My legitimate co.cc site was deleted from Google, what do I do? - <AUTHOR>

I've had a legitimate blog at http://beatpanda.co.cc for several years(1), and Google just removed all co.cc domains from its search results, including my blog. Who do I appeal to in this case? Am I better off just getting a new domain, and if so, how can I recover the traffic that was previously coming from Google before they removed my site?<p>Thanks for any help you all can provide.<p>(1) I know some of you will go there and see that the posts only go back to 2011- the fact that my archives aren't up right now is a separate issue. <comment><USER2> There is essentially no one to appeal to, unless someone on the Google webspam team takes a personal interest in this when it hits the top page of HN. (Which has been known to happen.) That will be to avoid the PR hit rather than out of the moral persuasiveness of avoiding collateral damage. Google does collateral damage on a fairly frequent basis.

They prefer to deal with it by "scalable communication methods" rather than by speaking to you about it. For example, to a certain philosophy within the borg, that blog post should teach you your lesson about being in a "bad neighborhood." (This euphemism has become a term of art in the SEO community. Google recommends you not link to websites in bad neighborhoods.)

 _how can I recover the traffic that was previously coming from Google before they removed my site?_

You seem to be under the impression that that traffic was yours to begin with. I think the borg believes it is their traffic, though they would be circumspect about saying that in as many words. They'll sell it to you, for example. (Google makes _scads_ on selling brands their own branded keywords.)

Most professional SEOs of my acquaintance would note that, if one has a site burned, redirecting that site to a new site is a fairly risky endeavor for that new site.

P.S. If one needs a new free web host and one is worried about getting smacked down again for being in a bad neighborhood, a cynical person might recommend blogspot.com. You'll still be in a bad neighborhood, but you'll be in a bad neighborhood which is highly unlikely to get hit with the orbital ion cannon.

<comment><USER3> "Most professional SEOs of my acquaintance would note that, if one has a site burned, redirecting that site to a new site is a fairly risky endeavor for that new site."

I don't think so. If that were the case (and we were competitors) then all I would need to do in order to hurt your rankings would be to stuff a website with a multitude of buy-viagra-penis-enlargement-type of spam/malware and then 301 to your site.

<comment><USER4> One thing wrong with your logic is that this sort of stuff does happen, and Google's algorithm does let cracks like this through.

<comment><USER5> OK, what about another form of redirect? Would a simple message be best?

This site has moved. Please go to the new site (no href - don't let google see) www.example.com.

<comment><USER6> The lack of an href is not required. Google explicitly will not fault you for links /to/ your site from "bad neighborhoods" (for the obvious reason).

An automatic redirect (w/ javascript) would probably be the best way to go, with a message explaining the move while the reader waits the 5 seconds for the redirect to take effect. (Google doesn't evaluate javascript, to my knowledge.)

<comment><USER7> Googlebot evaluates Javascript.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Honestly, I would buy the .com and just move on. There's not much you can do except protect yourself going forward. If you own your domain you can always pick up and move to a new host.

For what its worth, people will probably search for you upon not finding your site. With an exact match domain, you should rank really well and your fans can find you. Maybe throw a HelloBar.com style message at the top explaining what happened, so they know they've found your new home.

Best of luck. Hate that this happened to you.

</comment><comment><USER9> _If your site isn't appearing in Google search results, or it's performing more poorly than it once did (and you believe that it does not violate our Webmaster Guidelines), you can ask Google to reconsider your site._

[http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answe...](http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35843)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, this was the answer I was looking for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> You can appeal through the Google Webmaster Tools (GWT) <http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools> but I wouldn't bother in your case. They are not likely to make an exception. I would recommend getting a new domain.

On possible way that an appeal might work is if you 301 redirected all content to the new domain and then go into GWT and do an appeal to be re-included stating the case that you were collateral damage from the .co.cc ban.

I would only do this if your site is without a doubt a legitimate site (if it seems even slightly fishy, I don't think they'll help and you're better off starting fresh) and doesn't have even a hint of shady SEOing.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I want to state for the record that I am meticulous about keeping my blog updated and thus hack-free, I do not use it for any kind of nefarious SEO purposes, and I don't even run advertising. It's just my blog.

In that case, would 301 redirects help or hurt? Am I better off just starting fresh, and hoping that anybody who cares enough about my content just updates their links?

<comment><USER11> It must depend in part on how people use your site and what you hope to happen with the move. If most of your users just go to the top front page every day to read what you've posted, you could almost certainly post the new URL on your front page (maybe not even link it and make them copy-and-paste it), a one-time slight inconvenience for your users and you start from zero on accumulating new Google juice. After a little while, you'll start showing up in Google rankings again.

If a lot of people have bookmarks and/or on-page links to your site, and you have a bunch of regular users that you want to transition, a 301 is the web- standard right way to do that; but the cost is that you'll have a longer walk in the Google wilderness. I have to assume that the "transferred from a bad neighbourhood" poison isn't permanent (especially if you take down the 301s after a few weeks or a month) but it seems like it would start you off with negative Google juice.

Which might be worth it, or might not. How many referrals were you getting from Google before the co.cc thing went down?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Get a new domain (second-level, that you actually own this time) and accurately 301 all your URLs to the new domain. You cannot "regain" your Google traffic. You'll need to rebuild, but 301s will at least help put your inbound links back on solid footing.

<comment><USER2> This has an _excellent_ chance of contaminating the new domain. Consider Big Daddy G's view of the world: they've just declared *.co.cc persona non grata. 301 redirecting is designed to tell them that foo.co.cc is now doing business at example.net. I would not do that to a domain I didn't want to lose.

<comment><USER13> Google can't take this extreme position as competitors could do this to your site as well. While I would personally not 301 to the new site, technically the benefit should outweigh the possible negatives. See paid links and directories for past reference on this subject. If getting a site down-ranked was as easy as linking TO them from a bad neighborhood, black-hat SEO would be all over it and would abuse the technique enough to make Google adjust (which most likely has happened many times)

<comment><USER2> It is _certainly_ possible to burn a new domain by pointing a penalized domain at it. If domain #2 contains the same content as domain #1 pre-burning, and domain #1 301s to domain #2, that's almost proof-positive that they're under the same control. Google's standard of proof isn't neaaaaaaaaaaarly that high.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Whoops, you were collateral damage.

Yeah, google does not care about you. Sorry.

</comment><comment><USER15> I do not think appealing (or trying to) will get you anywhere. But you might try contacting them (<http://www.google.com/contact/>)

If being searchable through Google is really important for you, get a new domain. If the contents of your site where that important, Google will index it and will be available sooner than you think.

</comment><comment><USER16> Have you contacted Google with you question yet? I would imagine if enough people ask them about this, they would have to come up with a solution somehow. Perhaps you might start a campaign requesting Google to provide a tool for legitimate businesses and companies to "migrate" their .cc traffic to a new domain name. Again, it wouldn't happen if you don't ask and if you don't ask, it would never happen. If there are enough people asking --> publicity --> Google will answer. But sometimes, all it takes for things to change is one person. That person can be you :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I have, but Google makes it especially difficult to direct a message to an actual person as opposed to a message board. I figured it was more likely they would catch wind of the complaint if it was here.

<comment><USER17> beatpanda, if you haven't seen this article in Technology Review, it's a good read: <http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/37718/> and discusses co.cc. It's definitely the case that we saw a ton of spam on co.cc, which is one of the reasons why I posted at [https://plus.google.com/u/0/109412257237874861202/posts/eanX...](https://plus.google.com/u/0/109412257237874861202/posts/eanXpZKMDSf) to remind people that if we see enough spam on a freehost, that can affect the reputation for the entire domain and result in us taking action on that freehost.

It remains to be seen to what degree co.cc can remove or clean the amount of spam on their domain. In the mean time, if you want to have a long-term presence on the web that's also in Google's index, you could get your own domain name or check out other freehosts such as WordPress, Tumblr, Blogger, Posterous, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> Props to you for getting back to me. I'm not mad, and this isn't even the first time being on co.cc has bitten me in the ass, so maybe now's a good time to move on.

What about 301 redirects though? Am I going to be penalized for directing traffic from the old domain to a new one?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> 1) Spend the 10 bucks on a real domain (beatpanda.com,.net, .co and .org are all available).

2) Diversify your traffic sources.

</comment><comment><USER19> One interesting point this brings up is that it's sometimes difficult to tell whether you're in a "bad neighborhood" or not.

In other words, if I'm considering using co.cc to host my (legitimate) blog, there's no realistic way for me to browse through all 11 million subdirectories; notice that some 6,000 are spammy; and conclude that the site has a high risk of being burned by Google.

Of course, there are indirect methods of discerning a host's reputation and likeliness to attract spammers -- starting from the fact that co.cc is a free service -- but they may be too difficult for a layman to pursue.

Hence, I am going to start offering Google Burn Insurance. For a low monthly premium, you'll have peace of mind knowing that if your legitimate, non-spammy site is ever banned as "collateral damage," you'll get a tidy lump-sum payment that you can use to rebuild your site somewhere else.

Any takers? :)

<comment><USER20> Here's a hint: If it's free on the internet, spammers and scammers will try to take advantage of it. If you can't see anything to stop them, then there's probably something you can't see that will stop them. Like Google delisting the entire domain.

Pay for your own domain and hosting service and this won't happen to you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> beatpanda.com is available, better go ahead and buy it

</comment><comment><USER22> Who your DNS provider is counts.

This topic came up very often in the last months. bit.ly is not just a cool name, it is the Lybian official domain and when Gadaffi has a problem with it he can shut it down.

There has been a case where a free-subdomain hoster linked everyone to an advertiser one day.

</comment><comment><USER23> I am sorry to see you get hit like this, but relying solely on one company's ability to send traffic your way is also a bit blunt.

Like I said, it's sad, but they got the power over their traffic and can do whatever they see fit with it - even cancel it.

While sounding harsh, say "lesson learned" and diversify your traffic sources into more baskets. If one does the lemming thing, you still got others sending visitors your way.

</comment><comment><USER24> Get a real domain, have your old domain do 301 redirects to the new.

</comment><comment><USER25> Move it to a different domain. Not much else you can do.

</comment><comment><USER26> >what do I do? register new domain</comment>


Hacker News endless scroll ^(Tamper|Grease)Monkey$ hack - <AUTHOR>

I'm proud to release a basic Tampermonkey and Greasemonkey extension enabling to endless scroll on Hacker News without page refresh. Just install the code, and whenever you visit the Hacker News page, you just scroll down to automatically load the next 30 topics.
The code can be downloaded here: http://jsfiddle.net/DqUJt/
It has been tested in Google Chrome only, but I guess it will work in Firefox as well.
A couple of days ago I read two interesting discussions about Hacker News [1, 2]. I'm working now on an extension toolkit for the Hacker News homepage, but I wanted to share this first feature.
I'd love to hear your thoughts! I hope Paul does approve this, because it probably is causing a tiny bandwidth hit...
[1] A Proposal to Improve Hacker News (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4399108) [2] Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News.. - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4396747 <comment><USER2> Just install Autopaginate:

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/aeolcjbaammbkgaiag...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/aeolcjbaammbkgaiagooljfdepnjmkfd)

It works on a wide variety of sites, including HN.

</comment><comment><USER3> Does it account for the whole "expired" mess? That is, if I go away for fifteen minutes and come back and scroll, will it load the next page?

<comment><USER4> That's a rather complex thing to do. It's not just the "expired link" thing. Items move up and down and in 15 minutes their order will be different from what it is now.</comment></comment>


Georgetown Law Professors Say Students Are "Traumatized" by Criticisms of Scalia - <AUTHOR> https://theintercept.com/2016/02/23/georgetown-law-professors-complain-conservative-students-are-traumatized-by-criticisms-of-scalia-demand-remedies/ <comment><USER2> Back in the 90's I often saw right wing students who complained about the unsafe environment they perceived in the classrooms, microagrressions, etc.</comment>


London is home to the world's most expensive technology hub - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/09/28/london-home-worlds-expensive-technology-hub/ <comment><USER2> Probably because it's right next to the square mile where a lot of junior bankers live. They get paid £60-80k out of university and will drive prices up. It's not helped by being a trendy area for artists/designers to begin with!</comment>


Opera 11.50 Swordfish released - <AUTHOR> http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/2011/06/28/swordfish-jumps-out-of-the-water

<comment><AUTHOR> This is how you can customize the speed dial using extensions and whatnot - <http://imgur.com/UaAfE></comment>


Noah Wyle imitating Steve Jobs (Macworld 1999) - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIClAanU7Os

<comment><AUTHOR> For those who can't remember, Noah played Steve Jobs in the infamous "Pirates of Silicon Valley" 1999 movie.</comment>


Sysinternals ProcDump for Linux - <AUTHOR> https://build5nines.com/sysinternals-procdump-for-linux/ <comment><USER2> I used sysinternals tools before their creator even joined Microsoft. Haven't touched Windows for 12 years, but I have only good memories about the usefulness of sysinternals tools. Will certainly try this.

<comment><USER3> The creator is now head of Azure I believe.

<comment><USER2> Didn't remember the name, but of course it's easy to find: Mark Russinovich. Now CTO of Azure. I'm sure he would not have envisioned Azure either when wrote the first sysinternals tools for Windows PCs...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think at this point it's only a matter of time before Microsoft acquires Canonical. They've taken great steps to try to own the end-to-end development ecosystem. Develop with VS Code, host on Github, deploy to Azure. What OS are people building/deploying most of their software on? Linux and Ubuntu. Everything from local docker dev, CI, and production deployment. For a huge percentage of the developers that Microsoft is targeting Ubuntu is the default choice. They're even shipping it themselves by default in WSL..

Canonical's financials will start to be seen as too risky once Shuttleworth decides to stop funding it out of his pocket. At that point Microsoft will jump in with a check for 50 bil and snatch it up. Then they'll even have their own Linux distro to complete their ecosystem. And they'll probably call it something like Azure Linux.

<comment><USER5> I dread the day this will probably happen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Note: there is already a simple tool to generate core dumps on Linux: gcore.

<comment><USER7> gcore is on more platforms, at least also on Solaris.

This tool, though, seems to be able to do a lot more like wait until some basic kinds of conditions are met before dumping core.

Given that gcore on Linux is really using gdb, this is probably also pretty easy to do in gdb -- but it's not done, so this tool adds value to the ecosystem. Just not as much value is added to the Linux ecosystem by this tool as is added to the Windows ecosystem by its Windows port.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Didn't Linus once say, "If we get Microsoft writing programs [or was it Office?] for Linux, then we've won".

There's MS Office for Android, which is Linux, so, victory?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not unusual these days for the .NET Core team to be releasing Linux tools for performance and crash analysis, but Sysinternals in particular has always been about insights into _Windows internals_ , so I thought it was pretty interesting that they were releasing a Linux tool under the Sysinternals brand.

<comment><USER9> I have a feeling that it may have a lot to do with how much Linux they use internally in Azure (or so I hear). I would speculate that this was probably an internal tool that someone needed / wanted, so they ported it and then released it.</comment></comment></comment>


Use RunPee.com to know when to go to the bathroom during a movie - <AUTHOR> http://runpee.com

<comment><USER2> Sadly, another example that execution and vision is very important.

Execution: As stated by mkinsella - it's probably the worst Flash site I've seen in maybe a decade (it duplicates late 90s era HTML frames)

Vision: What is this guy's purpose? To pimp Adobe Flex? He might be building something that people do want but using a technology (Flash) that is fundamentally incompatible with what most people have access to in a movie theater.

"Of course, I pimp Flex big time during the interview [with Leo Laporte on his net@night show]. I'm not sure if they exactly know what Flex is"

However, on a bright note, it demonstrates:

1) A clearly understandable concept/elevator pitch can garner you national- level press coverage.

"A few people here and there heard about it. Like Dave Barry. A producer from NPRs All Things Considered found out about RunPee from Dave's mention"

2) For all of us who are worried about having a site launch without being perfect: Runpee.com shows that you can launch with a poor implementation of a potentially good concept and still get press if the idea makes sense.

"As to why it's all Flash and not HTML: well, I have a saying, "Go with what you know." Since I'm a Flash Platform Developer I build everything in Flash - this is actually a Flex application. I had never before created a data driven app when I started RunPee."

3) You can have some hubris, make some mistakes and your concept/site will survive your imperfect personality.

"Maybe, someday, when I've made enough money to buy all of the major Hollywood studios. :)"

<comment><USER3> > _"As to why it's all Flash and not HTML: well, I have a saying, "Go with > what you know."_

The Flash throws an error on load (only visible if you have the Flash debug player installed), so even if the logic is good, the execution isn't.

      TypeError: Error #1009: Cannot access a property or method of a null object reference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting and unique concept but horrific all-Flash website

<comment><USER5> So that's why it broke my back button...

Please, FTLoG, don't do this. There's nothing in the website that couldn't be done with normal (D)HTML.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> For Christ's sake don't give those assholes a specific reason to shine their cellphones in my face during the movie.

<comment><USER7> Damn right. For anyone who hasn't figured it out yet, it is NOT ever ok to use your phone in a cinema during a film, even without sound. I find it unbelievable that so many people haven't figured this out yet. If you can't stand being disconnected for the length of the film then watch it at home.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Nice idea, but:

1\. Flash?

2\. Gratuitous unrevealing of the RTO13'd text is annoying.

3\. It's full of trolls already.

</comment><comment><USER9> Thats remarkably accurate. I fell asleep during Wolverine exactly when they said it's appropriate to take a bathroom break. I didn't feel like I missed anything.

</comment><comment><USER10> I think TakeNap.com would be great for an extended amount of time (10-15 minutes) that can be missed in extra-long movies.

</comment><comment><USER11> Nice site (could come in useful), however — why flash/flex?! It just seems so much slower than it could have been (especially since it's such a simple site, HTML + light javascript would have sufficed perfectly…and saved CPU cycles!), and to be honest, the thing which flash excels at, animations, are a bit annoying…

</comment><comment><USER12> Or: Pee before the movie, during the intermission and after the movie.

<comment><USER13> Most commercial movies don't have intermissions.

<comment><USER14> wow! here in India every movie has an intermission.

<comment><USER15> I'm going to ask the local cinema to outsource management and operations to India. :)

Seriously, I almost had to go see a doctor after holding myself in during the second Lord of the Rings movie.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm surprised to hear such bitching about Flash. Actually, this is one of the few Flash-heavy sites I've seen in recent memory that didn't (a) crash my vintage 18.104.22.168 Firefox running on Fedora Core 4, or (b) warn me that I needed to download a new plugin.

It did, however, break the Back button in an interesting way: after I clicked on "Classic Movies" and "Raiders of the Lost Ark", clicking the Back button several times took me through the pee times of several other random movies.

</comment><comment><USER17> wow I love the concept! When I saw the last LOTR movie, I wanted to go pee after the 2nd hour... it was a torture to see all the long ending :) But I will no longer have pain with runpee.com! :P

</comment><comment><USER18> Funny comments here. If you're actually curious about why the developer used Flash for the front-end, then his info here: <http://runpee.com/blog/72_why- flash>

Basically, the rap is that running one set of HTML/JS/CSS instructions atop varied browser brands, with different implementations and edge-cases of those specs, ends up pushing browser-vendor costs onto the backs of content developers.

(And Flash-enabled mobile phones outnumber recalcitrant Apple iPhones by a factor of 40:1 or so. But we at Adobe would still like to support that popular walled-garden, if permission is granted for us to do so.)

jd/adobe

</comment><comment><USER19> Brilliant college dorm idea. Only problem is there is no way to check when the problem is identified.

</comment><comment><USER20> Why can't you just pee before the movie like normal people?

</comment><comment><USER21> How about this movie is so bad stay home and pee!

</comment><comment><USER22> there isn't even a search box on the main page.

this needs a lot of work.

</comment><comment><USER23> I wonder why somebody would release a site that's 100% in Flash when a sizable majority will access the site from a mobile device.

</comment><comment><USER24> RunShit

<comment><USER15> The blurred favicon _does_ look like it says RunPoo if I lean well back in my chair.</comment></comment>


Un-Liberty and the Problem of Hyper-Liberalism - <AUTHOR> https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/john-gray-hyper-liberalism-liberty/ <comment><USER2> This is one of the best articles I've read in about 6 months on the new politics we've been experiencing. It provides some excellent hooks for conceptualizations explaining what's going on, in a coherent manner. Doesn't mean it's true, but it's a working theory.</comment>


Evidence Rebuts Chomsky's Theory of Language Learning - <AUTHOR> http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/evidence-rebuts-chomsky-s-theory-of-language-learning/ <comment><USER2> The article attempts to relate several hypothetical anecdotes, informally, but is otherwise scant on actual evidence.

Here and there, are sprinkled vague nods towards unnamed " _researchers_ " and " _the new way_ " but not many specifics on who, when or how. Mostly it's just: Trust us, here's how it is now.

The article uses only one name, and only aims to chip away at it. It has no new celebrities, no names stepping forward to take credit for the incredible breakthroughs that destroy the old and oh-so-inferior.

The authors, and the editor are after something. But they offer nothing (or very little) in exchange, pre-supposing that it's just common sense which prevails over the tyrrany of something innately unlikable.

Not sure why linguistics ruffles some people's feathers. It's such a dry, imprecise sociological subject after all.

 _EDIT:_ they make a single mention, in passing, of research by Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker, but very briefly, and don't return to it afterward.

<comment><USER3> > Not sure why linguistics ruffles some people's feathers.

My hypothesis is that it's Chomsky personally who ruffles people's feathers. And this is not because his work on linguistics but rather his political views.

<comment><USER4> I really doubt it's his politics. George Layoff and Chomsky had (have?) a protracted, acrimonious battle over the relationship between syntax and semantics, but they're not miles apart, politically.

I find Chomsky frustrating because he comes up with these incredibly elegant theoretical machinery--and then is totally disinterested in empirically testing then.

For example, the "Language Acquisition Device" absolutely _HAS_ to be the brain, but a lot of the discussion of it--and Universal Grammar--are totally untethered by psychology and neuroscience.

For a while, it seemed like he regarded recursion as a key aspect of human language, versus animal "communications." Fitch, Hauser, and Chomsky had a 2002 article in Science that seemed to argue as much, and they were excited to show that humans, but not monkeys, can learn center-embedded recursion patterns[1]. However, Chomsky seems to have subtly backed away from that and now says that recursion important but might not manifest itself in all human languages (or something along those lines).

<comment><USER5> That somebody genuinely disagrees with Chomsky's linguistic theories on their own merit doesn't mean that other people don't want to prove his linguistic theories wrong because they disagree with his politics. Both sorts of people can exist.

<comment><USER4> Well sure. Unicorns _could_ exist too.

George Lakoff is one of his fiercest critics and I have a really hard time believing that he is motivated by Chomsky's political views; Lakoff is involved with various progressive and socialist think tanks himself. I'm not sure about (e.g.) Postal, Ross, or McCawley but I've never heard anything about their political animosity to Chomsky either.

If one wanted to go after Chomsky's political views, falsifying Universal Grammar (whatever that means) seems like an oddly difficult and indirect way to do so. Do you really think that someone decided that a deep dive into recursive structures in Pirahã is the way to push for TPPA? I'm totally willing to believe that more conservative linguists might get a _tiny_ bit more of a thrill out of needling him, but again, this seems really unlikely to be a driving force.

If there's any political force that drives people to go after Chomsky, it's the one driving the academic job market. He is A Big Name, and conclusively debunking his theories would set the debunker's career on the fast track. In fact, even a high profile debate with him, assuming it wasn't a complete rout, would probably benefit most careers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I believe the chart shown in the article titled, "Noam-enclature And The New Linguistics," mischaracterizes Chomsky's theory, by conflating the commonly used meaning of the word, "grammar," with grammar as it was defined in Chomsky's paper. In essence, this chart is a straw man argument.

[https://www.scientificamerican.com/sciam/cache/file/A680FCC2...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/sciam/cache/file/A680FCC2-FE3E-4FA4-A1623C6B4EDB9A79_source.png)

The top part of the chart shows, "the brain's innate sentence diagraming machine," and then points toward a sentence structure broken down into designators, adjectives, nouns and verbs, which is what the common definition of the word, "grammar," means. This is not what Chomsky's theory stated. Chomsky's theory defined grammar as (I'm paraphrasing) a system for understanding language, involving a syntactic component (e.g. there should be some kind of order), a semantic component (e.g. there should be some kind of meaning) and a phonological component (e.g. there should be some kinds of sounds).

That's it! There was no inherent underlying English grammar structure hard- wired into babies' brains as the chart suggests. What is wired into a baby's brain, which assists with language, is the ability to order sensory inputs in a way that would result in language...that is what he called grammar. Basically what Chomsky did is, "psychologize," linguistics and I am not convinced by this article that this theory had been refuted. That would be like saying that Einstein refuted Newton.

<comment><USER7> > There was no inherent underlying English grammar structure hard-wired into > babies' brains as the chart suggests.

There was in Chomsky's original theory. His original claims have been significantly mellowed out after the mounting weight of counter-evidence crashed down.

<comment><USER8> No, there wasn't. That's the poster's point. Universal grammar in Chomsky is lower-level than any concrete language, English most definitely included. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_grammar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_grammar) The first two sentences should suffice.

<comment><USER9> The characterization on that page is not good: virtually no one disagrees with "the ability to learn grammar is hard-wired into the brain". The substantive disagreement is whether grammatical categories and relations (or other knowledge that helps the child induce such) is hard-wired, or whether more general-purpose learning mechanisms are sufficient to abstract this structure from the environment.

<comment><USER10> >virtually no one disagrees with "the ability to learn grammar is hard-wired into the brain".

No, this is exactly where the field is split. Chomsky says that if a child socializes with people speaking a language with each other, the child will learn that language without teaching, punishment or reward. I.e. the human mind is not a blank slate buy has innate capabilities. Ideologically, this is an individualist take on linguistics.

The other side says that children have to be taught to speak a language properly and that language is difficult. Ideologically, this is the collectivist take on linguistics - children are blank slates to be filled in by society.

The people that have a problem with Chomsky's ideas are authoritarian collectivists. It's not about science.

<comment><USER11> You're making a straw man caricature out of the nativism detractors. Current researchers do not claim that first language is taught, that's why the field is called language acquisition regardless of whether one subscribes to nativism. The more nuanced non-nativist theories argue that grammar learning employs domain-general cognitive mechanisms, rather than language-specific innate grammar knowledge or principles. It's quite a stretch to connect any of this with political ideologies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> >In the second half of the 20th century, it was becoming ever clearer that our unique evolutionary history was responsible for many aspects of our unique human psychology

In my experience, most "evolutionary psychology" stories are also ad hoc, unfalsifiable at best, and loaded with cultural biases from those who propose them. We don't have a good idea of what traits actually carry a selective advantage, and those advantages are often highly context dependent. The brain, culture, and evolution are both incredibly complex, and so you can often find some way to smush puzzle pieces together that almost works, but that doesn't mean that's what's actually happening.

<comment><USER13> Correct

A lot of traits and variances have no clear evolutionary advantage, most of the time it's fudging and trying to come up with an explanation for a certain behaviour

There aren't good evolutionary explanations for a lot of physical traits, let alone for psychological ones

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> > when linguists actually went looking at the variation in languages across > the world, they found counterexamples to the claim that this type of > recursion was an essential property of language. Some languages—the > Amazonian Pirahã, for instance—seem to get by without Chomskyan recursion.

This is a pretty thin counter-example. A Christian missionary who became a linguist claimed that the Pirahã language had recursion. Then he later claimed that it did not have recursion. Linguists went down to study the Pirahã and found out that his first reports of Pirahã being recursive were correct, as they observed recursion in Pirahã language when they were there.

The authors return to this language spoken by less than 400 people later on:

> Chomsky defenders have responded that just because a language lacks a > certain tool—recursion, for example—does not mean that it is not in the tool > kit... makes Chomsky's proposals difficult to test in practice, and in > places they verge on the unfalsifiable.

Recursion in languages has not been falsified - it has been found in all languages, including Pirahã.

<comment><USER4> I think you're giving Dan Everett (the person you're describing) a short shrift here.

He says that his initial pro-recursion reports were attempting to fit Pirahã into the standard Chomskyian UG framework of the time. However, as he learned the language better, he started to realize that it _didn 't_ really fit and he was seeing the things he expected to see. For example, he initially described -sai as a nominializer (an "adapter" that lets other parts of speech be used in constructions that expect a noun). His later reports argue that it's actually not a nominalizer, but marks old information ("As you know Bob").

As far as I know, there is not actually a ton of non-Everett data on Pirahã.

The most well-known paper that disagrees with Everett is probably Nevins, Pesetsky and Rodrigues (2009), which reanalyzes Everett's published work. They start with a list of properties are are supposedly unique to Pirahã, and claim that many of these show up in familiar languages. However, I don't find that paper completely convincing. For example, Pirahã possessives can't be embedded: the equivalent of "John's brother's house" is ungrammatical and needs to be rendered as "John has a brother. The brother has a house." NPR argue that German has a similar restriction. This is true, sort of, in that "Hansens Auto" (Hans's car) is grammatical, but "*Hansens Autos Motor" ("Hans's car's motor") is not. However, this occurs because of a totally unrelated restriction: you can say something like "Hansens Vaters Frau" (Han's father's wife) because everyone involved is animate, and there's an alternate route involving "von" for embedding other kinds of possessives (as in "the motor of John's car"). Pirahã, as far as I know, does not have any possessive embedding at all, which does make it different from German.

I'm also not sure that cherry-picking individual examples from many other languages successfully refutes Pirahã's exceptionalism. German may prohibit embedding in this circumstance and Hindi in that one, but surely the interesting part is that Pirahã seems to prohibit it everywhere. As an analogy, I know people who do not write with their left hands, and other folks who don't write with their right hands. However, this doesn't imply that hands aren't involved in writing at all.

Realistically, this debate is going to be hard to settle without some more data. Unfortunately, Pirahã is said to be impossibly difficult to learn and there aren't a ton of native speakers wandering around universities. There is some data kicking around from another Australian language which may have similar properties, which might help.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> While Chomsky's attempt to formalize a grammar is wonderful, the probabilistic approach (based on weights) to language advocated by Norvig is, it seems, more close to what is going on inside the brain.

Brain does not perform recursive algebraic simplifications (which is, probably, the most beautiful abstraction humans have produced - fixed points, Y-Combinator, etc), it performs structure-based pattern matching - "it looks like a duck".

Natural selection, it seems, would select a crudest, good-enough model, full of cues, short-cuts and heuristics learned from environment, instead of evolving a beautiful, universal recursive meta-circular evaluator, which MIT guys are worshiping (what else there is to worship, but a beauty?!)

And, of course, mutually recursive processes (physical processes which could be abstracted out and formalized that way) are everywhere in biology. It just happen that language is a pattern matching, not an algebra, like everything else in the brain. Algebras, like numbers, does not exist outside our heads.)

<comment><USER16> Algebra and pattern matching are basically the same thing, aren't they? To find a solution to an algebraic problem, you pattern match on the problem structure and see what falls out. To solve a pattern matching problem, you perform algebraic transformations to isolate the pattern being matched.

>Algebras, like numbers, does not exist outside our heads

Models are called models because they are not the things they model. Anything that is a model is an approximation. This doesn't mean they don't exist outside our heads. If that were true, there wouldn't be any computers.

<comment><USER17> > Algebra and pattern matching are basically the same thing

The difference is that pattern matching is done on a model of the world provided by words, instead of applying it directly to senses.

In reinforcement learning there is an approach to model the world first, then run RL on top of the model, because that would provide a way for the agent to imagine possible outcomes without the need to try them first in actuality. Model based RL is a refinement of direct RL and is essential for thinking.

<comment><USER18> Pattern matching is done on literally every sensory nerve impulse the brain receives.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The article makes it sound like Chomsky's early approach was similar to the grammar you learn in school. That's actually what linguistic classification was like before Chomsky as I understand it. It's first mention of recursion is of a Chomsky paper from 2002, where everything is done with just a few rules, but recursion was also critical to Chomsky's earliest results.

Coming away reading it I would think Chomsky had a really naive approach that had to be modified with Principles and Parameters just to handle Spanish first person verbs, because his program was so narrow they hadn't bothered to consider Spanish. Then it wasn't until 2002 that they started handling recursion.

It doesn't quite say that directly, but that is just what I think someone might take away from reading the intro.

</comment><comment><USER20> Anyone else feel that ending the first section with the well-known "science progresses one funeral at a time" quote is rather too sharply pointed, given Chomsky's age?

<comment><USER10> Yes, I felt it to be extremely poor taste.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> My colleagues and I just got a paper accepted at Psych Science on this debate: we looked at the degree of generalization kids show in using determiners/articles ('a','an' or 'the') with nouns, also accounting for imitation of caregiver speech. If a child has heard "the cat" and "a cat", but only ever "the fish", when do they know they can generalize and say "a fish"? TLDR is that it's hard to say conclusively without larger samples of caregiver speech, but it seems like early speech (<2 yrs) has little evidence of category-based generalization, but it rapidly increases after that. Of course it's possible to contest that kids have more grammatical knowledge than what's reflected in what they say (the performance vs. competence distinction), but these methods can't address that.

[http://langcog.stanford.edu/papers_new/meylan-inpress- psychs...](http://langcog.stanford.edu/papers_new/meylan-inpress-psychsci.pdf)

HN readers may appreciate the methodology: we construct a beta-binomial model as a simple approximation of the generative process, and measure how the parameters change over time when we fit to read data. The child's definite vs. indefinite uses for each noun are treated as flips of a weighted coin; the weighting is determined by the definite and indefinite uses by the parent combined with a beta prior. The peakedness of the beta prior indicates how similar a kid thinks nouns will be to one another (in the absence of evidence). We fit this model to all the successive samples of a bunch of longitudinal developmental datasets, including the Speechome project out of MIT. Nonzero, constant peakedness would be consistent with access to syntactic categories from birth; increasing peakedness of the scale parameter corresponds to growing syntactic generalization.

</comment><comment><USER13> After reading the article, I still have to side with Chomsky on this one

Universal grammar may not exist (exactly) as he described but "young children use various types of thinking that may not be specific to language at all—such as the ability to classify the world into categories, and to understand the relations among things"

And what says this is not language related? It's an underlying structure that helps organize concepts. Who says thinking in shapes or concepts _is not a_ language?

Also, it's not because some languages have not evolved recursion that it's not a defying trait. In the same way western languages are not tonal but it doesn't mean a western kid wouldn't be able to learn them

<comment><USER17> > ability to classify the world into categories ... what says this is not > language related

It is data related. The patterns exists in the data itself, young children are just uncovering the latent factors that explain the data. So, the ability of children is to learn from patterns.

<comment><USER13> > It is data related. The patterns exists in the data itself

This is a cop out. You can't get semantics (and grammar) out of "types of words" only (or you couldn't have declensions)

The important thing about recursion is not that it doesn't exist in some places, but the fact that _it exists_.

The language capabilities of the brain seem to be an "hardware accelerated" heuristic that allows things to be connected more easily

Given that cognitive psychologists can't even reproduce the experiments they're supposedly experts of, I'm not holding my breath from an explanation from them

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> "I have not failed, I have just learned thousands of of ways which don't work" applies to science as well. It bothers me popular science often presents ground breaking work as a direct competitor to an established theory, while usually the established theory is a necessary stepping stone to the new one. usually, because it's more obvious approach and explains some aspects of the system. The old theory can be used as an instrument to gauge the qualities of the system under observation, and incompatibilities found provide then fertile material for new understanding.

<comment><USER22> Unfortunately, this is often the rhetorical approach commonly employed in unpopular, ahem, professional science as well. No one wants incremental progress, everything has to be transformative (science's _disruptive_ ).

Fortunately, this has yet to pervade other industries we all know and love.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> The article, and many professional functionalist lingusts, confuse Chomsky's Universal Grammar theory and its later "parameters" revision with the much more general hypothesis, also advocated by Chomsky, that human language grammar is somehow computable in a logical sense, formed through the application of objective and universal (with a small "u") logical rules. They prefer to view language rather as some sort of nebulous and inherently unquantifiable expression of the human spirit that is intrinsically bound to the unique cultural attributes of the society that produces it, a precious snowflake different from all others, which cannot be related to other languages through universal logical principles.

They feel that the notion of universal (small U) principles of grammar somehow robs language of some essential human qualia by reducing it to a mere mechanism, and moreover many postmodernist linguists believe that the very idea of objectivity in language, to include supposed universal grammatical principles, is somehow part of a broader imperialistic plot by evil white heterosexual men to oppress and subjugate the glorious Other through malicious efforts of universal grammatical classification. (Yes, seriously. Your tax dollars support more than a few professors who believe this is true, in all seriousness, and teach it to impressionable young students every day.)

These fears do not, however, have any bearing whatsoever on whether human language is, as a matter of fact, computable, the result of some set of universal logical principles. It either is or it isn't, and wishful thinking about how we would _like_ to conceive of language has no bearing on whether that is true or not. That is not how scientific knowledge works. (Of course, many denounce the scientific method itself as merely another tool used by evil white straight men to oppress the Other, and this despite the fact that it was invented by Arabs.)

The anti-computation camp frequently conflates Universal Grammar or parameters theory with the question of computability in general. When any evidence comes out that shows that a specific portion of UG is probably not true, they crow triumphantly about how language is really fundamentally something ineffable and pseudo-mystical, not able to be computed by logic.

UG and the computability question are not the same thing. UG is a specific proposed model of language computation. It has largely been falsified, shown to be inconsistent with the empirical evidence of how actual languages work. That is fine. This does not imply anything at all about whether language is universally computable according to _some_ model.

It just tells us that language is not computable according to _that_ model, not that it is not computable according to _any_ model.

<comment><USER9> >> When any evidence comes out that shows that a specific portion of UG is probably not true, they crow triumphantly about how language is really fundamentally something ineffable and pseudo-mystical, not able to be computed by logic.

I think the overwhelming mass of work critical of Chomsky treats it as a computational object; the emphasis changes from global computability to local inference: what can a learner infer about the structural properties of a language? How can people parse complex sentence structures and ascribe meaning to them? Hence the rapid adoption of machine learning for explaining human behavior in psycholinguistics, developmental linguistics, and historical linguistics. Nothing pseudo-mystical there.

<comment><USER23> Sure, of course not _all_ linguists who disagree with UG are anti- computationalists. (I don't know about "the overwhelming mass," but that is possibly the result of my exposure to a local concentration of anti- computationalists.) Many tentatively accept some sort of computability while rejecting the specific model of UG, as you correctly note.

My comment was directed at the author of the specific article, and at many functionalist and postmodernist linguists, who actively conflate the question of computability in general with the validity of UG as a specific model.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> So, if there is no innate grammar, why the phrase "large red ball" feels more correct than "red large ball", and in many languages (I can confirm only two)? If this is just a learned relationship between things, the order of the adjectives shouldn't matter. Furthermore, in Czech, words in sentence can be in many different orders (in particular, the ending word is the one that has emphasis), but order of adjectives still matters (or at least some feel right and some wrong). So we can learn and deal with different orderings of words.

<comment><USER25> Because you're an English speaker?

In Malay it's "ball red large"

Also this has been making the rounds:

[https://imgur.com/a/tDzy2](https://imgur.com/a/tDzy2)

<comment><USER26> Oh my god, a png of a twitter featuring a png. What is this world we have created.

Anyways.. it's pretty damn interesting. When I read it, I seriously read the last sentence as "great green dragon" without thinking, then went back and saw that I actually read the words in the wrong order.

Oddly enough, a green great dragon makes me think there would be some distinct species of dragon called the "great dragon", that are sometimes green, whereas "great green dragon" makes me think of just a very large, green, run-of-the- mill dragon.

However, all of this seems to me entirely related to training, getting very very used to things being expressed in a certain way. I have no idea how it could relate to some "innate" idea of grammar, especially since, as others have pointed out, this rule and many others only hold for English. Any bilingual individual can tell straight away that these things are all about memory -- nothing "innate" about a bunch of arbitrary rules.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> My own theory of language acquisition and music: [http://whatismusic.info/blog/LanguageDisplacementAndTheState...](http://whatismusic.info/blog/LanguageDisplacementAndTheStateOfMindInducedByMusic.html).

I don't assume any pre-existing "universal grammar".

What I do assume is a pre-existing classification of sounds into language and non-language. This hypothesis is somewhat confirmed by the recent results as described at [http://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273%2815%2901071-...](http://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273%2815%2901071-5) (and see [http://whatismusic.info/blog/IPredictedTheExistenceOfCompone...](http://whatismusic.info/blog/IPredictedTheExistenceOfComponentFive.html)).</comment>


Best Books to Movies in 2015 - <AUTHOR> http://www.bestoninternet.com/entertainment/novels/best-books-movies-2015/

<comment><USER2> Glaring omission of Andy Weir's "The Martian"

[Book]([http://www.amazon.com/The-Martian-Novel-Andy-Weir- ebook/dp/B...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Martian-Novel-Andy-Weir- ebook/dp/B00EMXBDMA)) | [Movie]([http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3659388/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3659388/))</comment>


A gift or hard graft? [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.econ.ubc.ca/ggallipoli/papers/Gift%20or%20Graft.pdf

<comment><USER2> Thanks for this! I had this bookmarked from when it was first written, but if i remember correctly, access was restricted soon after.

</comment><comment><USER3> Scribid link not working. Pdf article not working for me once I read it either.</comment>


Organizing Data in Long Lived Applications - <AUTHOR> http://eviltrout.com/2013/05/26/organizing-data-in-long-lived-applications.html

<comment><USER2> Interesting. Using composition of objects like that is a sensible enough approach. What about also just implementing lazy loading in your domain objects. If you try to get details of a user and it's already been fetched from the server, then great. If not then fetch it from the server. I guess that's what you're doing in a way, but with lazy loading, the fetching logic would be tied to the entity class and the rest of the application doesn't need to care.</comment>


Listen to Bitcoin - <AUTHOR> http://www.listentobitcoin.com/ <comment><USER2> Beautiful :) I didn't know people were moving around such large sums. I saw a 3400 bc bubble, and a 2000+ bc bubble floating out there. I wish I was able to distinguish what was going on directly from the sounds. Those huge bubbles sounded exactly like the small ones, and when I saw 50 bubbles appear at once, that also did not sound any different than a single bubble. The amount of simultaneous sounds seems to be limited to a very low number.

<comment><USER3> Bitcoin clients usually try to diffuse coin ownership by always sending two amounts with one transaction, one (normally smaller) amount is to the receiver, the second amount is to a new address of the sender. So your coins diffuse out over tons of addresses this way, and the true number of coins transferred between individuals is much less than it appears.

It can also be extremely unhelpful, for example to this chap today on reddit:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1bd1d1/i_think_i_ju...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1bd1d1/i_think_i_just_lost_90btc_are_they_stolen_help/)

Who didn't seem to know about return transactions and seems to have lost 90 BTC on that. (Because he/she used a "secure" live environment that would work with a temporary wallet and just one extra address with his/her money.)

<comment><USER4> Wow I can't follow that at all! Now I'm scared to ever spend my bitcoins!

<comment><USER5> He only got into that situation because he was using the software in a non- standard way, and he inadvertently deleted the "change-wallet" that had automatically been created for him.

As long as you use the software in a relatively standard way and don't ever delete your wallet files, you'll be fine.

<comment><USER6> This. If you save all wallet.dat files on any bitcoin clients that you use for transactions, you'll be fine. Don't be scared off by someone using the bitcoin client in a non-standard, unapproved way (and as long as you use the GUI and not the command line interface, you'll not have to worry about that).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What on earth are people spending this much bitcoin on? I see a multiple $100000 transaction on my screen.

<comment><USER8> Most of it seems to be just trade volume on MtGox, not actual transactions recorded in the blockchain.

<comment> w-ll Deposits and withdraws of Bitcoin will show, but all trades within MtGox are not recorded in the blockchain. It's just Gox moving balances between accounts.

<comment><USER8> That was exactly my point. Most of the bubbles on the screen on MtGox trades, not blockchain transactions.

<comment><USER6> He means Gox moving balances between internal Gox accounts, like hot/cold wallets. Not trades. The trades you and I make on Gox don't show on the blockchain until they're withdrawn.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wish I could pop these bubbles.

</comment><comment><USER10> It says no sound in Safari, but the sound works just fine in Safari 6.0.3. No sound in _Mobile_ Safari on iOS 6.1.3, however.

<comment><USER10> Just to note: it _did_ say there was no sound in Safari, but it was silently edited after the comment edit/delete window on parent ended. Odd you can't even delete comments that no longer apply after the edit window.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This needs a Satoshi dice version Ka-ching sounds

edit: obviously forgot my compliment, very clever idea and cool implementation this digital art right here ladies and gentleman

also this gave me an idea: how about a Bitcoin ECG?

<comment><USER12> And a whack-whack-oomps for the losses?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Are the pitches based on something? They appear to be totally random.

<comment><USER14> There are two kinds of sounds, "celesta" for transactions and trades (e.g. <http://www.listentobitcoin.com/sounds/celesta/c003.ogg>) and string swells for blocks (e.g. <http://www.listentobitcoin.com/sounds/swells/swell2.ogg>).

Looking at the source, you are, however, correct, that the pitches are selected at random.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Very appropriate in choosing bubbles to represent bitcoins :)

</comment><comment><USER16> I wish I could turn off the bubble sounds and just get sound for the blocks. I'd leave that on all day.

<comment><USER14> Here ya go:

<http://www.listentobitcoin.com/sounds/swells/swell1.ogg>

<http://www.listentobitcoin.com/sounds/swells/swell2.ogg>

<http://www.listentobitcoin.com/sounds/swells/swell3.ogg>

You could write a script to play these randomly!

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Wow, this is great! I got to see a block completed and see a 3392.80 BTC transaction go by - both got me excited enough to be amusing to those around me!

</comment><comment><USER18> Strangely relaxing to listen to money being moved around.

</comment><comment><USER19> What's the relationship between a sound (pitch, note, etc) and a transaction value?

<comment><USER19> after some digging around the JS, I noticed the sound is completely random except the volume which is based on the quantity of bitcoins

 _var maxBitcoins=1000;var minVolume=0.3;var maxVolume=0.5;var volume=bitcoins/(maxBitcoins/(maxVolume-minVolume))+minVolume;if(volume >maxVolume)volume=maxVolume;Sound.playRandomAtVolume(volume_100); _

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> If I had a child, I would open this site and it will make it sleep for sure ;). PS. Good idea!

</comment><comment><USER21> There was 20,000 BTC transaction the other day. I wonder how it would have sounded like.

<comment><USER22> Big Ben, presumably. This is oddly soothing in an "ew, economics" kinda way. I wouldn't mind letting this run in the background for when there's no wind for my windchime.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> The sound and the bubbles remind me somewhat of _Electroplankton_ for the Nintendo DS.

</comment><comment><USER24> Oh boy.. I was going to buy some bitcoins, but the price is creeping towards 100 USD/1 btc. That's just ridiculous.

A few weeks ago, prices were around 26 USD/1 btc... So are we going to see a swing down that low again? Or is this SilkRoad talking?

<comment><USER25> this is the effect of the scarcity of bitcoin. there's a tremendous network effect, more and more online shops accepting them as well as AFK. it allows much lower fees and risk than credit cards with their 3% plus chargebacks, up to 5-10% better margins for sellers.

You can now use bitcoin to pay for services and even fines at some municipalities, cities and what not <http://www2.egovlink.com/press-release- bitcoin.cfm>

You can buy things on amazon via bitspend as well as other services.

And if you still don't trust bitcoin value to not go down, you can use services like bitpay that will convert for you instantly in whichever currency you want.

There's even some VISA prepaid you can top up with bitcoin for the places that don't accept them.

And you can now use bitcoin to pay for expenses and contractors [http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/27/expensify-now-offers- suppor...](http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/27/expensify-now-offers-support-for- bitcoin-an-alternative-to-paypal-for-international-contractors/)

And while all this happens, the USD keeps getting printed at a far superior rate.

<comment><USER26> Thanks for explaining this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I bet loads of people are moving between wallets just to see theirs right now. :)

<comment><USER28> If people are going to do that they should consider donating a bit to his wallet (14zoTKB29NdsJRvk4qP3vB9mQZ3dcV3eWk)

It gets highlighted and is really easy to spot

<comment><USER29> I like your optimism in thinking that people who use Bitcoin will fall for that...

<comment><USER30> Fall for what? It's explained right on the top of the page.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Is this actually representative of all bitcoin transactions?

<comment><USER32> Original creator here, it plots all the transactions it receives from Blockchain.info. It's more or less pulling from the same recent transaction feed that you get if you go to Blockchain.info's homepage. I'd like to think this includes all transactions on the network :)

<comment><USER31> I'm surprised, the volume is much lower than I expected.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> @Maximillian Try a smaller font for smaller transactions.

</comment><comment><USER34> Nicely done.

What feed/API are you pulling from to track these changes. I've been looking for a solid way to chart bitcoin transactions and haven't been able to find one.

<comment><USER35> Check bottom left corner. I guess mtgox and blockchain streaming api.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> You can see what are currency trades vs. transactions on: <http://www.bitcoinmonitor.com/>

</comment><comment><USER37> Nice. Bubble size based on (log?) bitcoin size would be good. I wonder how long till bitcoin gets big enough that this sounds like techno ;p

</comment><comment><USER38> As fiat money devalues bitcoin becomes more valuable; but it might be doomed because the central banks could easily bubble it to oblivion.

</comment><comment><USER39> It's a pity that bubble size is unrelated to the amount of Bitcoins in transaction. Or is it related to the transaction size?

</comment><comment><USER40> How do the sounds correspond to activity?

<comment><USER41> Deeper noise = larger amount, roughly. Larger bubble has some sort (logarithmic?) correlation to size. It's necessarily rough though.

<comment><USER42> Does this mean that a huge transaction for the right amount will hit the perfect low note, and cause everyone within earshot of listentobitcoin.com to simultaneously crap themselves?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I'm seeing one transaction every 30-60 seconds, which seems wrong to me.

<comment><USER44> Seems to be going fine now. I imagine the transactions are just pretty sporadic. Either that, or it momentarily lost the connection with Mt. Gox and blockchain.info.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> i used to do quite a bit of sonification of stock trades. i imagine bitcoin is the thing to use these days though, since realtime stock data was a pain to get and deal with.

</comment><comment><USER46> Needs a volume button.

</comment><comment><USER47> Where did you get the celesta and swells sample banks from?

</comment><comment><USER48> I wish I could pay my meal with bitcoins :)

<comment><USER49> You can, depending on your location. <http://pizzaforcoins.com/>

I know you were really trying to be snarky about Bitcoin, but in case you hadn't heard, you can actually do things with them. Also notable are <https://wrapbootstrap.com/> and Reddit

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Very nicely executed.

</comment><comment><USER51> Just brilliant!

</comment><comment><USER52> boua!</comment>


U.S. Workers Show Little Improvement in 21st Century Skills - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-15/u-s-workers-show-little-improvement-in-21st-century-skills <comment><USER2> What bugs me about this is reading the comments. Instead reading this news and thinking that when large swathes of the population are doing poorly there must be something wrong with the system, they turn around and just blame people for being stupid and lazy. There are tons of people in this country that grow up poor, in bad neighborhoods, with bad schools, and no hope of going to college and when things don't turn out well for them, we blame them for it. It may come as a shock to people from other countries but in the US school funding is extremely local. If you're from a rich neighborhood, your school has tons of money and resources. If you grow up in a poor neighborhood, some barely have enough money to keep the roof from leaking. And we've all just accepted this as normal and OK. We have the power to change this but we choose not to.

<comment><USER3> Disclaimer: 100% conjecture and opinion.

I understand where you're coming from and I'm going to leave an unpopular opinion as a comment, but I think the society we're growing into one that wants to absolve anyone of personal responsibility. I understand that growing up in poor neighborhoods and shitty family situations makes it immensely more difficult to set yourself up for success, but I just think at some point you're responsible for your own person, not anyone else and not society.

I grew up in methland, appalachia and had countless crackhead friends and family. I didn't have any money and had to work starting at age 15. I think I'd be in my right to complain and want education to be fixed and my city to be improved so it'd be easy for me to be more successful.

I took an alternative and left home, educated myself, and turned myself into a halfway decent contributor to society. I really think the US still has a lot of ability to reward those who go after it even if that means becoming a carpenter and saving for 30 years to retire early.

I understand our society is not ideal, but I just think those problems are going to take generations to fix. Why not take care of yourself and do your best to fix your own shit.

As a disclaimer, I'm not writing this towards disabled people or others that need society's help. I'm 100% ok with helping in those situations. I'm talking about the average american who has their health and some direction over their destiny.

I just don't get why people sit on their asses and complain instead of getting out and making shit happen or at least trying to. I don't get the barely getting by mentality.

<comment><USER4> It feels like you have no understanding of the underlying problem, honestly. There is a saying that everyone has heard that goes, If you are trying to outrun a bear, you don't have to be faster than the bear, you only have to be faster than your friend.

The bear, in this analogy, is the problem. It is society's problem. And the solution you propose for society is for everyone to run faster, but no one can run faster than a bear.

Maybe it is time instead to deal with the bear.

<comment><USER5> I think you're giving the commenter you're responding to too hard of a time. From what I understand, all he's saying is let's tackle two problems at the same time. Let's address the systemic problem but since that naturally takes a long time, let's also work on personal accountability and meet at the "perfect" end where we excel at both. I agree with his/her take that it seems that with each passing generation, there seems to be less and less independence in addressing personal issues (even if they stem from systemic issues). At the end of the day, whether society helps or not, you are the only person that cares about your wellbeing the most. Let's just do both simultaneously is all I'm saying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My wife and I are in the early stages of homeschooling our kids and one thing I've noticed in all my reading about education is that there seems to be one side that argues for more job training in school, and there's another side that argues that a well-rounded life includes much more than just job skills, and then there are articles like these, that seem to indicate that a ton of people are making it through the education system without learning anything at all. That seems like a much bigger problem than what should be on the curriculum, but it doesn't seem to be much talked about.

On the professional side of things, I've come to expect that most 18 year olds won't know anything about anything, which is fine, 18 is quite young, after all, but it seems at odds with the tremendous amount of time and money that's been spent on the average 18 year old's education.

<comment><USER7> "18 year olds don't know anything about anything"

Come now, that is blatant overstatement. When I was 18, I knew how to read, write, do calculus, use Microsoft Office, do a bit of coding, and even enough to work in a biological research lab.

The problem is most skills needed in the economy are not aligned with the skills taught in school. Is it necessary that a plumber can read Shakespeare and analyze it? Is it necessary that a nurse knows all about the Civil War? Well no, in a purely skills-based sense, their schooling was "not valuable" and they "don't know anything".

<comment><USER6> I said most, not all, and do you consider yourself average? I would consider an 18 year old with your skills to be rather exceptional. And 18 year olds like you were tend to go off to college and not enter the workforce right away, anyway.

And your last paragraph is exactly what I'm talking about, we argue about whether a plumber needs to know Shakespeare or whether a nurse needs to know about the Civil War, as if they know those things but would be better served with other, more practical knowledge, but, in my experience, basically nobody knows about those things, anyway, beyond a few cursory facts. Meanwhile, apparently a huge number of people can't do basic math.

As an aside, the kind of people I know who do know a lot about Shakespeare or the Civil War are the kind of people who would have learned it whether or not it was a subject in school.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Note that this research was done in 2017. You can see the press release here:

[https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/piaac/current_results.asp](https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/piaac/current_results.asp)

Sample questions from the test are available here:

[https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/piaac/sample_lit.asp](https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/piaac/sample_lit.asp)

[https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/piaac/sample_num.asp](https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/piaac/sample_num.asp)

[https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/piaac/sample_pstre.asp](https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/piaac/sample_pstre.asp)

[https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/piaac/sample_reading.asp](https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/piaac/sample_reading.asp)

</comment><comment><USER9> One thing I've noticed is that as more things "advance", there's more that you're supposed to already know - and an expectation (especially among people who themselves don't really understand it) that it should somehow take _less_ time to get up to speed than it took in the past. Take machine learning, for example. You can work through a tensor flow tutorial in a day and understand how to use tensor flow to solve the problem in the tutorial or another problem close to it. If you actually want to understand how machine learning works - when it does or doesn't apply, how to make it efficient enough to be usable, how to figure out where it went wrong when it does go wrong - you need to actually understand the statistics that's behind it and the calculus that's behind _that_. And that can take months or years, just to learn what you're already "supposed" to know. I'm picking on machine learning, but I see this everywhere: I work with people who struggle to get Hibernate working because they don't understand SQL joins, and they don't have the time to go back and pick up "the basics" or people who can't get Angular to work right because they don't understand Javascript closures. As technology is made "simpler" it actually takes _longer_ to master while everybody on the outside looking in expects it to be easier to learn than before.

</comment><comment><USER10> It's because the average American doesn't value education like they once use to. American's IMO value entertainment far more.

We're living in a time when information and the ability to gain skills is easier than ever. Google, YouTube, Public Libraries, etc. It's all there, available for anyone. But American's have it in the their mind that the only way to gain skills is by going to a school and sitting in a classroom. Perhaps, the institution is to blame for that?

Until Americans start realizing that education and being a lifetime learner is one of the most critical aspects of an economy, I'm afraid we won't see much in terms of improvements.

<comment><USER11> There's a mix of both. There are hardworking Americans - usually first- and second-generation immigrants and the older, wealthier families - that value education and hard work. And then there is the middle class, who was raised on entertainment, music, and media that romanticized apathy and disdain for education and the workplace. And there is the lower class, which has enough of its own struggles that I don't want to try to summarize their problems in just a sentence or two.

Either way, I do think that platforms like YouTube and Instagram give lots of influence to entrepreneurs - enough that Shark Tank started labeling some contestants as 'wanntrepreneurs' (wannabes) - and that the perceived value of self-driven diligence and the desire for intellect might become popular again. Actually, I think they already are starting to be popular again, especially among younger people.

> But American's have it in the their mind that the only way to gain skills is > by going to a school and sitting in a classroom.

Ivory towers will come crumbling down in time.

<comment><USER10> > and that the perceived value of self-driven diligence and the desire for > intellect might become popular again. Actually, I think they already are > starting to be popular again, especially among younger people.

I hope you're right :) Good points overall.

> Ivory towers will come crumbling down in time.

No doubt. We can't continue on the path we're currently on. It's not sustainable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This might be an unpopular thing to say on this forum, but it needs to be said: 1\. The average US worker is entitled and arrogant. The "everything is belong to me" attitude is rampant. 2\. "There is no shortage if you pay enough" argument - especially in high-tech - is a bunch of BS. You could be paying 200-250K salaries and still you end up with bunch of incompetents.

<comment><USER13> IMO that's more of a symptom than it is a cause.

Re 1: Mid-western/"fly-over" state folks have been hit by large amounts of change in the last few decades. The "white working class" (especially male) was overthrown by globalization, immigration, by a renewed push for women's rights, LGBTQ rights and so-on. Wages went down, social rank went down and opportunities dwindled. No training programs, no social programs, no healthcare, nothing.

This has led to a reactionary position of "returning to the good old days" of manufacturing, of mining, and conservative ideologies. To when they could pursue the American dream. I think it can come across the way you describe but it's driven more by fear and lack of opportunity than by some intrinsic arrogance characteristic.

These are the folks who were left behind by the Democrats in 2016. The status quo genuinely wasn't working for them. Not that the alternative was better, but it was an alternative to a system that wasn't working and from their perspective they had nothing to lose. That's why we find ourselves where we do.

Re 2: "There is no shortage if you pay enough" has more to do with the zero marginal cost business models that yield staggering quantities of revenue and profit per worker. Apple makes ~$40B per year in net profit off of 123,000 employees. That means could give each of them (including FTE geniuses and sales people) a $350,000 per year _raise_ and still break even. There's tons of head-room here.

<comment><USER14> HN has such an absurd view of the Midwest. I live in the Midwest. We have a large MS campus here along with quite a few smaller tech companies. The main economic drivers here are tech, agriculture, and oil (not manufacturing, mining, or conservative ideologies whatever that means). My group of friends averages in the 150-250k range of income which is high for the area for sure but it's evidence of the thriving technology scene. It's also low compared to the farmers around here which do quite well in good years. Nothing in your description comes close to accurately describing our small city in the Midwest.

<comment><USER15> _HN has such an absurd view of the Midwest._

It's not just HN, I keep reading _many_ opinions and thinkpieces that reference "the situation in the midwest" when trying to talk about jobs, job markets and localized economies that are often frustratingly and annoyingly WELL off the mark.

I share your frustration.

Signed,

Northern Indiana

<comment><USER16> I live in Michigan and I've spent a bit of time in northern Indiana. My observation is that it was one of the most impoverished, destitute, and hopeless places I've ever visited, and I've also spent considerable time in sub-Saharan Africa.

I've never lived there though, so I'm curious to hear how far off the mark you consider me to be.

<comment><USER15> Allow me to be a bit self-deprecating on behalf of my fellow Hoosiers here: I'm from Indianapolis, originally. We have a rule about going into "other" Indiana:

Don't.

More seriously, no you're not really that far off. Most of the wealth concentrated in NWI specifically exists to and from Chicago. In this case, _not_ speaking for anyone else by me and my own experiences: I have many friends who live in towns like Hammond, but with the exception of groceries and utilities spend a lot of their time (and money) over in IL (these are the well to do types, I should clarify). My job is in Chicago. Personally I'd be curious to see if anyone's ever done the numbers on how towns like Merrilville and Hammond are doing fiscally against how many residents hold full-time jobs in the second city.

Brain drain is a real thing too, if kiddo isn't going to ND, IU Northwest or State (or even traveling down to Bloomington or Lafayette), they're probably heading up 55 to Chicago and going to one of the many schools up there. And not returning because...well, there's not much here, big wheel in the sky keeps on turning.

All that said: Housing is affordable. Indianapolis is slowly transforming into something really interesting. Have fun getting there with these roads but..

<comment><USER16> Thanks for the response. I almost went to IU in Bloomington for grad school, and I still love the town. The Runcible Spoon is still top 5 breakfasts I've ever had. But outside of there, and maybe Indianapolis, the state just seems forgotten by time.

<comment><USER15> _The Runcible Spoon_

I'm an IU grad myself and 100% agree it's still one of my favorite breakfast spots; I'll be down there for the holidays and it's definitely on the list.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> What a negative spin on a pretty neutral result. Here's the actual link [1]. The latest results are for 2017 and the prior ones for 2012/14\. The government's conclusion is:

"Between 2012/14 and 2017, there were no statistically significant changes in the percentages of adults performing at each proficiency level in any of the three PIAAC domains"

So, how can you spin "no statistically significant changes" into something more click-friendly? You say U.S. workers show little improvement. Nevermind that this was in no way restricted to "workers"; the survey covers all adults ages 16 to 65, in a representative fashion.

How's the US compared to the rest of world? Here's the relevant documents: [2] for 2012/14 and [3] for 2019. Note that the format is slightly different, the first doc contains only OECD countries, while the second some more countries.

* literacy. before: the US well below OECD average, just below England and Germany and above Poland and France. Now: the US slightly above average, still just below England and Germany, and just above Poland, but well above France

* numeracy. before: well below average, only Italy and Spain worse than the US. Now: exactly the same.

* computer numeracy. before: a notch below average, wedged between Japan and Korea. Now: well above average, well above both Korea and Japan.

So, overall, either neutral (numeracy), or slight improvement (literacy) or substantial improvements (computers).

Should I dare to conclude that the most improvement the US workers have shown was in the area most relevant for 21st century?

[1] [https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/piaac/current_results.asp](https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/piaac/current_results.asp)

[2] [http://www.oecd.org/skills/piaac/Country%20note%20-%20United...](http://www.oecd.org/skills/piaac/Country%20note%20-%20United%20States.pdf)

[3] [https://www.oecd.org/skills/piaac/publications/countryspecif...](https://www.oecd.org/skills/piaac/publications/countryspecificmaterial/PIAAC_Country_Note_USA.pdf)

</comment><comment> non-entity > Americans struggle with the most basic of math skills," NCES Associate > Commissioner Peggy Carr said in a statement. "We need to better equip > Americans with the numeracy skills that they need for success, starting in > middle and high school."

I can resonate with this. After starting sken projects that were going to require more CS knowledge than I have, I found in a rabbit hole completely ignorant of most things. Even simple things like doing division by hand and multivariable equations? I had completely forgotten hownto do. I was never particularly fond of math in school. Not sure why tbh, whenever I would get stuck on something the teacher was unable to explain things in a way I couldnt understand. I dont think I was stupid, hell throughout middle and high school I started programming andn hacking stuff, often finding ways out of classes to go do that instead. But by the time I was in HS, I found myself ending up in pre-calculus and calculus classes (ended up picking thats over stays because colleges would prefer it for any engineering discipline). And do to a mix of teachers who would generally pass anyone + technology ready available for me to plug in the problem in. I was constantly digesting articles that claimed this stuff would never be of use to me, that traditional education was useless for programmers and that of could slap together CRUD apps would be hired for six figures easily. I ended up deciding I wasnt going to bother with college as it was useless (in retrospect theres a lot of mixed truth to all that and I really wish I had gone to school)

And of course fast forward and I dont hardly remember simple algebra, and could flat out tell you nothing about trig, or calc. It sucks, but I dont have time to relearn all that now.

</comment><comment><USER18> Anecdote: In high school (2004) I got a CCNA after a year of networking classes. That was pretty useful. Or would have been, had I not been into Linux as a hobby already. I've been in IT since then but ended up never touching a switch or router in my entire professional life.

</comment><comment><USER19> [https://outline.com/AZfPcW](https://outline.com/AZfPcW)

</comment><comment><USER20> The real challenge is that it is nearly impossible to get hired for work even when you are qualified for it.

<comment><USER21> Part of the problem I have noticed is people being brought up with the idea that a qualification is what is required to get a job when reality is usually far from the truth. It certainly might get you into the door more often that someone without but a common mindset is if I tick the qualifications boxes I will be given a job.

Tangentially related, this effects wage equality dissuasions as people get into the habit of comparing wages based on title and qualifications as opposed to value added to the company from your work. Some roles this happens to work ok for, but for lots of roles it just makes no sense, developers being a prime example.

<comment> non-entity So what's the alternative? Kmowing the right people? That seems 100x harder than than getting qualifications sometimes.

<comment><USER21> The alternative is learning what value you add to a company, what others are earning while providing similar value and learning how to communicate that value proposition effectively. These skills are much harder to learn than getting a qualification because they are subtle and not taught at school. Schools teach you how to get qualifications.

Knowing the right people is the same as having a qualification, it's a stat boost.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What should I make? - <AUTHOR> I'm a solo developer with some "full stack" skills but am having hard time finding my unicorn, which is ideally something I can make and run by myself for paying customers, who are preferably small teams/businesses.<p>What do you wish existed that you would gladly pay for to relieve some burden? <comment><USER2> Visual Basic to Javascript+PHP converter+WYSIWYG- because there are a lot of VB enthusiasts still out there and also a lot of free PHP servers out there.

<comment><AUTHOR> this sounds...out of my skill range. thanks tho

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> maid service</comment>