Enabling E-Textile Microinteractions - <AUTHOR> https://ai.googleblog.com/2020/05/enabling-e-textile-microinteractions.html <comment><USER2> At first I misread that comment as "e-textile microtransactions". I thought my shirt pocket was about to become pay-per-use.

<comment><USER3> You are not alone. I first read it as "E-Mail microtransactions", then "E-Mail Microinteractions". Just now I realize it's not about E-Mails. Not sure If I should be happy or sad now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why does Google keep fooling around with fabrics? This keeps coming back every few years and then disappears again.

[https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/6/16428338/google-atap- levi...](https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/6/16428338/google-atap-levis- project-jacquard-denim-smart-jacket-review)

<comment><USER5> I think this is a fascinating question and I don't honestly have an answer to it. There is a lot of interest in the broader HCI community around wearable tech, embodied tech, and ubiquitous computing. Naturally Google - a major employer of HCI researchers - has a lot of people who are into this sort of thing. But that just pushes the answer back to why is the HCI community so into this? My best guess is that the HCI research does not really have a central canon or paradigm (a lot of people come from other departments (CS, Psychology, ...)). Consequently the community is very open minded about what constitutes valid research and creative expression and potential valued more than practicality.

<comment><USER4> I've spent some time in the HCI community, even going to a SIGCHI once, and my take is that input methods are a very wide open field. So it's easy to get work here.

Some of it can be downright sexy, and giving good demo gets you more prestige and money. I'm sure GATAP is no different.

What puzzles me is that we're certainly headed down new roads that other groups have paved already, like two-way audio interfaces and AR/VR. Tactile is great, but also presents a huge gap in affordances. Any interface you need to train for is a failed one. Anyone with an AirPod and Siri has moved a generation past a clickable headphone button. So why keep pursuing a one- dimensional interface method like a hoodie string?

I get that there's an application here in decoding waveforms using "AI" to translate signals to gestures. And maybe that's the point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wont take long before high stake poker players find some applications; I wonder what those would be.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is interesting! Seems we can make _everything_ interactive these days with a simple mix of electronics and ML. Discoverability might be an issue though, I already have trouble remembering all the gesture combinations on the Macbook trackpad.

It's also not clear if the ML-based classification scheme can handle the vast individual differences among the general public, in real-life scenarios. (Wasn't this why Motion Sense on Pixel 4 wasn't as precise as initially expected?) Performance may take a further hit with wear and tear, if these are embedded in clothing like hoodie drawstrings.

</comment><comment><USER8> The video of this in action is pretty cool.

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=pbAvY6bwZD8](https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=pbAvY6bwZD8)

</comment><comment><USER9> We're witnessing the birth of a new category of cybernetic languages (smart gestures? tech-tactile? techtile?). Glad that Google is doing their HCI research to figure out how the tech is bounded by the human body. I imagine that at some point, you could add vibrations as another information channel to supplement sight and hearing.

How long before we see competing gesture languages? How long before there's an industry standard?

</comment><comment><USER10> I don't know why, but it took me until about halfway through the article to realize it was micro-interactions not micro-transactions. My brain just automatically read it as the latter.

I was picturing this dystopian scenario where clothes would be paid for through microtransactions using some kind of network aware fibers that would automatically charge your bank account per use or something.</comment>


Generation C - <AUTHOR> http://gapingvoid.com/2014/02/18/generation-c-3/

<comment><USER2> What is Generation C?

Born sometime between the launch of the VCR and the commercialization of the Internet, Americans 18-34 are redefining media consumption with their unique embrace of all things digital. According to Nielsen and NM Incite's U.S. Digital Consumer Report, this group—dubbed "Generation C" by Nielsen—is taking their personal connection—with each other and content—to new levels, new devices and new experiences like no other age group.

The latest Census reports that Americans 18-34 make up 23 percent of the U.S. population, yet they represent an outsized portion of consumers watching online video (27%), visiting social networking/blog sites (27%), owning tablets (33%) and using a smartphone (39%). Their ownership and use of connected devices makes them incredibly unique consumers, representing both a challenge and opportunity for marketers and content providers alike. Generation C is engaging in new ways and there are more touch points for marketers to reach them.

[http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/newswire/2012/introducing- gener...](http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/newswire/2012/introducing- generation-c.html)

<comment><USER3> Generation C? I thought they were the Millenials? Or Generation Y?

<comment><USER4> God at this point the entire "Generation" concept has lost all meaning. Pick a group of people, and call them "Generation <catchy-name>". Write paper, get cited, accolades, repeat.

<comment><USER5> I wonder how many generations I'll eventually turn out to have been born in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Google has a great video on generation C:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=q9wwY...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=q9wwY9C4V4E)

And here's their article:

[http://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/articles/meet-gen-c- youtube-g...](http://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/articles/meet-gen-c-youtube- generation-in-own-words.html)

</comment><comment><USER7> It sorta sucks to see such a completely positive spin on being plugged in when we are having so many problems with privacy and not caring enough about abuses of our connectedness.

Where's the part about setting precedent for letting marketing, big business, and corrupt government walk all over us?</comment>


Lenovo? So The Rumors Start - Some Idle Speculation About Nokia Buyers - <AUTHOR> http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2012/08/lenovo-so-the-rumors-start-some-idle-speculation-about-nokia-buyers-and-reasons.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Essentially,

"The big value in Nokia is its patents portfolio. Before Elop took over, Nokia's patents portfolio was the strongest in the industry. Motorola was sold to Google mostly for its patents, and the smaller Motorola patents collection yielded a price of 11 Billion dollars for Google to pay. Nokia's bigger portfolio is arguably more valuable, even if we discounted all other Nokia units to zero. And by current market capitalization, Nokia is worth less than what Google paid for Motorola's patents. Remember, just Apple alone pays Nokia in the tune of between 1 and 2 Billion dollars per year in intellectual property fees."</comment>


My 8 hour journey to a single character - <AUTHOR> http://lbrandy.com/blog/2009/11/the-8-hour-journey-to-a-single-character/ <comment><USER3> The real lesson here is the power of asking the experts. Over the years there are countless times when I've replaced a huge or messy work-around with a tiny fix someone on IRC or a mailing list suggested.

Googling is great, but it only helps when you know what you're looking for. Telling expert humans _what you're trying to achieve_ is far more useful.

<comment><USER4> _Telling expert humans what you're trying to achieve_

This is critical. All sorts of "dumb questions" turn out to have been created by faulty assumptions or bad solutions to a larger problem. Often it's like traveling to the top of a mountain to boil water instead of fixing the broken stove. When asking for help, users should always ask the big picture question ("I need help setting up a server to do X, I'm getting error message Y when doing Z" rather than just the specific problem "I'm getting error message Y when doing Z").

<comment><USER5> An excuse to share my favorite bash.org quote:

<glyph> For example - if you came in here asking "how do I use a jackhammer" we might ask "why do you need to use a jackhammer" <glyph> If the answer to the latter question is "to knock my grandmother's head off to let out the evil spirits that gave her cancer", then maybe the problem is actually unrelated to jackhammers

<http://bash.org/?866112>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I had the pleasure once of debugging an issue in C# that boiled down to the difference between a property "Percent" which was represented as e.g. 45.6, and a field "percent" which was measured as a fraction, e.g. 0.456. After correcting a reference to the field to be a reference to the property, I was proud to claim that my fix was a fix of a single bit - the difference between ASCII 'P' and ASCII 'p'.

Can't get smaller than that!

<comment><USER7> I was at a pompously titled Software Craftsmanship conference, and one of the questions going around was: "what is the minimum commit size?"

My first guess was one character, since you can fix a bug by changing one character. But in the 'P' vs 'p' case, minimum size could be larger - <USER2> the calling code is fine, but is there a change that can be made to stop this bug appearing in other calling code? Eg, simplify the interface so that one of the 'p's is protected, so that the wrong Percent can't be set by accident.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> _One character. One friggin' "J". 8 hours. I hope no one is keeping track of "lines of code per hour"._

Sounds like he / you acquired some essential domain knowledge in those eight hours. Your code is more efficient, and you understand the problem space. That is what programming is about, not how many lines of code you write.

(When working on a large existing code-base, my goal is to _remove_ lines of code from the project. Writing code means you are writing bugs. Removing code means you are removing bugs :)

<comment><USER9> Whoosh.

<comment><USER10> Can you explain what apparently obvious point you think jrockway has missed?

<comment><USER9> jrockway bromidically responded to a throwaway joke that in itself already acknowledged the content of the response.

<comment><USER8> Judging from various codebases I've had to maintain, most programmers don't think this is a joke. They really think this guy wasted 8 hours learning how his code is supposed to work. They would have just reverted to last night's version and moved on to adding some more technical debt. (It's OK because it's test-driven development. If the tests pass, the code is fine!)

<comment><USER9> I'm sure most of the people here feel the same way. It just seemed like an audience mismatch, and if you acknowledged it (either the joke nature or the audience mismatch), I wouldn't have felt the need to "Whoosh" you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I had a similar case; a regression that lasted 3 weeks and took half a day of grovelling through code to fix... and turned out to be two one-character typos in a #define name:

[http://git.videolan.org/?p=x264.git;a=commitdiff;h=2389de25f...](http://git.videolan.org/?p=x264.git;a=commitdiff;h=2389de25ff7fe6f84c9c885578c0fbaa6b656f4a)

</comment><comment><USER11> I just fixed a "should be || was &&" logic error that manifested itself fairly mysteriously in a one-dimensional partitioning data structure I had made(meant for indexing things like collision rectangles that have a "canonical value" and a "represented value" which need to be synchronized).

When it removed elements, it was matching both the represented value(an integer) and the node(an object reference). Using && meant that it removed too greedily. Because updates always went "remove then add," this error went undetected until I hit the case where two or more objects shared an identical reprval. Then it removed all of the shared objects, leaving only one behind when I went to query the partition. After going through "Does my query function work right, does my list implementation work right, " I finally narrowed it down to the add/delete functions.

<comment><USER12> That sounds like an error that would have been detected by a unit test.

<comment><USER13> Being a little snide... that sounds like a unit test that occurs to you after encountering that bug.

<comment><USER11> It's a conceptual error with the problem, which means that it indeed WAS missed by unit tests. I wrote some of those and checked the "overlapping numbers" case; the difference was that I did so in a naive situation where the values were inserted once and never updated.

Now, it would have gone from a "mysterious" error to an obvious one had I done an academic-style step-by-step visualization applet of the entire structure's processes before integration, but I had confidence when the code was first written that because this structure was being used with extremely high frequency, the only thing I had to write an explicit test for off the bat was off-by-one ranges causing edge-case "near misses"; anything else would make itself known at runtime after integration.

Time it would have taken for a visualization applet: ~3-6 hours? Time it took to solve the bug: ~3 hours

It's placing a bet - and the bet is that the bugs are limited to a specific segment of code that can be narrowed down easily; if the problem were architectural in nature I'd be in far deeper shit because that would make the same class of bug appear all over, with any number of different symptoms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I love stories from the trenches like this! I'm currently diving into the shallow end of Lucene trying to accommodate ridiculous customer requirements. I'm sure in a couple hours there will be a "hidden flag" story somewhere in here.

<comment><USER15> The part of my code soul that dealt with search requirements goes out to you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Something like this happened to me today. I noticed a floating menu that worked fine in Firefox and Safari didn't work in (wait for it) IE. After about three hours, I discovered that the JavaScript for the menu needed a CSS top attribute to work with; FF/Safari set it to 0 by default, but IE apparently needs an explicit value. Three hours, one line:

      #navtool {
        top: 0;
      }

But it works, and that's what really matters.

</comment><comment><USER17> I now realize why people don't always share their failures in the way Feynman said we should in "Cargo Cult Science."

Comments like this:

> wow, you are an idiot. i feel bad for you. you work on image processing for > a living?

</comment><comment><USER18> I would think there would be another cause of different results: chrominance being encoded at lower resolution, dynamically and spatially. So converting to RGB then to gray would make it more quantised and blurrier . . . well, I haven't thought this through in detail, so I am not certain, but it seems a possible consideration . . .

(since each channel of RGB is a weighted combination of all three YUV, each of RGB must be somewhat lower resolution, and that can't be recovered, so when converted to gray, that lower resolution must remain . . . so it seems it _would_ be a deficiency . . . )

<comment><USER4> That's not lower resolution, that's lower precision. It's the difference between the number of samples and the accuracy of those samples.

This has nothing to do with luminance range though. Even if the output samples only had 4-bit precision, it wouldn't make black into gray.

<comment><USER18> I understand the difference, which is why I said 'lower resolution, spatially and dynamically'.

Are you saying definitively that chrominance is not encoded at lower spatial resolution?

I also said it might be _another_ cause of difference, not _the_ cause.

Anyone might want to look at <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4:2:2> before simply assuming I am talking nonsense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> A little off-topic, but I was under the impression that using the ffmpeg commercially was problematic, did you find you had to address that issue at all?

<comment><USER4> ffmpeg is LGPL; it is used by hundreds of commercial applications around the world. For that matter, it has _no commercial competitors_ for many of its use-cases.

Even On2, a _competing encoder company_ , includes instructions with its encoder on how to set up mplayer (which uses ffmpeg) for decoding input videos.

<comment><USER20> Besides which, it sounds like they're only using it in-house for processing, not distributing anything based on it. So even if they're not compiling it in LGPL mode, they're probably perfectly OK.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Independant Consulting - <AUTHOR> If I stick with my current salary position, by this time next year I should have the cash I need to settle my debts, take off work for six months, and focus on building some sort of software firm (I have plans, but they're outside the scope of this post). However, I've become rather disgruntled and burnt out with my current position and am thinking that maybe independent consulting for a few short term contracts would be a good way to traverse the mean time.
I have two questions, 1) should I really bother to settle my debts? If I build the debt payments into my 6 month cash reserve, it cuts my wait time in half. But, I'm afraid I'm being impatient. 2) I have no experience doing independant contracts. What are some things I could expect? I assume I could probably work out 1099 paperwork through my mother's LLC (where I'm ready in a year, she just jumped in a week ago). I have what I think is a very solid resume for 6 years of experience, having lead two dev teams in the past three years, but I don't have any sexy tech like RoR or Django, nor any certs for my .NET and MSSQL experience.
I've been talking about and planning my own business for the last three years. I make occasional progress, but I'm getting impatient. My last effort towards this goal was to move from rural central PA to Philadelphia a year ago. This got me the salary I needed to accelerate my debt payoff and I've been making excellent networking contacts along the way. But it's been a hard, disappointing slog at work due to a corporate culture that I (and most of my programmer coworkers and predecessors) feel is designed to undermine the employee's self esteem. I put out several applications to other salary positions to have some way to get out, but given my timeline I think the independant route has better potential. (Who wants to hire someone for less than a year?) <comment><USER2> Do you get excited by pitching, doing sales, hustling leads, negotiating deals, and reading contracts yourself? Because this is half the work of being an independent consultant. You're both the biz guy and the tech guy, and if you don't like being the biz guy you're going to HATE being a consultant.

 _But it's been a hard, disappointing slog at work_.

For most people, it can be an even longer, harder slog to find clients.

 _I put out several applications to other salary positions to have some way to get out, but given my timeline I think the independant route has better potential._

In all likelihood, it will take you far _more_ time to find your first few clients than it will to get a full-time position. Finding clients is a crapshoot, and it takes a lot of time. Even if you do find a client, it usually takes longer to close a consulting deal than to get hired for a job. What are you going to do if you don't find clients in time?

 _I have what I think is a very solid resume for 6 years of experience, having lead two dev teams in the past three years, but I don't have any sexy tech like RoR or Django, nor any certs for my .NET and MSSQL experience._

What kind of consulting will you do? Without this details, it's difficult to comment on how you might acquire clients.

<comment><USER3> Bravura really gets to the heart of the matter. A consulting business, or any business, can only survive as long as it has clients. Do you have any? If not, start finding them now, while you're still employed.

When I wanted to quit my job, I told the boss I could only work 30 hours a week for them. I was so valuable to them that they didn't protest at all. I set my schedule as 1pm to 7pm; and then spent the mornings getting my business going. About a year later, I knew I could do it and quit my job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Pay off your debts, if only because they're one less thing to distract from whatever you're working on at the time, and because reducing your monthly living costs will be a huge win when you start your company and/or consulting.

Don't quit your job to start looking for independent contracts. Take on a small side gig or two while you're at your current job to work in your off hours. This will give you a taste of what independent consulting is like and the challenges involved. Also, in independent consulting people don't care about certification, they care about you solving their problems.

Also, your questions of "Who wants to hire someone for less than a year?" makes it sounds like you're a good candidate for third party agency consulting. That's where Company A doesn't want to commit to a full time employees, so they hire a consultant from Company B. You're considered a temporary employee for Company B while working at Company A. Contract terms are usually fixed, but will often go month to month once the initial term is up. Some are often contact-to-hire. Certification will help you negotiate your rate with Company B, but isn't necessary, and there's a HUGE number of .NET jobs that use this kind of consulting.

The downside is the consulting firm (Company B) takes a chunk of money before passing you a check. The counter-point is these firms often get contracts that would never be handed out on an independent consultant, and the upside for you is 40/hours a week of stable employment for a period of time, and a loose commitment that makes it easier to do side work and/or plan for your future. If you want to find a few of these consulting firms just search Dice for job listings.

</comment><comment><USER5> I quit my job due to similar feelings back in 2007. Here is my report after 3.5 years:

It's been completely worth it. I've gotten to work on projects in so many different areas - food and beverage, music, video games, law, film, academic, science, the list goes on and on. So many intelligent people in different areas have many exciting ideas and they need YOUR help to do it.

Averaging out what I have earned the past three years, I haven't made more or less money than I did at the job I quit. However, there are certain other benefits -- I haven't set an alarm clock in over three years, I am outside in the sun right now on my laptop enjoying a beer, I have a small amount of equity in a few businesses, and I haven't had to do a "self evaluation" or had an Outlook calendar constantly open that is scheduled with many meetings about meetings. That said, I have also been up working at 2am many days in the past few months, haven't had a paid vacation, have been paid late many times, have no idea what I'm going to be doing in December, and there are many apps and servers running that have my name on them and could go wrong any minute, and I haven't been able to expand into something bigger. Good times!

My advice to you: convince 3 people to pay you money before you quit. If you can't find the clients now, then you will still have trouble when you quit. Once you knock out the first few, you should be able to convince others that you are reliable, can finish the job, and do good work.

<comment><AUTHOR> _I have also been up working at 2am many days_

Well then, I will have something familiar to look forward to! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have been doing independent consulting for four years and for me it has been far more lucrative than keeping a normal job. you need to be a competent programmer, but the key is having contacts, getting jobs, and getting people to like you. I have mostly made money working for business with java and .net. most Ror jobs pay way less.

<comment><USER7> _most Ror jobs pay way less._

Wide variability here, though. I've never had trouble finding Rails gigs around $125/hour, and have done some at higher rates.

(Edited for typo.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Definitely pay off your debts. The US is still hanging over the precipice of a deflationary recession/depression, that only massive government stimulus and Fed intervention has been able to prevent so far, but it's not clear how permanent that success is. Way too much bad debt in the system that is tending toward default, and Foreclosuregate isn't helping.

In deflation, the cost of debt is exacerbated. The payments and interest stay the same, but there's less money in the economy, hence increased odds of lower income, hence increased odds that the same debt consumes a larger portion of your income.

Don't get caught with your pants down should things go south, get rid of it.

</comment><comment><USER9> I was an independent consultant for almost 10 years - the first year or two can be the toughest. One of the best pieces of advice that I got before I started was that you know that you're ready to be a consultant when people are calling you and offering you money to do work for them (i.e. your network and reputation is already mature). If you resort to a brokered arrangement the rates aren't nearly as compelling. If you think you've got contract work that will take you through your time period, go for it.

If you want to discuss further, or are interested in discussing F/T work (the company I work at - Monetate - is hiring in the Philly area) feel free to email tjanofsky at monetate dot com.

</comment><comment><USER10> The two questions:

1\. Prepaying debts reduces your cash in hand and hence your flexibility. Running out of money is the biggest risk for a startup. Long term debt can extend your runway at the expense of interest. The downside is that cash in hand makes it more difficult to be really cheap.

2\. If your goal is to have a software firm, doing consulting is a potential distraction because you will not be able to leave your customers hanging after six months, and the potential revenue stream will look better than not being paid.

Based on your post, you might look at sticking it out for a year as a first step in making your startup happen. My advice is that if you leave, then leave to do the startup.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER11> Moving to Philly is certainly a step up from central PA, but I'll tell you this as someone from PA myself - finding decent work in Philly is a real challenge. If you are unhappy still, I really suggest another relocation to an even bigger tech market. That was game-changing for my business.

I would also suggest not only killing your debts but saving a good cushion as well. As soon as you go independent you will be relying on savings and debt to cover your living expenses.

And beef up your skillset - learn the newest sexiest stuff, even if it hurts. As a freelance developer if you don't keep up with the latest tech on a regular basis you will be in serious trouble

<comment><USER12> I have to second this - almost every smart up and coming network/programming/security guy in the area I live in, that I know, is either: 1) married/has family in the area and that is why he stays

2) has gone on to better things in Baltimore/WashDC corridor, Delaware, or other places.

One of the guys I know went to Cambridge on full scholarship and ended up working at 2 well-known startups, one after the other. He hasn't been back to PA in years :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I am not sure about Philadelphia but there are lots of 6-12 month contracts in Washington, DC which involve you working on Govt Contracts. Most of the positions are for Java/.NET. If you are willing to relocate for 6ish months then it might be worth a try to check out jobs on dice (contract to hire etc). Being and independent contractor, don't expect to have work coming your way as soon as you decide to become and independent contractor (unless you have networks who are willing to give you 1099 right now). Another option is to hide from your employer that you only need work for less than a year...

<comment><USER14> Just a couple of words of warning on government contracts.

1) Some will require a government clearance. This will take time, and you will be competing against folks who already have the clearance. So you will need to convince them you are worth the wait - a notoriously difficult proposition unless you already have work with them.

2) The timeline from lead to getting paid is long. I would expect at least a month or two from when you start working on the contract until the money comes in, to say nothing of the time to actually get started on the contract.

3) The end of the year is a tough time to try to get added to a contract - everyone is running out of money. In some cases you might get lucky and find a project with a surplus that is looking to spend it before the end of the year, but in my experience those are usually the exceptions as opposed to the rule.

In short, unless you already have the paperwork in hand, I wouldn't bother if you are only looking for 6-12 months.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I just left my well-paying job to start working on my idea about 4 months back. I didn't have much savings (I've been hasty to quit my job), so I am working on consulting gigs part time. It pays enough to cover my bills and petty expenses related to my project.

As @bravura mentioned, selling yourself is the biggest challenge you have in order to get good consulting work. If you go for small gigs that you can do in your free time, you can quit when you feel comfortable doing it.

PS: It's always better to settle your debt before you start living off inconsistant income.

</comment><comment> clark-kent A year from now is not that far off. Just keep your job and pay off the debt. Work on your business as a side project. You can work on your side project 1hr a day, some days 10 - 30mins and some weekends 3hrs. As they say "drops of water makes an ocean". If you slug it out, by this time next year, you would be out of debt with cash reserves and possibly a finished product. You may even already have customers. Find positive things you like about your current job and focus on them.

</comment><comment><USER16> I've been doing independent consulting on and off for many years, but there have been many times when the work wasn't there for me to pay the bills, and I had to go back to a regular day job.

Early on, I also missed several good opportunities because of my lack of sales experience.

Don't quit your job until you've secured some small, part-time independent work. Spend as long as you can doing both, and don't quit your day job until your workload gets too big.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks everyone for all of the advice. I'm going to keep looking for other work as long as I can be confident to maintain my current salary and take care of this debt issue first.

My phone has been ringing off the hook from recruiters wanting to place me (though I've dealt with plenty of recruiters before, that doesn't necessarily mean anything). I just got contacted by a friend-of-a-friend with a small contract for about a week's worth of work; that will be nice to helping with the debt issue. And I actually just got an email for an interview at a company with a really excellent benefits package. So, at the very least, it looks like I can get out of my bad situation.

</comment><comment><USER17> I'd suggest independent contracting whether you were going to start your own business or not. So I vote yes!

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1831130>

</comment><comment><USER6> expect problems collecting, people not wanting to pay, people wanting a discount, people paying late... etc. usually big companies are easier to collect than small companies. it's a soft skill because you have to be firm to get your money, but you don't won't to be a jerk and not get any more business.

</comment><comment><USER18> Can you do a fourth option?

Do a project using non MS.NET/MSSQL on the side in a different industry knowledbase as you do not want piss off your current employer.

In other words you will be using that side project to see if you can get marketing momentum for independent consulting. That way you know for sure before you jump, which is a better idea.

Have you accessed how strong your list of contacts is at this time yet? That is something to be considered as well.</comment>


OS X Lion Recovery is real innovation - <AUTHOR> http://farsec.net/?id=4e271782

<comment><USER2> Wow, this article is pretty misinformed. This is something that PC vendors have been doing for _years_ , since Windows XP came out, at least. It can definitely be helpful and a nice thing to have, but an innovation? I don't think so.

</comment><comment><USER3> Has anyone found any more detailed articles that describe how Apple protects the boot process described in the article?</comment>


Perl 6 compiler, Release #107 (2017.01) - <AUTHOR> http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl6.compiler/2017/01/msg14763.html <comment><USER2> I still hold hope to build something fun and interesting in Perl6 sometime in the next couple years.

Hyper-operators, advanced type declarations and all the goodness that makes Perl Perl is still attractive to me even after years of doing mostly Ruby (after about 10 years of mostly Perl).

</comment><comment><USER3> This release contains fixes I submitted, and I would like to call out how welcoming and supportive the Perl 6 community was during the process.

Also, the fact that Perl6 is written in Perl6 made contributing especially easy.</comment>


The Criminal Underworld Is Dropping Bitcoin for Monero - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-02/criminal-underworld-is-dropping-bitcoin-for-another-currency <comment><USER3> Monero's big problem, right now, is that the fees are high - around $3. They're working on "Bulletproofs" that will reduce the size of transactions, and hopefully fees, by 80%.

Zcash has more advanced crypto, but it takes nearly a minute to generate a private transaction on a normal computer.

My favorite "privacy" coin is PIVX. It uses the zerocoin protocol and is fast with low fees. Die-hard privacy advocates don't like it because it uses Masternodes, but I consider that a plus from an adoption point of view.

Here's a privacy coin comparison of these & others, if anyone is interested.

[https://www.bitcoinbeginner.com/blog/privacy-coin- comparison](https://www.bitcoinbeginner.com/blog/privacy-coin-comparison)

<comment><USER4> The other competitor being mentioned on dark markets is XVG:

[https://vergecurrency.com/](https://vergecurrency.com/)

<comment><USER3> Can you show a dark market actually discussing it? Verge has got to be the worst privacy coin.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A question to the experts: why don't the criminals use smart contract platforms like Ethereum?

My amateurish take is that, for instance, a smart contract could work as an untraceable distributed Silk Road with escrow and everything else. Because there is no one machine where everything runs, it's impossible to shut down the server; there is nothing that links these transactions together, except for the commonly used Solidity code.

<comment><USER6> It's sad to see the "Bitcoin doesn't do smart contracts" line repeated so faithfully - even implicitly as in your question. It's rubbish.

Bitcoin supports smart contracts, and has done so since launched in 2009. Even the simplest Alice-pays-Bob transaction is actually running a smart contract written in Script, a Forth-like language custom built for Bitcoin.

Bitcoin also supports metacoin protocols that create tradeable tokens, and has done so for a long time (e.g., ColoredCoins and MasterCoin).

Only a fraction of Bitcoin's full range of features are used today. This leads me to suspect that Ethereum's much-hyped VM will turn out to be mostly unused.

And, the majority of the interesting use cases for smart contracts require extrinsic (non-blockchain) state to operate. The price per barrel of Brent. Whether it rained over a piece of farmland. Randomness. Notice of the publication of a death certificate. All of these applications rely on a trusted server (or a federated system of them) for input. And they can be corrupted or shut down by a powerful adversary. Ethereum might be able to free itself from oracles to a small degree, but the difference will be negligible for many practical purposes.

In other words, Ethereum offers little more for day-to-day use than Bitcoin does. Ethereum does, however, enjoy a massive marketing advantage.

<comment><USER7> The difference is that Bitcoin supports a limited number of smart contract types (due to limitations in its scripting language.) To create new types, it requires changes to the Bitcoin scripting language, protocol, and runtime, followed by a coordinated soft fork. This is a pretty heavyweight process.

Ethereum is effectively a generalized distributed computer -- so new types of contracts can be written, tested, and iterated on readily, without requiring a change to Ethereum itself.

> Ethereum does, however, enjoy a massive marketing advantage.

I really don't think that's true. I'd wager that the majority of the public that is aware of Bitcoin has no idea what Ethereum is.

<comment><USER6> Bitcoin smart contracts are based on the language Script:

[https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Script](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Script)

Opcodes and values can be combined to yield a vast array of possible contracts, just like any programming language.

Templates are not used, except to activate the full language capabilities (i.e., P2SH).

 _Ethereum is effectively a generalized distributed computer -- so new types of contracts can be written, tested, and iterated on readily, without requiring a change to Ethereum itself._

Bitcoin is not a generalized distributed computer, but it does allow new types of contracts to be written, tested, and iterated on readily, without requiring a change to Bitcoin itself.

 _I really don 't think that's true. I'd wager that the majority of the public that is aware of Bitcoin has no idea what Ethereum is._

Nevertheless, Ethereum - through the Ethereum Foundation and is sizable war chest, has a far more concerted marketing effort.

<comment><USER5> > Opcodes and values can be combined to yield a vast array of possible > contracts, just like any programming language.

It's not Turing-complete and doesn't even have loops (or goto to provide an alternative). Definitely not "like any programming language", you could as well try to use Brainfuck (which is, BTW, Turing-complete).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> monero has become popular in this space, but the average (illicit) user is still probably making operational mistakes while buying, using, and selling it. in the case of monero a lot of people like to skip the step where they download a 30GB+ blockchain over tor, and I can't blame them. when the privacy-oriented cryptocurrencies are effortlessly private, that's when they will have arrived so to speak. I'm fairly optimistic about moxie & co's recently-announced mobilecoin ([https://www.mobilecoin.com/whitepaper- en.pdf](https://www.mobilecoin.com/whitepaper-en.pdf)) for that reason -- if it's going to get adopted by whatsapp, the user experience will necessarily be pretty darned simple.

<comment><USER9> Why would you need to download the blockchain over Tor? There are many people downloading the blockchain and that in itself does not incriminate you. It seems sufficient to only send out transactions using Tor.

<comment><USER10> A relatively tiny number of people will ever download the blockchain, a relatively tiny number of people use Tor, how many bits of information does a state level adversary need to deanonymize someone?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > Its main competitor, Zcash -- which isn't known to have a significant > criminal following -- _can offer even better privacy protection_.

On zcash, there was this discussion:

[http://jeffq.com/blog/on-the-linkability-of-zcash- transactio...](http://jeffq.com/blog/on-the-linkability-of-zcash- transactions/)

which suggested that nearly 31.5% of the hidden transactions in Zcash has some transparent parts to it.

<comment><USER12> re: only 3.5% of traffic using z-addrs:

The dirty secret of crypto is that there is almost no economy that exists for any of the altcoins, and relatively little even for Bitcoin (which functions as the reserve currency due to its lions' share of the economy).

Effectively, by volume most altcoins are held by either miners (who sell immediately), or daytraders who will pump and dump. A very small fraction is held by true believers (who will HODL under all circumstances), but they don't contribute to the economy either.

Such people don't care about anonymity, they're not actually using the currency, they're just traders, and traders mostly don't need to be anonymous.

<comment><USER13> You're making big generalizations about lack of usage and economy, and you've provided no citations or verifyable grounds. For example, did you know about [https://www.projectcoralreef.com](https://www.projectcoralreef.com)?

<comment><USER14> In regards to bitcoin I believe he is correct. About 97% of the activity appears to be people on exchanges:

[https://seekingalpha.com/amp/article/4122695-bitcoin- series-...](https://seekingalpha.com/amp/article/4122695-bitcoin- series-2-usage)

This mainly appears to be due to transaction times and high fees.

I'd be interested to see a similar analysis for monero but that's probably not easily doable due to its privacy features.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "How are you going to prove that these funds are not coming from illegal sources?"

Funny, here I was thinking the burden of proof was on the state.*

* at least in most countries

<comment><USER16> In the US I believe any cash you hold (incl. prepaid credit cards) can be seized by the state if they even suspect it was gained through illicit means. Getting the money back would require you to prove that you gained it legitimately. This is not considered to breach due process since it is not a person being incarcerated, but rather money being incarcerated, and due process does not apply to money. This is referred to as civil forfeiture.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> How long was the criminal underworld using bitcoin before they learnt it was a public ledger.

<comment><USER18> Only accept coins that were directly mined by the originating wallet's holder, use a new receiving address for each transaction, and sell BTC for cash in real-life parking-lot transactions.

<comment><USER19> > and sell BTC for cash in real-life parking-lot transactions.

Doesn't sound practicable.

<comment><USER20> This is all we had in the beginning; I did all my meets on a basketball court next to a police station because I was a teenager, and that's where I would meet people from forums to sell my other stuff online like X-men cards and MTG cards.

<comment><USER21> Walmart/Target parking lot or Caribou Coffee here. Craigslist was (is) the best. People are still good, our "social" media just tells us otherwise. You have to be street smart to be able to do this stuff... if you go to meet afraid, a maybe-mugging is a sure-thing-mugging. Most people just wanna do business and be done, some of them may take an opportunity if it's there so don't give one beyond doing business. This is true in all of life, so meet in courts by the police stations "and stuff"... be smart. I've used CL as recently as last year in SF, and in 3+ cities over 10 years. No free lunch, if it looks too good to be true it probably is, don't take free candy from strangers, tell a friend where you're going, etc...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Off-topic but related, any way to block/disable their stupid auto-play videos?

<comment><USER23> In Firefox, about:config and then set media.autoplay.enabled to false.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> It also has some cool stuff regarding block size as well. It's a variable block size where am miner can pick a block size they want to mine instead of the fixed blocksize issues of btc.

</comment><comment><USER25> > Some coins post fake blockchain entries to hamper surveillance

I don't get this. How do you post fake entries? Wouldn't the ledger be out of balance, or unbalanced or whatever the correct term for that is?

And how are fake transactions identified by the faker?

<comment><USER11> I guess the writer got an ELIF and hence the whole thing was simplified a lot.

Here's my understanding of Monero - It has the concept of ring signatures. I guess this is what the author is referring to. When a transaction is posted to blockchain it is assigns coins to a public key (generally known as the address). Now what Monero does is that it obscures the end address and hides who the transaction went to.

That said, blockchain doesn't exactly use the concept of double boook keeping. So, you don't really have things going to out of balance. I am writing an article on how cryptocurrency transactions work. It it still WIP.

<comment><USER25> Thanks! LMK when you publish your article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Isn't the hard part getting the <whatever coin> with real money?

Let's say I was going to try to launder a million dollars in cash. How do you get that into an exchange and out of an exchange without setting off a million red flags, at least in the United States?

<comment><USER27> Darknet vendors have the opposite problem. You can swap with them, sell cash on darknet, or swap with others on localbitcoins.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Tldr: Monero

</comment><comment><USER29> Good PR for bitcoin

<comment><USER30> Isn't it the opposite?

<comment><USER31> Bad for short term Bitcoin price speculators.

Good for long term investors and enthusiasts hoping for a grown up Bitcoin to achieve mass adoption and legitimacy as the worlds most standard digital currency.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Thank you, bloomberg.com, for giving us news from 6 months ago. I'm glad I have serious traditional media with professionals working to provide me with fresh information and insight.

Tomorrow, they will tell us the amazing discovery on about how the economy of crypto is now influenced by massive master nodes holdings.

Next month: the impact of Macafee tweeting.

Seriouly, how are they still doing money when bloggers give better, fresher, stuff than them ?

<comment><USER33> Knowing that the general media and public are six months behind us is, itself, priceless information.

<comment><USER32> It is isn't it ? Especially with crypto currencies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Called it (in a rather verbose comment 11 days ago).

TLDR: BTC - the mob came, the mob went - <USER2>

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15993110](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15993110)

<comment><USER34> Interesting... two downvotes, no comments. I'd love to know why. Did I come across as snarky? If so, didn't mean to. It's just the timing of this article is so close to my prior speculation on this that I thought it warranted a mention.

<comment><USER35> I didn't downvote you.

Your comment provides little new information and looks like bullshit. Lots of people are predicting bitcoin's fall. For lots of reasons. People can rarely time the markets, I'd expect strong evidence otherwise.

Do you track all your predictions?

<comment><USER36> /speculation: If Bitcoin doesn't implement the lightning network or something else withing 3 months, they will die, eventually.

<comment><USER37> It will not. A lot of people, even very rich, use Bitcoin as a store of value, something like an electronic version of gold.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Selfie-seeking Instagrammers are ruining the world's beautiful places - <AUTHOR> https://www.cbc.ca/radio/day6/fugitives-on-the-run-what-s-next-for-puerto-rico-instagram-vs-nature-the-pinkertons-ride-again-and-more-1.5232456/how-millions-of-selfie-seeking-instagrammers-are-ruining-the-world-s-most-beautiful-places-1.5232466 <comment><USER3> Any one should be able to visit any national park, wilderness area, or other beautiful place and take as many pictures as they want... as long as they follow the rules and regulations.

Park your car where you are supposed to, stay on the trail, don't use a drone if it's not allowed, carry out your trash, don't feed the animals, don't leave your toilet paper under a tree, etc.

Sure I get annoyed when people take too long to snap their photo, but I also get annoyed at people at the grocery store, on the train, etc. You just have to deal with it and go on with your life! Just because some one else likes to take pictures, doesn't mean you should shame them for being a "millennial influencers". But we all should shame the people who don't follow the rules (and these people have been around since before instagram).

<comment><USER4> True. At the same time, travel has gotten so much cheaper and accessible that it's really impossible to go anywhere and enjoy it in peace. I chose to go to Paris in dead winter to avoid the summer crowds - the lines were not any shorter. It feels like a long time ago but only a few years ago I was visiting a few national parks and the hiking trails were modestly crowded. In comparison they are all overrun now. The difference I'd say is AirBNB. My choices used to be shitty motels or campgrounds that never have space. Now, it's a beautiful home by a stream just outside the park in a ranch. Shared with a few friends the cost is a fraction of a hotel room. Hotels were - <USER2> sure fully intentionally - used as a mechanism to enforce visitor counts. With AirBnB that equation is out the window. With low cost airlines making flights cheaper and better fuel efficient cars making driving cheaper and AirBnB making stay cheaper and inexpensive, the tourism sector is exploding. I do not think this is sustainable. As with the other cases, these things are externalising the cost to the cities and the parks do deal with.

<comment><USER5> >it's really impossible to go anywhere and enjoy it in peace

This is only true for a very limited definition of "anywhere". You can go to Yosemite in the peak season and easily find places where you can't even see another person.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's easy to hate on people for wanting to go to a place they've seen in a photo and to focus on the fact that they want the same photo there... I think that's a casual knee-jerk reaction. The impulse to have a destination while traveling isn't a new one, and people have been taking photos for decades upon decades. The problem is that we now have a platform that concentrates attention so efficiently on the 20% of attractions anywhere someone might go. I don't know the solution, but shaking our heads at people for wanting to experience the world they live in (even if they aren't doing it to our creative standards) isn't going to help, and seems to be how a lot of articles about this topic bait peoples' attention and ire.

<comment><USER7> Right, the problem is the "likes" or "views" and comments, whatever metric.

Anonymize (hide) the metrics and watch this attention seeking plunge.

<comment><USER8> No, that's not how this works. That's not how any of this works.

Do you think anyone is out there "seeking likes" for the sake of likes? If we hide likes and views, who would we be hiding them from? Third parties, or the person making the content? If the former, then the person making the content is still getting a dopamine rush. If the latter, then the audience will have a button that they're not sure if it does anything when they click it. If both, then someone will still find a way to track these things due to the outcome of the algorithm used to sort content to trending or not.

Oh, wait wait wait, no, let me guess, you want the idea of popular content to be thrown away completely and have the pseudo-communist overlords of silicon valley to select what is or is not trending manually?

Like, what possible solution do you think there is to this other than just leaving the system be as it is and being content with the fact that humans are humans?

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure what you're on about. What I'm saying is that people seek approval and or attaboys and attagirls. They want the likes and they want the comments, the recognition. This leads to this behavior.

If they were posting things to a virtual void the great majority would quickly decelerate the rate of this behavior.

<comment><USER9> The same with Twitter. The amount of garbage that platforms spews daily would go down tremendously if likes and retweets weren't a thing. I can't spend more than a few minutes reading the most cringeworthy crap without questioning why I'm even looking at it.

<comment><USER7> True, but I think Twitter is a bit different in some aspect. It's still about recognition, but it's more akin to oneupmanship with yo momma jokes (and similar things) where people attempt to impress via quips and such and getting the attagirls and attaboys vis this idea signaling.

It isn't so bad when it's a group of five or ten being smart or crass and obnoxious within that limited group. The amplification via Twitter makes that unbearable. I agree the metrics do ultimately drive this behavior too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Here in Holland at the fields with all the flowers we have this issue with tourist in general. They walk into the field for a picture, destroying the crop costing the farmer thousands a year.

So the farmer put up a big signs telling people to take pictures outside the field etc. Queue the German/Chinese boomer who conveniently 'did not notice it'... People are just trash

<comment><USER11> I was in Amsterdam once and saw a sign in the floor indicating that was a selfie spot. I chuckled. People were waiting in line to use it. Maybe farmers should put signs of where it is allowed (and gives you the best angle) instead of where it is not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is a stupid manufactured problem. People are visiting cool places and trying to take a cool picture of it. Let's publicly shame them for it?

i don't mind either when you see a big picture spot at a famous location and there's a line of people waiting to get that best pic. if you made the journey out there and want to spend an extra 10 mins to come home with something that will help you remember it and look awesome at the same time, by all means go for it

<comment><USER13> Well in the case of Maya beach in Thailand, where they have already restricted access, it was having a big environmental impact:

"Today, the almost 5,000 daily visitors to Maya Bay have contributed to the area's eroding natural beauty, threatening local marine wildlife and sustainability of the ecosystem. Issues like boat anchoring, an excess of pollutants and sunscreen, and irresponsible tourist behaviors have led to a major decline of the coral reef system in the area, according to Andrew Hewett, a spokesperson for the Phi Phi Island Conservation and Preservation Group"

[https://theculturetrip.com/asia/thailand/articles/this- beach...](https://theculturetrip.com/asia/thailand/articles/this-beach-in- thailand-is-set-to-soon-restrict-tourists/)

[https://www.suretravel.co.za/blog/thailand-restricts-mass- to...](https://www.suretravel.co.za/blog/thailand-restricts-mass-tourism)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I was abhorred to see a teenage girl pouting for a selfie outside the gatehouse of the Birkenau concentration camp.

Everyone else was ashen faced after an exhausting day of horridness.

I wondered about saying something but decided not to.

<comment><USER15> Easy to be shocked by this but some slack can be imaginably cut.

I accidentally went to a concentration camp in the Czech Republic without knowing what I was letting myself in for. Sure the sign said 'concentration camp' but I was just cycling by and in need of an excuse to stop, so I took the turning and went in. I hadn't heard of this one before - it was the one the Nazis showed to the Red Cross to show that all was well when it was not. I wasn't quite teenage at the time, but definitely young and ignorant.

My mistake was to offer to take a photo for some American tourists that were there. They seemed to be taking selfies so I just 'helpfully' offered to click the button for them whilst they 'smiled'.

This was obviously insensitive, but I had just casually arrived at the place with no thought. Meanwhile the tourists I had tried to help had planned this visit for months (if not years) and they had lost their whole extended family in Theresenstadt and other places where 'Arbeit Macht Frei'. There is something iconic about ironwork that says that, an impulse to take a photo definitely exists.

But it is all very different if you go there because 'this place looks interesting' rather than because you have thought it through. I learned as much from getting it wrong with offering to help someone with their camera as I did from seeing the bunk beds and barbed wire. I expect your teenage girl pouting learned a lot too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Social media is a cancer on humanity. It is not benign, as many people still assume. Almost every time the medium is studied, the results show it makes people less happy, susceptible to propaganda, and generally shittier people. I've got an idea, if you really want to keep up with people set up an email list. Or just realize that you don't actually want to keep in touch, as evidenced by the fact that you never actually bother to call the people you claim to want to stay in contact with.

</comment><comment><USER9> I think the only solution is to restrict access or regulate tourist flow (if feasible). You can't blame people for wanting to take pictures - it's an impulse that's hard to defy unless you are actively thinking about it and have had many thoughts / discussions about it like we are now. Yes, it's sad to see people taking selfies, then looking at their photos and walking away from whatever wonder they were just in front of for the sake of the photo. But hey, that's their prerogative, why should I care? Presumably they paid in time and money to get there so they can do with that time as they please. If we want to protect landmarks, scenic & historic places, we need to control how many people and how much access they are allowed to any given place. The tourist- powered businesses are not going to bite the hand that feeds them so that's a perfect example where the local government can step in and apply regulatory measures.

<comment><USER17> They do this in a lot of places, partially to conserve the area and prevent what you described and also as an added safety measure. Over-nighting in the Grand Canyon is a great example. I think it's a good idea in most places where the risk of injury or the risk of trampling is too great.

It's kind of a bummer that you have to plan so far ahead for some things. Grand Canyon permits are done during a 1-week opening 5 months before the calendar month you hike in, for example. It's challenging to organize a group when you have kids, jobs, etc. that could change in that time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> 2030: you can generate a deepfake selfies portfolio in 500 ms and algorithmically choose the best looking one in another 500 ms, but people still want "the real thing", a real proof they were there. Popular spots offer zero visibility due to selfie sticks. Croatia is the first country to ban phones, in Dubrovnik.

</comment><comment><USER19> The effect is very pronounced on the Greek island of Santorini. The rise of Instagram (among many other factors) can be correlated with the expansion of tourist season from ~5 months to 10.

Each day, dozens of young brides from every corner of the planet must wait to pose on the scenic steps with blue domes that is present in everyone's consciousness, in the split-seconds when the shot is free of crowds.

Watching that scene play out over and over, and the general anxiety level of everyone involved, I found to be quite fascinating.

Everyone was working very, very hard to recreate the popularized conception of the experience, rather than just being mentally-present in an otherwise pretty place.

<comment><USER20> Your point about being present really resonates. When I go out into national parks for a backpack, I'm there to immerse myself in that space. Sometimes I take photos, but never of myself in those places - it's about preserving what's imprinted in your mind to look back on later. These photos make great fine art prints that can be given as gifts later on.

The gamification of travel via social capital never sat well with me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> A few years ago, my friend who moved to and now lives in Thailand told me something similar to the contents of the article. Specifically, a quiet beach area that locals would go to became overrun with tourists after Instagrammer with lots of followers posted the location.

I guess I wouldn't mind this if it meant we became more receptive to making life decisions to help preserve the environment, but it seems like the outcome is mostly just about getting addicted to upvotes/likes on digital platforms. Ah well.

</comment><comment><USER22> The fact that so many millennials are attempting to make a career out of being an 'influencer' or 'digital nomad travel photographer' certainly doesn't help.

<comment><USER9> Can you blame them? It's that or working a minimum wage job.. which would you take? Have thousands of followers and make money online or work some miserable job for corporate overlords - the choice is not difficult.

<comment> blaser-waffle Reminds me of _Super Sad True Love Story_.

"Super Sad True Love Story is the third novel by American writer Gary Shteyngart.[1] The novel takes place in a near-future dystopian New York where life is dominated by media and retail." [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Sad_True_Love_Story](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Sad_True_Love_Story)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Unfortunately the problem here is not the selfie or instagram, its the smartphone.

An incredible tool with side effects people aren't yet capable of dealing with.

The problems with social media mainly exist because we have always on internet and a very good camera in the palm of our hands.

If it were a layer more difficult many of these issues go away.

That said I don't think its socially possible to put it back in the bag, so we'll probably have to simply invent a bigger distraction.

</comment><comment><USER24> I am about to have this problem right in my back yard. I know the farm field that is 50 feet from my back door is going to grow sunflowers some time soon, and my driveway is the obvious way for people to access it. I have seen cars parked carelessly on major roads in the area when the same farmer used other fields, and I am really not sure what to do when the problem comes to me. I will be fortunate in that the field is slightly hidden and off the road, plus sunflowers can't be planted in the same place every year, so there is only a single season for people to discover and seek out the site. I am just really not looking forward to dealing with all of the people driving down my driveway to get their shot.

<comment><USER25> Put up a gate and charge $50 to access the site :)

<comment><USER24> I have thought about that. Maybe when the time comes I should make a deal with Farmer Kenny. He really doesn't like the people trampling around to get pictures either, but maybe if I organized it and shared $10/person with him it would be better for everyone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Jackson hole has started a campaign called "tag responsible" urging people not to use specific geotags, but I doubt its had any real impact. No place is secret anymore

</comment><comment><USER27> What in the world is going on with HN today? There's this post trying to make fun of those who like to take pictures in an "I'm better than you because I enjoy the moment" sort of way, then there's another post about "Was Email a Mistake?" from the New Yorker nonetheless, and then another one titled "Tardigrades may now be living on Moon" which is an article which should be retitled "Tardigrades aren't living on the moon, but click here anyway!"

There are comments in all threads talking about how they're not good things to be posted and talked about, but these don't fit with what I feel HN should be about.

</comment><comment><USER28> *People are ruining the world's beautiful places.

Title fixed to remove implication that this is somehow 1- a new problem 2- "young people ruining things"

</comment><comment><USER29> Oh Jesus! I feel really sad for this new selfie-generation. They just don't know how to enjoy stuff.</comment>


Go 1.11 on App Engine - <AUTHOR> https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/application-development/go-1-11-is-now-available-on-app-engine <comment><USER2> I'm the tech lead and primary software engineer on the Go runtime. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask!

I'm super thrilled to announce that Go 1.11 is now available on App Engine! We now support...

* vendoring

* regular best-practice package structures

* go modules

* the regular Google Cloud client libraries: [https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/google-cloud-go](https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/google-cloud-go)

This is a "second-generation" runtime ([https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/gcp/introducing- app-e...](https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/gcp/introducing-app-engine- second-generation-runtimes-and-python-3-7)), meaning that we're now running stock Go in the gVisor sandbox ([https://github.com/google/gvisor](https://github.com/google/gvisor)). We've removed all of the restrictions present in the old runtime, like limited socket and file access. You can even import "unsafe"!

If you're a current Go-on-App Engine customer, you should check out our migration guide at [https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/standard/go111/go- di...](https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/standard/go111/go-differences) to learn how to migrate from the Go 1.9 runtime to the new Go 1.11 runtime. For the time being, you can still use the legacy App Engine APIs with the Go 1.11 runtime, but you should start migrating to the Google Cloud client libraries.</comment>


TripAdvisor removed reports of rapes and assaults at Mexico resorts, report says - <AUTHOR> https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2017/11/01/tripadvisor-removed-reports-rapes-and-assaults-mexico-resorts-report-says/ST6JbI29XR25CeiDXh8K5J/story.html <comment><USER2> This is a non-story. TripAdvisor has been doing this for years as it is a violation of their policies. Rapes and assaults are not considered family friendly and will be removed from the site.

Here's the specific part of the policy:

Family-Friendly

To maintain a safe, family-friendly environment, we don't allow profanity or vulgarities in reviews. We also reject reviews that include sexually explicit comments, hate speech, prejudiced language, threats, or personal insults. So keep it PG-13! Any reviews that describe reviewer participation in illegal activities, including those that advocate or describe drug use in defiance of local laws, will be removed.

Full policy is here: [https://www.tripadvisorsupport.com/hc/en- us/articles/2006147...](https://www.tripadvisorsupport.com/hc/en- us/articles/200614797-Our-guidelines-for-traveler-reviews)

<comment><USER3> WTF. I'm not sure why you think someone saying "I was sexually assaulted at this resort" is somehow against that section of the policy.

<comment><USER2> You may not like it - but thats how TripAdvisor has always interpreted the policy. Specifically, sexual assaults have always been considered not family friendly. They are removed from the site and referred directly to the hotel for investigation. (disclosure: I worked there from 2010-2013, including a short rotation in the content moderation arm that makes these calls)

My broader point was simply that this isn't a new interpretation of this policy, they've been doing this for years.

<comment><USER4> I think it is a story, because most people, having never worked for TripAdvisor, would find it surprising.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Another recent post on this story, from USA Today:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15603371](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15603371)

</comment><comment><USER6> "The issue raises questions about the role of a hotel review site as a public forum, and the role that TripAdvisor should play as a mediator. The company hosts more than 535 million user reviews online, and is worth more than $1.5 billion

It derives much of its revenue from referrals to hotel sites, and also has an "instant booking" feature, allowing users to book directly through the site. Its relationships with hotel properties are integral to the company's bottom line, according to an August filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission obtained by the Journal Sentinel. In it, TripAdvisor financial officers stressed the importance that the company convert visitors into "users and bookers."

"Advertisers will not continue to do business with us if their investment in such advertising does not generate sales leads, customers, bookings, or revenue and profit," they wrote."

Like Yelp, this is an opaque business entirely focused on profit. From 'news' sites with readers comment sections on selected articles to review sites like TripAdvisor, the whole mysterious disappearing posts due to 'moderators' is getting beyond the pale.

Not sure how this could be regulated but free speech comes up in my mind...

</comment><comment><USER7> > Among the other users who saw their posts deleted was ____*, who wrote > warning visitors that she had blacked out at a Mexican resort out after > drinking at a hotel's swim-up bar

I do not believe this story. OK I believe it, but put it down to cheap booze at higher levels of alcohol than normal. This is what is often found to be the case. (Changing locations with drugs also causes ODs)

And there in lies the problem. Great allegations require great proof and this is why we have court systems not mobs.

I'm not sure this is trip advisors job.

<comment><USER8> There is plenty of evidence about the criminal actions of many of these resorts. Waiting for the Mexican court system to catch up will absolutely get people hurt. If the resorts are being defamed, they can take legal action of their own, trip advisor should not be helping them hide accusations.

[https://www.google.com/amp/amp.timeinc.net/time/4900991/mexi...](https://www.google.com/amp/amp.timeinc.net/time/4900991/mexican- resort-alcohol-unsanitary)

<comment><USER7> You seem to be saying it's part of Trip Advisers mission to keep people safe?

I don't think it is. And certainly if they chose it not to be that's their right.

I find it part of the worrying 'snowfake' trend of everyone seeming to thing their safety is 100% someone else's responsibility.

And it is also dangerous.

Trip Adviser is 'in or out' on whether it keeps people safe. A half assed attempt can be more dangerous.

> There is plenty of evidence about the criminal actions of many of these > resorts

I really find it strange you think a site that rates the quality of food and bedding should be the gateway to this information. It's not crazy, but a strange concept.

Travel Guides back in the day used to do it in extreme cases and normally through innuendo. They always enforced the general idea of general safety when they did.

<comment><USER3> Forget whether it's part of their mission. People use Trip Advisor because of the level of trust they have in the reviews. If enough people feel TA is censoring reviews, especially to the point of removing reports of sexual assault, you can bet they will sure as hell lose trust in those reviews.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to be a Great Lecturer (and Professor) - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~scsfacts/vonahn-simon.html

<comment><USER2> duuuudee, you're being such a von ahn fanboy.

Von Ahn has some pretty good lectures, but that's due, in no small part, to the fact that the courses are "Great Theoretical Ideas in Computer Science"/"Science of the Web"/"Artificial Intelligence". He gets to cherry pick from some of the coolest stuff out there, and though he presents it very well, I wouldn't describe him as the best lecturer at Carnegie Mellon.

One complaint I have about his excellent TAs is that, though many of them are stand-up guys, a lot of them perpetuate a long standing Carnegie Mellon tradition of dickish undegrad TAs (Full disclosure: this is also true in one of the courses I've TAed, and is a much stronger influence in the Systems side of things at the school).

Von Ahn is a pretty good professor, and he's pretty funny too. I just wish that people would realize that things like the "Luis Von Ahn Awesome Classroom" in the Gates Center are him poking fun at his own image (I hope) rather than the foundation of some sort of Cult of Von Ahn.

<comment><USER3> The link reads like a joke and you seem to be taking it as fanboyism (word? sp?).

<comment><USER2> He gave a presentation that I attended emphasizing exactly the same set of points, so don't take it "as a joke", though Von Ahn tends to make jokes a regular part of his presentations.

The fanboyism to which I am referring is common among undergrads at Carnegie Mellon. Though I applaud Von Ahn's efforts with Human Computation and think the awards and rewards (namely, the acquisition of reCaptcha by Google) are well deserved, I question the apparent need to discuss his greatness on a regular basis. Hundreds of thousands (if not millions) oughta be enough approval for anyone.

Simply look at the poster's comment and submission history to see what I mean by fanboyism.

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha, seems like someone's getting a little worked up. I do research for the guy. Obviously I support what he does. After all, aren't you supposed to learn from the best professors at your university?

However, Von Ahn doesn't get to pick any class to teach. He received 251 while still a Grad Student and was rather "forced" to teach it. He created Science of the Web so I think he deserves to teach it if he wants to correct? And he absolutely hates AI and didn't, by any means, choose to teach it. What's interesting is that even you admit he's a great teacher, but he himself admits he hates teaching. Guess that means he must have some talent.

(as for TAs in Systems being dicks, I completely agree with you. 251 TAs too.)

<comment><USER4> I'm taking this comment into account when calculating your final grades, jc, dude.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok as, (I would say dude but TAs have names)

<comment><USER5> I am so, so glad I did ECE.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I realize this was posted as a joke, but I'd be seriously miffed if my professor ended class 10 minutes early every day.

(And in saying that, I realize how far I've come from my undergrad days.)

<comment><USER7> You tell me! I have an instrumentation class that's 1h30 a week, and yet we regularly finish 20 to 30mins early. And almost every week I'll have at least one class that get cancelled for no specific reason - and there's no extra class to compensate or anything, it's just gone. Then again, I have a teacher who always ends 10 mins late because his class is before the lunch time.

This is supposed to be one of the top universities in Japan. Undergrad courses here are very hit or miss...

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I realize that von Ahn is joking, but this one isn't terribly funny.

</comment><comment><USER9> Von Ahn just has teaching envy for Randy:

<http://www.thelastlecture.com/>

Although I never took a class with either, I was at the Last Lecture and went to the Entertainment Technology Center (the program Randy built with Don Marinelli). Every time I saw Von Ahn speak he did not hold a candle to what I saw Randy do.</comment>


Building Backbone.js Apps With Ruby, Sinatra, MongoDB and Haml - <AUTHOR> http://addyosmani.com/blog/building-backbone-js-apps-with-ruby-sinatra-mongodb-and-haml/ <comment><USER2> None of these are Backbone.js

<comment><USER3> They're used to construct an API that interacts with Backbone (see the practical section). The whole point of the post is to demonstrate how straight-forward it is to move from persistance using something like say, the localStorage adapter over to something with an actual datastore.</comment></comment>


Memories Exist Even When Forgotten, Study Suggests - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090909122100.htm

<comment><USER2> summary: brain fails to garbage collect reference cycles</comment>


Ask HN: What is the consensus on Hacker News? - <AUTHOR>

A thread currently at the top of the Hacker News main page includes comments mentioning issues on which most Hacker News users agreed a few years ago, and other issues on which most users agree these days. Users are speculating about HN's "broader sentiments" and others are mentioning "fanboys" or "echo-chamberism."<p>As far as I know, no one reads Hacker News exhaustively. I certainly don't. I miss hundreds of threads each week now, not even having time to lurk in them. So I'm not sure if Hacker News today has any consensus points of view. What do you think? Within the scope of the site's guidelines (which were recently revised) what are the issues on which most users here agree, and what are the issues on which there are vigorous debate? <comment><USER2> tokenadult, from all of the things I've read from you over the years, I believe you are too kind and well intentioned to notice the reality of the situation. Then again, maybe I'm too harsh and jaded.

If you're as jaded as I am, you've already realized that the ancient days when people put great stuff on the Internet because they enjoyed working on it are long gone. The commercial interest of the web combined with human vanity have transformed the Internet into a for-profit popularity contest. The vast bulk of submissions to HN support this, both the stuff on the front page, and all of the countless things that have slid off of the 'newest' page into oblivion.

A large part of the supposed "sentiments" show in comments, submissions, and voting/flagging are really just playing to the crowd. Though it might be offensive to some, the typical phrase is "karma whoring." It's really just human nature at work; if you buy or buy into some expensive widget, you promote your choice publicly to gather the esteem of your peers. Similarly, if you abandon something, you disparage it publicly to promote your choice and gather the esteem of your peers.

Using gmail/google?

Bought an Apple?

Programming in javascript?

Love/Hate copyrights?

All of the "consensus" issues boil down to pimping for profit and praise, or resisting the resentments of others. A prime example is, when was the last time you saw someone really speak out against javascript? It does happen on occasion, but voicing a negative opinion of javascript is always severely punished -- negative comments threatens the capacity of js coders to make a living, so they respond harshly.

As noted by others, positive opinions of javascript are promoted endlessly, and for the opposite reason -- positive comments increase the value/income of js coders, so they respond beneficially.

There are plenty of people on HN that work for the big companies (Apple, Google, Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, and gasp, Microsoft), so the pimping and punishing is rampant on every mention of any of them. As harsh as it might sound, the people employed by these companies have vested interest in promoting and protecting them.

If someone disparaged the value of the skill you use to make a living, how would you react?

On the flip side, if someone praised the value of the skill you use to make a living, how would you react?

(For the record, I'm a typical human language monoglot, so I absolutely envy your skill with the Chinese language!)

      ...
      ...
      ...
      ...
      ...

Did my admission of envy for your skills make you feel good or proud of your abilities?

      ...
      ...
      ...
      ...
      ...

Maybe that was just what I wanted you to feel...

If you have far too much free time and spend it watching the /newest queue, you'll see the attempted manipulation of HN by both vested parties and professional marketers. Their efforts are continuous, and their goal is manufacturing "consensus" by any means possible. The self-reinforcing echo chambers seen on HN and elsewhere are entirely intentional, completely dubious in nature, and created specifically for the sake of profit.

When you hear an echo, the only rational question is, "Who profits from this?"

With all of the above said, we still see people asking tough questions and others responding in an honest attempt to contribute help. It's the very best part of HN. Unfortunately, the bright sparks of HN have been slowly fading in the face of contentious discussions, ever falling average technical acumen, and of course, the self-centered motivations behind promoting and punishing. I honestly don't know if the trend of decline is inevitable or reversible, but surprisingly, I like to believe the latter.

<comment><USER3> Great comment.

And now the only rational question is, "how do you reverse it?"

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the compliment but my simplistic summation of game theory and group psychology still needs a _whole_ _lot_ of work. ;)

As for how to fix it, that's a remarkably tough question, in fact, it might be a formally "undecidable" (unsolvable) question but that doesn't mean a better _partial_ solution can't be found. Either way, writing up my thoughts would result in a _painfully_ long post, and I'm not sure I would make much useful progress towards potential improvements.

More importantly, I have already derailed tokenadult's submission; it's clear that he wanted to know both the _personal_ and _perceived_ biases are around HN, rather than look at the root cause of those biases. It's fair to say I let him down by examining root causes. If you asked me what color the sky is, and I answered with the physics causing sky color on various planets, then you wouldn't have gotten the answer you wanted.

An important part of overcoming bias is knowing what the biases are.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> After lurking for a few months, here are a few "consensus" issues that come to mind (again, this is just the majority of users - certainly not all):

\- Macbooks are the best laptops

\- iOS is preferred over Android (both in use and development)

\- PHP is terrible

\- Facebook is the devil

A few common debates here are:

\- Ruby vs. Python

\- Rails vs. Django

\- Google (whether they are evil or helpful)

\- Whether or not we are in a startup bubble

<comment><USER5> Other "consensus" you forgot:

\- lisp is good, java is bad

\- working in a big co sucks

\- rms is awesome

\- pg is awesome

<comment><USER6> _lisp is good, java is bad_

And this makes Clojure...??

There is plenty of dislike for Lisp and acceptance of Java.

<comment><USER7> I think you'll find the common theme being Java hate, but a general love-hate relationship with the JVM (clojure, scala both have their fanboys and critics).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you mention some companies a few people will rabidly upvote your comment, and a few people will rabidly downvote your comment. It doesn't matter what your comment actually is. Online communities are used to this kind of religious war. It's sort of surprising to see it so blatantly here.

TSA are always stupid, all the time.

Patents are evil. (But no-one knows what to replace them with. And maybe they're only evil for software.)

Facebook is evil and will destroy the Internet, but most certainly are violating all kinds of privacy laws.

</comment><comment><USER6> There is an historical bias in favor of Google and Apple. Somewhat contradictorily, there are biases in favor of privacy and open source. Other large companies tend not to be seen as positively.

On the hardware side, ARM is favored over Intel.

Politically and culturally, HN tends to US centric with an Anglo shell.

<comment><USER9> I'm not sure if Google part contradicted the other ideas until a few years ago. Easily available software, open-access quality services, clients available for linux (even if not open-source, it's still something), they contributed to many projects like the linux kernel, published go, worked on Android which is... corporate-flavoured open-source, etc. They were very much about geeky stuff and easily available information. Google groups were also popular with open-source projects.

Also in all cases at some point in the past favouring those companies was about rooting for the underdog... and then just continued even when they became large and abusive in some cases.

<comment><USER6> Apple v Open Source (particularly since the iPhone).

Google v Privacy (always).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think you have just spawned a recursive argument, which Segmentation fault

</comment><comment><USER11> Consensuses I've noticed on HN:

\- Paypal screws merchants over.

\- Startups are cool.

\- PG is God.

\- The US should be more liberal, like SF or Europe.

<comment><USER12> As an American who believes the last one (and moved to Denmark), I haven't felt that HN posters generally agree with me, unless you mean purely on social issues (e.g. discomfort with religious conservatism and support of gay rights). On economic issues there seem to be a lot of libertarians around, tempered mainly by a vocal group who're unhappy with the healthcare situation for freelancers and startups.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> My 2 cents on what I think is consensus here:

      Javascript frameworks are cool
      Public API's are good
      VIM is awesome</comment>


Desktop 3D printer prices will rise - <AUTHOR> http://www.tctmagazine.com/blogs/grimmblog/3d-printer-prices-will-rise-5k-is-near-term-price-target/

<comment><USER2> I think this is still the cheapest solution (edited for links):

If you are interested in building a repstrap to bootstrap the RepRap project, or are just looking for the quickest and most cost effective way to start 3D printing, you need a clonedel. For the uninitiated, it is a fork of the Prusa Mendel, optimized for easy casting and updated by the UW Solheim lab and Metrix Create:Space. This project is fully Open Source, and is designed to be both the fast track and the cheap track to 3D Printing.

<http://wiki.metrixcreatespace.com/clonedel>

<http://reprap.org/wiki/Prusa_Mendel>

Start designing in Inkscape:

<http://inkscape.org/download/?lang=en></comment>


A Genocide Incited on Facebook, With Posts From Myanmar's Military - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebook-genocide.html <comment><USER2> As in previous threads on this, I'd like to remind people of the role of radio stations in the Rwandan genocide: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_T%C3%A9l%C3%A9vision_Lib...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_T%C3%A9l%C3%A9vision_Libre_des_Mille_Collines)

These and other tragedies lie in the past. We would do well to look for the warning signs of these in the future: what media organisations are publishing propaganda about ethnic minorities? What incitement to and tacit endorsement of violence is currently being broadcast or circulated on Facebook and other places?

<comment><USER3> Not just endorsement of violence, but organizing it: [https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2018/08/02/facebooks- fig...](https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2018/08/02/facebooks-fight-club- how-proud-boys-use-social-media-platform-vet-their-fighters)

</comment></comment><comment> Const-me Russians do similar stuff, the most famous case is probably this: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crucified_Boy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crucified_Boy)

They incited war this way, still ongoing.

<comment><USER4> Serious question.

Why is there so much "whataboutism" whenever anyone brings up these issues?

Sure Russia has rights violations.

China has censorship and Uighurs.

The US has all kinds of toddlers in internment camps.

Etc etc etc. Lots of bad things happening in lots of other places.

But right now we're talking about the number they're doing on the Rohingya. Sheez.

If you want to talk about Russia, or Brazilian death squads, or immigrant toddlers, or whatever submit a link and we can talk about it.

<comment><USER5> You question is valid, ignore the downvotes.

I think it comes about as a way for people to "explain away" or "brush off" things that happen in our modern world that we are just too lazy/busy/preoccupied or otherwise can't be bothered to fix.

It doesn't really matter what the thing that happens is, someone will always chime in with "yeah, that's just like when xyz happened" \- which is a completely useless thing to say, but I think it helps people feel better that the world is not utter chaos, and things are not entirely isolated or have no precedent.

Of course, as you say, it would be much more productive to spend time trying to solve or eliminate said things, but gossip and media and reality TV aren't about that.

<comment><USER6> No, it's that human rights have long been used as instruments of aggressive foreign policy by some countries; so now, when issues are raised, there is an instinctive reaction from some quarters that basically means "oh no, you will not use that to bully Country X, because you are no saint either".

It's the diplomatic equivalent of "Why do you see the speck in your brother's eye, but fail to see the beam of wood in your own?"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The only way to combat propaganda and 'fake news' is for its audience to apply some critical thinking. As far as I'm aware the Internet in Myanmar is not restricted/censored, so people there have every opportunity to check facts - that they do not appear to may be a symptom of Internet access being such a new phenomenon there.

<comment><USER8> While Myanmar no longer has a restricted internet enforced via firewall that's a relatively recent development, only having changed in 2011. There isn't official state censorship at this point in time, however there is still a large degree of self-censorship occurring due to concerns over being jailed or otherwise penalized for voicing a dissident opinion online. Freedom House has a more comprehensive report on the state of internet there available here [https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom- net/2017/myanmar](https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/2017/myanmar)

The current state of affairs is such that only those voices that conform to the government's official narrative will be heard and promoted while those that do exercise critical thought can't verbalize it online without fear of violence and intimidation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't get how Mark can live with the monster he has created. He made billions from this, why doesn't he retire and move to a desert island with his wealth. From there he can start to work on an open protocol alternative to FB.

<comment><USER4> Even if he did, Facebook doesn't go away. It's here to stay now.

If you're dining with Satan, you can't decline dessert. You have to eat everything Satan prepares for the evening. You can _try_ to run away, but I'm not sure you would get very far.

<comment><USER10> Are you conciously victimizing Facebook's leadership?

It makes money, but it has a net negative social effect. Do we, as a society, stigmatize, or at least not encourage greed? We don't. So you might as well say that these people are not the victims of the mythical, absolute evil, aka the devil; they're victims of our conflicted sense of value.

<comment><USER11> It's easy to pin evil on Facebook because of the company's arrogance. It's arrogance that ultimately negative impacts the value of the firm.

They look at growth as the only metric that matters and as a result have a vacuum in governance and practice. They appear to not fundamentally now respect the userbase, and have not appeared to seriously consider the conduct of partners on the platform in the past.

Anyone of the age of the Facebook leadership should have always understood how online forums work. Anyone who used Slashdot in the old days understood moderation, trolls, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Interesting how people were 'outraged' about 1 missing Journalist and flooded HN with articles about how evil the government of Saudi Arabia is ( which I agree with ) , but a more serious crime like genocide leaves HN disinterested. Would this be the same, if the perpetrators and victims were reversed ? I highly doubt it.

<comment><USER13> We had a lot of coverage of the Myanmar genocide facilitated by Facebook and the comments were always very negative against Facebook here. You won't find much sympathy of the company on HN.

<comment><USER14> >We had a lot of coverage of the Myanmar genocide facilitated by Facebook and the comments were always very negative against Facebook here.

Not always. A surprising number of HN commenters in those threads supported both Facebook and the genocide.

Either way, HN was anything but disinterested.

<comment><USER15> > A surprising number of HN commenters in those threads supported both > Facebook and the genocide.

I'm skeptical that there actually were non-grey comments in support of _the genocide_

<comment><USER14> Every one of them probably wound up being downvoted and flagged, but that doesn't require a majority of users. My point is that the sentiment was still expressed, so it exists as a facet of HN culture.

You won't find many threads where Islam, Muslims or immigrants are mentioned in which at least some anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant bias doesn't appear, including this one.

<comment><USER16> Which specific comments in this thread as it stands indicate anti-muslim or anti-immigrant bias?

Edit: what did saana say that got them flagged out? Is this the one?

<comment><USER4> The Saana comment was pretty far out there.

Yes. It's safe to say that comment had anti-muslim, anti-immigrant, anti- minority bias.

There are many people like that in the world though. It's unreasonable to require them to not exist before we discuss topics like this. In fact, in a very real way, they are the entire reason we find ourselves needing to discuss topics like this.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>