How the engineer driven culture at Google damaged Wave - <AUTHOR> http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2010/08/27/LessonsFromGoogleWaveAndRESTVsSOAPFightingComplexityOfOurOwnChoosing.aspx <comment><USER2> I remember reading a paper a long time ago about traffic engineering. It turns out that when there's a traffic problem you have three choices more or less:

1) Add something

2) Change something

3) Remove something

The paper talked about how most civil engineers have a strong bias toward 1, followed by 2, and then rarely 3. The first thought is almost always to add something. Something is wrong? That means we need something more to solve it, right?

Complexity is not a virtue. It's actually a vice and a liability. It is better to solve a problem by removing something than by adding something. This (along with losing sight of what customers want) is the problem with engineer-driven design. Engineers like to add stuff, not remove stuff.

Wave always looked horridly over-complex to me. The protocol was a tower of babel. It was "open," but it was so complex that nobody would bother climbing its learning curve. It tried to solve too many problems at once, it was slow, and it was cumbersome to use. Those are all signs of over-engineering.

<comment><USER3> Very good points. Reminds me of this quote:

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

\- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

It does seem to be a major problem with a lot of Google's latest inventions - they try to do too many things at once, and solve too many problems for too many people. Wave as a technology proved to be extremely useful in some certain circles, including corporate collaboration. I would wager if they marketed as a sharepoint competitor and increased the integration with google docs, it could potentially have been a money maker while giving more credibility to Google Docs.

Similar situations are going on right now with Google Buzz and even Google Mail, the execution of the "make phone calls from your mail box" seems to leave a lot to be desired. It's a feature that tries to jump out at you and grab your attention as if saying "Hey look at this, we invented something new" when really it should be almost invisible until you need to use it.

<comment><USER4> "Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."

Doesn't this imply that _nothing_ is always perfection. The quote just seems to be flat out wrong.

While maybe not as elegant, but wouldn't it be better said as "Perfection is achieved, not where is nothing more to add, but when there is neither more to add nor anything to take away".

Maybe the quote has a proceeding sentence that makes it clear.

<comment><USER5> The assumption is that you're talking about some thing - design, work of art, whatever - which is accomplishing some goal. The perfection lies in removing extraneous elements without stopping it from achieving the goal. Nothing, by itself, doesn't achieve much.

<comment><USER4> Still, even your explanation is wrong. There are obviously times when adding something is required. If a car with no engine, I need to add one. I can't simply remove a wheel.

<comment><USER6> as he already said, it has to accomplish some goal, if your goal is for your car to drive, it needs an engine.

<comment><USER4> OK, put a lawnmower engine in a Hummer... Now this simply becomes an exercise in requirements gathering. Because your retort will be the goal is this accerlation curve, this torque curver, this gas mileage, etc....

And this presumes that the requirements lead to perfection. What is the goal of the Mona Lisa or Dante's Inferno? Could Micaelangelo have done less to satisfy the requirements for the Creation of Adam?

Can you point to any value in that quote?

And let me extend my last question. How many things can you list that would be perfect merely by removing things? I don't think there are many. I suspect most things, that even accomplish a goal, lack perfection due to an array of things, not simply due to having too much of anything.

<comment><USER7> <http://google.com/> vs <http://yahoo.com/>

<comment><USER4> I suspect Google and Yahoo don't have the same goal. Otherwise Yahoo wouldn't put a link to mail.

But this is exactly the type of reasoning that this silly quote leads to. That simply having less makes something better.

Apple could easily make a computer with no keyboard, no mouse, no OSK, no visual display. Simply a touchpad, to input a binary code that corresponds to text and numeric output that corresponds to what color and x,y location to draw pixel. Of course, this numeric output would simply be a binary light. But that's just stupid.

The reason you add something is almost always because there is a goal that you'd like to accomplish. Yahoo probably thought you should be a click away from your email account. Google doesn't.

<comment><USER6> maybe another quote will help you understand the point

"I'm sorry I wrote such a long letter. I did not have the time to write a short one." - Abraham Lincoln

The point isnt to have less, its to have as little as possible required to perform the function you want, anything extra is just extra mental energy required to be able to understand it.

Have you ever written something and then vastly reduced it because you realise you are conveying the same thing in different ways, or written software and realised you have made 2 ways to do the same thing? thats all it means.

<comment><USER4> I get the point, but it's a bad quote. Let me give you an example of a quote that is right on target.

"Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler" -- Albert Einstein

Einstein captures the fact that you need to both add ("as possible") and keep simple. The original quote does not, although apparently some people have a preface to the quote that has a whole bunch of assumptions that make the quote work. I've never seen that preface.

<comment><USER8> Most people realize exactly what the quote is talking about, since the alternative (removing stuff until you're left with nothing, or with something barely working) makes no sense if the goal is perfection. Part of the appeal of the quote is that you have to make this realization. Just like a joke would lose its appeal if it was preceded by a list of assumptions that would explain the joke.

<comment><USER4> The problem is that what you describe is not the alternative I've heard before. It's not that you'd remove things to nothing, but rather that you don't add something that is necessary or beneficial, because there's this belief that adding things is bad. I hear this from a lot of college grads, who apparently read a blog that talks about this, or maybe read this quote.

My point is you don't add stupid stuff, but you don't blindly say not to add something, and simply look for things to remove.

<comment><USER8> I guess I just never met anybody who didn't understand the quote. To me it says: Think very hard about what to add, and think very hard about what to remove. Of course, I realize that those who take the quote literally are not going to think very hard about which features to remove, and I'll agree that you're more likely to succeed with a product that has lots of thoughtlessly added features, than one that has none. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _Google is like grad-school. People value working on hard problems, and doing them right. Things are pretty polished, the code is usually solid[...]_

Wow, that sounds nothing like grad school. Or any research environment, for that matter.

<comment><USER10> Yeah really. Does that mean the code is littered with "Left as an exercise for the reader."?

<comment><USER11> In this case, the "reader" being the compiler?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm glad to see a post highlighted here which shows the limits of bright engineers and hacking in a business. Google Wave is just one high profile example..

Being full of engineering-minded people, Hacker News has a strong bias favoring the idea that if you hack away and create an interesting piece of technology, then that is what is required for a successful startup business.

That idea is wrong. That idea is more of a love of inventing and obsession over technology rather than successful business.

A successful business doesn;t need neat technology or having brilliant engineers.

It requires a product/service meeting consumer demand at the right time in a sustainable way at a cost that enables a profit for the business.

That's where Google Wave failed. Despite a huge financial backing in engineering and promotion, people didn't want it.

The core for a successful business is not innovative technology-- it's _Business Operations_.

If the business operations are wrong -- ie a product isn't fulfilling a consumer demand or has an sunsustainable cost-- then the startup is going to tank. (unless angel investors keep throwing money at it, but eventually they won't anymore)

On the other hand... if the business operations are right, ie. there is strong sustainable consumer demand for the product/service and a cost enabling a profit, then the the company will prosper regardless if the engineers are decent, great or so-so.

There are plenty of companies making good profits year after year, growing there business and equity sustainably, which have just ok engineers and average non-innovative software.

It would be nice to see more startup-related articles here on Hacker News showing technology failures, not wasting money on too much engineering and the importance of the business operations side of things.

<comment><USER13> So you want to read about companies with no competitive advantages anywhere in the organization? Maybe some big firm that uses its marketshare to enforce a significant amount of revenue as opposed to better handling of operations, marketing, R&D, customer support, sales, etc?

<comment><USER12> Technology isn't the only comparative advantage.

Nor, is it necessarily the best option when maximizing comparative advantage over another firm.

Nor, is implementing new technology necessarily a comparative advantage, it could be a disadvantage (ie. if the technology fails either technically or on the business side)

It's often the most difficult or worst option because of the costs and risks involved.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This post is pretty much information-free.

This seems to be his only criticism of the product, and it isn't even correct:

>It is interesting to think about all the internal discussions and time spent implementing features like character-by-character typing without anyone bothering to ask whether that feature actually makes sense for a product that is billed as a replacement to email.

This was explicitly thought about. The reason this feature was included was to fix the latency of chatting. The perceived problem is that most of the time people spend chatting is waiting for the other person to finish typing. No one quite knew what sort of social effects this would have, but by taking a poll they would have just built a "faster horse."

<comment><USER15> Every single person I know who used Wave thought the character-by-character thing was terrible and wanted it turned off. A few of them actually stopped using it as soon as they realized it did this since they didn't want to broadcast half-formed thoughts to the world.

<comment><USER16> Broadcasting half-formed thoughts can be desirable; we do it everyday when talking face-to-face.

<comment><USER17> Typing/reading is a very different experience to speaking/hearing.

I might type something that comes across as unnecessarily harsh, which if I said it would not, because of the tone of voice and posture I took.

The timelag of allowing me to reread to see if my statement can be misconstrued is far more important in writing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This seems pretty much like a straw man argument. The notion that Facebook concentrates upon user experience, given all the privacy wrangling and complaints about the user interface being needlessly changed or being too convoluted, seems to be not very well founded.

Fundamentally the concept of Wave seemed good, and I think there is (or will be in future) a demand for something better than email which consolidates email, instant messaging, microblogging and some project/time management features into a single interface. I think what happened with Wave was not that they concentrated too much upon the engineering but precisely the opposite. If they had spent more time engineering a slick, fast system which scales to large multi-user conversations without crashing or grinding to a halt and integrated easily with legacy email systems from the beginning to allow a seamless transition then there would have been a much bigger chance of Wave becoming a success.

<comment><USER19> "...integrated easily with legacy email systems from the beginning to allow a seamless transition..." Nail on the head. That is exactly why I didn't use wave more than a handful of times even though I rather like it. If I'm the only person who uses the email when everyone else uses snail mail, it's not really very useful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Does anyone actually know Dare Abasanjo as "Carnage4Life" or is that just his years-long ploy to annoy me and undermine his credibility in any forum of consequence?

<comment><USER21> I went to Georgia Tech undergrad at about the same time as Dare (I graduated in 2004). If my memory serves, he was using carnage4life handle even back in 2002.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> The second section discusses SOAP/REST and XML/JSON, saying that XML Schema attempted to solve two problems (document formats + object wire format), but it predictably became too complex. He claims that we now use REST (not SOAP) and JSON (not XML), so the "impedance mismatch" problem is now solved.

Is this true?

JSON is used mainly where there is Javascript (ie. client side webpages - though that is becoming more and more inclusive these days... almost everything is a webapp (exceptions?)) - but it's schemaless (or typeless). While this is popular (eg key-value NoSQL stores, and dynamic typing in Ruby, Python, Perl), it's not right for everything. If you did want typed data, you'd probably just use XML Schema, since everything is already there.

I ask because of a startup idea based on XML Schema. It _could_ survive XML Schema going away, but I'm not so sure about the apparent long-term trend away from schemas/types altogether. With fast-enough computers to nullify the speed advantage of static types, will the remaining advantage of type-safety be valuable enough on its own - What is the evidence for and against? Even databases are going schemaless (it seems).

<comment><USER23> If I wanted typed data, I would be more inclined to use RelaxNG than XML Schema. In some situations, XML might not be so advantageous. JSON is quite convenient for JavaScript applications. Protocol Buffers have an efficient wire representation.

I think his point of JSON vs. XML is that JSON is simpler because it is designed specifically for representing structured data exchanged among JavaScript programs. Sure, it can be used from other languages and read by humans, but the design goal was much more narrowly circumscribed than the design goals of SGML, XML, and XML-Schema.

The argument about SOAP vs. REST is not as well-developed, but I think he's saying that SOAP was doomed by its attempt to stretch XML to serve one too many masters.

Personally though I see REST as a set of principles more than an RPC standard. It seems to me that REST's success is due both to the evolutionary manner in which it developed, and the relatively simple architectural form it takes compared to the SOAP/WS-* protocol specifications.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> the reason wave failed was cause it was not integrated with gmail! It's that simple. All the rest of the arguments are just killing the dead animal

</comment><comment><USER25> I've read similar arguments here being leveled at Microsoft. Given their strong culture and hiring practices they ended up hiring people who were strong engineers. At the same time that resulted in the company developing blind spots in areas where a different approach would have been more beneficial.

I guess the risk is that when you end up phenomenally successful using a particular method, it becomes very difficult to go against that ingrained culture and try doing things a different way. Best example of a company combating that issue, in my opinion, is the IBM PC, where they gave Don Estridge free reign to carry out the project outside the normal operating procedures of the company which the management realised would have destroyed any chances of the project becoming a success.

<comment><USER26> <http://www.dailywritingtips.com/free-rein-or-free-reign/>

It's not a metaphor about monarchs, but about horses ... but I guess nobody knows what those are anymore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Frankly, this is just punditry. Nothing wrong with trying something and failing at it and moving on cutting your losses short. I give google the credit for choosing to fail _this_ way instead of failing with, say, marketing efforts.

</comment><comment><USER28> When I read that they'd made their Google Wave API _before_ they had user- adoption, I thought _gee, they've got their priorities wrong_.

</comment><comment><USER29> Google Wave... whatever. What annoys me is that we lost etherpad for this. That was a really effective product.

</comment><comment><USER30> Did Google Wave fail? I thought it just started?

Google mainly suffers from people (including those at Google) thinking that everything they do will be big from day 1. Even though that never happened to any of their other products.

<comment><USER31> You think? I thought exactly the opposite.

The problem of Google to me seems to be that they release something they think it's good enough and then just leave it there hoping that time will prove them right. Then one day they wake up and see there has not been any adoption, and kill it.

When Google releases something they are hardly all behind it, and seem to forget about it in a week.

<comment><USER32> In that case, they are suffering from the same internal-politics fratricide that Microsoft has been long suffering from. I'm wondering if Google is at the peak of their innovation curve?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Because a marketing/business driven product has never failed before...

Also wasn't this part of the newer Google that looked better and was primarily more product/marketing/suits driven like Buzz?

If it was engineering culture that killed Wave, engineers are ok with failing to make something better or to analyze it. Later perfecting it for a solid product/system.

I believe the product failed in the way they released it and that Google may have found the limit for how connected people want to be. Cool as it was, Wave seemed exhausting and we don't need to see people type each letter.

Waves happen naturally on the web, twitter, facebook etc. Google hurried the response to that. I do believe many components will be reused on Google.me. Also I wonder if they have any issue with GWT now that they are being sued for Java licensing on Android.

</comment><comment><USER34> Wave as is may be dead, the technology will live on in other google products. Introducing it as a big bang was maybe not the best way, too much change at a time. But gradually it will emerge in another form.

</comment><comment><USER35> Google's non-search products are really just research projects.

<comment><USER31> Why? You offered a non-obvious assessment without any evidence or argumentation.

Personally I think you are completely wrong. Google is in the business of targeted ads. For that they need infos about the user. Everything else is just a trap to get you to tell them a bit about yourself. Helping you in your searches, is as important as knowing what and who you email.

Facebook, who is also entering the same market, is giving them food for thought exactly because of that. Facebook offers almost no search, but they get your infos from other means. From Google's perspective the end result is similar.

<comment><USER35> I'm not knocking Google in any way. It's just that, as the article says, Google seems to be developing their new products because thee engineers think they're cool, regardless of whether they're actually commercial. In this way, Google is the Bell Labs of the 21st century.

<comment><USER33> Lots of good stuff came out of Bell Labs, modern software being one of them, C++ another. Lots of things you are looking at right now while at your computer were influenced by Bell Labs.

<comment><USER35> I have enormous respect for Bell Labs, at least until they decided to kill non telecommunications projects.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Google Wave could have been great if it was not designed by engineers.It amazes me that such a giant company does not put more effort into design and usability.

</comment><comment><USER32> It's not only Wave!</comment>


Doge#, a .NET programming language for Doge fans - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/returnString/DogeSharp

<comment><USER2> "It's still funny, right guys?"

</comment><comment><USER3> .... this hurts my brain.</comment>


Show HN: Intro to Machine Learning in Interactive D3.js Visualizations - <AUTHOR> http://www.r2d3.us/visual-intro-to-machine-learning-part-1/ <comment><USER2> That's an incredibly good visualization! Both beautiful and clear. Next time I'm explaining machine learning to somebody who's smart but not a computer scientist or statistician, this is where I'll start.

Do you think a future tutorial could demystify deep learning and neural networks? Many people are confused by the backpropgation algorithm, but the way it works is simple and intuitive if you can get beyond the mathematical notation. The way that errors propagate backwards through the neural network is not all that dissimilar from the data flow in your "Growing a tree" section.

Andrej Karpathy has a great library that trains neural networks directly in the browser: cs.stanford.edu/people/karpathy/convnetjs/

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Brandon! We're certainly thinking about it. We'll work out way up there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> really nice visual, it'd be cool to see similar illustrations for areas of ML that do more than just separate classes based on a set of features, rather work with your data in more interesting ways (e.g., CNNs learning features, semi-supervised methods for training with unlabelled data, and subspace techniques like CCA that work on a projected version of your data).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Yeah absolutely. We are working our way up to those. Our tentative plan is to tackle bias-variance trade-off next, then random forests, then neural networks.

<comment><USER3> oh for sure, just jumping in to these topics is difficult enough. i'm looking forward to what you guys put together next

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Really cool. As someone who didn't fully understand what people mean by machine learning, this is great.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is great, I can't find the source though.

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here. What kinds of sources are you looking for? We built this based on some of the lectures in Stanford's statistical learning class ([http://online.stanford.edu/course/statistical-learning- winte...](http://online.stanford.edu/course/statistical-learning-winter-2014)) as well as just hanging out with the ML team at [http://siftscience.com](http://siftscience.com)

<comment><USER5> Do you have a gh repo? I really am interested in the story telling and ML aspects of the post.

<comment><AUTHOR> The decision tree model was generated from [http://scikit- learn.org](http://scikit-learn.org) in Python. The JS is a complete mess, but I'll try to write up how it works in the next couple days.

<comment><USER6> I'd love to see the JS too. Great viz!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Any chance of an RSS feed?</comment>


Show HN: Remain connected with remote teammates via live video with privacy - <AUTHOR> http://videoworklink.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hi, guys!

I'd like to share with you an experimental product for teams that include remote employees.

Remote employees often feel lonely and disconnected. The product helps to solve this problem: it connects remote teammates via live video, providing an individual sense of privacy.

It is called VideoWorkLink (VWL): [http://videoworklink.com](http://videoworklink.com)

It saves your bandwidth consuming only 1% of 100 Mbps bandwidth network.

I would like to invite everyone to try it and write your thoughts about the product.

Please, go to the website I posted above, try the product and write what do you think!

Thank you :-)</comment>


Show HN: A Twitter bot that uses computer vision to caption random photos - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/ImageCaptions <comment><USER2> People need to be able to tweet a picture at it, and it will reply with a caption.

</comment><comment><USER3> I want more - I like the mix of pretty accurate and "random" results

<comment><AUTHOR> From now, the bot should post around every 3 hours or so :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This would make for a good IFTTT applet.

~ Khayri R.R. Woulfe</comment>


THIS THING DELETED 3 MONTHS OF WORK!!!! - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/32405 <comment><USER2> You have to admit in some software "Discard" means "Cancel". Having to choose between "Discard" and "Cancel" might sound nonsensical.

These are language subtelities that might be hard to translate to other languages, or to be understood by junior programmers or non-native speakers. Keep in mind that VSCode is a tool often recommended in bootcamps, etc.

Reminds me of the infamous modal question "Are you sure you want to cancel?" / "OK", "Cancel".

</comment><comment><USER3> 'Discard' in VSCode obviously means a 'git checkout' and this 'VSCode user' failed to read 'IRREVERSIBLE' and he clicked discard. The computer can never deletes your work automatically, it is always you telling it to.

Don't say VSCode didn't warn you.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think their over-reaction is hilarious.

Language and UX are important. English words have different meanings to different people in different parts of the world, so it's important to localize to the various regions by using slightly more appropriate words and use congruent iconography with it to convey exactly what would happen with the "least surprise" principle. It's difficult to say what they thought that word meant at the time.

For example, in a real estate game:

The British "Let" and American "Rent" mean the same thing in their respective countries. However, in America, "Let" means only to allow or suppose, not sign a lease or rental agreement.

</comment><comment><USER5> All things considered it is not VSCode faults for following git standard usage, but this does not mean that it was not a user hostile functionality. This is essentially git fault as `git checkout` is a dark and evil command.

Whether we have normalized low standard for usability is irrelevant.

</comment><comment><USER6> Isn't it a valid point that deletion should move the deleted files to the recycle bin? I think so.</comment>


Bug (Unix Epoch Y2k) - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1213500585716006912 <comment><USER2> Storm in a teacup. It's (pretty much) just a matter of increasing the number of bits in the epoch-counter, and a recompile.

In fact, just adding ONE more bit to the epoch-counter would put off any problems for another 68 years. TWO extra bits and it delays any problems for another 200 years at least.

 _Doubling_ the number of bits (32 to 64) puts off the problem for MILLIONS of years.

[And I don't think that humans will still be around by then.]</comment>


Track SP100 stocks or Bitcoin on Twitter in real time - <AUTHOR> http://www.hype-meter.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Over the holidays, I've put together a web app which counts how often a stock or Bitcoin is mentioned on twitter. Interestingly, Bitcoin dominates even the most popular SP100 stocks by big margin</comment>


NSA Careers for DEF CON Attendees - <AUTHOR> http://www.nsa.gov/careers/dc20/ <comment><USER2> I was offered a nice contracting job at a USAF base. All I had to do was run a single large Oracle server (Sun Enterprise 10000). I asked "what does the system do?" The recruiter told me the database handled the parts ordering system for foreign countries that need to order replacement parts for F-15 fighters that the US ships to them.

I turned down the position for ethical reasons. Somehow, I'm not comfortable knowing that I helped facilitate the export of US weapons systems to foreign countries that history has shown us are likely to use them to bomb their own people, or innocent people in their neighboring countries. The fact that most of these F-15s end up in middle eastern countries seems to be standard operating procedure for the US government. Then, later, when the next dictator they propped up starts bombing innocent civilians, the politicians will act outraged "who knew that by supplying weapons systems to a dictator he would ever turn them on innocent people?"

Sorry, but I don't want the blood of innocents on my hands. Working at the NSA might not directly be as damaging, but you better believe that people will die indirectly because of something you helped work on. Do you want that guilt on your conscience?

<comment><USER3> I don't understand the moral intuition here: why is working on that Oracle server morally wrong, but not paying taxes to the country which bombs those innocent civilians?

<comment><USER4> I've been in a similar situation, and I think it's about risk. It's relatively easy to decline a job, you're not going to jail for turning down a gig. Not paying taxes will get you some serious jail time though. So morally, yeah, both actions are enabling the same results, but one is easier to commit to.

<comment><USER5> Also, not paying taxes has less prospect of leading by example. The sheer majority will attack you for not paying your "fair" share, as they internalize their rulers' plans as their own to feel a sense of purpose.

<comment><USER6> There's some justification for that, though. If you don't pay your portion, then that's less funding for the things that are common good, as well as common bad.

I don't particularly think it's all that great that childless homeowners pay school taxes on their property, but I accept the reasoning for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Help us monitor the communications of private citizens all over the world, even if they use encryption!"

( Need I remind you of this? <http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/> )

Hey it's challenging work! Just like devising new algorithms for helping Wall Street rape the world's economies!

It's exactly what a true hacker wants and needs. Tinker with your favourite programming languages and tools! Go crazy with mathematics! Help us rape the little folks!

<comment><USER8> That's just nonsense. Where's your outrage over the stuff the Syrians, Iranians and North Koreans. You can bury your head in the sands of outrage, but meanwhile, people are working hard to maintain your freedom to enjoy your conspiracy theories. Wall Street isn't raping world economies. That's just anti-capitalist nonsense. "The most important single central fact about a free market is that no exchange takes place unless both parties benefit."

<comment><USER7> I take it you work in finance then.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Have to appreciete the direct honest approach:

"It's true that you must be a U.S. citizen, and you'll need a security clearance that requires a background investigation and polygraph. But ... If you have a few, shall we say, indiscretions in your past, don't be alarmed. You shouldn't automatically assume you won't be hired. If you're really interested, you owe it to yourself to give it a shot."

<comment><USER10> _Have to appreciete the direct honest approach_

You know, they are only referring to smoking pot once or twice, right? Admit to running a small botnet or monitoring GSM calls and I'm sure your 2nd interview will be with the FBI .. not for a job.

This whole NSA/DEFCON relationship smells funny. I've lost a lot of respect for DEFCON.

<comment><USER11> Many of the leaders of DEFCON work for the government. I've come to suspect that it's 'pwned' and is now revealing its form as a recruiting tool.

<comment><USER10> _Many of the leaders of DEFCON work for the government_

I can confirm this. Though, to be realistic, I haven't encountered any conference or local 2600-type meeting that _hadn't_ been pwned by government representatives. What I haven't seen is the active promotion of the very agencies that are working hard to put meeting attendees in jail.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> <!-- OK. You found the Easter egg, but don't think you're clever just 'cause you identified an HTML comment. There's more to find if you take a closer look. And if you really want to prove yourself, apply for a job and show us what you can really do. -->

<comment><USER13> Then if you zoom in on bottom of the background (<http://www.nsa.gov/careers/dc20/images/Back.jpg>) in the light blue swoosh there is a message: "GNXR N PYBFRE YBBX NG ANGVBANY FRPHEVGL NG AFN"

Which is ROT13 for "TAKE A CLOSER LOOK AT NATIONAL SECURITY AT NSA"

<comment><USER14> Nothing there, I'm afraid.

That is, unless they're intercepting Google searches for the decoded phrase, in which case, hello! Feel free to check out my resume, which you can find in my Documents folder, and I look forward to hearing from you shortly.

<comment><USER12> I can confirm it's there, look closer.

<comment><USER14> Oh, I saw the ROT13 text; I was saying there's no real easter egg there, just a dead-end tagline.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> For a government hiring req, this is shockingly well written.

<comment><USER16> One of this really interesting things I've discovered over the last year is that the government is really heterogeneous; extraordinary competence exists in many places. When you think about it, it makes perfect sense. There are talented hackers working on the kernel instead of Wall Street for ideological reasons. It not that great of a leap to imagine that there are also talented hackers (and people who are talented at recruiting) who ideology causes them to work in government.

<comment><USER17> Or the government is just the last place left where you can count on a stable paycheck, and lots of engineers like to optimize for that instead of for the possibility of striking it rich.

It used to be, anyway.

<comment><USER18> What about Google, Microsoft, IBM, etc?

<comment><USER17> You mean the IBM that almost disintegrated in the 90s, and that now employs an entirely different workforce than it did then because their core business has completely changed? And IMO Microsoft is being driving into the ground, it certainly won't be known as a stable employer within 20 years. We'll see what happens with Google, I guess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> And if you think it's ok to use national security means to spy on foreign companies to rig the economic competition and if you think a human being from another country has less rights to privacy than one with a US passport, apply.

<comment><USER8> Right. Because China and France would never do that. One of the primary purposes of French Intelligence is industrial espionage. Before you make ignorant statements about the NSA how about getting some facts?

Also, if those 'human beings' are trying to blow up Americans, then I don't care about their rights. I have a right for my kid to not get killed while traveling on the subway. I have a right to not have bombs blowing up while out at a nightclub. Is the NSA perfect? Of course not, but it's a dangerous imperfect world. When people stop blowing shit up in the name of their deity, then I'll gladly revise my opinion of the relevance for the NSA.

Where's your outrage over Syrian and Iranian Intelligence and their tactics? How about North Korean intelligence and their wholesale kidnapping of hundreds of Japanese citizens? How about the Chinese and their operations in the US? It's a popular sport to pick on the US from the safety of an armchair, but it's quite another to address the reasons the NSA and CIA do what they do. I'm not defending all of the actions of those agencies, but I will certainly defend their mission and goals.

The fact that you can even safely criticize the NSA and feel secure that you won't be arrested is a testament to the freedoms the NSA helps preserve. Spend ten minutes in China and start posting messages about their MSS and see how long your comment stays up (and how long before you get a visit from a local Public Security Bureau officer.)

<comment><USER20> _Where's your outrage over Syrian and Iranian Intelligence and their tactics?_

Your entire rant is irrelevant. Independently of how much you dislike foreign agencies, working for the NSA might _also_ pose ethical problems.

<comment><USER8> Murder is unethical, but when you're at war..

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> A few NSA reps should hang around HN, if they are not already, to respond to any questions and partake in the discussion on this thread.

<comment><USER22> _A few NSA reps should hang around HN_

Please don't give them any ideas. I mean, I imagine they monitor this site already anyway, but why encourage them?

What would be really cool, would be if pg could determine if an incoming request was from the NSA, and redirect any such requests to youporn.com or something.

Now sure how you'd detect the NSA requests though. I doubt they publish which netblocks they snoop from, and I doubt their browser UA string says "NSABrowser 1.0 (Mozilla 4.0/Compatible)" or anything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I love their CSS naming convention.

        #maincontent {
       	width:941px;
    	margin:0px auto;
    	}

        #maincontentleft {
    	width:228px;
    	margin:0px auto;
    	text-align:left;
    	float:left;

    	}

        #maincontentright {
            background-image : url(images/tableGrad.png);
    	width:699px;
    	margin:0px auto;
    	text-align:left;

    	float:right;
    	color:#ffffff;
    	}

        #maincontentright1 { /* a lowercase L or a number one ? */
            padding:15px;
    	}

In their careers page (<http://www.nsa.gov/careers/>), there is a comment that reads: <!--do not remove the extra close a tag, needed to fix an error in ia/academic_outreach/nat_cae/cae_r_program_criteria.shtml-->

I thought they would be using template inheretance for such a big site.

</comment><comment><USER24> Embrace, extend, extinguish

<comment><USER22> _Embrace, extend, extinguish_

But is the NSA EEE'ing the Hacker community, or is it the other way around?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Impressive, who would have thought a government agency could have signs of imagination and even <gasp> fun!

</comment><comment><USER26> <http://antipolygraph.org/index.shtml>

</comment><comment><USER27> I can't believe this shit flies here.

</comment><comment><USER28> Appalling.

<comment><USER29> Why? Because you don't agree with what they do?

<comment><USER30> Because its all doublespeak, protect and serve, while attacking and exploiting, just word games, trying to spin the NSA in to a good light. The Defcon talk by the NSA head guy was pretty much the same, doublespeak all the way. In the UK we have GHCQ trying to do the same things their advert was a little more interactive <http://www.canyoucrackit.co.uk/></comment></comment></comment>


How To: Read more books - <AUTHOR> http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/morebooks

<comment><USER2> The best way to read more books is to get a job where you have to commute. And by that I mean commute by train.

That's giving me almost 2 hours per day for pretty uninterrupted reading. Not that I read 100 books per year but it seems that it's much more than my co- workers, so I guess I'm above average.

Because of that I actually enjoy commuting. :)

<comment><USER3> Audiobooks and podcasts work just fine for drivers (and on the train too). It's the weirdest feeling when you find yourself picking the slowest lane in traffic just so you can spend more time enjoying what you're listening to.

<comment><USER4> I used to love audiobooks, until I realized how much longer they took over reading. I prefer podcasts for drives, but even a lot of those aren't very focused and tend to banter.

<comment><USER5> I convert PDFs to audiobooks using an osx service and then i listen to them on 2x speed. i'm a slow reader, so it isnt a huge difference in time for me.

<comment><USER6> A text-to-speech converter sounds like an awful way read to listen to a book.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Copying my comment that I posted on Aaron's blog:

One more simple lesson that I learned only in my early twenties.

You don't need to finish every book.

This is a simple but powerful lesson. It reduces the mental burden of starting a new book to near zero. I'm now comfortable putting a book down 200 pages in. And that makes it much easier to start the next 600 page novel.

High school english classes teach us the wrong way to read books. It took me a long time to unlearn what I was taught.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yay, I struggle with this too.

Have this compulsive need to complete the entire book.

Afraid, that not devoting enough effort I will shortchange my reading effort. That I'd be withdrawing from a challenging but fruitful experience (if the text is difficult, or the author's style is boring or has a level of incomprehensibility).

I resolved this dilemma by at least making it half way through a book, or at least first two chapters for those dreadful cases. Or not at all, as of late, have realized that there is just so much to read, that no need to waste on uninteresting/uninspired.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Bla, bla, bla.

The most important question is, I think, why force yourself to read more books?

I grew up in a family where everyone reads a lot of books. No one forced me to read books but I spent most of my childhood reading something, being completely convinced that it is good for me.

I used to read everything. From silly to hardcore stuff, like philosophy, sociology and literature critique. From novels to strictly technical books about management.

I was able to fluently speak about postmodernism, and I was a complete imbecile.

It took me few years to realize that I actually learned nothing from books. My world expanded enormously just within few years because of few random discussions, people I met and admire, as well as Internet, and silly blogs.

If you say that books help you to focus, I'd recommend taking some hardcore courses of typography. Writing down the whole alphabet takes much more patience than reading almost any book.

I agree that you should read books, if you enjoy them. However, please stop treating books as something more special than watching a movie, taking a walk or other pleasures of life.

<comment><USER9> I think this is with you, not with the books. Maybe you're talking about when you were a teenager or before -- I did a poor job of reading many books when I was younger, too.

But most adults don't read good novels or tracts on philosophy or sociology and then come out learning "nothing." I promise that there is much more than "nothing" inside. I think it's awfully pessimistic to say that you can't learn anything from books after your experience; books are more or less the only window into almost the entire history of human thought and storytelling, and not being able to incorporate that history into yourself is a problem.

<comment><USER8> You're the essence of the problem, messieur.

What's so pessimistic about it? Whatever floats your boat, pal. If books enrich you, keep reading. Do not force everyone else to do so, though. Might be that there are other sources of enlightenment. Nature, nice chicks, long discussions, Italian restaurants etc. It's pure symbolic violence what you do right now, pal.

Easy test, though.

Speak to a random literature folk, who graduated five years ago, or so. By average, he is completely clueless. You recognize he is smart, uses much complicated buzzwords than you've ever heard of, but chances are, you do not expect him to change the world, nor get laid.

It should be obvious what's my point. If you're smart, books might help you. If you're average, books won't change it significantly and sometimes might make things much more worse, clouding your mind or hiding your ignorance behind overly complicated concepts. Accidentally, most of the world is not that smart, and it's perfectly OK.

That's why I say that books are overrated, and we should ask yourself a question whether we really get so much from them as we think we do. Chances are that some people will keep reading but others would be more happy dancing, drawing or being next Sasha Grey or Stoya, without this guilt they don't read enough books.

By the way, I don't say that there is "nothing" in books. Nothing can be something, too. However, the knowledge about Humbert Humbert and a little girl he loved, is, for me, nothing significant.

<comment><USER9> I have to admit, you've got a point. I feel a little bit like the Christian who insists on starting every conversation with a discussion about how you ought to let Jesus into your heart. I will think a little bit and see if I can defend my position this evening.

<comment><USER8> Thank you. I appreciate your honesty.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> tl;dr: Stop visiting hacker news, reddit and other blogs; stop interacting with people; get books from the library for free.

My opinion: seriously, blogs should count as minibooks and everytime I read a particularly good and in depth blog or something that elicits the "I'm smarter for reading that" moment, I'm going to keep a tally. That tally I'll consider a chapter of a book. At 300 chapters, I'll count that as a book. Let's see how many books I have after a year. I think it'll be around 100.

<comment><USER11> Wow, are you really reading 30,000 good blog posts in a year? Could you please share what blogs you read? I find most blogs tiring and annoying, because there is so little new content and so much reposting and regurgitating of the same things going on over and over again.

I am rediscovering what a joy it is to read books. It seems it does take a lot of work to write well. Blog posts, almost by definition, are not meant to be well-written in terms of depth and succinctness.

But, maybe I'm just reading all the wrong blogs.

<comment><USER10> See my reply to tome.

There are lots of good blogs out there. I think a substantial number of bloggers end up getting published in books, and a lot of good writers blog. There is a lot of information out there, my primary point is that you don't have to consume it on parchment for it to count.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _at the first sign of mental difficulty, I tab to a different window and begin typing the URL of a favorite blog._

Heh. As I read that I realize I have being doing it pretty much all day today.

</comment><comment><USER13> >> "since books can usually substitute for human company: you can take them with you on the train and to meals and curl up with them at night and so on."

Seriously? Comes across as slightly sad to me.

The top priority on everyones list should be friends+family IMHO. Everything else is just 'stuff'.

Also I'd say there's far more to be learned/gained/enjoyed from other human beings than in any book.

<comment><USER14> Books are actually usually written by humans. In fact they often serve as a device for condensing, organizing, and transmitting one human's collected insights on a topic to many thousands of other humans. It's pretty efficient and effective.

 _dislodges tongue from cheek_

<comment><USER13> Yeah they certainly have their place, but I would never put them above human contact. I'd go insane.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Aaron recommends isolating yourself from other people, stopping reading blogs entirely, and getting rid of other hobbies.

If your goal is to read a _lot_ , obviously it's primarily a matter of finding time to read. Aaron's advice is extreme, though. Don't isolate yourself entirely -- from people, the world, or even social media like blogs. Each of those has value. As the saying goes, moderation is key.

<comment><USER16> Finding time is never an issue. Every day, you are handed 24 shiny new hours to spend. The real issues (which Aaron addresses) are motivation and mental ability.

<comment><USER15> You get 24 hours each day, true. But it's not just about motivation and mental ability. The time you have available to read is only time you aren't doing something else. If you have a job, or school, or family duties, or anything else, you may not have much time available to read. Your _downtime_ is available for you to use as you please -- via reading, or watching TV, or whatever. That's when it's an issue of motivation. Sometimes people don't have a lot of downtime.

<comment><USER17> For many people, time management is really relationship management. I read that on a blog somewhere.

A lot of grown ups, most things we do, we do for other people, in one way or another. So when we pick a thing off of the to do list, we are picking a person to serve.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Here's a radical idea: only read books that you enjoy and find interesting. Don't measure reading success by the number of books, but by how far your hair was blown back :-)

</comment><comment><USER19> "#3 Alienate everyone close to you" is the complete opposite of what I do. My favorite technique is to read a book out loud to my wife (and before I was married, to friends). It improves my reading/pronunciation and we discuss the book as it progresses. We learn something new while spending time together. Someday I hope to read to my kids and have them read back to me. I like reading by myself too but I'd rather read it with someone.

<comment><USER20> Reading aloud is fun, and can be useful, but it is extremely slow. No one reads 100 books aloud per year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> 5\. Stop reading Hacker News.

<comment><USER22> But how?

<comment><USER23> Do or do not. There is no try. (I.e. weigh up your plans thoroughly, but once you decide to implement one, implement it properly.)

IMO, I'd have to find some pretty amazing books to justify dropping HN entirely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> _The biggest consumer of time is undoubtedly other people, in large measure because talking to other people is so fun that you don't notice time going by. By keeping yourself away from other people (living alone is a good start), you free up an enormous amount of time for reading. I find this is particularly useful in reading books, since books can usually substitute for human company..._

How sad, especially coming from someone whose opinion I respect so much.

I love reading books, programming, sports, good food and drink, and a whole bunch of other things. But none of those things is an end unto itself. I do all of them as part of building a better life. Why? To share it with other people!

No matter how many cool things are on my list, sharing my life with others is always #1. If I find myself alone, then sure, I'll pick up a good book or project. But avoiding other people in order to have more time alone for books? Except for extreme circumstances, that just doesn't make sense to me.

<comment><USER25> Aaron is pretty young and acts it. He often comes out with incredibly naive posts, especially on topics like the economy, or politics. But the counterpoint is that his reading (especially re history) sometimes means he comes out with counter-intuitive or enlightening stuff.

Speaking for myself, I find other people a real energy drain. I don't live alone, but I feel delight and a deep sense of relaxation when I get the opportunity to have the house to myself for a few days. Company can be good, but in moderation.

<comment><USER26> Some people have that draining effect on me, which is usually why I try to cut those people out of my life. Many people I know are fun and energizing, because they take life and themselves easy. However many of my ex-friends have been the self-centred and self-absorbed kinds that just make your dealings with them laborious.

I don't mean to be harsh or cold, but it's not my job to deal with someone elses problems day in day out. I purposely chose _not_ to go into the psychology fields for that reason. I have my own problems, I have my own stresses, the reason I get together with friends is to _forget_ the problems and relax.

I think it's a good guide in life to route out the sources of problems and stress in your social circles and remove them. I'm an introvert, perhaps not so much as others but I'm certainly not an extrovert by any measure, but with the right groups I can be going out almost nightly and I don't feel the usual drain.

Although I have to say, I will likely always look forward to two days alone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If I may, I would like to point out the following related discussion at _Infinite Injury_ and _Less Wrong_ on the virtues of reading original sources in the sciences:

(original) [http://www.infiniteinjury.org/blog/2010/02/25/reading- origin...](http://www.infiniteinjury.org/blog/2010/02/25/reading-originals/)

(response) [http://lesswrong.com/lw/1ul/for_progress_to_be_by_accumulati...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/1ul/for_progress_to_be_by_accumulation_and_not_by/)

(I agree mostly with the arguments made in the _Less Wrong_ post, viz. "If one wants to know the Standard Model, sure, study it directly, but if you want to actually understand how to do the sorts of things that Newton did, you would be advised to read him, Feynman and yes, Plato too, as Plato also did things which contributed greatly to the development of thought.")

<comment><USER20> The infinite injury article is (IMO) complete hogwash. Its author assumes (but never explores or explains the assumption) that there's some unidirectional arrow of improved understanding and pedagogy through time ("progress") and that therefore modern explanations are inherently more sophisticated/subtle/polished than the original grapplings with a subject.

What he misses is that the seminal papers in any field are forced to really grapple with a subject for its own sake, while later works fetishize dogma and ceaselessly pander to the interests of whoever is paying for the work to be done, simplifying concepts to be understood by those of uncertain prior experience, and packing in features (ooh, glossy pictures! companion website!) that will sell copies.

There are some areas where studying the originals is not especially helpful, because subjects weren't yet understood. For instance, the founders of quantum mechanics really had no clue what was going on at the beginning, and their early papers are mishmashes of math pulled from other sources which sometimes fortuitously explained their experimental results. So by all means, go grab Townsend's _Modern Approach to Quantum Mechanics_ (2002) as a more practical and informative work.

In other areas, the famous "originals" (which is to say, those works which were good enough to last centuries while their contemporaries faded into oblivion) are wonderful. There's much more insight packed into Machiavelli, Tocqueville, or James Madison's writing than any modern political science textbooks.

And yes, economics as a field would be way better off if its practitioners had any idea what its foundational assumptions were about, or tried really deeply considering (e.g.) Smith, Veblen, Marx, or Keynes (or even, say, Von Neumann and Morgenstern), who had a real world to answer to, not just other economists.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Maybe instead of actively _alienating people_ and _getting rid of hobbies_ , you can find people who share the hobby of reading?

<comment><USER28> What's the use? If you'd all rather be reading, I can't imagine your parties are terribly thrilling

<comment><USER29> You could take turns getting rid of people intruding. Division of labour should give you more time to read.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I don't agree with some of Aaron's suggestions, but I enjoy reading and have thought about this some too. I have a FT job, a wife, a 7 yr old and a 7 mo old and I mangage to read 2-6 books a month. Here's what I do:

1\. Audiobooks - I subscribe to Audible.com and get books audiobooks from library and occasionally Librivox. I listen on my 20 minute commute, while I exercise, and when I'm doing mundane tasks like the dishes or cleaning.

2\. eBooks - I put the icons for Stanza and GoodReader on the homescreen of my iPhone. When I find myself about to tap a game or feed reader or YouTube or whatever I check myself and ask myself if I'm in a good state to read (e.g. awake enough, have more than 3 minutes). I don't feel like I'm denying myself the entertainment of another game of Doodle Jump as much as consciously encouraging myself to opt for something that I generally find to be more satisfying.

3\. Books by the bed. Nothing new there. I sometimes squeeze in a little time to read real, paper books before bedtime or when I wake up.

I haven't turned down the thermostat, alienated people, ordered stacks of library books or blocked any blogs (though I have drastically reduced the number of blogs I subscribe to). In fact, I feel like my life is generally the same as it was before I started reading a lot, except for the value I've found in what I read.

If you're curious, here's what I've been reading: <http://goodreads.com/zzzmarcus>

</comment><comment><USER31> I read about 40 books a year[1]. The main way I do this is not alienating my friends but by not watching TV. I have started watching DVDs and Netflix instant stream recently and this has cut into my reading time.

I do recommend requesting books at your library. It is awesome, like Netflix for books.

I would like to try blocking my favorite websites. I don't know if I would read more, but I certainly would work more.

[1] I have kept track of this since 2006, inspired by Kevin Drum. Here's my lists:

<http://justlooking.recursion.org/2009/Jan/2#books-2006>

<http://justlooking.recursion.org/2007/Dec/31#books-2007>

<http://justlooking.recursion.org/2009/Jan/2#books-2008>

<http://justlooking.recursion.org/2010/Jan/24#books-2009>

</comment><comment><USER32> > I've read a hundred books a year for the past couple years.

I read about 30 books a year. I read about 15 books for the first time, and then I reread a few of my favorites over and over.

I find some books are worth 1000x more than others. So when you've identified these great books, it would be a shame to not reread them frequently.

</comment><comment><USER33> I fully agree with the value implicit in having that library book deadline to push you to finish something that you wouldn't have finished otherwise (100 Years of Solitude was that book for me). At the same time, you can avail yourself of the cost-free access to try something that you can't find in bookstores in case you won't like it. I got to surprise myself with enjoying Asterios Polyp and hating Chris Ware's Jimmy Corrigan.

If you try and like it, please donate to your local public library! Just think of how much you're not spending on books and how much you'd spend for Netflix discs

As a side tip, I've usually got notions towards more books than I actually want to check out at a time, so creating an Amazon wish list is a really easy way to track interests.

</comment><comment><USER34> Beside the point of this article I'm amazed by the following: "The average person spends 1704 hours a year watching TV".

From my understanding an average work year is around 2000 hours. If 'the average person' worked in an enjoyable environment that was as pleasant as watching television or reading a book they could easily almost double their input at the workplace by cutting out television.

Whether that would double their output is a different question all together.

Would be interesting to see a breakdown of time spent watching television vs. per capita productivity for different first world countries.

<comment><USER34> Also note that 1074 hours per year is just shy of 3 hours per day, seven days per week. Unbelievable!

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I'm in agreement with one point at least.

I used to force myself to complete books that I wasn't enjoying out of some misplaced sense of achievement on completing a "difficult" book.

I had the misfortune of reading "A Chancer" by James Kelman (otherwise, one of my favourite authors.) I was on a 4 hour bus trip, I was a captive audience. It was dreadful.

I stopped reading the boring story that I didn't care about and let my mind wander for 4 hours instead.

After that I now feel empowered to put down a book that I'm not enjoying, even one I feel is meant to be "good for me."

</comment><comment><USER36> IMHO, at least 85% of the books sold at Amazon (for instance) are better not being published at all.

Being obsessive about reading books is nothing but an instance of OCD ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsessive%E2%80%93compulsive_di...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsessive%E2%80%93compulsive_disorder)).

Not daring of judging the author of this post. Yet, you cannot live this way for too long, it might be good for a while. If this situation become a constant form of life of one, that one is about to go insane.

</comment><comment><USER37> Why not to read more books:

[http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/schopenhauer/arthur/lit/chap...](http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/schopenhauer/arthur/lit/chapter5.html)

<comment><USER38> You might like this quote, which is in a similar vein:

      Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind
      too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who
      reads too much and uses his own brain too little
      falls into lazy habits of thinking.

          -- Albert Einstein

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Keep a book in the bathroom. It encourages one to slow down and let nature take its course, and get some education/entertainment at the same time.

<comment><USER40> Just make sure you really do slow down.

[http://www.esquire.com/features/answer-fella/toilet- reading-...](http://www.esquire.com/features/answer-fella/toilet-reading-1209)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> There was a site here on HN that was basically about what books you were reading and finding books your friends were reading. What was that site?

</comment><comment><USER42> A PDA with a good ebook reader boosted my reading rate by about 1 book a week. During the day, there's an innumerable amount of 1 - 10 minute pauses in your life that you can use to whip out a PDA and read a couple of pages.

Unfortunately, now I have an iPhone where the web browser is better than the ebook reader so I find myself reading hacker news rather than novels.

</comment><comment><USER43> I don't like carrying books around. An ebook reader has me reading a lot more now. Just load it full of good reads, and you feel obligated to get through it all. Also, scanning through HN for good book recommendations. I'm reading "The Art of Learning" right now, and loving it (it's got me back into chess!).

</comment><comment><USER44> I've found that simply setting aside some time every day or every couple of days for reading is sufficient. Once I start reading I have no problem continuing.

</comment><comment><USER45> I used to visit <http://www.bn.com> store on every saturday & sunday to read more books.

</comment><comment><USER46> My idea of hanging out is to read books with the other friend.

Though, my friend is a theoretical physic geek.

</comment><comment><USER47> He doesn't seem to motivate his post, but I think reading (more) (books) should not be a goal in itself...

</comment><comment><USER48> But if I blocked hacker news, how would I find this informative article?

</comment><comment><USER49> how to read more books: pirate them. or buy them online or to an ereader. however you get them, convenience is key. i read 2,000-3,000 pages a month since putting books on my computer. love it.

</comment><comment><USER50> I wonder if pg ever considers paying Aaron to stop writing stuff. People that read stuff like this have got to start wondering, "Is it really a good thing to get a payoff before I am ready for it?"

</comment><comment><USER51> Haha, my technique is also blocking websites. Here it goes, might be useful for someone: <http://pastebin.com/AhY3mgU4></comment>


Show HN: Client side rsync lbirary - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/gilbertchen/acrosync-library

<comment><USER2> I would loved to have this a few years ago, when we built dattabank.com (desktop backup), we used plain rsync in cygwin through a Multiplatform GUI based in Qt 4.8.x. More or loss what you are doing :) Sadly we run out of steam, tough local market here in Argentina, I'm always thinking in making the code open source, but not sure if it worth it to anyone.</comment>


NASA Announces Plans for Human Exploration of Deep Space - <AUTHOR> http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2011/dec/HQ_11-415_2011_Year_in_Review.html <comment><USER3> > In 2011, NASA began developing a heavy-lift rocket for the human exploration > of deep space

...which is sort of stupid, given that there are multiple private firms eager to deliver this service, and deliver it at a price point lower than NASA is remotely capable of achieving.

This silliness is explained by the fact that NASA employees want to work on this project, even if it's going to cost more and deliver less than other teams working on it.

As with regulatory capture <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture> and the principal agent problem <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_agent_problem>, the key insight here is that NASA is not run for the benefit of the people who cut the checks (the taxpayers) but for the people on the NASA payroll.

A wasteful rocket development program is not a COST ... it's a BENEFIT.

<comment><USER4> >This silliness is explained by the fact that NASA employees want to work on this project, even if it's going to cost more and deliver less than other teams working on it.

Not at all. It's explained by the fact that congress keeps putting more money in the space launch system than NASA itself requests; moving money to the project that NASA would like to use for its commercial programs.

It's not NASA being silly here – it's congress wanting to impress the world with its own space system.

<comment><USER5> Congress isn't trying to impress anybody. They're just playing the classic pork barrel game, by maintaining high paying jobs in key congressional districts through government spending.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> NASA should stick with what they do best - robot explorers. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, soon Pluto, plus Mercury, and the famous Mars twins - <USER2> excellent and great ROI projects. Lots of science, lots of knowledge. Their Humans in space program is dismal at best, and a complete waste of money at worse. Robots do it better, faster, and way way way cheaper with no significant risk. Humans in space is nothing but a political boondoggle.

</comment><comment><USER7> The title is wildly incorrect. This article is a year in review of things that NASA did in 2011. It's specifically not a new announcement of anything.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry. I can't edit it now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> SpaceX will beat them to it.

</comment><comment><USER9> "Qualified individuals can apply to become an astronaut through the federal government's USAJobs.gov website."

<http://www.usajobs.gov/GetJob/ViewDetails/302967000>

"Qualified" apparently means healthy, science or engineering bachelors', 20/20 vision.

</comment><comment><USER10> "...it was consistent with the NASA Authorization Act of 2010 to retain as much of the current workforce and its critical skills as possible."

Does this sound anything like what you would envision as a core qualification for a long term technical goal? Really?

</comment><comment><USER11> Yeah, and I'm announcing plans to explore Angelina Jolie's pants. Same likelihood of accomplishment.

Until we take NASA's mission seriously and fund them accordingly, it's all just empty talk, seemingly repeated every couple of weeks.</comment>


Stripe: new mobile libraries and Parse integration - <AUTHOR> https://stripe.com/blog/mobile-updates

<comment><USER2> This is awesome! Although, I think you should add that selling digital content in your app via this will cause your app to violate ToC's for Android and iOS as they already have in payment schemes for digital content. However, for physical purchases, this is a huge value add and makes life much easier for people! As a side thought, I wonder if this opens up competition for Square (maybe make an app that accepts payments only by taking a picture of a credit card?). I don't know if it does or not, but its worth some thought.

<comment><USER3> (I work at Stripe.)

Yep, we include such a warning in the docs: <https://stripe.com/docs/mobile/ios>.

As for Square, they're for in-store transactions. We're not targeting that segment at all.

<comment><USER2> Cool! I should rtfm once in awhile before I post! I just didn't want anyone to start a project only to have it removed for ToS violations! This is really cool, and excited to see what people build with it.</comment></comment></comment>


Google+ shutting down after users' data is exposed - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-45792349 <comment><USER2> This is a better article: [https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/08/google-plus- hack/](https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/08/google-plus-hack/)

Key takeaways:

* A security bug allowed third-party developers to access Google+ user profile data since 2015 until Google discovered and patched it in March, but decided not to inform the world.

* The company decided against informing the public because it would lead to "us coming into the spotlight alongside or even instead of Facebook despite having stayed under the radar throughout the Cambridge Analytica scandal" according to an internal memo.

* Google+ will cease all its consumer services while winding down over the next 10-months with an opportunity for users to export their data while Google refocuses on making G+ an enterprise product.

* The consumer version of Google+ currently has low usage and engagement: 90 percent of Google+ user sessions are less than five seconds."

</comment><comment><USER3> Google+ still had 500,000 users? That's the only really surprising part to me.

<comment><USER4> I never knew Google rotated through that many employees...

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Dupe of most of these five posts: [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=google%2B&sort=byPopularity&pr...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=google%2B&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=last24h&type=story)

</comment><comment><USER6> The larger the company the more they roll over and give up on new initiatives. There are a lot of things Google plus could have done, such as when searching on Google save the link publicly to Google plus similar to how Youtube works for videos. At least it is easier if you have a startup and someone says what if Google comes into your space... you can point to all the times Google gives up just because things need more innovation. Google wants to hit a home run every time up to the plate and they forget you have to play in the Minor Leagues and prove you are worth moving up.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Ignoring for a moment that most of those 500K users had probably forgotten they even had accounts, what strikes me as particularly shameful is that Google decided against informing anyone back in March when they discovered the bug.

If they couldn't tell exactly who was affected, or whether any data had in fact been improperly accessed, shouldn't they at least have notified users of the possibility their private data might have been leaked?

Oh, but that might have drawn "regulatory interest".... much better to sweep it under the carpet and hope nobody notices.

</comment><comment><USER7> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18169027](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18169027)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18169243](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18169243)

</comment><comment><USER8> imagine working on google+ for the last 8 years

</comment><comment><USER9> This is great news! Seemed like myspace to me.

</comment><comment><USER10> When Google's hegemony gonna end ?

</comment><comment><USER11> Surprised it took this long</comment>


Elon's Musk - <AUTHOR> https://elonsmusk.co/ <comment><USER2> Looks like checkout actually works... out of curiosity, what is the legality of using an actual likeness of Elon Musk?

<comment><USER3> I'm more curious how they extracted 'essence of Musk' from Musk, is he a partner? lol

<comment><USER4> No musk was harmed in the making of Elon's Musk

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Our product and brand is intentionally a parody, and is not connected to the real Elon Musk."

</comment><comment><USER6> Welcome to the era of the living Meme.</comment>


C vs Java Complete Comparison - <AUTHOR> http://pixelstech.net/article/index.php?id=1317919599

<comment><USER2> Poorly-written article. First of all, whenever you use "complete" in your headline you better make sure you deliver. On a topic such as comparing these two so very popular programming languages, such statement is overly ambitious and I personally read it with skepticism, hence (maybe) my criticism below. Moving on to the text. Focuses on syntax only which certainly isn't the complete picture. No examples provided, no references to support any of his statements. On top of it, some incorrect statements, too, as tgd pointed out. Definitely not "complete". And then there's the obvious fact it's subjectively written. The author tries hard to praise Java. Yes, some of this praise is reasonable (to me, at least) but without any examples and data, it just makes it a shallow argument and bets on the reader's personal experience. Other praise is just vague - how does eliminating pointers "makes Java programs more robust" ? I personally don't know so would have been great to learn this.

</comment><comment><USER3> Some of these comparisons are accurate, however java has had variable length argument lists since Java 5.0. Enumerations are also supported.</comment>


Blind speakers gesture like their sighted counterparts: study (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://www.superlinguo.com/post/149950073272/blind-people-gesture-and-why-thats-kind-of-a-big <comment><USER2> 1\. We are born with the ability to gesture, and not something that is learned directly. So it is a in-born trait. You get the ability of speech, and gesturing tags along. (but most likely, evolutionary speaking, gesturing came first).

2\. Gesturing is linked to speech/language. Different languages will have different gestures, not because they learned them, but by the grammatical structure/intonation of the language.

It will have been interesting to see multi-lingual people, and see if the level of gesturing changes when they switch language.

"The results showed that blind Turkish speakers gesture like their sighted counterparts, and the same for English speakers. All Turkish speakers gestured significantly differently from all English speakers, regardless of sightedness. This means that these particular gestural patterns are something that's deeply linked to the grammatical properties of a language, and not something that we learn from looking at other speakers."

<comment><USER3> I wonder what it is about Italian that leads to the stereotype, then?

<comment><USER2> It is not just Italians, but latin based languages (Spanish, French) are also known to use more gestures, while Germanic ones, a lot less... eg. German, Swedish folks almost come out as 'robotic' compared to Mediterranean countries.

<comment><USER4> I speak English and Spanish and I have almost no hand gestures. But I see other English speakers that are mono-lingual and they have extensive hand gestures. I wonder what is up with that?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I went to high school in Japan for a year. Something that tripped me up for a while is the gesture for "come here". It's equivalent to the English gesture for "go away". (Try gesturing "go away" like you're shooing a bug away and "come here" like you want to tell someone a secret. Your hand flips 180 degrees, but it's basically the same gesture.)

<comment><USER6> My Indian coworkers shake their head side to side for yes and no. When I first starting working with them I was always a little mad that they never agreed with me until I realized what was going on.

You can tell if it's yes or no depending on speed but thanks to covid WFH for months I've forgotten which is which. Going back to the office is going to be an adjustment.

<comment><USER7> There are something like four distinct head-waggle motions with different meanings.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It would be interesting to know if there is any difference in the types of gestures employed [https://2012books.lardbucket.org/books/a-primer-on- communica...](https://2012books.lardbucket.org/books/a-primer-on- communication-studies/s04-02-types-of-nonverbal-communicati.html)

[http://changingminds.org/explanations/behaviors/body_languag...](http://changingminds.org/explanations/behaviors/body_language/gesture_type.htm)

I tend to use metaphoric gestures a lot by splitting complicated subjects up into groups, and then using gestures to illustrate the group I am discussing at the moment.

<comment><USER9> I've read that in ASL, one may establish a "pronoun" by signing in a location, and then using that location as an endpoint for further signs. Is this true?

<comment><USER8> yes [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002438411...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0024384113002167)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'd love a study comparing Chimpanzee gestures to humans.

I'd expect similarities!

</comment><comment><USER11> One think I noted is that as eye contact, and therefore line of sight is not so important for blind speakers, They tend to be more expressive with their head movements.

</comment><comment><USER12> Url changed from [https://allthingslinguistic.com/post/150001033323/blind- peop...](https://allthingslinguistic.com/post/150001033323/blind-people- gesture-and-why-thats-kind-of-a-big), which points to this.

A related article is [https://www.thecut.com/2016/09/blind-people-gesture- like-sig...](https://www.thecut.com/2016/09/blind-people-gesture-like-sighted- people.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you dang, I originally read the first link on my phone and didn't notice that it was quoting another blog.</comment></comment>


Which Linux should I install? - <AUTHOR>

Hi everyone:
I've decided to install Linux on a hand-me-down laptop I just got. I'm debating which one to install and since everyone here is pretty smart I thought I'd see what you all recommend. The only requirement I have is that it's free.
What do you use? <comment><USER2> I've used FreeBSD or OpenBSD on my laptops for years but I've recently given up; while they're both nice operating systems (including on the desktop, especially if you use DesktopBSD) they lack some things I need (mostly embedded software development tools and easy support for things such as flash video). So I'm now a Kubuntu user (it's like Ubuntu but with the K Desktop Environment instead of Gnome). I like the way all KDE applications interoperate with each other (well, this works if you use KDE applications; fortunately there are a lot of great KDE applications including a full office suite, an IDE, the wonderful Amarok audio player, etc.) It may not be as good as Mac OS X but I think it's a decent alternative. And KDE is very configurable and overall well designed.

Now, the bad thing about Kubuntu is that the out-of-the-box experience could be better. You actually have to install support for proprietary codecs and things like that yourself (but it's easy).

A final thing: I've experienced the FreeBSD ports system, the NetBSD pkgsrc system, the OpenBSD ports system and, while they're all good systems, I have to say that the apt system shipped with (k)Ubuntu is by far the best. It just works.

</comment><comment><USER3> Any flavor of ubuntu ought to work well for a beginner. I would get the latest stable version, but be ready to have some possible driver issues. It's become better over time, but the laptop driver scene is still kind of dicey for Linux. What kind of laptop is it?

<comment><USER4> Ubuntu +1. You can look here for stuff that doesn't work with Linux:

<http://www.leenooks.com>

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I would recommend ubuntu dapper.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestion!</comment></comment>


The Bomb for Beginners: A DIY Guide to Going Nuclear - <AUTHOR> http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,681525,00.html

<comment><USER2> The ip-global version is more nicely laid out.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1219608></comment>


Stepanov interview: origin of STL - <AUTHOR> http://www.stlport.org/resources/StepanovUSA.html# <comment><USER3> "In 1976, still back in the USSR, I got a very serious case of food poisoning from eating raw fish. While in the hospital, in the state of delirium, I suddenly realized that the ability to add numbers in parallel depends on the fact that addition is associative. (So, putting it simply, STL is the result of a bacterial infection.) In other words, I realized that a parallel reduction algorithm is associated with a semigroup structure type. That is the fundamental point: algorithms are defined on algebraic structures."

This has got to be one of the best outcomes of sickness in computing history!

I _love_ STL, it's the major reason I stick with C++ rather than switching to Java et al. It is extremely well thought-out and most algorithms have clear complexity guarantees. I think it forms an example that libraries in other languages should strive for.

<comment><AUTHOR> "[Java] might be successful - after all, MS DOS was - and it might be a profitable thing for all your readers to learn Java, but it has no intellectual value whatsoever."

I agree with your opinion about the STL it is indeed very well thought-out and very efficient. It is a shame that concept did not make it into C++0x[1] as it could had help STL usage by preventing the cryptic errors[2]

[1] For very good reason, I understood.

[2] STLFilt can help though <http://www.bdsoft.com/tools/stlfilt.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> And oldy but a goody. I like to re-read it every couple of years or so; Stepanov is delightfully bonkers and clearly operating on a rarified intellectual plane that, with binoculars and on a clear day, I can sort of make out the general form of; but the interview is so well done that he comes across as nearly human.

<comment><USER5> I can't find a date on the article, when was it written? It still speaks of 'the standard' without referencing 0x, is it from the 2000-2004 era or earlier?

<comment><USER6> The Wayback Machine first picked up this page in June 2000.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The STL is by far the best thought-out algorithm and data structure library I've ever used. I miss it frequently when programming in Python, but in many cases where having optimal algorithms and data structures actually matters, the quantities of data I'm dealing with mandate C++ over Python anyway.

</comment><comment><USER8> Stepanov recently gave a talk at Stanford's EE380 about his book _Elements of Programming_. <http://www.stanford.edu/class/ee380/Abstracts/101103.html> [http://ee380.stanford.edu/cgi- bin/videologger.php?target=101...](http://ee380.stanford.edu/cgi- bin/videologger.php?target=101103-ee380-300.asx)

</comment><comment><USER9> I using STL 8+ years, but mostly because it's a standard, not because of it's good design. In fact, combination of C++ with STL can be quite ugly and very verbose:

      //for each element in vector v
      vector<T>::const_iterator it;
      for(it = v.begin(); it != v.end(); ++it)
      {
         ...
      }

or

      // if there is element Value in vector v
      if(find(v.begin(), v.end(), Value) != v.end())
      {
        ...
      }

I'm not talking about what pain it's, to write your own custom iterators.

I ended up using my own macros to cover verboseness of STL. Boost also provide some macros to ease working with STL, like FOREACH.

In a nutshell STL is a hack stretching pointer/iterator concept to generic algorithms and data structures on the host OOP language.

The best generic data structures library I saw, was in Clu language. Clu is all about ADT (Abstract Data Types).

Absence of closures in current C++ implementation also not very favorable for generic programming.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm surprised this hasn't been posted yet given the rarity of such interviews and the interesting history the STL has.

Coming up with something which was at the time entirely against mainstream practices and imbue it into the standard of a language as widely used as C++ takes a very special kind of person/s.

</comment><comment><USER11> Stepanov's STL has inspired the design of ranges and algorithms in the D programming language standard library. <http://www.digitalmars.com/d/2.0/phobos/std_algorithm.html>

</comment><comment><USER12> Best quote 'Occam was a strange fellow anyways. As the editor of his Opera Omnia Gideon Gal used to say: "But the fellow was really mad!" '

</comment><comment><USER13> "Answer: Yes. STL is not object oriented. I think that object orientedness is almost as much of a hoax as Artificial Intelligence...."

</comment><comment><USER14> <harsh> Java is clearly an example of a money oriented programming (MOP). As the chief proponent of Java at SGI told me: "Alex, you have to go where the money is." But I do not particularly want to go where the money is - <USER2> usually does not smell nice there. </harsh></comment>


Which loads faster? Pit websites against each other. - <AUTHOR> http://whichloadsfaster.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Here's the associated blog post from the developer: [http://onecreativeblog.com/post/781952553/announcing- whichlo...](http://onecreativeblog.com/post/781952553/announcing- whichloadsfaster)

</comment><comment><USER2> <http://google.com> 2.7 × faster (1198 ms / 3191 ms) than <https://google.com>

<comment><USER3> Pretty much the same with google.de/google.de (36%), my blog (52%) and xkcd.com (44%). This killed it for me actually. Another observation is that the right window is always faster at my end. Can anybody else confirm this?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Dunno if this holds up for others, but Bing is substantially faster than Google's homepage to load, even with all of the crazy graphics... Impressive.

<comment><USER5> Due to the distribution of servers, and the way data is routed about the internet, i would imagine it would be different for everyone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> looks interesting, but serial should be the default mode.

<comment><USER7> You might be right. I considered that, but it doesn't have as much of an impact factor on the user, which is really important for getting the word out about performance (why the site exists in the first place).

I probably doesn't matter too much as long as you have a ~3Mbps connection or higher (see Mike Belshe's "Effective Bandwidth of HTTP" graph on [http://www.belshe.com/2010/05/24/more-bandwidth-doesnt- matte...](http://www.belshe.com/2010/05/24/more-bandwidth-doesnt-matter- much/)) because the TCP transmission rate can't ramp up high enough on each object to saturate the connection. It's possible, however that the objects will interact with each other by causing differing queueing latency and possibly loss in the bottleneck router and by changing the order of scheduler events on the client OS. Also, it may be better subject the two pages to the same network conditions (at least in the last mile) while they're loading, esp. on mobile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The reporting and accuracy is wrong.

I clearly see Bing loading images AFTER the timer has stopped.

This is just timing the main html, it's wrong.

<comment><USER7> I believe Bing loads images asynchronously after the DOM content has loaded.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Bing is faster on mine (FF)

On others it's google that is faster (They use Chrome)

So browsers seems to affect it too.

</comment><comment><USER10> This uses iframes to pit websites against each other. Twitter breaks out of iframes and so do other websites.

<comment><USER11> Any idea how to prevent this from happening? Google seems to have figured it out in their google images iframes, but I can't for the life of me figure out how they did it.

<comment><USER12> It looks like google parse the page serverside to detect break out of frames scripts. Here's a manually engineered example - I searched for a demo of a break out of frames script and forced the URL into a google images request:

[http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.internet.c...](http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.internet.com/icom_includes/footers/img/icom_logo_qsfooter.png&imgrefurl=http://javascript.internet.com/navigation/manual- frame-break- demo.html&usg=__nA7P9hJ3tihz2fLto_VlTZ96K2M=&h=891&w=883&sz=234&hl=en&start=1&itbs=1&tbnid=IYlLzX-w4vX2AM:&tbnh=146&tbnw=145&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dfoo%26hl%3Den%26gbv%3D2%26tbs%3Disch:1)

THe page just displays a "you are being redirected" message straight away, so it must be detected at the server level. Smart.

<comment><USER12> Having said that, if you look at a genuine result from twitter:

[http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://a1.twimg.com/p...](http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://a1.twimg.com/profile_images/108462666/home_sscredits_bigger.jpg&imgrefurl=http://twitter.com/homeproject&usg=__gzb2ICTasTI-R6GrhHpOIfNxoVs=&h=3780&w=2835&sz=442&hl=en&start=1&itbs=1&tbnid=_uftMx2399b4tM:&tbnh=150&tbnw=113&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dsite:twitter.com%26hl%3Den%26gbv%3D2%26tbs%3Disch:1)

google doesn't detect or stop that breaking out of frames. But maybe twitter are just managing to avoid detection by google's code..

The code on that page is:

        	<script type="text/javascript">
    	//<![CDATA[
    	if (window.top !== window.self) {document.write = "";window.top.location = window.self.location; setTimeout(function(){document.body.innerHTML='';},1);window.self.onload=function(evt){document.body.innerHTML='';};}
    	//]]>
    	</script>

which doesn't seem like it would be too hard to detect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Here's one I didn't expect: HN loads 5.5x faster than reddit.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, I would have put HN at least 10x faster. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Very cool idea. Could play with this for hours.

</comment><comment><USER16> neatly done and pretty useful.

</comment><comment><USER17> very cool!</comment>


Stock Picks from Space (2019) - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/05/stock-value-satellite-images-investing/586009/ <comment><USER2> > Investors are using real-time satellite images to predict retailers' sales. > Is that cheating?

This is no more "cheating" than using any other pseudo-publicly available sources of information, such as credit card purchase data, yelp/foursquare/FB checkins, or whatever. It's entirely legal in the same way sitting outside Macy's and counting the number of people who enter and leave through the public entrances.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's not cheating, but it gives one a perspective on just how far humanity can go in figuring out ways some humans can get an advantage over other humans in a silly, arbitrary, zero-sum PvP game we've somehow evolved.

I know that's unfair. But the way I feel, there's lots of absurdity in this. In a more reasonable world, if you wanted to know when some CEO is leaving on vacation, you'd just _ask them_. You wouldn't have to spy on them with a satellite.

<comment><USER4> I don't think investing in shares is zero-sum. Day trading might be, but so far _most people_ win in long term investment.

<comment><USER5> The act of trading is zero-sum(slightly worse when you consider taxes and fees). On one side, a person is getting a right to an uncertain cash flow based on the companies performance and giving up a lump sum of cash in the present. On the other side the person is giving up the uncertain future cashflows for a lump sum in the present. Both people can win based on their risk/liquidity preferences but one person's upside is the other person's downside.

<comment><USER6> I'm not sure you're using the terminology zero-sum correctly. Yes bad investments can be zero-sum, but as a whole, the economy is positive-sum. Positive sum doesn't mean "Everybody gets paid the same", it means that the value output from a closed system exceeds the input (e.g. greater than the sum of its parts)

If you're referring to derivitives, you could technically refer to it as zero sum, since speculating on a contract between two parties doesn't necessarily create value. But there's an argument to be made that options actually help liquidity, and the act of being able to purchase insurance contracts on investments reduces risk, meaning more people are likely to invest, which does, in the end, actually create value.

<comment><USER3> > _but as a whole, the economy is positive-sum_

But is that due to trading? I thought it's due to population growth and progress of technology creating more wealth faster.

A locally zero-sum game in a growing environment may not feel like zero-sum.

<comment><USER7> Trading helps the society to determine various prices and therefore makes it possible to allocate resources more efficiently.

<comment><USER3> It does, but I get the distinct feeling that we're putting cart before the horse. I mean, we ought to be able to correctly price wheat and steel better than through ever-growing financial industries and having people use satellites to spy on CEOs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Why you should buy index funds, Exhibit 494920".

It's not cheating, but it's something you probably can't compete against, so you shouldn't try.

<comment><USER9> You don't need to compete, stock price tells the story.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> There's a strong case for firms to publish more and higher quality data now the web makes it easy. Forget sattelite images use carpark stats from entry and exit and so on. Many of these equity analysts will do your job of analysing the data for you giving you a bigger lead on a developing problem or strategy failure allowing for sooner correction. On the flip side, earlier notice of strategy success for quicker ramp up decisions.

"Yes but we do more sophisticated data analysis anyway" \- firstly, I call BS on that CEO & management career self-marketing and secondly, if I'm wrong and it's already being done at an excellent level there is nothing to fear putting it out there - you can spank analysts doing a shoddy job with hard analysis scotching undeserved "impression, zeitgeist and rumour" based negative market sentiment.

Of course every board of directors should have an IT committee and a data committee to go with the audit committee with a similarly highly qualified chair of those comittees. It's basically unthinkable not to have a very qualified accountant on the board. Should be the same for IT and Data - although IBM Global Services, Accenture, Oracle etc etc will campaign heavily against having people who know what they're doing on the board!

Chair of the data committee would be a crucial figure in earnings calls and so on - they better know their stats!

</comment><comment><USER11> Using Foursquare data seems easier to me. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14052444](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14052444)

</comment><comment><USER12> Investment idea: build a bunch of projectors that fool orbiting satellites into reading empty parking lots as full, then short retailers' stocks at earnings time, knowing that all the big smart money will be on the other side.

<comment><USER13> Filling spots with inflatable "dummy" cars would probably work better - or you know just cover your parking with canvas shades haha

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This type of play usually used for short term buying and selling. I.e options.

</comment><comment><USER15> Satellite data has been used for a very, very long time.</comment>