Facebook's first European data center goes live in Sweden  - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/notes/lule%C3%A5-data-center/lule%C3%A5-goes-live/474321655969861

<comment><AUTHOR> I just checked out traceroute, and it seems that it's not yet servering. Same was with Google's Hamina data center. It took months, before it was actually serving something to Finnish users, even if they claimed it's in production use.

Currently it seems that www.facebook.com TCP connection is terminated in Frankfurt, Germany. Ping from Stockholm, Sweden is 178.2 ms. Hmm, it should be less than 20ms for sure.</comment>


The things I've learnt from Michael Jordan as a software engineer - <AUTHOR> https://blog.phuaxueyong.com/post/2020-05-30-6-things-michael-jordan-taught-me/ <comment><AUTHOR> It has always been a dream to be able to merge the two domains I love and learn something out of it. Wish to share with all of you! (:

</comment><comment><USER2> This is cool :)</comment>


Cannabis reverses aging processes in the brain, study suggests - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/05/170508112400.htm <comment><USER2> Then why does it make people so forgetful? These studies should always be taken with a grain of salt on both sides

<comment><USER3> It makes your short term memory worse, demonstratively, but doesn't seem to have the same affect on long term memory.

And yeah, this study is on mice, so it's pretty inconclusive.

<comment><USER4> Yes, it's on mice. But I've yet to see any studies that demonstrate memory loss conclusively in humans. If you know of any, I'd love to read!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The study is a far way from anything difinitive.

</comment><comment><USER3> TLDR; in mice</comment>


Scientists create mutant enzyme that recycles plastic bottles in hours - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/apr/08/scientists-create-mutant-enzyme-that-recycles-plastic-bottles-in-hours <comment><USER2> [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6665906-directive-51](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6665906-directive-51)

This article is exactly what this book series was about.</comment>


How to Manufacture a Climate Consensus - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704398304574598230426037244.html

<comment><USER2> As a scientist, I find it depressing that people would engage in this kind of behavior. But on the issue, I just watched this MIT "debate" about the impact of this incident:

<http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/730>

One thing I specifically remember is that one of the panel members (and member of the IPCC) concluded that the attempt by Mann et al. to bury conflicting studies was not successful, as some of those very papers were discussed and cited in the IPCC reports.

<comment><AUTHOR> I believe if you reduce the argument to one or two specific papers you can easily see that they get out.

More distressing is the overall pattern of behavior, where editorial boards are rigged and scientists just "give up" working in this field. No amount of good papers getting through is going to fix that, unfortunately.

<comment><USER2> Agreed. It's a fine line between rejecting "crackpots" and those with whom you simply disagree.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is a pretty powerful article. Regardless of your thoughts on global warming, it's rather upsetting to see scientists' careers ruined through having opinions differing than the gatekeepers of the peer reviewing system.

<comment><USER4> This isn't a particularly powerful or insightful article. The entire subject is blown out of proportion and distorted until hardly any of the actual facts remain.

1\. Scientists ruin their careers by repeatedly attempting to discredit theories they cannot find the evidence to discredit (or proving claims they cannot find proof to claim). If a truly compelling set of studies discrediting global warming trends came out, you can be sure that _many_ publications would be _eager_ to publish it. This is how science works, and how it has worked historically. It's a surprisingly stable environment of meritocracy. Politics intrude, as in any human endeavor, but we'll get to that in:

2\. Differences in opinion in the peer review process are as old as science. That is why there are multiple publications and multiple standards for entering into those publications. The whole notion of "scientific consensus" is built around assumptions like schisms such as this. If everyone agreed about the exact criterion for publication we'd only have a few (perhaps regional) scientific publications (and then we'd truly be in trouble).

3\. Science is about _consensus_ , but that implicitly accepts dissent. People argue for awhile, a consensus is formed, and then things blow over. Seldom are careers ruined. For an example, see Einstein's extremely controversial claims that eventually became the next major stepping stone for physics. People _violently_ opposed his propositions at first, and now we look at him is one of the greatest minds in human history.

The difference here is that there are active sources of misinformation trying, for whatever non-scientific reasons, to drum up controversy around the global warming issue of anthropogenicity. This issue is still under active debate and research, but unlike many other subjects in a similar status (e.g., quantum physics) there are "deniers" who will not accept _any_ positive evidence against their claim and will resort to any means, social or otherwise, to make their point of view supreme.

Some might argue this is warranted because climate science is making predictions that require us to radically restructure our industry and energy infrastructures to the tune of massive sums of money. To be honest, I think this complaint is shortsighted. Scientific predictions, even those in the limbo state between "well-accepted" and "just a theory" that we are calling "consensus", have always dictated the allocation of resources. Consider the exorbitant cost of the LHC, which is one of the single greatest achievements of human engineering and physics.

<comment><USER5> Science is NOT about consensus. "Scientists" have no monopoly on truth. Science is about facts. Observation. Falsifiable, objective, and independently reproducible theories. They either produce predictions that match reality or they don't. It doesn't matter if the scientific establishment believes or disbelieves in the hall effect, or special relativity, or high temperature superconductivity. They are either real or not independent of the opinion of the majority of scientists.

One hopes that the scientific community is sufficiently objective and disciplined to embrace true science when they see it, but that may not be (and has not been) the case always.

Consensus should follow science but consensus _cannot_ create science.

<comment><USER4> > Science is NOT about consensus.

The entire scientific method is built around consensus. As science is a process subject to continual refinement. Almost all propositions put forth by science are ultimately incompletely, inaccurate in some cases, or limited to specific situations we can test.

So, the scientific process (and the method itself) rigorously challenge all propositions. Some simply fall apart under the weight of their own inconsistency, which is what happens when results can not be replicated. But those which can be replicated _achieve consensus_ until a more accurate proposition can be made.

Thusly, Newtonian physics was supplemented and updated by Relativity. Wave- particle duality gradually replaced competing theories. Et cetera. These are _consensus_ opinions. They are _not_ facts. They're the closest models we can get based off our observations. The core of the scientific method is that things are given a continuous opportunity to be _falsified_.

<comment><AUTHOR> So science is like some big dinner party where really smart people decide what best model substitutes for reality?

I always thought it was more like a dinner party where really smart people were usually wrong and engaged in petty groupthink, and the guy who was able to show they were wrong (by reproducible experiment) eventually changed their minds (after quite a bit of trouble, and sometimes by having to wait until they retired or died)

Have you heard of the book "The Structure of Scientific Revolution", probably one of the top ten books on science in the last hundred years? Wasn't the entire point of that book that the way science is sold to kids, ie, a linear process where one good idea comes out and naturally replaces another, was a complete fable? In reality science gets "stuck" in various paradigms and it takes quite a bit of pushing to get them to change.

I've been observing your comments, and I wonder how you make these two things fit together.

<comment><USER4> > I always thought it was more like a dinner party where really smart people > were usually wrong and engaged in petty groupthink, and the guy who was able > to show they were wrong (by reproducible experiment) eventually changed > their minds (after quite a bit of trouble, and sometimes by having to wait > until they retired or died)

I think this is the thing I said. Ideally the change is purely a matter of data being presented and reproduced, but human politics inevitably creep in. But either way, saying "Science is not about consensus!" is at best a misunderstanding and in some cases it's actually a tactic for climate change denialists.

But I'm not sure how my comments require me to reconcile the information you mentioned from "The Structure of Scientific Revolution" with my viewpoint? Could you explain, please?

<comment><AUTHOR> Perhaps we are violently agreeing? ;)

Here's the thing. There are two concepts here that people mix up quite a bit: the scientific method and the politics of science.

The scientific method is about 1) Abduction. Collecting data and finding patterns. 2) Deduction. Forming the patterns into possible rules, and 3) Induction. Showing through reproducible experimentation that the rules work (or not) and then extrapolating that to the universe at large.

There's not much argument on the scientific method. A lot of philosophers point out it's many problems (induction, for one, is a thorny one. And there's the problem of instrumentation) but in general the scientific method is the light that lets our species see in the darkness. The reason you get into an airplane and trust it is because these three processes have been followed. The reason medicine is fundamentally different than, say, physics, is that in some cases strong correlation between data and induction is all you have -- there is no hypothesis holding it all together (or a very weak one). Different sciences and different subjects have various levels of maturity in all three of these areas. It's important to understand that when talking what the status of those sciences are.

The politics of science is all about consensus, funding, peer reviews, press coverage, political causes, etc. The actual practice of science, because it is full of people and not demi-gods or robots, has a lot of politics built into it.

The interesting questions for any discussion of science are 1) what is the maturity of the science in all 3 of these areas, and 2) are we talking about the scientific method? Or the politics of science? (either one may be important, but you have to know which you're discussing)

Over the years schoolkids are taught some sort of propaganda that mixes all of this into one big pot and stirs in a little hero worship. (I think the hero worship is well-placed. Scientists are some of my greatest heroes). Scientists are these really smart guys who move from one great idea to the next as new information comes out, and science is the process of being the most "enlightened" by being up-to-date on whatever the current consensus is.

But a funny thing happened on the way to nirvana -- Thomas Kuhn started looking at how the work of science gets done. And he found this huge gap between the legend of how science gets done and how it actually gets done. There's really too much there for me to do justice in this format, but as an exaggeration suffice it to say that scientists have turned out to be as human as the rest of us, and consensus is probably very much a lagging indicator of where the actual science is leading. Lagging by perhaps as much as decades.

So when you say "consensus is what separates science from philosophy" or that "science is all about consensus" I find I must interpret that as "the politics of science" for it to make sense to me. But then when you start using that consensus in some sort of functional context just like the real work of science, it doesn't fit any more.

It's probably me. I'm just confused.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was thinking about this the other day: what _is_ the best scientific statement we can make, at present, about anthropogenic global warming?

On one hand, we have theory. There's reasonably good theoretical reasons to expect that increasing carbon dioxide should increase global temperatures. However, every good scientist knows not to trust theory too much until it's been verified by experiment, especially when the system in question is so complex.

On the other hand, we have experiment. Unfortunately, we only have a sample size of one, and we don't have a control group. We tried increasing the CO2 emissions, and found that sure enough, the temperature did wind up increasing. But given there's only one planet in the sample and no planets in the control group, we certainly can't eliminate the possibility that there's no causal link. If we forget that we're looking at global temperature vs CO2 concentration and pretend we're looking at a high school kid's science project about whether playing music to plants makes them grow faster, we'd have to say that the experiment lends some support to the hypothesis but is hardly conclusive.

So what can we reasonably conclude? I think the fairest thing we can say is that it's more likely than not that increasing CO2 emissions causes an increase in global temperatures. Anyone who claims the science is "settled" though, the way it's settled for heliocentrism, evolution or relativity, is not much of a scientist.

(I am also, despite years of Year 9 science projects, still unsure whether playing music to plants makes them grow faster.)

<comment><USER7> > I was thinking about this the other day: what _is_ the best scientific > statement we can make, at present, about anthropogenic global warming?

Here's what it seems like:

1\. The Earth is warming at a slow rate, but at least some of this is natural as temperatures were historically considerably higher, then considerably lower than now.

2\. We're still well within the bounds of normal, habitable historical temperatures.

3\. Warming definitely occurs at local levels with deforesting, mining, and urbanization. This can decrease condensation and make areas less habitable to life. This can be stabilized to a large extent by planting trees, restoring soil quality, and so on.

4\. Carbon dioxide currently makes up 0.3% of the greenhouse gases including water vapor, and about 5% of the non-water vapor greenhouse gases. Carbon dioxide increases are lagging temperature increases - suggesting that CO2 is not the biggest culprit of global warming.

5\. That said, fossil fuels will gradually be replaced - the two current biggest hurdles are battery quality and political/public fears about nuclear power. Nuclear has gotten incredibly more stable and safe, and the advent of thorium reactors is exciting. Innovations in batteries and transitions to next generation nuclear will reduce fossil fuels a lot.

6\. Much of green technology isn't so green - in many areas, turbines and solar panels take enough energy to create that they won't "pay back" their energy cost within 50 years, at which point we'll likely be able to produce energy much cheaper anyways. Some areas are very well suited for green energy - deserts with solar, very windy areas with turbines, hydroelectric on rivers, but they're brute forcing some very Earth-unfriendly alternative energy into areas it's not well suited for. Much of what's called green is marketing.

Personal judgment call based on everything I've seen? Money into R&D for hydrogen power, better batteries, fusion, and safer next-gen nuclear probably goes a lot further towards cleaning up the Earth than the current proposed solutions. Fossil fuels seem like they're going to largely be obsolete within 100-150 years or sooner, and rumors of the Earth's imminent demise appear to be greatly exaggerated.

<comment><USER2> As you say, much of your points are personal judgments. I do want to respond to some that aren't:

"2. We're still well within the bounds of normal, habitable historical temperatures."

This is a severe oversimplification, IMHO. Human society is sensitive not just to whether the Earth is overall habitable, but to impacts to the significant "sunk costs" we have in the locations of population centers. It's not much comfort to the people of California if the Earth remains habitable _on average_ when the Sierra snowmelt disappears and the state faces a drought of unprecedented proportions.

"4. Carbon dioxide currently makes up 0.3% of the greenhouse gases including water vapor, and about 5% of the non-water vapor greenhouse gases. Carbon dioxide increases are lagging temperature increases - suggesting that CO2 is not the biggest culprit of global warming."

Where do you get that CO2 is 0.3% of greenhouse gases? It's true that water vapor is the largest contributor to the greenhouse effect, but CO2 is next. It accounts for 50% of the non-water greenhouse gases and for _way_ more than 0.3% of the total greenhouse effect. Besides, counting water is a little spurious because the water content of the atmosphere is set _by_ the temperature. Thus, if temperature goes up, water content goes up. So saying that CO2 doesn't matter because water vapor is much more important is wrong, it's precisely the opposite. CO2 matters _more_ because its effect is amplified by water. (Barring controversies about cloud covers.)

CO2 is also the greenhouse gas that has the longest lifetime in the atmosphere. The others (methane, etc) break down a lot quicker.

<comment><USER7> > It's not much comfort to the people of California if the Earth remains > habitable on average when the Sierra snowmelt disappears and the state faces > a drought of unprecedented proportions.

It's a really long discussion, but our ability to locally adapt to climate change is actually quite good and improving regularly. Temperatures are rising really, really slowly - you can get the 2-3 degrees per 100 years back by planting trees and irrigating. Desalination has come along incredibly fast too. I can go into greater detail if you have specific questions, I know a fair bit about this stuff.

> Where do you get that CO2 is 0.3% of greenhouse gases?

"Carbon dioxide (chemical formula CO2) is a chemical compound composed of two oxygen atoms covalently bonded to a single carbon atom. It is a gas at standard temperature and pressure and exists in Earth's atmosphere in this state. CO2 is a trace gas being only 0.038% of the atmosphere."

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide>

I think a lot of people forget that CO2 is naturally occurring and necessary for life.

Also of note:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPCC_list_of_greenhouse_gases>

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas#Greenhouse_effec...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas#Greenhouse_effects_in_Earth.27s_atmosphere)

Wikipedia has CO2 accounting for between 9% and 26% of the greenhouse effect, the citation was from the American Meteorological Society.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What we are seeing is the politicization of science. Free and open debate in the scientific community has been choked off by the true believers.

Data not showing what you want, then change it. Allegiance to the cause trumps the search for the truth and we are all losers in this debate.

</comment><comment><USER9> Should I overlook the fact this guy is employed by The Cato Institute, which is funded by big oil?

<comment><USER10> No, but also don't miss the fact that most of those on the other side are funded by big government. Neither side is neutral.

<comment><USER11> Fair enough, but the security and welfare of citizens is the primary interest of big government (o.k. secondary, but aligned with the primary interest of getting re-elected), whereas big oil has no interest other than making loot. With respect to climate change, big oil loot comes at the expense of our planet (and our security, and lives our troops in the middle east, and our health, and our economy).

<comment><USER12> Employment is not a valid criteria by which to validate a scientific paper. It's a red-herring, when the actual paper and data is available to validate. Employment has 0 bearing on it's validity. The point of the article and other like it is that papers and careers were being blacklisted not on the validity of the science conducted but on the personal opinions of a group more interested in their own ideas than in open discourse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Consensus != truth

</comment><comment><USER14> Why is this occurring now? If this type of behavior was going on then it sounds like there were a number of scientists that could have spoken out about this long ago? Especially when the "hockey stick" paper came out if it was questionable. Why did it take a mysterious "hacker" to reveal this bias? If all the scientists at the CRU are being unfairly treated why didn't Sallie Baliunas pull a Zed Shaw when she left science?

The timing just makes all of this very suspect. Had this occurred six months prior I might be less skeptical, but at this point I don't know who to believe.

Until someone figures this crap out I'll be in my hummer doing donuts in the parking lot.

<comment><USER15> It didn't take a mysterious "hacker" to reveal this bias. It has been known for a long time.

I heard about the "smoothing over" of the MWP and the weighted bias used to produce the hockey stick many months ago. A significant number of climatologists have been vocalizing these concerns in varying degrees for some time. No one would listen to them.

The only reason YOU are hearing about it now is that once light was shed on the CRU shennanigans, it lent legitimacy (whether or not it is deserved) to said climatologists, and the opportunity to voice their concerns to a larger listening audience.

<comment><USER14> But as cited in the article Mr. Mann tried to put Climate Research "out of business" as it's put after a 2002 paper didn't agree with him. If YOU heard about the smoothing over of MWP data only months ago doesn't make it very current. The paper was from 1999. It's not like this stuff just happened within the last year.

If these small enclave of scientist felt CRU was being railroaded why did it take 10 years for them to get a larger audience? They couldn't come up with some way to expose this problem? He's sending these emails around. I'm sure plenty of them were CC'ed on one or two of them. "as stonewalling and requesting colleagues to destroy emails to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)." Those emails could have been sent along to any paper and they would have been published. There are plenty of journals that could have published this research, and would have been happy to do so if they were compelling.

Why did someone choose to expose this through the shady hacker route?

At least Patrick Michaels went to WSJ when he wrote his article.</comment></comment></comment>


Is Portugal's Liberal Drug Policy a Model for US? - <AUTHOR> http://www.aolnews.com/world/article/is-portugals-liberal-drug-policy-a-model-for-us/19591395

<comment><USER2> It's a bit of an old story, but perhaps newly relevant after Mexico's _incumbent_ president Felipe Calderon saying last week that existing policies don't seem to be working, and that it is time to consider legalization, though he didn't go so far as endorsing the idea. Given the ~28,000 drug-war-related deaths in Mexico over the last 4 years, I can see why he might be considering alternatives. The previous president, Vicente Fox, enthusiastically endorsed the idea a couple of days later. Retired officeholders can afford to be more bold than when they were in the hot seat, but it came as a big surprise to me to see a sitting president put the idea on the table.

Surprisingly, this news made barely a ripple in the US media...then again, coverage of Mexican affairs here is not that good, and even discussing legalization is political suicide in most of the US. One articulate and credible advocate for the idea is a judge and self-described former 'drug warrior' from Orange County named Jim Gray, who left the GOP to run as a libertarian candidate in 2004 (for the senate, of all things). I caught him speaking recently on CSpan and was highly impressed by his pragmatic approach.

<http://www.judgejimgray.com/grayarticles.php> or <http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/295043-1> or <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_P._Gray>, for text, video, and background respectively.

<comment><USER3> In Mexico, marijuana, cocaine, and heroin are already legal in personal use amounts much like Portugal. The problems Mexico is having are the side effects of drug shipment cartels that move substances from South and Central America to the USA.

Mexico could further legalize transshipment of drugs so that cartels could just hire Mexican shipping companies to deliver the drugs to the USA border. And that might help a little in the interior of the country, but the interior of Mexico already sees low levels of drug crime.

The real problem will be crossing the USA border with the drugs. As long as that is a critical concern of the cartels, they will need decoys, armies of labor, help from police, forged bills of lading, bribed officials, and the whole infrastructure of corruption and violence.

Since the USA isn't going to be legalizing anything as far as I can see, there will always be violence in Mexico paid for by USA users. I don't see anything the Mexican government can do about it.

<comment><USER2> Quite so. Quite aside of the various problems inside the USA (sentencing disparities, resources taken away from other crimes, families and careers wrecked, and worse), our current policies create terribly perverse economic incentives - and not just in Mexico. Check this out: [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-07/wachovia-s-drug- hab...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-07/wachovia-s-drug-habit.html)

The sad fact is that every time we or the Mexican government removes a top- level dealer, there's a gruesome competition to take his place because the market is worth billions of dollars. Even a vanishingly thin slice of such a huge pie is worth the risk of death to many people. The more of a high-risk occupation we make it with aggressive enforcement, the more marginal and unscrupulous the individuals who will be attracted to it. The sort of people who are willing to decapitate their competitors or massacre civilians are not rational actors who are influenced by the calculus of deterrence; as we've seen in Central and South America, the net effect of escalating the conflict into paramilitary activity is to just bring drug suppliers and illegal arms dealers into closer proximity.

If you have the hour to spare, I felt Judge Gray had a very pragmatic and persuasive approach to overcoming the political and legislative inertia, but it's going to be an uphill struggle. While the Obama administration has finally altered national policy a little (eg by supporting legislation to eliminate crack/cocaine sentencing disparities and taking a hands-off approach to state policies on medical marijuana), more fundamental changes will require the voters to demonstrate where the safe electoral ground is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> My take on this is quite simple: I want drug dealers, drug suppliers, pimps and prostitutes to pay taxes. And I don't want my tax money to be wasted policing these areas. Legalize it and let IRS worry about them, this is the worst thing for such business: with the high profit margins gone and taxmen watching over the shoulder organized crime will have no reason to be involved in these areas.

<comment><USER5> Forget the IRS -- just legalize it, period. People have the natural right to produce, trade, and ingest any substances they choose -- even to the point of injuring or killing themselves. I don't support legalization for your pragmatic reason of enabling certain people to dip into other people's business. I support it because it's the right thing to do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've always thought that the problem with the drug war is that governments simply try to regulate the usage instead of regulating the desire. People use drugs because their lives suck. People drink because their day sucked. People use drugs to change their state of reality because they do not enjoy the state they are in. I think the funny part of it all, in some shape or fashion, government is the reason why people do not enjoy the state they are in. Taxes, rules, and regulations are created for every aspect of your life. The government controls every part of life and when you are high, there is no control. You get to be free for as long as the high lasts.

To the decriminalization, if I can grow it in my back yard, the government should have no right to say what I can do with it. If I have to create it in a lab setting and plan on selling it to someone else, then there should be some control. I've never heard of weed killing anyone, but I've heard of all the rest killing people. So when it's possible to kill someone, there should be roads to justice available.

2¢

<comment><USER7> Some people use drugs for life-enhancement. You probably don't read HN because your life sucks, or play video games because your life sucks, or watching sporting events because your life sucks.

For some people, drugs are just another enjoyable part of life, not an escape from life.

<comment><USER8> I'm surprised how few people realize this. I guess drug use is one of those topics that tend to shut off people's rational faculties and make them react with emotion and a holier-than-thou attitude

<comment><USER9> Near constant anti-drug propaganda from infancy through adult hood has that effect.

<comment><USER10> That and I think a lot of people outgrow drug use or advocacy. They did it when they were young, stopped and now don't care about the rights of other people. Or maybe they just developed a cynical view of youth or see the negative drug culture.

Basically, an "I don't care anymore so just keep them banned" attitude or an inability to do analytical thinking to see that the negatives of our drug culture aren't inherent to drug use.

<comment><USER7> You speak some depressing truth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> In answer to the title: Yes, it is. Every country on the planet that has legalized one or other drug has seen only positive results from it (Portugal, Switzerland, The Netherlands, to name a few). The "war on drugs" has never, ever sported any success or any result in combatting this supposed "problem"; a problem that a ban itself creates - the very second a government bans a specific substance it loses all control over it, and non-governmental bodies (cartels) will instantly gain control over all accessibility of the substance in question - completely beyond any government's reach - and drug-related crime arises from this very point in a twofold manner: the cartels' fight over dominance, and the actual legal tag attached to anyone handling said substance. The only way to get rid of the problem is to _LEGALIZE_ the substance, _REGULATE IT_ , and thus regain control. The last time the USA were taught this lesson was during the prohibition, when it took them 14 years to realize how stupid their mistake was. The current lesson has been going on for over 80 years, costed thousands of thousands of lives, and billion after billion of tax payers' money. How much longer will it take?

<comment><USER12> "only positive results" is simply not true, and a dangerous assertion if you want legalization in the US to not just happen, but to stick.

In the Netherlands, we're still struggling with tons of unforeseen side- effects of partial legalization (like a excessive alcohol abuse amongst teenagers, since drugs are no longer particularly "cool", and alcohol is much cheaper and more available). The net result has been positive, but it's not without its problems.

As a results, there is still a lot of pressure from conservatives to take more repressive measures, and the road to full legalization is blocked by the relations with other countries (not just immediate neighbors, but the entire EU with its wide-open borders and the US that meddles in everyone's business) that take a much less liberal view.

Bottom line is: legalization will create new problems, some of them may be hard to predict. It does not magically solve the problem. It just allows you to focus efforts and resources on the _real_ problems, instead of the side- effects of prohibition.</comment></comment>


Favorite Hacker/Startup Food/Diet (What do you guys eat) - <AUTHOR>

Come on guys what else do we eat besides Hotpockets and Mountain Dew, I like Ramen and Vault Soda as well Coffee Bean covered in Chocolate. How about you???? <comment><USER2> I like cooking so for me its a way to relax and get my mind off. but during the day I only drink coffee. I don't eat lunch or breakfast

</comment><comment><USER3> Google site:news.ycombinator.com - it's been covered several times...

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> you eat like samurai Danielsan</comment>


Show HN: Play "music" with others (a basic web app) - <AUTHOR> https://www.personalecho.com/jam <comment><AUTHOR> Developer here. I heard some of you try out this little app. If you have any feedback, I'd love to hear it.

Would you use it in the future, if it were more polished?

</comment><comment><USER2> Delay a bit too strong to be useful. Some quantized or delayed loopy thing might do the trick.

<comment><AUTHOR> How much of a delay did you experience?

I was worried about it before I made this, but I haven't noticed any considerable lag. The server is in France. If you're not from Europe, this could be the reason for the delay.

<comment><USER3> I'm in Italy and the delay is acceptable

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Good to know.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Y Combinator Challenge #6 - More variants of CRM - <AUTHOR> http://astartupaday.wordpress.com/2008/07/28/y-combinator-challenge-6-more-variants-of-crm/ <comment><USER2> Boy, this guy is pretty good.

<comment><USER3> Thanks pg!!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is great so far.

It would benefit from phone integration too. I do a lot of selling/appointment booking over the phone and it's a pain to have to manually feed that back in to our CRM.

Even better if you went to a meeting, being able to update the CRM using an iphone.

</comment><comment><USER5> "MRC"--I love it. (Those are Mark Crispin's initials/hacker signature, the inventor of the (gag) IMAP protocol, the main email underpinning these days.)

</comment><comment><USER6> If anyone wants to implement this in the greater Boston area and needs C++ hackers, I'm available.

</comment><comment><USER7> Xobni + Highrise?

<comment><USER3> Good call on Highrise - I love 37 Signals</comment></comment>


Products I Wish Existed - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/products-i-wish-existed <comment><USER2> "The Reusable Checklist"

Like Microsoft InfoPath? Or pretty much any business software with "workflow" in the feature list.

"E-mail with time function"

Like you can set an "expires" time in e-mails in Outlook?

How many more of these are "things which do exist, but searching for them and finding out about them is actually hard" rather than "things which don't exist at all"?

Vernor Vinge's programmer-archaeologist vocation was a pretty good prediction.

<comment><USER3> Is the expire time set in Outlook will work in another email server/client like Gmail?

<comment><USER2> I don't think so. I don't know if it's a standard header, or even what Exchange does with it.

But it has existed in Outlook for a decade or more, so people have been considering this same problem for a long time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> There is no way to comment on these. As pointed out, many of the things exist, but the submitter is merely unaware.

>Email 'To:' field randomizer <https://medium.com/products-i-wish- existed/5dc3f5cd08ab>

For example, it hurts me inside that I cannot tell this guy to use "bcc:"

<comment><USER5> Bcc is different than what he's describing

<comment><USER4> If the entire recipient list isn't disclosed to the recipients, then there would be no need to randomize it. So, bcc meets his goal of not disclosing the particular order in which he entered the email addresses.

Granted, in rare cases, it is desirable to disclose all recipients' email addresses to each other, but I'd personally prefer it if that were the exception, rather than common practice.

<comment><USER6> > _Granted, in rare cases, it is desirable to disclose all recipients' email > addresses to each other_

It might be rare for some people's use of email, but it's hardly rare. It's essential if it's group email and others in that group need to be able to chime-in to the rest of the group.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The countdown looks super awesome. I think we'll build this over the weekend. <https://medium.com/products-i-wish-existed/995b0a12ee16> Email me (martin at UpOut dot com) if you're interested in the beta.

</comment><comment><USER8> I want a Microsoft Excel clone where each formula is replaced with a call to R. Formulas can also be used as array formulas.

Wouldn't this be cool: {=randomForest(A1:A1000,B1:H1000,...)} and out dumps your rf to the selected cells then {=predict(...)} etc.

Pretty sure I'm the only one who wants this.

</comment><comment><USER9> Username charity sounds exciting to me. We are in early years of user driven web. Imagine what it would be 25 years down the line? I doubt people want to use their real names unless governments across the world regulate Internet and make it mandatory.

</comment><comment><USER10> I really do love all of these, but I hate knowing that few are viable, and few will ever be real products. "Awesome ideas" are exactly why we built LaunchSky.com \-- a tool to quickly and effectively validate if an idea is truly viable (and needed).

If you go to LaunchSky.com now, we've locked off free invites, and have the submissions we'll be using for our launch -- but these are really good.

If the OP or any posters of the ideas on that medium page want a free credit to post it on LaunchSky.com -- email me: Vlad (at) DarwinApps.com and I'll hook it up with a free credit to LaunchSky for you.

Just screenshot the medium.com part of the post and send it from the email you'd like the free credit to go to.

</comment><comment><USER11> Two hardware products I wish existed but never will:

\- an eInk display laptop for text only computing / document creation and max battery life

\- 4G basic brick phone + wifi tethering

<comment><USER12> Never is a long time. 1) Will definitely exist in some form. Perhaps a slate- like device with relatively fast eInk display which you can connect a kb/mouse to. 2) I can see mobile SoC's becoming so cheap that you can probably personally hack together something like that for cheap in a couple of year's time. Then just buy Data from some reseller.

<comment><USER13> I was under the impression you could get a 4G brick from Sprint and use that as an access point. Unlimited data and all that. Still kind of insanely expensive, though, but hey, companies can own radio frequency.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I want to be able to enter a target dollar amount into a certain date on a calendar, then select a date at a time before that date, and have it calculate how much I have to save each week to reach that target. And have it auto- adjust the weekly amount when I miss a week now & again, or when I save more than the required amount sometimes, too.

<comment><USER15> Simple.com lets you set goals and automatically sets the right amount of money aside for you to reach that goal at your desired date.

I have 5 invites if anyone needs one.

<comment><USER16> I would love an invite if you still have one to spare. What do you think of Simple.com so far?

<comment><USER15> I think it's great. I've always had trouble saving any money always desperately waiting for my next paycheck, and after only two months, I've saved more than I ever have.

It can't really replace a full bank though unless all you do is use a debit card for all your transactions (like me).

Email me at firstname.lastname@example.com if you want an invite.

<comment><USER17> I'm really surprised that integration with external credit cards (and banks, but especially credit cards given their importance in the US) isn't on the top of their priority list. I understand that they'll miss out on the extra data they get by being partnered with their bank, but it would let me drop mint.com with its dated ui, and make it much easier to use the goals mechanism (and daily spending limits would be a lot more relevant). Alternatively they could just launch a Simple credit card, give me 1% cash back / rewards and I'd feel comfortable moving most of my spending onto their card, which would let me continue to maintain my credit score and extract a bit of that merchant fee.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> related: <http://www.halfbakery.com>

</comment><comment><USER19> The jpg format supports all kinds of textual metadata, so "write on the back of my photo" is theoretically a solved problem. I'm surprised to hear that there aren't mobile apps that make editing that metadata easy.

<comment><USER20> [http://www.photometadata.org/meta-resources-field-guide- to-m...](http://www.photometadata.org/meta-resources-field-guide-to- metadata#Description)

Yup there's already a field which could do the job just not quickly editable in your phone's camera app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Google Notes!

That would be heaven for me. I've been trying to do notes via Evernote and while it is fine and feature rich, it is not a good performer. There's no way to just open app and take notes!

<comment><USER22> That article horrifies me.

People are already putting every question they have into Google. Every email they send and receive. Every video they watch on YouTube.

Putting every little thought into a service by Google is just a horrifying thought.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Things I wish sites would stop doing: changing articles on horizontal scroll events. Makes my laptop nub scroll completely unusable without jetting across 3+ articles.

</comment><comment><USER23> At least part of the answer for "Unsubscribe to junk snail mail" exists - <https://www.catalogchoice.org/>

"Glamera" too, <http://www.google.com/glass/>

I'd just like the "Time Stopper", a lot of the rest of these could be solved without any effort if that existed.

<comment><AUTHOR> The idea that interests me most is Uber for food. The number of times I've wanted Mexican food only to discover my local store doesn't deliver and my clothes stink so I don't want to go outside, too many times too count.

<comment><USER24> Check out Seamless (<http://www.seamless.com/>) or do a TaskRabbit/Exec to get somebody to pick up the food for you.

Edit: Verified that the seamless link worked; don't know why that caused problems for you.

<comment><AUTHOR> That Seamless link didn't seem to work for me and as for those task services I wouldn't trust them for food. A service with guaranteed time delivery, service you can rely on is what would sell it for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Great article, I should keep a similar list for the ideas I have

</comment><comment><USER26> Medium just became an interesting site. It's @ev's new project? Wow. Decent design, and lots of cool collections of articles. Check the home page.

</comment><comment><USER27> Huh, I've been playing around with a shared reusable checklist thing. "Trello for checklists". Everyone's thinking the same thing as usual!

</comment><comment><USER28> I like all the email related ideas. I hope someone is implementing them. Anyone want to partner for self destructing email?

</comment><comment><USER29> No form for readers to submit their own?</comment>


Dead simple server to mock a JSON API - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/micromata/http-fake-backend/ <comment><AUTHOR> Has also an optional Yeoman generator to make setting up endpoints easy as breezy: [https://github.com/micromata/generator-http-fake- backend](https://github.com/micromata/generator-http-fake-backend)</comment>


Peak content: The collapse of the attention economy - <AUTHOR> http://www.themediabriefing.com/article/peak-content-the-collapse-of-the-attention-economy <comment><USER2> This trend has parallels with the games industry. Many publishers and developers decided long ago that monetization above all else was the goal, and it didn't matter if that meant pumping out title after title with terrible production values and sleazy monetization strategies.

Zynga pioneered this approach to such a degree that they were essentially the BuzzFeed of interactive entertainment. Later, many AAA games would follow suit embracing the Free-to-Play model. Higher production values with the same sleazy monetization strategies. The end result was games of all types selling their soul in the name of making a quick buck.

Web content has the same problem. In the face of content becoming a commodity, the reaction thus far has been to produce more content. More content means lower quality content. Lower quality content results in monetization becoming more difficult, and thus prevalent. More prevalent monetization leads to ads. Ads kill page performance, thus driving anyone away who doesn't have an ad blocker. That in turn leads to idiotic things such as paywalls and traditional media being turned into a glorified blogging platform ( _cough_ Forbes). It's a race to the bottom.

The solution to this of course, is to simply make a high quality product. Ensure the content is top-notch, kill anything that isn't. Make sure page performance is excellent. Hand-curate ads such that they're non-invasive, fast, and not killed by ad-blockers. Admittedly the last point is difficult, but it can be done. If the publication is sufficiently niche, a subscription model could actually be appropriate in lieu of ads; nautil.us is a fantastic example of this.

In the end, it boils down to the classic error of the suits screaming "monetize!", ruining their product and shooting themselves in the foot in the process. This same dynamic applies to games, print media, and even startups alike. There's a reason YC constantly reiterates that monetization efforts are foolish in the face of a product that isn't great.

<comment><USER3> _" The solution to this of course, is to simply make a high quality product. Ensure the content is top-notch, kill anything that isn't. Make sure page performance is excellent. Hand-curate ads such that they're non-invasive, fast, and not killed by ad-blockers."_

I agree with this strategic sentiment, but I'm not sure the solution is as simple as you think it is. Higher quality content generally requires much more expensive production costs, and it's far from clear that the revenue side of the equation will support these costs at anything more than hobby-level scale.

 _" Admittedly the last point is difficult, but it can be done. If the publication is sufficiently niche, a subscription model could actually be appropriate in lieu of ads; nautil.us is a fantastic example of this."_

I love Nautilus, as I imagine a lot of HN readers do. But how is it doing as a business? Is it thriving? Is it crushing it? Is it barely scraping by? I'm not posing these questions Socratically; I'm genuinely curious to know the answer. Extremely curious, in fact, as someone who's spent a lifetime in the content business and desperate for any glimmer of hope along these lines.

My instincts lead me to a similar hypothesis as yours: find a niche, overservice it, and invest in quality as a differentiating factor. But historically, these sorts of publications have rarely been goldmines. Many of them, especially in the old days of print, were borderline nonprofits -- heavily subsidized by charitable publishers or donors.

I suspect there is a niche out there for the specialty publications of the world: your web equivalents of Road & Track, Field & Stream, Wine Spectator, Robb Report, Foreign Affairs, and so forth. I am not as sure there is a lucrative niche in general-interest categories, such as news. Even still, I'd love if any of the niche publications in today's brave new world -- Nautilus, for example -- would let us in on their business data. Even just a slice of it.

<comment><USER2> > _Higher quality content generally requires much more expensive production > costs, and it 's far from clear that the revenue side of the equation will > support these costs at anything more than hobby-level scale._

True, but high-quality content also serves to build reputation. Positive reputation can still drive revenue, even in this day and age. If major publications haven't failed on that front, then they've failed on others, such as presentation. Excellent products have to achieve and maintain excellence in all areas, and any chink in the armor is reason for people not to regularly use a product. I don't know of a single major publication that's checked all the boxes.

> _I love Nautilus, as I imagine a lot of HN readers do. But how is it doing > as a business?_

That's a good question. I don't know, but I really hope it's doing well.

<comment><USER3> _" Positive reputation can still drive revenue, even in this day and age."_

Can it drive a business model, though? Again, let's turn to the case of Nautilus. We can probably assume it has a great reputation amongst an admittedly small group of readers. But is that reputation driving subscription revenue sufficient to keep the publication in the black? To keep it growing? To keep it securely in business?

Once again, I'm 100% aligned with you in my hopes and desires for the industry. But hope isn't a business model. I'd like to hope that Nautilus is a great example of how to run a content business; unfortunately, at the moment I have insufficient economic evidence to back up that claim.

I agree with you that excellent products can outcompete commodified trash under certain circumstances. I'm less sure that enough people want to pay for the product at all in this case, however, be it excellent or otherwise.

Whatever the case, thank you for a compelling take on this subject. I quite sincerely hope you're right.

<comment><USER2> > _I 'm less sure that enough people want to pay for the product at all in > this case, however, be it excellent or otherwise._

In that case publications like Nautilus would probably have to be ad- supported. Hand-curated ads would go a long way towards preserving design, performance and even revenue since most ad blockers wouldn't block them.

However, there's still massive benefits to outsourcing ads—namely advanced analytics, targeting, and click fraud detection right out of the box. Implementing any of those in-house is certainly non-trivial.

That said, most publications—especially niche ones—are selling direct to their audience right now. There's nothing wrong with that, unless consumers prove adverse to paying for content in a subscription manner. I tend to strongly agree with you on that point.

While perceived value is one issue on that front, I think a lot of it has to do with the inconvenience of signing up, paying, and logging in. App stores don't have this issue, and they offer a lot of print media content these days, though I don't think they've really solved anything yet.

Film has Netflix. Music has Spotify. Print media doesn't really have an equivalent. So, it's possible that may be one angle. I know there's startups that have tried this, but none have approached the scale or success that Netflix or Spotify has.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think that human produced content is at a peak. Like call center employees, the management has to balance the ability for people to shovel out crap articles with the burnout rate. HuffPo, Buzzfeed, and others are clickbait farms that have high turnovers [0]. The content is not very deep, but they put out a lot. This is something that can, and is in the process of being, easily automated. Much sports journalism is already automated [1], why can't these clickfarms be the same too? 538 and other sites that just do stats can easily just have a giant number database that output correlations for click's sake. That would ruin their userbase, but may expand it. The issue at heart is what does a click mean? Currently it is linked to a person that you can then show an ad at to sell something. However, it is more and more likely that those ads are worthless wastes of dollars to the sellers. Other older methods, like mail with a robot that 'handwrites' a note to you from the company, may be more profitable as ads.

[0][http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/12/the- econ...](http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/12/the-economics-of- blogging-and-the-huffington-post/?_r=0)

[1][http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-34204052](http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-34204052)

<comment><USER5> > 538 and other sites that just do stats can easily just have a giant number > database that output correlations for click's sake.

Ahh, there you see the problem! you can also output all harry potter novels from digits of pi, but that doesn't get anyone anywhere. : ) The entire point of a good content producer is to understand what the customer needs, and put it out, NOW. So I'd imagine 538 will be automated about when computers start writing Harry Potter equivalents.

<comment><USER6> I don't think you'll see entirely computer-produced stories for a while, but what you can already see is computer-suggested correlations and framework stories that can be touched up quickly by a human editor. You might need that last 10% of human labour, but if 90% of the job can be done by the computer, that means 90% fewer staff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Sometime in mid-2015, my old aggregation reader got shut down I had to jump ship over to Flipboard. The most annoying part of this journey has been the total reset of my blacklist of news outlets and topics. Content farming, hat- tipping and "some shit somebody said on Twitter" is just spam delivered differently, and its frustrating that historically respected media has taken so long to think about not only the impact on their value, but how it impacts their core values.

Beyond my recreated blacklists, so much garbage has narrowed my focus and sources. NYTimes, a few RSS feeds, HN for tech. Hopefully, as with books, the culture will begin to correct course.

(Gonna break out my cane and start waving at some kids any moment now)

<comment><USER8> I moved over to Flipboard after Google Reader shut down, but it's no replacement. I miss the efficiency of Google Reader, none of the alternatives seem to match up.

<comment><USER9> The closest thing I've been able to find is The Old Reader (theoldreader.com).

Best thing is it was able to import all my old Google Reader subscriptions. Although by now, I think that ship has sailed for other people...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Here's a thought. Suppose we had a search engine which tried to figure out the sources behind an article. Build a tree which represents the provenance of the statements in the article, tracing them back to their original sources. Like Wikipedia style, but automated. IBM Watson might be able to do this. The goal is to track facts back to their original source, and identify what's new in each article.

The search engine could then discard most derivative articles, even if they'd been reworded. It's a form of automated curation, based on content, not attention.

<comment><USER11> We do something similar at Newslines, a crowdsourced news search engine that is a curated database of news events, kind of like a database-driven Wikipedia meets daily news. We generally source each event to a single news report, but we may add more sources programmatically. By sorting the news into discrete events we can eliminate a huge amount of manual searches on Google and other sites, compiling news from multiple sources into a crosslinked timeline format that saves readers days of work.

That said, I think the drive to fact-check every statement in an article is a red herring. Other sites have tried this (Infobitt, Grasswire) and it doesn't work well for general reader.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> > "What if, inside of Columbia Journalism School, we built Columbia Publishing > School? And what if we did the same at Missouri, Northwestern, and Berkeley? > What if we decided to pipeline, train, and mentor future publishers, chief > revenue officers, circulation directors, and sales chiefs alongside the > future journalists we are teaching to code?"

I know this is _specifically_ about the economics of content creation and media consumption, but talking about the rise of the Internet and the plurality of voices that previously couldn't be heard from the point of view of the owners who can't profit just seems incorrect. It's this kind of thinking that leads to stronger and stronger intellectual property rights, which is a euphemism for more and more restrictive information control.

Materially speaking the Internet has ushered in a golden age of media, but its revolution is being held back by outmoded economic relationships. This article is wondering how to reassert those relationships over the Internet instead of wondering what new relationships are possible.

<comment><USER10> _" What if we decided to pipeline, train, and mentor future publishers, chief revenue officers, circulation directors, and sales chiefs alongside the future journalists we are teaching to code?"_

You can probably get all of those you need from the layoffs at Yahoo and Aol. We've probably passed "peak people generating and selling crap content."

Have we hit "peak advertising" yet?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> _Use your properties to do A /B testing, measure the effectiveness of these experiments and then, most importantly, drive adoption of the most successful. Don't adopt the Silicon Valley catchphrase of failing fast. Instead learn fast (or, so as not to draw the ire of sub-editors, learn quickly.) Constantly feed strategic intelligence back into the organisation, then refine the strategy and repeat._

IMHO, there are real obstacles to these types of experiments taking place. For one, many media organizations still have a top-down, "me too" attitude when it comes to innovation. The boss sees something he or she likes ("Buzzfeed is hot!"), convenes a committee to discuss how to do something similar ("Let's do Buzzfeed for our niche!") and then the team (or consultants) build it out ... sometimes over a period of a year or more to "get it right." In my experience, there is little attempt to gauge (during the planning stage or when it's being prototyped) if the "Buzzfeed for XYZ" is something their audiences want.

In addition, in media organizations that sell advertising, resources are more likely to be put assigned to projects that the sales team thinks are important, even if audiences aren't really interested. An example that springs to mind is the brand new feature on a local news website that supports auto dealerships even though most car buyers are not going to the news site to buy cars.

Incidentally, I have been working on a framework for the creation of media content (including news, film, websites, music, etc.) called lean media. It draws heavily from the lean startup movement, while attempting to reconcile the emphasis on constant and careful measurement (A/B tests, etc.) with the intangibles that are an integral part of the creative process. If anyone is interested, I have a long writeup on Mediashift (1) as well as a blog (2) and I would be interested in getting feedback.

1\. [http://mediashift.org/2016/01/lean-media-a-new-framework- for...](http://mediashift.org/2016/01/lean-media-a-new-framework-for-media- production-and-innovation/)

2\. [http://leanmedia.in30minutes.com/](http://leanmedia.in30minutes.com/)

</comment><comment><USER14> How about "stop pumping out thoughtless unresearched crap, and create valuable content that lasts and people will pay for?"

(Or is the number of people who value their time so they pay for quality just too low?)

<comment><USER15> The problem is that people have been trained to expect everything to be free. So high value, premium content doesn't get a chance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> "when the paper analyzed its online traffic, they found that fully 40 per cent of the paper is read by fewer than 1,000 people."

I wonder what this 40% consisted of.

Never forget social signalling, "this is what everyone expects we do". They don't actually read it or want it, but they expect to see it there, like a glass of water at a restaurant table.

Consider how some products exist mostly to funnel purchasers up to the next highest product tier. Likewise I suspect some stories exist mostly to funnel readers to stories they want read, not to be read by themselves.

With no actual data, its merely theoretical, but there are at least some theoretical models that could excuse the creation of unread content. Not that I would waste much time or money on the unread-by-design content, although literal lorem ipsum as content might be going a bit far.

<comment><USER17> >I wonder what this 40% consisted of.

Tangentially, this must have always been the case, perhaps it was even worse when measurements were hard to come by. During pure print media days, lots of what they thought people read was through wholly inaccurate methods. So that forty per hundred is probably much improved over how it used to be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Ironically, I didn't finish reading the article...

</comment><comment><USER19> punchline: "There hasn't been enough ad revenue to sustain..." traditional media institutions.

</comment><comment><USER20> A lot to talk about in this article.

Network TV advertising woes: I have mostly stopped watching TV except for Hulu Premium. I pay $12/month and watch about 5 hours/month Hulu content. Since Hulu is owned by the 3 bug TV networks, aren't they doing fine with me as a consumer? I also sometimes watch TV reruns on Netflix and I have no idea how much content creators get paid for this older material?

Passion writing vs. commercial: I find amazing content on the web that represent huge efforts by authors. But, I still buy a lot of eBooks because the quality is a bit better on average.

I spend a ton of time watching conference talks on YouTube. This seems like a win-win-win situation. I save travel and conference costs, and don't miss much (except not getting to personally network), Google gets my YouTube Red monthly subscription fee, and conference speakers extend their reach of who they can affect with their ideas.

</comment><comment><USER21> "too much content"

Really, it's the sugar to shit ratio of the content, as well as the overall quality and compelling nature of the content at issue.

Traditional media is producing a lot. Both content and ads, and often it's mixed. "News" has become increasingly unclear, making it difficult to discern fact from opinion. Entertainment programming is often 50/50 AD to entertainment ratio, and the quality doesn't often justify that kind of time investment.

People are paying as much attention as they ever did. Traditional media is simply getting it's ass kicked.

</comment><comment><USER22> There are people who understand the economics of information and those that don't. The interesting thing is that capturing the value of your editorial qualities through advertising is a like capturing the value of a taxi by trying to draft off its turbulence as it drives by. Basically ad fraud pays but actual ads not so much.

There is a bargain you make between the reader and your advertisers, you protect your reader from aggressive overt advertisements, you provide your readers with something worth reading. It is hard to make a retelling of a story that everyone has reported on, worth reading.

It is also impossible (at present) to lower the friction of reading and subscribing to a point where it gets sufficient market penetration to make it scalable. I imagine that something halfway between flattr and the NY times subscription is going to be an answer.</comment>


Cells programmed like computers to fight disease - <AUTHOR> https://www2.warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/pressreleases/cells_programmed_like/ <comment><USER2> Reaction to headline: Now program them like computers to compute like computers. I want an exponentially growing CPU!

Reaction to article: WTF is this garbage? We've been able to build RNA sequences forever. Anyone who has read ANYTHING about bioinformatics knows RNA works like 'computer code' to tell a cell how to make a protein. This is high school level biology.

'The researchers made their invention by first modelling all possible RNA sequence interactions on a computer.' No, they didn't. Jesus Christ no they didn't. I don't know what they actually DID, or what they even CLAIM to have done, but they did not do this. First off, there is no limit to the number of possible RNA sequences. Secondly, there is no limit to the variety of possible interactions. You know Folding@Home? It simulates protein folding? That's what happens after you feed some RNA into a cells protein factory. So even if you figured out the infinite variety of proteins possibly created by the infinite variety of RNA sequences interacting with themselves and all the rest of the cellular contents (including potential viruses or bacteria that snuck in), then you'd have to solve every single folding problem on all of them.

Once you get to the actual words of the actual people doing the science, hey magic, it actually makes sense and sounds cool! But WOW, whoever wrote that press release up to the point where the closing quotation starts? That person needs to never write a press release for a scientific finding ever again. Humanity will be better off!

<comment><USER3> Obligatory link: [http://phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1174](http://phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1174)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> That sounds awesome, but I don't understand much of DNA, so I can't tell, if this is really a breakthrough, or rather a good step forward ... (I suspect the latter)

<comment><USER5> It's not really a huge breakthrough. Lots of work has been done in this area for a long time now.

Look into synthetic biology and biological parts: [http://parts.igem.org/Main_Page](http://parts.igem.org/Main_Page)

This is just one way of getting to "programmable cells." Basically what they're doing is creating a database of DNA sequences that can be stringed together to create programs in cells. There's even GUI editors for this stuff, tons of standards around the syntax, etc.

But Biology is messy. This stuff isn't going to be running deterministically, it requires a deep understanding of the organism, it requires a deep understanding of the overall environment an organism operates in, etc.

<comment><USER6> As a software dev, who watches an unnecessary number of these cell internals/molecular dynamics/spontaneous self assembly vids on youtube for kicks, I am always amazed by the utter chaos that produces all these mechanisms and processes.

We see nothing like this level of randomness in the already chaotic world of software development. When one works on complex projects with more than a few hundred people one constantly sees random things bumping into each other producing stuff nobody imagined. But this stuff happening inside a cell is just insane too me. Makes me feel like a cave man playing with my current set of stone age tools.

<comment><USER7> Glad I'm not the only one... on all points -- love watching this stuff on Youtube also!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's called the immune system, no need to invent it, it's been here all along... Just treat it with respect and it gives back.</comment>


Ask HN: I have a hardware product idea, how do I make it happen? - <AUTHOR>

I'm a software engineer with no hardware experience. Who should I seek for help? Are there hardware design firms? How much would it cost and how long does it take?<p>Thanks! <comment><USER2> [This post assumes you actually need _hardware design_. If you really just want a Raspberry Pi with some custom inputs, none of this applies.]

Yes, there are hardware design firms. Your software experience may or may not help at all, depending on the type of product you're going for.

Basically, you need to find a company that does this. This is pretty hard to do. "Hardware design" firms may or may not do it, "embedded systems consultants" may or may not do it... you just need to find some local ones and talk to them. Some do hardware layouts, some do board manufacturing, some do industrial design, some do RF, some do product management -- decide what you need, then find a company that can handle it. Or find a company that can help you decide what you need :)

One way to find these companies is to call the local representative for chip manufacturers (Atmel, Texas Instruments, Silicon Labs, etc) and ask if they can recommend a local consulting house that does product development. They know everyone in your area who buys ICs. They'll be more inclined to work with you if you find a specific one of their chips that suits your needs, and tell them you're thinking about using it.

"How much would it cost" is mostly unanswerable. The answer, though, is definitely a LOT more than you suspect. I'm assuming you've phrased the question correctly and you actually need hardware design, but if you really just need to throw an Arduino or Raspberry Pi at something it will be much cheaper. But if you need custom hardware design, the answer is a LOT. Nobody can give an estimate without knowing what you're doing, of course... a digital thermometer will be pretty cheap, a self-driving car will be quite expensive. But creating a hardware product usually requires 1+ hardware designers, 1+ embedded software developers, 1+ industrial designer, and possibly more... and since you don't own a company, you'll be paying them consultant rates. $100+/hour each. Plus the cost of raw materials, which is high in low volumes, plus the cost of manufacturing a board, which is _very_ high in low volumes, plus the cost of doing it over and over again until it works.

How long: again, nobody can answer without knowing what you're doing... but longer than you think. It takes a long time to manufacture a board. They come back broken, always. It takes a while to figure out why they're broken, then you get to make the next revision. Rinse and repeat. Don't forget that you'll probably need something -- an IC, a JTAG debugger, a person -- that has a 6-month lead time. And it's easy to get stuck on a bug for a few weeks/months that turns out to be a defect in the microprocessor you're using. There are a lot of things that can stall the project and burn time, and nearly every project hits one.

The cost and time of projects is all over the board, and very hard to predict, but it's not unusual for a very "simple" project (ex: USB microphone) to run up $250,000 and 6 months for 10 prototypes, and a complex project (ex: television cable box) to run over $2 million and 1.5 years. On the other hand, maybe you luck out and your microphone works perfectly and only runs $30,000. Or nothing works, and you throw paycheck after paycheck at it, until you're down $5 million and years have passed and people don't even use USB anymore.

And that's just to get a prototype.

Something to remember: a digital thermometer costs $5 at every corner store because there are digital thermometer companies with a very large staff dedicated to making millions and millions of digital thermometers per year. They can make them for $0.50 each. You are not a digital thermometer company, and you will not make one for $0.50... your first one will cost $100,000. Hardware is only profitable if each unit is worth a fortune, or you're going to sell millions of units.

I strongly recommend it -- hardware is a blast -- but be aware that it is far, far, far more volatile and uncontrollable than software development.

</comment><comment><USER3> Some good advise on this thread already, but a couple of hints I could add.

Dig through sites like EETimes. There's a lot there to give you many leads into hardware.

There's a wealth of information out there, but it helps to categorise a little. A rough guide would be, off the top of my head, hardware parts, and hardware fabrication.

For hardware parts, think platforms ( beagle, PI, arduino etc ), System On Modules, and chips ( MSP430, LPC435x etc etc ). You'll often get quickly to the related point of interest by searching on a part, just as you would searching by software language.

Look at Edaboard as well. An example of hobbyists and up working with hardware.

Search on Altium and Orcad software. Or Eagle at hobby or trial level.

Peer through trade materials and magazines. For example PCB Design Magazine [1]

[1] [http://www.pcbdesign007.com/pages/thepcbdesignmagazine.cgi](http://www.pcbdesign007.com/pages/thepcbdesignmagazine.cgi)

</comment><comment><USER4> The answers to your questions are someone who knows, yes, and it depends.

There is some information on that in the last week of [https://www.coursera.org/course/design](https://www.coursera.org/course/design) but if it applies to your idea depends on your idea.

</comment><comment><USER5> Hardware design is a pretty broad term. As well costs and length of time are variables depending on project complexity. Feel free to contact me - email is in my profile.

</comment><comment><USER6> If you have a good hackerspace close by, ask some of the core people there for leads and ideas. You might be able to prototype stuff for cheap.

</comment><comment><USER7> Arduino...

<comment><USER8> The Arduino platform does not teach you electrical or mechanical engineering, nor does it teach you how to package a final product. While it is a useful tool for makers, it is nowhere near a silver bullet for hardware design.

<comment><USER7> Yes... but for a SW engineer with no hardware experience. It will get him to a working prototype and help him understand some of the system groups involved. Hiring a HW guy is a waste of time unless you have plenty of $$ and the GO signal from the consumer. The guys behind the "Pebble" watch prototyped on Ardunio

<comment><USER9> Exactly. EE here who used to do Robotics. Pay a bit more and get components that can be plugged together in the simplest possible way. Then once you get the prototype working, you can get some fancy HW people to design the system/chip/whatever and throw it into a factory in China.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


First Interactive 360º Video - <AUTHOR> http://www.wirewax.com/blog/post/360-video-whats-the-point <comment><AUTHOR> The first interactive 360 video that works in most desktop and mobile browsers without any app or plugin.

Video: [http://embed.wirewax.com/8028567/](http://embed.wirewax.com/8028567/)

Blog post: [http://www.wirewax.com/blog/post/360-video-whats-the- point](http://www.wirewax.com/blog/post/360-video-whats-the-point)

WIREWAX is a free tool that turns any video into an interactive experience.

</comment><comment><USER2> works on iphone in the browser too!</comment>


What Color Is Khaki, Anyway? - <AUTHOR> https://www.dampfkraft.com/what-color-is-khaki.html <comment><USER2> It's not just Japanese. I'm French and I had no idea khaki was some kind of beige in English. In French it's the same colour as in Japanese. As far as I know, it's also the case in Dutch at least (Dutch, or Flanders, maybe it depends on the place rather than the language).

<comment><USER3> Another color naming confusion is the French "pourpre" vs English "purple". Pourpre in French has more deep red in it than the shade of magenta described by purple. (Don't get me started on violet).

<comment><USER4> > (Don't get me started on violet).

Well, now you've piqued my interested. Please, get started on violet!

<comment><USER3> People are using the same name for two distinct colors, a mix of blue and red on the one hand, and on the other hand the pure spectral color after blue and indigo, which by definition doesn't have any red in it, being on the other side of the spectrum. Also, modern electronics based on RGB primaries can't display violet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Khaak" is Persian for soil, "Khaki" can mean either dust-covered or color of soil, so typically a light shade of brown in more arid regions.

<comment><USER6> The article says it has Hindoustani roots

It's true that in Farsi it means earth colored as well

<comment><USER5> The article isn't wrong, it's just incomplete.

"Khaki is a loanword from Hindustani (Urdu or Hindi) ख़ाकी/خاکی 'soil- colored', which in turn comes from Persian خاک [xɒːk] khâk 'soil' \+ ی- (adjectival ending); it came into English via the British Indian Army."

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

<comment><USER7> Hindi/Urdu native speaker here: "khaak" means dust, not soil exactly. I believe it is the same in Farsi as well. "Khaaki" would mean 'dust-coloured'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> For some background reference.

Khaki is a word that has its origins (edit: English language origin) in the Anglo-Boer War. The British in all their pomp and ceremony decided to invade what was then the two Boer Republics of the Orange Free State and the Transvaal—by wearing bright red coloured jackets.

It did not take long before the Brits understood the other word that was introduced into English at that time—the "commando". Needless to say, the red jackets gave way to Khakis and even after the war the colour remained popular in Southern Africa.

In fact, the word Khaki (unlike other words in Southern Africa) today does not have any negative connotations (with the British) and my grandmother commented on more than one occation that she thought I looked rather dapper in full Khakis.

In South Africa today Khaki can mean any of the two colours as in the article, but I would say it is more common for Khaki to be used to refer to a sand brown colour.

<comment><USER9> > _Khaki is a word that has its origins (edit: English language origin) in the > Anglo-Boer War._

Wikipedia says earlier:

> _In 1848, a khaki uniform was introduced. [5] Subsequently, all regiments, > whether British or Indian, serving in the region had adopted khaki uniforms > for active service and summer dress. The original khaki fabric was a closely > twilled cloth of linen or cotton._

[...]

> _Khaki-colored uniforms were used officially by British troops for the first > time during the 1868 Expedition to Abyssinia, when Indian troops traveled to > Ethiopia.[8] Subsequently, the British Army adopted khaki for colonial > campaign dress and it was used in the Mahdist War (1884–89) and Second Boer > War (1899–1902)._

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

<comment><USER8> There were two Boer Wars and during the first one they largely wore red uniforms. But yes, the history intertwines with the other British colonies, but at the time of their conflict with the Boers they had not at first switched to Khakis. At least, this is how the common knowledge story goes.

But it would be more accurate to say it origins were, amongst other conflicts, forged in the two Boer wars.

Another thing to take into account was that the Anglo-Boer war from 1899—1902 was (prior to WW1) one of the most expensive and critical wars for the British and could perhaps have been the most _documented_ first use of Khakis. Of course, the Boers had been using Khakis (but not so-called) all along.

Anthor interesting thing is that this was also one of the earliers incarnations of trench warfare.

<comment><USER10> And concentration camps. And scorched earth.

The empire really wanted that gold.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Just in Humor - Khaki color is the color of the general landscape of your country. If you are in the North Pole, it is 'white'.

</comment><comment><USER12> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khaki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khaki) lists three tones of Khaki.

</comment><comment><USER13> No one color as it referred to the cotton fabric used to make uniforms.

The exact color or colors it would be associated with for a particular country would depend on what color of uniforms if elected to use.

</comment><comment><USER14> I am 40. Starting this year there was two work functions that required "khakis". And it took some online searching to figure out exactly what this meant. At first, I was confused about why the color mattered - thinking it was color. Do my cargo pants count? Can they be shorts? This article leaves this still inconclusive.

When I asked the boss, he said "just don't wear jeans". I was still confused, because I don't own jeans.

Suit pants seemed like too much, cargo pants too little. But the cargo pants I have are exactly like the "khakis" I've seen, only they have two more pockets. Same material. Same color. So, I thought, is "khakis" a non-English word for "less pockets" or "Four Pockets"? Still very confused.

<comment><USER15> I would say that when people say "khakis" they actually mean "chinos". Chinos are the type of pants, khaki is the usual color (a quick google search will corroborate!).

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I was surprised there has been no mention that stores will happily offer to sell you khaki pants in many different colors, including red and blue. Eg: [https://m.kohls.com/product/prd-3386796/mens-dockers- signatu...](https://m.kohls.com/product/prd-3386796/mens-dockers-signature- khaki-lux-slim-fit-stretch-pants-d1.jsp) I've just taken to accepting that is something I won't be able to resolve.

<comment><USER17> There was a mention:

> This is still the basic meaning in English, though sometimes "khaki pants" > refers to chino pants regardless of color.</comment></comment>


A Spacecraft for All: The Journey of the ISEE-3 - <AUTHOR> http://spacecraftforall.com/data

<comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8156322](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8156322)</comment>


Facebook is mirroring Wikipedia - <AUTHOR> http://www.facebook.com/pages/Wikipedia/103767749661773

<comment><USER2> I was just about to comment something like "They're using Wikipedia, but they took out all the references, which is just about the stupidest damned thing they could do."

Then I noticed the references are there, but it seems they need to work on their scripts to show in-text citations correctly.</comment>


Show HN: WebGL Milkdrop Emulator - <AUTHOR> http://jsviz.neocities.org/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone! I have been working on this side project for a couple months now and pushed to try to get a demo up for the close of Winamp today.

I'm hoping to get 100% milkdrop compatibility and make a site kind of like shadertoy or glslsandbox where people can hack together new presets.

Thanks, hope you enjoy</comment>


Cupertino's photocopiers are hard at work - <AUTHOR> http://www.edbott.com/weblog/2012/02/cupertinos-photocopiers-are-hard-at-work/

<comment><USER2> wow... is this the first time Apple is copying Microsoft on the UI front... that's not very Apple.

Maybe, Apple is scared of what Microsoft is doing with Windows 8 and the whole Metro UI thing.

Otherwise, why would they announce the plans for the new OS X just before the Windows 8 beta release.</comment>


Happy Birthday edw519 - <AUTHOR>

Meant to submit this yesterday (for obvious reasons), but for some reason I failed.<p>I'll try harder next year! <comment><USER2> Y'know, as much as I wish this edw519 person well (at least in that I don't actually wish him any specific harm...) I really don't think that submitting and/or upvoting this was a good move on the part of the people who did it.

<comment><USER3> edw519 is a top contributor to yc: <http://awurl.com/ueuqua68821>

I don't see what's wrong with a community doing something nice for one of it's most active members.

<comment><USER4> There are 100 people on the leader board. Should we wish them all a happy birthday too?

Let's stay focused on news and cut this feel-good stuff out.

<comment><USER5> I just noticed that I slipped off, so I vote no! :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> How's this news though ?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not. I really didn't expect this to get voted up. Just wanted edw519 to catch it on the 'New' page, which I assume he watches.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Umm. If you don't already do it, remembering (recording in a safe place and (calling preferred over emailing) near the day of) the birthdays of people who are important to you and/or who you'd like to keep in very loose contact with is a platinum networking technique.

</comment><comment><USER8> Thank you, Xichekolas! Whether you remembered or figured it out doesn't matter - either way, you have the makings of a great hacker. Sure hope to see you again before 5/19/09.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh I remembered from when you mentioned it at startup school. Sadly I was so busy yesterday playing with javascript that I forgot until today.

<comment><USER9> Well, it's good to know you were getting some work done.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Happy birthday! I think if you celebrate a day late he officially will live 24 hours longer in his life right?

<comment><AUTHOR> If delayed birthday celebration were the secret to longevity, think how long people born on February 29th would live...

<comment><USER11> only a few days more than what they would have had they been born on any other day (number of extra days = (number of years he has lived) / 4)

<comment><AUTHOR> I was thinking that if they could only celebrate their birthday every four years, they would only age at 1/4 the rate. Their 80th birthday would happen 320 years after being born.

Of course, this is all rather silly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> <brag> I wished him yesterday ;) </brag>

<comment><AUTHOR> That's why they pay you the big karma.

<comment><USER12> :-) I wished him by email. I wanted to post here but then remembered the heat I got for being (genuinely) concerned about missing nickb. Thanks for posting - we can have a close knit group.

<comment><AUTHOR> Eh, hopefully we can make an exception for Eddie. He does contribute a lot to making this site what it is.

<comment><USER12> No kidding! <http://searchyc.com/user/edw519>

      edw519:
      1436 comments, 3.51 points per comment
      836 submissions, 4.90 points per submission</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What Are You Listening? - <AUTHOR> I don't read books so I am not able to make use of all the "What am I reading" threads. But I listen to a lot of podcasts , radio shows and Audio documentaries mostly from BBC. Usually joe rogan and how stuff work  etc comes as an answer but I am looking for any one off masterpiece that I have missed like Hitchikers guide to galaxies . <comment><USER2> Audiobooks - I hope this isn't cheating! The Baroque Cycle, by Neal Stephenson. A mix of swashbuckling adventure, science, alchemy, courtly romance, and politics.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not well known Masterworks - all different all strange tales in different genres and stories well told.

Our Fair City podcast The Lost Cat podcast. The Mabel podcast The SHWEP podcast The House of Sunshine podcast We're Alive podcast

If you're ready for a challenge - The book of the new sun audiobooks. Deep, intense and multiple listens would be required for understanding - but very rewarding.</comment>


Google PPC - <AUTHOR>

After many years of advertising on PPC I can honestly say smoke and mirrors, we have stopped PPC after researching click fraud, using proxy servers on a world wide net work for fraudulent click's, Google has flat lined in the last 8 months, keeping this short and to the point. <comment><USER2> Do you have evidence to backup your claim? And if so, could you please present it?</comment>