Esther Dyson vs Bill Campbell: 2002 − 2012 - <AUTHOR> http://longbets.org/5/

<comment><USER2> Since it's obvious that Dyson's statement is _way_ too optimistic, I assume that for her it is (was) a good marketing - you bet a lot by investing in Russian startups, why not bet a little bit more to show to your future partners how confident you are?

Here is why the statement is _way_ too optimistic:

\- Resources _always_ move to places where they can be used most effectively (econ 101) unless there is a significant friction

\- For that type of resource (talented programmers/mathematicians) the friction is very small

\- Russia has bad regulation and bad business environment in general

\- Specifically, very hard to get investments[1], and investors interests are poorly protected[2]

\- Silicon Valley utilizes these resource much more effectively, so that even other places in the US - NYC/Boston/Chicago - could not compete effectively

\- Also, managerial talent in Russia is concentrated on more profitable business, like participating in natural resource explorations or working for state-run monopolies - very profitable and risk free if you have the right connections

Disclaimer: I'm Russian living in Silicon Valley. That may have affected my judgement.

[1] I can share the following anecdote: When I was helping some friends to find VC funding in 2008 in Russia, I learnt that most VCs in Russia require _kick-backs_ (!) from startups that they're investing in - presumably as a way to steal from their limited partners (and even provide some advice on how these kick-backs could be recorded in accounting books).

[2] Khodorkovsky's and Chichvarkin's examples are probably the most well-known on the West.

<comment><USER3> >> When I was helping some friends to find VC funding in 2008 in Russia, I learnt that most VCs in Russia require kick-backs(!) from startups that they're investing in<<

There are stories on HN all the time about US investors requiring the same. There are fancy meals on the company's tab, first class airplane tickets from all around the world for board meetings and various other abuses that HN founders complain about.

I guess straight-up cash would be a novelty, but that probably comes from the IRS scrutiny it would engender. Is an exacting tax authority part of the root of American exceptionalism?

<comment><USER2> In this case, they were requiring 10%(!) of the investment as a kick-back.

Another interesting feature: there are plenty of 'funding advisors' that can help connecting you to a right VC[1] for a fee, typically a few percent of the funding.

Kick-backs are also typical if you are a mid-size company a need to get a commercial loan.

[1] They all claim to have connections to some government-backed VC funds such as government-backed Rusnano or Russian Venture Company.

<comment><USER4> _Another interesting feature: there are plenty of 'funding advisors' that can help connecting you to a right VC[1] for a fee_

Same in the US. I think Massachusetts might have a law against it?

But as another Eastern European currently in the US, I agree with you and know what you are trying to say.

<comment><USER2> I'm wondering why such market exists in the US. Assuming there is enough VC capital, why would you need an intermediary?

<comment><USER4> The demand to pitch or meet a VC is far greater then VCs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In the interest of being completely fair to Dyson, I'm not sure anyone could have fully predicted just how bad of a regime Putin's would be. That said it seems like a long shot just the same.

<comment><USER6> Exactly... the political and economic institutions of Russia have not progressed and have likely regressed in the last 10 years. Who led Russia in 2002? Putin. Who is leading Russia in 2011/12? Still Putin and United Russia. The Litvinenko killing and Khodorkovsky imprisonment are chilling indictments of this regression. Also the run up of energy and commodity prices has only increased the allure and hold of the Dutch disease in Russia.

<comment><USER7> Hrm ... interesting thought: is a market dependent on financial services analogous to one dependent on natural resources?

Particularly if those financial services are extractive in nature?

<comment><USER8> Maybe, but they look like two separate problems to me.

Russia's is a "resource curse": <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse>

Our current financial system looks more like a twist on a "rent seekers": <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent_seeking>

They're kind of similar, but only because resource curse countries end up with a bunch of rent seekers and corrupt officials.

<comment><USER7> I've got to mull this one over a bit. After several decades of study, I'm just starting to really grok money and finance.

Notable WRT resources curse / Dutch disease is the Norwegian counterexample: <http://ideas.repec.org/p/ssb/dispap/377.html>

<comment><USER4> Norway had a strong law and order foundation _before_ they hit oil.

<comment><USER9> True, but the article the other day on Norway said that they squandered the oil up until the 1970s? when they brought in a foreigner to advise them on how to set up their current successful system. The law and order helped them recover from their mistakes, yes, but it didn't stop them from making them and if the oil had run out before they recovered...?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Here's an interesting long bet: Warren Buffett has bet $1M that the S&P500 will outperform hedge funds over a 10 year period.

<http://longbets.org/362/>

<comment><USER11> Unfortunately, the details are being kept confidential, so I'm not sure what is being counted as "hedge funds". There's "hedge funds" that engage in very risky investments, ones that engage in investments that wouldn't normally be risky except that they incur counterparty risk, and then there's hedge funds that could be fundamentally very conservative, even more conservative than Buffett.

For instance, if you ran a fund that simply bought BRK shares, and, each year, bought just enough out of the money options to protect against a %10 decline in BRK, that would be a hedge fund. Buying the puts is a hedging position, but I would say that such an investment would be damn conservative, and certainly in line with Buffett's investments strategy. (He cautions against derivatives, but covering a long position with puts isn't what he means.)

<comment><USER12> > _Unfortunately, the details are being kept confidential, so I'm not sure > what is being counted as "hedge funds"._

I wouldn't be surprised if they had simply agreed on a subset of prominent hedge funds from '08 that the two agree represents whatever range of investments they think is important. I'd assume they're unwilling to disclose the methodology simply to avoid any accusations of outside manipulation or something.

Makes sense to me, at least.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Dyson's right about Russia having a wealth of talent, but I'm surprised he didn't take into account the US University system and the amount of immigrant talent it attracts each year.

<comment><USER14> The Dyson in this bet is Esther Dyson, who, last I checked, was female.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> If you've been in the industry long enough (in my case, since 1975) you realized a _long_ time ago that Esther Dyson doesn't have even the vaguest of clues when it comes to the computer industry. The smart bet is to do the exact opposite of whatever she predicts.

</comment><comment><USER16> In fairness, if you replace Russia with India, is it so far off? Remember that there were many years of books with titles like, "The rise and fall of the American programmer" that talked about the educational system in Eastern Europe.

Thanks for sharing the site!

</comment><comment><USER17> How have I never heard of longbets.org before? This site is fascinating.

<comment><USER18> As you may already have discovered, it's part of the Long Now, which is making the 10,000 Year Clock[0] (about which a friend of mine wrote a play[1], and which helped inspire Neal Stephenson's sci-fi novel "Anathem"). It involves a bunch of the smartest futurists around, including Stewart Brand (famous for the "Whole Earth Catalog"), Danny Hillis (the Connection Machine), and Brian Eno (producing Talking Heads and U2).

0\. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clock_of_the_Long_Now>

1\. [http://www.seattlepi.com/ae/article/You-don-t-have-to-be- a-s...](http://www.seattlepi.com/ae/article/You-don-t-have-to-be-a-scientist- to-appreciate-1274154.php)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Cached copy: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://longbets.org/5/)

</comment><comment><USER20> mathematical skills ≠ business skills

</comment><comment><USER21> People tend to assume that in today's era, progress is inevitable. The is a dramatic illustration to the contrary. Progress depends on a stable, pro- business system of government. Which, in turn, depends on a certain kind of underlying culture. (This is why I find Occupy Wall Street threatening.)

<comment><USER22> OWS is a protest movement, the core of which is against corporations buying laws. The corporations do this because they want to protect their inefficient business models by enshrining their way of doing things into law. For example, content owners wish to censor the internet so they can keep selling consumers crap, while banks wish to tax everybody when they make a loss on their trades.

OWS is not anti-business, it is anti-corruption, and there's few things more damaging to progress than corruption.

<comment><USER23> You would never know that based on the signs being waved and the t-shirts being worn.

<comment><USER24> Yeah, I thought it was about "End Capitalism Now!" and "Bail out students", or something like that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Damnit, I thought I'd read Esther Dyson vs Bruce Campbell :(

</comment><comment><USER11> I found this one on bit coins: <http://longbets.org/611/>

Nobody has taken the other side of it. I'm skeptical (but intrigued) by bit coins, but I wouldn't take the other side of this bet, simply because bit coins have just started out and aren't yet a "fully mature form of money". That is to say, its a lot easier for a penny stock, or any other cheap commodity, to double (or outperform by 2 orders of magnitude) a global currency or form of money that has millions of owners, and relatively stable value.

<comment><USER26> The problem with longbets is that you can post a challenge without being required to accept a bet. I emailed the organization and they helpfully confirmed this.

>[Me:] "Must the makers of predictions (eventually) accept a challenger? I get the impression that several of these predictions are dubious yet have been sitting for awhile without forming a bet. It seems against the spirit of the site to allow predictors to grand stand without having to put their money where their mouth is."

>[Them:] "Predictors put their money where their mouth is by paying $50 to be published. They do not, however, have to accept challenges to their Predictions."

If it were up to me, they'd also allow bets with odds other than 50-50. Still, I think it's a great site.

<comment><USER27> _The problem with longbets is that you can post a challenge without being required to accept a bet._

That's pretty shady, especially since it sends a misleading message to see a bet being offered with no challenger - without knowing about that part of the policy, I'd assume that meant nobody had the balls to take them up on the bet, not that they themselves didn't have the balls to accept any challengers!

Longbets should be removing bets from public display if too many reasonable challenges have been submitted without an acceptance. I'd leave it to them to decide what "reasonable" means, maybe something like falling within a certain range of amounts (perhaps making the offerer specify this beforehand?), with argument content that passes a cursory review.

I'd at least suggest that they manually review "bets" that pass a certain threshold of page views and/or challenge requests, and tried to determine whether the bets were proposed in good faith or not, up to and including interacting directly with the people offering the bet and asking them for explanations about why the challengers didn't meet their requirements.

<comment><USER28> Just posting some sort of list of unaccepted challenges would solve most of this problem with relatively little effort, and seems like a large improvement.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Pioneer.js: JavaScript DSL to test web apps - <AUTHOR> http://pioneerjs.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Looks interesting at first glance. I was always wondering if DSLs like this one require too much boilerplate code. What do others think? Is this a feasible tool to use for testing a larger web app?</comment>


We used CosmoDB and here's what we learned - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/neil445/we-used-cosmosdb-instead-of-a-relational-database-here-s-what-went-through-and-learned-40k3 <comment><AUTHOR> We used CosmosDB instead of a relational database, here's what went through and learned.</comment>


What life would look if we said no to work-life balance - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-life-would-look-we-said-work-life-balance-nod-amazon-trunk

<comment><USER2> I gotta say, opening up a post by talking about how you ignored your kid for years is bold.

Following it up with BS like

> In this way, it makes sense to me that you get paid well, and you get paid > reliably, so you need to put the company before your personal life.

and

> Being nice is something that's important if you have slaves. Or indentured > servants.

is also... "bold"

</comment><comment><USER3> There are 12 year old children who are "willing" to work in Bangladeshi sweatshops.

That doesn't mean we should tolerate it.</comment>


Ask HN: Does HN has content reviewers? - <AUTHOR> how does HN ensure no content is violating the laws?
usually maintaining such a big traffic web site would come with lots of spam, porn and so on, right?
I assume the ranking algorithm can not delete those contents. <comment><USER2> Users can flag posts. Once a low-quality post gets flagged enough times, I presume it becomes hidden.

<comment><AUTHOR> so it's purely based on user voting? and there is no human interaction?

that's kind of amazing!</comment></comment>


HPE backs off from OpenStack development - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/article/hpe-backs-off-from-openstack-development/ <comment><USER2> Every time I click this article it redirects to an article about MS Surface after a second. (but never loads - a popup gone wrong?)</comment>


The Heterotopia of Facebook (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://philosophynow.org/issues/107/The_Heterotopia_of_Facebook?utm_content=buffere29de&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer <comment><USER2> The claim here is a naive realization of existentialism. I'm not sure how much value examining the self in terms of social media adds to the discussion other than the parlance of our times. I don't think people do anything on Facebook that they haven't done through more conventional means. The only thing that's changed is the speed at which they do it. Exploring that difference would make for a more interesting piece than what was posted.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think the ho-hum responses so far to this article are because it leaves out what philosophers take for granted, which is the "stakes."

Is fb an imaginary land where words have no meaning? (kind of like 4chan) Or is it a direct extension of our reality where our actions have consequences, like being at our job?

We may not be able to even answer this question without comprehending what heterotopias are:

We tend to automatically think fb is a digital/optimized/enhanced version of every day life with the same responsibilities, ability to do damage and ethical consequences as our everyday life. However, in practice, fb appears so completely dissociated from reality that we can't expect people to be responsible for their actions there any more than we can expect Miss Piggy to go to jail for punching Kermit the Frog. [1]

If all someone cares about is acquiring users and serving timely and relevant ads, none of this matters. But people who care about designing a platform for a species to support for their entire lives, directing and controlling the platform is critical.

[1] [http://cafecasey.com/miss-piggy-the-picture-of-domestic- viol...](http://cafecasey.com/miss-piggy-the-picture-of-domestic-violence/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Okay.</comment>


What TextMate bundles does everyone use? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> My favourite is one that provides mini-games to keep me entertained whilst TextMate completes searches.</comment>


Why milk comes in bags in parts of Canada - <AUTHOR> https://www.cbc.ca/radio/costofliving/we-answer-your-burning-questions-about-things-like-milk-bags-tariffs-condo-insurance-and-printer-cartridges-1.5409407/here-s-why-milk-comes-in-bags-in-parts-of-canada-1.5409420 <comment><USER2> The KwikTrip/KwikStar truckstop/convenience store chain in the Midwest sells milk in bags--about $.20/gallon cheaper than milk in jugs.</comment>


MH370 used to transport embargoed material to Iran for nuclear program?  - <AUTHOR> http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%3A//ing.dk/blog/smarte-flykaprere-167056

<comment><USER2> The worst part about this whole ordeal (other than 200+ people disappearing, of course) seems to be that all sorts of people are getting airtime now that they otherwise wouldn't get while spreading their far-fetched theories.</comment>


Medicare for All Would Abolish Private Insurance. 'There's No Precedent' - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/23/health/private-health-insurance-medicare-for-all-bernie-sanders.html <comment><USER2> I'm British, but moved to California 10 years ago. I have obviously had many conversations with my American colleagues and friends over the years.

And I am (still) baffled that the starting viewpoint from the American side is that with single payer health care private insurance would be 'abolished' or otherwise become unavailable and/or illegal. Huh? Of course not. It's simply a base level of care given to everyone. If you have the money and desire then why wouldn't you pay for private insurance, or cash out of pocket for a private hospital?

And better yet, that private insurance will become cheaper: it can exclude the rare, chronic and expensive diseases you probably won't get. (As if you ever do, you could rely on the base single payer coverage.)

<comment><USER3> The intellectual level of understanding the concepts behind all of this is basically a generation behind the rest of the oecd in America due to lack of experience and lack of curiosity about other countries. This goes both ways. Many people think everything will be free and boundless on single payer and they can keep using fancy sparkling public hospitals and have free specialist Consultation without even a GP referral all they want...

<comment><USER4> America has a unique patriotic bias that keeps us from having nice things like health care and safe children.

<comment><USER5> It's not patriotic. There were many people who were against it because it was championed by a "non American Secret Muslim who wanted to impose Sharia law". If Romney had proposed or Trump they would have been all for it.

It's amazing how many states are passing laws that are pro Medicare expansion now that it doesn't mean supporting Obama.

On top of that, they don't want "them" to have health insurance.

Let's call "patriotic" what it is - racism.

<comment><USER6> Let's call "patriotic" what it is - racism.

        Seriously?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "There's no precedent in _American history_ ".

Plenty of precedent in the rest of the world ... In fact, you'll have to go looking to find western countries that _don 't_ have universal public healthcare.

<comment><USER8> The quote _in the headline_ appeared to mean what you responded to, but a few paragraphs into the article it was plain they were talking about the unprecedented scale of the private health insurance industry, at about $1,000,000,000,000/yr revenues (a trillion, a lot bigger than the defense budget), largely owned by institutional investors and mutual funds, ie. people with retirement plans. I would tend to believe unprecedented is the correct term for nationalizing an industry of this scale. Of course, it is also unprecedented to spend this much on health care.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Australia has medicare and a public health care system to go with it. And it also has multiple private health insurers and a private health care system to go with it. In a way they compete with each other. The private health care system has better hospitals and equipment. But the public health system has lower costs. If the private system gets too expensive, you would just go public. If you can afford the insurance, you go private (also there are some tax incentives for higher earners to stop them just using the public system). Private system provides the best in care. Public system provides a base level of care for everyone. It actually works very well.

An American friend told me that the US health care system will never be fixed. There is no way it can. That there are too many people with too much power getting filthy rich through it.

<comment><USER10> > That there are too many people with too much power getting filthy rich > through it.

That's the key point. Of course there are many precedents, all over the world, and especially in all Western countries other than the US: the public and private healthcare systems happily coexist. But in the US there is so much money to be made on all components of the current complex system it's simply impossible the people involved give up without fight and agree to make it sane like everywhere else in the civilized world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> "Medicare for All" is an umbrella political slogan, backed by many different interpretations, timelines, and concrete policy proposals.

This article is about the Sanders plan, which is radical (in the non- judgmental sense). It is more generous/costly than typical non-US single-payer systems, such as Canada's. Even Medicare itself incorporates private insurance, via "Medicare Plus".

So "abolish private insurance" is actually an outlier position among the Democratic field and is not implied by a naive interpretation of "Medicare for All".

</comment><comment><USER12> Obamacare has resulted in only one insurance provider in my county, which is my only choice.

</comment><comment><USER13> In Finland, we have Kela, which provides many services including health and wellbeing support for all residents:

[https://www.kela.fi/](https://www.kela.fi/)

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kela_(Finnish_institution)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kela_\(Finnish_institution\))

I am an expat from the U.S. living in Finland on a work permit and still qualify for Kela support.

Voluntary health insurance does exist here, e.g. employee health benefit, but plays a small role compared with the National Health Insurance.

More info:

[https://www.infofinland.fi/en/living-in- finland/health/healt...](https://www.infofinland.fi/en/living-in- finland/health/health-services-in-finland)

</comment><comment><USER14> [https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/health-july- dec09-insura...](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/health-july- dec09-insurance_10-06)

[https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/...](https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/countries/models.html)

[https://synapse.ucsf.edu/articles/2014/05/15/comparing- healt...](https://synapse.ucsf.edu/articles/2014/05/15/comparing-health- systems-around-world)

</comment><comment><USER15> > Many supporters of this approach see elimination of private insurance as a > key feature, not a bug...

Is this common vernacular now, or is the author letting their hacker show?

<comment><USER16> This is common (enough) vernacular.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Abolishing private insurance is kind of the point here though.

</comment><comment><USER18> > Unlike Obamacare, emerging plans would sweep away the private health > insurance system. What would that mean for the companies' workers, the stock > market and the cost of care?

The US spends around $3.6 trillion per year on healthcare now (approximately 18% of GDP). Matching with other elite, developed nation healthcare expenditures, it should be closer to $2.3 trillion. Even after accounting for the higher US wages. 10% to 12% of the economy going to healthcare should produce a system that is competitive with the top dozen systems (whether France, Canada, Britain or Switzerland).

What would cutting $1.3 trillion from the system do for the the US? It'd be a boon for unleashing an extraordinary amount of capital for productive use. Capital that's currently being vaporized as the greatest worker welfare subsidy in world history, exceeding the over-spending on the military industrial complex by a laughable sum ($200b-$250b in over-spending on military, versus $1.3 trillion in over-spending on the healthcare industrial complex).

At the center of all of the problems with US healtchare, including doing a proper socialized system, is cost. No matter the angle, no matter the argument, it's all back to the problem of how much the US spends per capita on healthcare. There is no scenario where the US can implement a universal / socialized medicine approach without dramatically cutting spending. The question is: who's going to take the hits (on higher taxes, and lost jobs / lost income). The US middle class pays very low effective income tax rates. Other developed nations tend to have far higher tax rates on their middle classes, which goes to pay for healthcare and other social safety nets. Somebody has to tell the middle class their tax rates are going to double at a minimum.

Doctors, nurses, admin, scientists, pharma reps, insurance industry employees, etc. Overwhelmingly people in the top 40% of the economic bracket. That's where that $1.3 trillion in welfare subsidies is going. Instead, it should be going toward expanding the economy, funding business formation, investing into productive companies, boosting household savings (including dramatically reducing bankruptcies), and so on. I find that nobody ever wants to talk about how so many people in the US healthcare system will need to take a huge pay cut to get our costs down to sane levels. US doctors and nurses are considerably overpaid versus other comparable nations (as one example, compare what US radiologists make versus France or Germany, it's typically two to four times higher depending on the market).

People often think the over-cost in the system is all in pharma + insurance, which isn't the case. The over-cost in pharma is about $100 to $125 billion per year, it's less than 10% of the cost problem in the US healthcare system.

Doctors at my local ER, in a rural market, charge about $1400+ per hour for their time. Step foot into that ER for any reason, and it's $500+ as a minimum charge from the hospital (doesn't count the physician fee). Doctors here commonly earn ~$300,000 to ~$500,000 depending on specialty. Roughly 11 to 17 times the median income.

That all has to be wiped out, it's entirely non-functional and non- sustainable. It's one of the great economically exploitive systems ever invented, fiercely protected by very powerful guilds.

If we make our healthcare cost effective, you can increase taxation on business (a tax to help pay for universal coverage) at zero net additional cost to the businesses versus what they're paying now to cover employees with health insurance. Each dollar directed at the healthcare system ends up going a lot further in other words.

Short term there would be considerable pain for anyone working in healthcare, unless it's phased in quite slowly. Even if it's phased in slowly, there will be massive strikes and protests as wages either stagnate at a minimum or are slashed. Every nurse in America will go on strike if you freeze their wages for even a few years, forget about cutting their wages by 1/4 as should occur to bring them into line with other developed nations.

<comment><USER3> It's true. ER doctor which is just a small step above GP can earn 500k plus in Wyoming or similar. These communities should be allowed to import physicians from other countries and pay them 150k instead. This is sheer lunacy. If those people decide to make that trade off that's up to them (they could not only get good Indian and African doctors but they could likely still attract European doctors at that rate!)</comment></comment>


Krush - The dating app - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.krushapp.krush Krush is your personal matchmaker. It understands who you are and matches you with compatible friends and friends of friends in a fun, safe and discreet way.
If the feelings are mutual, Krush breaks the ice and introduces the two of you.
Follow all the action on Facebook too: www.facebook.com/krushapp <comment><USER2> Does "big data" style network graph analysis of people's social circles actually work to find people to date? Is there any evidence that the analysis bit of online dating does anything to promote successful relationships? Would simply showing people a randomised list of single people in their vicinity work just as well? I'd love it to be true that it's possible to work out an approximate level of compatibility using available data, but I've never seen any real evidence that it works. _Undoubtedly_ online dating works; plenty of people find someone to date online. But pretty much 100% of the time it's down to the photo and the messages sent rather than anything in the user's profile (based on anecdotal evidence of myself and many friends).

Interestingly, KRUSH could actually test their algorithm for this really easily - just measure whether people message matches more often when they've rated the two people as compatible. Unfortunately you'd have to not show people their compatibility scores though otherwise you might be influencing the likelihood of someone sending a message, which presumably would devalue the perception of the product for users.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for taking the time to articulate this :) I just responded to lun4r about why the proximity-based model doesn't work in the East.

We're not sure if there is evidence that "big data" style network graph analysis of people's social circles works. But what we do know is that a lot of relationships materialize between friends of friends offline.

Having said that, we used that as the germ of an idea for Krush. We have some way to go before the algorithms are satisfactorily refined, but hopefully Krush will be "the evidence" that you're talking about.

Stay tuned!! :)

<comment><USER2> Interestingly, and probably because I'm a liberal, white Westerner, I hadn't even considered the impact prejudices (social class, race, religion, etc) make on who you might want to date. I just assumed that everyone who meets a few criteria and lives close by would be an option. To that end, an app makes a lot of sense.

But at the same time, maybe using an app will reinforce those prejudices, and that might not really be such a good thing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Point taken.

The Indian market is saturated with matrimonial services and there are no serious players in the casual dating market. Having said that, for now, we're focussing on giving people what they want :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> As a married person, this does conceptually make sense. It's much better to date a friend of a friend than a stranger in a bar. I suspect that there are secrets in the network that could suggest likely candidates. (Just like people with weak links to you but strong links outside your existing network can help with job intros, they can also help with dating connections.)

When I was single, I just remember thinking, "There are so many folks online that I would never consider dating." Something like this could have narrowed the search down. Ultimately I married a classmate that was a friend of a friend.

Good luck with this!

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, thanks :-) We're working our butts off and moving lightening fast to make this happen.

Stay tuned...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Reminds me a bit of coffee meets bagel except instead of a single match, you get a batch. I wonder how facebook fatigue affects conversion. There probably isn't another way to find 2nd degree friends besides facebook login, or is there?

<comment><AUTHOR> We're not sure Facebook "fatigue" per se will affect conversion.

The Facebook login is simply a tool to sign in regardless of your activity level on Facebook.

The response has been pretty terrific so far. Over 95% of sign ups have returned to rate their batch every single day × 4 days consecutively so far.

Give it a shot and mail us your feedback to email@example.com

Cheers :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> how is this different than Tinder/CMB? Also, if many of my friends have a friend in common that I'm not connected with there is a high probability that I know this person and decided not to be connected with him/her. Not cool if my profile pops up on his/her phone (may be my ex who I've unfriended on fb..)

<comment><AUTHOR> I can't comment on CMB because it doesn't work here in India.

As for Tinder, the big difference is that it's primarily proximity based. While this works fine in the West, the realities in the East is completely different.

I'm a bit ashamed to say this, but the caste system is wired into every Indian at some level or the other. This means that certain schools, professions and ultimately people are perceived as being "above" others.

So, for example, it would be a big NO to connect a bartender with a journalist just because they happen to be in the same proximity. Or a pizza delivery guy to a law student for that matter. I went to college in the US and knew a bartender who dated a journalist, as well as a pizza guy who dated a law student. In the twenty odd years I've lived in India though, I have never come across such a thing.

The reality simply is society in the West functions differently from the East. A mutual friend being the core of your experience (as opposed to proximity) goes a long way in connecting people who belong to a similar social class/status and maintaining the quality of data.

There are a bunch of other things that significantly differentiate Krush from Tinder. Give Krush a try for a few days and you'll figure them out :) But thanks for your comment!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> We are also working with some amazing facial recognition technology that will roll out in 2014. Stay tuned :-)

</comment><comment><USER6> 2 Girls like me, makes we want to continue using this app.

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha, I'm on 7 here :P But my co-founder isn't telling me who they are.

<comment><USER6> Went 2 or 3 batches but now it doesn't seems to be giving me any more. Just getting the "Give us abit message"

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, we're thrilled you want more :) That message could be one of a few things:

\- You have too few friends/friends of friends of the opposite sex

\- Available suggestions don't meet your criteria because they're listed as married on Facebook

\- Your Facebook friends are primarily in a different city

\- Or a few other possibilities

Tried tapping the orange "Retry" button at the bottom? You'll have more suggestions available the moment another Facebook friend of yours signs up for Krush. Feel free to let someone know :)

Thanks for your interest, fruks! It means a lot to us. Cheers

<comment><USER6> I have about 250 friends mostly in a 100km radius and about 40%-50% female. Tapping the retry button doesn't do anything

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7>
        Give us a bit

        We are busy putting together a new batch of perfect people

This is what I am getting on my first attempt just now.

<comment><AUTHOR> Shucks. Sorry to hear that. It's probably one of few things:

\- You have too few friends/friends of friends of the opposite sex

\- Available suggestions don't meet your criteria because they're listed as married on Facebook

\- Your Facebook friends are primarily in a different city

\- Or a few other possibilities

Tried tapping the orange "Retry" button at the bottom?

Thanks for the alert :-)

Cheers

<comment><USER7> that explains it I created a facebook account just prior as there was no other way to use the app without a facebook account.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep. But thanks for taking the time to check it out :) We appreciate your interest.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


To John Wheeler, the race to explain time was personal - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/66/clockwork/haunted-by-his-brother-he-revolutionized-physics-rp <comment><USER2> I was lucky enough to have met John Wheeler when I was in grad school. He was a wonderful man who radiated joy and curiosity.

My favorite anecdote about him, which was not widely known, involved what used to be called "nut letters." Before the internet, if you were a famous scientist, particularly a famous physicist, you would receive actual letters from people all over the world asking for help with their perpetual motion machines, time travel devices, and similar nutty theories. Having worked on black holes, gravity, general relativity, and the bomb, Wheeler was quite a nut magnet. He was also blessed with a bit of OCD in the way he organized and categorized all his notes (his annotated bibliography for Misner Thorne and Wheeler Gravitation filled many shelves in the library). John didn't just receive nut letters. He received, read, organized, filed, classified, and acted on nut letters. His preferred response to them was "I'm afraid I'm not very knowledgeable in the area of your work but I believe you should contact _____ who is working on similar conjectures and may be a good source of additional insights" at which point both parties in that conversation would be so ecstatic to be talking with someone recommended to them by the great John Wheeler that they'd never bother him again. While in grad school, I happened to read an article in the New York Times on a perpetual motion machine (their weekly Science Times section was fantastic but did occasionally step into pseudo science topics). At the end of the article the main researcher thanked John Wheeler for having introduced him to the theorist who had helped him refine his understanding of the mechanisms at play in his invention, and I couldn't help but smile at the wonderful successes of John Wheeler's nut dating service.

<comment><USER3> My colleagues and I used to get these "nut letters" occasionally even as unknown grad students. They were quite a treat to read: the human imagination is a marvel, and curiosity knows no bounds. If they'd taken slightly different paths than they had, some probably would have even been with my colleagues reading those letters instead of writing them.

<comment><USER4> I wonder if any of these nut letters have ever yielded useful scientific discoveries or advances. I figure one or two must have, even if only by accident, or indirectly.

<comment><USER5> Maybe not the "nut" letters, which are frequently very nutty, but random letters can.

In this episode of Tested Joe DeRisi describes how a random letter from a snake owner led to some interesting published results in molecular biology.

[https://www.tested.com/old- categories/podcasts/854328-scarie...](https://www.tested.com/old- categories/podcasts/854328-scariest-episode-yet-still-untitled-adam-savage- project-103018/)

<comment><USER6> Wow, that's one of the best guests I've heard on that podcast (and in general!). I'm a few months behind, so I hadn't heard this one yet, so thanks.

The title isn't wrong, either, this one is terrifying (so far).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I need to get caught up on new developments regarding Wheeler's "Participatory Universe" to find out if anyone else is thinking along these lines, but if observation does result in existence becoming--wave function(s) collapsing into the truly concrete--then essentially the history of the Universe occurred instantly when the first observation of it was made? I don't know where that conscious observer would have been located. Earth? A planet like it? Perhaps on every world (simultaneously of course) where the retrocausal positioning of conscious entities made sense?

<comment><USER8> > the history of the Universe occurred instantly when the first observation of > it was made

Perhaps that history could still collapse into existence in stages, as subsequent observations of it became more detailed. The first observer would see far-off galaxies as small white dots in the sky, but not the composition and interaction of each, so perhaps those aspects don't decohere until later observers see more using telescopes.

And not only history but also laws of physics could come into existence in this way. If earthlings are the only observers in the Universe, perhaps dark matter holding galaxies in a circular shape is a law of physics which only came into existence when observers on Earth could start seeing inside other galaxies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> _> The faster you go, the slower time goes. If you could go as fast as light, you'd see time come to a halt and disappear._

No, you wouldn't. Someone observing you would. Am I getting relativity wrong?

<comment><USER10> You are getting relativity wrong. The layman phrase being used here 'time come to a halt and disappear' encodes what would happen from a relativity perspective. Everything that you would be seeing relative to you, would appear as if time had stopped if you were traveling at c.

<comment><USER11> If you were traveling at C you would not really see anything [external] at all. Length contraction would be such that everything around you would appear as a single motionless point.

Any incoming light would be blue shifted to infinity, or red shifted to zero, so if any actually touched you there would be infinite energy there. Luckily no light can actually reach you - nothing can. You would have no incoming sensory information at all.

Because of length contraction there's no distance between the start and and of your journey, so from your POV it doesn't take an time at all, since the distance was so short.

<comment><USER12> If you were traveling at c you would be a photon :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> What irks me in articles like this is the term observer. Define observer. Sure, a human is an observer. But can a dog be an observer? A plasmodium? A virus bumping into a molecule and changing its course? Is observing shorthand for any interaction that can collapse a wave function? In that case it seems highly unlikely to me that a photon can travel billions of light years unperturbed.

<comment><USER14> I prefer the quantum decoherence perspective where being 'observed' basically means interacting with a macroscopic object in a way that's similar to the notion of reaching 'thermodynamic equilibrium' in statistical physics.

<comment><USER15> "macroscopic object" is unsatisfying though because macroscopic objects are made out of objects that are describable under QM.

<comment><USER14> Maybe so, but that's a problem shared by both thermodynamics and quantum mechanics. Both have macroscopic objects that exhibit phenomena like temperature, friction, wave function collapse, that simply don't exist on the smaller scale.

The good news is that macroscopic objects exhibit behaviours that are predictable. The bad news is that. while those behaviours are related to the behaviour of the microscopic scale, a full description of systems involving that many particles will likely remain out of our reach forever. Although I could see it happening that we might be able to simulate systems of a sufficient scale to convincingly demonstrate wave function collapse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> On observers creating the universe, I've sometimes wondered if given the simulation hypothesis, that simulating quantum mechanics is so computationally expensive that it isn't done unless we're looking at it, and that the high energy levels required to probe smaller and smaller length scales is an artifact of the computational requirements of simulating it.

<comment><USER17> That's an interesting thought. It it's true, it seems to have some implications:

* Whoever is running the simulation cares about whether we're looking.

* They had a good reason for going with quantum mechanics rather than something that would be easier to simulate.

I know some people would say that's because they're interested in simulating conscious life and quantum mechanics is essential for consciousness. However, I find it very implausible that quantum mechanics is essential for consciousness so I'd prefer a different hypothesis for why they went with a difficult-to-simulate physics in their simulated universe. Any ideas?

<comment><USER18> Idea: their reality is much more computationally complex than quantum mechanics, so much so the difference between classical and quantum is irrelevant from a cost point of view and matters only from a results point of view.

<comment><USER19> Another possibility is simply that they've got wildly more resources than we can imagine. It's ferociously expensive to run the universe on a classical simulation of QM, but finite. We have no particular reason to believe this "higher reality" doesn't have this level of resources. I've often pondered our universe as the moral equivalent of an elementary school demonstration; what if we're some metaphorical elementary kid's homework, because our physics is relatively simple (assuming some ToE that may actually be simpler than meets the current eye) and produces interesting results?

We can reasonably discuss the feasibility of simulating our universe using our universe. We can do some reasonable discussion of "universes that run something like ours but with some differences". We are profoundly ignorant about everything else.

<comment><USER20> I can't help but find it unsettling listening to a subject of the universe describe it as "relatively simple". Simple relative to what?! Some arbitrary more complex system? Well Sure!

Frankly, I don't think it's a question of complexity, or even expressivity, but more one of encapsulation and information hiding.

<comment><USER21> The fundamental laws of the universe, at present, seem to be a whole lot simpler than many of the things that arise from them. That's as much of a statement in that direction as I think can be supported.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> First read this as "the race to explain that time was personal".

<comment><USER23> > "the race to explain that time was personal"

That's special relativity in a nutshell.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> > _He Revolutionized Physics_

Did he, really?</comment>


Show HN: Experimenting with Clojure 1.9's tools.deps and CLI - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ethagnawl/tools-deps-experiment <comment><USER2> While I applaud every initiative, outsiders might be more interested in [https://github.com/juxt/edge](https://github.com/juxt/edge) which is more battle-tested. I specifically liked its multi-project layout, which shows a specific clj strength: [https://github.com/juxt/edge/blob/master/docs/layout.adoc](https://github.com/juxt/edge/blob/master/docs/layout.adoc)</comment>


So Much Fun. So Irrelevant. [Friedman on politicians & technology] - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/04/opinion/friedman-so-much-fun-so-irrelevant.html?_r=1&ref=technology <comment><USER2> _Right now, though, notes Levin, America is focused too much on getting "average" bandwidth to the last 5 percent of the country in rural areas, rather than getting "ultra-high-speed" bandwidth to the top 5 percent, in university towns, who will invent the future._

Well - this is because our political parties have come to the consensus that in order to be successful in elections, city issues must be kept out of the discussion.

<http://salon.com/a/sE_2zAA>

 _"The core of the Republican constituency in metropolitan America are the growing, racially and economically exclusive 'outer suburbs' whose privileged status Republicans seek to protect at all costs," says former mayor of Albuquerque David Rusk, now a consultant. He cited New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie as an exemplar of the trend._

Democrats are equally to blame:

 _Republicans saw little gain by reaching out to minority voters (the quixotic efforts of GOP maverick Jack Kemp excepted) and Democrats feared that if they put too much effort into solving urban problems, says University of Pennsylvania historian Thomas Sugrue, they would reinforce their image as the party of 'special interests.'_

That is root-cause of the difficulty of the "last-mile" delivery of broadband. Our society at the end of WWII decided to give ourselves a huge present for winning the war, in the form of an Interstate Highway System, and the politics of suburban sprawl that resulted has stymied efforts to build any serious broadband and mass transit systems that we require to continue strong economic growth and improve national security.

</comment><comment><USER3> _Historians have noted that economic clusters always required access to abundant strategic inputs for success, says Levin. In the 1800s, it was access to abundant flowing water and raw materials. In the 1900s, it was access to abundant electricity and transportation. In the 2000s, he said, "it will be access to abundant bandwidth and abundant human intellectual capital," — places like Silicon Valley, Austin, Boulder, Cambridge and Ann Arbor._

It's not about bandwidth, it's just about "human intellectual capital". And those places are good, but the best "human intellectual capital" I have met has been also in out-of-the-way places in Russia, Holland, Poland, Czech Republic among others.

Physical location is deprecated. These clusters will be based virtually -- video conferencing and using it differently.</comment>


Numerics Benchmarking: Fast Statistics on the JVM - <AUTHOR> http://measuringmeasures.com/blog/2010/4/17/numerics-benchmarking-fast-statistics-on-the-jvm.html

<comment><USER2> With any sane implementation, this just benchmarks the memory bandwidth.</comment>


Why do roots of polynomials tend to have absolute value 1? - <AUTHOR> http://mathoverflow.net/questions/182412/why-do-roots-of-polynomials-tend-to-have-absolute-value-1

<comment><USER2> This seems intuitive without needing complex formulas. If you have a big polynomial with, say, one term of ax^300 and one term of b, anything where there is a solution, these terms will tend to be roughly the same order of magnitude. If you are generating polynomials in such a way where a and b are roughly the same order of magnitude, then x^300 and 1 will have to have roughly the same order of magnitude. This only happens when |x| is pretty close to 1.

<comment><USER3> This is the heuristic explanation given in the answer just below the top one, so you are definitely right there.

I also think it's important to mention that the roots ax^300-b have magnitude (b/a)^(1/300), which is much closer to 1 than b/a, which is why the magnitudes of a and b don't matter very much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you define polynomials by their roots instead of by their coefficients, then the roots tend to have wherever absolute values you tend to choose!

</comment><comment><USER5> This is related to the observation that, in the purely real realm, if you take some positive real number, and repeatedly take its roots (e.g just keep hitting the square root button on your calculator), you will reach a fixed point of 1.0. Gee, why is the n-th root of any positive real number, even a large one, so close to 1.0?

It's because you can reconstruct that large number by taking a sufficiently large power of that 1.0 + [small delta].

(Same thing with a small one: start with some .000000000000xxx and take roots: it blows up quickly toward 1.0).

It's the same with the polynomial. The n roots are just numbers that let us write the polynomial as:

P(z) = (z - r0)(z - r1)...(z - rn-1)

Their modulus |ri| doesn't have to be far from 1 for them be able to reproduce P(z), even if if some of the coefficients are decepively large when it's written as the power series.

If one of the ri's is far out somewhere, then the (z - ri) term will contribute a wild factor. Several of these will just blow the thing way out.

</comment><comment><USER6> The VERY important detail is that the question dealz with randomness. From here the conclussion is more or less reasonable and not surprising (the residur formula gives most of the information). Essentially a matter of symmetry, I guess.

<comment><USER7> I'm confused; I don't see how the randomness is really important here. I modified the code such that the expected value of each coefficient is a function of the term's degree:

        randomPoly[n_, x_] := x^Range[0, n].Table[RandomReal[{1, i}], {i, n + 1}]

With this bias (or any of the various of biases I've tried), the result is exactly the same.

I guess my observation is 'symmetry' of the coefficients has nothing to do with the 'symmetry' of the roots.

<comment><USER8> I think coefficients that are merely linear (or even polynomial!) functions of the degree are all "almost equal to 1" in this case. As user conistonwater mentions in another comment, "I also think it's important to mention that the roots ax^300-b have magnitude (b/a)^(1/300), which is much closer to 1 than b/a, which is why the magnitudes of a and b don't matter very much."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A key point is that the distribution used to generate the coefficients is the uniform distribution over an interval. What happens if, say, a cauchy distribution (centered around 0) were used?

<comment><USER10>
        randomPoly[n_, x_, {a_, b_}] :=
           x^Range[0, n].RandomVariate[CauchyDistribution[2, 1], n + 1];
        Show[Graphics[
          Point[{Re[x], Im[x]}] /. NSolve[randomPoly[300, x, {27, 42}], x],
      Axes -> True]]

[http://imgur.com/a/52oEs#0](http://imgur.com/a/52oEs#0)

The unit circle is still present, but it now seems to be getting a few uniform outliers, a sort of halo.

I think that the explanations given in the responses are not correct. Even for the unit circle, they account for why you don't seem many points outside of the interval, but fail to explain why you rarely see points inside of the unit circle. The argument essentially is that inside the unit circle the equation reduces to

        a1*x+a0 = 0

But the distribution for this (randomly picking a1 and a0 when you generate the poly) indicates you'd expect the occasional circle that had a point that was about .3 away from the radius. If you generated the circle 10 times, you don't. You rarely get as far as 0.1 .

<comment><USER9> is it also not weird that the outliers are approximately the same radius out from each other - and also seem to be evenly spaced around the circle??

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Can someone explain in detail what the mathematica code does?

<comment><USER10> There are two functions here, the first

        randomPoly[n_, x_, {a_, b_}] :=
          x^Range[0, n].Table[RandomReal[{a, b}], {n + 1}];

Simply generates the expressions {x^0,x^1,x^2...x^(n-1),x^n} using 'x^Range[0,n]' and multiplies that list elementwise with a list of random numbers (in the range a,b) of the same length (Table evaluates an expression over a parameter range, in this case, the parameter doesn't matter, he just wants RandomReal evaluated n+1 times). This will generate a random polynomial of order n with coefficients in the range {a,b} if you pass in a symbolic variable for x_.

        Show[Graphics[
          Point[{Re[x], Im[x]}] /.
          NSolve[randomPoly[300, x, {27, 42}], x], Axes -> True]]

Now he invokes the ranNo, it really doesn't matter whidomPoly to generate a polynomial of the symbol 'x' of order 300, with coefficients between [27,42]. He passes them into NSolve which returns a list of replacement expressions for x (NSolve assumes it's being asked to find the roots of the expression in the symbol variable 'x'). Mathematica has this idea of a replacement operator (/.) that will take one expression and replace all occurrences of a symbol with a new expression. If you provide a list of replacement expressions, you get a list of expressions as output. So the output of NSolve is something like

         {x->1+i, x->2+i}  # Except it's going to have 300 entries and be closer to 1

And he replaces the expression like

        Point[{Re[x], Im[x] }] /. {x->1+i, x->2+i}

which would yield

        {Pint[{Re[1+i],Im[1+i]}],Point[{Re[2+i], Im[2+i]}]}

Which results in

        {Point{1,1},Point[{2,1}]}

He then wraps them up into a single Graphics object and displays it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> something something Fourier transform.</comment>


Can an ISP do this? I'm no security expert, but this looks like a MITM attack - <AUTHOR> https://imgur.com/a/cX9Dj <comment><AUTHOR> OP here. This ISP is pretty famous in several areas in my city (Bangalore, India). Can they legally do this? Isn't my browser sending each visited- domain's cookies to my ISP now? For example, one of the screenshot-ed sites is a very famous e-commerce site here. Doesn't this pose a security risk? I have no idea whom to complain to.

<comment><USER2> > Can they legally do this?

You should ask lawyers in your country about that.

> Isn't my browser sending each visited-domain's cookies to my ISP now?

Yes, but that's not different even if they didn't hijack your sessions. Everything goes thru your ISP, so in any case, they see everything (not just cookies) that goes thru http.

> Doesn't this pose a security risk?

Yes.

> I have no idea whom to complain to.

As first measure, complain with those sites and ask them to implement and enforce TLS and move all traffic to https. That way your ISP doesn't see your traffic and can not MITM you. Then, complain to your ISP or even better find new one (after you complained to them, vote with your money).

Btw, TLS is really first solution (but not the only and last) to this (and many other) problems on the web.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Not really MITM; this looks more like a DNS hijacking.

Some providers put this kind of stuff in one of the following cases:

\- you didn't paid your bills;

\- they have new offers to show you;

\- they are just jerks.

<comment><USER4> It could be MITM. Note the lack of HTTPS on any of the affected websites.

@ OP, what happens when you browse to [https://www.stackoverflow.com](https://www.stackoverflow.com) ?

<comment><AUTHOR> I get a certificate error.

<comment><USER4> What sort of error?

Regardless of whether it's MITM or DNS hijacking causing the issue, it's clearly your ISP doing it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Facebook, Dropbox, Mailchimp, Twilio and More Combined Into -One Universal API- - <AUTHOR> http://cloudrail.de/# <comment><USER2> How can a service like this exist when pretty much every company API says this in their ToS:

> Don't sell, transfer or sublicense our code, APIs, or tools to anyone.

Sec 4 #10 of [https://developers.facebook.com/policy/#properuse](https://developers.facebook.com/policy/#properuse)

<comment><USER3> We don't sell any code nor do we sublicense it. It is common that for instance the open source community creates alternative SDKs. And we help them to get users on their API. So it is definitely a win win situation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Flagged since URL covertly redirects to cloudrail.com. Doing a HN search shows that domain has been submitted frequently. (I've seen deleted-then-resubmitted posts from this domain as well)

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Cloudrail&sort=byPopularity&pr...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Cloudrail&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)

<comment><AUTHOR> That is sometimes unfortunately the only way. Getting the first votes is just luck and the right timing, or you fake them. I prefere posting it several times. Sorry for that, but it seems like people like what I posted.

<comment><USER5> That might be the case. But it's also more suspect when your username was created a mere 2 minutes before you posted this. You should be using the same, preferably established, HN username.

<comment><USER3> Usually we use this account. I just decided to create one for myself as well. Might be a mistake and sorry for that. Anyway I don't like if someone flags a post which people really like. Especially when it is about a real tool for developers by a startup.

<comment><USER3> Hope this post is ok now: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10603625](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10603625)

<comment><USER5> It appears that you are abusing HN.

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Cloudrail&sort=byPopularity&pr...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Cloudrail&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What are your SLAs? Do you have any data on the latency overhead this service introduces? Historical uptimes and postmortems on outages? These are all factors I'd use to evaluate the engineering maturity of a service like this.

<comment><USER3> The good thing about CloudRail is that no data ever passes one of our servers. The intelligence sits in the SDK which is included in your app. Data then flows directly between your app and for instance Dropbox. So even if we are down your integrations will work.</comment></comment>


PEP 443 -- Single-dispatch generic functions - <AUTHOR> http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0443/

<comment><USER2> It might be useful, but I find it will be overkill for most use cases where you can solve this with a simple if/else checking the type of the argument. At the end of the day this is just a weird syntactic sugar implemented through a standard-library decorator. But it's cool anyway because it's just there.

Python, by design, will never have real function overloading so emulating it will look ugly.</comment>


Ask HN: How do technologies like Farecast (now bing) and Flightcaster work? - <AUTHOR>

They take historical data and predict future trends. Does anyone know of a basic introduction to the mathematical models involved? Something simple enough to grasp easily, but with enough depth that the information can be used for small naive experiments? <comment><USER2> There's really good books on Data Mining at Borders, and a recent bunch of "collective intelligence" books; the Manning books are excellent, but you have know java; you probably also want to install Weka and R, look at the Python suite (numpy, scipy, matplotlib), tools like that; also look up the ~107 (!) algorithms that Bellkor used for Netflix comp.

<http://www.research.att.com/~volinsky/netflix/>

[http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Collective-Intelligence- Bu...](http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Collective-Intelligence-Building- Applications/dp/0596529325/)

[http://www.amazon.com/Collective-Intelligence-Action- Satnam-...](http://www.amazon.com/Collective-Intelligence-Action-Satnam- Alag/dp/1933988312/)

[http://www.amazon.com/Algorithms-Intelligent-Web- Haralambos-...](http://www.amazon.com/Algorithms-Intelligent-Web-Haralambos- Marmanis/dp/1933988665/)

<comment><USER3> Strong upvote on that book list. If you want to learn from scratch, start with the "Programming Collective Intelligence" book, then move to "Collective intelligence in action", they're both quite good.

If you've covered and understand the material in both, you're probably ready to consider moving to some of the more academic texts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> <http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs229/></comment>


50 Successful Open Source Projects That Are Changing Medicine - <AUTHOR> http://nursingassistantguides.com/2009/50-successful-open-source-projects-that-are-changing-medicine/ <comment><USER2> I think Osirix should be on the list. <http://www.osirix-viewer.com/>

</comment><comment><USER3> What about PatientOS or Medscribbler's community project?

      http://patientos.com/
      http://sourceforge.net/projects/medscribbler/

</comment><comment><USER4> Ha, I wrote OpenEMR when I was 16 along with a few of my high school friends in Connecticut. One guy's mom was a doctor, and wanted an EMR system, so we whipped one up in PHP over a summer.

My first startup, and I've since forgotten about it, but I'm glad to see that OpenEMR is still alive. The codebase looks nothing like it originally did, but I guess that's a positive for open source. (Who really trusts some high school kid's PHP code, anyhow?)</comment>


How Friendships Change Over Time (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/10/how-friendships-change-over-time-in-adulthood/411466/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> Birds of a feather flock together. The truth of this old adage never hit me until my late twenties by which time I had changed places and jobs a few times. Growing up with an ill defined idea of who a friend was, I imagined I would have friends of all kinds around me who would challenge my thinking and perceptions by simply being who they are. Like some carefully assembled bouquet of exotic flowers I thought I would, of course, have a hippie friend, a nerd friend, a gothic friend, whatever, but over the years I learnt that the people I like talking to and the people whose company and conversations I enjoyed were almost exclusively a subset of the people I went to university (and later, graduate school) with. I found that people I knew from an earlier period in my life, like a neighbor or a high school friend, came to see me as being different because of the wildly different path I had taken later in life. I would like to imagine that close friends from a young age don't just fade away because you went to a different school or took a different job, but that's how it has played out consistently in my life. In brief encounters with such friends I learnt that they treated me differently and were too eager to put me down, either out of some deep insecurities, afraid of who I was or simply from an effortless nastiness that came to them. I think this (late twenties) is a time when some people become acutely perceptive of keeping score and start playing the status game etc. I uniformly avoid such idiots from my social life, when I just want to hang out without the specter of my career looming over every conversation.

<comment><USER3> Unfortunately, I seem to have had a similar experience. Perhaps it is bound to happen in this economy when a lot of people are struggling to find decent jobs on the one hand, and you have this group of people involved with Tech who are doing incredibly well...I've made the decision to always live with roommates not in the tech sector, and I made the mistake of revealing once how much I make. Instantly, my roommate's (and his friends') attitude changed after that. I've learned to never make that mistake again.

<comment><USER4> How did their attitudes change?

<comment><USER5> I am not him but in my case my friends and roommates say things like "You make enough to pay for this/that/whatever", "Why would you look for another job you make good money?" etc.

I do make good money for this area or compared to them but that doesn't mean I don't have to be responsible with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Reminds me of this poem, I think I read it first time on hacker news. [https://allpoetry.com/Around-The-Corner](https://allpoetry.com/Around-The- Corner)

</comment><comment><USER7> I wish I could know.. I went away to college... years away. It was hard to leave friends, but I knew I'd see and talk to them again someday. Two of my best friends, within weeks of talking to them, they passed away. Both incidents happened years apart, but both died exactly the same way. And both.. I had just recently gotten in touch with again... only to lose both just weeks afterwards.

Even sadder.. I had premonitions of "losing a best friend" and I did nothing to warn either of them, ignoring it like it was just a dream, when in reality, it was a vision.

But when I did speak to them, it was as if we picked up right where we left off. For the one friend, I hadn't spoken to him in over 4 years. The other friend? At least 6 years. I still call them my best friends because I grew up with them. Life happened and it caused us to not talk as much anymore, but like I said: When they are your best friend.. you pick up right where you left off, no matter how many years apart you were.

Both losses caused me to write what was in my heart.

One Life, Old Man ... [http://www.confessionsoftheprofessions.com/one-life- old-man/](http://www.confessionsoftheprofessions.com/one-life-old-man/)

The Loss of a Best Friend ... [http://www.confessionsoftheprofessions.com/loss-best- friend/](http://www.confessionsoftheprofessions.com/loss-best-friend/)

Certainly a pain that no one should ever have to endure... it is as painful as losing a family member. I cannot call them up. I cannot change what happened.

<comment><USER8> > Certainly a pain that no one should ever have to endure

And yet... almost everyone does, at one point or another, endure that sort of pain.

Perhaps it's better to not have to go through that sort of pain in your youth, but when older and you have more perspective and experience, which may help to put the pain in to a context which may help alleviate it some?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > In a set of interviews he did in 1994 with middle-aged Americans about their > friendships, Rawlins wrote that, "an almost tangible irony permeated these > adults discussions of close or 'real' friendship." They defined friendship > as "being there" for each other, but reported that they rarely had time to > spend with their most valued friends...

To what degree does friendship have to do with quantity of time spent, as "being there" suggests, versus quality of time spent?

Anecdotally, it seems that people can share deliberately quality time, as determined by some arbitrary and subjective metric, and remain fulfilling friends with each other. It also seems that many conflate quality of time with quantity because spending lots of time with someone (or someones) will yield some moments of that formative quality.

Does this observation break down after the social 20s, when people start families and move away? Have you found that raw amount of time spent with someone matters more or less as you grow older?

<comment><USER3> I think its a case-by-case thing. I have friends I hang out with all the time and yet I would never expect to e.g. take me to the ER room at 3am in the morning. And others who I see once a month and can reliably expect them to. At some point, you have a fuzzy mental ranking of all your relationships along certain attributes. So the first friend ranks high on "fun" but low on "dependable", while for the second one it is opposite.

<comment><USER10> As someone who recently needed such assistance, you might be surprised by who will gladly render that support when you actually need it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Honestly, I was really surprised how little of it is new knowledge.

That's not criticism, but maybe the realization that there isn't much more knowledge to gain about friendships, if science knows exactly the same stuff as someone who is in a totally different department.

I think maybe it becomes interesting when combined with other relationships like colleagues. If you spend the prime time of your day with someone for 10 years, you also expect them to be dependable to some degree. However in a mostly formal relationship people can get quite surprised about how little they actually can count on their coworkers when sh*t hits the fan. And at the same time many people may spend more time, energy and money into their coworkers than into their dependable friends.

<comment><USER12> I've read that "friends are the new families", taking on roles that were traditionally reserved for families such as lending money or sharing the burdens of childcare.

<comment><USER11> In which area of this planet? I wish friends and I would support each other in final struggles, but it's a huge taboo in my country in central Europe.

<comment><USER13> From India here, lending money to friends in times of urgency is quite common and is not considered as a taboo. In fact, some of my friends jumped to help me in need. Also I feel it considerably strengthens the friendship.

<comment><USER14> Is it really that common for people in India to live so close to the edge without savings that they regularly need help?

I know my friends and I (in the US) all have buffers of at minimum a few months of expenses. I guess it's not inconceivable that someone might have an emergency that requires more, but that would end up being a rather substantial of money. In my friend circle, I've never heard of someone borrowing money.

<comment><USER10> It may help to remember that the average _yearly_ wage in India is about $3000[1].

[1] [https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-average-annual-salary- in-I...](https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-average-annual-salary-in- India/answer/Praveen-Venkiteswara-Annu)

<comment><USER14> I realize there are income differences, but I don't think it's terribly relevant. Even if I have low income (and concomitant low expenses), then my choice is to save money consistently when times are good and then spend extra money during some time period; or I can not maintain any savings, spend extra during some emergency by borrowing money, and then spend less afterwards to put money toward my incurred debt. Both of these financial life plans earn and spend the same amount of money, but one of these plans seems much more stressful than the other. None of the preceding is at all related to the amount of income or spending, only the timing.

<comment><USER15> Income differences are terribly relevant. How could you think otherwise? If you make more, fewer times will be emergencies. They will just be normal events.

<comment><USER14> It's certainly true that making more money will lead to an easier life (otherwise what would be the point?), but I don't think you're addressing my central argument.

Whether someone saves money prior to an emergency and then spends their savings, or they borrow for the emergency and slowly pay it back over time, the person still earns and spends identical amounts of money. The difference is the ordering of events. No matter how poor the person, if he or she is capable of repaying loans after the fact, then he or she is capable of saving money before the fact.

I've of course read the statistics that 30-50% of Americans couldn't handle an unexpected expense of some moderate magnitude, but I admit I don't really understand the psychology behind it. You're going to get to spend all the money you earn in your life either way. Why not time it to maximize happiness and/or reduce stress?

Some other commenters have correctly guessed that my income is higher than the median and for some reason think that this is a reason why I can't or shouldn't have an opinion on the matter. But this wasn't always the case. All through my twenties I was poor, but even still I always strived to have 6 months of expenses in a savings account. The only times I didn't have 6 months of expenses in cash were the times I had emergencies or a couple times I bought a cheap used car with cash.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Fascinating and particularly relevant to my recent life experience. I wrote earlier this year about the realisation that friendship changes, people move on.

[https://reillysontour.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/away-we- go.html](https://reillysontour.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/away-we-go.html)

Upon reflection I think that's ok. You just have to realise that's how life goes. Accept it. Embrace it. Make the best of it.

You can't really change it. But, as long as you're at peace with that, well it's fine. C'est la vie

<comment><USER17> ...Which is why it's important to get in as much as you can while you're young. Unfortunately, not everyone has the foresight to socialize at that age.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> 3 month = 0.25 years; 0,25 years / 10 years = 1/40 :)</comment>


Japanese 'rent men' who are paid just to listen - <AUTHOR> https://www.yahoo.com/news/japanese-rent-men-paid-just-listen-045544065.html?ref=gs <comment><USER2> We have this in America as well.

Have a friend who was a stripper in SF, she had customers that would pay her just to sit and talk with them. I interviewed an escort once and she had similar stories.

Additionally, this is a huge part of hospice care. Incredible article recently[0] in the New Yorker about this.

[0]: [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/07/11/the-work-of- a-h...](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/07/11/the-work-of-a-hospice- nurse)

<comment><USER3> We'll have a huge number of childless old people in a couple of decades. I am hoping for huge number of young immigrants who will be recruited to provide emotional companionship.

<comment><USER4> That means they need to be friends. Friendship among peers is a two way street, which isn't what folks like this want.

A therapist, escort, paid companion, etc is ultimately there to serve.

<comment><USER5> _" Better to go down dignified

With boughten friendship at your side

Than none at all. Provide, provide!"_

[http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/provide- provide/](http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/provide-provide/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Pretty interesting article. Maybe when I get sick of "Will do tech for food", I can pivot into that.

But it also happens here to. There is a kid that mows my neighbor's (who is 85) yard and he's there for three hours. 45 mins to mow and the rest of the time talking. He gets about $35 for it, makes both of them happy.

<comment><USER7> I know someone who is an Apple Tech certified consultant (don't know the exact wording but he's listed at Apple or something like that). Anyway he was telling me about some rich clients, people that pay him to come and do things as simple updating the software (you know a menu option) and it sounded to me like a version of keeping someone who is lonely and giving them a chance to talk to someone more than anything. (Not discounting some (especially older) people's fear of tech which is real, but the time he would take wasn't exactly 'get in and get out as quickly as possible'). Plus he is a super friendly nice guy (who really talks to much) so I kind of got the impression that was actually a benefit to his clients.

<comment><USER4> I had a few gigs like this in college.

It's more than lonliness -- people like being connected to people outside of their circle, especially young people. One couple I did computer and odd electrical jobs for were a semi-retired power couple (neurosurgeon, big cheese at med school + big attorney) who were not at a loss for company.

I got the sense that they liked talking to young folks without the baggage that comes with interacting with their own kids. Also, many rich people enjoy paying people to do things for a variety of reasons.

<comment><USER7> When I was younger I had an older guy (who was sort of an admired quasi mentor type) that would always want to take me out to dinner. He usually had an agenda and something that he wanted to know. But at some point he said that "he really liked out interactions" and I got the idea he just liked hanging out with younger people. I didn't need the free meal (he always paid however I owned a business and made money at the time) but it felt good that someone who was older and successful took an interest in hearing what I had to say.

> I got the sense that they liked talking to young folks without the baggage > that comes with interacting with their own kids

For sure. Your kids don't always realize that you are acting in their own interest (but of course there is also an agenda as well typically) whereas a non-kid-of-yours thinks you are acting in their interest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Slightly related: I once watched a documentary about a man managing an acting agency where people hired someone to act as a daughter, parent, etc.

When he finally disclosed his business to his wife, she's like, "who care?"

All that dramatic tension just melted away.

Hiring people to simply talk to seems like yet another manifestation of whatever is happening in Japanese society.

<comment><USER9> In some places people hire "mourners" others hire other people to add "volume" to their events. But these aren't as much psychological fillers as much as devices to save face.

<comment><USER7> Reminds me of "claque" people hired as professional applauders:

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is Japan especially lonely compared to other advanced nations?

<comment><USER11> Haven't spent more than a month there however I always got the sense that it's 'harder' to be Japanese (same goes for Korean) than it is to be a Westerner.

Complex social hierarchies, deference to the boss, deference to family and elders, suppressing individualism and the overbearing pressure to conform.

Especially though, having to stop at every single pedestrian crossing even though the road is one metre wide and there's not a car or a cop for kilometres.

More than a few months of that and - bam - seppuku for me.

<comment><USER12> I was nearly tackled for jaywalking across an empty traffic light intersection at 3am in Shinjuku. It ended up being a 3 hour ordeal that involved 15 cops and a quick police car ride to my train locker.

Worth noting were the 10 obvious foreigners (my friends) that jaywalked ahead of me, which made me think I was singled out because I looked Japanese.

<comment><USER13> I've seen a couple of Japanese jaywalk during my trip. But I guess not at 3am though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Isn't this just a non-professional psychologist?

<comment><USER15> Pretty much. Note the line at the beginning: "clients who would never dream of spilling their guts to a therapist or worse, their families." This is in some ways an end-run around the stigma attached to psychological treatment in Japan (and most other countries).

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> In the Western world we call them psychoanalysts.

</comment><comment><USER17> Entertainment & Time pass (SMS 9278131800) firstname.lastname@example.com Hopefully — once you've given somebody a massage — you will get one in return.3 (Three) Plans: (1) Social Economy Plan (2) Like Close Friends Plan (3) Blind Love of Fun & Fooling around Party for selected (M) 9278131800

</comment><comment><USER18> Isn't this potentially just a form of talk therapy? Yes the person listen has no medical training and that /could/ be dangerous, but neither do you friends and if you have they you talk to them, perhaps some people just don't have friends or perhaps need an 'air gap' and need someone with some distance from their lives to hear them out so they can't talk things through out loud? Personally - I think it sounds interesting and potentially therapeutic.

</comment><comment><USER19> The Uber of Psychology

</comment><comment><USER20> They're like a male, extremely casual and simplified, version of Geisha (perhaps so much so to render the comparison meaningless, I'll admit). I wonder if Japan has much use for life-coaches, which also sound a bit related to this (less coaching?), but within Japanese culture and traditions this may be the way those needs are met.

</comment><comment><USER21> This is an elegant premise for a drama. Something that Jarmusch could make great hay with.</comment>


So. I wrote a novel. And I published it. - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/113382908267935344043/posts/eVnSJ8tk638

<comment><AUTHOR> Also potentially interesting, I wrote a blog post about how I wrote the first draft of the novel in about two weeks: [http://www.syncingdreams.com/2012/06/dragon-master-post- mort...](http://www.syncingdreams.com/2012/06/dragon-master-post-mortem- part-1.html)</comment>


Famous French Hacker Calls Internet a "Digital Shantytown" - <AUTHOR> https://news.slashdot.org/story/16/03/20/2126231/infamous-french-hacker-calls-internet-a-digital-shantytown#comments <comment><USER2> "The only things that belongs to you is your data but to be on that land you have to give up your commercial rights to it."

So true.</comment>


Optimization: An Introduction (2006) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/pls/portallive/docs/1/7288263.PDF <comment><USER2> Can't every constrained optimization problem be converted into an unconstrained one? For eg, instead of saying "minimize f(x) with the constraint g(x) = 0", can't we just say "minimize f(x) + abs(g(x)) * 10^30" ?

Also, is there a reason why most optimization texts (like this one) only discuss point optimization and not path optimization (i.e. calculus of variations) ?

<comment><USER3> a) this is not the same problem. The second equation you suggest could have a different minimum than the first, e.g. if f(x) goes to negative infinity but only when g(x) != 0.

b) because this is a much more complex topic, for which you need to know optimization first anyways.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a very high-level introduction. If you want a lot more meat, see Boyd & Vandenberghe, which is legitimately free online at [http://web.stanford.edu/~boyd/cvxbook/](http://web.stanford.edu/~boyd/cvxbook/). It doesn't have any material on global optimization for nonconvex problems, but that's not really an introductory topic anyway.</comment>


How Wired Published Its GitHub Story on GitHub - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/02/github-revisited/ <comment><USER2> I'd contrast this situation to Wikipedia, which allows unfettered access to collaboration. The benefit of MediaWiki is that people can build their changes directly on previous changes, being continually pulled into master. Alternatively, Wikipedia suffers from authorities having less weight than experienced editors with little domain knowledge (and constant fights against vandalism, esp. on trending articles).

There is a likely a middle-ground between Wikipedia's open editing, and GitHub's "what does it really mean to fork a story and make a pull request." Interesting experiment none-the-less for Wired.

</comment><comment><USER3> Merging people's writing together doesn't seem to be as obvious as merging people's code together -- code is a means to an end, so whatever is the best solution should be merged into master. Writing is subjective, so if your paragraphs cause a merge issue, its not so simple to choose a winner.

<comment><USER4> Pull request:

\- its not so simple to choose

\+ it's not so simple to choose

<comment><USER5> You can put in a couple of spaces before each line to make the diff look even better:

      - its not so simple to choose
      + it's not so simple to choose

<comment><USER5> Dear downvoter: this was a simple, helpful comment about the formatting supported by this site, and it didn't deserve your ire. Please go visit a site other than Hacker News. You are not welcome here.

<comment><USER6> I wasn't aware you even could downvote here. But even if you can who cares? I think elitism here is even more frowned upon than a downvote.

But this is horribly off topic, so if you _can_ downvote, we both _should_ be downvoted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This actually kind of annoys me. When I worked in that very same Wired office, I was constantly trying to get the (fairly tech savvy) writers to use git for their drafts and then just push to Wordpress when they had a final version. They never thought it would work.

Well, I'm just glad they finally saw the light.

I can't wait until we can convince congress to publish laws this way. Imagine if you could see which congrescritter made each change with git blame?</comment>


Bureaucratic cockup leads to delay of age verification block on porn in the UK - <AUTHOR> https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/06/20/bureaucratic_error_leads_to_p0rn_block_delay/ <comment><USER2> Why not just disallow free porn? Require everything available in the UK to be paid, for at least $1, via credit card. This will exclude children most simply.

<comment><USER3> This comment was dead. I vouched for it as the comment has substance and this is HN - please don't downvote just because you disagree.

I used to work for a company that facilitated selling adult content on phones in the UK (why someone would pay a few quid for a 320x240 video I don't know). Even to access free samples you had to pass age verification, which required you to have a contract phone (not prepay).

In regards to credit cards this may work in the US, but in the UK (and the rest of Europe) a lot of people only have debit cards, not credit cards. These are accessible to minors, apparently as young as 8.

[https://osper.com/](https://osper.com/)</comment></comment>


A Stroll Through the Minefields – Surviving the Startup 'Ramp Up' - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/a-stroll-through-the-minefields-fc26b3490cd8 <comment><AUTHOR> I am not sure if I believe this, but the author had an interesting point:

"This dynamic seriously limits the pool of individuals who can successfully start companies to those who have higher risk profiles, can defer immediate financial gratification, and who are resourceful enough to make something with scant resources."

I think a lot of good entrepreneurs are risk averse. Meaning they find a good idea and validate it before going headlong into it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree with this: "For an early stage company, the longer you can put off expanding your head count and endure the financial pain of not paying yourself anything close to a market rate salary, the more runway and resources you'll have to invest in actually growing the company."

<comment><USER2> I'm glad you enjoyed the piece. I agree that there's a lot of work pre-release in validating an idea to mitigate some of the risk.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN:  Moving archived files to other media - <AUTHOR>

I work in the medical IT field and on a regular basis paper or online information is moved to another media - microfiche, CD jukebox, or other.
I would be interested in knowing what methods are used or preferred, particularly for small businesses.
Thanks, Steve <comment><USER2> Like with backup, the problem isn't how you store the data, but how you retrieve it.

I'd flip the problem - think about how you're going to want to use the data in the future, then work to a solution that meets that goal.</comment>


Kenya's mobile telephones: Vital for the poor - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21566022-report-describes-sacrifices-poor-make-keep-mobile-phone-vital?fsrc=scn/fb/wl/pe/vitalforthepoor

<comment><USER2> > Almost half of those surveyed were using internet-enabled smart or "feature" > phones. The scratch cards that many Kenyans use to charge their mobiles have > recently begun to advertise their value in terms of data rather than talk > time. Meanwhile, mobile-phone operators have been giving free access to > sites such as Wikipedia to entice customers.

> Still, only 16% of respondents said they were using their phones to browse > the internet.

The iHub report I read said that 88% of Kenyans browse the Internet with their mobile phone instead of 16%. The same report says that 99% of Internet access from Kenya is through a mobile device. I think the Western world assumes people in developing countries are dependent on computers for Internet access because of the popularity of the One Laptop Per Child program. I think we should recognize that the developing world will probably never have the resources or desire to adopt laptops or personal computers and so we should instead focus on providing them with web-content sized for their devices and hardware organizations such as OLPC should look into reducing the cost of smartphones. In my personal experience an android device in Africa costs at minimum of $200.

Reading this article reminds me that there is a huge demand for mobile Internet in developing world and few companies are capitalizing on this.

<comment><USER3> You have personal experience with "Africa"? African countries have much less in common with each other than non-Africans tend to imagine. That being said, I agree with you regarding computer adoption.

A new, low end Droid can be had for roughly $50 contract-free in my city, Nairobi.

<comment><USER4> What percentage of the populace could afford such a device and the data plan? For what percentage would that be true for with a $25 device?

<comment><USER3> To add to what davycro said, entry level Android devices are becoming price competitive with feature phones. Phones are seen as a long term investment, so poorer families often make sacrifices to acquire them. It wouldn't be unheard of for one to spend up to half their monthly income on the purchase.

Mobile data costs KSH. 8/MB, about 10 US cents at its most expensive. This is still out of reach for a sizeable portion of the working population, but the situation is rapidly improving.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> > _The real breakthrough in the Kenyan market has been in people's ability to > send and receive money, with more than two-thirds doing so by phone. East > Africa's biggest success has been M-Pesa, a mobile-based money-transfer > system pioneered by Safaricom, a leading Kenyan operator. Its simple > interface, which works on any phone, has brought financial services to > Kenya's poor majority, enabling the movement of some $8.6 billion in the > first half of this year._

These examples show that applications of any particular technology can vary from a developed country to a developing or a poor country. I also think such solutions will help reduce latency, corruption and inconsistencies leading to much better governance.

</comment><comment><USER5> _Meanwhile, mobile-phone operators have been giving free access to sites such as Wikipedia to entice customers._

This is great!

<comment><USER6> Am I being pessimist in thinking that this is just a test for "value-added" services that will in the future charge you for access to select websites or services?

Net neutrality dies with free wikipedia and blocked Skype.

<comment><USER5> No, you aren't but one step at a time!

Although, wouldn't Facebook better serve that purpose assuming FB is as popular there as it is here?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I often wonder why we can't have something similar here already. Seems like the perfect way for parents to send their kids money at short notice.

<comment><USER8> Well, we do have some options here, but part of the reason why it was so easy to setup over there is lack of laws around the movement of money.

<comment><USER9> As usual, laws prevent innovations to protect the incumbent (banks and credit card companies)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Here is something we spotted: that one-fourth of Kenya's GDP flows through this mobile payment system called mPesa

[http://statspotting.com/2011/04/kenyas-m-pesa-the- unbelievab...](http://statspotting.com/2011/04/kenyas-m-pesa-the-unbelievable- success-story-in-numbers/)

<comment><AUTHOR> TFS - I see you draw heavily from a report from Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation [0]. I found this part very interesting.

> _Safaricom also benefited from launching the service in a country which > contained several enabling conditions for a successful mobile money > deployment, including: strong latent demand for domestic remittances, poor > quality of available financial services, a banking regulator which permitted > Safaricom to experiment with different business models and distribution > channels, and a mobile communications market characterized by Safaricom's > dominant market position and low commissions on airtime sales._

If these indeed are the parameters, one should make a list of countries which satisfy these requirements and do some compare/contrast study.

[0] [http://www.microfinancegateway.org/gm/document-1.9.43376/Mob...](http://www.microfinancegateway.org/gm/document-1.9.43376/Mobile%20Payments%20Go%20Viral_M- PESA%20in%20Kenya.pdf)</comment></comment>