Ask YC: can we collectively figure out how to neutralize eBay? - <AUTHOR>

Consider this a math/strategy/social problem, possibly tougher than any game of chess.
Basically, eBay has a monopoly and they are abusing that fact.  Is it possible to neutralize the network effects that protect them?
If any group can come up with a viable strategy, why not news.yc? <comment><USER3> You're looking for another, larger dinosaur to come along and eat ebay. Instead what is likely to happen is many smaller mammals like cragslist and <http://www.etsy.com/> will come along and slowly make it irrelevant.

They are certainly speeding the process along with their mistreatment of the most important kinds of sellers and allowing the rampant spam and fraud that has nearly taken over whole sections.

When ebay began the web was a very different place. The rise of social networking and basic online shopping awareness will allow smaller niche markets like etsy to flourish. A reputation system that is portable, secure and inter-operates easily would be a big plus in this direction but I think it will happen even without it being fully developed.

I can't wait for an online market of makers that can offer unique, one-off technology products. I'd gladly trade in my Ipod for a funky handmade OS Ogg player that did more of what I want and less of what Apple wants. Reputation built by how many cool things you've made, commissioned items.. Hey there's a startup in there somewhere!

<comment><USER4> Your suggested approach is flawed simply because it would require all the little companies to cooperate together on some sort of system.

<comment><USER5> You mean like open source or the free market?

<comment><USER6> No, like some combination of an OpenID-like system and a search for auctions and similar things across many sites. Such a thing would probably have to include eBay to be very useful at first.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you want to be the next eBay you need to be radically different from the current one. You can't just one-up them.

One thing I've been thinking about is using double-sided auctions instead of the typical second-price English auction you find at eBay. The idea is that buyers leave bids and sellers leave offers for a particular item class, rather than for a particular item "instance". For each class of item (e.g., 2GB iPod nano) you would essentially have a market similar to the stock market. You can leave an offer or a bid or you can act on a bid or an offer that is already left by somebody else.

This will be a much more efficient market than eBay, so the forces of supply and demand will be stronger. Buyers will be able to choose between speed of sale and profit. On average, buyers will have less of an advantage against sellers - things will be more balanced.

Overall, this greatly decreases the transaction cost, which is the cost of the time and effort to research the item, determine the veracity of the listing, and devise a bidding strategy. In a way, the market has already done the research for you.

In addition, it removes the wait until the auction expires. If I want to buy an iPod for $200 and you want to sell it for $200 we can close the transaction immediately.

The market principle won't be so strong with rarer items, but people will be able to show demand for rare items before sellers list them.

The major problem is the adequate clustering of similar offers (e.g., all 2GB iPod Nanos). It needs to be done automatically, so this idea becomes to eBay what Powerset is to Google.

<comment><USER8> I like it. It's a stock exchange except the stock is all physical goods.

Of course as you mentioned there would be clustering of items for this to work, but the principle of the system is that all items in a category are 100% interchangeable.

In the stock market one share in X corp. is no different than another share in the same corp. For 2G iPod Nanos there are very specific differences (color, usage, markings, etc.) that will deviate unlimitedly.

I guess the way this would work is buyers would know what they want (2G iPod Nano), see what the going rate is (ask), if interested, make an offer (bid), and then when the buyer is matched to a few potential sellers, they would have a chance to look at the _individual_ products to either confirm or deny a final sale.

A nice benefit of this is that you can see what sort of 2G iPod Nano $90 will get you (say if you're on a budget), simply by "bidding" $90 on the product and seeing your matches. If they're aren't any matches, you need to bid higher. If you have a few matches, you'll probably be seeing some beaten up iPods, but that's fine - you only wanted to spend $90. With eBay, if you look for $90 iPods, you'll only see current auctions, and the final price will most likely be bid up before the close.

<comment><USER9> Easy way for eBay to implement this: RSS feeds for searches.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The problem, of course, is inertia. Everybody hates ebay, but they have the buyers, the sellers, and the feedback data.

If I were trying to beat ebay, first I'd separate feedback into another application. Why should you need separate feedback for ebay, amazon, and other sites? It should all just be one reputation score, which lets people know whether you're an honest buyer/seller or a crook. You could import existing feedback from existing sites.

Second, I'd come up with an app that would allow users to search for items not just at ebay but at other sites too, in the hopes of attracting users, given that they would have little reason to help bootstrap a new auction site that has neither buyers nor sellers.

Third, I'd write an auctomatic-like app for sellers that would have a superior interface for them to list items at ebay and other sites (Amazon purposely gives sellers inferior tools for listing items unless they pay $40 to become a power seller).

If all goes well, I would now have buyers and sellers visiting the site. Next, I would start hosting auctions myself, which would optionally automatically be listed if a seller listed an item at another site. My fees would be quite a bit lower than ebay's or amazon's and scammers would not be tolerated.

Of course, this is all easier said than done... I guess there's a reason ebay remains dominant after a decade of craptacular service.

<comment><USER11> Note, there exists that separate reputation service-- Rapleaf: <http://blog.rapleaf.com/about/>

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The problem is two-fold: a new site can't attract sellers because there are no buyers, and it can't attract buyers because there are no sellers.

If the sellers come I think the buyers will come. Here's a potentially useful question: how can a site be made that is hassle free for sellers and also eliminates the risks associated with an initial lack of buyers? This may be easier to do for "Buy it now" sellers than for auction sellers.

<comment><USER12> Seems like you may be looking for some sort of aggregator that can interface with other auction sites (both buying and selling) as well as doing its own listings.

What's eBay's precedent in allowing websites to repost scraped data from its listings? It'd be easy as all get-out. My guess is that something like this has been tried.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The thing is the online auction market has to have a monopoly. Why would a seller want to sell his item on a site that won't give him the most bidders?

So honestly I don't think anyone can take eBay down. Even if Craigslist/Google/Microsoft comes out with a free version.

So unless you want to get government involved I wouldn't bother

</comment><comment><USER14> How is eBay abusing their monopoly, specifically?

<comment><USER15> The first things that come to mind are the raising of fees and locking out payment methods other than PayPal.

<comment><USER16> That's not a monopoly, that's their business model. No one is required to use eBay. You need to to be more careful when using terms like monopoly and making charges of abuse.

<comment><USER15> No one is "required" to use Windows however Microsoft is still a convicted monopolist. Ebay are certainly using their market leader position to lock out competitors in the payment system arena. Anyway, I didn't make the claim that they're a monopoly (the parent poster did that) and personally I'm on the fence whether they should or should not be considered one. You need to more careful when accusing me of making such allegations :-P

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The problem is you're looking at a generic competitor to eBay while the real opportunity is niche auctions. There's a lot of stuff sold on eBay just because it's the default site. e.g., I would love to see a competitive online auction site for used & new machine tools that could do a better job in this area.

</comment><comment><USER18> To my knowledge, I believe the biggest deterrent to an online competitor is the patent itself that ebay is in control of regarding online auctions. Maybe the method that the auctions are controlled by could be the route taken, but for the most part I think they have their sector of the market cornered.

<comment><USER19> Pierre never patented the auction system. He didn't believe in them at the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> honestly, it really amazes me no one in web 2 has come up with a recognized ebay competitor:

google => powerset,mahalo msft => zoho (they're full of fail, but still)

<comment><USER21> I'm sorry, pardon my ignorance. Why does it amaze you that no one has bested ebay? I'm not in the least surprised, primarily because of the traction/inertia that ebay has now. A bit of an orthogonal take: Chuck-e- Cheese sucks, I mean really-really donkey balls sucks ass, bad food, boring entertainment, a viral haven, I feel dirty after being there, but parents still take their kids there in droves. Why? cultural inertia, _because everyone else does it, we'll do it too_. Stereotype, joe sixpack, soccer mom, sheep, lemmings, hive mentality, whatever you want to call it, its the same thing. That is tough to break these habits. I mean, look at McDonalds. I don't see any redeeming value eating there but tons of people do. Its like the saying, "eat shxx, a billion flies can't be wrong." OK, done with rant, mod me into oblivion for bashing our cultural icons.

<comment><USER18> Don't pardon your ignorance because there is none, we should recognize everyone else's. Forget Chuck-e-Cheese, think of DisneyLand/World. As a child, people would act like I was deprived and lacked a good upbringing because my parents could never take me there. I was happy my parents never wasted their money and instead spent it on more important things. Disney is a money trap that has successfully marketed their product to convince children and parents that their children will be lacking if they have not visited their park.

<comment><USER22> Good to hear I'm not the only one who feels that way who had the same experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> What happened to that Facebook app that was launched a while ago? I thought it sounded interesting (trade with your friends or something like that).

<comment><USER24> A smaller market - but with built in reputation?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Ebay has radio adverts in the UK. That's why they are of mass appeal - <USER2> can advertise in the mass market.

</comment><comment> daniel-cussen I think in this kind of situation, the monopoly is so entrenched other entrants can only have a shot if the rules of the game change significantly or if ebay makes a really major mistake that makes sellers leave en masse.

</comment><comment><USER26> how long before people start saying this about Google?

<comment><USER23> They've been saying this about Google for quite some time already.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I own spareshit.com if anyone wants to work with me on it. I haven't had any time to dedicate to it.</comment>


Cognitive enhancement drug may also cause addiction - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090317/full/news.2009.170.html <comment><USER2> Irrespective of observable physiological effects, any drug, or indeed any _thing_ that improves our quality of life is addictive. Addiction is part of the human condition and we're better off just accepting it and letting ourselves get hooked on things, subject to our own rationally chosen limits. Those choices should be based on the strength of the addiction and the benefits and risks of the addictive object. The chemical/psychological distinction is hardly important.

<comment><USER3> > drug, or indeed anything that improves our quality of life is addictive.

There is a difference between using something (and getting used to it because it increases your quality of life) and a chemical addiction.

> The chemical/psychological distinction is hardly important.

There is a huge difference. If you are addicted to something it is pretty much a physiological effect on you.

<comment> a-priori Often when people, and especially the media, say "addiction" they're actually referring to _psychological dependence_.

Most physiological addictions have a psychological component. As an example, I'm _addicted_ to caffeine, but I'm also _dependent_ on coffee as part of a morning routine. Smokers who are addicted to nicotine are often also dependent on the social aspects of being a smoker. It's often the psychological component that, long term, is the hardest to break.

The converse, however, is not true. A good example is so-called "Internet addiction" which should rightfully be called "Internet dependence", at best, because it has no physiological component.

<comment><USER4> To say that something like internet addiction has no physiological component is to vastly understate the power our brain has over the rest of our body. If your method of getting a dopamine rush is the internet (or world of warcraft, porn, gambling, etc), you are still going to get physiologically attached to that dopamine rush and will suffer negative physical reactions (poor mood, etc) if those things are taken away.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> How is this news? Even modafinil.com and Wikipedia already list Dopamine effects from modafinil.

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

<http://modafinil.com>

Worth noting, too, that "may cause addiction" does not equal "causes addiction".

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice catch. It's the first imaging study to show the effect, I guess. I think this is one of the reasons for its popularity. It not only makes some folks alert. It makes them happy _and_ alert. That's the holy combination. Caffeine doesn't quite get there and how big is that market? When we look back in fifty years at the development of custom (and cosmetic) psychotropics, I bet modafinil leads the story.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Out of curiosity, are there any legal stimulants that are non-addictive and generally low risk to risk free?

I quit smoking a couple of years ago, and my brain never fully recovered from quitting. I've felt mentally slower ever since I quit.

I've occasionally taken Modafinil, and whenever I've taken it, my brain resumes back to my smoking baseline. I don't feel amped up on it at all, just normal.

<comment><USER7> I was slightly curious too, and so did some searching. Surprisingly stimulants can actually decrease risk of addiction to drugs or alcohol. It was found that adults who were prescribed medication for ADHD were at less risk for substance abuse. Now I don't no whether it just reduced risk for addictions to things other than stimulants, or that it just reduced addiction in people who had ADHD, but it at least shows that there is a medically safe dose for some people.

<http://www.drugabuse.gov/NIDA_Notes/NNVol14N4/ADHD.html>

<comment><USER2> Treating a mental disorder/personality quirk that is fucking up your life will reduce your risk for substance abuse, not to mention loose women and rock and roll.

It also helps if the drug you're being treated with has a lot of the same effects, or is in fact the same substance, as the drugs you would otherwise abuse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Don't screw around with your brain unless you're willing to accept the consequences for something bad happening to it.</comment>


A new film claims root canals cause cancer. Don't believe it, dentists say - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/feb/04/root-cause-documentary-netflix-dentists <comment><USER2> Bloody annoying & clueless document it was. Main problem with root canals it that they become leaky in time and there is no mechanism to detect the bacteria, because the tooth is now dead. Persistent inflammation is of course source for all kinds of bad, including cancer.</comment>


Trump administration bans WeChat, TikTok from app stores beginning on Sunday - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/09/18/tiktok-wechat-ban-trump/ <comment><AUTHOR> It's interesting and peculiar that stories on this topic are being very quickly flagged by someone.

<comment><USER2> There are two submissions about this on the front page right now though? (EDIT: and a larger discussion at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24515461](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24515461))

<comment><AUTHOR> I assume that's because a sufficient number of people vouched for them and commented on them because they were posted a little earlier. (the alternative, that people possess an extremely strong preference for the Financial Times, strikes me as unlikely) It's not a big deal, but I do hope people who are flag-happy lose that ability in short order, since it's really not a feature that ought to be used very often.

<comment><USER2> If there are already running threads on the topic (and looking at them, commenting started pretty much immediately), duplicates don't do the sites any good (and are not supposed to even be submitted), so flaggin them is not a problem IMHO, although it is good custom to add a comment pointing to the already existing threads.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why don't we have Direct Messages feature on HN? - <AUTHOR> Pardon me if it was asked earlier.<p>Just wondering, why don't we have an option to direct message someone in HN? Is there a philosophical reason behind it or in general HN users will dislike it? <comment><USER2> Feature creep? HN is a news aggregator not a social network; if you want to contact someone and they haven't posted contact information in their profile then they don't want to be contacted.

And if they do want to be contacted, there are better tools than a lossy web- based email-style replacement shim, which is what most other sites end up having.

<comment><USER3> +1 exactly! Let the user provide ways to contact in his bio, and leave HN as simple as possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Are there concrete ways in which direct messaging would make Hacker News better?

</comment><comment><USER5> HN is not a social network. If you want people to contact you, post your info.</comment>


Kube 0.1 – a modern email client for KDE - <AUTHOR> https://kube.kde.org/ <comment><USER2> it looks same as windows 10 Mail client :(

[http://i1-news.softpedia- static.com/images/news2/microsoft-r...](http://i1-news.softpedia- static.com/images/news2/microsoft-rolls-out-update-for-windows-10-mail- app-489647-3.jpg)</comment>


The voice of sadness is censored as sick. What if it's sane? - <AUTHOR> https://aeon.co/essays/the-voice-of-sadness-is-censored-as-sick-what-if-its-sane <comment><USER2> wow emos just got science. very edgy science.</comment>


ES6 Template Strings in Depth - <AUTHOR> http://ponyfoo.com/articles/es6-template-strings-in-depth

<comment><USER2> Combining this with react jsx should definitely make lives easier!</comment>


Show HN: Table2Site – Create No-Code Websites from an Airtable Base - <AUTHOR> https://table2site.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi Hackers,

I made a tool that can generate websites from an airtable base. It uses Airtable as a CMS and requires no code from you.

It's perfect for list sites (like "curated list for X") or small landing pages. A few examples: [https://table2site.com/site/demo- site-3](https://table2site.com/site/demo-site-3) [https://table2site.com/site/demo-site-2](https://table2site.com/site/demo- site-2) [https://table2site.com/site/demo- site-1](https://table2site.com/site/demo-site-1)

I appreciate any feedback!

</comment><comment><USER2> Looks like a more polished version of sheet2site [1]. I think Google Sheets is a more widespread option (b/c lots of people using GMail or GSuite).

I wouldn't create an Airtable account, just to try this tool.

[1] [https://www.sheet2site.com/](https://www.sheet2site.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> You're absolutely right, the 2 tools look quite similar :-).

No doubt Google Sheets has a larger audience but Airtable is becoming increasingly more powerful so it's definitely a worthy contender. It deserves to be a niche :-)</comment></comment>


Some Colleges Have More Students From the Top 1 Percent Than the Bottom 60 - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/01/18/upshot/some-colleges-have-more-students-from-the-top-1-percent-than-the-bottom-60.html <comment><USER2> If anyone's interested in learning more about this topic I can't recommend Revisionist History's episode 4, 5 & 6 enough. Malcolm Gladwell uses a very compelling and thought-provoking narrative to dissect educational philanthropy and how hard the elite universities trying to be more inclusive (or are they?)

[0] - [http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes](http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes)

<comment><USER3> Let me second that. Gladwell raises my skeptic alarm often, but these three highlighted episodes are good.

For the past 7 years I've been involved in education from pre-k to university and my BS detector didn't budge during these episodes.

<comment><USER4> I'll second your Gladwell doubt:

[https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20161228/23550336364/malco...](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20161228/23550336364/malcolm- gladwells-ridiculous-attack-ed-snowden-based-weird-prejudice-about-how- whistleblower-should-look.shtml)

But the guy can be good, I'll check these out.

<comment><USER5> Very skeptical of Gladwell, especially since _David and Goliath_

[http://www.cjr.org/the_observatory/the_gladwellian_debate.ph...](http://www.cjr.org/the_observatory/the_gladwellian_debate.php)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The poorer 20% are also much more likely to go to for profit "colleges". I don't think this is as simple as saying they can't afford to go to the best colleges.

<comment><USER7> > But some elite colleges have focused more on being affordable to low-income > families than on expanding access. "Free tuition only helps if you can get > in,"

This is, I think, the bigger problem. Educational opportunities are highly differentiated by wealth at a young age. Better public schools require living in more expensive neighborhoods. Private schools are expensive and even on financial aid difficult for some people to get to. Poor people can't afford to send their kids on summer trips (i.e. summer camp) and effectively the poor are more likely to have learning stop in the summer. To top if off, the guidance people in poor school districts get in/around their senior year is rarely helpful and sometimes just terrible (I.e. councilors telling students to not even bother applying to Harvard, etc...)

So yes, I'd say it's more complicated. When you're poor you're playing against students with a stacked deck. That's not to say there is no personable accountability, but it's not the only determining factor.

<comment><USER8> I don't know if we can account for the wealth difference and "stacked desk" at the school level. My city school district has five high schools in difference part of the city. The best ones is near the top of the state academic ranking while the others are average. They all get the same level of funding from the city and the schools look all equally run down. The difference is the demographics of those attending these schools. When they started statewide ranking of schools, families started gravitating to the slightly better schools and driving up the prices on neighboring houses. So this school is full of wealthy and high achieving families despite equal levels of funding.

<comment><USER9> Don't most cities contribute a proportion of a school district's property taxes to that district's school(s)? So districts with expensive housing receive more funding than those with cheaper housing.

I agree that home life influences schooling outcomes as well. Families with higher incomes can afford for one parent to stay home or to pay for a nanny or whatever. But in addition, many schools are funded disproportionately, where the schools with the most need receive the least funding.

<comment><USER10> If I recall, many of the worst school districts (inner cities) also spend the most dollars per student. I've been told this multiple times, but can't look for a source at the moment. Can someone else confirm or deny?

<comment><USER11> They definitely receive more in federal funds but I am not sure if this takes into account local money raised through levies/property taxes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12>
      But some elite colleges have focused more on being
      affordable to low-income families than on expanding
      access.

The article talks about _access_ multiple times, but never defines what that might mean. If financial commitment is removed from the table, either qualified low-income applicants aren't being accepted at the same rates (unsubstantiated here) or qualified low-income applicants simply aren't applying (supported by linked research[1]). Or colleges accept students based on qualification alone and are "blind" to economic circumstances—which may be good or bad depending on your POV.

If the second, the question then becomes how to _encourage_ those applicants. Is that "access"?

Or do we need to re-think "qualification" to be more democratic (if it includes, say, international exposure that can be bought)? Are institutions obligated to change their qualification criteria to this end? _Should_ they all?

The selectivity-vs-income ("rainbow") chart is interesting and fairly linear. I wonder what a similar "qualification-vs-income" chart would look like: e.g., are top 0.1%-ers "more qualified" (e.g., more likely to get into a selective university by performance alone) than other bands?

Then we're either into _really_ dangerous territory (e.g., wealth correlated with intelligence), we're back to (re-)defining qualification criteria, or we shift the "blame" from university admissions to childhood education.

[1][http://www.nber.org/papers/w18586](http://www.nber.org/papers/w18586)

<comment><USER13> I assume, from that sentence, "expanding access" means "teaching more students" and thus accepting a larger class/more applicants.

<comment><USER12> Sure, but that's a pretty blind metric. "If Harvard (6k undergrads) accepted as many students as Texas A&M (50k undergrads), it would be more diverse!" But then it wouldn't be selective; it wouldn't be _Harvard_.

Presuming Harvard is interested in increasing enrollment _at all_ , that alone doesn't help increase these _percentages_. If Harvard accepts 1 low-income student for every 10 people, and accepts 100 more people in total, the mix is still 10%. I don't think that's "increased access".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's disappointing that the article leads into this as a discussion about income inequality at certain universities, when the study is branded as a tool for low income students to determine which colleges provide the best opportunity for upward mobility.

[http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/](http://www.equality-of- opportunity.org/)

<comment><USER15> Why is starting such a discussion "disappointing"? It seems like a fair extrapolation to make, and a conversation worth exploring. Is income inequality at particular universities _not_ an interesting issue to explore?

The article links to the page you've linked to, and includes links to data and source information. I haven't personally vetted what NYT has done here, but it seems fair to take original research and run with it in new directions.

<comment><USER14> Well yes, income inequality at a particular university is not interesting because the paper concludes that upward mobility is a better metric to identify schools that should be expanded. I see comments below about capitalism, supply/demand, luxury cars, tuition, affirmative action, banning private/for-profit schools, and social status. Some of those are totally irrelevant, and the relevant ones ought to be in the context of how they relate to access to high mobility schools.

There are accompanying NYT articles, and I agree that it's fair to jump off from the research. I believe the discussion needs to incorporate the conclusions from the paper into that new direction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Education should be cheap for everyone, otherwise this will only get worse.

Additionally everyone that has finished High School should be accepted into any state-funded university. You can seed out the unqualified students during the first two semesters.

<comment><USER17> It would be silly to put a bunch of resources into expanding college and university accessibility. In the US, highschool is free and mandatory, but still 20% of students are not graduating. Then there's the portion of those who graduate who have GPAs lower than 3.0. A disappointingly large portion of students do not take education seriously and there is no real societal value in providing those students with four more years of tax-payer supported casual living.

<comment><USER18> Just to provide an example how other countries do it - in Poland, all higher education is 100% free for the student. It doesn't matter what and where they want to study - there is nothing to pay.

Of course, the problem you mentioned still exists - a lot, if not most of people are not cut out for higher education, and since there is no financial barrier to entry, why aren't people spending 3+ years on taxpayer's dime doing nothing?

Well, I believe there are two mechanisms at work here - it's stupidly hard to get into any university, even a relatively poor one. You need fantastically good results on the high school diploma or you are not even considered.

Second mechanism - first year is the sieve to rule out who is not cut out for higher education. It has a reputation for being harshly difficult, and it's not unheard of university courses failing or just losing 90% of all students that have enrolled in their first year. If you come to university with an attitude that you are going to party and play games, you will be out by the end of the first semester. Then, if you do reach the end, there's no "grades" on your diploma. You can't graduate with a low score so to speak - you need to have absolutely pristine record to actually graduate. People have finished their 3-4 years and have been re-taking final exams for years just because you need to get something stupid like 90%+ score to actually pass.

In comparison, I was shocked by education in country like the UK - in here, first year of uni is almost treated like kindergarten. It's not meant to be difficult. You are not meant to be treating it seriously. It's the year when you are supposed to get the partying out of your system and enjoy yourself. The grades from 1st year don't even count towards your final degree. The only way to fail in 1st year would be to assault a lecturer or something. Then anything above 40% is a pass. "First" is just a paltry 70% of higher. So you can cruise through higher education and graduate, even if your scores were below 50% average.

<comment><USER19> I feel that stricter systems like this require an extremely homogeneous society to work. Everyone has to be on the ball, educating the kids from a young age. This includes both the actual education of things they learn, as well as instilling the values of respect for learning and education. When you have a fragmented society it feels like it's hard to fix the low performers at the college level, and even having a much stricter and/or free system would not help without a huge upstream culture change.

I don't know what the solution is (US-centric). Push the education and values as widely as possible relentlesly, hoping to get a positive first derivative, and maybe in 50 years things will be better?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > Add your favorite colleges to the tables in this article:

What a great idea! NYT really capitalizes on this medium and doesn't simply deliver print articles via web.

<comment><USER21> They have a very strong web team. In fact, they are contributors to things like D3 and other big JS libraries.

<comment><USER20> True. But I think it takes a distinct editorial mind shift to publish articles that have interactivity features, though. It's not enough to have "a very strong web team" if they're only focused on dimensions like uptime and page load times.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> In their top 10 list the only school I have heard of is Tuf. Are these considered Elite colleges? Havard, Yale, Penn, MIT, Columbia, were not there.

<comment><USER23> I checked MIT (alma mater) and it was 173 greatly skewed towards the bottom 60%. Don't know if this is something to be proud of but there it is :)

<comment><USER24> A big endowment ($13.5B / class size = 940 => $14M/student) + the will to use it on scholarships. Kudos to them.

I did undergrad at WashU, which in this ranking is the poster child for regressive admissions. WashU is opposite MIT in this respect: a medium-sized endowment ($6B / class size = 1400 => $4M/student) and no will to use it, at least not on scholarships.

It was not that way back when I attended. The only way I can make sense of the graphs of diversity vs. time is that they are aggressively increasing tuition, recruiting among the wealthy, and erecting fancy buildings.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> As someone who was born into a bottom 20% family and went to a supposed "Ivy Plus/Elite College" this is not shocking to me at all. The culture shock for me personally was amazing. In particular, I'll never forget when some students wanted to go to Asia of all places for a 4 day weekend.

Though I've personally benefited from diversity recruiting for low income, first in family to go to college, etc. I still believe the solution is to fix K-12. In particular, Boston is an example of there being great higher education, but terrible public schools.

\</comment><comment></comment><comment>-----

Short of that, I would recommend for the following actions:

1\. Anonymous interviewing for all companies, mandatory. Let's be honest, those attending elite schools are the biggest beneficiaries of "discriminatory recruiting." Oh, except, not if you're the stereotypical beneficiary of affirmative action [1] (ironic because really white women are those who benefit the most [2]). The idea here is to level the playing field. I imagine most resistance to this will come from people who went to schools similar to mine.

2\. Banning of private schools. This probably won't happen, but private schools simply perpetuate the problems with access. How is it that rich cities like Boston, New York, Chicago and San Francisco have terrible school systems? Don't get me wrong, this isn't THE solution, there's still the rich suburb effect [3]. Practically, this probably wouldn't work. Those in control generally either live in rich suburbs or send their kid to private school. It would take one heck of a politician to pull this off.

3\. Affirmative action should now be implemented at the beginning, not at the end. Helping people who already succeeded is unnecessary for real change, and expensive. Not to mention it's cheaper and more effective [4]. The tin-foil hat in me says that people wouldn't want this to happen, simply because it'd produce better competition. Affirmative action at the end is more tame.

4\. More advocacy of college alternatives. Personally, I went to a two-year college and transferred to an "Ivy Plus/Elite College" in order to not pay loans. Ironically, that was not necessary since they paid for everything anyway, but hey, I didn't know that. For many, college loans are just entrapment [5]. Two year college is a factor to help mitigate the pain, in the short term [6].

5\. Complete banning of for-profit school. There's already been movement in this direction, with the prevention of enrollment of students with federal aid to ITT. [7]

I have many more ideas about this, but unfortunately things are very complicated. The intersection between the economy, parenting, culture, the government as well as racism, discrimination and access make it very difficult to propose a general solution.

I disagree with my own advice above depending on the city, and the circumstances. Ultimately, this is too tough a problem to solve merely with broad strokes, but I do believe the sentiment "fix K-12" summarizes my view.

[1] [https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/03/06/elite- college...](https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/03/06/elite-college- degrees-give-black-graduates-little-advantage-job-market)

[2] [http://ideas.time.com/2013/06/17/affirmative-action-has- help...](http://ideas.time.com/2013/06/17/affirmative-action-has-helped-white- women-more-than-anyone/)

[3] [http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/09/even- if-...](http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/09/even-if-private- schools-didnt-exist-there-would-still-be-rich-suburbs/279295/)

[4] [http://thefederalist.com/2016/06/24/we-wouldnt-need- affirmat...](http://thefederalist.com/2016/06/24/we-wouldnt-need-affirmative- action-if-k-12-schools-actually-worked/)

[5] [https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/08/upshot/student-debt-is- wo...](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/08/upshot/student-debt-is-worse-than- you-think.html)

[6] [http://www.scholarsstrategynetwork.org/brief/make-first- two-...](http://www.scholarsstrategynetwork.org/brief/make-first-two-years- college-free-cost-effective-way-expand-access-higher-education-america)

[7] [http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Education/2016/0828/For- profit-...](http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Education/2016/0828/For-profit- college-banned-from-accepting-students-with-federal-aid)

<comment><USER26> If you want affirmative action to be implemented at the beginning, why not take that thought further and discourage someone from producing kids when they are not yet ready to be parents?

Honestly, government help is definitely _necessary_ to help the less privileged kids. But it is by no means _sufficient_ if the home environment is broken and parents don't have time to develop their children.

<comment><USER25> I don't believe that's necessary. Education already promotes not having kids, or at least waiting. [1][2] What you propose is also politically impossible (I completely agree, in theory, however). We already know how challenging the abortion and sex education issue has been. Proper sex education (and K-12, generally) will implicitly implement what you're suggesting.

[1] [http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/may/9/education- lev...](http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/may/9/education-level- inversely-related-to-childbearing/)

[2] [http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/02/lets-not- pa...](http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/02/lets-not-panic-over- women-with-more-education-having-fewer-kids/273070/)

<comment><USER27> Education promotes smart people not having kids, especially smart women.

But it doesn't diminish in any way the dumb people. If you have no intention of getting an education or supporting yourself in the modern world, a tougher education system with higher standards won't discourage your reproduction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I went to Purdue, which I considered fairly blue-collar as far as 4-year universities go. Stats: 3.1% from the 1% and 21.1% from the bottom 60%. Even more sobering is that there are more people from the bottom 40% at MIT than at Purdue.

I then thought of what would be the most blue-collar state university in Indiana, and checked ISU: <1% from the 1% and 46.5% from the bottom 60%.

<comment><USER29> I don't find this surprising at all. I spent a summer program at ISU once and had plenty of friends that wound up going there. In the mid-90's, it was cheaper than both Indiana University and Purdue, with smaller class sizes - and they have a completely different focus it seemed. If I remember correctly, ISU seemed to cater towards lower income much more than Purdue ever did.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> two thoughts

1\. I think its interesting/notable that the colleges that are most successful at helping poorer kids, are not elite schools, but rather are training people for well paying "middle class" jobs like teaching them how to be an air traffic controller

2\. nowhere does it talk about the cost of providing an education...if it costs College X $75,000/year/student and College Y costs $15,000/year/student then making Y "affordable" is eminently easier than X...the point being some schools may want to have a more economically diverse student body, but in order to achieve that end, they would need to either spend less on education (and consequently become less prestigious), raise more money/get more grants, or charge the students that are already paying full tuition even more...none of which appealing/easy...

<comment><USER31> >they would need to either spend less on education (and consequently become less prestigious)

Given many studies (notably Google's) showing that school performance is not a good indicator of future performance. Is losing prestige such a bad thing? It would be if the prestige was correlated with significantly smarter and better performing graduates.

But if the prestige only comes from being associated with higher class individuals, all you are losing is a false-positive signal.

<comment><USER30> I think the conventional wisdom is that prestige allows schools to attract better students and professors, and to raise more money from alumni sort of creating a virtuous cycle...but to a certain extent its zero sum, so some schools actually end up trying to compete in races that they can't win to their detriment, and effectively to the detriment of their students.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Ivy League degree is not about education, but a social status certificate. That is why 1% are paying for it in the first place. No wonder that most of the Ivy Leagues colleges are of liberal arts.

There is MIT for education.

<comment><USER33> MIT practices the same undergraduate admissions shenanigans as Ivy League universities. At a certain point, the course material is largely identical. I really doubt 6.006 is going to significantly differ from CS 31 in terms of student outcomes [1]. Liberal arts are great to study at top schools if you'd like to work in investment banking or consulting.

[1] [http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~cs31/journal.html](http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~cs31/journal.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Elite schools may provide generous financial aid, but what this ignores is that typically students from lower income families go to secondary schools that are weaker than traditional schools upper middle class students attend. Some provide few AP courses, one where no one may explains/prep students for the SAT and only schools students are recommended to attend are local community college/nearby schools. Take a top student from this school and she may have 0 AP courses, 3.8 unweighted GPA, 0 ECs, average SAT score (after taking it blind) and from a low income family. Elite universities will not lower their admission requirements to accept her, nor would top public universities. Due to her background, she is forced to attend a lower ranked school. She failed at a game she never had a chance to win to begin with.

Harvard and the like may offer great financial aid to those students, but those students are the very ones that aren't going to be accepted Harvard.

</comment><comment><USER35> In other news, more people from the top 1% drive Ferraris than people from the bottom 50%.

</comment><comment><USER36> Maybe we should replace affirmative action w/ one based on income... Average incomes of student families must = average american salary -- or absolutely 0 tax savings, grants, etc.... from the government.

</comment><comment><USER37> To the extent that society is self-similar, does this represent society as a whole - like some sort of power laws of societal existence/expression?

</comment><comment><USER38> > Where today's 25-year-olds went to college, grouped by their parents' income

Their parents' income relative to what...

The city their parent works or lives in? The state? Country-wide?

Seems like an important thing to clarify. You can be in the top 5–10% in a small blue-collar town and still middle of the road across the country.

<comment><USER39> In any context I've ever seen, income percentiles are always nation-wide.

Re-read OP, didn't see them explicitly call it out, but they did implicitly mention "[percent] of American families" in places, so likely it's nation here too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I find it very interesting that many so-called "Ivy Misser" schools such as WUSTL and Tufts have more 1%ers and fewer 60%ers than extremely elite schools such as Princeton and Harvard. Even Yale has a lower ranking on the list. Perhaps the elite of the elite are more concerned with giving their progeny a broad exposure to different classes of people, while more middling members of the upper class concern themselves with status signalling.

</comment><comment><USER41> You would think it makes sense to grab the smartest poor people and start indoctrinating them as soon as possible.

</comment><comment><USER42> This is partially a side effect of admissions that are skewed by racial affirmative action, as opposed to taking into account overall socioeconomic status. Race is still a factor for two families of similar income, but Obama's children received a enjoyed significantly more educational opportunities than the children of an average working-class West Virginia white family -- yet admissions only sees race.

</comment><comment><USER43> What happened to the 39% in between? Aren't they the majority?

</comment><comment><USER44> this is because some schools are very expensive.

</comment><comment><USER45> Everything in this world is a commodity. Supply vs demand. Education is like that too.

</comment><comment><USER46> Some sports cars have more owners from the top 1 percent than the bottom 60. What's the big deal?

Besides, farming is the backbone of civilization. You don't need much education for that. Everything we have nowadays is extra.

<comment><USER47> Farming is less than 1% of human activity currently.

<comment><USER46> In India it's half of the workforce. So I don't think your 1% is accurate. Also most jobs are nonessential for human survival, unlike agriculture.

<comment><USER47> In first world nations it is. The US has 3.2 million farmers and a population of 325 million or so. I don't know if your figure is inaccurate, misleading or farmers in India are extremely inefficient.

<comment><USER46> "Today, India ranks second worldwide in farm output. Agriculture and allied sectors like forestry and fisheries accounted for 13.7% of the GDP (gross domestic product) in 2013,[2] about 50% of the workforce.[3][4]" \- Wikipedia

<comment><USER48> 50% of the population is in _agriculture_ , not _farming_. Total agriculture represents about 10% of US jobs, but only 10% of agriculture jobs are farming jobs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> This is a capitalism country. We reward individuals who are rich. What is wrong with rich kids getting into college? This is the bonus they got from creating more economy growth for the society. And to be honest, the 1% income limit is misleading. The real rich people will laugh at the 1% income threshold. With 1% income in nyc, you can't even raise a family in decent life style.

<comment><USER50> > This is the bonus they got from creating more economy growth for the > society.

One quibble: it's not them, it's their parents.

There _are_ 18 year old entrepreneurs who've created lots of economic growth, of course, but they're very much not the crowd we're talking about here.

<comment><USER49> I am talking on a GDP basis.

<comment><USER51> On a GDP basis, it's still their parents.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Warren Buffett Bidding for Yahoo Assets with Quicken Loans Founder - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnbc.com/2016/05/13/warren-buffett-bidding-for-yahoo-assets-with-quicken-loans-founder.html <comment><USER2> It seems that Buffett is helping finance the offer. He might not be the part of the consortium. He may have arranged a loan for them. That would be more the style of Buffet. Selling pickaxes during a gold rush. He rarely invests directly in technology companies.

>The consortium is in the second round of bidding in the auction for Yahoo's assets, the people said. Buffett is helping finance the offer, one of the people added.

[http://www.reuters.com/article/us-yahoo-m-a-buffett- idUSKCN0...](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-yahoo-m-a-buffett- idUSKCN0Y42ME)

<comment><USER3> Yeah, Buffett prefers buying high free cash flow assets, ideally backed by some kind of monopoly or other barrier to entry, and then using the cheap money to offer exactly this kind of financing. Buying Yahoo assets themselves wouldn't be at all his style.

<comment><USER4> Yup, he buys well-run companies then leaves the managers to do their thing, offering capital when needed. Yahoo is the most anti-Buffett company on Earth.

This is more like when he loaned money to GE. Hope this bid wins, I always love learning how he structures his deals.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It sound as a good news for everybody.

Buffett is know for not putting too much pressure on his investments giving them the time to grow and be profitable.

It is a strategy that worked pretty well, however a technology company is a different beast from the other companies in the Hathaway portfolio (winner takes it all/most), said so Yahoo can still an important player with the right management.

<comment><USER6> More detail here: [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-13/buffett- ba...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-13/buffett-backs-group- bidding-for-yahoo-assets-reuters-reports)

Buffet isn't bidding for the group, it wouldn't be part of the Hathaway portfolio. He's just providing the financial backing for Dan Gilbert.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Buffet buying a stake in a technology company. Never thought I'd see the day.

<comment><USER8> He bought into ibm

<comment><USER9> I know they have a quantum computer, Watson AI, and that Power architecture...but isn't IBM primarily a sales and consulting company? at least, by revenue and headcount?

<comment><USER10> Is yahoo really a technology company? IMO it's more of a media company.

<comment><USER11> Anything that publishes content for public consumption to get advertising revenue is a media company. Google publishes search results to get ads. Facebook published your information for ads. Twitter publishes your tweets for ads.

I heard on the radio that someone proclaimed Facebook is now a media company...no, they've always been a media company.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A VC: Employee Equity: The Option Strike Price - <AUTHOR> http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/11/employee-equity-the-option-strike-price.html <comment><USER2> I'm not sure why Fred doesn't mention it, but as your option price creeps upwards, it becomes (for better or worse) a form of handcuffs for employees.

If your option price is $0.50/share and you grant a new exec 200,000 options then it will cost them $100,000 to leave your company once vested. At $0.01/share, your early employees can exercise themselves and bolt.

That's why early Facebook employees are gone, but ones who showed up in 2008 and 2009 are forced to stay or forfeit their options. The alternative of purchasing them and selling them quickly creates a massive tax hit, which is why almost nobody does it.

As a consequence, there are already people at Facbeook who want to quit but can't afford to.</comment>


The Real Deal about Jonathans Card - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/notes/jonathans-card/the-real-deal/174391689299156

<comment><USER2> Could someone please explain to me why this is such a big deal?

Let us assume that Jonathan is deceiving us and that this is a marketing ploy... what does it matter? We haven't been conned into spending our time or money on anything. The card still works in the same way.

Now, if Jonathan is telling the truth then it sucks for him to be treated in this way. It seems to me that there is nothing to lose by believing him.

Sure, it sucks to be misled and I'm sure it hurts some people's pride to think that they are prone to being tricked but ultimately we don't lose anything!

For me it comes down to a nice example of how generous some people can be. And if Starbucks are actually the ones topping up the card then yay, free coffee!

<comment><USER3> It's not that big of a deal. I wish he would just say whether or not his company has a relationship with Starbucks, and if it does, why he made such a strong claim of no-affiliation-whatsoever to Starbucks on his project page?

Here's a screenshot of the cached clients page: <http://i.imgur.com/PgccX.png>

Nothing wrong with free coffee, or sponsored free coffee. And not that much wrong about doing a hobby project that relates to a professional client. But appearing to hide evidence of that relationship seems to be what has caught people's interest:

<comment><USER3> FWIW, Mobuqity has made a statement to TechCrunch [http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/10/the-vast-starbucks- conspira...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/10/the-vast-starbucks-conspiracy- jonathans-card-wasnt-faked/)

>Mobiquity has no professional affiliation with Starbucks. As a young company launched this past March, Mobiquity had initially included on its website the logos of companies with whom members of our team had worked with in the past, as we stated on the page. Mobiquity took down the l page in late July as part of an ongoing site redesign – complete coincidence, not conspiracy. Jonathan Stark was not the Mobiquity team member who had previously worked with Starbucks. But he does admit to liking their coffee. If you read Jonathan's original post on the subject on July 14th, you'll see he was as surprised as anyone else that his experiment in "broadcasting money" (by taking a screenshot of his Starbucks card barcode via his iPhone and emailing it to himself to use on his Nexus S) was successful. Jonathan's exact quote was, "I bought a coffee with a picture."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The Jonathan's Card story really demonstrates something that I've been increasingly aware of:

On the Internet, it's very easy to wear a tin-foil hat _and_ persuade others to do so.

 _Why_ does every other thing have to be a conspiracy?

<comment><USER5> I share your and Pheter's take on the "issue" but an answer to your question can be that it makes people believe they are smarter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> A remarkably empty statement. I already didn't think it was a marketing ploy, but if I did then reading this sure as hell wouldn't have changed my mind.

<comment><USER7> Really? What more would you have liked him to have said?

<comment><USER8> Clear up his professional associations with Starbucks.

<comment><USER9> > _"The Jonathan's Card experiment was completely my idea, Starbucks had > absolutely nothing to do with it, and until recently, I was scared to death > that Starbucks might sue the crap out of me."_

What part of that is unclear?

Believe or disbelieve him, but the statement is unambiguous.

<comment><USER10> The accusations were specific - he works for a company that provides mobile solutions for Starbucks. They pulled their clients page from the web after this blew up. I'd expect something along the lines "I'm not the Jonathan Stark who works for Mobiquity" or "I'm him, but the idea was still solely mine and my employer pulled the clients page for reasons totally unrelated to the whole affair".

<comment><USER10> Update: Mobiquity has spoken up and said it was indeed a coincidence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> That's all well and good, but removing their Clients page and the Google cache of it is pretty damning. Why cover your tracks if it was all above board?

I don't think it really matters in this case whether it was sincere or not, but I guess people don't like to feel like they've been played.

<comment><USER12> It could simply be Starbucks didn't want to be associated with the project, or they never gave Mobiquity permission to use their name as an endorsement. This stunt could have caused them to notice.

And this could still be the case while a marketing team at Starbucks has decided that this card is a great tool that they can sink a couple thousand dollars into slowly to get people in to Starbucks.

Like you say, it is pretty tempting to assume the worst because nobody wants to be the last person to know they've been duped.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> TechCrunch also wrote a piece on this coffee conspiracy thing [http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/10/the-vast-starbucks- conspira...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/10/the-vast-starbucks-conspiracy- jonathans-card-wasnt-faked/)

</comment><comment><USER13> The comment thread under that looks super fishy as well. All positive comments, on the internet? Yeah right. And most of them are well written? Maybe my bs detector is set too high, but I smell shenanigans.

<comment><USER14> It's a Facebook note. Only his friends can leave comments.</comment></comment>


SpiderFoot: OSINT collection and reconnaissance tool - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/smicallef/spiderfoot <comment><USER2> I'm going to offer an opinion not matching the groupthink here.

I think this is a great project... many of us gather intelligence on various targets and threats by hand, because we're used to doing that, and it's the way we've always done it, and it works.

A system of automation is more thorough and more complete as well as speeding up the process, allowing for more searches in less time.

Sure, the software isn't perfect, but it's better than almost anything else in terms of being more of a product and less of a toolkit. It's open source, so if you think a data source like Facebook is missing, feel free to add it in.

Well done, I say.

<comment><USER3> Yes, I still mine data by hand. Usually inserted directly into sqlite using datagrip. And if I use a script its bespoke, specifically crafted for a single site (or single page) ;)

I applaud this effort as well. The web is a chaotic soup of unstructured data. And this is a first step towards agents that can surf the web for us. And return complex queries from natural human language!

<comment><USER4> Appreciate it, thanks!

<comment><USER5> Yeah, this looks pretty awesome! I ran it against one of my own domains and there's a fair bit of false positive/flood of information, but the data is really interesting!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I am excited to get into this.

Anecdotal disclaimer: I have been both an OSINT analyst and a developer supporting OSINT work in the past. I understand completely why OSINT analysts like to do things by hand - they can understand where the data comes from; they can cite sources as they go; they can tailor things specifically to their use case. Understanding the process is indeed important to knowing how we got to the conclusion.

And yet, we're frustrated when there's a panic situation and we need a report of any kind in two hours. We're frustrated when we're handed sixteen targets all at once and have to suss them out over the weekend. We're frustrated that visualizations suck and we have to custom make them ourselves. Better tooling, an opinionated process, and automation helps solve all of that, or at least advance things a bit.

Can't have anything perfect (entity resolution as #1 on the un-perfect list) but getting a tool together as well thought-out as this one is an excellent step forward. Kudos, @smicallef.

<comment><USER4> So happy to hear it helps, thanks a lot!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Author of the project (not the OP) here. Must say it was quite a surprise to see this land in my HN feed today! I'll do my best to answer the points raised below but if you have any questions or further feedback, I'm glad to hear it!

</comment><comment><USER7> It is nice to see OSINT receive more tooling, but I shudder at the 'most complete' hyperbole. For starters, this appears to be almost exclusively centered on web domain OSINT. But what about reverse image searches? Government records searches? Video analysis? All of these domains appear to not be represented at all, to name just a few. Even in the domain of web analysis the tool is missing critical queries such as historic whois and leaked database lookups.

<comment><USER4> Actually you can target a bunch of things beyond domains, including IPs, usernames, phone numbers and more. And historic Whois and leak database modules are indeed there. In some cases you need API keys though but most offer free tiers for low volumes.

But yes, it's not covering some of the other sources you mentioned... yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> For something that claims comprehensiveness, I am somewhat surprised by the list of sources. It's almost entirely restricted to the web domain, i. e. domain/ip/email data.

That's understandable, considering how any data you gleam can immediately be fed into another run of all these tools. But I was under the impression that "OSINT" has a few more data sources connecting it to the "real world"? Company data, published books, or the court system come to mind.

(Sorry if I just missed some)

<comment><USER4> Company data is a little there, using OpenCorporates' API. The tool originated with a smaller scope initially and has grown over 8 years of development. I can imagine how different it will look in another few years.

</comment></comment><comment> no-dr-onboard The whole syntax similarity feature in Recon-NG with MSF is really what is keeping me from trying this tool.

Swiss-knife projects like this are great, but if you don't provide a relatively intuitive set of commands for flipping through the various modules and interfaces, you're going to lose a lot of your userbase.

Simply put, no one wants to learn how to use a new tool if they already know the input and expected output and can't leverage existing navigational habits.

<comment><USER4> I didn't even consider the MSF compatibility need for people, so will take that into consideration for a future release. The sfcli.py CLI was a starting point for that kind of functionality but not MSF compatible. Thanks for the feedback though!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Jack of all trades..?

I've not tested spiderfoot to see how it compares to other more specialised OSINT tools in their specific areas but there is a line of thinking that would suggest an amalgamation of tools might fare better.

<comment><USER10> It is kind of an amalgamation of tools. Install it, sign up for the dozens and dozens of different external services it queries, configure those API's in SpiderFoot. Then fire away. It is really good, but some of the better visualizations, sorting options, reporting and diffing come with the premium SAAS version SpiderFootHX.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It scans wikipedia for edits from a specific IP, but doesn't scan facebook for accounts matching names?

This tool seems to do some very niche things, and miss out some very big things...

<comment><USER4> It actually does search for social media accounts linked to a name or username, but does so using Google/Bing APIs and not Facebook's.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Rdap. Whois is so 1990s

<comment><USER4> Indeed, Whois sucks for parsing and is losing value as an OSINT source since GDPR. I'll take a look at RDAP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> does it compare to palantir?

</comment><comment><USER14> " There's something fascinating about hairy little spider feet. They look like they belong on dogs. Or maybe even cats.

Recently, images of hairy spider "paws" have circulated on social media with people oohing and aahing about how cute they are and how much they resemble furry pet appendages"

If you haven't googled spider feet. Do it.

<comment><USER15> >The black "hairs" on the Araniella villanii spider are innervated, meaning they are sensory organs, much like a cat's whisker.

Source: [https://www.livescience.com/newly-discovered-math- spider.htm...](https://www.livescience.com/newly-discovered-math-spider.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Inside one of the plugins I found this code:

        def setup(self, sfc, userOpts=dict()):
            self.sf = sfc
            self.results = self.tempStorage()

            for opt in list(userOpts.keys()):
                self.opts[opt] = userOpts[opt]

And I'm left wondering... Since the class that implements this method has a opts dictionary that is a class attribute, why didn't the author write a simple self.opts.update(userOpts) that takes care of it? It does exactly the same thing, is faster and clearer.

That in itself made me lose a lose a lot of the interest I had in this project. I'll still pass it around to a few colleagues that work in infosec to see what they think of the tool from a practical point of view.

I'm also a bit confused that the authors says it's Python 3, but there are a lot of idioms around that point a 2/3 compatibility. I can understand that the project might have started with a 2/3 mentality, and then progressed. However, some of this idioms not only affect readability but can introduce side effects (anywhere from annoyances to bugs).</comment>


Burrow Is Casper for Designer Sofas - <AUTHOR> http://www.themacro.com/articles/2016/08/burrow/ <comment><USER2> We're giving everyone in the YC community $150 off with promo code YCFAMILY. You can earn more off with our referral program. Email me with any questions at email@example.com. Also check us out on TechCrunch: [https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/04/burrow-wants-to-bring- casp...](https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/04/burrow-wants-to-bring-caspers- mattress-concept-to-couches/)

Thanks!</comment>


Ask HN: How to get into the game industry as a game developer? - <AUTHOR>

I would love to get in the game industry as a game developer, but I find it kind of impossible to get started.
Most of the companies do require existing knowledge of OpenGL and/or engines like Unreal Engine 4, CryEngine, Unity 4 and so on. Some of them even require up to 5 years in the industry or that you have developed on AAA games.
I do not have anything of the above. Though I did read the game programming pattern book[0], which I was mesmerized by. About me, I am a 19 year old male from Germany, who is passionate about programming. I graduated from middle school and I am about to pass my apprenticeship as an IT Specialist for Application Development, in fact next Friday.
Any ideas for me? Maybe there are some game developers out here on HackerNews, who can tell me when and how they got started.
[0]: http://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/ <comment><USER2> I was a game developer for various AAA studios for many years and did many, many interviews for new hires. The number one thing that companies will look for is knowledge (you will be tested on this) the next is drive (you have to show that the company should take a chance on you). These things are no different than any other job.

Luckily there is a very simple thing you can do to hone the first and show the second. Make a game. Don't piddle around with an engine, don't read and talk about how you could do this and that if you were given a chance. Make a game. Make it small and completable. There is not a single thing stopping you from just making a game.

Find a genre you like and make a clone, then extend one area with a new idea. Or a clone that show you understand a specific technical area. Or create a mod for an existing game, hack new functionality into Minecraft, or change a control scheme in Half-Life. Just make something you can show, then show it.

A point though, you will find it easier if you pick an area to specialize in. Saying you want to get into the games industry is like saying you want to play in a band. What instrument do you play?

Most game studios don't hire many generalists without experience. So pick one area that you are willing to work at for 3-5 years and double-down. Then find a way to show 1) you've done your homework at a base level 2) are willing to sit-down and do the work.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you're interested in being a game developer then just make some games. There has never been more places where you have a chance to be successful at making games if you're even a little bit talented or perhaps more importantly persistent.

I started by selling Flash games on FGL.com back in '08 or '09, transitioned from that into my old SaaS startup, came back to games by self-publishing mobile about a year ago.</comment>


GNU Mcron - <AUTHOR> https://www.gnu.org/software/mcron/ <comment><USER2> I love that GNU loves Guile. There are few Scheme implementations as well polished as guile is, and what a breath of fresh air it can be to sit down to some '() stew after a few rough weeks of spreadsheet hell at work.

Might be just me, but it's kind of like having another universe to take a vacation in.

It does make me miss types, doing data structure programming in scheme can be irritating I guess, but still. I can compose, I can syntax-rules if I wanted, etc.

The sexpr universe isn't dead yet.

<comment><USER3> It's a pity GNU doesn't use Common Lisp instead of Scheme — it has rich types, data structures & more. It's a language built for programming large systems, rather than teaching small examples.

<comment><USER2> R7RS large is underway now! CL also has unhygienic macros, non-lispy loop grossness, lots of cruft, lots of poorly named functions that are named two different ways in two different places, and generally reeks of the 70s.

Scheme actually tried to compete with CL once, with a language called T. It had something sorta similar to CLOS and if I recall it was aiming for optimized performance per Sussman and Steele, but it eventually languished.

SBCL is the only thing keeping CL alive and they don't have the wherewithall to begin a modernized spec.

I don't hate CL, but I LOVE scheme. It is much more pleasant to actually work in, and feels cleaner. All the potholes of CL leave me checking under my fingernails for grime.

<comment><USER4> > generally reeks of the 70s

Scheme was implemented as a clean toy/educational Lisp on top of Maclisp in the mid 70s.

Scheme was defined too small upto R5RS and in R6RS is got unlispy.

> Scheme actually tried to compete with CL once

It never really did, since all implementations were different. There are lots of great Scheme implementations (MIT Scheme, Chez Scheme, ...) - but all were different. Then a bunch of extension were bolted onto Scheme - but the base was too small.

> It is much more pleasant to actually work in, and feels cleaner.

Which Scheme? Chicken Scheme? Racket - which is no longer a Scheme? Kawa? They are cleaner than CL?

The last clean Scheme was R5RS - and that was underspecified as a programming language.

Whenever I used Scheme I missed keyword arguments, CLOS, LOOP, optimization declarations, type declarations... Oh, wait. All those and much more has been added to Scheme in some ways. Unfortunately the result does not look 'cleaner'.

Chicken Scheme:

        (define-method (pop (stack <stack>))
          (let* ((c (slot-value stack 'content))
                 (x (car c)))
            (set! (slot-value stack 'content) (cdr c))
            x))

Let's see how it's written in Common Lisp:

        (defmethod stack-pop ((s stack))
          (pop (slot-value s 'content)))

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Guile syntax to run every second Sunday of the month (example taken directly from the manual [https://www.gnu.org/software/mcron/manual/mcron.html#Every-s...](https://www.gnu.org/software/mcron/manual/mcron.html#Every- second-Sunday)):

      (job (lambda (current-time)
           (let* ((next-month (next-month-from current-time))
                  (first-day (tm:wday (localtime next-month)))
                  (second-sunday (if (eqv? first-day 0)
                                     8
                                     (- 14 first-day))))
             (+ next-month (* 24 60 60 second-sunday))))
         "my-program")

Meanwhile in cron (second Sunday falls between the 8th and 14th day of the month, and it is the 7th day of the week):

      0 0 8-14 * * [ `date +\%u` = 7 ] && my-program

I think I'll stick with cron.

<comment><USER6> Couldn't that cronjob simply be: 0 0 8-14 * 0? (I think 0 is Sunday)

<comment><USER5> No because the dom field (8-14) and dow field (0) are treated as a logical OR by cron, not AND.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Some of Mcron's innovations[1]:

> The new idea is to read the required command instructions, work out which > command needs to be executed next, and then sleep until the inferred time > has arrived. On waking the commands are run, and the time of the next > command is computed.

> Each user looks after his own files in his own directory. He can use more > than one to break up complicated cron specifications. Each user can run his > own daemon. This removes the need for suid programs to manipulate the > crontabs, and eliminates many security concerns that surround all existing > cron programs.

> Vixie cron is implemented in 4500 lines of C code; mcron is 1500 lines of > scheme, despite the fact that it offers many more features and much more > flexibility, and complete compatibility with Vixie cron.

[1] [https://www.gnu.org/software/mcron/design.html](https://www.gnu.org/software/mcron/design.html)

<comment><USER8> One would have to check the timeline to determine whether the second was, in fact, an Mcron innovation. Uwe Ohse's uschedule, which has been around since 2001, _also_ works by individual users having files in their own directories with their own daemons.

* [https://ohse.de./uwe/uschedule.html](https://ohse.de./uwe/uschedule.html)

* [http://jdebp.eu./Softwares/uschedule/](http://jdebp.eu./Softwares/uschedule/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Now that timers are baked into systemd[1], the days of cron and its cousins seem to be numbered. The systemd timer specification is pretty rich, and since it can control any arbitrary systemd unit, I can't imagine using a legacy solution anymore.

[1] [https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd.tim...](https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd.timer.html)

<comment><USER10> On embedded you really don't find systemd anywhere. At least not yet.

Cron, busybox and friends are still good things to master.

<comment><USER11> > On embedded you really don't find systemd anywhere.

don't you ? my phone from _2013_ runs systemd and wayland.

<comment><USER12> Out of curiosity, what phone/OS is that? I don't believe stock Android runs either of those, right? (iirc, they have a custom init daemon and compositor, am I wrong?)

<comment><USER13> The OP is probably describing the Jolla 1 phone, released in 2013, and running Sailfish OS that was based on Systemd and Wayland from launch.

<comment><USER11> Indeed

<comment><USER10> While _your_ phone may run systemd, modern phones are pretty powerful compared to platforms traditionally considered "embedded".

It's also an extremely niché phone... Witch I seriously wanted to try out, but couldn't because it was actually impossible for me to buy.

It's definitively not representative for phones in general, and certainly not for embedded Linux as a wider term.

Edit: Things might be changing though.

For instance my Netgear NAS used to run a custom Debian-derivative based on Debian 7 (which used sysvinit). But I discoverd today that after some recent updates it's now based on Debian 8 (which ships with systemd instead).

Based on that, I could produce the following plot[1], on a "embedded" device. Which I now know spends a tremendous 42 seconds booting the kernel. I guess it contemplates life, the universe and everything before moving along :)

[1] [https://gist.github.com/josteink/3cf87479b97d8ab3eac81cba719...](https://gist.github.com/josteink/3cf87479b97d8ab3eac81cba7199bbca#file- nasboot-svg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> _and allows configuration files to be written in scheme (as well as Vixie 's original format) for infinite flexibility in specifying when jobs should be run._

It looks like Greenspun's Tenth Rule has been taken to the next level. Software that's so configurable its configuration files itself are written in a Turing-complete language is the bane of enterprise development. IMHO if you need such complex requirements, that should be done by something other than the configuration file of what should be a simple task scheduler.

<comment><USER15> I guess calling Guile an "ad-hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of Common Lisp" could be a clever salvo in a religious war between Scheme and Common Lisp programmers, but of course Mcron's approach is heeding Greenspun's implied advice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Not sure what the OP intended as the context around this submission, but here's some more info:

Latest version 1.1.1 released 2018-04-08 [1][2]. Previous version was 1.1 on 2018-03-19, and the one before that dates to 2010-06-13 [2].

This is a job scheduler compatible with vixie-cron [3], but written in Guile Scheme. Entries in a crontab file can be the traditional format, or snippets of Guile. There's a whitepaper from 2003 [4] and up-to-date documentation [5] that explain the rationale and usage.

[1] [http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/info- gnu/2018-04/msg00004....](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/info- gnu/2018-04/msg00004.html) [2] [http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/mcron/](http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/mcron/) [3] [https://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Vixie- cron](https://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Vixie-cron) [4] [https://www.gnu.org/software/mcron/design.html](https://www.gnu.org/software/mcron/design.html) [5] [https://www.gnu.org/software/mcron/manual/mcron.html](https://www.gnu.org/software/mcron/manual/mcron.html)

</comment><comment><USER17> From the project documentation [0]:

> The mcron program represents a complete re-think of the cron concept > originally found in the Berkeley and AT&T unices

"Unices" as in the plural of "Unix"? I've never heard that before, but that's amazing.

[0] [https://www.gnu.org/software/mcron/manual/mcron.html](https://www.gnu.org/software/mcron/manual/mcron.html)

<comment><USER18> The Latinate -ix suffix becomes -ice/s when pluralized, as in matrix and matrices, or dominatrix and dominatrices.

<comment><USER19> However, -es (as in "unixes") should be perfectly acceptable too. Just like how "indixes" and "matrixes" are fine in English.

<comment><USER20> I've seen "indexes" and "indices", but never "indixes". I assume that's a typo. Or is "indix" a noun I don't know?

<comment><USER19> Yeah, that's a typo. Sorry about that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I make backups using cron, and recently I've been wondering what happens if the backup (hypothetically) takes longer than the interval between cron jobs. Will it start the new job while the old one is still running? Will unrelated cron jobs be blocked? And how is that in Mcron?

<comment><USER22> Yes. If you're worried about this you can take a look at `flock`. e.g.

        flock -xn /path/to/lock -c /path/to/command

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> For people who've never heard of this, the project home page is really missing a simple opportunity to actually say "what is this Mcron thing?"

It wouldn't have been too difficult to take the small introduction from here: [https://www.gnu.org/software/mcron/manual/html_node/Introduc...](https://www.gnu.org/software/mcron/manual/html_node/Introduction.html#Introduction)

</comment><comment><USER24> Mcron is included by default in GNU's Guile-centric GuixSD OS.

</comment><comment><USER25> Reminds me of a Windows-only nnCron, written in Forth.

</comment><comment><USER26> Lost opportunity: EmaGNUel Mcron.

<comment><USER27> That's a pretty good pun, but I'm not sure it's wise to attach this project to a politician's name.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> It wouldn't hurt to tell us what this actually is in the title.

"Gnu Mcon- a 100% compatible replacement for Vixie cron"

Would be a -way- better title.

HN seems to love to announce random products and updates without telling anyone who doesn't already know what it is.

"Gnu Squanchydoo v3 released!"

TF is "Squanchydoo"? No idea, not going to bother to find out...

<comment><USER29> It wouldn't hurt for the website linked to tell us what the package does at least somewhere on the page, I will agree with that much. The first paragraph tells me what it replaces, what language it is coded in and who wrote it...but not what it does.

<comment><USER30> Would you not consider cron to be 'general knowledge' in the Hacker News community?

<comment><USER31> I would, but I also would like to know in what way is it different from vixie cron and what impact does it have on the user ?

<comment><USER32> It says exactly that. It's written in Guile (which is inconsequential until it reaches the second part) and can take Scheme code as configuration file (which is _very_ interesting).

<comment><USER31> I read that, but to the end user, that's not really a plus if the "old" syntax works the same.

How does mcron's working differ from cron's ? That's what should be on the front page, not the language its written in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> So it's like regular Mcron except without anti-union policies?</comment>


Crimean developer submits patch to .Org = "possible" violation of Order #13685? - <AUTHOR> https://www.postgresql.us/node/149

<comment><AUTHOR> This should be treated not as the act of importation, exportation, reexportation or whatever you call it. It should be treated as the act of the right of freedom of expression?</comment>


The 6 Tools We Use to Run a Company While 500 Miles Apart - <AUTHOR> http://nextshark.com/the-6-tools-we-use-to-run-a-company-while-500-miles-apart/

<comment><USER2> Awesome!</comment>


Behind the scenes of a detox scam - <AUTHOR> http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2017/07/behind-scenes-detox-scam.html <comment><USER2> I use to work for a major nonprofit centered around natural health, supplements, etc. It is, absolutely, without question, a scam. The supplement companies, wealthy individuals who own those companies, and sell those products and services, support and prop up, not to mention being a huge tax write off.

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks like someone lost their "religion" because they didn't find a "cure". That doesn't mean a fast or particular supplements don't help any specific use cases.

<comment><USER4> That's an oddly defensive response to a claim no one made.</comment></comment>


What different sorting algorithms sound like - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8g-iYGHpEA <comment><USER2> Disclaimer: sorting algorithms can sound like just about anything, depending which parameters you map to which sounds.

This is just a simple example of data sonification, albeit with some nice visualisation too, and a subject matter which appeals to the computer scientists in the room.

<comment><USER3> No. Under some simple guidelines, which the model follows, the sorting algorithms won't sound like just about anything.

If you sort random permutations of the values [1, n], and map some monotonic property to the values, then not only are there provably some sounds which certain algorithms make that others don't, but more generally there are 'average case' signatures for each algorithm that give them their own recognizable cadences, and that is exactly what this video is demonstrating.

That you can use a 'boop' or a 'beep' or 'buzz' or invert the monotonicity is obvious and irrelevant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This makes me want to sort something. The loose change strewn all over my desk. The contents of my fridge. The words on this page. Anything.

<comment><USER5> Anything. The The The This all change contents desk. fridge. loose makes me my my of on over page. something. sort strewn this to want words

<comment><USER6> all Anything. change contents desk. fridge. loose makes me my my of on over page. something. sort strewn The The The This this to want words

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Awesome link. It reminds me of a website showing a matrix with visualizations of several sorting algorithms: <http://www.sorting-algorithms.com/> (which was posted somewhere here iirc).

</comment><comment><USER8> where is quicksort?

<comment><USER6> Too fast to hear.

But nice to look at:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxENKlcs2Tw&feature=relat...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxENKlcs2Tw&feature=related)

<comment><USER9> Bullshit on the too fast. Mergesort never needs more comparisons than quicksort, and mergesort was featured.

<comment><USER6> Errm. Yes. I know that. It was a joke...

<comment><USER9> I've noticed that we don't share the same sense of humour.

Generally speaking, I've seen too many people assert that quicksort is blazingly fast to believe all of them were joking. It doesn't particularly help that the major sorting algorithms are severely fragmented, because people optimize variously for stability, time, space, comparisons, swaps, cache locality, parallelizability, best case, worst case, average case, amortized average case, arrays, lists, integers, objects...

<comment><USER6> quicksort has very bad performance on the wrong data.

But on the kind of data that the test showed it would perform more or less on par with merge sort. To suggest that quick sort would be that much faster than merge sort that you couldn't hear it when there are obviously quite a few steps is to me more than enough reason to assume a joke rather than a serious answer.

Anyway, humour is a hard thing to get across online, I should have added a ;) at a minimum apologies for that, also HN seems to frown on humor (even though every now and then there are some really good jokes here <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1597571> ) this one was reasonably lame but the subject wasn't all that serious to begin with.

Sorting is enough of an issue that Knuth devoted the better part of a very thick book to it and to this day there are plenty of people that think that 'one size fits all'.

The more you know about your data the faster you can sort it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Interesting, but not new. Mark Brown did this two decades ago at DEC SRC (and probably others before him). <http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/Compaq- DEC/SRC-RR-76A.html>

</comment><comment><USER11> i know the choice of sounds was arbitrary, but it nonetheless reminded me of the seal calls of 'encounters at the end of the world': <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SORza1fqQGk>

</comment><comment><USER12> That was super cool! I really enjoyed how my brain started matching the sound and the bar heights in such a way that by the end I said "of course that one sounds like that".

</comment><comment><USER13> See another experiment: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ol5ml9e2THw>

It sonifies the following algorithms (from <http://www.algolist.net/Algorithms/> ) \- Bubble sort \- Selection sort \- Insertion sort \- Quicksort

You can also see their sonograms.

</comment><comment><USER14> What, no quick sort? And no heap sort?

<comment><USER15> There was a link to the heapsort at the end: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXAjiDQbPSw>

<comment><USER16> That is by far the coolest sounding of the bunch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think Mathematica can be used to make "audiolizations" really easily. They include one of the Riemman Zeta function as a demo. It sounds really cool (sorry I can't find a link, I'll try upload it)

</comment><comment><USER18> That was really cool. Is the speed indicative of the speed of the sort?

<comment><USER19> I would say it's likely. There are all sorts (pun intended) of optimizations you can do for each algorithm, but at the textbook level, I could say they seemed typical as far as speed expectancy goes. My rough estimates for the times were (in seconds): insert: ~10, bubble: ~27, selection: ~18, merge: ~17, and gnome: ~19. I have only written inserts, bubbles, and selections; with bubble being slowest and insert being the fastest, my limited experience agrees with the video. Note: the merge algorithm appeared to have sorted a different data set.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Here is a live version of the sounds of various sorting algorithms. Done using HTML 5 audio - <http://bit.ly/sort-sound>

</comment><comment><USER21> It would be interesting to listen to graph algorithms.

<comment><USER22> What do you imagine would determine frequency?

<comment><USER21> For example in depth first search, the depth.

<comment><USER23> I like that. And in breadth first search, one could use a filter on a saw wave to have the breadth of the frequency spectrum manipulated by the search.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Why does the bubble sort continue to the end of the array on every pass, when it could stop one earlier each time?

</comment><comment><USER25> There's a lot of effort been put in to this, I like it.

I love that you can hear the bubbling in bubble sort :D

<comment><USER26> I noticed that too! Good stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Merge sort's sound is actually recursive.

</comment><comment><USER28> At times this sounds a lot like an old Williams shoot'em-up arcade game, like Defender for example.

</comment><comment><USER29> Cool job! Gnome Sort - now that's new to me!

</comment><comment><USER30> bubble sort sounds like someone chanting "DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS!" !!!! :D

<comment><AUTHOR> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMU0tzLwhbE></comment></comment>