Why can't people just accept evidence? - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7495837.stm <comment><USER2> _Why can't people just accept evidence?_

It's tempting to talk about the human psychological urge to _do something_ in the face of a problem -- an urge that serves us well in many situations, though it may also serve us poorly. And it's tempting to talk about how double-blind statistical studies are, at most, a few hundred years old, are nonintuitive for most people, and are often poorly understood even by those who are supposed to be experts.

But let's put that aside and ask: _Do humans even care about the "effectiveness" of this ritual_? Perhaps the use of acupuncture to improve fertility is a social signal. I can well imagine that infertile Chinese women feel one hell of a lot of social pressure to demonstrate that they're doing everything possible -- including all sorts of financial and physical hardship -- to get pregnant. Acupuncture is a dramatic statement of purpose, especially if it costs "hundreds of pounds". But if the alternative is for your husband and his family to grow unsympathetic, or even suspicious...

Scientists have also shown quite convincingly that smoking, wearing high heels, and being anorexic are very bad for your health, and yet many women do all of these things, at great physical and financial expense. Heck, there was a time within living memory when a well-bred Chinese woman would have had her feet bound in childhood, crippling her for life, in order to enhance her marriageability. Compared to _that_ , the fact that some women feel compelled to undergo acupuncture is a sign of tremendous progress.

<comment><USER3> Robin Hansen speculates that a lot of behavior concerning medicine is about social signaling rather than desire to alter medical outcomes. In particular, people push medicine onto others as a way of showing that they care.

<http://hanson.gmu.edu/showcare.pdf>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why people can't accept evidence? What do you know as "truth"? Just look at the title of the article: "Acupuncture 'no help for IVF'"

See the single quotes around the key statement? Even the reporter does not want to endorse the truthfulness of the statement. Wise choice, since the content of the article states something that is, at least up to a point, opinion.

Rather your question should be: "Why do some people, like myself, so readily accept incomplete facts as absolute truths?" Take heed and listen to bdfh42's comments about assessing evidence. He is right on the money, no need for me to repeat what he stated.

<comment><AUTHOR> The single quotes are very common on the BBC in headlines and are used inaccurately for direct quotes. Don't ask me why they do that. It's in no way suggestive that the reporter is or is not endorsing the statement.

And it's not opinion. Looking at 2000+ women over 50 years is not merely opinion. It's a lot stronger evidence than "I'm really surprised by this result", which most certainly is opinion. Statistical anlysis does not care about experience, and when done properly it speaks in the cold hard truth that any effect we may have observed previously is spurious.

For myself, I'll happily accept the stats that the article talks about now as the best objective evidence we have now, and will happily change my mind when new evidence emerges.

<comment><USER5> "Don't ask me why they do that."

Because the BBC is funded by a mandatory licence fee (TV tax) and so it must appear even-handed and balanced. If they're not, people complain that "I pay my licence fee but the BBC is mocking my deeply-held beliefs." It really annoys me sometimes ("Islamist terrorists" rather than "Muslim terrorists") but in other respects they are an excellent source of information.

<comment><AUTHOR> I 'almost' 'wrote' a 'joke' blog 'post' about their 'stupid' "headlines".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Two problems here.

The most fundamental problem is that we are talking (in this instance) about belief systems. People seem programmed to reject even positive evidence that conflicts with their belief systems - just as they ignore the complete absence of evidence supporting things like religious faiths, fairies at the bottom of the garden etc.

The second problem is that very few of us are taught how to assess evidence. Most lack the skills required to judge the relevance and likely accuracy of what is presented. Evidence (I know) to support this hypothesis can be gleaned from almost any daily newspaper - most items are written by intelligent human beings but the results lack any analysis that reflects an ability to process evidence properly.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree 100%. My initial question was from the final quotes from Paul Robins who seems to assess the evidence correctly ("This study has shown that there's no proof that acupuncture can help") and then pivots into close-mindedness by saying "that suggests that there should be lots more studies to examine the question. I'm convinced it can help."

I want to see him come up with well-controlled studies to support his conviction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Because, in our society, rhetoric has become accepted as evidence. So, when Sally says "I used acupuncture and it helped me conceive", that counts as evidence. When a creationist says "well, a banana fits nicely in my hand which shows an intelligent designer", that's evidence.

This combined with the fact that the scientific community seems bent on publishing even when they have studies with no statistically significant result. I'm reading more studies of 50 people in two cohorts where one had 10 do something and the other had 11 do something touted as a breakthrough. In fact, it's evidence of nothing.

So, the value of rhetoric has grown in people's minds and the value of evidence has diminished because people are publishing crap.

<comment><USER8> _Because, in our society, rhetoric has become accepted as evidence._

How do your examples count as "rhetoric"?

Also, can you provide examples of any other societies, present or past, where this was different?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I would like to refer everyone to this study for a minute --> [http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/abstract/323/7327/1450?maxtos...](http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/abstract/323/7327/1450?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=prayer&andorexactfulltext=and&searchid=11)

Yes that is a serious experiment.

As I understand it, when the original article was published there was a huge uproar in the academic community about the findings and intentions of the study. Those concerns were addressed in a reply from the author:

"The purpose of the article was to ask the following question: Would you believe in a study that looks methodologically correct but tests something that is completely out of people's frame (or model) of the physical world--- for example, retroactive intervention or badly distilled water for asthma?

There are three ways to deal with this question:

(1) To answer in the affirmative. But this leads to such paradoxes (some described by those who responded to this article1) that it is incompatible with scientific work or even daily life.

(2) To look for methodological or statistical faults. Here an obvious one was that the duration of fever and the duration of hospital stay are related. But what if the next study sports perfect methodology and statistics?

(3) To deny from the beginning that empirical methods can be applied to questions that are completely outside the scientific model of the physical world. Or in a more formal way, if the pre-trial probability is infinitesimally low, the results of the trial will not really change it, and the trial should not be performed. This, to my mind, turns the article into a non-study, although the details provided in the publication (randomisation done only once, statement of a wish, analysis, etc) are correct.

The article has nothing to do with religion. I believe that prayer is a real comfort and help to a believer. I do not believe it should be tested in controlled trials."

"Evidence based" has recently become a popular ideology/buzzword in the medical community. Although it is always comforting to have a tangible set of numbers to reference, "evidence-based" findings are often adopted without legitimate consideration of experience-based/anecdotal data.

It is the current culture to accept anything with the label of science as indisputable truth. As a rule, I don't think it is ever a good idea to blindly follow. Even the most well designed studies are worth debating. The more you question, the more you discover.

</comment><comment><USER10> I've had acupuncture before. It can help.

It's all about what you believe. The power of the mind. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo>

<comment><AUTHOR> Absolutely it can help in some ways through a placebo effect, but placebo has known link to increasing fertility.</comment></comment>


Lightning-Fast Templates and Web Components: Lit-HTML and LitElement - <AUTHOR> https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2019/02/lit-element-and-lit-html <comment><USER2> Both these look great, But I dont understand Googles stand on Polymer now. Does Polymer use this or Polymer and lit-* are going different direction

<comment><USER3> lit-html and LitElement are products of the Polymer project. They're different enough from the classic Polymer library, yet can be used interoperably with Polymer because it's all just web components, that they deserved new names.

The classic Polymer library is in maintenance mode now. It's getting critical bug, security, and performance fixes only. We're moving customers from Polymer 1 & 2 to Polymer 3, then from there we're encouraging them to incrementally adopt LitElement, which again, they can do because they work together.

Our situation is quite different from frameworks because of web components. First, we care more about web components adoption than any specific library. Then, because apps can mix web components made with different libraries, we don't have to bank everything on one flavor or specific set of ideas. That said, we think lit-html is an even better solution than what we've had before, and we're focusing on that.

<comment><USER4> How does LitElement compare with something like hyperapp[1] or meiosis[2]? The issue I have with $new_tool is trying to figure out what it offers vs the competing tools and it's a non-trivial time sink.

[1] [https://github.com/jorgebucaran/hyperapp](https://github.com/jorgebucaran/hyperapp)

[2] [https://meiosis.js.org/](https://meiosis.js.org/)

<comment><USER3> Hyperapp isn't Web Components. We're able to freely mix Polymer and LitElement components because the browser does it for us.

LitElement really is just Web Components with reactive properties and lit-html rendering. Everything else is plain HTMLElement. Hopefully there's very little to learn that's not standard and transferrable to any other web-based code.

I'm not exactly sure what Meiosis is, to be honest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Are there any ready made components available yet? Something similar to PrimeNG or Vuetify?

<comment><USER6> Do the material web components count? They are being rewritten using lit-(HTML|Element)</comment></comment>


Simulating slow or laggy network connections in OS X - <AUTHOR> http://barkingiguana.com/2009/12/04/simulating-slow-or-laggy-network-connections-in-os-x/ <comment><USER2> This is a nice trick for _quick and dirty_ prototyping, but I think most full stack devs will need a solution that is more robust for testing</comment>


Angular Material based admin template - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/radicalloop/matangular <comment><AUTHOR> Just open sourced a Angular Material based no-frills admin template, with a focus on ease of integration and extension. Please do check out, comment and contribute:

[https://github.com/radicalloop/matangular](https://github.com/radicalloop/matangular)</comment>


PHP library for generating and parsing license files - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ziishaned/php-license <comment><USER2> Heads up: it's about license _key_ files, not the file commonly named LICENSE</comment>


StoryWorth for iPhone – record family stories and print them as a book - <AUTHOR> http://www.storyworth.com/app <comment><USER2> My mom looks forward to her StoryWorth questions and puts a lot of thought and time into writing her answers. Even though I may have heard some of the stories growing up, I've discovered so much more through her StoryWorth responses. For example, I knew that one of my mom's favorite toys was her doll, but when StoryWorth asked, "What were your favorite toys as a child?" my mom replied with a 465 word response! I learned much more detail: "I didn't have a lot of toys as a child because of my family financial situation...but I remember when I was about five years old, my father got a chance to study in the US. When he came home after a year he brought me a big surprise. I got a beautiful doll, you can imagine how happy I was. It was a boy doll because a boy doll was cheaper than a girl doll. She didn't have a princess dress or long blonde hair, but I was still very excited..." I really cherish the stories and hope to share with my children one day.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I started using StoryWorth more than a year ago. My parents _love_ writing their stories. Didn't know they recently started letting you print them to an actual book, definitely giving it a try.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've been using StoryWorth's online service for a few months. Excited to use the new app on my iPhone! Both my mom and my mother-in-law have responded to several of the story prompts and feel comfortable now knowing the stories they submit are private between us. Recently (with permission from the Grandmas of course) I invited my sisters and my husband to have access to the stories and I hope to eventually turn them into books as gifts. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER4> Why is this an iPhone and iPhone-only app, excluding many users? The UI for this is a trivial web form, with absolutely nothing mobile-specific.

<comment><USER5> We actually have a fully-functional, mobile optimized web app – that's how we started!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm the founder of StoryWorth, happy to answer any questions!

<comment><USER6> I love this idea. I actually had an idea in a somewhat similar space. I'm pretty sure I'll never actually do it so I'll share.

I thought it would be cool to offer a service to store family history in some super long-lasting acrylic. Maybe laser etch binary into the block or something like that?

<comment><USER5> Oooh, like a family history version of Han Solo in carbonite :)

I do think the printed books give it some of that longevity. They may not last 1000 years, but I love the idea that someone's great-great-great-grandchild could read their stories a couple of hundred years from now.

<comment><USER6> yep, just like that lol. No doubt the book is a great idea, but I always saw the "carbonite" option as a high end option. Books for regular people, eternity for those who can afford it. Anyways, best of luck with your service, it really sounds great!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The book option is a new one...my parents have been asking for it!

</comment><comment><USER8> Now that voice calling is almost free even internationally and you can email your parents at anytime, I do not know why this would be a useful service? Calling someone or writing a letter or even emailing directly has a more personal touch than using a service like this which emails your relatives to write about their life.

<comment><USER9> Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but your parents won't live forever.

<comment><USER8> Sorry to be the bearer of bad news as well but your Story Worth service also won't live forever.

<comment><USER9> I assume that's why they have a service which prints it as a book.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Joel Spolsky is doing an IAmA on reddit - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/gulpx/iama_cofounder_of_stack_exchange_and_fog_creek/ <comment><USER2> _Every time you feel like you've made the world better by upvoting a story about injustice, you're just making yourself feel smug. Forget the upvotes... go work on making the world a better place._

He was writing about how stories of social injustice get a ton of upvotes, but nobody actually goes out and does anything to fix the situation. I'm sure there's a lesson here for HN.

<comment><USER3> Can anyone argue that the time spent upvoting a reddit story of injustice provides negative net value to the world?

<comment><USER4> I can, I think:

When you upvote a story on reddit about some issue you deeply care about, that tricks your brain into thinking that you have done something about it.

It is the same problem that announcing your goals makes you less likely to achieve them, because you already see yourself as a person who has accomplished that.

<comment><USER5> Related: [http://www.ted.com/talks/derek_sivers_keep_your_goals_to_you...](http://www.ted.com/talks/derek_sivers_keep_your_goals_to_yourself.html) (one of Derek Sivers' TED talks)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I really want to learn C, like he says. I get plenty done without knowing it, and I have few doubts I can continue to find decent work without knowing it, but I haven't been able to gain any traction when I try to learn it.

I've got the books sitting front of me, and I've written some trivial visualizations of sorting algorithms using terminal output, but damn if I can find a way to use C as a web developer. If there were just some use case where C would help me get something done, I'd be all over it.

<comment><USER7> > but damn if I can find a way to use C as a web developer

Write a web app in C? ;)

But yeah, in most cases C won't improve your productivity as a web developer. But it will certainly make you understand the computer better.

So maybe start a recreational project in C? A command line utility, a demon, a music streaming server - something not really web-dev related.

<comment><USER6> Listening to you, I'm thinking about just reading the C books and nothing more. If C's usefulness to non-C-programmers is simply that it gives them greater understanding of how computers work, then reading might suffice.

<comment><USER8> I don't think sufficient understanding of how computers work can come from just reading a book. If it could, you should read a book about how computers work, instead of trying to glean that through the lens of C programming. Understanding comes from doing.

<comment><USER9> If you have read the K&R C book I am not sure you would say that. It's great no matter what you do with it.

<comment><USER8> That's a bizarre thing to say. Do you think the K&R book is a great way to learn French?

<comment><USER9> No offense but are you just being obtuse? Clearly I meant something other than what you are suggesting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A dedicated ama.stackexchange.com could be an interesting experiment.

<comment><USER11> I'm not really convinced that StackExchange is the best system for that. You'd really want one StackExchange per person; otherwise, the one-answer-per- question nature of StackExchange, with voting for "correct" results, which result in bizarre gaming behavior and impossible-to-follow discussions.

<comment><AUTHOR> You could use the tag system. The questions would be at ama.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/Joel+Spolsky. The person who posted the question just had to accept the answer of the person who he had asked.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> He mentions how functional programming is valuable, something that many graduates are lacking in. Does JavaScript count as a functional language?

<comment><USER13> Do Javascript programmers program in terms of function applications, or do they program in terms of sequences of state-changing operations?

If they do the first, then Javascript is a functional language. But without even a function composition or application operator (or function), it's obvious tht Javascript is not intended to be functional. It's an imperative/OO language with lambdas, like Common Lisp.</comment></comment>


W3C Issues Recommendations for Annotations on the Web - <AUTHOR> <comment><AUTHOR> Waiting a long time for this. Looks flexible and comprehensive. A bunch of compliant tools (see tests) but none yet provides 100% coverage of the recommendations.

I hope coming soon to every web browser!

</comment><comment> tony-allan [https://www.w3.org/annotation/](https://www.w3.org/annotation/)</comment>


A German court has opened a lawsuit against Mark Zuckerberg for inciting hatred - <AUTHOR> http://www.dw.com/en/munich-court-to-try-facebooks-zuckerberg-for-inciting-hatred/a-36269828 <comment><USER2> Article's wrong.

It's in the investigative state, solely under purview of the prosecutor.

No court has even got a single piece of paper about it, let alone opened proceedings.</comment>


Most Americans will get a wrong or late diagnosis at least once in their lives - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2015/09/22/most-americans-who-go-to-the-doctor-will-get-a-wrong-or-late-diagnosis-at-least-once-in-their-lives-study-says/ <comment><USER2> What is frustrating is cases where doctors insist they are right, and how dare you the patient question their expertise based on your internet research.

I mean, look, I totally get their side--you are paying them for their knowledge which they accumulated from years of practicing and years of specialized training. You SHOULD largely trust them. But doctors are also often overworked, and may not always specialize in your particular area. You also obviously have a much more vested interest in the outcome as a patient, so there's a decent chance you'll spend much more time researching it than your doctor.

All of this to ask..."how can we strike a balance?" If one has doubts about what their doctor is telling them, they can always get another opinion. I just wish there was a better way to vet any research one might do on their own without the doctor getting upset that you continued to look into the matter instead of just taking their word on it when things don't improve.

Personally, I have an awesome doctor, but when I have these concerns I preface them by saying "I recognize this is internet research, and I trust your opinions on these things, but I had X, Y and Z questions." They have always been perfectly happy to answer my questions and address my concerns (as I would hope given what they bill my insurance for a 15 minute visit...)

<comment><USER3> I feel it's the other way around. I am a sample size of one; the doctor's experience, and the experience of the people who trained that doctor, is a _far_ larger and more reliable sample, and so the doctor's diagnosis is more likely to be correct (absent any other information) than mine.

My go-to example here is a few years ago I had unbelievable abdominal pain for a day or two and saw a doctor about it. And the first thing the doctor thought it was -- gallstones, which I ended up having a mildly-complicated and expensive test for -- turned out to be completely wrong. But I don't fault the doctor for that: it was, given what I was experiencing and my family's medical history (multiple people who had to have their gallbladders out due to gallstones), the most likely cause, to such an extent that focusing on anything else until it had been ruled out would have been a bad idea.

(it turned out to be inflamed cartilage in my ribs, which was the second thing investigated, once the abdominal ultrasound ruled out gallstones)

<comment><USER4> We should be free to push a doctor on things and have them answer as to why we're wrong. I can only imagine that must be very annoying to doctors. After working even with technical clients that manage to misunderstand and come up with all sorts of troublesome reports of non-issues, it's easy to get complacent.

While it's not a good use of resources to run all sorts of tests for everyone, the tradeoff changes for you individually. Sorta like how the fox is only running for its lunch while the rabbit is running for its life. The limiting factor is probably the reliability of tests: get enough done and you'll find _something_ that looks wrong but isn't.

Wikipedia lists hospital error as the leading preventable cause of death[1]. The source used notes "Serious harm seems to be 10- to 20-fold more common than lethal harm.".

I'm a bit biased due to repeated experience. I lost one child due to being overly deferential to doctors instead of pushing a harder (trivially preventable issue). I saved another after flat-out rejecting the analysis of a nurse that appeared to be having trouble with simple math (after insisting on being re-evaluated, the child was rushed to emergency care; issue avoided - even got an apology).

It reminds me of patio11's advice on salary negotiation. A bit of discomfort while discussing the subject vs a large payoff. I'd prefer to feel a little uncomfortable and annoy a doctor with a few additional questions, piss of a nurse for double-checking their work, given the stakes.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preventable_causes_of_death](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preventable_causes_of_death)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As someone currently dealing with two completely seperate but overlapping medical conditions that have somewhat similar symptoms I'm in a four way battle between what I think, what my GP thinks and what specialist #1 and specialist #2 think.

Specialist #1 sent me to Specialist #2 who pretty much dismissed out of hand that the problems where related to his specialism but said he'd do the tests anyway, turns out I do have something that is under his specialism.

It's a bit frustrating tbh, the only doctor who's been awesome was the A&E consultant who basically said "this is not normal, march into your GP's and demand the following tests" had he not done that and I not followed his advice I'd _still_ not know what was causing a significant part of the problems I was having nor that certain daily routine tasks could make things horrifically worse.

</comment><comment><USER6> Isn't this normal, expected and sort of by design for any non-trivial diagnosis?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_diagnosis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_diagnosis)

Doctors know they are wrong all the time, but they must keep the cost of testing to a minimum while considering the more life-threatening possibilites first.

</comment><comment><USER7> I will never fully forgive the nurse who informed me in 1998 that I had AIDS and that I needed set up a living will and get my affairs in order before I began experiencing "cognitive decline." It turned out I didn't have AIDS but a highly treatable parasitic infection from time spent working in the Amazon.

<comment><USER8> What did the nurse do wrong?

<comment><USER9> Gerd Gigerenzer talks about medical testing, and the scary numbers of health professionals who are unable to interpret the results.

[https://plus.maths.org/content/reckoning- risk](https://plus.maths.org/content/reckoning-risk)

This is what most people struggle with:

> The probability that one of these women [asymptomatic, aged 40 to 50, from a > particular region, participating in mammography screening] has breast cancer > is 0.8 percent. If a woman has breast cancer, the probability is 90 percent > that she will have a positive mammogram. If a woman does not have breast > cancer, the probability is 7 percent that she will still have a positive > mammogram. Imagine a woman who has a positive mammogram. What is the > probability that she actually has breast cancer?

That can be reworded to something much easier:

> Eight out of every 1,000 women have breast cancer. Of these 8 women with > breast cancer, 7 will have a positive mammogram. Of the remaining 992 women > who don't have breast cancer, some 70 will still have a positive mammogram. > Imagine a sample of women who have positive mammograms in screening. How > many of these women actually have breast cancer?

It's a good book and covers cases of misdiagnosed HIV.

[http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/0140297863](http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/0140297863)

[http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0140297863](http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0140297863)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A lot of what Google is doing in life sciences has to do with pursuing earlier, more data-driven diagnostics (eg, [http://www.wsj.com/articles/google-designing- nanoparticles-t...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/google-designing- nanoparticles-to-patrol-human-body-for-disease-1414515602)).

I'm sure future humans will be horrified to learn that we walked around with barely no meaningful monitoring on our body stats for our whole lives... Only seeking out help when problems got big enough to be visible to the naked eye or bad enough to impair us.

</comment><comment><USER11> Bodies are pretty complex systems to diagnose. We ask programmers to work in pairs to reduce mistakes and then trust our lives to a single opinion. Buyer beware if you're not getting second opinions.

<comment><USER12> This. There is also a pretty wide variation in skill levels between different doctors. With only one arbitrarily selected opinion the chances of getting advice from the wrong end of the spectrum is higher.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> When you see how little time physicians spend with patients, this is not a surprise. Additionally, new research is continually coming out, and the doctors are often not up-to-date on it. This is a huge problem called Translational Research. For this reason, it is important that you do your own research.

<comment><USER14> Just today I went to the doctor and had a bad experience, as it is usual since I came to the US.

I basically love everything about living in America. I love this country. But one thing that I don't love here is primary medical care. It is so damn shitty compared to what is was in my home country of Brazil.

I don't understand what goes on here. I have to basically convince doctors to examine me. They treat me like they're doing me a favor. I'll usually leave the office with a recommendation to take ibuprofen or a prescription for antibiotics, and most of the times that doesn't address my concerns. Also, doctors here have this huge attitude that I don't recall ever seeing on a Brazilian doctor.

I can't fathom how the country with the most advance medicine in the world does so bad on primary care.

<comment><USER15> This is an artifact of the medical insurance system in the US, which focuses upon low-cost, high-volume processing of patients and gouging the delivery staff on payments. Subscribe to an expensive concierge physician service (the kind that is cash/check/bank-transfer only, no insurance allowed, some don't even take credit cards), and the difference is night and day; impeccable bedside manners, no rushed visits, 24x7 phone access to your personally- assigned doctor (with only light screening by the RN on duty, if any screening at all), some even perform house calls.

It is no secret that if you are well-to-do or wealthier in the US, then it offers you some of the best medical services and quality delivery you can buy anywhere in the world; the steady stream of medical tourism by the very wealthy non-US patients year-in and year-out attests to that. And if you are not so well-off in the US, then any complex medical complications requiring sophisticated treatment to survive can be a horrifically terrifying experience, depending upon your individual roll of the dice in our byzantine insurance maze.

While many US citizens decry "socialism" when single-payer systems are discussed, I personally believe Coase's Nature of the Firm might offer one possible solution set out of many possible such sets, in terms of a solution along the lines of co-ops.

<comment><USER16> The idea that insurance companies are "gouging" providers or that providers are underpaid is absurd:

[http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2013/02/amer...](http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2013/02/american_doctors_are_overpaid_medicare_is_cheaper_than_private_insurance.html)

<comment><USER15> Right you are, I should have been more specific for the US readers of my comment. General Practitioner's are not nearly as well-compensated by insurance as specialists, and GP's are the primary care main point of contact for most Americans. Thanks for pointing out the need for the clarification.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> How many of the people here react positively when members of their family share their "internet computer experience" when trying to fix a computer? Yeah, thought so.

Now, let's move on to the fact that the patient is saying "fix me" while the doctor is operating on "First, do no harm."

Now, translate that to some individual who is actively having a health problem that may be dangerous. But who doesn't want to hear things like "stop smoking", "stop drinking" and "get exercise" and wants a pill.

Now, add in people actively trying to scam you to get prescription medication.

Now, some people simply want to be told completely what to do because they don't have the capacity to make the decisions for themselves (cancer diagnoses in particular bring this out).

Finally, doctors are human and are sometimes having a bad day.

etc.

Dealing with people sucks and is an art rather than a science.

My experience with doctors has been this: if the doctor won't explain his reasoning or it isn't logical, I'm getting another doctor. This cleans out the idiots and the assholes.

The flips side is that if the doctor _IS_ explaining something to you: shut the fuck up and listen. The quickest way to leap up the communication scale is to be so informed about what's happening that you can ask intelligent questions about the situation after an explanation.

Just remember, doctors are running with the probabilities.

A well-informed, logical patient is almost as improbable as an Ebola diagnosis.

<comment><USER16> >How many of the people here react positively when members of their family share their "internet computer experience" when trying to fix a computer? Yeah, thought so.

The difference is that people actually respect doctors and usually do what doctors tell them to--baring lack of money, time, or willpower, or some other quack like Andrew Wakefield telling them not to. Technology professionals by contrast aren't respected, and our advice (like "keep your software up to date") is often simply ignored regardless of how much we repeat it.

>Now, let's move on to the fact that the patient is saying "fix me" while the doctor is operating on "First, do no harm."

They're operating on "first, make as much money as we can." If they weren't, then medical bills wouldn't be the #1 cause of bankruptcy in the US.

>Now, add in people actively trying to scam you to get prescription medication.

Many countries (particularly in Latin America) don't allow doctors to act as gatekeepers to medicines and allow you to legally purchase almost any drug, with or without a prescription. To require otherwise is simply rent-seeking under the guise of protecting people from themselves.

>Just remember, doctors are running with the probabilities.

and running with scissors in the dark, apparently: [http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/12/17/statistical-literacy- am...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/12/17/statistical-literacy-among- doctors-now-lower-than-chance/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> False positives and false negatives are no fun. I presented with rather obvious signs of colon cancer, but due to my age and lack of family history, my GP misdiagnosed it as irritated hemorrhoids. A year later, I went back to him and he decided he better refer me to a specialist who diagnosed me with a 6cm tumor. Luckily that thoracic surgeon was pretty damn good at his job, and I'm here 10 years later to write this post.

Sometimes medicine is an easy diagnosis, sometimes outliers bite you in the ass...

</comment><comment><USER19> If you find this article interesting you might consider the book "How Doctors Think". It's basically an entire book dedicated to the subject of misdiagnosis and how our modern medical system has some systematic flaws that contribute to it. If I think about just how often I'm incorrect in trying to diagnose an electronics or software problem, and how little time an average doctor spends on a problem, it's not surprising to me that anything that is remotely outside the norm could be easily misdiagnosed. For me the takeaway is to just accept that for common problems doctors can do a great job, but if you have a condition that is not making progress despite seeing a doctor be open to the fact their diagnosis could be incorrect. I had a minor problem with my ears a few months ago, went to a doctor, was given a diagnosis and treatment which temporarily improved the condition but did not seem to eliminate it. Went to another doctor a few weeks ago, given a different diagnosis and treatment. There you go.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Doctors_Think](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Doctors_Think)

</comment><comment><USER20> This story is a textbook example of bad reporting.

The headline and opening paragraph combine two completely different categories of error--"wrong" and "late"\--so that it is possible to say "most Americans".

The story then goes on to talk exclusively about "wrong" as if that was the dominant category. "Late" is never mentioned.

The abstract of the ($60) report talks about errors only, but reading between the lines "late" is subsumed under the author's notion of "error".

So this story tells us _nothing_ about the actual rate of misdiagnosis, but it leaves unwary readers with the probably false impression that "most Americans will experience misdiagnosis".

This is not to say that misdiagnosis is not a serious problem. But then, so is really bad reporting.

</comment><comment><USER21> I got an asthma inhaler from my family doctor for what turned out to be a collapsed lung, many years ago.

<comment><USER22> A few years ago, I was fresh out of college and working at large university with a very good teaching hospital. I was making $30k/year, but had amazing Cadillac health insurance. I started developing asthma (unbeknownst to me. It was caused by a very gradual onset allergy, and I had never had asthma before), wasn't able to walk up a short flight of stairs on my way to work one day, and, instead of turning right to go to the office, I decided to turn left to go to the urgent care center attached to the school.

I wasn't waiting more than 5 minutes (for a walk in!), was seen by two doctors and at least one nurse, including a pulmonary specialist, got a chest x-ray, a breathing test, lots of stethoscope exams, and diagnosed (correctly!) with asthma. I don't remember how long I was seen for, but it was a very long time, for what most doctors would probably consider to be a fairly straightforward diagnosis. (Oh! And it was all free -- they didn't even bother to mail me a statement afterwards. I gave them a $20 bill for the co-pay, $5 for the prescription and that was the end of it)

Around the same time, a friend of mine, in a different school, going to a not great school clinic with his school's official insurance plan, was in a similar situation to yours, where a collapsed lung was misdiagnosed as "you're just tired, get more sleep," without an exam. (Granted, as an engineering major, he did need to get more sleep, but still!) As you might imagine, there were some pretty hefty hospital bills later on when his condition deteriorated...

Anyway, your situation sounds terrible, and I wouldn't be surprised if the collapsed lung misdiagnosis was fairly common. "Collapsed lung" just seems like one of those things that's really easy to misdiagnose (in some presentations, at least) as a number of other things, unless you're good with a stethoscope, and/or have access to medical imaging equipment (and the will to use it!). Ugh.

It's so absurd to me how fantastic and thorough my treatment was at one school (I was on the same insurance plan the students were), and how badly the screwed up a similar situation at a school just 10 miles away -- both with nearly equal tuition rates and health insurance plan costs.

<comment><USER21> It all turned out ok, because I could tell there was something _wrong_ , went and got x-rays and eventually got operated on. This was all 20 years ago. Apparently, tall-ish, skinny guys in their early 20ies are one of the highest risk groups for collapsed lungs - the other being older smokers, which sounds more like what you'd expect.

<comment><USER22> Ha! Yup, my friend with the collapsed lung was very tall, very skinny, and 21 at the time.

This college clinic also misdiagnosed a pregnancy as "you stopped menstruating because of your low weight" in a friend of mine who came in, literally saying "I think I'm pregnant." (You'd think that would be the _first_ test a college clinic would do!)

In both situations, they figured something was wrong a little while later, and surgery did the trick!

Glad it turned out well for you too!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> My TLDR: There may be unknown unknowns in the medical system.

It doesn't say how many, it doesn't say the consequences, it just says "most". And since people die, there's probably something we don't know.

That said, I'm not sure this problem as described is one that is even conceivably fixable at this scale. As in, I'm literally not sure that a machine that perfectly diagnoses all the health conditions of a person going forward is logically consistent.

<comment><USER24> I mentioned a few of these the other day: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10240084](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10240084)

How do we fix the current system? We could make a global centralized review system for doctors then start maintaing records of performance, mistakes due to just being a "bad doctor," mistakes due to just bad timing (patient complained too late to fix), mistakes due to being overworked ("seeing" 100 patients a day), etc.

Even with a global system of reviews and oversight, we'd need a way to evict the failing doctors or reduce their responsibilities.

It's a lot like the rampant police violence/corruption problems coming to light now because everybody has mobile video recorders. When everything is hidden, nobody notices and it's difficult getting anybody to believe you about widespread systemic failures.

What's the equivalent of a cell phone video for medical malpractice?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Paul Graham discussed this in the _Ongoing Diagnosis_ section of his _Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas_ article at:

[http://www.paulgraham.com/ambitious.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/ambitious.html)

</comment><comment><USER26> Its Occams Razor. There's never any point in a diagnosis other than the most common problem that shares your symptoms. Nobody is doing much to weigh the risks of false positive/negative vs each diagnosis' life-threatening properties. Even if they did, they'd have to measure life in dollars (the cost of tests etc) which is a losing game no matter how you play.

</comment><comment><USER27> In my totally unauthoritative opinion the diagnostic process has been optimized to find the most likely cause as quickly as possible. This isn't a terrible strategy on the aggregate. It increase the overall likelihood that the most people will get the right diagnosis. But the trade-off is that some people will get the wrong diagnosis. The alternative would be for doctors to spend more time really digging into symptoms and tests to ensure they get it right the first time, every time, but then fewer people would get diagnosed.

This would be okay if doctors would accept the limitations of the system and admit when they don't know the correct diagnosis or are not sure. In that case they would say something like "This is the most likely diagnosis, but it doesn't meet your symptoms, you should seek a specialist" or something to that effect. I think what happens too often is that doctors confuse the most likely diagnosis with the correct diagnosis, possibly because they're unwilling to admit their fallibility.

</comment><comment><USER28> This is an area, that currently available IT technologies could be of great help - if they were seriously deployed:

First, automated medical questionnaires before the visit can gather much more detailed information that a doctor in such a short visit, and display it to the doc in an efficient manner, while letting the doctor verify or ask more. There's a company doing this via tablets at clinics, forgot the name.

Second, medical expert systems(like Isabel healthcare) that could manage the extreme complexity of Healthcare, request missing data, offer an accurate list of possible diagnoses with probabilities without forgetting rare diseases. Basically Dr. House in a box.

But, I fully expect doctors to resist those systems, like in the past, because it takes away from their skill and makes their work boring.

But maybe we as consumers should demand this, both through the political process and through our consumer power?

</comment><comment><USER29> Doctors "practice" medicine. Know one knows it in and out.

Remember that next time you get a diagnosis. "Doctors practice medicine."

<comment><USER30> When doctors "practice" medicine they aren't saying "We're amateurs just like band practice." They're just using the traditional wording. You also here this with other older professions like law.

[http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=practice](http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=practice)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Oh, us poor Americans!

Something tells me this wouldn't be a headline if you replaced "Americans" with "Mexicans" or "Norwegians".

<comment><USER32> It wouldn't be applesauce if you replaced apples with oranges, either.</comment></comment>


Parametric CAD modeling for open source scientific hardware: OpenSCAD / FreeCAD - <AUTHOR> https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0225795 <comment><USER2> I'm working on this dilemma right now in LibreDWG. The problem is not the script to represent the parametric links and expressions, the problem is how to translate the database entries from one system to another.

Both systems are using scripts only, which need an interpreter and are therefore extremely system-specific islands.

Better standards come from SolveSpace and AutoDesk, and the industry formats STEP and IGES. The problem with AutoDesk is that it's a closed and undocumented format, representing the various links and expressions between entities. The SolveSpace modeler is much smaller, much more powerful and much easier to use.

Imho needed are converters from the most used tool, AutoCAD, to the other tools, as mentioned, if CSG or B-Rep based, which carry better information than just STEP/IGES.</comment>


Oregon's air quality is so hazardous that no one knows what it means for health - <AUTHOR> https://grist.org/climate/oregons-air-quality-is-so-far-beyond-hazardous-that-no-one-knows-what-it-means-for-health/ <comment><AUTHOR> This one came to me via a friend. Western OR and parts of CA clocked around 700ppm over the weekend, which goes well beyond the EPA's air quality scale that tops out at 500ppm ("hazardous").

How are people dealing with this? I'm near SF where levels have been around 200 ~ 250ppm and it's been just miserable—and I have respirators and air purifiers handy!

<comment><USER2> Do you have an air quality monitor to see how effective your air filter is? Mine with the windows closed is able to filter the air to clean levels

<comment><AUTHOR> I have yet to make such an investment as good air monitors are fairly expensive, but I'm hoping to get a few indoor monitors from Purple Air (~$200 USD).

What do you folks use?

<comment><USER2> I use something like this handheld air quality monitor. It's been close enough and useful enough to figure out how well my filter is working:

[https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000312301074.html?spm=a2g0o...](https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000312301074.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.0.0.37c13648L2Gy2g&algo_pvid=9e24c17f-5d44-40e7-89d5-81c943cca0ae&algo_expid=9e24c17f-5d44-40e7-89d5-81c943cca0ae-21&btsid=0bb0624616001459071324782e0b16&ws_ab_test=searchweb0_0,searchweb201602_,searchweb201603_)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Title is somewhat misleading as we have seen air quality this bad in China. The US embassy in Beijing has recorded AQI > 700 in 2013 for example.

<comment><USER4> [https://www.sciencealert.com/sydney-air-soars-to-12-times- ha...](https://www.sciencealert.com/sydney-air-soars-to-12-times-hazardous- levels-under-toxic-blanket-of-bushfire-smoke)

2,552 here last bushfire season... :-/

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Does anyone know how long wildfire season normally lasts in OR/CA?

<comment><USER6> this time around? until the marxists take over.

<comment><USER7> it really does seem that anyone who offers a valid solution to the problem gets labeled a "Marxist" because of "Doing literally anything? Who's going to pay for it???" kneejerk hysteria.

<comment><USER6> No, is because the antifa-blm marxist are setting the fires. Direct and coordinated arson. Time to pay attention.

<comment><USER5> Isn't it fun to say things when you don't justify them? Let me try..

Stalin is back! running around starting fires with his gender reveal parties! Wake up sheeple.

<comment><USER7> Leaks revealed famous world reviled Marxists Ellen Denegeneres and George Bush conspiring to send funds to sleeper cell deep state arsonists! Is the Bureau of Land Management planning to abort your children??? Watch this Tim Pool video, all the evidence is there!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's even worse when layered on top of a respiratory pandemic.

</comment><comment><USER9> And the main problem driving Oregon's wildfires is a lack of forest management leading to dense fuel buildup: [https://katu.com/news/on-your-side/lack-of- forest-management...](https://katu.com/news/on-your-side/lack-of-forest- management-allowed-fuels-to-accumulate-expert-says)</comment>


PythonBooks: Find the best Python books - <AUTHOR> http://pythonbooks.org/ <comment><AUTHOR> I created PythonBooks as a side project.

The website is a guided repository of Python books. It classifies Python books into fine grained categories and shows the best books in each category. It has filters for Python version, free and non free books etc. For the beginner book section, you can even filter the books by topics that you want to learn.

Enjoy!</comment>


Hackers penetrate bank IT network using social media info - <AUTHOR> http://www.usfst.com/news/hackers-penetrate-mid-level-bank-IT-network/ <comment><USER2> Very creative attacks by the penetration testers:

\- Map out the organization's staff by Googling Facebook and LinkedIn pages with relevant keywords

\- Do the same thing for the IT infrastructure by Googling IT job openings at the target company to find the relevant security technologies

\- Submit a fake infosec job application to the target; use the phone screen to pump them for additional security info

\- Exploit a PDF vulnerability that allows you to install a trojan on a bank employee's machine.

The information gathering phase of the attack was fairly interesting. The actual break-in seems to have been as simple as "find a current Acrobat exploit".

Great read considering _FST_ doesn't appear to be a security-focused publication.

<comment><USER2> For what it's worth the first two tactics could be useful for improving one's chances in a legitimate job interview.

Just remember not to say "I watched all of your YouTube videos, read your team's LinkedIn bios, and read every press release for the last 18 months" out loud.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Related blog post: <http://snosoft.blogspot.com/2010/04/hacking-your- bank.html>

<comment><USER2> This part really stands out:

 _When we created the PDF, we used the new reverse https payload that was recently released by the Metasploit Project. (Previously we were using similar but more complex techniques for encapsulating our reverse connections in HTTPS). We like reverse HTTPS connections for two reasons:

First, Intrusion Detection Technologies cannot monitor encrypted network traffic. Using an encrypted reverse connection ensures that we are protected from the prying eyes of Intrusion Detection Systems and less likely to trip alarms.

Second, most companies allow outbound HTTPS (port 443) because its required to view many websites. The reverse HTTPS payload that we used mimics normal web browsing behavior and so is much less likely to set off any Intrusion Detection events._</comment></comment>


Your Facebook data is creepy as hell - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/your-facebook-data-is-creepy-as-hell-319ae47117e6?source <comment><USER2> Creepier (and weirder) still: one of my very first chats, with somebody I ended up in a relationship with (long since ended), which I remember very well, is nowhere to be found. That's very weird indeed.</comment>


Show HN: Okru – Personal OKRs with Friends - <AUTHOR> https://okru.app/ <comment><USER2> It is really aggravating when acronyms are used without a definition.

Yes, I can do a google search. I'm just sick of it. Please define the acronym before using it! Thanks :)

</comment><comment><USER3> Sign in with Google = no thanks.</comment>


The voices of ancient women - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2018/03/the-voices-of-ancient-women.html <comment><USER2> >"Demetrios the vine dresser deceived my daughter and took her away and keeps her hidden saying that he is going to live with her without me. She was managing my store and supported me, since I am old. But he has a wife and children so he cannot live with a woman he deceived. Please help me, an old woman, to return my daughter back to me."

Looks like scoundrels exist in any age.

<comment><USER3> I suppose a devious vine dresser is possible, but I assumed from that snippet that the daughter just left. There's always been an issue of people leaving elderly or sick family because they no longer want to take care of them.

<comment><USER4> Important to note, it's very much an issue for the elderly and sick family. Not so much an issue for the person whose life gets derailed and cannot find love due to the overbearing demands of a less-than-grateful relative (which _might_ be whats happening here? very hard to know, but that seems to be what the person is demanding, that the woman abandon her love life and essentially live as her relative's slave).</comment></comment></comment>


BadgerDB: embeddable, persistent, simple and fast key-value database in pure Go - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dgraph-io/badger#badgerdb----- <comment><USER2> Was a nice post about badger talking about their motivation of moving away from RocksDB due to cgo issues. Not a fan of `cgo`</comment>


Memprof: a memory profiler for ruby [scribd] - <AUTHOR> http://www.scribd.com/doc/31772032/memprof-a-memory-profiler-for-ruby

<comment><USER2> Incredible. I especially like the demonstration on how you found a leak in Rails3. I hope those working on Rails3 use this!

I love sane tools. Very cool. I'm going to give it a try.

<comment><USER3> We very much are :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is this your goruco presentation?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes it is.</comment></comment>


Rocket Lab successfully launches second Electron booster test flight - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/22/rocket-lab-successfully-launches-second-electron-booster-test-flight/ <comment><USER2> Previous post: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16201047](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16201047)</comment>


Amazon is helping ICE track, detain and deport immigrants, report says - <AUTHOR> http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/ny-news-amazon-tech-companies-transforming-immigration-enforcement-20181023-story.html <comment><USER2> Doesn't the electric company help too? What about taxes, that also helps fund ICE. Amazon doesn't pay its taxes so I suppose it's against ICE in a way too..

<comment><USER3> I assume you know that there is probably some continuum of culpability between, say, being a cafeteria vendor that sells 7up to ICE employees and being a technology company that provides surveillance technology or support to ICE.

There is also a continuum in criticism between writing a relatively tame op-ed complaining that a company supports ICE and, like, burning down their headquarters.

And it's not like anyone is asking Amazon to scan S3 bucket registrations to try to reject any from the US government; we're talking about high level, mega-million dollar sales efforts, products specifically targeted for the government surveillance audience, and company participation in training. So it is very feasible for Amazon to make a choice to do or not do this stuff without a lot of monitoring overhead.

I feel embarrassed articulating the above because it is so obvious, which makes me wonder if the parent comment is really in good faith to begin with.

<comment><USER4> I'm not familiar with the ICE dog-whistle, what are they culpable for?

<comment><USER5> According to the left, deporting illegal immigrants who are breaking the law is a bad thing and we should therefore abolish ICE.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > The federal government increasingly relies on policing through tech > innovations — including big data analysis and cloud-based storage

Ok.

</comment><comment><USER7> Immigrants that are non-compliant with the law, aka people breaking the law.

<comment><USER8> "They're illegal" is neither true nor sufficient.

ICE and CBP have also repeatedly detained, denied entry to, or generally harassed people who are in _full compliance_ with immigration law. That has included lawful applicants for asylum or refugee status, lawful permanent residents, and even US citizens. That's all besides the fact that being legal doesn't make something moral, consistent with national ideals, or economically wise. Or that unnecessarily cruel enforcement of a law is still a crime in its own right.

<comment><USER7> I made no comment about what they were doing. It's just the article goes to great lengths to avoid saying that the people in question are breaking the law.

I think there is merit to using Facial Rec and License Plate readers to try and find people who are in violation of the law. The ethics and morals come into retention of that data. Collect and retain facial information for future use? Bad. Search for a known face in a crowd. Better.

And bad behavior of some is not a valid excuse for everyone. Police sometimes kill innocent people, but that's not a reason to say the police shouldn't carry guns. Tools can be abused, and that abuse needs to be aggressively monitored and punished, but that's not an argument to not use something.

<comment><USER8> > the article goes to great lengths to avoid saying that the people in > question are breaking the law.

Or maybe they didn't "go to great lengths" to use that as an excuse. Really, why is it even relevant? If an organization is doing wrong, no matter who they're doing it to or whether they also do right sometimes, that alone is sufficient to question support for them.

> Police sometimes kill innocent people, but that's not a reason to say the > police shouldn't carry guns.

By the same token, very few immigrants are anything but innocent people looking to live and contribute to the American Dream, so there's no reason to preemptively exclude or bother them. There seems to be a bit of a double standard here. Bad cops? It's just "a few bad apples" to handle case by case after the fact (and half-heartedly in most cases). Immigrant criminals? Well, better put up a wall and do "extreme vetting" before we let anyone through.

<comment><USER7> > Really, why is it even relevant? If an organization is doing wrong, no > matter who they're doing it to or whether they also do right sometimes, that > alone is sufficient to question support for them.

We put GPS trackers on convicted criminals. We limit the freedoms of people convicted of crimes; can't buy guns, can't get certain kind of jobs, can't vote in some places. We put out warrants for the arrest of people accused of crimes in cases.

What's wrong? Using modern tools to catch criminals?

> By the same token, very few immigrants are anything but innocent people > looking to live and contribute to the American Dream, so there's no reason > to preemptively exclude or bother them.

Ok. But we live in a country of laws and rules. If I knock over a bank and don't harm anyone- that's fine right? I'm just trying to provide for my family. The bank has insurance. If I don't report my taxes, it doesn't harm anyone. The government has enough money. Breaking the law doesn't harm anyone- right?

> Bad cops? It's just "a few bad apples" to handle case by case after the fact > (and half-hardheartedly in most cases). Immigrant criminals? Well, better > put up a wall and do "extreme vetting" before we let anyone through.

We're putting body cameras on cops to stop abuses. We put cameras in cop cars so we can make sure what they say happened happened.

If an Immigrant comes here without proper authorization, without a visa, or stays on an expired visa; they are breaking the law. They have no inherent right to immigrate here. Coming into any country is a courtesy extended by the government of that country. If Japan doesn't want to issue a visa for whatever reason, that is their right. You have no right to visit or move to Japan. If they wish to do "extreme vetting", that is their right.

Cops has no inherent right to become a cop. They have to be hired, trained, and maintain a standard. Sure, there are bad ones who are not punished for their actions- and yes that is a double standard that needs to be fixed.

> Immigrant criminals? Well, better put up a wall and do "extreme vetting" > before we let anyone through.

The stupid idea of a wall is to stop people from breaking the law. As I said before, nobody has the right to immigrate to this country as they want. If they ignore our laws and do so anyway, they should be removed- as they broke the law.

<comment><USER8> > we live in a country of laws and rules.

Isn't "innocent until proven guilty" one of those rules? And aren't "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" supposed to be inalienable _human_ rights? Do you suppose the people who wrote that believed that these "self- evident truths" only applied to people born in a country that didn't exist yet?

> If an Immigrant comes here without proper authorization, without a visa, or > stays on an expired visa

There you go again, pretending that ICE/CBP never bother anybody who's here legally. That's just not reality, and the cases where they overstep their own _legal_ bounds are the ones that are most relevant here. We are a country of laws and rules, with nobody above those, right?

<comment><USER9> In this thread, you seem to be equating the infrequent overstepping of legal boundaries with an act that is fundamentally illegal, without exception.

<comment><USER8> No, I'm saying that the "fundamentally illegal" act is irrelevant. The reason people even care about AWS helping ICE is entirely about their abusive behavior, not the proper discharge of their legitimate legal duties. Just like #BlackLivesMatter isn't about police being professional as they apprehend actual criminals and do other things to keep us all safe. Abuse is abuse, no matter what surrounds it, and there should be zero tolerance for it.

<comment><USER9> I think you'll find that most people who dislike ICE do so because they are opposed to the acts they are designed to carry out (i.e., deportations). In this very thread, you have declared opposition to deportations.

And regarding AWS, the technology will allow ICE to carry out it's job more effectively (i.e., more deportations). This is clearly upsetting for some.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European > countries.

But given the title, I assume "help" is providing tech resources just like to anyone else?

<comment><USER11> Looks that way. Here's an archive: [http://archive.is/s9aXG](http://archive.is/s9aXG)

The political slant of the author comes through loud and clear from the first paragraph:

> _Amazon and other tech companies are raking in billions by selling services > that aid President Trump's deportation agenda, according to a report._

Some find and replace set to "non-partisan" would render that:

> _Amazon and other tech companies are profitably selling services that aid > lawful immigration enforcement, according to a report._

Also telling is the (imo, blatantly dishonest) refusal to use the words "illegal", "undocumented", etc, making it sound like ICE is attacking people who crossed the border legally.</comment></comment>


For Ubuntu, With Love. - <AUTHOR> http://nbafna.blogspot.com/2010/05/for-ubuntu-with-love.html

<comment><USER2> " Please work with Adobe and do something. " -- as if Adobe would be willing to port it for free or spend so many hours that.

Btw wine runs Photoshop 7 perfectly, might run new apps too in future.

"Ubuntu can never be a worldwide OS with major applications not running. " Well, world-wide users wont have a majority as power users or developers. It runs a browser - that really enough for the 50% or more of "world-wide" users I think.

Looking at mention of OS X :P

People who can't buy a Mac run Linux. People who can't install Linux run Windows. People who know what they're doing - ride anything the way they want.

Ubuntu == The linux you can run on grandpa's desktop ?! :)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> but, still as end-user and web-developer and designer, i would love to be able run CS natively on ubuntu. and, i bet there are a lot more. well, if the market for ubuntu expands, wouldn't adobe want to develop products for linux too? and, why will it port it for free. ubuntu it free, doesn't mean all applications on it have to be.

+1 on "people who can't buy a Mac run Linux. People who can't install Linux run Windows. People who know what they're doing - ride anything the way they want.".

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> A blog post on what Ubuntu needs from an average end-user's point of view.</comment>


The Triumph of Email - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/01/what-comes-after-email/422625/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> Email works reasonably well for exactly what it should be used for. If you're having a problem with it, you're either using the wrong collaboration tool or you're using the tool incorrectly.

Email is still the most lucrative marketing channel you can devise. I've yet to find a better intra-office communication tool. If I'm having trouble doing it with email, I immediately switch gears and either get up and go talk to somebody or to go do some fact-finding.

Email allowed me to maintain long-distance friendships where otherwise we would have drifted off. Email is easily categorizable and sortable. My workflow takes close to a minute to clear everything out to where only open loops are in my inbox.

I look at everyone who wants to replace email with someone else like I would a 25 year old bro who thinks he's going to 'disrupt' something ridiculous like politics. Harmlessly stupid at best, dangerously power-hungry at worst. Look somewhere else to build your empire, buffoon.

<comment><USER3> > Email is still the most lucrative marketing channel you can devise. I've yet > to find a better intra-office communication tool.

I would say that having a private intranet only NNTP server with discussion groups would be far better than just using email.

For one thing, you already have grouping of general topics on a server level rather than having to take the time to create rules/filters and IMAP folders in using the email client. Second, it's much easier to access previous messages by just subscribing to the group (rather than having someone forward you an email which you have to read from bottom to top to get a summary of what was discussed). Lastly, it separates discussions from personal communication (emails sent directly to you).

<comment><USER2> I'm shuddering at the thought of training our customer service team on using a news reader. There's more to a good tool than features.

<comment><USER3> Many email clients already support interacting with NNTP servers. IIRC, Windows (Live) Mail, Outlook Express, and Thunderbird all support reading email as well as newsgroups.

IME, it's no different than using email other than the fact that you'll have a Newsgroups field instead of a To field. Composing and replying are pretty much the same as email. And each subscribed newsgroup could just as well be thought of as an email folder.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I work a cubicle job in the financial services industry, a large back-office for one of the largest independent broker/dealer networks in the country. Attending to email is essentially the crux of my job. The entire corporation is held together by email. My eye is constantly on not just my personal inbox, but several shared inboxes. A certain type of email hits a certain inbox and the clock starts ticking, I have a specific time frame in which to process a series of actions. I am just one cog. Once I'm done with my part, I fire off an email that hits a number of other shared inboxes and people in other departments pick up the baton and do their processes. If I fall out of my prescribed time frame, I become a bottleneck, the issue gets escalated to higher-ups and it can impact my performance review. If I get too many at once, I'm S-O-L. And, oh yeah, there are also faxes.

<comment><USER5> That sounds so much like Gilliam's _Brazil._ Good luck.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Slightly curious, this exact linked-to article had a different headline less than a week ago, specifically "What Comes After Email"[1]. Furthermore, there were a number of minor edits made which removed any of the "Email is dead!" thesis. So somehow, in that small amount of time, email was resurrected at the hands of The Atlantic editors.

[1] [http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/01/what-c...](http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/01/what- comes-after-email/422625/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Email's greatest advantage is that it is a distributed system. No silos involved. If I want to run my own system, I can. The current hipster tech crowd seems to forget the very definition of the term Internet (network of networks). As such, the systems designed at its origin were design to work in a distributed fashion.

Email is not dead. Email is just plumbing. Want a different experience with it, use better software layered on top.

</comment><comment><USER8> _" White-collar workers check their inboxes an average of 77 times a day, according to research by Gloria Mark, an informatics professor at the University of California, Irvine. (If that sounds low to you, she found some workers check email far more frequently, up to 343 times a day or more.) The more time people spend focused on email, Mark has found, the less happy and productive they are."_

This seems odd to me. I check my email half a dozen times a day. Can't see the point of checking it 10 times an hour....

<comment><USER9> Maybe through notifications … many users probably don't turn the default notifications off and get distracted all the times. And on OS X at least, it is tricky (or maybe even impossible) to proactively disable unwanted notifications for your users.

OK, instant messaging and social media networks are even worse … in the end, most human beings get easily distracted and it takes some energy to avoid distractions, especially due to messages and related notifications of all kind.

<comment><USER10> I was a little hesitant to write this reply because I might not fully understand your comment. In particular, I do not understand why you added the 3 words "for your users" to this next sentence:

>And on OS X at least, it is tricky (or maybe even impossible) to proactively disable unwanted notifications for your users.

It was possible for me to turn off all notifications on OS X. This next command line got rid of most of them, leaving only the occasional notification from Firefox and maybe some other app asking for permission to upgrade the app. Then installing and using Growl from the Mac app store got rid of the rest.

launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.notificationcenterui.plist; killall NotificationCenter

The only disadvantage I am aware of of turning off all notifications in this way is that when there is a new security update for OS X available, it remains uninstalled (because I remain unaware of its existence) until I manually open the app store.

A running app can still get my attention by bouncing its dock tile, but they do not do that often enough to be bothersome, and in the case of my IM client, the bouncing is welcome (because it is how I find out someone sent me an IM and because my IM client can be configured to refrain from bouncing its dock tile for events other than new IMs).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I thought this was an interesting history of email, though the end does read like a submarine ad[0] for Slack.

[0] [http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html](http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html)

</comment><comment><USER11> The article seems to suggest the fact that "email" is so old is significant. IRC is quite old too. And that's what Slack is, with some enhancements. Email has also undergone many "enhancements". Yet the article never mentions IRC. What is old is new again. Keep those articles coming.

</comment><comment><USER12> Surprised to see this expression popping up yet again, "to check one's email".

We checked our email in the nineties. These days our email checks us. Or am I the the only one left on a decent IMAP server?

<comment><USER13> It depends on your use-case. I very deliberately put myself in the position of checking my email, despite having all of the technical pieces in place to have email pushed to me.

My work email polls every 30 minutes, with notifications disabled, and I check it as and when it suits my workflow. My (personal) phone is always in Low Power mode, so doesn't poll for email unless I open the Mail app; I use offlineimap in combination with mutt for my home email (the same account which is on my phone), and it automatically synchronises with the IMAP server every 15 minutes, but again get no notifications and I check it whenever it suits me.

On top of that, all of my computers and devices are always muted unless I'm actively doing something that requires sound, like listening to music or watching a video, so even if there was an errant notification, I certainly wouldn't hear it. I also don't have my phone set to vibrate.

I didn't deliberately aim to operate in this mode, and gradually ended up here after a lot of single changes made over a long time, but I find that it's the best way for me to work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> 1/2 OT:

This evening, I always get '404 Not Found – nginx/1.8.0' from theatlantic.com if I use Chrome. Firefox and Safari on the other hand work … Google Cache via Chrome works too.

</comment><comment><USER14> If I send an anonymous note from a disposable box, it will probably slam into a spam filter.

I don't think email is as flat as it used to be. If that's what we will eulogize about email, then maybe it's already dead.

It was probably too flat back then to be workable, but there were some perks.

</comment><comment><USER15> I expect that email will phase out slowly in the same way Craigslist is. Craigslist used to be a place to get tickets to sporting events, find used stuff you need, find employees, personals etc. But startups have found much better ways to solve individual niches. I now prefer slack to email for in- office communication, I prefer live chat to email for customer service, certain social media marketing replaces some email blasts.

</comment><comment><USER16> > It was completely ephemeral

Doesn't sound much like email to me.

<comment><USER17> I see these posts all the time and wonder what i missing. Email works perfectly well, and fits many of my needs to a high level. I have no issues with it, and it's not like i don't get much email, given the number of mailing lists i subscribe to, i probably get significantly more than most 'normal' people do.</comment></comment>


Gawker's Moment of Truth - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/14/business/media/gawker-nick-denton-moment-of-truth.html <comment><USER2> World's tiniest violin playing for the legal troubles of a site that posted a sex tape without the consent of either of the two people in it. Nothing would rejuvenate my faith in humanity quite so much as a world in which Hulk Hogan ends up owning Gawker.

<comment><USER3> Not to mention the complete lack of journalistic ethics on Kotaku. They frequently post articles about games they have financial or personal ties to, without disclosure.

Edit: I made no mention of movements and have no hidden agenda. My concerns for journalistic ethics are sincere. Kotaku and other games journalist web sites have associated any criticism of these concerns with unrelated harassing activities from typical internet bullies that falsely claim to represent the people that voice those concerns, but are ultimately unrelated.

I stand by my statement. The fact remains that there are journalists that have reported on games without disclosing financial or personal ties to the companies or developers representing those games. I invite you to set aside the politics and evaluate the facts.

<comment><USER2> I can't imagine an aspect of Gawker less interesting to discuss than how it covers video games.

<comment><USER3> I see it as being representative of the company as a whole. Regardless of the subject matter, if those ethical oversights are so frequent on one of their sites it's not unreasonable to wonder where else it might be present. In that vein, I believe it to be relevant to the article.

<comment><USER2> Feels like potential conflicts of interest in video game reviews is a pretty minor journalistic sin compared to, for instance, disapproving stories about celebrity photo leaks that _link to the stolen photos_. Or obtaining a stolen unfilmed Tarantino movie script and promoting itself as the best place online to read it.

Gawker is like a tabloid without the scruples. We don't need to read tea leaves to see that.

<comment><USER3> I agree. If there is to be a moral scale on which the two are placed, it would certainly tip towards the invasion of personal privacy.

Video games are a $10+billion dollar industry, however, and Kotaku is a major publisher in that industry which may be directly funding many of Gawker's other "journalistic sins".

I get the impression you are discounting Kotaku's actions or my bringing it up primarily because the subject is video games. If you have a poor opinion of that hobby, it may be affecting your judgment.

<comment><USER2> Hip-hop music is a $10+billion dollar industry, but despite the fact that I'll listen to the occasional Outkast album, inside-baseball music industry drama also doesn't seem all that important to me either.

<comment><USER3> I have approximately the same level of interest in hip-hop, however if Gawker owned a hip-hop media site I wouldn't question its relevance to a discussion about Gawker.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> While we're on the subject, perhaps it's time to take another look at Hacker News's ban of gawker.com domains in submissions.

While yes, there is a lot of linkbait trash, there are relevant original articles to tech (e.g. [http://gawker.com/remember-brands-can-turn-your-dumb- tweets-...](http://gawker.com/remember-brands-can-turn-your-dumb-tweets-into- embarra-1710409054)) that get caught by the filter. At the least, I haven't seen any of the former being submitted.

<comment><USER2> There is an easy fix for that problem: write a short blog post summarizing the (rare) valuable Gawker story, and submit that.

<comment><USER4> Then this violates Hacker News's rule of linking to a news story's original source. Thus the Catch-22.

<comment><USER2> No. HN _prefers_ the news story's original source, but does not have a "rule" against posting secondary or tertiary sources. Meanwhile, if the mods rewrite the link back to Gawker (unlikely), mission accomplished.

Anyways: the site is better off with the blunt-force ban on Gawker articles. There might be occasional worthwhile things there, but most of the stuff that isn't worthwhile is _poison_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As much as a think most of Gawker's publications are thrash, it is one of the few independent publishers that doesn't bow for the powerful and influential.

Unfortunately instead of speaking "truth to power", it often just throws shit at power just for the hell of it.

<comment><USER6> That's often how it turns out, doesn't it? See also UK's Private Eye or France's Charlie Hebdo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Sometimes I really do miss Valleywag. Such funny reads!

<comment><USER8> Wait, what? Is valleywag shutting down?

<comment><USER4> The Valleywag reboot started with Sam Biddle, Nitasha Tiku, with Kevin Montgomery joining later. Simultaneously, Biddle was moved to main Gawker after causing an advertiser to drop millions in spending, Tiku move to The Verge (later, BuzzFeed), and Montgomery moved to BuzzFeed.

Dan Lyons attempted to restart Valleywag but due to personal reasons it was short lived.

Valleywag has been dead since.

<comment><USER8> But it's not _dead_ -dead, [http://valleywag.gawker.com](http://valleywag.gawker.com) is still running, still producing new articles as you can see.

<comment><USER4> You may want to check the dates on those "new" articles :P

Most of those articles are reposts from elsewhere on Gawker as well.

<comment><USER8> Ah, you're right, sorry about that.

Kind of a weird decision to just let it... die. I mean, valleywag's name branding has considerable value, if they just employ folks who keep on writing articles that valleywag always had, it would work well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Last night they published a story about Lebron James' penis accidentally being flashed on TV. Very classy organization.

Not linking to it.

<comment><USER10> > Last night they published a story about Lebron James' penis accidentally > being flashed on TV.

They and literally a thousand other news organizations, including Newsweek, NBC News, The Guardian... There's no doubt Gawker is a pox, but in terms of uselessness and vulgarity it's not really an outlier.

<comment><USER2> Worth remembering: this stuff is an arms race. What we know of Gawker strongly suggests that they'd run this shit no matter what. That NBC will jump on the bandwagon actually makes Gawker's actions _less_ responsible: they driving the whole field into the toilet.

Newsweek was never a great publication, but whatever it was, it's not that anymore: it was sold to the Daily Beast, stripped for parts, and then spun back out and acquired by another company.

<comment><USER11> It is arguably the readers driving it into the toilet. They only make those posts because they drive clicks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Imagine if this was a sex tape of Jennifer Lawerance...

The double standard.

</comment><comment><USER13> > _Whatever information we have, whatever insight we have, whatever knowledge > we have, our impulse is to share it as quickly as possible, and sometimes > with as little thought as possible_

Sounds like the complete 100% opposite of journalism.</comment>


Ask HN: What stats/analytics you wouldn't mind websites collecting about you? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> The stats you can collect with Javascript turned off.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hm. That's a nice definition. I like that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> New V.S. Returning visitor, sessions, page views, time spent, site navigation flow, Device type, Browser Vendor/Version</comment>


Database leaks data on most of Ecuador's citizens, including 6.7m children - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/database-leaks-data-on-most-of-ecuadors-citizens-including-6-7-million-children/ <comment><USER2> At this rate it seems that if your personal details haven't been leaked by an elasticsearch, mongodb, or S3 misconfiguration, you're in a small and dwindling minority

</comment><comment><USER3> All of this stuff was on the servers of some corporation nobody has ever heard of? Names, home addresses, personal ID numbers, bank accounts, balances, VINs, plate numbers?

This is a nightmare even ignoring the absurd security breach. How many of these databases are out there?

</comment><comment><USER4> Related submission: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20984015](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20984015)

(Points to [https://cyware.com/news/unprotected-elasticsearch- database-e...](https://cyware.com/news/unprotected-elasticsearch-database- exposes-sensitive-information-of-over-20-million-ecuador-citizens-58e5add8/) )

</comment><comment><USER5> Think of the citizens!</comment>


WeWork's Implosion Shows How SoftBank Is Breaking the World - <AUTHOR> https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/d3ae7y/weworks-implosion-shows-how-softbank-is-breaking-the-world <comment><USER2> I think it's weird to paint all VCs with the same brush as Softbank.

Also, how much of VC money actually comes from pensions/retirements? I always figured the bulk came from private equity groups and was a less accessible avenue for investors.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think the takeaway would be that WeWork has found the biggest sucker out there, and that nobody else at this point would invest a dime in them.

Until you can somehow show profit on sales per unit, then you certainly aren't running a sustainable business. All of the more clued in investors are running for the hills. Google ventures invested early in Uber - when was they last time they tossed Uber more money? (Honest question, I don't know)

Seems like WeWork wants to enlist true believers/people who think they can flip their investment. I don't see an exit plan.

</comment><comment><USER4> Everyone is laughing at Masa Son for paying $19Bn for something only worth $8Bn, but it's entirely possible that it's actually worth $0.

</comment><comment><USER5> Also, Adam Neumann walks away with $1.2 billion for selling $1 for $0.50 while a third of the workforce gets pink slips. I mean, they were obviously way over-staffed so this day was coming no matter what but it just sucks to see Neumann walk away with untold amounts of power for the skill of lighting free money on fire.</comment>


As a freelancer, how do you start finding work? - <AUTHOR>

Basically I've just finished university and I'm looking to make some dough before I can move to Brighton and start networking and joining in with start-ups/making my own at the moment. I basically have a huge amount of time to make sites, and I'm sure there are people out there who want apps or sites made, so where have you found the best places are to quickly get projects? I'm pretty experienced (PHP/Python/HTML/CSS/JS+Sysadmin) and doubt there's many problems I couldn't tackle, but I've only done a few freelance projects which were for friends of friends. Finding the work is my biggest concern. <comment><USER2> Try and springboard off your existing contacts.

If you just finished university there should be some subset of people at the university who already know you in the context of tech (assuming tech was your major). Professors/administration either have projects or know plenty of people who do. Talk to everyone there you have rapport with.

This is where I'm at now. I developed quite a name for myself and my work while at university, and now six months after leaving I have more work than I can possibly do--almost without exception referrals from university contacts.

</comment><comment><USER3> I started on RentACoder[1], earned little money for 2 weeks, and then saw the work pile in after clients discovered that I was competent. It worked for me, no reason if you're talented (and reply to emails within a reasonable amount of time ;)) that you can't do the same :)

[1] I documented my experience here: [http://tbbuck.com/winning-your-first- freelance-job-on-vworke...](http://tbbuck.com/winning-your-first-freelance- job-on-vworker-how-i-got-started/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Referrals are the best way to get high paying jobs from clients that dont' suck. Our biggest source of referrals right now came from a shitty job I did after another shitty job on Craigslist. Now, we're building a list with a blog and great products so that we don't waste time on those job boards, which haven't been worth their time.

We also pay 15% referral fees over the lifetime of clients, which our customers and friends like.

</comment><comment><USER5> Plenty of freelance sites like oDesk, freelancer.com, etc. Those places can get you work fairly quickly but the rates may not be impressive (at first).

Generally people don't just jump into freelance though without any clients or big projects lined up. Perhaps finding a job first and networking/developing a portfolio to freelance later may be an easier route.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well I have a job lined up, I just have a month or two where I have no income until it starts. I have skills to offer so all I really need is someone to go I WANT A WEBSITE THAT DOES X and me to quote it, make it and charge them. Bam. I understand the processes involved in getting something from an idea to a reality, but I'm not hugely keen on sites like freelancer that just seem kind of scammy.

I'm sure if there's any startup people on HN that want a prototype whipped up quickly I can do that sort of thing, too.

<comment><USER4> My team is always looking for freelance developers that don't suck. What are your rates? What do you like to build?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Just as a side note: we're planning to launch our app: <http://www.jobbrew.com> soon.

Our aim is to help freelancers collaborate, manage their projects and reach out for help. It will have a Q&A app, a personalized job board + lead management.

</comment><comment><USER7> 1\. Have a simple webpage (url) with your information, contact info etc.

2\. Tell everyone you're available.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not pretty at the moment (I can design, and I'll make it better this week), but I'm here <http://www.jamescleveland.co.uk/>

<comment><USER7> Cool. Make it clearer that people can hire you, and what for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I am very interested, can you shoot me an email - firstname.lastname@example.com -- I need a redesign of the site in my email address + about 10 other pages (that are the same but just different color schemes)

Major emphasis on HTML5 and all the latest buzzwords :)</comment>


One Year In Hell... Surviving a Full Collapse in Bosnia - <AUTHOR> http://silverdoctors.com/one-year-in-hellsurviving-a-full-shtf-collapse-in-bosnia/

<comment><USER2> I am not sure what WTSHTF types would be doing reading Hacker News.</comment>


Facebook Toast? Hot Today, Dead Tomorrow--Like AOL? - <AUTHOR> http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/3/facebook_the_next_aol_

<comment><USER2> Article thesis: though Facebook exceeds expectations on the only established empirical metric for its success, it fails all the author's subjective metrics, like "thrilling older people".

Eagerly awaiting news of Google's imminent demise as well; yes, it makes huge amounts of money, but the graphic design minimalism so crucial to its success has been slipping.

<comment><USER3> I think that the author's point is that even though Facebook has a huge number of users, they haven't yet figured out a way to properly monetize their business. They're making peanuts compared to Google and income is a very well established metric for success.

<comment><USER4> It's not that hard to monetize: just stick ads on pages and sell them. If they had been happy with a billion-dollar valuation, they could simply do that, and everybody would have been happy, including their blissfully unzombified users.

Unfortunately, they're not happy being a billion-dollar company, they want to be a 15-billion dollar company, or perhaps a hundred-billion-dollar company. To justify that kind of size they need to think up all sorts of new ways to monetize their users (e.g. Beacon) at the possible cost of annoying their users (e.g. Beacon).

<comment><USER3> Yes, I think that is the point of the article.</comment></comment></comment></comment>