US Cyber Command Staffed by "Warriors", not "Geeks" - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/23/AR2010092303000.html?hpid=topnews

<comment><USER2> I'm pretty convinced that all the publicity accorded to the "US Cyber Command" is a decoy, meant (a) to command the attention of the public, (b) send a message that the government is taking the issue seriously, and (c) deflect questions from the real efforts the national security establishment is making to grapple with offensive technology.

I know much less about military/intelligence computing than a lot of other security people, but in a career spent neck-deep in vulnerability research, you get data points in dribs and drabs. They include:

* The immense role of military contractors in securing DHS/DOD networks.

* The NSA's (incidental) role as a feeder for offensive computing specialists into industry.

* The (very shadowy) network of business fronts for vulnerability purchasing, along with the notional understanding of the kinds of vulnerabilities they seem most interested.

* The large, contractor-run malware research groups set up around the country.

There are serious infosec people in the DoD --- particular the Air Force[1] --- but I don't have the sense that DoD runs the show on this. I think articles like this are a red herring.

[1] During the early '90s hacker rennaissance (the Operation Sun-Devil era), AF-OSI really did seem to run the table on computer security for the government.

<comment><USER3> _> (a) to command the attention of the public_

 _> (b) send a message that the government is taking the issue seriously_

are you serious? the whole article seems to be written by, for and about 5 year olds. Did you get to the part where they talk about planning to bomb Iraq when it turns out they were hacked by some teenagers? how much attention and seriousness is that inserting into US population?

 _> The immense role of military contractors in securing DHS/DOD networks._

The immense role of contractors in DoD budget is not exactly news

 _> The large, contractor-run malware research groups set up around the country._

any evidence?

<comment><USER4> Did you get the part where that was over 12 years ago?

<comment><USER3> Actually that part was the only one of interest. I didn't know Clinton was planning to bomb Iraq in 1998.

<comment><USER2> Uh... Clinton _did_ bomb Iraq in 1998.

<comment><USER3> Indeed. Same in 1996.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I attended a military conference once on future threats.

They don't understand the Internet.

I mean, at all.

Imagine every stereotype about how old people don't get the Internet. That is the stage of thinking the military is still at.

One of them was trying to futuristically imagine Internet-coordinated mob attacks, and I got up in front of the conference and told them that this was already happening in real life and they needed to ask a fourteen-year-old how it works on 4chan instead of making things up.

<comment><USER6> But this has nothing to do with the internet or technology, and everything to do with projection: <http://essays.dayah.com/lazy-evil-genius>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Uhm... You get great pilots to fly planes and great hackers to defend / attack networks. Having a pilot pick programmers is as stupid as having the MBA choose them.

<comment><USER4> The services haven't had Infosec personnel long enough to really have many senior people with that background. So they pick from the pool of people who need desk jobs - like grounded pilots.

The vast majority of infosec leadership in the services that I've encountered has been grounded pilots.

It goes as well as it sounds like it would.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> If this article is actually indicative of how our electronic security is being managed, the United States is in serious trouble.

 _"It was supposed to be a war fighter unit, not a geek unit," said task force veteran Jason Healey, who had served as an Air Force signals intelligence officer.

A fighter would understand, for instance, if an enemy had penetrated the networks and changed coordinates or target times, said Dusty Rhoads, a retired Air Force colonel and former F-117 pilot who recruited the original task force members. "A techie wouldn't have a clue," he said._

Unfortunately, it's unlikely that the warrior would either know how to defend the network, or that it was penetrated at all. The skills necessary for electronic security are so far removed from physical security that the implication that someone that had been involved with physical security would somehow have a better understanding is ludicrous on its face.

<comment><USER8> The key point: _In the world of defending military networks, it takes fighters - not merely techies - to do the job._

All that means is you need someone with domain knowledge. You need someone who can recognize non-technical signs of infiltration, who knows the value of different targets, and who knows the consequences of a particular system being compromised at a particular time. For military work, that means "fighters." The military's mistake, if indeed they're making this mistake, is taking it for granted that the best way to create good leaders and decision-makers is to train military guys in computer security, when they really need to open it up from both sides. Anybody who writes software in business knows that the really effective people who understand the technical and domain ends well enough to coordinate them emerge from both sides of the business, not just from the technical side and not just from the domain side.

P.S. I would be most alarmed by the small size of the Cyber Command, but I assume it's misinformation.

<comment><USER4> RE: The size.

The Cyber Command is a combatant command (like CENTCOM or AFRICOM) - just a staff/HQ organization. It directs the service components (US Navy Cyber Command, US Air Force Cyber Command, etc.) to actually DO things for it.

It won't typically staff actual workerbees - only planning and coordination type personnel, not hackers and firewall geeks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> wow, simply wow! someone is surely on crack!

 _"It looked as though Saddam was about to take down massive amounts of infrastructure . . . because we were threatening to bomb him," recalled one former intelligence official. Tensions were building. President Bill Clinton was briefed. Senior officials convened another meeting in the Pentagon's "tank," the Joint Chiefs' conference room. The threat was no longer hypothetical, it seemed.

Then the real culprits were identified: A pair of 16-year-old boys in California and a teenager from Israel who had exploited a known vulnerability in the Solaris (UNIX) operating system._

<comment><USER2> You think _anyone_ was capable of securing _any_ system plugged into _any_ network in 1998? 1998 is the late Cretacious period for software security.

<comment><USER3> No. What I find amusing is that President was being briefed about cybersec issues.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why is SICP generally preferred over HtDP? - <AUTHOR> Hi all,
New member, longtime lurker here.  As someone who knows almost nothing about programming, I've recently decided to rectify that by starting out with HtDP. I'm just curious why many people seem to recommend SICP over HtDP, not only for newbies, but in general.  The impression I've gotten from various sources is that HtDP is a better starting point. (Of course, this is probably relative to the viewer.)
Any comments on why you've chosen SICP over HtDP would be appreciated and enlightening. <comment><USER2> I have recommended SICP to friends that already have some programming proficiency. I have recommended HtDP to friends that are just getting started with programming.

HtDP is easier to study. It is also designed to be used with Dr. Scheme, which is a good learning tool for beginners. I recommend reading HtDP first, and SICP later.

Your choice of book, however, is much less important than the amount of time that you spend studying and practicing. Choose whichever book you want, or choose both and switch back and forth, or read HtDP first and SICP later. Just get started and don't worry about if you made the perfect choice. Keep studying and practicing. It is not easy, but you can do it if you spend enough time trying.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Appreciate the feedback, guys. In particular, the progression of HtDP->SICP->CTM by Kaizyn is helpful; I'd been wondering how these 'big 3' stacked up in terms of difficulty.

Edited for future reference:

HtDP: How to Design Programs at <http://www.htdp.org> SICP: Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs at <http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp> CTM: Concepts, Techniques, and Models of Computer Programming at <http://www.x-crew.com/crew/apollo/ProgrammingText.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER3> SICP and HtDP have different audiences. HtDP was designed for people who know nothing about computer programming, particularly students who would not be pursuing a degree in computer science. SICP was used in a first CS course. Because they both use Scheme, they're complimentary. If you are starting out trying programming for the first time, then HtDP will certainly be a better choice. When you finish it, you should proceed to read SICP, followed by Concepts, Techniques, and Models of Computer Programming.

</comment><comment><USER4> HtDP appears to be eight years old, and SICP is 25 years old. Therefore, the number of people who have been exposed to the one is likely to be several times larger than the number exposed to the other. That may explain why one seems to be recommended much more often than the other.

That certainly applies to me: I read SICP about ten years ago after MIT- educated bloggers recommended it [1], but I was on vacation from the field when HtDP was published and this is the first I've heard of it. Thanks for the recommendation! Perhaps someday I will manage to read it and will then be in a position to recommend it in the future.

\----

[1] Though they weren't called bloggers at the time.</comment>


In memoriam: Microsoft's previous strategic mobile partners - <AUTHOR> http://www.asymco.com/2011/02/11/in-memoriam-microsofts-previous-strategic-mobile-partners/

<comment><USER2> And they forgot Sendo

[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/01/06/microsofts_masterpla...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/01/06/microsofts_masterplan_to_screw_phone/)

And some would say Danger as well (e.g., Danger employees). But at least Danger was bought and paid for, and not just screwed.</comment>


What are some bad UX present in today's popular apps? - <AUTHOR> For example: To me, Medium comments are bad despite the overall great UX of the app. <comment><USER2> YouTube comments.

The upvote/downvote system appears to be near-useless as it doesn't influence ranking like you think it would (it is a factor, but is by far not the only one), ranking appears to be semi-random and only encourages shitposting.

There is also a lack of moderation regarding said shitposting. They clearly have the infrastructure to (wrongly) ban comments at scale like those critical of China, so why can't they use it for good and ban "FIRST!!!" instead?

Old comments were not imported properly. Older videos have comments with the old reply system (@username) but without being linked to the comment it replied to despite back in the day the "@username" bits being clickable so they clearly have (had?) the data to tie the comments together but couldn't be bothered doing their job properly.

A single wrong click will take you to another page and when you go back you lose your scroll position and you can no longer find the comment you were looking at. The infinite scroll/"load more" system doesn't help with that either.

Reddit (and its clones) solved all these problems just fine (at least on the old UI), there is no reason for YouTube not to be able to do the same.

</comment><comment><USER3> The absolute worst UI is the banking apps when they ask for details of an account to transfer money to:

* The app asks for the account number

* The app asks for the name of the account

* The app never tells you that it won't check the name against the account number.

This is the worst UI ever, because people lose hundreds of thousands of dollars when they don't realise that only the account number matters.

<comment><USER4> Monzo have now introduced this

[https://monzo.com/help/payments-getting-started/cop-cant- che...](https://monzo.com/help/payments-getting-started/cop-cant-check- account/)

<comment><USER3> I don't use Monzo, so there's still the question of what does the UI show when they can't confirm the name - how much do they emphasize that everything now hangs on the account number only?

The bank app I use always shows a confirmed name if there is one. The UI problem is that when there isn't a confirmed name, they just do nothing, and say nothing.

Also, for very large transfers, the UI should do more than just tell you that the name can't be confirmed. The app should also encourage you to pester the receiving account holder to sign up for confirmation, especially if they are in the business of receiving large bank transfers (eg real estate & lawyer holding accounts).

<comment><USER4> Here is the blog post on the release:

[https://monzo.com/blog/2020/05/04/confirmation-of-payee- laun...](https://monzo.com/blog/2020/05/04/confirmation-of-payee-launch/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Dragging icons from one place to another on an iphone. It's almost impossible to move an icon from location A to location B without accidentally moving about 20 other icons at the same time, because everything is constantly re- arranging itself in response to the icon being dragged.

<comment><USER5> That is super annoying.

Doesn't quite fix the problem, but you can drag multiple apps at once in a stack [https://9to5mac.com/2017/06/12/move-apps-drag-and-drop- ios-1...](https://9to5mac.com/2017/06/12/move-apps-drag-and-drop- ios-11-iphone-video/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Not an app; but whoever designed Netflix's interface wants shooting!

</comment><comment><USER7> Hard to unsubscribe or cancel something.

I understand as a company you don't want it to be as a CTA, but please don't use shady UX tactics. Such as smaller, lower opacity, hidden buttons, or adding extra steps/clicks than necessary cancel.

</comment><comment><USER8> Here's my minor nitpick: pluralization of quantities.

There are still a number of major websites and apps that display strings like _" 1 days to go!"_ or _" there are 2 item(s) in your cart"_.

Are they afraid of that extra code to build the string properly? Is internationalization a problem for these strings? Who the hell knows. Not everyone has this problem so it can't be because it's not solvable.

</comment><comment><USER9> When I try to buy something on Walmart.com, sometimes I get to the checkout screen before it informs me that the item can only be picked up at a physical store. If I wanted to see such items, I'd go to the physical store.

</comment><comment><USER10> Postmates allows you buy food from closed joints. They tell you "The store is closed " after you pay.

</comment><comment><USER11> Animal Crossings crafting system. I love that game, but not sitting for an hour crafting items one at a time.</comment>


Ask HN: Recommend me a linux compatible laptop - <AUTHOR> Looking for a new laptop. I do full stack development so needs to be powerful. I would prefer a laptop that supports a dock that I can plug in and use it to power 3 monitors (2 1440p Display port monitors and 1 1080p hdmi, will upgrade to another 1440p soon) and run ubuntu or mint. Would like to stay under 2500 if possible. I haven't looked at laptops since I got my last MBP but want to go full linux and hate the lack of dock and ports for MBP <comment><USER2> ~3 years ago I bought a nice laptop from Mythlogic that runs pretty well with Mint (or at least now that the kernel has caught up with the hardware!). If I were shopping again now I'd buy from them again. I think their current lineup has something that might suit:

[https://www.mythlogic.com/2017_Models/deimos1616.php](https://www.mythlogic.com/2017_Models/deimos1616.php)

They'll preinstall Ubuntu, and there's a wide variety of build options.

</comment><comment><USER3> See also "Ask HN: Best Laptop for Developers Right Now?" ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13949489](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13949489)) from two months ago

</comment><comment><USER4> In my experience most computers support Linux pretty well now a days. Docks are a lot more hit or miss. I would recommend focusing on finding a dock that is explicitly Linux compatible, a choosing a computer to match it.</comment>


How to Memorize Pi - <AUTHOR> http://blog.artofmemory.com/how-to-memorize-pi-6088.html <comment><USER2> Thanks for the mention. If you have any questions, let me know and I'll write a follow up. I think one member of the site is up to 70,000-something digits of pi, and another has memorized 50,000.</comment>


Mobile phones are the greatest poverty-reducing tech EVER - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/09/23/mobile_phones_greatest_poverty_reducing_tech_ever/ <comment><USER2> I agree 100%. Now low income people can connect with their friends and business connections. That could lead to more business even though their business is just off...</comment>


Local news crisis is destroying what America desperately needs: Common ground - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/the-local-news-crisis-is-destroying-what-a-divided-america-desperately-needs-common-ground/2018/08/03/d654d5a8-9711-11e8-810c-5fa705927d54_story.html <comment><USER2> I like the nonprofit model that was mentioned towards the end of the article. I think that has more of a future than the midsized regional stuff. However, I think that what's really killing the public press is citizen journalism and video evidence. You'll have press releases and news stories describing something, but your aunt has video of it. So of course, you'll just get the video from your aunt. At that point, who needs the press? And what do you need it for? Impartial analysis? We live in the age where Donna Brazille gets the questions beforehand from CNN. Nobody believes _that_ anymore.

This is in part the Newsman's own fault. We are in an era of hellish clickbait, and utter partiality, and many have caught on to this. It is a second era of yellow journalism and sensationalism, except now the yellow press is free.

</comment><comment><USER3> It used to be that everything was a war, now everything is a crisis.

<comment><USER4> Perhaps the government should declare a War On Crises.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Odd that this article mentions non-profit journalism as if it's recently been invented. I've been cycling between local NPR stations -- KQED for my current home, KUT, WFIU, WNIN for my past -- for years. Even my parents, devout conservatives suspicious of public access as the haven of kooks and liberals (My dad would say: "isn't that redundant"?) have found themselves dialing in to get some information not shouted.</comment>


Will it have a steering wheel? - <AUTHOR> http://www.vox.com/2016/4/27/11518396/autonomous-vehicle-steering-wheel <comment><AUTHOR> While I don't follow the autonomous vehicle news too closely, this is the first article I seen that really directly confronts the potential limitations of AVs in edge cases, and how that may affect development of them and how they're used. If would have helped to see some discussion of wether the taxi fleet approach could be financially feasible in less densely populated parts of the US.</comment>


Microsoft bans free Slack and discourages AWS and Google Docs use internally - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/22/18713270/microsoft-slack-ban-aws-google-docs-prohibited-list-details <comment><USER2> A bit of a hyperbole on this. Slack is allowed for example, but only the enterprise edition which allows for them to meet compliance regulations.

This sort of policy is pretty typical at any organization of size with a proper legal team.

<comment><USER3> I wonder if Slack lets organizations do on-premises (for compliance purposes, as you mention) e.g., as GitHub Enterprise does (many companies don't want to keep their raw source code in someone else's cloud).

<comment><USER4> They don't have such a product yet

<comment><USER3> Kind of surprising, to be honest. Business communication could be more valuable than source code to a bad actor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> They gave two reasons, which are risk of security and eating your own dogfood. Those seem reasonable.

Can anyone explain what the point of this article is? I read it and can't see one.

<comment><USER6> Discouraging AWS also makes financial sense. Why give Amazon its profit margin when they can use Azure at cost?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This may be one of the more clickbaity articles that's crossed the wire in the world of compliance, and Tom Warren's background at Deutsche and Morgan Stanley until 2011 unwinds an ignorance defense; he knows how these compliance policies work.

dang, can we de-clickbait the title? Or does it currently survive HN's policies?

</comment><comment><USER8> Doesn't surprise me Grammarly is banned. The whole thing just screams 'keylogger'. Send us all your keystrokes in return for grammar corrections, deal?

</comment><comment><USER9> Had to try out Teams at work recently, because the corporate IT wants us to switch over from Slack. I'm working in operations for a daughter company of corporate IT. Tried it. It's a joke compared to Slack. Horrible UI and calls dropped all the time, combined with 90s quality. In the case of an incident (I work remote) I cannot rely on Teams at all.

So, maybe some of the microsoft employees feel the same about Teams, and that's why they still use Slack? Interesting though.

</comment><comment><USER10> Fair play for the dog fooding on Teams.

Simple solution on Grammarly - MS should buy the company. It's a definite example of a tool to make SME's more effective and I'd love to see it rolled into Office 365 rather than the current cost.

</comment><comment><USER11> Slack, Trello, Grammarly, free-tier GSuite, and other tools are gaining access to some highly privileged information at a lot of companies... It's just a matter of time when something bad happens because 'you gave us permissions to all the data in the TOS you signed' or something similar.

I personally dislike all of the above, but am forced to use some of the tools :/.

</comment><comment><USER12> Always silly to force employees to use your own software. It was better or even close the employees would use it. Instead they should promote using the best so they know how to improve their own. I understand banning free slack if it's a security concern but saying they recommend not using the grid is just a poor practice.

</comment><comment><USER13> Reblog of [https://www.geekwire.com/2019/no-slack-microsoft-puts- rival-...](https://www.geekwire.com/2019/no-slack-microsoft-puts-rival-app- internal-list-prohibited-discouraged-software/)

</comment><comment><USER14> Companies that big have maintain a weird balance between a strategy tax and eating your own dogfood.

</comment><comment><USER15> What is Github running on? Isn't it AWS? If so, are they migrating to Azure?

<comment><USER6> GitHub isn't cloud-hosted, they have their own infrastructure: [https://github.blog/2017-10-12-evolution-of-our-data- centers...](https://github.blog/2017-10-12-evolution-of-our-data-centers/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> > The Grammarly Office add-in and browser extensions should not be used on the > Microsoft network because they are able to access Information Rights > Management (IRM) protected content within emails and documents,

Oh the irony.

Microsoft exfiltrates telemetry/data for all of it's product users, but complains when others do the same to it.

Has Grammarly "pulled a Microsoft" and not given meaningful options to completely disable it?

<comment><USER17> Does MS actually include or access data from your emails and docs when they do telemetry? I thought it was more stuff like what apps are being used and what you use Cortana for and stuff like that. Which isn't great but also doesn't pose an IRM risk.

<comment><USER16> They (at least used to) include things like docs when uploading crash dumps and similar.

Bit of a problem when it's in a medical or other security sensitive setting. Patient data, etc. :/</comment></comment></comment>


VPAID ads destroy performance and are still served by major ad networks - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/+ArtemRussakovskii/posts/7jMWV7oCQpn <comment><USER3> At the Guardian we needed our own video player, because we couldn't rely on a third party platform not to take down something that we published. Editorial independence was important.

We implemented our player on top of video.js, and most of the developers who were there at the time still have nightmares about it.

We finally got the thing working, looking good, embeddable, reasonably cross- browser. We shipped it. A few days later, we get a curious email from some ad provider. "It looks like your VPAID ads have stopped running!"

Oops. We'd naively believed we could live without Flash (I take full responsibility for this stupidity). The sales folks pointed to a big gap between our old projected revenue and our new projected revenue. So we went and did the work[0], hating every minute of it.

The underinvestment in ad-tech by publishers and the cancerous ecosystem of vendors that have grown up around it is one of biggest collective mistakes made by an industry.

I am optimistic that this problem can be solved, and we are actively looking at this at my current employer. We sell direct, usually without a ton of intermediaries. Talk to me if you want to know more.

Incidentally, if you want to know if a publisher is going to survive the next five years, a decent proxy is the number of intermediaries involved in their ad supply chain.

[0] [https://github.com/guardian/video-js- vpaid](https://github.com/guardian/video-js-vpaid)

<comment><USER4> Thanks for your insight.

Maybe I'm naive but how are these ads of any value to the advertiser? - <USER2> wants them, everybody ignores them. How can ads that surely almost exclusively receive accidental clicks be so worthwhile for publishers like you?

<comment><USER5> Advertising is a weird business.

There's different types of media: print, television, digital (banner ads). Print is dead (has been the increasingly accurate argument for 10 years now), television is expensive and untrackable, and digital is here to save the ad industry because that's where all your customers are and it's very trackable.

The value to the advertiser is either direct-action ("click here and buuuuuy!") or branding ("we exist, see!") Companies like Verizon, Proctor and Gamble, Johnson and Johnson, unilever, etc. spend billions on branding.

How does that money get allocated? Well, you've got a brand manager for, say, Acme Inc. Their job is "Get more people to buy" and they split their resources between creative--often working with big agencies (think Madmen, see AdAge)--and media buying. There's often pressure to spend less on creative and more on ad buys. And when ad buys don't perform, they say "We should have spent more on creative".

Media buying is basically buying banner ads (or tv or whatever). They're typically sold at a CPM (Cost Per thousand iMpressions), less often Cost Per Click.

So to answer your question: major brands have billions for branding and it's a bunch of people's jobs to spend that money and convince the people they work for that it's money well spent. And if it's not money well spent, they'll find someone who will tell them it is.

<comment><USER6> > So to answer your question: major brands have billions for branding and it's > a bunch of people's jobs to spend that money and convince the people they > work for that it's money well spent. And if it's not money well spent, > they'll find someone who will tell them it is.

I'll be the first to say there's a lot of mismanagement, incompetence, politics, etc that leads to this but it's also one of the most data driven industries around and there's a lot of proof behind the results. It's not all just random guessing.

<comment><USER7> Despite all that data though, there's still very little in the way of a clear approach to figuring out cross-channel attribution, valuing view-throughs etc.

<comment><USER6> This is a case of it being simple but not easy.

The technical strategies are pretty straightforward but it's all the business policies, silo'ed data, bad integrations/tech, privacy issues/constraints, and (the worst of all) politics and outdated thinking, that cause these issues.

Attribution isn't that hard, it's basic analytics and statistical analysis - but half the agencies don't have any understanding of math or tech and just use last click wins with some unreliable vendor and probably poor implementation which ultimately hurts everyone.

<comment><USER7> As someone who has invested countless hours reviewing attribution reports and has seen how it is handled by companies of all sizes (including up to Fortune 50 brands), I respectfully disagree with your statement that "attribution isn't that hard."

I have the fortune to also work with an incredibly bright Data Science team (several of whom have phenomenal stats backgrounds), and they all agree with me.

Many companies and agencies know last click has very real limitations. Likewise, for anyone that has started to go down the rabbit hole, you quickly find all of the other static models have similar limitations. Dynamic/data- driven attribution at the user path level is the way forward, and Adobe's econometric attribution modeling tools are the closest I've seen to getting it right. But even that has limitations (cost being just one of them). The free reports in GA and AdWords are a great start, but likewise have their own issues.

There are a LOT of variables in terms of sample sizes, data accuracy, inability to effectively isolate an experiment group due to other marketing efforts, etc. that all throw other major wrenches into this.

All of that said, I'd genuinely love to hear your solution for how to definitively solve attribution from an analytics and statistical analysis perspective. As much as I disagree with your statement, I realize I don't have all the answers, and if you have them, I (and many others) want to hear them.

Personally, I think this is the biggest challenge the industry faces right now. My gut says display and video CPMs are overvalued, but better analytics and better data are needed to really help advertisers answer the questions of things like "what is a view through worth?" or "how much revenue should I attribute to this display/video campaign?"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > A single VPAID ad absolutely demolishes site performance on mobile and > desktop, and we, the publishers, get the full blame from our readers.

The site is responsible for including ads; "publishers" should get the full blame from their readers. The publishers themselves can complain to the ad network they use, but readers are right to just blame the publishers.

<comment><USER9> It's not that straightforward though; these networks all pile in on each other, layers and layers deep, and in real time. It is very difficult for a publisher to work out who they are dealing with.

The only network ads I had running on my news site were from Google Adsense, the seemingly reputable choice, but I found ads and trackers from all sorts of networks were infiltrating through that little window.

The only reasonable action was to just turn it all off and forgo the marginal ad revenue. We now only host ads we have sold direct.

<comment><USER10> >It's not that straightforward though; these networks all pile in on each other, layers and layers deep, and in real time. It is very difficult for a publisher to work out who they are dealing with.

Then the publisher should stop working with networks that do this.

That's not in our control as users, only the publisher can do that.

<comment><AUTHOR> The problem is pretty much all networks do this.

<comment><USER11> Maybe there's a market there? An ad network content providers can trust.

Even well known news websites have ios app store redirects that stop content from being viewed.

<comment><USER12> Maybe what we need isn't an ad network, but a service that makes it easy for sites to self-host ads. Like some sort of gateway- I'm thinking adapter pattern- so that advertisers build their ads to a certain spec, and the web site plugs them in. The ad isn't served by a third party, just spec'd by it. We'd also need a plug-and-play payment pattern.

<comment><USER13> That gateway is an ad network.

Now, if it was an open standard without a gateway, it would be a different beast. But fraud would kill it.

<comment><USER12> No- the ad isn't served by the gateway. It's not an ad network. It's a standard (open or not) combined with the _service_ to help advertisers conform and site owners to plug them in. Like itunes for ads.

Ad networks seem to be immune to fraud. Large companies will pay to have their brands seen anyway; us small guys take the hit.

<comment><USER14> Having worked for an ad network that went under due to fraud, I politely disagree that they are immune.

<comment><USER12> Interesting. Is the story online? Do you want to share?

<comment><USER14> Sales people sign up publishers, I make the determination they are fraudulent, VP of Sales overrides my decisions, I leave company, advertisers demand refunds of dollars already paid out to publishers, rinse, repeat.

<comment><USER12> Hmmm. ok. Service trumps network then, for sure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> What I would like in a new kind of Ad network:

\- all ads are responsive HTML5 ads

\- all resources are loaded over HTTPS

\- ads are based on your content, not on a profile of the user

\- ads can be requested server side by sending the URL where the ad will be displayed through an API. The response contains the ad code, as well as the expiration date

\- if you want, you can even download a package with all resources so ad blockers can't block you. (unless they target you specifically)

\- if you don't get an ad in return, you can fill that space with your own fallback ads

\- the ad network also does some kind of sentiment analysis so it doesn't show ads for Donald Trump on a page that's critical about him

\- the ad network immediately severs ties with anyone who abuses the system

<comment><USER16> This is literally what HaloAds (HaloAds.com) aims to fix. We have been irritated with the state of online advertising for long enough now.

We are looking for people to try it out once it launches. Show your interest at [https://HaloAds.com](https://HaloAds.com)

<comment><USER11> Since you seem to specialise in this, FYI:

> Mixed Content: The page at '[https://haloads.com/'](https://haloads.com/') > was loaded over HTTPS, but requested an insecure stylesheet > '[http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Lato:400,300,700,900'](http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Lato:400,300,700,900'). > This request has been blocked; the content must be served over HTTPS. > [https://haloads.com/assets/img/favicon.png](https://haloads.com/assets/img/favicon.png) > Failed to load resource: the server responded with a status of 404 ()

<comment><USER17> For Google Fonts, it's best practice to leave out the protocol and link to '//fonts.googleapis.com/...'. It's unhelpful that their link generator still suggests '[http://fonts...'](http://fonts...').

<comment><USER15> Or just download them and serve them from your own domain. If you enable HTTP/2 there is little to no advantage of using a third party for hosting fonts.

<comment><USER18> Wont they be cached from other peoples websites saving the download?

<comment><USER15> No. Well, maybe, if you're using one of the most popular fonts, but each combination of weights is a seperate CSS file, that's probably a unique combination and _only cached for 24 hours_. A reason _not_ to use Google fonts is that it's just another tracking tool in their arsenal. For each request, cookies are sent to Google's servers, so they have enough reason to avoid cache hits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> From the comments:

> Peter Dahlberg > we, the publishers, get the full blame from our readers. > That's because you are to blame. As far as I know nobdoy forces you to use > those shitty ad networks. Look for a honest way to finance your business and > don't whine.

That actually makes a lot of sense. As long as Google et al. are making money from this, they have no incentive to change. Google, the automated rainbow monolith, in particular doesn't have any incentive to even _listen_.

But if publishers take the apparently extremely inconvenient step of using other networks, this sort of shit might get cleaned up. EDIT: Perhaps I should have said "other buyers;" these problems seem closely associated with the nature of ad networks.

The problem for me as a user, is how would I know the difference that such a site has, and then know that I can whitelist it?

<comment><USER20> One of the problems there, is Google has locked this down.

Chrome and Firefox warn users if they visit "deceptive websites", and disallow it. It's touted as part of their "safe browsing feature".

What it means in practice though, is that if you use another ad network, and that ad network has an advert that Google dislike, they will block your website on Chrome,Firefox and Safari also uses it now I believe. They won't just block the advert, they will block your whole website. Getting unblocked takes ages, and is a complete pain, because google will not tell you which advert it objects to.

So it's not a simple case of "Use other networks", because Google have thought about that, and locked it down. It's a big risk to use another ad network, because Google might just decide to block your website.

The fact that Google now controls what websites users are allowed to visit, should ring alarm bells with everyone. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be reported on.

<comment><USER21> > What it means in practice though, is that if you use another ad network, and > that ad network has an advert that Google dislike, they will block your > website on Chrome,Firefox and Safari also uses it now I believe. They won't > just block the advert, they will block your whole website. Getting unblocked > takes ages, and is a complete pain, because google will not tell you which > advert it objects to.

Does this actually happen? And if so, what about the advert does Google dislike? And if there is no good reason for this, how does Google get away with it?

<comment><USER22> It's usually a legitimately harmful ad. Malware, adware or other bad stuff. But these slip through quality control of ad networks, even when they don't want them.

<comment><USER20> It's worse than that IMHO.

They dislike "deceptive" adverts. So for example, if it's an image, saying "download" then Google will block your website.

Who knows, maybe in the future they'll start banning websites that advertise gambling or other things they dislike.

Now I do think that adverts like that are irritating, and deceptive, but should the _website_ that happens to be using an ad-network, that allowed an advertiser to upload an image that says "download", be blocked so that users cannot access it from Chrome and firefox? Of course not. Censorship in browsers is just not a good thing going forward. And pretty much every ad- network (Even adsense) has problems keeping out bad adverts. I don't see why Google should penalise website owners for an advertising-industry-wide problem.

IMHO It should be investigated by governments, as it's a clear case of using their muscle to retain their absolute monopoly of online advertising.

<comment><USER23> > Now I do think that adverts like that are irritating, and deceptive, but > should the website that happens to be using an ad-network, that allowed an > advertiser to upload an image that says "download", be blocked so that users > cannot access it from Chrome and firefox? Of course not.

Why not? At least that would get websites to look at the ads their ad networks are serving up a little more than "not at all". Ultimately these ads would impact the site's brand even if browsers didn't block it, the damage would just be more subtle and easier to ignore.

Until somebody in the ad delivery chain accepts responsibility for ad quality nothing is going to change. Publishers and websites have the most to lose here and should be demanding better from their ad networks.

<comment><USER20> So you want to squash the tiny amount of competition there is in the online advertising space?

I think it would be fantastic to have a credible alternative to Google adsense, but there isn't one at the moment.

Technically, a better approach would be for Google to block the advertisement or even the ad network. Blocking the website publisher is just bullying tactics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm a bit shocked about the state of advertising. When I was making websites (~early 2000s), there were a lot more options to choose from, it seems. Now you basically just have Google and this opaque network of algorithmic auctions. Back then, you had a bunch of small business ad networks that you could choose from.

I found you could also choose more different formats. OK, there was no video (thank God), but you could have unobtrusive text links, you could have banners, little buttons, HTML blocks, and so on. And yes, also annoying pop- ups and flash ads...

You also had paid content, which is absolutely taboo and vilified today, but I believe it was not nearly as bad as we think. It was certainly better than some alternatives (horrible pop-up-ads that installed dialers, does anybody remember them?) Back then, I was proud to not serve evil or annoying ads, and to promote articles from partners on my site - including setting links to them to promote their page ranks. (That Google shows links among search results that they get money for, but forbids slightly improving the position of search results when other people got money for it tells a lot IMHO.)

One alternative to the current situation would be for sites to serve their own ads (from their own servers). I wonder why this isn't done at least from big sites?

<comment><USER25> _One alternative to the current situation would be for sites to serve their own ads (from their own servers). I wonder why this isn 't done at least from big sites?_

There's no way to prove that you've served a particular number of ads to real humans. That's why all these ridiculous brokers and third-party fragments of javascript exist: it would otherwise be trivial for the publisher to defraud the advertiser.

<comment><USER19> How do physical newspapers prove ad serving to their buyers? I'm certain they don't point to every single newspaper thrown in a driveway.

<comment><USER25> Third parties and surveys e.g. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circulation_Verification_Counc...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circulation_Verification_Council)

Similar to Nielsen ratings for television, they're approximate.

<comment><USER26> So why can't the same be done on websites? If numbers of views can't be confirmed without spying on users or trusting shady actors to do that for you, it means the business model that is based on this metric is skewed.

<comment><USER27> If one network offers approximate numbers from an expensive external audit and another network offers "exact" tracking through cookies etc., which network do you think advertisers will spend with?

<comment><USER26> Exactly such egoistic and short term thinking led us to the current situation and the widespread usage of ad-blockers, no?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> In most walks of life we happily pay for something that provides us value: Cars, phones, shoes etc. I don't see the web/app ecosystem as any different although owners (that's app creators and web site owners/creators) feel they can make more by selling our lives to a third party - That's not something I want to happen with my details I will block your system for doing so. If I feel your site/app is not providing me with value then I likely will uninstall/never come back. It's a choice thing.

I have paid for apps in the past and will continue to do so in the future but only for stuff that brings me real value. I may not be the biggest supporter out there but I have a couple of Patreon's running (is that the right term?) for people that provide me with value.

Let's face it, there is a whole load of shite content out there... so maybe we need to cull the herd a bit.

Anyway, you can run a website for almost nothing these days and spending, say, $50 a month will get you some serious hosting solutions so if your business is just exploiting my browsing habits and selling my metadata on then I will happily grab the popcorn and watch your site burn.

<comment><USER19> I pay for access to NYT, Economist and Guardian. And I still block their ads. I expect them to eventually kick me out or charge more, because I'm sure my subscription fee isn't covering their profit goals.

Even if I was paying full fee for these things to be dropped on my physical door step every day, there would still be ads, only they'd be static and safe.

<comment><USER29> I have a visceral hate for advertising inside a product I pay money for (website, magazine, movie, etc). The only exception I've found to that being a product packaging including advertising for additional catalog items from the same manufacturer or retailer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> BTW, nowadays everyone talks about AI, machine learning and "mobile-first". But when I open any mobile app or any mobile website with ads I see only ads of "clash of kings" and similar scammy games. They collect lots of data but ads have no targeting at all. At least ads on mobile phones. I can't understand it.

<comment><USER31> I used to work in the industry - mobile ads can be quite targeted. My guess is apps like clash of clans appeal to a wide range of people and are backed by heavy ad spending. This means a wide variety of people will be targeted with their ads.

Doesn't mean ads arent targeted. E.g. a 25 year old white programmer probably isn't getting Spanish language ads, or ads targeting new mothers, or ads for retirement communities.

<comment><USER32> > Doesn't mean ads arent targeted. E.g. a 25 year old white programmer > probably isn't getting Spanish language ads, or ads targeting new mothers, > or ads for retirement communities.

You'd be surprised. I bought a travel sewing kit five years ago on Amazon, and ever since I'm getting advertisements and "recommendations" for handbags, makeup and high-heeled shoes. It's so blatantly sexist and wrong it's almost funny again.

Almost.

<comment><USER33> > It's so blatantly sexist and wrong it's almost funny again.

Have you considered that it's blatantly sexist and _right_? I.e., that perhaps no-one programmed the ad network to associate sewing kits with handbags, makeup & high-heeled shoes, that perhaps the ad serving AIs learnt that on their own?

I wonder what we'll do when our AIs come to socially-unacceptable-but-true conclusions. Humans can be brow-beaten or persuaded into ignoring the truth systematically, but computers have to either have each bit of truth-denying programmed into them, or have much better intelligence and spend much more CPU calculating at a higher level in order to avoid socially-unacceptable truths.

<comment><USER32> > Have you considered that it's blatantly sexist and right?

I buy an average of a hundred items on Amazon a year, among them all my – male – clothes. Your algorithms are just plain shit when a single purchase five years ago is somehow weighed more than the whole rest.

<comment><USER34> The algorithm guesses that your wife is doing the ordering, and is targeting her.

<comment><USER32> So the algorithm isn't even able to differentiate between the buying behaviour of a married couple and a single male living alone, with roughly 10 years worth of buying history to judge from?

I'd fire the department responsible for that waste of money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> At some point the cost of advertising to the medium in terms of user disengagement will exceed the income. I can't wait for it to happen, then at least we will reach some kind of steady-state.

I really pity the newspapers, especially the ones that also have an online presence, they are caught between a rock and a hard place and no matter what they do they end up hurting themselves, their employers, users or shareholders. It's very hard to transition from a 1800's model to one that will work 200 years later.

Bandwidth being as cheap as it is means that advertisers really don't care about how many bytes they need to shove down the pipe in order to make a sale. End users on metered bandwidth (mobile for instance) will suffer but that's not the advertisers problem, to them it is mission accomplished and the website owner/publisher will end up holding the bag.

<comment><AUTHOR> I find it pretty ironic that Google constantly tries to optimize for every byte in some of its products, pushes for speed and mobile optimization, yet ends up completely negating that in its advertising offerings.

This and the malware that gets through. Stop allowing arbitrary Javascript in ads, and that's it - problem solved. But nope, the cat and mouse chase goes on, and maldvertisers are always a step ahead.

</comment></comment><comment> adam-a I recently had a similar problem, browsing a reputable news site (newstatesman.com), I accidentally clicked an ad and got taken directly to a page containing explicit pornography. I complained to the site and they said they do what they can in terms of blacklisting ads, but they don't have enough time or staff.

I can't believe there's no ad network that will take a stand against abusive advertising and actually vet the ads on their network. Surely they could get a lot of business and at least a lot of goodwill. Is it just too labour intensive?

<comment><USER36> You would think some of the most profitable companies in the world could afford to hire a few interns to put eyes on any and all ads before they go out.

<comment><USER37> >hire a few interns to put eyes on any and all ads before they go out.

They do, all creatives are audited on submission. You can't provide literally ANY creative at bid time, it has to be one that's been audited. It's people that then switch the creative once the audit has been completed that are screwing everyone. It should result in you being banned from the network, but it's hard (apparently) to ban people that are paying the bills for you the ad network.

<comment><USER38> Why is it even possible to make changes after the audit?

<comment><USER39> Because the user is forwarded to a website that can be changed.

<comment><USER38> Oh right, I momentarily forgot that the complaint here was with the target of the ad, not the ad itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Sites need to be legally liable for installing malware on your computer. That will solve all of this. I can go to prison for clicking on the wrong link but somehow they get away with drive-by ransomware installs.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is laughable. If site owners could go to jail every time a 3rd-party code they're not fully responsible for does something bad, they'd all be in jail now.

[https://blog.malwarebytes.org/threat- analysis/2015/08/large-...](https://blog.malwarebytes.org/threat- analysis/2015/08/large-malvertising-campaign-takes-on-yahoo/)

[http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/03/big-name-sites- hit-b...](http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/03/big-name-sites-hit-by-rash- of-malicious-ads-spreading-crypto-ransomware/)

Etc.

<comment><USER41> Then the only standing ones would be site owners who care enough to make sure they don't allow malware on their visitor from their site. What's the problem?

<comment><AUTHOR> Because that's not how the world works. You'd jail 99.999% of publishers and the only ones not jailed would be ones who don't have any advertising.

<comment><USER42> Sounds great to me. People only publishing what they want others to read, no clickbait, absolutely marvellous.

<comment><USER43> How do you expect journalists to pay their rent in this utopia?

<comment><USER41> The internet and cheap computing has made anyone with some writing skills able to compete with journalists.

So maybe journalism as a profession is dying as blogging as a hobby rises. Of course there is value in professional journalism, but the need for that journalism is more specific.

IMO it will happen similar to encyclopedia authors or GPS makers followed a decade back.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> What ever happened to just offering a product that is in high demand and charging for it, and ignoring advertisers?

There are a lot more cancers of the advertising industry than just those listed too. In particular I would say the news industry which is a shadow of its former self, is a great example. It doesnt matter what major news site I go to, theres a big half, full, middle page popup that requires an x yo be hit, or wait for this ad, or some wierd hyperlink hijacking bullshit, or any number of other douchebaggery which tells me the site considers the ad network a bigger customer than the reader.

I'm mostly talking about on the phone, on desktop, with a combination of ublock origin and others this is greatly reduced, but only a small subset of the population uses those.

Our country is in what amounts to a constitutional democratic crisis of epic proportions but ads are interfering with citizens informing themselves due to recursive feedback loops between publishers and advertisers.

Dont even get me started on how the standard SV business model I see is: create something semi novel, get a bunch of users, sell company, new owners exploit users for advertising, ride the wave until the crash.

Or how people pay money for cable but still sit through 18 minutes of brainwashing, mindnumbing commercials for the priviledge of paying!

Its a big ol racket basket of bullshit. Cancer barely even begins to describe it. How about stage 4 metasticised cancer of the everything.

</comment><comment><USER41> If someone needs to have an ad solution to have their website running it is NOT a business that should exist.

It's like we say restaurant owners should support the mafia because otherwise they cannot make money in the neighborhood. Or any other criminal(ish) activity.

"Without advertising we wouldn't be able to run this" MAYBE it really means you shouldn't run it at all, but don't force advertising(+malware) down your users throat just to justify an unsound business decision.

Edit: reworded to avoid confussion

<comment><USER45> But a lot of niche forums - games, hobbies and so forth are unlikely to monetise any other way. Should they die too? Or have to rely on a rich benefactor deciding to host a motorcycling (or whatever) site?

Few are going to pay a subscription to chat on a Civilization or fishing forum a few hours a week. Advertising _should_ be the appropriate model for this. Trouble is it's being poisoned by the greed of Buzzfeed and Wired etc.

<comment><USER46> Come on, hosting a simple website/forum is really cheap nowadays. Some websites (wikipedia being the main one) simply ask for donations at the end of the year.

<comment> angry-hacker Wikipedia is in different position than other sites.

Every time someone posts a link to paywall, everyone discusses how to bypass it. And the people reading HN are wealthy Silicon Valley people. Well, not me but you get the idea.

Everyone talking about charging people instead ads - have you ever tried it? Tell me your success stories.

<comment><USER47> My forum runs on yearly donations. The shared hosting plan and domain cost $48/y, so about six people usually cover the costs for the whole year for the price of a fast-food lunch.

If you're trying to pay salaries, good luck, but hosting costs are very low nowadays.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Yep... I have seen this increasing steadily for a while now. Most major "news" sites have this garbage being served. Then these same sites decide to autoload video at the top of the page and their site becomes completely unusable. Do they not realize how horrible the experience is for the user?

<comment><USER49> It took CNN years to get the aspect ratio of their videos right -- all of their web video used to look like standard def TV stretched out to a HD screen. So the answer is almost certainly no.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> This whole thing would actually be technically quite easy to solve: just introduce new attribute to iframe, say f.ex. you could have traffic- limit="10MB", and request-limit="5". Browser would block the iframe and anything that runs in it cold, if it exceeds limits. In an ad-auction one would sell the ad space with the knowledge of those limits. Publisher would have perfect control on how heavy ads they allow on their page. Ad networks could still run arbitrary js. And tracking the amount of raw traffic or requests on a separate iframe should not be hard to implement.

<comment><USER51> Wouldn't it be easy to just...

         var iframe = document.createElement('iframe');
         iframe.src = '(ad url here)';
         document.body.appendChild(iframe);

For every new ad?

<comment><USER52> Sure, and since that code runs inside the frame because you're not crazy enough to let it out of its box, the new nested frame shares the same budget. No problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Some people, like my elderly father, live in an area where it's dial-up or Verizon LTE MiFi with severe data caps (~14 GB for $100 per month). He's an old-school newspaper & magazine reader, so advertisements don't offend him. He actually looks at them from time to time as he reads ESPN and on-line newspapers.

However, page loads that approach 100 MB are leaving him with less money in his pocket to purchase the products and services being advertised. Something needs to give.

<comment><USER54> _page loads that approach 100 MB are leaving him with less money in his pocket_

Install Firefox and NoScript for him. Turn off Javascript completely, everywhere, except on a handful of whitelisted sites.

That's what I use, every day, and it's really no problem to surf the Web that way. You miss some of the pictures, you miss 99% of the ads, you're not constantly wallowing in the advertising cesspool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> This is exactly why I have JavaScript turned off on mobile and selectively for some desktop site (politico nd salon are two examples of ba actors).

As a die hard JavaScript guy, I hate doing this. The performance gains have been so large that I dont miss JavaScript any more. There are a few sites that demand it and I make the determination whether or not to enable JavaScript based on how badly I want to read or do whatever is at that site.

</comment><comment><USER56> On my desktop the fan literally starts winding up for takeoff when I hit one of these pages. Taken across all the users how much electricity is just being wasted by these things?

Perhaps there should be a running "hall of shame" listing of the most egregious offending pages. Sure it's not their fault directly but these days few organizations want to be associated with the useless wasting of energy.

</comment><comment><USER57> This as nothing to do with VPAID[1], it's the player that decides how many ads to play. VPAID is just an IAB standard for video ads...

[1] [http://www.iab.com/guidelines/digital-video-player-ad- interf...](http://www.iab.com/guidelines/digital-video-player-ad-interface- definition-vpaid-2-0/)

<comment><USER58> That's mostly true. The player decides how long to allow the ads to play. It's very possible to put multiple ads in a single VPAID unit.

<comment><USER57> Sure, but the player will decide how many ads to play.

<comment><USER58> That's my point. The player will decide how many VPAID units to play. The VPAID unit can show multiple ads and essentially lie to the player saying it's a single ad. This happens, and is actually on the mild end of abuse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> And people complained about Flash, as if it was the cause. It was just one of the effects.

We moved on, and now it's even worse because now it's one additional http hit for every resource requested (images, jsons, etc). Things were as bad before with tags and tracking and analytics and whatnot, but at least many of the resources loaded were self-contained in a well compressed SWF file.

Hopefully now we're realizing it's not about the technology involved, but what people actually do with it.

</comment><comment><USER60> How is something like this even economical?

All those servers to keep up with that request rate and all that bandwidth spent. Even as costs go down, I don't see how anyone can break even on this. The tiny fraction of a penny earned on this ad is surely outweighed by the cost to display it.

And also the follow-on costs of increasing bounce rates and less time-on-site. Publishers have to be seeing less value in these kinds of ads that perform this way.

It doesn't make any kind of economical sense!

</comment><comment><USER61> Unfortunately ad technology and creative companies are not using the VPAID standard properly. Essentially VPAID is simply a JS file. One really bad VPAID I seen is generated through Adobe Animate CC and meshed with a bunch of custom code with jQuery in it. The image assets are all oversized because Samsung Galaxy S6 edge supports 2560 x 1440 and it wasn't resized to fit desktop proportions. The VPAID standard doesn't constrain the designer in terms of payload and how many connections to send.

</comment><comment><USER62> Has anyone tweeted this to Matt Cutts (Head of Web Spam at Google) ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Good idea. [https://twitter.com/ArtemR/status/742687018514157568](https://twitter.com/ArtemR/status/742687018514157568)

<comment><USER37> >I'm the head of the webspam team at Google. (Currently on leave).

From his Twitter account.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> I can see why advertising networks want to use ads which slow down browsers. The only ads I've 'clicked on' lately are those where the site was loading slowly and the bowser registered my click late, on an ad window which changed page layout as it loaded. I think most clickthroughs these days are from the page layout jumping around while rendering and not real. If the page rendered quickly you'd loose all these accidental clicks.

</comment><comment><USER64> This among many other reasons is why publishers lose the ad blocker debate with me.

</comment><comment><USER65> I manage ads in several mobile apps and I've chosen to disable full screen video ads. Still Google's AdMob mail hints keep recommending to activate them as well in order to get more revenue. More revenue for me and more revenue for the ad provider, that's the only reason.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm on a war path with these video ads, but advertising networks don't give us enough (or any) tools to disable serving them. Most of the time, it's either all or nothing. Some let you disable certain types of ads, including AdSense (it has a VPAID checkbox now that I think about it), but when I reached out to AdX people about it, they were not helpful so far (their recommendation was to turn off anything that says "video" in the OptIn tab, except that does not get rid of these VPAID ads).

sovrn was a network I dropped for this very reason - they kept serving VPAID ads and didn't give me a way to turn them off.

The list goes on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> > _I 'm at 53MB downloaded and 5559 requests._

That was not advertisement, but malware. It is probably running DDos attack on some website. We should block that.

Anyway, at ancient days I surfed with i486 on 14.4 kbps modem. Not much has changed since.

<comment><USER67> >That was not advertisement, but malware.

I doubt it. It more likely that someone wants to know how long the reader/users of a page are exposed to their ads. Some idiot savant then figured "Hey, we'll play a video and download the bits in chucks. Then we know how much of the videos was played, and that's the amount of time they spend on the page."

<comment><USER68> It's just that the advertiser, the agency, the ad network, another ad network, and another agency are tracking the time that you are watching the video. Plus, sometimes, they track every second or the code is really dirty and does this kind of crazy number of http (tracking) requests. 5000 requests is above the average though :) But I saw recently an ad like that, and it was like 100% of my surf on a website.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> Block all ads, all the time. No exception.

It's not an ad blocker. It's malware protection.

</comment><comment><USER70> One of the ad blocker blockers I came across had the balls to suggest blocking ads could negatively affect the performance of the site.

I laughed, then dropped into the DOM inspector to remove the blocker overlay element.

<comment><USER71> Probably bloomberg? They have this hilarious ad-blocker blocker popup:

      We noticed that you're using an ad blocker,
      which may adversely affect the performance
      and content on Bloomberg.com. For the
      best experience, please whitelist the site.

No bloomberg, the ad-blocker positively affects the performance and content on your site. For the best experience, make sure your adblocker blacklist is up to date.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> What it comes down to for me is this: businesses don't have some god-given right to exist. If you can't get people to give money to your business enough to at least cover your costs, then your business should go out of business.

If we enter into a business relationship, I will pay you for a good or service that you want. I will be obligated to do so because we came to an agreement in which you provide me the good or service and I give you money. But I'm not obligated to pay you money if I don't want to, and in turn, you wouldn't be obligated to provide me with your good or service. If not enough people give you money, you will go out of business. That's the risk you take with running a business.

If you enter into a business relationship with an advertiser, good luck. That has nothing to do with me. I get that you came to an agreement with the advertiser in which you provide them with ad viewers and they give you money, but it's not my responsibility to help you hold up your end of the bargain by viewing ads. At best advertisers are wasting my attention to try to sell me something I don't want or need. At worst, they're lying to me, collecting my private data, installing malware on my devices. Advertising is almost universally reprehensible. I want nothing to do with them. If advertisers don't pay you enough money, you will go out of business. That's the risk you take with running a business.

Of course, if I don't view your ads, you aren't obligated to provide me with your good or service. I fully support sites that use anti-adblocking banners. I mean I support them morally, not financially; if I come across such a banner I'll leave.

There are arguments about whose responsibility it is when ads do reprehensible things: is it the ad network or the publisher? This strikes me as similar to arguing whether the hit man or the person who hired him is responsible. Don't take money to do reprehensible things and you won't have this problem.

There's also an argument floating around that ads are the only things that makes quality content possible. This is obviously false: I remember the 90s and content was _better_ pre-advertising. Sheldon Brown's website[1] is _still_ the best website if you want to choose a bike that fits your needs. Erowid[2] is _still_ the best resource for information on drug harm reduction. And decades of development have only made things better for non-ad models: even without a packaged solution like Patreon it's not hard to include donations or paid subscriptions on your website.

Yes, some businesses will not survive the transition to non-ad models, but we have good reason to believe that the BuzzFeeds and Gawkers of the world will be disproportionately represented in that number. I'm looking forward to it.

[1] [http://sheldonbrown.com/](http://sheldonbrown.com/)

[2] [https://www.erowid.org/](https://www.erowid.org/)

<comment><USER73> Thank you for this comment. I have never been able to really articulate my position well on web advertising (even to myself, when debating over the sides of the issue) and this is it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> It isn't the ad itself that is causing those streams of requests, but rather the ad technology vendors buying or selling the data from the ad server from which the ad was delivered.

Don't blame the publisher or advertiser for not noticing that their 'anti- fraud' vendor is sending itself events every millisecond.

</comment><comment><USER75> OK, so this guy is complaining about a cancer inflicted on us by advertisers like Google, while posting on a site that (speaking of cancers nobody is talking about) requires a Google login to view. I agree with his point, but the obliviousness to the problem caused by his choice of blogging platform is a bit rich.

<comment><USER76> Doesn't require a Google login for me...

<comment><USER75> You're probably already logged in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER77> The fact that video objects can be started programmatically is the problem. There should be no API for a page to start a video; it should be only possible for a video to start via a UI action.

It's not just a problem with ads, but with videos in general. If I land in a video-hosting site, I don't want the video to start.

<comment><USER78> I agree that playing, fullscreening, etc, a video should be a /protected/ action. However I believe that an end user should have SOME mechanism of allowing such actions on their behalf.

If this sounds like a security model you are correct.

Currently the lowest hanging fruit security model would be allowing a plugin to run client side and white-listing which domains it can work with (is triggered/loaded on).

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Why isn't there an ad network that lets you inject ads server side? That would solve a lot of problems.

<comment><AUTHOR> Because any sort of page caching makes it much harder to count impressions, among other reasons.

<comment><USER15> With HTML5 ads there are several ways around that I think?

<comment><AUTHOR> HTML is a client-side language for browsers to interpret. I'm not sure what you mean exactly - can you please clarify?

<comment><USER15> HTML5 ads are like small webpages. So you can still use javascript to load tracking pixels from within the creative.

[https://www.richmediagallery.com/detailPage?id=9017](https://www.richmediagallery.com/detailPage?id=9017)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER79> One thing to note: When the developer tools are opened Chrome will temporarily disable the cache. When the video loops it would normally just reach into cache and re-play the file that was already downloaded. However, with devtools open it will probably re-download all the files again.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's not true at all. It only disables the cache if you tell it to. Like so: [http://i.imgur.com/dutc1cy.png](http://i.imgur.com/dutc1cy.png).

As you can see, that checkbox is not on in the demoed GIF.

The ad code is actively requesting new ads and pinging its trackers countless times.

<comment><USER79> ok, sure, it's configurable. But that box is checked by default.

<comment><AUTHOR> 1\. Not for any installs of Chrome I've ever had.

2\. That's entirely irrelevant in this matter because it was not turned on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER80> I block ads so perhaps one of the many "we owe it to site owners to not block ads" types can explain an alternative solution which doesn't involve me paying for stuff I don't want and which both slows my devices and drains their batteries.

<comment><USER81> Universal content syndication / income-indexed broadband (or total content) tax.

$100/year will cover all Internet ads.

$500/year will cover all advertising. Period.

That's money you're already paying.

Oh, and that's Europe, North America, Japan, and Australia, pretty much. The rest of the world gets awesome content for no charge.

<comment><USER80> I'm already paying that? I would never opt into advertising like that were it available. Most of the sites on the internet can just die for all I care. I'd still do online banking, buy stuff from amazon, read news on the BBC's sites. I don't mind paying individual sites if they ever wake up and offer that possibility but i'm not holding my breath. But as long as the choice is "streaming video/running javascript/annoying popups/privacy violation" vs that site going away, well...bye bye.

<comment><USER81> Advertising has costs. They're paid by consumers.

My "you" is statistical, but yes, generally, of the $500 billion spent on ads worldwide, the industrialised world, about 1 billion people, pay for it. If my maths check out, that's $500/year.

Amazon is Google's largest single advertiser.

I'll see if I cant find an _excellent_ HN comment made a ways back (and not by me).

Ah, here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7485773](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7485773)

<comment><USER80> Thank you for taking the trouble to find and post it, but I don't agree with hardly any of it. Facebook is free and so even if it were true that it would be of higher quality if there was a cost associated with it, i'm happy with it the way it is. (The great is the enemy of the good and all that). I have a very minimal use of facebook; just Messenger, and that's a great little app. If my usage of Facebook is paying for the infrastructure (and for Whatsapp, which I prefer because of the encryption) then so be it. I'm glad to be a part of it; I don't feel used or violated at all. They're welcome to whatever data they can clean from me; very little, I suspect. I don't see the ads, of course, because I use ad-blockers. The arguments about the best minds making people click on ads; well, at least the ads pay for services like google, facebook etc. A lot of very smart people are creating games, or writing blogs, or whatever. Utterly artless (most games are not art using any meaningful definition of the word) distractions from life. But that's their choice, and the consumers who use them. I'm not going to start paying for search engines or facebook or email etc any time soon.

The bit about advertising and its effects on society at the end is the bit I come closest to agreeing with, and it's a shame that the author of that past thought to start it with a quote from a terrible book and not, say, Noam Chomsky. I have no problem with advertising in principle; just the way it's been co-opted to sell lies and dreams. Ads on the web - in contrast to the sorts of ads you get offline - seem to be old fashioned, telling you about specific products and services, rather than showing you what your life could be like if only you owned this or that brand of fridge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER82> I'm more angry that clicking on this link on my iPhone even in Safari's Private browser launches the Google Plus application.

Why not just go to the webpage? And why launch another app that can identify me from an app that is meant to not allow that?

</comment><comment><USER83> Why is the online advertising industry so slow to address performance problems? Doing so is clearly in their best interest. Don't give people a reason to hate your product, especially when it's in your power to make it better.

</comment><comment><USER84> For some reason I ignore ads when I'm reading content. Nonetheless, once sites started moving to full interruption ads, I decided to use adblock.

What boggles my mind is that people actually look at the ads and click on them and buy things.

<comment><USER43> People don't have to click on ads for them to be useful. You can't click on a billboard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER85> Anyone looking for a DNS level blocking solution, please checkout [https://github.com/jakeogh/dnsgate](https://github.com/jakeogh/dnsgate)

</comment><comment><USER86> Publishers can blacklist ads, so unless they have tried to do so and failed then this is a way to shift blame from themselves on to a system that has been helping them all along.

</comment><comment><USER87> We have a real duty to maintain engineering excellence, before all our tech is spaghetti. What happens once the MegaBytes don't count anymore?

</comment><comment><USER88> At least now I know why my old iPad 2 becomes unusable on certain websites. Life without an adblocker is really not nice.

</comment><comment><USER89> Is this really such a hard problem for Google to solve or is it just turning a blind eye to it?

Can't Google limit the size of the ads somehow? The number of requests per page? Whether the ad remains a static image or it's a video? I find it hard to believe it would be that hard for Google to implement restrictions around this.

And advertisers wonder why the use of adblockers is skyrocketing. If Google knows about this but isn't willing to fix it, then I worry it will allow similar stuff to work within AMP pages as well, but the difference will be you won't be able to block them unless you block the whole content as well. That would mean advertisers have learned nothing from the rise of adblockers.

<comment><USER13> Increasing Google's revenue every quarter is certainly enough of a challenge without a policy of discarding clients.

Don't expect any solution from them. This is something end users (by ad- blocking) or startups (by destroying the market) can do, but not big companies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER90> I can only speak as an implementer: fuck VPAID

</comment><comment><USER91> I still won't use ad blockers, I find them akin to stealing from content creators, but I'm getting close.

<comment><USER92> After several incidents where malware was distributed through ads, I think it is fair to call it self defence.

<comment><USER93> This is a valid argument only for people who disable javascript wholesale. The lion's share of malware distribution is done by hacked sites where the attacker configured to deliver a payload only in 5-10% of pageviews in order to delay detection.

<comment><USER26> _This is a valid argument only for people who disable javascript wholesale "_

Not only. My older relatives happily click on "Congratulations, you won a million!!!" ads and end up with yet another browser bar or worse. No JavaScript required.

<comment><USER93> Parent talks about distribution of malware...</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


MIT Values - <AUTHOR> http://mitvalues.org <comment><USER2> >We uphold the principles of the scientific method, of fact- and reason-based objective inquiry. Science is not a special interest; it is not optional. Science is a foundational ingredient in how we as a society analyze, understand, and solve the most difficult challenges that we face.

>For any member of our community who may feel fear or oppression, our doors are open and we are ready to help. We pledge to work with all members of the community – students, faculty, staff, postdoctoral researchers, and administrators – to defend these principles today and in the times ahead.

Now, these things sound nice on paper, but they run completely contrary to my experience in dealing with universities in my community. If you aren't pay tuition, they won't tell you the time of day.

That's completely fair, but let's call a spade a spade.

<comment><USER3> As a long-time non-student-but-affiliate MIT person, initially as "some person who volunteered to work on some SIPB project[1]", I've been continuously amazed by the degree of openness of the MIT community. I could just walk in and visit the computer club, or go to an event with friends.

Sure, administration doesn't care, but members of the faculty are regularly willing to help out non-students. (I got a temporary account by asking a staff member nicely, to help me work a project that furthered the goals of computing at MIT)

So, thank you, MIT faculty, for clearly stating that people from all backgrounds are still welcome here[2].

[1]: [http://sipb.mit.edu/](http://sipb.mit.edu/) [2]: [http://yawh.mit.edu/](http://yawh.mit.edu/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'd like to know who has endorsed racism or misogyny. Could someone point me to such an endorsement from someone senior in Trump's administration?

<comment><USER5> You can't be serious

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> MIT only has ~1000 faculty, so it's kinda impressive that 300+ have signed at this point.

</comment><comment><USER7> Seems to me MIT cares more about political correctness than education.

<comment><USER8> The term "political correctness" generally means excessive policies to avoid offending or disadvantaging particular groups.

Nothing in the MIT message qualifies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why does MIT feel the need to hold forth on this? It sounds a lot like the SJW posturing you see at second- and third-tier public universities and state colleges.

This statement seems a bit below MIT. They should take the high ground, above petty Presidential-cycle politics. Science and all that.

<comment><USER5> > SJW posturing you see at second- and third-tier

It's been difficult to take anyone seriously that has a problem with people they label as "Social Justice Warriors". Also, this isn't the sort of rhetoric I enjoy seeing on HN.

It's important to note that they also specifically called out the President- Elect for his Climate-Denying statements.

Him being racist – and a denier – make this incredibly important.

Why is this important? They are in a position of scientific authority, and they are opposing a position of government authority. He is incorrect, he is ascending to power, and this sets their authority against his authority.

This is about who you trust for your information and who will help shape your opinion. An esteemed educational institution, or a racist demagogue? Sounds to me like you've already made your choice.

<comment><USER9> You mean I chose MIT. I didn't vote for Trump; I'm not even in the US. And even though I think Trump is a crackpot, I'd rather keep HN on tech, science, and programming. Same with MIT.

 _this isn 't the sort of rhetoric I enjoy seeing on HN_

Conversely, I don't enjoy seeing social justice rhetoric on HN. I come here for the tech, startup, and programming news and commentary. So I suppose we're even. The fact that you mistakenly read my view as pro-Trump only highlights the dangers of this kind of content on HN.

<comment><USER5> Gas lighting doesn't change the tone of your rhetoric. Drawing conclusions from what you said isn't a big stretch, given that you were dismissive, and _clearly_ invested in the scientific portion of the MIT statement:

> Science and all that

Really sounds like you chose MIT. You know there's a part in there where they acknowledge climate change? That's pretty important.

> Social Justice Rhetoric on HN.

Again, really hard to take you seriously.

<comment><USER9> You engaged in standard read-in to my comment, not even trying to understand what was meant. You say that "it's hard to take you seriously", yet the HN guidelines are clearly on my side of this issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> More virtue signaling. It's a shame that it's coming from MIT.

<comment><USER11> Calling out virtue signaling is itself virtue signaling. Do you have something meaningful to add?

If we start to see stifling of legitimate, civil speech, then I think we have cause for concern. I'm encouraged that the statement specifically includes

 _We uphold the principles of the scientific method, of fact- and reason-based objective inquiry. Science is not a special interest; it is not optional. Science is a foundational ingredient in how we as a society analyze, understand, and solve the most difficult challenges that we face._

Looking (albeit briefly) online, I found one indication that free speech might be under threat at MIT:

[http://projects.wgbhnews.org/muzzle- awards-2015/mit/](http://projects.wgbhnews.org/muzzle-awards-2015/mit/)

This describes a broadening of the MIT anti-hazing policy as including "mental discomfort", which, according to the author's commentary is part of "the gradual yet radical transformation of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from one of the most robust academic centers of free speech and free thought in the world, to just another politically correct wannabe gulag."

That said, the text doesn't include any actual incidence of complaints of these restrictions being applied. If there were, I'd think they'd be included. Of course, that doesn't mean there _haven 't_ been such occurrences. Such data would add weight to such allegations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Aka MIT values political correctness over free speech. Great. Reminds me of my university, they had a "free speech zone" to sidestep the reality that saying the wrong thing on other parts of campus could get you expelled.

Many have labeled trump as a near fascist and one of the hallmarks of such a regime is suppression of free speech and thought. In banning unpopular speech MIT has become closer to the very thing it's trying to distance itself from

</comment><comment><USER13> >The President-elect has appointed individuals to positions of power who have endorsed racism, misogyny and religious bigotry

 _leans into microphone_

Wrong.</comment>


Language of the Month: Smalltalk - <AUTHOR> http://hoelz.ro/blog/talking-small <comment><USER2> One of the best languages ever. Seeing the implementation of ALL the system in the IDE, the Transcript to play with code ....</comment>


How ultra-processed food is ageing our cells - <AUTHOR> https://www.telegraph.co.uk/health-fitness/body/ultra-processed-food-ageing-cells/ <comment><AUTHOR> [http://archive.is/iBcOt](http://archive.is/iBcOt)</comment>


Yarn 0.16 Release Notes - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/yarnpkg/yarn/releases/tag/v0.16.0 <comment><USER2> Seems to have fixed a lot of pressing issues (subpar git support, the weird "undefined in <version>" errors). Nice release!

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm happy they support private modules now</comment>


On Android, Garbage Collection Can Kill You - <AUTHOR> http://www.war-worlds.com/blog/2012/06/on-android-garbage-collection-can-kill-you <comment><USER2> You need to be really careful when using object pooling and carefully consider two things: synchrony and lifecycle issues.

Synchrony issues occur when sharing an object pool among multiple threads. If you're sharing an object pool and using an unsafe data structure you will run into concurrent modification exceptions. Another issue could also be that using a thread safe data structure (or more simply a syncrhonized method) will lead to huge performance degradations because it is a central point of contention. A third issue with object pools is that if you have multiple threads using an object pool it might fill up your entire heap with cached objects.

The lifecycle issues come into play when you ask the question, "Who returns the object to the pool?" For example you could have 1 thread passing an object to another thread and then returning the object to the pool. If not considered you could run into a possibility where 2 different threads are operating on an object as if they are the sole owners leading to unexpected results.

</comment><comment><USER3> FTA: " _A quick look at the output from ddms shows I was allocating tens of thousands of Colour, Vector2 and Vector3 objects per image_ "

And this is the fault of the garbage collector? Doing per-primitive ops by allocating heap blocks is a disaster, sorry. No one doing HPC does that. This won't run well anywhere, though obviously a desktop machine is going to give you a lot more freedom before you see frame rate problems.

<comment><USER4> It's the fault of the garbage collector because the JVM provides no sane alternative (like, say, structs, or packed object arrays...).

If there's Only One Way To Do It, that One Way should not cause the garbage collector to fall over and choke. It sounds like the desktop JVM handles it just fine, in comparison.

<comment><USER5> Why not just pre-allocate the objects and reuse them?

<comment><USER4> Have fun getting that pattern right by hand. The language isn't doing anything to help you.

Make sure you release the instances back to the pool on every exit path, but don't release them if you let a reference escape into another scope.

Have fun debugging the issues that crop up when you accidentally release an instance that's still being used back into the pool.

Have fun hunting down that one code path that isn't returning instances to the pool, and as a result is draining the pool down to 0 and causing you to gain nothing from it.

<comment><USER5> Didn't people do all that before the advent of GC? People seemed to manage resources just fine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> On Google App Engine, Over Quota can kill you:

Over Quota This application is temporarily over its serving quota. Please try again later.

is all I get right now from the link.

<comment><USER7> Cache link: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?sourceid=chrome...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=cache:http%3A%2F%2Fwww.war- worlds.com%2Fblog%2F2012%2F06%2Fon-android-garbage-collection-can-kill-you)

<comment><USER8> It's ironic that we need to use Google to cache a Google site that's over- quota, right?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Actually, Dalvik's GC just plain sucks, too.

Clojure has a similar problem: works fine on desktop JVMs, but even initialising it takes many seconds on Dalvik.

<comment><USER10> Your laptop has 10x memory bandwidth of top-end Android phones (and 20x of midrange phones). Double the numbers for desktop.

In short, mobile devices are different than laptops/desktops. If you threat them same, your application will suck.

<comment><USER3> Closer to 5x than 10x. Don't do the math based on the clock speed, look at the cycle times (which are mostly the same between DDR3 2000 and LPDDR2 533). A desktop or laptop CPU (unless by "laptop" you mean "netbook" -- laptops based on mainstream CPU cores have the same memory interconnect as desktops) will have two 64 bit DRAM channels, a typical phone will have a single 32 bit channel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I guess from the headline, I expected more than what everyone already knows: garbage collection takes up processor time, especially on unoptimized code. I was expecting something new.

<comment><USER12> Ah yes, but the article claims that Dalvik has a poor gc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Is this really a credible complaint? Someone who wrote this:

        public int hashCode() {
            return new Double(x).hashCode() ^ new Double(y).hashCode();
        }

does not seem to have the requisite understanding of how things to work to declare the inferiority of a widely used garbage collector.

<comment><USER14> Can you explain what is obviously wrong in this code?

<comment><USER13> You don't need to allocate a new double to call hashCode on it. You can just call hashCode on the double you already have.

Out of curiosity, what language background are you coming from that this isn't obvious?

<comment><USER14> Python mostly.

The constructor for Double is:

        Double(double value)

I thought only 'Double' had the class methods, not 'double'.

<comment><USER13> You're right, I forgot that there's such a distinction in Java.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's a bit strange to me that one of the recommended optimizations is to create fewer objects in a programming language that is heavily object oriented.

<comment><USER16> I remember the last time I got involved in one of these discussions, where the same give-and-take was brought up: [https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.lang.ruby/vWcRBbg8VGE/0...](https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.lang.ruby/vWcRBbg8VGE/0OUuQmCMuFcJ)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's not GC per se, it's that the Dalvik JVM doesn't do some analysis and note that the object that you create to pass to a method which doesn't escape it can be created on the stack as it is guaranteed not to exist beyond the calling method.</comment>


Genomics and me: DNA testing may not reveal as much about yourself as you'd hope - <AUTHOR> http://thelongandshort.org/life-death/dna-testing-and-you <comment><USER2> > Two years ago, US consumers could see more than 240 detailed health and > trait reports, including risk factors for heart attack and type 2 diabetes. > Then, at the end of 2013, the Food and Drug Administration clamped down. > They implied that 23andMe's tests were inaccurate. They also worried that > some consumers would misconstrue the risks, seeking out unnecessary > treatments and changing their medication regimes without speaking to their > doctors.

I can't even begin to describe how much this enrages me: I, a purportedly-free citizen of a purportedly-free republic, am not permitted to pay a firm to do its best to give me accurate information, because some unelected third party is concerned that I may make bad decisions based on that information.

What business of the State's is it if someone chooses to change his medical regimen without consulting his physician? It's _his_ regiment, not the State's; it's _his_ health, not the State's.

I'm a free man: I should be permitted to consult the best firms and practitioners I can in order to make decisions for my own lifestyle.

<comment><USER3> I think it's a complete tragedy that customers in the US can no longer get health information from 23andMe.

I started a genome software company that primarily targets the academic research market, but we recently adapted our software for 23andMe users: [https://www.enlis.com/personal_edition.html](https://www.enlis.com/personal_edition.html)

Happy to hear opinions and bug reports!

<comment><USER4> How does the report compare to the one generated by Promethease[1]? Promethease itself uses data from SNPedia[2]

[1] [https://promethease.com/](https://promethease.com/)

[2] [http://www.snpedia.com/index.php/Promethease](http://www.snpedia.com/index.php/Promethease)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This brings up a number of problems with the current approaches to gathering signal from the noise of DNA, but it's making the deeper argument that DNA may not contain much useful information. I don't think it met the burden of proof for that argument. It's a popular argument: we want to believe that our attributes aren't predetermined, that we have free will, so we want to believe anything that downplays the role of nature in the nature vs. nurture debate. But really this is still a big unknown. I very much doubt that the difficulties we currently have with gathering useful information from DNA are unsolvable.

<comment><USER6> DNA is just a small part of what makes up the functioning whole of an organism. The Transcriptome, Proteome, and the Metabolome are just as important to determining the outcomes of genes.

It's like understanding what parts are in your car but not knowing how much gas is in the tank, how far the pedal is pressed, or even what gear you're in. It's still an incomplete picture.

Disclosure: I studied cancer metabolism in grad school so I'm a little biased to think that the Metabolome is the functional endpoint of genetics and all its associated modifiers.

<comment><USER5> Well, in the nature vs. nurture debate I'm not really interested in taking a side; I want to figure out the truth. I'm relatively certain that it's a split. I just want to caution against a common human bias in favor of nurture, which this article seems to be affected by.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> To anybody who has 23&Me results: can you tell me if they are still reporting tongue rolling as a heritable trait on their reports?

<comment><USER8> Presumably you are aware this is a Myth of Human Genetics?

[http://snpedia.com/index.php/Myths_of_human_genetics](http://snpedia.com/index.php/Myths_of_human_genetics)

<comment><USER7> Yes, I've read that paper, and I read 23&Me's blog post on the trait from 2008 ([http://blog.23andme.com/23andme-and-you/tackling-tongue- curl...](http://blog.23andme.com/23andme-and-you/tackling-tongue-curling-the- challenge-of-23andwe/)). They both agree in saying that tongue rolling is not a Mendelian trait, and they both agree there appears to be a heritable component which affects several tongue-shaping traits.

I'm asking because the 23&Me reports don't really include the contextual information to appreciate the subtlety of non-Mendelian traits. If people see this and come to the false conclusion, then they're likely to come to similar false conclusions abotu the parts of the report that touch on actual health- related issues.</comment></comment></comment>