly doing
God's work; no matter how secularly I want to phrase it, when I see large
scale addiction it is very difficult not to see the abstract idea of the
devil. People physiologically enslaved to a chemical, slowly dying, facing an
uphill battle against tolerance and death -- it's all so very bleak, even more
so because it is in the present moment and was fully supported by the public
health care system. One wonders where the oversight was; and who is
responsible? Maybe we all are responsible.

~~~
Henk0
Agree fully on the points about people working with addicts, and Purdue seem
to have no moral compass to counteract the profit motive. About the
enslavememt to the chemical itself, it’s more complicated. The drugs primarily
tend to serve as substitutes for the natural positive reinforcers the addicted
person is missing, and there’s often a history of trauma and psychological
unhealth prior to the drugs entering the picture. Like for the Krokodil users
in the parent post, the natural and externally imposed consequences of
maintaining the habit lead to a negative spiral where there’s more pain,
suffering and hopelessness to face when trying to quit. I highly recommend
Johann Hari’s book ”Chasing the Scream”, and Gabor Mate’s ”In The Realm of
Hungry Ghosts”. Truly enlightening reads if one wants to better understand
addiction

~~~
kmate
Thanks you for the suggestions and for pointing to a more realistic point
about addiction. As I see - and I've been living in this for many years -
addiction has nothing to do with the chemical. Johann Hari has some very good
thoughts on the topic. The first time I heard about him was this talk:
[https://www.ted.com/talks/johann_hari_everything_you_think_y...](https://www.ted.com/talks/johann_hari_everything_you_think_you_know_about_addiction_is_wrong?utm_campaign=social&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_content=talk&utm_term=social-
science)

His books worth checking out too. As someone who struggled with addiction
since childhood it is something I can very much relate to.

------
sandworm101
Im not sure these people are mentaly ill. In the past such people were lauded
as important thinkers. A monk living a minimalist life was not sick. Hermits
living alone, most always in pathetic circumstances, were consulted for thier
wisdom. How many of our great religeous leaders spent some years huddled in a
cave alone? These people may not be normal, but i dont think this is a new
problem... if it even is one.

Not everyone gets to have a good job, a wife, kids and a house. Our society is
very competative. There are worse reactions than becoming withdrawn. These
people are not violent. They are not addicted to drugs. They are not in
prison. There are far worse social ills.

And lighthouse keepers. That used to be a thing.

~~~
mruts
Being addicted to drugs is probably not as big of a problem as the hikkomori.
While doing drugs you can productively contribute to society and most
addictions naturally pass as people get older. I’m not sure the same is true
with the hikkomori. Also many hikkomori do become violent or engage in self-
harm: lashing out at themselves or their family.

After spending 8 years in your room and only talking to your parents through a
door, it probably takes a huge toll on your mental health. And since Japan is
a shame/honor-society, the effects compound very quickly. To make matters
worse, once you fall out of the “right” track in Japan, you are categorically
excluded from certain forms of work and social status.

This means that if, say, you stay in your room a year after high school
instead of going to college, you will never be accepted into college for the
rest of your life. You will never be able to get a high status salaryman job.
This leads to a mindset that there’s no going back and that the rest of their
lives are ruined.

The hikkimori are a class of people that suffer from a culturally specific
syndrome that would manifest itself in other ways outside Japan/Asia.
Depression or anxiety probably.

I think a large part of the problem is that it is very common in Japan for
children to live with their parents for a relatively long time compared to
Western (or at least American) society. And since Japanese culture is built on
the honor/shame duality, everytime the child disappoints their parents, the
effects compound. This eventually leads to a point where the child is so
ashamed, they just lock themselves in their room to escape.

If children just left the house earlier, I think this would solve a lot of
problems. They would leave their rooms because no one would be there to judge
them.

As an aside, it’s interesting that the problem is only with men. Women are
held to a lower standard and don’t feel the type of pressure as men to become
successful and honor their parents.

~~~
dqpb
> _most addictions naturally pass as people get older_

Is this true?

~~~
gaius
Apparently yes [https://www.drugfoundation.org.nz/matters-of-
substance/novem...](https://www.drugfoundation.org.nz/matters-of-
substance/november-2014/ageing-out-of-addiction/)

~~~
rtkwe
I don't see it mentioned so I wonder if that 'aging out' effect takes into
account people just dying. I.E: On average these addictions are either dealt
with by 4/10/15 years or it's deteriorated bad enough for the person do die.

------
mc32
>A government survey found roughly 541,000 (1.57% of the population)

Something's not right about that figger. 1.57% out of a pop of 126MM is
roughly 2MM.

~~~
chmod775
Presumably only counting people of a certain age, i.e. excluding retirees or
people above a certain age and children.

------
known
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Round-the-
world_ticket](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Round-the-world_ticket) can help
them

------
VLM
Its fairly typical during the early stages of societal collapse to blame the
first victims. Obviously the cultural-wide problem of declining standards of
living must be solely the fault of the first victims or their families not
trying hard enough. The whole point of the situation is "have a live" was
quite achievable to everyone just a generation or two ago. As the decline
continues, societal expectations will eventually change to match and the
problem and bullying of the victims will disappear naturally, so in a sense
its not really a problem.

The victims are likely to get blamed for economic problems such as demand
destruction. If an economy for 100M people requires 100M "great jobs" spenders
but only has 95M "great jobs" available, those 5M kicked out of society are
going to have trouble keeping the consumer economy running. Resulting in
economic contraction to a 95M person-sized economy for a 100M nation only
having maybe 90M "good jobs" rinse and repeat until collapse.

~~~
ThrowawayR2
> _Its fairly typical during the early stages of societal collapse to blame
> the first victims._

Interesting statement. What previous societal collapses can you cite to back
up that claim?

~~~
VLM
Seriously? You first. Find me a counterexample in history, of the decline of a
civilization, which resulted in BETTER treatment of minorities, outgroups, or
weak sub populations.

I hate to Godwin the discussion but as a trivial example I don't think the
Jews got gassed in Germany because the economy was too strong and Weimar was
too politically stable. Generally you don't want to be part of a small
outgroup during a societal collapse, the masses will demand somebody gotta be
burned at the stake and its not going to be the popular group.

~~~
b_tterc_p
i don’t think he was doubting you, he was asking for evidence of your
seemingly insightful claim.

Your points don’t seem to be aligned though. Minorities suffering is not the
same as blaming the first coincidental victims of economic downturn.

~~~
maxxxxx
I think it's more that during a downturn the powerful find ways to make some
victims blame other victims but not the powerful who are doing quite well.
Just look at the latest political developments. Workers think that immigrants
are the source of their declining job prospects instead of questioning why the
upper x percent take an increasing share of economic output for themselves and
even give themselves tax cuts.


Show HN: Hashdog – MD5 breaker in Io.js/ES6 - logotype
https://github.com/logotype/hashdog

======
beernutz
Interesting project.

I see in some classes you set the object "self" to "this" and use it later in
anonymous functions. That seems to be a common pattern in a lot of peoples
code.

It seems like naming the "self" object something more descriptive and specific
would make sense in general, but I can't help wondering if there is a more
fundamental reason for using "self".

Is this common in OO parlance for a reason?

~~~
mdaniel
That is a common JS idiom because the binding of "this" changes inside
function calls, so one must capture the outer binding of "this" which when
used in an object scenario does behave like the same keyword used in
traditional OO. The naming of "self" could just be a synonym or a nod to
Python (I'd have to do research to know definitively)

~~~
beernutz
That makes sense. I wonder though if there is a better convention than "self".
That by itself (to me at least) does not say much about which "self" we are
describing. Maybe it is just a matter of personal preference, but I like to be
more specific and descriptive.

It reminds me of the practice of using "throw-away" variables in for loops.
Personally I would still rather name the variable "loop" instead of "i".

~~~
mdaniel
Ok, you are free to propose an alternative - either here or to your team - but
be sure you and your team are prepared to have to adjust if and when you join
another JS team.

And if I had to name loop variables "loop" I would lose my mind. But I'm glad
it works for you and your team, so long as you never have nested for loops.

------
logotype
I don't claim this to be fast, as it isn't really optimized for performance at
all. I created this mainly as a learning experience using ECMAScript 6, as
well as multiple processes in node/io. The plan is to add more options later,
or perhaps another interesting way could be to see how fast this thing can be.

------
logotype
a few updates, now includes a CLI. other stuff will be updated soon!


Justifying 1 Billion Dollars for Instagram - melissamiranda
http://dickbrouwer.com/post/20911933152/justifying-1-billion-dollars-for-instagram

======
melissamiranda
This is a highly plausible scenario for how the price could have gone from a
more sensible $300M to $1B if Instagram said no to a sale and raised a round
instead.

~~~
jeebus
It's a case of put your money where your mouth is

------
nextstep
This seems plausible, but this tiny article is mostly speculation.


Ask HN: What API do you wish you had while building your product? - afinemonkey
======
onli
Product information. Things like "The mainboard named XY from producer ABC has
the manufacturer sku 1234567, the EAN-13 00123... and the UPC 01234...".
Ideally add to that the custom specs, like "it has that many usb slots and
this socket" etc.

But I think I miss part of the picture here, there is probably a channel
transmitting structured information like this from manufacturers to vendors, I
just never found it.

~~~
netvarun
My startup Semantics3 works on this problem -
[https://semantics3.com/](https://semantics3.com/)

We have a standardized taxonomy and ontology to which we map all our products
to. It's a garbage in garbage out problem but as long as the product has the
information in some sort of semi-structured or unstructured form, we typically
can infer attributes and standardize them based on their ontology (i.e. They
have 4 USB ports)

~~~
onli
Hey, that did not work out at all. So, like said in the other comment, there
are no pricing information I could find. Then you say "14 day free demo", but
I got an email saying the free trial ended two days after registering. The UI
says "add a credit card and let us know" when checking on how to pay/prolongue
the trial, but does not actually show the price. I asked for pricing via your
chat window thing, and got no response.

I certainly won't add a credit card to a service that does nor show me pricing
information.

Guys, I get that the enterprise market is comfortable and the usual target for
this kind of thing, but if you don't want to bother with startups/developers,
why do you market to them on your website and by answering here? You are
completely unuseable like that. Hiding pricing information to sell overpriced
services to big enterprices that just don't care is completely unacceptable
for everyone else.

~~~
netvarun
Shoot. My apologies about any confusion on the sign up process. I have reached
out to you on email.

------
ForrestN
An API for handling image processing/uploading to S3:

Use 1: Send a high-res image in any format (like, say, tiff), the original, a
web-optimal jpg at full resolution, and any sizes that might be needed in
various contexts (thumbnail, inline display at any screen density) are put
into the right place in my S3 bucket.

Use 2: Using ids or original file names, point the API to an image or array of
images, uploaded via Use 1, and give it a set of dimensions/conditions, and
have it return links to the correct images for me.

~~~
kevinflo
We've had an excellent experience with
[http://cloudinary.com/](http://cloudinary.com/) for pretty much what you
describe.

~~~
netdur
as a consultant, I picked up cloudinary for a client, promised "75,000 Total
Images & Videos" then a team of four people used the free data shortly, they
contact us saying to either pay $44 per month or shutdown, why? we are over
free bandwidth...

relocated a developer to spent some hours writing a restful services, now
paying ~$0.030 per GB

~~~
thirdsun
> why? we are over free bandwidth...

I don't have any experience with cloudinary, but to be fair, their pricing
table mentions each plan's limitations pretty clearly. Is it really their
fault that you underestimated the customer's requirements?

------
tatsuhirosatou
Reddit/HN like forum as an API. I want a forum for my site, using my own
templates and integrated into my app, but without having to code the forum
myself. What buttercms does for blogs, but for forums.

~~~
gwintrob
Discourse has an API: [http://docs.discourse.org/](http://docs.discourse.org/)

~~~
OJFord
Would you really describe Discourse as "Reddit/HN like" though?

------
reitanqild
A webhook or something that would tell me when a phone number changes owner.

I.e.: when we bill someone weekly for something and then the phone number
changes owner we want to stop immediately.

Same if you send sms-es that you don’t want delivered to anyone but the
intended recipient.

~~~
amiller2571
I can understand the positive uses for such an API. For the uses you mentioned
it would be great.

However, I hope nothing like that is ever made! It would get abused to no end.
I've personally changed number multiple times for privacy reasons.

~~~
reitanqild
I see your point but as long as the

1\. You only get notifications for numbers you sign up to watch

2\. The webhook only notifies me that <number> will be transferred <at> (using
some data format)

then it shouldn't be a problem, should it?

~~~
amiller2571
I think it would be ok as long as it didn't tell you what the person's new
number is or who now owns <number> if it gets reassigned.

~~~
reitanqild
Ok, then we agree :-)

We just wanted to know so that we wouldn't charge the new owner for things the
old owner ordered etc.

------
andrewfong
Let me programmatically schedule a task to run at a specific time, just once.
E.g. if my user tells me to remind them about something in a day, I want to
schedule a task to do that exactly 24 hours from now.

I'm sure this exists already but it's hard to find because searching usually
points me to a cronjob service. But what I'm looking for is distinct from a
that. I don't want to run something every minute or hour or checking if
there's any work to do. I just want a given task to run as a pre-determined
time, scaled to any arbitrary number of tasks.

~~~
Phenomabomb
I've heard good things about Autohotkey, but every time I try to do even the
simplest of tasks it becomes a hassle. Like even just clicking on a specific
point on your screen you have to know the exact coordinates of the place you
want clicked. It seems like it'd be very easy just to record where you want to
click.

~~~
tahw
When I'm working on tasks like that I like to add a hotkey that just puts the
mouse's location on a tooltip for me. Sometimes you can just Tab to whatever
you're trying to click, too, which is robust to window position.

------
mtrimpe
An API where I could point _end user_ video uploads to and have them
processed, transcoded and playable on all platforms. One that also works at
the RTMP/WebRTC layer (i.e. not just an all-in-one JS library with it's own
idea of a 'good UI') and doesn't require me to do an API call first to set up
the stream for the user (i.e. encode 'upload rights' using expiring HMAC-
signed blobs including restrictions such as maximum length and/or file-size to
prevent people having me transcode movies for them for free.)

~~~
boredprogrammer
Not sure if it quite fits the bill, but if your end user video uploads are
stored on S3 or similar then zencoder does most of what you are looking for.

~~~
mtrimpe
The hard part is the ingestion services; which aren't as easy to set up as
they seem since a proper one is essentially a reverse CDN (content ingestion
network if you'd like ;-)

------
orasis
I wanted machine learning-based app configuration. So I built it and spun it
out as a separate product: [https://improve.ai/](https://improve.ai/)

~~~
danenania
I think this is a really cool idea, but I feel like it could be described in a
better way.

'Machine learning-based app configuration' is very techie and vague and could
mean a LOT of different things in a number of realms. What about something
more specific and benefit-focused, like: 'AI that automatically improves your
site's design'? To me something like that communicates what the product is
more clearly, assuming I understand it correctly of course.

~~~
orasis
Thanks for the feedback. Working to find the best language has been a hard
slog. It's actually not for improving a web site's design but is targeted
specifically at mobile apps. I'm using the "configuration" language now so
that developers maybe get an idea of how it integrates.

------
nathanken
Sometime back I wished I had a light weight CMS that can serve your content
and allow you to program sections of your content so that you can make it more
dynamic. For example, I can have something like this as the content:

The sum of @Var1 and @Var2 is #Sum

and then we can program #Sum (we call this an expression) to return the sum of
@Var1 and @Var2. Once I pass the values for the variables @Var1 and @Var2 to
API, let's say 1 and 2 correspondingly. Then the api would return you the
content as:

The sum of 1 and 2 is 3

I couldn't find something that could help me with this so I build one. You can
visit [https://www.dialoguewise.com/](https://www.dialoguewise.com/) in case
you have a similar requirement. More on expressions here:
[https://docs.dialoguewise.com/expressions/](https://docs.dialoguewise.com/expressions/)

~~~
michaeloblak
Not exactly this, but [https://sheetsu.com](https://sheetsu.com) is a
lightweight CMS from Google Spreadsheets.

------
mclifton
A generic communication API (this might exist). When I want to communicate
with my customer, it handles how they receive the message - whether that's
SMS, Email, IM, slack, etc.

~~~
freyfogle
Not quite what you're asking for, but here is a service that provides the
opposite side of that - all customer messages come into a single queue on your
side and can then be processed by customer service and/or answered by a bot
[https://hubtype.com/](https://hubtype.com/)

------
superasn
An API that returns top 100 relevant web results via Javascript (aka the
google ajax api which sadly they discontinued).

~~~
edoceo
DuckDuckGo and Yandex have one

------
erikrothoff
Subscription billing API that deals with reminders, renewals,
e-mails/cancellations, etc. Everything related to that. All existing solutions
don't work well if revenue per user is a "measley" 2 USD per month.

~~~
BatFastard
So a "Low cost" billing API, everyone's dream!

~~~
frenchie4111
"Low cost" could be 5% of charges. Use stripe under the hood, so you make
2.1%. Not too bad for a stripe wrapper.

~~~
desdiv
Stripe's pricing is 2.9% + 30¢, so the fee for a $2 payment would be 36¢,
effectively 18%.

~~~
erikrothoff
We're paying the 18% already for our $2 transaction... Another 5% on that
sounds doable.

~~~
frenchie4111
This is definitely one of those problems that while I was implementing it
every day I would think "Why the hell do I have to do this myself"

------
akcreek
I need an accurate way to count words on a variety of documents, with and
without renderable text. Could be an image, pdf, docx, etc. The renderable
text isn't an issue, but the non has been for me. I've tried several OCR
products and none have worked well as we often have something like an image of
a hand written document or a low quality scan of an old document. Maybe
something with computer vision instead of OCR is the right solution though as
I don't need to know what the text says, I just need a count of the words or
characters for languages that use symbols.

------
thangalin
Bret Victor's The Future of Programming has intriguing ideas on APIs that are
tangentially related to this topic.

[https://vimeo.com/71278954#t=14m](https://vimeo.com/71278954#t=14m)

------
b3b0p
Video Games.

There are a few, but none provide some important information or have a
reliable, complete data set. In particular, box art, UPC codes. From my
research the Giant Bomb and Moby Games API's seem to be the most complete, but
neither have the UPC. The only place I can find that is another API which is
rather lacking in completeness and data.

------
ransom1538
Easy way to get geo from ip. I hate a lot of the options: downloading binarys
or using google's that just regulates you.

~~~
nolite
There was a solution for this on HN not a week ago..

~~~
ypys
Here it is: [https://ipinfo.io](https://ipinfo.io)

~~~
avar
These free databases are really inaccurate in many cases compared to e.g.
Maxmind. E.g. this thinks my IP address is 100 km away near the German border,
but Maxmind's commercial DB puts me a 7 minute walk away in the center of
Amsterdam.

They're better than nothing, but be careful when relying on them for anything
you need accurate Geo-IP info for.

~~~
romanovcode
I also don't recommend free solution for serious business. This can be
critical for E-Commerce which uses GEO-Locking.

For customers that live on the borders it is very important that correct
country is selected.

------
jtolj
A cost effective API into whois data that doesn't come across as sketchy or
fragile.

~~~
cjonas
I worked on a project for one of the big registars and even they didn't have a
proper whois api!

------
frenchie4111
Point of Sale integration API. This exists for Restaurant POS systems:
[http://omnivore.io/](http://omnivore.io/) but I want one for all POS systems.

------
seancoleman
A real estate API for active/sold residential and commercial listings.

~~~
rgbrgb
This one would be pretty amazing and we'd pay a lot for it. Unfortunately,
beyond the mapping/sanitization, it's an extremely difficult data licensing
problem and so we still pay a lot to make an internal residential version we
can't vend.

------
mkilling
1\. A process engine that can execute a process given as an EPC (ideally with
an embeddable gui editor). The app notifies the API of event completions and
the API allows you to query the current state of the process.

2\. An embeddable survey tool like SurveyGizmo, but completely whitelabelable,
including the survey editor

3\. An API for benchmark scores for iOS and Android devices (give me all
devices that are as fast or faster than a Samsung Galaxy S6)

4\. An embeddable private commenting tool (like Disqus, but for the back-
office parts of the website)

~~~
wolfgang42
What does EPC stand for?

~~~
mkilling
Event-driven process chain[1]. In fact, any executable process modelling
language would do.

[1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event-
driven_process_chain](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event-
driven_process_chain)

------
mistercow
A postgres API to specify query plans directly, bypassing the planner. I
usually know exactly what algorithm makes the most sense, and it's not
uncommon for the planner to choose something considerably worse, forcing me to
break queries up, write them in strange ways, or disable strategies.

------
AlphaWeaver
An API providing access to coupons from major retailers in a machine readable
format.

Edit: Great question by the way!

~~~
kapuru
Can you tell me more about how you would've integrated the API? I think I
could've helped out.

~~~
AlphaWeaver
The issue wouldn't have been implementation - it was sourcing the coupons
themselves. You'd have to sign agreements with multiple vendors and force them
to use your system instead of their own.

------
tarr11
Natural Language API with a well-defined ontology

~~~
matthewayne
Have you checked out Google's Natural Language API?

[https://cloud.google.com/natural-
language/docs/reference/res...](https://cloud.google.com/natural-
language/docs/reference/rest/)

------
koala_man
A reverse pastebin, where you give it a pastebin URL and it returns the
plaintext.

~~~
edaemon
Can't you use the /raw/ URL for that? E.g.
[https://pastebin.com/raw/AC3FGHBX](https://pastebin.com/raw/AC3FGHBX)

~~~
koala_man
Works for pastebin.com, but not dpaste.com, sprunge.us, ix.io, fpaste.org,
ideone.com, paste.fedoraproject.org, hastebin.com, termbin.com,
paste.debian.net, gist.github.com, bpaste.net, lpaste.net, pastee.com,
irccloud.com, codepad.org or susepaste.org.

I currently have ~40 lines of regex for this, plus some custom logic for a few
that don't have raw URLs at all. A service would be very convenient.

~~~
avh02
Some would say you're half way to building what you want... Launch and sell!

------
Boxxed
I wish AWS autoscaling groups had a "recycle every machine" operation.

~~~
frenchie4111
I agree with this. Currently it is super annoying to upgrade a group to a new
launch config

~~~
frenchie4111
Just found this: [https://github.com/colinbjohnson/aws-missing-
tools](https://github.com/colinbjohnson/aws-missing-tools)

------
ben_jones
An asynchronous API that returns a full review of my codebase by dozens of
industry specialists with special attention paid to best practices and
idiomatic implementation details.

~~~
kagx
This one is a really interesting idea. Although It would be quite pricey I
guess. It takes time to review properly code base which is new to you and
industry specialists know their price.

------
seanwilson
Instagram API that didn't require approval for basic things like downloading
the image for a given Instagram URL. :P They've made it incredibly restrictive
now.

~~~
motyar
Just add ?__a=1 with any instagram URL read ->
[https://medium.com/@motyar/instagrams-public-json-
apis-330e4...](https://medium.com/@motyar/instagrams-public-json-
apis-330e4e3f5307)

~~~
seanwilson
Is that a sanctioned way of doing it though? I don't want this to break later.
Their
[https://api.instagram.com/oembed/?url=](https://api.instagram.com/oembed/?url=)
endpoint is at least documented but doesn't give full resolution photos and
only limited metadata.

------
tmaly
a really good directory / search for APIs. There is so much out there, it's
like a needle in a haystack literally

~~~
pdimitar
That would be the best thing happening to programming in a while... if it
happened. I'd pay for such a service.

------
kidproquo
An easy way to get a webpage's image/thumbnail. For e.g. get the the main
product image from an Amazon URL.

------
vyrotek
An affordable API or platform to build live streaming communities such as
twitch.tv

------
urlbox
Multiple choice question and answer API for an e-learning site, for mini-tests
and full exams. Ended up using classmarker, but wasn't able to customise it to
the look and feel of the rest of the site.

------
diehell
API for musical instruments, gear, equipment and its info? If anyone know a
good one, please do share.

~~~
kidproquo
Can you expand on this? What's use case?

~~~
diehell
So that user(studio owner,musician,etc) select the instruments or equipment
that they have, maybe as autocomplete.

------
ieb
An API that had close to real time feed of all closed captioning for news
sites and those who were speaking.

------
Old_Thrashbarg
A good affordable https API to determine location from IP address.

------
flylib
1) an API around freight shipping

2) an API to connect with insurance carriers as a broker

~~~
fancy_pantser
ShipRush does freight and LTL via API. On the downside, it's not as clean/easy
to use as EasyPost.

[https://shiprush.com/developer](https://shiprush.com/developer)

------
5_minutes
A dead-easy scraper API

~~~
gwintrob
Have you seen Nightmare?
[https://github.com/segmentio/nightmare](https://github.com/segmentio/nightmare)

~~~
bgdkbtv
Thanks for this! Exactly what I needed for a project

------
taysic
A language API- finding synonyms or categories to words

~~~
artpar
You can use nltk/wordnet bindings ? checkout hypernymn and holonym.

------
RingoBear
A LinkedIn API that allows you to get a list of a user's contacts. This used
to exist until they made it available only to "approved partners" a couple
years ago.

------
ozzmotik
one that did all the hard work of coming up with a product to build, as that's
generally the part I fail at :c

------
sharemywin
var MarketingCost = 0;

var customer = api.getNewCustomer(MarketingCost);

var BankAccount = api.Sell(customer);

------
abootstrapper
A simple AB testing API.

~~~
armis
Years ago I've created embeddable A/B testing platform (but only for PHP
projects). It's super simple to implement and relevant to your wish
[http://www.binpress.com/app/multivariate-ab-testing-for-
php/...](http://www.binpress.com/app/multivariate-ab-testing-for-php/1897)

------
SirLJ
unlimited stock market API

------
jamespitts
This is probably too general of a question.


The Expression Problem and Tables - qubitcoder
http://joelburget.com/the-expression-problem-and-tables/
======
ajuc
Clojure has the best solution to expression problem I've seen in a real
programming language

[http://clojure.org/multimethods](http://clojure.org/multimethods)

        (defmulti sound class)
        (defmulti eat class)
        (defmulti attack class)

        (defmethod sound ::cow [c] "Moo!")
        (defmethod sound ::dog [c] "Roof!")
        (defmethod sound ::cat [c] "Miau!")

        (defmethod attack ::dog [c] (bite c))
        (defmethod attack ::cat [c] (scratch c))

        (defmethod eat ::cow [c] ...)
        (defmethod eat ::dog [c] ...)
        (defmethod eat ::cat [c] ...)

        ...

        (derive ::mad-cow ::cow)
        (defmethod sound ::mad-cow [c] "MooOOOooooOOOOoooo!")
        (defmethod attack ::mad-cow [c] (stampede c))

The layout problem remains, and I would like to be able to do sql- or prolog-
like queries on code, but IMHO it's IDE and tooling problem more than missing
language feature.

Also in clojure you can add arbitrary
[http://clojure.org/metadata](http://clojure.org/metadata) to each value, so
marking your function as deprecated/in-progress/whatever is easy (but it seems
you can't easily add metadata to separate implementations of multimethod right
now).

        ...
        (defmulti "Attacks."
                  {:deprecated "Use eat instead.",
                   :author "me"}
                  attack class)
        ...

Also - to confirm that people want to specify rules in tables - I've been
working at 2 different companies where we had code generators with .xlsx files
as input and .java as output.

~~~
lispm
How so? You ignore that the expression problem is about using static types.
See the original problem statement.

In languages like Smalltalk or Lisp, the Expression Problem has easy solutions
- but they are not statically typed.

~~~
fnordsensei
The point is to not violate the type safety of the language used. There are
plenty of dynamic languages that don't offer a solution to the expression
problem.

With that said, you can add gradual typing to Clojure with Core.Typed and
still solve the expression problem using multimethods without violating type
safety.

------
jerf
Everything looks like a good idea in a blog post. Your homework, if you are
serious about this, is to crack open a non-trivial, but not huge, program and
apply this idea to it. See how the table looks when you're trying to fit a few
dozen elements into it in each direction, where the contours of some real
problem created the structure (very important!). You can tweak the
organization of the program a bit, because changing paradigms often requires
tweaks to the best solution, but it's important that whatever the problem was
is still solved at the end of the tweaking (i.e., no fair "simplifying" until
you've simplified the entire problem away).

I say this not because it will prove impossible or useless, but because you
will learn things in the process that will help you refine the idea.
Refinement into "what I want is not really possible at scale" is certainly one
possible outcome, but there are many other possibilities.

(Certainly one problem you'll encounter is that real code is horrifyingly
non-"normal", in the statistical distribution sense. A program of 100 classes
is very likely to have 90 of them part of one hierarchy, with the remaining 10
each doing isolated things. Understanding the table representation of such
things may have the MEGO ("my eyes glaze over") problem, but then, perhaps you
can find something for that.)

------
kthielen
As others have said, the key is to solve the expression problem without
discarding type safety. :)

I think that this problem is basically a simple structural relation on sum
types in disguise. That's how I interpret the "Data Types a la Carte" paper
anyway.

So if you have:

      class Foo a where
        foo :: a -> String

And say:

      instance Foo A+B where
        foo A = "a"
        foo B = "b"

And:

      instance Foo C+D where
        foo C = "c"
        foo D = "d"

Then if you extend your data type to A+B+C+D, then a simple instance generator
should be enough to tie it all together:

      instance (Foo v, Foo w) => Foo v+w where
        foo (inl v') = foo v'
        foo (inr w') = foo w'

I have a (currently internal to my company) Haskell-like language with
structural sum/product/variant/record types where we can do this kind of
thing. Otherwise "Data Types a la Carte" has the solution in the typed setting
of vanilla Haskell (even if it's a little wordy).

------
sgreben
Sum types + exhaustiveness checking already do this, right? For this example:

      type animal = Cat | Dog
      type action = Sound | Eat | Attack

      let cat_sound () = printf "meow"
      let cat_attack () = printf "scratch"
      let dog_sound () = printf "woof"

      let act animal action = match animal,action with
      | Cat, Sound  -> cat_sound ()
      | Cat, Attack -> cat_attack ()
      | Dog, Sound  -> dog_sound ()

Compiling this yields:

      Warning 8: this pattern-matching is not exhaustive.
      Here is an example of a value that is not matched:
      (Dog, (Eat|Attack))

just as we'd like.

~~~
Ono-Sendai
The problem is not so much if the compiler will catch it, but how to lay out
the new code/types in an editor, hopefully all in one place or accessible from
one place.

C++ will catch a missing combination at compile time as well.

~~~
ICWiener
Note that the given example has only one place where all combinations are
defined. Not sure if this could be done in C++.

------
platz
A staticly-typed solution:

[https://oleksandrmanzyuk.wordpress.com/2014/06/18/from-
objec...](https://oleksandrmanzyuk.wordpress.com/2014/06/18/from-object-
algebras-to-finally-tagless-interpreters-2/)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8904182](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8904182)

------
Someone
Multimethods, introspection and a good IDE can get you very far in this
direction. For an example, see [https://opendylan.org/history/apple-
dylan/screenshots/browse...](https://opendylan.org/history/apple-
dylan/screenshots/browsers.html) [There likely are older Lisp or Smalltalk
implementations of this idea]

------
flipp3r
"we gain the power to query: implementations calling a deprecated function,
implementations marked TODO, unimplemented cases, animals which eat, functions
written by me, with no tests"

I think what you're looking for is a good IDE and Scala or Java

~~~
TeMPOraL
No IDE needed with Common Lisp, you can get most of this data via standard
language features and Metaobject Protocol, and for whatever else you need to
keep track of, just write a few macros and you're done.

------
zamalek
Go's implicit interfaces are one possible solution to this problem.

> animals which eat

        type eater interface { eat() }
        somEater, isEater := value.(eater)

Or something, my Go isn't very good.

------
hepek
This text reminds me of row polymorphism in OCaml object system. Or maybe I
got it all wrong.

------
innguest
Reminds me of TOP - Table Oriented Programming - as discussed in the c2 wiki.
I use those simple but helpful ideas to this day.

~~~
smrtinsert
I thought of this too. I remember reading it years ago and wondering why this
idea had no traction. I honestly think some sort of tuple oriented programming
paradigm will eventually emerge at the forefront. Look at R datatables for
example.


If a tweet declares war, is it treason to take it down? - awinter-py
https://abe-winter.github.io/2019/10/18/tweason.html
======
tptacek
No, for assistance to an enemy to be treasonable, war must actually have been
declared, and only Congress can declare war. Actually _waging war_ on the US
is treasonable without a Congressional declaration, but the definition depends
on a state of "open war" in which you're part of a recognized assembled group
of people engaged in open armed hostilities.

The short answer to almost all these kinds of questions is "it's never
treason".

~~~
diego
1) You're assuming this ONLY discusses the possibility of the US declaring war
via tweet. The article clearly talks about ANY country that could declare war
via tweet.

2) It specifically addresses the question of the US and Congress.
[https://abe-winter.github.io/2019/10/18/tweason.html#can-a-t...](https://abe-
winter.github.io/2019/10/18/tweason.html#can-a-tweet-declare-war)

~~~
tptacek
Yes, its analysis of the US and Congress is, I believe, simply wrong. The
President can effectively levy war in the 21st century without Congress, but
such "wars" do not create the conditions required for treason. Treason is
incumbent on war being properly declared.

Even John Walker Lindh couldn't be charged with treason, and he had the weight
of an actual AUMF against him.

~~~
Retric
You can be convicted of treason without a war being declared. Walter Allen
being the most obvious case.
[https://www.wvencyclopedia.org/articles/205](https://www.wvencyclopedia.org/articles/205)

What makes this case so interesting is it was treason vs a specific state not
the entire USA.

~~~
tptacek
See my original comment on this thread. The definition of "declared or open
war", the conditions required in the US, go back into English Common Law.

~~~
Retric
We can quibble about the open war vs the entire US on that one, but here
conspiracy is also considered sufficient grounds.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burr_conspiracy](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burr_conspiracy)
Though not convicted, that was a question of evidence rather than if
conspiracy was sufficient grounds for a conviction.

~~~
tptacek
The Supreme Court cases that clarified this matter occurred after the Burr
affair.

~~~
Retric
So you have some specifics in mind? I assume you’re referring to Ex parte
Bollman

“That levying an army may or may not be treason, and that this depends on the
intention with which it is levied, and on the point to which the parties have
advanced, has been also stated. The mere enlisting of men, without assembling
them, is not levying war. The question then is, whether this evidence proves
Col. Burr to have advanced so far in levying an army as actually to have
assembled them.”

In the Burr case no men where actually assembled. “No evidence existed that
either Bollman or Swartwout engaged in any military activity or violent acts.”
I could be misreading this but I believe the military acts of a non violent
nature could still qualify under this definition. Though, it’s stretching the
definition of war to call such non violent acts war, such is the way of such
things.

In any case I believe the line for treason is close to but before what could
be called “open war.”

------
akersten
Sorry, I'm really not seeing the jump to "treason" here. I also think the
author has a personal vendetta against Twitter based on the final sentence of
the post, but regardless - they acknowledge that declaration of war is a
congressional power, and that contempt of Congress is a possibility - but
somehow this means that removal of a post from a member of the executive
branch is treason?

Would the New York Times refusing to run a story about how war was declared be
treason? What about CSPAN cutting away the broadcast in the middle of a war
announcement?

I don't think so, in either case, and I don't think it's the case for Twitter
either - because them not carrying the information doesn't change the material
facts of the declaration. They're not interfering in an official congressional
process in any capacity, because they're _not part_ of an official
congressional process.

~~~
caiocaiocaio
You and me have an extremely different definition of personal vendetta!

~~~
akersten
That's fair, "vendetta" is too strong of a word. "Personal bias" is better-
suited. It's just hard to read a post calling them "internet vampires" and
still assume a neutral author.

~~~
t0mbstone
But Twitter _has_ objectively proven themselves to be "celebrity vampires" by
selectively applying different sets of rules to celebrities than to common
people.

For example, it is against Twitter's official rules
([https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/twitter-
rules](https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/twitter-rules)) for a
user to use their platform to say hateful or racist things, and they regularly
ban people for violating those conditions, but they they regularly allow
famous people (like the President of the USA) to get away with violating many
of those rules.

Why does Twitter let Trump (and many other famous people) get away with
breaking the rules? Because Twitter directly benefits from the viewers and the
outrage.

Acknowledging that fact (and yes, it is a provable fact) hardly means someone
has a personal vendetta against Twitter.

~~~
manicdee
It’s especially common for Twitter, upon receiving complaints from a POC about
racial harassment, to ban the victim.

------
jjk166
According to the Hague Convention's relevant sections,

article 1:

The Contracting Powers recognize that hostilities between themselves must not
commence without previous and explicit warning, in the form either of a
reasoned declaration of war or of an ultimatum with conditional declaration of
war.

article 2:

The existence of a state of war must be notified to the neutral Powers without
delay, and shall not take effect in regard to them until after the receipt of
a notification, which may, however, be given by telegraph. Neutral Powers,
nevertheless, cannot rely on the absence of notification if it is clearly
established that they were in fact aware of the existence of a state of war.

There is nothing saying that a declaration of war must be preserved. Indeed
the only mentioned method of transmitting a declaration of war is by
telegraph, which does not preserve the information at all and would mean the
message might be completely missed if the receiver was unmanned at the time.

Ignoring the absurdity of declaring war exclusively via twitter, or the
improbability that a declaration of war on twitter by a nation state would go
unnoticed, it seems even an extremely rapid deletion of the tweet would not
hinder the tweeter's ability to formally declare war, and thus the deletion
could never be treason to begin with.

There might be an issue with the Federal Recordkeeping Act, but this would be
on the part of the entity tweeting, not Twitter, and would certainly not be
grounds for treason in any capacity.

------
tomatotomato37
The early conversation here seems to focus more on US procedures and
government branches than Twitter's responsibilities but Twitter is not just
accessible to US world leaders. What would happen if some Middle Eastern
monarch used the service to declare war on a neighboring country. I think even
the UK still does war declaration from only the Queen, how should Twitter
respond to it then?

~~~
catalogia
How could an American company commit treason in a foreign country? Treason in
a country you aren't a citizen of, in a country you have no moral, ethical or
logical obligation to be loyal to, seems nonsensical. If country A invades
country B, country A isn't committing treason against country B. Treason isn't
just some word meant to describe "anything a country dislikes".

------
Torwald
> If twitter wanted heads of state off their platform, they would have asked
> them long ago. They put up with everything because like me and the rest of
> the internet they’re celebrity vampires.

Maybe they don't put up with anything. I couldn't find any official complaint
of a Twitter inc. spokesperson about having to "put up" with what any head of
state is doing on their platform.

------
Quarrel
"Disclaimer: I’m not a lawyer"

They should have stopped the article there. They're way off base on almost
every point, with no idea about some of the basics of law at all.

The whole thing is absolutely ridiculous.

------
danso
In tech communities, we often have discussions/debates about the value and/or
necessity of hosting content and data on servers we own, because we fear
losing everything stored on cloud servers beyond our control. The current
White House seems to be the very opposite in its lack of qualm or reflection.
Which is ironic because the WH has long had a decent software stack (made even
better by federal budgets and staffing) to publish, host disseminate, and
secure content on servers completely under their control – arguably as close
to reliability and digital permanence as the Library of Congress or Internet
Archive.

I know the federal archivists have logistics and software in place to
automatically collect and archive digital content [0]. But that doesn't do
much for real-time current announcements made on Twitter or Facebook. In the
hypothetical event in which the President posts something that could
irrevocably lead to diplomatic disaster and war, it's not impossible to
imagine a tech executive, or even low-level employee, having a Vasily Arkhipov
moment and making the unilateral decision to censor/ban the president.

From the perspective of the White House and the President, of course, it's
deeply undesirable to have a main communication channel cut off, especially
during an emergency. And yet President Trump has stoked a mindset among the
public and media to see his Twitter as the direct feed of executive-level news
and decision making, without any concern that Twitter's execs have ultimate
veto power over his channel.

[0]
[https://archivesocial.com/whitehouse/](https://archivesocial.com/whitehouse/)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Arkhipov_(vice_admiral)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Arkhipov_\(vice_admiral\))

------
celticmusic
what a stupid thing to waste time thinking about. One would think the actual
declaration of war would be the interesting event here.

~~~
benj111
Ok.

X declares war on Y. Twitter takes it down so Y never sees it. Are they at
war?

~~~
dragonwriter
> X declares war on Y. [...]

> Are they at war?

Yes. Moreover, it doesn't matter, as no one declares war before initiating
hostilities anymore; since aggression has been uniformly understood to be a
crime, the only legitimate reason for waging war is is immediate, including
imminent, national or collective self-defense (including, in the latter,
implementation of UNSC resolutions pertaining to maintenance of peace and
security), which requires claiming that the other side has already initiated
war, which makes declarations superfluous. For domestic purposes, in the US,
Congress will sometimes issue what is legally, though not formally labelled, a
conditional declaration of war conditioned on executive determinations, but
those conditions tend to be an executive determination that conditions which
include (among more specific findings) a violation of UNSC conditions or acts
of aggression against the US.

~~~
benj111
I was thinking of a World War 2 scenario where the declarers didn't actually
start hostilities.

Now in an alternate universe where Germany didn't realise it was at war if it
invaded Poland, so it never invaded France. Fast forward X years on, and
France wants to sign a peace treaty (because it's embarrassing being in the EU
but at war with a fellow member, and makes Schengen complicated), but Germany
doesn't see the need because they aren't at war. Can France unilaterally
declare peace? Is Germany at war? (I suppose theres a legal and real world
answer to this)

I'm reminded of an urban legend, where Berwick on Tweed wasn't included in the
peace treaty concluding the Crimean war, therefore still technically at war
with Russia [1]. In all the tellings, a second treaty has had to be signed to
end the war, which suggests both parties need to agree.

[1] [http://www.berwickfriends.org.uk/history/berwicks-war-
with-r...](http://www.berwickfriends.org.uk/history/berwicks-war-with-russia/)

------
rabuse
Obviously not, since the account can be compromised. (Especially when it comes
to Twitter and how they handle 2-Factor)

------
cft
The quarter when Trump abandons Twitter I am going to short it. The reversal
of Twitter stock was due to Trump popularizing it.


Iron Man Movie Review - Did it Suck? - xeroteam
http://www.jaguarmarketingrevealed.com/2008/05/01/iron-man-movie-review/
Get a non-spoiler review of Iron Man. Pre-screening was in theaters on Thursday evening before the official May 2, release.
======
xirium
The Iron Man film is astounding; better than expected. It is bursting with
comedy. The visual style of the film is similar to The Dark Knight. The
gadgetry is amazing. For example, you'll love Tony Stark's multi-monitor
desktop. And I've never seen Gwyneth Paltrow looking better. I'm expecting a
sequel.

------
Tichy
Hard to believe. I don't know anything about this movie except for the poster
ads, and every time I see one of them I feel amazed at how ridiculous the
movie industry has become.

OK, a recommendation on Hacker News, that is quite something. But nah - I
think I'll still pass for the time being. Maybe if I had a 12 year old son, it
would be a different matter...

------
iamelgringo
I heard, "That was sick!" 3 times on the way out of the theater tonight.

It really was... sick.

------
wumi
was surprised at the quality of the film. very entertaining.

------
xeroteam
Yes I agree, much laughs. I've never been a fan of Paltrow, but I must say
she's lookin excellent in this movie.


2048, Wolfram Style - lelf
http://blog.wolfram.com/2014/05/09/2048/
======
b0sk
I opened this page in Chrome and a file 2048.cdf got automatically downloaded.
Hardly the best practice.

~~~
Neff
It looks like they embed the CDF at the end of the post (line 549), and Chrome
interpreted that as "let's download this file without any warning". Both
Firefox and Safari just display a "missing plugin" box.

This is most likely a chrome issue, not a Wolfram issue.

------
Chromozon
I downloaded the plugin for Firefox. The game is not registering key presses.

------
davidgerard
What's the plugin it's asking for?

~~~
daureg
On Linux it's a 577 MB download[0], which IMHO is kind of heavy to play a
HTML5 game.

[0]: [http://www.wolfram.com/cdf-player/](http://www.wolfram.com/cdf-player/)

~~~
davidgerard
Yeah ... no, I think.


The Pirate Bay Mystery - Absentinsomniac
http://thepiratebay.se/

======
Absentinsomniac
So, there's a bit of a mystery going on with thepiratebay's site. In the
source there's been various clues that have been changing over time. A couple
of folks over at reddit were working on it, but I don't think anyone has come
up with anything.

Basically, in the source, they have stuff named like:

"key lowercase" and "WeAreTPB" "aes.png" and class="pipe vi Makefile"

There also appears to be an image of an AES key on the page. And before they
allegedly had "thecluesareallthere" as one of the classes. I'd imagine there's
some kind of encrypted thing in the image or video. Maybe somebody here will
find it interesting.

~~~
tabrischen
What is the reddit link?

~~~
Absentinsomniac
New one:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/thepiratebay/comments/2rml8a/update...](https://www.reddit.com/r/thepiratebay/comments/2rml8a/updated_again/)

Older one:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/thepiratebay/comments/2q23mm/the_ke...](https://www.reddit.com/r/thepiratebay/comments/2q23mm/the_key_is_an_aes_key/)


Attention loss feared as high-tech rewires brain - fogus
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/11/15/BUNI1AB1G2.DTL&feed=rss.technology
======
jswinghammer
I think people have longer attention spans now. Watch "The Wire" which is by
any definition complicated and requiring a huge attention span. Now compare it
to "Dallas" which at the time was considered to be too complicated for many
people to follow. "The Wire" is certainly far more complicated and hard to
follow. I recall watching a whole season and not knowing the names of some
major characters because I just didn't have the space to store that
information.

These sort of articles get written all the time too. It just seems like it's
trying to appeal to an older audience who doesn't understand new technology.
I'd imagine more and more newspaper readers are falling into this category.

~~~
gojomo
I think you're confusing two different (albeit related) axes.

TV is more complex _because_ attention spans are shorter: they need to pack
more twists (and more, shorter scenes) into the same amount of time to keep
the attention-addled from switching channels.

~~~
jswinghammer
I don't see more twists these days in the shows I'm talking about. I see shows
dumping tons of information on you and making you deal with it and store it in
order to keep up. Have you watched "Lost" or "The Wire" or "The Sopranos"?

~~~
gojomo
Yes "Lost", a little "The Wire", yes "The Sopranos".

If the info is essential to "keep up" -- that is, it wasn't completely
predicted by the earlier trajectory of the show, and it's not easily ignorable
as subsidiary to the main plot -- then it is a "twist", in my meaning.

The shows you mention use multiple overlapping story arcs -- some for just the
current show, some for several episodes, some for the season, some for the
entire run -- in order to _fight_ short attention spans. There's something for
everyone, including lots of short cuts between simultaneous (or flashback)
story lines, to keep the pace of "reveals" sufficient for even fidgety,
clicker-happy viewers.

------
mattyfo
I stopped reading after the quote: "If our attention span constricts to the
point where we can only take information in 140-character sentences, then that
doesn't bode too well for our future,"

This seems like a predictable 'woe is technology & future' article.

Yes we use shorter messages and the way we write is different but if that's a
problem for you then take a day off and go hike in the woods; it will do your
mind wonders.

~~~
nazgulnarsil
but even if any specific alarm is overblown, there is a legitimacy to the fear
that the ways we're hacking our brains will ultimately result in a net loss.

"what are you doing? you haven't answered your phone for 2 days!"

"playing this game where I have to collect waddels"

"what's a waddel?"

"I don't know but I'm ranked #3 on the server"

~~~
mattyfo
I agree, we may be doing things to our brains that are irreversible but I also
believe that it's something that we can control and manage.

I used to be an obsessive everquest player but am not anymore because I
realized how unhealthy it is. Albeit, that's one small anecdote.

I think the real takeaway here, and I can't say if this article addressed it
(because I refuse to read this) is that we as conscious beings have to take
time to be self-aware and regulate our activities in a healthy way.

IE Eat your fruits and veggies, exercise, don't smoke, wear seatbelts, don't
watch too much TV, spend a limited amount of time on computers, get outside,
meditate, play music or draw, explore, expand and be creative and don't read
too many alarmist articles.

~~~
azm
" (because I refuse to read this) "

At the risk of getting down-voted on my first comment:

I am sorry, how can you comment on an article about the possibility of
acquiring some form of ADD and attempt to provide a potential solution without
actually reading the article. Perhaps the author is actually correct,
especially considering the size of your response and the actual content.

Just because something does not agree with your outlook does not necessarily
mean that it is incorrect or invalid. Try reading some of those types of
things. You would be surprised how refreshing, entertaining or enlightening
they are.

A

------
Freebytes
I have known this is the case for a long time; however, it stems back much
farther than simply during the age of the Internet. Ever since the ability to
write, mankind has been changing the way thought it processed, memories are
stored, and information is ignored.

------
eli
Our brains are constantly being "rewired" by everything we do... So?

This is just like the silly, "Is google making us stupid?" article in The
Atlantic over the summer. (Hint: if a news magazine has a question headline,
the answer is usually "no.")

------
gabeybaby
The article itself actually makes a decent example. With four headers (the
title header and the three sub-headers) the article is more digestible and
rewarding to read since you finished four sections instead of one article. The
article and this <http://xkcd.com/597/> comic make a good point. I feel myself
constantly distracted by news feeds and automatic updates to the point where
starting and sticking with project becomes difficult. Compare this to society
before radio where people had ample amount of time to create personal works
simply because they had a lack of things to do. So in a way we're culling some
of our deeper culture and ability to ruminate deeply. Yet at the same modern
society is creating a whole new information architecture. With all these
efficiencies we've created, society has been able to create a vast amount of
wealth that wasn't possible before. That wealth can be used to create that
deeper culture or those more sophisticate inventions; however, when bits of
information can only exist in small containers will we be able to continue the
progression. After all, the recently posted Eco article demands that "Culture
isn't knowing when Napoleon died. Culture means knowing how I can find out in
two minutes."

We'll have all the pieces, but will we still have the conceptual framework to
mold new ideas. Will capitalism be enough to stave off these ill effects? With
increased filtering and data relationship tools capitalism may be enough to
push over the plateau of stupidity this article is foretelling.

~~~
gabeybaby
After reading Atwood's "Parsing Html The Cthulhu Way" article
(<http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001311.html>), I'd like to add one
more thought after reading the following section. "What we have here is an
ongoing education problem. The real enemy isn't regular expressions (or, for
that matter, goto), but ignorance. The only crime being perpetrated is not
knowing what the alternatives are. "

The article is lamenting a possible loss of knowledge over the accumulation of
information where knowledge is the obvious preference. And I think that's the
point I was originally trying to make with the "before radio" comment. People
had less information to work with and yet possibly KNEW more with respect to
the amount of information they had available to them.

------
BigZaphod
I wish I was joking, but I seriously read to the word "high-tech" in the title
and my mind started drifting.


Bigger does not mean faster - raganwald
http://daringfireball.net/linked/2008/08/13/snell
======
cconstantine
I've worked in one growing small company, and one internet giant. From my
limited experience I've noticed that as companies get bigger:

\- they gain engineering throughput. Given enough time more stuff gets done in
the larger company.

\- they gain latency. It takes longer to get a single feature out.

\- they lose creativity. Solutions tend to get more boring, and exciting new
things get swept under the rug. Powerful levers that allow single developers
to be highly effective become frowned upon.

The key things appears to be the way a simple question is answered: "We need
to implement X and there are two ways; the risky design that requires a small
number of developers, and the safe way that requires a large number of
developers. Which design should we chose?"

Every manager I've ever worked with wants to chose the safe route because it's
safe, but only those in large companies can afford the number of engineers.

------
pongle
I had two thoughts when reading this: 1) Mythical Man Month... 2) If I was
Apple would I have released the SDK with iPhone 1.0? Probably not. iPods
became a market leader without a killer (externally developed) app. Why spend
the effort to package-up the SDK, when it's not going to be key to your
offering?


SQL Pie Chart - fuzzix
http://code.openark.org/blog/mysql/sql-pie-chart

======
crazygringo
"...conclude with what, I hope you'll agree, are real-world, useful usage
samples."

I can't tell if the author just has incredibly dry humor and this whole thing
is a joke... or actually believes this is useful?

It's probably the most convoluted use of SQL I've ever seen, but I guess it's
kind of impressive that it's possible...