Silk Road 2.0 Launches - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/11/06/silk-road-2-0-launches-promising-a-resurrected-black-market-for-the-dark-web/ <comment><USER3> I'd never buy heroin from a website, but I see the Silk Road as cyber-civil- disobedience, and I hope the persona of DPR and the site itself are as unsinkable as they claim.

The drug war is a ghastly thing, and the number of people we lock up in the US is more shameful than our foreign policy. You can begrudge the first DPR his lame security, shady murder contracts, and ill-gotten fortune, but he's the product of our system, and his shame is our shame.

<comment><USER4> I don't see the Silk Roads of the world making much difference with regard to the drug war.

Right now Silk Road is the eBay of drugs, where convenience is it's competitive advantage. I can get some drug without visiting a shady person in some shady place, but the drugs (in general) are still coming to the US the bloody, violent way via paramilitaries, druglords, etc. A huge part of the US war on drugs takes place among and between those parties, with the US not always supporting the side you might expect.

I'd be more excited about an Etsy of drugs, where people could buy whatever they want straight from the source, bypassing the blood trail. Good luck getting packages delivered from Afghanistan or Colombia though.

<comment><USER5> You can use digital black markets like the silk road as an analogue for legalization though. Forget how the vendors obtain the drugs for a second and just analyze the differences in distribution and consumption between offline and online drug trade.

Offline there is: \- competition via violence \- political narcoterrorism \- profit maximization by product dilution \- profit maximization by product deception (most street MDMA is amphetamine+nBOME mixture)

Online there is: \- competition via quality, price (violence impossible in anonymous marketplace) \- political separation via anonymity \- drastically reduced product dilution (people do reviews with sources like ecstasydata.org) \- drastically reduced product deception (see "The LSD Avengers" for example)

When you contrast these aspects you see that the online marketplaces do operate like a free market with the biggest difference being the incentives associated with deceptive vending. I think thats valuable just because it provides a real world simulation for what variables of legalization would look like without forcing any one country to take the initial plunge by themselves.

<comment><USER6> Violence amongst end user drug dealers is very rare and confined to specific, very poor, areas. Wholesale is the only place where you start to see significant amounts of cash, and hence most of the problems, and that has zero differences between offline and on. There is no 'political narcoterrorism' between the guys selling 8ths of coke in the neighborhood. You're also mischaracterizing the drug trade with regards to consumer habits. Drug users communicate about dealers and products the same way people communicate about every other local business. The internet has greatly expanded and enhanced this ability, but prior to the Internet, local businesses, just like local drug dealers, operated by word of mouth and competed in many facets of service. We know this as drug quality has gone up and up over the years.

Remember, the vast majority of offline drug deals do not consist of driving to the hood to pick up something from a gangster. I think this mis-perception clouds a lot of the analysis of operations like the Silk Road.

<comment><USER7> The majority of personal use sales are not conducted with a "gangster", true, but the small-time college ecstasy or coke dealer conducting those personal use sales IS making regular trips to the hood, purchasing from people who are hardened criminals. They expose themselves to a lot of risk in doing this.

You don't have to move far up the chain before you see some serious violence. Personal use weed dealer? Probably not going to get killed. But robbed? Yes, definitely, seen it happen many times. Personal use coke, ecstasy, heroin dealer? Much more likely to experience violence. The dealer one level above, supplying the personal use dealers? They get killed all the time, despite not being drug kingpins in any sense. It only costs 1000$-2000$ to have someone killed in many parts of the US, so that should say something about the chance of violence that small-time dealers face.

Silk Road was more than personal use sales, I'd bet the majority of its revenue came from pounds and half pounds of weed, sheets of LSD, and orders of 500+ ecstasy pills. Heroin and coke haven't caught on as much yet in the online scene, with prices still a little above what well-connected users can get on the streets, but give it time. Also keep in mind that the online drug scene is more than just SR/BMR/Sheep and that there are private forums that deal strictly in wholesale.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Yesterday my cousin was found dead. He had committed suicide. It was the end of a long battle he had been waging against himself. Drugs have destroyed this small part of my family, but i'm really glad to see something like the silk road revitalized.

I think the sooner we realize how fleeting a battle it is to fight them, the sooner we can place the money where it belongs.

My cousin is dead now, but I think my tax money would be better spent helping him kick his habit, than locking him up.

<comment><USER9> I've been an active Libertarian for several years now, and just looking at the countless stories I've heard like this leads me to hold the same belief as you do. It truly is tragic the way many people are simply thrown in a cell rather than helped with what is clearly an illness. Addiction itself is not a choice. Using a drug is, but the consequences that follow oftentimes cannot be overcome. I'm sorry for your loss.

<comment><USER10> > this leads me to hold the same belief as you do

His belief was that tax money should be spent on rehabilitation instead of the drug war. Shouldn't you be against using tax money for this and instead supporting private charities?

<comment><USER11> Being Libertarian doesn't necessary mean you have to be against all tax. For example (in the Libertarian point of view), taxes should only be used to maintain order, that being said the government should run prisons. However, in the case of drugs a rehabilitation program likely would be cheaper than a drug war and still under the classification of "maintaining order." Since drug users can often be violent, unable to drive, etc. and could cause harm.

Therefore, it's actually better and fair to use a small tax for rehabilitation than it is to use prisons to keep drug users locked up. This is according to the Libertarian point of view.. Strictly Libertarians are against tax, however in this case a more middle road can be argued for and be within the Libertarian's view.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Senator Tom Carper's statement on the launch:

"This new website – launched barely a month after Federal agents shut down the original Silk Road -- underscores the inescapable reality that technology is dynamic and ever-evolving and that government policy needs to adapt accordingly. Rather than play 'whack-a-mole' with the latest website, currency, or other method criminals are using in an effort to evade the law, we need to develop thoughtful, nimble and sensible federal policies that protect the public without stifling innovation and economic growth. Our committee intends to have that conversation – among others - at our hearing this month on virtual currency."

[http://www.hsgac.senate.gov/media/majority-media/chairman- ca...](http://www.hsgac.senate.gov/media/majority-media/chairman-carper- statement-on-the-unveiling-of-the-so-called-silk-road-20-website)

<comment><USER13> This scares me more than reassures me. Given the US government's history of response to questions like these, I suspect this message will get through, minus the "without stifling innovation" part.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Not unexpected of course, the demand for narcotics and other services is still out there. I can't help but wonder if this isn't a bit like becoming the new head of some terrorist organization, the target is now painted day-glo orange and we know that it is not only on the 'radar' of law enforcement, its a priority target. The clock starts, and a number of resources are now tasked with taking you out.

Of course the genius of the Princess Bride with respect to the DPR character is that _the character_ cannot be killed or captured or prosecuted, because it isn't really a person, it is an idea. And that was wonderfully illustrated in the book, film, and now in world around us.

<comment><USER15> I think it will be interesting to watch, no doubt this time round the creators have been anonymous from the get go. Avoiding all the errors that DPR/Ulbricht made would be quite simple given the knowledge we have from court documents of how he was caught.

If these guys get caught then I think we can more safely assume that it was a case of parallel construction after the targets were initially identified by the NSA/GCHQ tracking them via Tor. Only the biggest dealers and the operators would be worthy of the resources required to undertake that task.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I have a sneaking suspicion that it's a honeypot. Just a hunch.

<comment><USER17> Could be, but would they really dare to mock themselves in the honeypot? If it is a honeypot, it's very convincing and elaborate.

<comment><USER18> I would say, that's exactly what you want from your honeypot.

What I don't really know, I guess, are the legal implications of entraping people on such a mass scale.

I'm also not sure about the usefulness of such a honeypot, since you can't actually track the buyers. Just because someone pays you to send drugs to some address, doesn't mean it's their own address

<comment><USER19> IANAL, but my understanding of entrapment is that law enforcement has to persuade you to break a law that you wouldn't otherwise have broken - <USER2> example if you walk up to a cop and say "sell me some weed" that isn't entrapment, unless he initiated it and persuaded you to try to buy some weed - so if this site _was_ a honeypot, it wouldn't be entrapment, as buyers and sellers are both going there without any persuasion, because they already want to do something illegal.

That said, I agree with other comments here as to why it's unlikely to be a honeypot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is just an example of the massive waste of resources used up by the drug war (assuming this is what it claims to be, point stands regardless). So the Silk Road was shut down, but all that did was reduce the available supply of the drugs. It did nothing to address the demand side of drugs, which is really what drives everything. All attacking the supply does is make it more lucrative for those who are able to evade law enforcement.

There is some role for law enforcement to play in discouraging the supply of drugs (if the society we live in remains one where drug use is considered negative). However, the vast majority of resources should go towards addressing the demand (making people want them less, treatment, etc., I don't mean just arrest all the buyers).

</comment><comment><USER21> My favorite bit is Forbes' publishing software automatically linking the handle "Steve Jobs" to their profile of the real Steve Jobs. Classy!

</comment><comment><USER22> There is cool interesting feature — two factor auth. But not your usual one. It ask you to decrypt random string encrypted with your public GPG key (you provide it in prefs).

</comment><comment><USER23> A serious question: while I have nothing against Silk Road (the drug war is a waste of money anyways), aren't people afraid of putting stuff in their body that they had an anonymous person send to them? I mean, unless the seller has a reputation, isn't there is a substantial risk of using that drug?

Are my fears unfound? On one hand, the idea of buying drugs online is probably more safe than doing it on the streets, but the anonymity this offers has a potential downside like the one I mentioned above.

<comment><USER24> Do you ever buy anything at grocery store, drug store, restaurant that you put in your body?

There is risk in everything. Generally people aren't sociopaths and aren't out to harm others. Risk is minimal but exists.

Sellers on Silkroad do have reputation? Anonymous does not mean "unknown".

<comment><USER25> > Do you ever buy anything at grocery store, drug store, restaurant that you > put in your body?

Not really a fair comparison. If a grocery store assaults or defrauds you, you have legal recourse.

There is nothing you can do if an illicit transaction fails.

The rest of what you say is true, of course.

<comment><USER26> You can leave bad feedback, and take it to the dispute center to force the seller to defend themselves to the SR admins.

This is more recourse than you have in practice against a grocery store if they refuse to give you a refund - what are you going to do, sue them?

<comment><USER27> If a grocery store harms you in an illegal way you they can be punished by the force of the state in a variety of ways. The same is not true of a anonymous person on an inbound tor site.

<comment><USER26> > If a grocery store harms you in an illegal way you they can be punished by > the force of the state in a variety of ways.

Hypothetically. If you have enough money. And enough evidence. Good luck with that. I'd rather take my chances in SR's dispute resolution center...

<comment><USER27> You act like the health department is some kind of ivory tower

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Never, ever, _ever_ trust anyone or anything that suddenly reappears after a major bust by the authorities. _NEVER_.

Move on.

<comment><USER29> One would think that they'd start moving to technologies that are decentralized using technologies such as distributed hash tables. This puts the onus on the users to have a client app that helps host the transaction system for everyone else.

The clients would openly share the buy and sell orders and then communication would moved to an encrypted channel that supports perfect forward secrecy.

The only part that ostensibly needs to be centralized is a ledger maintaining the reputation tied to some pseudonym.

i.e. the identity of DPR is passed along to all the users of the site collectively.

<comment><USER30> You don't need the ledger to be centralized either. A bitcoin style blockchain stores transaction histories tied to a specific set of keys/wallets. In the future I imagine some sort of reputation system will be maintained using this.

<comment><USER31> Ya. Wouldn't it just have to be something like they are doing with Namecoin (decentralised DNS)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> [http://silkroad6ownowfk.onion/](http://silkroad6ownowfk.onion/)

</comment><comment><USER33> Hopefully it won't be another "Project: Black Flag", [http://buttcoin.org/silk-road-replacement-project-black- flag...](http://buttcoin.org/silk-road-replacement-project-black-flag-closes- shop-owner-thanks-everyone-free-coins)

</comment><comment><USER34> The sudden rise of terribly programmed, horribly insecure marketplaces as hidden services since SR went down has been absolutely fascinating.

<comment><USER35> Any particular reason you're assuming this one is terribly programmed and horribly insecure? Other than past experience, I guess.

<comment><USER34> The litany of hidden service marketplace failures in the past month alone is enough to make me have little faith in this endeavour. I'm just glad im watching on as am outsider: quite a few people in desperate situations are losing lots of money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Well, that was inevitable.

<comment><USER37> I think the word you're after is INCONCEIVABLE

<comment><USER38> You keep using that word.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Is there a place he could run this from and be safe? Like a country without extradition where it would be difficult for US gov to come in and arrest you anyway.

The single dumbest thing the last DPR did was continue living in the US

<comment><USER40> I don't remember the exact details, but I don't think that was DPR's mistake. I thought he had ordered some fake passports that were intercepted.

<comment><USER41> He also promoted the site from a forum account with his real name and real name gmail account in another post.

<comment><USER39> True, that was very stupid. But, if he were in a place where the US gov couldn't operate, that wouldn't have really mattered

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> As I've never heard of the site before it was seized, the DEA gave it some good advertising. They probably will have grown the site much quicker by trying to stop it.

</comment><comment><USER43> So how do we know that this is not the FBI waiting for people to place orders/post listings so they can arrest them?

</comment><comment><USER11> They claimed to have caught the Dread Pirate Roberts... but then again who's to say?

</comment><comment><USER44> I am serious here too: I don't support the website's initiative. I endorse the technical aspect of it as a way to test whether the design is optimal and achievable, but in no way would I ever support drug dealers.

<comment><USER45> An honest question: Why not?

<comment><USER44> 1\. I am against illegal drugs. It is up to the society to have a consent whether x drug should be legal or not. For example, marijuana.

2\. Liability and safety. It's safer to assume your pharmacist is giving the right drug and the right amount and the right quality. I am all for reducing the cost and I think we should lower the cost whenever possible, but getting through silk road because it's cheaper/easier to get doesn't meet my standard.

<comment><USER46> I, too am against illegal drugs like heroin, but I believe legalizing all drugs would help everyone, both the addicts and normal people. Taking away the black market would reduce crime and stop the flow of money into powerful crime organizations. The addict would benefit from cleaner drugs and would not have to break the law to get their fix.

I have seen heroin ruin people's lives and I wish with all my heart that it could be eradicated. However, this is just not possible, and we have to figure out how to live in a world that includes such terrible things. The only people who benefit from criminalization are law enforcement and prison owners.

<comment><USER47> > I have seen heroin ruin people's lives and I wish with all my heart that it > could be eradicated.

Not disagreeing with you, but I (personally) have seen far more people's lives ruined by legal drugs such as alcohol, tobacco and various painkillers than I've seen from hard/illegal drugs (heroin/crack/cannabis/etc).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Honeypot

</comment><comment><USER49> The interesting thing to me is that, in theory, the same kinds of extreme privacy-protecting, anonymity-maximizing measures which can be used to host any kind of Silk Road, or to visit it and use it, can ALSO be used by... wait for it... wait for it... yes the law enforcement folks. In other words, how can you be sure that this new Silk Road 2.0 is not a sting honey pot setup by the FBI itself?

I don't buy stuff like that and never will. But if I did, I wouldn't go near anything using the Silk Road name after a seizure/arrest has been publicly documented.

Remember, on the Internet, nobody knows if you're a dog. Or a teenager living in your mom's basement in Russia. Or an FBI agent munching on donuts in Washington DC. Etc.

<comment><USER50> to be honest. When I first read it, I assumed that it was just a rouge organization looking to defraud the ex customers of the old Silk Road.

As a black hat, that would of being my first play. The presence of ex Silk Road moderators does a little bit to assuage those fears, but they could be fooled just as any other person. Truly, I would never trust this Silk Road. Then again, I wouldn't of trusted the old Silk Road either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> pretty sure its a honeypot.

</comment><comment><USER52> Domain registered by FBI</comment>


Comdb2 is open sourced - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/bloomberg/comdb2 <comment><USER2> WOOT

[https://github.com/bloomberg/comdb2](https://github.com/bloomberg/comdb2)

Congrats!

Do you still get the Ship It award sticker if you left the company before it shipped?

</comment><comment><USER3> VLDB 2016 paper with some benchmarks here: [http://www.vldb.org/pvldb/vol9/p1377-scotti.pdf](http://www.vldb.org/pvldb/vol9/p1377-scotti.pdf)</comment>


Web 3.0, The Movie [video] - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/10/web-30-movie/

<comment><USER2> Clay Shirky's first comment is interesting:

"If I was going to start a news business tomorrow, I would start a news business designed to produce not one new bit of news, but instead to aggregate news for individuals in ways that matter to them."

This itch has been bugging me for a while. Social news aggregators have amnesia. It's difficult to even find old submissions and old threads. There are nth-licate submissions; Questions answered over and over again; Poor or nonexistent tagging systems.

Social news aggregators are sitting on rich bodies of knowledge -- high shoulders on which to stand. But without some way to synthesize it and curate it and search it in an intelligent way, we seem doomed to keep repeating ourselves, or to miss subtle but important connections between events.

Is there some project I'm unaware of?

Edit: SO is a step in the right direction</comment>


What are your favorite music industry startups? - <AUTHOR>

For everyone that's sick of Pandora never quite delivering what you want, what are some young companies doing exciting things for music consumers?<p>Everyone knows hypem.com; what about songza.fm? Any other suggestions of where to go to get a customized streaming experience? <comment><USER2> I don't really know any of them but I use grooveshark, their radio seems to work pretty well if you want a pandora like experience.

Thesixtyone was great until they decided to mess everything up.

</comment><comment><USER3> try <http://musicanchor.com> (YouTube interface)

<http://www.shuffler.fm> (Music blog interface)

<http://www.playlistnow.fm> (jukebox)

<http://www.muziic.com/> (YouTube interface)</comment>


Glibc: realloc() ncopies 32-bit integer overflow - <AUTHOR> https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=24027 <comment><AUTHOR> Perhaps interesting to discuss on HN is

\---

 _Personally I 'm a bit sad that ~20 years old code we all depend on has so obvious bugs._

 _I found this issue after finding that all 3 glibc malloc memory use info functions (malloc_stats(), mallinfo() and malloc_info()) are bugged and report completely wrong numbers (bug 24026, bug 21556)._

 _For malloc_stats() it was an integer overflow due to `unsigned int` being used for counting bytes._ _It is very well known among programmers for decades that `unsigned int` is not the right type for buffer lengths._ _At that point, I just searched for "unsigned int" in malloc.c to see if there are any similar problems, and found this realloc() bug within a minute._

 _It seems nobody does in practice read the code of fundamental components running on billions of devices._

\---

How can we arrive at good software that does nontrivial things, if even casual reading reveals serious issues in the basic building blocks we all use?

</comment><comment><USER2> The argument that "open source leads to greater security" only holds true if thousands of eyeballs really _do_ look at the code.</comment>


Hs-quake-3: Quake 3 map viewer written in Haskell - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ocharles/hs-quake-3 <comment><USER2> What's interesting it it is heavy use of FRP: both 'reactive-banana' and 'wires' libraries.

<comment><USER3> Makes sense - wires is pull based and would run each frame by polling its network while reactive-banana is push based and would only proc on an event from the user. I haven't looked much into it though.</comment></comment>


Does Tim Cook have a Plan B in China? - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/business/2019/05/30/does-apples-boss-have-a-plan-b-in-china <comment><USER2> > "Designed by Apple in California. Assembled in China".

More accurately: "Designed by Apple in California. Components from Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, USA and China. Assembled in China."

If you count the value added in China, only $8.50 of the cost of iPhone comes from China. Chinese import components to assemble iPhone.

Slapping $160 tariff to iPhone assembled in China is indirect tariff to the US allies in the region and even to the US itself. Foxconn can move their iPhone assembly to Vietnam but it takes time.

[http://theconversation.com/we-estimate-china-only- makes-8-46...](http://theconversation.com/we-estimate-china-only- makes-8-46-from-an-iphone-and-thats-why-trumps-trade-war-is-futile-99258)

<comment><USER3> why I just ask someone to repair my iPhone screen, it would cost me $50 to $100? should not less than $8.50 as that actually assembly the whole phone.

<comment><USER4> 1) Assembly and repair are completely different tasks.

2) You're paying for repair in different country with different wages.

3) Economies of scale. How many identical phones with identical problems are you bringing in to be repaired using identical steps? One million or just one?

<comment><USER3> You provide some reasonable explanation, but that still overlooked the value for China's manufacture provided. For the folks of supporting Made in USA, do you think they would accept the price tag that assembly whole iPhone would just charge less than $10?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is the Economist really implying that Cook, the CEO of Apple, one of the world's largest publicly traded corporations, has not thought about forming a future facing outlook that is comprehensive in its strategy and planning?

A cursory glance at Apple's leadership page shows that Isabel Ge Mahe is vice president and managing director of Greater China [1], which to me indicates that yes, Apple definitely is thinking about China at a high level, by formally naming an executive specifically to focus on strategy in China. This is further indicated in their recent highlighting of Chinese-centric features on OS products at events such as WWDC.

As far as the trade war is concerned, I think it's a little premature to assume that it will drag on and increase in its scope and scale. Apple has pull in D.C., and the interconnected nature of the global economy will likely ensure that there will be a resolution to this at some point in the near future.

[1] [https://www.apple.com/leadership/isabel-ge- mahe/](https://www.apple.com/leadership/isabel-ge-mahe/)

<comment><USER6> > As far as the trade war is concerned, I think it's a little premature to > assume that it will drag on and increase in its scope and scale. Apple has > pull in D.C., and the interconnected nature of the global economy will > likely ensure that there will be a resolution to this at some point in the > near future.

Alibaba just decided to IPO (again) in Hong Kong -- as opposed to offering more shares through their existing US exchange. Given the timing of this decision, it sounds like at least their leadership think this trade war may go on for a while.

<comment><USER7> There is another reason for that. Alibaba has always wanted to be listed in HK. But system in places requires all shares has equal right, you don't get those A B C Shares in US where they have little to zero voting right. Jack Ma said the these rules are old and US way of cooperate ownership is the way going forward. Which leads to Alibaba went to US to be listed.

Now HK has relaxed its rules a little bit. So this is the major reason why Alibaba is coming back to HK.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I feel the worker expertise is overblown by Cook to justify his business decisions, Samsung basically doesn't produce any cellphone in China now, do Samsung phones require little expertise to make?

Since Apple production employs cities of people, and the unempolment rates in China likely are at alarming levels, to further lock in Apple and Foxconn should be the reasonable move for Chinese govs, while angling for more cooperation from Apple.

<comment><USER2> Samsung's market share in China is below 1 percent.

Maintaining market share and the brand in massive Chinese markets is important for the long term. Just 5-10 percent can be good enough for a luxury brand like Apple.

Apple might be willing to eat the cost of tariffs if it helps them to avoid political backlash that can shut them out from the markets completely. Keeping China as the part of the value chain may be condition for the market access.

<comment><USER9> to be honest why as consumers do we not object to Apple pursuing China profits from both sales and manufacture when China's human right abuses keep coming right and left and their never ending threat toward Taiwan?

Apple touts their stance on human rights at every opportunity in the West but looks away in the East and this hypocrisy is something they need to be called to the carpet on. They need to move manufacturing out of China as the rest of world should until China ends the threat towards Taiwan and end the persecution of Hindu and Muslim citizens, if not others.

<comment><USER10> Which Hindus is China persecuting?

<comment><USER11> He probably meant Buddhists.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I guess the answer is no? Can't tell outside the paywall.

<comment><USER13> Here's a link using outline.com

[https://outline.com/ajm9j7](https://outline.com/ajm9j7)</comment></comment>


Open-Source (Software) Economics - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_economics <comment><AUTHOR> The wikipedia entry references this Ted talk about open-source economics

[https://www.ted.com/talks/yochai_benkler_on_the_new_open_sou...](https://www.ted.com/talks/yochai_benkler_on_the_new_open_source_economics/up- next)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I have always found the economics of open-source software fascinating. There is so much useful stuff being made without economic compensation it seems!

How is that possible? I would love to read an indepth and thoughtful analysis on the topic. Any recommendations?</comment>


Cameras That Can Spot Shoplifters Even Before They Steal? - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-04/the-ai-cameras-that-can-spot-shoplifters-even-before-they-steal <comment><USER2> Correlation does not imply causation.

How do these AI systems account for causation?

It's the fundamental issue I have with the penetration of these sorta "AI" systems in daily life: from what I understand about the basic maths, they're ultimately all seeking correlation and real-world data used to improve models seems to achieve verification, not validation.

I'm guessing I'm not the only person who reads this article and experiences a visceral reaction.

This is what I would call "ugly" tech.

<comment><USER3> These systems are interested in probabilities, not in finding the causes of shoplifting. If not correlation, then what else?

<comment><USER2> How is a validated chain of causation not important for these systems to arrive at ethical predictions?

The causation gap for these models presents a really terrible scenario.

Without causation, these models are capable of correlating things like race, gender, etc. with outcomes like shoplifting.

<comment><USER3> Because it is not a social science paper or a government policy (smoking causes cancer, so we should forbid advertising smoking to teenagers). You do not combat shoplifting by knowing the causes of shoplifting (being unethical causes shoplifting, now what?).

Nobody infringes on your rights, if a system pings you as suspicious and so a security guard is alerted and watches you more closely. There are no false positive consequences here: either they find that can of Red Bull on your person without a paid receipt, or they don't. You won't get banned from the store, because the system inadvertently deemed you suspicious.

A whitebox statistical model still can provide the factors that contributed to its prediction, without resorting to causal inference.

I do not think a certain race, gender, age, income causes shoplifting, but they sure are correlated, and effective at finding shoplifters or tax fraudsters. I deem the act of shoplifting more unethical than the act of watching you on a camera feed. This already happens anyway, these systems just manage attention better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "These cameras act like a racist old shop keeper so you don't have to, but it's cool because it's 'artificial intelligence' and definitely not profiling."

<comment><USER5> The article makes no mention of racism. The article only mentions "fidgeting, restlessness and other potentially suspicious body language".

<comment><USER6> There are two options:

1) The "signs of shoplifting" are human-designed, and so are heavily biased 2) The "signs of shoplifting" are entirely machine learning-based, meaning that they are overwhelmingly biased towards the people who actually get caught and the people who are of communities more likely to shoplift, either because of economic necessity or because of being more likely to live in areas with higher crime rates for whatever reason.

Both lead to racist results without any explicit racism being required.

Also in the absolute best-case scenario that this system works, all you're achieving is locking up more people stealing out of desperation for the benefit of corporations. Even that terrible situation, though, is a pipe dream compared to the reality of systems like these.

<comment><USER7> I thought most of the shoplifting damage isn't the teenager (or senior) pocketing a snickers bar but the roving bands of professional shoplifters. These people can be caught and deterred.

<comment><USER8> The professionals will likely take the time and effort to discover and exploit the holes in the AI.

<comment><USER7> I think at some point the effort will be too costly for them and they'll fold and it would make more sense to divert that effort into legit businesses.

<comment><USER9> Other way around. By installing the shoplifter-detecting cameras, the shopkeepers will lower their guard because they have just spent a lot of money and are happy to abdicate the surveillance responsibility to the computer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Trying to detect a crime like shoplifting beforehand seems to open the door for all sorts of biases, racial and otherwise...

<comment><USER11> So if say, old white females who wear expensive clothes are more likely to shoplift, should we ignore that?

<comment><USER12> Yes, we should. As a society we've agreed that whatever benefits there may be from racial profiling aren't worth the harm.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> ...Like a scene out of the movie "Minority Report,"algorithms analyze security-camera footage and alert staff about potential thieves via a smartphone app. The goal is prevention; if the target is approached and asked if they need help, there's a good chance the theft never happens.

At least the won't try to arrest you before committing a crime like in the movie

<comment><USER8> Nasty consequences could still ensue.

Imagine being banned from your main grocery store option because of a false positive from this system.

<comment><USER14> As a society, we're rapidly encroaching into a deeper feudalistic structure here in the US. This is apparent in trends shown in socioeconomic structure and mobility. It's also apparent in the unrest you see in recent and current politics.

At the same time, we're reaching a point with data science and sensing technologies that we've not looked at from a moral and ethical perspective at large as a society. These technologies will certainly be used by the ruling class (wealthy, powerful) for their best interests to further entrench this societal structure. As with any technology, it can also be used to serve humanity at large so the technology itself isn't bad, it's always a balancing act of how it's utilized.

We, as a society, really need to begin considering moral and ethical implications of the uses of these technologies by the ruling class and decide what we want and don't want to allow. If it's left for them to decide, I can assure you, it won't be good for vast majority of us plebes/proles (citizens).

Maintaining a democracy is a never-ending fight and we meager citizens currently seem to be losing the battle as technology accelerates the ruling class's grip at every turn. Heck, people on this very site are indirectly contributing to these development efforts for what now seems like a great payoff. It's easy to get wrapped up in the beauty and complexity of technology without considering its implications, especially when you're getting paid quite well (for now). You only need to look back a few decades at retrospective assessments from some of the greatest minds in the century that developed modern nuclear weapons as a guide.

We need to organize and step-up our game to take back control of our government to serve us (the people), not a select few extremely wealthy and powerful folks. We need to consider moral and ethical implications of use of these technologies and enact laws with serious protections and penalties before mass abuse of technology grows more rampant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> _> artificial intelligence software that hunts for potential shoplifters, using footage from security cameras for fidgeting, restlessness and other potentially suspicious body language._

Isn't this survivorship bias? You can correlate suspicious mannerisms with shoplifting only because the shoplifters without suspicious mannerisms don't get caught. Has there been research into what percentage of inventory shrinkage is attributable to people who exhibit such suspicious behavior? This also leaves unanswered the question of how many people exhibit these behaviors without being shoplifters, e.g. people with social anxiety (exhibiting general nervousness), ADHD (insatiable restlessness), Tourette's (uncontrollable physical tics), or on the autism spectrum (which can compel one to conspicuously touch everything in sight).

<comment><USER16> Can't wait to have loss prevention tailing me in home depot because I am having a panic attack.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I am not sure if many of the commenters here have experience of shoplifting, whether doing it or working in retail and therefore having to prevent what the industry calls 'shrinkage'.

Some say that the neural network will be racial profiling instead of working on body language tells. However, having worked in retail and knowing the attitudes of some of my colleagues, I think I would trust a computer over some of my former workmates when it comes to having fair suspicions.

The training for the neural network is simple, the known thieving incidents get traced back to the thief entering the door and doing what all thieves do when they enter the store - scope out the counter, the cameras and mirrors. It is all body language.

There can be off-duty thieves who don't steal always but will be showing some of the same tells. These will be false positives. But then there are the long tail thieving situations that can not be spotted by a mere human.

For example, a woman regularly stealing cat litter and pet food with every weekly shop for a family. She simply placed the items on the lower part of the shopping trolley, checked everything else out properly and conveniently forgot to pay for the 'minor items' on the lower rung.

No human would have thought a normal member of society would risk reputation for the small financial gain involved. This probably started as an accidental theft one week with no 'nerves' involved. By the following week the 'OMG silly me!' routine would have been prepared for. There would be no looking at the security arrangements walking in, so very different 'tells'. Humans could not spot this, but a neural network trained on every bit of shrinkage across a vast store network might stand half a chance.

If you do work in retail you actually want to deliver excellent customer service and to trust customers. So, from a point of view of wanting to do that and give customers undivided attention, I welcome our new neural network overlords.

</comment><comment><USER12> There is no way this doesn't end up disproportionately impacting at least some protected class.

Even if it doesn't, the opacity of ML means that it's going to difficult to defend against charges that it does.

</comment><comment><USER18> Next move: Mimicking shoplifter behaviour in order to get harassed and suit the crap out of stores.

</comment><comment><USER19> How do they create first sample from which to "learn" without importing current bias?

</comment><comment><USER20> The software looks "for fidgeting, restlessness and other potentially suspicious body language".

Great, so sociopaths will go unchallenged because the computer deems them trustworthy, and socially-anxious people will endure YET MORE intrusive encounters during what should be a simple trip to the store.

"Can I help you? No, I won't go away, I don't understand this computer thing but it says I really need to stay near you while you're in the store."

That'll be lovely.

<comment><USER8> It's gonna be fun to watch when this runs up against the ADA.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Ah we're at the pre-crime stage of our police state. Surely this will turn out well.

</comment><comment><USER22> And so it begins... [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Minority_Report](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Minority_Report)

<comment><USER23> Slippery slope arguments slip both ways: [https://www.smbc- comics.com/comic/2010-01-02](https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2010-01-02)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is gonna be some racist bs

</comment><comment><USER25> No, they can't.</comment>


Cortex Still Beats CPU? (Matchin' experiment in AI, aesthetic sensibility & ranking of attractiveness) - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/15-07/ff_humancomp <comment><USER2> This is pretty much exactly the same idea as likebetter

<comment><USER3> It is pretty similar, but if you look at the other games he's made this was a pretty logical next step. I don't really think that his idea was influence by likebetter, they just both happened to reach the same point via different routes.</comment></comment>


Backend Teardown: Muut - <AUTHOR> http://www.scalescale.com/backend-teardown-muut/

<comment><USER2> Curious on the Docker usage in production, are they using host networking or another way of doing load balancer integrations?

(me, I'm a fan of vulcanproxy[1], even if it is a bit young)

[1] - [http://vulcanproxy.com/](http://vulcanproxy.com/)

<comment><USER3> I'm using Vulcan on CoreOS to route between a few backend containers for several static sites and it has been going great for a few months now.

Disclaimer: CoreOS employee

<comment><AUTHOR> CoreOS is looking really tight.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Would have liked to hear more in-depth about your Redis setup and production gotchas?

<comment><AUTHOR> they did a very transparent post on the production gottcha a few months ago. [https://muut.com/blog/news/april-2014-service- failure.html](https://muut.com/blog/news/april-2014-service-failure.html)

<comment><USER5> This blog entry offers more detail on the Redis setup: [https://muut.com/blog/technology/redis-as-primary- datastore-...](https://muut.com/blog/technology/redis-as-primary-datastore- wtf.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great, I was looking something like Muut. Looks friendlier than Disqus. Before I sign up, does anyone know, on how to plan to monetize their free service?

Edit: found it - if you want to style or extend it, you can opt to pay a fee.

<comment><USER7> You can embed Muut on your site and it becomes a true part of the page. You'll have complete CSS control and there is no need to pay for that. The free version is a full forum and commenting solution with unlimited data and traffic.

<comment><USER8> looks great, props. So I can use Muut so that it looks like it's on my own domain?

<comment><USER5> Yes, embedding is done by inserting a couple of lines of html, and styling to make Muut look like the rest of your site is easy with the included CSS designer tool. You can also write CSS by hand if you wish.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nice post on Muut's backend design.

</comment><comment><USER10> Just wondering if replacing Redis with AerospikeDB would help them reduce the cost even more. Now that Aerospike is opensource.

<comment><USER7> Just heard of this project for the first time. Their website seems very salesy and lacking the open source spirit.

<comment><USER11> They gave a "sponsored" talk at Velocity along with a company that provides an ad bidding platform. But also had not heard about it otherwise.</comment></comment></comment>


List App Founded By Celebs - <AUTHOR> https://li.st/ <comment><AUTHOR> I really don't understand the problem they are solving. Browse lists of what celebs like to do?

<comment><AUTHOR> ok, its a lot of fun.</comment></comment>


Speed up your PHP applications with memcached  - <AUTHOR> http://www.linuxuser.co.uk/tutorials/speed-up-your-php-applications-with-memcached

<comment><USER2> The author of this article should have written another article at the same time that was language agnostic.

Memcache as an accelerator for web apps is fantasticalicious, but it's not the best solution.

As a loooooong time memcache user, I've found that Redis is much more reliable when it comes to removing items on schedule, and has a bunch of cool new features as well.</comment>


Ubuntu Touch OTA-4 Release - <AUTHOR> https://ubports.com/blog/ubports-blog-1/post/ubuntu-touch-ota-4-release-166 <comment><AUTHOR> From the announcement:

"Why does OTA-4 matter?

We believe that this is the "official" starting point of the UBports project. From the point when Canonical dropped the project until today, the community has been playing 'catch up' in development, infrastructure, and community building. This release shows that the community is soundly based and capable of delivering."

Congratulations to the Ubports crew and community! Moving to 16.04 is a great achievement.

I would recommend anyone interested in the future of Linux on phones to get involved. It's a very welcoming, and well run community and there's a role for everyone be it porting, developing apps or the system software, bug testing, writing documentation etc

Here's to the future!</comment>


Ask HN: My Google Play App Removed on Bogus Copyright Claims - Advice? - <AUTHOR>

Hi Everyone,
I'm a sophomore at UC Irvine and recently created my first 'product' (www.TagsForLikes.com). TagsForLikes essentially curates Instagram tags and compiles them to copy and paste into your pictures easily. I recently created an App for the sites content and this morning got served with the following email from Google (edited for brevity):
"This is a notification that your application, TagsForLikes - Instagram Tags, with package ID com.tagsforlikes.tagsforlikes, has been removed from the Google Play Store.
REASON FOR REMOVAL: Violation of the intellectual property and impersonation or deceptive behavior provisions of the Content Policy."
...
"If you feel we have made this determination in error, you can visit the Google Play Help Center article for additional information regarding this removal."
I am preparing an appeal letter and would love some advice or tips to deal with this. Some points:
1. Google does not even tell me who's intellectual property I am infringing upon or what the claim is against in my app. This makes it very difficult for me to defend my app given I don't know what exactly I'm supposed to be defending against! I am near certain though it is from a competitor who recently was very vocally angry at my success and lack of his.
2. The free version of my app has been removed yet the Pro, paid version, remains available. Maybe just a delay on Google's part?
3. All the tags I have curated were curated originally from me by scanning through manually Instagram pictures and seeing which tags were used the most. Surely the tags are public information because they are available to see by anyone on Instagram?
Thanks for reading thus far and again would love any advice or tips anyone has for responding to this. <comment><USER2> "The Instagram Services contain Content of Users and other Instagram licensors. Except as provided within this Agreement, you may not copy, modify, translate, publish, broadcast, transmit, distribute, perform, display, or sell any Content appearing on or through the Instagram Services."

Perhaps Instagram made a complaint on the basis of the above clause of their terms of use. Although I would argue that the tags are not copyrightable due to their short length, Instagram may feel differently. Although quite how they are being harmed by your service is difficult to see.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was thinking of this too but would that not come under Online Fair use laws? Also there are other apps on the store that compile hashtags as well so I'm not really sure why mine got taken down and others are still up.

<comment><USER2> Sometimes takedowns can be as simple as your app coming across the radar of the company whilst others aren't noticed.

The concept of fair use covers various set grounds like education, comment and reporting. I don't think your usage would fall under any of the prescribed grounds on a first glance.

However, I would argue that the tags are just not capable of attracting copyright protection (there needs to be a certain level of skill and labour expended to attract protection) and as such Instagram have no ability to prevent your usage.

<comment><AUTHOR> I just reached out to Google to clarify what the issue actually is. Really hoping that this isn't the reason. I suppose if I rebranded it just as hashtags and remove all references of Instagram it should be ok, right?

<comment><USER2> It looks like there may be two separate grounds, impersonation and infringement. Removing instagram references may help with the impersonation claim but not necessarily with the infringement claim...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Another item to note that I edited out for brevity from the letter: "If your developer account is still in good standing, you may revise and upload a policy compliant version of your application as a new package name."

This means I lose all the ratings I have (300 with an average of 4.8/5 stars)?!</comment>


Ask HN: Immigrants of HN, what was your job before and after you immigrated? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Moved to Canada to do Masters (with the hope of getting PR eventually). started working at gas stations and now i am working at one of big four :) I am happy.

</comment><comment><USER3> Moved to Europe from India.

Was a software engineer 3 years ago. I am now an engineering manager making pretty good money and having a good work life balance. Also, less cut throat competition and I do not feel being in the rat race all the time.

<comment><USER4> Awesome! I am in the same boat, currently i am in India but I have been applying to European companies for the past few days , hoping for one of them to convert.

What countries do you think have a stable tech scene ? Also how did you find a job easily - was it by applying online or networking ? Also have a look at my profile and let me know if i stand a chance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> My mother-in-law was a doctor and now she's a cardiovascular technologist. (She didn't want to redo her residency)! My father-in-law was a mechanical engineer, still a mech-e.</comment>


Ask HN: How to exercise stock options expired due to founder's mistake? - <AUTHOR>

tldr; Early employee at a startup who couldn't exercise a part of my options as founder and HR intentionally didn't respond to my emails within 90-day expiration period. what are my options?
I was an early engineer (<5) at a startup and joined them in the first 6 months of inception. I worked (hard) for over 5+ years and left them recently due to limited growth opportunities within the startup. I believe the startup will have a decent exit (nothing remarkable, but =~$50M to $100M) based on steady growth and its valuations in last few rounds.
After leaving the startup recently, I sent an email to the founder and HR attaching executed exercise notice but without any payment (as I didn't know where to wire the money etc.). I didn't receive any response from them until 5 days after the vested options expired due to 90-day expiration rule of ISO options set by IRS. I followed up multiple times (before expiration) but didn't hear back.
A week after expiration, I received a response from founder (who cc'ed the lawyers) saying that I could exercise the options and send them a check. Within few minutes of his emails (yeah, it was a setup), the lawyers replied saying I couldn't exercise them as I was past 90-days which IRS mandates.
Now I understand that IRS has a 90-day rule here. but what are my options considering the startup founder/HR intentionally didn't let me exercise?
Notes: 1. I took paycuts for the options early in the startup tenure (a mistake which I fixed later). so I hate to see the options just go away like this.
2. If options are part of compensation, why do vested options expire after 90-days? I understand ISO rule by IRS, but shouldn't startup employees opt for NSO's etc.? The vested options correspond to work that I already did in the past. I fail to understand this rationally. Are there any other favorable equity structures that startup employees should push for? <comment><USER2> The best advice anybody is likely to give you is that you should probably delete this and consult with a lawyer.</comment>


Why We Desperately Need a New (and Better) Google - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/01/why-we-desperately-need-a-new-and-better-google-2/ <comment><USER2> An obvious improvement to Google whose absence shocks the hell out of me would be this:

Personal domain blacklist.

There's a lot of spammy bullshit on the web and Google seems to have given up on keeping this away from me. Fine. But for my specific searches, there's usually a handful of offenders who, if I never, ever saw them again, it would improve my search experience by an order of magnitude.

So let me personalize search by blacklisting these clowns. Why can't I filter my search results so that when I search for a programming issue, I never see these assholes from "Efreedom" who scrape and republish Stack Overflow?

I don't, personally, need an algorithmic solution to spam. Just let me define spam for my personal searches and, for me, the problem is mostly solved.

(Also blacklisted: Yahoo Answers, Experts Exchange.)

<comment><USER3> Just a small note, SO puts all of its content under a Creative Commons license[1][2], which they are (in my non-lawyerly opinion) following.

Now, this doesn't mean that filtering them wouldn't be useful to you, since at first glance it appears they're solely a duplicate. Just pointing out that they're not actually doing anything wrong, and they're (probably) not scraping.[3]

SO has specifically said that this is okay.[4]

1: [http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Case_Studies/StackOverflow.c...](http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Case_Studies/StackOverflow.com)

2: <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/>

3: [http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/06/stack-overflow- creativ...](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/06/stack-overflow-creative- commons-data-dump/)

4: <http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/06/attribution-required/>

<comment><USER2> > SO has specifically said that this is okay.

It doesn't look like Jeff is _that_ okay with it, especially when it comes at the cost of Stack Overflow's own ranking:

 _Sorry, this is absolutely necessary, otherwise we get demolished by scrapers using our own content in Google ranking._ – This is from a question about Stack Overflow's SEO strategy:

[http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/71906/first-tag- in-t...](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/71906/first-tag-in-the-title- of-the-page-is-not-that-convenient)

<comment><USER3> Yeah, it's not a _great_ situation. I'd probably filter them out too. But then again, maybe not. This is a complicated topic, and I'm still not quite awake...

<comment><USER2> I mean, their use of SO's content may be _legal_ but it doesn't mean they aren't dicks. It's a wholesale ripoff of another site's content that adds absolutely no value to anyone but the publishers themselves. It inconveniences users and it harms the good work of Stack Overflow by robbing them of rankings they deserve.

In the same way I _can_ call someone's mother bad names because it isn't illegal, it doesn't mean I _should_ do it, because I can follow the letter of the law 100% and still be an asshole. Overall, my policy is that it's best _not_ to be an asshole and it annoys me when others can't share that basic ethos.

<comment><USER4> The same happens with Wikipedia as well. It's free-content, because that's sort of the point of the project. And reusing that content is great and encouraged. But just rehosting the exact contents of en.wikipedia.org with ads slapped on is a bit lame. Legal, but it's not any sort of interesting reuse, just adding more noise to the internet.

<comment><USER5> Wikipedia gets so much traffic from google that the harm there is minimal compared to what's happening to stackoverflow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This issue in a roundabout kind of way touches on Facebook.

The issue of social search has a lot of mindshare. Some think it is the future of search. I disagree.

One of the things that made search successful anduseful early on was scale. Instead of having to go to the librar or ask your friends you can effectively canvas the connected world.

I find the notion that friends' recommendations will replace that as nothing short of bizarre. It's like a huge step backwards. The argument is that you can filter out the garbage as your social graph will provide a level of curation.

Let me give you a concrete example. If I wanted t buy a camera I'd stil need t go to dpreview and other sites. It's highly likely that my friends don't really know a lot about this (but some will have an opinion anyway).

This same idea of human curation is behind such sites ad Mahalo and the garbage sites themselves to a degree. Of course at some point computers will be powerful enough to generate this garbage content.

Blekko's idea of slash tags s interesting (to a degree) but if it's successful its easily reproducible. Google is still in the box seat here but of course that's no barrier to a link-baiting TC title.

Personally I'm an optimist. I believe that, much like email spam, the garbage from AC, DM and others I'd a transitional problem (email spam is basically a solved problem now if you use a half-decent email provider). If they succeed we won't be able to find anything. I don't believe that'll happen so these services are therefore doomed.

So betting on Demand Media is (to quote Tyler) like betting on the Mayans (meaning betting they're right about the world ending in 2012: it doesnt really matter if you're right).

So my money is on Google being the better Google.

<comment><USER7> How does filtering based on a trust network imply that the network will only include your friends?

<comment><USER8> Well, at that point, your 'trust network' may as well include the blog/review site that you would have found through a normal search to begin with.

<comment><USER7> You would only consider the people you trust on a specific topic when ranking results (not all backlinks).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Google does provide an option to search within a date range, but these are the dates when website was indexed rather than created; which means the results are practically useless."

I believe the author is mistaken on this point. Quick proof is to do a search for [matt cutts] and you'll see the root page of my blog. Click "More search tools" on the left and click the "Past week" link. Now you'll only see pages created the last week, even though lots of pages on my site were indexed in the last week.

<comment><USER10> BTW, why is it that Google has not opened up its core search engine to third party developers so that their code can be used to bring up some of the search results by default (without requiring the user to subscribe to third party features)?

Most people have never used Google's Subscribed Links feature because it is not enabled by default.

User feedback can be used to determine which third party code to use in which contexts. Spam/unhelpful features would be detected quickly. There would be intense competition among third party developers for highly desired features.

Something like this could give you Wolfram Alpha like features among other things such as custom UIs for various searches (e.g., travel).

The Google App Engine could be used for computation. You could pay third party developers by how often their code is used in search results.

<comment><USER9> Just speaking for me personally, I'd be a fan of trying ideas like that. The potential danger would be that some code could introduce latency or other things that would make the search experience worse instead of better.

<comment><USER11> Isn't that pretty similar to Steve Jobs' original argument against apps on the iPhone?

<comment><USER12> It seems more likely that the average developer would introduce latency when searching through a database of billions of text documents than when making an application that makes a fart sound when you press a button. Just sayin'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> _This is exactly what blogger Paul Kedrosky found when trying to buy a dishwasher. He wrote about how he began Googleing for information…and Googleing…and Googleing. He couldn't make head or tail of the results. Paul concluded that the "the entire web is spam when it comes to major appliance reviews"._

So I happen to know somebody who is taking a small section of the home appliance market and creating content around it -- reviews, news, advice, a place for other consumers to talk to each other.

Of course to do this you need to have income, so they are going to use some sort of ad-supported model.

My question is very simple: is their project a spam site or not? To some, I guess it would qualify. To others, not.

You see, there are two questions when it comes to search results: 1) Am I being presented results that match the query I entered? and 2) Am I being presented results that match what I want to know?

These are two entirely different things. A third-grader looking for information on a movie star might find a games page with all sorts of information on that star -- all sponsored by some kind of adsensey stuff. And he's very happy. A researcher typing in the same question gets the same page? He's pissed.

There is no universal answer for any one question. It's all dependent on the culture, education, and intent of the user -- all of which are not easily communicated to a search engine.

Look -- this is a real problem. I hate it. Sucks to go to pages you don't like. All I'm saying is that it's more complicated than "we need a new Google" Finding what you want exactly when you want it is a difficult and non-trivial problem. We just got lucky in that Google found a simple algorithm that can be helpful in some situations. It may be that we're seeing the natural end of the usefulness of that algorithm.

</soapbox>

<comment><USER14> you failed to address the main point. Google is filled with duplicate content, aggregation sites, and content farms with shit content that has the right statistical profile.

this is not the same problem as different people perceiving results differently.

<comment><USER15> Sure, but it can also have to do with different people perceiving _inputs_ differently. While I lament the content duplicators with a passion, I deal with it myself with longer search queries. Grouping and requiring, excluding particular domains (like efreedom), and so on. I know we all probably do this to some extent, but I've found that, sure, you have to exclude 10 different domains, but it does winnow down the results in a useful search. I'd rather be able to search with three words, but for now those days are over.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It will be interesting to see how this impacts the Android/iOS battle. Search revenue funds almost all of Google's other activities so if people start using other search engines or find alternate ways to get their content it could impact the level they can spend on phones.

With a push to a mobile first world the Android model is especially sensitive to spam. On a full size browser you have a lot more context and results for a given search. 5 Results may be spam, but you can work around them. If the average phone screen shows 3-5 results and all of them are spam you will quickly find alternate tools.

Google ignoring spam is like Microsoft ignoring the cloud.

<comment><USER9> The article calls out two specific companies as "landfill in the garbage websites that you find all over the web." Reasonable people can disagree over whether such content is truly spam or low-quality content, and thus how to respond.

<comment><USER16> What is the difference and how should they respond? It seems to be a rising frustration among power users that Google is increasingly becoming a wasteland populated by spam. For example, Marco Arment recently commented on his podcast how hard it was to find answers to simple questions on Google these days. He was saying that the content farms have basically created a page for every PHP function with thin content and rendered it useless. For a company whose goal is to index all human information it is a pretty big warning flag.

What is the appropriate user response? Go to Stack Overflow? Find a branded knowledge base like O'Reilly's Safari? I'm genuinely curious to know what we can do.

<comment><USER9> I was referring to how Google should respond to content farms. Historically, Google has been willing to take manual action on webspam. With the rest of search quality and ranking, Google tries to use algorithms as much as we can. So the distinction of whether something is spam vs. low-quality is an important one within Google.

<comment><USER17> One of the reasons the searchwiki approach was a good idea. Not everyone has the same opinion, what one person found helpful another found low quality content.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Tell me, how exactly is writing a sensationalized article that targets one of the Internet's oldest and largest communities to get fed by CPM advertising any different than what they decry? People have said this time and time again, but they never seem to debut let alone promise any sort of technology to address the issue. They just leave that end of the deal up in the air. As if to say that it's o.k. to spin topics as long as they strike a social nerve, but those who're less graceful at the craft are undeserving of the benefits which they themselves reap.

If the search giants had any balls they'd cut the "Internet Marketing" community off at the knees. Because the money making methods pushed by that community either don't work or are unsustainable, so they're entirely reliant on a steady stream of new recruits. If they want to promote gaming your system don't let them reap any benefits from it.

<comment><USER19> What about a three strike approach like the one that was suggested a few days ago with AdSense?

Domains frequently being excluded by power searchers could be good signal.

(googling to find on that used to pester my search results, kods.net, it seems it has finally got banned. Hooray!)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The argument being that Google is loosing the war against spam. A new and better Google will likely be Google itself. What we really need is a way to discover content that's not search.

<comment><USER21> For many things there is utility to social content finding. Sites like HN work for news/discussion, and Twitter and Facebook work for a random amalgam of things. I'm interested in the future of social search startups that somehow curate content from friends. In the articles example- asking friends if they liked their Dishwasher, and if yes what brand it is. That's the most like how people IRL make these decisions. I know there are some startups in this space as well, hope they do well!

<comment><USER22> Furthermore, I'd love to see a simple thumbs up or thumbs down system integrated into the browser or Google search.

Did this page help you find what you were looking for? Was this page useful?

etc

<comment><USER23> The problem with that, is again, spam. How do you differentiate fake votes from real ones? You can do per-IP limiting, and probably other things I'm not aware of (please comment about them), but it's still pretty open to abuse I'd say.

<comment><USER22> I suppose you do it similarly to the way Amazon or iTunes implements it for reviews...you make sure the user is logged in via a Google account.

Sure, it could be exploited, and I'm guessing that's why they haven't implemented it, but there's got to be a solution that would make it work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Let me see if I correctly understand the learned professor's article. In his view, the problem is that a user using a free search engine to find information will find a lot of information about people who want to sell products and services, gaining money by exerting their time and effort. What he hopes to obtain for free is email addresses of persons to whom he wants to send his survey, so that he can use their time and effort without compensating them to produce something of value to him. Exactly how is this a problem?

People who actively like to be contacted by random persons surfing the Internet make their contact information readily available (and answer questions sent through those publicly visible contact channels). But to many other persons, not being readily visible on the Internet is a feature rather than a bug. (Disclaimer: my contact information is readily visible on the Internet, so readily visible that it has been used by point-of-view pushers on Wikipedia to give me harassing telephone calls.)

<comment><USER25> I think he was actually trying to piece together the background stories for the people who didn't respond to his emails, not find their emails. I don't think the info he was searching for was particularly private either.

For instance, trying to find out the company a CEO worked at before their current one. The problem is that content copiers will produce so many copies of the PR announcement for their current job, it's impossible to find the announcement for their previous job. I've tried doing this exact search and it's very frustrating.

<comment><USER26> I often find that things that really don't exist wind up with spam results. For instance, if you type in "free ipad" into google you will likely get thousands of search results, all spam because they don't actually exist.

Similarly, contact and personal information for CEOs of major corporations does not exist online either and any search will turn up spam.

One more example, to add to the many. If you get a genuine wrong number call from somebody who made a simple mistake and type their caller id into the internet, you'll just get a bunch of reverse phone lookup spam while if you search for a phone number of a know telemarketer or bill collector, you'll likely get a full dossier on that company.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> It's interesting that the way of "gaming" Google appears to be in having thousands of people generating SEO friendly content. I think Google's problem is that it's pushed SEO to the point where the definition of Spam depends either on a subjective view of what kind of site the user is looking for, or it's just mildly worse than something else that's out there (e.g. When I search for something coding related and get one of the stackoverflow scrapers).

Where do we go from here? Well, I don't think the answer is just a radically new way of indexing/ranking websites. That might work in the short term but the spammers will soon catch up. The answer probably lies in a combination of better language interpretation, context sensitivity using browsing history and location, and user profiling based on the social graph and search history. All of which google seems to be working on.

</comment><comment><USER28> I love Google products, but I can't help but agree. I'm currently trying to find a colour laser printer that has good performance (quality vs speed) with a reasonable running cost over the life of the printer (at least a few years).

All I'm getting is either the manufacturers slant (PR) or spam sites all harvesting the same reviews.

To solve this I now look for vertical based search sites. In this case <http://www.printershowcase.com/small-officecolorlaser.aspx> is the best I've found... but it's hardly to printers what dpreview is to cameras.

I stick with Google because it largely works well, but when I know what I want to see and that it must exist but cannot find it... then I find myself looking elsewhere all the time. DDG and Blekko I use in these cases, but even they're not solving these kinds of needs.

<comment><USER29> I trust Amazon for my product reviews.

<comment><USER25> I've found them nearly useless. Way too many people giving one star reviews because their 15" laptop doesn't fit in a 13" bag. If you take the time to read all the reviews, you can weed out the idiots, but sifting out the haters and the astroturfers can take longer than just going to a store and fondling the merchandise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I just created a blekko account after reading this article (good job TC! It works this time.)

They seriously need to hire a capable UX person. The logged-in interface is full of problems:

* Twitter-like status update. I believe this has nothing to do with search.

* Form with 10+ fields on creating a slashtag. You cannot possibly expect me to enter all domain names I could think of into that tiny <textarea>?

* I finally created /python but I have no idea how to improve or update the slashtag. I cannot update that slashtag from search results page.

Overall, very frustrating experience.

</comment><comment><USER31> Why would it be so difficult for Google to filter out spam sites? E.g. DuckDuckGo filters out eHow.com results, because they are low quality and tend to be spammy.

Oh of course, it's not in Google's interest to do this, because they make money from the spam sites. So I don't expect Google to really "solve" this problem.... their trick is to stay useful enough that users don't abandon them, but allow enough spam into the search results to provide revenue. A tricky balance...

<comment><USER32> None of Google's ranking decisions are concerned with revenue from AdSense. Period.

<comment><USER33> And I should believe this because....?

<comment><USER32> I work in Search Quality at Google, and this is stated policy. Revenue _from any source_ (the ads on the results page included) is not a metric used to make ranking launch decisions.

If me saying so isn't enough evidence for you, consider that it makes sense. Google knows that losing the lead in search would be much more damaging then shutting down _all_ of AdSense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Professor, you could've proved your point by linking to at least one example of how Blekko found a founders work and listed it by date (as the task required), instead you have hashtags on health, finance, etc. The truth is that nobody has arranged that information in the way you want, if it existed at all, that venture database where you found the 500 companies would've been the natural place to look.. CrunchBase maybe?!

Thought Worth mentioning

</comment><comment><USER35> One of the new things I am working on with unscatter.com is getting quicker access to reviews and blog posts using the blekko api. The next release will be a major change as I've dumped most of the current search providers in favor of blekko and have moved realtime search to it's own page with analysis by providing lists of links in the realtime feed.

Nothing is released yet unfortunately. The site is officially a hobby for me write more but I hope to have the new stuff up in the next week or two. I may just hide the realtime stuff and get the blekko feeds up sooner rather than later.

Now that I am focusing building the site to fit my needs getting up to date info about products and technology, the bulk of my personal searches, is the top priority. Have to admit the blekko api has helped.

In the mean time I would suggest the slash tags /reviews and /blogs with /date on blekko would be very helpful if you are doing product searches. With unscatter I am really only providing shortcuts for the with additional ui tweaks.

Disclaimer: I am in no way associated with blekko other than having been given permission to use their api for a personal project.

<comment><USER35> Sorry meant to say the site is a hobby for me right more. Wrote these comment with the swype keyboard on my phone so I apologize for any problems reading them

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I just tried two test queries on blekko and google. Small sample, but there did seem to be less link-bate results on blekko. The issue is whether their results are close to being as up to date as google's results.

I was interested that blekko seems to have done a lot with a modest amount of funding.

Also, I wonder if they are getting some monetization with the association with Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER37> CMIIW, but is that the reason why Google acquired MetaWeb a few months ago? I'm expecting to see some improvement on that front.

</comment><comment><USER38> _He couldn't make head or tail of the results. Paul concluded that the "the entire web is spam when it comes to major appliance reviews"._

A simple solution to this: Consumer Reports. A subscription is well worth it! The likelihood that it will pay for itself in the next year is very high.

<comment><USER31> Consumer reports are probably about as objective a source as you can find, but I don't believe they are without their biases. They tend to give a lot of weight to things like value and reliability, and less on aesthetics, though the latter may be an important factor for some consumers. For tech products, the review them from the standpoint of an "average consumer" and probably won't evaluate factors that matter a lot to many readers here.

They are also politically left-leaning, if that matters to you.

<comment><USER38> _For tech products, the review them from the standpoint of an "average consumer"_

Yeah, don't use them to rate tech products. But as far as coventional appliances go, they are a very good resource.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Hey, so what you are basically saying is, "the best computer algorithms in the world" (you know, Google has like > 578690 Ph. D's) are not good enough to have effective search, so we should introduce the human element.

Fair enough. There is the Open Directory Project (which is pretty old) and of course there is Facebook, Twitter, and other, human-curated services. Starting a whole new company to do search and compete with Google (and Bing)? Seems like a waste of time as Google can just copy what you are doing and incorporate it into its already massive site (complete with traffic, audience, and lots of other goodies). Instead, why not get Google to add more social recommendation and feedback features?

</comment><comment><USER40> This may be a bit of a tangent, but I want to see the results of the VC system survey.

</comment><comment><USER41> How does yegg deal with this on DuckDuckGo? A lot of us use his search engine, and it's a great one at that, which is not worth forgetting.

<comment><USER42> By way more aggressively removing useless sites.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> How about a P2P search/bookmarking platform where peers could publish search/bookmarking histories ranked by like/dislike/spam votes which other peers can subscribe to. Publishing peers can also be ranked according to number of subscribers. Actually P2P curation could be the next level up from raw centralised search. Is there anything like this out there already?

</comment><comment><USER44> I'd like to have the option (like facebook has when you mouse over a post in your feed) to hide all results from X website.

If you tied that with the ability to follow other people and their search edits, the number of spammy results could be reduced.

</comment><comment><USER45> <http://duckduckgo.com/> works very well for me.

      - less spam
      - programmer oriented results, when relevant
      - more legible search results

</comment><comment><USER46> Isn't the issue, of course, that spammers have no incentive to game other search engines since they're not worth the time? Any search engine that gets big will have the problem.

<comment><USER47> Came here to say this but you said it before! ;-)

Also, "crowd-sourced curated lists of websites" sound like the old Yahoo directory of yore. They will either become obsolete very quickly or spammers will find a way to penetrate and dominate them.

<comment><USER48> I believe the Yahoo lists were actually centralized. Hypothetically a fully- distributed approach could work better, in the style of Wikipedia. Realistically, well, I have no idea but it's worth a try.

<comment><USER23> I agree. One particular try failed [1], but that doesn't mean it can't work.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikia_Search>

<comment><USER49> Not only that, but Yahoo didn't think search was important, so it's not even a real try of enhancing search with curation.

The truth is, if some company comes up with a better search engine, whatever ideas behind it are not going to sound like an obvious win up front—if they did then Google would already be doing that. Instead they'll have to create a search engine that is better, but somehow antithetical to Google's business model so that they can't just copy it, because there's no way for a startup to come up with enough resources to stay materially ahead of Google in pure search. And of course that's only half the battle; then you have to be better enough that users can be bothered to switch (or a browser deal coup).

Personally I haven't found the spam problem to be nearly as bad as the echo chamber makes out. I think silicon valley types just have a good imagination about how good it _could_ be.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Bring back IKEA's standing desk "Fredrik" - <AUTHOR> https://www.change.org/petitions/ikea-bring-back-the-fredrik-standing-workstation#intro

<comment><USER2> We got a bunch of the Multitable bases [1] and screwed on the large size GALANT table top from Ikea (we recycled our GALANT tables into adjustable standing tables) It was pretty cost effective and they work really well. No need to bug Ikea.

[1] <http://heightadjustableworktable.com/pickabase>

</comment><comment><USER3> I have the Fredrik, it's a great desk. I combined it with a nice adjustable mesh bar stool to regularly go from sitting to standing. I also have a thinkpad style keyboard, and therefore no mouse, so it's extremely minimalist.

I just need a no moving parts VESA mountable computer to put behind the monitor with a 3G dongle for connectivity to tick all the boxes.

</comment><comment><USER4> I love my JERKER (the predecessor) so much, with its multiple attachments. Had to get it off Kijiji.

<comment><USER5> I have one I'm not using anymore, so I wouldn't mind selling to a follow dev with a good home.</comment></comment>


Trololol: grep -R Doesn't Automatically Search Amazon - <AUTHOR> http://www.thepowerbase.com/2012/09/trololol-grep-r-doesnt-automatically-search-amazon/

<comment><USER2> The bug report is, to me, comedic genius. I laughed so hard when I read it on HN yesterday.</comment>


Ask HN: Anyone want a Pixelapse invite? - <AUTHOR>

I just received an invite from Pixelapse and so far I love the service, I have 2 invites if anyone wants one you can post your email here and maybe other HN members can fulfill once I'm out. <comment><USER2> yes! Can you send one to email@example.com

thanks</comment>


Pediatric Death Due to Myocarditis After Exposure to Cannabis - <AUTHOR> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1n10w5pc <comment><USER3> So 1 baby dies and because myocarditis is rare and they assume "cannabis exposure" is rare that they are probably linked? This seems pretty far from anything like science.

<comment><USER4> This is exactly how science works.

They report this possible case. Maybe there is never another association and the issue is forgotten, because there is no causal link. But maybe, someone else, some place else, who never read this paper, notices something similar and reports it. And maybe this happens several more times. And then, along the way, one of these reporters does a detailed search and finds the other reports. He collects the cases and maybe contacts the doctors who wrote the reports and writes what we call a Case-Series on these.

Maybe a couple case-series get written independently in various places. Someone finds these series and convinces someone else to fund a Case Control study.

Usually with environmental exposure literature this is exactly how "science" happens. Medicine is messy and serendipity is more than involved.

Hierarchy of evidence: [http://ebm.bmj.com/content/early/2016/06/23/ebmed-2016-11040...](http://ebm.bmj.com/content/early/2016/06/23/ebmed-2016-110401)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The implication this infant died of myocarditis due to cannabis exposure is horrifying. If I'm reading correctly, the cause of myocarditis is unclear but the association is confirmed.

Which leads me to wonder what was the mechanism of exposure? Was the infant given something to eat, inhale, or something worse (if such a thing is possible)?

I'm struggling to believe that this infant's caregivers did not knowingly dose this infant with cannabis.

<comment><USER6> There's no story from the parents as to what happened. The closest the paper gives to explaining the situation directly is at the end of the Case Report: "Additional history disclosed an unstable motel-living situation and parental admission of drug possession, including cannabis."

In the midst of the toxicological analysis, it mentions that the THC metabolites they observe were "most likely secondary to ingestion" and it later says, given that they observed various metabolites but not the primary compound itself, "the authors deduce that cannabis consumption occurred within the recent two to six days, assuming this was a single, acute high-potency ingestion."

So, most likely what happened is that the parents carelessly left some edibles around, and the infant toddled over and put one in his mouth. Infants put _everything_ in their mouths, so an accidental exposure sounds plausible- albeit criminally negligent. I'd presume the parents have been charged accordingly.

<comment><USER5> Thank you for replying with that information. I read the article but didn't see the "Additional history" note.

I also poorly worded the last paragraph of my previous comment. What I meant to say was more along the lines of "I want to believe this infant's caregivers did not knowingly dose this infant."

Negligence is bad but not nearly so bad and dispiriting as intentional exposure gone awry.

(Disclosure: I support medical and recreational cannabis for consenting adults.)

EDIT: spelling, disclosure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm sorry but this is really not science. This is the scientific equivalent of "and you'll never believe what happened next...".

Do a search for "Pediatric Myocarditis" and you'll see lots of results - <USER2> happens, unfortunately. I think it's far more likely that it's caused by a vaccination ([http://www.vaxchoicevt.com/myocarditis-after- vaccination/](http://www.vaxchoicevt.com/myocarditis-after-vaccination/)) or one of the other causes mentioned here: [https://emedicine.medscape.com/article/897591-overview](https://emedicine.medscape.com/article/897591-overview)

<comment><USER8> Detailed reports of observations are important, normal portions of the scientific process. They're just the first step. Where is the line? Is a hypothesis with an experiment design not science? Is a negative finding not science? Is a positive self-reported study not science? Is a positive double- blind study also not science (because it hasn't been repeated)?

Being dismissive of preliminary findings as "not science" is the same kind of attitude that cause people to not publish negative results, which is an incredible tragedy of modern scientific progress.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Worth noting that this is a case study about one child. I'm not saying the science is bad or that you should blow cannabis smoke in your baby's face, but if the headline made you think there's an epidemic of babies dying due to exposure to cannabis, that's not the case.

</comment><comment><USER10> I think its sad people are using drugs when they have responsibility for a child.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is ridiculous, "post hoc, ergo propter hoc" [1]

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

<comment><USER12> No, it's a case report. They looked for more normal causes of myocarditis and didn't find any. Note that they only claim an association, not that it directly definitely caused it.

It seems very plausible that cannabis is toxic to infants in ways that it wouldn't affect adults.

Here's a quote of the relevant part of the abstract:

> histological consistency with drug-induced myocarditis without confirmed > alternate causes, and prior reported cases of cannabis-associated > myocarditis, a possible relationship exists between cannabis exposure in > this child and myocarditis leading to death

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Mmh so this seems just a coincidence and they re saying it's happened because of cannabis?

<comment><USER14> No, they're saying they've seen enough evidence to report to other doctors to keep an eye out for it. Reports of this nature are not unusual in medicine, someone just noticed this one because of the drug connection.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm sorry. Of the millions of babies who die within their first year globally, I find it hard to be suddenly concerned about cannabis's effect on them given the multitude of other factors.

That's not to say it isn't worth study, but it's unlikely worth a headline.

<comment><USER16> Whenever there's anything negative even possibly associated with cannabis, there are those who must reflexively shoot it down, or minimize it (i.e. your data is wrong, or, if it's not wrong, it's not as bad as alcohol, or if it is, it's a rare issue). It's like they can't accept that cannabis could ever be bad for any reason. I find this very odd.

<comment><USER17> Because negative news articles about cannabis are almost always flimsy studies trying to spread fear and push an agenda.

If cannabis was legal everywhere almost no one would care about these studies.

However, cannabis is illegal in most places and there is a battle for opinions where groups are trying to spread FUD about how "weed is killing babies".

It's fighting for people to have a rational stance and pushing for policies that don't imprison people over a substance on par with alcohol that brings out the defenders on any article like this.</comment></comment></comment>


Square Root by Long Division - <AUTHOR> http://www.solipsys.co.uk/new/SquareRootByLongDivision.html?HN_20141201 <comment><USER3> Maybe too OT, but here is another proof

      P = n * (n+1) * (n+2) * (n+3)

         = n*(n+3) * (n+1)*(n+2)

         = (n*n + 3n) * (n*n + 3n + 2)

         = m * (m+2)

      If P has an integer square root, it must be (m+1)

      Trying (m+1) * (m+1) we get m*m + 2m + 1 = m * (m+2) + 1 = P + 1

<comment><USER4> I like your proof better! Much simpler to read. The _if_ part confused me a bit, though

        k = m + 1

        P = m * (m + 2)

          = (k-1) * (k+1)

          = k^2 - <USER2>

<comment><USER3> The _if_ part is meant to illustrate the idea, that if P is not a perfect square, then (m+1)^2 will give the nearest perfect square.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm a little confused by the description. He starts out saying:

Let's compute the square root of 677329.

We start by thinking of it as 67 x 10^4 + 7392. That means the square root will be 800 and a bit (because the square root of 67 is 8 and a bit, and the square root of 10^4 is 100.)

How did he know to start with 67 x 10^4 + 7392 instead of 6 x 10^5 + 77392? The Square root of 6 is a bit over 2, but obviously starting with this digit doesn't get you the correct answer. In the next step he works with 3 digits instead of two. Knowing how many digits to work with at each step seems a little magical.

I guess you look for the biggest single digit square factor in the original number? So the biggest number < 81? Or am I thinking about this wrong?

This is one of those frustrating math examples where the author skips over a lot of the detail because it is "obvious".

Edit: I've really gotta learn how the markup works on this site.

<comment><USER3> You should factorize as n*10^m where m is even. Then the square root of the 10^m factor will be 10^(m/2), which then gives the order of the full square root.

<comment><USER6> And one way to really internalize this is to start taking square roots (in your head, of course) of large numbers you see around you. Maybe license plate numbers if you're waiting in traffic.

If you have extra time, you can do one step of refinement of your original guess, as done in the OP. ("Take the residual R, and the guessed-at factor p, and find the largest number N such that 2 __* p __* N <= R")</comment></comment></comment>


How to treat heat like light - <AUTHOR> http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2013/how-to-treat-heat-like-light-0111.html <comment><USER2> Interesting; I wish the news has some more details on specific numbers e.g. efficiency.

From my perspective such concept will require for commercialization a strong application driver or killer application, which is something I did not get a clear picture here.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, killer application: Heat lasers

<comment><USER4> sadly the kiler app most will embrace will probably be a HD cylone toaster.

But seriousness back ont eh table I suspect this could have a lot of uses in the medical and production market.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Are they talking about conducted heat, rather than radiated heat (which _is_ light)?

<comment><USER6> Well, neither. Take a look at this <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_theory_of_solids>.

I think they see the "vibration" as some sort of wave ( with the properties as such ) and process it similarly to light wave.

<comment><USER7> Yes, they are talking about conducting heat, which is atomic vibrations (not light)</comment></comment></comment>


The Guy I Almost Was - <AUTHOR> http://www.electricsheepcomix.com/almostguy/

<comment><USER2> This is a great comic. I just wish he had preserved the old format which was deep-linkable instead of switching to a "pretty" javascript interface.</comment>


Parse is now compatible with ARC - <AUTHOR> http://blog.parse.com/2011/10/03/parse-is-now-compatible-with-arc/

<comment><USER3> Appears to be missing. Here's a cached version: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?sclient=psy- ab&...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?sclient=psy- ab&hl=en&safe=off&biw=1366&bih=603&source=hp&q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fblog.parse.com%2F2011%2F10%2F03%2Fparse- is-now-compatible-with- arc%2F&pbx=1&oq=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fblog.parse.com%2F2011%2F10%2F03%2Fparse- is-now-compatible-with- arc%2F&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=85742l86819l0l87187l6l4l0l0l0l3l285l935l0.1.3l4l0)

</comment><comment><USER4> I hate following links to blog posts about some software that don't quickly summarise what it does. I do some iOS dev, but I haven't heard of parse - <USER2> it's awesome you could have interested me, but instead I just read an insiders-only blog post and shrugged. Shame!

</comment><comment><USER5> These Parse posts are getting quite old. I know they are YC funded, but would it be possible not to include posts for minor features?

<comment><USER6> I think these stories get up-voted because they're actually interesting to other mobile developers, not because the Parse guys are somehow using YC to game the system.

<comment><USER7> yup parse is one of the most exciting companies right now for mobile developers like myself.

<comment><USER8> Does anyone know how they compare to Stackmob? At first glance it looks quite similar.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Augmented (hyper)Reality. - <AUTHOR> http://vimeo.com/8569187

<comment><USER2> If advertising becomes that prevalent in day to day life, somebody please shoot me.

Not to say there's anything wrong with ads, but please, not all over my cupboards. I like my kitchen the way it is. Thanks.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the point of that was to show that users would get paid for looking at ads (when he turns down the ad level, there was a little thing that said "Balance" on it).</comment></comment>


Twitter's New Search Architecture - <AUTHOR> http://engineering.twitter.com/2010/10/twitters-new-search-architecture.html

<comment><USER2>
        7 days ago via web...
        Older tweets are temporarily unavailable.

Great, so now I can go back 7 days instead of 3.

Just imagine how (un)successful Google would be if it held only the last 7 days of web updates.</comment>