How China Detects and Blocks Shadowsocks - <AUTHOR> https://gfw.report/blog/gfw_shadowsocks/ <comment><USER2> (In Waterfox)

Secure Connection Failed

An error occurred during a connection to gfw.report. Peer reports incompatible or unsupported protocol version. Error code:

SSL_ERROR_PROTOCOL_VERSION_ALERT

The page you are trying to view cannot be shown because the authenticity of the received data could not be verified.

<comment><USER3> No such problem in Firefox. Maybe lacking TLS 1.3 support is the culprit: [https://www.reddit.com/r/waterfox/comments/ak32am/how_to_ena...](https://www.reddit.com/r/waterfox/comments/ak32am/how_to_enable_tls_13_in_waterfox/)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why do you hate advertising as a business so much? - <AUTHOR>

With the Twitter IPO, the conversation about paid advertising as a "necessary evil" has come up again. I simply don't understand what people have against online advertising.
Online advertising is a tremendous step forward that does help "the little guy". Maybe not your average mom and pop store but thanks to Adwords, Facebook Ads and Sponsored Tweets.. SMBs can now cost-effectively advertise, test products etc. On the other side of that, consumers are exposed to solutions that fit their needs. I've found tens of products and services through Facebook ads that I would not have found otherwise.
So there are certainly organic/free ways to gain new customers but nothing scales as nicely or as quickly as online ads. I see many people more excited to see companies like Pebble or Nest but a lot of the reason why these companies exist is because of advertising. SMBs like Pebble or Nest use small budgets to reach a wider audience and build their businesses. It's possible that they'd exist without digital advertising but unlikely.
I think mass media and shady ad practices have painted a terrible image of the advertising business model. Advertisements that prey on human weakness, pop ups, auto-play etc... but that doesn't mean that the advertising model is completely broken.
Anyway, I'm THANKFUL to this new age of advertising which allows my business to run and introduces me to apps, services and products I want to use.
Why do you guys hate ads? <comment><USER2> 1\. I can name exactly one time that an ad was actually something I might be interested in.

2\. Conflict of interest. An advertiser's job is to get me to buy/view/etc something, often with misleading statements. Whether me doing that is actually in my best interest isn't factored into the equation.

3\. Annoying. 'Shady' ad practices do and will continue to exist. In any case they take up screen real estate.

4\. Advertisers are compiling huge databases that they intend to fill with all sorts of intimate information about me. What I like to read ( _what_ I read), who I talk with, what I talk about, etc. These databases are ripe for all sorts of abuse, both outside and within the domain they're being compiled for. (Great example: [http://blog.echonest.com/post/27047918145/musical-taste- poli...](http://blog.echonest.com/post/27047918145/musical-taste-politics))

5\. Another conflict of interest is between me and the service itself. When the service is mainly powered by ad revenue it means that anything that's good for ads is in the interests of the service, even if it's bad for me. (Eg. Taking up more and more screen real estate, sandwiching ads in between the 'legitimate' content.)

For a start.

<comment><USER3> 1\. we do the best we can to target. you get blanketed by irrelevant ads for a myriad of reasons not limited to: -lazy clients who don't understand their userbase -ads for things you might be interested in being choked out by higher paying spots.

2\. that's actually not an advertiser's job--although some of those elements may be part of a campaign. we live in an era where clients demand an ROI, they want a conversion stat, and that's what they base an ad buy on--we agree this is detrimental in the industry. we'd much rather present you with a product over a span of time. we'd much rather show a product to likely consumers.

I'd give you a treatise on the industry, but ogilvy did that:

[http://www.commissionedwriting.com/CONFESSIONS%20OF%20AN%20A...](http://www.commissionedwriting.com/CONFESSIONS%20OF%20AN%20ADVERTISING%20MAN%20-%20OGILVY.pdf)

3\. that's also a client generated evil.

4\. we've been making that sort of connection our entire history. content producers check too, they call it 'knowing your audience.' we're actually in the midst of a massive democratization. instead of five or six market research companies (or one TV research company, or one radio company) we're opening up. you can actually opt-out--that's never happened before.

5\. so pay for the service.

not enough users are interested in baring the true cost of a service--hence the dependence on ad revenue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I hate advertisers because:

1) The sense of entitlement they feel - "I should have a right to telephone you at any time, or to mail you junk, or to interrupt your viewing, or to scrape your email address from somewhere and email you garbage, or to use obnoxious loud music or other weird techniques."

2) The destruction of the WWW as a useful source of information, moving instead to really foul pointless content farms or link farms or other weird useless broken sites. Or to sites that are just massive collections of everything, but with no concept of curation. I don't want (eg) every different spectacles case ever made anywhere in the world available from one website - because most of them really are pretty similar. I want a nicely chosen list of twenty different cases.

3) The fear of most sites to let go of advertisers and to just let me pay for the content.

<comment><USER3> 1) those are not advertisers, those are direct mailing etc., outfits. I think they're annoying too. I don't use them. If a client suggests using them, I suggest they find a new agency. I suggest you write a note to the CEO and discontinue your association with the brand. they pay attention to that.

2) might I suggest 'site:.edu'

3) it's not a fear, a critical mass of users won't pay for content.

<comment><USER5> We didn't have to pay for content before the ads came along. Why should we have to pay for content now?

<comment><USER6> The content that is advertising supported largely didn't exist before the ads came along, or was provided by entities that were burning through initial capital while seeking a revenue model.

Much of the kind of content that was sustainable before all the ads came along is largely still available without ads after the ads came along to support other kinds of content.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Why do you hate advertising as a business so much?

Because _advertisers are in the business of lying_. The measure of success in advertising is the persuasiveness of one's lies.

> I think mass media and shady ad practices have painted a terrible image of > the advertising business model. Advertisements that prey on human weakness, > pop ups, auto-play etc... but that doesn't mean that the advertising model > is completely broken.

This reminds me of the child molester's defense: "So? Who's perfect?"

> Anyway, I'm THANKFUL to this new age of advertising which allows my business > to run and introduces me to apps, services and products I want to use.

It's always nice to see someone ask an question on HN who doesn't already have his mind made up, and who doesn't post simply to express a slanted editorial view of the topic.

<comment><USER8> So, today, when I searched for a notary public in my area, expecting to have to trawl through yelp or angie list type crap to just find a local place, and instead I was pleasantly surprised with an ad for a place very close to me that offered everything I needed (I needed more than the notary service), they were _lying to me_? Odd, it sure seemed legit.

I know what you mean, you are talking about the 'soapX cleans brighter!" which of course is a contentless sentence intended to deceive, and I am with you there. But I think what is awesome about things like Adwords is it gives the small local business the ability to reach the people that are looking for them. Instead of dealing with some horrible chain I ended up at a tiny mom- and-pop shop, found out they had other services I've been looking for unsuccessfully, and now they have a guaranteed customer in me. I think that is great for me, and great for them, because they only paid a tiny amount for my click, and got a customer from it.

It's not perfect; I've just done several searches just to see what will turn up, things like 'kayak rental half moon bay' and such, and am not getting very good ad results. But sometimes they are spot on, more spot on than the google search results.

<comment><USER3> which is a client-centric failure. convincing a small business (such as a kayak rental outfit) why that they ought to invest in targeted search [which would have a favorable effect] gets a lot harder when they're only pitched for the scammier side of things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> While I agree with the general sentiment posted here, here's an anecdote from a famous publicist. He got in a taxi cab and in the conversation he told the driver what his profession was.

"oh well, that advertising thing never works for me" the driver said.

"what brand of cereal do you buy" \- "Kellogs"

"what toothpaste do you use" \- "Colgate"

"what's your favorite drink" \- "Coca-Cola"

<comment><USER2> The effectiveness of advertising isn't to make you buy a specific product at a specific time. It's to increase the mind share of a specific product so that when you're in the market for it that's what you'll buy. (Or at the very least you'll see it as a viable option.)

This is of course, unmeasurable.

<comment><USER10> Isn't it possible that there might be different types of advertising each with its own goals? Billboards are probably about mindshare, but what about when I search Google for a model of TV and there's all these retailers trying to sell me that model?

<comment><USER3> that's actually still about mindshare though--that's why radio ads still exist. they catch you on the way to the store.

<comment><USER10> For some of them (say, Best Buy) it definitely would be, but others (say, Bob's Local TV Shop) don't seem to advertise on the scale that would give them any chance of gaining mindshare. I acknowledge that the advertisers are trying to gain mindshare are at a significant advantage when advertising, since they can afford to bid up to the lifetime value of the customer rather than bidding up to the margin of a one-off sale.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> When it comes down to it, I don't hate Ad's. But I can openly admit that I despise the Ad Experience. You are basically forced to view/hear the Ad. The consumer has no choice. I find it to be a flawed User Experience. I fault the Advertising Industry for failing to innovate the Advertising Experience. Technology has evolved, providing the potential for an increased User Experience. But the Advertising Industry remains the same, and the User Experience sucks. I find that Today's Advertising Experience essentially utilizes the same approach / method (or what I call the model) that was developed decades ago (born out of Radio, Print, and TV). Take the Banner Ad; Same approach used in print, just modified and served over the Web/Mobile. Consumer attempts to consume content, interrupted by the Ad. Take the Video Ad; Same approach used in Television, just modified and served over the Web/Mobile. Consumer attempts to consume content, interrupted by the Ad. It's the same thing over and over, just repackaged and delivered in a new format. And the underlying User Experience is the same.

I think that the Advertising Industry is ripe for innovation. I'm no fan of Buzzwords, but the new concept of 'Native Advertising' represents (IMO) the biggest innovation in the Advertising Industry in the last 3-4 decades. I think it's time for the Industry to realize that they don't have to interrupt people and force things upon people to successfully Advertise something. I see a correct implementation of Native Advertising creating a much more positive User Experience that actually helps people and gives them the information they want, when they want it. I'm working on a Project in this space, and I'm excited to test and hopefully validate my hypothesis.

</comment><comment><USER12> I hate ads because they usually involve tracking.

I hate Facebook ads because a lot of them are for games, scams, BS products, or companies/politicians where the ad says "click like if you think/agree..." and the statement has almost nothing to do with that company/politician and are just using it to gain likes for the company/politician's Facebook page.

Before I started blocking ads and JavaScript, I've clicked on exactly four ads:

1 Google text ad in their search results - no sale

2 Facebook ads - I bought the products of both ads

1 ad on a blog (not using a third party ad service) - no sale

<comment><USER13> Right, it blows my mind to think how many Google Adsense ads I've been exposed to over the life of my Google use. And subsequently to think how many I've clicked on... exactly zero.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Because now content providers know consumers hate ads, so they offer "Ad Free" options (for a price) which is effectively legal extortion.

Ads basically convert 3% of those exposed at the expense of annoying the other 97%, at the very least it's wildly inefficient.

</comment><comment><USER14> Because the service provider loyalty lies with the advertiser and not me.

</comment><comment><USER15> Smells like a shill

</comment><comment><USER16> Oh for gods sake. We must live in alternate universes. I have never clicked an online ad. Ever. I have never met someone who said that they were grateful for ads on a web page, or found them helpful. Ever.

The "advertising business model" is to just push vapid, gratuitous shit. The fact that it is gratuitous shit is what requires it to be advertised.

And for most of us there is the dawning revelation that a life of consumption is...a life of gratuitous shit.

<comment><USER17> I click on Facebook ads all the time. So obviously we do live in alternative universes. And I don't mind them because sometimes it turns out to be a good way to find stuff.

<comment><USER18> I click on facebook ads for fake saliva, fake tears, gout remedies, "vitality supplements" and other old fart ailments. I'm trying to build up a facebook persona of a crotchety, ailing, "got off my lawn!" type of elderly nutjob.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best way to get beta app signups? - <AUTHOR>

We're building a consumer mobile app and are in private beta right now. We have the ability to send someone a build via email. Any good suggestions to amass user emails?
If you're interested in trying it out (req: i phone/pad/pod touch w/ios8): email firstname.lastname@example.com and we'll reply with a build.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> 1) Create a landing page with an easy-to-type and remember URL.

2) Convey the basic value of the app (why it matters, why it's relevant, why should they use it over the competition, etc.).

3) Give users ability to give email address and other optional info such as name or other survey questions.

4) Create at a minimum a chance to have users give their friends email addresses. Even better would be to give them an incentive to invite (quicker access, additional features, etc.). Check out untorch.com for a easy turnkey solution

Using a mail service, you can automate sending an email with the build invite.

</comment><comment><USER3> Walk up to people on the street, explain what you are doing, and ask for their email.</comment>


Publer - <AUTHOR> https://superpubler.com <comment><AUTHOR> An app I've solely built. It is the first and only app in the World that lets you schedule everything (including multi-photo posts, photo albums, videos and offers) everywhere on Facebook (including profiles, groups, pages and events)

It is being used by Being Latino, one of the biggest pages on Facebook.

<comment><USER2> The app is really nice, but the UI needs a lot of work. :)</comment></comment>


Show HN: full-featured Drag'n'Drop jQuery plugin with no dependencies in 0.6kb - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/vdemedes/draggable

<comment><USER2> Sounds interesting....Do you have an example of the code running on a website?

<comment><AUTHOR> Nope, not yet. But there is working example in the repository, in /test folder.</comment></comment>


My Brush With a Patent Troll - <AUTHOR> http://jacquesmattheij.com/my-brush-with-a-patent-troll <comment><USER2> "The idea that I can be presented with a problem, set out to logically solve it with the tools at hand, and wind up with a program that could not be legally used because someone else followed the same logical steps some years ago and filed for a patent on it is horrifying."

\- John Carmack

<comment><USER3> It would not be a problem if lawyers wouldn't take the case.

So the question is, how do we make sure lawyers don't want to? (without going to jail).

<comment><USER4> _So the question is, how do we make sure lawyers don't want to? (without going to jail)._

Don't get caught. ;-)

But seriously, there only seems to be one answer that is likely to work in practice: change the risk/reward structure so that patent trolling isn't profitable any more.

One obvious approach would be making fewer things subject to patent protection in the first place. You could explicitly exclude whole categories like software or business method parents, assuming you could define them clearly enough. You could raise the general bar for granting/defending patents in terms of originality and non-obviousness. You could leave the standards the same in principle but apply more robust checking for prior art and/or a more thorough consultation to determine obviousness before awarding a patent. Each of these has costs in different places: principally, the legislature, the courts, and the patent office, respectively.

Another approach would be to look at the types and magnitudes of consequences that result if you lose a patent case, either by being found to infringe someone else's patent or by claiming that someone infringes your patent and failing to win the case. For example, what if the remedies available to someone who owned a patent but who was not actively working to exploit that patent in some reasonable way themselves were made dramatically less than the remedies available to someone who was using the patent system "properly" to secure exclusive rights while they worked hard to exploit a real invention? What if there were a meaningful cost to bringing a patent case and losing not just because the court invalidated your original patent but also because the court actively determined that the original patent had been [some legal specification of "obviously abusing the system"], a kind of patent case analogy for dismissing with prejudice?

<comment><USER5> The simplest solution is to abolish patents, the government has no business going around handing out monopolies.

<comment><USER6> So you spend millions (or billions, even) on research, then someone can just come along and copy that work? Where's my incentive to do all that R&D?

<comment><USER7> Who said you have to release your method? If what you found through 'R&D' can be quickly reproduced through reverse engineering it's highly unlikely it was complex to figure out. On the other hand if your development is complex, and requires a great deal of time and effort to reverse engineer then your R&D has paid for itself by giving you a dramatic lead in time to market. If a company can't win the market with such a lead they don't really deserve protection. Lets also not forget copyright still exists to protect exact copies of the ultimate product.

<comment><USER8> Drugs are very easy to reverse engineer and it would kind of defeat the point if you created them and then didn't release them.

You have drugs at one end of the spectrum and software and business processes at the other. There is a huge cost associated with medical research due to the inherit complexity of the human body and the requirements governments put on proper testing. Any patent solution has to address that problem as well.

(And, yes, drug companies are doing a horrible job at doing real research, but that doesn't alter the substance of the argument.)

<comment><USER9> Fine. Make patents a side effect of the FDA's requirements rather than infecting every other industry with it as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Has anyone got a theory as to why video and video streaming seem particularly prone to patent trolls? A few years ago people might have accepted the answer that "they're really complicated", but I think we all accept now that patents are pretty much BS. So there must be some other incidental business reason why so many people went and filed patents on these ideas. Because Hollywood has lots of money and a reliance on video but no tech understanding maybe?

<comment><USER11> My best answer is...Youtube blew up. The market for it went through the roof, anyone's posting videos all over the internet, and obviously the trolls weren't using their patent to make money themselves, they were using it to ride on the backs of the real developers.

<comment><USER12> Your best answer doesn't hold water. YouTube was started in 2005, which means it was founded _after_ the first round of these lawsuits had started. These patents are about live content, Youtube was about stored content.

<comment><USER11> I didn't read up on the patent, and you are mostly right with regards to credit card processing and video chat, but streaming media isn't always live. Were there quite as many of these lawsuits in the first round?

Honestly, the porn industry was always making large sums of money in this type of field, so perhaps Youtube was a little short-sighted. For a more general statement, they started the lawsuits when it became economically viable to, i.e. the companies using the "infringing" patented methods made enough money to sue for / strike a license deal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> a-priori So I had an idea the other day for a patent reform: property tax on patents.

As long as a company wants to keep the monopoly rights over a patented invention, they are taxed a percentage of the patent's market value each year. They can choose either to pay that tax or sell the patent to someone else.

The government would offer to buy any patent for its market value, using tax revenue gathered from other patents, in doing so putting the invention into the public domain.

This would discourage companies from building large 'defensive' patent portfolios, since they'd be expensive to maintain. It works for the 'lone inventor' scenario too, since the market value of a new, untried invention would be low.

Once a patent's value is proven by developing the patent, its value will rise. At some point, the benefit derived from the patent's monopoly rights will no longer be worth the cost, and the rational thing to do is sell the invention.

</comment><comment><USER13> This guy literally "saved" GeoCities hah. (dutch) [http://webwereld.nl/nieuws/64140/nederlander-redt- geocities....](http://webwereld.nl/nieuws/64140/nederlander-redt- geocities.html)

</comment><comment><USER14> I can see allowing a patent on software to the extent the invention incorporates a truly novel and interdependent physical component. But plain software patents are, for the most part, bogus and ought to be outright eliminated. There is no dearth of software innovation, and the litigation is twice as expensive as development.

</comment><comment><USER15> The Stack Exchange "Ask Patents" sound a very good idea for such cases. People can be more aware like the OP.

</comment><comment><USER16> Just to clarify, the _idea_ of video in the browser wasn't novel. Your implementation was novel and might even have been the first instance of the general idea, but the only way you could claim such an obvious idea as novel would be to have invented the browser.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm glad we have such staunch defenders here and at the head of the Patent Office. This is nice to read, and Ask Patents is a great concept that perhaps you can be a part of.</comment>


Taiwanese animators made this awesome video in support of RestoreTheFourth - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=hjItu4SchJU

<comment><USER2> Rule #1 of life: never _ever_ get in a windowless van with 4chan, regardless of who else is in the van.</comment>


Show HN: MyPodium – An audio-only social network - <AUTHOR> https://mypodium.net/ <comment><USER2> Anchor was kind of like this when it started and, over time, grew into a podcast platform. While I like podcasts, I honestly have a hard time imagining using an audio version of Twitter.

<comment><USER3> An audio version of Twitter would be utterly insufferable. It's bad enough reading it, but to listen to the same thing would be an effective torture device.

Like /r/publicfreakout on steroids.

<comment><USER4> That's what would make it so entertaining, though. As someone who's never used Twitter, I'd totally use that for laughs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Cool idea!

I think a single volume control for the site would be a bit better than per clip.

<comment><USER6> More than that I think it'd require some type of volume leveling across all the clips otherwise you'll wind up just blowing people out switching between quiet posts and loud posts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> If this doesn't pan out, can you pivot to "an audio-only social network for your friends/family who commute?"

I live in a time zone 5 hours off from most of my friends and family. When I want to call my friends after work, they're still at work. When they get off work, I'm headed to sleep. On my way to work, I'd like to be able to record a short podcast about my day and my thoughts, then publish it for my family to listen to when they get up and head to work. Then they could do the same and I can listen to it on my way home.

<comment><USER8> You can do this on WhatsApp

<comment><USER7> To do this on whatsapp, you'd need to click "play" on the individual messages. You can do this on public transport.

But you should not do this while you are driving or while walking through an area like London where phone theft is common.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Cool idea but I really don't like the booing and the cheering. It's incredibly annoying.

<comment><USER10> I was thinking that too. Makes you think of a 90s sitcom.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Not working on iPad Safari. Edit: Can't find variable Offline Audio Context

<comment><AUTHOR> Will fix it, thanks for noticing

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think what is needed is a small description and topic and then people can listen to whatever channel they want to listen to. This looks interesting.

</comment><comment> seph-reed Pretty neat.

I think the social network bit is played out, not a fan of the booing or claps, but I see potential in this as a tool.

Something like imgur for audio.

</comment><comment><USER13> If you remove the booing and cheering I'm in. I'd love to use this as a musical notes of the day type of thing. Where I upload short musical ideas on things I'm working on. As I say, remove the booing and cheering I'm in.

</comment><comment><USER14> Very novel. The effort barrier could help filter out garbage, and audio could also help humanize people and reduce reactionary posts.

</comment><comment><USER15> Good thing Live Transcribe is out.

</comment><comment><USER16> Fellow founder. How are you guys marketing this besides social posts?

</comment><comment><USER17> What is the maximum size/length of an post?

</comment><comment><USER18> Not easy to understand.

</comment><comment><USER19> Nice. Really cool idea.</comment>


Why millennials are making memes about wanting to die - <AUTHOR> https://www.salon.com/2018/02/10/why-millennials-are-making-memes-about-wanting-to-die/ <comment><USER2> Multi page clickbait stuffed with ads. Save your time.</comment>


Show HN: Sell Tickets to your events easily.(ticketforest.com) - <AUTHOR> https://ticketforest.com

<comment><USER2> It took me several seconds to decipher the headline on the cover image, primarily because of the green spotlight (or at least, I suppose this is the reason).</comment>


Jeff Bezos, Jack Ma, and the Quest to Kill EBay - edouard-harris https://medium.com/s/story/jeff-bezos-jack-ma-and-the-quest-to-kill-ebay-bb4992dc5020 <comment> time-domain0 After watching a dude on YT drive for 20+ hours to hit a bunch of Walmarts for some 100+ copies of a Monopoly board game to sell on Amazon, netting several thousand USD, I was thinking there ought to be a brick-n- mortar/eBay/AliBaba/Amazon arbitrage platform that scans UPCs, product numbers, SKUs, etc identifiers on many platforms and tells the user (within a certain region) which products+retailers to buy from and which platform(s) to sell on to maximize profit automagically.</comment>


Smart Checklist plugin – tasks organizer built-in in JIRA - <AUTHOR> https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/rw-smart-checklists <comment><AUTHOR> It has a simple-to-use interface as well as Markdown support, and it allows adding details to each checklist item. These and other features help you structure tasks all through implementation. And it's free! [https://marketplace.atlassian.com/1215277](https://marketplace.atlassian.com/1215277)</comment>


Google already knows you're a 24-year old woman who loves wombats - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2012/01/google-already-knows-youre-a-24-year-old-woman-who-loves-wombats.ars <comment><USER2> It's probably well-known among readers here, but you can turn off this tracking via the Google ads settings page: <https://www.google.com/settings/ads/onweb/>

Ironically, I disabled targeted ads because the targeted ads would distract me (since they were well-targeted) and I prefer to not use ad blocking software.</comment>


Ask HN: How to make online learning more motivating? - <AUTHOR> Online learning is awesome -- high-quality, accessible, scalable, etc. Only 5% of the people who start a MOOC finish it though. Why?
I think traditional colleges (or bootcamps) have a motivational component that is as important, if not more, than the structured curriculum or lectures. Online learning is not just very passive, but also lonely.
Having other peers to motivate you (shared joy is twice the joy, shared pain is half the pain), teachers to hold you accountable, a physical space and schedule to help you build habits, etc. is, in my opinion, the key to be a successful learner.
I've been experimenting with online synchronous collaborative learning as a way make online learning both scalable and motivating. The reason is simple: peer pressure.
I just wrote an article explaining one of my latest experiments on this topic, a Node.js course done through online pair programming: https://medium.com/@arielcamus/learn-to-build-a-backend-with-node-js-doing-pair-programming-b6d5a241b846#.8olu5g82k
I'd like to hear more about what you think. Could we use online synchronous collaboration to make online learning much better? Which other things can we do to keep online and self-directed learning scalable and at the same time supportive as a traditional learning setting? <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable link:

Learn to Build a Backend with Node.js doing Pair Programming: [https://medium.com/@arielcamus/learn-to-build-a-backend- with...](https://medium.com/@arielcamus/learn-to-build-a-backend-with-node-js- doing-pair-programming-b6d5a241b846#.8olu5g82k)

</comment><comment><USER2> I'm not sure you can teach people to be self-starters.</comment>


Interview with Paul Romer On Hong Kong, Charter Cities and Growth Theory (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/econexplainer/interview-with-prof-romer-on-hong-kong-charter-cities-and-growth-theory-85b4c0353cf0 <comment><USER2> The only way to build economical and cultural (by which I mainly mean education) wealth is by exponential growth. There are no short-cuts. Invest (=risk) a too large amount of capital and you get a collapse. Invest too little, you go nowhere. Put in too much capital from the outside and it can't be used efficiently.

These kind of charter cities are essentially colonialism. They are supposed to run on a legal system imposed from another country. Which doesn't work without a large contingent of police officers, judges, civil servants from that country. Because, again, just hiring local people doesn't work because as a population they didn't grow into that mindset yet (but they might in the future).

And good luck defending a wealthy city, or even a shabby one with wealthy foreigners, in Somalia from Al Shabab.

</comment><comment><USER3> [http://www.econtalk.org/romer-on-charter- cities/?highlight=%...](http://www.econtalk.org/romer-on-charter- cities/?highlight=%5B%22charter%22,%22cities%22%5D)

For lovers of econtalk.</comment>


The 'Undertaker of Silicon Valley' Stays Busy as Startups Lay Off Thousands - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/2020/04/20/837527666/the-undertaker-of-silicon-valley-stays-busy-as-startups-lay-off-thousands <comment><USER2> I'm disappointed that this article is more about job loss in tech at large, rather than a look at what Sherwood Partners actually does.

How does one wind down or sell off the assets of a technology company? What percentage of tech companies even have assets in the traditional sense? I can see the value of selling off inventory, machinery, owned facilities, and IP, but I'm guessing that a small percentage of Silicon Valley companies have any of these things in meaningful quantities.

Does Sherwood Partners buyout the company for cheap and then make a profit by selling individual pieces? I'm very curious. If anyone knows some of the answers, I'd love to hear!

<comment><USER3> I was a Sherwood Partners client in 2010. Oracle bought our startup, DataScaler. However, they bought the core assets of the company, not the corporate entity. That's a fairly common strategy for acquiring early-stage companies. The buyer gets the parts they want (in our case: the team, code, and patents) without any of the hassle or liabilities of the corporate entity or any assets that they don't want or need.

That left us needing to wind down the DataScaler corporate entity. This is a fairly technical process and not something you do casually. We hired Sherwood Partners to do the wind down. They filed the appropriate paperwork with Delaware and California, since we were a Delaware C corp based in Cupertino. They stored our corporate files (lots of paper back then) in their warehouse for 7 years in case of any litigation, tax disputes, etc. The offered to connect us with a liquidator to sell off our desks, chairs, phones, etc. They don't actually do the liquidation themselves. Perhaps most importantly, they were legally the "Stockholder Representative" and ensured that the stockholders were properly taken care of, etc.

We used Sherwood exclusively for the corporate wind-down part, as we already had a buyer. They also can help companies find buyers and they have lots of contacts in the valley.

I am happy to answer questions if anyone has any.

<comment><USER4> A question out of curiosity, how much did the wind-down of the company cost in comparison to its acquisition cost?

<comment><USER3> Sorry for the delay in getting back to this...

The wind-down cost was very small in comparison to the price Oracle paid.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for letting me know

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am tired of this pandemic being described as a "black swan". Scenarios with decades of warning, billions spent on plans and agencies to react to them, and several real-world near-misses are not black swans!

<comment><USER6> Nassim Nicholas Taken echoed your point in an interview recently. He said this is actually a White swan event because it was inevitable.

<comment><USER7> Why isn't Taleb a billionaire if he's great at predicting events that are surprising to the market (IE, aren't priced in)?

<comment><USER8> "Aug. 30, 2015 8:54 am ET - The recent market rout caught some star Wall Street traders by surprise. But not a hedge-fund firm affiliated with "The Black Swan" author Nassim Nicholas Taleb, which gained more than $1 billion on a strategy that seeks to profit from extreme events in financial markets."

[https://www.wsj.com/articles/nassim-talebs-black-swan- fund-m...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/nassim-talebs-black-swan-fund- made-1-billion-this-week-1440793953)

"April 8, 2020, 11:28 AM EDT - Nassim Taleb-Advised Universa Tail Fund Returned 3,600% in March"

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-08/taleb- adv...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-08/taleb-advised- universa-tail-risk-fund-returned-3-600-in-march)

<comment><USER9> The Universa figure is extremely misleading, and it's either some appalling marketing job or appalling journalism.

Universa is not a traditional fund, it is a so called "premium spend" structure. With a traditional fund, you give them money, and they try to make some profits. At a later time, you can retrieve the profits and original investment.

With Universa, you give them money as you would to an insurer, that is, you cannot back that original investment back, you only get the profits they make on it. It is literally insurance premium.

This is a very important distinction because when returns are traditionally quoted, they are not based on the premium the fund spent buying financial instrument, but the total capital invested. In the case of Universa, their assumption is that you'll spend 3% of your capital with them as insurance premium. It is therefore much more clear to quote the returns based on the capital insured, which results in a much more modest (although still great) 120%

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's interesting (although morbid) to speculate about which types of companies will be hit the hardest.

1 Anything focusing on AI/ML that isn't directly revenue generating such as sales leads/conversion optimization

2 Blockchain

3 Consumer non-essentials. Think Tesla and Subscription boxes

Industries that should be ok.

1 Gov/DoD contractors

2 Consumer 'essentials' (Netflix, online commerce, food delivery

3 Biotech? (I don't have a good insight into this sector)

<comment><USER11> I would actually think that Tesla would be less affected by this pandemic.

Why? Because their target market, are people that would be last to be laid off. Not entirely of course, but they are the programmers that can work from home, or the senior managers that can jump between companies if they're laid off.

Of course, the lockdown is affecting everyone, but Tesla has always targeted the affluent and entrepreneurial, as their primary customers.

And let's be realistic here, these people that can afford an $80k Tesla, are not concerned about the price of gasoline.

<comment><USER12> People on average (including the demographic you are talking about) do defer making big capital purchases in this type of environment - it's the "conserve money in case the worst happens" attitude.

Of course there is a demographic who are wealthy enough that a Tesla wouldn't be a big capital purchase for them. But I don't think that demographic alone is enough to sustain them as a business.

In addition, with governments likely to be looking for cost savings in the coming years, subsidies for electric cars aimed at or claimed by "rich people" (thinking about some European markets here) look like an easy target politically speaking.

What might offset that for Tesla is potential for them to grow in China but that's a difficult one to predict.

<comment><USER13> In addition, while I suppose you could make a Tesla purchase and take delivery mostly virtually, people are still deferring significant purchases for reasons that go beyond money.

It's just one more unnecessary thing to deal with right now. Furthermore, for many purchases, you can't totally deal with things over the phone or over the computer. I should get a new refrigerator one of these days but it's just not something I'm going to do until this is all over.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This guy just uses these puff pieces to get himself more limelight/business. As a self-professed former pop-music manager, he certainly knows how to market himself. I've seen articles with him as the subject before topping HN in years past, foreboding all sorts of doom and gloom which, of course, never happened.

<comment><USER15> > This guy just uses these puff pieces to get himself more limelight/business. > As a self-professed former pop-music manager, he certainly knows how to > market himself.

I used to work with this nurse who wasn't very good at his job and most people didn't like working with him. He hired a PR agency and suddenly was being highlighted in all these news articles as a medical expert/color commentary and getting listed on "Top Emergency Nurse" lists. He flew to various environmental disasters to help out but they were mainly just ego trips to get in the news. For example when there was an avalanche on Everest and many people died, he took a month off work and flew there to basically screw around "volunteering." He would come back and post the articles about himself on our bulletin board in the breakroom.

He got let go after having a third affair with a coworker and during a messy breakup she complained that he played porn on his computer during a work meeting.

<comment><USER16> How does a nurse afford a PR agency?

<comment><USER15> Our nurses start at $180k, it varies by hospital and unit.

<comment><USER17> Start at $180k? Are these nurses who specialize in some esoteric medical procedure, or just "run of the mill" nurses who don't specialize in anything?

<comment><USER14> Well, they're nurses in one of the highest COL, highest taxed locations in the US (based on the "Cupertino" in his username) where median one-bedroom rent is over $3,000 and the "poverty line" is drawn at $100k per year income.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I totally hoped this would be about whoever the real person that "The Carver" from HBO's Silicon Valley is based on: [https://silicon- valley.fandom.com/wiki/The_Carver](https://silicon- valley.fandom.com/wiki/The_Carver)

"The Carver" takes bankrupt startups and "moves the carcass to the cloud." Sadly disappointed.

<comment><USER19> I think the initial "The Carver" mystique set up the comedy of introducing a kid, but that the character might've actually been a stealth critique of a much more common dotcom stereotype:

* Mechanically grinding out large amounts of formulaic code.

* Routinely abusing medication for performance enhancement.

* Smug, strutting, arrogant, and rude.

* Demands very high compensation.

* "Laidback".

* Secretly a massive fudge-up in their work, but there's mutual interest in not calling that out.

<comment><USER20> What does "laidback" mean?

<comment><USER15> Stanford Duck Syndrome, perhaps? [https://www.stanforddaily.com/2018/01/31/duck-syndrome- and-a...](https://www.stanforddaily.com/2018/01/31/duck-syndrome-and-a- culture-of-misery/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Another article about Sherwood Partners [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/aug/21/the- under...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/aug/21/the-undertakers- of-silicon-valley-how-failure-became-big-business)

</comment><comment><USER22> "Everything has been hit. I never in my life thought I'd see a black swan," Pichinson said. "This is a black swan."

He must be pretty young if he can't remember 9/11.

<comment><USER23> But 9/11 as ugly as it was, was US only. It did not have any financial repercussions in my circles outside of USA.

This thing is impacting worldwide

<comment><USER22> It had global repercussions. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_effects_of_the_Sept...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_effects_of_the_September_11_attacks)

<comment><USER24> The main repercussion of 9/11 was the US collectively going crazy, starting wars and taking away civil liberties. And western fiction getting so dark and dystopian ever since. But outside the US, Iraq and Afghanistan, nothing substantially changed for anyone.

9/11 is nothing compared to this pandemic. It hit swiftly and brought the entire world to its knees. There's no hiding from repercussions for anyone, and we're not even through the worst of them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> "He hopes it catches the attention of companies like Google, Amazon and Facebook. Because while the startup world is being shaken, some tech giants are still hiring."

Can't help but think of the giant sequoia trees, that are much more fire- resistant than the underbrush beneath them, and whose seeds flourish in a recently-burned forest floor.

</comment><comment><USER26> Any asset fire sales? Could use another aeron chair or large monitor.

<comment><USER27> I'm looking forward to picking up some test equipment. The problem is hardware is no longer built here. Back in the 2000 dot-com bust, there was plenty of RF and optical equipment going for cheap. As another poster mentioned though, these companies have no assets.

<comment><USER28> There is a little bit. Happened to come across this auction just by accident (A headphone manufacturer), with oscilloscopes and more: [https://murphyauction.hibid.com/catalog/209050/human- inc----...](https://murphyauction.hibid.com/catalog/209050/human-inc---- online-only/?ipp=10)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> > "Well, we used to do two, three to four a week,"

Uh, shit. I expected the rate before COVID to be way less. No wonder COVID is causing so much havoc. COVID has simply been the pin that popped the bubble.

4 startups a week that just this one firm are shutting down due to no revenue or investment? And not just 4 companies closing a week, but 4 that have enough assets that need a law firm to clean up the mess. What a disaster the start-up economy has turned out to be.

<comment><USER30> The investment wouldn't exist if the investors were not making money

<comment><USER24> Making money is how the bubble inflates; if investors weren't making money anymore then it would be a popped bubble.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> > Silicon Valley has developed a reputation for building up companies at > hyperspeed, propelled by mega-financed investment that can result in > overnight fortunes or colossal failures.

> That zero-sum approach is now being reimagined as the coronavirus pandemic, > which has spared no industry, rips across the technology sector.

Those are just nonsense words strung together. It doesn't seem like author understands what "zero sum" means.

<comment><USER32> Right? Sounds just like an episode of Star Trek, placed in business sector instead of in space.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Becoming a cyclical milestone. From 2004:

[https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=166649...](https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1666494)

</comment><comment><USER34> Sherwood is not very good. But they are the only real choice you have if you're a tech startup. There is definitely a startup to be built in just helping businesses close properly.

<comment><USER35> This can be the pivot for the remnants of Atrium.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Does anyone know if they sell chairs, desks, and other equipment to individuals? Would love to get an Aeron chair at a discount.

</comment><comment><USER37> So if I am reading correctly the article, this is just affecting 1% of the total ( 21k from 2.2M ).

I would assume such fluctuation is normal?

</comment><comment><USER38> Wow. How much can half-written software be worth? I bet this guy offers some very deep discounts.

</comment><comment><USER39> We do this as well. Many companies do.

</comment><comment><USER40> Any FAANG workers here worried about the possibility of layoffs?

<comment><USER41> Hard enough to retain/hire talent, they will weather the storm for a while.

They regularly fire low performers though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> > *"We don't know what's happening, but we do know everything we believed in > is changing. Everything we thought to be true may not be true.""

This is 2020 America in a nutshell.

</comment><comment><USER43> So what does this company actually do?

<comment><USER44> [https://www.shrwood.com/Assignments- Liquidations/Assignment-...](https://www.shrwood.com/Assignments- Liquidations/Assignment-for-the-Benefit-of-Creditors)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is AMD close to bankruptcy? - <AUTHOR>

It's losing in both CPU and GPU markets. Let's not even talk about the mobile segment. Follow up: What would it take for AMD to get back in the game? <comment><USER2> [http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/04/amd-on-ropes-from- th...](http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/04/amd-on-ropes-from-the-top-of- the-mountain-to-the-deepest-valleys/)

</comment><comment><USER2> [http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/04/the-rise-and-fall- of...](http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/04/the-rise-and-fall-of-amd-how- an-underdog-stuck-it-to-intel/)</comment>


RCA student radically improves the UK plug - <AUTHOR> http://www.iconeye.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3864:rca-student-radically-improves-the-uk-plug <comment><USER2> 74 days ago: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=782236>

2 months ago: [http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/9djgs/a_radicall...](http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/9djgs/a_radically_improvement_of_the_uk_plug_it_folds/)

4 months ago: [http://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/comments/8uvbh/1cm_thi...](http://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/comments/8uvbh/1cm_thick_uk_plug_designed_video/)

etc etc.

<comment><USER3> How are the reddit links relevant? Not everyone on HN follows reddit, in fact I personally stopped following reddit after I discovered HN because HN has more mature and tech-orientated posts and discussions.

However you're right, and there was a link to the youtube video up on HN over four months ago: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=670856>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This was posted a while back; isn't the whole point of the UK design to be able to embed fuses in the plug itself? I assume that that would mean this design is dangerous in early post-WW2 houses where the integrated fuse design was meant to save on wiring (which I only know thanks to a previous HN post about the history of electric plugs...)

<comment><USER3> Fuses in the plugs serve a secondary purpose, one that people don't realise. The conventional wisdom today is that the circuit breaker is the safety measure, however people infrequently jam their circuit breakers open instead of paying $50 for a higher amperage (it's uncommon, but it happens way too much). This causes 2 main problems, the first is that it allows potentially unlimited current to flow until either A) the breaker fails, or B) the wiring fails, and either can easily burn you house down. The second problem is that breakers usually flip because of a ground fault (hence the breakers being ground fault interrupters), not high current draw, and jamming the breaker open allows electricity to flow to ground, which either A) allows you to be electrocuted, or B) the Earth wiring fails and your house burns down.

The fuse still serves a great purpose in that if your equipment fails and you was stupid enough to jam the G.F.I. open, then the fuse will near instantly fail as the amperage drawn will go through the roof. The second function they serve, is that many plugs are equipped with a 3A fuse, but they're on a 15-30A G.F.I., which means if the equipment fails in a spectacularly bad way you can have up to 10 times the amperage flowing through wires that can't handle it... unless you have a fuse.

I was always dubious of how unlikely it must be to damage the neutral+earth but not the live. However, when working as an electrician I managed to slice just those two whilst working, which is the important reason to turn mains power off while doing electrical or construction work in a house, either by running off a generator or by running a dedicated extension line from the breaker box. You can always know where your extension is, you can't always know where a live electrical cable is inside a wall (even with a detector).

<comment><USER5> Don't Do That Then.

A better unsafe solution is to upgrade the breaker without upgrading the wiring or outlet. Breakers are usually $5-10 and most wiring won't burst in to flame from an extra 5 amps.

Note that fuse-in-plug does not keep you from overloading a circuit; it only helps when the device itself malfunctions.

 _Disclaimer: sometimes it will burst in to flames. You shouldn't actually do this._

<comment><USER3> Wiring typically has ~100% safety margin built in, however this cannot be counted on. If your wiring takes 15A, it should in theory handle 30A safely. _HOWEVER_ , any nick or sharp bend in the wiring can increase resistance in the wiring, or even worse decrease the electrical resistance of the cable insulation. Heat also amplifies this problem, so an overloaded wire handling 30A in the cold of a Siberian winter might not handle it in a sweltering summer.

The safety margin is there for safety, just like how skydivers have a reserve chute, it doesn't mean you should rely solely on your reserve day after day.

Personally I would never overload house wiring, it's just not worth the risk. However I do occasionally overload extension cords (they have the same ~100% safety margin) for certain quick tasks where the cable doesn't heat up, but I'd certainly never push a 15A cable to 30A . . . I got close to something similar, a 14A appliance on a 8A extension because I was a moron and didn't read the label.

Also it's good to note that, not all cabling or extensions have the 100% safety margin, this margin is in place so that any defective products should still meet the _minimum_ requirement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Very classy-looking! I'm surprised this is 'art' and not 'industrial design'.

<comment><USER7> RCA London teaches: "Animation | Architecture | Ceramics & Glass | Communication Art & Design | Conservation | Critical and Historical Studies | Curating Contemporary Art | Design Interactions | Design Products | Drawing Studio | Fashion Menswear | Fashion Womenswear | Goldsmithing, Silversmithing, Metalwork & Jewellery | History of Design | Innovation Design Engineering | Painting | Photography | Printmaking | Sculpture | Textiles | Vehicle Design"

<http://www.rca.ac.uk/Default.aspx?ContentID=159384>

The guys BA has worked as a graphic designer (advertising copy by the looks of it) but took his MA in "Design Products".

Edit: another of their alumni, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Day_%28designer%29></comment></comment>


Web 2.0 Agile Requirements Management - <AUTHOR>

I've seen - on this list or another - a link to an online requirements management tool... I believe based on Scrum/FDD or perhaps generic.  Anyway, I've lost the link and searched far and wide and cannot for the life of me find this site again (which looked super-cool and very useful).  Any ideas?<p>Have you seen this site? <comment><USER2> I'm writing an agile project tracking tool, AgileWizard (www.AgileWizard.com)

E-Mail me if you'd like to hear about some of my competitors. Not sure which one you're talking about.</comment>


Practice good online password security - <AUTHOR> http://www.macworld.com/article/135655/2008/09/emailpwdsafe.html?lsrc=rss_main <comment><USER2> He's making it way too complicated. For your "secret question," you should never actually answer the question. For instance:

 _First school:_ Neptune

 _First Car_ Neptune

and so on. They only check that the answer agrees with what you said it was when you set up the account. They don't actually check to see that it is _true_. A lot of people don't get this. In effect, it is simply a second password; a backup, if you will.

</comment><comment><USER3> The "problem" they discuss is the secret-question routine used for hinting when users forget their passwords. However, for the secret-question problem to be relevant, users must first break the first rule of password security which is:

Never commit a password to memory. Always write it down.</comment>


Ask HN: What is easier to read: camel or snake case? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I prefer snake_case() since it maintains a comfortable / familiar word spacing. Since I program mostly in Lisp, I use its equally attractive sibling, (kebab-case).

ToMeCamelCaseIsWayTooCrowded. ItMakesForUGLYEmphasis. AndTHISisJUSTmindBOGGLING.

Snake_Case_reminds_me_of_underlined_text, and is as-easy-to-read-as-Kebab- Case. Double_underscores__REALLY__stand_out and are reasonably_grammatical.

</comment><comment><USER3> It doesn't matter as long as the whole project uses the same style.

</comment><comment><USER4> Snake case, but it's entirely subjective.</comment>


Show HN: Minimal Twitter Client with Classification - <AUTHOR> https://trysensible.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hello All, I wrote this twitter client to scratch an itch and to reduce context switching while browsing twitter. This client neatly classifies tweets(or atleast attempts to) into categories such as sports, politics, travel and also allows you to add custom categories. For e.g. academics, music, entertainment. All classification is keyword based.

</comment><comment><USER2> Still requires JS. I'll stick with nitter.net, which doesn't even require a login.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for visiting! nitter looks cool. Though not exactly for browsing your twitter timeline? More like a scraper?

<comment><USER2> It's what I use when there's a twitter link I want to read without jumping through all the hoops twitter.com creates for no-JS users</comment></comment></comment>


Hacker Themes - A collection of simple, readable themes for hackers - <AUTHOR> http://hackerthemes.com/

<comment><USER2> Also consider:

Hacker changes grades, later saves world from military

Hacker plays games, later finds he has saved world from aliens

Hacker discovers secret code, later saves world from (military takeover) | (evil bad guy)

and of course

Hacker quits college, creates startup, (saves) | (corrupts) the planet earns a zillion dollars (gets the girl) | (still cannot get laid)

</comment><comment><USER3> What are these themes for?

<comment><USER4> It's so you can theme your hacker.

(Why these are "hacker themes" - I don't even know.)</comment></comment>


Is This the Way Our Sex Lives End? Not with a Bang but a Whimper - <AUTHOR> https://humanparts.medium.com/is-this-the-way-our-sex-lives-end-92f3e5c0cdf7 <comment><USER2> If you're over 40 these apps don't even work then you find it's not so much about commitment phobia its more to do with a system that taxes income to poverty. The ordinary working person in places like CA have lost so much traction it becomes impossible to build a life. Super high rents coupled with super high income tax combined with systemic insecurity have created a perfect storm of dehumanization and that's when we have a good economy.

<comment><USER3> How's this compared with being black or Mexican in CA 10, 20, 50, 100 years ago? Aren't you comparing a common case of today with the richest few percent of yesteryear?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> We live in a very cynical and pessimistic time.

The level of thinly veiled despondency and contempt everywhere you look these days is rivaled only by the level of people mentally disclaiming that they're not perpetrating and perpetuating it.</comment>


Facebook Is Expanding the Photo and Video Transfer Tool to Dropbox and Koofr - <AUTHOR> https://about.fb.com/news/2020/09/expanding-photo-and-video-transfer-tool-to-dropbox-and-koofr/ <comment><USER2> The adapter is also opensource [https://github.com/google/data-transfer- project/pull/927](https://github.com/google/data-transfer-project/pull/927)</comment>


The Surprising Reason the Right Doesn't Trust the News - <AUTHOR> https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/09/26/conservatives-media-trust-shafer-220708 <comment><USER3> I think that is wrong - it's more like The Frame Problem.

It's not really that right wingers think the news is lying to them in a direct sense. It's more like they believe the entire frame of discussion is wrong. I'm not an American but I'd concur with that sentiment in general when I listen to NPR. You could listen to NPR for years without realizing the experience of many Americans directly contradicts the story themes on offer, yet many other Americans do have an experience which is sympathetic to the same themes.

This is because of social class. Different people have different experiences - but because of social stratification what has happening is that some people _consistently_ have a difference experience of the world.

In Hidden Brain - an NPR podcast - a social science researcher and mother relates how she had the impression most mothers breastfed their kids, bought organic food, went to yoga. It's only through her analytic research that she came to the understanding this is a minority, a sort of elite.

A zip code away - you'll have some people who have had their car broken into 17 times, burglarized 5 times - every time by people with the same skin colour.

I leave the results to your imagination.

NPR and Russia Today will make one of those scenarios sound normal, the other abnormal but they're the result of the same sorting affect.

Scott Alexander makes the point that this clustering affect can happen even when you go out of your way to prevent it. He says he doesn't have any Christian Republican friends on his Facebook account - but they're half the country. He didn't try to do this - it just happened that way.

The probability of this happening by accident is astronomical - yet each one of us is in a similar peculiar bubble. Worth reflecting that this makes it harder to understand each other.

<comment><USER4> There's a lot to this. But in addition, the basic quality of journalism in papers like NYT and WaPo have fallen dramatically in the last few years. On any given day, I encounter a headline that simply does not match the story it's attached to. Usually it's a click-baity or ideological exaggeration.

Or a piece not marked as "opinion" is obviously not factual reporting. A not- uncommon example is "fact" pieces that assume the mental state or thought processes of various public officials with no quotes or really anything to back them up.

Perhaps journalists were always often dishonest. But these days they often seem not to even be trying to make those deceptions convincing.

<comment><USER3> I've similar impressions.

I think - and this risks sounding self absorbed - that we've become more sophisticated because of the Internet - at least in some ways.

Closer feedback loop because flow of information is higher. You might have thought "this is bullshit" before but this feeling was more widely spaced before when journalism was in print form.

Some subgroups in society like the extremes were easier to dismiss as irrelevant because we couldn't really point to anything concrete representing their existence. This will probably be a downvote attractor but I wouldn't have believed SJWs were real people before the web existed. I'd heard of them before but presumed them the ravings of hyperbolic conservatives.

The number of people in these subgroups isn't large but large changes in society usually happen when the subgroup mainstreams an idea - so appreciating that extremist minority groups are important - is important - that idea development is an ecology and even that policy _cannot_ come from the center. I think this is why when politics stalls support flows into fat tails - normally thought of as a bad thing but it's a survival instinct - this idea is slippery because from the evolutionary view conflict isn't a pure bad - <USER2> of reproduction is.

> A not-uncommon example is "fact" pieces that assume the mental state or > thought processes of various public officials with no quotes or really > anything to back them up.

I really hate this, I'd call it an allergy! The worse version of this is that most dishonest form of journalism where the piece attempts - inception-like - to insert the thought process into yours. It's not compare and think or think within this framework - it's think like me. For this reason I dislike Fox but I really, really hate NPR.</comment></comment></comment>


The IPv6 Challenge - <AUTHOR> https://www.cloudflare.com/ipv6-challenge

<comment><USER2> There's a tiny restartless Firefox plugin that will tell you if the pages you browse are using IPv6, <https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/sixornot/> and one for Chrome (written by p1mrx here): [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ecanpcehffngcegjma...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ecanpcehffngcegjmadlcijfolapggal)

<comment><USER3> Why IPVFoo, vs other IPx-checker addons?

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4024195>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "You are accepting the IPv6 challenge." => "ERRORDismissInvalid value specified."

The future is no... oh wait, never mind.

<comment><AUTHOR> I work for CloudFlare. We're looking into why that's happening.

EDIT: Fixed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> So... what incentive is there to make your services IPv6 compatible today other than geek cred?

I set up an IPv6 tunnel at home, and recently added AAAA records to my web site (a tech blog). For my very technical audience, barely 1.8% traffic is IPv6. If I look only at the RSS feed, it goes up to 3%, which seems to be mostly Apple machines and hosted RSS aggregators.

<comment> mike-cardwell Depends how you look at it. There might not be an individual incentive for _you_ to do it, but there is a general incentive for _us_ to do it. You can choose to contribute towards the move to IPv6, or not. I prefer to contribute, because I recognise how important it is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Who failed? Pages show different time to launch: <https://www.cloudflare.com/ipv6-challenge> <http://www.worldipv6launch.org/>

Doesn't look too convincing.

<comment><USER7> It looks like CloudFlare are counting down until 2012-06-06 00:00:00 in your local time, while the WorldIPv6Launch site is counting down to 2012-06-06 00:00:00 UTC.

<comment><USER8> That's correct. We were using local time and the World IPv6 Launch Day is using UTC time. We're going to update the CloudFlare page to also use UTC.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> g-garron Linode offers IPv6

<http://www.linode.com/IPv6/>

</comment><comment><USER9> Sadly, the only way my most recent website (<http://websocket.us/>) was able to get IPv6 support was via CloudFlare.

And my personal website, not being on CloudFlare, has no IPv6 support. I hope my provider gives me IPv6 someday...

<comment><USER10> May I ask why it matters to you? Anyone running v6 has v4 support running as well, otherwise they couldn't get anywhere on the net.

<comment><USER9> What's the point of IPv6 day if we don't get IPv6 support?

:/

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I tried signing up but it seems like the site is under load and not responding well - e.g. pages aren't loading, timeouts, etc.

Just wondering if anyone else is having the same problem?

Is this a good sign for a company whose main service is to make your site geographically faster?

</comment><comment><USER12> When will phones get IPv6? Then you can host services yourself, e.g a website, your email. Basically opens up all sorts of possibilities that will allow people to own their content.

(yeah sure you prob want to back up to somewhere off your phone)

<comment><USER13> I'm sure phone providers will find a way to configure their links so that they work the same as with IPv4 (i.e. no incoming connection allowed). This isn't even necessarily a bad thing - remember all these jailbroken iphones with the default root password running an sshd? While not providing perfect security by a long shot, denying all incoming connections to a client on the firewall can help mitigate some issues.

It also "fixes" a lot of potential "problems" like people running p2p software on their phones or using VoIP instead of the much higher priced voice calls by the phone proivder (yes. voip works today, but it could work ever so much better if these devices were accessible directly)

<comment><USER14> One of Australia's 3g networks had an alternate APN you could use that gave you direct access to the internet, and an externally facing IP address. I only discovered this last month and the network is being shut down this year. It's such a pity this isn't a standard feature.

Edit: Apparently it is possible. (1)

1: [http://forums.overclockers.com.au/showpost.php?p=9968987&...](http://forums.overclockers.com.au/showpost.php?p=9968987&postcount=15)

<comment><USER4> Optus resellers will give you public IP addresses by default and the high end ones can get you static IPs too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> What's needed to have IPv6 support? Hosting with IPv6 support, right?

<comment><USER9> \- A domain name with working AAAA records

\- Your site reachable over IPv6

And possibly:

\- Any software packages (Wordpress, phpBB, etc.) working correctly with IPv6

<comment><USER16> A DNS server which serves your zone available over IPv6 would also be nice.

<comment><USER9> Ooh, that too. That would be ironic if it wasn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Oh and there was me thinking that this was an attempt to produce an alternate replacement for ipv6 that is designed with migration in mind rather than the ivory tower OSI style standard it became.</comment>


Calculate Coinbase cryptocurrency ROI in 60 seconds - <AUTHOR> https://www.cointracker.io/blog/coinbase-roi <comment><USER2> I feel like this is better done in the head. It is at least a good measure for where your mental math skills are

To calc roughly, divide current value by what you put in</comment>


C programming language back at number one position - <AUTHOR> http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1600105/mind-language

<comment><USER2> An explanation of the strange dip in Java popularity in 2004:

Q: What happened to Java in April 2004? Did you change your methodology?

A: No, we did not change our methodology at that time. Google changed its methodology. They performed a general sweep action to get rid of all kinds of web sites that had been pushed up. As a consequence, there was a huge drop for languages such as Java and C++. In order to minimize such fluctuations in the future, we added two more search engines (MSN and Yahoo) a few months after this incident.

[http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index....](http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Given the huge margins of error in their methodology, the differences seem too small to justify a headline like that. They aggregated all sorts of noisy data sources (one even being the number of hits for a web search!), and found that C has pulled ahead of Java by... 0.007%. Whatever MOE you want to put on their figures, I'd be willing to be it should be more than 0.007%... probably >1%.</comment>