Google Dataset Search - <AUTHOR> https://toolbox.google.com/datasetsearch <comment><USER2> Very nice. Worth keeping in mind prior examples for comparison's sake. My favorites so far:

\- [https://www.opendatanetwork.com](https://www.opendatanetwork.com) \-- what I would call the "Google, for Socrata datasets"

\- [https://public.enigma.com/](https://public.enigma.com/) \-- One of the best collections of U.S. federal data, with good taxonomy and lots of useful options for refining a search, such as filtering by dataset size.

\- [https://www.data.gov/](https://www.data.gov/) \-- Not as useful as what most people would want -- e.g. unlike Enigma and Socrata, it's a directory of self-submitted (by the government) data sources, not one in which the data is stored/provided in a standardized way. But it's a pretty good listing, though not sure if it's much better than just using Google.

\- [https://data.gov.uk/](https://data.gov.uk/) \-- Better than the U.S. version in terms of usability and taxonomy.

<comment><USER3> [https://data.gov.ie](https://data.gov.ie) —- this is a repository of a bunch of the open data produced in the Irish public sector.

(Disclosure, I work on this)

<comment><USER4> Playing around, a lot of countries use this url scheme:

[https://data.gov.be](https://data.gov.be)

[http://data.gov.ro/](http://data.gov.ro/)

[https://www.dati.gov.it/](https://www.dati.gov.it/) (note, Italy redirects data. to dati.)

[https://data.gov.pl/](https://data.gov.pl/)

[https://data.gov.za/](https://data.gov.za/) (South Africa's has a cert problem)

[https://data.gov.in](https://data.gov.in)

[https://data.gov.au/](https://data.gov.au/)

[https://datos.gob.mx/](https://datos.gob.mx/)

<comment><USER5> although data.gov.pl exists, and even presents a valid cert, it has no content. The place with the data is:

[https://danepubliczne.gov.pl/en/#](https://danepubliczne.gov.pl/en/#)

(website is being terribly slow for me right now)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nice. I'm glad Google is making it easier to find public data sets. I wish that these could be filtered by format, so that you could narrow them to CSV, XML, JSON, KML, etc.

Another nice resource that I've used in the past is 'toddmotto/public-apis' on Github [0].

In the end I would prefer all public data sets to be available over the DAT protocol [1] instead of being hosted only on government or organization websites. A lot of climate data previously made available by the EPA was taken down, and only saved by efforts of volunteers.[2]

[0] [https://github.com/toddmotto/public- apis](https://github.com/toddmotto/public-apis)

[1] [https://datproject.org/](https://datproject.org/)

[2] [https://www.wired.com/2017/01/rogue-scientists-race-save- cli...](https://www.wired.com/2017/01/rogue-scientists-race-save-climate-data- trump/)

<comment><USER7> Dat's pretty cool, but it's not the only game out there. The efforts of git- annex/Datalad [0], Academic Torrents [1], Quilt[2], DVC[3], and Pachyderm [4] are also notable in this space. My hopes are broader in the sense that I just hope that dataset versioning happens in the first place.

[0] [https://www.datalad.org/](https://www.datalad.org/)

[1] [http://academictorrents.com/](http://academictorrents.com/)

[2] [https://quiltdata.com/](https://quiltdata.com/)

[3] [https://dvc.org/](https://dvc.org/)

[4] [http://www.pachyderm.io/](http://www.pachyderm.io/)

<comment><USER8> [5] [https://qri.io](https://qri.io) (we're tackling the dataset versioning problem head on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The state of data sharing seems to be still quite sad.

* Hosting problems. The first link I tried was already broken.

* Format problems. Also the presented data is in all kinds of formats, some "data sets" even require me to read data off images: [https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/germany/gdp-per-capita](https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/germany/gdp-per-capita) And even if it's JSON, this is not particularly great either (Unicode support? Large (64bit) integers?).

* Update problems. Many data-sets change over time (e.g. GDP). How can I subscribe to updates? "git pull" would be nice.

* Provenance problems. I want to know who put which record into the dataset, when and why? "git log" would be nice.

* Presentation problems. (This is OK sometimes) I necessarily want to download 5Gb file before I looked into it. The first few rows of the dataset should be presented on the page, with information about it.

Wrote down a few more thoughts a while ago here: [https://github.com/HeinrichHartmann/data-sharing#in-the- idea...](https://github.com/HeinrichHartmann/data-sharing#in-the-ideal-world)

Approaches I have seen so far in the wild:

* figshare.com -- Addresses Hosting and Presentation.

* [https://quiltdata.com/](https://quiltdata.com/) \-- (!) looks great. Still exploring.

* github.com -- works fine for small datasets (<1GB)

* packaging (yum, pkg, pip) -- (?) Not sure if that works, but at least they solve: Hosting, Update, Provenance.

This seems to be a wide open problem to me.

<comment><USER8> Totally agree! At Qri ([https://qri.io](https://qri.io)) we're working on many of these problems together - hosting, formatting (interoperability), provenance and sync. It's an open source project - we'd love to have your feedback as we design it!

<comment><USER10> This is cool and is a perfect case for IPFS for public datasets. I've not heard of it before, though, and I think naming / branding is something that makes finding these things / building momentum more difficult.

For example, someone else mentioned engima.com. I would have no idea that is related to data sources / sets unless I knew what it was.

Certainly wish you the best of luck though and will keep an eye on Qri! Cool project!

<comment><USER8> Thanks! you can follow us on twitter where we announce most updates: @qri_io

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Interesting vertical integration for Kaggle Datasets: [https://www.kaggle.com/datasets](https://www.kaggle.com/datasets)

<comment><USER12> Note Kaggle recently adopted the FrictionlessData.io Data Package specs: [https://github.com/Kaggle/kaggle-api/wiki/Dataset- Metadata](https://github.com/Kaggle/kaggle-api/wiki/Dataset-Metadata)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Interestingly enough, I built and released something very similar [1] about a month ago using a Google Custom Search Engine.

Here is the Show HN for it: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17789119](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17789119)

[1] [https://databasd.com/](https://databasd.com/)

</comment><comment><USER14> What is the best way for a website to format data to the public?

I already have my presentation, but I can also provide it as a .xls, .csv, sql, or html table.

What would be best to help programmers/data scientists use my data?

<comment><USER15> I vote CSV.

\- simple

\- lightweight

\- open

It's easy for the consumer of your data to convert a CSV to whatever format they need.

\- spreadsheet, for personal analysis

\- SQL database, for industrial-strength analysis

\- HTML, for pretty output to _their_ users

<comment><USER16> Oh, and don't forget that CSV is a rigorous data format, with many tricks. Don't just append some text together, separated by commas, and call it CSV. Instead, use a dedicated lib to create the CSV for you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Nice to see Google trying this again!

It's one of those areas they have long attempts at involvement in - e.g. Google Public Data Explorer which never quite reached it's potential, and Freebase which although flawed was good and was shut down after Google acquired it.

I like that this is search based! The web is still the best place to publish data - in fact in my view normal Google search is still by far the best way to find datasets, even though it isn't directly designed for that.

There's a link from the about page of Google Dataset Search to this help for webmasters on how to mark up content for it - although it is a bit odd, mainly showing how to mark a dataset with a DOI (so good for academics certainly!):

[https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/webmasters/nP...](https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/webmasters/nPq4BW6iPIA)

Just metadata about data feels like a very niche thing to search to me - I'm still not convinced anyone will maintain the metadata well enough to help. Possibly will work in particular domains.

Does Dataset Search have some way to search column headings, types or content (of CSV, Excel, JSON etc)? I can imagine a load of operators that would make that really powerful for finding badly meta-marked up datasets deep in the web. Would seem like the obvious extra thing a dataset search would do.

Also previews please!!! Just nicely render the fist ten rows of common formats - CSV and Excel to begin with.

What part of Google is doing this?

</comment><comment><USER18> It would be good to know who sponsored the data research so that everyone can make self biased decision to use/trust the data.

</comment><comment><USER7> Looks like academic institutional repositories and figshare are doing the heavy lifting here. It's still neat to see Google aggregate everything, but it's not that different from what they do with other services relying on these sources already, and is largely dependent upon how rich these upstream sources are in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER19> This is nice. I'm working on a similar open source project that is releasing soon called DataLibrary[0]

It goes further by bringing this kind of data together into a single API, converting/cleaning into a similar schema where possible.

A small write up can be found on github [1]. Any feedback/ideas would be appreciated!

[0] [https://www.datalibrary.com](https://www.datalibrary.com) (not online currently)

[1] [https://github.com/reactual/datalibrary/blob/master/README.m...](https://github.com/reactual/datalibrary/blob/master/README.md)

</comment><comment><USER20> Pretty lame that it doesn't work in Edge.

</comment><comment><USER21> [https://data.urbanfootprint.com/](https://data.urbanfootprint.com/) \- browse thousands of environmental, social, transportation, and land use datasets.

(disclosure - I work there)

</comment><comment><USER22> Then there's this $500K just awarded by the NSF to build a "Google for data sets". I wonder if, before making these sorts of grants, the NSF looks at what Google and other and other companies are already (or likely) doing. [https://www.lehigh.edu/engineering/news/faculty/2018/2018082...](https://www.lehigh.edu/engineering/news/faculty/2018/20180820-davison- heflin-jia-dataset-search-engine-nsf-award.html)

</comment><comment><USER23> You may want to try [[https://data.opendatasoft.com](https://data.opendatasoft.com...](https://data.opendatasoft.com\]\(https://data.opendatasoft.com\)) \-- thousands of datasets available through the same API, usable online, no download required.

</comment><comment><USER24> Look at [https://knoema.com](https://knoema.com) which positions itself as a search engine for data with more than 2.5 billion time series available. They provide both visual data discovery through search and navigation as well as API access through Python, R etc.

</comment><comment><USER25> Can we list some good data searches to suggest below this comment?

I would love to see some cool data we might be able to use.

</comment><comment><USER26> I also very much like [https://www.figure-eight.com/data-for- everyone/](https://www.figure-eight.com/data-for-everyone/). It's not optimized for search but it's an excellent repository of high quality datasets.

</comment><comment><USER27> Of note is the link below which indicates how you can have your dataset indexed.

[https://developers.google.com/search/docs/data- types/dataset](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/data-types/dataset)

</comment><comment><USER28> Nothing for FRED [https://toolbox.google.com/datasetsearch/search?query=site%3...](https://toolbox.google.com/datasetsearch/search?query=site%3Afred.stlouisfed.org) hmm...

</comment><comment><USER29> Using Google to search Google ... [https://toolbox.google.com/datasetsearch/search?query=site%3...](https://toolbox.google.com/datasetsearch/search?query=site%3Agoogle.com)

</comment><comment><USER30> Since we have already a nice reference list of open data portals by country I like to add the German portal: [https://www.govdata.de/](https://www.govdata.de/)

</comment><comment><USER31> Looks like this doesn't crawl one of the most important source for data: academic torrents. For example, I searched for

ilsvrc lmdb

This should have found imagenet data in lmdb format available somewhere but it returned no results.

</comment><comment><USER32> Maybe I'm missing something but this strikes me as underwhelming. To the point of something that I could do as opposed to something that the firm that created maps and gmail could do.

Is it just me?

</comment><comment><USER33> Add this one: [https://dados.gov.pt/](https://dados.gov.pt/) (Portugal)

</comment><comment><USER34> Google is so damn bad on UX. An excellent example of interaction of unlimited ressources and priorities.

</comment><comment><USER35> Placeholder comment to calculate the time before Google inevitably shuts this down.

</comment><comment><USER36> What's up with this domain? Is there anything else under toolbox.google.com?

<comment><USER37> Here you go: [http://bfy.tw/JkG7](http://bfy.tw/JkG7)

<comment><USER38> Please don't do this here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> it will be helpful for somebody who major in AI</comment>


South Korean parents hire thugs to stop school bullies - <AUTHOR> https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/01/22/south-korean-parents-hire-thugs-stop-school-bullies/ <comment><USER2> That's for a reason. Bullies will only understand violence.

I personally don't know any kid who had psychopathic tendencies that grew up to be a respectable member of society. They've all degenerated into drug dealers/enforcers/ criminals or worse.

If my kid is bothered by a bully, I'll defend him by _all_ means necessary and will face the consequences of the failed system, if I have to.

Ideally, the kids should stand up for themselves. Bulliest always go after the weakest ones.

<comment><USER3> Not disagreeing with your sentiments, but I think stepping back and taking into consideration why the bullying is happening can give better insight and perspective, maybe even other solutions.

Vice had a short video about a kid who was a bully, and as it dived into his personal situation I found that I regretted the first assumptions about him I made when seeing his behavior (despite how wrong it was). [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PY7PBrAnp_A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PY7PBrAnp_A)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wasn't there a movie in the 80s in which a bullied kid hires a big brother to defend him. Then the bully hires his own muscle to counter? It ends up in an "arms" race (excuse the pun).

Surely the same thing will happen here, with the gangs benefitting the most.

<comment><USER5> Is this the movie that you were thinking of? [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081207/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081207/)</comment></comment>


Is saturated fat bad for your health? - <AUTHOR> https://examine.com/nutrition/is-saturated-fat-bad-for-you/ <comment><USER2> >Is saturated fat bad for your health?

only if you are conducting or reading a study commissioned by the sugar lobby ;)</comment>


Deep learning with synthetic data will democratize the tech industry - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/11/deep-learning-with-synthetic-data-will-democratize-the-tech-industry/ <comment><USER2> Synthetic data is based on a model, i.e., a simplified version of reality. Given deep learning's need for lots of training data (to achieve variety), I don't see how synthetic data can help much except as an initial accelerator. If this is being sold as a replacement for real data, then it sounds like a scam to me.</comment>


HTTP API Design Guide - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/interagent/http-api-design

<comment><USER2> Please pardon my ignorance, but I am building a REST API using ASP.Net MVC 5 and Web API 2.0. I am not very clear on the following, can someone please help me with these recommendations in the Guide.

1) "Require TLS": How do I implement this for my Web API Project? Also what exactly does the author mean by saying "Require TLS". Is it achieved by using some kind of API Key+Token, or by using SSL for all communication, or is it something else?

2) "Responses - Provide resource (UU)IDs.". I have AutoIDs in all my tables for all the resources that are exposed as endpoints over HTTP. Is it ok to use this internal AutoID PK (PrimaryKey) value as id for the endpoints (ex: Updating a Resource by ID etc) or should I use a different ID field? Reason for asking is, I've been told by many people that "It's not good practice to expose your internal PK IDs anywhere to the outside world.".

3) "Keep JSON minified in all responses" \- How can I do this in .Net / Web API? Are there libraries that already do this, or do I need to roll one from scratch.

Thank you!!!

<comment><USER3> To answer your first two questions:

1\. TLS is the successor to SSL; setup your webserver with a certificate and redirect web traffic from HTTP to HTTPS.

2\. UUIDs have some advantages over database primary keys; they are hard to guess; they can be generated on multiple machines without duplication. You could extend your current table with an extra column called public_id.

<comment><USER4> > and redirect web traffic from HTTP to HTTPS.

The original post [advises against this][1]:

> Redirects are discouraged since they allow sloppy/bad client behaviour > without providing any clear gain. Clients that rely on redirects double up > on server traffic and render TLS useless since sensitive data will already > have been exposed during the first call.

[1]: [https://github.com/interagent/http-api-design#require- tls](https://github.com/interagent/http-api-design#require-tls)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Most of these points seem well-thought out, but the pagination system using Content-Range headers seems a little bit quirky.

GitHub are using Link headers which seems more in keeping with the typical web approach of pagination:

[https://developer.github.com/v3/#pagination](https://developer.github.com/v3/#pagination)

Does anyone have any real world experience with either of these approaches?

</comment><comment><USER6> I am not sure about "Provide full resources where available". Why do we need to return everything with DELETE request? Client is supposed to know what to be deleted, so the response seems redundant.

<comment><USER7> Consider this a request to delete an item from a users shopping cart:

DELETE /api/users/1234/cart/5678

I would expect this response to return the cart resource so client does not have to issue a GET /api/users/1234/cart request.</comment></comment>


Writing Music in Plain Text - <AUTHOR> https://pellejuul.github.io/posts/2017/03/12/writing-music-in-plain-text.html <comment><USER2> Doesn't Lilypond already do this?

<comment><USER3> This is much closer to ABC notation [1] -- which the article says was an inspiration. ABC has been used for a long time by folk musicians, for example here [2].

1\. [http://abcnotation.com/](http://abcnotation.com/)

2\. [https://thesession.org/tunes](https://thesession.org/tunes)</comment></comment>


School ditches rules and loses bullies - <AUTHOR> http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/school-ditches-rules-and-loses-bullies-5807957 <comment><USER2> Since my natural preference (and probably that of many here) would be more freedom I think it's important to be wary of wishful thinking. Even though I think the link between authoritarian institutions and bullying is _real_ , there are too many variables at play to make such a direct assertion.

Regardless, I favor less rules and more freedom for kids _for it 's own sake_. If there are social and/or developmental benefits, that would be icing on the cake.

Where I grew up (near Charlottesville, VA), I had acres of wilderness in my backyard and the surrounding area to explore with my friends. We would build make play forts, climb (real) trees, make bridges over creeks and rivers etc. In the winter we'd go sledding, unsupervised, on _real_ hills that we discovered ourselves .. age ranges from 7 to 10.

Nearby there were a couple old plantation houses (ruins) near the scene of various battles from the revolutionary to the civil war. One even had cannonballs embedded in the walls. To be clear, these were _just there_ , not maintained as museums etc. They were a rumor passed from older kids to younger ones, each mini-generation re-discovering them and the wonders contained.

I bet if our parents knew exactly what we were doing they would have been horrified, that was part of the fun. We did these things _without their permission_.

When I was about 13, we moved to upper middle class suburban California. Nice, _safe_ , maintained parks. Pretend islands with pretend castles, slides and playground equipment with signs displaying instructions for "proper use." Frankly, boring, synthetic and alarmingly _sad_.

<comment><USER3> >Even though I think the link between authoritarian institutions and bullying is real, there are too many variables at play to make such a direct assertion.

On the contrary, the problem is that schools are _insufficiently_ authoritarian. Low-level harassment by students goes unpunished, while outright retaliation (a well-deserved punch in the face) _is_ punished.

A lot of schools are in this weird uncanny valley between freedom and strict discipline. _Both_ would create order, but choosing one in between will have the advantages of neither.

<comment><USER4> I am not sure your ideal of perfect authoritarianism is possible. If you want to torment someone it is always going to be possible to do invisibly to casual observation. Restrictions merely determine the language of what harassment consists off, but those who are less well adjusted socially, who are unable to participate as effectively in whatever social maneuvering exists, will always be targeted.

<comment><USER3> _My_ impossible idea? I was not the one who coined the phrase "Zero tolerance."

<comment><USER5> Yes, the idea you espouse. Yours, given that you promoted it. Or do you want to revise your statement?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Occurs to me that under the strict playground rules, the school was effectively being a bully: harmless natural behavior was being punished way out of proportion and with no sensible (to the kids) reason. Seems the bullies were just mimicking what the school was doing.

<comment><USER7> Agree in principle: a great deal of bullying goes on in schools that is not pupil-on-pupil.

<comment><USER8> I grew up partly in the French school system, and this certainly holds true. Teachers were often prototypical bullies : humiliating kids, mocking them outright, verbally lashing out at them.

No shocker that this behavior trickles down as a model to follow.

<comment><USER9> I grew up partly in the French school system too, but never had such kind of teachers. I was both in private schools and ZEP (area with high level of immigration and considered schools with problems). This is just to balance your point of view with respect to the French school system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> While ideologically I am more likely to agree with the study (hence the need for more caution), the results seem possibly (I bet, more) likely due to the Hawthorne effect. That is the kids and teachers felt they were special because of the study and so behaved better. Alternatively, fabricated data.

The article is written like this is a silver bullet with hand waving pseudoscience justification which implies it is total bull.

<comment><USER11> I grew up in New Zealand in the 80s. Bullrush, 3-story high flying foxes on school property, huge trees, open farmland, unsupervised cross-country runs: no adults around were par for the course except if someone broke a bone (which I remember happening in my community twice in 10 years) and we managed ourselves. We like to think we're a good outdoor lot of people and many of us adults have been horrified to think our kids can't grow up like we did.

What I saw in this video was like looking back 30 years and it made me happy. You're underestimating our kids to think we can't let them loose for a good game of bullrush and they are more aware that they are being watched than actually just playing the rules of the game. Also remember that Rugby is New Zealand's national sport and these kids grow up watching it and knowing the rules. I'd bet some of those kids end up in the All Blacks.

<comment><USER12> Another New Zealander here, there's merit to encouraging safety consciousness in children. An injury like a broken back (That most people think will "never happen to them") can doom someone for life. Teaching rigorous safety consciousness in children should result in some of that safety consciousness sticking around into adulthood.

That being said, I also think rugby is a silly game.

<comment><USER11> >Teaching rigorous safety consciousness in children

Yes, watching the video reminded me that no-one taught me how to tackle when I was playing Rugby as a skinny 11 year old. Good to see the kids at the school have someone to help them avoid those common injuries and still get some decent play in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There weren't any rules when I was in primary school either and there definitely were bullies and injuries on the playground.

> Children develop the frontal lobe of their brain when taking risks, meaning > they work out consequences. "You can't teach them that. They have to learn > risk on their own terms. It doesn't develop by watching TV, they have to get > out there."

Weak argument for the no-rules position. Children get injuries all the time, whether you have rules or not :].

The fact that this particular school has no reports of injuries seems suspicious to me. And a (self reported) higher level of concentration in the classroom can't be related to the playground absence of rules (well, the article doesn't provide any explanations for that). Did they ditch the coke vending machines as well ? I could believe that.

Disclaimer: I was raised in Europe and although there were no rules per se we weren't allowed to leave the school premises. The article doesn't give enough details to compare both situations.

<comment><USER14> The article doesn't give a lot of information, but neither does your anecdotes.

>There weren't any rules when I was in primary school either and there definitely were bullies and injuries on the playground.

I'm not sure that the article is saying that the removal of rules has lead to zero bullies/injuries--just a reduction.

>Weak argument for the no-rules position. Children get injuries all the time, whether you have rules or not :].

This is an even weaker argument _for_ rules. If children are going to get injuries whether you have rules or not, than why are you wasting time rule- making when nobody wants to follow the rules and nobody wants to enforce the rules? Furthermore, I'd say that the thesis of "less rules means more activity, means less time spent harassing and troublemaking," is very plausible.

It's like getting a husky and crating him up all day, then wondering why he's irritable and destructive.

<comment><USER13> It got stuck in the keyboard but I wanted to add in the disclaimer that I don't have any strong opinion on the subject of rules on the playground. Moreover, there seem to be significant differences between our countries on that topic.

> The article doesn't give a lot of information, but neither does your > anecdotes.

I fully agree with you, I just wanted to point out that one school "without rules" is not enough to draw any conclusion regarding bullying as the article seems to imply. (I read "lose bullies" as "no bullies", my mistake).

> This is an even weaker argument for rules.

I don't really have an argument for or against rules. I don't even know what's in the playground rulebook.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Am I the only one that does not see anything special about those kids?

We played with sticks and stones, football, skate, bmx biking, hiking all the time in Spain.

You got hurt all the time too, but mostly scratches, you understood risk and knew the limits.

There were also bullies, but the best thing you can do against bullies is fight them back. There are some places with rules like "no fighting" that ironically makes bullies rule.

<comment><USER16> > but the best thing you can do against bullies is fight them back.

That sounds crazy to me. Doesn't fighting back just escalate things? And do we really want the next generation to grow up thinking that fighting is OK? Will they apply that same pattern when they're adults?

<comment><USER17> I wouldn't mind at all if the next generation was more comfortable with fighting. It's a basic human instinct and when basic instincts are completely suppressed pathological behaviors will bulge out instead.

The current state of "assault" law is appalling, especially in the U.S. We need to get more than a bit back to what we actually are.

<comment><USER16> What exactly do you mean by "what we actually are"? I don't want to jump to conclusions and go off in the wrong direction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I look forward to them publishing, and will be interested to see the long term effects, especially with kids that have been exposed to only this regime from the moment they join the school. On the face of it right now, I'd be wary of the Hawthorne effect:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect)

</comment><comment><USER19> So 10,000 children grow up happier and learning proper risk taking behaviour... and one dies from strangulation when going down a slide with a rope in hand (happened last week in my city)... and one is quadriplegic for life after jumping into a murky lake (friend of my cousin)...

Do we really, _really_ just want to accept those risks? I don't think that's easy to answer...

<comment><USER20> Yes, it's called evolution the kid that can't figure out he is doing something very dangerous does't end up having children of his own.

I know this sounds very harsh but it's not like there is another way to teach this to children. They need to figure it out on their own.

All parents wish they could wrap their children in cotton but the reality is they can't do that forever it's best children lern about risk early.

<comment><USER11> I don't know why you are being downvoted. Humans are physical creatures as much as thinkers, and not letting kids find physical limits is going to have severe effects on their ability to think and take creative risks with their minds.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> So, kids can survive playing around without paranoid adults standing over them and monitoring them 24/7? Truly shocking news indeed, it's not like this is exactly what has been happening for millenia, until the current paranoid approach to minuscule risks took over.

<comment><USER22> > [...] until the current paranoid approach to minuscule lawsuits took over.

FTFY. But, then again, I'm a helpless cynic.

<comment><USER21> Lawsuits are the consequence of that. The concept is that if something happen, there must be somebody to blame, because they "should have done something to prevent it". And the lawsuits are in no way minuscule - they are actually huge and consist a serious drag on the economy, but the worst consequence, of course, is the behavior modification which emphasizes covering one's ass over all else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> In the actual video, the principal doesn't say there are no rules, but that they start off with no rules and create them collaboratively is the need arises. E.g. no high tackles in the game of bullrush

<comment><USER24> Exactly. Kids don't want to hurt themselves or others, they just sometimes don't realize certain things like high tackles could be inherently dangerous. Teaching in this method is brilliant IMO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> The effect on bullying is likely minimal - in my school, everyone could do whatever they wanted and there were still plenty of assholes that made life hell.

<comment><USER26> In the school mentioned in the article, there was a significant _decrease_ in bullying. But we don't know absolute figures before and after (understandably, that is difficult to measure).

Two thoughts:

1\. Perhaps the effect of loosening the rules lasts only a few years. After that the playground gets boring again and the bullies resume their behavior.

2\. There might be other factors too, such as the environment of the kids when they are away from school.

<comment><USER27> 3\. Measuring the amount of bullying that occurs is not an exact science?

Not to say that letting the kids get their hands dirty is a bad idea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> That story is anecdote. Not surprising or a problem from a general news source. But as a few commenters have pointed out, it ignores the fact of high risk/low probability events, and our general inability to properly assess those.

I'm surprised this crowd isn't more data-driven in its assessment. Surely studies of child safety trends exist, and could be correlated to levels of regulation?

The closest thing a quick Google turned up is a study of mandatory cycle helmet legislation and its effect on injury rates. Those rates declined 45% after the introduction of helmet laws. Perhaps not a perfect analogy, but chalk one up for regulation. [http://cyclehelmets.org/1106.html](http://cyclehelmets.org/1106.html)

</comment><comment><USER29> Lenore Skenazy (Free Range Kids) blogged about this. [1] A commenter linked to a podcast with the school Principal. [2]

[1] [http://www.freerangekids.com/unsafe-playground-happier- safer...](http://www.freerangekids.com/unsafe-playground-happier-safer-kids/)

[2] [http://podcast.radionz.co.nz/ntn/ntn-20140127-0909-free_play...](http://podcast.radionz.co.nz/ntn/ntn-20140127-0909-free_play_at_school-048.mp3)

</comment><comment><USER30> Seems like there may be a correlation with: Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges (The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the government)

[http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Tacitus](http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Tacitus)

<comment><USER11> Not in this case:

[http://www.3news.co.nz/New-Zealand-again-least-corrupt- natio...](http://www.3news.co.nz/New-Zealand-again-least-corrupt- nation/tabid/423/articleID/323818/Default.aspx)

But I will say that New Zealand has a perceived problem currently as a somewhat 'nanny state'. Definitely a million kinds of by-laws but we try to resolve our differences with fairness in mind. Generally I describe New Zealand as a 'fair' country, as in, let's figure out what's fair for all involved.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> A lot of new experiments like this are basically the montessori approach. our kids' montessori school has giant tree logs and boulders.

</comment><comment><USER32> There's nothing very new about this. Aboriginal societies have been exercising the principle of permissive education for hundreds for years. There is something very logical about the idea of applying the premise of learning from one's mistakes to even the most basic things in life, which are learned as children.

</comment><comment><USER33> I think, in order to work that well, this kind of "riot" school yard activity would require a teacher with certain character traits such as authority, playfulness and calm at the same time. That guy in the video seems to suit very well. But it certainly looks like a good concept.

</comment><comment><USER34> I absolutely agree with this move, but I'll play devil's advocate for a moment on this

>Letting children test themselves on a scooter during playtime could make them more aware of the dangers when getting behind the wheel of a car in high school, he said.

Back in the days before all this modern child cocooning began, kids were free to roam and do pretty much whatever they wanted. But car drivers of the time routinely drove around without safety belts in what were essentially death traps. After safety belts and very basic safety equipment were introduced, it still took decades for people who grew up with the freer childhoods to really cotton on to them.

<comment><USER21> When I grew up I could roam freely (well, mostly, and I didn't always make as good use of it as I could, often preferring books to soccer) and I still have absolutely no problem with the concept of the safety belt. I know my safety is my responsibility, and if I have a device that can (and arguably already did) save my life - IMO only idiot won't use such a device. So I don't see any connection between rejecting belts and having freerange childhood.

<comment><USER34> Well, the article is positing the opposite effect is true, that cocooned children don't grow up with an appropriate respect for things that will hurt you, like driving your car safely. My devil's advocate argument is that the opposite is demonstrably true, that children who weren't cocooned _did_ in fact grow up to not appreciate things that would hurt them. A 1950s car, for example, was basically a passenger mulching machine, yet people who grew up uncocooned (as was common at the time) drove them with quite a bit of abandon, flying all over the inside of the passenger area without even basic safety harnesses.

I don't remember the statistic off the top of my head, but Ralph Nader brought to light one particularly brutal group of years where a large number of passengers were decapitated on the glove box door during accidents that were occurring at speeds under 35 mph.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I would like to send my kids there if there is a school like that at any state!

<comment><USER36> I grew up in NZ, Swanson is one of the rougher and poorer areas in Auckland, and the school no doubt has all the issues that come with areas like that. I'd be careful that gains aren't skewed as its not a 'average' school or socio- economic environment.

<comment><USER37> yeah, my thoughts exactly. The study is fairly biased in that if you did this to Remuera school, results may be significantly different.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> In my 7 year old daughter's gymnastics class the girls all play bullrush for fun during the last 10 minutes or so. Of course this is in a Canadian city where the schools don't have fences, doors are unlocked, no security guards, adults wander in and out all through the day. Americans would be shocked at the apparent permissiveness of it all.

</comment><comment><USER39> I'll raise this useless antidote with another. I was raised in a poor inner city school that had no playground. I went to an afterschool program that was heavily subsidized for poor kids that had a huge playground. There was no rules except the older kids and younger kids were segregated. There was pretty much no supervision. I was bullied tons. Hair pulled, harassed, excluded from the parts of the playground I wanted to go on.

</comment><comment><USER40> From a financial perspective there is a lot more downside to "no rules".

Imagine a child dying from hanging in the "lynching game". When teachers are asked if they knew about they said yes, but there are no rules.

Even if it underestimates the effect of bullying (which I'm skeptical about), it certainly puts the school at much more risk for easy lawsuits.

<comment><USER41> > Imagine

But that's the whole point: when you actually _do_ the experiment, all these horrible things that you imagine might happen don't actually happen.

<comment><USER42> By that logic there should have been no problems whatsoever before the creation of the rules that generally obtain at schools today. One has to ask what created the pressure for those rules in the first place.

<comment><USER41> > By that logic there should have been no problems whatsoever before the > creation of the rules that generally obtain at schools today

No, not "no problems whatsoever" just "fewer problems than there are now." Which is in fact the case.

The problem is that people looked at the problems that existed before the rules were in place and applied an argument of the form: There is a problem. Something must be done about this problem. This is something. Therefore we must do this.

I hope I don't have to explain the flaw in this reasoning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> This is the complete opposite of surprising to me.

</comment><comment><USER44> Oh really?

Sorry, I couldn't stop myself. From a standpoint of a person who was young not that long ago it's pretty much obvious. Children want, children do.

</comment><comment><USER45> What rules did the ditch?

<comment><USER11> Many schools still won't let kids play Bullrush or play in the dirt. This is a low decile school so it seems particularly awesome for the kids to get some exercise as many parents can't afford after school programs.

[http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/photograph/26271/bullrush-2009](http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/photograph/26271/bullrush-2009)

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> So lets ask the question. Why are some people bullies and some aren't? Is is because more rules are imposed on some then others? Is it because kids aren't allowed to play bull rush or play in the mud?

Bullies usually have emotional problems or brain chemistry issues. A high percentage of bullies have fathers that are abusive to their mothers and are bullies themselves (vicious cycle). It is difficult to tell if this is merely learned or genetic, but I am pretty sure that it has nothing to do with playing bull rush.

What is likely having an effect on the kids in this school's situation is positive peer pressure. The administration puts the kids in a position of judging other peers. This has been used for at least 20 years and was effective in a high school I once attended. It was no utopia, but I sure didn't observe much bullying going on.</comment>


Show HN: TelegramGo. Simple Command-Line Telegram Client on Go - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/shelomentsevd/telegramgo <comment><AUTHOR> Hi all! Month ago I started working on Golang library for work with MTProto(telegram protocol) and Telegram API.

Here is a simple example how to work with library.

Link to library: [https://github.com/shelomentsevd/mtproto](https://github.com/shelomentsevd/mtproto)

I am new in Go, so it would be awesome to get your feedbacks about code and library.

Thanks.</comment>


Why Yahoo is Good (But May Get Worse) [1998] - <AUTHOR> http://www.useit.com/alertbox/981101.html

<comment><USER2> Oh wow. Incredibly prescient on most points. Out of context, much of the description of it's strengths sounded like those of Google (at least, those of Google within the past few years). In the same vein, many of the problems it mentions for Yahoo ahead are visible when you go to the Yahoo homepage today-- especially the increasing number of services and topic hierarchy problems.

Now, what it says about advertising is another story entirely. A few years ago I would have dismissed it, but now it seems we may be on the verge of the problems he speaks about. We could use a more up-to-date run of the numbers, including look at trends starting back from 1998. I'm not sure how to go about finding data that old though.

Afterthought: Hilarious to read "3.0 seconds...fastest download times" sentence at the opening.</comment>


Why Twitter's Dying (And What You Can Learn from It) - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/bad-words/why-twitter-s-dying-and-what-you-can-learn-from-it-9ed233e37974 <comment><USER2> Richelieu: "Give me six lines written by the most honest man and I will find in them something to hang him." How many tweets have you sent? Tweeted by Snowden today.

I think this sums it up. The web is a permanent record of the brilliant and stupid things that you have said and think while at the same time society has become very focused on responding to rather than ignoring the stupid things people say and think.

</comment><comment><USER3> But it's not just the right-wing extremist parties. The culture of victimization in our universities is part of the same picture.</comment>


Hire me Eventbrite - <AUTHOR> http://hirecorymikell.eventbrite.com

<comment><USER2> Wow - very creative use of their platform.

Nice work dude - best of luck!</comment>


Retiring Internet Explorer - <AUTHOR> https://textslashplain.com/2020/01/19/retiring-internet-explorer/ <comment><USER2> > A fascinating set of circumstances led to Internet Explorer's dominance in > Asian markets. First, early browsers had poor support for Unicode and East > Asian character sets, forcing website developers to build their own text > rendering atop native code plugins (ActiveX). South Korea mandated use of a > locally-developed cipher (SEED) for banking transactions, and this cipher > was not implemented by browser developers… ActiveX again to the rescue. > Finally, since all users were using IE, and were accustomed to installing > ActiveX controls, malware started running rampant, so banks and other > financial institutions started bundling "security solutions" (aka rootkits) > into their ActiveX controls. Every user's browser was a battlefield with > warring native code trying to get the upper hand.

Wow. That's... a rather unconventional security architecture.

<comment><USER3> I'm Korean so I glad to see someone speaks out this.

Actually it was rather inevitable, partially because of the U.S. gov that time. The Korean gov wanted to grow e-commerce/e-banking in 1999 but the American gov did not allow to export cipher higher than 40 bits. As a result the Korean gov had to develop its own 128 bits cipher (SEED).

It was even before AES/SSL/TLS were introduced so the whole crypto stack was implemented using ActiveX.

I would say it was quite pioneer in 1999 but since then the gov don't even dare to replace the crypto policies. Now we are stuck at this in 2020.

<comment><USER4> What I think is kind of interesting is that South Korea arguably had/has the technical know-how to have built it's own domestic browser with SEED and good Hangul/Hanja language support built into it and ended up with a very siloed alternative web. As an example, I'm thinking of the ubiquity of the Hangul Word Processor over Microsoft Word (which apparently has been around for over 30 years!) which gained near ubiquity in its domestic market.

However, I think the present situation is possibly the better one as a siloed, South Korea only web, separate and distinct from the rest of the Web, would end up being a much harder one to eventually migrate to the regular global web ecosystem vs. the current problem of just getting banks to stop using SEED and moving users to modern browsers.

<comment><USER5> > As an example, I'm thinking of the ubiquity of the Hangul Word Processor > over Microsoft Word (which apparently has been around for over 30 years!) > which gained near ubiquity in its domestic market.

There are two major factors in the ubiquity of HWP:

1\. Its use of the de facto standard format in the SK government (the de jure standard is the ODF since 2007, but its use is virtually nonexistent). This stems from the fact that it was the most viable word processor supporting Hangul the script back in 1990s.

2\. Its excellent support of table-based layout. HWP is a decent word processor in comparison to MS Word, and in some cases it is even superior. Koreans used to produce lots of documents based on tables [1] and HWP's UX was specially tailored to them. MS Word lagged behind for a long time, probably because this use case is not common in English worlds.

[1] You can search for "이력서" (résumé) to see what I mean. Even a plain document tends to be styled in this way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Someone needs to tell Microsoft.

The Microsoft License Advisor, which has the pricing info for Windows,

[https://mla.microsoft.com/](https://mla.microsoft.com/)

on Firefox pops up a box which reads

"Internet Explorer Notification NaN and newer versions. Download latest version of Internet Explorer"

<comment><USER7> NaN seems to be the result of a typo in the JS. They tried to concatenate two strings, but added an extra / character, which causes the strings to be coerced to NaN.

      '

	'  /

                 + ' Microsoft License Advisor is optimized for Internet Explorer 7'

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If Microsoft really believes no-one needs IE, why is it still shipping it as part of Windows 10?

Specifically, why is it still shipping IE _as the only browser_ as part of Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC, including LTSC 2019? Yes, that is the version of Windows 10 with an "extended support end date of 9 January 2029"*

* [https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/13853/windows-lifec...](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/13853/windows-lifecycle-fact-sheet)

<comment><USER9> > If Microsoft really believes no-one needs IE, why is it still shipping it as > part of Windows 10?

We have multi-million dollar software that relies on IE to run -- that's why. What good is an OS that can't run our software?

Since Windows 10 we've setup an icon to just launch this application in IE and set the default browser for end-users to Chrome.

Eventually that software will be replaced and we can end our use of IE but today is not that day.

<comment><USER10> IE doesn't have to ship with Windows 10, does it? Is there any reason it couldn't be a separate install?

I don't use it so I'd rather not have it on my machine.

<comment><USER11> From what I recall, iexplore.exe is actually only a small wrapper around mshtml.dll. A lot of software depend on mshtml.dll and related DLLs. So you might think you're not using IE, but other non-browser software you use might be using IE under the covers. If Microsoft doesn't install IE by default, these programs would not work correctly (which is why Wine also implements these DLLs).

<comment><USER12> Correct, iexplore.exe is itself a small wrapper. But that doesn't stop Microsoft from _not shipping_ that small wrapper. Software that embeds mshtml.dll does not require the existence of the exe file.

(Or alternatively, Microsoft could put some hack into Windows so that attempts to run iexplore.exe are passed to Edge unless the administrator has twiddled with some arbitrary registry key or group policy.)

<comment><USER9> > But that doesn't stop Microsoft from not shipping that small wrapper.

They could but that goes back to reply about it existing software still requiring IE.

IE will be around for as long as very critical apps still require it. In some form, it might be around forever.

<comment><USER13> IE should just be a compatibility mode in edge so you only have one program and a button to say "this page is broken, load in legacy mode". That way everyone else in the world can stop being forced to support IE users.

<comment><USER14> This won't work where ActiveX is required. They would have to write a plug-in wrapper...

<comment><USER12> The legacy mode would surely run MSHTML.dll for the entire page.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> _-___________-_ > Burndown List >> Banking, especially in Asia

My bank in China requires Windows + IE + a custom ActiveX control to use their Internet banking. As a result, I don't use it. One of my accounts can be used via their mobile app (if you read Chinese or have another phone to use camera translation). My business account cannot be, and I am therefore required to visit a branch along with my official chop (seal / stamp) whenever I want to make a transaction.

In every bank branch I've been to, the computers are using ancient versions of Windows and IE. That actually applies to the PSB (a branch of the police) too. I think it might be a while before they get off IE.

<comment><USER15> I'm surprised Microsoft doesn't just revoke people's licenses to use EOLed Windows, such that they're breaking the law by staying on that version. That'd get crufty corps and orgs moving, no?

<comment><USER16> It would get them moving, but not necessarily in the direction MSFT would like. If they are forced to change OS, they might think twice about moving to yet another OS made by a company that just did the forcing in such a ruthless way.

Mind you, I would totally agree with such a decision, if MSFT decided to enforce it, but I dont think it will necessarily play out in a way that is advantageous to MSFT, hence why they haven't done so yet.

<comment><USER15> Keep in mind, Microsoft _already_ aren't making any money from them. They aren't quite "Microsoft customers" in any real sense, if they're running WinXP and Office2007.

<comment><USER16> Those running WinXP/Office2007 are, in fact, pretty legit customers (assuming they run official registered versions of Windows and require security patches/support). MSFT even has a special payment plan for entities that refuse to update, so they charge them a hefty sum for custom security patches and support, with costs going up significantly every subsequent year.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The death of IE cannot happen soon enough. Our organization only supports IE11 now, but even that is still a terrible handbrake on our dev process. So many tickets get reopened because of issues found only in IE, and it limits both the features we add to our application and the general polish/look/feel we can achieve.

</comment><comment><USER18> The Japanese electronic tax filing system's browser support policy is to support browsers that come preinstalled with the OS, period, actual marketshare be damned. This makes them support IE, Edge and Safari, but not Chrome nor Firefox. (While some newer parts of the system do support them, most of the critical parts still do not. Additionally, since the system still only supports the EdgeHTML Edge, the Chromium Edge automatic rollout is delayed to April specifically for Japan, to avoid confusion during the February-March tax filing season.)

The only way to make them stop supporting IE is to have the OS itself stop bundling it - which, like it was mentioned elsewhere in this discussion, is probably never going to happen.

</comment><comment><USER19> The last great version of IE that I personally used was IE 5.1 for Mac OS 9. It was - at the time - my preferred browser on the platform and really shone brightly.

As a web designer, IE - since 6 - has been the bane of my existence. It's not nearly as bad as it used to be, but it's there.

<comment><USER20> IE6 was a very good browser when it came out in 2001. People forget how the landscape looked at that time: Netscape 6 was utter garbage, Firefox was still years away and Opera was a tiny, largely unknown niche browser that did cost money and was plagued by incompatible websites which were optimized for IE.

It's just that MS ceased investing more than the absolute minimum into their browser after releasing IE 6 - it took until 2009 until a MS browser passed the Acid2 compatibility test.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> > IE9 was a fantastic, best-of-its-time browser, and I'll forever be proud of > it. But as IE9 wound down and the Windows 8 adventure began, it was already > clear that its lead would not last against the Chrome juggernaut.

This is tangential, but I wonder how Chrome got so far ahead, not in market share but in features and quality, even with IE's 10+ year head start. Did Google just throw more programmers at the problem, or was there more to it? I suspect this has already been discussed to death, so pointers to previous discussions would be good.

<comment><USER22> Don't you remember the weird explanatory comic that came out with Chrome?

[https://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/index.html](https://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/index.html)

<comment><USER23> Illustrated by none other than Scott McCloud, how to forget it?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> > I printed out the source code for the network stack and sat > down with a > red pen.

Does anyone still do this to get to know new code base?

<comment><USER11> I have done this once before too, with a particularly hairy multi-page function from a legacy system. Spreading all the pages over a large meeting room desk allows you to view the whole code at once, instead of being constrained by the physical size of a computer monitor. And there's something hard to describe about being able to physically manipulate the code (rearranging the sheets of paper, scribbling over the code with a pencil, etc). I hope VR one day allows for that kind of experience without wasting lots of paper.

<comment><USER25> Probably you would be interested in [https://dynamicland.org/](https://dynamicland.org/) or Bret Victor fame.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I understand Microsoft needs to continue supporting IE for old websites but my boss a couple days ago used the Microsoft Lifecycle Policy as a reason why we, as website developers, need to support IE11 also. I would like articles saying people shouldn't use IE to also explicity answer the question, "Should website developers support IE?"

<comment><USER27> To me the answer to that question is another question - "what market share does IE11 still have amongst our target users, how fast is it decreasing, and what's the development effort required to support it?"

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> We fully stopped supporting IE11. Refactoring code to use ES6 and reducing code size by 20% is proving a big win for the vast majority of customers. If any customers are still on IE11 - they can run Edge, which now that that is Edgium we have even more code size reduction we can implement to improve load time and user experience.

<comment><USER29> You can even do differential bundles if you want to go to the effort of setting it up. So IE11 users get one legacy build of your JS client, and modern browsers (with module support) get the simpler modern code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> _> No. Internet Explorer will remain a supported product until its support lifecycle runs out._

which is pretty much going to be "never". IE's support lifecycle says that a version of IE is supported for as long as the version of windows it shipped with is supported.

Windows 10 shipped with IE11 and Windows 10 is going to be the last version of Windows ever released, remaining in constant support.

Companies on the other hand still force users to use IE11 and they will continue to do so while IE11 is supported (which is forever).

We will have to continue to support a browser that came out in the beginning of the last decade for at least another 10 to 15 years.

</comment><comment><USER31> I wrote JScript and VBScript for IE 5.X and 6.0 more than 20 years ago. We used ActiveX objects to do things on the client side of intranet applications for a law firm.I wrote a docket calendar that used the date picker control for example. We could only use IE not Netscape and nothing else. Which meant it was not a cross compilable with Linux, OS/2, MacOS etc and people who used those computers where SOL. I tried to talk about JavaScript and Java to make it cross over to the other systems, but I was told it was a Microsoft Shop and we only use MS technologies.

</comment><comment><USER32> I had to support a really old site that another developer wrote on IE just over a year ago. Luckily I am no longer at that company. Basically 99% of development and sites worked with modern browsers but one needed site required IE6 compat mode. It would have taken months to rewrite and the company didn't want to spend resources on it. At my current job we also have a lot of IBM software that seems to work best in IE although only a few people still use it at work. Doesn't seem like IE will be retiring anytime soon.

The article (and site) from this post is very good.

</comment><comment><USER33> We would love to, but I'm sure you, like me, has a SaaS Vendor that still needs IE for a portion of their website that they just can't seem to re-write.

</comment><comment><USER34> I know I'm in the minority on this, but I love the feel of IE, it feels like the most OS-integrated browser I've ever used. Of course, Trident was based off the same layout engine as MS Office, so that makes sense.

I still make my sites work in IE, down to IE4, and probably 1-3 too, I just haven't had a chance to test them yet.

I think that in the retro-computing world, IE will be one of the longest browsers still in use.

<comment><USER35> I don't know about IE1 and 3, but for IE2 (the one that shipped with NT4) you need at least, from what I remember:

\- no name-based virtual hosting (it does HTTP 1.0 but doesn't send Host headers)

\- avoid redundant whitespace (it's not collapsed)

\- wrap


Ask HN: How to find remote development jobs? - <AUTHOR> I'm about to begin a Master's program in Statistics. Unfortunately, the school is not in an area where there are many tech jobs. I'm looking for a full-time, remote development job with a flexible schedule to work around classes. What are some good places to start looking?<p>Thanks! <comment><USER2> I would start by looking at <http://jobs.github.com/> , <http://jobs.37signals.com/> , <http://www.authenticjobs.com/> and filter out those that say "remote|anywhere" in the location field.

<comment><AUTHOR> Excellent, thanks for the suggestions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Speaking from experience of years as a software architect and now a development manager at a very large technology company, unless you've got a HIGHLY impressive track record of experience, no job worth a crap is going to hire you to work remotely. If you're dead set on it, then as others have pointed out, the freelancing approach (Elance, Guru, oDesk, etc.) does work, to a point. On those sites, you'll always be competing against some insanely low-cost (and low-quality) offshore workers but that's not as big an issue. Again, even on those sites, the issue will be a demonstrated track record of excellence. So, best advice would be to take 3-5 projects on those sites of any size doing anything you feel comfortable doing and don't worry about the $$. Hit home runs on those projects and two things will happen:

(1) There's a very good chance those who hire you will hire you again or extend the projects out

(2) You now have ammo to get other better/more lucrative online freelance projects.

Do the online freelance thing for maybe two years and have tons of good real- world experience under your belt and then you have a shot at landing a full- time remote work position.

Just my two cents worth...

<comment><USER4> I've been working remotely for a few years now, and I can say that I don't have a HIGHLY impressive track record, but that has not stopped me from being interviewed to see if my skills were worth something.

I suggest if you have a little time and don't need the money badly, cook up a project of your own. Managing even a small project that you aren't getting paid for and progressing in that is a good mark of dedication.

Other than that, spread around your resume, and post that you're looking for work. Never know what will come of it. Heck, I got a job interview and offer from another HN user here, because I asked if anyone wanted my skills.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you're into python, you can check out <http://www.python.org/community/jobs/>, there are the occasional remote/telecommuting jobs posted there.

A company I've run across before that only works with remote devs is Art and Logic: <http://www.artlogic.com/> (absolutely no affiliation, I just know they're a remote company).

</comment><comment><USER6> Depends on the type of job you are looking for. If you need total flexibility, you might try freelancing. You will be more likely to find freelance gigs anyways.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have done some web dev freelancing in the past; we have a new baby so I'm looking more for the stability of guaranteed full-time work.

<comment><USER7> First of all : Congratulations for your baby! You may also check Stackoverflow careers . [http://careers.stackoverflow.com/jobs?searchTerm=&locati...](http://careers.stackoverflow.com/jobs?searchTerm=&location=&range=20&telecommute=true)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Craigslist worked for me. There's a huge amount of garbage on CL, but I found a remote contracting dev job that turned into salaried gig.</comment>


Ticketmaster Ticketfast Barcode Format - <AUTHOR> http://www.georgiecasey.com/2014/09/16/ticketmaster-ticketfast-barcode-format/ <comment><USER2> Using a proprietary barcode format won't help if people post the barcode image itself (which they do in the example image provided). More work might be required to 'unskew' perspective shifts to get it back looking like the original if the photo wasn't taken from directly in front of the printout, but barcode readers are generally designed to deal with that sort of skew anyway.

I remember when the Xbox One came out last year a lot of people were posting ebay listings for digital download games in the form of scannable QR codes and posting those QR codes as proof of the item existing (since otherwise it is all digital). Not surprisingly people claimed those QR codes using the ebay images without ever buying the item.

</comment><comment><USER3> As someone who works in the industry (but not Ticketmaster) and has spoken frequently to higher ups at TM, people should realize that the majority of the time "handling charges" are a way for performers to generate more revenue from sales while deflecting the bad PR to Ticketmaster. That's one of the services TM provides to their clients (performers/venues).

If you're a performer and you want to sell tickets for a face value of "$50", but generate revenue at the $60 or $65/ticket range, you add on some fees and let TM take the hit from the fans for "gouging" them. It's very common.

<comment><USER4> I've never heard of TM sharing ticketing fees with artists.

In my experience TM fees are for TM. They may share with the _venue_ , but the venue isn't sharing that with the artist. In fact they are taking a cut of the face value from the artist directly.

In fact I've even seen TM take a small percentage of the gross face value!

<comment><USER3> You're splitting hairs between who is considered the TM client: venue or performer. Of course there may be any number of organizations between you the ticket buyer and the actual person singing and dancing onstage (venue, promoter, manager, record label, etc.).

Regardless of which of these is getting the biggest cut of the "fees", the reality is that in most cases the "fees" are line items used to increase revenue without raising ticket face prices, and TM is not the primary beneficiary.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Just this morning I was selling tickets to an Interpol concert in Seattle and realized people on Craigslist were posting pictures of their tickets with the barcodes visible.

I'm sure it's happened before.

<comment><USER6> So you could easily scan it, go in early, get free access to the ticket, and the purchaser is going to blame the guy he bought it off, not you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Could you use some form of public/private key combination to prove that you have a ticket to something without actually giving away a digital ticket?

<comment><USER8> Yes -- a scheme like this is used to prove the origin of a digitally signed email without revealing the sender's private key. So there's a model for this functionality.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Similar issues when people post scans of mail they get, and don't realize the barcode encodes the same info that the stuff they redacted had.

</comment><comment><USER10> One festival I bought tickets for not only had standard barcodes but also sequential ticket numbers!

<comment><USER11> Many times the order item numbers will be sequential within the order, but each order will have a different number.

You can order three tickets and you'll get 08737401, 08737402, and 08737403, but the next person to order three tickets will get 08343201, 08343202, and 08343203.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Has this happened to anyone? What would happen if you showed up and find that your ticket is invalid. I'm guessing it varies by venue but is there any recourse? I can't imagine they'd just turn you away without at least a little investigation.

<comment><USER13> this hasn't happened to me, but i witnessed it at Outside Lands SF this year and it is devastating to watch. there is basically zero recourse for the buyer of the ticket that scans invalid and many of them have very legitimate looking pdfs and emails they got from craigslist.

neither the ticketmaster folks nor the venue folks tend to be super compassionate in my experience. it's a real mess though, the venues often have no in-and-out privileges (possibly due to how scanning invalidates some 24-hour key), so even as a law-abiding consumer, you're stuck at an event for the whole time just to deal with ticketmaster's implementation details.

i'm sure others have said this, but that is definitely a business that wants disrupting. there's so many bits of tech that could make this experience better and safer for consumers, but i suspect ticket fees are more profitable than user experience.

<comment><USER11> I just worked admissions for a festival in Seattle, and we have started seeing scalpers actually walk with the customer to the gate, and verify they get entrance. If the scalped ticket isn't valid, the scalper will refund right there. People have stopped trusting scalpers with print outs, because they often don't work. The resellers are realizing this and offering guarantee.

As an aside, many festivals and venues don't disallow re-entry due to TM implementation (I've been to enough TM ticketed events that have re-entry). They ban in-and-out so that you cannot go elsewhere to drink or eat without the festival surcharge and kickback.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is this one of those theoretical problems that doesn't show up in reality?

<comment><USER4> You'd think so but people actually post pictures like that. Not sure if it's been taken advantage of but I have a feeling this has:

[https://twitter.com/search?q=my%20new%20credit%20card%20pic....](https://twitter.com/search?q=my%20new%20credit%20card%20pic.twitter.com&src=typd)

<comment><USER15> A handy real time feed: [https://twitter.com/NeedADebitCard](https://twitter.com/NeedADebitCard)

<comment><USER16> Anyone know a story behind this? Some of these have to know exactly what they're doing, so are they trolling or joking or something?

<comment><USER17> Sadly, I am quite certain the story is that people are just naive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Hehe, love this. Ticketmaster deserves every ounce of scorn, similar to Comcast, ATT & VZW</comment>


America's Never-Ending Oil Consumption - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/05/american-oil-consumption/482532/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Best-Of-The-Atlantic+%28The+Atlantic+-+Best+Of%29&single_page=true <comment><USER3> Oil is great.

From an engineering perspective it is energy dense and relatively stable and easy-to-use. I can put a small amount of it in my pickup truck and drive up the side of a mountain. A pilot can fly to the other side of the world in a few hours time with a plane powered by the stuff. A few hundred years ago that level of mobility and conevnience would have been seen as a magic power - <USER2> domain of witches and demons.

I don't think Americans are addicted to oil. We are addicts of the capability, the freedom, if you will, that oil enables. In the short term limits on oil limit our ability to do the things we want, many of which require oil to enable. When an alternative technology comes along which gives us the same capability and is cleaner and (most importantly) cheaper, we will gladly move on from oil.

I personally would even support a tax on oil (and thus marginally reduce my freedom) in order to invest in whatever is next and facilitate the change before we permanently impair the earth. Alas my fellow countrymen do not have it in their hearts to tax themselves for this purpose.

<comment><USER4> Oil is great for energy storage and we have over a hundred years of infrastructure built for it. And that oil technology is still being refined and advanced.

The big issues with oil are due to the source, not the technology itself. Right now the source is underground carbon sinks (fossil fuels). But what if we produced synthetic oil using excess solar energy during daytime? It would pull carbon from the air. And would burn cleaner than any fossil fuel source.

It seems many dream of a battery future. But is it really better to produce millions of batteries instead of just finding better ways to make oil?

It kind of reminds me of the classic desktop app vs web app debate. One big advantage of web app is that upgrages are single source, just update the server. But desktop apps, there may be many multiple old versions out there because users don't always update. In a similar way, why are we focusing on the very difficult and slow task of upgrading all cars to EV? Why not improve the source of oil itself?

<comment><USER5> EV's have other benefits. Ultimately, when economy of scale is fully realized, perhaps electric motors are cheaper, cleaner, and easier to maintain than ICE's. Perhaps automobile supply chains will become similar to laptop/Iphone supply chains ( ie extremely efficient) . Perhaps EVs are easier to re-cycle. Perhaps they perform better on the road. For ex, accelerate and stop faster . Perhaps there will be a 5x 10x 20x breakthrough in battery technology?

<comment><USER4> When comparing just technology, EV cars are superior. Far greater engine efficiency, less complexity and moving parts, efficient transmission of energy from power plants to vehicle, etc.

But we live in an oil world. There are billions of cars out there. Cars are big investments that are handed down generation to generation like houses, especially in developing countries. EV car sales are still a drop in the bucket compared to ICE car sales.

If we want fast and rapid action on climate change, the quickest path is not pushing EV. It would be massive investment in reducing the cost to make synthetic oil. This may seem impossible, but that's what many said about solar competing with fossil fuels. EV car enthusiasts often talk about how EV cars get immediate environmental benefits from power plant upgrades such as burning coal to solar. But how much more orders of magnitude environment improvement would we get from carbon neutral oil creation? If a cost effective way was found that could compete with fossil fuels, billions of cars would immediately benefit environmentally.

Again, another computer analogy. Imagine someone invented a beautiful new elegant programming language that reduces CPU energy use by 50%. At the same time, someone found a way to reduce JVM CPU energy use by 20%. If we wanted the shortest path to worldwide energy reduction in CPU, what would be faster, just update the JVM for millions of servers or rewrite everything in the new programming language?

<comment><USER6> Don't we already kinda do this with Ethanol, and aside from how growing so much corn is also bad for the environment, how it's a less efficient fuel, and other concerns (indirect land use change etc), it already works to des crease our dependence on the stuff in the ground?

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel_in_the_United_S...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel_in_the_United_States#)

<comment><USER4> Ethanol is terrible, especially corn produced ethanol. The type of process I'm referring to is this:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-diesel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-diesel)

The inputs to this are just energy + water + CO2 = oil. No corn or other plants required. Currently this type of technology is far from cost competitive. But that could potentially change if more was invested into this area.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Getting people to use less oil is easy. Tax it to make it more expensive. I don't mean to say that that would necessarily be good policy, but it would be a hell of a lot more effective than just giving a speech.

<comment><USER8> That's one of the lessons of economics that seems to be largely lost:

To discourage use of something, make it more expensive (or less efficient).

To encourage use of something, make it less expensive (or more efficient).

Increasing efficiency _increases_ overall consumption: the Jevons paradox (1865).

Jevons was also an early peak-fossil-fuels theorist, though his area was coal (oil had just been discovered, the 4-cycle internal combustion engine was 20 years off).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Americans don't love cars and big homes. The way our cities are arranged and our land is zoned make it difficult to live without a car and a big home.

<comment><USER10> I absolutely agree about cars, but in what way is it "difficult to live without" a big home for the average American? How does zoning make that the case?

<comment><USER11> The biggest effect of zoning rules and regulations is to prevent developers from building highly dense and efficient neighborhoods.

If zoning rules allowed developers to build larger, taller, and more numerous buildings, we would all have better, cheaper, and more transportationally efficient housing.

<comment><USER12> Zoning rules are largely the result of the desires of the local residents.

<comment><USER13> Exactly; local residents totally don't like housing in their area become cheaper, because their own houses would become cheaper. They use their privilege of being local residents to constrain other property owners' rights in their area, preventing them from building denser housing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If you're an American and you're interested in supporting a carbon tax, check out the Citizen's Climate Lobby: [http://citizensclimatelobby.org/](http://citizensclimatelobby.org/)

What they're trying to implement is a revenue-neutral fee on carbon emissions: a fee is collected on fossil fuels at the source (the well, the mine, whatever), and the money from the fee is placed in a fund. At the end of the year, the money is then redistributed to every citizen. About 2/3 of citizens would net positive on this fee.

<comment><USER15> So 2/3rds of citizens are incentivized with hard currency every year to want MORE carbon emissions?

<comment><USER14> The fee is aimed at and energy producers and investors. The fee would increase steadily every year, which would signal them to divest from fossil fuels. The dividend part of the plan is put in mainly to make Republicans happy, since no Republican is ever going to support a new tax (Al Gore couldn't even increase the gas tax by 5 cents).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Politician speaches has usually little to no impact on dayily life habbits.

What can help is the policies. E.g. Higher gas tax, denser cities with better public transport, higher taxes on cars...

</comment><comment><USER8> That's an interesting exploration of the past 50 years or so of US domestic oil consumption politics. For a rather more detailed history of oil, I recommend Daniel Yergin's _The Prize_. It's rather the epic book (there's also a PBS/BBC miniseries), and it wraps up in 1992 with the first Iraq War, but really hammers home the impact of oil.

As to consumption, conservation, price, encouragement, and discouragement, the problem's complicated.

As torpfactory notes here, oil is close to a perfect fuel. It's high in energy density (by weight or volume), _exceptionally_ stable (proven multi-million year stability), liquid (so it flows, unlike solids, but stays in what you put it in, unlike gas), safe (little or no protective equipment is needed near it, and while I wouldn't advise bathing in it, you can touch it with little harm), and works in thermal and motive systems ranging from thimble-sized to the size of a large house. The immediate exhaust products are mostly harmless (CO2 and water -- though yes, over time the CO2 becomes _quite_ problematic).

There's little else that's so immensely attractive as a fuel.

It was also abundant and cheap, for a time. But it's ultimately finite, supplies we've used took tens, possibly hundreds of millions of years to form, and we're consuming them at the rate of ~5 million years of formation per year of consumption. Jeffrey S. Dukes' paper, "Burning Buried Sunshine", describes this calculus in detail, and I highly recommend it.

If you want people to use more of something, lower prices and increase efficiency. If you want them to use less, increase prices and decrease efficiency. The fact that increased efficiency _increases_ overall production has long been noted, William Stanley Jevons is credited with describing his eponymous paradox in _The Coal Question_ , 1865.

Oil's price is another problem. Carbon taxes address externalities on the _consumption_ side, but in _extraction_ , I'm coming to the conclusion that typical market forces tend to ignore, to their error, the _embodied creation costs_ of oil. It's as if you were living off a trust fund but considered only the cab fare to cross town to the bank to make a withdrawal, and not a depletion allowance _based on actual costs of replacement_ for the funds removed. Properly accounted, oil would cost hundreds, thousands, possibly millions of times what we account for it.

There's also the problem that a democratic populace is an ultimate "shoot the messenger" manager. The public wants to hear what it wants to hear, and the lessons of US presidents Carter and Reagan should be closely studied. Carter told the inconvenient truth, Reagan the attractive lie.</comment>


Luxembourg Wants to Solve Congestion with Free Public Transport - <AUTHOR> https://popupcity.net/observations/luxembourg-wants-to-solve-congestion-with-free-public-transport/ <comment><USER2> I'm slightly confused by the last part in the article

 _" Even though free public transportation has existed in Tallinn, Estonia for over six years, there has been no indication that mobility and opportunities for low income residents have improved."_

Following the link to the study:

 _" Almost a year after the introduction of FFPT, public transport usage increased by 14 % and there is evidence that the mobility of low-income residents has improved. The effect of FFPT on ridership is substantially lower than those reported in previous studies due to the good level of service provision, high public transport usage and low public transport fees that existed already prior to the FFPT."_

This is strange reporting

<comment><USER3> More like lazy reporting.</comment></comment>


YahooMail Is So Bad That Congress Just Banned It - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/cyberattack-leads-to-a-yahoomail-ban-on-capitol-hill-1775851542 <comment><USER2> What is the current state of the art for secure email?

Hosted? Self-Hosted?

Genuinely curious.</comment>


Dropbox update - <AUTHOR> https://www.dropbox.com/help/9300 <comment><USER2> > Specifically, Dropbox Update: Works in the background to check that you're > always using the latest version of the desktop application

Do not want.

Apple provides a Software Update mechanism for apps downloaded from the App Store. Use it.

If you can't do that because your app is too intrusive for App Store rules, poll your servers from the main Dropbox app like every other app does. Don't run a new background app.

Seriously, Dropbox, after the recent farrago with your Mac app, do you never, ever learn?</comment>


Poll Shows People Don't Want Amazon Deliverers to Have Access to Their Homes - <AUTHOR> http://www.thestranger.com/slog/2017/11/02/25538061/poll-shows-people-dont-want-amazon-deliverers-to-have-access-to-their-homes <comment><USER2> If this is Amazon's solution to missing packages, it's the wrong one.

I've never had an issue with Amazon delivery until they used their own drivers. I now frequently have my packages never arrive (I have cameras on my porch. Not being stolen) and four times in the last six months have received a delivery for someone else. It isn't like a package for my next door neighbor, either. They're packages to addresses up to three miles away.

If Amazon wants to reduce missing packages, they need to hire drivers who actually give a shit or go back to using USPS/FedEx/UPS.

<comment><USER3> Had some issues with an amazon delivery and talked to the driver about fixing it for next time. They shrugged and said amazon pays like crap and the driver turn over is high. So high that I'd likely not get the same driver for my next delivery.

Does seem like a bad way to run a business.

Seems strange for amazon to propose entering into a house instead of just selling a locked box that you and deliveries could use.

<comment><USER4> As in all labor intensive industries that require no particular skill. Turnover is not an issue, it's a consequence.

You can't significantly improve the job and the work conditions, it is what it is. You can't pay more, that'd impact costs too significantly.

The consequence is high turnover and you can't fix the root cause. Lucky you, there is an endless supply of fresh blood that can and are willing to do the job so it's a viable business model.

<comment><USER5> You seem to forget there were and are companies like fedex and ups that deliver things just fine and don't have these issues. It might have something to do with how they train and pay their employees.

<comment><USER4> Let's not idealize the situation at other delivery companies. Delivering is not a dream job.

It'd be interesting to see how much business is B2B and repeated addresses for UPS/Fedex vs Amazon.

Amazon is likely to be distinct. High amount of one off consumers. Varying routes every day. Customers being away during delivery. Exactly what ruins a delivery company.

<comment><USER5> A number of people have already attacked one of your fundamental assumptions about low skilled labor. I think one way to say it is you're making the assumption that what you call "low skilled labor" is in fact "zero skill labor." I think you underestimate the level of skill required to deliver goods efficiently and quickly, and yes, the cost that is involved in it. (to be fair, you seem to be saying that I am overestimating that skill in your first sentence.)

Also, "one off consumers. Varying routes every day." Well, delivery company employees will have precisely fewer of those because their job is to deliver things, seems like the reason not to trust Amazon drivers over Fedex.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For historical perspective, I remember in 1996 when polls said most people would never use their credit cards to buy things over the internet. Bezos surely remembers that too.

<comment><USER7> To be fair, lots of people use debit Visa/Mastercard cards instead. If I had a credit card, I don't think I'd be comfortable buying something online with it.

<comment><USER8> The risk is pretty much the opposite of what you think it is. One gives access to your bank account. The other you are protected from paying fraudulent charges.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If I had a separate mudroom I'd consider it, but having dogs makes it a no-go as it is set up. I'm surprised Amazon hasn't set up a "Amazon Locker" style box that you can get placed on your porch for deliveries. A relatively small one would take care of 90% of my packages.

<comment><USER10> Amazon doesn't have to set this up. I know a handful of people who bought a durable plastic trunk for their porch, and leave it open with a padlock available. There's a sign on it instructing for deliveries to be placed in the trunk and then padlocked. They have the key and are able to retrieve it when they get home from work.

<comment><USER8> And, frankly, just asking for deliveries to be put in a plastic bin probably helps a lot at the margins. Never been an issue for me but just not having a package in visible sight can probably be useful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Solutions

1\. Every house installs a dropoff box. This box allows owner to activate or deactivate which delivery companies get to access it

I like this. No more write special delivery note.

2\. Open more amazon lockers that allow bigger sizes and more flexible delivery time

Actually #1 is the right solution

<comment><USER12> And when you receive a package, the flag is up?

Sounds like a mailbox, just bigger.

The real complication is not isolated houses, but apartment buildings with shared entryways and/or limited space.

<comment><USER11> It would be eletronic

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Who are they polling? I think there's a fairly limited amount of people who would really want this, and lot of people who wouldn't.

You need to live in a city, but not in an apartment building, which is a pretty small (and wealthy) proportion of people. If you live in the suburbs or the country, you probably don't mind leaving packages on the porch. In the city if you don't have a doorman, a package is almost guaranteed to get stolen.

Homicidal maniacs who want to kill total strangers for no reason are pretty rare. Packages thieves are ubiquitous.

<comment><USER14> > In the city if you don't have a doorman, a package is almost guaranteed to > get stolen.

That's taking a pretty narrow view of 'the city' - very few places on the west coast have a doorman for example (I've never actually seen one), and there are plenty of cities where you could have a package _not_ stolen. Of course if your definition of a 'city' only includes Manhattan then you may be correct.

<comment><USER15> Not sure why you're singling out Manhattan: Queens and Brooklyn are famously unsafe for packages. Even when I lived in the Sunset (the sleepy half of SF) I had packages go missing.

In fact I would argue that if a package can reliably last 8 hours on your porch you don't live in a city (at least for the purposes of this discussion).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> There are a lot easier ways to break into a house than to do it through the front door while access is logged and you are being monitored by a video camera.

<comment><USER17> To some extent, practical security isn't about closing off every avenue of attack. Obscuring obvious avenues of exploitation is a big part of it since most crimes are crimes of opportunity. I would be worried that an Amazon employee who is somewhat dishonest might feel tempted by the previously inaccessible opportunity to enter my home.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Then those people don't have to use the service.

</comment><comment><USER19> I read (read: scrolled through) the original survey. For those who did not / will not:

\- It's long.

\- It's mostly about products being Made in America.

\- The question in question is near the end (which could contribute to taker fatigue)

\- The question in question makes no mention of Amazon. In the case of this service, brand matters.

\- I didn't see anything (read: I could have missed it) saying if these are Amazon customers or not.

\- I didnt see any question along the lines of: Has a delivered package ever been stolen from your porch?

This idea is new. No doubt some people won't use it, at least not right away. But it could catch on. Maybe.

That being said, I don't see this survey being a good indicator. It feels far from a ideal survey (to me).

</comment><comment><USER20> I wish Amazon went for low hanging fruit in select markets.

In Toronto, Canada, if given the option, I always prefer FlexDelivery, when I can choose delivery to any post office even if it is not anywhere close to my home. It is much easier for me to mosey up to the post office steps away from my office in downtown and then bring stuff home, than try to make it to the office in my neighbourhood before closing.

Unfortunately, too many shippers do not support FlexDelivery, and this is a hassle. Amazon could start with that or strategically place the electronic lockboxes around downtown: the ridiculous amount of people work in a relatively small area of downtown core.

</comment><comment><USER21> I wouldn't allow Amazon or any stranger in my house without me being there.

They're making this optional only if wanted so I this doesn't matter to me I'm sure some people have some value.

For lower-cost items Amazon just puts it under my welcome mat (just got one today under the mat) at my front door that is covered. From the street u can see there is a package as it there is only shade and not well lit.

A few times they have called me especially in bad weather conditions on where to leave. Like leaving it in the backyard under the covered deck or with the renter in my basement Suite

</comment><comment><USER22> There is already a solution out there and it works. Japan has something called Takyubin-box. Delivery person arrives at door, nobody home, opens box, puts in package, sets a pincode, puts pincode in person's mailbox, person comes home, retrieves packages. Some T-boxes are enabled with fancy features, some have simple tumbler locks with manual one-time code setting.

I can't believe Bezos and company can't take that concept and retool for the US market.

<comment><USER23> Those exist in the US as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Err.. markets aren't democracy: "voting against" something just means you don't use it.

What this poll _actually_ shows is that Amazon _already_ has 32% of people who want this is some form.

This is kind of like those "if we can just get 1% of 1% of the population we will make millions" things, except in this case they have 38%(!)

The product managers of this service must be beyond joyful seeing acceptance like this.

<comment><USER25> Yeah, the headline doesn't seem to be remotely correct for the numbers in the poll. I assumed "people don't want" meant that the acceptance rate was some tiny number, like 1%. But no, 15% of adults are "very comfortable" with it, that's huge! Another 13% are "somewhat comfortable," making it even huger.

A better headline might be, "Poll Shows 70 Million American Adults Comfortable With Amazon Deliveries Into Homes."

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I would let a delivery drone have access into my house. Not a human.

I would happily install a remotely accessible window not accessible from the street, and give amazon the authentication to open it and close it for their drone to drop stuff in my house, IF losing packages was a recurrent problem for me. It isn't, but drone delivery is plausible in future so worth thinking about.

</comment><comment><USER27> They have a separate pilot program for letting residences/communities/etc buy one of their 'lockers' \- freestanding lockers that they deliver to and give you a code to type into for picking up your package.

Seems better for most situations, but it might be the sort of thing where you need a few dozen people to sign up for your location before they'll give you one.

</comment><comment><USER28> In a house with multiple people using Prime this could get pretty awkward. I rarely answer my door or even look to see who is there when someone knocks. Last thing I want is Mr.Amazon walking in my living room while I'm on the phone.

</comment><comment><USER29> Same thing everyone said with Uber & Airbnb.</comment>