Apple vs. Microsoft - A Website Usability Study - <AUTHOR> http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/05/apple-vs-microsoft-a-website-usability-study/ <comment><USER2> Odd comparison. Number of Apple products <> Number of Microsoft products yet the article was written as though they were basically the same companies and one had a superior design.

</comment><comment><USER3> Biased article.</comment>


Ask HN: What open source projects do you sponsor? - <AUTHOR> With the rise of fundraising platforms like Patreon,  OpenCollective, and GitHub Sponsors, it's now more common to see open source projects to get funded this way.<p>What interesting projects or creators do you support personally? Which projects deserve more visibility and funding? <comment><USER2> Not to hijack this thread but is there a collection of open source projects somewhere managed primarily by one person or a small number of people who don't have a lot of funding but contribute to a good project in need of donations?

</comment><comment><USER3> FSF, FSFE, and KDE</comment>


Humankind's Most Ambitious Search for Life's Beginnings - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/blog/humankinds-most-ambitious-search-for-lifes-beginnings

<comment><USER2> This mission is not really about searching life, but that does not make it less exiting!

<comment><USER3> Life's beginnings!</comment></comment>


Reinventing the common bicycle wheel - <AUTHOR> http://www.superpedestrian.com/

<comment><USER2> Previous submission with some discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6867962](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6867962) (over 20 comments)

More comments here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6858585](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6858585) (a few comments)

Other submissions without comment:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6857995](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6857995)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6857778](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6857778)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6856892](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6856892)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6603567](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6603567)

There may be more - these are just the ones I found with this search:

[https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=title%3A%28cop...](https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=title%3A%28copenhagen+wheel%29&sortby=create_ts+desc&start=0)</comment>


Laptop Survey from r/thinkpad and r/mac - <AUTHOR> https://imgur.com/gallery/Bv50aRW <comment><USER2> About 30 replies from highly non-representative samples. This is useless.

</comment><comment><USER3> Really would have helped to order the values in the legend

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm not colorblind, but the colors chosen are hard to distinguish.

<comment><USER5> i am colorblind and i had to give up

<comment><USER6> Came here to say this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Sign in required" on imgur. Here is the reddit link.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/dj02pp/i_had_peop...](https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/dj02pp/i_had_people_on_rthinkpad_and_rmac_take_a_survey/)</comment>


An Emotional Framework for Hackers v0.1 - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/aantix/emotional_framework Here's my feeble attempt to summarize all strategies that I have found to be helpful when dealing with emotions both in my relationships and with myself. <comment><USER2> Was hoping to find artificial emotion library :-(</comment>


Gian-Carlo Rota on Alonzo Church (2008) - <AUTHOR> http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Extras/Church.html

<comment><USER2> At every lecture, Professor Rota, wore the same three piece brown suit and a red tie while he taught us probability. I was fascinated with random numbers and their generation so I went to visit him in his office to talk to him about my ideas. I knocked on his closed door, but there was no reply. Instead I heard a bell ring. My second knock was again echoed by a bell ringing. Peeking through the door, I saw Professor Rota sitting at his desk behind a table covered with high stacks of books, the floor was likewise covered in stacks of math books, and behind him on the floor was a mound of journals. There he was, holding a large bell with a long wooden handle.

What an experience it was taking a class from him. He was funny, charming, unique, and totally brilliant. It's a shame that I was only 19 and didn't have enough mathematical sophistication to get the most out of that class.</comment>


Ask HN: What "soft skills" books does your company buy for developers and why? - <AUTHOR> Just looking to get an idea of what's out there in terms of company-endorsed books! <comment><USER2> My company doesn't give us softskill books. There are e-trainings we can take on Pluarlsight, Lynda, and internally. It's usually about diversity and communication.

Books that I have read on my own are 'The Coaching Habit', 'Getting to Yes', and 'Exactly What to Say'. They might be helpful to you. They didn't help me since my career is in a downward spiral.

<comment><USER3> Ha why is your career in a downward spiral?

<comment><USER2> The company outsourced development of the system that I became an expert in. Then I went to a new system/stack that has no other job options (Neoxam). The leadership was terrible on that team and there's no career for that tech, so I switched to a new team/stack. Now I am burned out - why learn new tech if you will just throw me/it away after a year? The company also doesn't follow it's policies (to my detriment), I don't fit any diversity initiatives at my company (so promotion not possible), and the subject matter and tasks that I am assigned on my new team are extremely boring.

Basically I have been in obscure tech that has no future career and now feel burned out and used. I don't see a future to my career.

<comment><USER3> What you gotta do is take a step back, do what it takes to recenter and feel fresh. Meditate to remove the mental albatross of your job.

Then with the fresh energy, work hard but steadily ("just do it") on learning a new stack that you think you'd want to work on and is also in demand.

Take it easy, live within your means so you have a cushion, and just work towards what you want. Sleep is important, cut out alcohol and stims. Read classic worldly fiction to feel inspired.

<comment><USER2> First, I want to say thanks for the response.

I'm on a team that uses AWS. I have a couple associate level AWS certs. We use a little Python (self taught). I think these are solid areas. I need to get actual experience in these to be employable.

My problem is that I get very little programming time. I'm saddled with corporate bureaucracy, BS analysis, and other non-impactful work. I want to make an impact. I want to be an expert.

I won't have any fresh energy - work saps me, then I watch my kid most days (wife works the hours I don't).

I live within my means, but don't have a cushion. I support my family (my wife works but does not contribute to family expenses, only her hobbies). I do drink sometimes (make my own wines) but do not use anything else. I don't read much fiction. I did read One Man's Wilderness (nonfiction but worldly), which probably was not the right motivation since j would love to be mostly selfsufficent. I like nonfiction that is educational like Stamets book on mushroom cultivation or 'We get Confessions'. Do you have any book recommendations?

<comment><USER4> I've felt as you're describing before. May I make a suggestion? Get out of the house. Get away from the kids, get away from the wife. Be alone with your thoughts without distraction. Talk to yourself out loud. Go for a long walk at dusk, watch the sunset and walk home. I cannot promise that you'll find the meaning to life, but when faced with a similar situation, these types of walks have helped me chart out my _next_ steps.

<comment><USER2> That sounds nice, but I have to watch the kid whenever I'm not working so that my wife can work. No free time for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> They don't buy any. On my own, I've bought, and lent

 _Peopleware_ by DeMarco _The Psychology of Computer Programming_ , _Secrets of Consulting_ , and _Becoming a Technical Expert_ by Gerald Weinberg. Not exactly fitting into the category, but worth reading if you can find it: _Models of My Life_ by Herbert Simon.

A co-worker who left to become a consultant took the Weinberg books along with him.

<comment><AUTHOR> thank you for these! definitely checking out Peopleware and Psychology of Computer Programming. Appreciate it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> My company does not buy any unless specifically requested.

I would recommend the following books:

Never Split the Difference - we are always negotiating, I use things from this book on a daily basis.

One Minute Manager - if you managing people this is a much simpler method. It is like the Kent Beck TDD of management rules in its simplicity.

How to Win Friends and Influence People - classic, but very useful in soft skills.

<comment><AUTHOR> hadn't heard of One Minute Manager, thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> There are aplenty! But there are two key books: \- Crucial Conversations [Check it out here in book depository: shorturl.at/adiyE] \- High-Performance Habits [book depository link: shorturl.at/rsBV5]

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks!</comment></comment>


Should I panic because Lastpass was hacked? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.erratasec.com/2015/06/should-i-panic-because-lasthash-was.html <comment><USER2> Perhaps yes, but I'm intrigued to know what exactly panicking would entail?

If it's running in circles and squealing then definitely yes you should panic.</comment>


Cancer and mobile phones - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/14/mobile-phones-cancer-inconvenient-truths <comment><USER2> > NTP scientists had exposed thousands of rats and mice ... to doses of > radiation equivalent to an average mobile user's lifetime exposure.

Misleading. From the study:

> Rats were exposed to ... whole-body SAR exposures of 0, 1.5, 3, or 6 W/kg

The _lowest_ exposure they tested was equivalent to an average person (80kg in North America, evidently) standing right in front of the antenna of a 120W transmitter 24/7.

<comment><USER3> Well, they had to jack it up because the experiment (and the rats) would not go on for seventy years. And if the mechanism of action is anything like other types of radiation, risk is proportional to total lifetime exposure, not peak exposure.

<comment><USER4> Nah, jacking it up has its own new set of problems. Cellphone radiation isn't ionizing radiation, at most you're ever so slightly heating cells around it. By increasing the intensity you might be literally baking and killing cells in the process (think the difference between drinking a scalding beverage and burning the shit out of your mouth vs. letting it cool and not being injured or having the cells get killed off).

Now take my hot beverage example and repeat it a bunch of times. I would bet that cancer incidence would increase in the scalding group. (as you're destroying epithelial cells and forcing them to regenerate... and cancer is really biological lotto).

To top all the above off. With the exception of the migration from GSM to WCDMA technology (GSM pulsed the radio), cell phone radio output power has actually been on the decline due to smaller cells sizes being used in cities. It's nothing like using an analog cellphone in the 80's was in terms of output.

<comment><USER5> To your last point - _individual_ radio power has declined but I'd suspect that the total exposure has gone up because 1)Device density is far greater and 2)Time spent transmitting is longer per device because we use more data now than in years past.

As to whether that causes cancer, I'm not an expert... I guess the ultimate measure will be actual cancer incidence rates but by that point, isn't it arguably too late for many of us?

<comment><USER6> Power drops off with distance squared. Device density increases background levels, but this study wasn't looking at background levels; time spent transmitting per device is up but the location of that transmission is no longer right up against your head, just your hands.

I'd love to see a study about background EM exposure in the various EM spectrum bands that are now in continuous use in urban environments. But it would be very hard to run such a study!

<comment><USER4> >I'd love to see a study about background EM exposure in the various EM spectrum bands that are now in continuous use in urban environments. But it would be very hard to run such a study!

While that study would be tricky, I can think of devising a study in which rural cellphone users are compared to urban ones. You'd have to control for things like wifi calling and outliers with a tower next to their house but in theory background EM from base towers will be lower in the rural area, while at the same time output power from the mobile will be higher (because further from base station).

Honestly though, nothing is going to compare to the EM radiation of the Sun. It's like asking if hearing whispering will cause hearing damage while someone is screaming next to you. So, yeah I guess... hard to control. (this is why I only bring up user equipment exposure since it's placed inches from the skin, I think it's silly to worry about cancer from base stations)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The most interesting part in my opinion is the linked meta-study from 2006 which had the following conclusion:

> _Forty (68%) studies reported one or more statistically significant results > (p < 0.05) indicating an effect of the exposure (Table 2). Studies funded > exclusively by industry reported on the largest number of outcomes but were > less likely to report statistically significant results_ [...]

> _Our findings add to the existing evidence that single-source sponsorship is > associated with outcomes that favor the sponsors' products_

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1797826/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1797826/)

This may be a fact that scientist are well aware of, but I would say it's not something that the general population knows; for most people there is this fantasy where the "scientific community" reaches consensus almost spontaneously and that's the end of the story, we got a new universal law.

If only the media said "some new analysis indicates that there could be a relation between this and that" instead of the usual "Science says"...

<comment><USER8> The problem with a fixed criteria of p < 0.05 for statistically significant results is that it is only useful if each experiment measures only one thing and all the studies are published.

I remember an study of a few year ago where they had

* rats and mice -> x2 * male/female/both -> x2 (or x3) * three level of radiation -> x3 * two or three types of cancer -> x2 (or x3)

So the report has at least 2x2x3x2=24 results. There is a high probability that by chance one of them gets a p<0.05.

Also, studies with a positive result have a higher chance of been published, because the researchers are not interested in publishing boring studies without a positive result so they don't write it, and the journals are not interested in publishing boring studies without a positive result so they don't approve it. (And I'm ignoring intentional fraud and p hacking ...)

Anyway, perhaps the researchers sponsored by the telephone companies/manufacters just publish all their studies and the independent researches publish only the interesting studies. This is why in certain areas it is mandatory to register the experiments before they start, to ensure (reduce) there is no publication bias.

In particle physics it's too easy to do experiments, filtering and analysis, so they use a criteria of 5 sigmas to call it a discovery. This is roughly p<0.0000003, because if they use p<0.05 you would get every month a announcement of a new particle and a few month later the retraction.

For experiments with mice/rats it's impossible to ask for p<0.0000003 because you will need trillions of rats, but remember that p<0.05 is just an arbitrary threshold.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'd like to see some studies that look at combining mobile phone radiation with things that are definitely known to cause cancer.

I'm curious about the possibility that mobile phone radiation does not cause cancer, but its presence can increase the effectiveness of other things the can cause cancer.

There are some researchers who think that the mechanism cells use to detect and repair damage to DNA finds the damage by looking for places along the DNA where there are unexpected changes in electrical conductivity such as due to broken bonds. There has been speculation that passing non-ionization electromagnetic radiation could interfere with that mechanism, causing it to overlook damaged DNA that it would have otherwise found and repaired.

Note that if it does indeed have some kind of "suppress preventing cancer" effect, then the intensity of the radiation might not matter much as long as it is above some threshold. What might matter most is the length of continuous exposure, and the time between intervals of exposure. As long as the times of little or no exposure are frequent enough and long enough that the cells will be able to do their find and repair operations before a cell on its way to cancer has time to start reproducing, you should be fine.

This would differ quite a bit from the usual radiation testing situation, where all that matters is total exposure, so you can simulate long term low level exposure by short term, higher level exposure.

It could turn out, say, that 100 short calls spread throughout the day are almost completely safe, even on an old high power phone, but a couple of long conversations greatly increase the risks that if something else tries to give you cancer during that time it will succeed.

This would probably be pretty hard to conduct a study on.

<comment><USER10> > detect and repair damage to DNA finds the damage by looking for places along > the DNA where there are unexpected changes in electrical conductivity such > as due to broken bonds.

Could you link to the research because this makes very little sense to me. DNA doesn't conduct electricity in any meaningful way (base resistance >= Teraohms).

Maybe charge distribution or something?

<comment><USER9> I was using "electrical conductivity" where much of the research actually says "charge transport". An example [1].

[1] [https://www.its.caltech.edu/~jkbgrp/Research.htm](https://www.its.caltech.edu/~jkbgrp/Research.htm)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Back to beating a dead horse with the rats in a microwave oven study.

How about a large scale human study performed over 30 years? [http://sci- hub.mu/10.1016/j.canep.2016.04.010](http://sci- hub.mu/10.1016/j.canep.2016.04.010)

<comment><USER11> That doesn't provide a click bait headline.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> _Lack of definitive proof that a technology is harmful does not mean the technology is safe, yet the wireless industry has succeeded in selling this logical fallacy to the world. The upshot is that, over the past 30 years, billions of people around the world have been subjected to a public-health experiment: use a mobile phone today, find out later if it causes genetic damage or cancer._

I've always said this, and I know it's putting the cart before the horse in terms of scientific investigation, and I know that in the worst case, I sound like a tin foil hat. And I use a mobile phone regularly myself. But I've always always wondered. The article doesn't say anything definitive in either direction, so I still am left to wonder.

<comment><USER13> > The upshot is that, over the past 30 years, billions of people around the > world have been subjected to a public-health experiment

They say this like it's somehow unique to cell phones. Really, how does this differ from _any_ technological advancement? Didn't the invention of cars, wired phones, the printing press, the transistor, etc. also start distributing without any scientific analysis of the possible dangers to health?

<comment><USER14> Those are weird examples (asbestos and lead in paint/gasoline might be better ones) for this particular topic, but, no?

Again using asbestos and lead in various products as examples, there are real dangers to public health in new products/technologies, and while I don't want to see the technological progress we've made stopped I do want to see more effort made to anticipate, mitigate, and lessen the potential harm caused by new technologies (and the irresponsible behavior of many of the companies pushing them).

<comment><USER13> I don't see why they're weird examples. Every innovation may _or may not_ cause health problems. Clearly cars do cause health problems, transistors largely do not unless you take a whole carbon footprint into account as well. How could you possibly know either outcome ahead of time?

The point is that we don't know the health consequences beforehand, and anticipating them is not easy. You say you want more of an effort made in this regard, but do you actually know how much effort is currently made towards this end?

<comment><USER15> Well, maybe even too much effort:

> Our findings add to the existing evidence that single-source sponsorship is > associated with outcomes that favor the sponsors' products

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "NTP scientists had exposed thousands of rats and mice (whose biological similarities to humans make them useful indicators of human health risks) to doses of radiation equivalent to an average mobile user's lifetime exposure."

Assuming we're discussing RF "radiation", how did they do this? By cranking up the RF output power? I'm sure if someone exposed me to a few thousand watts of 1ghz RF pointed directly at me, the tissue heating effect alone would cause a huge range of issues. That is how a microwave heats food.

Seems a bit like saying that baths are deadly because scalding hot water will kill you.

<comment><USER6> I like the sunlight analogy myself.

"We exposed broiler chickens (whose biological properties make them useful treatments of human hunger) to doses of heat and infrared radiation equivalent to an average human's lifetime exposure."

"They turned out crispy and delicious."

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I was diagnosed with testicular cancer earlier this year and am curious about whether keeping my cell phone in my front pocket on that side contributed to it. I was originally dismissive about this possibility, however I found it odd that my urology center said they've seen a significant increase in the number of young patients with testicular cancer over the past seven months. It's likely that they're just starting to receive more patients overall, but I'm curious if there could be another factor, like late-model cell phone use (and specifically, perhaps, the iPhone X). I'm curious if anyone else is in a similar situation or has heard of anything like this.

</comment><comment><USER18> Are bluetooth headphones and headsets any safer? Have there been any studies on those?

<comment><USER19> It seems like Bluetooth is safe, and using a phone with a headset might be the safest combination.

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

<comment><USER20> The video says that bluetooth operates at higher frequency but about 1000x lower power, which makes a lot of sense. Having a small device near your head broadcast a message a few feet seems much lower risk than having to broadcast all the way to the nearest cell phone tower.

Another thought: my phone and provider (Pixel 2, Google Fi) will automatically use WiFi for calls when available. I wonder if that mode is significantly lower radiation for the same reason (shorter distance to cover, so the signal doesn't need to be as strong).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> >We dismiss claims about mobiles being bad for our health – but is that because studies showing a link to cancer have been cast into doubt by the industry?

No. Industry probably casts doubt even when it's undeserved, but there is no reason to believe claims that mobile phone radiation causes cancer.

Even if the evidence provided would prove true, it would not matter. Reported effect sizes are so small it would not be reason to change behavior.

Microwave radiation has multiple potential ways it can change biological function, not just thermal effects. But things like EM radiation as calcium- channel antagonist works only with cells in vitro. If you are Multicellular organism with skin, there is no evidence that you are in any danger.

</comment><comment><USER22> _Microwave effects on plasmid DNA_ (1987)

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/3575652/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/3575652/)

Probably not significant if you have a good immune system, which is constantly cleaning out mutated cells. Sunlight, which is good for you, absolutely does cause cancer, but you don't see conspiratorial articles about UV radiation.

The part about 5G was interesting though. I wonder if it could be weaponised, say by compromising a base station and beam forming a signal at full power (plus harmonics) at a target in possession of a cellphone.

</comment><comment><USER23> I don't know where the article is off the top of my head, but there was a competent-looking study showing that certain non-ionizing radiation can open the blood-brain barrier, which may be relevant to these results.

</comment><comment><USER24> I suppose the good thing is the phone is mostly in people's hands now as opposed to their ear. Has phone use declined now due to texting? I know my 12 YO uses FaceTime with her friends instead of a traditional phone.

<comment><USER25> It would move the location to a better spot if mobile phones caused cancer. I haven't see any solid data on voice usage, but from a few poor quality articles its down at least 10-25% over the last decade.

The main problem with these studies is that they are "rats in a microwave oven", so they are subject to the same amount of RF as if you were sleeping in a pile of cellphones transmitting constantly (not recommended). They never bother exposing some of the rats to 1 cellphones worth of power.

There have been large multiple decade studies done of cellphone users that indicate cancer is not an issue (see elsewhere in this thread for a link).

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Remember when the industry used to say smoking was healthy, and even quoting doctors saying so?

I wonder if in 30 years we'll all be suing the industry over this (when it's too late for many of us).

</comment><comment><USER27> Have there been any studies on 1980s cell phone use ('the brick phone') which had much higher power output?

Anecdotally you heard of 1980s stock brokers getting brain cancer but were there any statistically valid studies done on this?

</comment><comment><USER28> Yet another example of how the world is hard...

I'm not sure what to make of this. I thought there wasn't any good evidence of radiation from mobile phones being harfmul.

<comment><USER29> There still isn't any good evidence. Sometimes seems like the hardest thing about the world right now is to avoid getting scared/depressed by excessive exposure to reports like this one.

<comment><USER28> Yeah.. reading all the comments that appeared after I wrote mine, it looks like I don't need to worry too much. That is, assuming the HN hivemind is on the right track -- which, for something like this, I think is generally the case.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> So no "truth" at all? Alright.

</comment><comment><USER31> You know what can provide several watts/m^2 of MUCH higher frequency radiation (both ionizing and not), and kills far more people per year? THE SUN.

</comment><comment><USER32> Ugh.

> There is a catch, though: the Internet of Things will require augmenting > today's 4G technology with 5G technology, thus "massively increasing" the > general population's exposure to radiation, according to a petition signed > by 236 scientists worldwide who have published more than 2,000 peer-reviewed > studies and represent "a significant portion of the credentialled scientists > in the radiation research field", according to Joel Moskowitz, the director > of the Center for Family and Community Health at the University of > California, Berkeley, who helped circulate the petition. Nevertheless, like > mobiles, 5G technology is on the verge of being introduced without pre- > market safety testing.

[https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B14R6QNkmaXuelFrNWRQcThNV0U...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B14R6QNkmaXuelFrNWRQcThNV0U/view)

Just out of curiosity, how would one go about locating the direction of 5G antennas? At the very least, I'd gleefully shit-talk anyone involved I come across. Just out of principle. It doesn't even matter how safe it turns out to be -- just how needy and dumb people are adopting anything thrown into their through, how reckless not just with their own lives, but with their effects on others and the environment, calls for some serious fucking wrath. And this is as good a starting point as any.

<comment><USER15> There is no way 5G is blocked, too much money has been invested in it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Even when smoking is conclusively proved to cause cancer and grotesque pictures of what your lungs will look like are displayed on the pack, people still ignore it and just smoke anyway. I think this effect is partly why people ignore or try and dismiss any possible evidence that this technology could indeed be causing harm. The NTP study has taken a lot of flak in the name of 'discerning' science,but as far as I can see none of it is deserved. (Original authors have responded thoroughly - so much so that they have done video presentation- on youtube)</comment>


Facebook fires trending team, and algorithm without humans goes crazy - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/aug/29/facebook-fires-trending-topics-team-algorithm?CMP=fb_gu <comment><USER2> What an absolute dick move to fire the employees without telling them in advance.</comment>


We petition the Obama Administration to: Shutdown petitions.whitehouse.gov - <AUTHOR> https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/shutdown-petitionswhitehousegov/r5Wbx5hx

<comment><USER2> I don't think the petition idea is inherently bad. I just think the petition system would be a lot more useful if it was _also_ directed to every House representative and Senator. Then the politicians would have a much better idea of what people care about in their districts.

<comment><USER3> I have read that even if the petitions reach the goal the government does not really take action. Or they might put it off for a really long time.</comment></comment>


The Case of the Missing Magenta - <AUTHOR> http://nowiknow.com/the-case-of-the-missing-magenta/ <comment><USER2> A slight elaboration about the way your eye works: The cones are not on-off affairs, and they are not limited to specific wavelengths. Each type of cone has a response curve, and these curves overlap (see e.g. the Wikipedia article about Cone cells: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_cell](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_cell) ). So different colors are not really "made up" by filling in the gaps between the wavelengths. Each color we see corresponds to a specific cone response pattern. So for example, 500 nm would lead to responses of (roughly) 0.3, 0.4, 0.1.

This means the explanation here is slightly misleading, as it compares yellow (which is a color that does exist as a single wavelength) with magenta, which is by definition a mix of at least two wavelengths.

You could say that magenta is a compound color, the interpretation by our brain of the simultaneous stimulation by at least two wavelengths (i.e. two or more cone response patterns). This means, of course, that magenta is far from the only color for which this is true. Any combination of at least two wavelengths is a compound color, and the interpretation of each of these combinations will not be found on the visible spectrum.

So, interesting article, but a bit oversimplified, in my view.

<comment><USER3> I make a study of funny colors. For example you can get weird _vibrations_ via certain patterns of strobed color combinations and frequencies.

This is an interesting study of such (warning! strobes!) :

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dL0lNGXoP8E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dL0lNGXoP8E)

<comment><USER2> Wow, anyone who can watch that without becoming epileptic is immune :).

Interesting effects though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Another interesting color fact: many birds have four independent color channels instead of our three [1]. Which means they can see a whole additional dimension of colors we cannot even imagine. I like to think how it would be to wake up one day and suddenly being able to see all those additional colors...

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrachromacy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrachromacy)

<comment><USER5> I never understood why we have three trichromatic vision and not tetrachomatic vision.

We have rods and three types of cones, which look like four channels to me. In very low light the cones don't fire and we see in black and white. In reasonably bright settings I can imagine that the rods saturate and we only have three useful channels. But there must be a level of light where both cones and rods are within their dynamic range. What am I missing?

<comment><USER6> The wavelength curve the rods are sensitive to spikes in the middle of all the wavelengths curves for all the cones. So I think the mental sensation of gray is pretty accurate, actually, since it is close to being just a rough measurement of all the others.

<comment><USER5> You are saying that the rods' spectral curve response is collinear with the cones. That would do the trick, but I'm a bit surprised as I don't see any reason for evolution to push you in that direction.

Do you have a reference for this? Quick googling seems to show that the rods' response curve is not, it seems to be a most sensitive at a wavelengths between the peak of the blue and green cones.

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure if this will satisfy you, but you can give this a shot:

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

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Now I Know is probably my most favorite daily read. It's a tiny chunk of seemingly useless knowledge, but it always makes me aware of how much is out there that I don't know.

<comment><USER9> Hi, I'm Dan! I write Now I Know... thanks! :)

For everyone else, please consider subscribing at [http://nowiknow.com](http://nowiknow.com)

<comment><USER10> Is there any particular reason you don't have an RSS feed? That is the only way I will subscribe.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > All the colors the monitors show as are actually just a mix of red, blue, > and green light. If you could magnify your screen, you'd see something like > this, and you'll notice that there are only three colors there.

The easiest way to do this is to get some water on the screen. Red, green, and blue pixels will be apparent under the water droplet.

</comment><comment><USER12> Violet is in the rainbow. Like magenta, it is a combination of red and blue (#8F00FF). This is because there's a second hump in the frequency sensitivity of the red receptor. See: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIE_1931_color_space#Color_matc...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIE_1931_color_space#Color_matching_functions)

So there is a "between red and blue" in the spectrum. Just no place where there's more red than blue.

<comment><USER13> It's not in the rainbow as in the diagram you link to ("CIE 1931 color space chromaticity diagram"). The diagram has the

             R

         G       B

"in 2 dimensions" and the values between and the rainbow has it as

        R     G      B

"in one dimension" and the values between.

Edit: under "it" I wrote about magenta, as the main article writes too. The "drawings" are about the appearance of magenta. I see you talk about violet. Yes it is an interesting observation about how we see the colors.

<comment><USER12> What happens if your eye sees pure 400nm light? There is some stimulation of the "red" receptor and more stimulation of the "blue" receptor. I think the fact that we DO see violet in the spectrum is more interesting than the fact that we DON'T see magenta.

See this: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violet_(color)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violet_\(color\))

Wavelength: 380–450 nm

Hex triplet: #8F00FF

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think it would have been a better explanation if it included a color space graph, with the different directions corresponding to stimulating the different cones. You'd need a lot less text and people would grasp a lot more intuitively that a a line cannot stimulate 3 different cones in all the combinations.

<comment><USER14> So what would be the shortest explanation using concepts from linear algebra?

<comment> alok-g The stimulus is a spectrum. Discretizing wavelengths for simplicity of explanation, the stimulus is a vector where each element specifies the amplitude at each wavelength.

The color bar of rainbow colors is a sub-sampling of this spectrum where only one element is taken at a time. In other words, those are monochromatic colors. Alternatively, each point in the rainbow is obtained by multiplying a delta function with the stimulus and integrating over the wavelengths. This sub-sampling cannot possibly cover the entire color space. In fact, the majority are missing, including magenta which is not a monochromatic color.

The human eyes also sub-samples this space. However, it does not use delta functions. Each cone has its own vector (or more precisely a function of wavelength) and the sensed amplitude is integral of this vector multiplied by the stimulus. This is very much a dimensionality reduction problem where given the spectrums of natural objects around us, nature chose a smaller space that allows distinguishing the objects as much as possible.

Quite obviously, the sub-sampling done by the human eye also leads to loss of information. There would be spectrums which are different but would map to the same perceived color. See metamerism: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamerism_%28color%29](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamerism_%28color%29)

Electronic-displays use RGB because those three colors then cover a good percentage of the colors human eyes can perceive. When more than three primary colors are used in the display technology to enhance color gamut, etc., avoiding metamerism issues becomes an interesting concern as we need to make sure colors which should appear the same do not appear different given that the cone response curves varies somewhat between humans, varies with age, and also surrounding illumination can impact the two rendered colors in different ways.

See also my older related comment on the topic: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5931005](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5931005)

<comment><USER15> That's not as helpful as the original article. It's all in science terms (delta functions, vectors, stimulus, discretizing wavelengths), without really explaining them.

<comment><USER16> it was a reply to somebody kindly asking an explanation using linear algebra concepts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Wouldn't magenta just be red mixed with white? That's how you do it with paint.

<comment><USER18> No. You'd have to mix in some blue, and then you'd just end up with a muddy purple.

You can prove it to yourself by looking at any painting from before about 1860. See any magenta? No. Magenta pigment was not available until 1859, and it could not be mixed from other colors without getting a muddy result.

Edit: Here's an example: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bouguereau- Psyche.jpg](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bouguereau-Psyche.jpg)

The painting (Psyche by Bouguereau) was done in 1890 and could not have been made thirty years earlier.

<comment><USER17> Thanks for the interesting reply.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> No violet either, can't get violet out of a mix of red, green and blue. (True violet, the stuff that is after blue on the spectrum).

"Magenta (often called pink)"

\- Aaaaargh. What next, "purple"? Please.

</comment><comment><USER20> tl;dr: magenta = blue + red

Long version: brains interprets green+orange as yellow because they are close enough and it save one kind of photoreceptor ; blue + red is not interpred as another color are they are far enough, hence magenta (not a simple color ray)</comment>


The "right to be forgotten" shouldn't be decided by a high court - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/15/opinion/dont-force-google-to-forget.html

<comment><USER2> > How an individual's reputation is protected online is too important and > subtle a policy matter to be legislated by a high court [...]

Yeah, right. That's why the "right to be forgotten" wasn't just invented by the court. It was passed by the Council and the Parliament in a European Directive.

The court just ruled on how exactly this Directive was applicable to the concrete case. Just like every High Court in about every country does.

If you don't like the verdict, that's fine. It opens questions and problems. But don't try to frame it as an activist court trying to legislate on its own.</comment>


What does HN owe the author of an article that gets posted here? - <AUTHOR>

My question was inspired by my own experience today after posting an article about the "strategic lessons of hacking" by Umair Haque (Harvard/Bubblegeneration) and Fred Wilson's post [also of today], "Web Discussions: Leaving the Instigator Out."
We all know that the convo that happens here is discrete from what happens on the actual source.  In lieu of the i/o plumbing that Disqus, et al, are forging, isn't there some kind of social contract that commentators should be a party to?
As Fred said, "[The author's] reward is the comments it generates. That's how bloggers get paid."
I think this is especially true if there's serious criticism.  I'm not sure how I feel about  someone posting a comment that flies here, but would be regarded as a flame in context (as happened on my submission http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=203609 )
(Ironically, I was downmodded after responding flippantly to the in-context flame)
Any thoughts?
(Links: my post http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=203400 // Fred's post http://avc.blogs.com/a_vc/2008/05/web-discussions.html <comment><USER2> What is owed? A non-obfuscated 'referer' header on clickthroughs.

Then, the author can find here if they want to monitor offsite discussion.

<comment><AUTHOR> Heck yeah...even a comment saying "Hey pal, there's a convo happening at xxx.com"</comment></comment>


Inappropriate Uses of Google Trends - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@dannypage/stop-using-google-trends-a5014dd32588 <comment><USER2> I'm glad this was written and has more historical examples than just Brexit.

I could imagine a good portion of the questions could be originating from students. If a large political or economic event happens, it's not unlikely for classrooms teachers to task their students to understand what's happening. Search is the obvious first step for that.

Even more broadly, and in line with the article, extrapolating from a single coarse data point is a Bad Idea™.

<comment><USER3> Forget students even, I'm an adult with a compulsive information-seeking habit, as I suspect a lot of other HN readers are. I know who Harriet Tubman is, but I don't know _all_ there is to know about her, so on the date that her $20 bill debut was announced I Googled her and read parts of her Wikipedia article, the same way I am constantly doing for all sorts of current event topics.

How can wanting to learn more possibly be demonized? Would we rather have a situation where a big influential vote affecting the future of an entire nation comes up and no one does any research about it?

<comment><USER4> The only really valid part of the linked article is the point about how you can't make sweeping generalizations based on a very small sample size and a (relatively) small trend.

Concluding that people probably know what the EU is while searching very specifically using the phrase "What is the EU" is no more accurate or truthful than concluding that they don't know what the EU is.

The author says at one point, "perhaps we can more likely conclude". Perhaps we can. But perhaps we shouldn't make any conclusions and just stick to the thesis that the press should know better when reporting facts?

<comment><USER5> True, the article gives no basis to _conclude_ that people searching "what is the EU" already know what it is, but it seems like a fair default position. I might search "history of the EU" or "Mitt Romney bio" to get a certain kind of content outside of current events and gossip. I could also see other people with similar (limited, but much greater than 0) knowledge searching "what is the EU" or "who is Mitt Romney" for exactly the same reasons.

The less clueless-sounding queries have spikes on Google Trends that appear very correlated with the "who is"/"what is" spikes, for what it's worth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Googling something does not mean you don't know what it is.

Very often I google things that I know quite a bit about. Sometimes to see if there is any news about it, or just to get to the wikipedia page, and brush up on a few facts.

<comment><USER7> Google is indeed rightfully called "the Address Bar of the Internet" in the article.

Few of the searches I did today[0]:

\- russian letters - because I needed to copy-paste a glyph

\- ramen - because I wanted to double-check this word for one of my today's HN comments

\- polyvalent - because "wtf does that word in today's HN link mean?"

\- sabaton prague - to get the name of a song I wanted to listen to

\- list polecający - to double-check that's a right name in Polish for "recommendation letter"

\- shield logo - to quickly find an image URL I could post to office chat so that the person who stole my mug can know which mug I'm talking about

etc.

I could call only one of these (the "polyvalent") a case of not knowing something. Rest were mostly "utility searches".

[0] - I'd post more, but for the typical weird Googly reason, they completely fucked up the search history interface - it's now mixed with sites _visited_ with Chrome, of which I have significantly more than distinct Google queries. And there is no way to filter the list. Why Google keeps making interfaces dumber and less usable is beyond me, but I'm started to get sick of it.

<comment><USER8> Firefox has gotten a lot more usable in the last few versions, and Chrome- style tab isolation should be here a few versions from now. If they're still screwing up in any major way, it's in the ever-closer approximation of the terrible Chrome UI, but there's an extension [1] which solves that quite handily.

[1] [https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/classicthemer...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/classicthemerestorer/)

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the extension link. In my comment though, I didn't mean _Chrome_ interface, I meant the UI of [https://history.google.com/](https://history.google.com/). It's now made Inbox-style, but with zero functionality.

<comment><USER9> I just searched for that and used it for the first time to look to prior searches to use in another comment, and found the interface to be pretty bad. But in writing this comment, I found that it has a "go to date" option at the top and a search box that searches your history. It's actually far better than I thought on first use (but I'm not sure it qualifies as good).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I honestly took the WP article at face value and told a coworker that Brexit voters were regretting their decision based on conclusions drawn from Google trends.

I feel like one of those ants that have been infected by the mind control fungus, helplessly infecting others with misinformation designed for an agenda.

<comment><USER11> To be fair, some voters are regretting their decision.

Here's the former editor of The Sun (a large uk tabloid "red top") saying he regrets voting leave.

[http://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/former-sun-editor- ke...](http://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/former-sun-editor-kelvin- mackenzie-admits-remorse-after-voting-to-leave-the-eu-a3281921.html)

There are many others, but I link this one because, well, he should have known better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The Washington Post reporters knew that Google Trends data was not accurate and misleading. They went with it because: it is a liberal site, wanted to make people angry against the Brexit voters. Also Jeff Bezos(the owner) has a beef with Trump and publicly supports liberal media outlets like Gawker.

tldr: Nothing unexpected happened, they knew what they were doing.

<comment><USER13> Rather than downvote, I'd love to see some links regarding if the Post has a liberal bias, that they knew they were publishing inaccurate and misleading information and did so willingly with intent to deceive, and evidence that they want their readers to be angry against the Brexit votes.

I totally agree with your other, factual statements, Bezos I'm sure doesn't care for Trump, and does indeed probably support Gawker. I just can't find anywhere in the world literature any evidence that supports your other claims. Or I guess I wouldn't would I?

<comment><USER14> Same here. It's seems to me they're trying to spread F.U.D., but I would love to read more if it's backed up.

On the flip side of the coin, some typically conservative media tried to use Google Trends to prove manipulation of instant search results to be pro- Hillary [1], with the same results of not really undestanding how instant search really works [2][3].

[1] [http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/06/10/google-burying- anti...](http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/06/10/google-burying-anti-clinton- search-results/)

[2] [http://www.vox.com/2016/6/10/11903028/hillary-clinton- google...](http://www.vox.com/2016/6/10/11903028/hillary-clinton-google- debunked)

[3] [https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/09/google-instant- behin...](https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/09/google-instant-behind- scenes.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> In 2014, Facebook made a famous post ([https://www.facebook.com/notes/mike- develin/debunking-prince...](https://www.facebook.com/notes/mike- develin/debunking-princeton/10151947421191849)) mocking researchers for using Google Trends data as evidence it would die.

I made a comment along the lines of this a year ago ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9828295](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9828295)) when people cited Google Trends as statistical evidence people were looking for a Reddit alternative in light of the controversy back then.

Google Trends is fun for snarky Tweets, but I'm still seeing it used to prove points in startup blogs, which is a problem.

<comment><USER16> It's easy for Facebook to say, here's our actual engagement numbers because we have (nearly) perfect tracking! But from an outsider's perspective, say a journalist or a hedge fund bro, it's difficult to perform any truly rigorous analysis involving these unobservable behaviors. So people come up with proxies - Google Trends, polls, or if you're truly adventurous, credit card spend information. [1]

Anyways, using products like Google Trends is worth a shot if only because there's few substitutes to imperfect information.

[1]: [http://www.reuters.com/article/us-sec-capitalone- insidertrad...](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-sec-capitalone- insidertrading-idUSKCN0UR2KR20160114)

<comment><USER15> Printing misleading charts and presenting as fact is often worse than printing nothing at all.

<comment><USER7> I wonder how many people do that just to lie to people, because if people believe that Google Trends pseudostatistic, it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy?

<comment><USER8> > I wonder how many people do that just to lie to people

Ooh, lots, I'm sure. It's a brilliant way to lie, because it makes catching you out look like a lot of hard work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Let's face it, the only reason publications turned to Google Trends to show people Googling "What is the EU?" is because it fit the narrative they had out of the gate. I see the good and bad of Brexit (I'd say "remain" has a stronger case if the EU would reform;) yet the more I read from the media, the more I've leaned pro-Brexit, just out of spite. Every article I've read treats those who were pro-Brexit as if they were complete idiots, as if their concerns aren't legitimate. Even if I disagree with someone's policy position doesn't mean I should completely ignore their concerns and write them off as a bunch of idiots.

Absolutely infuriating to listen to and read. Maybe it's my imagination, but the media as a whole has gotten a lot more preachy within the past 6 months. The new trend seems to be "data journalism" in which most people omit numbers to the contrary of a certain world view (Vox literally has been getting a dataset from Reddit on 'mass shootings.' Even the NYTs and MotherJones called them out, to no avail. Not sure how people are letting them off the hook.)

I honestly can connect more with those that were "Leave" on the E.U. now than in the beginning; simply because the media coverage has come off as so elitist.

<comment><USER18> The battle lines have shifted. It's now nationalism vs. globalism, not conservative vs. liberal. It turns out that the elite, while split between conservatism and liberalism, is firmly in the globalist camp. The people tend to go the other way, especially once the hollow veneer of political correctness is shattered (terrorist attacks, migrant crises, and economic downturns can do that).

You're seeing it in Britain, where Brexit crossed party lines. The people were told they couldn't have a say on immigration or many other aspects of their lives. Britain's cultural identity, their nationhood, would just have to give way over time to a pan-European globalized society. They were told that high- minded technocrats in Brussels, not the British nation, should run their country. It turns out that the common people don't like that deal.

You're seeing it in America. Trump is not running on a policy platform. He's signed up to enough conservative pieties to get the Republican Party behind him, but his whole campaign is really premised on kicking out the ruling elite and restoring government for the interests of the American people, not the establishment and their globalist agenda. Regardless of whether you agree that his policies will accomplish that, there's no denying that that's the core sentiment that he's tapping into. This is the quote that seems to be extremely popular among his supporters: _" We will no longer surrender this country or its people to the false song of globalism. The nation-state remains the true foundation for happiness and harmony. I am skeptical of international unions that tie us up and bring America down."_

You're seeing it in continental Europe, with nationalist parties pulling supporters from both the establishment conservative and left-wing parties. Marine Le Pen's National Front has a very good chance of winning the election in France next year. Her platform isn't right-wing or left-wing, it's nationalist and seeks to preserve the culture of the French nation, including their social and economic model.

Alternative for Germany (AfD) is gaining rapidly in reaction to the disastrous decision to allow migrants to flood into Germany. They have benefit in the polls at the expense of both the main left and right parties.

The supporters of these movements are unified in one thing: a love for and desire to preserve their _nation 's_ culture and values, which they perceive to be under siege from uncontrolled immigration and globalization.

<comment><USER19> "We just want to preserve our culture" is the loudest racial dog-whistle I know. It's been around since Jim Crow and it looks like it's not going away any time soon.

<comment><USER18> Just because something can be a racial dog-whistle doesn't mean that it's wrong or that it's always motivated by racism. I'm a Hispanic-American, the first generation born in America, and I'll be casting my ballot for Mr. Trump.

Here's my reasoning. Immigration has to be at levels, under conditions, and from cultures that are conducive to assimilation. I don't think we have that today, and what's being proposed by the other side is a big step in the wrong direction. Immigration to America works when it's a melting pot. When people are coming to work hard and to earn their own way, not to collect on generous benefits that would make them rich in their home country (edit:[1]). There was a time when a large percent of immigrants went home after a few years because they weren't cut out for America. America does not need millions of low-skill migrants; we already have more low-skilled people than our economy seems to be able to accommodate. Immigration must be for the benefit of the American people, not out of any sense of fairness or duty to potential migrants.

I'm not trying to convince you of my views here, just show you that it's not as simple as calling the other side a bunch of bigots. There's nothing inherently wrong with wanting to preserve your culture or to defend the interests of your nation.

[1] Clarifying in response to rconti below: I'm not saying that most immigrants are necessarily coming with the express intent on cashing in welfare checks. I think a welfare state is just not as capable of successfully integrating immigrants the way America has been able to in the past. I suspect generational poverty among descendants of immigrants since 1965 vs. descendants of those who came in the early 20th century and prior would show that (measuring one, two, three, and four generations out). I could be wrong and even if the statistics are on my side, there's so many confounding factors that I'd hesitate to declare victory on that basis.

<comment><USER20> You're right racial comments are not necessarily wrong, but I think you're wrong to vote for Trump.

Just to avoid using very loaded words like "racist", I'm going to say I think we're all "culturist" to varying extents, which means we like people culturally like ourselves. We use race (or sometimes religion) as a proxy for this, because it's simpler - note that it tends to be the less articulate who do this. But actually it's having the same values, the same social habits and ceremonies and the same language to share them that binds us. Put another way, a black person who absorbs enough white culture is acceptable enough to be voted president; and a white person who absorbs black culture (Eminem) is viewed with suspicion by many white people. It's not the colour - it's the culture.

If you and I were not culturists, we'd probably look at immigration and say that there was an optimal size for a society inhabiting a particular part of the world, and we'd welcome people until we hit the limit. As with any population, some of those people would be a net drain on our society, and some would be a net asset.

In fact it's a lot better than that - numerous studies have found that immigrants tend on average to be far more productive than the population they are joining, and it makes perfect sense because by definition they had the vision, energy and resources to leave their old lives behind. I'm guessing you are a prime example of this. And it is this exact effect that made the US such a powerhouse - in the early 1900s they absorbed millions of the worlds brightest and best who then built the miracle that was 1950/60s America. Then they started putting the breaks on immigration, and... oh dear, the economy is faltering! Why ever could that be?

So it's generally accepted that immigration is not actually a serious problem, and it is only the most culturist and least successful members of our society who think it is because it gives them a convenient excuse for their circumstances. And any politician that tries to whip up support by shouting "immigrants are causing all our problems" automatically loses my respect because the argument is a fallacy, and they know it, but it's the oldest trick in the book to get the less fortunate to support you.

History is littered with politicians who used immigrants as scapegoats, and in every case it did not go well. Do you really want to vote for someone using the same tactics that Fascists used to get into power? And even if you decide immigration is a big enough issue for you, are you sure you want to support all his other policies? You really want to waste huge amounts of your country's resources building a totally ineffective wall? You really want to start profiling large segments of the population - a favourite tool of the most repressive regimes in history? And do you really want the US military to be at the whim of someone who loses his temper when a minor court case goes against him? You're going to vote for someone who promises he's squeaky clean but is the only candidate to refuse to release his tax records? Please use (or don't use) your vote wisely.

<comment><USER18> There's nothing wrong with liking your culture and wanting to preserve it, with wanting it to succeed. If that makes me a "culturalist" or "culturist" or whatever, then I'll wear the label proudly. When my family moved to this country, they decided to become Americans. That doesn't mean abandoning your heritage, or forgetting it--I love Cuban food, poetry, music, history, and humor--but it does mean embracing the society you moved to and raising your children in its values. Some of what we brought will seep into general American culture, and the rest will be relegated to the history books within a couple generations. That's the melting pot.

Mass migration to Europe from the Middle East is an unmitigated disaster, even before the current refugee crisis. France in particular is a good example of what can really go wrong with unmanaged immigration. You have second and third generation Muslims becoming _more_ fundamentalist than their parents, developing incredible animosity toward the rest of France (and receiving it too). Without pointing fingers at whose fault it is, the French or the immigrants, it's a total disaster for both. It frankly doesn't matter whose fault it is, it should have never been allowed to happen. I'm incredibly alarmed that the left in America is totally and willfully blind to those risks. They call you racist and shout you down if you dare challenge them. They're promising to bring in hundreds of thousands of people from the Middle East. It will be millions if it goes the way of other promises that the American people have gotten on immigration.

We need to be very careful. We should accept the best and brightest from these countries. But we cannot repeat the horrible mistake that the Europeans have made.

Uncontrolled mass migration is new to America. For the first sixty years of the Republic, there was almost no immigration. Then until the early 1920s, immigration was mostly restricted to Europeans, who already had a great deal in common culturally with Americans. Then from the early 20s until the 1965 Immigration Act, there were strict quotas imposed per country-of-origin that slowed immigration to a trickle. (Though mass _illegal_ immigration does predate the 1965 act by a few years, I believe.)

> _And it is this exact effect that made the US such a powerhouse - in the > early 1900s they absorbed millions of the worlds brightest and best who then > built the miracle that was 1950 /60s America. Then they started putting the > breaks on immigration, and... oh dear, the economy is faltering! Why ever > could that be?_

The mass migration from Mexico into the US is not the brightest and most talented, it's Mexican peasants. There's nothing wrong with being a Mexican peasant, and I wish the best for them. The ones who are now my countrymen deserve the same consideration and acceptance as any American. But America does not need to import millions of peasants. They're a total mismatch for what our country needs, which is high-skill labor. We have enough low-skill workers that can't find jobs. I don't see how we benefit from adding more. Especially people with very low expectations for wages and the employer- employee relationship. Mexican poverty is Mexico's problem. Why do we need to make it America's problem too? We have our own problems to solve.

No one thinks the economy is faltering because we're not allowing enough immigration from Mexico. The idea is frankly a little ridiculous.

It didn't have to be this way. The American people have been making their views on this uncontrolled migration, on the wink-wink approach to illegal immigration in particular, very clear for a long time. They were sold a massive amnesty in 1986 in exchange for increased enforcement. It was a great humanitarian act, worthy of a great nation. It also ended up being a total and brazen lie by the politicians. The Democrats are happy to keep importing voters and the Republicans are happy to importing cheap labor. All while swindling the people. Time's up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'd say the core problem here is that people are insufficiently cynical about plurals. If you see a headline that says "Belgians are going crazy about a roller-blading echidna", you should be asking "How many Belgians?". If there's no answer in the article, the answer is "at least two, maybe". Google Trends is just one of many ways that headline might come to exist.

<comment><USER22> "Which Belgians?" is a similarly important question to ask.

I was somewhat surprised by the immediate inference that people searching "what is the EU?" were people who voted to leave, rather than people who voted to stay, or people who didn't vote at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I don't see the evidence behind this piece. In the article linked it says:

<< For instance, in the month before the Brexit vote, 8,100 Britons googled "what is the eu." That's around 261 a day. Google Trends showed a huge spike in searches for that term the day after the referendum; assuming searches for the term tripled, that's still fewer than 1,000 individuals googling "what is the eu" in response to the "Leave" victory. >>

The key is "assuming searches tripled". Did they triple or did they increase by a 100? All the evidence we get is a line going from zero to a little peak. But without any scale:

[https://d262ilb51hltx0.cloudfront.net/max/1000/1*mA4iVZVb41M...](https://d262ilb51hltx0.cloudfront.net/max/1000/1*mA4iVZVb41Mf0bif- EUCCA.jpeg)

It seems to be 1/3 of the number of searches for "Game of Thrones". Did only 3,000 people search for Game of Thrones?

I went back to google trends and found this:

[http://imgur.com/zwrWEqB](http://imgur.com/zwrWEqB)

On June 24th, people in the UK searched "Game of Thrones" 1.3x as frequently as "what is the eu". According to Keyword Planner, "Game of Thrones" was searched in May 2.2M times. Approx: 73,000/day. This _could_ mean that "what is the eu" was searched 56,000 times.

I like how people get up in arms about the lack of rigour of the _other side_ but forget to check if this piece is likely to be true.

Now, whether it was searched by the "Leave" voters, the "Remain", the foreign residents or the people who didn't show up at the poll, that's anybody's guess).

edit: June 24th was a day with few "Game of Thrones" searches. So not likely one with an average number of searches, i.e. 73,000. Maybe 35,000? The main point is that everybody accepted the 1,000 searches.

</comment><comment><USER24> Similar-ish to the cancelled 'Google Flu Trends' project, which tried to predict flu outbreaks based on search trends. A paper was initially published, containing fantastic results, but since then the results have not been great:

[http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?story...](http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=289802934)

I like the Google quote at the bottom of the article - ' _...part of the issue was that they sometimes get a flood of searches simply when there 's a lot of flu in the news_'.

Who would have thought of that, eh? It apparently took eight years to discover!

</comment><comment><USER18> Think about this: the media could concoct this narrative after every single election if they wanted to. They just chose this time because it suited their broader narrative. They're trying to tell you what to think and they're surprisingly effective at it. This should be a wake-up call to thoughtful people everywhere.

After this sorry debacle, with all of the major media outlets in the West pushing this ridiculous and spiteful narrative, how can anyone seriously claim that they aren't totally in the bag of certain political interests, that the media isn't pushing a particular world view by spreading lies and deception.

</comment><comment><USER25> Well written article! I always find it funny when the media claims a majority with their wording when in fact it is an extreme minority.

Like those afflicted with H1N1/Bird Flu/zika/ebola etc.. all are dwarfed by people that die every year from the common flu and yet the news portrays them as epidemics to drum up viewers for a week or two.

</comment><comment><USER26> I wrote a script that finds pictures of celebrities mentioned on Google Trends, and swaps their faces. Here are Jimmy Fallon and Jada Pinkett Smith: [https://twitter.com/faceswapbot/status/731075094739476481](https://twitter.com/faceswapbot/status/731075094739476481)

Not entirely sure where this falls on the appropriateness spectrum.

</comment><comment><USER27> Good piece. The conclusion on the Brexit article was ridiculous.

</comment><comment><USER28> This is no different from fluff tabloid pieces that say that foods cause cancer. A typical headline might be "Eating chicken every day increases your risk of stomach cancer by 50%!"

Unless they specify absolute numbers, this could be a one in 10 million chance increased to 2.5 in 10 million. Or, it could be 4/10 increased to 6/10.

</comment><comment><USER29> Really interesting article, it made me curious how Google Trends would recognize the searches with "Go" and "Golang" since Google now suggests the domain of such phrases (Go was recognized as programming language).

As far I know many developers using Go uses "golang" phrase to receive more precise results in search engine, but Google Trends denies such usage of this "trick". I made comparison [1] between the "Go", "Golang", "Elixir", "C#" and I felt pretty amazed that Go phrase is popular the same as C# - I would like to, but I don't think that can be truth. I really suggest to stop using Google Trends as a "representable source" which i.e. programming language is better known (sadly this practice is very popular, even during lectures at colleges/universities or in various publications).

[1] [https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/26479102/hn/capture_1.pn...](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/26479102/hn/capture_1.png) ([https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=%2Fm%2F09gbxjr%2C%20...](https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=%2Fm%2F09gbxjr%2C%20Golang%2C%20%2Fm%2F0pl075p%2C%20C%23&cmpt=q&tz=Etc%2FGMT-2))

</comment><comment><USER30> very glad this was written -- the sensationalism of it bothered me

</comment><comment><USER31> This is the sort of thing that I like to keep around to link to people when they extrapolate incorrectly from Trends. However the really poor copy editing honestly makes me reconsider this, as a reader. I think the quality of what you read reflects on you and quality is a measure composed of many variables.

</comment><comment><USER32> Guilty as charged _deletes tweets and learns lesson_

</comment><comment><USER33> And then _Iceland_ beat you. That's gotta hurt.

</comment><comment><USER34> Any statistical information can be used inappropriately, so it's only logical that it applies to google trends. We seem to be wired as a culture to take stats at face value, myself included. This is a nice cautionary tale.

</comment><comment><USER35> I believe the "plenty of people" issue is because graphs' vertical scale is not labelled, other than a percentage of the maximum, which says nothing.

</comment><comment><USER36> Thank you very much for writing this. The staggering smugness I saw, and continue to see, from Reddit threads about how people that voted leave most be slack jawed morons who don't even know what the EU is made me really frustrated. Apparently divisive rhetoric and a sane discourse on politics isn't possible on either side of the aisle (or the Atlantic for that matter.)

</comment><comment><USER37> > Google [is] the Address Bar of the Internet

Wouldn't the actual address bar be the address bar of the Internet?

<comment><USER38> Firefox's Awesome Bar ([https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/awesome-bar- search-fire...](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/awesome-bar-search- firefox-bookmarks-history-tabs)) does its best to blur the distinction. I'm not sure whether theirs or Chrome's came first, but, of course, Chrome does its best to make sure that you see no difference between navigating to a specific address and Googling for it. Certainly I know people who prefer to enter [company name] rather than www.[company name].com in their address bar, and for whom the stop through Google (or whatever search engine of choice) along the way is practically invisible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Even if you very much know what the EU is, searching "What is the EU" is probably a good start to find a resource that does a good job explaining it in details you didn't yet know.

</comment><comment><USER40> Oh,that's really true, but we can just ask random people questions what do they think about EU.

I think that majority pro-Brexit answers about EU would be: Illegal immigrants, giving money to Poland and no money for NHS.

</comment><comment><USER41> Obviously, anyone who has ever searched "What is love" really has no clue what it is. Thus we can conclude that there is a massive population of sociopaths in our society. /s

<comment><USER42> Or that somebody has successfully cloned an army of Haddaways.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> You mean to tell me clickbait media is biased and manipulative?

I'm shocked.

</comment><comment><USER44> People often compare programming language popularity using Google Trends. It could be interesting to analyze those queries more deeply.

</comment><comment><USER45> Why is Medium blurring out images? It negates the whole point of having images, i.e. to see them.</comment>


Ask HN: Web Service for Local Business Directory - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking for a web service to get local business listings.
Yelp is too restricting that it only allows you use their data in real-time and you cannot store them.
Yahoo Local Search meanwhile only allows it for non-commercial use.
Google Local Search API only does Javascript/Ajax.
Thanks. <comment><USER2> If you are looking for specific service I think you can give redbeacon a try. fyi - They won techcrunch 50 this year. <http://www.redbeacon.com/></comment>


Ask HN: What technologies can New Orleans use to counter crime?  - <AUTHOR>

I'm working as a volunteer on a public service project in collaboration with the NOLA PD and some local tech entrepreneurs. We're curious to hear ideas that involve measuring crime, visibility, geolocation apps...etc... that might help reduce crime in NOLA/bring about positive change.<p>Thanks in advance. <comment><USER2> There was a thread about this on HN a while back:

<http://www.shotspotter.com/>

Here's the thread:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4034528>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Anonymous crime reporting through cellphones I think is a good area to do some research. There are some good examples in some countries of Africa, as this one in Kenya: [http://www.sida.se/English/Countries-and- regions/Africa/Keny...](http://www.sida.se/English/Countries-and- regions/Africa/Kenya/Programmes-and-projects1/New-technologies-promote- democracy-participation-and-accountability/Facts-Mobile-phones-as-a-tool-for- democracy--texting-for-the-MDGs/)

They are low tech (you don't have to own an iPhone to access an iOS app and report a crime, you just send a SMS), which I think is a great advantage. If you are able to create a good source of data of previously unreported crime through a good system of anonymous reporting, will help a lot the PD. In example, in my country lots of small crimes ( e.g. pickpocketing) go unreported because the chances are close to zero of recovering your things or find and punish the thieve. Also, lots of serious crimes (e.g. drug dealing, police abuse, murders) go unreported because people are afraid of retaliation. You see that I used a real case but I am giving my own ideas here, I hope you can have a use for this. But I really think the universal reach that mobile phones (including the simpler ones) have and the anonymity possibilities can be used to create a system that improves your city's criminal maps.

</comment><comment><USER4> Create a social network where people from rough areas can have access to psychological counseling via Skype or chat rooms. High crime areas as plagued with drug abuse, alcoholism and many other non-healthy addictions often due to inherited "mental illness", but they have no help. Also finding ways to keep fire arms inaccessible in these areas may result in lower crime rates.

</comment><comment><USER5> Don't fight the crime/drugs. Fight what turns people into criminals: poverty, social issues, low education standards.

Help those people who need help.

<comment><USER6> I think its utter bullshit to think tech can solve social problems. it can raise awareness, bring resources to people, and provide general help. If you want to reduce crime from the source put boots on the ground, and put intervention in schools.

end rant.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree with you, but I volunteered to see what I could do to help. Criticism is easy.

That's a long term strategy that I'd back.

but......

Is there any technologies in the short term that might help?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> <http://www.predpol.com/>

checked these guys out? (no affiliation)

<comment><AUTHOR> any other useful tools like this?</comment></comment>


8 Free Tools to Kickstart Your Startup - <AUTHOR> http://wearecontrast.com/2015/03/8-free-tools-to-kickstart-your-startup/

<comment><USER2> Hey,

Mike here from CONTRAST. Would love to hear your thoughts on the post, and if theres any tools you use that are worth checking out.

Cheers,</comment>


Multiplayer Deck of Cards - <AUTHOR> https://deck.of.cards <comment><USER2> Very cool idea!!! You can basically play ANYTHING with this. The only feature missing that each player should be able to look their cards only in a way that others can't see it.

Edit: Oh wow, it's not missing! If you put the card in top of the player icon, only that player can reveal it, nice!!

<comment><USER3> What would be nice to really be able to play anything with it, would be a selection of used cards. That would mean for example choosing if the deck goes from Ace to King, or from 7 to King, or even if it contains jokers. Even more advanced would be allowing multiple copies of cards, the game Doppelkopf for example is commonly played with two cards each of (9)/10/J/Q/K/A for every suit.

<comment><USER2> You can actually do that right now by putting unused cards aside, but it is a little bit cumbersome, because shuffle will put it back.

<comment><AUTHOR> I mean game editor, I will add that :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nicely done. Drag and click works well on my iPhone with my fat fingers. Zoom also. I found the invisible boundary a little annoying. I laid out a Canfield base, but found the invisible boundary only when I moved a card up to the foundation. Grrr.

FWIW. Made me think, why have a boundary at all? Even better, why not have a snap-to grid you can toggle? A preset layout (save option?) which best lays out your gameplay.

Great job.

<comment><AUTHOR> Layout editor is something I've had in mind too – will work it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This would be amazing to use when playing absolutely any card game with friends who don't live close enough for a real game.

If this would be open-source and there was an easy way to modify some of the actions to fit the most common operations to a particular game, it would likely start as an engine for tons of other games/websites (Pokémon, Magic the Gathering, Star Realms,...).

<comment><USER6> Cockatrice is okay for Magic: the Gathering, though it could certainly be improved a lot (I feel like XMage is really of the same flavor).

It's a shame playing Magic requires a lot more features than, say, Bridge — this is hardly exhaustive but in addition to needing to be able to put dice on cards, you need to be able to select and reveal cards at random from all zones, manipulate the top of your deck, create token cards, and tap/untap cards. I feel that this presents a large UX problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I made a very similar project: [https://cardtables.online](https://cardtables.online)

It also offers chat communication and webcam over webrtc!

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool wow, yeah! I've thought about chat feature..

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Cool idea. I see some weird rendering issues on my retina Mac. Is that a known issue? [https://www.dropbox.com/s/uq18mm1q9braipa/Screenshot%202019-...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/uq18mm1q9braipa/Screenshot%202019-06-01%2011.22.09.png?dl=0)

Mainly what I see is the face cards are rendered HUGE and the pips in the centers of the cards seem jumbled.

I tried playing solitaire, but gave up when it came time to flip through the deck 3 cards at a time. Going through the first time would be OK. Resetting for subsequent passes would be really painful.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow, that's really weird, need to look on that..

I will create different game modes, solitaire is definitely one of the first ones!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> If someone plays a game with me with this, I'm totally going to be spending time between every turn in the Dev console figuring out a one-liner to reveal as-yet unturned cards...

<comment><USER2> It could be done that server doesn't send the information what card it is until absolutely necessary, so you could not do that.

<comment><USER10> Cryptographers are really interested in card games as a model of information problems, so there are pre-existing algorithms for how to do stuff for card games in which different players have different information about the state, but everybody can prove to their satisfaction that the others aren't cheating - without a trusted server at all.

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

<comment><AUTHOR> Server is the single-source-of-truth and only share the info about card value/suit when clicking your own card or common cards

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Love it! Is there a way to select which cards to shuffle? I tried to play solitaire (with house rules) but got stuck when I wanted to reshuffle the draw deck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm.. that would actually require some kind of game editor / custom game mode – let's see..

<comment><USER11> I was actually thinking about a designated shuffling area on the board. All cards moved to the shuffling area would be shuffled but the rest would be kept untouched. The area could surround the deck by default.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Excellent! I've wanted to make something just like this for our family. Are you going to work to make the site self-sustaining or is this just for fun?

<comment><AUTHOR> Both

I have lots of ideas how to make it even more fun! And will open source it also soon..

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Nice been waiting for something like this. Maybe some ideas can be borrowed from TabletopSimulator eg. Custom cards etc to allow a larger selection of games.

<comment><AUTHOR> I will open source this – let's hope people will create customized cards/decks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> That's an awesome domain name! I've tried house.of.cards and it redirects to deck.of.cards ;-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha yeah, I was lucky to get that

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Nice but I think I found you a little bug. Some of the figures are displayed with numbers in the corners. It looks like it's the number of the pips on the preceding or following card.

Frex, my last draw of three cards was: Ace of space, King of hearts, 8 of diamonds, but the king had an 8 instead of a K in the corners.

Edit: Aw. HN markup removes suit symbols :(

Further edit: It looks like some of your cards are drawn with one image superimposed on another. So actually the figures that have the numbers in the corner are a figure with another card that is not a figure on top.

Should be a quick fix :P

Last edit I promise: It looks like this:

[https://imgur.com/a/I9CJqGG](https://imgur.com/a/I9CJqGG)

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh damn, I'll fix that ASAP

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Great idea! The card graphics don't look as nice for me as they did in your blog post, though: [https://imgur.com/a/RrjMifa](https://imgur.com/a/RrjMifa)

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm pretty sure that has been some kind of a caching issue, does it work already?

</comment></comment><comment> chc-sc Yoo somebody play my game [https://deck.of.cards/play/5cf24587743bbd7cc4047e52](https://deck.of.cards/play/5cf24587743bbd7cc4047e52)

</comment><comment><USER17> Like the animations. Nice simple website.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Here's how they're done: [https://medium.com/@pakastin/javascript- playing-cards-part-3...](https://medium.com/@pakastin/javascript-playing- cards-part-3-animations-7099f9f5dea4)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is a really cool idea! I'm making a browser poker app just to play with friends but idea was to have it specific to poker with a similar UI to pokerstars, 888 etc.

Never considered emulating actually just having a deck of cards on the page, using the same level of trust you have between people irl. Any plans to add stuff like chips or scoring?

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe, let's see..

<comment><USER19> Awesome! Another vote for (a simple way) to do chips.

I've wanted to have poker games with my team (which is distributed) for a long time. This is 90% of the way there.

Update - I just found pokerchips.io. Check it out; it has a simple interface which does everything you'd need.

<comment><AUTHOR> Others have requested chips too, so will add. But first need to open source

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm sure others have reported this, but there's some kind of odd bug:

[https://www.solipsys.co.uk/images/OddPlayingCards.png](https://www.solipsys.co.uk/images/OddPlayingCards.png)

Pretty sure it's wrong to have numbers and Kings on the same card.

<comment><USER21> heh, ya I missed two aces because of that bug :P

<comment><AUTHOR> Whoops, sorry about that – fixing now!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Today I learned that .cards is a TLD

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha, yeah

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Weird. It always yields the same card - shuffling just changes which card

<comment><USER24> Move the card off the top of the deck. You are turning only the top card face up and face down.

<comment><USER23> I did that. At one point I had like 10 aces of heart lying on the table.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's weird. It might've had a bug. Now enhanced a lot and should work so much better!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Fisher Yates for shuffle?

What is the key scheduling used for multiplayer?

<comment><AUTHOR> Fisher yates yeah! Server is the single-source-of-truth, so no way to peek cards

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Nice! I am only missing a way to move a pile of cards.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's actually something I've already tested out, so probably coming soon! Hit test + long-press-and-drag should do it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Now make a forum where to read replies you have to organize paper on a table.

</comment><comment><USER28> What backend you are using ?

<comment><AUTHOR> node.js + express + MongoDB + socket.io</comment></comment>


The 10x developer is a myth - <AUTHOR> https://www.codementor.io/blog/hiring-developers-10x-272qhyvr5f <comment><USER3> What a bunch of garbage. The article pivots from stating that the 10x developer doesn't exist to then implicitly accepting that they _do_ exist and why you should avoid hiring them! That'd be like a rock band saying "nah, we don't need Eddie Van Halen for our guitarist. Joe here who just finished guitar boot camp is good enough." Yeah, right. That's not to say that rock star developers aren't often prima donnas and toxic to your culture - <USER2> negating all their supposed advantages. That's true. It's also true that a lot of rock star developers don't come with this toxicity. But to use that to claim that the 10x developer doesn't exist is being dishonest.

<comment><USER4> He's not saying that it doesn't exist, he's saying he doesn't believe that's who startups should hire.

He's making the argument that 10x isn't solely about the person and their technical abilities. You could have a "10x developer" who joins a team and performs poorly because they're not motivated by what the company is building, or they have a shitty boss. What makes the person a good performer is the environment they're put in combined with their technical abilities.

<comment><USER5> He is though, right up in the title. And then he changes the subject to discussing why he prefers hiring inexperienced developers; which is fine, I guess, as long as shitty software is your goal. That being said, the rock- star/code-ninja culture isn't really helping anyone. I once got hired for one of those positions, but failed to realize in time what a shitty pool of wishful thinking I was diving into. From my experience, it's not the magic it's presented as, it's not about solving 10x as many problems in the same time; rather about skipping 10x as many problems and doing exactly what needs to be done, because intuition and pattern matching is much more effective than logic reasoning for heuristics.</comment></comment></comment>