Population-based training of neural networks - <AUTHOR> https://deepmind.com/blog/population-based-training-neural-networks/ <comment><USER2> Two things stick out to me after a first read:

First, this actually learns a schedule for each hyperparameter, not just a good set of fixed values, automatically discovering learning rate annealing and related techniques. This seems incredibly powerful. It is also learning hyperparameter schedules specific to a single training run - which seems interesting but not obviously helpful, especially since many of the learned schedules fairly closely match the baseline hand-tuned ones.

Second, it seems like they're optimizing against their validation metric directly; isn't that basically 'cheating' (i.e. defeats much of the point of having a separate validation metric in the first place)? It also seems completely orthogonal to their technique - could they not have optimized for the same loss function as the network itself? Is this an improvement over state of the art, or is it just overfitting to the validation metric?

<comment><USER3> Well, they consider RL problems extensively, and as the joke goes, in RL it's OK to overfit to your validation set - if you can.

As for regular supervised learning: it's no worse than, say, early stopping based on validation scores. It should be wrong but in practice NNs generalize anyway, and since this paper implies that Google Brain & DM are doing this hyperparameter optimization routinely now for everything, I figure that they would have noticed any overfitting problems by now (either when the methods fail to outperform on one of Google's private internal huge databases, or when they rolled outth the translator).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is really cool! I haven't read through the real paper yet but it's very impressive that this method does not incur a significant performance cost. I had assumed that using a genetic-style algorithm would be costly since you would need to train a large number of networks individually, but treating all variations equally in terms of training time now seems naive. Distributing the training time using intelligent exploration and exploitation is an awesome idea to fix this.

<comment><USER5> This is a fairly well represented technique in bayesian hyperparameter optimization, where you train a meta-classifier that keeps track of the parameter space. Kind of like a manager model, if you will, that learns to intelligently optimize exploration vs exploitation so that a team of workers will arrive at the global optimum.

Back when Yahoo! was a real company they used a technique called "multi-armed bandits" to learn what ads to show. [1]

More recently, there's a number of off-the-shelf packages available that you can trivially integrate into your ML pipeline to optimize hyperparameters of your models, I'll include the links below.

[1] multi-armed bandits [https://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/09/23/yahoo_core_personal...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/09/23/yahoo_core_personalization/)

[2] tree of parzen estimators [https://jaberg.github.io/hyperopt/](https://jaberg.github.io/hyperopt/)

[3] hyperband - what google uses in their internal ML toolkits AFAIK [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1603.06560.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1603.06560.pdf)

[4] (shameless plug) gaussian process based hyperparameter optimization service [https://github.com/avantoss/loop](https://github.com/avantoss/loop)

<comment><USER3> This isn't your standard MAB or GP hyperparameter optimization; those typically require you to train each NN to convergence before further exploration is done (ie each 'round' is training a NN). Skimming the paper, OP is closer to freeze-thaw or reversible backpropagation hyperparameter optimization, or Net2Net meta-RL: the hyperparameter optimization is monitoring the loss curve of each trained NN, switching between them based on promisingess like in freeze-thaw, but also switching hyperparameters on the fly and reusing the trained weights to avoid starting from scratch, Net2Net style. Each NN being trained is periodically updated to either clone & tweak a new hyperparameter set to continue training the current NN's parameters, or clone & tweak the best NN's parameters while keeping the old hyperparameters. (They only clone the full NN, so they can't do architecture search, but there's no reason they couldn't use Net2Net or other recent approaches which similarly recycle the trained weights to avoid the huge computational burden of training from scratch.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think this is what Google and the others aim for - no hand-tuning. You simply specify the problem (some function to optimize) and the data. Everything in a nice concise package running on Google Cloud using their custom software and hardware.

</comment><comment><USER7> This seems similar to what Jeff Dean was working on with AutoML: [https://research.googleblog.com/2017/11/automl-for-large- sca...](https://research.googleblog.com/2017/11/automl-for-large-scale- image.html). Is DeepMind collaborating with the Google Brain team and how connected are the teams? It seems somehow that the efforts may be duplicated in some areas...

<comment><USER8> Isn't it good that efforts are duplicated? It commoditizes the work and results, provides more jobs so there are more people who understand this field. It's unlikely each approach will be exactly similar.

Similarly, take a look at the deep learning library market: caffe (I think out of Stanford?), tensorflow (google), pytorch (FB + MS)... each has different strengths, but I'm sure glad the pytorch people pushed ahead, even though google put a ton of marketing effort into TF, simply because now we have more awesome things :).

Once a market or product is mature, then I can see the "duplicates are wasteful". But a nascent, exploratory field like ML/DL needs as many different approaches as is possible.

Now, if only we could gradient descent to find the optimal approach ;).

<comment><USER9> Should I move from theano to tensorflow? I didn't realize that theano was no longer being developed when I first starting playing with keras.

<comment><USER10> Does Theano meet your needs? Then no. Does TensorFlow meet them better, enough to justify the cost in switching? Then yes. "Actively developed" is a silly metric. Focus on features, flexibility, robustness etc.

<comment><USER11> For neural network libraries this isn't sensible.

For many (most?) users outside of Google and Facebook the most important feature is "is there an off-the-shelf implementation of new technique XXX or do I have to build it myself?"

For most users the sensible choice comes down to Keras+Tensorflow or PyTorch.

<comment><USER5> Depends on what you do. If you're starting a new project picking Theano indeed isn't a very good choice due to the reasons you've mentioned. However, if you already have a stable piece of software that does what you want it to do then migration won't add much value and you could spend this time doing something more important, like improving documentation or having dinner with your family and friends.

However it's worth pointing out that theano's API is somewhat similar to tensorflow so migrating shouldn't be too hard and should be fairly easy to test

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Looks like a genetic algorithm to me, just framed it differently to normal (which is clever). The hyperparams being the DNA and a network being an environment in which they are executed against.

</comment><comment><USER13> Seems very similar to using RL to tune the hyperparameters. Surely that means there are hyperparameters for PBT that need to be set, such as the exploration vs exploitation tradeoff.

</comment><comment><USER14> So basically SGD based NEAT?

<comment><USER15> NEAT just uses GA to generate a network topology and weights. From what I read, I think this is just a fancy way to parallelize searching for optimal hyperparameters.

<comment><USER14> Well, okay, what I meant is that it's literally applying evolutionary algorithms for hyperparameter optimization. Calling it some souped up BS like "population based training" seems like Deepmind marketing is getting out of hand...

<comment><USER16> Evolutionary Algorithms are a subset of Population Based heuristics. I don't think its "souped up BS" to use the term.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask YC Archive - <AUTHOR> http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/startupswiki/Ask_YC_Archive

<comment><USER2> There's no reason the sections can't be given constant names-- instead of #toc29 you could have #visas. This would avoid the explanation of how links can break, as well as avoid breaking links (and, as a bonus, you can stay backwards-compatible in the transition). Though of course, this does require you to update it, blah blah blah. Perhaps consider it in the future? :)

Very nice collection, of course.

<comment><USER3> Also, a script/Unix-one-liner to download everything and wrap in a zip/tarball for leisurely offline reading (e-readers/pads/etc.)

Selling PDF optional ;-) (yeah, I know - just curious about the number of pages.)

Thanks, of course, curating this is a lot of work.

P.S. the PDF joke was partly because of the Wikipedia repackagers; they seem to be resting: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1183986>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Noooo! There goes the next few hours/days. :) This is awesome, but I've already opened 20+ tabs in just one section...

</comment><comment><USER5> I've been linked this so many times that I assumed it had already been posted - a must read if you haven't browsed before.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is fantastic! A great resource for everyone, no matter how long you've been reading hn. I've been here for years and just read a whole bunch of stuff I had never noticed before. Definitely bookmarked. Perhaps pg could link to this from "Lists". Thank you, Gabriel.

I clicked on about 25 links and noticed that all of them were more than 600 days old. I wonder why. Something about how they were mined? Selection bias?. Or maybe we've already said all the important stuff and hn is devolving into fluff (perish the thought).

<comment><USER7> More because I haven't updated it in a while :). If pg links it, I promise to update it immediately!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Very informative. I've sent this to my co-founders and we're reading through it - at least, the threads we haven't already read.

Thank you!

</comment><comment><USER9> This is an amazing resource! Many thanks for putting it together.

</comment><comment><USER10> So much quality info! Very many thanks.

</comment><comment><USER11> great, thanks</comment>


LESS Prefixer - <AUTHOR> http://lessprefixer.com/

<comment><USER2> There is also Lea Veriou's prefix free project.

<http://leaverou.github.com/prefixfree/>

I can see arguments for both leaning on JavaScript or doing it server side as this one does. One benefit of doing it on the client is that it only generates the relevant prefixes. There is no need to send down opera-specific prefixes to a webkit browser.

<comment><AUTHOR> The bandwidth saved once gzipped cannot possibly outweigh the downside of another HTTP connection for the JS file and then the processing time needed to run it. Additionally a JS file at the top of your page will be blocking.

The benefit to the JS method is developer convenience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I keep seeing box-shadow used as an example in projects like this, but my understanding is that all browsers which support box-shadow now support it without any prefixes. If this is the case, aren't we better off to only have the generic .box-shadow, and not including any of the vendor prefixes?

I have been using my own version of something similar to this for other CSS properties. This looks more complete than my own, so I look forward to trying it out. Thanks for putting this together.

<comment><AUTHOR> In building this, I had to look this up for each rule. <http://CSS3Please.com> has the most compact 'reasoning' for each in the form of comments.

To answer your specific question, all _browsers_ that support it do so without prefixes, but not all _browser versions_. For example, even with auto-updates, a non-negligible percentage of Chrome browsers out there are older.

<comment><USER4> That's one of the many problems with the prefixes, we're stuck with them until we're sure that all the "modern" browsers' old versions are no longer in use. Thankfully for most of those it shouldn't take that long.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great lib, thanks. (How did you know I was searching for something like this yesterday? :) )

I hope to see more and more component libraries for less being built -- both low level ones like this, and higher level widget kits, and finally full framework kits like bootstrap. Less provides such a great way to do mix and match with proper factoring that I feel a real design-dev ecosystem could be built with it. Particularly if some conventions about naming variables for various things like colors and borders start seeing widespread adoption -- theming becomes a matter of setting the right variables.

(aside: coincidentally, I think the biggest problem with bootstrap and why bootstrap sites aren't as custom as they really could be is this that a lot of variables aren't nicely exposed for theming purposes, in some cases values that don't need to be hardcoded are, and deep in the project. This is also true of other, similar frameworks I investigated.)

</comment><comment><USER6> Most of these are also in Twitter Bootstrap 2 (see mixins.less).

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not quite as complete, and comes with other idioms as well so it's not as portable. I'm not really sure why they put so many different things in a single file to be honest.

<comment><USER6> Agreed. This is a useful project, but it stands or falls on maintenance. Kudos for putting it on Github. I hope you will take good care of any pull requests!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This looks fantastic. I've been using a similar (but less complete) css3 less file in some of my projects. It's nice to have a more complete one available.

I would reccomend also taking a look at this border-radius mixin: [http://tech.matchfwd.com/a-better-border-radius-mixin-in- les...](http://tech.matchfwd.com/a-better-border-radius-mixin-in-less/) it's quite well done using guard statements to allow more fine-grain control.

</comment><comment><USER8> Sorry but this type of libraries are only going to enforce in me the idea that stylus is the best option out there.

Want mixins? then use that `mymixin( arg, arg2 );`. Want simply overloaded/overridden standard properties to extend support for non-standard- compliant environments? use `box-shadow: 0px 2px 0px rgba(0,0,0,0.4);` with the _nib_ extension, or build it by yourself.

</comment><comment><USER9> Nice! I too like the idea of having a tiny module that does only this, rather than using a big library like Bootstrap or the LESS equivalent of Compass. I added a pull request that puts the Opera prefixes into a separate file since it has a small market share. It's like the webkit-only version, only less minimalistic, and is closer to what someone who writes their own CSS might do.

</comment><comment><USER10> Looks like a more complete alternative to <http://lesselements.com/>

Thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> I used LESS Elements for a while -- its shortcomings caused me to build this. I can't fault LESS Elements too much since I think the problems it has are caused by choosing a syntax before CSS3 was stabilized.

The main issue it has is that it often puts parameters in a different order than the CSS3 spec making it a huge pain to remember.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Ahhh great! I've been rolling my own as I go, but this will save a lot of time and effort.

</comment><comment><USER12> Good work on this. Personally, I tend to use Preboot (<http://markdotto.com/bootstrap/>), which was the precursor to bootstrap, before they tacked on the kitchen sink.

</comment><comment><USER13> Bourbon is another alternative for SASS.

<http://thoughtbot.com/bourbon/>

</comment><comment><USER14> This is great... wish I'd had it before I made my own.

I would suggest either minifying it or aligning the properties. Or both!</comment>


Shopify Announces Payments - <AUTHOR> http://www.shopify.com/payments

<comment><USER2> My experience with both Shopify and Stripe (separately) has been absolutely fantastic. Both are extremely innovative teams at the top of their craft, and outstanding customer service the few times we've needed it. Happy to see them working together - great fit.

</comment><comment><USER3> Using Stripe Connect?</comment>


Android's Log.wtf Method - <AUTHOR> http://developer.android.com/reference/android/util/Log.html#wtf(java.lang.String, java.lang.Throwable)

<comment><USER2> See also:

      public static boolean isUserAMonkey()

      Returns "true" if the user interface is currently being messed with by a monkey.

[http://developer.android.com/reference/android/app/ActivityM...](http://developer.android.com/reference/android/app/ActivityManager.html#isUserAMonkey\(\))

<comment><USER3> This is related to [http://developer.android.com/guide/developing/tools/monkey.h...](http://developer.android.com/guide/developing/tools/monkey.html), where you can actually test your user interface with a pseudo-monkey.

<comment><USER4> Also related to that: <http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Monkey_Lives.txt> (how a similar tool was used on the original Macintosh)

<comment><USER5> And this explains isUserAMonkey()

 _Bill Atkinson came up with the idea of defining a system flag called "MonkeyLives" (pronounced with a short "i" but often mispronounced with a long one), that indicated when the Monkey was running. The flag allowed MacPaint and other applications to test for the presence of the Monkey and disable the quit command while it was running, as well as other areas they wanted the Monkey to avoid. This allowed the Monkey to run all night, or even longer, driving the application through every possible situation._

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> See also :)

android.glitz

[http://groups.google.com/group/android- developers/browse_thr...](http://groups.google.com/group/android- developers/browse_thread/thread/3e7d0716e2d29605/f8fae650be9bcbc7)

</comment><comment><USER7> I like the description

        What a Terrible Failure

adb lolcat was another andoid easter egg that made me laugh

</comment><comment><USER8> Lol, funny fact is that I have been collaborating with dpkg team in Debian and they created an identical function in C to report ANY error condition. I've read a lot of //D'OH and //ROFLMAO comments in rhythmbox source code so I guess this is pretty common over open source devs within the Linux community!

</comment><comment><USER3> Another gem: [http://developer.android.com/reference/android/hardware/Sens...](http://developer.android.com/reference/android/hardware/SensorManager.html#GRAVITY_DEATH_STAR_I) gives a gravity constant, on the death star, in imperial units...

<comment><USER9> I was too busy cracking up at GRAVITY_THE_ISLAND, defined as 4.815162, to notice the Death Star reference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> instead of cutesy shit like that, how about documenting stuff like customizing input methods. the SoftKeyboard sample doesn't have a single usage datum online. I, ahem, googled it. How do I enable a custom keyboard for just one text entry widget?

oops, didnt mean to interrupt the cute fest with actual question. fucking morons.</comment>


CNN Fails to Stop Fall in Ratings - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/30/business/media/30cnn.html?hpw <comment><USER2> I recall Bernard Shaw in a blacked out hotel room in Baghdad during the initial aerial assault of the Persian Gulf War. At the time, it felt new, immediate, and fresh.

Now we get Anderson Cooper grandstanding in Haiti...now it feels somehow "staged" - news in the background, anchors in the foreground.

CNN's best days are long behind them.

<comment><USER3> Funny thing about CNN's gulf war coverage.. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m17MPJ2bQ9Y>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The rise of cable news is probably one of the worst things that has ever happened to this country. It turns news into entertainment and sport. No mystery why Fox News is popular. The echo chamber of cable news has also dragged down the quality/substance of the network news programs as well. That's where the overwhelming majority of people get their TV news. Even newspapers are not immune. It's terrible that this small but rabid viewership of cable news is allowed to have such a disproportionate impact on the entire news industry. I think CNN would be wise to position themselves as a more serious substantive alternative. I don't see how they beat Fox News at entertainment/sport. I'm actually surprised MSNBC hasn't pulled ahead of CNN yet since they indulge in most of the same gimmicks as Fox News. That probably speaks more to the demographics of these rapid cable news junkies.

</comment><comment><USER5> I wonder how much of these news ratings are a reflection of the changing preferences of their primary audiences. Though I think CNN attempts to be as neutral as possible, I have always considered it a somewhat liberal network. Fox, on the other hand, has always come off as very conservative to me.

As a young (26) libertarian/liberal I don't even own a TV, I get my news from nytimes.com, BBC and NPR driving around and links from my social circles. I think if I had a TV I would watch CNN. My father on the other hand has a TV, and its on Fox.

</comment><comment><USER6> I think the cnn audience is ( used to be ) generally younger and more progressive and therefore has made the jump to online news earlier. This can probably not account for all of the decline however.

<comment><USER7> Hmm, in the 90s I always thought of the CNN audience as older and more conservative, but that was admittedly just an anecdotal impression. I mean, compare the audience that watches John Stewart to the one that watches Larry King.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Incredible that Fox News is doing so well even when so many companies have joined a boycott on the channel. The market is definitely sending signals to CNN.

<comment><USER9> That's because Fox News isn't really a news channel anymore, they're more of a 24/7 entertainment/reality TV thing pretending to be a news channel. No wonder their ratings are so much higher - news is boring compared to entertainment.

<comment><USER10> It also helps that Fox News is usually put on the analog or basic cable packages where MSNBC is put in digital and extended tiers.

Less possible cable viewers for that channel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> People don't want to think. They prefer to go with like minded individuals and groupthink which is easier, hence Fox's popularity. There was a time when it was fashionable to figure it out yourself but that went the way of Martha Stewart. While I get all of my news from the Naked News (.com) network I believe what was best about CNN was Lou Dobbs. At least you knew where he stood and if you liked that you would tune into it. It's just as easy to filter out the one-sidedness of news as to get something generic and make your own opinions.

<comment><USER12> CNN is the perfect home for nonthinking individuals. They are in full-blown groupthink constantly reaching out to the bloggers and twitter and the guy on the street and begging the viewer for their emails/tweets/input. I know I've personally stopped watching CNN exactly because I desire news, not uninformed opinion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Well I'm glad that it isn't a race to the bottom for ratings by everybody. Of course the cure for CNN is a couple of reality shows.

</comment><comment><USER10> Does anybody know a good source for the actual rating numbers?

</comment><comment><USER14> When visiting friends who have CNN on, I don't find it to be news. It's hours worth of talking heads repetitively speculating and emoting on whatever is the "topic du jour" -- chosen for salaciousness (or similar, primitive appeal) rather than salience. The actual news content is pretty close to zero.</comment>


Ask HN: Is the word "bot" losing its meaning? - <AUTHOR> From my understanding, the word "bot" is supposed to mean something that is working as autonomously as believably possible.
Within the past few years, I have read a lot of comments in social media and forums where people respond with accusations of people being a "Russian bot" or "Chinese bot". I can understand what they mean if they use "shill", but using the word "bot" means to me that the original poster is an autonomous web scraper or automatic program to vigorously defend or attack something. But the thing is, even if there is a nation-state-coordinated agenda to subvert online opinion, these things are still being conducted by real people, which I am fairly certain are still just regular humans. You can argue that programs like GPT-3 are generating the posts, but I think it's obvious by the flow and logic/emotional response chain between accusers and accusees that it is between real people because GPT-3 simply cannot handle pulling in knowledge of theory-building in a coherent, substantive way (at least not yet)—GPT-3 can only give the facade of having complex, novel thoughts and responses as is typical of heated discussions, but usually it is quite vapid. GPT-3 also doesn't typically make typos, nonconformist "nicely formatted" writing of humans, or use new information too well.
My conclusion then is that real people are pushing their viewpoints still, not "bots", but I may be misunderstanding the way the term is used. Or, has "bot" changed in meaning/use? Is it just a word used to effortlessly shut down opposing viewpoints? I'm trying to seriously understand how people use this word now. <comment><USER2> A bot is something that looks like a human or pretends to be one, but is actually a machine. That always was the meaning of it and nothing changed here. In a game a bot is software controlling the player-character and doing things, like a human player would do it. In web a bot is software visiting sites and scrapping them, like a human user would do with a browser. In social media a bot is software which creates and posts content and answers, like a human would do.

But, as everything is virtual, you have no direct way to proof whether some virtual actor is human or software. Only the quality of their actions can give you hints on it. So people go around accusing people left and right if their arguyments are to much following the protocol, and don't show signs of self- thinking by their understanding.

This on this other side has an additional meaning in form of human bots. A bot technically does not nead to be all virtual and digital, it could be also a meatbag with wetware following a guidebook, just acting out pre-definend routes. You see this usually in companies, call-centers and propaganda-jobs.

This is BTW a funny roundtrip, as the original meaning of robot was coinend for humans who do braindead labor, just following the rules, not thinking on their own. It just later moved to machines.

</comment><comment><USER3> My son, 9, is a keen Fortnite player. He uses this word to criticize newer or less capable players. "You're a bot"

<comment><AUTHOR> How interesting. Probably because playing against bots in a multiplayer game usually sucks. If really high AI difficulty was the norm, then that wouldn't work.

<comment><USER4> They're not very skilled in a lot of games. They can be a threat to newbies, but they're easily fooled by experienced players, and can even be less accurate vs more advanced moves, involving motion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It seems like "bot" and "drone" has the usage flipped. You don't really accuse them of being corporate drones anymore. You accuse them of being mindless bots.

</comment><comment><USER5> No. It has the same meaning. The layman just wildly overestimates the current capabilities of AI. The average Twitter user who sincerely accuses another account of being a "russian bot" actually does think it's some autonomous entity regurgitating propaganda.

</comment><comment><USER6> > I can understand what they mean if they use "shill"

You kind of answered your own question. Many people never differentiate between bot and shill, instead preferring to lump those two words together. A bot is programmatic; a shill is a human agent that likes to amplify messages or spread disinformation manually. Although some shills may still use some level of automation, for example, often using several accounts at the same time using some bespoke software arrangement.

</comment><comment><USER7> It means the bottom lane in League of legends.

</comment><comment><USER8> Or people on reddit accusing you of being paid to post because you don't share their Uber liberal religion.

</comment><comment><USER9> Yes. It is indeed losing its meaning.

This word has been abused to the point where it has become meaningless just like how I keep hearing the word 'literally' used in every sentence. Even worse, it's used carelessly as an insult to criticise others or used towards anyone who disagrees with them rather than describing the actual quick and automatic actions of an enity being closer to a 'robot', 'botnet' or 'aimbot- like' behaviour.

> Within the past few years, I have read a lot of comments in social media and > forums where people respond with accusations of people being a "Russian bot" > or "Chinese bot". I can understand what they mean if they use "shill", but > using the word "bot" means to me that the original poster is an autonomous > web scraper or automatic program to vigorously defend or attack something.

I think shill is a better word here to describe this. If people cannot distinguish between a real user account and a bot account then either this bot account has passed the turing test or Twitter is not doing enough to disclose actual bot accounts. They should do what Keybase did with disclosing bot accounts by signing them up differently and then tying them to the real account holder. Google ReCAPTCHA + phone verification for sign-ups solves the mass automated sign-up issue, distinguishing between real and bot accounts by linking them up with 'owners' would clear this mystery up.

> You can argue that programs like GPT-3 are generating the posts, but I think > it's obvious by the flow and logic/emotional response chain between accusers > and accusees that it is between real people because GPT-3 simply cannot > handle pulling in knowledge of theory-building in a coherent, substantive > way (at least not yet)

While it can generate very convincing sentences, it has the limitation of always accepting and responding to nonsensical input, especially in very divisive / heated discussions which is likely to be the case. The output will also be limited to data up to 2019 which it was trained on.

> My conclusion then is that real people are pushing their viewpoints still, > not "bots", but I may be misunderstanding the way the term is used. Or, has > "bot" changed in meaning/use? Is it just a word used to effortlessly shut > down opposing viewpoints?

Exactly. This is almost exactly what this Twitter blogpost outlines about the misunderstanding of the word "bot" [0]. However, My point still stands: If the accuser cannot prove that a particular account has the properties of being a "robot" which issues replies very quickly in an automated fashion [0], then perhaps the fault is on Twitter not being able to find a way to disclose if these accounts are either a "bot or not". They should overhaul the sign-up process like the way Keybase dealt with bots: Link the bot account with a real account and disclose which real account owns that bot account.

[0] [https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/bot-or- no...](https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/bot-or-not.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow, thanks for showing that post on Twitter. I think I did five different Google searches on this topic and I could not find a single link because Google kept feeding me garbage search results (Off-topic: Google Search is getting really, REALLY frustrating recently to find what I want and I'm not sure if it's me or the search engine. It seems like Google Search is getting worse and worse with every passing month, like it's not specific anymore and it doesn't care what words or quotes I put in the search query).

Anyway, half that Twitter post is about platform manipulation, which I agree definitely relates to bots. However, I still have this gut feeling that platform manipulation is done almost unilaterally by swarms of people, not __bots __. I think the definition of the term I am familiar with is clashing with how the word is being used.

> However, My point still stands: If the accuser cannot prove that a > particular account has the properties of being a "robot" which issues > replies very quickly in an automated fashion [0], then perhaps the fault is > on Twitter not being able to find a way to disclose if these accounts are > either a "bot or not".

I really don't think it takes a genius to realize which accounts are automatons and not-automatons, because the former replies nonsensically. So, I was going to reply to your comment saying that it's not really necessary for Twitter to disclose which accounts are bots or not. However, after typing out that sentence, I realize that technologists (which I identify as) have a better understanding on what is capable by state-of-the-art automation.

Do you really think that people genuinely can't tell which social media accounts are bots or not? My emerging understanding was that "bot" was a label used to mostly maliciously insult others, but I did not consider that these people could genuinely not tell if the accounts were bots or not.

I'm not saying I could not be fooled by a program, because there is that recent instance of someone from my university claiming to have fooled Hacker News with GPT-3 [0]. Unlike a blog post or article, however, it's much easier to tell when you are having an interactive discussion and a back-and-forth of talking points. This is why I have a hard time believing that anyone actually thinks someone they are talking to is a "bot".

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24164470](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24164470)</comment></comment>


Facebook Comments Epitomizes Everything I Hate About Facebook - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/03/facebook-comments-epitomizes-everything-i-hate-about-facebook/ <comment><USER2> Check out the first cluster of comments: <http://i.imgur.com/phz9X.png>

The third and fourth comment are directed at the second comment, but are displayed in reply to the first comment since there's only one level of replies. Confusing.

Also, instead of linking to the comment to show this, I had to take a screenshot.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I find it pretty annoying that you can't deep link a comment as well, but I'm not sure how to make it better.

What do you think would be a good way to add that functionality, given that the comment plugin is running in an iframe on a different domain (so e.g. putting a hash in the top url won't be readable by the iframe)?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think Jon to some extent fails to realize that having options (i.e. sorting by date) comes at the price of complexity.

A significant amount of modern software has gone the opposite way seeking to remove options to simplify products for users.

Facebook grew up competing against MySpace, a site which gave it's users more options and configurability than anyone could want. Facebook realized that users don't want to be able to tweak everything, they want things to be standardized and just work.

It's philosophically the Facebook way.

<comment><AUTHOR> While that may be true for _Facebook_ users, it's not true for users of specific sites that use their comment system. Part of my thinking when coming up with the idea for IndexTank is that sites need to control their UX (search in our case). The vast majority cannot invest in building backend technology, so they use what's readily available and easy.

Facebook comments are easy, but they are not customizable. I haven't tried Disqus, but if I were them I'd focus on ease of use and control (not by the end user, but by the site).

<comment><USER5> Thanks for making Index Tank, I am just starting to implement it into my ruby application and have found it to be easier than any other search option I have tried.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> With just a few strategic word replacements, one could turn this into a pretty convincing rant about Wal-Mart.

There's nothing cool or innovative or interesting or high quality. But dammit, they're everywhere, can do a lot of things good enough to satisfy Joe Consumer, and have just kind of slowly sunk quietly into the background of their culture. They're ubiquitous, and that ubiquity allows them to cut corners and keep "costs" low because they operate at a scale no one else can really touch.

Facebook is the Internet's Wal-Mart.

<comment><USER7> That reminds me of this post on how Craigslist's business is being eaten away, and why it's taking so long (because of the critical mass needed to compete against its network-effect benefit): [http://www.quora.com/Why-hasnt-another- product-disrupted-and...](http://www.quora.com/Why-hasnt-another-product- disrupted-and-replaced-Craigslist)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The idea was to cut back on trolls by using "real names", but a) it's still easy to create troll accounts on Facebook and b) it rules out comments from pseudonymous visitors.

In terms of dealing with trolls, active moderation is the most reliable method I've seen used in practice. I know it doesn't scale well, which is why people turn to voting schemes instead.

</comment><comment><USER9> _reflect on the fact that what you are looking at is the very best product that a $75 billion software company, one famous for allegedly only hiring A-list talent, was able to build._

Except that it isn't the "very best product ... FB was able to build." It is just something _useful_ that a team at FB built -- something that provides some value for websites and users, and that will continue to be evolved and improved in the future.

FB Comments may or may not be an amazing product, but obviously it is good enough for TC, so that says something.

</comment><comment><USER10> One thing i hate the most about it especially on techcruch is that a person using Operamini cant view any post on techcrunch because (i think) the FB plugin screws up with Operamini.One cannot see the comments and also the page just goes blue. I hope they fix this

</comment><comment><USER11> The reply from the Facebook employee was interesting. "While I think you have some interesting points about missing features, overall this post is sullied by its sulky, immature tone. [...]"

On the one hand, I wish all companies let their employees be human and respond as such. On the other hand, it feels like _if_ you're going to engage, you should ignore the insults and address any valid points. Here it just looks like two parties trading jabs while dancing around any real issues.

</comment><comment> X-Istence I'd love to comment on the article itself that the Facebook comments system is a barrier to entry, but then I'd have to enable the Facebook platform and risk losing my SSL on my account every time I log in.

<comment><USER3> What do you mean "risk losing your SSL?" Do you mean the "turn off SSL so I can access this canvas application?" thingy? As long as you don't click that, you shouldn't have to worry - if you've turned on HTTPS browsing, it only sends your auth cookies over HTTPS, so you're not vulnerable to downgrading attacks.

If that is what you mean, how do you think it could be less scary? The idea is to strike a balance between security and usability, and if we'd love to do a better job of that where possible! (I work on security at facebook, though not the HTTPS implementation directly.)

<comment> X-Istence In Facebook under account settings there is an option for persistent SSL. If you turn on the Facebook platform and use any part of it, on any site (such as clicking a like button, or using Facebook comments, or using an "Facebook app" like Farmville (just an example)) it disables the SSL part of your account, and doesn't re-enable it when it can, instead your account is once again non- SSL enabled.

Now, the last time I tested this was when Facebook comments came out on a test account I have, if it no longer disables SSL using Facebook comments that would certainly be a step up.

Even then I don't want everything tied to my Facebook account, and it is not exactly easy to switch which Facebook account is used on which website.

<comment><USER3> Interesting - what do you mean by "your account is non-SSL enabled?" I've got persistent HTTPS turned on (and have not opted out of platform), and clicking a like button or commenting on a comment plugin does not add non-secure authentication cookies (i.e. I can still only use the site over HTTPS). Perhaps you had HTTPS turned off on your test account?

As far as not wanting to comment with your FB account, you can sign in with Yahoo...?

<comment> X-Istence When the SSL option first came out I tested this, and noticed that using the like button would turn SSL off in my settings, since then I have just used adblock to block all of the like buttons.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I always find it funny when a paid Huffington Post staffer is upset about the quality of something that's free! You'd also think that Techcrunch would work with an up and coming company working in the space — well I guess the old Techcrunch would have done that...

<comment><USER13> It's nowhere near free. Money might not change hands, but we pay handsomely with attention.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> If you don't think there are any suitable comment engines on the market, why not put your money where your mouth is and pay my company to build one for you.

I think a reasonable budget/timeframe would be $350,000 over 18 months.

I look forward to hearing from you.

</comment><comment><USER15> Facebook Comments removes honesty and replaces it with PC Cheerleading. Sounds perfect for the modern TC as it moves from startup coverage to covering companies founded before computers had mice. Most real insights are unpopular, if they were popular it'd be common knowledge.

This will stop trolls for a few minutes, you can buy a Facebook account with 100 friends for a buck or two if you really want to troll. On the long term this is likely to succeed to the same degree that Kuro5hin charging $5 for an account had.

</comment><comment><USER16> I think the interesting question is, if this comment system was standalone, so it didn't have any network or real name effects behind it, would anyone use it?

I'd prefer to use something attached to the back end and possibly use Facebook connect for the real name aspect, or even include the indication back into the feed on Facebook, although not everyone wants that.

</comment><comment><USER17> Sounds like the single level replies is a big problem for some users. If the replies are single threaded, why is there a reply button on each reply instead of just at the bottom?

<comment><USER18> Twitter has what I guess you could call a zero level reply system - so why is there a reply button on each tweet?

<comment><USER19> I don't know about the Facebook comments system because I avoid it wherever possible, but at least with the Twitter reply button, it prepends the ever- popular @OP.

In short, a Twitter conversation can be replayed, or stitched together after the fact. From what I'm seeing with this thread, it doesn't appear that is possible with the Facebook comments (though I know that they DO have the '@' reference, sort of.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I am wondering how much money that techcrunch gets from the facebook in oder to keep their comment system. Disqus is much better system than facebook comments.

<comment><USER4> As noted in the article the level of quality of comments is much higher with Facebook comments, plus with the comments showing up on people's Facebook stream it gives Techcrunch a huge amount of free publicity.

So I doubt they need money to convince them to use Facebook over Disqus.

<comment><USER21> This (comment activity shows up in Facebook stream) is precisely why I won't be commenting on Techcrunch articles any time soon. I have no interest in advertising to my aunt and high school ex-girlfriends that I have a minute opinion about some random bit of software technology. I'm not looking for anonymity to troll, I just want to control my various internet personas. More for the sake of my "real friends" than anything else.

<comment><USER4> When you make a comment there's a tickbox which you can untick so it doesn't go to your stream.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It brings a lot of traffic to my startup when a domain is listed as my company on Facebook also it allows me to read comments more clearly, there's no trash but there's a lot more pressure.

I posted a comment on the blackberry playbook review and someone that worked for RIM replied with a load of marketing spin I wasn't bothered to reply too. You also get notifications which makes me reply more often also that needs a lot of tweaking.

</comment><comment><USER23> My biggest problem with facebook comments is that facebook is blocked at the corporate proxy so i can't see them.

Maybe thats a good thing....

</comment><comment><USER24> I actually have noscript blocking facebook.com and fbcdn.com and facebook cookies. I really don't feel like I've missed anything. The times I've read facebook comments, it felt like they were on the level of people giving "I propose a toast to..." speeches at dinner parties.

</comment><comment><USER25> Money quote : "Facebook Comments is basically Facebook writ small: while it's maddeningly mediocre lowest-common-denominator crap, it's not quite bad enough not to use."

Yep.

</comment><comment><USER13> TL;DR; Hates facebook comments, but is going to keep them because mediocrity is a small price to pay for being able to track and identify users.

</comment><comment><USER26> the post got 136 facebook likes so far...

</comment><comment><USER27> Hey TechCrunch, demand your money back.</comment>


Show HN: Ethergarden the First virtual garden on the ethereum blockchain - <AUTHOR> https://ethergarden.io <comment><AUTHOR> Hi, We have just launched Ethergarden [https://ethergarden.io](https://ethergarden.io), the first virtual garden on the Ethereum blockchain. In Ethergarden everybody can plant his tree (with a specific name and url) and water it to make it grow taller or cut other trees to make them shrink, by paying in ETH. The DApp is inspired by Crypto High Score: the more your tree gets funded, the taller it grows and the more visible it becomes. However, growing is not the only way to gain more visibility: you can make your tree the tallest also by cutting the other trees in the garden! You can find the verified contract here: [https://etherscan.io/address/0x471cd7a690b752e13826bbf3745a9...](https://etherscan.io/address/0x471cd7a690b752e13826bbf3745a9111c66906f5)</comment>


Tech-Support Scams Prompt Google to Act - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/tech-support-scams-on-google-trigger-crackdown-1535755023 <comment><USER2> I was wondering for quite some time how these scammers find their way to less experienced users.

Turns out I've been using adblocker for so long that it didn't even occur to me that the scammers were purchasing Google ads.

<comment><USER3> I didn't use adblock on my phone until recently because until Brave came out, it was such a pain in the ass (root, vpn, etc). But eventually I couldn't take it anymore. I got regular reminders of how badly ads have ruined the modern web. Any small to midsize blog had a 1-in-4 chance of crashing the browser with fake "YOUR PHONE HAS A VIRUS" ads that pull you right out of what you were reading. Extremely irritating and it's no shock to me why Brave was conceptualised.

<comment><USER4> Ehm? You can just install firefox from the playstore and then ublock origin. (Privacy Badger is also recommended).

<comment><USER5> Did just that for a long time but recently switched to brave. Chromium just feels way more snappier on Android and I prefer its UI much more over Firefox which does many things that annoy me (e.g. ignoring theme-color tags).

<comment><USER6> What options are available for iphone?

<comment><USER7> iOS has a built in "content blocking" framework. Third party Ad blockers basically submit blocking rules to iOS in JSON format and the ad blockers work both in Safari and in apps that use the newest WebView.

The advantage is that the third party ad blockers aren't able to intercept your web browsing directly and can't invade your privacy.

I use 1Blocker.

<comment><USER8> 1+ for 1Blocker, although I also run Adblock Plus in parallel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Direct link to Google's announcement: [https://www.blog.google/products/ads/restricting-ads- third-p...](https://www.blog.google/products/ads/restricting-ads-third-party- tech-support-services/)

</comment><comment><USER10> [http://archive.is/S4aXl](http://archive.is/S4aXl)

</comment><comment><USER11> I just listened to an interesting podcast about these scams [1], but in this case they were mainly making outbound calls. The podcasters actually travel to India to track them down, and it's kind of crazy the way they run their operation.

What I thought was really funny was the scammers literally type "Zeus troan found" into the console (typo included) and people are falling for this and giving them money. Crazy just to let someone remote into your desktop though..

[1] [https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/102-long-distance- part...](https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/102-long-distance- parts-1-2#episode-player)

<comment><USER12> _Crazy just to let someone remote into your desktop though.._

A lot of times it's the old and infirm. A friend's father is going through the beginning stages of dementia and he got taken by the "MS support" scam.

Remember: 1) they wouldn't do it if it wasn't profitable, and 2) it only takes a small percentage of folks to fall for it to make it profitable.

It disturbs me that our system of government and commerce does give a shit about this problem. The people who are caught doing this are given a slap on the wrist. I talked with a lawyer in TX once (googled a case, called him) and in the 00's a company was caught and convicted of terrible scams. They paid the fine and kept doing it, just in a slightly different way that was harder to get caught.

<comment><USER13> There are people who fight back: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzedMdx6QG4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzedMdx6QG4) [1] (warning: nsfw audio, use headphones)

With that said, when your loved ones are facing mental health challenges that make them susceptible to fraud, someone needs to step in to assume a guardianship role. That's not to say the government has no role; they should be prosecuting these cases harder, but there is no magic bullet. Everyone could be doing a better job.

[1] Code that drives it: [https://pastebin.com/r4L2ufkp](https://pastebin.com/r4L2ufkp)</comment></comment></comment>


3D Printing of Liquid Metals at Room Temperature - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ql3pXn8-sHA

<comment><USER2> This is most interesting and a step forward in the right direction.

However to highlight some of the larger downfalls, the current metal alloy used is very expensive and while it oxidizes and becomes solid, only the outer edges of each drop are exposed to the air and so become solid. All items that are 3d printed still have liquid metal inside them, only the outer edges of it have solidified.

This is a bit of a downside to this method to me. However the day that I can 3d print solid metal structures will be an awesome one.</comment>


Show HN: Top billionaires favorite books for high achievers - <AUTHOR> https://www.producthunt.com/posts/book-billionaire <comment><USER2> I like your compilation, but would advise to post your Show HN not to the ProductHunt page but to your original source.

</comment><comment><USER3> The direct link to the website is: [https://bookbillionaire.com](https://bookbillionaire.com)</comment>


Instapaper Premium is now free for everyone - <AUTHOR> http://blog.instapaper.com/post/152600596211 <comment><USER2> This smells like an app that will be shutting down in about six months.

<comment><USER3> Brian from Instapaper here. We have no plans to shut the app down, and a big part of the value the app provides (parser improvements, aggregate information on links) requires the ongoing operation of the service.

<comment><USER2> Hello, Brian! I hope you will take my skepticism in good humor. While I would delight in Instapaper's prolonged availability, I trust you are aware of the widespread perception that acquisition is where startups go to die [0], to say nothing of the fact that some of Instapaper's competitors have also fallen to the wayside [1]. The final red-light comes from the tendency to make services free right before they shut down, #1 as a last-ditch growth mechanism, and #2 as a means to eliminate any legal recourse _should_ the service suddenly shut down.

[0]: [https://signalvnoise.com/posts/2777-what-happens-after- yahoo...](https://signalvnoise.com/posts/2777-what-happens-after-yahoo- acquires-you) [1]: [https://readability.com/](https://readability.com/)

<comment><USER3> I understand and appreciate the skepticism, however, the reason we're making this change is because we want to provide the best experience for our users.

Pinterest receives value from the ongoing operation of Instapaper in the form of continued parsing improvements and aggregate information about links on the web, and that value is enough to justify our relatively small operating costs.

<comment><USER4> For me one part of "growing up" in sw engineering has been that I have started to want to pay reasonable amounts for things I use actively.

I see it as an insurance for us users: as long as a significant amount of users are paying keeping the service as-is is a valid alternative for the owners.

When it becomes free I fear that someone suddenly starts looking at it as a cost center, I mean: all the benefits you mention seems to be possible without operating an end-user service.

Disclaimer: not a paying Instapaper customer, but I am a paying lastpass customer and a paying google docs customer etc etc.

<comment><USER5> Being a service that charges money does not guarantee a longer life.

<comment><USER6> Guarantee? No. Improve the odds? Yes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So what's the plan here. Just two months since Pinterest acquired them, they've shutdown Instaparser, moved their team across the country (literally: NY to SF.. I wonder how many employees quit instead), discontinued Premium-- their sole source of revenue(?), and committed to no-ads... sounds like they have no monetization strategy at all anymore.

This doesn't look good.

<comment><USER8> This is the kind of business model the SF tech scene encourages. People are starting companies to be acquired, not to create a business that stands the test of time.

<comment><USER9> At the very least, they should write less treacly Dear John letters to their former customers

[http://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com](http://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Looking forward to Pinterest shutting Instapaper down in 2 years.

<comment><USER11> Hello Pinboard.

<comment><USER12> Hey there.

<comment><USER13> I just subscribed. Very nice and simple service, love it. The only bad thing I can say is that the "popular" tab seems to be HN delayed by half a week or so.

<comment><USER14> Just add a comment system - that would be a HN competitor I would love to use.

<comment><USER12> Hah, that's an entertaining idea!

<comment><USER15> Wait, wait, add the work "API token" tag filter first!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> On the one hand I like new free features, especially the search. On the other hand Instapaper got acquired by Pinterest ([http://blog.instapaper.com/post/149374303661](http://blog.instapaper.com/post/149374303661)) and if they no longer make money from premium subscriptions and the service is ads-free, then how will they generate revenue? Selling publishers premium spots in my reading queue?

<comment><USER3> Hi there,

Brian from Instapaper here. We will not be serving advertisements in your Instapaper queue. The value Instapaper provides to Pinterest in terms of parser capabilities and aggregate information about links is enough to justify the small operation cost of running the service.

I'm happy to answer any other questions you have.

Brian

<comment><USER17> Hi Brian,

I paid for Instapaper so that it could run in the interest of its users. If it's fully supported by Pinterest, then its value to users is secondary to the value of its data and technology to Pinterest.

Why can't I keep giving you money? I don't want any special features, just your undying loyalty.

<comment><USER18> The only way you can have an undying loyalty is by being the owner of the company, that's how capitalism works.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Our incredible journey towards offering our premium service for free, until the two weeks shutdown notice.

</comment><comment> purple-dragon Does anyone have experience to share re: Instapaper vs. Pocket (or something better)?

<comment><USER20> I'm a huge fan of Pinboard. I like that it has a clear I-am-the-customer profit model, and it's performed flawlessly for me for several years now.

<comment><USER21> Are there apps that work with Pinboard? I'd like to support it, but I want to be able to background sync my saved stuff to my phone, like I do with Pocket.

<comment><USER22> Unfortunately there are no good iOS apps for it. The only decent one, Pinner, decided, inexplicably, to drop iOS 9 support as soon as iOS 10 was released. iOS 9 is still fully supported by Apple. (Using iOS 10 isn't an option for me for now). The iOS 9 version's share extension still has a few bugs that completely block the third-party apps' UI when adding URLs. Also the Pinner developer _never_ responds to any support requests. I've tried sending him emails and hit him up on Twitter. He is completely silent.

All the other iOS apps I've tried are laughably crippled. One of the apps I tried (Pinswift) still opens all links in an embedded web view, which means I couldn't easily log into any sites because I'd have to copy and paste the credentials and OTP manually (NYTimes, WaPost, GitHub, etc). This also means no ad blocking or other protections and functionality offered by the SafariViewController feature in iOS.

I'd also expect for $9.99 plus a $1.99 for "Premium Fonts" Pushpin for Pinboard to be excellent but it isn't. It's unstable and its share extension isn't as flexible as Pinner's.

That said, Pinboard is a good service. It cares about my privacy, which is very important to me, and has the features I need for _a bookmarking service_. It is not a read-later service. For example, the article caching features that it provides is web-only and isn't available through the API so no third-party app can integrate it. This means there is no truly offline reading experience since I'd have to have access to the Pinboard website if I want to read a cached link.

<comment><USER23> Do you know if there is any good software for windows and/or Linux (Ubuntu specifically) for pinboard? Nothing seems to be actually good, and Pinner seems to be the first client I've seen that actually looks good.

EDIT: Windows would be the main win for me if a good client exists, as that's my main OS. I only use Ubuntu at work.

<comment><USER22> Sorry, I don't. ReadKit on OS X is decent (and is the only native Mac app that I could find that actually integrates the Pinboard API) but I don't know of anything else on other platforms.

I'll have to start looking for this, soon, however. I'm seriously considering switching. Another service that seems to have no native clients on Windows or Linux is Feedbin.

It used to be that one could find tons of native apps for Windows for pretty much anything. Now there're hardly any for popular services. I'm not sure if this is because of Microsoft's seemingly schizophrenia approach to their office APIs (is it MFC? Win32? WinForms? XAML? UWP? Something else?) and their lack of focus or just the iPhone and mobile computing's "halo" effect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm hoping this is a 'Halo Car' kind of project for Pinterest. Instapaper has, I'd guess, a relatively large, legacy subscriber base, and their parsing and read-it-later tech is pretty mature. Hopefully, it's a product that they use for development of features to see if they are useful into the main Pinterest product, and so it stays around instead of just getting killed in 6 months.

</comment><comment><USER25> I've been an instapaper free user for quite a few years, I feel bad about not chucking them a few quid.

The product is very good though, it's been extremely useful for me as I use the London Underground a lot, where a signal is often not available and I don't use the wifi they have in stations - so being able to load all my instapaper articles beforehand and read them offline has been great

</comment><comment><USER26> Wow! I'm a premium subscriber and really love the send to kindle feature. I always read articles on my bed with good lightening.

BTW, it is the greatest procrastination killer. Instead of reading HN articles during my work hours, I send them to my kindle and -- usually :-) -- never finish to read them. A great time saver!

</comment><comment><USER27> I would probably pay ~$10 for some combined services of blogging, link saving, todo list management, ad removal, photo storage, maybe even email etc. (posthaven, pinboard, asana, etc).

I'm not saying they have to be integrated just that I might pay that much for a bunch of premium services if the price were bundled.... and the services were entirely focused on functionality of power users, privacy, and not ease of use, ads and eye candy.. ie pro users... ie vim keys.

I would love a whole bunch of services that had really good vim like short cut keys (yes I know gmail has it but not a lot other things do).

Maybe some of these guys like instapaper could do some sort of joint marketing/sales effort or sharing of users to stay in business.

<comment><USER28> Sounds a bit like an Office 365 subscription, making use of OneDrive, OneNote, Outlook and Tasks/Teams. No blogging though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Hey, i'm a user that is interested in seeing the continuing success of instapaper, do you have any other ways to generate revenue? I'm interested in the services success and that of the people behind them, so i'm a bit worried with this move, actually. I wasn't a paying customer, but I could have been.

</comment><comment><USER30> Mo users. Mo data harvesting. Mo money.

</comment><comment><USER31> I stopped paying for their service as I was broke and they kept billing my account leading to several insufficient funds fees on an overdrawn account that they wouldn't stop billing.

Can't say I'd even use their service for free.

<comment><USER32> This doesn't really sound like it was their fault.

<comment><USER33> Are you telling me people have to be responsible for their own money? The horror.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Already lost my business when they paywalled me out.

<comment><USER35> What do you mean?

<comment><USER34> at some point in the past they were free, then to continue the normal service you had to sign up for a paid plan. So I stopped using their service. This is a "too little too late" for me as far as my customer experience goes.

Apparently that gets you downvotes on HN.

<comment><USER16> Not sure what you mean. I'm a non-paying user from almost day 1 (oldest article from 2011). At no point was I forced to upgrade to paid plan. Did you use a third-party app maybe? Those only worked with premium accounts ([http://blog.instapaper.com/post/3208433429](http://blog.instapaper.com/post/3208433429))</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The James Franco Project [New York Magazine] - <AUTHOR> http://instapaperstories.tumblr.com/post/972880219/the-james-franco-project-new-york-magazine <comment><USER2> "After which, obviously, he will become president of the United Nations, train a flock of African gray parrots to perform free colonoscopies in the developing world, and launch himself into space in order to explain the human heart to aliens living at the pulsing core of interstellar quasars."

Priceless.

<comment><USER3> Or how about this one: "He's not a savant or an obvious genius — he's someone of mortal abilities who seems to be working immortally hard."

Fantastic. Hard work is probably the biggest difference at the margin.

<comment><USER4> Yes, I like margarine too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Forget the first, obvious question: Why are we reading this at all? (It's got 27 upvotes already, so that speaks for itself.) Why are we looking at this on some Instapaper+Tumblr site rather than _from its source_ , namely New York Magazine?

This came up the other day in a thread linking to a Posterous link. It's good to see that Tumblr is also in the reposting business. ( _Edit_ : Found the other item about Posterous <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1990945>)

Here's a direct, and nicely readable & printable, link:

<http://nymag.com/print/?/movies/profiles/67284/>

</comment><comment><USER6> Intense article!

Franco is probably strong enough at math to realize that the more he immerses himself in the art world, the strongly the probability is that he will become truly iconic.

He also seems to be enjoying the ride. And he basically defines self- actuation. I'm sort of jealous.</comment>


Steve Jobs' Last Big Project Was The Redesigned iPhone 5 - <AUTHOR> http://www.redmondpie.com/steve-jobs-last-big-project-wasnt-the-iphone-4s-it-was-the-redesigned-iphone-5-report/ <comment><USER2> Like most articles, can't trust this one at all.

Gruber has some excellent thoughts (with actual reasoning) on this which contradict much of what this guy and his "source" is saying.</comment>


Facebook Live Feed Kills Twitter & FriendFeed - <AUTHOR> http://www.allfacebook.com/2008/08/facebook-live-feed-kills-twitter-friendfeed/ <comment><USER2> I don't think so. Twitter has evolved into a communication tool that doubles as an alert system for some uses. Live feed is less voluntary, since it's automatically recording and publishing what you're doing. The appeal isn't JUST being having updates on what's going on, it's letting people interact with your actions, to collaborate from multiple mediums. LiveFeed seems limited to what you do on Facebook, Twitter lets users define their own activity, and FriendFeed scrapes everything.

Where's the appeal, then? I think saying this will "kill" anything is incredibly premature.

<comment><USER3> Facebook is also a walled garden. To have access to the feed you have to sign up and be a friend of the person. With Twitter, the default is to have a public feed.

<comment><USER4> I think the main difference is that with twitter its a one way following. You can follow people and they can be completely unaware. With facebook you have to have the two way yes we both consider each other 'friends'.

To actually beat twitter/friendfeed they would have to allow a 'stalker' relationship. So you can stalk someone without being their friend.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Dramatic title...reminds me of dig. Best part: if the author is wrong (likely), everyone will have forgotten his prediction.

</comment><comment><USER6> I don't see the appeal: It's even noisier than FriendFeed!

</comment><comment><USER7> I hacked together some stuff to get the feed to post Growl notifications:

<http://tlrobinson.net/blog/?p=48>

</comment><comment><USER8> That is the least convincing video I've ever seen.

</comment><comment><USER9> I don't sit watching what all my friends do though, thats a little creepy.

</comment><comment><USER10> wrong

</comment><comment><USER11> Must be true if it comes from allfacebook.com

<comment><USER12> Poor Nick. He really tries. He puts an insane effort into his three sites. It's just that he's picked niches that are either full or too newsless.</comment></comment>


Google Ventures Almost Ready To Launch, But It Is A Bad Idea - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/20/google-ventures-almost-ready-to-launch-but-it-is-a-bad-idea/ <comment><USER2> It's true that corporate venture funds are usually lame. But if there were a company that could defy this trend, it would be Google. The fact they have Rich Miner in there is a sign they plan to do things differently. He's not a finance guy; he's one of the guys who wrote Android.

</comment><comment><USER3> _It is in effect saying that it has so much cash it doesn't know what to do with it. Google would be better off paying a dividend to shareholders or buying back stock than playing venture capitalist._

It's by paying a dividend that google would be in effect saying it has so much cash it doesn't know what to do with it. Starting a venture fund is google saying that it can reinvest it's profits for a positive return.</comment>


Ask HN: Introductory IoT development resources? - <AUTHOR> I'm interested in a few different IoT ideas and was looking for some basic resources for building things in that space. I have a physics PhD with a few years of DIY-style electronics experience in various labs and a good amount of scientific and web development programming experience.
Some of my current questions are:
1. How to connect an IoT device to a mobile device through when on the same wifi. 2. How to connect when on a mobile network. 3. How should I approach hardware prototyping? (currently my sensor i think I need is just a camera. but possibly using something like a raspberry pi would be a good idea since it allows some flexiblity?)
Any beginner/introductory material would be welcomed at this point, even if it doesn't directly address one of these questions.
Thanks! <comment><AUTHOR> After a little reading, it seems the arduino is probably better for IoT type things. This video goes through a super simple project to just make an LED blink. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R102xfcx75I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R102xfcx75I)

It's a place to start! :)</comment>


The Arcane Algorithm Archive - <AUTHOR> https://www.algorithm-archive.org/ <comment><USER2> Since this is on HN, I'll add a request to anyone that is able and willing. I want to understand the Cooley-Tukey FFT [0]. This algorithm holds a special place in my heart because I just don't _get_ it. I've used it and implemented it. So I suppose I understand how it works, but I don't understand _why_ it works. There's something deeper and elegant about the bit reversals that I think will reveal something to me about what an FFT is. Anyways, if you've never looked into it, it's beautiful.

[0] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooley%E2%80%93Tukey_FFT_alg...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooley%E2%80%93Tukey_FFT_algorithm)

<comment><USER3> The Cooley-Tukey algorithm is nicely understood as a "4 step FFT". Both the decimation in time and decimation in frequency algorithms, and the "bit reversals" they use, are really just special cases of the more general (and simpler) thing.

Say you have an array of size N, where N = P*Q. You can treat your 1D array as a 2D array in row major form. Then the 4 steps are:

        do vertical FFTs of the columns
        "twiddle" the data
        do horizontal FFTs of the rows
        transpose the array

The twiddle step is really just multiplying each element in the array by a complex number. See:

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooley%E2%80%93Tukey_FFT_algorithm#General_factorizations

This breaks the N-size larger FFT into smaller P and Q sized FFTs. If P or Q is factorable, then you can recursively apply the algorithm to perform each of the smaller FFTs. Eventually, you'll reach a base case where you need a different algorithm. For instance, if you get to a factor of 2 or 3, you'll just do the simple DFT. If you get a large prime, there are other approaches.

If N is a power of 2, then you can always choose one of P or Q to be 2. These are the decimation in time or decimation in frequency algorithms that most people are taught. I think restricting it to this special case, and jumbling it all up with the "butterfly" diagrams commonly shown really obscures an elegant and easily understood algorithm. If you save all the transposes, and the transposes in the recursions until the end, it ends up being the bit (or digit) reversal you're familiar with. The reason bit reversal seems magical is because it hides the fact that it was really just a bunch of transposes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So [https://www.rosettacode.org/wiki/Rosetta_Code](https://www.rosettacode.org/wiki/Rosetta_Code) ?

</comment><comment><USER5> How is this different from Rosetta Code?

<comment><USER6> Edit2: This is addressed in the FAQ: [https://github.com/algorithm- archivists/algorithm-archive/wi...](https://github.com/algorithm- archivists/algorithm-archive/wiki/FAQ#how-is-this-different-to-rosetta-code)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why are we so far from reaching acceptable autonomous driving? - comonad-colaboy We seem to have large datasets that can be used, and the best of algorithms Why have we as a species failed to make acceptable autonomous driving a reality by now? What is missing? Do we not have the math to do this, like some folks say we don't to tackle hardest problems in quantum mechanics? (By acceptable I mean, a state wherin there exists a handful of people using it to drive across all terrains and under all weathers a normal human is capable of operating a car in) <comment><AUTHOR> I recently read about this in an article [1] about Tesla's ambition to build a level 3 auto-pilot.

The article points out several issues about this project that I didn't think about before reading it. Basically, there's more issues than just "finding the right math", and on different levels, not only the technical one. I'd recommend reading it.

[1] [https://dev.to/bosepchuk/is-it-ethical-to-work-on-the- tesla-...](https://dev.to/bosepchuk/is-it-ethical-to-work-on-the-tesla- autopilot-software-4lhh)

</comment><comment><USER2> There's a _really huge_ variety of stuff that can happen when you're driving a car. In my lifetime, I've seen:

\- A signal light malfunction such that I had a green turn arrow across the path of oncoming traffic, where the oncoming traffic _also_ had a green light.

\- The axle break on the van going around the cloverleaf in front of me (and props to the driver for not rolling the van after the tire rolled off - I'd be surprised if autonomous drivers were trained for _that_ ).

\- A pickup truck drop an extension ladder in the freeway. It hit in such a way that it started spinning. The centrifugal force then made it extend. So there's this growing, spinning, sliding thing in the middle of the freeway. It was the single hardest to avoid thing I've ever experienced.

\- A baby stroller rolling across the crosswalk across my path (unaccompanied by any adults!) just as my light turned green.

\- Hydroplaning.

\- Torrential rain.

\- Show blowing across the road in the grip of 100-mile-an-hour winds.

\- Dirt roads that have rocks in the middle that can take out your oil pan.

\- Failing to clear my car of all the snow on it before I drove it. When I hit a red light and hit the brakes hard, the remaining snow dumped on the road in front of me. I then started to slide on what had been (until a moment ago) a clear road.

\- Having a semi in the next lane hit a groove in the pavement that was full of water, sending a wall of water across my windshield, rendering me abruptly blind. On a curve. With a semi beside me.

Sure, you can train the autonomous driver to handle each one of these. But that's just stuff that I personally have seen. You've made a list of goofy circumstances to train for. But did you get all the ones that actually happen? No, you didn't. How's it going to do on some strange situation that it never trained for? Such situations _are_ going to occur.

<comment><USER3> Out of curiosity, how DID you handle the situation with the semi?

<comment><USER2> I hit the brakes to try to get out of the wall of water it was throwing, tried to remember in my head what the shape of the curve looked like from my last look at it just before the water hit, and just waited to be able to see again. It took _much_ longer than I wanted it to...

<comment><USER3> That sounds terrifying.

Oddly, an autonomous vehicle might have the advantage in that situation, since ideally it'd have some representation of the shape of the road ahead that would persist for a few seconds even if its sensors were blinded briefly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Kinda off topic, but pranks for the next generation are going to be amazing. Code is just so predictable. I can picture a couple of teens blocking an empty self driving uber/waymo going to pick up its next passenger, covering its cameras with paint/sticky notes, and leaving an empty disabled car in the middle of an intersection for the police to deal with. Dont think the AI is going to be able to get out and chase them down. Yes, there are cameras but a handkerchief and a hoodie will solve that. Genuinely curious as to how they are going to solve this problem.</comment>


ColdFusion session management - <AUTHOR> http://blog.protogenist.com/?p=778 ColdFusion session management is enabled by default. It utilizes CFID and CFToken as session identifiers. It sends them to the browser as persistent cookies with every request. If cookies are disabled, developers must pass these values in the URL. Session variables are automatically cleared when the session timeout is reached—but not when the browser closes <comment><USER2> This article has incomplete information and is about 10 years out of date.</comment>


The secret backstory of how Obama let Hezbollah off the hook - <AUTHOR> https://www.politico.com/interactives/2017/obama-hezbollah-drug-trafficking-investigation/ <comment><USER2> That might explain what happened to an old Benz 240D I used to own.

</comment><comment><USER3> Buried 6 pages in. This is a huge story. HN in 2017, everyone.</comment>


FCC reportedly close to reclassifying ISPs as common carriers - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/10/fcc-reportedly-close-to-reclassifying-isps-as-common-carriers

<comment><USER2>
      The plan now under consideration would separate broadband into two distinct
      services: a retail one, in which consumers would pay broadband providers
      for Internet access; and a back-end one, in which broadband providers
      serve as the conduit for websites to distribute content.  The FCC would then
      classify the back-end service as a common carrier, giving the agency the
      ability to police any deals between content companies and broadband providers.

At first glance, this looks bad. Really, really bad.

The Internet was based upon the concept that each node would be both a producer and consumer of content. And as speeds for the end-user have increased, truly becomes feasible (especially as FTTP becomes more common).

What this proposal does instead is play into the hands of the cable industry and their view of the Internet is a broadcast mechanism, and the consumers as primarily passive consumers and not really producers or highly interactive.

What's really needed is more competition. Unfortunately, the only entities with the capital which can provide that competition are munis. Private investors and other entities don't really seem to care that much about this.</comment>


Fly Straight, Dammit (2019) - <AUTHOR> http://www.petecorey.com/blog/2019/08/12/fly-straight-dammit/ <comment><USER2>
      a_a =: 1 + +
      a_b =: [ % +.

      py (a_b ` a_a @. has_gcd) y

I know it is math and all that, but when we commit something like this at day job, it doesn't give you applause. Can the idea of the article be expressed in more readable/obvious form? Or is that an alphabet that you should learn first before solving that?

<comment><USER3> It's a problem without solutions, when implementing from a mathematical definition.

Either you write it so it is "easy" to understand or you write it so it is easy to compare with the source equation.

Both have pros and cons.

</comment></comment><comment> why-oh-why It looks like they're two separate functions merged under a condition. Any 2 functions can generate a "fly straight, dammit" graph. What's the point of this?

<comment><USER4> Any two functions when glued together as a piecewise function can have a discontinuity, that's true, but that's not what this is... this is a sequence with a recursive term. Sort of like the fibonacci sequence where a term is defined by the one preceding it, so you have to, conceptually, computer all the way down to the base case. It just so happens that the rule in this article for some reason becomes very well ordered past a certain step when you plot the values, at least to our human brains.

The numberphile video to which the article links is a good watch!</comment></comment>


Court to Grandma: You Shouldn't Lose Your House Just Because Your Son Sold Weed - <AUTHOR> http://reason.com/blog/2017/05/30/court-to-grandma-you-shouldnt-lose-your <comment><USER2> Glad the courts are doing something. Civil forfeiture is one of the most horrifying abuses of police power and very directly contrary to the Constitution; one of the reasons the American Revolution happened in the first place!</comment>


How I lost 10% body fat, while launching a startup (and raising kids) - <AUTHOR> http://ryanleecarson.tumblr.com/post/21845066920/get-healthy <comment><USER2> It's been said many times before, but getting exercise while doing a startup is a must. It's like saying you should use LESS/SASS instead of coding CSS. You just won't believe how much better it is until you actually try it for a while.

For the last three months I've forced myself to go for a jog every morning, no excuses, even if it means I'll get started on stuff a little later, so be it. It's an amazing complement to the uncertainty and mental challenges of a startup.

<comment><USER3> Forcing myself to use LESS is actually harder than exercise for me. Any tips?

<comment><USER4> Do yourself an additional favor and don't use less - it nowhere near as powerful as alternatives. go with sass or stylus and I absolutely promise you it will pay off. gem install sass then run sass --watch /path/to/sass_file.sass and you're good to go.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It looks like no cardio to speak of in your routine. So many people kill themselves doing an hour a day of running or riding a stationary bike and then wonder why they don't get better results. It's really 80% or more about diet and lifting weights. The more muscle you have the more calories you will burn throughout the day. You just don't need that much cardio if you train intensely enough when lifting weights.

Nice work Ryan.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, it is refreshing to see people posting results from these predominantly weight lifting programs. Helps keep me motivated on what I'm doing.

If anyone is interested in starting, but lacks the money for a personal trainer, I've found Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe ([http://www.amazon.com/By-Mark-Rippetoe-Lon- Kilgore/dp/B005PI...](http://www.amazon.com/By-Mark-Rippetoe-Lon- Kilgore/dp/B005PITS1E/)) to be a huge help in learning all the lifts. The first chapter is almost 60 pages just on squats going over everything from foot position to hand position, along with an explanation of why.

<comment><USER5> Looks interesting. I know a lot of beginners have had solid results with 5x5 as well:

[http://stronglifts.com/stronglifts-5x5-beginner-strength- tra...](http://stronglifts.com/stronglifts-5x5-beginner-strength-training- program/)

There's a free iOS app for tracking progress too: <http://stronglifts.com/stronglifts-5x5-app/>

<comment><USER6> Yeah, I'm actually doing the stronglifts 5x5 program. The Starting Strength book is still really useful for learning the lifts and getting all of the detail. With stronglifts you're going to get high in weight quick - so knowing form well is kind of important.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think its great that you accomplished this, and I guess seeing as its hit the front page of HN you may inspire a few tech folk to believe they can too. But I still find nothing new to take from this that you can't find on just about any Paleo, low carb, excercise site (i.e Mark's Daily Apple).

You changed to Paleo. You worked out 3 times a week. You took some supplements. You saw some results. You did this with a day job (albeit 4 day a week job) and a family.

What new obstacle did you overcome ? what breakthrough did you achieve ?

I think your achievement is commendable, just not sure what its doing on the front page of HN.

<comment><AUTHOR> The hard part was achieving this during a tremendously stressful period of my life (raising money and launching a company).

Also, I was never able to achieve success before, even though I tried multiple times.

<comment><USER8> Good on you, dude - thought you were looking rather more trim the last time I spied you in town. Did the same, and dropped from 18.5 stone to 13 over 9 months. Eat food, not too much, mostly leaves. Run. Done. Oh, and withings scales. Can't be without them.

That said, I still need to lose the final, irksome bit of gut. _pulls finger out, decides to get some new running shoes_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This may get a down voted because I'm new to commenting, but I figured adding a comment was better than starting a "Show HN" thread.

My buddy and I created a web/iPhone app that is great for people trying to get fit but struggle doing it because they can't find the motivation. So for those who are motivated by Ryan's story and are looking for additional tools, maybe give it a try.

<http://1upfit.com> allows you to compete against friends in simple workout challenges. Pushups, pull-ups, running, swimming, etc. We are actually in beta testing right now for tracking a weight loss challenge similar to what Ryan did above. (We both recently completed a slow carb diet, which is very similar.)

Training by yourself or changing dietary habits by yourself can be hard and sometimes you don't have the people around to properly motivate you. My brother is an Ironman but lives in Colorado (I'm in Portland) so it's hard to say "Hey let's go for a run". By using the app though, I can see every time he runs and it motivates me to go out and do it too, for fear of losing a competition to my brother.

<comment><USER10> I highly recommend you start a Show HN thread for this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I signed up for a marathon right before founding a startup last summer. Having a training plan and something to train for was great because it forced me to stop working and exercise on a routine basis. The running itself was great stress relief, gave me "big picture" think time and actually made me more productive when I worked.

</comment><comment><USER12> I started rising a bike to and from my startup (also raising kids.) One hour of very pleasurable cardio a day, lost a lot of weight.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is inspiring Ryan. I was specifically looking for examples of busy dads that have successfully launched their own business when I came across your post. Too bad you're in the UK, I'd love to take you out for a pint.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cheers :) I'm moving to Portland if that's any closer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Very inspiring story of losing 10% body fat - gaining muscle and losing fat. I've read elsewhere of this 3-day per week workout plan focusing on muscle mass. It seems like it gets great results. Also, working with a personal trainer makes a lot of sense.

The only thing I'm skeptical about is all the meat in your diet. If you watch Forks Over Knives and read the China Study, it talks about meat and animal products directly leading to the growth of cancer cells. Have you heard about that and what's your take?

<comment><USER15> I enjoyed Forks Over Knives but as with any documentary there is always a bias. I would recommend taking a look at this write-up in response to the film: [http://rawfoodsos.com/2011/09/22/forks-over-knives-is-the- sc...](http://rawfoodsos.com/2011/09/22/forks-over-knives-is-the-science- legit-a-review-and-critique/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Given that a big part of the dietary changes is getting rid of as many carbs as possible, does anyone have any advice for eating out at lunch on this kind of diet?

Going out and grabbing some food is a rewarding part of my day, but I'm struggling to think of any options for low carb, almost everywhere seems to focus on bread, pasta or rice.

<comment><USER9> Mexican, even Chipotle will work. Get a burrito bowl. Substitute the rice for more veggies. No tortilla. Beans, veggies, meat, and fresh salsa. It's right in line with most of the diets. Pretty low carbs. I just completed a month of the Slow Carb diet by doing this. Lost 20 lbs.

<comment><USER17> The salads at Chipotle are also a good choice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> _> All day: Three litres of water, two coffees (with soy milk)_

Some research has shown that soy decreases testosterone in men. It does not seem to be a decided question, though a nutritional epidemiologist I trust believes it is. You might replace with rice milk to be on the safe side.

</comment><comment><USER19> Congrats on the change! I'm on the middle of something similar myself. One question: you say your work out sessions were 60 minutes and for Tuesday you write "Tuesday - Shoulders: Military press, side-arm raises". You did only that for 60 minutes? How many series and reps?

<comment><USER20> I thought the same. It makes more sense to me to split up back and chest to different days and do shoulders on the chest day. I believe the 3 largest muscle groups are legs, back and chest and I split my workouts into a day for each of those.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Is there really no other way than going Paelo? As a former vegetarian, I find that hard to stomach.

Also I was slim for 16 years as a vegetarian, and vegetarian diets used to be considered healthy. Gained weight in the last three years, though - but I eat lots of sweets...

<comment><USER22> The "nice" thing about pre-fab diets like Paleo is that you'll find lots of like-minded people sharing recipes and generally giving each other support - just like every "moment". There are certainly other diets that are effective, and paleo doesn't even seem to have a solid scientific foundation…

Basically pick anything that reduces your caloric intake. Yes, some diets might get you more rapid results, but in the end most people fare better with something they can actually live with, especially if it's not just sprinting towards a goal, but keeping that dietary change for a long time (permanently, even). I'd be wary of picking any extreme as your first stop, in any endeavor.

For me, just training yourself of snacks and sweets worked out quite well (I've got one hell of a sweet tooth). I did this mainly by picking 24 consecutive hours in a week where I didn't eat anything (and neither made up for it before or after that). That alone saves you some calories, but for me the main benefit wasn't this fasting, but teaching yourself that you don't _have_ to eat all the time.

<comment><USER23> Regarding the paleo science, or lack thereof, I enjoyed this talk from Robb Wolf: [http://robbwolf.com/2012/03/07/darwinian-medicine-talk- suny-...](http://robbwolf.com/2012/03/07/darwinian-medicine-talk-suny-paltz/)

I'm sure some see 'paleo' as pseudoscience, but there are definitely people in the community trying to pin down the science.

<comment><USER22> I'd be more interested if people _outside_ the community -- people who don't have a stake in it -- would work on it, but for this discussion, whether it's bro science or not doesn't really matter, as long as it works for people. (Until someone discovers long-time ill effects, of course, but I'm not aware of that right now)

Although I do guess that the "sole true human diet" factor is contributing to the effectiveness, as people who accept that are more likely to stick with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Ryan, have you done blood exams before and after to check if everything is ok?

</comment><comment><USER3> Where's the before pic, man?

</comment><comment><USER25> Shame you didn't talk more about your diet in the regards that what you actually did was cut out all the carbohydrates! This to me would appear to be the #1 reason to your success, a low carb diet.

<comment><USER26> Macronutrients are secondary to cutting calories. Once you get enough protein to maintain or build muscle and enough fat to fit dietary requirements you can eat as many carbs as you want so long as your calories come in lower than what you burn.

That said, many people find it easier to control their food intake by eliminating simple carbs. Swings in blood sugar can create cravings and eliminating or reducing carbs will reducing or eliminate such cravings.

<comment><USER27> Low-carb diets can be unsustainable depending on individual preferences too. Cutting calories and portion control generally makes it easier to maintain weight when your target weight is met.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What's the best way to compete with same names in Google search - <AUTHOR>

I'll be brief; I'm trying to get my Github, Portfolio website, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc to the first page when you Google my name. Unfortunately for me, I happen to share my name with quite a few other individuals, of varying professions, but many seem to be quite successful. I've researched quite a bit about SEO; it seems backlinks help a lot. What are some other ways that I can improve my ranking in Google search? What is the timeline on how quickly it can be accomplished? https://markewaldron.com <comment><USER2> I see you've included your middle initial in your domain name. At least I think that's what you're doing. (Is 'E' your middle initial?)

If that's what you're doing (including your middle initial, like Arthur C. Clarke), then you need to be consistent. Use your middle initial with your name everywhere online, so everyone online (including Google), knows you as Mark E. Waldron. Make it your online identifier in all your profiles everywhere. Also, include the 'E' in the <title> tag for your home page.

There are some websites and web services which can give you suggestions on minor changes that might help your search engine ranking. There are even books about SEO. Good luck!

I don't know if this matters to search engines, but I found it frustrating waiting for your home page to load, and for all the animations to finish. Maybe skip all the fancy animations.</comment>


Video of Color in action - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/innovation/03/23/color.photo.app/index.html?hpt=C2

<comment><USER2> Maybe I'm missing something here, but in the video they point out that Peter Pham has had some successful startups in the past. Does anyone know how much of his money is in Color, if any? I'm just trying to grasp why he would need to take $41 Million of other people's money.</comment>


ANY BUSINESS YOU START IS Not a STARTUP - <AUTHOR> https://digiryte.com/blog/posts/any-business-you-start-is-not-a-startup?utm_source=blog&utm_medium=hacker_news&utm_campaign=take_off <comment><USER2> Get to the point faster.</comment>