Data on the uselessness of LinkedIn endorsements - <AUTHOR> http://blog.interviewing.io/linkedin-endorsements-are-dumb-heres-the-data/ <comment><USER3> Your analysis is extremely flawed.

I really appreciate your sharing the data with us and I like your service. But, this is a poorly done and a far from subtle plug of your business at the cost of LinkedIn.

1) Technical ability vs # of endorsements

Jesus. Hiding stats that you don't like through aggregations? And please read up on Simspons Paradox, which is clearly the case here just by looking at your plot. Try a basic t-test, or rather some statistical rigor, the next time you try to make conclusions from data.

2) Most endorsed vs Language of Choice

As pointed out, this is not the way to frame your problem. By obfuscating what's happening in your histogram (which isn't technically constructued right either) you are again hiding what you dont like through aggregation. By the way, language matters greatly here, and you'd have benefitted by standardization.

3) Your conclusion

"After running some significance testing, though" and not posting your results or methodology, which is at best questionable after reading your analysis.

Again, I enjoy your service, but blog posts on technical ability that are ironically lacking in technical ability don't really make me want to come back.

PS: A little birdie told me that endorsements are quite strong in predictive power for jobs :)

<comment><USER4> Here's another, even worse example:

> It turns out that people's interview language of choice matched their most > endorsed language on LinkedIn just under 50% of the time, so, you know, just > slightly worse than flipping a coin.

A coin has 2 sides. How many programming languages are there, again?

<comment><USER5> language of choice == linkedin endorsed lang -> {TRUE,FALSE}

Yet if there was no relationship between the two entities and there were N languages, one would expect the random probability of TRUE to be N/N^2 = 1/N.

Although, the writer doesn't seem to allege that he's comparing to random or anything like that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, that's exactly how I meant it. But I agree it's confusing. Will remove the comparison right now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In their quest to copy Facebook's formula for professional networking, LI's growth/engagement team makes a huge effort in promoting users to endorse their connections.

As a result, nearly all the endorsements on my LI have come from non-technical folks who just know buzzwords (e.g. python was my most-endorsed skill even even though this isn't my most used language by far, and any engineer taking a quick glance at my projects -- almost all native C/C++/ObjC -- would realize it. Now I'm getting lots of pitches for python gigs...)

If there was a way to (optionally) approve an endorsement beforehand, that would help.

<comment> rising-sky Actually, LinkedIn endorsements have to be accepted by the endorsee before appearing on their profile. This has always been the case, I know because I haven't accepted endorsements for `Cascading Stylesheets`, but for `CSS`.

<comment><USER7> Endorsements for skills you HAVEN'T listed must be accepted, but if you have a skill listed, anybody can endorse it for you. I think that's what OP meant - he had Python on there because maybe he knew a bit about it, and a bunch of randos just clicked the + next to it.

<comment><USER8> that's more on the fact that linkedIn asks "does x know y" rather than "here's a list of skills, select which is more applicable".

I also agree though, people randomly endorse stuff. I see D.o.D. all the time or Security Clearance. What does that even mean? That's not a skill as much as, hey I worked there, or hey I have one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've been considering just deleting my LI account. It essentially has just been a sink for terrible recruiter mail; in 12 years of having an account I don't think I've once received any sort of actionable message through it.

I've also turned off the endorsements because I was just getting driveby endorsements for things like J2EE.

Is there a job-search downside to deleting your account, provided you have a decent Google cross section otherwise via conference talks, blog, github, etc?

I can't tell if LinkedIn has marketed itself into an actual perception that not having an account means you don't care about career or the like.

<comment><USER10> I am personally astonished that LinkedIn is still a thing. For me, it was the most obviously useless of all the social networks and it was the first one I deleted, upwards of 7 years ago now.

The other social networks eventually followed but LinkedIn just gave me zero value from day one. It was nothing but recruiter spam. Do people actually get work and jobs out of LinkedIn? Or is is just a way to keep up with what old coworkers are doing? I frankly do not get it.

<comment><USER11> > Do people actually get work and jobs out of LinkedIn? Or is is just a way to > keep up with what old coworkers are doing? I frankly do not get it.

Yes. Multiple times.

<comment><USER12> As someone who has only gotten recruiter spam from LI: Was it worth sifting through all the spam? I've personally never known anyone who has gotten a job with them, so from where I sit it seems like a lot of work for no payoff. I'm curious as to your experience, though.

<comment><USER13> Got a job at MS via LinkedIn, as well as my current job, which I really enjoy.

I ignore recruiters if I even get a hint that they're not employed directly by the company they're purporting to be with. It's become less of an issue within the last year or so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Up until the LinkedIn redesign a few weeks ago, I used to run a bit of javascript every day that would pick a 100 people randomly on my LinkedIn "friends list" and endorse them for one of their listed skills that I hadn't already endorsed them for.

Every time I did that, it caused about 20% of the people to view my profile, which gamed my LinkedIn statistics so my profile was ranked higher in various searches.

I haven't rewritten the script since their redesign, but I'll get to it soon.

<comment><USER15> Wow, that's an ingenious hack that makes a lot of sense in hindsight. What was your thought process and how did it lead to that? Was it solving a similar problem in another domain?

<comment><USER16> > Wow, that's an ingenious hack that makes a lot of sense in hindsight. What > was your thought process and how did it lead to that? Was it solving a > similar problem in another domain?

I've read your comment thrice and have not been able to understand it! It's starts out mildly reasonable, then drifts out into bot-territory

<comment><USER15> I'm mildly offended that you trivialized my comment. I'm even more confused because I believe my questions are completely valid, and you're not taking them at face value.

To rephrase:

Have you ever encountered a flash of insight that seemed to approach a challenge from a completely different angle? It could be something like someone solving a deeply technical problem in a non-technical way, or the first time you were introduced to affordance [1].

This is similar. Instead of the obvious solution of injecting buzzwords into his LinkedIn profile, deftnerd did a social hack that nudged his own connections towards viewing his profile, equivalently boosting his visibility.

What I meant by my questions is that I'm interested in learning both the flash of insight and the thought process that led to that. Sometimes the reason is as bland as accumulated knowledge (but even then, what knowledge?). But if not, maybe I can learn a completely new perspective from which to approach a whole class of problems.

[1] [https://www.quora.com/What-are-examples-of- affordances/answe...](https://www.quora.com/What-are-examples-of- affordances/answer/Shaun-OConnell?srid=nEG0)

<comment><USER16> Apologies -- I could have phrased it better. Your explanation above provides clear context for your original question.

<comment><USER15> A bit late, but apology accepted! =)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> When writing LinkedIn profiles for my resume and coaching clients, I advise them to turn endorsements "off". Under the Skills section is a "Adjust Endorsement Settings" listing that you can click to turn it off.

Endorsements tend to be just extra noise with all those pictures, and on many profiles there is rather important information (education, projects, etc.) _below_ the skills section. You don't want your reader getting lost in the endorsements before getting to some useful info.

<comment><USER18> Serious question: what exactly does a resume coach do? Do they just maintain a good resume for me?

<comment><USER19> BLUF: A good one will help your résumé navigate the often opaque and misaligned fiefdom that is corporate HR.

Long version: If they have significant and current experience with hiring processes (especially in your industry), they'll be able to help you with everything from how to word and structure it to maximize your odds of getting through the automated filters nearly every big company uses these days, to figuring out (based on job postings) what the hiring company's HR department is going to care about. Which is often different from what the person doing the actual hiring will care about, but you need to satisfy both.

They also have visibility into other aspects (salary, titles, mobility) that recruiters often can be helpful with, too, but I've found recruiters sometimes have their incentives somewhat misaligned with those of their clients (e.g., like a real estate agent who makes more money if they focus on turnover over deal size, so the homeowner isn't happy to get $15K less for their house than they could, recruiters make their cut when someone gets hired for anything, at any salary, and a small percentage of a salary that's 10% lower is less of a concern to them than being 10% underpaid is to you), whereas a résumé consultant's job is to do their part to ensure you get the interview.

I run a couple businesses and therefore don't really have a résumé myself, but I've probably referred a total of a half people (friends, relatives, and people moving on from my employ to better things) to a close friend who is a résumé consultant, and they in turn have referred many multiples of that, given how happy they were with the results. Virtually all got interviews with the companies they wanted to. (Of course, a good résumé consultant will also tell you when you're completely on-paper-unqualified to enter that job via traditional means.)

I consider myself a fairly capable person, but seeing the work of a highly talented résumé consultant made me realize that that's just not an area I (or the vast majority of most people) are adept at navigating.

It's sort of like hiring an attorney to handle a legal matter one could technically handle without being an attorney. Sure, if you already have a talent for that kind of thing, and are willing to spend at least hundreds of hours working in that field, you'd probably be able to take care of that one task fairly easily, but anything short of that and it's far better to pay an expert.

A few hundred bucks to put one's résumé into the top few-percent of applications is money very well spent.

<comment><USER17> As my background is in recruiting (which is quite helpful in resume writing), this is well put overall. A resume writers is just trying to position you as best as possible to get in the door, whereas a recruiter typically is just trying to get everyone in the door.

The thing I like about resume writing and coaching is that it's 100% focused on helping an individual job seeker, and there are no misaligned incentives.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Not sure linkedin really cares if the endorsements are accurate or not. I heard endorsements were / are massively successful at re engaging users, which is the real aim of the product.

<comment><USER21> My experience has been that my friends and I troll each other by submitting endorsements for irrelevant things like "Microsoft Office" or "Public Speaking." I usually spend a few minutes on LinkedIn when this happens, so this is consistent with your point.

<comment><USER22> After being contacted through LinkedIn for an entry level PHP job in Spain (I don't use PHP nor do I speak Spanish and I have nearly 20 years of experience) my colleagues decided to endorse me for both PHP and Spanish--so I can absolutely relate. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Just as a test I added "laughter yoga" as one of my skills to my LinkedIn profile. So far it's received 5 endorsements.

Proof: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/austenallred/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/austenallred/)

<comment><USER24> At the time of this writing, I have been endorsed for the following skills:

Fly-bagging (10) Squirrels (10) Walking (8) Fierce Conversations (9) Rhinoplasty (2) Puns (3)

<comment><USER7> Maybe your endorsers thought you meant Squirrel-lang? (files of which end in .nut)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I remember making several comments over the years about that on LinkedIn asking why endorsements were relevant. Recruiters or IT companies looking for favors would randomly give me credit for skills they had no idea I was capable of or not. In the beginning I would message them back saying "You don't even know me, why are you endorsing me?" and people would be surprised like it was rude or something like they were doing me a favor with bullshit endorsements.

After that, I just cared only about getting recommendations from CEOs and CTOs etc. on LinkedIn. These actually are useful and are a true marker of your reputation. Endorsements need to be completely overhauled or abandoned. They have the potential to be cool if somehow there were rep points that could be distributed for the given skill set that people were actually qualified in to give but that would be way too complicated for most people to even understand or care about.

<comment><USER26> When the endorsement flood first hit, I thought it was a truly awful and intrusive idea. I created an Unwanted Endorsement Recipient... skill? I don't remember exactly how it works. I know I've been endorsed for it a few times now, though I long ago turned off endorsement emails so I'm not sure.

It's just an engagement growth hack by LI. I understand why they did it, but I think it's short term gain for long term risk of irrelevance (of LI itself; endorsements are already irrelevant). Which, for a social network, is the biggest existential threat.

<comment><USER25> Totally. Your comment is particularly relevant to me as I'm building my own social network and have to see blunders of others and avoid them like the plague.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I've been endorsed for _sarcasm_ on linked in. When friends want to tease, we endorse each other for things like _ms-dos_ and _j2ee_ it's beautiful.

<comment><USER28> "Healing Touch" is another fun one.

<comment><USER27> Ima steal this one. Too good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> andy-x I believe endorsements on LI are fake. I'm receiving endorsements for random things from my former and current co-workers and I know for sure they never sent any (either because I asked them or I know it's entirely outside their expertise).

<comment><USER29> Yes, I've seen this too. 4 people allegedly endorsed me for Clojure, and only one of them, when asked, even knew what it was. None could recall having clicked the button.

And I allegedly endorsed someone for "TeamCity" before I knew what it was!

Either they're faking the data or their UI design is negligent-to-malicious levels of bad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> LinkedIn is highly focused on metrics of user engagement. Endorsements motivate a lot of engagement by providing a low-effort way for users to articulate generally positive information about each other. Although skill endorsements could be shaped into something more rigorous and useful, that conflicts with engagement/virality goals which call for easy ways to quickly message dozens of contacts.

In other words, no kidding endorsements are useless. That isn't the point.

</comment><comment><USER31> I have endorsements for "potato salad" and "teenage paranormal romance".

My potato salad is pretty good. My twilight fanfic, however, only deserves endorsement because I have not yet written any.

</comment><comment><USER32> I read these articles until I get to the first major methodological problem. In this case, it is this claim:

"It turns out that people's interview language of choice matched their most endorsed language on LinkedIn just under 50% of the time, so, you know, just slightly worse than flipping a coin."

That would only be true if there were only two programming languages.

<comment><AUTHOR> We thought of that too and tried to see how often people were endorsed for their language of choice vs. their most endorsed language. Keep reading? (You can scroll down to where the gray histogram is.)

<comment><USER33> Sorry, I don't understand the histogram at all either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Without trying to blow my own horn too hard here, I've never really taken these all that seriously and have strongly thought that people who have more (serious) recommendations are often the most useless people.

Screenshot: [http://m.imgur.com/uyXXEPl](http://m.imgur.com/uyXXEPl)

Source: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewjohnmcgrath/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewjohnmcgrath/) [my recommendations]

<comment><USER35> Thank you for posting this. I love this idea! It could demonstrate one's personality in an unexpected way.

<comment><USER34> You're welcome.

I want to say that is how it started, but honestly I think I was just annoyed at people who had never worked closely with me endorsing me for "The Cloud", so I intentionally added some stupid things in the hope they'd prove to me once and for all they actually didn't know anything about me.

My profile has been like this for years now...one day when I actually want to do something different, I look forward to it acting as an automatic filter against the people I don't want to work with :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> This post is as good as "new study finds cholesterol causes heart disease". We know that LinkedIn endorsements are only as good as the person looking at them. In the new UI, LinkedIn highlights endorsements from "people that are highly skilled at this", which, in my observations so far, is fairly reasonable. In my mind endorsements only matter when they come from people that _I_ trust. I'll take _highly skilled at this_ with a grain of salt, but that's a lot better than endorsements from random people. I don't know anyone that hires engineers based on endorsements.

</comment><comment><USER37> one of the linked to articles has the following excerpt:

"Most jobs are never available publicly, just like most worthwhile candidates are not available publicly (see here). Information about the position travels at approximately the speed of beer, sometimes lubricated by email."

How does interviewing.io plan to attack this problem? I recently have had a lot of trouble getting placed - through one of interviewing.io's competitors (still not employed), but am now somewhat cynical about the process.

</comment><comment><USER38> My experience with endorsements tells they can be not only deceiving, but also a trap.

There's this guy which I used to work with that was not very good in the job and used to distract others at work very often, not being really productive most of the time - but he was generally nice to everyone, so nobody really disliked him.

He ended up leaving the company, and was hired by another company which we had business with. After some time, his new employer called our boss to tell he left, taking with him all the code of the project he was and starting a company by himself with this code.

This may seem bad already, but it was not the end: a few years later, the guy comes back asking me for recommendations on LinkedIn - when I checked his profile, I found he got a lot of code from the first company as well - <USER2> we used to work together - and put on his Github, with copyright headers stating he was the author. In fact, he did that with code _I personally wrote_.

Of course, I didn't endorse him - but if I go to his LinkedIn page today, there are tons of recommendations by ex-colleagues, including recommendations for things that he barely worked with.

And this is just one example. Most co-workers I have or had that were really good in what they do have zero to a few recommendations, and usually in very specific stuff that don't every start to cover their knowledge.

So, my advice is: if you use LinkedIn recommendations to anything serious, you are doing something wrong.

</comment><comment><USER39> LinkedIn is very useful to keep a list of past and current colleagues and touch base with them in case you need to.

Instead of deleting my LinkedIn account to get rid of recruiter spam, I deleted my entire history. My profile is just my name and my photo. That way I can expand my network of colleagues without getting bombarded with spam.

I highly recommend doing this!

</comment><comment><USER40> For anyone that wonders what the hell is the loading bar that is on top of the page, it loads the data for graphs at the bottom of the page.

I was semi-worried that my computer will explode when it is loaded. It takes so long and gives no visual feedback what it is loading. I would either put that near graph or better just use a static image

</comment><comment><USER41> I'd always assumed the primary goal of LinkedIn endorsements is the same as every other email I get from LinkedIn, to keep user engagement with the site - and based on the number of colleagues I see accepting them, I'd say it's been pretty successful at achieving that goal for LinkedIn.

<comment><USER42> LinkedIn makes loads of money from their recruiting products. They likely care as much or more that you have a good profile that recruiters can search as that you spend time on the site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Yep, I've been asked by friends to endorse them. But they are in a different industry and I have no proof whether or not they know the skills. Ethically, I don't think this is right. But no one I know has looked at endorsements during the hiring/interviewing process.

</comment><comment><USER44> Wait, you mean my 1500+ endorsements, mostly by people I don't know, are worthless?! [https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregghoush/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregghoush/)

I am pretty sure I already knew this.

</comment><comment><USER45> I have anecdotal evidence that endorsements are useless. I endorsed myself for "Rocket Science", "Brain Surgery", "Smooth Jazz", and "Yacht Rock".

I've received several endorsements for each.

</comment><comment><USER46> Their notifications are top notch too:

"You have 1 new notification!"

 _tap_

... "Do you know these people?"

</comment><comment><USER47> Shouldn't we start with the assumption that LinkedIn endorsements are already worthless and then try to prove that they have some sort of value? Hint: you can't.

</comment><comment><USER48> Here's my anecdata on LinkedIn Endorsements. I've got endorsements for Malbolge a language I put on as a joke that I only know about vaguely from a wikipedia article.

Turns out when they released them and every time people logged in they got prompted to "endorse", they just pressed all of the buttons (and expected reciprocation) whether or not they knew the first thing about the skill they were endorsing that I had...

</comment><comment><USER49> I wouldnt start my marketing spiel with "get a job at uber" unless I was going to follow it with "... and bring your wiiiifeeee"

</comment><comment><USER50> There's a hand-wavy footnote about recruiters not being able to divide by number of connections for every search result candidate, but I still think this would be a much more meaningful metric. I'm willing to bet the good recruiters already look at number of connections (too many/too few being flags), so I don't think it would be much of a stretch to compare the ratio.

</comment><comment><USER51> A better way to do this analysis would have been to create an extremely sparse matrix with one column for every possible endorsement category with the value being the number of endorsements (normalized). Then try to predict various _aspects_ of coding performance.

Definitely wouldn't endorse the author for machine learning :)

</comment><comment><USER52> What is the theory which states that the relationship is the cover graph is linear? There must be one otherwise the fit does not make sense, it could have been ax^3 + e^9x, or heart shaped.

There should be a law punishing arbitrary linear fits and ridiculous claims which are concluded from their correlation.

</comment><comment><USER53> Out of curiosity, why are the data manipulation controls (zoom/share) on the plot.ly charts explicitly disabled (specifically, no hover popovers which plot.ly sets by default + the parameters link=false and modebar=false)?

At that point, why not use static images for data visualizations instead?

<comment><USER54> Probably bad copy paste examples?

Or

Some people think everyone should consume charts a specific way and thus disable everything that doesn't fit that precise consumption model.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> I wonder if they are useful at all just as: number of endorsements / number of connections.

Even if the tag is wrong, that someone vouched for you in some minor way might be statistically significant.

Of course, it could be that the UI encourages mindless tagging, therefore it's all cruft.

<comment><USER56> The UI definitely encourages mindless tagging. I'm endorsed for parallel algorithms by the manager of a very low-end car maintenance shop. Plural of anecodate, yada yada yada, but most of my endorsements are from people who really have no experience in that programming language or concept AT ALL.

<comment><USER55> A manager of a low end car maintenance shop with whom you've done no work for, correct?

If you have done work for him, I'd argue the tag at least means he liked the work. If not, then yeah, useless data.

<comment><USER56> I spoke with him for a few minutes at a wedding. Must have liked the conversation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Yeah, the endorsement stuff is just tag spam.

They encourage people to endorse their friends, and they give us some tags. Lots of people will, on the theory they're somehow helping their friends, do this thing.

But the tags they offer have a tenuous relationship with reality.

</comment><comment><USER58> I don't need an article full of statistics to tell me the endorsements are useless; everyone I know who has endorsed me only did it in the hope that that box with 'endorse your friends' will disappear off their Linkedin.

</comment><comment> charles-salvia I'd like some endorsements for Hypercard, Police Quest 3, and obscure x86 opcodes

<comment><USER59> I fucking rule at HyperCard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Depends on what that data means. Endorsement does not mean X knows Java. I would take it as X is somehow related to Java.

This is very useful and a collective statistics while being completely useless for individuals.

</comment><comment><USER61> My employer set up a similar app thing - also allowing endorsements. Crucially it allowed freeform endorsements.

Didn't take long for people to endorse each other's BASE jumping and pole dancing ability.

</comment><comment><USER62> Haha I have always thought this though, I love that Tammy the waitress who I knew from school endorsed that I am capable of Network Architecture and Geospatial databases....

</comment><comment><USER63> Looking for input from LinkedIn users:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13738855](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13738855)

</comment><comment><USER64> Good article. So true about LinkedIn. In my experience, its a circle-jerk with no real checks and balances.. Don't let the LinkedIn darlings here ruin your day.

</comment><comment><USER65> Well, after a certain event last year, I have added "The cyber" to my skills and got endorsed for it. I do not need to be told they are useless.

</comment><comment><USER66> I wonder how valuable the written recommendations are? Anyone have data on that?

<comment><USER67> Yes, that is a much more interesting question. They _should_ be much more valuable, since they represent much more effort than a simple button click. However, you don't really know how genuine a recommendation is. It could be simple payback for someone who gave you a recommendation or some other favor in the past.

You would need some kind of subjective survey on if any prospective employers/recruiters even look at the recommendations and how much weight they tend to give them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> I love when I receive an endorsement for something like "XML".

<comment> charles-salvia At least it's not an endorsement for SGML

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> I'd like to see the residuals from that model

</comment><comment><USER70> If people claim: "I know C++"... then I rub my hands and the fun begins. It usually ends with leaving that one off the list.

</comment><comment><USER71> Amen

</comment><comment><USER72> Threatening to endorse a colleague for PHP was a popular way of trolling at a recent workplace. Childish, but amusing.

<comment><USER73> Love it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> FWIW I noticed many lower-level employees who did a lot of heavy lifting for the company had skill sets and productivity that may or may not have been correlated with ability to get linkedin recommendations or endorsements. I'd even heard talk of management refusing a recommendation because: "is he looking for another job? why is he asking me for that?"

If you look at the world through rational self-interest recommendations and linkedin profiles should be viewed sceptically.</comment>


K Language: Remarks on Style (1995) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://nsl.com/papers/style.pdf <comment><USER2> Where is K being used nowadays? Banks? 1010data?

<comment><USER3> 1010data indeed still uses K as a core language for its infrastructure, supplemented with some C libraries here and there. The internally-maintained fork of k3 has grown some interesting features over the years, both unique and borrowed from newer K releases. I hear "Shakti" aka k7/k9 is used by a handful of cryptocoin exchanges. Their needs drove a number of design considerations in early k7, but I'm not up to date on k9. Most of the k4/kdb+/Q users I know work at hedge funds.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > _Names should be easy to type._ [emphasis in original]

I see. This is why your language is called "K".

Permit me to disagree. Reading code is harder than writing it. Names should be easy to _read_. Typing can be assisted by autocomplete in editors -- already an old technology.

<comment><USER3> long names obscure the patterns in expressions, and make idioms harder to pick out. In APL-family languages, the ability to visually pattern-match aids comprehension. It's a skill that must be learned, though. This may sound implausible until you've tried it.

<comment><USER5> This is extremely right. If you see it as notation, or an actual language, instead of the paper tape-emulating languages we have around now, it's actually one of the only sane ways to do it.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: See what is trending amongst friends - <AUTHOR> http://trendingfor.me

<comment><USER2> Great way to see what's trending in my twitter feed. I'd like to see a browser plug-in with these features in the future. Nice Shave!

</comment><comment><USER3> since your page basically shows nothing until you authenticate against twitter (i didn't) you should show a grayed out image or something of some example data of what it looks like once the user logs in.</comment>


Adobe Acquires Allegorithmic (maker of Substance Designer) - <AUTHOR> https://theblog.adobe.com/adobe-acquires-allegorithmic-substance-3D-gaming <comment><USER2> Ouch, as someone who uses Substance Designer/Painter I'm not sure how I feel about this.

I suppose this means Substance users will be forced to become Creative Cloud users as well.</comment>


Love in GIT - <AUTHOR> http://git.gnome.org/browse/frogr/commit/?id=d20b4b7679a64349c09b611b6376f20bfa4fb1d2

<comment><USER2> At my past couple of companies, we've tracked any births to the core eng team in the build system: you can go to the top of the build tree and type "make babies" to see who was born and when.

<comment><USER3> There's a joke in here somewhere about trying to make babies with a makefile, I'm sure of it. That's great build functionality!

<comment><USER4> In good relationships, as in Makefiles, you have to give each other space, but it has to be the right kind.

<comment><USER5> You also have to have clearly defined ground rules, and it helps to have contingency plans for unexpected events.

In the event the relationship receives a SIGHUP, you can only hope that it terminates gracefully- nobody likes a zombie relationship that's waiting on closure() that will never return due to the sudden absence of /dev/love.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Every time when I see humanity in code I feel a big relief. After all we are (still) humans, no?

</comment><comment><USER7> Subtle biases.

As we all know, the ultimate expression of love is marriage.

<comment><USER8> And the ultimate expression of insight is sarcasm.

<comment><USER7> And the ultimate form of flattery is imitation.

<comment><USER7> The moderation on this whole thread has been incredibly entertaining to watch. I'm sort of surprised this joke post got beaten down and the sarcastic post got elevated.

<comment><USER9> Pro tip: be funny :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> While I would never hope for or wish unhappiness on some one, I'm afraid the next punchline to this joke is an update in the future in which the thanks line is gone (presumably for his ex-wife).

<comment><USER11> Well, that's what we have git rebase for.

<comment><USER12> Not once you have published the change.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Such comments always make my day, and I am always with an eye looking for them. Most of the time I feel like someone that's stuck in a jungle and finds marks of previous ... activity, "Hey, I am not alone".

</comment><comment><USER14> Thanks for that. Unfortunately though, Love is but one of the many reasons people get married.

<comment><USER15> Fortunately, romantic love is but one of the many reasons that marriages turn out to be fulfilling.

<comment><USER16> And it can even develop after the wedding.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> [http://www.google.com/codesearch?q=my%5C+%28girlfriend|wife|...](http://www.google.com/codesearch?q=my%5C+%28girlfriend|wife|boyfriend|husband%29)

If anyone fancies improving on my little _euristique de l'amour_ that'd be excellent.

</comment><comment><USER18> And here is more [http://blogs.igalia.com/mario/2011/05/11/an-unexpected-e- mai...](http://blogs.igalia.com/mario/2011/05/11/an-unexpected-e-mail/)

</comment><comment><USER19> got to keep those top level text files up to date.

</comment><comment><USER20> Read it as "loving it"

</comment><comment><USER21> Hah, awesome. Don't know what else to say...

</comment><comment><USER22> Such acts make privacy concerns about Facebook et al. look trivial in comparison. Pulling last weekend's drunken photos or wall messages off your profile is not that onerous. Good luck tracking down all the forks of your git project and tampering with their history!

<comment><USER23> I don't think most people consider public expressions of gratitude a private matter, nor the fact that they are married to their spouse.</comment></comment>


Did ever European teams get YC founding? - <AUTHOR>

Did ever European teams get YC founding? Would be encouraging to know anything about that... thanks! <comment><USER2> Yes, pretty much every cycle has groups from Europe.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, do you know any concrete startup?

<comment><USER2> Auctomatic, Heysan, Songkick, Clickpass, Baseshield, Snaptalent, Webmynd, FathomDB, and Scoopler are all from Europe.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, wow! Thanks a lot. Good list of startups

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> From last week: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=286911>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Cool!</comment></comment>


Successful Lisp: How to Understand and Use Common Lisp - b-man http://www.psg.com/~dlamkins/sl/

<comment><AUTHOR> The worst thing is that it's entirely possible his contract with the publisher is structured in a way that if he makes the book available as a free download or sells it on Lulu.com, the publisher will unleash their lawyers upon him.

<comment><USER2> No it isn't. The book has been available since much prior to the notice about royalties being put up.

I have a single correspondence with the author about compensating him for his effort (I used the online edition) to learn lisp and he refused -- as the publisher has first rights to collect monies on the book -- , I am inclined not to even fleetingly question his judgment in posting the book online.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well then... A PDF version would make me happier. ;-)

OTOH, he could make a second edition and start selling that, if the agreement with the publisher allows.

Unless the contract is deliberately convoluted, it shouldn't take more than an lawyer x hour to sort that question out.

<comment><USER3> PDF

[http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2083231/Successful%20Lisp%20How%20to...](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2083231/Successful%20Lisp%20How%20to%20Understand%20and%20Use%20Common%20Lisp%20-%20David%20B.%20Lamkins.pdf)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks.

I had the idea of a more booklike PDF.

I wonder if the author would seriously object to that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great, it looks like a good book and a valuable resources. It's a shame about the publishing situation. I've been interested in Lisp and scheme for some time, but haven't found a way to learn it by accomplishing something with Lisp yet. I'm looking forward to finding a project.

"Oh, and one more thing: It's not quite true that no mass market product uses Lisp. Microsoft's "Bob" environment for naive computer users was developed (and delivered) in Lisp."

Okay, I'm sold! But really, MS was using Lisp in the 90s?

<comment><AUTHOR> "Microsoft's "Bob" environment for naive computer users was developed (and delivered) in Lisp"

Lisp just lost a hundred geek points with me...

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Oh man, this is such a shame.

I read much of his online book before deciding to buy a paper copy, figuring the result was definitely worth the money, therefore the guy deserved to be paid; this was a few years ago. I don't exactly remember when, so hopefully before 2007...

</comment><comment><USER6> It looks like the publisher's site is offline too: <http://www.bookfix.com></comment>


America's Densest Cities - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/wendell-cox/americas-densest-cities_b_5888424.html?utm_hp_ref=business&ir=Business

<comment><AUTHOR> I found this very surprising. The data that the author is drawing on is here: [http://www.demographia.com/db-uzajuris.pdf](http://www.demographia.com/db- uzajuris.pdf)</comment>


The Rise of Nvidia (2001) - <AUTHOR> http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=405942 <comment><USER2> That just makes me remember how awesome my TNT2 Ultra was. Maybe that it was replacing a 8MB ATI card/Voodoo2 combo was part of that, but that NVIDIA card held it's own for a while. I might even still have it somewhere.

Ah 1152x864, how I don't miss you.

</comment><comment><USER3> Random trivia, one researcher at Nvidia was the guy who developed the NURBS stitching (shapeshifting) algorithm for the Terminator 2 movie. [http://www.enderton.org/eric/](http://www.enderton.org/eric/) [https://research.nvidia.com/publication/accumulative-anti- al...](https://research.nvidia.com/publication/accumulative-anti-aliasing)

</comment><comment><USER4> Better link: [https://web.archive.org/web/20110326050206/http://www.firing...](https://web.archive.org/web/20110326050206/http://www.firingsquad.com/features/nv2/)

</comment><comment><USER5> I had the Geforce 2 GTS. Played Counter Strike like a champ.</comment>


The Coding Interview - <AUTHOR> http://blog.palantir.com/2011/10/03/the-coding-interview/

<comment><AUTHOR> A good complement to our other post last week, How to Rock an Algorithms Interview - [http://blog.palantir.com/2011/09/26/how-to-rock-an- algorithm...](http://blog.palantir.com/2011/09/26/how-to-rock-an-algorithms- interview/)</comment>


Show HN: Worldwide Meteor Day – 133 meetups synchronized across the globe - <AUTHOR> http://meteorday.com/

<comment><USER2> You can still get the first eight chapters of our book about Meteor (Discover Meteor) for free for one more day here:

[http://book.discovermeteor.com/starter](http://book.discovermeteor.com/starter)

And if you want, you can also join us in the Meteor chatroom on Gitter:

[https://gitter.im/meteor/meteor](https://gitter.im/meteor/meteor)</comment>


Keep Your GitHub Email Address Private - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/blog/1580-keep-your-email-private <comment><USER2> The obvious evolution of this would be to host email and allow users to forward:

      firstname.lastname@example.com -> useremail

The fake non-routable emails can be a problem when you have to get in touch with contributors who are no longer active on Github.

Saw this problem in the bootstrap project where we still can't get in touch with ~10% of users to get them to approve the addition of an MIT license:

[https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap/issues/2054](https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap/issues/2054)

<comment><USER3> This would make it trivial to spam every user of GitHub though, by first spidering the site for public usernames.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As someone who's had recruiters find my personal email via my GitHub commits, this is a welcome feature.

<comment><USER5> Why does everyone hate recruiters? I'm a developer and I just don't get why other devs hate them so much.

See them for what they are(sales people wanting you as their next product) and get over it.

<comment><USER6> It's a sign of how spoiled we are that we complain when people try to find us employment.

<comment><USER7> They're trying to cash in a fat bonus, not getting people a job first and foremost. At least the ones who message me after not reading my profile, just having a single buzzword match.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Anyone seriously worried about privacy should also ensure that their gravatar doesn't point to their real email address, especially if there's a simple relationship between the email addresss and GitHub username.

Edit: Apparently, this doesn't re-write the actual repo so anyone seriously interested in e-mail addresses will be unaffected. It was already easier to get e-mails via cloning rather than through scraping or the API.

</comment><comment><USER9> This seems kind of like privacy theatre to me. What's to stop someone from just cloning your repos and deriving your email from the commit attributes?

<comment><USER10> The actual commits will have the fake address. The change isn't that they're hiding the email addresses in the UI; it's that they've added the option to use a fake email address for commits made via the web UI while still receiving notification emails from Github.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Awesome, lately privacy has become a real concern for me... my inbox filled with Recruiter e-mails will also like this!

</comment><comment><USER12> Not going to help. Cloning some public repo will expose all emails you commited with anyway.

<comment><USER13> Which is why you shouldn't put a real email address in commits [1].

[1] [https://help.github.com/articles/keeping-your-email- address-...](https://help.github.com/articles/keeping-your-email-address- private)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> So how is this different from using any fake email address?

<comment><USER15> Shut up. Is it necessary to bash every single new feature because it can be done another way?

<comment><USER14> I can't tell if you're being ironic or not. My question was honest, though. I honestly don't understand this feature.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: WZWave is an open-source Java Z-Wave library - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/whizzosoftware/WZWave

<comment><USER2> Very nice project! I like how it ties together many different devices running different protocols in a way that hides the details (and protocol complexity) from me.

</comment><comment><USER3> Open source access to the protocol should make Z-Wave products more valuable. It's a shame they make it difficult to access. Thanks for opening it up!

</comment><comment><USER4> I did not know what Z-Wave is. It would be nice if there was a hyperlink to a description.

Good luck with the project.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great idea, I have added some info the the Github README and the wiki page. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is great! Opens up great possibilities for...well, a lot of things. Thanks for doing this!</comment>


Merry Christmas to HN - <AUTHOR> Hi HN,
With Europe running ahead of US (but behind Asia, hi!) let me wish you all a Merry Christmas. My hopes are none of us feel alone these days but if you do share it here and have the beautiful HN community send you a warm reply.
Count your blessings, sing your Christmas carols, open your gifts, and make a wish under the Christmas tree. May you have a Merry Christmas! <comment><USER2> merry christmas

<comment><AUTHOR> Merry x-mas!</comment></comment>


Visualizing Time Zones - <AUTHOR> http://everytimezone.com/ <comment><USER2> I've had just that 'time zone math' problem for years, which is, why I wrote a small iPhone App just for the purpose of being able to easily lookup this information when on the road. Globetrotter :) [http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/globetrotter-timezone- calcula...](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/globetrotter-timezone- calculator/id355140639?mt=8)

everytimezone.com looks swell though. Love it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks very nice. The only problem I had is that it's not clear when you load the page that you can actually interact with it. Some people might go away confused and think this tool can't convert specific times

<comment><USER4> A couple of days ago it just followed your mouse wherever it went so you didn't need to drag anything. I think I prefer that than what the interaction is now

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Reminds me of Bret Victor's BART train schedule redesign: <http://worrydream.com/MagicInk/#case_study_train_schedules>

<comment><USER6> Beautiful. Thank you for posting that as I doubt I would have come across that. As someone who rides public transit 5 or more days a week, that is a very useful visualization.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> My only complaint is that once I grabbed the bar and dragged it around I had a hard time getting it back to the current time without refreshing the page.

</comment><comment><USER8> Beautiful, well executed. To make it even more useful I think it would be cool

* to provide selection of countries to be included in the graph, because what matters is usually two or more countries, say, participating in a conference call

* to have another sliding bar that can be adjusted manually, e.g., to find a point in time most suitable for all participants of a conference call

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm using Chrome on Windows (don't ask) and I get a featureless black screen. What am I supposed to see?

</comment><comment><USER10> This is so close to being really cool. Usually what's needed, though, is to compare two or three time zones text to each other. In this system, they're far away so that's hard to do.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, cool to look at... but not as _useful_ as this one: <http://www.thetimezoneconverter.com/> (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1133613>)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Maybe I'm just retarded, but I spent 1 minute on this website and couldn't figure out how to use it. Too many elements jumping and shining blew my mind. What I really want is two text fields, where I can type in cities and get the difference and local time in each of those cities. That's it. My guess is that people really like the design, but I can't see how this is more convenient than typing "time in San-Francisco" in Google.

<comment><USER13> You're clearly not the intended audience. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't get it. I can slide the local time around, and right next to the bar it shows the time in each timezone, and there's a bunch of grey bubbles that move around. Is it just that it's broken on chrome?

[edit]I tried it in opera 10.5 and firefox 3.5 and it was worse than in chrome, what browser does it work in?

</comment><comment><USER15> Site does not work for me, but I have been using foxclocks for a long time:

<https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1117>

</comment><comment><USER16> its awesome and super easy!, it took me exactly 30 seconds to figure out that I can move the slider. Pls don't listen to the old farts here who say that the site is "shiny" or "Can't figure out".

<comment><USER17> Because old farts never need to compare time zones...?

<comment><USER16> You can find tons of web-apps/apps that show the timezone(s) in a traditional form, but this one has a different take on presenting the same data. Why change the one unique feature ?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Broken on both the latest Firefox and dev build of Chrome on Ubuntu.

<comment><USER19> Only a black page for both my Mac Chrome 188.8.131.52 and Safari 4.0.3, but works on my Firefox 3.6.3 (OS X 10.6.2).

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Anecdotal: The last time I needed to figure out was what someone meant by American PST - this wouldn't have helped me.

Great design.

</comment><comment><USER21> This is very cool, but can you add a field to manually select a date in a particular time zone, as well as a current time button?

<comment><USER4> Always funny to me to see people not realizing the author is not always the submitter

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm assuming the green timezone is your current timezone? Perhaps that could be spelled out somewhere.

<comment><USER23> I'm not the author, but it appears that the green tag is your current time zone, at the time you want to convert from. Initially, this starts as the current time, but it can be adjusted. When you move the green tag, a purple tag is placed to represent the current time instead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Doesn't work in IE7 I guess? All I see is a green bar that isn't draggable. I already noted in the comments that the UI isn't necessarily obvious, but I've tried pushing, pulling, dragging every visible element on the page, and haven't seen anything happen.

</comment><comment><USER13> Ha! I didn't even notice this got submitted here.

Background, for the record:

1\. It is alpha alpha ALPHA.

2\. We built it for the iPad specifically, and Safari/Webkit generally.

3\. It has no images. All webkit-specific CSS. All those gorgeous gradients! I gave Thomas and a PSD and he made the magic happen.

4\. It has no JavaScript framework.

5\. It gzips down to under 3K.

This evening Thomas added Firefox support. Naturally, Firefox's CSS styles for gradients are not as nice (and, naturally, different syntax) than the Webkit ones.

We plan to do more things with it. This was really a proof of concept. I was surprised it got such wide circulation already...

... although considering the alternative "tools" in this space, I guess I shouldn't be.

Thanks guys!</comment>


Laws or comets? - <AUTHOR> https://aeon.co/essays/how-chance-and-probability-affect-the-path-of-big-history <comment><USER2> I understand that this article is mostly about history. I only read the part that was about physics...

I think the author misunderstands chaotic systems. Despite the presence of the phase 'deterministic chaos'...

Chaos, in math, is a technical term. It means, as the author said, that small differences in the initial conditions result in major differences in the outcome.

Imagine a small cannon situated in the end zone (or goal) on a football field. You point the thing at a 10 degree angle (up from the ground), use half an ounce of powder, and fire 100 cannon balls. Most of them land in around the same spot, lets say the dead center of the field. It's a quality cannon and there's no wind. You could plot the position of all 100 landing sites and observe a sort of bell curve... The distribution of cannon balls on the field has a point of highest density in the center.

Now let's focus on just that one most recent shot. Rewind time itself so that every atom in the universe is back where it was, and take the shot again. If cannon ball firing is truly deterministic, and even if it is chaotic, the cannon ball will land in the EXACT same spot, roll in the same way, and come to rest with the same side facing up.

Rewind time again. This time, change something... increase the angle to 20 degrees from the ground. The cannon ball will land farther from you than it did before. Repeat, but with 30 degrees, and it will land farther still.

You can repeat this rewind/re-aim experiment many times and measure every result and plot them and perform rudimentary number crunching and arrive at a model of cannons, then you can use your model to PREDICT where the ball will fall if you set the angle to 15.7 degrees... Cannon fire isn't particularly chaotic.

Switch from the cannon to paper air planes. Throw an air plane, see where it lands, rewind time itself, adjust the angle of your arm, throw again, and you won't be particularly surprised to see that the relationship between arm-angle and landing site is not as simple as the relationship between cannon angle and landing site. The danged plane may well land behind you.

But let's explore that. If you don't change the angle at all, if you only rewind time and throw again, and if paper airplane throwing is deterministic, and even if it is chaotic, then the plane lands in the same spot it did the first time, right? The exact same spot.

What happens if you only change the angle of the throw by 0.001 degrees? 1x10e-10 degrees? There is some change of angle that is small enough so that the plane will still land near the original site.

For those small changes of angle, you might even be able to come up with a model, and accurately predict where the plane will land.

Creating a model for larger changes of angle will be work intensive! If you can rewind time, and if you're patient, it's merely labor. That is, assuming that paper airplane throwing is deterministic and chaotic.

Of course, the model you come up with wouldn't be useful outside of that moment. Stop rewinding time, and you'll have different initial conditions for every throw. Air moves, grass grows, arms become fatigued, the sun moves, etc.

...In conclusion, if the universe is deterministic, then the only thing that makes chaotic systems unpredictable is that we can't measure angles finely enough--we can't measure anything finely enough.

Stephen Wolfram argues an additional point: that even with perfect measurements, the maximum speed at which we could simulate truly complex systems will always be slower than the natural execution of those systems (a human, the weather, etc), so they are predictable in principle but unpredictable in practice.

<comment><USER3> Your explanation is wonderful, but I thought the article said pretty much the same thing:

"So there is a subtle but important distinction reflected in the term deterministic chaos – the motions of an orbiting body are fully determined by the laws of physics, but they are unpredictable because we can never know the starting conditions well enough."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The content on this page draws off to the right of my screen, and I can't scroll horizontally so it's unreadable...

This is on a fully maximised browser window at 1920x1080, normal zoom level.

How does this happen?

<comment><USER5> Same for me in Firefox (on Windows 8.1); it seems to be at about 2010 pixels that the text stops falling off the right-hand edge.

Works OK for me in both Chrome and IE. Also works OK for me in Firefox on Android, at a couple of different widths.</comment></comment>


Netflix ISP Speed Index - <AUTHOR> http://ispspeedindex.netflix.com/ <comment><USER2> Does anyone have such an index for ISP's in respect to Youtube.com?

Idk whether its a routing issue or a bandwidth cap issue but with ATT Uverse youtube is constantly buffer with the video quality set to 720p. Regular speed tests show reliable 12Mb/3Mb bandwidth which should be well enough to stream a 720p video.

<comment><USER3> U-Verse subscriber here. I have 25Mbps down and I'm glad someone else is noticing this. I first noticed it early of Summer 2012 that 1080p videos were (literally) unplayable; as in no matter how long you waited the video would never start. 720p videos will buffer every 15-30 seconds.

This happens no matter what other bandwidth is being used by other applications or devices. I've actually shut down everything in my house and used the desktop on cat5 to see if it was wireless issues or anything, but the entire rest of the web is snappy and responsive except for HD YouTube.

Thanks AT&T-- the two hundred and forty goddamned dollars a month I'm paying you should defray the cost of the configuration of your service to flirt with the very line of net neutrality.

Dear god please Google Fiber come to Madison.

<comment><USER4> I have the same issue, but haven't had the time to fully investigate it yet. Other services have excellent download speed, typically about 3 megabytes per second download of say movies purchased through iTunes. But for some reason 1080p YouTube videos will never load.

The only thing that could be causing this is if:

1) YouTube's servers can't push the 1080p video out fast enough. (Very doubtful)

2) U Verse hasn't invested in a capable enough link to YouTube's servers. (Possible, but even a 240p video loads faster than a 1080p video. If it was purely a connection issue then 240p and 1080p videos should load at the same slow speed.)

3) They are purposefully throttling HD YouTube videos to ensure that more bandwidth is available for other things. (I'd say this is most likely.)

Either way some sort of unprofessional and/or shady thing is happening with U Verse and HD YouTube videos.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Netflix (I know some of you are here),

Would you consider including sonic.net. I realize they are local/regional to the greater Bay area, but as one of the first ISP's to offer (trial) gigabit speed, and at a reasonable price, I think they deserve a nod.

In fact, as I wrote the above, I expanded on this thought. I'd like to see the Chattanooga high speed service mentioned, and perhaps some others. This could be a good message that higher performance Internet -- other than just Google; not that I'm knocking Google on this -- _is_ possible and _is_ offered by some more progressive providers.

And that it's this _real_ competition that will drag the rest of us forward into a better network (and so, Netflix) experience.

Thanks for your consideration

<comment><USER6> Seconded. Moreover, in Chattanooga, the cheapest/slowest option EPB provides is 50Mb, which is quite a bit more than the average connection speed listed for Google Fiber. I'm on that plan and the rate is usually closer to the 60Mb range; fast enough to necessitate plugging in an ethernet cable if I want to max out my connection.

<comment><USER7> The cheapest/slowest option from Google Fiber is also much faster than the average connection speed listed for Google Fiber.

The listed speeds are impacted by all sorts of factors (not the least of which is that most of Netflix's content likely caps out at somewhere less than 3 Mbps, so it will be tough for any ISP to have an average speed much higher than that).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why is that Netflix is SO much faster for me than YouTube. I am on a shitty ~5Mbps DSL connection so on YouTube I have to watch 240p (360p on a good day) video to get it to load in anywhere close to real time. On Netflix, my video goes to what looks like 480p-720p quality within the first minute of my watching and the initial 240p-360p quality video loads nearly instantly. Is it just that Netflix has a smaller library and has more caching available for popular content, or are they doing something totally different with video delivery?

<comment><USER9> The Internet is a _really_ complicated place. There could be any number of reasons Netflix is faster for you than YouTube: your ISP might have better peering with Netflix than Google, or it might have a wider transit pipe to Netflix's preferred transit provider(s) than Google's. Netflix content could indeed be cached closer to your location than YouTube content. With more details I could find out exactly what's happening when you visit YouTube, but I wouldn't be able to share the explanation, and it would probably just be an exercise in frustration for you.

What I can say is that this is definitely something you should let your ISP know about. Tell your ISP that you're unsatisfied with YouTube performance: while some will just brush off the complaint, conscientious ISPs are constantly bringing issues like these to our attention and we have entire teams devoted to making sure all users have a good YouTube experience.

<comment><USER10> You are right. Of course a "wider transit pipe to Netflix than to Google" also means "more available bandwidth towards Netflix than towards Google".

There is probably more users using google than netflix at the moment, and thus is more probably that that bandwidth gets saturated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I find it interesting how google fiber not only raised America's bar by ~25% but has been steadily destroying their own record month after month. <http://ispspeedindex.netflix.com/results/usa/graph>

I hope that chart makes some ISPs fearful enough to start innovating.

<comment><USER12> Google Fiber claims it's supposed to be "100 times faster than today's broadband." As evidenced by this chart, the experience via Netflix is nothing like 100x. Is this just because NFLX's bandwidth requirements for streaming video are far short of GF's bandwidth availability?

<comment><USER13> Yes. Netflix only uses up to 5 Mbps so the benefit of gigabit is mostly wasted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Seems oddly low. I know the US is notorious for low speeds, but 3.35 Mbps for Google fiber? Does their measurement actually measure what I intuitively think measures?

I've used two different ISPs in recent years and both sustained 10+ Mbps over long periods of time with their mid range tiers, and had basic tiers offering 3 - 5 Mbps which I believe performed as rated.

While I know that most of the country is likely on slow Internet, I have a really hard time seeing how the numbers end up lower than ~5 Mbps avg overall unless the whole situation is way worse than I ever suspected and that large portions of the sample were either mobile users or rural.

<comment><USER15> netflix content caps out at ~6mbps for HD, and for streams or equipment that doesn't support HD (not uncommon) that number is ~1.5mbps

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I don't know about other ISPs, but Comcast offers several different rates for their cable Internet. But the Netflix chart only shows one line. So what is this really reporting? If Comcast is faster than competitor Foo, is that just because a higher percentage of Comcast's subscribers are on a better plan?

<comment><USER13> That's possible, although realistically Netflix is less than 5 Mbps so even a slow plan should be enough.

The only study I've seen which takes different plans into account is the FCC one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Am I the only one who think this is a cheap shot from Netflix? They are putting preassure on the ISP's to host Netflix servers for free, and when some of them dont want to do that Netflix tries to give them bad reputation by displaying this statistics (where the ones that dont host netflix servers will get a low score). If Netflix was concerned about ther customers video quality they would PAY the ISP's to host their servers like everybody else. Now they are just trying to push their costs to the ISP's and make it hard for competitors to deliver the same quality for the same cost, unless they also manage to "force" the ISP's to host their servers for free...

<comment><USER18> You are not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Genius work from Netflix. They have the data, why not display it? Removes blame from them for poor video performance. We all don't think we get what we pay for on broadband, now there is industry support for that. These rankings will shame companies into providing better access. Minimally, they will prioritize Netflix traffic.

Good for the community, giving users some tools to vote with their dollars. Good for Netflix either way.

</comment><comment><USER20> I keep seeing stories about how the broadband subscribers in the U.S. pay more for less service. We might pay more, but our service seems to fall close to the average for the companies shown here.

Does anyone have numbers for Korea (South), Japan, etc?

<comment><USER21> This is the average speed for the Netflix streams, not the average speed of the internet connections. So if their highest bitrate stream is 5 Mbps for example, that is the maximum you could see on those graphs.

 _These ratings reflect the average performance of all Netflix streams on each ISPs network. The average is well below the peak performance due to many factors including the variety of encodes we use to deliver the TV shows and movies we carry as well as home Wi-Fi and the variety of devices our members use. Those factors cancel out when comparing across ISPs, so these relative rankings are a good indicator of the consistent performance typically experienced across all users on an ISP network._

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> It would be nice if I could browse the long-tail. I'd love to see how Sonic.net and MonkeyBrains compare to AT&T UVerse, for instance.

</comment><comment><USER23> 1\. It's curious that Canada isn't included. Netflix does streaming in Canada.

2\. The UI on graph view Could be better if there was a "disable all"/"enable all" feature. Parts of the graph were crowded enough that I had to click on all of the ISPs (in the US data) to disable them, and do comparisons with a smaller subset of ISPs.

</comment><comment><USER24> The interesting thing that I'm taking from this is that The United States is not nearly as far behind other countries (average bandwidth wise) as some would have you believe.

In fact, our average bandwidth seemed to be about exactly the same as the other counties.

<comment><USER4> Average bandwidth appears to be the same among people who use Netflix but this set of people is not necessarily a good representative sample of all the people in the United States. Many areas have such terrible internet service that Netflix doesn't buffer well enough to be worth paying for. These connections clearly wouldn't be on Netflix's chart and therefore not contributing to the statistics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'm a little worried about this. What's going to stop, e.g., a low-ranked provider from prioritizing Netflix packets above other packets? This seems like an unintentional network-neutrality backdoor of sorts.

<comment><USER15> Netflix actually wants low ranked service provider to agree to host edge caches for netflix's multi-service CDN, which saves them power and transit and lets them charge others to get on there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm with virginmedia and apparently they have infastructure that allows me to stream from netflix at 1080p but I'm not allowed to make use of it because I'm not running Windows 8. wtf?

<comment><USER27> Pretty sure that's a Netflix call; their Silverlight browser plugin doesn't have all the features of their Windows 8 app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I zoomed out to 67%. Large fonts are really great for texts, but not for lists where you want to get an overview.

Edit: And Google Fiber an average speed of only 3mbps? Something seems wrong here.

<comment><USER29> That's the average for USA. I didn't get that straight away either and wondered why Google fiber had a lowest speed of 1.25Mbps* and what CLEARWIRE was.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> That's pretty damning for Virgin Media, given they are cable so aren't limited by weak ADSL connections, and their "basic" packages are now supposedly 30Mbit/s.

<comment><USER31> Not convinced this is Virgin's fault, but perhaps a limit imposed by Netflix. Compare the Google Fiber results for the US.

My 60Mb/s Virgin service can demonstrably deliver the full 60Mb/s — but I usually have to start at least 4 - 5 downloads to actually saturate it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> <http://ispspeedindex.netflix.com/canada>

404.

</comment><comment><USER33> Canada's internet speeds are hilariously bad. That's probably why they're not on the list.</comment>


Samsung Galaxy Note 5-inch Smartphone unveiled - <AUTHOR> http://www.i4u.com/47637/samsung-galaxy-note-5-inch-smartphone-unveiled-ifa-2011

<comment><USER2> Congratulations Samsung, you have just re-invented the PDA after all of these years...

<comment><USER3> you are almost correct. re-integrated is what you mean</comment></comment>


Google Buzz data to be copied to Google Drive for shutdown - <AUTHOR>

Dear Buzz user,
In October 2011 we announced that [Google Buzz was shutting down]. On or after 17 July 2013, Google will take the last step in the shut-down and will save a copy of your Buzz posts to your [Google Drive], a service for storing files online. Google will store two (2) types of files to your Google Drive and the newly-created files will not count against your storage limits.
1. The first type of file will be private, only accessible to you, containing a snapshot of the Google Buzz public and private posts that you authored.
2. The second type of file will contain a copy of only your Google Buzz public posts. By default it will be viewable by anyone with the link and may appear in search results and on your [Google Profile] (if you've linked to your Buzz posts). Note, any existing links to your Google Buzz content will redirect users to this file.
3. Any comments that you made on other users' posts will only be saved to those users' files and not to yours. Once the change described in this email is final, only that user will be able to change the sharing settings of those files. This means that if you have commented on another author's private post, that author could choose to make that post and its comments public. If you would like to avoid that possibility, [delete] all your Buzz content now.
4. The new Google Drive files will only contain comments from users who previously enabled Google Buzz, and the files will not contain comments that were deleted prior to moving the data to your Google Drive.
Once the files have been created, they will be treated the same as any other Drive file. They are yours to do with as you please. This includes downloading them, updating who can access them or deleting them.
Before these files are created, you can [view the Google Buzz posts that you have authored here]. If you do not want any of your Buzz posts or comments to be saved to Google Drive files, you can immediately [delete] your Google Buzz account and data. <comment><AUTHOR> This struck me as a surprisingly mature way of shutting down such a service - certainly more palatable than expecting all users to export...

Pasting the original e-mail here seemed the best way to avoid the subtle 'interpretations' of content in blogospam. :/</comment>


Ask HN: Resources to learn marketing? - <AUTHOR> What resources (e-books, videos, on-line lessons, formus, etc) can you people recommend to learn on-line marketing?
I have a couple of projects that need a marketing boost to get more clients, but since I'm programmer, I'm struggling a little bit with the marketing side.
Thanks in advance. <comment><USER2> Traction by Gabriel Weinberg ([http://tractionbook.com/](http://tractionbook.com/)) is a must-read. You'll learn that marketing is massive and not all tactics work for everyone. It's usually through trial and error.

For example, inbound marketing is great but it takes a lot of time to build up an audience and generate traffic. If you're looking for more short-term sales, outbound marketing might be more effective. It is expensive though. This is where the importance of your objective/goal comes in (i.e. sell more, generate awareness, etc).

</comment><comment><USER3> For SEO + Inbound Marketing start with Moz's beginners guide to SEO [https://moz.com/learn/seo](https://moz.com/learn/seo), and follow their blog.

and skim the Friday Whiteboards [https://moz.com/blog/category/whiteboard- friday](https://moz.com/blog/category/whiteboard-friday)

[https://inbound.org/](https://inbound.org/) often has some good pointers to blog posts, though you'll sift through some PR puff pieces too.

Shopify's blog [https://www.shopify.com/blog](https://www.shopify.com/blog) is also pretty good at the basics, albeit with a focus on ecommerce.

That's enough to get going.

Then dig into the search and SEO blogs as you need to dig deeper.

<comment><USER4> Seconding all of this except for the end, where you have to be careful:

>Then dig into the search and SEO blogs as you need to dig deeper.

I'd recommend this for a marketer who works with other smart marketers.

If you're starting out all alone, it's very hard to tell what advice is reasonable. Search blogs can be the biggest piles of festering crap.

You pretty much can't go wrong with Moz though. You can find all the basics and plenty of the advanced info on the Moz blog.

Also, just don't do anything that seems spammy, ever. Tell people why your products are good, and use words that are similar to what someone would type in to find those products.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> There are many resources depending on what exactly your projects are. Justin Jackson's book "Marketing for Developers" was quite helpful to me. Here's my brief review - [https://learnetto.com/blog/learning-marketing-from-justin- ja...](https://learnetto.com/blog/learning-marketing-from-justin-jackson-s- book)

I run an online education site where we're going to launch some courses on marketing. I could give you free access if you email me at firstname.lastname@example.com and tell me more about what you're trying to do.

</comment><comment><USER6> One resource is Sam Altman's _Startup Playbook_. It is free and Altman is a purported to have some expertise in entrepreneurship.

[http://playbook.samaltman.com/](http://playbook.samaltman.com/)

It will not go into details about adwords and growth hacking. It will suggest talking with people directly; customers and potential customers.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER7> Make sure you aren't spreading yourself too thin "I have a couple of projects that need a marketing boost" \- can you limit it to 1 project and focus on marketing that?

Go try and market one single thing - that is by far the best way to learn.

Once we find one successful tactic - you can apply that to other projects and see if it works on other projects too.

</comment><comment><USER8> Marketing is a sprawling category.

Can you be more specific so that I can make a helpful recommendation?

E.g. Are you interested in learning about marketing at a high-level (positioning, messaging, value prop) or about more tactical online marketing (email, paid display & search, SEO, social)?

</comment><comment><USER9> Bill Hicks is all the resource you need ;)

</comment><comment><USER10> thevault.bz

:)</comment>