Ask HN: Favorite hacker movie - <AUTHOR>

What is your favorite hacker movie?<p>Mine is Swordfish (2001) <comment><USER2> Primer (2004) - <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390384/>

Classic entrepreneurs hacking in the garage, with some unanticipated science fiction side effects.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sneakers (1992, still holds up perfectly) and Hackers (1995, probably doesn't hold up quite so well).

edit: I'd also like to add The Social Network (2010) ... completely forgot about that one!

<comment><USER4> Sneakers as well. The world of cryptography is still as murky and interesting as it was back then. Doubt we'll find a key to everything in an answering machine though. :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Pirate of Silicon Valley <http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=440334862070787846#>

<comment><USER6> One of my favorites. The quote "Why join the navy if you can be a pirate?" has stuck with me since middle school.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Gotta be Sneakers. Incredible cast and well written.

What's not to love about Darth Vader answering "We are the United States government, we don't do that sort of thing." to the simple request for "Peace on earth, good will towards men" seen here: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHsUYF5VfQ0>

</comment><comment><USER8> Hard to top Wargames.

</comment><comment><USER9> Tron: Legacy (2010) - <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1104001/>

_"I was asked to record myself using a unix terminal doing technologically feasible things. I took extra care in babysitting the elements through to final composite to ensure that the content would not be artistically altered beyond that feasibility."_

 _"So we went with posix kill and also had him pipe ps into grep. I also ended up using emacs eshell to make the terminal more l33t. The team was delighted to see my emacs performance -- splitting the editor into nested panes and running different modes. I was tickled that I got emacs into a block buster movie. I actually do use emacs irl, and although I do not subscribe to alt.religion.emacs, I think that's all incredibly relevant to the world of Tron."_

Source: <http://jtnimoy.net/workviewer.php?q=178> Quite genius actually.

<comment><USER10> Oh, man. Those apps would make GREAT screen savers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Office Space

</comment><comment><USER12> 23

<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0126765/>

</comment><comment><USER13> Con artists are hackers too: Catch Me If You Can, Matchstick Men, I Love You Phillip Morris

</comment><comment><USER14> Swordfish? Surely you're joking, Mr. ConceitedCode? Such as faux pas :)

</comment><comment><USER15> Hollywood is almost universally terrible at hacker movies, unfortunately, dating back to when they perverted Frankenstein. I haven't seen Swordfish, but what I've heard doesn't make me optimistic.

Real Genius and Ghostbusters are two pretty good hacker movies. I hear Buckaroo Banzai is in the same ballpark, but I haven't seen the whole thing. I also enjoyed Flight of the Navigator, but it's really more about magic than about hacking.

<comment><USER2> Very true. Actually, unmentioned here yet is "The Social Network (2010)" which has one of the most realistic scenes of coding I've seen. The problem is that it takes David Fincher and a script by Aaron Sorkin to make someone sitting at a computer both realistic _and_ interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Real Genius is first, <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089886/> This portrays nearly everyone's ideal undergraduate experience.

Then Sneakers.

</comment><comment><USER17> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=450702>

</comment><comment><USER18> Real Genius by a hundred thousand miles.

</comment><comment><USER19> Hackers, primer and antitrust

</comment><comment><USER20> Antitrust & Startup.com

</comment><comment><USER21> I like where Scottchin is going with this one, Ghostbusters.

</comment><comment><USER22> The first $20m is the hardest (based on Po Bronson's novel)

</comment><comment><USER23> That would have to be antitrust and wargames

</comment><comment><USER24> Ghostbusters :)</comment>


Ask YC: Looking for a co-founder - <AUTHOR>

I'm seriously considering applying for funding in the upcoming YC round, I have an excellent idea that is very well thought out (I think...), I have learned how to program so that I can implement this idea, and I'm roughly 2/3 done. Since this is my first real programming project there are probably issues in the form of scalability, security, modularity, etc.
The idea is an online project management/ productivity enhancement tool. If implemented correctly it might even solve the problem of email overload that PG brought up in a comment: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=144127
Since YC seems very reluctant to take single founders I thought that I would look for a cofounder here...
I'm looking for a hacker that knows php (yeah - I know...), javascript, css, and mysql as this is what I have programmed it in. Pretty standard. The important thing is that you are smart and get things done.
I am currently located in Denmark, but will move to wherever the action is - the startup scene here is horrible, and I don't mind seeing the world ;-) I have done startups before, and have always been the glue that keeps the team together - half business half tech kind of guy.
My mail is in my profile if you think it sounds like fun :-) <comment><USER2> Just a thought, if you're planning on applying to the round coming up in a few days I would suggest holding off until next time. Your odds will be better because you will have A: a further developed product, B: A cofounder who you know very well and are comfortable with, and C: more time for PG and crew to look at your application.

Of course after you consider the upsides to this, there aren't really any downsides to applying now, even if you don't get accepted. But if you don't get accepted, I encourage you to apply again in the winter round. The problem you're addressing I believe is a good one to solve.

<comment><USER3> There's always a downside of waiting to do anything in a startup: you have competitors. You may not know who they are, but odds are there's someone else out there working on roughly the same thing.

If you're not committed to a particular idea, you can safely wait, yes. But if there is something specific you want to work on, you can't safely delay at any stage, whether it's getting funding, releasing, or adding new features.

<comment><USER2> Sure. I wasn't suggesting not doing anything until the next funding round. Ideally, mixmax would continue working on the idea, while hopefully getting to know potential cofounders and making other contacts. That way, when YC hosts its winter round, their team will have the benefits already mentioned in my above post.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This might be somewhat off topic since you are looking for another technical co-founder to build a product as opposed to someone to help build a company.

At the risk of being presumptuous, I like to offer my latest chapter on how to build a team, not so much on how to entice talents but to screen the wannabes who do not have the staying power to be in a startup.

<http://www.lovemytool.com/blog/2008/03/team-building.html>

Good luck. It sounds like fun.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not at all - after all building a product is only the first step to building a company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> mixmax, I recognize you from your many contributions here and wish you the best of luck. My skill set is very close to what you seek, and I'd love to meet you and talk about possibilities some day, but for the time being I'm completely consumed by my own startup.

When you say "the upcoming YC round", do you mean 4/02/08? If so, I imagine that you'd be better off applying as a single founder. Probably not a good idea to go into business with someone you've only known for 8 days. As a single founder myself, I'd need at least 6 months to a year to get to know someone and work with them before I'd make a commitment. Better yet, I'd prefer someone I've known for years, but the dozen or so possibilities always seem to have some other road block.

Is there anyone you already know and have worked with before that could join you? That way, your odds would be much better (for YC and beyond).

Good luck and keep us posted.

<comment><USER6> [nevermind] ---Untrue. Unless your product has already shown considerable traction or you're a startup legend, it is 100% percent certain that they will not accept you as a single founder.

Not making a judgement on this policy, it just seems fair for people to know before they take the time to apply as a single founder.

<comment><USER3> _it is 100% percent certain that they will not accept you as a single founder_

Two of the startups in the current batch were run by single founders when we accepted them. Neither was a startup legend or had any traction.

The odds of being accepted are much greater (roughly 4x) with a cofounder, but it's not impossible to get funded as a single founder.

<comment> daniel-cussen Did they got co-founders? How does this work out?

<comment><AUTHOR> This is an interesting question that I would love to see some answers to. Locating a co-founder at a later time doesn't seem to be a bad idea.

<comment><USER7> I also be it would be much easier to find a cofounder if you've already secured YC-status.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Access Economy: Why the Normal Distribution Is Vanishing (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://alexdanco.com/2015/12/17/taylor-swift-ios-and-the-access-economy-why-the-normal-distribution-is-vanishing/ <comment><USER2> Tournament wages theory: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tournament_theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tournament_theory)

This seems to happen whenever there's (a) direct competition (b) the value provided by the winner is very scalable (media, sports, software) and (c) most importantly, it can't be substituted by splitting the job among more people.

So footballers follow this model because you can only have 11 people on the pitch - there's no amount of low-wage non-first-worlders you can replace Ronaldo with. Megastars follow this model; if you want to see Taylor Swift, that doesn't substitute cleanly with Ariana Grande or your local bar band.

And software engineers follow this to some extent because splitting problems up is in itself the difficult bit.

<comment><USER3> Software engineers follow for the same reason as footballers or doctors.

In football, there's only a market for the best. Nobody likes a loser.

It's the same in health. There's no market for mediocre or bad doctors.

Similarly, there's not really a market for software that doesn't work. Writing novel software that solves real problems isn't yet trivial. So there's not a huge market for bad software engineers. And there isn't yet a big enough supply of good ones to meet demand.

See why Google doesn't just lower their bar to hire more candidates. It wouldn't do them any good.

<comment><USER2> Few markets have a market for "bad" employees, surely? What matters in the tournament situation is that the number #2 employee isn't as good as the #1 employee, regardless of what absolute quality level we're talking about.

<comment><USER4> There are things with low differentiation. Average day care is fine. Average janitorial services are okay. Average checkout operator is okay.

No one needs the exceptional janitor.

Fwiw though, I think there's lots of room for the mediocre software engineer. Enough work requires little to no skill. I've done some of it myself b

<comment><USER5> _> Fwiw though, I think there's lots of room for the mediocre software engineer. Enough work requires little to no skill. I've done some of it myself b_

Unlike janitors or checkout operators, software work can be outsourced. Outsourcing doesn't make sense for high-skill software engineering for two reasons. First, actually writing the code is only a small part of the job. And second, even when it comes to writing the code, there's still a real quality difference between top US candidates and top international candidates [1].

But software work that requires "little to no skill" is exactly the sort of thing you can successfully outsource.

[1] [https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/03/us-computer- science-...](https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/03/us-computer-science- grads-outperforming-those-in-other-key-nations/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is pretty muddled thinking. He talks about categorical variables and then points out that they are not normally distributed. Which doesn't make sense. (It almost could, but he skips an important step.)

Apart from that it's mostly handwaving and opinion with no actual data. When you don't use data it's unsurprising that your personal experience matches your hypothesis.

<comment><USER7> Yes, he just chose a satisfactory cutoff for whatever counts as a "true" flagship. Some people would say only this generation iPhone. Some would say only this generation iPhone + Pixel + Galaxy. Some would say this generation, and the previous generation of iPhone + Pixel + Galaxy.

And even then, we're ignoring features like internal storage capacity for each phone.

Even if you are making $10 million a year, you split that between your yacht, your car, your mansion, and jewelry for the wifey.

You aren't going to have the biggest mega-yacht and no jewelry for the wifey, so there will be a tapering at the higher end of the demand curve for yachts for people making $10 million a year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > _We can see, too, that these bifurcations are driven by a shift from a world > of scarcity to a world of abundance._

To me all these bifurcations seem to me to stem from a change of a world of more evenly distributed wealth (for working, lower middle, and middle class) and one with wild inequality.

It's a world where a 10-20% can afford the "whatever" (e.g. best phone, live in NY/Bay area, university degree, etc) and the rest have to scrap by and increasingly pinch pennies (while still doing some desperate wealth-signalling purchases, like poor urban blacks that buy $200 sneakers to feel like they have something nice and can participate in the kind of society they see in ads).

Back in the 50s and up to the 80s a signle-income middle class household could still send a kid to college, buy a house, and so on. And living in NY or the Bay are was still very affordable (to the point that both areas had large artistic / bohemian communities living there, and not of the latte sipping urban wealth variety, but the penny pinching / stick it to the man / junky variety).

<comment><USER9> 500 years ago, only 1-2% could afford "whatever" and the rest had to scrap by and pinch pennies. I'm not sure we're moving to a world of less evenly distributed wealth.

<comment><USER10> Now compare 60 years ago with now.

<comment><USER11> Statins, anti-retrovirals, common availability of antibiotics, treatment for TB, vaccines for many population-decimating (in the traditional sense of the word) viruses.

Everyone has a super computer in their pocket, the vast majority of human knowledge is available in your hand for free all the time, you can video chat anyone you want anywhere in the world in HD for free, world-leading educators post hundreds of hours of video lectures online for free. You can get O(every song ever recorded) instantly anywhere you are for $10-$15/month.

In my opinion, what we're seeing is that things split into two categories: generally free or almost free, and expensive enough to be out of reach of most people. The thing that is really exciting is that things are moving from the latter to the former very quickly. The problem specifically with education is that expectations (everyone must have a degree!) Hasn't kept up with reality (degrees are no longer the only/best marker of skill!).

<comment><USER10> Things are also moving the other way at unprecedented speed - the expensive ones: housing, medical care, education. None of which is discussing the comparative inequality of the two periods.

Are you saying inequality is _required_ for that list of innovations? If so, on what grounds?

We came up with contraceptive pills, eradication of polio, visited the moon, transformation of aviation and personal transportation, domestic appliances - including TVs, washing machines, dish washers went from unaffordable luxury to in every home. Doesn't seem like the pace of innovation has increased, just moved to a different field compared with the period of lowest US inequality. If anything it's slowed markedly.

So why didn't _these_ innovations need inequality?

Nit: antibiotics were commonly available 60 years ago, they just weren't yet abused by stupid uses in agriculture.

<comment><USER12> Most of these things were coming as a side effect of the huge Cold War era military industrial complex. We'll get it back soon enough.

Additionally, yes, the US society in the 50s-80s was pretty egalitarian and full of opportunities — as long as you were white, male and heterosexual.

<comment><USER8> > _Additionally, yes, the US society in the 50s-80s was pretty egalitarian and > full of opportunities — as long as you were white, male and heterosexual._

It was full of opportunities for all kinds of people, not just "white, male, and heterosexual". That's when the civil rights movement and the feminist movement flourished too and ensured the rights for women and blacks.

People born after some age seem to remember some bizarro version of history, when it was all oppression with no redeeming qualities, and if you were a woman or black etc you were as good as dead. People think we made some huge strides in the 00s, probably because they have no experience of the 60s to 90s. That main strides have been done for gay/lesbian rights (and even those were increasingly more permissible after the 70s and the sexual revolution).

Though all of the above are beyond the point. As if to have those other things (affordable housing, college and healthcare) that the 50s-80s enjoyed, you need to also have racism and sexism... How does that compute?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "-Normal distributions come from multifactorial situations, where many variables matter. -In a world governed by scarcity, our decisions and preferences tend to be multifactorial in nature. -In a world governed by abundance, on the other hand, our decisions are no longer multifactorial. They tend to be dominated by one factor above all others: either X matters to you, or it doesn't."

I'm more curious as to _why_ our decisions become dominated by one factor as we approach abundance. It almost seems counter-intuitive: in a world of abundance, wouldn't there be more things we could afford to care about? In a world of scarcity, wouldn't your decision be based mostly by just "does it do what I want it to do"?

Maybe we're just lazy. Maybe it's the other way around: in a world of abundance, we can _afford_ to be _lazy_ and not care about nearly as much, and instead focus on singular values.

In either case, I'm not convinced that decision distribution is a function of scarcity/abundance, but rather some other factor, of which scarcity/abundance contributes to.

<comment><USER14> _In a world of scarcity, wouldn 't your decision be based mostly by just "does it do what I want it to do"?_

Yes but also "can I afford it?", "is it available?", "will it be shipped on time and to my address", etc. When you reach real abundance and everything is at your fingertips, the only factor that matters is whether you want it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> > Chances are good that if you're in the market for a smartphone, you fall > into one of two very clear cut categories. Either: a. you've decided that > your new phone is a very important item in your life, so you're going to buy > the nicest phone available at whatever price. (Usually this means an iPhone, > although some flagship Android phones qualify for this category.) Or, b. > you've decided that just about every phone out there is 'good enough' and is > more than adequate for your needs, so you'll go with whatever one costs $0 > with your existing wireless contract.

He doesn't provide any figure, he just says things and consider them to be true.

<comment><USER16> I don't think it is true. Just a cursory google search suggests that the market, at least globally, is a lot flatter and is likely flattening. Not everyone has an iPhone or Samsung. [0]

Similarly, those large cities he lists (LA, New York and San Fran) have relatively low population growth, at 0.67%, 0.25% and 1% respectively [1]. Large cities like Phoenix, and Austin have around 2% growth.

This makes more sense to me. As these cities become crowded and expensive, people will naturally look for a better deal.

These types of articles are just lazy. The author doesn't even seem to bother doing basic research.

[0] [http://zindagi.online/2018/12/03/gartner-global- smartphone-s...](http://zindagi.online/2018/12/03/gartner-global-smartphone- shipments-grew-1-4-in-q3-2018/)

[1] [http://worldpopulationreview.com/us- cities/](http://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/)

<comment><USER17> Yes, it's just a wrong intuition sold as fact. Millenials have increasingly started to buy larger cars and moved from the big cities to the sunbelt and the suburbs.

([https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/04/why- is-...](https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/04/why-is-everyone- leaving-the-city/521844/))

The idea that everyone will be riding around in shared cars and live in the LA megalopolis is a tech industry fantasy.

<comment><USER18> It's worth noting that it's unclear whether or not this is a generational preference for the suburbs, or rather a result of a lack of suburban- equivalent amenities for families like safe parks, good, not-overcrowded schools, and available daycare options. Not to mention a lack of housing at the 2+ bedroom size.

It's still a reversal of the '60s and '70s where the cities were being abandoned wholesale.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The author almost stumbles on the answer to his question when he shows the height distribution. It's bimodal, because men and women have different average heights. Similarly, flagship and lower-tier phone buyers will display distributions in what they're willing to pay. If you combine two separate normal distributions you can always make a claim that a single distribution is no longer normal. But that doesn't make it an interesting insight on its face.

<comment><USER20> It's not similar to height distribution. At the population statistics level, human height is bimodal because humans either have a Y chromosome or they don't. What is the equivalent binary variable for the phone market?

<comment><USER8> Obviously income. Are you in the upper 20% that does great (or still fine), or in the 80% that's increasingly scrapping by?

<comment><USER20> Except income is no longer bimodal. It was back in the 70s, but now there's just a single peak. See:

[https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2013/12/Global- inequality...](https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2013/12/Global-inequality- in-1800-1975-and-2015.png)

However, growth in income is bimodal:

[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Global_changes_in_re...](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Global_changes_in_real_income_by_income_percentile_- _v1.png)

Could that affect the phone market indirectly, by consumer confidence? It's possible, but it's not nearly as clear-cut as human height.

<comment><USER8> Also account for wealth (we don't make the distinction between income and wealth much in my here parts).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> One phenomenon in the "concert ticket" space is that promoters have discovered a way to dynamically price tickets. So you'll pay the concert promoter $1000 to sit front and center.

So instead of all floor tickets being $100, there are some floor tickets that are worth way, way more than others. Even "row 1" tickets up in the 3rd deck are more than row 2 tickets in the same section now.

Ticket pricing has evolved to maximize profits at the source. The value of the tickets is very close to their retail price.

So if you ask "how much would you pay for Taylor Swift tickets", the answer is "depends on what row".

</comment><comment><USER22> His paragraph about jobs is spot on. I've seen this in my own workplace on a team that is 75% contractors and 25% full time employees. Contractors are seen as completely replaceable, and if one leaves they'll be replaced with another one after a quick round of interviews. However, if a full time employee leaves, the process to replace them seems to take much longer as it appears that those doing the hiring are looking for The Superstar. I'm not sure how to fix this, or if it's even possible to fix.

<comment><USER21> The fix is to always hire contractors, let the bad ones go, and convert the good ones to full time if you can.

<comment><USER23> In any industry where good employees are in high demand (like tech) this strategy has the unfortunate effect of filtering out most individuals who are both good employees _and_ experienced. None of the really good software engineers I know would accept this arrangement unless the contracting wages were a ridiculous multiplier of their normal salary.

<comment><USER24> Really? Because I wouldn't accept a normal salary unless it was 20% higher than my contracting rates. Because I go through my own company I get to minimize my taxes so much that regular employment seems like a ripoff by comparison.

<comment><USER23> Yes really.

First, for a number of positions, salary can make up less than 70% of total compensation. Things like healthcare, stock options, bonuses, PTO, etc. are worth quite a lot of money. To make up for that you need a good multiplier on salary.

Second, unemployment benefits and the possibility of severance offer increased stability that many find both useful and comforting, this is another multiplier on the salary number.

Third, and I think most importantly, the person I'm responding is looking at contractors who _want to be employees_. We can even set aside the fact that such people, in my experience, rarely set up corporations are do the research to find the tax savings you achieve (kudos on that). If you're an in-demand professional there are people who will hire you on terms you like. Every really good software developer I know with over 4 years of experience never spends more than a couple weeks on the market and are _flooded_ with offers, why bother with some contracting "test" when they could have a good job today? The people I'm acquainted with would only subject themselves to that for giant gobs of money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Lots of things follow a Pareto distribution (which is what the author is describing). This is the default distribution for anything that relies on network effects and competes in a market with limited availability.

Famously, word usage follows this pattern (Zipf's law). But other things such as wealth accumulation, product usage, celebrity fame, upvotes on Reddit, etc all have this distribution. It's not possible for every person to read every post, evaluate every possible drink, or watch every movie, so they settle on one of the most immediately available options. So they drink a Coke while watching The Avengers and upvote the top-rated comment on Reddit about it.

</comment><comment><USER26> I would predict things tend toward the bi distribution the article talks about during market lulls and that competition rather than abundance creates the gaussian distribution. In the example of smartphones given, there hasn't been the same rapid progress as there was between each generation even a few years ago. So most middle of the road smartphones are all fairly comparable. That said, if someone wanted to take the energy and time to find the best available of this mid tier I'm sure they could, it's just the majority seeking the middle of the road find the average of this tier good enough. If any revolutionary comes out again soon I would guess there would be an immediate gaussian distribution again

</comment><comment><USER27> I like the idea but it seems the author is just slicing the normal distribution at a point of interest and calling it bifurcated? e.g. with the phone example. "good enough android" or "iphone / flagship android" all the actual phone models are hidden under two higher level labels. Isn't every decision making process with buying essentially try to get the best for your money?

</comment><comment><USER28> If this author's conjectures are correct (and I think there's some truth to them), my honest response is not care about anything. Because I'm not willing to be price gouged. If I know that something priced at the top end for the sake of it, I won't pay. I don't _need_ to care about Taylor Swift that much. I don't _need_ the latest smartphone.

This doesn't work with everything; for example, I could need access to health care. But for the vast majority of non life-or-death purchases, I'll opt-out.

I don't think I agree with the rationale: the bifurcation is more likely based in economics. Niche appeal at 10x the cost might be more profitable that reasonably priced, mass appeal products. E.g., when it comes to things like Taylor Swift tickets. I'm unwilling to spend a few hundred dollars to see her. These live performances are for people who are.

</comment><comment><USER29> This is a dumb article. Wow, the author rediscovered a beta distribution without knowing what a beta distribution is.

<comment><USER28> Not everyone is an expert in statistics. But there were many other interesting points beyond the statistical in the article, like the implication of this phenomena on our economy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Caring about something is not a binary, all-or-nothing affair. I care about some things a lot, others a fair amount, and yet others quite little.

And for most of the examples given in the OP, I still find myself landing in the middle, between two supposed modes.

So I guess I'm not entirely convinced.

</comment><comment><USER31> I wish this guy had some data to back his ideas up.

<comment><USER32> Yes - it would be interesting if you could somehow tie this to our record low unemployment and low inflationary environment.</comment></comment>


I think NY Times copied my article that went to #1 on HN - <AUTHOR> About a week ago (8 October), a blog post I wrote about deleting Facebook went semi-viral on HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18164188 . Nice. 12k hits in 24hours.
Yesterday a very good friend of mine sent me this link https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/10/technology/personaltech/how-to-delete-facebook-instagram-account.html containing an article, extremely closely related to the blog post I wrote. It was written 2 days after I published mine.
Any thoughts? <comment><USER2> It's possible that the writer saw your post and was inspired to make his own. It could just be a coincidence.

Either way, I think the content between your article and his is different enough that it makes no difference. It's a similar topic, sure, but there don't appear to be any signs of plagiarism. There's nothing wrong with being inspired by someone else's post to write on a certain topic. If that were wrong, we would only ever have one point of view on a news event. It's only a problem when your specific phrasing is claimed by someone else as their own.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm super chilled about it. Just a thought. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I haven't read either, but from you saying you 'think they copied' it to rococode saying 'there don't appear to be any signs of plagiarism' seems quite a gap. What makes you say they _copied_ it?

</comment><comment><USER4> Contact the Times:email@example.com or if you have extra cash, a lawyer. The author of the article may be scrutinized by management but no compensation or apology will likely result.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm chilled. Just curious.</comment></comment>


GitHub public code search limited? - <AUTHOR> Not sure if folks here browse github without logging in, but if you try to do a code search it seems like they might be experimenting with limiting public code search?
Example:
https://github.com/search?l=Dockerfile&q=from+python&type=Code
Response:
"We could not perform this search
Must include at least one user, organization, or repository"
Maybe this is only an intermittent thing as they rebuild their search indexes? Maybe it's a new 'feature' being rolled out?
This also seems to come and go for me as a logged in user. <comment><AUTHOR> Are there any other services which index github as a fallback? I've taken for granted how powerful this is.</comment>


My hiring experience as a submarine sonar operator in the Norwegian Navy - <AUTHOR> https://www.brautaset.org/articles/2018/submarine-sonar-hiring.html <comment><USER3> Hearing ability and having an "ear" for sounds are two orthogonal skills.

My hearing is, for lack of a better word, fucked. I'm in my 20's and I have quite bad tinnitus from years of shooting rifles without proper hearing protection [1], using power tools without any hearing protection, and standing next to large speakers at nightclubs for 16 hours every weekend.

Recently I have actually started looking after my ears. I wear high quality earplugs any time I'm somewhere with loud noises.

Anyway, my hearing isn't exactly great, especially in higher frequencies. But I've still got an ear for sounds. Back when I was shooting I'd be able to tell different calibers apart. When listening to a song I'll be able to pick the different samples and instruments apart. I'm also fairly sensitive to how speakers or headphones have been EQed.

It's a bit of a curse really. I really struggle in nightclubs and at raves with poor quality speaker systems. I was at a nightclub a few weeks ago and I spent the whole night being bugged by how off the EQ was. If a club hasn't got its acoustics right and has sound bouncing off the back wall it really bugs me too.

[1] Even for a .22 you need hearing protection, even if your ears don't hurt, the high frequency impact will still damage your hearing. And for shooting hundreds of rounds with AR-15s, foam earplugs are not suitable.

<comment><USER4> And I am in the opposite position. I can't hear a voice in any noisy environment, even when everyone else seems to hear it fine. So I went to do some test and was told by the doctor that my hearing was absolutely fine, that it has to do with the ability of my brain to process sounds...

<comment><USER5> I bet you can re-train the brain on how to hear for that. Could be you've trained the brain one way (maybe too much white noise exposure) and now you need to train it back.

<comment><USER6> Exactly. I learned to find different instruments in songs by watching YouTube videos of producers putting a song together. Now it's much easier for me to pick up that mellow instrument way way in the background of a hook.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> From the hiree perspective, it's clear that many companies are over-listing requirements and it makes sense to apply if you approximately match the position but don't tick every last box in the formal requirements.

I'm not sure why companies over-list. Some think it's so they'll have a defensible reason for saying no in subjective cases, others think they are just being lazy and listing every possible thing they would like to see in the candidate.

<comment><USER8> Also, in some jurisdictions, you are required to hire whoever has the best qualifications for the job (makes sense), but maybe you as an employer already have your sights on someone particular and wants to ensure the chosen candidate is the winner in the end.

Fresh out of university, I applied for a job as a lab rat/hardware designer at another university. The list of qualifications mostly made sense - <USER2> engineering, PCB design, SMT soldering skills, some assembly and C skills, swahili...

Swahili?

When coming to the interview, I walked past the door to a postgrad office liberally decorated with photos from East Africa. Bingo. They had already decided on who to hire; they just needed to make sure the hiring was legit, too.

It did make for an entertaining interview, though - at first they were more than a little embarrassed that their sham hiring process was outed, but once they realised I was OK with it, the mood lightened considerably and I was given a grand tour of their research facilities.

(I already had two other interviews for more relevant positions lined up, so I could appreciate the humour in failing a HW design interview due to deficient Swahili skills...)

<comment><USER9> When companies list many seemingly silly requirements (example, why do I need experience with database x, when I can pick it up in less than a week?), at least two types of candidates will be likely to apply: those that know all of it and possibly more, and those that don't check off all boxes but had the guts to attempt to convince them to pick them anyway.

The one type is going to fit right in and be ready to contribute quickly. The other has the drive to get up to speed and further. Both are much desired people.

<comment><USER10> I can tell you right now that I do _not_ want to hire the people that show up to my interview without checking at least some of the boxes, guts or no.

It's a (senior) programming job, why are you here if you have barely 2 months of experience...?

<comment><USER11> For sure you need them to for sure meet certain requirements.

My current job was listed as full time (Entry/mid level) but I'm a student and in my phone interview told them that - guess they wanted me anyway. My biggest value IMO is that I've dabbled with a lot of stuff. Okay I haven't worked on a personal project in Django, but I'm at the point where the exact language/framework is semi-irrelavant. I was confident I could, and was able to be semi-fluent with Django for example in a few weeks (only 25 hours a week).

My point is that what GP is trying to say is more about "Oh we listed postgres but they've only used mysql" if the person is motivated they should have no issues picking up postgres

<comment><USER12> They shouldn't have listed a database if they don't require a specific vendor of DB for operation.

Jusging by what you are saying you'd probably have a problem telling the two apart, while they will have many differences when run at scale.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> See headline... Think "hmm, I knew a guy in London ages ago who had famously served on a sub in the Norwegian Navy"... Check blog.

Yup, same guy. Guess there aren't that many former Norwegian submariners in the tech world!

</comment><comment><USER14> There are 3 major things that matter in hiring great people: passion, curiosity and drive. If these 3 things exist then rest typically falls in place. For example, if you are hiring a mechanical engineer, do your initial basic tech vetting but the most important thing in your interview would be to understand why this candidate is interested in mechanical engineering (passion)? What does s/he do to learn things in mechanical engineer that are not related to job (curiosity)? How hard this candidate worked when faced with extremely difficult problems (drive)?

If you can frame these questions right and practice this skill over time, you can minimize passing up great candidates who don't look good on paper but are jackpots in disguise.

<comment><USER15> In isolation I agree, but that great person may not be a good fit to the hiring organization entirely due to that greatness. A person with sufficient drive and passion will see one way of doing things that isn't necessarily observable or appreciated to a team of people absent of greatness. In fact this could result in conflict.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Militaries are massive bureaucracies whose management-by-numbers methods often fail to accurately capture individual talents. Glad you found a way through the cracks!

And from a fellow submariner: pound a few at the Periscope Hut for me, and keep a zero bubble.

</comment><comment><USER17> Site is timing out for me. Archive link:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20181121181539/https://www.braut...](https://web.archive.org/web/20181121181539/https://www.brautaset.org/articles/2018/submarine- sonar-hiring.html)

</comment><comment><USER18> Isn't it so the recruiters can have "plausible deniability" for when they discriminate based on age, gender, race etc?

If the feds look into some of these startup hiring practices, they have an excuse that the candidate didn't meet all requirements. But that kind of defeats the spirit of the law.

<comment><USER17> Only if they were discriminating in favor of a different candidate who _did_ possess their unrealistic laundry list of requirements...

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I wonder how many proxy requirements are pre-optimizations with no empirical support?

</comment><comment><USER20> Welcome to the Brothers of the Phin.</comment>


Dirty medicine - <AUTHOR> http://features.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2013/05/15/ranbaxy-fraud-lipitor

<comment><USER2> It's nice to see that our news media can still produce such in-depth investigative journalism on important issues.

The scariest part of this whole story is the FDA's role:

 _"Indeed, the FDA -- charged with protecting the safety and health of Americans -- went even further. Despite the agency's finding of fraud and misconduct, it granted Ranbaxy lucrative rights to sell new generic drugs. In the most high-profile example, in November 2011 the FDA allowed the company to maintain its exclusive first dibs on making the generic version of a medicine taken by tens of millions of Americans: Lipitor."_

</comment><comment><USER3> ... I think this article has permanently scared me off of generic drugs.</comment>


The Procrastination Risk in the Maker's Schedule - <AUTHOR> http://ben.casnocha.com/2010/06/makers-schedule-procrastination-obligations.html

<comment><AUTHOR> key graf:

Bottom Line: The idea of a day totally free of any external commitments or obligations sounds good in theory yet increases the likelihood I procrastinate. On the other hand, a day full of meetings or obligations means I get nothing done. The optimal point is one or two obligations which mark the passing of the day and create a sense of urgency about how I spend the time that's all mine.</comment>


Up to Two-Thirds of Bitcoin Transactions Have No Economic Value - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-26/up-to-two-thirds-of-bitcoin-transactions-have-no-economic-value <comment><USER2> They are just arbitrarily declaring various things to be non-economic transfers. They have enough economic value for the participants to pay to execute them.

If you are going to slice it like that, there are plenty of ACH/SWIFT transfers that are actually just people moving money from account to account or institution to institution too, rather than actual inter-party transactions.

And specifically, if mining pools distributing rewards to participants don't have economic value, then neither does Uber. Mining pools are literally just "the gig economy" for computational power.

I'm as critical of Bitcoin as anyone else but this is just an ad for Elementus's services. "If you want to understand what you're getting into, pay us!".

<comment><USER3> Well you could define 'economic' transactions as those that leave one of the participants with less bitcoin and another participant with more bitcoin.

In that sense mining pool distributions are double-counting - the distribution of the mining reward to the pool and then the distribution of that same reward from the pool to an individual member. (I understand that correctly right?)

A mixer is just shuffling it's coins around so it's non-economic. Spoofed trades are obviously non-economic. 'Market Manipulation' could mean lots of stuff but I wouldn't be surprised if there are bots that enter lots of offsetting trades on both sides of the orderbook to generate volume around specific events. If they're offsetting that's non-economic.

Now maybe 'non-economic' isn't the best term but I do think those sorts of activities should be given a meaningful distinction from the other third of the volume that is 'normal transactions' of individuals buying and selling from/to each other.

<comment><USER4> > In that sense mining pool distributions are double-counting

Let's say I have a customer who pays me, and I pay a bunch of employees or contractors who helped me deliver services to that customer, keeping some profit for myself. Does that have no economic value? Because that's what mining pools do.

> I wouldn't be surprised if there are bots that enter lots of offsetting > trades on both sides of the orderbook to generate volume around specific > events.

There is no order book on Bitcoin, Ethereum, and others. The order books are on web based exchanges, and yeah, there's a lot of fake trading. Most of it is clearly generated by the exchanges themselves and is completely fake. That stuff is so obvious when you look. In those cases the volume dwarfs the depth, so most orders miraculously attract counter parties instantaneously while the rest of the orders just sit there. Exchanges fake it to get a better rank on coinmarketcap, which blindly trusts the trade data from the APIs. And there's wash trades by users of these web based exchanges, but I believe it's significantly less volume than the pure fakes because those guys have to put up real funds so it's only useful to make shitcoins look more popular. In any case, none of that actually makes a transaction on a blockchain. It's just shifting balances in some centralized database.

<comment><USER3> >Let's say I have a customer who pays me, and I pay a bunch of employees or contractors who helped me deliver services to that customer, keeping some profit for myself. Does that have no economic value? Because that's what mining pools do.

Again we're really getting hung up on the term 'economic.' Okay you're the pool, you receive 50 BTC and you pay 45 of that out to miners. Have we transacted 95 BTC or 50 BTC? Is the 'economic value' of our transaction 50 or 95? The best thing is it doesn't even matter what you answer because what's best for everyone is if we know both numbers. Right now all parties interested in BTC can see is the 95. But if I'm investing in BTC I don't care about the 95, I care about the 50 because 50 tells me how much BTC actually changed hands here. And this firm is just trying to find all the double counting and completely fake transactions and remove them from our number.

>There is no order book on Bitcoin, Ethereum, and others. The order books are on web based exchanges

I mean yeah? I don't understand what difference you're trying to draw here.

>yeah, there's a lot of fake trading

>It's just shifting balances in some centralized database.

Exactly and it's the same way in a mining pool as per the above example. 45 BTC is getting counted twice because we shifted it twice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This reminded me of this joke:

Two brokers walk on the street and suddenly one of them proposes: if you eat that shit on the ground you get a million dollars. He eats it very quickly and is amazingly happy with his profit.

A moment later the guy who had eaten the shit proposes the other: if you eat this shit you get a million from me. He also eats it without thinking. After 10 minutes one of them asks: why have we eaten all that shit?

The other replies: Don't you see we have created two million trading volume?

(Apologies if it isn't funny. Don't remember exactly the original and I'm also not a real joke teller type. )

</comment><comment><USER6> I'd be curious about the figures for a similar analysis with the US dollar.

Ex. for a credit card transaction, the 'economic value' of the transaction (purchase price) would be half or less of the total amount of dollars moving (price from CC to merchant, payments from customer to CC). Even if a customer pays off the balance instantly, two transfers of the amount of the purchase price are made: 50% economic value transactions. If making minimum payments, economic value seems like it could constitute less than a third of total amount transferred.

If CC, merchant, and customer all use different banks, there may be more transfers necessary behind the scenes.

<comment><USER7> All of the things that happen in a regular CC transaction have economic value, i.e. buying stuff, interest, loans, network charges, transaction fees etc. etc..

Even BTC-USD trades have economic value obviously.

The article presents transactions which are basically kinds of accounting functions, i.e. tumblers to hide trails etc. etc..

As far as USD, maybe this would be the equivalent of moving USD from one account to another.

Now, clearly it wouldn't be done if there was no value to the transaction ... but it's generally net neutral stuff.

There's now way to compare to the USD because it's generally not something that is tracked at all with fiat currency because it would be pointless. But it just happens to go on the record with BTC.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Aside from speculation the bulk of any commerce done is likely for darknet purchases anyway.

Go look up a list of common darknets, go open a few of the top sellers. Look at their listings, look at how many reviews each listing has. Go back 2 weeks later and check again, you'll be surprised. Now look at how many darknets there are with decent user bases and consider how many sellers each has with moderate activity. Most of that commerce is in bitcoin, some in monero or ETH but mostly bitcoin.

I mean, you can pop on and buy several kilograms of cocaine in a single listing (or any other drug you can think of, some even sell guns and human bones, most also have cvv2 dumps and other identity theft stuff as well as stolen uber accounts any all sorts of other things). With the cocaine for example, you can pull up a 1kg+ listing that will have a dozen or more reviews indicating tens, or hundreds, of thousands of dollars in sales just for a single listing on a single market.

People like to make-believe bitcoin is for legit commerce but it's mostly for speculation and criminal enterprise.

</comment><comment><USER9> Its amazing to see how much people waste in general. I did an analysis the other day and came up with ~ 3 TWh per year wasted just because reddit wants to use "fancy" (annoying to me) layouts:

>"So about 3 TWh extra electricity is being used each year. This is about the total used each year by Papua New Guinea, which is ranked 133/219 in electricity consumption by country." [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17449349](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17449349)

<comment><USER10> At 10c/kWh that seems to imply an annual energy bill of ~$300MM just for the extra bandwidth? There must be a math error in either your math or mine because that seems like an insane amount to spend just on electricity for hosting a mid-size site like Reddit. (It's ballpark 3x their estimated revenue)

<comment><USER9> I'm pretty sure that somehow everyone who visits the site is paying for it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Relativey speaking, all the GPU sales and spiking utility bills are of economic value to the suppliers. /s

</comment><comment><USER12> This article is unfortunately typical of the low quality of reporting on Bitcoin in the popular media.

It provides no independently-verifiable evidence of the claim in the title, nor does it even make a small effort to explain the analysis supposedly done by Cryptocompite, a service whose website consists of nothing more than an email capture.

FWIW, determining the nature of Bitcoin transactions is not trivial. The disposable pseudonym privacy model, coupled with CoinJoin transactions and now increasingly Lightning Network gives users a great deal of privacy power if they choose to use it.

Many analyses I've seen are based on transactions whose users throw that privacy stuff out the window, re-using pseudonyms and posting them to social media.

</comment><comment><USER13> I don't think this is particularly surprising or even a very useful metric, besides I don't understand why for instance "mining pools disbursing coins to members" is considered to have no economic value (the article mentions that "Ethereum co-founder Anthony Di Iorio" shares this sentiment but doesn't justify their choice). Maybe one could expect that trading and speculation would be higher but I suspect that the average bitcoiner just trades directly on the exchanges without ever owning a wallet, or maybe just for "cold storage" if they're wealthy enough. As such I expect most of it is done off- chain.

What I would be curious to know is what portion of the remaining third is actually used to buy goods and services vs. speculation. And for those who actually use it as a currency, how much is for buying legal things. My gut tells me that the number must be ridiculously low.

<comment><USER14> My understanding is that mining pools could just as well have been implemented as a feature of the protocol itself. In Bitcoin, for example, this would be a coinbase transaction with multiple recipients.

If that change changes your reckoning of the accounting, then the difference between more and less trading volume in the network has come down to how you represent the ledger format. At which point you need to choose how to resolve that discrepancy—for example, by always choosing the most compact ledger format possible.

(Analogy: figuring out how many cycles a series of CPU instructions takes to execute. If some of those instructions are hints or pragmas that the CPU consumes without a full cycle, then representing this CPU's instructions in a RISC encoding will give you a different cycle-count estimate than encoding the instructions as CISC, where the hints/pragmas just become part of the CISC instruction they're associated with.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Also on the HN front page today: "close to 40% of multinational profits were artificially shifted to tax havens"

[https://voxeu.org/article/missing-profits- nations](https://voxeu.org/article/missing-profits-nations)

What percentage of US dollar transactions have no economic value?

</comment><comment><USER16> This is all true yet I don't know whether such stats are helpful or misleading for cryptocurrency investors. All of the value of cryptocurrencies is currently due to speculation. You can verify this by putting the economic activity into the velocity of money equation and you get a fundamental value around 1% of the current price. So even if "real" economic activity were to increase massively, it's not clear that there would be any discernible impact on prices.

(And yeah, if my salary counts as an economic transaction then why shouldn't miner payouts? You can avoid double-counting by not counting coinbase transactions.)

</comment><comment><USER17> In the comparison with Ethereum: invoking a smart contract function does not require value transfer beyond gas (transaction cost). Most such calls carry no ether attached, this is how it's supposed to be.

</comment><comment><USER18> What, more than a third of btc transactions have some economic value? This is a fantastic result! /s

</comment><comment><USER19> They sure have value to the miners, and presumably to those who pay those miners transaction fees. A Bitcoin transaction isn't free.

</comment><comment><USER20> Out of curiosity, does anyone know of any information on a similar analysis of fiat currencies? My Google-foo is failing me.

</comment><comment><USER21> As a bitcoin critic, this is a pointless criticism. No one uses bitcoin as a currency, and everyone knows that already.

</comment><comment><USER22> Two thirds seems low

<comment><USER23> I would have guessed about 100%.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Wasn't that the case for most of the internet's history?

</comment><comment><USER25> Just Two-Thirds?

</comment><comment> aaron-santos How many cash transactions have no economic value?

</comment><comment><USER26> lol what does this even mean

<comment><USER27> We've already asked you to please post substantively. We ban accounts that won't.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> With things like HFT what proportion of stock market transactions have economic value?

<comment><AUTHOR> Matt Levine talks about this, and despite its obvious pitfalls (in terms of unfairness amongst players in the market), HFT does provide utility of arbitrage. Also, all that moving around of stocks theoretically provides more liquidity - i.e., it's easier to find a counterparty when you buy and sell; you don't sit there waiting for the trade to execute. I'm no expert, however.

<comment><USER29> There's a distinction to be made between many different players in 'hft'. You have market makers, latency arb, plain old short-term quant trading which all provide different sorts of 'economic value. Most players are running a mix of some to all of these strategies - for example, in options, fast trading on spot moves is really some weird mix of everything from latency arb to market- making to long-term option pricing.

One could argue that pure latency arb (what flash boys portray as hft) is fairly useless since it's just trying to catch stale quotes that market makers would move otherwise, but that's a very small portion of the industry.</comment></comment></comment>


Google Exec Departs Amidst Rumors Of Tangled Love Quadrangle - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/28/google-exec-departs-amidst-rumors-of-tangled-love-quadrangle/

<comment><AUTHOR> Kind of a gossipy story, but also fascinating.</comment>


Your Shit, My Stuff, Goldilocks, and Making the Bed You Sleep In - <AUTHOR> http://blog.frankchimero.com/post/2831408736/your-shit-my-stuff-goldilocks-and-making-the-bed-you

<comment><AUTHOR> This quote really struck me:

"Add things until it starts sucking, take away things until it stops getting better."</comment>


4.2 Kiloyear Event - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4.2_kiloyear_event <comment><USER2> Naming things is hard.

Current name is relative to current date because it talks about an event 4200 years ago. Any literature discussing this will be stuck with this relative name and eventually will become incorrect.

I understand why they don't want to use BC to name a global event that touched all cultures, and far before C was a thing.

Maybe it would make sense to adopt kurzgesagt's Human Era calendar, starting at approximate time of first human settlements. They call current year 12019.

<comment><USER3> Not exactly. A word "BP" in the full name ("4.2-kiloyear BP event") is a key: it stands for "Before Present", where the "Present" is defined as 1 Jan 1950 for the archaeological and geological purpose [1].

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

<comment><USER4> So BP = C + 1950, and this is better how ? Seems worse really, why not just stick with C ?

<comment><USER3> BP specifically means that the date was calibrated [1] after radiocarbon dating. It is not just an epoch difference.

Also, the radiocarbon dating itself (and thus the beginning of effective absolute dating) was invented around 1950, and nuclear weapon tests made everything after that point unsuitable for the radiocarbon dating. It would be natural to have that point as a reference for the "present" at least for now.

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

<comment><USER5> I actually never thought about the fact that human nuclear testing would basically destroy the accuracy of radiocarbon dating. Any distant future civilizations who assumed there had never been any ancient sources of distortion would end up with results that are way off. Of course, that's true of us as well.

<comment><USER3> Technically we are still able to use radiocarbon dating for dates after 1950, at the reduced accuracy though. This is what I meant by "unusable", because other dating techniques will work better.

The calibration is there because the global 14C/12C ratio is not constant over the time, and the same procedure can be used given the recent history of ratios (that we do have). As far as I know, though, resulting error bars might be much larger than usual because the function from uncalibrated ("14C") years to calendar years is no more regular. For example see [1] where uncalibrated t2 and t3 can correspond to much larger periods than t1's; historically this happened only locally, but after 1950 it would be far more common. Still the radiocarbon dating can be used with this caveat [2].

[1] [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Variations_in_calibr...](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Variations_in_calibration_results.png)

[2] [https://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/29/science/29qna.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/29/science/29qna.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_periods_and_events_i...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_periods_and_events_in_climate_history) 'List of periods and events in climate history'

<comment><USER7> I love learning about past Earth climate history and just history in general. One of my mind blowing climate events is:

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

It's not in the list you link, but it's a pretty neat read. Basically, the Mediterranean dried up and refilled about 6 million years ago.

<comment><USER8> And it's _five kilometres deep_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What is the likely cause of this event?

</comment><comment><USER10> I love reading these kinds of wikipedia articles especially when it comes to reprecussions on ancient civilizations.. anyone got a book suggestion for s/t more detailed?

<comment><USER11> Best book on the subject I read is Wright's "A Short History of Progress" [https://www.amazon.com/Short-History-Progress-Ronald- Wright/...](https://www.amazon.com/Short-History-Progress-Ronald- Wright/dp/0786715472) Jared Diamond's "Collapse" is in a similar vein, but less cleanly written.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Funny I just read this [https://m.timesofindia.com/india/two-major-floods- wiped-out-...](https://m.timesofindia.com/india/two-major-floods-wiped-out- several-medieval-indian-dynasties-study/articleshow/72716607.cms)

</comment><comment><USER13> What will this be called in 100 years?

<comment><USER14> "Because the present changes every year, archaeologists, by convention, use A.D. 1950 as their reference. "

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Climate change over time.

</comment><comment><USER16> The chart in the article makes recent man made global warming look insignificant compared to recent changes. Much different than the often sited xkcd, [https://xkcd.com/1732/](https://xkcd.com/1732/), which shows the same time period as basically a flat line. Who is right?

<comment><USER17> All the events in the wikipedia articles are localized, whereas the current global warming is a a global event, which is what is referenced by xkcd.

What this means is that the frequency and/or the intensity of these local outlier events can increase significantly. This is what man-made climate change means and we can still avoid most of the negative effects if we want to.

Often these local climate change events are taken as proof that 'climate has always changed'. Well, yes of course - but not on a global scale during human civilization as we know it.

Personally, imagining these events occuring during our lifetime, maybe several at once or just a couple of decades apart scares the crap out of me.

<comment><USER18> "we can still avoid most of the negative effects if we want to"

There is (possibly a minority) view that no, we can't, and things are far, far worse than people think. That contrary to the idea that people exaggerate the threat, in fact it's been minimized to the point where we are about as prepared for it as we would be for a large asteroid strike.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Climate change over time. Earth actually experienced more than '4.2 Kiloyear Event'.

1.「4.2 Kiloyear event」 - A severe aridification event, occurring around 2200 B.C., that greatly contributed to the fall of the Akkadian empire.

2.「Medieval Warming Period」 - A warmer climate experienced especially in the Northern Hemisphere when Vikings and Inuit were moving to Greenland, around 800-1300 A.D.

3.「Little Ice Age」 - A cooler climate that eventually caused the demise of the Vikings, lasting from circa 1300-1850 A.D.

4.「The Holocene Era」 - Starting about 10,000 years ago, this era includes the Medieval Warming Period, the Little Ice Age, and continues all the way up until today!

</comment><comment><USER20> Seems like evidence that our current climate change might be random.

How do you rule out random climate variation scientifically? I'm curious, do we have enough data to say one way or the other?

I'm hesitant to post this, since it seems like detached scientific conversation about climate change has been in short supply. But perhaps.

<comment><USER21> The warming of our atmosphere is easily predicted by basic science related to greenhouse gasses and solar radiation.

This isn't disputable as randomness any more than an object can be said to have randomly fallen to the ground when dropped.

Here is one of countless sources you can find that explain this principle and the consequences: [https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding- climate/...](https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding- climate/climate-change-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide)

<comment><USER22> >In fact, the last time the atmospheric CO2 amounts were this high was more than 3 million years ago, when temperature was 2°–3°C (3.6°–5.4°F) higher than during the pre-industrial era, and sea level was 15–25 meters (50–80 feet) higher than today.

Doesn't this mean that the correlation between CO2 levels and temperatures isn't that big?

<comment><USER23> I can come up with a couple alternatives to your explanation:

1\. Our current carbon levels haven't been high long enough for their total effects in temperature to be felt yet, given the size of the system they must affect. 50 years is a blip on geological timescales.

2\. There are cascading effects to high CO2 levels that will take longer to manifest themselves and which will raises the temperatures further. Permafrost melting and releasing methane is a possible example.

<comment><USER24> The orbit of the earth around the sun, and the activity of the sun itself are also possible culprits. I'm sure actual climatologists have a better explanation.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google retires Google Health and PowerMeter projects - <AUTHOR> http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/update-on-google-health-and-google.html

<comment><USER2> I can't speak to PowerMeter but on Google Health they have no one to blame but themselves. I desperately wanted to employ it here (I work for an agency that takes in abused children and had envisioned putting the kids records into Google Health so they would start out being able to carry their records wherever they go).

But after just an hour of research I'd already identified over 20 serious issues that could open us up to major liability claims.

To give just one example. This is from Google's own Google health page...

"Unlike a doctor or health plan, Google Health is not regulated by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), a federal law that establishes data confidentiality standards for patient health information. This is because Google does not store data on behalf of health care providers. Instead, our primary relationship is with the user."

Well...ok...but then how are health care providers supposed to put information in for their clients? The whole point of this is for the patient to carry around accurate information. But if the Doctor has to trust the patient will put the information in themselves there's no way to guarantee all the information will be put in correctly. Meaning the records could be more harm than good. Imagine a scenario where the patient forgets to put in allergy information leading a future physician to assume they have no allergies.

(Yes you could provide patients with a zip file to just upload but there's still no guarantee the user won't unzip it and upload it manually or any of a million other stupid things that users sometimes do)

Had Google actually engaged the industry rather than throwing something at them Google Health could have literally changed the world. Which is a far cry from the quick death it has found itself suffering.

<comment><USER3> _Had Google actually engaged the industry_

Engaging the industry is a customer-serving function. I suspect that Google is just not interested in that kind of activity - because if they were, surely they would be better at it.

It almost seems like if a project can't survive by sheer Google brainpower alone, they have no interest in sticking with it.

<comment><USER4> Not necessarily true - their lobbying arm was very successful getting Nevada to allow their self driving cars.

<comment><USER5> Lobbying doesn't strike me as being very similar to B2C customer service.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Microsoft's HealthVault appears to still be in business: <http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/healthvault/> and they seem to be actually doing the work of getting industry partners. I know, MS is icky, but maybe they aren't quite as afflicted with corporate ADHD as Google.

</comment><comment><USER7> The rumors about Google Health's demise have been circulating for the past year or so. But who I really feel bad for in all of this are the handful of Google Health partners that actually tried building their own software and using Google Health as the data store.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm in the health tech industry and thought Google Health was a great idea, but it all boils down to the doctor's office adopting the process. Many Dr's don't grasp technology very well and are usually too busy to care.

I guess they would rather have their customers sit in the waiting room filling out forms than getting them on with their day.

This will eventually be popular, just a little ahead of its time.

<comment><USER9> Sounds like a job for DrChrono. ;)

<comment><USER10> Their own technology and response to security questions hasn't reassured many of us about their commitment to privacy, as I've stated here in response to several of their press releases.

<comment><USER11> I had dinner with some of the DrChrono guys. I think they are working on security issues (which, honestly, lag far behind adoption as a concern; they meet some minimal standard which is technically HIPAA compliant and better than most small practices now.)

The biggest security concern for something like DrChrono IMO is availability; they do a better job of backups, DR, replication than a forgotten windows box running filemaker in the closet of a small medical practice, now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Glad to see them doing the right thing and aiding in the export and migration of their users' data to other services (direct export to a Microsoft product! Would that /ever/ happen at Microsoft?).

<comment><USER12> When Microsoft shut down Windows Live Spaces they provided direct export to WordPress and strongly encouraged their user base to take advantage--is that close enough?

[http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_live/b/windowslive/archiv...](http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_live/b/windowslive/archive/2010/09/27/wordpress- com-and-windows-live-partnering-together-and-providing-an-upgrade- for-30-million-windows-live-spaces-customers.aspx)

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, I meant more Microsoft migrating data from one of their services to Google :) -- but yes it's cool that they offered a data migration path in that instance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> These projects seemed set up for failure from the start. I wonder if this is a systematic problem at big companies (or at least Google). They launch "experimental" projects, dont give them enough resources, and consequently doom them to failure.

OTOH, wave was also given lots of resources (supposedly), so perhaps its just a sign of poor management.

</comment><comment><USER9> We've posted the Wattvision response: <http://blog.wattvision.com> ... there's a coupon code in the post, too.

</comment><comment><USER14> If you had Google PowerMeter and want something similar, come check out <http://PlotWatt.com> \- Not only do we show you how much energy your house is using, we also run data processing algorithms and show you how much each appliance is using.

<comment><USER15> Do you know if there is a solution that will work in Europe (230V/50Hz)?

I was really looking forward to the Google PowerMeter, even email my local power provider, but with no luck.

If I could install such a device in my house, without the need to talk with the utility it would be great.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I guess I should be happy they try to do a lot of things, but it sure puts a break on the idea of being an early adopter of their products. It seems like you should wait a couple years before taking something from Google seriously. This sets up a really crappy catch22 dynamic.

</comment><comment><USER17> I kinda wish Google had better versioning in their infrastructure. While I used neither of these products, their disappearance makes me reluctant to adopt Google products for any core infrastructure. If I buy a program from Microsoft, and Microsoft discontinues it, I get to keep using it forever. If I do the same with Google, since I'm not managing my infrastructure, at some point, it just goes away. It shouldn't be that hard to fork off sets of servers to run frozen, legacy applications, or older versions of non-legacy apps.

</comment><comment><USER18> How Google PowerMeter got it wrong and how to fill the gap <http://bit.ly/kj5ghH>

This is what happens when you build a data black hole...

<comment><USER19> It's considered better etiquette on HN to post the full link, rather than a shortened version. If the link is too long to be displayed, HN will elide it.

[http://blog.pachube.com/2011/06/how-google-powermeter-got- it...](http://blog.pachube.com/2011/06/how-google-powermeter-got-it-wrong- and.html)

Edit: I also consider it useful to claim ownership of any of your own sites you link.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Bummer, I had linked a workout app called CardioTrainer for Android to Google Health to store fitness information in the cloud.

<comment><USER21> Looks like Microsoft offering is still alive and you could actually use that. That's what google seems to be suggesting its users. Oddly enough...

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm a massive nerd who spends ungodly amounts of time online, yet:

* I've only heard of Google Health in one obscure place, and I don't even remember where. I checked it out, put some info into it, but didn't see how it was of use to me.

* I've never heard of PowerMeter. Ever.

* I still have no idea what Wave was about.

I don't know what's going on with them, but this, combined with things like the really lousy duplicate-login migration with Google Hosted, makes me very hesitant to get on-board with anything new from the Goog. It's like a ball- dropping convention hosted by MENSA.

</comment><comment><USER21> This is what I love and hate about this company. They are not afraid to release products and then kill them shortly. They are no afraid to experiment. Keeps them looking like they are always innovating and ahead of the curve.

The unfortunate part is that as a software developer it does not give me a confidence in the logevity of any google platform. I have a friend who was gearing up to use the platform and was testing out an idea that he was hoping to launch soon. I bet he won't be as confident taking dependency on Google platform the next time.

<comment><USER23> _Keeps them looking like they are always innovating and ahead of the curve._

lately, most of google's products have come out behind the curve, lacking polish and functionality, and then fail to gain traction and get killed off.

<comment><USER21> True. That's why I said it keeps them "looking like" they are innovating. Failed or not, each small product or feature release gives them PR points. Look at +1, buzz or any other new products. They are all the rage when they are released. Everybody hails Google as the new king of innovation and when the products are killed a few months/years dows the line, the only people complaining are developers who took dependency on that product thinking it was a good long term platform bet.</comment></comment></comment>


A middle school requires kids to dance with anyone who asks. One mom is suing - <AUTHOR> https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/a-middle-school-requires-kids-to-dance-with-anyone-who-asks-one-mom-is-fighting-for-her-daughters-right-to-say-no/ar-BB10sDxR?ocid=st2 <comment><USER2> No one should be required to dance, but the jump to rape seems a bit much.

I do recall those middle school dances, and the realization that I was one of the boys no girl would be caught dead dancing with was crushing at the time.

What would have been better? Maybe zap the dances and use that time to educate kids on the realities of life and how to make oneself more appealing.</comment>


Why didn't the Native Americans ever advance technologically? - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/Why-didnt-the-Native-Americans-ever-advance-technologically-over-thousands-of-years-while-Europe-and-Asia-advanced-dramatically/answer/Al-Carroll?srid=obCO&share=1

<comment><USER2> 1) they sure did advance technologically. Compare the Clovis culture of the Lithic stage to the Aztecs of the Post-Classic stage.

2) The book "Guns, Germs, and Steel" goes into this topic in detail, without starting from the wrong premise that Native Americans made no technological advancements.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow, deceptive submission title.

</comment><comment><USER4> Are you crazy? Have you ever been to a casino?? "Whach talkin bout, willis?</comment>


6 Reasons Housing Is About to Become Even More Unaffordable - <AUTHOR> https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/housing-crisis-inequality-harvard-report_us_5b27c1f1e4b056b2263c621e <comment><USER2> 7) Because we refuse to acknowledge the simple equation needed to fix it. When a city adds a new job it has to add a new home. Mountain View ca is a perfect example. 10k jobs created in a decade, zero new homes. They are a perfect example of what not to do.

</comment><comment><USER3> clickbait headline, while the article is interesting, it's not about the imminent rise in housing prices really...

</comment><comment><USER4> There are plenty of affordable houses, it's just that they are NOT in the places where people either can find jobs or where they want to live. Everybody wants to be in the same few places at the same time, driving up costs.

The only fix I see is some kind of gov't incentives to develop slumping towns and/or tax breaks or other financial incentives to move to low-demand areas. But, that's "socialism", and you know how well the S-word plays in middle- America. We collectively got what we deserve.</comment>


Swiss university launches Human Brain Project - <AUTHOR> http://bigstory.ap.org/article/swiss-university-launches-human-brain-project

<comment><AUTHOR> Link to the project's site: [https://www.humanbrainproject.eu/](https://www.humanbrainproject.eu/)</comment>