Rejected by Kickstarter? 'Roll your own' with Selfstarter instead - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcworld.com/article/2011744/rejected-by-kickstarter-roll-your-own-with-selfstarter-instead.html

<comment><USER2> I love what Lockitron did. I'm sure the dismay of getting rejected by Kickstarter drove them to open-source their work, and they did a great job. They put a lot more work into open-sourcing their efforts than I've seen from many (any?) start-ups. It feels very polished.

Sucks for Kickstarter though, they picked the wrong couple of folks to reject and now the barrier to just rolling your own has become infintely lower. If you're launching a decent-size product Kickstarter is starting to look worse and worse

Why even try to get them to accept you, having to worry about getting the rug pulled out from under your project just a couple hours before you reach the funding deadline to then pay a 8-10% fee? (5% + 3-5% to Amazon)

I'm sure the folks at Kickstarter HQ are worried about this development, maybe their rigid product vision will wind up biting them in the ass.

<comment><USER3> Why would they be worried? Rolling your own Kickstarter has many issues that Kickstarter deals with, scalability, payment processing, there's all manner of things. Sure, if you really care so much about that 5% that you're willing to dump all the advantages of Kickstarter then you'll get to save 5%, but do you think kickstarter are surprised that people are cloning the idea for their own usage?

If you're a project creator, let's say you're Lockitron and you _don't_ have any web developers on staff, do you try and hire someone or get a friend on board to try and manage a website that could, if the project blows up, suffer from a metric fuckton of traffic, traffic that lots of websites cannot handle? Or do you say "eh, we'll sacrifice the 5% for the stability and branding of Kickstarter"?

If your website goes down for 24 hours because you can't cope with the traffic and your developers are inexperienced you could lose a lot of money, it can be make or break for projects that get media coverage. Who's going to put money into a project that can't even keep a website online?

Then there's the fact that there are dozens of Kickstarter alternatives out there already, with lower fees and other advantages, like no project limits. Why aren't Kickstarter crying themselves to sleep over that?

I really doubt Kickstarter have anything other than "heh" to say about this. Hell, they might even gain from this because people will develop new ideas that Kickstarter can fold into their product.

<comment><USER4> Kickstarter dumps basically all of the costs of payment processing onto whoever's launching the product, though. Amazon's payment processing fees, chargeback costs, etc are all paid from the project's portion of the money, and they also have to have a US bank account to deposit the money in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> How about Kickstarter as a service [1] (forked off Selfstarter or similar code) itself? They could especially target Kickstarter rejects.

1\. Useful for those who cannot (or are too lazy to) code - instant setup.

2\. Cut out the middle man and save on the 5% (or $X) fee. Then again, you will still be paying a bit for the service.

Thoughts?

[1] Transparency which means you are responsible for the project and the provider has no legal obligation whatsoever.

<comment><USER6> <https://www.outcrowding.com>

<comment><USER5> Neat, just what I had in mind - powered by Stripe. Fee looks a bit steep though.

<comment><USER7> It's lower than Kickstarter's (the 5% mentioned doesn't include the Amazon processing fee, iirc).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> One of the biggest things that Kickstarter wanted to avoid was customers looking at projects and simply treating it like a store. So, they tried to prevent those types of projects from being created.

However, for some experienced people, that's exactly the experience they are trying to create, because it is what sells.

</comment><comment><USER9> As a developer of a hardware project [1] that was funded on Kickstarter last year, I have to say that the real value is not the easily-reproduced payment infrastructure, but the eyeballs. A significant portion of our backers found the project through Kickstarter -- that's where people browse looking for something to spend money on.

I'm disappointed by Kickstarter's latest changes, however. What we did wouldn't be possible under the new rules.

[1] <http://www.nonolithlabs.com/cee/>

<comment><USER10> First of all good luck with you project looks like a beaut.

With regards to eyeballs. With eyeballs comes competition. I wonder if Lockitron would have as much success had they used Kickstarter.

<comment><USER11> This is a fascinating question. We optimized our design to be a "simpler" Kickstarter - however, I don't believe the changes were material enough to really shift things more that 5-10% in either direction.

While we did lose out on the internal momentum that Kickstarter brings to projects, most of the early press missed that fact that we weren't on Kickstarter. Some actually reported us as a Kickstarter project.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It would be interesting to see how this landscape evolves. I'm very familiar with the development, having consulted for multiple companies and I know that even for industry veterans, a product is very rarely on time and on budget. What does it mean for kickstarter projects, when the inventor is usually approaching a whole new field?

I'm thinking that there will be a lot more friction between makers and backers as time passes.

I'm sensing that KS is trying to sidestep the issue instead of confronting it. They are in an enviable position now, but it will take little bad press to dethrone them. I'm willing to bet that some major PR mess is approaching KS like a freight train, with all their flattering press and hugely overbacked projects. These will start slipping one by another, as most products do.

KS needs to preempt this by appointing governing/consulting entities to the major projects, making sure things are on time and well communicated to the backers. KS also has to find a milestone scheme where the money gets to the makers on an agreeable schedule, and should consider alternate funding methods like dollar matching with the project maker.

What they run now is a disaster waiting to happen.

<comment><USER13> "KS also has to find a milestone scheme where the money gets to the makers on an agreeable schedule"

not sure if KS wants to get into monitoring of project details and this idea is a hard one, because as organization making physical products you have big upfront expenses to pay like tooling and it requires the money early on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's important people realize that a lot of payment providers don't like accepting payments up front for something that does not yet exist. Paypal for instance clearly states that's not allowed.

While I think it's great that crowdfunding is very accessible as of lately, I think there's a risk here of people half assing things, not following through on their end with the product development, and it going south really quickly.

<comment><USER15> It's against most networks' (Visa, etc) TOS to charge before the goods are shipped, but you can usually word things in such a way to get around it, and it's usually not enforced strictly until it becomes a real problem. It's definitely higher risk than paid-on-shipment though.

However, you'll find that the Lockitron guys aren't charging cards until shipment, just getting the preapproval to do so when they're ready to ship. I suppose that means either they have some other funding or means to get it (with nearly $2m in "pledges", it shouldn't be hard to secure a loan for the first run if they need it if they don't want to go the VC route)

So this solves a slightly different problem than Kickstarter, since the people doing preorders aren't providing working capital. Still, it shows that Kickstarter got enough traction that continuing to fly under the radar wasn't possible, or the chargeback rates on preorders was way too high.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm wondering what sorts of benefits (protections, legal boilerplate, etc.) that kickstarter provides that selfstarter does not. I imagine that there must be some benefits that having a company behind the platform brings to the table.

<comment><USER17> Kickstarter brings a comments section that is not controlled by the project creators. That's extremely important. You want a degree of scrutiny from backers that are asking the tough questions. The Lockitron model dispenses with that important distinction. EDIT : REPLY to the comment below. No, it's not. 1- you can always back with 1 $, comment, remove your pledge.2- you can back (conditionally) in good faith, ask questions lingering in your mind, decide to rescind your support if the answers do not prove satisfactory.

<comment><USER18> Only backers can comment on kick starters, so the comment section on kickstarter is pretty useless anyways.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Hello all ,this is a very nice thread Its open oportunities for those who wants to share new ideas

See in our website what we are doing to survive in the wild.We are offering templates that is very easy to install and manage.here are some examples:

</comment><comment><USER20> Here's an alternative that I wrote after reading about Lockitron.

[http://blog.crowdint.com/2012/10/13/crowdfunding-your- projec...](http://blog.crowdint.com/2012/10/13/crowdfunding-your-project-with- rails.html)

</comment><comment><USER21> So weird to see people complaining about the risk of people half-assing projects on kickstarter because of getting money up front with little assurance. As if angel investing is much different.

<comment><USER22> A professional angel (and certainly VC) is a lot less personally pissed off at losing $25-200k in an investment than a purchaser of a product is at not receiving a $25 product. Courts are also much more sympathetic (rightly) to the individual consumer than to an investor in this case, so that $25 loss (x 1000 people) could turn into a huge judgment against Kickstarter, etc.

<comment><USER21> Kickstarter makes it clear they are not a "purchaser of a product." How much money you make doesn't change being responsible for how you spend it.

<comment><USER22> That's not really true under US law. US consumers are legally privileged over vendors or business to business transactions -- the only more privileged party is the Government.

Morally/intellectually, sure.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Is "Do Unto Others" Written Into Our Genes? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/18/science/18mora.html?ex=1347768000&en=b2e3366b4c299aa6&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

<comment><USER2> I've often wondered about this while watching canine social groups in action. Despite the proverbial "dog eat dog", I've seen what appears to be an expectation of fairness and group order in dogs, even in a supposedly informal social group like pets at a dog park. I've often felt that animals with complex social structures might reveal the origins of "enlightened self interest." Cool stuff.

</comment><comment><USER3> Nope, otherwise hot girls would be having sex with any ugly guy that wanted it.</comment>


China Builds Enormous Optimus Prime Transformer - <AUTHOR> http://singularityhub.com/2010/07/20/the-growing-robot-culture-china-builds-giant-optimus-prime-out-of-junk-video/

<comment><USER2> why is the headline "china builds"? would they say "america builds" or "italy builds" or rather just credit the people and organizations responsible (even if government was involved)? it reads like pre-war propaganda and seems to have that effect on the first ("they" "we") commenter.

</comment><comment><USER3> If they leave it at our gates, we probably shouldn't bring it inside... there could be more than meets the eye.

I'd down mod myself if I could.</comment>


296 'funked up' stocks -- trades canceled - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2010/05/07/markets/explaining_wall_street_turmoil/

<comment><AUTHOR> So if the price fell by only 60% or less due to this technical glitch--those people are just out of luck?</comment>


Ask HN: Sample for web development contracting agreement? - <AUTHOR>

I am about to hire a web development shop to make the 1.0 version of my new project.
I won't use Odesk, Elance or any such service.
What are the key components the contract should cover?
So far I have: - Description of deliverables
- Timeline of project - Payment schedule if timeline is met - Financial punishment for failing timeline - IP goes to client - Assigning arbitrator in case of unresolvable dispute - Service level agreement <comment><USER2> You could consider stopping at "Description of deliverables", then pay the prospective development team to help refine the deliverables spec/scope and on that basis create the additional items. You might also consider including a couple of iterative cycles to further refine the deliverables as the project develops and adjust the timeline payment schedules accordingly. In my limited experience, it is rare to be able to clearly define deliverables before you get into the project development.

Taking this approach might help you decide if you want to work with the chosen team and take your project forward another step.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, thank you. We indeed did feature prioritization and have three release dates for alpha, beta and final 1.0.

So far I feel quite confident about the development shop.</comment></comment>


Ubuntu: Where Did the Love Go? - <AUTHOR> http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/osrc/article.php/3925641/Ubuntu-Where-Did-the-Love-Go.htm

<comment><USER2> Ubuntu was and is seen as a unifying force for Linux, which arguably is badly needed. That was never going to sit well with the rebels and individuals who although developing great software - do it on their own terms. The more success Unbuntu has with standards, almost by definition the more resistance it is going to get from some members of the community.

<comment><USER3> I lose a bit of faith in Ubuntu every single time they change something major without community involvement, or sufficient testing on real machines out there. There have been so many times where S. said "we're doing it that way" and that was it - changes went in a day before freeze and devs kept saying that it was planned all along and you could voice your opinion earlier... Additionally due to only one release line, changes go in which break stuff all the time in new releases and are not fixed until half a year later (if at all). This can be really annoying if your gpu depends on those changes.

I don't believe they would have to change much to be "nice" again... just start working with people in many small ways instead of playing apple with "you will like it" attitude.</comment></comment>


People Recognize Objects by Visualizing Their "Skeletons" - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/no-bones-about-it-people-recognize-objects-by-visualizing-their-skeletons/ <comment><USER2> Imho the most important part of the article:

 _One concern with the study is that the authors generated the objects specifically from skeletons rather than deriving them from shapes, either natural or human-made, covered by skin, metal, or other materials that people encounter in their day-to-day life. "The shapes that they generated are directly related to the hypothesis they're testing and the conclusions they're drawing," says James Elder, a professor of human and computer vision at York University in Toronto. "If we're interested in how important skeletons are to shape and object perception, we can't really answer that question by only looking at the perception of skeleton-generated shapes. Because obviously in a world of skeleton-generated shapes, skeletons are probably fairly important because that's the way those shapes were made."_

I looked into the paper first and thought: yea well it's really not surprising, that the skeleton models are most predictive for the kind of objects they tested. Their skeleton really is all that defines them.

The only thing they tested and proved is: Skeleton models are predictive for human decision when recognizing objects made just from skeletons with little flesh and hardly any texture whatsoever.

Nevertheless I think skeleton models are a good thing for object recognition

<comment><USER3> > The only thing they tested and proved is: Skeleton models are predictive for > human decision when recognizing objects made just from skeletons with little > flesh and hardly any texture whatsoever.

Isn't it an important result that humans are able to recognize when an object is made just from skeletons and optimize recognition to focus solely on the skeleton? That sounds pretty neat to me

<comment><USER4> Yes, that's neat, but it's very different to and far more limited than the generality the title and the rest of the article claim.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Humans are much better at noise removal than computers. Many people can look at an object and see what's extraneous to the basic form--what's left is the skeleton. Computers, so far, don't have the context to do this, and instead try to recognize objects based on visual patterns, etc.

Perhaps "weighting" models, allowing algorithms to look for centers of gravity and mechanical behavior would help. Humans exist in a 3d world, but we also _interact_ with a simplified 3d world.

We don't worry about the plastic bag in the street because we can feel how our car will respond. It's trivial. There's no "weight" attached to the object.

Weight and balance are incredibly important psychologically (see the burgeoning popularity of weighted blankets), and that's a thing that's missing for computers. Having a tangible sense of the world in our minds gives us a huge leg up when relating to it.

<comment><USER6> _> Computers, so far, don't have the context to do this_

As someone who did their Ph.D thesis on the statistics of shape using models based on the medial axis (i.e., a skeleton), I would beg to differ.

Whether these models are as easy to apply (computationally and conceptually) as the currently in-vogue techniques is another question, but there is nothing magical here that computers are incapable of.

<comment><USER5> Sure, just the skeleton part. How about density, deformation, and reflectiveness? All at once? We can simulate these, so we can obviously detect them, but not yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Direct link to the paper: [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-45268-y](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-45268-y)

>Here we tested whether skeletal structures provide an important source of information for object recognition when compared with other models of vision. Our results showed that a model of skeletal similarity was most predictive of human object judgments when contrasted with models based on image-statistics or neural networks, as well as another model of structure based on coarse spatial relations. Moreover, we found that skeletal structures were a privileged source of information when compared to other properties thought to be important for shape perception, such as object contours and component parts. Thus, our results suggest that not only does the visual system show sensitivity to the skeletal structure of objects32,36,37, but also that perception and comparison of object skeletons may be crucial for successful object recognition.

</comment><comment><USER8> I think it's telling that even young children are exceptionally good at object recognition, and if you ask them to draw an object, they'll typically give you a "skeleton" with basically no ability to reconstruct the textural components.

I think the real interesting question is: what is the internal representation of this skeleton? A graph? A forest of graphs? Some kind of field that's graph-like?

<comment><USER9> I think young children's drawing ability is more indicative of the type of tool we are giving them, they only have the ability to draw a fixed width line, how else would you represent a limb?

<comment><USER10> The same instrument in the hands of a skilled artist would have no trouble using it to produce a convincing likeness of whatever they were drawing.

<comment><USER9> Absolutely, but that requires advanced fine motor control, understanding of how the instrument lays down color and what multiple layers of color look when on top of each other, and so on.

The naive way to use the instrument, is to run the instrument over the area one or a few times. The simplest way to do that in terms of motor control (e.g. fewest turns) is to run it up and down the longest axis one or more times. That's exactly what a child does.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This seems very obvious.

Machines are taught from flat images. How can they be expected to create 3D from this?

Humans learn from binocular vision, and from multiple angles as we move around an object, making it a lot easier to get an idea of its shape.

My daughter aged 18 months could already recognise abstract signs like the mother and baby or disabled sign just from knowing the real object. Which must say something about the way she stored the representations of them.

<comment><USER12> Why not use two cameras for training AI then?

<comment><USER11> Because they're using existing data. You need thousands, maybe millions of images to train an AI to recognise something well, and only recognise the right characteristics. No-one has the resources to go take all those photos themselves.

Anyone know of a visual recognition AI being trained also with depth data? Would be interested to see what difference it makes.

This relates to something else I noticed differently about my daughter learning. You can show her one photo of a lion, from one angle and she will recognise other lions later on, at different angles. I think she must have seen enough animals already from many angles to have generalised their shape and then be able to presume the new animal is similar and just see the new characteristics like a mane. Something very different is happening in Human brains!

<comment><USER12> You are right and it would be interesting to quantify how much it could improve AI if datasets were binoculars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'd say (out of experience) that people do not recognize objects by visualizing their skeletons, but they recognize objects by a generalization of their shape.

In case of recognizing other animals, the generalization takes the form of a 'tree' of objects connected via nodes, which is actually what a skeleton does to a body.

But that does not happen with other objects, i.e. cars. For cars, the generalization is that of a box with circles at the bottom (for the wheels).

It shall also have to be noted that the details of objects are not really lost, but they are remembered, up to a certain degree, which allows us to recognize a person with fat body parts from a person with thin body parts of the same height and otherwise same general outlook.

The degree of generalization is also responsible for not being able to remember a new face that strongly resembles a face we already know, until we recognize for the new face some special attributes the old face does not have. In this case, the degree if generalizaton is such that does not allow us to immediately tell apart the old from the new face.

I'd say that recognition works in a step like fashion:

-we first recognize a generic abstraction of the object at hand: if the object is inanimate or not.

-then we recognize in which category of the inanimate or living objects the object under recognition is (for example, is it a human? an animal? etc).

-then we recognize more details; is the person tall, fat or blond? for example.

-then we recall our connections to that person, resulting in chosing a response.

I don't have data to back the above up, it's all from intuition and personal experience, but that's how I think objects are recognized by brains.

</comment><comment><USER14> Note that the leading image classification algorithms are apparently trained to recognize texture more than shapes, because that's the easiest way to win at current benchmarks. But that can be fixed:

[https://arxiv.org/abs/1811.12231](https://arxiv.org/abs/1811.12231)

</comment><comment><USER15> So what's the implications of this for topological data analysis as an alternative (or complementary) framework to the convolutional approaches in image analysis?

(I'm being loose with language, but a CNN is not an optimal "hole finder", while persistent homology is not optimal for telling different kinds of fish apart.)

<comment><USER16> I was looking at something along those lines recently "TopoResNet: A hybrid deep learning architecture and its application to skin lesion classification" on arxiv.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> >people do not evaluate an object like a computer processing pixels, but based on an imagined internal skeleton

Well, maybe not how computers typically process pixels _nowadays_ , but back in the old days of computer vision one technique for simplifying an image was skeletonization : [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topological_skeleton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topological_skeleton)

<comment><USER18> Yeah, now I'm wondering what topological skeletons might have in common with the abstract simplicial complexes generated by running a persistent homology algorithm on a point cloud.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I dont think the study can be used to draw the conclusions that the article is trying to draw. The study presents new objects which are derived from skeletons for people to learn and identify. IMO people learn differently in short term vs long term. Short term, we try to reduce the dimensionality of the input to things we can hold in working memory. In this study that would be the skeleton of the object. That doesnt mean that that pattern holds up for long term learning (which is mostly how we visually identify things, because we've seen them many times already). The main reason I bring this up is because it seems to be in direct contrast with studies which show the opposite (i.e. that humans do operate like machines in identifying objects). That study was done by comparing the brain regions which activated when the person was exposed to visual input and found a consistent location which was activated due to seeing a horizontal / vertical line.

</comment><comment><USER20> "Do humans learn the same way as computers?" Computers learn whichever way humans program them to...

<comment><USER21> OK, rephrase the question to "Does the way we've programmed computers to learn happen to resemble the way that humans learn?"

<comment><USER22> Our models of human learning are crude at best. Some programs attempt to approximate those models. But it resembles how humans learn the same way a stuffed animal chicken resembles a T-Rex.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This reminded me of a scene from the movie The Omen where Damien's mother Maria Scianna's skeleton turns out to be of a jackal's skeleton.

[https://images.app.goo.gl/bKoVyzrgkty1J4DeA](https://images.app.goo.gl/bKoVyzrgkty1J4DeA)

</comment><comment><USER24> Reminds me a lot of the ancient idea of Platonic forms: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_Forms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_Forms)

Obviously not the same thing, but I think it's an interesting association.

</comment><comment><USER25> Related problem (ImageNet-trained CNNs are biased towards texture)

[https://openreview.net/forum?id=Bygh9j09KX](https://openreview.net/forum?id=Bygh9j09KX)

</comment><comment><USER16> This reminds me loosely of a paper I found on arxiv recently: "Scene Representation Networks: Continuous 3D-Structure-Aware Neural Scene Representations"

</comment><comment><USER26> Reminds me of Plato's theory of forms

</comment><comment><USER27> I think that object recognition is hard because humans have much more data than computers. People see with two eyes which can focus on different distances, so our brain has 3D data to learn from. We later learn to recognise the same objects on pictures.

Computers usually start from flat pictures, and that trips the learning process.

I have zero data to back it up. Just my hunch :D

<comment><USER28> So children that's blind on one eye take longer to learn to recognize objects?

<comment><USER29> No but they cannot see depth very well because they can't use stereoscopic vision (triangulate). However, there are other cues that are used to infer for depth such as covered edges(if one object partially covers another then it is closer to you), perspective (if two objects that you know are similar in size but one appears smaller then it is farther) etc.

A friend of mine who cannot see with one eye and yet he is a painter. One thing I know he cannot do is drive a car.

<comment><USER30> > One thing I know he cannot do is drive a car

That's specific to your friend, not true in general. Lots of people drive with only one functional eye. At the visual distances involved, the depth perception provided by stereoscopic vision doesn't matter much. Especially with all the relative motion. My dad has been driving successfully for 65 years with only one working eye.

<comment><USER29> To be honest I don't know whether he is allowed to drive or not, he thinks he isn't allowed and never pursued it.

<comment><USER31> There's a cutoff of a 20/40 on at least one eye (corrected with class A restriction)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This seems to play very well with some of MIT CSAIL's research in training robots to be able to manipulate objects they haven't seen before.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9U8X6I1vow](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9U8X6I1vow) [2] [https://arxiv.org/abs/1903.06684](https://arxiv.org/abs/1903.06684)

TL;DR the objects are grouped into categories which determine the "Key points" on the objects (similar to this 'skeleton') which the robot knows how to interact with in order to bring about the intended manipulation.

</comment><comment><USER33> It also seems that people have a tendency to represent things in drawing as either bubbles or stick figures. Even to ancient times, such as the humans from this cave paintint (Lascaux, I believe):

[https://anthonyalvaradoanthonyalvarado.files.wordpress.com/2...](https://anthonyalvaradoanthonyalvarado.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/06_hunting- scene-on-the-cave-paintings1.jpg)

Or more recently:

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

</comment><comment><USER34> This is because there is a metaphysical reality behind everything and humans instinctively recognize that even from a young age.</comment>


Pay to upvote? - <AUTHOR> https://honest.cash/honest_cash/new-on-honest-cash-get-paid-for-upvoting-and-promoting-good-content-early-on-127 <comment><AUTHOR> From the article on Honest.Cash: "The current upvote amount goes 40% to the writer and 60% to the previous upvoters". The upvotes are distributed to 1, 2, 4, 8, 16... previous voters.

Simple calculation: First voter gets their money back with the 5th voter. But the 5th voter only gets their money back with the 69th voter.

The first voter doubles their money with the 32,769th voter and the second voter doubles their money with the 33,554,434th voter.

So doubling the money is very unlikely for even the first voter and impossible for everybody else.

So if I'm honest, I don't think this algorithm will provide much incentive to vote.

<comment><USER2> If you are so skeptic about the algorithm, why did you post it here?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> As I read through the way payment amounts are handled I can't help but remember the owner of a company I worked for a long time ago saying, "there's money in confusion".

</comment><comment><USER4> The domain name is painfully ironic.

<comment><USER5> Why? They have a different business model and take no fees, the upvotes are not considered an investment but a social game and it's fully transparent. Some guys have already made +1000 usd for blogging there. I tested the upvotes and it's created in a way that if you upvote good content you get more or less the same back. It seems to be growing very fast, I see it everywhere making headlines.

<comment><USER4>
      the upvotes are not considered an investment but a social game

If one has to create _additional throwaway accounts_ [0] to submit comments in defense of a given behavior, that's a solid confirmation of its dishonesty.

[0] this account was created immediately before submitting this comment

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here are the tips: [https://honest.whotipped.it/Chart/](https://honest.whotipped.it/Chart/)

It seems like 20-30 bitcoin upvotes happen a day.

</comment><comment><USER6> Is this for social media networks or the Honest Cash website?

</comment><comment><USER7> Shill.cash</comment>


Exposure to ideologically diverse news and opinion on Facebook (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://science.sciencemag.org/content/348/6239/1130 <comment><AUTHOR> Though it's been posted here before, this study is probably more timely now than ever.</comment>


Our perfect submission - <AUTHOR> https://www.kaggle.com/c/restaurant-revenue-prediction/forums/t/13950/our-perfect-submission <comment><USER2> Can someone please enlighten me on the context? Assume I know nothing about what Kaggle is, what the contest is about, and even what 'overfitting' means.

<comment><USER3> Kaggle hosts data science competitions. There is a public leaderboard and a private leaderboard. During the competition only the public leaderboard is visible. After the competition ends the private leaderboard is revealed and your standing on this private leaderboard decides your final score.

The public leaderboard gives some feedback on your model performance. But when a human is in the feedback loop, then there is a risk of overfitting. Overfitting can be explained basically as: "memorizing the data" or "learning from noise, not signal".

When you overfit, you do well in cross-validation and may do well on the public leaderboard, but your predictions do not generalize well to new data.

What this team did was to submit a lot of predictions and only take the predictions that improved public leaderboard score. Then they'd add slightly random noise and try to submit again. They repeated this until they ranked nr. 1 and left quite a few other competitors scratching their heads: How did they do this? Did they find a perfect ML algorithm? Is there data leakage? Are they cheating?

When the private leaderboard was revealed, this team dropped around 2000 spots. Their good performance on the public leaderboard was purely artificial. The contest was valid and well-organized (this could happen on any Kaggle competition with little data). They did not receive a prize.

There are other benefits to ranking well on the public leaderboard: It helps with teaming up with other high-ranking competitors and you can market yourself (recruiters are pretty interested in the top 10, eventhough the competition has not ended yet.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you enjoyed this, don't miss Moritz Hardt's entertaining blog post on Wacky Boosting (linked from the forum thread):

[http://blog.mrtz.org/2015/03/09/competition.html](http://blog.mrtz.org/2015/03/09/competition.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> IPSC 2014 problem E looks like a machine learning problem, but the intended solution was to make multiple submissions and use the judge feedback to reverse-engineer the test data. The winning team needed only 6 submissions to hit 95% accuracy. It was one of my favourite problems from the contest.

[http://ipsc.ksp.sk/2014/real/problems/e.html](http://ipsc.ksp.sk/2014/real/problems/e.html)

<comment><USER6> What did they use the sixth submission for? You can win it in five submissions, can't you? :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> On the 4th page towards the bottom, Kaggle says they will host the team's writeup "soon"; this was 26 days ago. I do not see it on the Kaggle blog [1]... still coming? Or did I miss it? (I scanned over the titles for the previous month and ran a search on BAYZ. Despite the topic I don't think the "Microsoft Malware Winners' Interview: 1st place, "NO to overfitting!"" post is related.)

[1]: [http://blog.kaggle.com/](http://blog.kaggle.com/)

<comment><USER8> Usually the writeup is just supplemental to the posting's on the forum (and there is usually a 'post your solution' type deal where people walk through their process and sometimes post code) but I'm guessing it's just one of the competitions that will end up taking a month or so to gather all the interviews from the actual winners as well as BAYZ. Probably will not be too informative as they go quite into depth about the process and the linked blog post show's almost literal step by step of how to "game" kaggle leaderboards which is a huge aspect of competing (and why there is a private vs public dataset, why there are competition 'must enter by' deadlines and why people post benchmark code that will beat 25% of the current leaderboard before the competition is over and a lot of various other reasons).

Also looking at my submissions and notes from the competition (I stopped after the first week or so though) I even noted which 'groups' were most likely on the public leaderboard as it becomes easy to tell based on how your personal metric scores vs how that score results on the leaderboard since you know the evaluation metric for each competition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Winning by overfitting. Is that the end for those contests?

Maybe they need a "any score lower than X will be considered as a bast score", or score in other aspects of the solution (like complexity)

Or just have a lot of data for scoring purposes.

<comment><USER7> Here is the public leaderboard for the now-completed contest, where they are in first place out of 2,257: [https://www.kaggle.com/c/restaurant-revenue- prediction/leade...](https://www.kaggle.com/c/restaurant-revenue- prediction/leaderboard/public)

Here is the private leaderboard, which I believe represents the actual score of the contest, where they are in place 1,962: [https://www.kaggle.com/c/restaurant-revenue- prediction/leade...](https://www.kaggle.com/c/restaurant-revenue- prediction/leaderboard/private)

That's, ah, not in the prize range, to put it lightly.

There's no problem with the contests here. It's just a particularly vivid, and entertaining to humans, demonstration of the well-known problem with overfitting.

If I am reading this correctly, the green numbers to the left of the teams in the private leaderboard represent that team's position relative to the public leaderboard. Note they're quite large... the 9th place team in the final scores jumped 1,058 positions! That's nearly half the field. If this is typical, and I have no idea (reply & let me know!), the public leaderboards are basically a joke.

<comment><USER9> So, why have 2 leaderboards? Or the private one has limited visibility by contestant?

(there seems to be simple ways for kaggle to solve this: put a delay on the score generation, limit number of submissions, limit precision of scores on the public leaderboard)

<comment><USER10> I'm guessing that the private one isn't visible to contestants or the public until the contest is over (hence "private").

The published dataset gives contestants an idea of how good they are, but prevents gaming the system by overfitting, because the contest is actually scored with the second unknown dataset.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I thought a perfect result on test data via overfitting was trivial (just memorize the data). What am I missing? (I've never done Kaggle and don't know how it's set up at all.)

<comment><USER12> You're missing the fact that the leaderboard dataset is not made available to the contestants, so they cannot memorize it.

The only way they can determine anything about the leaderboard dataset is by submitting a model, at which point they are told a single scalar score for that model.</comment></comment>


Learn to program without leaving the browser window: Eloquent JavaScript - <AUTHOR> http://eloquentjavascript.net I think this might have been on here before at some point (is there a search feature?), but it is still bound to be useful to people. <comment><USER2> Anyone know how this compares with 'Javascript: The Good Parts'?</comment>


The Android back stack is broken - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/100838276097451809262/posts/HTJLjSUJnfx

<comment><USER2> I would prefer if the back button only worked _within_ one application only, and not across applications. That doesn't make much sense to me, and I do find it confusing to use.

That being said, I wish they just got rid of the buttons and implemented UI gestures so they don't have to waste screen space with the buttons and also to make it more intuitive. I like some of the ideas in the N9's UI, where a simple swipe of the screen can get you back to the homescreen, and so on:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nl3VOAf15BU&feature=relmf...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nl3VOAf15BU&feature=relmfu)</comment>


How to Communicate Badly with Developers - <AUTHOR> http://clubajax.org/10-ways-to-communicate-badly-with-developers/#ref=news.ycombinator.com

<comment><USER2> My buddy that is still at a company that I was with a while ago sent me an email that one of the exec sent out to all of the development teams that basically stated. This company is not here to do for you, you are here to do for the company. You should ask yourself what have I done for the company and is it enough. I was floored, much less that it was sent at all, but an IT wide email, wow just wow. It also had some tips on why your boss knows what is best, which basically summed up was because they are not technical people.</comment>


GDocsFS – A FUSE Filesystem for Linux Backed by Google Docs - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/pranavmk98/gDocsFS <comment><AUTHOR> I recently learned about FUSE and thought it was so nifty that I had to try it out myself - this is the result. I'm still learning about Linux and filesystems, so this is a rudimentary version with basic functionality - <USER2> advice or feedback is appreciated!</comment>


Watch 2013 Barack Obama Debate 2006 Joe Biden Over NSA Surveillance [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/06/watch-2013-president-obama-debate-2006-joe-biden-over-nsa-surveillance <comment><USER2> If we were honest and classified President Obama objectively based on his actions alone, we'd label him a neoconservative corporatist in the same vein as Cheney. It's painful, especially after Bush. The truth hurts.

<comment><USER3> But exponentially more charismatic to the general public, which means he will run the ball down the field further than Cheney ever could. Look out.

<comment><USER4> Apparently the CIA agrees with you: [http://www.salon.com/2010/03/27/wikileaks/](http://www.salon.com/2010/03/27/wikileaks/)

From TFA: "the CIA sees Obama as a valuable asset in putting a pretty face on our wars in the eyes of foreign populations."

<comment><USER5> Man, this is so true. I think 90% of Germans would vote for Obama. Mission accomplished.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Related - here's a video of Candidate Obama debating President Obama on government surveillance: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BmdovYztH8](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BmdovYztH8)

<comment><USER7> You can tell that Obama doesn't believe in what he's saying in 2013. There's just so much hesitation in his words.

In 2007, he believed in what he said - that security is not an excuse to violate the civil liberties of the people. There was so much conviction in his words. That conviction just isn't there anymore.

I'd follow 2007 Obama anywhere, but 2013 Obama is severely lacking.

<comment><USER8> The problem is that both candidate Obama, you and I are arguing from a point of massive ignorance.

From what's been leaked I find the idea that all digital communication is monitored on everyone and everything disturbing. As Snowden mentioned in his interview this is a powerful thing for a government to have and can become dangerous. It's something the public should be involved in deciding where and if that line is drawn.

It's a catch-22. The information necessary to fully appreciate what's going on is classified and the only way to understand the argument completely is to get a high level clearance which then prevents you from making any arguments about it.

Daniel Ellsberg wrote something really interesting about the effects this can have on the cleared vs. uncleared: [http://www.motherjones.com/kevin- drum/2010/02/daniel-ellsber...](http://www.motherjones.com/kevin- drum/2010/02/daniel-ellsberg-limitations-knowledge)

From what's available I can't imagine a situation where the cost of this type of massive internet surveillance outweighs whatever benefit. While I can appreciate the necessity of secrets - I wish we could know the truth.

<comment><USER9> That's a great link and interesting story. For complex scenarios I can see where they're might be many things people don't know about that changes their position.

In the case of such a broad surveillance system, I'm having trouble coming up with good secret reasons. Perhaps I'm being unimaginative. If, for example, this system _was_ preventing hundreds of terrorists, what damage would be done by stating that it has unequivocally stopped major threats?

What's the damage in revealing what's going on and why?

Is the plan "if we're quiet enough, bad guys won't bother using encryption or cover their tracks?

I'm curious to know, what information, in theory, would change someone's opinion, and _must_ remain secret in order to keep things safe. Aside from breaks on popular ciphers or mass collusion with major hardware/software vendors.

Edit: I'd trust a president stating for sure that this is entirely necessary, and stating there is secret information that'd even change the EFF's opinion. Obama's speech doesn't give that perception at all. It feels like he's stumbling around to justify something he knows is bad, using nebulous threats.

<comment><USER10> > In the case of such a broad surveillance system, I'm having trouble coming > up with good secret reasons. Perhaps I'm being unimaginative. If, for > example, this system was preventing hundreds of terrorists, what damage > would be done by stating that it has unequivocally stopped major threats?

What if it had prevented a biological weapon that could have killed millions of people in NYC? Revealing this publicly could cause mass panic.

Obviously I have no evidence of something like this, but it's a thought experiment to consider. Would that make the surveillance worth it in your mind?

<comment><USER9> Obviously giving specifics might cause panic, but, I'm not sure I see the problem in having e.g. Obama state "Unequivocally, there has been major threats thwarted, and considerable lives saved due to this program." Or some assertion recognizing that yeah, this is a 180 from my prior, but there's a good reason, seriously.

The thing is, I don't think anyone is claiming major successes. They're just saying that it's OK. Watching Obama's talk just gives you the feeling it's political nonsense, with a bit of CYA lines too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Obama's speech is obviously canned, while Biden's is the opposite. He is speaking candidly and openly, because he knows that it's the truth. The President, on the other hand, is hesitant and only chooses neutral words.

Amazing what diction can do for public viewpoints. It's equally amazing how many don't care enough to notice the aural cues of the state of being disingenuous.

<comment><USER12> Wasn't this the speech where he had to wait for like a minute before his staff brought him the speech, because they lost it or something? So yes, definitely canned, and he would've rather waited until they found the speech, instead of taking the issue head-on himself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Where did the master of public speaking go? I don't recognize Obama here. He's nervous and lost at words. Almost guilty.

<comment><USER14> Probably Jon Favreau didn't ghostwrite this one.

[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Favreau_(speechwriter)](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Favreau_\(speechwriter\))

<comment><USER15> I downvoted this because you linked to an entry without reading it, which drives me insane. Strike "probably" from your post and you have an accurate statement.

<comment><USER14> Tone was lost over the Internet. Inclusion of "probably" was a joke: without Favreau or another speechwriter, Obama isn't going to sound particularly erudite, in the same way that an actress without makeup generally looks much more normal. Most people don't realize that Obama doesn't write his own speeches anymore than he picks what suit to wear.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> How do you identify terrorists with only phone call 'metadata'?

<comment><USER17> You can't - the government's argument is that you can use the metadata to usefully augment other intelligence/investigative techniques without undue violation of the privacy of, well, everybody whose metadata you've collected. If you know a terrorist has used a particular phone number you can use the historical metadata record to try to identify the terrorist's potential associates. Ex-NSA head Michael Hayden claims that's the way the data is used.

[http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo- way/2013/06/09/190092800/bus...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo- way/2013/06/09/190092800/bush-era-nsa-chief-defends-prism-phone-meta-data- collection)

Given the very limited number of hard, verifiable facts about these programs, whether you believe or disbelieve this explanation is almost a matter of faith.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Not an excuse at all but watching President Obama these days is like watching the end of The Man Who Fell to Earth (the original one with Bowie) where he's lost all control of people around him that he helped bring to power in the first place and he's utterly frustrated but stuck having to work with them.

As someone who was thrilled to see him elected, I am going to be very relieved to see him flown away on that last day, just like Bush.

</comment><comment><USER19> FWIW, it is important that Candidate Obama had to say the things he did to be elected. I would rather live in a world in which the ideals we put forward are good, even when the system then corrupts them and people turn out hypocritical. It is far worse when we as a society lose our principles.

</comment><comment><USER20> Has this been taken down? Mirror, anyone? Not working for me, just gives a black rectangle once the video is accessed.

<comment><USER21> Working here. Maybe try this link: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4SRCOouw5I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4SRCOouw5I)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> cool stuff

</comment><comment><USER23> The difference between 2013 Obama and 2006 Biden is that 2013 Obama gets briefings on what exactly they uncover with that metadata and who they are catching with it. That's what he means when he says it was worth it.

<comment><USER24> That, "we have our reasons, but we can't tell you" excuse holds no water with me. I'm more likely to get shot by cop than hurt by a terrorist in this country. Whatever happened to, "give me liberty or give me death"?

<comment><USER23> I was only addressing the reason for the conflicting statements. Whether or not National Security is irrelevant I'll leave to others to debate. But it's a virtual certainty Obame and Biden would have disagreed with you (correctly or incorrectly) before taking office, as they would now.</comment></comment></comment>


Google AdSense criteria is broken - <AUTHOR> I submitted my website worktheme.com and google says the content is not good enough for placing ads. WTF?<p>Is there anything I can do to fix this situation? I thought my site content is already good enough because I have about 1000 regular visitors every day. I don't want to add content just for the sake of AdSense. Pleae advise. Thanks! <comment><AUTHOR> For a clickable link: [https://worktheme.com](https://worktheme.com). The google review bot says:

Insufficient content: To be approved for AdSense and show relevant ads on your site, your pages need to have enough text on them for our specialists to review and for our crawler to be able to determine what your pages are about.

To resolve this issue, please work through the following suggestions:

Make sure that your pages have sufficient text - websites that contain mostly images, videos or Flash animations will not be approved. Your content should contain complete sentences and paragraphs, not only headlines.</comment>


Ask HN: need apartment urgently in Montreal - <AUTHOR>

Hi guys.. I feel that here is my community, and although its not technical matter, but we are one community here.
I need a small apartment urgently in Montreal for one of my relatives. She is a single mom with son.
What is the shortest way to rent an apartment? <comment><USER2> It's winter in Montreal, so it should be easier to find a place this time of year. Start contacting people through: 1) <http://www.airbnb.com/montreal- quebec/apartments> 2) <http://montreal.en.craigslist.ca/hhh/>

</comment><comment><USER3> Try [http://montreal.kijiji.ca/f-immobilier-appartements- condos-W...](http://montreal.kijiji.ca/f-immobilier-appartements- condos-W0QQCatIdZ37)</comment>


Saturday morning cartoons and hackathon (Chicago, Nov. 3) - <AUTHOR> http://CerealAndCode.com/

<comment><USER2> _It's not "Hey I have a great idea and maybe a nerd will build it for me."_

 _If you're a "just pontificating about stuff" bizdev, this isn't for you._

Kudos for saying this aloud!

</comment><comment><USER3> Hhmmm.. I live off wells, like cereal, cartoons, and finishing stuff. Sounds like fun. I have a weekend project for a dog walking site I might work on.

</comment><comment><USER4> hmmm, i _do_ need to get stuff done and i _also_ enjoy cartoons with cereal so considering going. i'm just wondering how much will actually get done between munching, chatting and cartooning.

<comment><USER5> then maybe I'll see you there and remind you to get back to work

<comment><USER4> i tend not to listen to people when drunk on cereal and cartoons in the AM, though. just a heads up.

<comment><USER5> Haha fair enough. I did buy a ticket though so maybe I really will see you get drunk on cereal and cartoons. I hope they play Aqua Teen Hunger Force. I got excited when I saw one of the Moononites on the Eventbrite page.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Aw man, this sounds great. Who wants to do one in San Francisco?

<comment><USER7> Sign me up. Email's in my profile if you're serious.</comment></comment>


Multiple Tor security issues disclosed, more to come - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/multiple-tor-security-issues-disclosed-more-to-come <comment><USER2> Can we agree that Tor picked up a stone no one thought could be moved, and carries it around the world all the time, everyday? And despite and maybe because of that, there's gotta be a better way. The people clearly see the value in the product, but it's a shame there's so little competition in this software space, especially because for some, Tor access is a matter of life or death.

Is Tor written in a memory-safe language? Are its builds reproducible?</comment>


Rails 3 Upgrade Handbook - <AUTHOR> http://railsupgradehandbook.com

<comment><USER2> To everyone calling this spam, the author is a well respected member of the Ruby community and has already written a ton of information on the subject, for free, at his blog (<http://omgbloglol.com/>). He also wrote the rails- upgrade gem. I'm sure at least a few people here will be upgrading current rails apps to version 3 when it comes out so I could see it being of interest.

</comment><comment><USER3> What's wrong with

<http://guides.rails.info/3_0_release_notes.html>

<comment><USER4> After scanning through most of the PDF, the Release Notes are mostly superior. JM provides some decent info though, and the checklist at the end will be useful to people. Worth 12 bucks probably.

<comment><USER5> I figure it it saves me 10 minutes- then it was definitely work $12.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Are you planning on releasing a physical copy?

</comment><comment><USER7> This is a link to a site which does nothing but selling a electronic book...

It does seem like spam to me. I don't see a conceptual difference with the Viagra emails i frequently receive.

<comment><USER8> It's a paid content that is useful to some here (hence the upvotes).

Do you mean paid content or services shouldn't be posted here ?

<comment><USER7> yep, and viagra is usefull to some people with emails... your argument is not convincing. This is cheap dialectic.

oh and additionnaly viagra is usefull to some people reading HN... do you mean it is ok to advertuze viagra in HN ? (i can do cheap dialectic too :)

more seriously, this 'news' is clearly a spam and lets please avoid spam on HN.

<comment><USER9> If you stop and think about it for a minute, Rails is fairly topical for this site, whereas e.d. is not.

I think there is nothing wrong with trying to sell something that you've worked hard on; isn't that what most of us are doing here?

That said, I didn't vote this up and don't think I would buy this book.

<comment><USER7> well i dunno for you but i see very few 'news' which are direct links on the products sold by the posters. So no, i dont think this is what most of us are doing here.

i wont talk on this thread again. no hard feeling here, just trying to avoid more spamming in the future. have fun</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


I hate wasted documentation - <AUTHOR> http://productguys.tumblr.com/post/31131221045/how-to-reduce-documentation-in-product-management

<comment><AUTHOR> Would love to hear HN's thoughts on the idea that less is more earlier on and more is more later on in the product development life cycle.</comment>


Ask HN: What is the best way to manage customer issues from API testing? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I've seen public Trello boards[1]. We use Jira tickets - you can have a customer feedback project that enables customers to create tickets without seeing the full board[2].

\---

[1] [https://blog.trello.com/how-to-transform-trello-into-a- power...](https://blog.trello.com/how-to-transform-trello-into-a-powerful-bug- tracker-with-the-marker-power-up)

[2] [https://medium.com/thinktilt/five-options-for-creating- jira-...](https://medium.com/thinktilt/five-options-for-creating-jira-issues- from-web-forms-54f52dc15ed9)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. Is there something that can be integrated with the product so that there is no broken experience?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I want a seamless service where customers can easily submit and track their issues with our APIs during the testing phase. One of the ways I am thinking of is creating a public repo on GitHub for issue management but that is something client might not appreciate.</comment>


Brief Daily. The most important news of the day. - <AUTHOR> http://briefdaily.com

<comment><AUTHOR> A simple resource which provides a curated set of the most important stories of the day in each of several categories. A new issue is released daily at 11am CST.</comment>


Ask HN: What language was Scribd built in? - <AUTHOR>

Was Scribd built in straight PHP, Django, Rails or something else? <comment><USER2> Rails

<comment><USER3> <http://www.scribd.com/images/rails.png>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> We're a Rails shop, with some C extensions for Rails and a handful of internal java webservices running on top of Tomcat. There's probably a bit of lisp/clojure somewhere or other, but that's about it.

Search has variously been powered by lucene and/or sphinx.

The ipaper viewer was built with the Adobe flash authoring tools.</comment>


[UK] Petition: Teach Our Kids To Code - <AUTHOR> http://joshuamarch.com/post/10084967048/petition-teach-our-kids-to-code

<comment><USER2> I'm going to the Realtime Club dinner in London this month, where Simon Peyton Jones is talking about (the lack of good) IT teaching in schools.

When I was in school (in the UK) we were taught BASIC programming on BBC Micros, and I spent my computer classes writing vertical scrolling racing games and what not. Today, you're taught how to make spreadsheets and powerpoint decks, by teachers who typically know far less than the kids.

So yes, I agree with the sentiment in the article. Would be great to see actual programming classes taught to school kids (only to those that want them though!).</comment>


A latent gift from _why - <AUTHOR> http://blog.hackety-hack.com/post/1473405169/a-latent-gift-from-why

<comment><USER2> I know this is a bit of a tired phrase, especially from me, but more than anyone else in software, _why reminds me:

"Do not follow in the footsteps of _why, seek what he sought."

<comment><USER3> I feel like _why is out there watching us, to see how well we learned all the stuff he tried to teach us. Like Jesus.

<comment><USER4> He metaphorically died for our apathy towards creativity. :o

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This also shows us the importance of documentation.

Still, I miss _why. There are a few hackers that have equally inspiring projects, and even some that come close to _why's love for teaching or _why's creative ability, but none of them are the _why. I hope he's still somewhere out there, doing something great.

<comment><USER6> I just wish _why would come back, regardless of the reasons he left (wanting to be anonymous). Those of us who like him do so regardless of whether we can find out his 'real' name. The character of _why is larger than that.

<comment><USER7> While I think _why added something great to the world, and sad to seem him go. I like to think he left behind his imagine on top, and not a fat elvis. Same reason I miss The Show, but recognize that someone who is dedicated to creativity is always seeking a new way forward and a new path. _why as a character seemed to no longer provide that vessel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> When I first started hacking away at the Hackety source, I was referring to it as "software archeology." _why's personal coding style, his distaste for comments, and his advanced Ruby knowledge made fixing bugs a real treat. (I say this non-sarcastically: I love puzzles.)

I don't have a citation, but I remember seeing something where he said he never learned as much about Ruby internals as he did when creating Shoes. I feel the same way... doing more than just building Rails apps has made me learn more about Ruby than I would have otherwise, and I'm becoming increasingly appreciative of it.

Here's another screenshot of drawing stuff with the editor, and a color picker: <http://imgur.com/2jEEm.png> I'm adding it to the article, but just in case you've already checked it out.

<comment><USER9> Devil's advocate here: isn't a quirky, idiosyncratic coding style with no documentation generally considered a liability just about anywhere else?

<comment><USER8> Absolutely. Generally, we're talking about building robust, reliable systems, though. _why specifically thought this hampered creativity. I can't find a citation for you right now, though.

Part of making his projects my own? Adding this stuff. I can see _why's point, but I don't think it's right for Shoes/Hackety themselves.

<comment><USER10> You might be thinking about this quote from camping-list?

        No, let's not have rules.  I don't feel comfortable with having
        coding standards or any protocol on Camping.  The point of Camping
        is to have very ugly, tricky code that goes against all the rules that
        people make for "beautiful" code these days.  To show that ugly code
        can do beautiful things, maybe.

        I don't want to demonize anyone here, I just want to express the
        ideas that make Camping different.  Camping's personality is 80x50.
        It is like the little gears of a watch that are all meshed together
        into a tight little mind-bending machine.  The challenge of Camping
        isn't to figure out how to automate obfuscation.  The challenge is
        to bring new tricks into the code that push Ruby's parser and make
        everyone look twice.  Not all code needs to be a factory, some of
        it can just be origami.

<comment><USER8> Not the exact one, but gets the point across nicely. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I love these evidences of _why's embrace of humanity. He truly understood that software is about humans.

</comment><comment><USER12> You mentioned Sound Foley and art, but you left something out, so maybe people aren't aware of this one:

Try this, type dingbat into the editor and hit tab.

<comment><USER8> Hey Tim, long time no talk! Have you been getting notifications when I close tickets? Ha...

Yeah, dingbat didn't fit into my story. But it is pretty cool, though I still have some issues to work out on OSX...

<comment><USER12> Yes I have! You're on fire! I haven't been on Hackety a ton lately, but I'll be back.

<comment><USER8> No worries. You know that door is always open.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> From the available choices of sounds to generate, I'm guessing he included a port of sfxr: <http://code.google.com/p/sfxr/>

<comment><USER8> Nope, it's his own library, Bloopsaphone: <https://github.com/mental/bloopsaphone> (though there maybe some sfxr -> bloops connection I'm not aware of)

<comment><USER14> There is actually; Bloopsaphone is based on sxfr, at least if the COPYING file is to be believed.

<comment><USER8> Yet more source code I haven't read! Good to know.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Your business idea as a promise - <AUTHOR> http://blog.opportunitycloud.com/2009/08/03/your-business-idea-as-a-promise/

<comment><USER2> A.K.A. a Mission Statement

It's a statement of purpose, or what you will do as a company.

It's OK to have a mission, a plan and a promise while remaining agile and open to new possibilities that may affect or change those plans.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, but a mission statement is something you put on a wall. A promise is something you make to a _person_. There's a difference.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best Tool for Sharing Developer Notes, Processes, etc - <AUTHOR>

We are a small startup that has added 3 developers in the past 6 months.  Life is still good.  Developers have a lot of autonomy, and we are still sharing most of views, thoughts, processes by email, IM, phone or in-person.  However, the transitory nature of those communication channels is beginning to cause a problem.
What tools are startups using to share persistent information between developers?
We have tried using basecamp but everything gets buried in messages.  The important stuff does seem to bubble up to the surface.
We tried dropbox and google docs but there is no separation between personal and startup.  Plus its a mess.
We thought about standing up a wiki but I'm not very enthusiastic.  It seems like creating technical documentation.
The best option I have found is crowdbase but I thought I should search HN to see if it has been discussed previously.  I couldn't find anything which has triggered me to ask, what are other startups doing? <comment><USER2> I like teambox <http://teambox.com/>

It gives you the formality of setting tasks and road-mapping a project.

And then for when you quickly want to throw ideas around there is a group IM which is quite neat.

Plus it will be free for the three of you.

</comment><comment><USER3> As soon as you try to make communication permanent it seems to become documentation. Even if just for yourself. Best developers make it read like a book, so you may just ask them to be brief and make wiki consistent.

</comment><comment><USER4> Have you looked at Redmine? It includes a wiki, as well as 'projects', issue tracking, and email notifications for stuff.

<http://www.redmine.org/>

</comment><comment><USER5> Have you tried Asana? <http://asana.com/>

</comment><comment><USER6> I use trello. Works fine.

<comment><USER7> Interesting suggestion. I've never thought of trello as an platform for sharing but more as a task manager.

Thanks, I'll take a look at it.</comment></comment>


Designing for your colorblind users - <AUTHOR> https://blog.rainforestqa.com/2014-07-11-catering-to-your-colorblind-users/#2

<comment><USER2> xScope for OS X ([http://xscopeapp.com](http://xscopeapp.com)) has a really good overlay mode that has options to emulate colorblindness.</comment>


Tech Startup Trends of 2013 - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/accelerators/2012/12/24/the-top-5-tech-startup-trends-of-2013/

<comment><USER2> > Our phones are becoming our remote controls for life.

I feel really freaking old for a 21 year old. I got an Iphone 3gs back in 2009 before going into college. I should have been the target market for most of the tech revolution, right? I only used the thing to watch youtube, read pdfs, browse websites (never write anything), and take really ugly photos and video. I rarely made calls with it and canceled text messages entirely in 3 months. The battery died this summer, and I just got a tracfone just so I can call my grandparents because almost all my vocal communication is done via skype, jabber, or mumble. Maybe most importantly? I not only never paid for an app, I downloaded a total of like 5 in 3 years.

I have a Transformer tablet though, which I still wouldn't call the center of my tech environment, I just use it to read articles, books, and watch video. I don't even do the picture taking with it because its a giant book and it is so obtuse to photograph with it. The high DPI screen makes reading wonderful on it though, which is the main reason I have it. I did get the Transformer + keyboard dock so I had the ability to write when needed.

I don't think I'll ever get a 4 - 6" smartphone again. Anywhere I go I'll just throw my tablet in a backpack and bring it with me if need be, or just carry it. You won't shrink the screen any more and I just prefer the 10" form factor.

I still carry about my dumb phone just because we still live in the stone ages of ubiqutious internet. I don't want to pay $50+ a month for data just to have internet on the go. I already pay way too much to run a DSL signal to my home router.

I dunno, I just feel like the smartphone market is saturated. Modern computers have a very finite limit of influence over the world since they can only impact it through vibrating air, itself, or through emitting electromagnetic radiation in various forms. And I already have all the audiovisual stimulation that I want already, so I won't be adding any more. An RSS feed of all my choice webnews and the front page of reddit and HN for laughs is all the digital media consumption I really need anymore.

<comment> slash-dot Paying 50$ a month for unlimited 3G is just outrageous. Here in Finland you get half a mb a second starting at 5€ a month. The fastest plans go at 15-20€ a month or something like that.

<comment><USER3> Agreed: here in Australia I get by on $5/ month on prepaid. The 500MB data credit rolls over & I can't use it fast enough - I now have 3.5GB accumulated.

It's a good idea to research cellphone plans, you can probably find something very affordable that suits your usage.

<comment><USER4> Australian here. What provider are you on?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the doom-and-gloomers have a very narrow view of that startup landscape, and only really see consumer companies.

The real trend of 2013, IMO, is that the consumer space is dead, as far as new startups are concerned. Supporting evidence is the "series A crunch", the reaction to the Facebook IPO, and Chris Dixon's "10 million is the new 1 million" article.

However, startups in other spaces, notably B2B and "enterprise" (the new sexy as of very recently, and my prediction for the number one trend of 2013) should be fine. If your startup makes money and has customers, you'll have no problem raising money (and less problems going it alone).

[Supporting evidence: basically my own (limited) experience from fundraising over the last few months]

<comment><USER6> I don't think consumer space is dead. I think the mentality of "get users now, get money later" is dead. It was always a flawed philosophy. There's no guarantee that if you build a network of people, those people will actually want to pay you. (Case in point: Facebook.)

So I'm agreeing with your last point: "If your startup makes money and has customers, you'll have no problem raising money."

<comment><USER7> Agreed. People often use the term "consumer space" as if it only means some free app or product being given away for free ad infinitem... Dropbox, Airbnb, Uber, Kickstarter are all consumer services that all had huge years in 2012.

Dropbox is a particularly interesting example because it has a B2B counterpart in Box. Dropbox however is 2 years younger and about worth about 8x more. Consumer is certainly not dead. Free consumer maybe, but even then, Snapchat just showed us that VCs still have an appetite for free apps that skyrocket in user growth. (and appetite is an understatement.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Decent list of observations on startup landscape. If you are interested and haven't had an opportunity to read, Mary Meeker's Internet trends (<http://kpcb.com/insights/2012-internet-trends>) report provides a much more comprehensive view on the subject.

</comment><comment><USER9> I didnt see 3D Printing on that list? Though the cost of home 3D printers probably wont drop to 500 or less, so maybe 3D printers isn't 2013 but 2014/2015?

<comment><USER4> I love the concept of 3D printing but there is not one story out there that tells me what consumers could practically want with a 3D printer.

<comment><USER9> printing up any physical object like a belt, shoe, toys, iphone covers/cases... whatever you think of and can design using 3D printing software it can be printed/created.

It's the next huge thing that will change the world and economies. I don't feel it's a positive for our struggling world economies though. Why buy that physical good you desire thru a store (online or offline) when you and everyone else will be able print it up at home?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It'll be interesting to see how our interaction with our phones will change once data transfer rates of 1GB/s are common. Sensors will play an increasingly important role, and who knows... probably many new innovations will be funded through the rising crowdfunding eco-system.

<comment><USER11> and once data limits/caps/throttling by the providers gets a bit more reasonable :)

<comment><USER2> I had unlimited 3g data in 2007 for $30. Today, to get something similar, it would cost $70. We're going backwards, not forwards, in terms of wireless data. There needs to be some fundamental reforms to break up the AT&T and Verizon duopoly and to open up a significant amount more wireless spectrum for data transmission.

<comment><USER12> Unlimited 3G data in 2012 is a lot more than unlimited 3G data in 2007 was.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Two weeks ago we encountered a need for a hosted "launch rock style" landing page that would function like kickstarter, to fund and grow our customer base in the same fashion as lockitron. We built Tractio.co to solve the need for a crowd funding landing page without technical chops, and helping to foster the growth of companies and services that need help raising funds, and want full control. We are looking for beta testers still.

Trends be warned. The worst thing about a trend is that they create overpopulation of products/businesses in a small space, causing distraction and undue competition to serious businesses from "can do it for free and leave it" day hacks.

</comment><comment><USER14> Reads like a top 5 tech trends of 2012 at times.

<comment> d--b Couldn't agree more. The decline in funding shows that investors start seeing that start-ups that don't plan to make money from the start won't get free lunches anymore. My view is that enterprised-focused start-up will make a big come back in 2013.

<comment><USER7> I've heard this over and over, but the reason it won't become a "trend" in terms of people around the nation talking about it, or even people in tech- early-adopter capitols like SF and NYC, is that founders might try to pattern match what's getting funded (terrible idea and motivation to build a product), but people really just don't care about enterprise/b2b startups (press, startup people, casual americans reading 'Wired' and discussing startups/apps at the dinner table). So even if it's taking off underground, it will only take a few more SnapChat* series-a announcements to shake people back to meteoric growth, no sales-cycle, brand building type of companies.

*Everyone was writing articles about them this week - and with good reason. Startup people (founders, employees, press, wannabes, VCs, angels) love reading that kind of shit and talking about things like 'Will Facebook's X kill Company Y?', etc... If it was a b2b company, it wouldn't have gotten any attention. Not 'just a little attention', but like, none. On top of the great things the consumer sector provides (customers, no sales cycles, meteoric growth, easier to build, etc), this reason above is one of the biggest reasons enterprise will never be a real "trend".

<comment><USER15> Lol, people are not looking to read about work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> We shouldn't look to WSJ for insight on startups. The trends are already passed by the time they're aware of them, which is why the article feels like it's talking about 2012 instead of 2013.

</comment><comment><USER17> I participated in this WSJ series and suggested you should simply ignore the trends.

[http://blogs.wsj.com/accelerators/2012/12/20/ignore- trends-a...](http://blogs.wsj.com/accelerators/2012/12/20/ignore-trends-and- predictions/)

</comment><comment><USER18> So a big trend will be being able to order services via your phone?

Now instead of calling a phone number I download an app and do the same thing?

Not quite seeing the huge win here.

<comment><USER15> The big difference is that the services are also delivered by phone. With Lyft, Uber, Exec, etc etc, the people providing the services are not employees of the startup but independent contractors using the app to get referred to customers. Instead of going into work, having some guy tell them who their customer is and taking a cut, they have the app tell them who their customer is and take a smaller cut.

That is the big difference.

<comment><USER18> So the benefit is really to the service provider? However this relies on changing user behaviour, so I guess service providers using such services will be all able to charge lower prices?</comment></comment></comment>


Why Most Apple critique articles are garbage - <AUTHOR> https://theboldreport.net/2016/09/design-as-branding-daring-fireball/ <comment><USER2> I feel like I could write a nice article on why most critique's of Apple critique articles, are also garbage.

I will refrain and just offer a well rounded and fair opinion of Apple.

Apple is obviously still making well built products with slick software, but they have not created anything recently more compelling than just being an upgrade or polish to what they already have. The watches, while very nice, did not bring anything new to the table that android watches hadn't. Their phones, while having to compete with gobs of hardware running android, have certainly not changed that much, but they have incrementally gotten better.

iOS has not distanced itself from stock android, and on top of the line hardware like the Nexus 6P, the only factor people have to consider now is what ecosystem they want to live in. Either way they get a buttery smooth OS with everything they could want and all the apps they need.

From a geek perspective, I am chomping at the bit for them to shock the world with the next big thing, like they did with iPods and iPhones. I would love for them to make another laptop I can't live without, that nobody else can touch.

To make use of an analogy, if apple is car maker, its top of the line supercar is still a formidable foe on the drag strip and the track, and while other supercars may outpace it one area or the other, and Apple has the edge in other aspects, its still an amazing all around supercar. It's just not showing any signs of pulling away from the pack any time soon, and for that matter, for the money there are other good options out there that may be more your style.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for reading Ben. You see, I agree with you, there are very fair and justified criticisms of Apple; I'm no Apple apologist. My beef is the focus on idiotic arguments such as the one Manjoo wrote. Manjoo is arguing for change for the sake of change, which to me does nothing to push Apple to actually get better in the areas they need to.</comment></comment>


John Resig: How could YUI3 improve its image compared to jQuery, MooTools, etc.? - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/How-could-YUI3-improve-its-image-compared-to-jQuery-MooTools-etc/answer/John-Resig?srid=5i2

<comment><USER2> Documentation makes YUI seem far more complicated than it is. For example, I recently needed a slider widget. Compare the documentation: <http://jqueryui.com/demos/slider/> <http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/3/slider/>

Like many web devs I am not an expert in javascript. I just want to copy/paste some "codes" to get my slider. By the time I get to the point of needing detailed background documentation on a widget, a generic jQuery widget has been sitting in my prototype for a couple of weeks.

<comment><USER3> jQuery takes a "sensible defaults" direction. Animations have default values. You can get sliders with one line. Everything works intuitively.

YUI takes a "be explicit up front" direction. You want an animation? Tell us the timing, direction, and easing up front. Instantiate your animation. Run your animation. You want a slider? Tell us the min, max, length, and default values when you create it.

jQuery works great when you want to be fast and done. YUI helps you if you want to be a little slower and get everything tweaked to your exact requirements from the start.</comment></comment>


Switzerland just showed why Bitcoin may struggle to go mainstream - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/switzerland-showed-why-bitcoin-may-struggle-to-go-mainstream-2018-1 <comment><USER2> Very misleading chart on that article. The bitcoin chart axis starts at 0, while the SNB one starts at 1000.

<comment><USER3> also this doesn't take into account the recent Bitcoin price action from 5k to 20k and back down to 10k. BTC outperformed massively.</comment></comment>


Denmark's Tougher Citizenship Test Stumps Even Its Natives - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/08/world/europe/denmark-citizenship-test.html?module=WatchingPortal&region=c-column-middle-span-region&pgType=Homepage&action=click&mediaId=thumb_square&state=standard&contentPlacement=12&version=internal&contentCollection=www.nytimes.com&contentId=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2016%2F07%2F08%2Fworld%2Feurope%2Fdenmark-citizenship-test.html <comment><USER2> Well, then the natives should lose their citizenship.

We have the same bs here in nl, and I'm 100% certain that I would not pass, if only because I don't know enough about our 'Royal' family.

<comment><USER3> It is better understood as a ritual, specifically a hazing by way of bureaucracy.

<comment><USER4> I understand it better as a way to appease nativists.

<comment><USER3> And I that the conflict with nationalism and globalism is a red herring.

The Net has enabled bi-directional communication for many to many for the first time in history. These feedback loops will produce effects familiar and unfamiliar. Of course we pick up first what we see, our bias is toward what we already understand. In truth it is weirder than than we may think and old-new forms of conflict are likely to emerge.

For example; ISIS is based on an older interpretation of Islam, but could it exist without the Net? I'd say not.

The implication of that could be that old conflicts thought to be irrelevant will rear their heads once more. You see something beginning here with feminism being abandoned, that was not in the script of the progressives. On the other side you have 'international meetings of anti-internationalists' and other such interesting paradoxes. There is something fractal-like going on with the evolution of ideas because of the Net.

<comment><USER4> I didn't say nationalism, I said "nativism". Nor did I say "globalism". Because yes, that would certainly be a red herring. We've been a global economy since at least the 1830s, when the cotton mills of an English county was able to produce most of the world's cotton fabric, and collapse the economy of several Asian cities.

Since no one mentioned them here, I find it odd that you felt necessary to raise that point.

Every single communications form has enabled similar feedback loops for centuries; the printing press, cheaper paper to enable the penny-dreadfuls, Linotype to enable yellow journalism, radio, telegram, TV, telephone, record players, transoceanic cables, microwave and satellite repeaters, and now, yes, internet.

You wrote "could [ISIS] exist without the Net? I'd say not."

I see no meaning in that statement. If you define ISIS to include how it transmits messages over the internet, then you are surely right, but trivially so. Just like a 10 year old child in the US could not exist as-is without the internet.

Regional uprisings, including those which are part of a religious movement, are not new, and don't require the internet to happen. The 1979 Iranian Revolution is one relatively recent example.

The rest of what you wrote is a mixture of the obvious and the unsupported. Of course "old conflicts thought to be irrelevant will rear their heads once more"; history is full of examples where the powerful forget or trivialize a problem which was never fully forgotten among the oppressed, who eventually fight.

As a feminist, I am flummoxed by the statement "with feminism being abandoned". It seems to be ever more mainstream, with, e.g., recent declarations by Barack Obama and Patrick Stewart of being feminists. The early feminist fought for the right to vote. Are you seriously saying that there's a general retreat from woman suffrage? If not, which of the many aspects of feminism do you refer?

The seeming paradox of organized anarchism is one that has long been pointed out and discussed by anarchists. [https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/common-cause- ottawa-...](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/common-cause-ottawa- organized-anarchism-in-the-anti-capitalist-struggle) says:

> The debate between organizationalists and anti organizationalists is not at > all new. It has been ongoing in the anarchist community for at least a > century.

Finally there has _always_ been "something fractal-like going on with the evolution of ideas", including, yet, long before the internet. There's a reason for the joke about the "People's Front of Judea" vs. "Judean People's Front", mocking perhaps Marxism factions, but otherwise little different than the joke with the punchline:

> [Are you] Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, > or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?" He > said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912." I > said, "Die, heretic!" And I pushed him over.

Even the Germanic peoples, without a written language, still had "fractal- like" evolution of ideas, as seen in their laws, language, and religion/mythology. What you describe is a part of how human ideas develop, and not something special about the internet.

<comment><USER3> > Since no one mentioned them here, I find it odd that you felt necessary to > raise that point.

It is because the narrative (aptly called an 'iconography' if you're familiar with Neal Stephenson) of nationalism vs globalism is becoming increasingly emphasized in political discussions, with Brexit being the latest installment.

I accept that nativism isn't necessarily a synonym for nationalism but in my European context it really is. America (not assuming you're an American, this is an example) has a different context because of repeated migration waves but this is exceptional. My country for example was 98% native born until a decade or two ago. Contrary to popular perception in some circles, migration does not have much to do with the capacity of modern transport, especially for islands. It is politics.

> Every single communications form has enabled similar feedback loops for > centuries; the printing press, cheaper paper to enable the penny-dreadfuls, > Linotype to enable yellow journalism, radio, telegram, TV, telephone, record > players, transoceanic cables, microwave and satellite repeaters, and now, > yes, internet.

Here we disagree most severely.

There are two/three criteria depending on context.

The direction of feedback (uni or bi). The strength of feedback (weak or strong). The feedback relationship (one to one, one to many, many to one, many to many).

Almost all the things you mentioned there are uni-directional communications. If they are bi-directional, it is the weak forms or selective.

The Net is uniquely different to forms of communication that have preceded it. Its feedback loop has genuinely sped up human society in politics, culture, you name it.

> I see no meaning in that statement.

Come on. Their funding comes from people who noticed their videos online. Their gear, their money, even the fighters. The reality is turning off their Net access would absolutely cripple them. Yes, insurrections occur without Net access, but global recruitment drives and fund raising from huge numbers of people does not occur without the Net. Writing letters and making a phone call wouldn't exactly cut it.

> As a feminist, I am flummoxed by the statement "with feminism being > abandoned". It seems to be ever more mainstream, with, e.g., recent > declarations by Barack Obama and Patrick Stewart of being feminists. The > early feminist fought for the right to vote. Are you seriously saying that > there's a general retreat from woman suffrage? If not, which of the many > aspects of feminism do you refer?

First, this is not a personal attack. I say so because this is an easily inflammatory topic.

Second, I believe that most social change is cyclical and not linear. Just as dresses get longer or shorter, values change over enough time in a mean reverting manner.

This is a description of what I see. This may be hard to believe depending on where you are and who you mix with, but social change in trajectory tends to be first noticed at the peripheral rather Hollywood or the Whitehouse.

Increasingly women and men are dropping the belief in equality between the sexes. Some elements, such as the right of women to work and vote are likely to be kept if not exercised, but huge swathes of feminist ideals are being dropped. I am not a women myself, but I have heard the ones around me talk about it, I doubt there's a woman in the neighborhood who would self describe as feminist. Some of them despise feminists and most of them think of feminism as an old fashioned idea with not much relevance to the world. I suppose they are technically counter-revolutionaries ;-)

This will be a rather esoteric example of the tide going out because they're altogether unusual (and fun!), but this couple do express similar sentiments to the ones I've heard more generally.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqvc1Yx3U7s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqvc1Yx3U7s)

> Finally there has always been "something fractal-like going on with the > evolution of ideas", including, yet, long before the internet.

I'm sorry but you have perhaps misunderstood me, I didn't disagree with your observations. Not fracture. Fractal. I'm afraid it is an idea which is hard to articulate without sounding slightly mad and certainly sound contradictory so I shall nurture the slippery fellow to maturity for a different occasion.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Do animals grieve like we do? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/02/science/02angi.html <comment><USER2> Yes they do. I've seen a dog pine for its mother.

There are also eccentric gay dogs who pine for their (also male) wiener-dog objects of affection, but who freeze up when a foxy female starts sniffing their bum.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not Hacker News?</comment>


Coding for Performance: Data alignment and structures (2013) - <AUTHOR> https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/coding-for-performance-data-alignment-and-structures

<comment><USER2> Note that in modern x86 processors the overhead of unaligned accesses is nearly 0 - caching has more significant effect, so it's more important to make sure frequently accessed data can fit within a cache line even if it means some of it won't be aligned. Crossing cache-line boundaries is when things slow down.

[http://lemire.me/blog/archives/2012/05/31/data-alignment- for...](http://lemire.me/blog/archives/2012/05/31/data-alignment-for-speed- myth-or-reality/)

Edit: here's an algorithm that exploits this "nearly free" unaligned access for fast substring search: [http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/250566/Fastest-strstr- li...](http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/250566/Fastest-strstr-like- function-in-C)

</comment><comment><USER3> In the rearrange example, can/does the compiler do the rearrange, padding automatically?

<comment><USER4> In both C and C++ fields in structs must be outputted in the order they are listed.

There is in C++ a freedom to rearrange fields whenever the user switches between public/private/protected, but I believe no compiler takes advantage of it, because (I believe) it is believed too suprising for these kinds of changes to change a class' size.</comment></comment>


Repression in Saudi Arabia has reached a new level - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2018/10/04/repression-in-saudi-arabia-has-reached-a-new-level <comment><USER2> This is terrible and this recent repression hasn't gotten much attention. I feel helpless to resist the us supporting dictatorial regimes. About all i do is write my senator.</comment>