Where have you gone, Peter Norton? - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologizer.com/2014/06/05/where-have-you-gone-peter-norton/ <comment><USER2> Peter Norton was my hero way back in the late 80's to early 90's.

I remember the first time I used Unerase to recover a deleted file and was fascinated by it. Then I discovered DiskEdit and began poking around in the FAT system and found out more about how DOS actually deletes a file. It actually marks the first character with a ?. Thus started my hacking days.

Then I used DiskEdit to bypass copy protection hacking the byte codes.

DiskEdit rescued me again when I switch to DR-DOS, set passwords on my files and forgot the passwords (fwiw, it was just setting the next dozen or so bytes after the file name in the FAT to zero)

Such memomories, DiskEdit and SideKick were my two must have utilities in the days of DOS

<comment><USER3> I learned x86 via his books, quite good reading, specially how to write a DiskEdit clone.

<comment><USER4> Guys, I hate to crash your heroes but it is John Socha [0] who you should really admire :)

He wrote Norton Commander and that Assembly book which was published under Norton's name.

[0] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Socha](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Socha)

<comment><USER3> Interesting. Thanks for pointing it out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Which reminds me that to this day there is no good replacement for Norton Commander (for UNIX systems, of course).

Please, don't even start mentioning Midnight Commander. It is nowhere near as good. Oh, sure, it has a bazillion fancy features, but it just doesn't work that well, isn't as smooth as the original was. Remember, kids, not every file manager that has two panes can be called a "Norton Commander replacement"!

Those of us who grew up using Norton Commander still look at the redesigned ("improved") numpads on modern keyboards and shake their head in horror and disbelief, remapping those keys to what they Should Be.

<comment><USER6> I still mourn the passing of Vern Buerg's LIST.COM (and Buerg (d. 2009) himself) though the enhanced v1.81 version is still available for download if you search for it, it is 16-bit only, and would anyhow be not much use to me since I migrated to Linux 18 or so years ago.

A 32bit/64bit replacement is being worked on with a beta available ( [http://www.bizer.com/zblist/](http://www.bizer.com/zblist/) ) but that seems to be windows only and closed.

The capabilities and performance of this tiny program were a source of wonder to me in my early dealings with the PC platform.

<comment><USER7> Ahhhh, list.com! Used to use that all the time! When it became list.exe I thought "well there goes the neighborhood."

<comment><USER8> Same here, used list.com all the time back in the day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Disassembling the Norton Utilities and annotating them was an excellent way to learn how to program X86, I'm not sure if by then Peter was still writing himself or too busy managing his growing empire but that was some pretty tight code. Think 'gnu base utils' but instead of in C a good chunk of it (if not all) was in assembler.

It's a pity the article does not really answer the question in the title, Peter is simply getting older (he's probably in his 70's now). Here he is at some function a few years ago, looking happy and well:

[http://i558.photobucket.com/albums/ss23/Image- Gallery/norton...](http://i558.photobucket.com/albums/ss23/Image- Gallery/norton.jpg)

I wish him a very long life and much joy, he's done a ton of good for the PC industry and his books on low level PC stuff were quite useful.

<comment><USER10> Imgur link: [http://i.imgur.com/P2q0nLH.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/P2q0nLH.jpg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Midnight Commander lives on :)

For those unfamiliar, it's a remake of the Norton Commander for Linux / Unix: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norton_Commander](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norton_Commander)

<comment><USER12> No! XTREE!

<comment><USER13> If you liked XTree, there's [http://www.ztree.com](http://www.ztree.com) It's been in active development for... as long as I can remember. Think XTree on steroids. Norton Commander was neat, but XTree blew it away.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It was a different time obviously but still goes to show you can still achieve great things even if you are not the typical 20-something hacker anymore ;) Peter Norton was around 40 years old when he first released Norton Utilities and started that remarkable part of his career. Given the time, he probably didn't even start programming until he was 30.

</comment><comment><USER15> This article poses a question it never really answers to one's satisfaction

<comment><USER16> So, like life?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Peter Norton's books, or at least the ones he wrote himself initially, were wonderfully clear and well written, even though they absolutely got down to the bare metal. I kept my copies for many years because I could not bring myself to get rid of them.

</comment><comment><USER18> I worked at symc for a while and the conventional wisdom was that taking Norton off the boxes was a way to reduce the royalties that needed to be paid to him.

There is also a line of enterprise products dubbed "Symantec Antivirus" that reduces royalties even further.

</comment><comment><USER19> Too bad that these days Symantec/Norton AV is more known for 1) being installed on millions of PCs by the manufacturer, including on the recovery CDs and 2) being a performance sucker. Norton/Symantec AV is best called crapware these days.

First thing I do on every client's computer is remove Norton/Symantec, solves about 50% of the "why is my PC slow" questions

<comment><USER20> Last week I lost a few hours removing the 30-days trial Norton sofware from my aunt-in-law new notebook. I felt very sad remembering the old good days of the Norton suit :(.

Link to complete uninstaller: [https://support.norton.com/sp/en/us/home/current/solutions/k...](https://support.norton.com/sp/en/us/home/current/solutions/kb20080710133834EN_EndUserProfile_en_us)

<comment><USER19> In other words: Another great product down the drain. It's a real pity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Anyone remember the Norton Editor? One of the first commercial text editors. And actually decent for it's time.

<comment><USER22> Yes!! Turbo Pascal had an okay editor, but I remember always firing up ne.com when I needed to edit a lot of code. There was a menu when you pressed F4 for "block" commands, like copying and pasting.

One of my to-do's is to write an emacs mode would emulate the Norton Editor, and then my geek life would be considered complete.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Norton Desktop, an EGA monitor, and Windows 3.11 had some early magic.

</comment><comment><USER24> I will always remember the nights I spent reading Norton books to write my first (and only) TSR (Terminate and State Resident) program: Upon detecting a floppy disk inserted in A: or B: it would ask for a password before granting access.

Ahh, I am getting old.

</comment><comment><USER25> Norton ghost was quite awesome. It was the poor man's VM.

</comment><comment><USER26> It's kind of interesting how both Norton and McAfee faded into obscurity (or tried to) after publishing and eventually detaching from security software -- and probably not coincidental.

<comment><USER27> I, uh, would disagree that McAfee has tried to fade in to obscurity. His recent media appearances have been quite interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> For those questioning why Peter Norton had his arms crossed, he was waiting for Windows to load.

</comment><comment><USER29> Screw Peter Norton, I want to know what happened to Patrick Norton! :(

</comment><comment><USER30> Surprised not to see the Norton Guides being mentioned yet :-)

</comment><comment><USER31> But what about _NORMAN_ Antivirus?</comment>


Grow your app from (db) seeds - <AUTHOR> http://railsfreak.com/post/481785306/grow-your-app-from-seeds

<comment><USER2> hmm I usually use the seeds to populate the database with mandatory production data and for the fake/development datas I usually make some rake tasks with the faker and populator gem.</comment>


Trying to See Through: A Unified Theory of Nerddom - <AUTHOR> http://theviewfromhell.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/trying-to-see-through-unified-theory-of.html

<comment><USER2> This is a good article, but the title doesn't do it justice.

The point that stuck out for me:

Do you find yourself reading/watching/listening to things that leave you feeling a little smarter than you know you have any right to feel? Malcolm Gladwell, TED, etc? The author calls these "insight porn", and posits that they trigger some of the same pleasure centers as real learning.

That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it isn't a full replacement for the real thing, either.

I've often felt this, and been bothered by it, but haven't figured out an effective filter. Source is a good negative indicator (skip the Gladwell unless I'm feeling like powdered cheese), but there are lots of amateur gladwells out there too.

The real stuff is harder to locate, identify, and digest.

And honestly, sometimes the cheap alternatives have a greater ROI, since the investment is so much lower, and the return isn't quantified objectively.

<comment><USER3> My issue with Malcolm Gladwell, and others like him, is that he distills information down to a thesis that is so easily digestible as to make it seem like commonsense. You don't really _think_ when you read a Malcolm Gladwell book. You just sort of scan it, page by page, your critical and evaluative faculties turned off, and nod your head. It's like the highly refined white flour of insight.

I admire Gladwell the man, and I think he probably has a net-positive impact on most people who read him. But he's highly disappointing for those who want a real spark of insight, or an intellectual exercise. (Also, tangentially speaking, his books are pretty repetitive; most of them could be summed up adequately by a single paragraph, if not a single-sentence logline).

I guess the real question is: are we, the self-described nerds of the article, really better off in a world full of Gladwells? Or were we better off when insight was hard to come by, and you had to go off looking for it? We have a lot more information and insight at our fingertips, but have our critical thinking skills atrophied accordingly? I realize you could take this line of thought a little too far and follow a sort of neo-Luddite vein with it. But that's not my intent. Rather, I'm just asking if all this ready-to-eat insight is actually good for us. I think it's good for the averages, but we probably think of ourselves as being at the margins.

<comment><USER4> I wonder if your admiration would continue if you read his S.H.A.M.E. profile: <http://shameproject.com/profile/malcolm-gladwell-2/>

<comment><USER3> If even half of that is true, then it does indeed taint my opinion of him, and fairly seriously.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is this article not insight porn itself?

Also I can never get through anything with such broad generalizing statements.

</comment><comment><USER6> Sure, some concepts are hard to grasp. Once upon a time the same was true of multiplcation. And reading. Then we, as a species, grew up. The only serious question is this: are you content to be part of a self-congratulatory "mostly male" priesthood, or do you consider that a problem to be solved?

</comment><comment><USER7> whoa. Looks like I have a new addiction: "insight porn". whoa.</comment>


New Experiment Shows the Uncertainty Principle Isn't as Uncertain as We Thought - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencealert.com/new-research-says-the-uncertainty-principle-might-be-slightly-more-certain <comment><USER2> The article is very confusing, but the takeaway is:

> _So, in the end, Heisenberg 's Uncertainty Principle emerges triumphant._</comment>


The Crash of United Flight 232 (2017) - mighty-fine https://www.popularmechanics.com/flight/a10478/the-final-flight-of-united-232-16755928/ <comment><AUTHOR> Al Haynes passed away last week:

[https://www.npr.org/2019/08/26/754458583/al-haynes-pilot- fro...](https://www.npr.org/2019/08/26/754458583/al-haynes-pilot-from- miraculous-1989-crash-landing-has-died)

This talk by him is well worth reading:

[http://clear-prop.org/aviation/haynes.html](http://clear- prop.org/aviation/haynes.html)

(The talk used to be available on YouTube, but was removed sometime in the last year by copyright claim. I can't find an alternate source for it. The video was at [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZYHMMMeHic](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZYHMMMeHic))

Denny Fitch passed away in 2012:

[https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo- way/2012/05/10/152402632...](https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo- way/2012/05/10/152402632/hero-pilot-in-1989-united-crash-dies)

Fitch was interviewed by Errol Morris in an episode of "First Person" called "Leaving the Earth." It's still on YouTube:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8vdkTz0zqI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8vdkTz0zqI)

Wikipedia page on the crash:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232)

<comment><USER2> It's such an inspirational story to read about, even though a lot of people died.

This was one of the strongest proof points that crew resource management really worked. It was the final nail in the coffin for forces that resisted or only reluctantly adopted CRM. It's clear that it took a whole lot of teamwork to get that plane down.

Aviation is much safer than it was in the 80's, and the lessons learned from relative successes like the Sioux City crash can be thanked for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Interesting random fact about this crash. On board was a man by the name of John Stille. He had invented a very versatile carbon-carbon bond formation that bears his name "the Stille reaction".

His work eventually resulted in a Nobel prize for the scientists who built upon it.

He didn't survive the crash.

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

</comment><comment><USER4> Air Crash Investigation/Mayday does a pretty good dramatization of this flight:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-UM- YcwWBc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-UM-YcwWBc)

A similar incident took place in 2003 on a DHL cargo plane after being hit by a surface-to-air missile. Miraculously they did manage to land the plane intact despite the total loss of hydraulics and needing to rely on engine thrust alone to control the plane.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_Baghdad_DHL_attempted_sho...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_Baghdad_DHL_attempted_shootdown_incident)

The Mayday episode might also mention (least from my memory of last watching it) an experimental NASA program developed sometime after this crash that would allow "full airplane control" via computer in the event one more more control surfaces could not be used. It achieved this by translating normal flight inputs into sophisticated throttle manipulation of the engines, just like the pilots on flight 232 did, but with the reflexes and modeling of a computer.

[https://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/pdf/88794main_PCA.pdf](https://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/pdf/88794main_PCA.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER5> With all the attention given to the 737 MAX lately, it's easy to forget that airline travel is dramatically safer today than it was just 30 years ago when this incident took place.

Fatalities per revenue passenger-mile have decreased by a factor of 15x from 1989 to 2018 (and 54x from 1970 to 2018) [1].

[1] [https://theblogbyjavier.com/2019/01/02/aviation-safety- evolu...](https://theblogbyjavier.com/2019/01/02/aviation-safety- evolution-2018-update/)

<comment><USER6> Now assume Boeing and the FAA did their jobs and re-calculate.

<comment><USER7> So things get better over time but instead of recognizing the advances made, you take the point of view that nothing is good enough because it could have been better?

<comment><USER8> Well, you can chalk the first 737 MAX crash up to greed, hubris, bad design decisions and a generally rotten culture in a once great, engineering driven company.

Not grounding the plane after that, despite the fact that Boeing must have had the knowledge of what have gone on is corporate mass murder for profit.

 _you take the point of view that nothing is good enough because it could have been better?_

Yes, it would definitely had been better if 346 people wouldn't have been killed by a greedy corporate behemoth, which very obviously cares much more about profits than about the people they killed. This point is pretty obvious when you listen to their mealy mouthed pr bullshit.

I trust this answers your question.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "A fireball and smoke rose from the middle portion of the plane as banks of seats began vaulting and somersaulting high above the flames. Some of the banks of seats were thrown far above the fuselage in great parabolas, shot as if from a cannon by the centrifugal force of the aft end of the fuselage swinging in its majestic, flaming arc. What must it have been like to take that ride, alive, aloft, alone, aware, unhurt as yet, and looking down on the green earth?"

Holy shit.

<comment><USER10> If there's any mercy in the universe, they would have been unconscious from the g-forces.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It was a grim situation, but I don't think the end of the article does justice to the fact that nearly two-thirds of the passengers survived what by all rights should have been completely unsurvivable, thanks to the sterling performance of the flight crew and the flight instructor, as well as the flight attendants for keeping everyone calm and prepared, and the control tower personnel for getting a prodigious amount of local firefighters and EMTs on the scene before the plane arrived.

It was, as Wikipedia dryly puts it, "a prime example of successful crew resource management," and had a big influence on training practices as airlines sought to replicate that professionalism.

United Flight 232 was an engineering disaster, but a piloting miracle.

</comment><comment><USER12> Here's a computer simulation showing everything behind this crash landing

[https://youtu.be/SqDlEgZYgww](https://youtu.be/SqDlEgZYgww)

</comment><comment><USER13> I heard Al Haynes speak in a small group setting regarding this incident when I was in aviation college.

The amount of composure they had to maintain to even get this aircraft near an airport was unbelievable.

<comment><AUTHOR> Between the four pilots they had nearly 90,000 hours of flight time. Haynes had 30,000, of which ~7,200 where on type. Records had 20,000, Dvorak 15,000 and Fitch had 23,000. Fitch had amazingly practiced flying in a simulator with throttles-only after hearing about JAL 123.

If any crew was going to land this plane, it was this one.

<comment><USER14> Amazing how that turns out. Like when Sulley had to ditch that flight into the Hudson, and just so happened to be an instructor of water landings. What are the odds?

<comment><USER15> Could be some survivor bias here. One 747 Max happened to have a jumpseat pilot who knew how to fix the MCAS issue and the plane flew on without issue and thus without much media coverage. [1]

Presumably, 2 other 747 Max's didn't have enough SME's on board to save them and crashed.

[1] [https://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2019/03/jump-seat-pilot- an...](https://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2019/03/jump-seat-pilot-and- boeing-737-max/585301/)

<comment> Ono-Sendai 737

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I notice that the flight instructor disobeys the captain, who says to says to remove power from the engines, and does the opposite right as they're touching down.

Was there ever any thought as to whether that contributed to the loss of life?

<comment><USER17> Presumably using only one engine would have prevented the plane from flipping like it did, but it might have smashed into the ground harder or turned into a fireball.

Ultimately it is impossible to say what kind of effect it would have had, though I'm inclined to say it would likely have been better if the thrust was applied equally.

<comment><USER18> Thrust was applied equally in the cockpit, but jet engines don't respond immediately and don't spool up in sync. Normally that's not an issue because you're not making large adjustments in short spans of time, you can use various control surfaces to compensate for the brief asynchrony, and you're far enough away from the ground to have room to maneuver.

If you remember the Korean airlines flight that crashed at SFO a few years back, the spool up time for the engines came into play as well. The pilots noticed the issue with too little time for the engines to deliver more power before the plane crashed.

<comment><USER2> Yah. The thing is, long-period oscillation modes (phugoid, etc) exist in aircraft but are so readily controlled by pilots with conventional controls that they mostly don't matter from a certification standpoint (and would be difficult to avoid, anyways).

But jet engines are slow enough that any significant control of 10-30s period oscillations with engine thrust alone would be a real, real challenge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is one of those classic aviation tales I'm never not going to re-read when they pop up, right there with the Gimli Glider [1] and the various SR-71 stories.

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

<comment><USER20> For me it's BA9 that piques my amazement

"Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped. We are doing our damnedest to get them going again. I trust you are not in too much distress"

And for absurdity the one where the pilot was sucked out of the window and the cabin crew had to hold on to him

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airways_Flight_5390](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airways_Flight_5390)

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airways_Flight_9](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airways_Flight_9)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I wonder if the same McDonnell Douglas corporate culture behind the flawed DC 10 is what led to the MAX? It's often said Boeing's acquisition of Douglas was more of a reverse takeover.

On a side note, I once met an aircraft investigator who called it the Death Cruiser 10, and that it put his kids through college!

</comment><comment> matt-attack One thing I never understood as a kid, was why wasn't there better footage of a crash. Many people at the airport knew the plane was coming in, and they had plenty of time. Yes this wasn't 2019 where everyone has a camera in their pocket, but nonetheless I always thought the could have done better than the crazy shot through the chain-link fence.

<comment><USER22> It seems to me the reason is simply that it wasn't anyone's job to make sure there was really great footage of the crash. Everyone was too busy preparing to respond to an imminent disaster in which nearly 300 lives were, in all probability, about to be lost.

"Hey Bob, you have that VHS recorder stowed away somewhere in the locker room, don't you? This guy on something called a website 30 years in the future is going to really wish that we got great footage of a horrible crash in which dozens of people die. Why don't you run out a little closer to the airstrip where a nearly completely out-of-control airplane flying at an insane speed is about to slam into the ground? Future spectators will really appreciate it."

<comment> matt-attack I'd image it would have provided more than just lulz. It'd think a video like that would be of enormous engineering value in crash-dynamics.

<comment><USER23> They may have felt it would be too disrespectful to film the death of so many people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> IIRC, several policy changes resulted from this crash:

\- Pathway lighting for exits

\- Reminding passengers that the nearest exit may be behind you (not all airlines remind you)

\- Changes in how lap children are dealt with during an emergency.

</comment><comment><USER25> This book about the incident is a great read. [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Flight-232-Story-Disaster- Survival/...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Flight-232-Story-Disaster- Survival/dp/0393240029)

It goes into detail about the causes of the crash, the stories of the passengers before and after the crash.

</comment><comment><USER26> I also remember something about Sioux City itself - the hospital was at shift change, so they were able to have just about 2x the normal amount of staff available.

They had enough advance warning and were able to start getting more fire/EMS resources heading that way as well.

</comment><comment><USER6> 111 people died on that flight according to Wikipedia, more amazingly, 185 survived.

</comment><comment><USER27> Would ditching (assuming there was a large body of water near) or landing in a huge cornfield (like Ural Airlines 178 out of ZIA (Moscow-Zhukovsky)) have made it better or worse?

<comment><USER28> Disclaimer: this is total speculation from someone completely unqualified to speculate about aviation

Given the violence of the crash due to the total lack of fine control, likely worse.

A fire in the cornfield could have killed many more people as would the lack of emergency firefighting and medical attention.

A plane that broke apart in the water would likely just lead to most passengers quickly drowning. It might work if the plane remained intact, but that requires landing level and slow, something they had no ability to control.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Did the kids without seatbelts all die? I can't imagine what I would do as a parent of one of those babies if I were told to put them on the ground. Like... Hell no!

</comment><comment><USER30> Note that this _article_ is from 2017, but the _crash-landing_ was in 1989.

</comment><comment><USER31> so back in the day we had to watch film footage of this as part of the training for working on Boeing aircraft electrical wirings.

</comment><comment><USER32> Not sure if anyone's posted this yet.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hL13-nYfnOQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hL13-nYfnOQ)

</comment><comment><USER33> I'd never read about this flight before. Thanks for the share. Tragic about the loss of life.

<comment><USER34> I was a senior in high school in a suburb outside Minneapolis, and I remember it very well. What was so heartbreaking is that it looked like they were going to be fine, right up until the very end when the right wingtip went down, dug in and they started cartwheeling. After seeing that, I was amazed that anyone survived.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> "When the plane pancaked onto the runway, more than 10,000 pounds of kerosene came out all at once from the ruptured right wing and turned to mist."

I wonder why they didn't "dump the fuel" just before the crash to have avoided the fire. I thought this was standard operating procedure to dump fuel before crash landings.

I had read about the crash awhile ago and as I recall many people that died died of smoke inhalation from the fire and not the impact itself.

<comment><USER36> Apparently they did dump some of the fuel: "While dumping some of the excess fuel, ..." ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232#Cra...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232#Crash_landing))

Possibly the pilots were reluctant to dump too much fuel, since the two remaining engines were their only method of steering the plane. A lack of fuel was the last thing they needed.

<comment><USER37> Interesting. Or perhaps it would create more balance issues. Regardless, it sounds like it was considered by someone with more experience flying airliners than myself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> mr_sam-v Damn I never heard of this and ngl that's pretty dramatically amazing</comment>


Word Processors: Stupid and Inefficient - <AUTHOR> http://ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu/~cottrell/wp.html

<comment><USER2> Another good alternative these days is a processor of reStructuredText.</comment>


There's a 5% chance that these results are total bullshit - <AUTHOR> http://metricsparrow.com/theres-a-5-chance-that-these-results-are-total-bullshit/ <comment><USER2> > Stop saying: "We've reached 95% statistical significance."

> And start saying: "There's a 5% chance that these results are total > bullshit."

Argh, no, no, no and no!

95% significance is NOT 95% probability! When you select a confidence level of a 95%, the probability that your results are nonsense is ZERO or ONE. There is no probability statement associated to it. Just because something is unknown does not mean that you can make a probability statement about it, and the mathematics around statistical testing all depend on the assumption that the parameter being tested is not random, merely unknown...

Rather, 95% statistical significance means, we got this number from a procedure that 95% of the time produces the right thing, but we have no idea whether this particular number we got is correct or not.

UNLESS!

Unless you're doing Bayesian stats. But in that case your procedure looks completely different and produces very different probability intervals instead of confidence intervals, and you don't talk about statistical significance at all, but about raw probabilities.

<comment><USER3> I'm not really sure what you're trying to say.

> Rather, 95% statistical significance means, we got this number from a > procedure that 95% of the time produces the right thing, but we have no idea > whether this particular number we got is correct or not.

I.e. We got this number from a procedure and there's a 5% chance it didn't produce the right thing.

<comment><USER4> Nope. It's "If we did this infinitely more times, there's a 5% of those samples wouldn't have significant results". It's a subtle but important distinction.

Though I'm surprised that his advice wasn't "Report confidence intervals at least". There's _much_ more meaningful information in a point estimate and confidence interval than "p < 0.05"

<comment><USER5> Sorry, confidence intervals are just a different presentation of the same information as p-values, and don't contain any more or less information.

<comment><USER4> While built off the same information, and it's possible to do an ad hoc significance test off it, confidence intervals tell you more about the spread of estimate. _Especially_ if, as the author is suggesting, you're not even reporting the actual p-value, but just whether or not it's below a particular threshold.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> No.

In Frequentist thinking; p=0.05 means that if there was in reality no difference in your A and B and you repeated the experiment many times, 5% of the observed differences would be equal to or greater than the difference you just measured.

No probabilistic statement about the results being correct or incorrect can be made from a Null-Hypothesis significance test.

<comment><AUTHOR> (apologies for repeating from above)

If you have a few minutes to spare, I would very much welcome your thoughts so that I can either correct the article, or take it down - The last thing I want is for it to sit out there on the open internet as misinformation.

My goal was to create a framework which — while less mathematically accurate (hence "rhetorical device") — helped convey the seriousness of making business decisions based on P = 0.05 to people for whom 95% statistical significance doesn't mean anything. And clearly, based on reactions here, I failed at that goal.

So, if you're game, I'll quickly to walk you through my thinking, and you can help me understand where I went wrong. Best way to contact?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've long argued that the biggest problem with orthodox NHST for A/B testing is that you actually don't care about 'significance of effect' as much as you do 'magnitude of effect'. Furthermore, p-values tell you nothing about the range of possible improvements (or lack thereof) you're facing. Maybe you are willing to risk potential losses for potentially huge gains, or maybe you can't afford to lose a single customer and would rather exchange time for certainty.

My favored approach I've outlined here[0]. Where the problem is basically considered one of Bayesian parameter estimation. Benefits include:

1\. Output is a range of possible improvements so you can reason about risk/reward for calling a test early.

2\. Allows the use of prior information to prevent very early stopping, and provide better estimates early on.

3\. Every piece of the testing setup is, imho, easy to understand (ignore this benefit if you can comfortably derive Student's T-distribution from first principles)

[0] [https://www.countbayesie.com/blog/2015/4/25/bayesian-ab- test...](https://www.countbayesie.com/blog/2015/4/25/bayesian-ab-testing)

</comment><comment><USER8> Lots of knit picking here. In plain English, confidence intervals are about your results being bogus. You flipped 100 coins, all of them came up heads, you conclude 100% of coin tosses come up heads. By chance, you got a very unlikely sample that differed substantially from the population. You could also conclude your A/B test is a success, when it was just randomly atypical.

</comment><comment><USER9> You have to wonder: what else from their junior year in college did mr. Avshalomov get completely wrong?

How many of the recent YC graduates fail at basic numeracy? Does node.js mean you don't have to understand data structures and algorithms to successfully "preneur" too?

I mean, in finance this doesn't do. Or in consulting. So there's adverse selection to worry too.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm not a statistician, but lately I've been wondering:

When we're A/B testing code, the code is already written. If there's a 5%, or even 15% chance of it being bullshit, who cares? The effort is usually exactly the same if I switch or not.

It's my understanding that 95%, 99%, etc, were established for things that require extra change. We don't want to spend extra time developing and marketing a new drug if it isn't effective. We don't want to tell people to do A instead of B if we aren't sure A is really better than B.

But in software I've already spent all the time I need to to implement the variation on the feature. So given that, why do I need 95%?

I would appreciate if someone with more knowledge can answer this question.

Edit to add: I see a lot of answers about the cost to keep the code around. What about A/B tests that don't require extra code, just different code? Most of our A/B tests fall into this category.

<comment><USER11> Would you push a feature that negative affected your product? 95% confidence you will be able to know if you're feature is indeed positive, negative, or roughly neutral.

<comment><USER12> I think the core question is:

validation of upside vs validation of downside

as in: i want to avoid pushing something that is worse but i am optimistic (up to even indifferent) about how much something is better

personal opinion: data trains gut-feeling

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It gets even worse.

If you try 100 tests, and pick the 5 that pass the Statistically Significant threshold, most likely all 5 are BS.

</comment><comment><USER14> Is it just me or this sentence makes no mathematical sense at all?

"If you're running squeaky clean A/B tests at 95% statistical significance and you run 20 tests this year, odds are one of the results you report (and act on) is going to be straight up wrong."

</comment><comment><USER4> "We're taking techniques that were designed for static sample sizes and applying them to continuous datasets" \- Wait, seriously? Do A/B testers not use the _very_ well developed techniques that exist for time-series data?

</comment><comment><USER15> It just means A is slightly worse than B. Or equal to B. Or much worse than B, but that is quite unlikely (way less than 5%).</comment>


Finding the closest data center using GeoIP and indexing - <AUTHOR> http://www.turnkeylinux.org/blog/geoip-amazon-regions <comment><USER2> Is the physically closest data center always the closest wrt routing? I'd think the more important metric is number of hops and ping time over sheer geographical proximity.

<comment><AUTHOR> I totally agree that basing solely off geographic location is not adequate, so let me clarify the implementation details.

In production, we use GeoIP to determine the country/state of the server in question, and then perform a lookup in the generated indexes to determine the preferred region. I say preferred (and not closest) because the indexes are static, and are not calculated on the fly. This was a design decision to allow us to tweak the indexes with the help of community feedback.

The location based calculation described was used to generate the baseline indexes to provide a relatively good starting point. One of the reasons for writing this blog post and publishing the indexes, was to take us to the next phase of tweaking the indexes, hence the closing paragraph:

"we need your help to tweak the indexes - as you have better knowledge and experience on your connection latency and speed. Please let us know if you think we should associate your country/state to a different Amazon region."

The countries and US indexes consist of 249 and 62 entries, respectively. We don't have the resources to perform latency testing in each and every location, for that we need the communities help.</comment></comment>


United Kingdom Budget Visualization - <AUTHOR> https://uk.wikibudgets.org/w/united-kingdom-budget-2016 <comment><USER3> It's staggering to me that £46 billion goes to HM Revenue and Customs. So it costs £46 billion to administer £506 billion in tax revenue! That's almost 1/3 the budget of the entire NHS!

That doesn't seem like a good ROI at all. A product of an over-complicated tax system?

<comment><USER4> If you go back a year you can get some detail into what HM Revenue and Customs spends it's money on (90% of it is under the title 'social protection' which is child welfare and tax credits). The collection and enforcement looks like it costs 4 billion at most.

<comment> J-dawg Tax credits deserve some scrutiny. A significant portion of tax revenue is effectively being paid as a subsidy to businesses allowing them to systematically underpay their staff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The National Audit Office also publish a visualisation of the Whole of Government Accounts (best viewed on desktop) [https://www.nao.org.uk/other/whole-of-government- accounts-20...](https://www.nao.org.uk/other/whole-of-government- accounts-2016-2017/)

The accounts themselves are very readable [https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/whole-of- governme...](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/whole-of-government- accounts-2017-to-2018)

<comment><USER6> In spite of a mostly balanced budget, the growth of non-current liabilites is accelerating. I wonder if this just is due to an aging population and it's effect in pensions or if there are other factors.

[https://www.populationpyramid.net/united- kingdom/2017/](https://www.populationpyramid.net/united-kingdom/2017/)

<comment><USER7> UK state pensions obey the so-called 'Triple Lock' rule where they increase in payout yearly according to the greatest of: 1\. the growth in national average earnings; 2\. the growth in retail prices as measured by the Consumer Price Index; 3\. 2.5 per cent.

This causes an additional increase in pension costs over time on top of the effect of the country's aging population and is a source of resentment among some young people.

<comment><USER8> That's got to be offset by the increasing pension age?

Apparently accelerating the changes saved around £215bn (between 2011 and 2026).

[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-49917315](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-49917315)

<comment><USER7> In the short term maybe? A forward shift in age threshold is essentially a one-time reduction to expected future pension expenditures, whereas the triple lock and increasing post-retirement life expectancy are continuous increases.

<comment><USER9> If you think the raise of pension age is a one-time event, I think you'll be sorely disappointed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> That is a great idea. Understanding government expenditure on some level should be a fundamental part of a citizen's participation.

I don't yet fully understand how to read it. It's not really clear to me what the difference in income and expenditure is - the impression the diagram gives me is other that income is balanced by expenditure, or that there is a budget surplus maybe. I think I recall that there is a budget deficit that the government runs.

Grateful for advice/corrections ...

<comment><USER11> Shameless plug colon my company does this for cities.

[http://burlington.openbook.questica.com/](http://burlington.openbook.questica.com/)

<comment><USER12> Did you use voice-to-text to type this comment?

<comment><USER11> That is an unfounded accusation exclamation point

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There, at the top of "Other Expenditures", Slightly smaller than running the Office of the Secretary of State for Wales.

That is what's governing the entire political agenda right now.

That's the amount of money stuck on the side of a bus with the suggestion that we could spend it on the NHS instead

<comment><USER14> I didn't vote leave because of the money.

I voted leave because I was dubious about the control the elected and unelected officials and secretaries in brussels had over British politics, and the rats nest of well paid jobs with crazy benefits waiting for british politicians in brussels when they retire from british politics, so long as they play nice with the EU and go along with the will of the government in Brussels.

The "NHS bus" is a talking point very aggressively focused on by the remain campaign because it's an easy thing to point at as disingenuous, But I feel like there's a lot more nuance to the choice to leave the EU than many "remainers" believe.

It's harmful to national discourse to narrow the argument for either side down to misinformation or this "they don't know what they're voting for" narrative (not saying you're asserting this, I've just seen it said a lot) because it chips away at the very concept of majority rule and proportional representation.

<comment><USER15> That's actually a good point and well said ... 3 years ago.

However, today you cannot make that argument with a straight face when Boris is a PM with a very weak democratic mandate, actively undermining the democratically elected Parliament, doubling down on the lies made by the campaigns, pushing for highly damaging (according to the Government own assessment) economic measure.

From the Cambridge Analytica scandal we know that the bus not only worked, but it is the tip of the iceberg of a propaganda machine without conterpart in the remain side.

I can't believe that on HN, Brexit is still seen as a "remainer" vs "leaver" problem. Brexit has exposed a much deeper rot and threat to democracy, not in the EU, but in the very heart of the UK institutions. Brexit is not a liberating process, it is a threat.

<comment><USER16> (Lets call him "Johnson". "Boris" is either patronising or affectionate, and neither is appropriate for a head of state.)

No Conservative government has served an entire term with an outright majority since Thatcher in the 1980s. Johnson is in a sense "unelected", but his premiership is no less legitimate than that of Cameron or Major.

Like it or not, Johnson was the "biggest" voice behind the successful Brexit campaign, and it is therefore appropriate that he is tasked with making Brexit happen, and taking responsibility for its success or failure.

Its completely fair to say that Brexit is an economically stupid and possibly xenophobic project, but its not fair to say that Brexit is a threat to democracy. Brexit is exactly what democracy looks like at its best: the people forcing the ruling classes to make decisions that are against the ruling class's own interests.

EDIT: Johnson is of course the head of government, not the head of state, since the UK is a monarchy.

<comment><USER17> I'm not sure this is true. Cameron had a majority government after the 2015 election. Prior there was a coalition government which also held a majority. May lost the majority after the snap election and had to build a coalition with the DUP and others. In Johnson's case he doesn't have any majority at all. It's a weird situation that only exists afaik because of the fixed term act, as the PM can no longer trigger an election when he loses the majority. The current situation is far from normal.

<comment><USER18> Correct, the Fixed Term Parliament act was _supposed_ to cure a government supposedly "abusing democracy" by calling an election at their whim. Well at least that seemed to be the LibDem line during the coalition.

In requiring a super-majority, and a search for a second government first it's badly broken the system. As we can see, there is a government 20 odd votes short of a majority stuck there. Stuck there having lost _every_ vote they've called. Stuck there because they are trying to evade the extension parliament voted for, that would take EU membership beyond an election.

I am intrigued though, that neither side has made calls to repeal the Fixed Term Parliament Act, despite it very clearly not being fit for purpose.

<comment><USER19> "I am intrigued though, that neither side has made calls to repeal the Fixed Term Parliament Act"

Boris Johnson doesn't want an election. It was suggested after the first vote that he could table something that only required a simple majority, but he didn't, you cant really argue it's people against parliament, when you are (hopefully) a majority of parliament.

Those against a hard Brexit don't want an election now because it impairs their ability to do that, plus its been nicely illustrated to them why you don't want too much power to reside with the executive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> For Reference: this type of chart is called a "sankey diagram"

<comment><USER21> It's a pretty neat way to visualize P&L in a pretty logical way (money comes in on the left and goes out on the right).

</comment></comment><comment> the-dude Dutch budget viz ( different ) : [https://rijksfinancien.nl/visuele- begroting/2018/jv](https://rijksfinancien.nl/visuele-begroting/2018/jv)

<comment><USER22> Some things I found interesting:

\- We spend a billion on water management ("deltafonds"). I had no idea it took so much upkeep. I also like subsection "experiments" of 21 million euros.

\- 21 million still goes to "healthcare for resistance fighters and victims of world war 2", plus 246 million for pensions of the same group ([https://rijksfinancien.nl/visuele- begroting/2018/jv/u/volksg...](https://rijksfinancien.nl/visuele- begroting/2018/jv/u/volksgezondheid-welzijn-en-sport/oorlogsgetroffenen-en- herinnering-wereldoorlog-ii) ). We're still paying for the after-effects of war (though the amount went down by 5% relative to the year before).

\- 13 million (almost a euro per person) of the government's yearly budget goes towards equal rights for different genders (including LGBT) [https://rijksfinancien.nl/visuele- begroting/2018/jv/u/onderw...](https://rijksfinancien.nl/visuele- begroting/2018/jv/u/onderwijs-cultuur-en-wetenschap/emancipatie)

\- The climate budget section links to this site: [http://klimaatagenda.minienm.nl](http://klimaatagenda.minienm.nl) If you scroll down to "Is warmer eigenlijk erg?" ("Is hotter actually bad?") it breaks it down in a way I haven't seen before. It also drives home just how little we can oversee the consequences, e.g. going from "30% of species might go extinct" at 2°C to "many go extinct" at 5°C (I'd say 30% is quite a disaster already, can't imagine what +5 would bring us). The section below that visualizes the options: what if we prevent the issues, or what if we have to adjust to them?

<comment><USER23> I see a section for €48b for national debt. I thought the Netherlands was one of the few countries to not have debt?

<comment><USER22> I have no clue how a country can have billions of debt and not be declared bankrupt or (at least) go through major cost-saving reforms. Many (most? all?) countries have massive amounts of debt but apparently there isn't anyone who isn't getting paid (given the amount of debt countries have, everyone should have an uncle that is still owed $100k or so by their government, but I don't know _anyone_ that works for the government and doesn't get paid, so apparently it's not that kind of debt). I don't get it, but I'm not surprised that we have a huge amount.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> There are a couple of good graphs of the U.S. budget on wikipedia as well.

Take a guess at what you think we spend (dollars and percent of budget) on major categories (defense, Social Security, transportation, education, Medicare/Medicaid, SNAP, interest) and see how close you get.

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

</comment><comment><USER25> I saw a nice gov revenue/expenditure of Singapore here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/singapore/comments/cdtf4i/singapore...](https://www.reddit.com/r/singapore/comments/cdtf4i/singapore_goverment_revenue_and_expenditure_2018/)

Wish this UK one was in millions, not billions.

<comment><USER26> This is quite interesting, a sizeable chunk (roughly 16 out of 90 bil) come from "Investment returns" \- I guess the SG government have substantial stakes in businesses operating there?

<comment><USER27> Yes, including banking, real estate, telco, public transit, media monopoly, port operations, and Singapore Airlines [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temasek_Holdings](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temasek_Holdings)

<comment><USER28> See also [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIC_Private_Limited](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIC_Private_Limited)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Nice visualisation. But why is "VAT refunds" an income? And why is "Petroleum revenue tax" an expenditure? (2.2B, coming out at the top of the 241B "Taxes on income and wealth")

<comment> jon-wood I can't say this with certainty, but my assumption here is that the UK government buys products and services from the EU, for which it then reclaims the VAT in the same way a business would.

Petroleum revenue tax just sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole - according to [https://www.gov.uk/guidance/oil-gas-and-mining-petroleum- rev...](https://www.gov.uk/guidance/oil-gas-and-mining-petroleum-revenue-tax) PRT is effectively zero rated for any field approved after March 1993, but because of government vagaries still exists as a concept. Given that I could entirely believe that it costs the government more to adminster the tax than they make in revenue from it.

<comment><USER29> You're telling me that VAT refunds are greater than contribution to the EU? So basically UK has an immediate net loss from brexit?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> It would be interesting to see the loops in this graph.

A few big ones: income tax on state pensions; National Insurance Contributions taken out of NHS salaries; VAT (sales tax) paid on defence spending.

</comment><comment> ur-whale Independent of the amounts, where they come from and where they do, the visualization methodology is amazingly good and useful.

</comment><comment><USER31> I was surprised that £69 billion (9% of the budget) goes to Wales, Scottland, and Northern Ireland. That was until I found out that all three are part of the UK and they contribute to the tax revenue.

Overall the budget is nicely balanced. I wish the US ran a deficit as small as the UK's.

</comment><comment><USER32> In case it isn't immediately obvious, this is the budget from 2016 it appears.

</comment><comment><USER33> Lovely visualisation, but this doesn't reflect the direction of travel properly. Spending occurs before taxation. Taxation balances the books - <USER2> the other way around.

</comment><comment> maze-le I love the zoomable UI, very neat and it gives a perspective on how "small" a position of 800 million pounds can be...

</comment><comment><USER34> I like this WikiBudget idea, how do we add our own countries?

</comment><comment><USER35> This is really awesome! Needs more breakdowns.

<comment><USER36> If you look at previous years there is a lot more breakdown

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> This is... not a good visualization.

</comment><comment><USER38> Nice visualization.

</comment><comment><USER39> The "Budget" is 702 billion. The expense is 698 billion. Now the department expenditures is 702 billion. So they spend 4 more billions then they got. At that point I laugh.

so you see the Hm treasure.

<comment><USER26> No, look closer. The deficit is £55 billion. What I think you're confused about is that there's a £698bn allocation that seemingly magically feeds into a £702bn budget for department expenditures. However the £4bn difference comes from HM Treasury (it's quite a thin line at the bottom)</comment></comment>


Zuckerberg set up fraudulent scheme to 'weaponise' data, court case alleges - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/may/24/mark-zuckerberg-set-up-fraudulent-scheme-weaponise-data-facebook-court-case-alleges?CMP=share_btn_tw <comment><USER2> "Six4Three lodged its original case in 2015 shortly after Facebook removed developers' access to friends' data. The company said it had invested $250,000 in developing an app called Pikinis that filtered users' friends photos to find any of them in swimwear. Its launch was met with controversy."

So basically this company tried to do something creepy and invasive with users' data, were stopped by Facebook, and now they're taking advantage of the fact that the press is pissed off at Facebook and will uncritically regurgitate any negative claim about them in headlines as leverage in their court case against them, likely in the expectation that it'll be cheaper for Facebook to settle than deal with the PR fallout.

<comment><USER3> 250k?????

I bet their engineer to manager ratio was quite low.

<comment><USER4> 2 manager and 4 devs for 1 month to make an app.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In this particular article, _" weaponise"_ doesn't mean private data as a weapon against the users (like Richard Stallman critiques of Facebook[1]). Instead, the journalists and the lawsuit are talking about desirable user data as a _weapon against the API developers_.

The article has interwoven 2 themes in a disjointed way and I had to read it several times to separate the components of the dispute.

The 1st theme is that the company Six4Three wrote an app to find photos of friends in bikinis using Facebook's platform API. Facebook later pulled the rug out from under them. In this sense, this is similar to other stories about platforms changing the terms/accessiblity of API usage (e.g. Facebook demoting Zynga games, or Twitter closing off 3rd-party clients, etc). If a platform entices programmers to use an API and then later restricts it (or kicks programmers off it), the claim is being made that it is _" fraud"_. Facebook's counterclaim is that blocking programmers from using its API is exercising its editorial control and therefore _" free speech"_.

The 2nd theme that's mentioned in passing is the Six4Three bikini API dispute as a _forensic discovery_ into how the Cambridge Analytica abuse was deliberately engineered into the platform in 2011 and was approved by Facebook senior management. I think this is the more interesting angle that the Guardian writers should have focused more text on.

[1] [https://stallman.org/facebook.html](https://stallman.org/facebook.html)

<comment><USER6> "Editorial control" as justification for selective access is interesting, and seems in tension with their need to remain considered a "platform" instead of a publication. (They aren't a platform; utility surplus from user participation doesn't flow to the users.)

> wrote an app to find photos of friends in bikinis [....] Facebook later > pulled the rug out from under them

In this case, I think I'm just rooting for injuries.

<comment><USER7> I agree with Bill Gates' description of platforms as companies which provide tools which are used by other entities to generate more economic value than the value of the owners of those tools. How you measure said economic value is another story and one I am grappling with. And I think social media companies are ultimately aggregators, not platforms. What I think should come out of any regulation is an obligation for aggregators at a certain scale to 1) stop calling themselves neutral platforms, because that's not accurate, 2) be required to disclose in verifiable, auditable detail how they are prioritizing content from an algorithmic perspective, how they are compensating generators of both paid and organic content from a both monetary and "in app currency" perspective (likes, etc), and 3) when they do exercise their editorial judgment and kick 3rd party apps off their APIs, explain how and why they came to such a judgment, not in a storytelling kind of way, but in a parametric (they hit this number, so we took action) kind of way. And if there is a human in the loop, that human needs to have certain competencies, which would resemble professionalism like that of lawyers and doctors. These three requirements would have to be agreed upon like international standards of a sort. Now, I am aware that everything I am requesting is also likely to be infected by 'bureacracy' and that is something I'm not sure I have a way to solve for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Only tangentially related, but the second image in the article [1] — the one with all the cameras right in Zuckerberg's face — is _crazy_. What a strange and surreal experience that must be.

[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/may/24/mark- zuck...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/may/24/mark-zuckerberg- set-up-fraudulent-scheme-weaponise-data-facebook-court-case-alleges#img-2)

<comment><USER9> It's almost like a physical representation of how Facebook tries to capture every nuance of your activity online.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Statistics: Weaponized pattern recognition.

Gothic High Tech: Consciously weaponized bullshit.

Gollumization: The impoverishment of a system through ephmeralization and weaponized attention.

Bullshit: 1\. Data (often a firehose) produced by someone who is indifferent to the truth or falsity of what is being said. 2\. Data that appears to contain more information than it actually does. 3\. Noise randomly tagged with truth-values to give it apparent legibility. 4\. Non-requisite variety.

Legibility: the apparent absence of noise in data.

Data: Any collection of information, bullshit and noise.

Information: Data that has been judged to be true or false through comparison with observed reality at a given point in time.

</comment><comment><USER11> This article is a bit short on details.

Back in December 2016, Six4Three ("643") created a website [https://www.facebooksappeconomy.com](https://www.facebooksappeconomy.com) to raise awareness about Facebook's business practices.

"... Facebook started threatening to shut off friend data to companies in late 2012 unless they made extravagant, unrelated purchases in Facebook's new mobile ads product. Zuckerberg did this in order to keep Facebook's advertising business from collapsing because it had been built exclusively for desktop computers."

It has more details on what 643 is hoping to accomplish with the help of other app developers, including a timeline as well as a documentary video.

When 643 contacted Facebook to let them know about this website, Facebook threatened 643 with trademark infringement.1

1\. [http://digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl...](http://digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2339&context=historical)

</comment><comment><USER12> I have read it three times. It doesn't make sense. I have no idea what is being alleged.

<comment><USER13> Facebook abused their position against developers. Kind of like if Apple gave developers full access to all details of every iPhone owner to convince them to develop iPhone apps, then when they get developers onboard they start cutting access randomly to devs, and offer some devs lowball offers to sell with the implied threat of "or we'll cut you off entirely".

<comment><USER12> I can't imagine that "randomly" makes sense, or that they have proof of anything like that. "Arbitrarily" means that Facebook gets to decide how much of a creep is too much. It's very confusing to have the same talk about an offer to sell their company: creeps are the last thing Facebook wants on their payroll.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The first half of this title sounds terrible ... until you see the second half. "Court Case Alleges" Well, this is the COURT we're talking about, so maybe this is legitimate information. Until you realize that this actually reduces to: "Some guy says (because he think it will get him money)".</comment>


RIM Tablet May Be Announced Next Week - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2010/09/22/rim-tablet-coming/

<comment><USER2> I must say I am impressed with the RIM potentially abandoning the Blackberry OS for something different, although why not just Android or WP7 is another question. I do not think anyone is under an illusion that attempting to simply copy the iOs with BBOS6 was not really an overwheliming sucess (<http://lat.ms/9TQwrZ>), as an OS it is actually probably not that bad but sticking it on an underpowered device, maybe to save battery and production costs was far from an insipired decision.

I was worried about this though: "device will only be able to connect to mobile networks through a Blackberry". If that means it just works like a Blackberry currently and connects via the organizations BES then that would be fine. If it is somehow needs to pair with a BB to connect to the internet and other networks then that will be very disappointing and contribute to the failure of the device.

I have actually been very bearish on RIM recently with its loss of mindshare and a lack of a really competitive product against the iOS and Android devices (smartphone and tablet). But combined with the sharp increase in revenue (<http://yhoo.it/9Od7im>) as well as Apple and Google not really addressing the enterprise challenges (in security, deployment, centralised management: <http://bit.ly/amZzud> ) This gives me renewed hope for RIM, I am actually going to reverse my stock holding and go long.</comment>


Body cam captures cop shooting motorist in head, murder charges follow - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/07/body-cam-captures-cop-shooting-motorist-in-head-murders-charges-follow/

<comment><USER2> Please do not editorialize the titles of stories you submit to Hacker News. The submitted title ("Body Cam Captures Murder") does not say the same thing as the article title.

</comment><comment><USER3> It wasn't murder. I watched the entire video. The officer was very nice to the person he stopped, I didn't detect any attitude, etc.

After the final time he asked for his license, the guy drove off and tried to run the officer over. He shot in self defense.

The officer did nothing wrong. He defended himself and it's sad that someone had to lose a life in the process.

It's also sad that we have to keep defending criminal behavior in attempt to fit this narrative that cops are racist.

The only result will be more innocent people getting hurt or killed when officers stop being able to actually do their job.

<comment><USER4> Also watched the video, that description is not accurate.

The officer attempts to open the driver's door. The driver holds onto the door with his left hand to keep it shut while starting the ignition with his right. The officer yells "stop", leans into the car to grab the driver by the shirt / seatbelt with his left hand and immediately shoots the driver with his right hand.

The whole escalation is very fast. It's less than three seconds between the driver starting the ignition and the officer firing. Based on where the officer is standing there's no way he could have been injured by the car.

<comment><USER3> You weren't there, so you can only judge by a video..just like me. However, there were witnesses that said that the he tried to run over the cop.

<comment><USER5> By "witnesses," do you mean other cops? Other cops that _surely_ have no potential conflicts of interest? The "witnesses" that claim the officer was "run over" are at least a level, if not two, removed from the person who put such a thing in writing.

Here's the police report. Excuse the Gawker links, they are the first result on Google images:

[http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s-- aE5jr2zd...](http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s-- aE5jr2zd--/c_fit,fl_progressive,q_80,w_636/qf3wdaltdchuugfrmo9n.png)

[http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s-- _4cLZnsk...](http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s-- _4cLZnsk--/c_fit,fl_progressive,q_80,w_636/ly7yiksnvtf84necnd1w.png)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Under-occupied developments in China - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Under-occupied_developments_in_China <comment><USER2> Had a friend who stayed in a hotel near a National Park in China. Hotel had a great website, was built in the last 5 years, and had occupancy during the high season.

Friend arrives, and turns out he is the only guest in a 400 room hotel, being tended to by 20+ staff. The lobby looks really nice, but upon getting to the room he notices there is no window. No room above floor 1 has any windows, but apparently the exterior of the hotel had perfect fake windows for every room.</comment>


Set up a cache for deb packages - <AUTHOR> http://elopio.net/blog/setup-apt-cache/ <comment><USER2> This will save me so much time!</comment>


Vidoop Is Dead, Employees Getting Computers In Lieu Of Wages - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/30/vidoop-is-dead-employees-getting-computers-in-lieu-of-wages/?awesm=tcrn.ch_2t3&utm_campaign=techcrunch&utm_content=techcrunch-autopost&utm_medium=tcrn.ch-twitter&utm_source=direct-tcrn.ch <comment><USER2> _"The company's liability to you would be reduced by $1000, and you would have a laptop for $38.25."_

That's one way to look at it. The other way would be you're not getting paid $1000 for work you already did, but instead getting a laptop worth $250. Guess it's better than nothing...

<comment><USER3> This was actually common during the last bubble. I've read accounts of people who were grateful they at least got to keep the laptop -- it let them continue freelancing.

On the other hand, laptops in the year 2000/2001 cost a lot more than they do now, and many people had desktop PCs at home.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm wondering what will happen to all the open ID's that were created including mine and all the accounts they were used on. There's no info on their site.

<comment><USER2> That's a good reason to use OpenID delegation. As long as you remain in control of your domain name your OpenID can never become invalid, even if the provider you delegate to goes out of business.

<https://myvidoop.com/help/what-is-delegation>

Of course that's only a good solution for relatively technical people like us. Perhaps someone should create a service that automates this process for the average internet user: pick a domain name and OpenID provider, pay your $10 (per year), and you're done.

<comment><USER5> >> "Perhaps someone should create a service that automates this process for the average internet user:"

Sorry, but the average internet user will never want or understand OpenID IMHO.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Whats with all the tracking codes in the URL's querystring ?

'awesm': 'tcrn.ch_2t3', 'utm_campaign': 'techcrunch', 'utm_content': 'techcrunch-autopost', 'utm_medium': 'tcrn.ch-twitter', 'utm_source': 'direct- tcrn.ch'

<comment><USER7> Looks like some sort of google analytics tagging/tracking:

[http://www.epikone.com/blog/2006/11/10/google-analytics- camp...](http://www.epikone.com/blog/2006/11/10/google-analytics-campaign- tracking-pt-1-link-tagging/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Doesn't the company have a contractual obligation to pay you your wages even if it has to go into debt to do so? I don't see how they could get away with that.

<comment> patrickg-zill Yes, that is my understanding. The officers of the company are personally liable for the cash if there is no other source of funding.

<comment><USER9> The officers of the company are astronomically unlikely to personally bear any contractual liability at all, that being the one of the points of incorporating in the first place.

<comment> patrickg-zill Actually, you are quite wrong about that... many states have exactly those provisions, e.g. Colorado

[http://www.allbusiness.com/human-resources/compensation- sala...](http://www.allbusiness.com/human-resources/compensation- salary/173040-1.html)

20 seconds of google would have shown you that ...

(BTW if your claim of shielding from liability were absolute, then directors and officers wouldn't need D&O insurance now, would they? )

<comment><USER10> No. Your article is from 2002 and, at the end, refers to a case then before the Colorado Supreme Court. Here's the outcome (2003):

"After finding a lack of precedent from the Colorado Supreme Court construing individual officer liability under the Wage Claim Act, we certified the following determinative questions...

1\. Are officers of a now-bankrupt corporation individually liable for the wages of the corporation's former employees under the Colorado Wage Claim Act? ...

2\. If so, are all officers individually liable due to mere status as officers or must the officers have been high ranking or active decision-makers? ...

The Colorado Supreme Court then answered the first reframed question, holding "under Colorado's Wage Claim Act, the officers and agents of a corporation are _not_ jointly and severally liable for payment of employee wages and other compensation the corporation owes to its employees under the employment contract and the Colorado Wage Claim Act." Id. (emphasis added). This response clearly answers the first question certified by this court and moots our second question. We REVERSE the district court's summary judgment order..."

<http://ca10.washburnlaw.edu/cases/2003/02/00-1324.htm>

<comment> patrickg-zill Thanks for the update. I lived in CO in the late 1990s and actually had an employer take a while to pay me, which is why I incorrectly assumed that the law was the same, when it has in fact changed.

It is actually more difficult than I thought it would be to locate an accurate list of which states have which positions in this matter.

It seems that courts in many states are starting to lean against officers being responsible for unpaid wages.

<comment><USER9> What's the state where you think officers _are_ responsible for the contractual obligations of the corporations that employ them?

<comment> patrickg-zill You are mis-interpreting my point: it is not officers being responsible for contractual obligations in general, it is (or at least was) an _exception_ carved out for wages owed employees.

There seems to be a lot of debate over when/if an officer can become an "employer" as defined in the law.

Here are some URLs that cover what I am talking about:

WA: [http://www.turnaround.org/Publications/Articles.aspx?objectI...](http://www.turnaround.org/Publications/Articles.aspx?objectID=9112)

PDF with more discussion of the issue, includes discussion of the Federal FLSA and the case of CA: [http://web.omm.com/files/upload/D&O%20Liability- WARN%20A...](http://web.omm.com/files/upload/D&O%20Liability-WARN%20Act.pdf)

NY (10 largest shareholders of non-public company held liable): [http://www.eminutesonline.com/why-in-the-world-would- anyone-...](http://www.eminutesonline.com/why-in-the-world-would-anyone-with- employees-incorporate-in-new-york/)

Federal law (FLSA): [http://www.klehr.com/?t=11&la=690&format=xml](http://www.klehr.com/?t=11&la=690&format=xml)

Since the company that is not paying is often headed for bankruptcy, these situations often spill over to bankruptcy court, where the judge has a great amount of leeway to determine who gets paid and when.

<comment><USER9> I read your first example (CA), which states:

 _In Reynolds v. Bement, 36 Cal. 4th 1075 (2005), the California Supreme Court observed that, "[U]nder the common law, corporate agents acting within the scope of their agency are not personally liable for the corporate employer"s failure to pay its employees" wages." Id. at 1087._

Now I'm finished reading, and, hopefully, talking about this. Like I said, it's extremely unlikely that the owners, investors, or officers of a VC-funded company would be on the hook for salaries after the company went bankrupt. That's a good thing. Surprisingly few things need to go wrong for a company to BK. Who'd start a company if that event meant they'd lose their house?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Read it as "Voodoo is dead, employees getting computers in lieu of wages" Was all, "Sweeeeet!"</comment>


A Personal Study in Diversity – Startups and Venture Capital - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/startups-venture-capital/a-personal-study-in-diversity-55726f1ab411 <comment><USER2> > The gender gap that exists in the technology sector is a complex issue that > will take time to solve.

There's also a gender gap to address with janitors and bus drivers. Go smooth that out first.

As apart of the "technology sector", I don't think we further anything by playing the hand of God and trying force quotas. You're just ruining the chance sincere women have of having a career in tech by creating bias towards them.</comment>


Last Week Tonight with John Oliver – Edward Snowden Interview - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykfGWcmUbbk&feature=youtu.be <comment><USER2> Correct link to complete piece on Last Week Tonight channel on YouTube. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEVlyP4_11M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEVlyP4_11M)</comment>


The Price of Cool: A Teenager, a Juul, and Nicotine Addiction - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/16/health/vaping-juul-teens-addiction-nicotine.html <comment><USER2> I am extremely disappointed in the FDA's milqutoast response. Teenage vaping is an epidemic. It's an incredible problem at the school where I teach. The USB-A sized vape units just litter the bathrooms and parking lots.

The media has also failed it's obligations. Most news articles are practically advertisements for e-cigarettes, promoting them as smoking cessation tools and practically harmless compared to other tobacco products. They are not FDA approved and the evidence for their efficacy and safety is sketchy at best.

<comment><AUTHOR> I know. I've been sounding the alarm on this for years, to no avail. People do not understand what is happening amongst teenagers with vaping.

There are _millions_ more people addicted to nicotine that _never would have been_ absent vaping. We were winning the war, thanks to sound policy moves. E-cigarettes might be an okay solution for helping smokers to quit smoking. But the easy availability and marketing has led to an absolute and total epidemic, and no one seems to care.

People get incredibly defensive about this. I've been met with outright denial that it was even a possibility. Go back through my commenting history even on HN, and you'll see people telling me kids will never start vaping because "well, it's not cool." You get told well, look at all these people that quit smoking. That's great! But I don't see why it was necessary to trade smoking cessation among older cohorts for vaping addiction in teenagers. We have a massive public policy failure on our hands, and it's not getting better.

The only thing we can say is well, at least the public health crisis won't be as bad as what we had with cigarettes. Okay. But we didn't have to have one at all. E-cig companies (many of which are actually owned by the old tobacco giants) have successfully ensnared a whole new generation of addicts.

<comment><USER3> You are selling this FUD under the guise of "protect the children" when in reality you are restarting the issues we had with traditional cigarettes. The new regulations will pull vaping devices from stores and make it more difficult for those who do need them, thus making them go back to using cigarettes. People should be able to make their own informed choices and be able to put what they want in their bodies. Prohibition never works since it is not currently working (since all retailers are suppose to be checking IDs). This whole thing could have been avoided if parents talked with their children and school administrators did their jobs of enforcing existing policies / laws. There are much worse public health issues that need to be dealt with NOW and this is not it. Ever heard of the opioid / heroin epidemic that actually results in death and much worse health issues?

<comment><AUTHOR> You are completely wrong. "Prohibition" was working. Smoking was dropping year after year, thanks to public policies like banning flavored cigarettes, packaging laws, ID laws, and taxes.

Now, tons of progress has been erased because these e-cigarette brands, some of them owned by the old tobacco companies, were allowed to get around all those restrictions. The FDA completely dropped the ball and moved in way, way too late. Sale to minors wasn't even banned federally until 2016!

This just puts some of them back in place so, once again, we can start working the problem down.

> The new regulations will pull vaping devices from stores and make it more > difficult for those who do need them, thus making them go back to using > cigarettes.

What proposed regulation are you claiming makes it harder for an adult to buy e-cigs? The FDA's tepid response was that flavored e-cigs must be sold in a closed-off area. That's it. Nevermind that part of the FDA's problem is that e-cigarette manufacturers were able to resist regulation by claiming in court they were _not_ a nicotine replacement therapy, but in fact a new tobacco product for people who did not want to quit.

> Ever heard of the opioid / heroin epidemic that actually results in death > and much worse health issues?

What happened to people making their own informed choices and putting what they want in their bodies?

Besides that - obviously the existence of other problems does not prevent us from dealing with this one, now. The facts, according to the article, are that our tremendous progress in eradicating nicotine addiction has been dealt a serious setback: millions of kids are addicted, most of whom would not have been smoking cigarettes, and vapers are more likely to become future smokers.

<comment><USER3> > You are completely wrong. "Prohibition" was working. Smoking was dropping > year after year, thanks to public policies like banning flavored cigarettes, > packaging laws, ID laws, and taxes.

The main reason traditional smoking dropped was not because of prohibition, it's because of education and the fact that we had someone (or a lot of someones) who smoked and we had seen what it did to them. If someone is determined to get their hands on something, they will get it on the black market that you are proposing to create.

> What proposed regulation are you claiming makes it harder for an adult to > buy e-cigs?

The removal of flavored e-cigarette devices / tobacco from convenience stores. E-cigarettes are already hidden away in most convenience stores and I've been to hundreds of them across the country on my travels. The FDA needs to stop using my tax dollars to lie to teens with their The Real Cost AD campaign because it is not factual. I would support it if they were not lying to teens and they pushed factual ADs (showing parasites is not factual or genuine). Any teen who has had a Biology or health class will see through that (unless you are proposing we stop factually teaching those things in schools).

> Nevermind that part of the FDA's problem is that e-cigarette manufacturers > were able to resist regulation by claiming in court they were not a nicotine > replacement therapy, but in fact a new tobacco product for people who did > not want to quit.

You need proof to back up that claim.

> Besides that - obviously the existence of other problems does not prevent us > from dealing with this one, now. The facts, according to the article, are > that our tremendous progress in eradicating nicotine addiction has been > dealt a serious setback: millions of kids are addicted, most of whom would > not have been smoking cigarettes, and vapers are more likely to become > future smokers.

More FUD and bullsh*t claims being made. The only reason vapers would start using cigarettes is if you made e-cigarettes / vaping products difficult to get. All of this could have been avoided if parents talked with their kids, administrators did their bloody jobs and stop lying to teens about the things we don't want them to do. I guess that I was lucky enough to grow up in a time where my parents somewhat cared and I had the freedom to make my own stupid mistakes without authoritarians like you proposing to move the bar of adulthood later and in life.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How 37signals redesigned the basecamp homepage - <AUTHOR> http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2431-basecamp-home-page-redesign

<comment><USER2> As designer I always love to see the process of thought behind a design.

It kinda made me smile the shameless plug to Draft and Campfire in the second paragraph.</comment>


Markdown to Web - <AUTHOR> http://markdowntoweb.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Convert your markdown to the online web page instantly and for free.</comment>


How Deliveroo's 'dark kitchens' are catering from car parks - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/oct/28/deliveroo-dark-kitchens-pop-up-feeding-the-city-london <comment><USER3> I want to better understand the value-proposition / niche of services like Deliveroo compared to classical online food-delivery companies.

If I wanted to order food online for the last 10 years I could simply order through various services that connected me to local restaurants.

\- First question: why is there a niche for services like Deliveroo at all? If a local restaurant does not offer delivery there are hundreds of other restaurants that do. I am completely indifferent in choosing one.

\- Second question: it seems the value of Deliveroo is in (?) building the infrastructure to deliver the food rather than restaurants themselves. This seems much easier to do for existing platforms that already have signed up all the local restaurants and build this on top to aggregate all restaurants.

What is the scenario here? $900 Mio. [1] in funding sure is a statement.

[1] [https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/deliveroo](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/deliveroo)

<comment><USER4> In London, before Deliveroo, we had Just Eat and Hungryhouse (and we still do). I would say that the big difference between those two and Deliveroo for consumers is the selection of restaurants: the former offer a huge array of 'normal' takeaways - Indian, Chinese, Thai, pizza, that sort of thing. Deliveroo has fancy stuff - hipster burger places, my local high-end 'modern British' restaurant, the nice sandwich deli down the hill (who offer a roast beef sandwich with "incredibly slutty gravy mayo"). I remember when i realised that i could punch some buttons on my computer and get a fresh crèpe Suzette delivered (from Le Mercury in Islington, i think).

(That said, looking on Deliveroo now, i see a lot of the usual suspects (including such not-quite-so-high-end options as KFC and Papa John's), so perhaps the perception is greater than the reality.)

I think that market differentiation goes hand-in-hand with owning the delivery infrastructure, because those high-end restaurants don't have their own delivery infrastructure. Delivery isn't part of the business model of a high- end sit-down restaurant, or part of the core competency of the people running a hipster burger startup (cooking and managing the Instagram account at the same time is hard enough!). Pure information brokers like Just Eat can't get you food from those places, but logistics operators like Deliveroo can.

I suspect this is why the existing platforms didn't do this - they already have complicated businesses built around the information bit, and didn't want to take on the complexity of also running logistics.

As for why this is worth 900 megabucks, well, that's easy: interest rates are at record lows, and there are tax breaks on venture capital.

<comment><USER5> _In London, before Deliveroo, we had Just Eat and Hungryhouse_

You are forgetting Deliverance, which always had great food from actual restaurants. They were (are?) more corporate-focussed then consumer tho', e.g. people in the City working late would call for food on the company Deliverance account.

<comment><USER4> I've never come across them. There's also Seamless, which i think is also focused on corporate clients (i only found out about them at work!), but i don't know how recently they came to London.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The dark kitchen setup isn't just for delivery; I was wandering down a lane alongside one of London's many railways one evening and got chatting to a chap that was having a smoke. A number of the archways housed separate little kitchens, some of them cooking for delivery, but others preparing food that would later be composed at high end restaurants. It sounded like things that take a lot of preparation or cooking are sometimes done centrally and shipped out in time for the main evening meals.

<comment><USER7> My old super in LA did this for a while too, before becoming a super. Much of the high-end 'catering' is done in apartments all over LA. I liked him a lot, but never asked about what the health inspector thought of the 3 cats.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is merely the logical extension of app-centralization of food delivery - if Deliveroo is the brand that I'm buying from, and not an actual Indian/Thai/whatever restaurant with a name I trust and recognize, then Deliveroo might as well operate the kitchen part as well.

The interesting part, to me, is going to be is if the other half of the restaurant experience - the dining area manages to become a thing - <USER2> I want takeout so I can eat in the comfort of my own home, but sometimes I actually want to eat out. Is there a new business model enabled by this, for a fancy restaurant with no kitchen? Order whatever food you wanted to the place, they would take it, plate it as only a fancy restaurant can do, and then serve it to you with the appropriate flourishes, on a table with cloth tablecloth and fancy silverware. Finally, they would take away the dishes (and clean them), but without the cheapness of eating out of cardboard boxes.

<comment><USER9> From what I have heard from restaurateur friends - it's very difficult to have high quality food that was not prepared immediately before serving. So it is not as simple as plating it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm not surprised that as food delivery services gain popularity, restauranteurs are starting to realize that you can save a lot of money on rent and facilities, if you focus on a delivery-only model. Here in the US it's still mostly traditional restaurants doing delivery through seamless, grubhub, uber eats etc. but I'm sure this model is right around the corner.

Out of curiosity a while ago I tried looking into what it takes to be a seamless vendor and it seemed like they were mostly expecting established brick and mortar restaurants to sign up, rather than enterprising new ventures that exclusively sell through them.

<comment><USER11> When I was living in Lindon I regularly ordered from hungryhouse. On my way home from work I always walked past a sleezy place which sells asian food, had never any people in and the house looked really badly maintained. Only after a few orders and walking past this place I realize I ordered from them a few times.

After seeing the place and making the connection I never ordered again from there.

It definitely made me realize that I pick food differently for delivery than I do eating out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> So they're cooking food in a metal box in a parking lot. I don't see the issue. People seem to like food trucks just fine and the only difference is wheels and an engine.

<comment><USER13> > and the only difference is wheels and an engine.

and planning permission, and hygiene inspection.

<comment><USER12> Hygiene inspection is still being carried out. From the article:

"Dan Warne, Deliveroo's UK and Ireland managing director, admits the company did not move quickly enough to speak to the council and residents in Southwark, but says Roobox kitchens are clean, hygienic and checked by the Food Standards Agency."

<comment><USER13> FSA don't do food safety checks in premises.

Local authorities do the checks.

Does deliveroo not understand the regulatory framework? Is this just lazy reporting?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I live near Il Mirto (mentioned in the article). a) It's in East Dulwich, not Dulwich b) it does Italian Italian food, not British or American Italian food c) its branding and presentation leaves something to be desired. I can see why Deliveroo constitutes a problem for them: the big brands and solid presentation are going to win.

</comment><comment><USER15> I made the mistake to order from one of those, the food was just disgusting. There are 5 or 6 fake restaurants like those appearing in the list, all with the same post code. It taught me the habit of checking the postcode and google street view before ordering from any new restaurant on Deliveroo.

<comment><USER16> According to the Daily Mail (which, granted...) those listings say they're "Deliveroo Editions". I couldn't find an example on the site, though.

<comment><USER15> I can still see them, here is two:

[https://deliveroo.co.uk/menu/london/blackwall/dirty-bones- bl...](https://deliveroo.co.uk/menu/london/blackwall/dirty-bones-blackwall)

[https://deliveroo.co.uk/menu/london/blackwall/la- pistola](https://deliveroo.co.uk/menu/london/blackwall/la-pistola)

They are now flagged as "editions" but they weren't when I last tried one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It seems silly to say that delivery food _must_ be prepared in the back of a restaurant, on prime real estate, in the midst of sit-down diners.

People talked about the possibility of uber-for-food or "food-sharing", where the lady next door cooks a bunch of food and then all the neighbors get some.. I think this delivery-only kitchen model will be the reality of uber for food - hyper-local low cost kitchens which may be boxes in car parks, or may be operating out of cafes that don't normally open for dinner, or even out of suburban garages (with signoff from local health authorities).

Every suburb has a fairly standard, reasonable quality thai, chinese, pizza, indian and burger places. Lower price delivery incentivized users to go local, but if ratings are not great for the local option then they will get a more distant option for a slightly increased delivery price, pushing the local option to maintain quality.

Retail/hospitality real estate doesn't seem to have great prospects at this point. When you no longer need street frontage but rather just a back alley spot to sell food, and when amazon has dominated all street facing retail, it will be interested to see what happens to urban retail hubs.

</comment><comment><USER18> This making me a bit nauseous. Two things come to mind. Can Deliveroo and the restaurants do things like this? Restaurants need to go through a food safety agency before they open followed by regular checks. What kind of checks or regulatory frames do these "Rooboxes" fall in? Is it another case of ignorance of the law in name of tech disruption? The whole "fake it till you make it".

I maybe wrong but isn't this kind of lying to the customers? While people are expecting "Takeaway Delivery from Premium Restaurants", as Deliveroo puts it, what they are getting is something from a place which isn't really the restaurant. Sure people have been trained but is it really the same?

<comment><USER19> From the article:

> Dan Warne, Deliveroo's UK and Ireland managing director, admits the company > did not move quickly enough to speak to the council and residents in > Southwark, but says Roobox kitchens are clean, hygienic and checked by the > Food Standards Agency.

<comment><USER13> For food safety from restaurants I think of the "scores on the doors" scheme. FSA doesn't do the checking for that scheme. The local authority do the checks. The FSA hold the results.

[http://ratings.food.gov.uk/](http://ratings.food.gov.uk/)

I can't find results for any of the rooboxes, but maybe I'm not searching properly.

I really hope they're talking about this scheme, and that all the rooboxes have been checked.

<comment><USER18> Found two with Deliveroo's name:

[http://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/en- GB/957123/Deliveroo-L...](http://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/en- GB/957123/Deliveroo-London)

[http://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/en- GB/1002249/Deliveroo-...](http://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/en- GB/1002249/Deliveroo-London)

The Roobox gives up three results: [http://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/en- GB/960868/Blackwall-R...](http://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/en- GB/960868/Blackwall-Roobox-London)

[http://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/en- GB/957133/Rosa's-Roob...](http://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/en- GB/957133/Rosa's-Roobox-Battersea-London)

[http://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/en-GB/960304/The- Chilli-...](http://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/en-GB/960304/The-Chilli- Pickle-Roobox---Hove-22-Olive-Road)

I am not from UK so don't know which one of them correspond to the ones mentioned in the article.

<comment><USER13> ah, right. I didn't even think to check for the roobox or deliveroo names.

I wonder if they're going to run into problems with advertising standards or trading standards.

If I want "rotisserie chicken for the pricey Notting Hill-based specialist Cocotte" I probably want it from their actual place, or to know it's from a Roobox version.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Deliveroo in general seems to have a deliberate strategy of co-opting public spaces. You will often see their riders between jobs "parked" in a public square, for example. Good exposure for the brand perhaps, but normal companies don't do this - they have a depot. You never see a bunch of Fedex guys just "hanging out" in all their brand livery. As a taxpayer I wonder why I am subsidising their lack of proper facilities.

</comment><comment><USER20> As a side note; what does a service such as Deliveroo, Uber Food, Foodora, Wolt etc charge the restaurant per delivery?

<comment><USER17> Uber eats charges ~35% to restaurants in australia.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The phrase "dark kitchen" seems like an attempt to make this sound more illicit or unhygienic than it actually is. It's just a restaurant without the sitting part — I think "delivery-only restaurant" would be a fairer term.

</comment><comment><USER22> Straight out from `Virtual Light`.

</comment><comment><USER23> How dystopian. Its ironic, how as technology improves, things often get worse, because the cheapest, worse, solution becomes too cheep, and reasonable solutions cannot compete. It is no harder for us, today, to install windows in prefab buildings, than it was 10 years ago, but the windowless shipping container has gotten so cheep, that the window becomes a considerable cost. It is like how 30 years ago, most businesses had a telephone line and was easy to contact but today, the idea of having an actual telephone line and secretaries to answer the phone seems "too expensive". It wasn't any cheaper back then though.

<comment><USER24> > How dystopian

You're objecting to an aesthetic, not frankly anything of substance. Very few restaurant kitchens are particularly pleasant places to work, often cramped (because they take up square feet in prime real estate) and very hot. Three staff in a container seems comparatively spacious.

Also, when The Guardian struggles to find other fault than temperature and lack of appropriate council permits, that's about as strong a confirmation of adequate working conditions you're likely to find.

<comment><USER25> A related article [1] suggests there's "room for six or seven chefs" which sounds like a rather more cramped setup than three. One wonders, given they don't seem to have bothered with planning permission, whether any consideration's been given to fire safety either.

1: [https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/oct/08/deliveroo-b...](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/oct/08/deliveroo- battles-councils-over-pop-up-takeaway-food-kitchens)

<comment><USER23> Are there really fire safety concerns in such small spaces?

<comment><USER26> [https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/bikini-barista- die...](https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/bikini-barista-dies-after- fire-at-everett-coffee-stand/)

Yes.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>