Freeing the Web from the Browser - <AUTHOR> https://www.reinterpretcast.com/open-hypermedia <comment><USER2> While this is somewhat cool, I have a few comments:

> The Web is, without a doubt, the most powerful research tool currently > available to man. No longer must researchers comb through endless indices > and catalogues to find what they are looking for.

True, but most people aren't researchers. Heck, I think most people don't even know what indices are :)

> The vast majority of those interested in a piece of work are merely readers, > unable to contribute, only to consume.

Guess what, most people, 99% of the time, "consume".

> Billions across the globe rely on the Web to enhance their intellectual > capabilities on a daily basis, building understanding through its rich mesh > of connections.

Not really, billions across the globe check out funny cat pics, play games, watch you-know-what, etc. :)

Anyway, what I'm saying is: it's a nice vision of the world and the web, but that's not what the world mostly is. Good luck with it, but don't expect that a super contributor-friendly media will turn the vast majority of people into constant contributors.

<comment><AUTHOR> I largely agree. I'm very much coming at this from the angle of 'knowledge work', and think a system of this kind is most useful to (though definitely not only useful to!) scientists, engineers, designers, lawyers, journalists, etc. While the population of knowledge workers is admittedly much smaller than the population on the whole, though, it's still sizable. Knowledge workers play an incredibly important role in our society, and anything that can amplify their intellectual capabilities is well worthwhile in my view.

<comment><USER3> If the target audience is knowledge workers then this is a nice step in a better direction. Bear in mind, though, that the goal of a knowledge worker is to understand content so the focus of any such project probably shouldn't be on enhancing the manifestation of graph theory on the web and rather on the methods of education available.

Focus on how the content is presented to the user rather than the connections between content, because at the end of the day it's the content I care about and not the connections.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I would love a web where you can comment with your forum circle on any URI available on internet.

Eg. I open some research paper and I click "comments" in web browsers. And I see comments from /r/machinelearning, hackernews etc. Also real time chat would be awesome to have for each of websites.

Nowadays it work for me like this - found something interesting X - type "X site:myforum" in google to learn more about it

Found a bug, typo, wanna contribute related resource - need to go to github, email author etc. - can't just open "comment" on page without comments and contribute :(

I think such structure of internet as we have right now relies on google/search engines too much when it could be much better organised.

<comment><USER5> That could erase forum-ness of people and turn comments into a big heap of voices. Personally I wouldn't like my forums if they were just a random people hanging around. Moderators and implicit rules do form what a forum is, _what you do on it_ , but with "just comments on URI" all will be lost. While your wish feels great, it has downsides, since as an entire humanity we're still not ready to discuss anything.

<comment><USER6> Just seems like a downgrade to posting it on said forum.

For example, now you need a UI that enumerates the articles that have comments on them. Maybe new comments even bump to the top. Starts to sound like a regular forum but with a small gimmick to me. There's a reason this never caught on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This looked interesting, so I started reading the author's dissertation, but I've been sidetracked/put-off by its overbearing copyright statement.

        This copy of the dissertation has been supplied on
        condition that anyone who consults it is understood to
        recognise that its copyright rests with its author and
        that no quotation from the dissertation and no
        information derived from it may be published without
        the prior written consent of the author.

At least in the US, the fair use clause under the copyright law allows for limited quotes/excerpts w/o asking permission.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about this! It was a stock copyright clause provided by my university. I'll look into getting it removed, and in the mean time am perfectly happy for you to use the work (with proper attribution) as you see fit.

EDIT: The problematic clause in question has now been removed.

<comment><USER7> Nicely done! Thanks for being so responsive!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> We almost got there with Pingbacks being the first step. Then they devolved into meaningless spam. Without a system of manual curation, it's impossible to build something where _everyone_ contributes. Spam scales easily, and moderation and curation does not. A thousand good links buried under a million spam links don't add any value.

And we can talk about reputation and proof of stake systems until we're blue in the face, but so far, nothing exists that actually works. If it did, we'd already be using it.

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h I never understood that; PoW seems like not merely an elegant solution, but a simple one. What am I missing?

<comment><USER9> My gut sense is that proof-of-work as a spam deterrent can _improve_ the signal-to-noise ratio, but won't bring it up to an acceptable level.

Say you have a simple proof-of-work protecting some action (posting a comment, voting up/down a story, etc.), and you have its difficulty tuned to allow a median-productivity human on a typical desktop computer to do that action at their typical rate.

A spambot doesn't need to sleep, take days off, and can get illicit access to much more computing power than any one human.

It _would_ probably shift spamming activities to focus on more central, high- value venues, though. hmm.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Surprised nobody has mentioned HyperCard - [https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/05/25-years-of- hypercar...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/05/25-years-of-hypercard- the-missing-link-to-the-web/)

There was a very compelling vision for the web, by Doug Engelbart and others in the 60's and 70's. Unfortunately, because of the computing culture's attitude of forgetting even the recent history / understanding what foundational work was done (like real scientific fields do!), the web folks didn't have a lot that context.

Alan Kay, in many of his talks, has discussed how the browser should really be more like an operating system kernel. The web is a mess and we can still build interesting things with lots of hacking & engineering, but it's fallen short of the original vision. And now we're locked into the tooling we've built.

<comment><USER11> WebAssembly may eventually get us closer to that vision.

<comment><USER10> WebAssembly will no doubt give us more freedom, but still has a lot of constraints. Also, it's fundamentally a hack built on top of the browser ecosystem, not replacing browsers entirely!

<comment><USER12> I hadn't heard of Hypecard so I watched the video on it here [http://www.openculture.com/2017/08/apples-hypercard- software...](http://www.openculture.com/2017/08/apples-hypercard-software-the- innovative-1980s-precursor-to-hypertext-now-made-available-by-archive- org.html)

I seemed kind of cool but doesn't do much you can't do with webpages and javascript. Its scripting language seemed much easier to do some things with than javascript though. I kind of imagine WebAssembly will go the other way and make things more complicated.

<comment><USER13> > I seemed kind of cool but doesn't do much you can't do with webpages and > javascript. Its scripting language seemed much easier to do some things with > than javascript though.

In our current developer culture we tend to view things less holistically and more in terms of this-or-that language or system. Hypercard (which was composed of both the visual system and Hypertalk) was one holistic system that fit extremely well with personal computing of the early to mid 90s (which is why recreations of Hypercard on today's machine miss the point).

This was a completely different view of personal computing, one that sought to reduce the chasm between "developer/programmer" and "user". Hypercard allowed authoring in the computing medium, and did so by permitting users take advantage of what was new about computing as opposed to other older media. In fact, they were called "authors" and there were thousand of them — most of them weren't professional programmers.

There is a lot that hypercard could do that the modern web cannot. I cannot copy and paste a button — retaining all of its internal functionality in a different context — from one web page to my own (at least not without a lot of trouble). This was the de facto way to get started in Hypercard.

Hypertalk is another interesting part of bridging the divide. It is difficult for entrenched programmers to reckon with because it's more like natural English and (unlike most programming languages) is easier to read than it is to write. But for regular people it makes sense.

Final point: everything good about computing is about metaphors. Hypercard had one of the best metaphors since spreadsheets: the concept of stacks, cards, and objects on cards. That's all there was and it was easy to understand how these pieces interact. The web does not have anything like this for its "authors" because it is inherently unfriendly to them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> _Most saddening, perhaps, is the way in which the Web constrains the use of links. For example: although the link is the primary form of reference on the Web, underpinning the tangle of connections that make the system so useful, the ability to create new links is a privilege granted only to content producers. The vast majority of those interested in a piece of work are merely readers, unable to contribute, only to consume._

The sad part is, we already have the technical infrastructure in place to support those user contributions - it's the Comments section of any blog- shaped site.

So called "Web 2.0" was all about readers contributing feedback to whichever content was being published through a channel. But the shape it took was not the original hypermedia vision, but a conversation of loosely related comments that could potentially go off-topic.

To support the annotation feature described in the article, it would just require that common web platforms allowed their current comment systems to attach comments to paragraphs in the article, and show these comments as side notes. Current moderation functions could be used to separate the wheat from the chaff. But it would require readers to adapt and learn to tap this resource to its fullest potential.

<comment><USER15> " it's the Comments section of any blog-shaped site."

Something I never read on any site. It's just pure racism/muppets talking shit. If there were a plugin to block them I'd use it; I feel dirty even knowing they're down there. L

<comment><USER14> You're reading the comments section of a website right now.

Places like Ars Technica or Stack Exchange have a healthy environment in the comments section, so it can be done.

<comment><USER15> This site works because of the small numbers of people who are educated and there's sensible moderation.

<comment><USER14> Yes, precisely.

So, it can be done.

<comment><USER15> So what? I should start reading Nazi's comments on other sites now?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Great to see those ideas discussed! It is a little strange, however, that Ted Nelsons ideas around Xanadu and its link representations aren't even mentioned.

[https://youtu.be/hMKy52Intac?t=1m44s](https://youtu.be/hMKy52Intac?t=1m44s)

<comment><USER17> Check the full dissertation, they are.

[https://www.reinterpretcast.com/pdfs/savage-j- dissertation-2...](https://www.reinterpretcast.com/pdfs/savage-j- dissertation-2018-05.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Didn't Google used to have a project that allowed readers to annotate the web?

If I understand it correctly, it sounds like the author wants something similar only categorised by field of expertise instead of being a free for all (and not owned by one company). This would require some kind of moderation, in one form or anther.

 _EDIT_ : Wikipedia says I was most likely thing of Sidewiki, which wasn't actually a wiki: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Sidewiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Sidewiki)

<comment><USER18> Another thing my search brought up was Hypothesis[0] which sounds almost but perhaps not quite what the author describes.

[0] [https://web.hypothes.is/](https://web.hypothes.is/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> >One could imagine a system in which multiple sets of links could be associated with a single resource to accommodate this, allowing for a range of different viewpoints on how things are connected.

You can kind of do it yourself by quoting the thing in a public comment eg "Freeing the Web from the Browser" [https://www.reinterpretcast.com/open- hypermedia](https://www.reinterpretcast.com/open-hypermedia)

and then saying it reminds me of whatever eg. the semantic web [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_Web](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_Web) a bit

Then anyone gooling the title may come across stuff like this.

</comment><comment><USER19> Although this talks about freeing the web from a browser, this seems like a pretty good case for a augmenting the browser experience. The first thing being a browser plugin that ignores all links (which is probably a good default for anyone interested in reading an article and not getting distracted), then it just allows a layer on top for highlighting sections creating your own links. I expect this probably already exists.

I think firefox's reading mode should have an option to turn off links.

The missing step here is connecting to other programs, but this is a first step.

<comment><AUTHOR> Author here. It's definitely true that extending existing browsers is the fastest route to this kind of behaviour (though it's not clear to me if it's the best route). In fact, if you squint a bit (or maybe a lot), it could be argued that with application-specific URL schemes we kind-of sort-of already have the primitives we need to make something like this work.

Practically, though, if you want the multi-program side of this (which is kind of orthogonal to the 'multiple perspectives on how things are connected' side), then to make this kind of multi-window hypermedia system usable I think you need to have deep integration with the window manager. While Chrome OS tries to achieve this kind of integration by making the browser the OS, I propose that the best way forward here is to effectively make the OS the browser, as I discuss in the article. (Of course I'm not talking about the kernel when I say 'OS' here, but the desktop environment). At that point, I'd say the browser is different enough to the browsers of today that the description of 'freeing the Web from the browser' is still accurate.

<comment><USER19> Thanks for the reply! It's a really interesting piece of research. Yes, you're quite right, the browser alone can't interact between all the programs, I was purely thinking of low hanging fruit for the browser plugin.

I watched a Google interview with Douglas Engelbart [0] where people asked him a couple of times if Wikipedia was what he'd envisioned for hypertext, he was very polite about it and said it "was a good start", but he'd clearly wished that we'd got much further by now.

What you're suggesting is definitely a step forward.

[0]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQx- tuW9A4Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQx-tuW9A4Q)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The problem I think is that most sites and businesses would be up in arms over this idea. FB wants to have links pointing to other FB pages. Many websites do a lot to prevent user from leaving. How do you plan to overcome this?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good point, and not one that I've considered particularly deeply to be honest. (I'd love to hear other people's point of view on the topic!) I guess in many ways the situation is similar to that around adblock. Ultimately, the links that are overlaid on a particular page should be solely and completely under the control of the user. If the technology that everyone is using permits this kind of behaviour, I'm not sure companies have much choice in the matter.

<comment><USER21> > _If the technology that everyone is using permits this kind of behaviour, I > 'm not sure companies have much choice in the matter._

The technology _used to_ permit this; the current trends go against this direction. I'm of course referring to JS-rendered content and SPAs. I imagine, were your idea deployed, most of the time would be spent on fixing broken links and link anchor points.

I support the goal you're trying to achieve. But between greedy publishers and their ToS and JavaScript infecting everything like a pathogen, I fear that we'll have to spin up an alternative Internet for knowledge work. That Internet would be reader-friendly (both human and machine kind) and much more static.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Most documents are linked regarding the topic. If you go on a math page, you've got math links. Ancient and holy texts could be referenced in multiple ways, because it could be interpreted in multiple ways (or the correct way is unknown), but not something like guides. If a guide is written in more than one meaning, it is not a good guide. Learning should be more seen like a tree, you go down the route of branches and specialize more in the directions of it and the branches lead the references. At the beginning you learn the language, later you know it, otherwise every word needs to be linked.

<comment><USER23> The simplest counter-example is Wikipedia. Most links on any page could lead to generic term definitions, or they could link to explanations of how those terms work withing the context of the page.

I.e. a link to "synthesizers" on a page about FM synthesis could lead to a generic article on synthesizers, or to a list of FM synthesizers released up to date.

And that's just the most obvious example. Having different "linking contexts" would allow to add more links without turning the original document into a mess.

Again, using Wikipedia as an example, you could add another "context" to the page by linking various paragraphs to citations. That would be much more user- friendly than what they do right now with bracketed numbers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Great article, thanks for sharing. Of relevance here is TiddlyWiki (www.tiddlywiki.com), a personal note taking tool, that includes some of the salient features, like transclusion and user-generated linking, mentioned in the article. In addition, the approach supports a built-in programming capability to allow computation on content (e.g., dynamic filtering and content generation) and extension via plugins. All information (content and Javascript code) is within a single html document.

</comment><comment><USER25> Joe: some god thoughts, and ideas I'm seeing from several quartersv and have been thinking about myself.

I'd also like to see a tool that's useful for research, a _readers '_ ans _writers '_ Web, not merely a consumers' funnel.

I've been lookingat the history of the Web and information in general (guilty pleasure: [http://www.historyofinformation.com/index.php](http://www.historyofinformation.com/index.php)). Bush, Nelson, TBL. Early browser history, especially Viola, an entire system: [http://www.viola.org](http://www.viola.org) . Plan 9's 9p and /net: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_9_from_Bell_Labs#/net](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_9_from_Bell_Labs#/net) .

I'm thinkinking or possibly presenting the Web as a filesystem, or other forms not typical of contemporary browsers:

[https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/6bgowu/what_if...](https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/6bgowu/what_if_the_web_was_filesystemaccessible/)

And I've a long list of concerns, largely referenced in the last link above.

Taking a look at your doc.

</comment><comment><USER26> Comments and feedback won't work for a site with a lot of readers or viewers, they don't scale. If just 20k people read your post, and one-quarter of them comment, you'll be flooded and not able to find anything meaningful. I'm already following some YT channels where the creator(s) has stated, "we can't read the comments, requests here are ignored."

<comment><USER5> YT comments simply suck in any area. Creators can't make polls, sorting seems random, upvoting has no filters like funny/insightful at least. Moderation seems to not exist at all. No groups, no sections (those 4-5 in sidebar do not count). It is worst implementation of all possible, and YT does nothing to fix it for decades. They have time to make "material designs" though. If you imagine that videos are just OPs in a forum, you'll see how crappy it is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I had to stop reading after a few paragraphs. His assertion that linking belongs to "content producers" is ludicrous. Those content producers have given users the tools to do linking themselves, and they express themselves in a variety of ways over a variety of mediums.

You need to learn how to write to express yourself with written word, yet how many people do we here harping on how difficult it is to learn language?

At some point we can draw a line and say, "if you want these abilities you need to learn these things". We did so with literacy, with driving, and with so many professional trades. We can do so with basic internet literacy.

<comment><USER28> > Those content producers have given users the tools to do linking themselves, > and they express themselves in a variety of ways over a variety of mediums.

? How can I link to, say, a quote in that article that offends you? I can't. How can I link to a youtube video and add my own commentary links? I can't (I think) without creating my own video that explicitly copies the original (rather than consuming it).

> You need to learn how to write to express yourself with written word, yet > how many people do we here harping on how difficult it is to learn language?

I definitely wish people took the time to work on that skill instead of assuming it's both automatic and that their level is adequate. Nonetheless, this doesn't seem related to the point of the article - not that linking is HARD, but that, outside of whatever the creator enabled, all we get are top level URLs.

<comment><USER29> > How can I link to a youtube video and add my own commentary links? I can't > (I think) without creating my own video that explicitly copies the original > (rather than consuming it).

You can write a blog post and embed the video with timing information.

Of course embedding is largely the same as transclusion, among the features touched upon by open hypermedia.

While you don't get full expressivity without a blog or something that allows full HTML, you can get most of this in other mediums (e.g., Twitter) where the video is embedded automatically given a link. In theory OEmbed ([https://oembed.com/](https://oembed.com/)) is a standard for something like transclusion, though it's not very widely supported.

Constructing a link to a point in time in a video is a non-standard operation (you just have to know the YouTube interface). Similarly there aren't great patterns for finding a link to a position in a web page. But the pieces are all kind of there, though missing the controls and patterns to bring them together. Which is a failing of browsers, though that points in the opposite direction of the claim in the title of this piece (i.e., it implies to me that we need browsers to go deeper, not increase the breadth of linked applications).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I don't get what the actual problem is and how todays technology is limiting anyone to create something like a link-sharing (e.g. reddit) or link-redirect (hello url shorteners). Of course, if you need control over the content, then you have to build a content management platform, too (centralised or decentralised does not matter). But then you deal with boring copyright and other legal stuff.

And hey, browsers do allow extensions nowadays. And if that's not enough, build your own.

</comment><comment><USER31> This smells a lot like Xanadu.

<comment><USER32> Saved you a click: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Xanadu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Xanadu)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Super small feedback, you should put the video at the top of your post.

I really dig the commentary btw, maybe its the english sounding voice :)

</comment><comment><USER34> It would be awesome if they have social media plugin which µigrates all posts from other platforms into mastadon.

</comment><comment><USER35> There used to be a browser plugin that allowed users of the plugin to register comments on parts of web pages.

In general I like the idea behind the article, of enriching content by allowing readers to add links, but in practice this opens the door for spammers.

</comment><comment><USER36> For those who are on mobile:

[https://www.outline.com/hvF3cS](https://www.outline.com/hvF3cS)

</comment><comment><USER37> did i miss something or does this article COMPLETELY ignore the amazing possibility for abuse this opens up?

Now any a-hole can make a public link in your page (or whatever future form that takes)? Nah, no way _that_ could go wrong. The word "abuse" appears literally zero times in the 200 page pdf.

<comment><USER38> This is exactly where my mind went, the amount of spam even small time bloggers have to contend with in their comment sections is astounding, now imagine if every page on the internet had a comment section and no filtering, or moderation.... Even today youtube comments suck because of the near total lack of moderation.

Even sites like this one or the verge with paid and volunteer moderators who in theory monitor things 24/7 I still see useless spam. I'm not even talking about individual people with opinions some might find offensive, I mean just outright spam advertising.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> "Different people have different perspectives on how information should be connected, so why do we not allow these range of perspectives to be represented and shared digitally? Why limit ourselves to just one point of view?

...

Why re-create code editors, simulators, spreadsheets, and more in the browser when we already have native programs much better suited to these tasks?"

The title is something I contemplated and began to address long ago, only on a personal level.

With respect to the first question, perhaps this goes to the poor mechanism promoted by Google, to rank the www's contents by "popularity".

This mechanism obviously succeeds for purposes of measuring _www user_ opinion and _selling advertising_ (the later not anticipated by the founders in the early years). However it falls short in the non-commercial context, e.g., the academic setting out of which the company grew. Anyone remember "Knol"?

Today Google search (and probably others seeking to emulate its commercial success) intentionally promote a pattern of usage of their cache/database where its users never reach "page 2" of search results. The company has built their ad sales business on the idea that _one_ perspective ("the top search result") should not only prevail but also that, optimally, other results need not even be considered. It should be obvious that in a _non-commercial research_ context, this is not optimal.

If the www is 100% commercial then of course this is not an issue. But "the www" is difficult to define. All httpd's on any accessible network? All httpd's listening on accessible addresses with corresponding ICANN-registered domainnames? All pages crawled by a commercial bot, deposited in a commercial www cache and made accessible to the public? And so on. In any event, if users only view the www's supposed contents through the lense of a commercial entity, the perception of what the www actually comprises may be manipulated in a way that suits commercial interests, e.g. the sale of advertising.

As to the second question, when given the choice I do not use a popular web browser. The author mentions the utility of "native programs". I would prefer the term "dedicated programs". Programs that perform essentially one task, or "do one thing". Whether such programs can perform their dedicated tasks better than an omnibus-styled program that performs many, varied tasks is a question for the user to decide. For example, the author answers that native programs are "better suited" than the web browser.

The "web browser" has become a conglomeration of once dedicated programs.

There are such dedicated programs for making TCP connections over which HTTP commands can be sent and www content retrieved. This is a task that web browsers can perform, although some users may prefer a dedicated program. In this way content retrieval can be separated from content consumption, alleviating many of the www annoyances such as user tracking, manipulation and advertising.

</comment><comment><USER40> Select text, right click, search with google, job done....

</comment><comment><USER29> We do have a way to create links between two documents without editing either document: create a new document that links to both documents. This is a normal, though informal, activity.

And of course simply linking two documents together isn't that useful, you have to say WHY they are linked. I.e., the semantic triple ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_triple](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_triple)) of subject–predicate–object, or maybe more informally you are simply saying X relates to Y because of Z, where Z is akin to the predicate.

Currently in HTML hypertext we're stuffing Z into the link text, which sometimes works nicely and sometimes works very poorly. But in an external document you have all the space you want to explain the relation between the documents.

Obviously there's lots of shortcomings of adding a new document to the web to explain every relation between existing documents. But I think it's a good starting point. We're missing things like:

1\. Reliable deep linking to documents. We have ids, YouTube timestamps, etc., but finding these is an ad hoc process and they aren't always available.

2\. Widespread transclusion tools. We actually have some now, in the form of link previews or OEmbed. When you post a link in a comment or post on Twitter or Facebook, they effectively transclude the link into the document. Not fully interactive, but it might be a better balance between linking and viewing than traditional/literal transclusion.

3\. Discovery of these annotations or commentary. There's a hard CS problem here, to maintain privacy while also trying to find serendipitous results. Maybe it involves pre-loading lists of documents from the locations you want to "discover" from. Maybe it requires some understanding of privacy levels, or whether content is personalized or public. Or we use the technique we have now: lead with commentary, with no attempt to discover it after the fact. I.e., I know there are comments on [https://www.reinterpretcast.com/open- hypermedia](https://www.reinterpretcast.com/open-hypermedia) at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17690865](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17690865) because I found the document on [https://news.ycombinator.com/news](https://news.ycombinator.com/news) – is serendipity even a thing in a place as large as the web?

4\. Maybe publishing tools... do I want to post a Tweet to describe every relation I see? But maybe I do, because even if organic discovery is possible I probably also want to publish a feed of my own annotations, and I want to be part of a community of people doing this, and Twitter is a reasonable example of this.

5\. Some sort of representation of these links when they've been found. Even without fancy discovery this is necessary. Right now if I click on a link from a post like: "OMG this is the stupidest argument ever: [http://example.com/some-stupid-document"](http://example.com/some-stupid- document") it will look like any other page I've opened. Only if I remember well why I clicked on the link will I understand that I've been offered something with derision. The browser has to do something here, all it has currently is the back button to understand why you've gotten somewhere (and that doesn't even work consistently in these cases).

</comment><comment><USER41> oh boy it's the semantic web all over again. it's appalling the lack of citations of the copious corpus that exists and the fact that it's never named for what it is.

"what is really lacking — in my view — is research considering the human factors at play"

there you go, if someone is interested in the topic, some citation back from 2005 which should be enough to find more references and research [http://kmr.nada.kth.se/papers/SemanticWeb/HSW.pdf](http://kmr.nada.kth.se/papers/SemanticWeb/HSW.pdf) (they even have a workable concept browser, go figure)

<comment><AUTHOR> To be clear, I'm familiar with the semantic Web and did a reasonable chunk of reading about it when doing this research, but view it as only tangentially related to the ideas I talk about here. If you're looking for citations around this work, check the full dissertation — there are plenty.

<comment><USER42> Thanks. It's not clear in the article that this is based on another work. Can you provide a link? Reading the article I too thought linked data was noticeably absent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> One way would be to create a browser/portal(combo) that only indexes webgl/wasm apps for example. and you could still visit the info page about that app via a normal browser but would have to install the specific browser.

the irony is that walled garden might have a valid use case (not to wall from a vendor, but to wall us from old tech)

<comment><USER44> Sounds like we can achieve this with a browser plugin, not sure we need a whole new web just yet:)

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Every year for the last 25 or 30 I see this kind of thinking about "information processing" show up.

What it represents, is a gigantic failure of computer science departments world wide not connecting their theories of information with the department of education's theories of information.

Most techies who mentally masturbate about how information should be organized and optimally consumed to maximize the production of good outcomes have never heard of the word pedagogy.

Without understanding that complex topic, they spend their time busy producing articles and collecting them in libraries that only they can navigate. They do this scratching their head wondering why it isn't creating global enlightenment. Ever stuck in some fools quest for a better magical library that will inject wisdom automatically into their heads.

After they hear of pedagogy and after they read a couple of text books on how to turn a first grader into a tenth grader they finally understand the difference between a library and school. They then proceed to think up ways of converting the web (a library) into a school. Most of the time not even fully aware what they are attempting.

And thats why it always fails. Schools have already been invented. They already exist. They are constantly evolving. And they will always be better than a library at producing information processing in the human mind. Every first grader knows not to walk into a tenth grade class room and try to solve the problem on the board there. Now step back and take a moment to think about why that automatically doesn't happen on the web? And what the consequences are of first grader constantly exposed to problems of all sorts of grade levels without any indicator of grade or path to that grade. Naturally these first graders get it into their head there is something very wrong with the web.

If you want to "improve the web" understand pedagogy.</comment>


A simpler and cleaner programming language than JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/rsms/move#readme <comment><USER2> Submitted and discussed here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2215784></comment>


Eve V slays the Surface Pro 4 on specs – and is this week's killer crowdfunder - <AUTHOR> http://www.trustedreviews.com/opinions/eve-v-slays-the-surface-on-specs-and-is-our-crowdfunded-project-of-the-week <comment><USER2> Eve is a great Company, really paying attention to what the crowd wants!!! Cant wait to try the new Eve V!

<comment><USER3> Nothing more to say</comment></comment>


Apple begins exports from India as Foxconn starts making iPhone XR - <AUTHOR> https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/apple-begins-exports-from-india-as-foxconn-starts-making-iphone-xr/articleshow/72227591.cms <comment><USER2> US-China trade war will further benefit India. But it looks like they are moving towards a settlement.</comment>


Growl's response to Notification Center - <AUTHOR> http://growl.posterous.com/growls-response-to-notification-center-welcom <comment><USER2> What would be awesome is if Growl adopts the following strategy:

(1) Seamlessly integrate growl into iOS notification center, function more as a transport layer and delegate UI to Notification center if present. Use it's own UI if not. (2) Allow growl to be paid for by the end user as a standalone app (3) Allow a limited version of growl to be bundled with apps with a discounted rate for app developers. This version would be limited to notifications for that app only, but would only cost that developer something like $0.10 per license.

Basically adopt a strategy that doesn't require users to have to buy and install Growl to get notifications in non AppStore apps. Let the developers who want notification support choose to handle distribution of growl inside their app and pay the license cost. Notifications are such an important part of engagement, that I'm sure there is a market opportunity in charging the app developers instead of end users.

<comment> X-Istence Developers can already use Growl in their app without the user having installed Growl and notifications will work as required.

At least that seemed to have been the case with apps using Growl because I still see notifications but don't have Growl installed since they went paid.

<comment><USER2> But don't you need to have the previous version of growl installed or be using the Snow Leopard version?

I was under the impression that a user on Lion or later, would not have access to growl without paying for it. I'm specifically talking about the use case, where one of your users isn't already a savvy current growl user, but just a regular joe that is unlikely to have ever installed growl. In other words, the use case where the kind of person using your app will miss out on notifications because they don't know better and won't install a third party notification tool.

<comment> X-Istence I have a completely clean environment without Growl installed at all. Apps that use Growl still notify me, I just don't have a way to change the frequency or anything like that unless they give me a preferences menu inside of the app.

<comment><USER2> Did not know that. However do those notifications persist so you can review and dismiss them later, like with the notification center on iOS and how it is going to be on Mountain Lion? Or do you you have to notice the notification at the moment it is emitted?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Tangential, but is there an easy way to get growl to stop advertising its new paid version every day, without paying?

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure if you can, but that behavior was annoying enough to turn me off from buying the App Store version entirely.

A gentle reminder is good enough, and might induce me to pay for the new paid version. However, if you take an app which used to be free, and then nag me constantly because you decided to make a non-free version of it one fine day is annoying.</comment></comment>


Forebruary, an endless wall calendar - <AUTHOR> http://ilyabirman.net/projects/forebruary/

<comment><USER3> If we had 13 months, all of them would have exactly 28 days. We would need and extra day in order to complete 365 days, but we could make it a special case (the first day of the year, for instance) not belonging to any month or week. Then all months would be alike, every 1st, 8th, 15th, etc, would be a Sunday, and so on. We would never need a calendar again.

<comment><USER4> Is the existing system really that broken, though? It's a pain, but it works. People know it.

The pain of moving to a new calendar system would be considerably bigger than the pain of dealing with the current system.

<comment><USER5> Would it really be a big pain? It's not like you have memorized the calendar. You always look it up, you will just be looking it up in a new system (or not needing to look it up as it's a logical system).

<comment><USER6> People tend to write date code themselves, no matter how many times we tell them not to.

There have been leap year bugs in everything from Zune to Windows Phone 8 to iPhone/iOS.

This, in spite of legions of CS professors trying to get it into people's heads that they should be using libraries (once, of course, they have verified that said library is accurate).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I actually have a keychain just like this, I was always surprised it never caught on as much as it could have because they're extremely useful.

[http://keychainarchives.com/image/56257326138](http://keychainarchives.com/image/56257326138)

EDIT: This keychain is also very old, 70s to early 80s

<comment><USER8> Glad someone still knows about those things, and they are indeed useful. My parents have a few of these in their house, although there's are bigger and made for desktops. The OP's is basically a paper version of what my parents had for years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Cool, but it seems you need to remember how many days are in the current month yes? It always shows a full 31 days.

<comment><USER10> Yes. This will make it confusing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Yeah that's brilliant, and it looks pretty great. This would probably make the whole thing much more complicated but it'd be nice if the "unused" days were invisible, and I agree that the name is a bit awkward. Beyond that though, awesome.

<comment><USER12> This could be done by printing the calendar on a strip of paper/fabric, then sticking the ends together to make a continuous loop around two vertical rollers.

This would also have the effect of making the calendar less wide, so that it took us less wall space, at the cost of making it thicker.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This little bit of snark gave me a laugh: "The red stripe highlights the weekend. For the United States, where week starts on Sunday (but it is anyway considered a part of weekend), alternative frames can be produced."

Can I just say?

Sunday and Saturday are the week _end_ because they are on each _end_ of the week. If you stack them both up at the back, only Sunday would get to be the weekend. Saturday would just be the day before the end.

A line has got two ends.

<comment><USER14> > A line has got two ends.

A counterpoint of equal snark and uselessness: No, it has one "start" and one "end", especially if it's a one-way line.

<comment><USER13> In which case the last day would be the end. The day before the last day would simply be the day before the weekend.

And yes, it's all meant lightheartedly, as I assume the original sentence was.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Okaaaaaaaaaaaay. What about February, which ends on day 28 or 29?

</comment><comment><USER16> My Casio Twincept had the same calendar on its LCD. It applied backlight on a selected frame depending on the month. It was possible to see full set of numbers if you look closely.

It was something like this:

[http://www.pmwf.com/Watches/Casio/FirstTwinceptCalendarTwinc...](http://www.pmwf.com/Watches/Casio/FirstTwinceptCalendarTwinceptDisplay.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER17> Wait, I can't buy this from him?!

Anyone know of a place that I can get something similar? Or recommendations on the best was to make one?

<comment><USER18> Search for a "perpetual calendar" or "eternal calendar". They used to be reasonably common as desk accessories and are still made as promotional items.

<comment><USER17> Awesome, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It is cool. But is it useful? The only information it gives is day of week, assuming you already know where to position your slider. It doesn't have holidays and number of days in a month. So if you don't already have a calendar with all the information, you can't use this calendar.

</comment><comment><USER20> Cool! 2 thoughts:

1) Would be cool if it were a dry erase surface, both for writing the month on it and circling important dates, etc. 2) Many have mentioned the 31 days problem, but that's solved with a magnet of some kind to cover the 31 on months where that day doesn't exist.

</comment><comment><USER21> This looks fantastic, but it doesn't give me any reference as to which month I'm actually looking at.... i.e. I drag the frame so that the 1st is a Saturday, but what month in what year am I looking at? Will the 1st of July 2015 be a Saturday, I have no idea from this.

<comment><USER22> It's a wall calendar - it only shows one month at a time - presumably, the current month.

<comment><USER21> How do I know how to set the current month, and how do I know how to advance to the next month?

It feels like I'm missing something.

<comment><USER23> On the first of every month you drag it so that the number 1 lines up with the current day of the week

<comment><USER24> Oh, so I have to check another calendar/date display device. Right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The comment at the bottom about the US weekend tickled me. I never really thought about it, but holy guacamole, is it weird that Americans have the week starting on a Sunday, and consider it part of the weekend. Why the HECK are calendars printed with Sunday at the front? This doesn't even need any kind of "restructuring of the Gregorian Calendar or adopting a new more sensible one" (as the rest of this thread seems to be all about), just stop printing/displaying calendars in a disjointed, retarded fashion...

I'm sure it had some meaningful significance in the past, but really, I doubt anyone will get mad if you started printing the calendar from the Monday on the left, in America too.

<comment><USER26> Sunday has always (FSVO) been the start of the week - it's not an American thing at all (indeed I've found Europeans get more confused when you don't start a week on Sunday). The Sabbath - the seventh day of the week referred to in Genesis - was Saturday, and Jews still celebrate it as such - <USER2> moved a lot of the way it's treated to Sunday.

"Weekend" is just a catchy name; "weekboundary" would be much more cumbersome.

<comment><USER27> Although "end", when used for time, usually refers to the chronologically later boundary of a period, there are other senses of the word in which an end can also be a start: a line has two ends, and we say "from end to end", for example.

Thus, I don't think it's necessarily contradictory to speak of an end of a week that also comes at the start - and that's without even thinking about the inherently cyclical nature of the week.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Delightful concept. However, perhaps you should reconsider the name? Its spelling/pronunciation may be a bit of an anti-hype barrier.

<comment><USER29> I think "Forevruary" would be a little better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Very nice. I had a go at designing some calendars a while back, only they were all pocket-sized:

[http://www.flickr.com/photos/joelanman/sets/7215759450272255...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/joelanman/sets/72157594502722552/)

</comment><comment><USER31> It always shows 31 days, you can't write on it without carrying events onto the next months and the weekend can NOT be adjusted with this design.

Also I've seen this concept before many times, it certainly isn't a unique one.

</comment><comment><USER32> I would add small labels for Mon, Tue, ... Sun on the movable frame.

</comment><comment><USER33> This would be cool as a whiteboard with a sliding frame on it.

</comment><comment><USER34> > United States, where week starts on Sunday

> Yury Gagarin goes to the space

Gotta love Russian-flavour English.

</comment><comment><USER35> I am pretty sure my grandma has a desk calendar that has the same system like this one

</comment><comment><USER36> I think I have seen this like 15 years ago at my office.

</comment><comment><USER37> Not nearly enough ASCII art Snoopy for my taste.</comment>


There Are Not Enough Covid-19 Tests. There Are Also Too Many Covid-19 Tests - <AUTHOR> https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/there-are-not-enough-covid-19-tests-there-are-also-too-many-covid-19-tests/ <comment><USER2> "CDC's failed coronavirus tests were tainted with coronavirus, feds confirm"

So there's that too. Time to go back outside.</comment>


Show HN: Wafxr – sound effect generator for WebAudio - <AUTHOR> https://andyhall.github.io/wafxr/ <comment><USER2> Great work you have here! Thanks for sharing!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks much! I hope it saves a few souls from the endless frustration of dealing with low-level WebAudio APIs ;)

<comment><USER2> I'm actually thinking that I can use it in a project for an artist who's collaborating with a museum - it's a sort of clone of radio.garden, at the moment I've got a white noise placeholder (I know it sounds like crap) but the goal is to manipulate the sound while "tuning the radio station" ([https://www.punkbit.com/prototyping/world-radio-tuning- dial/](https://www.punkbit.com/prototyping/world-radio-tuning-dial/))

I also think that your skills are very welcomed to Audiokit ([http://audiokit.io/](http://audiokit.io/)), it's not Javascript but you can use Swift lang, check it out!

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, I see what you mean yeah... if you're already familiar with low-level audio, you might find it more useful to look at `wasgen`, which is the library underneath wafxr. It's harder to use but much more general. You basically give it an array of objects describing the sounds you want, like:

        { type: 'n0', /* white noise */
          gain: { a:0.1, s:0.5, d:0.5, r:0.1 }, /* asdr envelope */
        },

And it makes all the nodes and applies the envelopes and cleans up afterwards, etc. Wafxr is basically a friendly UI for it, but for what you're doing I guess you'd prefer to be scripting the sounds directly.

Audiokit looks very cool, I don't have any apple devices but I'll keep an eye on it!

<comment><USER2> Thanks, I'll use it!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Very nice</comment>


Ask HN: Advice on creating a "How to video" like Dropbox...DIY style - <AUTHOR>

I love Dropbox's "how to video" on their homepage. Its clean and simple. Is this a simple stop and shoot style video? I am trying to create one of these videos for my startup but I cannot afford the $3,000-10,000 so I plan on making one on my own.<p>Thoughts? <comment><USER2> Check out Powtoon <http://www.powtoon.com/> I've had it on my list of things to try for simple "how to" videos. Looks very easy to get started.</comment>


Johnson and Johnson Has a Baby Powder Problem - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-baby-powder-cancer-lawsuits/ <comment><USER2> > She lost her health insurance because she exceeded the policy limits and had > to skip her last chemo treatment.

What in fucking hell is this? An insurance exists to _protect_ people from going bankrupt due to health issues, not to screw people over when they're already in no position to fight.

How on earth is this legal?

<comment><USER3> It is legal because there was a limit defined in the policy.

No insurance is open-ended, sky-is-the-limit. In many cases (e.g. auto, home, business) the limit is capped at the value of the assets that are insured. In other cases (liability) there is a defined dollar limit. My homeowners and auto policies have liability insurance but there is a limit. If I caused a traffic accident with signifcant property damage and multiple serious injuries, my liability insurance limit would likely be exceeded.

Health insurance has limits as well, even with the recent changes that the ACA introduced. The ACA removes limits on "essential health benefits" but who decides what those are? Hint: Not you.

If there were no limits on health insurance there would be little backpressure to ensure that care provided is worth paying for, or to put it another way, has real benefit. You'd have hopeless cases on life support forever, or unrealistically expensive treatment of conditions for which there is no real hope.

Sad as it is, some health problems can't be fixed, and at some point you need to admit that and stop throwing money away. One more chemo treatment would very likely have made little difference in the outcome for this woman.

<comment><USER4> "If there were no limits on health insurance there would be little backpressure to ..."

Also, it wouldn't be insurance.

People think that insurance is "something that I want that does nice things for me". It's not.

Insurance is a math problem and it has a precise answer. If you go beyond that answer _it doesn 't work_. Either you're getting screwed or the (hapless) insurance company _goes out of business_.

<comment><USER5> The math problem is tricky in a lot of ways though. For example, the rate the insurance company pays doctors is different than the retail rate. Lots of people don't realize this. It also brings up two pretty interesting questions. One, could the patient have covered the last session at the price insurance companies pay? And two, does the insurance company run down that upper limit based on the amount they're billed, or the amount they pay?

There's another interesting policy question. Insurance, flat out, can't pay for everything. So, given that they have a pool of money, do you allocate that toward the least sick people? That's probably a better approach to more total years of survival. ensure the healthiest 50% (or whatever) get excellent care, and let the rest go. Alternatively, do you triage and spend the the money on people who have a slim chance of survival, making the heroic rescue day after day?

I find that policy decision horrifying. I honestly have no idea how they pick. But it's pretty obvious, somebody getting chemo means 100 other people aren't getting, for example, cholesterol medication.

I'll agree it's just an equation. but man, i'd love to see those tables showing years of human life saved based on condition and treatment. Just to add a touch more cynicism, should those years be weighted based on economic productivity? Would we be better off with 10 more years of Steve Jobs or 10 more years of Grandma? My gut says Grandma, but... it's just an equation.

<comment><USER6> They don't have a "pool" of money; they have exact obligations to each of their clients.

<comment><USER5> huh. that's weird. it _seems_ like all the customers throw in their money every month. some percentage of that must go to overhead and profits, the rest would go into a pool for medical care. Each month the insurance company would pay whatever is required for specific obligations, with any extra carried over to the next month. From time to time there would be random fluctuations, unusually high numbers of heart attacks for example, and they'd run at a loss. I thought insurance companies work just like casinos with harder to estimate probabilities of having to pay out. The thing that's _really_ cool about being an insurance company, you don't have perfectly clear obligations. With a casino, they land on double zero at roulette, the casino has to pay. With insurance, the insurance company gets to decide the worthiness of paying out. Oh yes, this person has cancer, but the chance of survival is quite low, so we're not paying for chemo.

But, clearly, i'm mistaken. Could you elaborate on how the insurance business really works?

<comment><USER6> > With insurance, the insurance company gets to decide the worthiness of > paying out. Oh yes, this person has cancer, but the chance of survival is > quite low, so we're not paying for chemo.

I don't know about US, but it seems like normal people would have laws and regulations to govern that kind of decisions.

<comment><USER7> In theory, you do. Lots of companies sell insurance and you can buy the coverage you want. In a single payer system, you are stuck with what the government gives you and that is where the "death panel" talk comes from.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've known for at least a decade that talc was dangerous.

I was 100% under the impression it was taken off the market years ago and replaced with corn starch.

Reading this article is the first time I realized it was not taken off the market, and I'm very confused.

How can I know this is dangerous and the company that makes it not know? I thought it was common knowledge.

I'm having a hard time expressing how perplexed and confused I am to hear talc is still on the market.

I mean, it says "not to inhale it" \- how can you possibly apply it and not inhale some of it? It's impossible. There is no way to use this safely without a gas mask.

<comment><USER9> Do you know what else can be deadly when inhaling it? Water

Limit is 2mg/m3 for 8h days [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talc#Industrial_grade](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talc#Industrial_grade)

<comment><USER8> And?

It's possible to use water safely, it's not possible to use talc safely without PPE.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've known about this molecular similarity to asbestos for 15 years, and have pretty much warned every barber or hairdresser that I've ever been to. They've never listened. I moved to a different city but I heard about a year ago the hairdresser at a place I used to frequent has lung cancer. Was it the cause? Who knows, but it sure is sad to hear. Regular people are just horrible about assessing / understanding risk. Baby Power is like the climate change of the local hairdressing world. That might be a slight overstatement, but gosh they sure use a ton of it here.

</comment><comment><USER11> Anything that hasn't been shown to cause cancer yet simply hasn't been investigated hard enough.

<comment><USER6> Dihydrogen monoxide.

<comment><USER12> ...talk to the people in Flint

<comment><USER6> You know the difference between H2O (distilled water) and water, right? Like, which one of those is conductive and which one isn't, all that stuff?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Quote:

> "People were using something they thought was perfectly safe," he says. "And > it isn't. At least give people the choice. J&J didn't give people a choice." > Among the most painful revelations, he says, was that in the 1990s, even as > the company acknowledged concerns in the health community, it considered > increasing its marketing efforts to black and Hispanic women, who were > already buying the product in high numbers.

Cynical question: Was increasing marketing efforts to black and Hispanic women out of racism or a cold risk calculation in the hope that these women couldn't afford to defend themselves as good as other groups? Will J&J be persecuted for this discrimination?

Disclaimer: I am not from US, but by reading HN I am often surprised how things work in US.

<comment><USER6> > Cynical question: Was increasing marketing efforts to black and Hispanic > women out of racism or a cold risk calculation in the hope that these women > couldn't afford to defend themselves as good as other groups? Will J&J be > persecuted for this discrimination?

Corporations of that size aren't usually coordinated that well, in my experience. Most likely, they were just putting marketing money in the demographics they identified in some surveys, and marketing manager responsible for that decision was from completely different department from PR guys handling the health issue.

<comment><USER14> I don't know if this is true for J&J, but the paint industry is quite large and banked on racism allowing them to get away with harmful lead additives. This kind of cold calculus is hardly out of bounds for US corporations:

The lead industry even sought to place the blame for lead poisoning epidemic on parents and children, claiming that the problem was not with the lead paint but with the "uneducable Negro and Puerto Rican" parents who "failed" to stop children from placing their fingers and toys in their mouths. Children poisoned by lead, the industry claimed, had a disease that led them to suck on "unnatural objects" and thereby get poisoned.

[http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/04/why-it- too...](http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/04/why-it-took-decades- of-blaming-parents-before-we-banned-lead-paint/275169/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It does not surprise me that introduction of small particulates to any orifice on a daily basis would increase cancer risk. Household dust increases cancer risk.

The cover up orchestrated by Johnson&Johnson here, however, is the deplorable story.

<comment><USER16> FTR, this issue has nothing to do with inhalation - it's about its use in women's undergarments, and the link between that an ovarian cancer.

<comment><USER17> I'm just a simple man, but I don't understand how a fine-grained powder, even entering the vagina, could cause ovarian cancer. This very long article spends only two paragraphs asking that question, with no answer.

Sounds like pesudo-statistical lawyering. This woman has cancer and she used talc every day of her life, ergo the talc is to blame.

<comment><USER18> One might ask why asbestos causes mesothelioma. Maybe the mechanisms are similar. Although talc is obviously less effective. But if there's increased risk, the lack of mechanistic understanding doesn't negate the evidence.

<comment><USER19> We already know why asbestos causes mesothelioma. Asbestos can form very small particles that go deep into the lung (there is good relationship between particle size and how deep it penetrates into the lung). Asbestos contains iron and the iron can promote free-radical formation, thus DNA damage and thus cancer. Yes, I'm simplifying it, but that's what I remember from my toxicology classes long ago.

I don't think it's odd to question the toxicity of talcum powder. Talcum powder used to contain asbestos, but doesn't any longer. We have good evidence that the newer talc doesn't cause lung cancer.

So an obvious question is, if talc doesn't cause lung cancer, why would it cause ovarian cancer? Of course, different tissue, different effect, but it raises doubt.

Maybe talc does cause ovarian cancer by some as-yet-discovered mechanism, but I wouldn't blame anyone for thinking it either coincidental (lots of people get ovarian cancer who never use talc) or due to something else.

<comment><USER20> I was under the impression that the cause was chronic inflammation resulting from recruitment and activation of macrophages and other immune cells to site of the fibres [1]. Chronic inflammation causes cancer on its own independent of external factors like free radical formation.

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

<comment><USER19> Well, I should have added details. You are correct that asbestos that doesn't contain iron can still cause cancer through a hypothesized inflammatory mechanism.

Honestly, I don't we know the exact mechanism, but have some theories that seem to fit.

<comment><USER18> And that, perhaps cryptically, was my point. Why should any chemically inert mineral cause cancer? But some apparently do, regardless. Inflammation seems most plausible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Although you'd have to be a total idiot to give much attention to such a idiotic, emotive article there does seem to be evidence inhaling mico particles is very very bad.

Be it cigarette smoke or a fireplace or smog or perhaps talcum power use = mico particle inhalation.

If there's a real story here this is where it might be, or give me a better written article that is about scientists not juries.

<comment><USER22> What is in your underwear that allows micro inhalation? The association doesn't appear to be linked to inhalation in any way.</comment></comment>


Preventing Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI) on a Mac - <AUTHOR> http://chrisltd.com/blog/2012/02/preventing-rsi-mac/

<comment><USER2> I disagree with his/her keyboard of choice. I find the ergonomic split keyboard to be vastly superior. I get noticeable wrist strain after a few hours at a straight keyboard.

The Microsoft Natural Ergonomic 4000 or the Microsoft Natural Wireless Ergonomic 7000 are the best I've tried.

Also, leaning back in the chair (130 degrees) with elbows out is much easier on me than sitting straight up.

But anytime ergonomics comes up, size of the individual matters. I'm 6'2" and 190lbs with large hands. My wife doesn't like my my keyboard because it is too large.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've never been able to get used to an ergonomic keyboard. But I should see if I can try a demo of the one you recommend. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> When I look at my colleges macs at work I am shocked by how unpleasant they look to type on and I am surprised that H&S haven't mandated proper keyboards for them.

Which reminds me must order that adapter for my IBM Type M</comment>


Tarantulas evolved blue colour 'at least eight times' - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-34944735 <comment><USER2> Is it possible that the blue color exploits a kind of colorblindness in the spider's predators that makes it effective camouflage? In the same way, you could imagine that red would be an effective camouflage against a green background if your predators were red/green colorblind humans.

<comment><USER3> Yep! Actually, this is _always_ how it works. Every living creature that can see is "colorblind"[1] in the sense that it projects the infinite dimensional space of visible light intensity (a histogram of intensity vs wavelength[2]) onto a small finite-dimensional subspace of perceived "color". For us, n=3. For dogs, n=2. For the mantis shrimp, n=16. There's nothing special about 2 or 3 or 16 other than that's how many different types of photoreceptors we have. The fact that we can represent "color" as an RGB triple is purely an artifact of the ways our eyes are built.

Anyway, matching color _really_ involves making sure that the projection of its spectrum on the perception space of its predators is the same as that of its background (there are other camouflage techniques, let's ignore them for the time being.)

        Pa=Pb     P=projection, a=animal, b=background

P is, as you note, strongly dependent on the predator! What fools humans might not fool birds and dogs (or vice versa) because we have different P due to having different spectral responses in our photoreceptors. Each "row" of P is a photoreceptor sensitivity spectrum.

Why should a programmer care? Funny story, about a year ago there was someone in here who was going on about how his company made bill validators that couldn't be fooled by photocopied money. He was convinced the secret sauce had to do with machine learning. Of course the more likely explanation is that the photocopier (which is acting like the "prey" in our example and matching colors) was designed against the P of a human eye, not the P of whatever photosensor+light combo was used to inspect the incoming currency. The copier was tailor made to fool humans but not to fool silicon photodetectors, which will naturally have quite different spectral response functions (rows of P). If that's all there was to the story (I don't know enough to say definitively one way or another), someone familiar with the way spectra work would know that the printer was quite possibly one matrix multiplication away from working for this alternative purpose. Oops! Or "tee-hee-hee" depending on which side you're on, I suppose.

For a more benign example, imagine creating a physically based effect for a video game or movie. The physics equations all take "inputs" and give "outputs" parametrized on wavelength. But all your art assets and screen colors are in RGB. When translating into the language of physics you're forced to invent information that you don't have (spectral details outside our perception space) and when you're translating out of the language of physics you're forced to discard this information. The latter is fine, but the former? If you're not aware that you are making an arbitrary decision (i.e. if you just plug in our sensitivity spectra or ink spectra or delegate to a library that does so), you might find yourself unable to match nature, and it might take you a long time to find the knob you need to tweak in order to get correct behavior.

[1] By "see" I mean "resolve an image". I'd be willing to bet that there's a creature out there that uses chromatic aberration or continuous variability in the activation spectra of its light sensitive neurons to its advantage. But I'd also be willing to bet that it doesn't independently resolve a full spectrum for each angle of incoming light.

[2] and direction of travel and location in space and polarization and probably a few more I'm forgetting.

<comment> vive-la-liberte >The fact that we can represent "color" as an RGB triple is purely an artifact of the ways our eyes are built.

I've thought a bit about this before and came to think, what if humanity disappeared and only our creations were left and they were discovered by an alien species but to them it would just look like the way we see the colonies of ants, the shell of shell fish, etc., that is to say just a pile of matter organized for housing, and the aliens were unable to percieve the fact that we have encoded vast amounts of knowledge in our artifacts. That would've been quite a cosmic tragedy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not a biologist: is it possible that they kind of imitated each other?

If one species develops the color as a warning to predators, then once those predators learn to ignore this species, I can imagine it'd be advantageous for similar species to look like this as well.

<comment><USER5> Possible. Other example: Hoverflies can neither sting nor bite, but many have yellow-white striping and therefore "look dangerous" like e.g. wasps.</comment></comment>


Use of video games in physical therapy - <AUTHOR> http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24232363 <comment><USER2> There's [http://www.mirarehab.com](http://www.mirarehab.com) as well, they built pretty cool games for physio-therapy using Microsoft Kinect. Their CEO Cosmin Mihaiu is one of the youngest TED fellows (and the first one from Romania I believe), so make sure to check out his talk as well:

[https://www.ted.com/talks/cosmin_mihaiu_physical_therapy_is_...](https://www.ted.com/talks/cosmin_mihaiu_physical_therapy_is_boring_play_a_game_instead?language=en)

I have worked for a startup in an accelerator program where Mira took part as well and I think their approach still does not get the attention it deserves since they have really built something that could have a huge positive impact on many peoples lives.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm confused how this is news. My company[0] and its two dozen or more competitors have been selling video-game-based commercial rehab robots for 15+ years.

[0] [http://www.interactive-motion.com](http://www.interactive-motion.com)

<comment><USER4> The subbed article is from 2013. It's research in an area that doesn't seem to have much research.

You should blog about your company and post it here - it sounds interesting.</comment></comment>


Unhealthy Fixation - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2015/07/are_gmos_safe_yes_the_case_against_them_is_full_of_fraud_lies_and_errors.html

<comment><USER2> User _fs makes the excellent point that

 _The only fear of GMOs that I have is knowing that certain crops have been genetically modified to not die when they are caked in pesticide. Good for plants, bad for me, as I have not been genetically modified to eat crops with layers of pesticide on them._

Strangely, this post was downvoted. Even more strangely a response to _fs's post by goodreter, that simply provided support in the form of a link for _fs's point about secondary negative effects was quickly downvoted.

As _fs alludes to, even if GMO crops have no negative effects on organisms that eat them, there are a lot of potential negative externalities that need to be considered, monocultures in food production, the unprecedented control of a food supply that patented genomes give to individual corporations, unforeseen interaction between a gmo and the surrounding ecological systems, etc. etc.

With _fs's and goodreter's posts, both of which are perfectly reasonable, being downvoted as well as the other posts downvoted in this thread(which all seem to share the characteristic of being somewhat skeptical of gmo) I'm not entirely sure there aren't monsanto shills hovering on this thread.

<comment><USER3> Possibly because the more common situation is that a crop is GMd to not need pesticides. Like the papaya in the article.

<comment><USER2> "more common situation is that a crop is GMd to not need pesticides"

Is that based on research you've done, or are you just going with your gut?

This[0] article explains how "Roundup-ready corn and soybeans"(roundup is an herbicide) has caused the near disappearance of milkweed and because of that the near disappearance of Monarch Butterflies which need the milkweed to survive. What does "roundup ready" mean? It means the corn and soybeans can tolerate the herbicide, so the fields are coated with it indiscriminately. I'd wager that acres of corn and soybeans planted exceeds acres of papaya by a fair bit.

This[1] well-sourced[2] article describes "Herbicide and Insecticide Use on GMO Crops" as "Skyrocketing."

This[3] article describes how corn crops that are gm'd to be resistant to pests have actually become susceptible to pests because "nature will find a way." This has resulted in even more use and need of pesticides for these crops, a vicious cycle.

By the way the crops that are modified to "not need pesticides," still actually need and use pesticides. The pesticides are just incorporated at the gene level, instead of after they've already been planted. _For example, the use of systemic insecticides, which coat GMO corn and soy seeds and are incorporated and expressed inside the entire plant, has skyrocketed in the last ten years. This includes use of neonicotinoids (neonics) which are extremely powerful neurotoxins that contaminate our food and water and destroy non-target pollinators and wildlife such as bees, butterflies and birds. In fact, two neonics in widespread use in the U.S. are currently banned in the EU because of their suspected link to Colony Collapse Disorder in bees._ [1][4]

And the roundup ready type gm is one of the main things I've heard touted about gm over the years, I'm not sure where you're getting your information.

 _Over 99% of GMO acreage is engineered by chemical companies to tolerate heavy herbicide (glyphosate) use and /or produce insecticide (Bt) in every cell of every plant over the entire growing season. The result is massive selection pressure that has rapidly created pest resistance--the opposite of integrated pest management where judicious use of chemical controls is applied only as necessary. Predictably, just like overuse of antibiotics in confined factory farms has created resistant "supergerms" leading to animals being overdosed with ever more powerful antibiotics, we now have huge swaths of the country infested with "superweeds" and "superbugs" resistant to glyphosate and Bt, meaning more volume of more toxic pesticides are being applied._[1]

[0][http://blog.nature.org/science/2013/04/04/the-monarch- butter...](http://blog.nature.org/science/2013/04/04/the-monarch-butterfly- decline-and-what-you-can-do-about-it/)

[1][http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-bronner/herbicide- insect...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-bronner/herbicide-insecticide- use_b_5791304.html)

[2][http://static.ewg.org/agmag/pdfs/pesticide_use_on_geneticall...](http://static.ewg.org/agmag/pdfs/pesticide_use_on_genetically_engineered_crops.pdf)

[3][http://www.wsj.com/articles/limits-sought-on-gmo-corn-as- pes...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/limits-sought-on-gmo-corn-as-pest- resistance-grows-1425587078)

[4][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neonicotinoid#Toxicity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neonicotinoid#Toxicity)

<comment><USER4> The article's point is that generalizations about GMd foods are ignorant and each case needs to be evaluated on it's own merits and dangers.

It's very well sourced (though it does occasionally fall prey into cherry picking) to show cases of both positive impacts like GMO Papaya and Golden Rice and negative like increased RoundUp usage.

Would be great if public perception adopted this skepticism and questioned practices that aren't discussed for labeling like widespread Bt spray usage vs the GMO included one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> First of all, I don't think anyone has a serious objections to GMOs that are modified to increase output or resist natural predators

The only fear of GMOs that I have is knowing that certain crops have been genetically modified to not die when they are caked in pesticide. Good for plants, bad for me, as I have not been genetically modified to eat crops with layers of pesticide on them.

<comment><USER6> First unintended victim may be the monarch butterfly. [http://blog.nature.org/science/2013/04/04/the-monarch- butter...](http://blog.nature.org/science/2013/04/04/the-monarch-butterfly- decline-and-what-you-can-do-about-it/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> GMOs are to liberals what Global Warming is to conservatives.

It's quite sad, really.

<comment><USER8> How is that? The way I see it, liberals consider both GMOs and global warming large problems that must be dealt with or fixed. Conservatives tend to not agree with the assessment that either is really a legitimate problem.

<comment><USER9> I think it was a comparison of views.

Science says global warming is a problem, conservatives ignore that and say that science is wrong because {poor reasoning here}.

Science says GMO is fine, liberals ignore that and say that science is wrong because {poor reasoning here}.

<comment><USER3> Except the science on GMOs is much further from settled. And science hasn't really addressed some of the theoretical concerns.

<comment><USER9> In many cases it has been largely settled and we even have decades of data proving it. The article even provides several examples - cherry picked or not [0] - that provide evidence to the irrational fear bits.

The Bt example is a great example. Being produced by the fruit or sprayed on after being produced by bacteria has the same results and the "sing a different tune" to try and pass laws against it is telling that there is a larger (money-driven) agenda behind making people fear Bt-enhanced items compared to Bt-sprayed items.

The claim, in many (but possibly not all!) scenarios is very similar to tobacco companies saying "the science behind tobacco smoke being harmful to humans is far from being settled and science hasn't fully answered some of the so-called issues". I'll call bollocks on the tobacco companies and claim that they might have some other ulterior motive behind making scientific claims that tobacco isn't harmful and their cigarettes do not cause lung cancer.

I don't trust companies that would profit from a GMO ban on the harmful effects of GMO when unbiased results are opposing the findings of the anti-GMO groups. I also don't trust misleading claims used for fear-mongering because people don't really understand something but pretend to. [1].

[0] I don't follow the GMO issues super-duper closely so concede that there might be cases, many perhaps, that aren't as "case-closed" as the examples in the article. But whether these examples are cherry-picked or not they do show several GMO issues that should be "case closed" but aren't.

[1] [http://www.dhmo.org/facts.html](http://www.dhmo.org/facts.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> From my perspective it's not that all GMO foods are bad. I think the problem is that a lot of staff is being engineered into food that is not good for us. And we don't know which is which. It's a much finer-grained point than GMO vs non-GMO. However, if we can't even LABEL the GMO food "GMO", what do you think will be in it? When corporations are fighting the GMO label so furiously, this can't be a good sign.

</comment><comment><USER11> It took 80 years to figure out trans fats are bad. How long will it take to sort out every single invented GM food?

<comment><USER12> People have been breeding and cross-breeding our food supply for thousands of years. What can we do about that? I know! Let's use the Internet to identify which foods are pure. Then we can be sure to stick to just those foods when we shop at the grocery store.

<comment><USER3> Breeding <> GMing. One is natural, the other is artificial. And that's precisely the point.

<comment><USER13> There are a lot of natural things that are bad for you, and a lot of synthetic things that are not bad for you.

<comment><USER3> That may be but doesn't change the concern here with respect to food manipulation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Journalist uses anecdotes to prove that GMOs are safe and science is difficult.</comment>


Why Would You Ever Give Money Through Kickstarter? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/10/magazine/why-would-you-ever-give-money-through-kickstarter.html?pagewanted=all&_r=3&amp& <comment><USER3> As a progressive younger person who has been swimming in internet culture for 15 years now, I find my attitude, wants, needs, and desires are almost completely left out of pop culture. The news rarely people with my point of view on it. The games I like to play are rarely made and instead it's CoD 143. The music I like isn't on the radio most of the time. I feel like there are a lot of people like me who like niche things they've found on the internet yet get no respect in the more 'mainstream' world (NOTE: I'm not using that world with a negative connotation). I like random stuff. Things like KickStarter give people like me a say. It lets me 'invest' in a project that would not get picked up by the normal distribution channels. It's almost a political statement. If I have the ability to throw Tim Schafer $20 so he can make a game without the normal pressures of the modern gaming industry (make it appeal to as many people as possible which inevitably leas to dumbing things down) then I'm going to give it a shot. It's literally the only way I see to get involved. It's putting my money where my mouth is.

<comment><USER4> If you want a non-hipsterish way to say "non-mainstream", "long tail" might be better. Just don't tell the hipsters.

<comment><USER5> Yeah but then you sound like a business-talk yuppie jerk.

<comment><USER6> The "long tail" phrase came from Chris Anderson. I wouldn't say the phrase implies jerk at all or business type. It's a statistics thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've taken to kickstarting (et al) about $20 per month even if there's nothing I really want. Think of it as a tithe to a weird little religion. Lots of people more sane than I give a great deal more to churches and charities to make their communities better.

Why? Because I want to live in a world where people do the kinds of projects that kickstarter funds. It's better that way.

<comment><USER8> I might agree however I've been burned twice already by Kickstarter projects. It's make me very gun shy.

However, I just got my Pebble watch and I'm very pleased. Might restart my interests.

I would be more willing if Kickstarter management was even slightly involved with failed KS projects. Their "It's not our fault" attitude makes me angry.

<comment><USER9> I think that's the wrong attitude - you shouldn't think of Kickstarter as shopping. I've funded sixty projects on KS, so far, and I don't keep track of which ones have succeeded. Okay, yeah, the Pebble was kinda expensive for a random lark. But usually I just kick in $5 to $25 dollars - less than I'd spend going out to dinner. And maybe, some months later, I get a surprise package with something cool in it. I feel good about that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've given money to a few KS campaigns, and while there are a few I don't regret there are certainly some I look back at as being a sucker at the time. I donated to Double Fine based on the knowledge that they have had a hell of a rough history with investors and publishers. The chance to get a game out through donations was offset by the fact that no investor would touch their game. Investing in their game was under the pretence of we either fund it and make it, or the game never gets made. I also invested some money into the Shadowrun remake, a new studio run by some industry vets who as I far as I know are making their first game. In this case I feel like I got suckered - <USER2> new company, a classic IP, industry vets - It would seem like a great bet by an investor. But it seems to me that they got to have their cake and eat it too - They get to have people invest their money into funding their development, but if they become the next EA/Activision (and who is to say they won't), they don't owe anyone jack all in returns. It's a suckers bet. They want to risk the money of other people, but not share the spoils at the end of the day.

I was talking to a friend the other night about this and we came up with a metric to measure KS campaigns by. It's a simple question of "Would this interest an investor?". If the answer is no but I think it's an interesting project I'll throw some money towards them. If the answer is yes, they should be offering the rewards of an investor, not just pan-handling for money and shifting the risk to fans.

<comment><USER11> Your approach depends on a very simplistic idea about investors. In reality, the fall on a spectrum. Some demand low returns but insist on a high level of confidence about the outcome. Others are investors in name only; what they really do is glorified gambling. They are almost sure to lose, but the (slim) possibility of an outsize reward goads them on.

The thing to appreciate is that Kickstarter can help creators validate an investment-worthy idea in the marketplace, shifting it from the high risk / high reward category to the lower risk / lower reward category.

That means more money from eventual sales can go into product and market development, instead of an inveator's bank account. In many cases, the need to pay an inordinate return kills good ideas in the cradle. By giving creators a way to lower the cost of the capital they depend on KS opens a range of possibilities that would remain closed if high-stakes gamblers were the only bankers in town.

If you and your friends don't want to help these project either, that's fine. But why take the extra step of mindlessly smearing the people who run them? Personally, I see Kickstarter's ability to atomize risk as a good thing, especially when it can drive down the cost of capital while checking its more extortionate tendencies. I've never met a "panhandler" who can do that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The first part of this article reminded me of freshman year of college.

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-----

Me: See you later, mom!

Mom: What are you doing?

Me: Driving to <neighboring state> to go to a party and play Guitar Hero with some people.

Mom: Neat. How'd you meet them?

Me: I haven't yet, we just know each other from the forums. Everyone's coming, some people are flying in.

Mom: Isn't that dangerous?

Me: Why is it dangerous? I know them from the internet.

Mom: Exactly.

<comment><USER13> My mum would have probably lock me in a cupboard... Still would, actually. :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think kickstarting with the expectation that you receive something is the wrong idea. I think it works especially well for funding people to create media or fund performances. It's a way for us to help fund/create the world we want to live in.

<comment><USER15> Personally I would donate to a kickstarter project (or any similar platform) that seemed like projects I would like to build myself, but didn't have the time or skill to do so.

It seems too often that people forget that financial gain is not the end all be all motivation to work on something. It's like asking somebody why they're sitting on the couch watching TV, for free. Or why you're driving that car for free. It's because you enjoy doing it.

It's not a strange person who would want to create something without getting paid for it, even if others benefit. It's not even a strange person who would pay money out of pocket to create something that everyone else got to benefit from for free. So it's not a strange person who donates money toward an idea they're interested in, expecting nothing in return.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I used to work in the game industry. Recently one of my former co-workers was laid off, and he is using this time to finish a game he has been developing on the side over the last few years.

Kickstarter is the easiest and most socially acceptable for him to put his game out there and ask people to contribute to his development effort. After a couple of days, he already has almost $2k pledged of his $15k goal, and I am willing to bet he would not be anywhere near there without Kickstarter's platform.

If you would like to support Tom and his retro tactical rpg with a fully destructible environment, check it out here: <http://kck.st/VVPEio>

</comment><comment><USER17> Surely in many cases the incentive is to get a pre-order of some item, possibly at a reduced price that you might not have had a chance to purchase at all otherwise?

<comment><USER18> If you factor in both risk and time to receive product, the discounts that (sometimes, not always) happen in practice aren't _nearly_ worth it, IMO.

Eg. say someone is offering some new gadget for $100 as a Kickstarter reward, and they then raise the price to $150 when it is an actual product (this doesn't seem to even happen much, the product price for products that do successfully make it to market is more often the same as the Kickstarter price). You save $50 but in the meantime your money is tied up for months with nothing to show for it, and it is entirely possible you will never get an item. I'd rather just pay the $150 myself and get the product 2 day shipping when it is actually a product.

This doesn't mean Kickstarter is useless to me as there are _some_ cases (more the art stuff than the gadget stuff) where I think supporting the project is more important than receiving the end product, but I certainly don't understand why so many people backed OUYA, for example. I'm glad they did because I will buy one when they are available via retail, but I didn't back it.

<comment><USER19> Sure there's a risk, which can arguably (and subjectively) be weighed against the pros, such as receiving a discount, or the possibility that if you don't help fund it there might never be a final product to buy at a higher price.

As to your money being tied up for months - obviously it depends on the amount, and on the buyer, but I'm sure quite a few funders can tie up $100 for a few months without caring. If I'm going to spend $100 on something that's available in 6 months I don't really care if it comes out of my bank account now or then.

<comment><USER18> "If I'm going to spend $100 on something that's available in 6 months I don't really care if it comes out of my bank account now or then."

I do. What if a better implementation of the same basic thing comes out for $80 in 3 months?

<comment><USER19> Yeah you're right, I guess I was thinking in the context of things I have supported on Kickstarter in the past. I'd definitely share your view for some things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> First Kickstart I ever backed (back in 2009) was to help a friend take her play to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Purely friendship, and pride in her accomplishment.

[http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/635470598/dawn-of- quixot...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/635470598/dawn-of-quixote- rides-to-edinburgh-fringe-fest)

</comment><comment><USER21> As someone who ran a successful Kickstarter campaign, I think it's amazing. For an inventor / creator it solves two key issues: raising necessary funding to make ideas come to live, and a "go to market" strategy to validate it. Especially for hardware ideas. I've also backed projects due to the pure excitement that someone is out there interested in making something that I want or need and don't have the time to do it myself.

</comment><comment><USER22> I can't really get into Kickstarter. It's one sided for people like me that don't live in the US or UK (I'm in Australia).

I'm not even sure if I would run a Kickstarter campaign (I have a few things that are would-be candidates). Still the fact that I'm not able to irks me to the point of not wanting to participate.

It's an economy where I can put money in, but it's not possible to take money out.

<comment><USER23> If you like the idea of Kickstarter but can't use it for some reason then check out Indiegogo (<http://www.indiegogo.com/>).

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The article resonates with me. Most of the kickstarter projects have a product as their deliverable, and I thought of that as the norm.

Recently, I came across a page for a large-scale hobby project[1]. As I'm a fan of that niche, and no-one has ever done it before, I wanted to see it succeed - really much. Even though I know full out that I will only ever get to watch other people play with it, it still gives me the immense satisfaction of seeing it done. It's a similar concept to the article, I think.

[1] Ultra-large flying quadcopter, [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1671680066/incredible- hl...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1671680066/incredible-hlq-heavy- lift-quadcopter)

</comment><comment><USER25> Seriously? "Zuran Orb vis-à-vis Claws of Gix"? You either need a 0 cost artifact for a combo, in which case they are the same, or they serve quite different purposes, in which case, why are you comparing them?

</comment><comment><USER26> I've had reservations about Kickstarter [0], but I've backed maybe $800 worth of projects and the experience has been positive [1].

However, I do maintain that Kickstarter needs to do _a lot_ more to make it clear what pledging entails, specifically that it doesn't equate to buying or even pre-ordering.

0: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4323835>

1: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4832427>

<comment><USER27> Exactly. KickStarter is great if you have the right expectations: every donation is a gift (and a gamble), not a purchase. If you're not willing to risk losing money on a failed project, then don't donate.

It's a tricky line for KickStarter to walk: they need to set the right expectations with users to stay credible and prevent backlash, yet they risk scaring people too much and reducing donations, which is their bread and butter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Honestly I'm just blown away at how decent this article is. I feel like most NYT articles I read on internet-ish companies come totally miss the point but this hit Kickstarter perfectly. After rounds of negative press for Kickstarter, it is nice to see a big old media company write something that at least kind of "gets" Kickstarter.

</comment><comment><USER29> imho Yes , but not for "work-in-progress" products (in case of hardware stuff).If there is no working prototype then no.

If it is a software i would look at the person record and how many successfull product that guy has finished and delivered and there is no reason why the "kickstartee" cannot provide a working prototype either ( with limited functionalities , ... )</comment>