Spoilers Don't Spoil Anything - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/08/spoilers-dont-spoil-anything.ars

<comment><USER2> I find that expecting a twist lowers the enjoyment. The twist, when it arrives, tends to usually be anticlimatic. If it turns out there's no twist, it ruins the whole experience.

I think that's why Shyamalan's later movies are considered so badly.

The "prediction error" point is interesting; I feel cheated when the twist is not so much a twist but hidden information; when one could never have suspected of the truth because not all facts where given. For example, I found the ending of the movie Number 23 to ruin the movie for me, so frustrating it was.

On the other hand, when it makes perfect sense, and facts were there all along, the twist is satisfying. That's why Sixth Sense is so popular.

Also, spoilers aren't always about twists. Telling me the whole plot of a movie robs me the experience of discovering it as it goes. Some of movies I enjoyed watching the most were ones I went in knowing absolutely nothing of what it was about (also some of the ones I disliked the most, but that's another story).

<comment><USER3> _Telling me the whole plot of a movie robs me the experience of discovering it as it goes._

I've always wondered about people who can sit through the same movie several times. If you already know what's going to happen, how can you get any enjoyment out of it?

I say this only half sarcastically. I get bored rewatching movies, except for only my very favorites. Those movies have been spoiled for me, and yet I enjoy them just as much as I did the first time I saw them (maybe a little more).

Remember, the journey is half the fun, even if you know where you are going...

<comment><AUTHOR> I like to re-watch movies for discovering small details and for all the well choreographed sequences. That's more like re-watching a music video, you do it because the material is just plain cool to watch.

As you say, this only works for movies I like, only for movies that have sequences like that and details.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This ignores too many issues to be relevant.

If something has a surprise, I can enjoy showing it to friends and watching them get caught by the surprise. That adds pleasure.

If something has a surprise, it can make a bigger impact and stick in my memory longer. That adds pleasure.

Sometimes I can guess a surprise. That adds pleasure.

</comment><comment><USER5> My dad was reading Game of Thrones and got to a shocking spoiler at the end of book 1 (you can guess which one). He told me he stopped reading the series right there. He probably wouldn't even have begun reading if he knew beforehand.

He reads a lot in the genre and he just couldn't take what GRR dished out.

I thought it was a brilliant move and I certainly would have been sad to know it was coming. When an author is reversing tropes and dumbfounding your expectations, when you're suspended between possible outcomes and don't know what's going to happen next, that's the golden time in reading.

<comment><USER6> How was something written in the book a spoiler when you're reading the pages in order?

<comment><USER7> The spoiler wasn't for his father, it would have been for _him_ :

> I thought it was a brilliant move and I certainly would have been sad to > know it was coming. When an author is reversing tropes and dumbfounding your > expectations, when you're suspended between possible outcomes and don't know > what's going to happen next, that's the golden time in reading.

"My pleasure would have been reduced to know about the spoiler in advance."

<comment><USER5> Correct. Sorry if I was obtuse. Neither my father nor I knew about the "shocking event" before reading it. I would call this a spoiler (certainly I would encase it in a spoiler warning before mentioning it online) but I guess you can argue about whether it's really a spoiler if it wasn't actually spoiled for anyone in the story.

For similar reasons I do not hesitate to say "John was walking across the street when he was hit by a car." As it turned out, John was walking to the middle of the street when he was hit by a car, but from his point of view he was engaged in a very different activity.

I have another story on the same lines. About 18 months ago a friend was giving a presentation on a new software module at work. We were waiting for supervisors to arrive and to pass the time, I showed everyone that I had recently seen the entire Star Wars trilogy (IV, V, VI) uploaded to Youtube in ten minute increments.

In the course of this, the friend giving the presentation mentioned he had never seen them. He was from China, but also did university in Canada. He watched a lot of anime but wasn't much into Western media.

Somewhat at a loss, I made him promise to watch them that weekend. He did, but right before he started his talk someone else asked about it and he said, "I am your father."

That, friends, is a real tragedy of spoiling and I defy anyone to defend it.

Postscript, my friend did actually watch all the movies that weekend, but he said they didn't hold up well. He watched an extremely suspect order though, something like 4, 1, 2, 3, 5, 6.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I detest spoilers so much that I've been known to leave a good book unfinished to avoid ruining the end.

</comment><comment><USER9> I've been rereading the Dune novels (because I never did read the last one and it's been a while). Since I have read them before, but it's been so long, I've been skipping ahead at times to read the final chapters (something I never do with other books). I've found that refreshing my memory of how it ends improves my enjoyment of the books quite a bit, as I can really appreciate the Herbert's craft in getting there.

Similar to ancient Greek plays and epics, where everyone knows the story, it allows me to focus on the performance and the details of foreshadowing, hinting, and flow.

</comment><comment><USER10> I can't find the article online (it does say it's "upcoming") but here's the press release[1] in the journal. An interesting comment from the authors:

 _"Christenfeld and Leavitt conclude the paper by saying that perhaps some of our "other intuitions about suspense may be similarly wrong."

"Perhaps," they write, "birthday presents are better when wrapped in cellophane, and engagement rings are better when not concealed in chocolate mousse."

We might be also well-advised to reconsider surprise parties, Christenfeld said._

But I don't know. Maybe they aren't spoilers, per se, but I know some of my favorite books and movies have me going "Oh! How is this going to end?" or "Oh! How are they going to get out of _that_!" I'd love to know how much was actually spoiled. Was it, as in the ars article does, "Dumbledore dies on page 596", or like a cliff's notes version of the whole story.

[1] [http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/releases/...](http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/releases/spoiler- alert-stories-are-not-spoiled-byspoilers.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the authors go a bit too far with their suspicions (but they use appropriate language, so that's alright). I would like to see their experiment repeated with, for example video games like Portal (where I do suspect that spoilers matter) or movies. I think their results are very intriguing, but it's still very possible that the truth is a bit more complicated. It's time to explore the landscape of spoilers. (Isn't that what everyone writes at the end of their papers? "Further research, however, is necessary.")

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wonder if there's a subset of people (presumably people who often do puzzles and the like) who run counter to this finding. I often run gimmick car rallyes[1], which is an extended exercise in parsing the rules, and when I've fallen for a good gimmick, I'm more likely to smile once I've figured out how I was tricked.

[1] <http://www.therallyeclub.org/what.htm>

</comment><comment><USER12> I don't think I'm typically bothered by spoilers, but The Usual Suspects stands out as an example of where it definitely hurt my enjoyment of that movie. I mean, I still liked the movie, but man, I can only imagine how much more I would've enjoyed it without the spoilers.

Also, by this point The Sixth Sense is ruined for me, so I'm not sure I'll ever get around to seeing it.

<comment><USER11> _I can only imagine how much more I would've enjoyed it without the spoilers._

Ah, but you're arguing a counterfactual. The study suggests that you wouldn't have enjoyed it more without the spoiler. Similarly, with The Sixth Sense, you might enjoy seeing how Shyamalan puts the story together and imagining how a naive viewer would try to reconcile things.

<comment><USER12> The study suggests something that is true in general for people, it doesn't apply to every person in every case. Like I said, in most cases I'm not bothered by spoilers. However, in this particular case, I felt a diminished sense of enjoyment of that movie. I base this off of my experiences of other twists of similar or lesser magnitudes and how much enjoyment I got out of those. I liked the movie, I liked the characters, but I was missing the punch at the end and I knew it. It felt like a letdown. Hell, I would've probably liked the movie more if it hadn't had the twist because knowing the twist and knowing I wouldn't be surprised made the movie end rather flat.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Yet another person that doesn't find value in something and thus thinks it should have no value for anyone else, either. -sigh-

<comment><USER14> That doesn't make sense. The article is about a piece of research that seems to indicate that people enjoy reading "spoiled" books more.

That doesn't imply that this is true for you personally, nor does it make a value judgement on how people should experience fiction.

<comment><AUTHOR> Or: It's not an opinion piece (well, it is, a little bit) but points to actual research.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Sometimes telling a story non-chronologically can create the anticipation effect of knowing a spoiler ahead of time. The recent Battlestar Galactica did this, to the extent of possibly overdoing it.</comment>


Could deflation cause problems for bitcoin?  - <AUTHOR> http://www.coindesk.com/deflation-and-bitcoins/

<comment><USER2> I think volatility is more of a short-term/medium term problem, due to the fact that each new Bitcoin user can have a pretty large impact on the value of the Bitcoin, and it's still early days.

But I also think deflation may present a problem in the long term, and this is why instead of all the slightly different Bitcoin clones, I'd like to see one like Bitcoin that is inflationary, instead of deflationary.

But whoever will be making this needs to think long and hard about what the inflation rate should be, or if it can be modified by the market/community down the road (or start with a high inflation early on, to boost the numbers, and lower it after after a while).</comment>


Versioning, Licensing, and Sketch 4.0 - <AUTHOR> https://blog.sketchapp.com/versioning-licensing-and-sketch-4-0-8ad98783e9ba#.h43wjvymw <comment><USER2> How many times will this be submitted? This is four and counting ...

This was first: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11861188](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11861188)</comment>


Why Women Programmers Aren't a Fad - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2010/07/08/women-education-programming/

<comment><USER2> Look, these all sound like fine programs, unto themselves. But I find this column itself odd.

The author lists different statistics and percentages which demonstrate an uneven male/female distribution within the field. _Conspicuously_ absent though is any discussion whatsoever of the causes of this uneven distribution. ("To combat these numbers..." Really? It's the numbers we're fighting?) Presumably, she's leaving the reader to fill in that blank him/herself. Thankfully for the author's sake, we're all very well trained in filling that blank.

<comment><USER3> The article isn't trying to argue the causes of the low female:male ratio. It's just setting a context for why it's necessary for there to be organizations to address the problem.

There are LOTS of articles that try to figure out the cause. This isn't one of them. It's a useful list, instead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Who is the author arguing against here? Did I miss it when someone said "Chicks writing programs? Psh, that'll go the way of pogs and pokemon in no time at all!"

<comment><USER5> I don't see women in programming jobs as a fad, I just don't see them. I've worked at dozens of companies in over the last 15 years and I've worked with exactly 4 women... none in the last 2 years. I don't know why that is.</comment></comment>


Are people using bitcoin to buy stuff anymore? - <AUTHOR>

.. or are people just buying and selling bitcoin already (and not spending it to buy say, pizza, movie tickets, etc.) <comment><USER2> I use it to buy Humble Bundles.</comment>


Knockout 2.0 released (JavaScript MVVM library) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.stevensanderson.com/2011/12/21/knockout-2-0-0-released/

<comment><USER2> I see this as more of a "improving the outlook" update. Control flow bindings, Accessing parent bindings etc. are more of making it look nice and easier. I like it as these are the issues which I've faced and is one of the major criticism of Backbone followers.

Steve's vision with Knockout I assume is to be a binding framework rather than a design one (like Backbone). It's just using Knockout alongside Backbone is too much trouble that both libraries are more or less targeting the same audience.</comment>


Slashdot Launches Re-Design - <AUTHOR> http://meta.slashdot.org/story/11/01/25/163257/Slashdot-Launches-Re-Design <comment><USER2> I was hoping Slashdot was going to reduce the huge amount of padding around each comment, but no luck. For instance, on my screen right now I can fit 13 comments on HN or reddit but no more than 5 on slashdot. This makes it _much_ harder to navigate comment threads, connect replies with comments, etc.

I'm I the only one who thinks this is easily the worst part of Slashdot? It's reminiscent of a bad forum where each 3-word quip comes with an avatar, a custom border, and a 5-line signature.

<comment><USER3> The original slashdot was actually very readable. Here's a screenshot: <http://images.slashdot.org/faq/screen_nested.gif>

Not pretty, but readable and very usable.

The padding and useless decoration that you (rightfully) complain about was introduced with the first ajax-redesign a few years ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I liked slashdot more when it was plain, quick-loading HTML. I liked most sites more when they were plain, quick-loading HTML. Ain't It Cool News is the only other one coming to mind at the moment, though.

<comment><USER5> Google's Marissa Mayer said it best: The web likes to be square. Rounded corners and other elements slows down a site.

<comment><USER6> Huh, why would that be? Drawing a round corner is in fact more complex than drawing a square one, but surely for a few dozen rounded corners the number of additional CPU cycles spent pales in comparison to things like anti-aliased font rendering, calculating CSS box model layouts, decompressing gzipped contents and the myriad of other tasks that a browser has to perform during loading and rendering of a web site nowadays.

<comment><USER7> For 4 rounded corners you probably need to download 4 images. Thats 4 extra connections to the server to connect to, download, process.

It isn't the processor time that is taking longer its the transfer time.

<comment><USER8> Most modern browsers (all but IE I believe) will let you round corners with CSS. An extra line or so of CSS is hardly much of a transfer overhead.

I believe current thinking (on non-enterprise sites anyway) is to let the IE people have their square corners, and those on new browsers get all the curvy goodness.

<comment><USER7> Yes, that is why I added the probably. The vast majority of rounded corners I see are still done with images however.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The old Slashdot design bothered me so much I proposed a minimalist layout last year: <http://nylira.com/p/slashdot>

Thoughts on this one:

Slashdot's homepage is much cleaner than before, but the thick green bars denoting each story is visually oppressive. I understand that it's a branding element, but it hampers readability.

The fixed navigation annoys me, but that's a personal preference: I don't think the menus are important enough to be constantly on-screen.

I see they still haven't added a max-width to text columns either. It's difficult reading comments on a 1440px+ screen.

<comment><USER8> Much prefer your clean design, but I'd move the story icon to the whitespace under the author/submitter info on the left.

Did you design a comment page too?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's unfortunate that they've jumped on the fixed positioning bandwagon. Non- scrolling headers/footers break the way Page Up and Page Down work, because the visible size is no longer the size of the scrollable area.

Luckily there's a user style in the Slashdot comments that changes the fixed elements to absolute positioning. It isn't a perfect solution, though (e.g. for when you use an alternate browser).

<comment><USER11> _Non-scrolling headers/footers break the way Page Up and Page Down work, because the visible size is no longer the size of the scrollable area._

It also seems to break their "Parent" links -- it ends up with the top bar partially covering the comment's header. I've yet to encounter a web site where floating title bar is a good idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I was going to make a snarky comment like Slash..who? But I clicked and it the UI looks much better!

<comment><USER13> It definitely looks better, but as with everything new I see on Slashdot and SourceForge these days it seems a little to late.

<comment><USER14> It probably looks better, as I remember Slashdot being really ugly, but the new design is still ugly. The Slashdot header font in particular is an eyesore, but very little on the site actually looks modern or pleasing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Ugh, all this time, a whole new revamp, and it _still_ suffers from the problem where hitting "Get more comments" moves everything around, and you've got to look through everything to figure out what the hell actually just loaded...

Why would anyone ever think that hitting more should load more comments _above_ the comment you just finished freaking reading? And yes, I realize they're loading low ranked deeply nested comments that are underneath ones that are already visible, but yeesh - just clip the damn comment tree after a certain number of comments are displayed, FFS, no need to try and be clever about it...

<comment><USER16> I might be alone in this, but I actually preferred the old-fashioned pagination approach to to 'get more articles' buttons. Actually, I might not be alone in this as HN does the same thing :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I don't really care so much for design as content. Slashdot looks tired, whatever design you slap on top of it. For example they've updated the Bill Gates Borg icon. It looks very dated now, though.

</comment><comment><USER18> These kinds of designs often work badly with flash, as can be seen by the flash ad on the page: <http://i.imgur.com/qycS8.png>

(flash in most (all?) browsers appears on top of even html regardless of specific css rules)

<comment><USER19> For the record, Flash will respect z-index if you set the wmode param.

<http://www.communitymx.com/content/article.cfm?cid=e5141>

<comment><USER20> If I remember correctly, setting the wmode param slows down flash performance significantly. I also remember it having significant trouble in opera. However, it's possible that these issues are now fixed in the newer browsers, but I'm pretty sure that older browsers still experience them.

<comment><USER19> Def some quirks back in the day (I think FF on Linux still doesn't even listen to the wmode param, iirc) but I think modern browsers deal with wmode better now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is probably the first good redesign that /. has done this century!

I actually stopped visiting Slashdot because the previous rounds of "improvement" to the comment system was always a pain in the butt if you had to switch tabs while typing. It will be good to be back.

</comment><comment><USER22> I hope it will work better than the previous one. It was unbearably slow on my puny work PC and hardly usable on my other machines, and frankly, I don't think that I should upgrade to quad core because of ONE website.

</comment><comment><USER23> I am glad they kept much of the original design, especially the rounded edges and the green. Yes, it's not pretty, but for me it's like listening to an oldie station. Slashdot was there in the 90s when you felt like participating in a revolution for using Linux (or, if you wanted to be even more avantgarde, one of the BSDs). It helped people get through the time of the Columbine massacre, was the best place to discuss the Halloween documents, offered endless First-Post/Nathalie-Portman trolling opportunities, and with Jon Katz you always had something to talk (or complain) about.

The problem is that the culture did not really evolve. There's nothing that Slashdot stands for anymore. I wonder whether it would be a good idea for Slashdot, now that the readers as well as the authors are older, to cover topics for geeks in their 30s or 40s: homes, families, kids... I believe that there would be a range of interesting topics, and I don't know any news site that covers them.

</comment><comment><USER24> Now it looks like a framed site from good ol' 1997 again. Fixed header, fixed menu cluttering up your 800x600 pixel smartphone screen, and a small scrollable area (of which most is white space) with the actual content. Wow, that went seriously wrong.

</comment><comment><USER25> It looks uglier than the old version, in my opinion. On the other hand, it looks like paste now works correctly when entering comments. (It used to often fail on Webkit-based browsers if there was any text already in the box), so that's a huge improvement.

</comment><comment><USER26> I really thought I'd be saying 'digg-a-what?' before i'd ever say '/?' ever again.

</comment><comment><USER27> My problem with /. was that the stories were not voted in on by the community but rather by a select few curators who added editorial content in the headlines.

And they're still using the Bill Gates Borg icon?

<comment><USER28> That could easily be called a feature, looking at how Reddit's focus changed. Hacker News is able to keep it's narrow focus, but it's the exception rather than the rule.

You're right about the editorial content in the headlines and summary though but I like that the stories have a small blurb explaining the story unlike Reddit or Hacker News.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Slashdot? I read HN.

<comment><USER30> Slashdot was here before HN.

It is likely Slashdot will still be here when HN is gone.

There's a lesson in that.

<comment><USER31> > _It is likely Slashdot will still be here when HN is gone._

My gut feeling says no. I used to read Slashdot as much as I now read HN or Reddit. I hardly ever go there any more, and when I do it just doesn't seem interesting.

For me, Slashdot lacks the buzz it used to have.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Still no Unicode

</comment><comment><USER33> Same basic design but like half the number of DOM elements. Well done for doing the right thing :)

</comment><comment><USER34> I like the redesign. Have they fixed the unusably bad commenting system?

</comment><comment><USER35> This looks really great. Kudos to the designers and programmers.

</comment><comment><USER36> The Apple category seems to be gone from the front page.

</comment><comment><USER37> Looks like CRAP in Opera. Sheesh.

</comment><comment><USER38> Does the redesign involve removing most of their userbase? There's some kind of aversion to people charging money on that site that just doesn't jive with me. I assume that HN will at some point reach the critical mass that killed slashdot for me. Hopefully that day will be far far in the future.

</comment><comment><USER39> Looks like a trainwreck w/ K-Meleon, plus it chews major CPU cycles. Ah, the web...

</comment><comment><USER40> I don't like the feel to it. When scrolling it feels sluggish and the screen seems to flicker.

<comment><USER41> I noticed the same (i7-920, FF 3.6) - after removing the fixed position bar (using firebug) the site at least seems significantly less sluggish. Weird how a seemingly simple thing can hurt performance so much (or maybe it's just a psychological effect ?)

On a large screen I find it visually more pleasing than the last version but I stoppped using the site completely after they introduced that silly ajax-abuse and the new one wouldn't make me come back if for that reason alone.</comment></comment>


Newell calls on Microsoft to open up Xbox Live - <AUTHOR> http://www.next-gen.biz/news/newell-calls-microsoft-open-xbox-live <comment><USER2> > _"Hopefully that will help Microsoft see that's a good strategy for making > customers happy, that the barbarians won't tear down the walls of Xbox and > turn it into some chaotic wasteland."_

When Microsoft relaxed the XBox Live rules for Activision and EA, both of those companies wasted no time in adding aggravation for their customers and removing functionality. So while Valve may behave themselves, opening the door altogether would almost certainly be a net negative for gamers.

I'd much rather Microsoft create an XBL standard for microtransactions, cross- platform chat and cloud saves.

</comment><comment><USER3> I can understand why Microsoft would not want Steamworks integration.

Steamworks is a direct competitor to Xbox Live -- achievements, friends list, chatting with friends, update delivery, etc. By allowing Steamworks on Xbox, it dilutes their own service and would confuse some customers ("Why do I have two friends lists?", "Why do I have two profiles?")

That being said, I really do want Xbox live to open up more. I think it's ridiculous that most Xbox games can't talk openly to the internet -- this prevents me from making an Xbox port of my game.

<comment><USER4> I had similar thoughts. I figure Sony opened up PSN because they have less leverage. Microsoft is in a position where they can dictate terms, Sony is not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> All I know is that I buy a _ton_ of cheap $2-10 games when they're on sale on Steam. I don't buy any games on Xbox Live due to the lack of good sales and their convoluted MS Points system. I don't understand why they don't follow Valve's example.

</comment><comment><USER4> _"Right now, there's a huge amount of updates and free content that we've been able to deliver to people who have The Orange Box that we haven't been able to deliver to the Xbox because of the restrictions that have been placed on us on Xbox Live._

Didn't Valve make a choice not to release that content through Xbox Live? Yes, it would have involved more time and effort to go through another system, but it was still a choice Valve made, no? Or does Microsoft prevent free DLC?

<comment><USER6> In general Microsoft doesn't allow free DLC. You can ship bug fixes and there's a tiny amount of title update space you can shove content into, but large amounts of content are meant to be deployed through paid DLC. In part, this is because MS pays for the bandwidth, but it's also because many of the vendors who use their platform would get angry since it would destroy the level playing field they've got going right now.

Part of the reason Sony gives you more freedom and control is that they do way less than Microsoft does. They charge you for bandwidth for the services they do offer (like demo downloads from the store), and you have to do a lot more of the work in terms of netcode and servers. Microsoft also runs XBox Live games/services behind a VPN while PSN stuff runs out on the open internet, so a PS3 game can hit a regular HTTP server but a 360 game can't.

<comment><USER7> > "In general Microsoft doesn't allow free DLC. You can ship bug fixes and > there's a tiny amount of title update space you can shove content into, but > large amounts of content are meant to be deployed through paid DLC"

That is incorrect - there are free Game Add-Ons (DLC) on Xbox LIVE for a number of games. There are also free Arcade (XBLA) games, by the way.

Here are some examples:

\- Some Halo 3 maps/map packs

\- Free tracks for Rock Band (several versions)

\- Left 4 Dead Survival Pack

\- Deadliest Warrior DLC

\- Fable 3 free weapons/outfits

.. and a lot more. Disclaimer: I work there.

<comment><USER6> That is surprising to me, because I've personally heard developers complain that they weren't allowed to release free DLC. I apologize for the misinformation... I guess policies have changed?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Isn't it already opened up? EA games let you login to Origin Online, Ubisoft games let you log into Ubisoft...

I don't think this really does much for customers except make it harder to fully enjoy the game. "Sign into our network for a free exclusive item/map!" - no thanks.

Maybe he's talking about restrictions about releasing free content on Xbox Live (you're supposed to charge for pretty much anything)?</comment>


ES6 Modules in Depth - <AUTHOR> http://ponyfoo.com/articles/es6-modules-in-depth <comment><USER2> Does anybody know the reason for named instead of default exports? Seems a bit overengineered.</comment>


Iqaluit man uses free Amazon shipping to fuel food charity - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/free-amazon-shipping-fuels-iqaluit-food-charity-1.3594729 <comment><USER2> I don't understand, what's the big story here? Amazon offers free shipping to a remote place, whereas normal grocery shops pass the high shipping costs on to consumers. So guy living in this place is using Amazon for the food shopping. Also, he's donating that food to local schools.

</comment><comment><USER3> By using prime shipping for non personal/ resale use, he's violating Amazon terms.

[http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=1...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=13819201)

Same applies in Canada [https://www.amazon.ca/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=2...](https://www.amazon.ca/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201025540)

This is no different from "man steals from big company to fuel food charity". If you wouldn't support that, what's the difference?

(I doubt his account is going to last too long if he's buying $7000 worth of food, but maybe Amazon will like the PR or something and let it go.)

<comment><USER4> Interesting point. I imagine it's a bad PR move for a company to enforce the terms in this particular case.

<comment><USER3> Whoever looks at his account might not have seen this article, anyway. I imagine spending $7000 on food gets your account flagged.</comment></comment></comment>


First SDK 1.5 Android book out - <AUTHOR> http://commonsware.com/Android

<comment><AUTHOR> After spending forever screwing round with books based on the beta, 1.0 or 1.1 SDKs where the examples frequently don't build properly on current software I'm finding this quite a pleasant change.</comment>


Swiss immigration: 50.3% back quotas, final results show - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-26108597 <comment><USER2> This is of course potentially disastrous. Our startup is based in Switzerland, with about half us working in Zurich and the other half in the EU. The goal has always been to do most new hiring in Switzerland rather than continue building a distributed organization. If the immigration situation changes drastically, we'll probably need to instead grow in other countries. And after that happens, there really is very little point in keeping the company registered and paying taxes in Switzerland at all. Even in the current situation being outside of the EU is already rather inconvenient.

And I'm sure ours isn't a unique situation. A sane immigration policy has been one of the main things Switzerland has going for it. For example Google Zurich can't be at all happy about this.

(As is normal in these kinds of things, the vote to restrict immigation was concentrated in the rural areas where no immigrants would move to. Meanwhile the places where immigrants actually have an impact voted against the proposal).

<comment><USER3> Yes, such quotas are a pain in the ass for a startup. The company I worked for lost a foreign employee because his residence-permit was not renewed after two years.

However, I'm not afraid about Google - they have all the legal processes in place to get non-EU citizens into Switzerland that face quotas already today. And in the worst case, they can still offer them a job in another office.

<comment><USER2> Oh, Google as a whole will of course be fine. But it'd be insane to have a huge engineering office in a small country and a bad immigration policy. So they'll grow elsewhere, and Switzerland loses out. (I worked in Google's Zurich office the last time there was a big immigration quota scare, IIRC 2008 or 2009 when they cut various quotas in half with no warning. It definitely wasn't treated internally as casually as you imply.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> There is nothing inherently wrong about tightening immigration policy. I don't know the details but there are couple of perfectly understandable reasons why people oppose immigration (note that they overlap a bit):

1\. Immigrants are disproportionally responsible for criminality.

2\. Switzerland is a rich country and the Swiss want to keep the wealth for themselves. But of course, many immigrants have a net positive effect on the country's wealth.

3\. Many immigrants come from a very different culture and don't want to adjust to the mainstream culture.

4\. Immigrants may form groups isolated from the rest of the society.

5\. The Swiss culture is different than the American one. They're not that welcoming to immigrants. They want to keep their culture. I personally understand why they voted not to allow mosques in their towns.

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure you have enough facts to support your arguments

1) most probably if you take into account other factors (social economics ones), the nationality it's not a major one

2) as you said, the wealth created by migrants can be a net positive effect

3) many immigrants (85%) come from EU

4) almost none "ethnic ghettos" in CH

5) agree it's different. CH has about a 1/3 of its population that are migrants and they are generally welcomed and integrated (the regions that got most migrants rejected the initiative).

Beside, there isn't a unified "swiss culture". If you simply look at the languages, they are 3 different ones.

<comment><USER4> 1) Perhaps it's just the poor and unemployed immigrants that cause criminality. But still, you can say that immigration increases unemployment and therefore criminality.

2) That's why it's important _who_ can immigrate. An uneducated family escaping from a poor country?

3) 4) 5) Ok, good points, these were mostly general arguments against immigration.

As for the unified culture - I would say that their culture is more unified than in the rest of europe. Languages are not _that_ important.

<comment><USER5> 1) No you can't gerneralise. Immigrants from France and Germany in CH are less criminal (well, technically less arrested ;) than swiss citizen.

2) CH immigration has always been selective, like most countries. The difference was that a few years ago citizen from "rich" eu countries could come without extra barrier. That's what has been voted to be changed.

As for the unified culture,I'm swiss and I lived both in CH and other countries in Europe. We have a lot in common within the country, but at least as much that is different. And language is one huge part of a culture, because it frames how you think and defines what books or movies you can access too.

X+

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Imho it is not a good choice at all. As the EU commission said, if the Switzerland want to put some immigration block they have to drop also all other rights of the treaty EU-Sw [1]. Considering how much Swiss companies depend on the EU to make profit, I think this can be a large catastrophe on the mid-long term.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switzerland%E2%80%93European_Un...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switzerland%E2%80%93European_Union_relations)

<comment><USER3> The dependency goes two ways. For example, there is no German car without parts coming from Switzerland. I hope that Brussels does not act offended and stays reasonable. Any action that hurts both parties would just be childish. However, they Swiss already struggled in the past to explain their democracy to the EU bureaucrats. Being used to decide for themselves, European politicians often fail to fully comprehend a system in which the people have the last word.

<comment><USER7> I suppose you consider not upholding one side of the treaty when the other side has been dropped "childish"?

<comment><USER3> The Swiss do not want to drop the treaty - which is about much more than just immigration. They only want to keep immigration limited - as it was already the case until 2010. Going back to that level would be the simplest and most pragmatic solution.

The problem with this is that the Eurocrats see Europe's political integration as a one-way street: once you are in, there is no way back. They hate and threaten anyone who wants to go a step back - even if it is just a small one. The root cause is their fear of others imitating the Swiss and Brussels losing power. This has become very apparent during the euro crisis: while there are lots of rules for joining the euro-zone, none of the treaties ever even mentioned how one could leave it again. Leaving is just not an option in the minds of European politicians. This leaves no room for experiments and makes the EU very inflexible.

<comment><USER6> Well but... we all know that. With that I mean that we know what EU treat are before we sign it. Once signed, obviously, we must not trash it expecting that nothing will happen.

And, in this specific case, we can not trash a part of a treat hoping the rest will be still accepted without problems, that is not the way contracts work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_foreign- bo...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_foreign- born_population)

With most countries with high amounts of immigrants being either quite poor or quite rich (especially those in Europe) and Switzerland obviously belonging to the rich European ones... it's not obvious what good could come from trying to leave this list of the richest, highest-immigration countries.

<comment><USER9> Some people hope that the EU will cut Switzerland's access to the common market which will force it to officially accede to the European Union and have a saying in the rules and regulations it has to adopt anyway.

<comment><USER10> From the perspective of the EU, taking punitive action would make them look like Russia, eager to push their 'allies' about. It would be a gift to people who say the EU wants to take away countries' individual sovereignty.

According to those who oppose caps, instituting caps will cause a bunch of pain anyway. If the EU want to punish the swiss, the best thing to do would be to allow that pain, which the swiss have indisputably brought upon themselves.

<comment><USER11> I think you are right, letting them run into that knife is probably the best way. However, the counterargument also holds some sway: Switzerland is free- riding already, having many of the common market benefits of the EU without giving he loss of sovereignty that EU membership entails.

The whole EFTA agreement only works because Swizerland etc. are relatively small compared to the rest of the EU. If everybody had the EFTA deal and there was no EU, the whole thing would go to shambles within a few decades.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> These kind of moves are Europe's equivalent to the bus nonsense in Silicon Valley. It's the misplaced anger of a bunch of people that feel economically impotent and threatened by outsiders that seemingly operate in places they consider to be their homes more effectively than they do.

Removing freedom of movement of labour is highly retrogressive, and vast parts of the world would benefit from enabling it further, but we need to be better at getting to the bottom of this alienation at home question and how to resolve it because otherwise the fear of outsiders is just going to become more common and more acceptable.

<comment><USER13> It's actually the opposite of the "bus nonsense" and actually the concerns are valid.

In SV, poor(er) people complain about too many rich(er) people coming in.

When it comes to immigration, rich(er) people are afraid of too many poor(er) people coming in.

Also they are not removing freedom of movement, they put a limit on rate.

Which is something U.S. has been doing for decades and nothing bad really happened because of that.

In addition, the math for Switzerland is much different.

It's hard to change demographics of 300 million country by letting in a few hundred thousand immigrants.

According to the article, already 25% of 8 million Swiss are foreigners. That would be a pretty alarming number if you were native Swiss. If the current trend continues (80 thousand immigrants per year), that would be 50% in ~25 years.

Let's also not ignore the real danger of ethnic-based or religious-based conflict, like Bosnian War.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This vote has a classic "urban vs rural" component. Urban areas (where high population growth has the most direct impact) said "no" to the restriction of immigration. Rural areas said yes. The other component is linguistic/regional.

These two components typically summarize most Swiss votes pretty well.

(most visible on a map, see [http://www.24heures.ch/suisse/tendance- initiative-udc-limmig...](http://www.24heures.ch/suisse/tendance-initiative- udc-limmigration/story/13798297))

</comment><comment><USER15> And EU officials are unhappy about it. I guess if it was one of the EU countries, people would get to vote until a pre-approved decision in a referendum is reached.

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

<comment><USER16> No. If it was an EU country, same thing would happen. EU would crack down on treaty violation.

<comment><USER17> By which you mean Europe would claim that the international treaties they make superseed the will of the local voters by virtue of them being in Europe ?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supremacy_(European_Union_law)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supremacy_\(European_Union_law\))

<comment><USER16> Yes. Member states can't just pick and choose. They're in or they're out, with few exceptions.

<comment><USER17> Except of course that in every test ever European politicians have chosen to safeguard their power and jobs as opposed to the principles of the European state.

Hell they've even gone against democracy itself.

Btw : letting member states pick and chose is alive and well. It's called confederalism and you can see it in action in (amongst others) Belgium and Switzerland.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Even the voting booklets were pretty biased against passing (IMO of course), although I'm not surprised at this result. The type of xenophobia often attributed to hillbillies in american culture is a lot more common in Switzerland than I expected. The sad thing is most people I've meet which hold this belief, could themselves be considered foreigners.

<comment><USER19> When I first arrived in Switzerland I was very surprised by the open racism and generally far-right-wing platform of the SVP. The black sheep poster[1] is pretty infamous of course, and then there's the small fact that the SVP was strongly against women's suffrage, within my lifetime! I think of universal suffrage as belonging to the American Reconstruction era but for Switzerland it's contemporaneous with men landing on the moon.

Even an American can easily see that a large chunk of Switzerland is quite reactionary. It seems weird. For some reason I expected a wealthy European country to have liberal social values.

[http://www.hurryupharry.org/wp- content/uploads/2009/11/svp_0...](http://www.hurryupharry.org/wp- content/uploads/2009/11/svp_01a.jpg)

<comment> guard-of-terra I would say a controversial thing:

As Switz people are historically all from one race and they didn't have a habit of importing slaves of other races, they don't have to _like_ other races _as a group_.

Of course they should still treat _individual_ people equally because not doing so is a human rights violation and is just plain rude.

<comment><USER19> Yes as I've sometimes said to my friends back home about Swiss, it's amazing how polite and well-behaved people are when they are all rich and sharing the same ancestors.

I had been in Zurich for almost a month before I saw the first black man there. Moments after I first saw him, he was arrested by four Kantonspolizie who jumped out of a van. True story.

<comment><USER20> > _it 's amazing how polite and well-behaved people are when they are all rich > and sharing the same ancestors_

I guess the big question is: Should they try to maintain their happy albeit somewhat isolated way of life? Or should they import diversity with all the social problems that come along with it?

<comment> guard-of-terra There are all kinds of diversity and most of them do not involve bringing poor and agressive people in. You can just call educated foreigners in. I frankly don't understand why countries can choose #1 route once that became apparent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is potentially good news for immigrants from the rest of the world. Currently, there are very strict quotas in place to make up for the large inflow of Europeans. In future, both categories will have quotas, which could result in more generous quotas for countries like the US. In an ironic twist, this could result in a more globally oriented Switzerland.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder wether this is part of a larger backlash against centralization in general. The British have become very skeptical of the EU. And in September, the Scots will even vote on becoming independent from the UK. Catalonia feels less and less comfortable as part of Spain. Is this only a temporary phenomenon or an ongoing trend?

<comment><USER21> _The British have become very skeptical of the EU._

This is par for the course in historical terms. The U.K. has always been against the formation of a strong, unified, mainland Europe.

<comment><USER22> Indeed we fought two wars in the last century to prevent it.

<comment><USER7> I believe preventing the need for such wars was one of the reasons why the UK joined the EU, or am I mistaken?

<comment><USER8> Preventing it by disorganising the EU from the inside, maybe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> guard-of-terra It seems that Europe is tightening its immigration policies.

I would say it makes sense given that previous policies gave rise to some suboptimal dynamics.

I wonder if they manage to still make holes for qualified specialists.

<comment><USER23> Half a billion people in the EU have the right to live and work in any of the 27 member states. People from some very poor countries can live and work in very rich countries. That's actually a massive amount of freedom of movement, and dismantling of immigration barriers.

<comment> guard-of-terra How come UK wants to stop paying immigrants from poor countries unemployement benefits?

If you think about it you'll wonder how they managed to pay newly immigrated poor people unemployement benefits in the first place.

<comment><USER8> The UK is not part of this, though.

The grand-parent said 27, but Shengen area (with free movement) is not the same as EU: The UK and Ireland are not part of it, but Iceland, Norway and Switzerland are (well, not anymore it seems).

<comment><USER7> Schengen area is about border control. There definitely is free movement between the UK and other EU states, with exception only for criminals and such IIRC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Actually, the EU should be grateful - that decision will result in fewer engineers, doctors, professors, and other highly qualified talents migrating to Switzerland.

<comment><USER23> The EU/Swiss deal is (I think) an all-or-nothing deal about immigration/customs/etc where either side can pull out completely. Switzerland might have just pulled out completely.

<comment><USER24> IIRC, Switzerland reserves certain rights on immigration.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The swiss enjoy the many benefits of the European Free Trade Association and want to be as integrated into the EU economy as possible without actually having to pay the price that comes with full membership. Not everybody is happy about this and I expect the EU to retaliate by putting more pressure on the freedoms of Swiss banks.

Can't have your lunch and eat it.

<comment> guard-of-terra So you're arguing that inflood of immigrants is not a benefit, but rather a "price" you have to "pay"?

That's an interesting twist to our discourse.

<comment><USER11> What? NO! That's not what I meant. The immigrants are a benefit.

The price you have to pay is that you get the Euro, you pay into the EU budget, you have your banking and industry regulated by the EU and you get the (admittedly questionable) supervision of the national budget.

There is a bigger question about cherry-picking the EU treaties here. Too many nationalists wanting to opt out of too many things.

EDIT: I must admit that my original comment can be read the way you did, but it was definitely not meant that way. I can assure you that I personally have made extensive use of the freedom to roam, work and study wherever I please within the EU.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I wonder if EU countries would ever pull a referendum on whether they should impose quotas on their nationals who keep their savings in swiss banks.</comment>


Ask HN: Is a non-human surrogate mother possible? - <AUTHOR> Is a non-human surrogate mother possible? More generally, among mammals, can very different species act as surrogate mothers for fertilized egg cells and have the resulting baby mammals successfully brought to term? <comment><USER2> One issue there is that the placenta generated by the fetus has to attach to the uterus of the foreign species. It's a tight integration of two tissues.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think the first is likely (hybrids often exist, as with ligers and tigons, mules and hinny's) but _very different species_? IMO less likely.

I don't want to know the answer, and it may be because of my limited understanding of biology, but it wouldn't even surprise me if humans could interbreed with some of the great apes (rationale: I wouldn't know why that would be much different from lions and tigers or horses and zebras. Those are within-genus, but I don't think 'genus' is that well-defined, and, certainly historically, biologists have wanted to keep humans well-separated from animals, so there's a decent chance they exaggerated the separation between humans on the one hand and chimpanzees and bonobos on the other)

</comment><comment><USER4> Pigs perhaps? Right sort of size, currently being looked at for organ transplant. It really I think if we get to the point where we could use a pig we are more likely to be able to build a womb from stem cells and grow a baby in that. I imagine that the latter would be an easier sell to the public, however the former would create quite a furore with 2 of the 3 Abrahamic religions.

<comment><USER5> Good Point.

Reminds me of that study on the Internet which said that Humans = Monkeys who mated with Pigs; I'm speculating that the Abrahamic religions knew about the DNA link and made it sacrilegious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why not?

This is the sort of question that gets raised at the end of Sapiens and throughout homo deus two books by Yuval Noah Harari.

The next 100 years are going to be very interesting as science is really testing the boundaries of what humans are capable of and I suspect more and more experiments will occur just to trial and error and see what happens.

</comment><comment><USER7> i think we'll see artificial wombs before non-human surrogates, either due to moral or technological limitations

</comment><comment><USER8> Don't get any naughty idea!</comment>


Facebook wants your nudes (to fight revenge porn) - <AUTHOR> https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/technology/facebook-to-fight-revenge-porn-by-letting-potential-victims-upload-nudes-in-advance/ <comment><USER2> The hashing could be done client side to avoid giving Facebook your, ahem, personal data. Other than that it's a clever idea, but it would be need to be done everywhere in order to be effective. What's stopping the person posting the revenge porn from just putting it on 4chan?

<comment><AUTHOR> dd if=/dev/zero bs=1 count=1 >> image.jpg

look, ma, different hash!

<comment><USER3> You're thinking of cryptographic hashes. Perceptual hashes don't do that.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Do email servers run in the cloud or data centers? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Just curious - where do you think is 'the cloud' located?

<comment><AUTHOR> in data centers</comment></comment>


Learning isn't fun. It was never fun. And it will never be fun. - <AUTHOR> http://hernan.amiune.com/blog/entry/learning-isnt-fun-it-was-never-fun-and-it-will-never-be-fun

<comment><USER2> Learning is the process of failing repeatedly in the pursuit of achieving something until you finally succeed.

That sounds fine as a definition, but that doesn't imply learning can't be fun. The "proof" provided seems to rely on "like" being binary, it falls down because you may like succeeding so much that it outweighs the dislike of failure, or you may like failing that little bit less each time. Having learnt quite a few skills so far I can honestly say learning, even as defined above, is fun.</comment>


Why Escalators Bring Out the Best in People - <AUTHOR> http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=why-escalators-brings-out-best-in-people

<comment><USER2> Maybe Red-Cross should have their donation page start from the bottom of the page and scroll upward? That would be a cool A/B test.</comment>


Show HN: Webapp to determine who owes you for pizza - <AUTHOR> http://settleup5.appspot.com/

<comment><USER2> As a college student I would actually say that this tool is pretty very useful for keeping up with the various things I purchase for myself, for others, and that others purchase for me (e.g. Chipotle, pizza, groceries, etc.). The minimalism & simplicity are a plus. Moreover, the functionality outlined by this statement is what I find to be truly useful:

"You can cut and paste the text from the results box into an email to all your buddies that owe you or you can save the worksheet...and send a link so they can see the worksheet that you created."

The fact that everything is coordinated by name also allows for a lot of flexibility. For example, if for some reason I wanted to add multiple rows, all with the same "Person", the system assumes that these people are the same based on the name, which is what I would personally expect.

Overall, kudos for a nice simple tool.

</comment><comment><USER3> Holy hell that is confusing.

The entire utility of using a computer to do this is to simplify things. At its current state, I may as well use a piece of paper and a calculator.

I'd recommend setting up some sort of simplified view. The person managing the house can set up all the users and bills that need to be paid, then the other housemates can just see what people are expecting them to pay and make payments accordingly.

I shouldn't have to figure out that I need to pay Mark for the rent, the system should know that I need to pay $200 as my portion of the rent, and that if Mark's already paid $800 for the rent, the $200 should go to him.

<comment><AUTHOR> one person can fill the form in and either cut and paste the "results" text into an email to send to the others, or save it and send them a link.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have absolutely no idea how this works. There are far too many inputs and buttons.

<comment><USER5> I used a google doc to split some payments when I went cottaging last week, so this is exactly what I was looking for. Pretty much: I drove person X and Y, so they owed me for gas, but I also bought food for 6 people, so they all owe for food, but 3 others bought food - so you write X and Y in the last column for gas, but "all" for food, for myself and those 3 others. Forget the buttons, just tab across the fields and the Ajax sorcery takes care of splitting up the bills, really handy +1.

<comment><USER6> Wait, cottaging?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cottaging>

<comment><USER5> Oh my, I've been saying cottaging all this time! But in my defence, I'm Canadian, see #7 here:

[http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Cottaging&...](http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Cottaging&defid=2686235)

      British/Canadian term for going to the cottage, chalet or
      camp located in a rural or semi-rural area.

Thanks for pointing it out. Definitely saved me some embarrassment down the road, like the time I asked the cashier at the grocery store to "bag" me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Here's some related functionality I need:

A group of people engage in N rounds of betting, where there is one winner per round. Each round winner is entitled to $X from all other participants for that round. Find simplest (ie fewest number of) settle-up payments at the conclusion of the N rounds. It's always harder to figure this out in real-time than it seems like it should be. Mobile app ftw.

</comment><comment><USER8> This is really confusing. Using your example, Kali spent nothing, Matt spent 101.96, and Janet spent 70.70, but Matt still owes Janet money to settle up? Makes no sense to me.

*Edit: I think I get it now, Janet's money went to Matt initially. Seems like if the user is smart enough to figure out how to use this, he/she is smart enough to do the math independently. A fun project though, good work!

</comment><comment><USER9> Cool. The neatest part, I think, is where you can specify who it's owed to, instead of assuming it's paid out for 'all' (everyone).

What did you build it in?

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks.

the front end is written in haxe and compiled to js. the backend is python on google app engine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Neat. Is this a self-learning project? Not that it's amateurish (I didn't look much at it besides clicking the link), but strikes me as that. If so, good luck

<comment><AUTHOR> I am new to bootstrap and I guess I didn't spend much time on the ui. I built it because I thought it would be handy, and only put time into making it clean and usable, but I suppose it isn't very polished.

<comment><USER5> Great job Ian (+1'd), any plans on opening up the source code? Or writing up a tutorial?

<comment><AUTHOR> a tutorial on how the site was made?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Neat. Back when I had roommates, we used a spreadsheet similar to this to split our expenses. Nice to see a stab at a webapp to make it easier.

</comment><comment><USER12> I've used Billmonk for this in the past.

<https://www.billmonk.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> cool site. I hadn't seen that before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> our group is using <http://www.billsup.com> for this kind of thing, keeps history and all for a running debt

<comment><AUTHOR> that is another nice site. that and billmonk are a bit different in their goals than settleup.

settleup is meant to be a simple calculator that you can use without creating an account or logging in. if you want something to keep a history then those are good solutions, but if you just want to settle up after a trip with friends you might not want to have to create an account, and might not care about keeping a history. then you're stuck figuring it out on paper or in excel. my intent was to make settleup a little easier than excel and more convenient than other similar sites.</comment></comment>


Done deal: Yahoo/Microsoft finalize search deal - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2009/12/04/microsoft-yahoo-finalizes-search-partnership/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Mashable+%28Mashable%29&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher

<comment><USER2> I'm a bit concerned what it will mean when Yahoo's engine is shutdown and only Bing's is left. Presumably it will cause a massive reshuffling of web traffic, because Bing's crawler and ranking algorithms are different.

There will probably be some major winners and losers as a result.

<comment><USER3> The tech press hasn't done a very good job of being clear about the details of the deal, which is unfortunate, since it's left many people with an inaccurate picture of what it entails.

A modern search "engine" is really many, many engines. There are countless backend systems layered on top of and alongside the core algorithmic search system that most people think of when they think of a search engine (and that Microsoft will soon be running for Yahoo! as part of this deal). None of those other systems are going away as a result of this deal, nor is Yahoo! Search itself going away.

Yahoo! isn't just going to flip a switch and start using Bing's algorithmic search. As part of the deal, Microsoft has licensed the core algo search technology that currently powers Yahoo! Search, so you're likely to see more of a melding of the two.

Disclaimer: I work for Yahoo! Search (on the frontend, not the backend), but I speak for myself, not for Yahoo!.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for replying. Can you tell me if what I was worried about is likely to happen? Will there be a big reshuffling of web traffic due to Bing returning results that differ from Yahoo's current results?

<comment><USER3> Your question presupposes that the search results from a given search engine tend to remain static over time, but they're actually in constant flux. All the major search engines make frequent tweaks (sometimes small, sometimes large) to their ranking algorithms, and indexes are updated endlessly around the clock with new and changing content.

I don't think there's anything to worry about.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Zesty (YC W14) Raises $17M Series A to Improve the Health of Humanity - <AUTHOR> http://blog.zesty.com/zesty-series-a/ <comment><USER2> According to the press release, they describe themselves as "San Francisco's leading office catering service."

Unless they plan on dramatically expanding their product offerings, "Improve[ing] the Health of Humanity" sounds like disingenuous marketing- speak.

Don't get me wrong, catering is important and meals are a great way to bring employees together. Having used Zesty, the meals are from local restaurants and, though there are healthy options, there's lots of greasy options available.

<comment><USER3> Hi there, one of the founders from Zesty here. There is definitely some variety in the level of healthiness of our meals, and this is something we want to keep increasing over time, evangelizing healthy eating as we go. However, in order to have a significant impact, you need to operate on a large scale. We've learned from trying that you can't get most companies to adopt a service that is too extreme on the health side. It's too much of a behavior change for most people. Compared to what our clients were eating before, we are a significant step in the right direction, and we intend to keep taking bigger steps here over time. We're excited about the progress we've already made and look forward to how much more we can make with this funding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> We serve Zesty everyday at Flexport and I consider it to be one of our best investments.

1/ The team enjoys having high quality, healthy food served right here in our kitchen, they barely have to move to eat.

2/ People end up talking about work stuff during lunch most of the time

3/ When they are not talking about lunch, they're still hanging out with co- workers, which is good for our culture.

4/ Our team takes shorter lunch breaks than they did when they went out to eat, which means we are getting more hours of productivity from everybody.

5/ Hosting meals daily makes it easy to invite folks in for lunch, so it helps with doing external meetings as well--if you are interested in working at Flexport, come have lunch with us anytime :)

6/ It's pretty affordable, b/c we're getting economies of scale by everybody purchasing together, so for the extra hours of work and bonding, we get an insanely good deal.

I love Zesty and hope they can scale the business and make it very profitable because it is one of those companies whose value proposition for its customers is a no-brainer.

<comment><USER5> Flexport sounds like a great place to work.

Question: how do you efficiently filter out job candidates who have lives of their own? My company is trying to make recruiting more efficient but we are always inundated with talented people who selfishly want to invest some of their time and energy away from the business.

Any advice you can offer would be greatly appreciated!

<comment><USER6> I can't tell if you're being extremely sarcastic or not.

<comment><USER5> I can't either.

<comment><USER7> I can.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > "We have quickly become the market leader in San Francisco."

This is an odd statement since I know there are at least two direct competitors who are far larger.

<comment><USER3> We are referring to being larger in the San Francisco market, not overall larger as a company.

<comment><USER8> Right — that's how I interpreted it. There are still two companies that are larger in San Francisco.

<comment><USER9> Why don't you just name which "far larger" competitors you're thinking of, so that he can address that?

<comment><USER10> Not OP, but I was wondering how they compare to ZeroCater, which is also YC- backed, feeds some big names like GitHub, Foursquare and Tumblr, and has all those billboards up and down 101.

<comment><USER11> Zesty also serves GitHub, and Zesty usually handles their events. There is a lot of business in town; more than enough to go around. And you don't need billboards to be a market leader.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> David and Chris are extraordinary entrepreneurs. I learned a lot watching them build Zesty week over week during YC W14. This is a hard business to build. Providing consistent service in terms of restaurant relations, food quality, and delivery is non trivial. Zesty is the best at it. All of thedogeye's points about the value of serving high quality meals to your team are spot on. Congrats David, Chris and the Zesty crew!

</comment><comment><USER13> Super impressed to see how far David and the team have come. I remember talking with him down the road from my flat three years ago about the inkling that Zesty was then. I remember when Chris first joined him and they showed me the first screenshots of the mobile app in a bar in London before they hotfooted it off to San Francisco and now they're raising $17,000,000. A pretty amazing ride. Congrats guys.

</comment><comment><USER9> Especially in this climate, there are lots of startups fundraising all the time (indeed a few other startups announced their fundraising today), and I can imagine that from the outside it may often look easy to raise large sums of money. I can say without doubt first hand that this fundraise for Zesty is the result of just immense hardwork and relentless hustle from David and his team.

I have huge respect for 1) the aggressive growth and customer development; 2) the operational roll out (which, given each customer has Zesty workers onsite to set out the food, is a huge operational nightmare); 3) being humble enough to deviate and pivot the initial idea from a mobile app to a much more operations heavy b2b play

</comment><comment><USER6> Nice good job.

David, if you don't mind answering, what made you decide to call it a day at groupspaces? Was there a certain event or circumstance that made you think "okay lets work on something else now".

</comment><comment><USER14> This is extraordinary! The Zesty team has moved light years in months. Can't believe how much David and Chris have grown in their abilities. I raise a green drink to toast your success.

</comment><comment><USER15> Way to go Zesty!

</comment><comment><USER16> I applied to one of your engineering positions and never heard back.

Are they available?

Open to remote?

<comment><AUTHOR> My apologies: send me an email at chris [at] zesty.com!</comment></comment>


I got my first paying b2b client - <AUTHOR>

I know there is a long road ahead of me, but I just got my first paying b2b client, and wanted to share some experiences from it.
I'm the founder of https://www.menutail.com and what the site does is offer online website/menu hosting and menu nutrition analysis.
A couple months back I gave out some of my business cards to a local shaved snow place near me, and he called me last Thursday that he needed some calorie information on some of his products before he gets interviewed by our local TV station on the following Tuesday.
Now keep in mind that the site has two products, calorie labeling, and restaurant website hosting.  The calorie labeling is done, but the website hosting portion is not.
With that I spend most of the weekend scrambling to polish up some of the nutrition features, and leave the website hosting features incomplete.
I came in person to show him the site, and a continual problem I am noticing is when I do demos with my mac, most business owners have a really hard time using it with just the navigation and simple things like clicking.  A note to myself might be to get a mouse with two buttons, or bring a pc laptop as those seem to be more familiar to most food business owners.
The second thing I realized was that their Internet was super spotty and I had to connect to the even worse AT&T wireless network next door.  From that, I learned I need to bring some type of tethering device when doing demos.
Lastly I initially told him we would do some type of trial deal, but after reading much things from the net, I decided to dump all free and trial, and instead do a monthly subscription fee for all services.
For tl;dr - For a business meeting with clients, consider bringing a pc laptop if they are going to use it for ease of use - Be sure to have some type of mobile tethering device in case the client's Internet isn't good <comment><USER2> Congrats on the sale! Have you thought about using a 3G-enabled iPad for demos?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a great idea. As long as I stay away from at&t hopefully that would be good..</comment></comment>


Under-building of new homes, high construction cost perpetuate housing shortage - <AUTHOR> https://www.redfin.com/blog/2017/10/heres-the-1-reason-its-so-hard-to-find-an-affordable-home.html <comment><USER2> "We would love to build more affordable starter homes, but when high-end homes cost the same to build and are far more profitable, we lose the incentive to build smaller units," said Isaac Stocks of Azure Northwest Homes, a Seattle- area home builder.

That sums it up.

Plus, more expensive homes means more property tax revenue, so there's little incentive for state/local gov to encourage lower end housing.

Finally, it would help to know about financing. How willing are banks to issue loans at the lower end?

The whole system is "tuned" for larger more expensive houses. It works for those it works for, and doesn't for those with little to none socio-political clout.

<comment><USER3> The first part of the solution is to completely eliminate mortgage subsidies and mortgage interest deductions. These do not increase the supply of housing, they only subsidize demand for more expensive houses and increase indebtedness, and increase the flow of capital into non-productive areas of the economy such as mortgage lending and mortgage backed assets.

The second part of the solution is to convert all property taxes into Land Value Taxes, so that idle and vacant land is taxed at exactly the same rate as land containing well maintained houses. Local governments would no longer get higher payouts for zoning for high end housing, they would only get higher payouts if they raised the net desirability of all land within the borders of their city as a whole.

The land value tax would also free up vacant, idle and underutilized land for actual use and improvement, by making land unattractive as an asset for investment or speculation. This would greatly increase the competitiveness of the housing market, because if it is no longer profitable to hold onto a vacant building, a parking lot, or a strip mall in a high demand area after the carrying cost applied by the land value tax, the vacant lot might be split up and sold to smaller owner-operators, the parking lot might be replaced by several smaller town houses, and the strip mall might be replaced by a mixed used development with additional housing units builtin above the shops, increasing average quantity of housing units per city block or per area unit measure.

> How willing are banks to issue loans at the lower end?

Focusing on banks and subsidizing loans is what is fueling this problem. The solution is not to make loans easier to get, it is to drastically lower the price of land and increase the efficiency at which land is used. When the price for land is cheaper and closer to a market price rather than a monopoly price, far fewer people will have to bother with loans or mortgages in the first place. Lower end housing can be made substantially more affordable even if all mortgage assistance schemes are eliminated.

<comment><USER4> You're putting the poor in an awfully tight position there. Between no tax deduction for a mortgage and paying the same property tax (what you call land value tax) for their trailer as the mansion next door, they're kind of getting screwed.

And what about old people that have owned their own house for decades? If the local economy goes up, increasing the land value tax, they either leave or go bankrupt. And the kicker is that their investment into their home is now worth a lot less.

<comment><USER5> People with trailers are not benefiting from the mortgage interest deduction.

The mortgage interest deduction overwhelmingly benefits households earning over $100,000 per year. Only one in five tax filers take the mortgage interest deduction, the extreme majority are in that $100k+ income bracket.

The substantially increased standard deduction is far more important than the MID for the middle class. Cutting the MID tax break for the top 1/3 of earners, is what will help pay for raising the standard deduction that is a huge benefit to the bottom 2/3 of earners.

[https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/31/that-beloved-mortgage- deduct...](https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/31/that-beloved-mortgage-deduction- skews-to-the-wealthy.html)

"Mortgage Interest Deduction Saves Middle Class Taxpayers All Of $51/Month"

"Most of the MID 2012 tax benefits went to people making six figures or more. Households earning over $100,000 in 2012 claimed 77.3 percent of the total MID tax savings, essentially the same as in 2010. And just looking at those making $200,000 or more, we found the very top earners claimed 34.6 percent of the total MID benefits and saved $5,021 on average for 2012."

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2013/12/18/mortgage- in...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2013/12/18/mortgage-interest- deduction-saves-middle-class-taxpayers-all-of-51month/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I hear an argument a lot, "housing in the Bay Area is expensive because because labor cost is so high." According to this report in San Francisco it costs $269,000 to build a new housing unit. With the median home sale price over $1,000,000 it seems fair to say that the labor component isn't the primary driver of the high costs, it's probably related to the inability to legalize enough housing.

<comment><USER7> Labor is definitely not the main driver.

Often quoted construction price is about 300$/sqft around where i live. If you were to build new, you would spend 750k-850k. Now, you cant buy land for less than 1.8 in mountain view that can hold 2500sqft home. And sale price would be close to 3m anyways.

<comment><USER8> Maybe one of the issues is the expected sizes of homes in the US - 2500 sq ft is about 250 sq m - which is pretty darn big. The average home in the uk is about 85 sq m...

<comment><USER6> No, this doesn't have to do with construction costs (which are about linear with square footage), it's other factors. For example, even if someone wanted to build a tiny home (i.e. less than 500 square feet), it's illegal in many places because of minimum square footage requirements. The problem comes from bad land use planning, not because "dumb" Americans don't understand a larger house costs more money.

<comment><USER7> True that. There's the other side of the coin though. South bay (excepting San Jose) is what you'd call suburbs. People who choose to live low density areas. Part of it is because of the employers. I, for one, do not like a lot of people around me, and I grew up in a city of > 15M. I like the low density.

I think it goes both ways. companies in the bay area choose to headquarter in low density areas (so they can grow).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> No, the #1 reason it's so hard to find an affordable home is that potential buyers can get huge loans at very low rates. Since buyers compete with each other, prices go up.

I guarantee that if interest rates were allowed to creep up, and the government stopped guaranteeing loans made by the banks, we'd have cheaper homes almost immediately.

<comment><USER10> Not really... these days 20% downpayments are the norm. I know several people holding off purchases because they simply don't have downpayment. Higher home prices reduces number of potential customers but right now we have so many of them that reduction doesn't matter and margines are much higher on higher end.

<comment><USER11> FHA loans are easy to get and the down payment required is 3.5%. Even with mortgages that don't qualify for FHA it's relatively easy to get 5% down payment loans.

<comment><AUTHOR> They generally require PMI, so still an extra payment out of pocket, are usually hard-capped at 30% of buyer's current income, and take looong time to close compared to strong cash offers with conventional loans, so sellers view them as last-resort. It's possible, but not very realistic for an FHA applicant to outbid everyone else on price.

<comment><USER11> You can get prequalified for an FHA loan just like any other loan. Everyone doesn't live in SV where houses go so fast you're constantly having to outbid people.

<comment><AUTHOR> taprun's comment was describing a competitive market "potential buyers can get huge loans at very low rates. Since buyers compete with each other, prices go up".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _We would love to build more affordable starter homes, but when high-end homes cost the same to build and are far more profitable, we lose the incentive to build smaller units_

This is a major reason why prices are so out of control. Land prices aside, there is no reason somebody couldn't build a nice ~1000sqf house for under $100k. But without literally doing the work yourself, these places just don't get built.

<comment><USER13> Can't you contract the building part if you have a suitable piece of land?

<comment><USER12> Sure, but that's going to cost a lot more, as it is now a "custom home". Economies of scale apply strongly to houses.

<comment><USER14> Not necessarily the case - my sister just had a home built on land in Dallas and the cost was not much more than new home cost ($129/living sq ft), before that my father built the home we grew up in nearby himself. There's a reason Dallas, Houston, and Austin are at the top of the new home construction numbers - low regulatory overhead make every scale of home building manageable, including self-starting new home construction. Meanwhile the benchmark for new construction starts in SF is 3-5 _years_ just to navigate the intial regulatory approval for construction. Try navigating that as an individual just trying to get a home built for yourself. It's basically impossible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Construction pricing is definitely out of control. Part of the problem is that the entire industry is funded with low interest purchase and equity loans and not cash. Another problem seems to be that a lot of construction entities went offline in during the crisis and never came back. Any construction quote easily runs into the $100,000s for even a tiny addition to a house. It's way out of control.

If there would exist a construction company that would have upfront pricing, not insanely expensive, and can get most jobs done within several weeks, they would get a huge amount of business. Instead it's always months out, pricing 5x what it should be, and often just impossible to find anybody.

<comment><USER16> You don't seem to understand what you're talking about. The reason for those months out is because everyone is overbooked, and the pricing reflects demand vs supply.

<comment><USER15> Exactly. It is a market out of whack.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is also because of mass migration to urban centers in recent times. Every major urban center in US is currently facing massive number of incoming people. When everybody wants to live in same little place, prices are obviously going to shoot up. This should also explain why there are no too many new homes being built - because urban centers have little room to expand. This is current phenomenon in much of the world. Even if you go to 3rd world countries and look at prices in core urban centers, you will see exact same trend as in 1st world countries. This always had been a trend through out history but in recent times curves have crossed the knee and has taken a vertical leap.

<comment><USER17> Urban centers can grow vertically. 80% of SF is single story construction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Here in the Kansas City area, it seems most of the new housing is mixed use; commercial on the bottom and apartments on top. Not many single family homes. Maybe it is because millennial not wanting/affording a house, and prefer dense urban living.

Though that is beginning to change as they have kids, and are now moving to suburbs. So they now build little cities within the suburbs.

<comment><USER19> In the northland, at least, there are tons of new boring ol' suburban houses going up. Construction slowed for a couple years after the crash, but came back fast and now they're putting up new houses and plotting new neighborhoods as fast as they can.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Tldr: new homes cost too much due to labor. And building affordable housing doesn't make sense when the costs to build a larger, luxury home are not radically more, but the profits are.

I wish they'd talked about the problem in a more systemic manner.

They didn't address:

* Commuting

* Land prices

* Price to rent ratios

* Density

* Economic opportunity where housing is cheaper

</comment><comment><USER21> Funny to read this after all the articles about China's "ghost cities" and the follies of central planning.

</comment><comment><USER22> Why isn't there a tech company trying to disrupt home construction?

People speak of Uber being worth so much because of the giant market it's going after and transportation is big being the second largest consumer expenditure at 17% of wallet share. However housing is first at nearly 30% of wallet share and the biggest dent you can make in that figure is lowering the upfront cost which is several years of income for the average buyer.

<comment><USER23> Because the cost is labor, materials, land acquisition and permits, none of which can really be "disrupted".

<comment><USER22> labor has been disrupted through automation. materials can be disrupted through better manufacturing and or new materials. permits can be disrupted by removing or streamlining the process through regulatory changes or personal changes/increases at the Department Of Building(s).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> My belief is that radical changes are needed. Much smaller plots, truly mixed use areas, for starters. The tiny villages concept I have shown at [http://tinyvillages.org](http://tinyvillages.org) takes it to an extreme, but even 2 or 3 uses for the old plot size would make a dramatic difference.

I think that this idea will be better in many cases than building condos everywhere.

</comment><comment><USER25> There seems to be a lot of articles posted on HN purporting to explain the housing crisis from companies that profit from it.

Bearing that in mind, it's not so surprising to see "labor shortages" get the blame while untaxed land, low interest rates and wealth inequality/property hoarding go unmentioned.</comment>


Amazon deletes job listings for analysts to track 'labor organizing threats' - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/01/amazon-seeks-intelligence-analyst-to-track-labor-organizing-threats.html <comment><USER2> Comments moved to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24343361](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24343361).

I've copied this title there too, since it seems more up to date.</comment>