Amazon Says It Has Over 10k Employees Working on Alexa, Echo - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-says-it-has-over-10-000-employees-working-on-alexa-echo-1542138284 <comment><USER2> And those employees are doing a rather poor job on the AI side of things. Hardware itself is OK, it hears me better than its Google counterpart thanks to the phased microphone array. But both speech recognition and natural language understanding are piss poor and other than ordering stuff from Amazon and setting the time it's not useful for much, nor does it understand me in a sufficiently high percentage of interactions, nor is it in any way "conversational", the way Google Home is. Alexa app is also lackluster and feels like it's held together by duct tape, like all other Amazon apps.

For me the quality of AI in this case outweighs the creep factor of Google. FWIW, I replaced my Echo with a Google Home Mini.

Full disclosure: I'm an ex-Googler who nevertheless thinks that ads are cancer, and pervasive tracking shouldn't be legal.

<comment><USER3> I have both a Google home and Amazon echo literally next to each other. I have found that the Amazon device is really poor at hearing you.

The Google device I can talk to from any room in my apartment and it hears me correctly 95% of the time, it even triggers and understands me if I am brushing my teeth with an electronic toothbrush at the same time. It is impressive.

The Amazon device on the other hand has a 50/50 chance of triggering, and I often have to walk right up to it to clearly enunciate "computer" before it wakes up. Not sure if this because I speak en-gb instead of en-us.

(I have both only because the Google one does not reliably work with Samsung smartthings any more (it used to work fine!) but the Amazon one does. Amazon one is also good for music but Google tries to sell you a YouTube subscription. Google one is hugely better at random day to day questions/queries/translation/usefulness etc - I guess that is b cause they are a search engine and not an e-commerce site)

<comment><USER4> Even Amazon's music search sucks. It can never find the song unless you provide an accurate name. Its fuzzy matching sucks too, doesn't even account for regional trend in songs.

<comment><USER2> Apple's music search sucks too, especially if your music tastes are even slightly outside the mainstream. It simply doesn't personalize per user, so when I search, I have to wade through a list of unfamiliar band and musician names until I type almost the whole thing. For a company whose motto once upon a time was "design is how it works", this is inexcusable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I hope at least some of them are working on Alexa's seeming inability to do any kind of learning on the go. For instance if, as you repeatedly inform me, there's no station called Summer FM Groove Salad, then maybe, just maybe, I mean _Soma_ FM Groove Salad, like the one in ten times you hear me correctly.

<comment><USER6> This. I never tell Alexa to set a timer for 15 or 50 minutes (only 16 or 49) due to tendency to confuse.

<comment><USER7> 16 doesn't get confused with 60?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I guess it takes a lot of people to listen to the accumulated recordings from all of those people's living rooms!

<comment><USER9> Wouldn't be the first time, won't be the last. For example...

[https://www.businessinsider.com/expensify-is-proud-to-use- hu...](https://www.businessinsider.com/expensify-is-proud-to-use-humans-in- its-automated-service-2017-11)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Amazon is a competently run technology company with smart people from my limited experience. I wonder why Alexa is so much worse compared to Google Assistant then.

Perhaps natural language processing / understanding applications aren't as well researched or developed at Amazon? Maybe it's the difference in culture between the two companies with Google being much more academic in nature and research oriented compared to the more process oriented operations / logistics focus of Amazon that has caused such a widening gap to build up?

<comment><USER11> Seems pretty simple to me, Google has more data and users that keep adding even more data to optimize their offerings. I doubt Alexa has even 1/10th the users as Google's assistant.

This is the unfortunate barrier to entry when it involves big data. Even behemoths Amazon and Microsoft are stuck with smaller pools of voice data than Apple or Google. It makes it very difficult to compete...imagine being an even smaller player, you have no shot. If Amazon and Microsoft weren't cloud competitors I bet they'd do a joint venture. They are already playing the most friendly with each other.

<comment><USER12> Amazon has still sold millions of these devices and thus has inordinate amounts of data. When you're talking about training sets that are, say, 1 trillion large vs 10 trillion, does it really make that much of a difference? It's diminishing returns. 10X the data size comes nowhere close to a 10X difference in quality at that scale.

<comment><USER13> I neither work on Alexa nor on Google Assistant. But based on my experience, going from 99% accuracy to 99.9% would require much more data than 0.9%. Same with adding each subsequent "9".

And the _perceived_ quality difference between 99% accuracy and 99.99% accuracy is much much bigger.

<comment><USER14> In my experience, like with high availability, each additional 9 requires between double to 10x the resources to achieve.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Has anyone tried to build an open-source voice assistant using the $100 Respeaker far-field mike array dev board, [https://respeaker.io](https://respeaker.io) & [http://wiki.seeedstudio.com/ReSpeaker_Core_v2.0/](http://wiki.seeedstudio.com/ReSpeaker_Core_v2.0/)?

 _> ReSpeaker Core v2.0 is designed for voice interface applications. It is based on the Rockchip RK3229, a quad-core ARM Cortex A7, running up to 1.5GHz, with 1GB RAM. The board features a six microphone array with speech algorithms including DoA (Direction of Arrival), BF (Beam-Forming), AEC (Acoustic Echo Cancellation), etc. ReSpeaker Core v2.0 runs a GNU/Linux operating system ... Our BF and AEC algorithms are provided by Alango, a professional audio DSP company used in the automotive industry._

Voice assistants are magical when they do-what-you-mean. If there was an active OSS community for voice assistants, it would enable experimentation with privacy-preserving architecture and customization for niche use cases and language.

<comment><USER16> \- [https://github.com/NaomiProject/Naomi](https://github.com/NaomiProject/Naomi)

\- [http://mycroft.ai](http://mycroft.ai)

\- [http://snips.ai](http://snips.ai)

<comment><USER15> That reminds me that Google has DIY kits at Target, but they are designed as Google service extensions.

[https://aiyprojects.withgoogle.com](https://aiyprojects.withgoogle.com)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> My guess is ~9950 of those employees just do data labeling.

<comment><USER18> That still implies 50 of them are trying to make it seem like anything but a toy.

I was given a Google Home Mini as a Christmas gift (the resident tech god for most people's lives doesn't have one? what, how can this be!? someone rectified that for me), and I've been toying with it... and its the Google assistant in my phone, but in a stand alone device.

I mean, don't get me wrong, that's a lot more useful than people realize because.... IT ACTUALLY WORKS. Ridiculously loud kitchen fan hood roaring along at levels that are probably considered unsafe by OSHA standards? "Hey Google, do the thing." "Okay, I'm doing the thing." Upstairs, far away from it? Not even yelling at it, it understands me reasonably and does things alarmingly often.

The best impossible magic? "Okay Google, turn my television off." My Chromecast is not named "television" nor "my television", is only referenced in my Home config as the default TV for that room (of which the TV and Mini share), and somehow turns the TV off even though the Chromecast does not expose this functionality anywhere in the Home app (and was assumed to only know how to issue exactly one HDMI CEC command (turn TV on and switch input to here) due to some undocumented and strange hardware issue... hundreds of threads across the Internet all about how can they turn the TV off even though they can turn the TV on, none of them ever figuring out how to issue CEC off or even if the Chromecast can... it can, and the assistant in my tiny speakers knows how to issue this probably undocumented command to the Chromecast).

My experience with Alexa? Ideal listening conditions, no background noise, only me talking. "Alexa, do the skill that you know how to do and is advertised in the commercials on TV, any off them." "I'm not quite sure how to help you with that".

<comment><USER19> I have been using Alexa for years. I've been controlling my TV and I have WiFi smart plugs. It is super useful and it has never had issues understanding what I was saying.

I have noticed people who have issues they place the device next to a sound source such as a TV or fan or something and obviously this will mess it up.

I also don't understand why so much hate for Alexa. Everyone in this thread just seems like a Debbie downer, shi*ing on everything all the time.

<comment><USER20> I'll give you a concrete example. The primary light fixture in my small apartment is a standing lamp in the corner of the living room. I bought a smart plug for the lamp and during set-up I chose the name "lamp", since that is what we call it (in our household you don't have to say /which/ lamp, since it's obvious). Now, Alexa doesn't know what to do if I ask it to "turn off the light", which is disappointing enough, but it also fails to understand "turn off the lamp" \-- instead I have to remember to drop the 'the' and say "turn off lamp", which is so unnatural. It feels like I have to bend and deform natural language into something Alexa can parse, which is the exact opposite of what assistants promise to do.

<comment><USER21> Well, naming devices for voice control is more tedious than you'd think. You have one device that you named poorly. Try having a house with over 150 devices! Naming matters. Putting a little thought into it makes a big difference in usability.

I've got one that gets used everyday. It's named "Breakfast Table". 'Alexa, turn on Breakfast Table' works quite reliably. Now, am I actually turning on the table? No, of course not, but that rolls off the tongue a lot better than "Alexa, turn off pendant lamp over the breakfast table". Or recessed ceiling cans as opposed to just "living room ceiling". We really don't have many devices with 'lamp' or 'light' as part of their name. Because we're not really asking for control over a light, we're asking for light for an activity at a location.

But there still ends up being a few that are clunky. "Family room endtable" for a reading lamp near that end of the sectional, or 'Family room sofa" for the two on a console table behind the other part. Haven't hit upon better names for those. Activity naming is an option but we really don't call for lighting in a scene oriented kind of way. Some folks seem to like that, go figure.

Bearing in mind with an open floorplan just about everything on a level is within line of sight and earshot. The placing of multiple Alexa devices took a little fine tuning to overcome reflection from lots of wood and drywall surfaces. That allows for unexpected pickup. Oh, the units handle avoiding overlap with each other, but sometimes facing one way in a room leads to the sound being picked up by the one in that direction. As you'd expect sound waves would travel. But without a LOT more intrusive sensors (cameras, motion, position) it's handling things remarkably well just with voice.

The great tragedy is the leap to conclusions people make. "Promise to do".... where? By whom?

Oh, you want a TV cartoon equivalent of Rosie the Robot... we're not there yet. But given the hilariously low price point for these devices, we're getting quite a lot of bang for the buck in the meanwhile.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> W/o Paywall: [https://outline.com/vqmqwg](https://outline.com/vqmqwg)

This org could be it's own company (like many other Amazon orgs)! For context, number of employees at:

      Motorola (2014): 40,000
      Nvidia: 11,528
      AMD: 8,900

<comment><USER23> I bet there are more Alexa customers than nvidia ones. And way more than direct AMD ones.

<comment><USER24> Amazon has sold about 35 million Echo units, which is a little under half of the total number of PlayStation 3 units sold to date, each of which has an Nvidia GPU in it.

<comment><USER25> 100 million, they released numbers the other day [https://www.reddit.com/r/amazonecho/comments/ad2drt/100_mill...](https://www.reddit.com/r/amazonecho/comments/ad2drt/100_million_alexa_devices_have_been_sold_yes/)

<comment><USER26> 1 employee per 10,000 echos doesn't seem like much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> And yet, Google has way better speech recognition than Alexa.

<comment><USER28> I'm surprised at the number of people saying there's a noticeable difference. I've been using Dots for a few months, now, and it pretty much understands me every time, even with the vent hood of the range on, etc.

I did have one odd error, where when I named one of my lamps 'halogen', Alexa would always ask back "did you mean halogen?" with the exact same pronunciation I had used. Then proceed to turn it off or on like I'd asked in the first place. This struck me as more of a bug than anything else, and I worked around it by just using a different name. But still, if that's the only listening error I've dealt with after several months' use, I'm impressed.

<comment><USER29> > when I named one of my lamps 'halogen', Alexa would always ask back "did you > mean halogen?" with the exact same pronunciation I had used.

Maybe due to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-dropping](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-dropping) ?

<comment><USER28> An interesting thought. In my case, though, I live and work in the bay area of California, so no H-dropping, and the accent I use is probably the one that is the most common in terms of use for a training set.

(I was saying 'hale-oh-gen', as was Alexa, FWIW. Now I'm curious if others can repeat the same error!)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Does anyone have an approx breakdown by role?

e.g. how many software engineers vs how many data labelers

or how many are full-time vs contractors, etc

</comment><comment><USER31> 10,000 people, any my Echo still doesn't understand the difference between any of my smarthome devices that contain the word "lamp" in their names.

</comment><comment><USER32> I have many alexa devices in my home and I love it. They solve lot of problem for us. From automate my home to a speaker(via bluetooth).

But one thing concern me a lot is Alexa is constantly stream/read data to internet. I'm not sure what it's but it consume to 114Mbps per device.

With that huge data it is sending back to Alexa, I imagine they may have a huge team of scientist to work on it.

One thing I noticed is Alexa understand my broken English way better than my wife(native). Probably I have speak to it to much and it learned my voice.

<comment><USER33> It's massively insane that people put microphones into their house and willingly stream all conversations to a private 3rd party in exchange for minor convenience.

<comment><USER34> >all conversations

I believe Alexa only streams what you say after the trigger word and not all conversations. Assuming you believe Amazon.

<comment><USER35> if its technically possible to do it without you knowing then all that is left is how much you trust Amazon with that. Note that Amazon may have to surrender its devices access to three letters agencies for random reasons as well. You have to live with that assumption.

<comment><USER36> It's widely understood how the wake-word system works. You can monitor how much data is being uploaded and when. So no, it's not possible to just stream everything you say undetected.

<comment><USER37> I believe 99 percent of Alexa users wouldn't notice the increased data usage. If "three letter agencies" carefully choose who they spy on, it might go undetected for a very long time.

<comment><USER38> If a three letter agency is interested in _you_ then you would be lucky if your Alexa is the best bugging device they have.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Seems like an 80/20 rule might apply here: 8K of them are in marketing, with the remaining 2K also being split 80/20 to 1,600 tech/infrastructure support and 400 actual ML/AI, device & application developers.

</comment><comment><USER40> Alexa seems to not understand simple questions like "current temperature in Celsius" which is really a deal breaker for me.

(I don't own any Alexa device but when I visit Seattle they have one in the room).

</comment><comment><USER41> I don't care how many people they have working on Alexa or Echo - those things will _never_ be allowed inside my house. Massive security risk.

<comment><USER42> Do you have a smart phone? It's not any different.

Edit: But it also constantly tracks your location and has a built in camera.

<comment><USER43> Has there ever been a documented case of a smart phone randomly burst out in creepy laughter or sending private conversations to random contacts?

<comment><USER44> Here is Android sending private conversations to random contacts: [https://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/01/06/android- sms](https://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/01/06/android-sms)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> If those 10k employees earn 90k$ on average, that would be 900 million dollars per year just for salaries.

The echo dot costs 30$.

I'm sure Amazon just wants to make a great user-centric product and will not agressively violate your privacy to make more money! </sarcasm>

</comment><comment><USER46> How many of them are working on tagging manually the audio tracks for machine learning?

</comment><comment><USER47> Amazon must have a very decentralized recruiting methodology because I've been contacted by recruiters for Alexa at least 4 times.

It seems like Alexa, Go, and AWS have massive staffing targets based on my interactions w/ recruiters.

<comment><USER48> Yes, every group in Amazon has its own recruiters who largely find candidates independently. However, Amazon does have a good central database of everybody who is contacted, who last talked with them, what happened with the contact, etc. And they're usually pretty good about having only one group active with a candidate at a time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Wow. Is the software that complex that it takes 10k employees to work with it?!! :)

<comment><USER50> Me: That's a pretty complex thing to build. I'm guessing it'll take about 12 months.

Management: Great! We'll hire 10000 people and have it done before lunch!

Me: ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Do people like having these devices in their house? Don't you feel like they're listening to everything you say? My wife says these will never be allowed in my house.

<comment><USER52> Your wife is wise. I won't have one in my house either. It's crazy to me that anyone would be ok with them post Snowden revelations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Is there any public info on the numbers for Google and Apple?

<comment><USER54> Apple likely has fewer people in their entire software engineering organization; they generally hire fewer people than you'd expect for most projects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Really hudge, how they are going to make it very lucrative? Monthly payment? Or sponsored hidden ads?

</comment><comment><USER56> And it's still no match for Google.

</comment><comment><USER57> My 6yo son thinks Alexa is an actual person... he might be on to something.

<comment><USER58> I wonder if any of the 10,000 people are actually named Alexa, and if so do they get any preferential treatment?

<comment><USER59> I always feel sorry for all the Alexas. And the Harry Potters who were living their lives just fine before the books.

My friend is named Tressa Green. Her dad assured me he had no idea that most people pronounced Tres-sa as Tree-sa.

[edit] this is a fun read: [https://www.radiotimes.com/news/film/2018-03-22/meet-the- rea...](https://www.radiotimes.com/news/film/2018-03-22/meet-the-real-life- muggles-named-harry-potter/)

<comment><USER48> If you look at the lists of ranked baby names by year, you'll see a massive drop off of Alexas about when Amazon shipped.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> the link below points to the source code for alexa based personal assistants in a can. [https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=..). you can also access alexa by browser, but you need to sign in

[https://www.amazon.com/ap/signin?showRmrMe=1&openid.return_t...](https://www.amazon.com/ap/signin?showRmrMe=1&openid.return_t..).

there is also a way of saddling an SDcard into the echodot debug port and booting whatever you have put on the SD thus you may run custom boot up on the dot and hax around.

[https://medium.com/@micaksica/exploring-the-amazon-echo- dot-...](https://medium.com/@micaksica/exploring-the-amazon-echo-dot-..).

[https://medium.com/@micaksica/exploring-the-amazon-echo- dot-...](https://medium.com/@micaksica/exploring-the-amazon-echo-dot-..).

One of the most interesting things to get into is the MP3files that make up the dots responses to you, writing your own skills is cool too.

and here are a bunch of fidjitty tricks to do to your dot.

[https://hackaday.com/?s=echo+dot](https://hackaday.com/?s=echo+dot)

</comment><comment><USER61> Once Amazon/Google/etc manage to get their audio surveillance embedded into every device on earth, will breathing oxygen and speaking aloud be considered "agreeing to Amazon/Google/etc privacy policies"?</comment>


Why client-side web development is harder than server-side development - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/Startups/Why-are-front-end-developers-so-high-in-demand-at-startups-if-front-end-development-is-relatively-easier-than-other-fields-of-engineering/answer/Simon-Willison

<comment><USER2> As a slight nit-pic, the actually question is not about why client side is more difficult than server side it is actually about the cost of engineers based on the assumption that client side is easier.

For me personally client side is easier because I prefer a stateless server architecture, that is achieved more elegantly through maintaining state client side. As far as easier is concerned I mean that it is easier for me to achieve what I feel is an optimal application architecture. This does not necessarily imply that the code is easier, or that it will take less time rather it implies that it is easier for me to achieve an what I feel is an elegant system utilizing a stateless server architecture.

With all that said, it has been our experience that we deliver faster with the new stack as opposed to the older server side stacks. But there are a lot of variables in that so it is by no means empirical.</comment>


Font Awesome Adds Pied Piper Icon – fa fa-pied-piper-alt - <AUTHOR> http://fortawesome.github.io/Font-Awesome/icon/pied-piper-alt/

<comment><USER2> This is the alt, the PP icon is [http://fortawesome.github.io/Font- Awesome/icon/pied-piper/](http://fortawesome.github.io/Font-Awesome/icon/pied- piper/)</comment>


Microsoft quietly launches so.cl social network - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57437881-93/microsoft-quietly-launches-so.cl-social-network/

<comment><USER2> Gee, I wonder why they chose to launch it for students first?</comment>


If you want to be a better person, find something to do outside of work - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/689526/hobbies-and-the-meaning-of-life/ <comment><USER2> yes</comment>


58,000 Sign Up for Stanford AI Course - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/16/science/16stanford.html?_r=1&hp <comment><USER2> I am most excited about the machine learning course, since I could use the structure to go through Andrew Ng's lectures; also the ones from 2008 are already out of date.

As for the AI course, I'm skeptical, frankly. Sign-up right now has meant putting your name and email address. There is a big difference between spending 2 second to fill that in, and spending the amount of time necessary to finish the course. You come to a website that sounds like making robots and turns out the class is about developing pruning heuristics for search trees, do you stick with it? Maybe...but I'm going to save my awe for how many people complete.

I praise Stanford (CS) for thinking up this idea. Like Khan, they are going to reach a lot of people, and I think its particularly useful for motivated learners who, for whatever reason, are stuck in a place that you can't take a good AI course or can't afford one. Ultimately, though, the course is going to require drive that a lot fewer than 65,000 have.

<comment><USER3> If 1% of sign ups complete the course .. that's still 5800 people. Which is pretty good reach. And then add in all the people who didn't complete, or look at the materials afterwards, or who are otherwise affected by the project... These people don't have enough drive to get the full benefit, but they do get some benefit for sure.

<comment><USER4> Nice try, but 1% of 58,000 is 580.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, that's a pretty stupid mistake. My bad!

I still stand by my other, less retarded point, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm really curious what affect this will have on Universities with relatively poor teachers in these areas. I remember taking algorithms with a very nice but not altogether great teacher, so in the evenings I would follow up class with the appropriate lecture of from the MIT OCW algorithms course.

I've worked in higher-ed awhile and been a student for many, many years and noticed that independent of the quality of the school there are always smart, ambitious students to be found (the density just changes). I can imagine a relatively near future were the brightest students start class having already finished the course material at Standford, smiling and nodding at a relatively clueless prof. I've heard that there are highschools that assign their students the khan lectures for homework and in class do the exercises together, it would be interesting to see universities start to go this direction (where poorer profs would essentially become long distance TAs for Norvig et al.)

<comment><USER6> It's absolutely a revolution in education. None of what you mention was possible ten years ago when I was in college.

<comment><USER7> Maybe a bit farther than 10 years. I watched CS lectures online back in 2000 for my USC classes.

<comment><USER6> Fair enough. It was when Quakeworld was extremely popular, so a little more than ten years. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm curious if any of the Stanford students who are paying thousands for this course are worried about the diminished return they might get from their professor. Don't get me wrong, I love this idea as the free recipient, I'm just curious if students who are paying, and obviously getting lots more, have any views on this.

<comment><USER9> The scrutiny that this course will attract because of its popularity might actually encourage a higher standard of teaching for this course than many others that are offered. It could be a win for everyone.

<comment><USER10> They can also use the data the crowd is generating, these are big data guys.

Also, students are going to be trying harder because they are going to be competing against the world. Imagine if no in-class student was in the top 1,000?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Government should sponsor this kind of thing, seems like there are a lot of people out there that want to learn more and these kind of quality courses should scale fairly well. Sure it won't replace the real course but it will teach a lot of people a lot of things.

Really the only thing holding this kind of thing back from dramatically improving education efficiency is the old thinking rigid degree requirements.

<comment><USER12> You can get Teaching Company DVDs from a lot of libraries. Basically the same idea but lower tech, and government subsidized.

But then, I am a big believer that a great teacher on tape is far better for the students than a good or OK teacher in person.

<comment><USER13> It's not really. The most useful thing a teacher can do is give feedback. That said, one student among 300 doesn't get a lot of feedback.

<comment><USER12> How about "great lecturer or speaker" over "great teacher"? Because a 300:1 lecture by an ok lecturer is much less useful (bordering on worthless) than a recorded one by a great lecturer. And that mediocre lecture is what you will get in most schools for intro classes.

<comment><USER13> ... which are often the ones with 300 students, and no useful feedback. I agree.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I bet ~5% will complete the course

here is the number of views for Andrew Ng's Intro to machine learning course on youtube (<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzxYlbK2c7E> )

lec 1, 206612

lec 2, 91234

lec 3, 49000

lec 4, 36823

lec 5, 27782

lec 6, 26347

lec 7, 22075

lec 8, 20713

lec 9, 15665

lec 10, 14142

lec 11, 16573

lec 12, 14296

lec 13, 12401

lec 14, 15022

lec 15, 12290

lec 16, 10760

lec 17, 8986

lec 18, 13639

lec 19, 10219

lec 20, 11373

<comment><USER15> These lectures are also available on iTunes U. It would be interesting to compare the number of YouTube views to the number of iTunes downloads. I watched the first two classes on YouTube, and downloaded the rest on iTunes, though admittedly I'm still only on lecture 6.

<comment><USER16> This sort of thinking is supported also by the fact that the number of views is not strictly decreasing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> and just like any math based course at a community college 3/4ths will have dropped by the midterm.

<comment><USER18> We should run a betting pool for this. I'd bet at even money than more than 90% of online signups fail to complete the course. Give me decent odds and I'll bump that up to 95%

<comment><USER19> I think you're being way too optimistic. I'm guessing about 5% of sign-ups will ever actually follow the course once it starts, and of those, I'm guessing less than 5% of those people will complete the course.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> HN readers may find another free Stanford course of interest: EE380, the Stanford EE Computer Systems Colloquium. The Colloquium meets w4:15-5:30 throughout the academic year and moves re-runs during summer quarter. Lectures can be seen live, viewed in real-time over the web, viewed on-demand over the web, and eventually find their way onto YouTube, iTunes, and elsewhere. <http://ee380.stanford.edu>.

</comment><comment><USER21> Official registration hasn't opened yet, right? I haven't received any additional info since I initially submitted my name and email address a few weeks ago.

<comment> misuse-permit Correct, the real headline was "58,000 Want Course."

Kind of sensationalist of mhb to change it like that, unless NYT secretly updated the article, which I've heard they're fond of doing.

<comment><USER22> Most likely NYT updated it. Easy mistake for someone not familiar with this topic to make.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It would be an interesting twist if someone were to sign up an AI bot, using machine learning to work its way through the course.

<comment><USER22> That's the homework for their machine learning class (ml-class.org). ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I really love this experiment. When I was in High School I was fortunate to be able to audit some University classes for which there wasn't an equivalent in my school district (numerical analysis and fortran programming). That allowed me to 'bank' time which would have nominally been wasted waiting to reach 'college age' or 'post HS diploma'. This is much more common today and my kids have all benefited from it.

This experiement is sort of the next step. If we can combine that with free access to a syllabus of seminal papers (vs paying $36 each from some Journal publisher) it will allow a lot of people more time to do great things.

</comment><comment><USER12> I think this is a great idea, but I'm not sure emphasizing the number of sign- ups at this point is smart.

They don't even have a CAPTCHA and don't verify the emails besides basic email@example.com. So hopefully they are removing bounces from the counts.

<comment><USER25> In fairness, these are _AI experts_. Surely they, more than anyone, know how to reliably distinguish people from non-people?

<comment><USER26> that's what they said about financial experts ...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> iTunes U was a big step in the proliferation of higher-quality education to the masses. It's nice to see Universities like Stanford spearhead revolutionary innovations to give the opportunity of learning from world class academicians to people who would have otherwise never dreamed of it. Bravo!

<comment><USER28> _iTunes U was a big step in the proliferation..._

A big step backwards, from what I can tell.

Sharing video recordings of class lectures on the Web is easy: record video, upload to Web. Why is there a need to do it through iTunes? AFAIK, iTunesU is just a way for Apple to try to get campus lock-in. I know this sounds kind of rant-ish, but I'm being 100% serious and honest.

My school started using iTunesU, which didn't seem to have any advantages over just putting video online, except that I couldn't use it, since I can't run iTunes on my computer (Linux).

I'd honestly like to know what benefits iTunesU has for anyone besides Apple and Microsoft, in the sense that if it became truly widespread, it would prevent any widespread movement to adopt Linux on campus.

<comment><USER29> I see your point about not having access to the iTunes content on Linux. Fair point that should be addressed.

That said, I'm a big fan of iTunesU. I like the ability to download courses on my iOS devices and listening to the lectures on trains or at the gym. Also, they must save a lot on bandwidth by letting people download the videos (I go through the lectures a couple of times at least).

<comment><USER30> You are saying this as if you cannot download videos and view them on an iOS device from any other source. I believe it is possible to just download a video and start watching. How does the iTunes software help to make that process better? Also many people do not have an iOS product.

<comment><USER29> The iTunes software sucks quite badly. Don't get me started.

However, the end-user experience for downloading videos from iTunesU and playing it on an iOS is excellent. It is almost a one-click experience. This is just my opinion as a user.

I'm curious, on a vanilla iOS device, what application would you use to download a video on a website and have it cache onto your device?

I agree that if you don't have an iOS device, this doesn't work.

<comment><USER28> Well, guess we should all go buy iOS devices, so we can have a great one-click experience watching lectures produced by public universities that are paid for by taxpayer dollars and ought to be freely accessible.

(Sorry if I'm rubbing it in too hard, you've been very gracious in this discussion.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Any reason on why they are compacting the courses during the Fall quarter? It could be interesting to have AI and ML separated in Fall-Winter quarters.

Anybody knows if they plan on doing something similar in future quarters?

I love the idea, and I am excited to see the results of this methodology.

</comment><comment><USER32> I just found it through the database course and signed up. Just got a taste of machine learning etc via <http://blog.saush.com/>

Hoping not all of it will go over my head!

</comment><comment><USER33> What is the name of the Stanford Course on compilers? I WANT I WANT!

</comment><comment><USER34> So is this the eventual commoditization of a university education on the horizon or what?

</comment><comment><USER35> Learning is not a spectator sport. For material that is solid and clearly presented in a book, for a good student with good preparation and good motivation, it is enough for the student to study the book independently or nearly so. Indeed, such is nearly necessary.

E.g., in 'research', how do you think the necessary background material is obtained? By signing up for 'courses'? Nope! Instead, the researcher gets the background materials, learns what is needed, and then gets on with the research. A researcher can't get paid just for getting the background material; instead, the researcher has to just do that seemingly effortlessly! Well, students, once they reach a suitable level of educational 'maturity', can too!

E,g,, here on HN are many thousands of programmers who use computer hardware and software they never saw in a course. So, HN readers learned on their own. Such self-education has long been a central feature of the US computer industry.

Net, researcher, HN reader, or serious student, all can learn solid material without a course, and do.

Actually, learning outside a course is sometimes in academics considered almost 'cheating'! So, if a course is to be a 'filter', a competition, a 'stress test', then for a student to have worked carefully through solid texts on the material before the course lets them in the course effortlessly blow away all the students who started with the material only in the course. So, can get comments such as "Best student in the class by a wide margin, but apparently knew most of the material before the course.". So, there's commonly no doubt that it's possible to learn the material outside the course and to learn it well enough to lead the class in a corresponding course. Indeed, such self study can move forward at the student's own pace, faster some places, slower others, and, net, learn without gaps or wasted effort.

Net, course or not, the actual learning is mostly or entirely from what the student does with the material alone in a quiet room.

Of course, again, to get this good situation of self learning, need solid material clearly presented in, say, a book. Some subjects, sadly, are so vague that no such book can exist; in that case, maybe a course is 'needed', i.e., so that a student can soak up nonsense that couldn't be written down in solid form! For such, wander over to one of the 'humanities' departments and take one of the courses in 'political correctness'!

<comment><USER36> Certainly nothing beats a good book, but often a good lecturer can give some intuition or motivations that are not customarily written down. I think a great example of this would be material on convex optimization released by Stephen Boyd (<http://www.stanford.edu/class/ee364a/videos.html>), also from Stanford - certainly his style is not as precise as e.g. Bertsekas, but probably much better at helping students to get a sense of how to actively work with those ideas.

<comment><USER35> Is Boyd still talking about convexity?

Convexity is an important concept, and the world is just awash in rock solid treatments.

So, for some positive integer n, consider n-dimensional Euclidean space. Suppose C is a closed, convex subset and point x in the space is not in C. Then there exists a closed half space that covers C and omits x. The boundary of this closed half space can share a point with the boundary of the closed half space so that the plane of the half space is 'supporting' for C. So, this is a 'separation' result. Yes, it generalizes past finite dimensional Euclidean spaces! Yes, it's a darned useful theorem! E.g., can ask for the point in C closest to x -- the point has to exist since C is closed. Then the plane through this point and perpendicular to the line to x is supporting for C. So, can get a nice projection result and use it for optimization and best approximation.

Okay, my point: This result is one of the most important about convexity but is standard in 'analysis'. I first saw the result in the 'advanced calculus' book, Fleming, 'Functions of Several Variables'.

Bigger point: Convexity pops up frequently in analysis. E.g., there is Jensen's inequality. With it can easily knock off a nice list of otherwise difficult to prove inequalities. E.g., in the L^p spaces, we can use Jensen's inequality to get Holder's and Minkowski's inequalities.

When we start with optimization, we should start with convex sets and also convex functions. E.g., there is a nice list of theorems of the alternative that are separation results for cones and polyhedra that can be used to establish some otherwise tricky results about duality in linear programming and are also key to the Kuhn-Tucker conditions in non-linear programming. Of course, the feasible region in linear programming is a convex set.

In non-linear programming maximization, there is a non-linear dual that is to minimize a convex function, and that can be the core of the powerful technique of Lagrangian relaxation.

When we have a norm on a vector space, the locus of all points distance 1 from the origin is convex.

In facility location we can be minimizing a convex function and doing so by constructing a sequence of planes supporting the hypergraph of the convex function.

Alas, I never heard a lecture from Boyd!

There are plenty of rock solid, highly polished books where the role of complexity is made clear!

<comment><USER36> Absolutely it is possible to get a good high level picture of a field without taking any particular class. Moreover things like "convex optimization" can be done in the footnotes of a serious maths course. But on the other hand until there are again 300+ people functional analysis classes like in the old soviet union, this is perhaps the best there is.

<comment><USER35> Yup, Kolmogorov and Fomin -- NICE book. I never learned from it, but I believe that eventually I got a copy, looked through it, and liked it.

If Boyd has some nice engineering applications, terrific!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> So how many signed up for the DB course?</comment>


How Simple Game Mechanics Can Impassion Your Users - <AUTHOR> http://mixergy.com/amy-jo-kim/ <comment><USER2> Game Mechanics will inevitably make a site less about what it's _supposed_ to be about and more about The Game.

E.g. Karma/Moderating systems glorify/reinforce consensus opinions to the detriment of actual discussion.

Friend counts destroy the real value of a friend connection.

Upvoting of articles leads to 'popular' articles inevitably taking the fore from on-topic articles.

etc.

<comment><USER3> The talk was about how to get people to do more business with you, not about keeping things on topic.

<comment><USER2> And I was talking about the value of that 'more business' which comes from Game Mechanics. Whether you're trying to sell sneakers, services or page impressions, changing the user's focus on the site will necessarily change their behavior. Which will cast doubt on the applicability of your old knowledge of how the site works.

Suppose you're trying to sell shoes and you notice that shoes with reviews sell better. So you add a karma reward system to incentivize reviewers.

The very act of soliciting those reviews with rewards will be reflected in the average review. And the relationship you formerly noted between reviews and sales, may no longer hold true. It may have been that the former relationship was truly between _informative_ reviews and sales. And your reward system has created a flood of _preference_ reviews which don't have the desired effect.

<comment><USER4> "Inevitably" vs. "necessarily" vs. "may no longer/have been" is an important distinction.

The community itself, the nitty gritty of the mechanics, and moderation all play a role in success/failure in respect to the underlying biz goal(s).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> She spoke a lot about human psychology,so I wondered what her background was. I had wrongly assumed that she was a "techie"-turns out she has a PhD in Behavioral Neuroscience from University of Washington, and a BA in Experimental Psychology from UCSD! What a fascinating lady and incredibly interesting interview.

</comment><comment><USER6> thesixtyone.com seems to do a really good job of this.

<comment><USER7> For the most part they have a pretty good system. There are definitely artists that shoot to the top of the list every time they upload something new which causes a lot of artists to be overlooked. That said, the community itself tries to make up for it by finding those underloved of songs and making them visible.

It also seems like the current system is showing some strain with a growing userbase. Things that worked a year ago don't seem to function so well anymore. Specifically, there aren't enough hearts given per day to spend on the growing number of songs uploaded. And since a song's visibility is directly tied to the number of hearts it receives, a lot of good songs go unnoticed because nobody enough hearts to go around.

Nits aside, I still love the site. It's done more for me as an artist than anything else I've done so far.

<comment><USER6> > Specifically, there aren't enough hearts given per day to spend on the > growing number of songs uploaded. And since a song's visibility is directly > tied to the number of hearts it receives, a lot of good songs go unnoticed > because nobody enough hearts to go around.

What you've just described is a hearts recession. Paul Krugman will tell you that the obvious solution is to increase the liquidity of the hearts market. :)</comment></comment></comment>


Quintet instead of Byte – data storage and retrieval approach - <AUTHOR> https://habr.com/post/468927/ <comment><USER2> It's like somebody looked at RDF triples and thought "F*CK IT WE'RE GOING TO FIVE ELEMENTS"

<comment><AUTHOR> Quite the opposite - the author's speaking about cutting the stuff down</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you organize your git/svn repository? - <AUTHOR>

How do you use the same repository for multiple projects in multiple languages and also use the common code in all the projects ? <comment><USER2> For common code see git-submodule: [http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git- submodul...](http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git- submodule.html)</comment>


Ask HN: WTF Happened to Digg.com? - <AUTHOR> Check out https://digg.com/about
 It says "please don't contact us"  and there's no way to submit stories.  The login is fairly broken (twitter login went to a busted XML tree).  What the hell happened? <comment><USER2> TechCrunch said Digg shut down in March, 2018: [https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/14/alas-digg-reader-is- shutti...](https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/14/alas-digg-reader-is-shutting- down-at-the-end-of-march/) At that time Digg was purchased by BuySellAds, an advertising company.

</comment><comment><USER3> AFAIK it's been rebooted a couple of times, maybe they're still trying to make it work?

</comment><comment><USER4> No money to fix.</comment>


Winding down a startup, have leftover tech like the day after thanksgiving. - <AUTHOR>

We're in the process of winding down a startup (we're working on another simultaneously). One thing that's bothering us is that we built a really, really awesome mobile user experience. Better than everything that we see out there, and we're in a space that's currently inundated with startups. They're all focused on building a mobile product, but many are early-stage and don't have the development muscle to do so yet. Others do, but are really falling flat on user interface design. Is there anything that we can do with this labor of love, or should we just throw it away? <comment><USER2> Can you show a demo or give a hint as to what it is? You might be able to sell the assets to another startup in this space.

However your post begs the question...if it's so awesome, why are you winding it down instead of supporting the millions of users who also think it's awesome?

</comment><comment><USER3> Well, winding down means you probably don't have the funds to patent whatever unique thing it is you've created. Which is a bit of a shame, because you could have donated the patents in some manner that would prevent someone else monopolizing them.</comment>


Thinking About Mozilla | Incisive.nu - <AUTHOR> http://incisive.nu/2014/thinking-about-mozilla/?

<comment><USER2> Powerful words. Incredible response from this amazing Mozilla employee.

'To everyone who has flinched away, and everyone re-traumatized by these events, I offer a complete and sincere apology: I have chosen to walk under this banner, and that makes me complicit, and I am so sorry for the pain I know this has caused.'</comment>


Jobs to Noah Wyle: "You do look like me" - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/blog/apple/jobs-to-noah-wyle-you-do-look-like-me-with-macworld-expo-gag-video/11332

<comment><USER2> Noah Wyle's intro at Macworld is better than Andy Samberg at f8.

Funnily enough I'm watching the movie right now - Mike Markkula just showed up and Steve just named himself employee #0.</comment>


Show HN: Get 5 proposals from the best designers - <AUTHOR> https://www.designinc.com/o/zb <comment><USER2> I have tried similar services in the past. Eventually the quality of the designers goes down as the community grows, how are you going to tackle that?

<comment><AUTHOR> That is something we have thought about a lot. Right now all designer on the platform are invite only. They have to apply, we review their work and make a decision. That has worked out very well for us so far.</comment></comment>


8.0 earthquake strikes northern Chile - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fgw-chile-earthquake-8-0-20140401,0,542646.story#axzz2xgY0SKqY

<comment><USER2> I'm Chilean and I live in a "problematic" area. Fortunately it was not that hard. We're kind of prepared (of course, with nature, nobody is actually prepared for something like this) and the Government and the people are already evacuating those areas.

The sad part? A lot of people is evacuating using cars, and streets doesn't gave so much space to handle all that traffic. Internet and Mobile networks are still working and that helped to reach to almost anyone.

ONEMI, which is the emergency organism here, already published the expected hour the waves will arrive to those problematic areas, so some cities have plenty of time to evacuate.

<comment><USER3> Is there anything worth taking photos of, or do you know of any decent photo sites? Glad it wasn't that hard and your Government is competent!

<comment><USER2> Not really. I think tomorrow will be a better moment to take some, given the fact that everything is happening by night. I have some pictures from the old 8.8 earthquake on Flickr[1] from a City called Angol (very close to the epicenter of the 8.8 magnitude)...

[1]: [https://flickr.com/photos/marlexsystems/sets/721576274358393...](https://flickr.com/photos/marlexsystems/sets/72157627435839372/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Here's a site where you can monitor the sea level live: [http://www.ioc- sealevelmonitoring.org/station.php?code=pisa](http://www.ioc- sealevelmonitoring.org/station.php?code=pisa) (as long as the site is up. Multiple measuring stations available there)

For now the highest is 2 meters. If the site is not working, here's a screenshot from right after it began: [https://twitter.com/severestudios/status/451151233739288576](https://twitter.com/severestudios/status/451151233739288576) After that it went wildly up and down.

Keep in mind that a tsunami can have wildly different heights and properties in different places.

</comment><comment><USER5> I am from Chile... live on Santiago though, far away (2+ thousand KM) from the North.

AFAIK there have been no casualties. People have been evacuated from the coastal areas all over Chile (even in the south for precaution).

Cheers.

<comment><USER6> So far 2 dead, 3 seriously injured according to Reuters.

[http://www.trust.org/item/20140402024844-z0fmt](http://www.trust.org/item/20140402024844-z0fmt)

<comment><USER2> According to our president, 5 are dead (she's live on TV right now).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I lived in LA for 7 years and experienced a few 3.0+s on older four-floor or so apartment complexes. Now I'm living ~7 miles away from a fault in the bay area.

Always have water and supplies.

And I hope ad-hoc/mesh wireless networking technology takes off sooner rather than later. [http://www.wired.com/2014/03/apple-multipeer- connectivity/](http://www.wired.com/2014/03/apple-multipeer-connectivity/)

<comment><USER8> > And I hope ad-hoc/mesh wireless networking technology takes off sooner > rather than later

Are you familiar with the Serval Project [0]? These guys are working on exactly this solution, for exactly this (and other similar problems).

[0] [http://www.servalproject.org/](http://www.servalproject.org/)

<comment><USER7> I was not. Thanks!

Drones, a la Facebook, might also be a solution under severely damaged infrastructure, it occurs to me now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Scary stuff. Personally my wife and I have decided it's time to get serious about creating a disaster kit. The "big one" could hit any time.

Hope nobody was hurt in Chile or South America.

</comment><comment><USER10> It's been updated to 8.2. No casualties reported so far.

And, actually, a bigger one it's expected in the zone, the "big event".

<comment><USER11> Do you have any links about "The big event" it seems like in every town somebody "knows" about it

<comment><USER10> [http://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-chile- quake-l...](http://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-chile-quake- larger-20140401,0,2045484.story#axzz2xhGKbm7q)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> On a related note, we are adding earthquakes to Riskpulse.com this week. It's amazing how much scattered and rich data there is, but it's just that ... scattered.

</comment><comment><USER13> Right as my wife and son are flying in to Peru. Like, they're literally in the air en route to Lima now...

<comment><USER14> I'm in Lima right now, hardly anyone has noticed a thing so for the moment I would try not to worry. Certainly don't know anyone who even felt any tremors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> God, please protect them from harm and danger..

<comment><USER16> Or how about we as human beings do all we can to get people out of there safely, instead of praying for a miracle? "Protecting from harm and danger" after a natural disaster is not how God works.

<comment><USER17> Sure, I'll just jump into my private jet, fly to SA, and start evacuating them.</comment></comment></comment>


Lessons Learned in SaaS Startups - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/lessons-learned-in-saas-startups <comment><AUTHOR> I wrote a collection of posts on lessons I've learned from 8+ years in SaaS. Hope it helps.</comment>


Show HN: WebRTC Poker - <AUTHOR> https://bitflop.me

<comment><USER2> I was hoping someone had found and implemented a practical Mental Poker algorithm, since webrtc is p2p, and you usually don't want to have to trust the other parties in a p2p system.

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

<comment><USER3> Mental poker is a neat thought exercise, but if one of the parties drops out mid-hand, it can't be completed. If there are connectivity issues or if someone doesn't like the flop that's a huge problem.

<comment><USER4> In a serious bitcoin/mental poker implementation you could let people put up a bond that's used to pay the other party if you do that. It's not exactly zero trust anymore but still better than the conventional model.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What shuffling algorithm do you use?

Here's a description of a very solid one: [http://www.briggsoft.com/docs/pmavens/Technical_Shuffling.ht...](http://www.briggsoft.com/docs/pmavens/Technical_Shuffling.htm)

Here's an example of what can happen if you do it wrong: [http://www.cigital.com/papers/download/developer_gambling.ph...](http://www.cigital.com/papers/download/developer_gambling.php)

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm using Fisher-Yates for the shuffle algo [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisher%E2%80%93Yates_shuffle](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisher%E2%80%93Yates_shuffle)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks to all those sitting and playing against me! Its been so much fun chatting with you all. I will keep creating games until 5pm Pacific time, so feel free to join and play me! My username is ziebac.

<comment><USER6> I'm interested in getting in a match as well. Username is "quux".

10/20, t1500, gogogo. =)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> As an avid poker player, I think this is a neat idea for a lot of casual live players to get into online play.

</comment><comment><USER8> have you posted this to 2p2? Feel like they would be very receptive to a version of this game that could allow for bitcoin and potentially other wagering

<comment><AUTHOR> This is still very early in development, and needs a lot more work before it's ready for some serious wagering.

<comment><USER6> You might still want to post this to 2+2. Granted, 99% of the readers won't be interested in a play money site with virtually zero traffic but 1% will and 1% of 2+2 is a lot of people.

You might be intentionally keeping this on the downlow (so I won't go post it myself, obv) but if not, and you want eyeballs to work out the kinks, that's your place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Small comment: I was slightly confused by the new game form.

I assumed that your watermarked values were defualts (which i was happy with) .... so didn't change them, then couldn't work out why the create game button was disabled.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks so much for the feedback! You're right , this is kind of confusing, and will be fixed shortly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> > Can bitflop games be monitored or recorded?

The answer to this may be a little misleading. There's nothing really stopping anyone from recording their own screen (which includes the opponent's video broadcast).

<comment><AUTHOR> This is an excellent point. I will definitely reword that FAQ to account for this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I can hear my own sounds (voice, clicking, etc), is there a way to disable that?

<comment><AUTHOR> As of right now, you can only disable the microphone completely, but I will look into taking care of this, as it is quite annoying!

<comment><USER5> Are you looking at doing something like Ventrilo's PTT (Push-To-Talk) -- hotkey-based transmitting like 2-way radios?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Do you have some links that helped you get started with the whole WebRTC setup? I watched the google i/o talk on WebRTC ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2HzZkd2A40&hd=1](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2HzZkd2A40&hd=1)) but it's still a mystery to me how to implement STUN and ICE, which they didn't go over in the talk. Some SaaS services are popping up but I'd like to know if you did this all from scratch and what resources you used.

<comment><AUTHOR> This was all built from scratch, and the best article I came across was [http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/webrtc/basics/](http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/webrtc/basics/)

This helped me understand how every part of the process worked.

<comment><USER12> Wow, that's a thorough article. Thanks for sharing!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> How would one go about implementing a distributed poker system where one could not cheat?

<comment><USER3> Even if you can manage to implement a system where everyone trusts the deal, you still have the problem of collusion between players.

You can avoid collusion by only playing heads up (2 players), but then you have the problem that there is very good AI for heads up.

In short, it's probably not possible to completely eliminate it.

<comment><USER5> Heads-up play will prevent collusion based on sharing your known hole cards with others, but it of course can't prevent the "asking a friend sitting next to you their opinion on the hand"-type collusion. The webcam video feed would prevent that, though. =)

The AI for fixed limit is much better than that for no-limit _(you can do more statistical math on the situation)_ ; I could have sworn it wasn't that great on heads-up but now you've got me doubting my memory.

<comment><USER6> >> Heads-up play will prevent collusion based on sharing your known hole cards with others, but it of course can't prevent the "asking a friend sitting next to you their opinion on the hand"-type collusion. The webcam video feed would prevent that, though. =)

Not unless you require nobody listens to music on headphones.

Even then, people using micro earpieces which sell for under $100 would go undetected.

If you required an inspection of every player's ear over the webcam, an app which allows two SMS devices to do Morse code with the player having vibrate turned on would suffice. One buzz for check/fold, two buzzes for bet/raise followed by a pause then binary for bet size.

I like the idea of the webcam as a novelty but I don't see how it offers anything but the illusion of honesty.

<comment><USER5> Funny that you came up with an SMS-based "buzzer" \-- a technique similar to this was used to gain an edge in casino blackjack decades ago. A custom microcomputer was hidden in the player's shoe, and IIRC they used vibrating motors to communicate the correct plays in one version of the device.

The webcam I think isn't there for an "illusion of honesty" but rather for a more personal / "human" game experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Do you accept bitcoins?

<comment><USER2> That's an interesting idea. Given how flexible the bitcoin transaction script system is, it might be possible to set up a system where the bitcoins can only be claimed by someone who can prove that they won.

<comment><USER15> The bitcoin script system only really allows by hashing. People have gotten very hyped up about the programmability of the scripting system in Bitcoin, but anything slightly interesting still requires trust in one or more arbitrators.

<comment><USER16> But less trust than the currently used alternatives. In a 2 out of 3 transaction you have to trust the arbitrator is not colluding with the other person, but you don't have to worry about him taking the money for himself.

<comment><USER2> Yes, this seems like the most likely arrangement - in a poker game if a significant fraction of your opponents are colluding without your knowledge then you're in trouble anyway, so you already have that level of trust. If you can use the same level of trust to claim the prize as you already implicitly have - maybe that 2/3rds of the players systems agree that a particularly player won, that would probably be good enough.

Another approach might be that everyone playing a game also automatically randomly observes another game somewhere, and their view of what happened is added to the trust calculation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> If anyone wants to play me :) [https://bitflop.me/game/play/62](https://bitflop.me/game/play/62)

<comment><AUTHOR> Im waiting at [https://bitflop.me/game/play/114](https://bitflop.me/game/play/114) for someone to join, if anyone wants to play (use your webcam please)! I'm crushing everyone today!

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Is this just 1v1? How many people could this scale to?

<comment><AUTHOR> Ya, this is 1v1 as of right now, but a full table (9 people) is currently in the works.

<comment><USER18> anyway to get notified when you launch this?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, of course! Follow on twitter to stay updated [https://twitter.com/bitflopme](https://twitter.com/bitflopme)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Does this use bitcoin or something?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not right now since it's still alpha, but soon (hopefully).

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is pretty awesome!

</comment><comment><USER21> Crazy mic feedback :(

<comment><AUTHOR> This is first up in my list of things to fix!</comment></comment>


Cat Parasite Affects Everything We Feel and Do - <AUTHOR> http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=2288095 <comment><USER2> Obligatory: <http://xkcd.com/231/>

</comment><comment><USER3> A sci-fi story that springboards off of this parasite and its effects, which should appeal to some hacker types: [http://www.davidwgoldman.com/Invasion_of_the_Pattern_Snatche...](http://www.davidwgoldman.com/Invasion_of_the_Pattern_Snatchers.html)

<comment><USER4> A really good one! Thanks for the pointer!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> There's another instance of this where flukes infect ants making them want to climb blades of grass where they are eaten by cows. Here's a diagram of the lifecycle of this odd creature:

[http://workforce.cup.edu/Buckelew/dicrocoelium_dendriticum_i...](http://workforce.cup.edu/Buckelew/dicrocoelium_dendriticum_is_a_bi.htm)

</comment><comment><USER6> I thought this might be bull so I googled it. Apparently the fact that these parasites affect human behavior is proven! How widespread this is is up for discussion. <http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/eid/vol9no11/03-0143.htm>

<comment><USER7> I'm having a hard time thinking this is not a joke myself

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> My friend who's a 24 year old (extremely cute) female, who eats your Standard American Diet (but on the healthy side), took a 40 day juice fast about a year ago.

After about day 30, she passed a huge ball of worms in her stool. Let me emphasize "huge". Like, a babies fist. Needless to say, she had some parasites.

I now fear the juice fast... and, in a weird way... her :)

<comment><USER9> Curiosity and revulsion combine. What exactly about an all juice food regimen would kill off that ball of parasites?

<comment><USER10> Yeah, ditto on the curiosity and revulsion. Is this a normal occurrence when juice fasting? What kind of juice? And when it was all over, any after- effects?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> 'Research has shown that women who are infected with the parasite tend to be warm, outgoing and attentive to others, while infected men tend to be less intelligent and probably a bit boring. But both men and women who are infected are more prone to feeling guilty and insecure.'

Although I do not doubt the infection rates I am sceptical about the conclusions. Any woman that does not LOVE cats is obviously not warm and attentive of others and I would like to see more details on the men samples; for example were they married to the above ladies or not. Do guilty and insecure people tend to have cats as pets?

Anyway I love cats since I was a kid and I am male! Worth the infection if I have it and perhaps the reason that so far I have not catch AIDS!

<comment><USER12> _Anyway I love cats since I was a kid and I am male! Worth the infection if I have it and perhaps the reason that so far I have not catch AIDS!_

I like cats too, but I feel like I am missing something here. How did you get from "I love cats" to not getting AIDS?

<comment><USER13> I think the idea is he loves cats, not women.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> That's why pregnant women are told to stay away from cats during term

<comment><USER15> Not cats, but cat feces. (i.e. she shouldn't be changing her cat's -- or cats' -- litter box)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This parasite is indeed real and widespread, and the reason you don't notice its effects in others is because its effects are rather minor, resulting from small brain infections and increased dopamine at certain sites (I had no luck pinpointing the location of these, unfortunately).

The most agreed-upon effect appears to be that the parasite results in decreased neophilia. What a sensationalist story like this one will not tell you is that the observed effects are "rather low":

 _Our results showed that CMV infected subjects had lower scores in the personality dimension novelty seeking than the CMV-free subjects. Novelty seeking in infected subjects negatively correlated with levels of anti-CMV antibodies. Negative correlation was also found between novelty seeking and Toxoplasma-infection in Prague, while in villages and smaller cities the correlation was not significant. The effect of both infections, although highly significant, was rather low, explaining about 2 % of total variability of the novelty seeking in our experimental set._

<http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2334/5/54>

Further, while cats are this parasite's original host, it seems that you're as likely to become infected form undercooked meat as from water polluted with cat fecal matter. I guess that's not as much fun as saying "cats are bad, now everyone fight!" I love how every media outlet picked this up as soon ('06, granted) as possible but it took Reuters a month to report on conclusive findings that marijuana consumption results in lower incidence of head and neck cancer.

<comment><USER17> This is old news and fluff. For a less fluffy article:

 _Increased incidence of traffic accidents in Toxoplasma-infected military drivers and protective effect RhD molecule revealed by a large-scale prospective cohort study._

Look here: <http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2334/9/72>

Courtesy of the hard science sub-reddit.

For those with too little time to read the actual paper, here's the results summary:

 _We confirmed, using for the first time a prospective cohort study design, increased risk of traffic accidents in Toxoplasma-infected subjects and demonstrated a strong protective effect of RhD positivity against the risk of traffic accidents posed by latent toxoplasmosis. Our results show that RhD- negative subjects with high titers of anti-Toxoplasma antibodies had a probability of a traffic accident of about 16.7%, i.e. a more than six times higher rate than Toxoplasma-free or RhD-positive subjects._

<comment><USER16> In case I missed it, did that study control for location? I know that the other study stated that it did not have much (if any) background information on the candidates, but did say that infection rates for the parasite are higher in villages and small towns. I think that this is a significant lurking variable in any traffic accident analysis, and needs to be considered: In my experience, rural folk are less exposed to some of the more "creative" driving situations than those who live closer in.

<comment><USER17> Good catch! I don't think they controlled for location.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Obviously there is a limit how much cats will take being humiliated as bad spellers all around the internet by humans. Revenge is here.

<comment><USER19> The cheezburgers are just an elaborate ruse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Come on. This is not HN material. What's next? Lolcats?

<comment><USER21> I find new discoveries about incurable diseases which change human personalities on the scale of individuals and whole societies very HN-worthy, by the same standard as other science/medical discoveries.

Unfortunately, this is (1) old news; and (2) especially prone to obvious, knee-jerk LOLcats jokes -- there were already three before your comment. So I have mixed feelings about its topicality.

<comment><USER22> Firstly it's a very old discovery, just the effects of latent toxoplasmosis are becoming more newsworthy in tabloids and fluff pieces, traditionally the whole encephalitis was what people worried about.

Toxoplasmosis' only agreed upon (and still alleged) effect is a decrease in neophilia, which is linked to monoamine oxidase A a product of the so called 'warrior gene' that is far more prevalent in society than toxoplasmosis infections (33% genetic prevalence amongst European whites IIRC and ~60% in Asian/Pacific Islanders).

Oh and BTW toxoplasmosis is easily curable, it's regularly cured in humans and in animals that carry it used for food production (Pigs, Sheep and farmed Deers). The reason doctors don't treat it, is because you're safer to have latent toxoplasmosis than none at all, not only can it lead to miscarriages in women, but the chance of encephalitis increases with decreased immune function. So if you get toxoplasmosis when you're healthy, like most people, you'll be fine, but if doctors go around curing it you'll get reinfected and seriously increase your risk for _death_.

Ironically the mild production of Monoamine Oxidase A is known for a decrease in danger-seeking behaviour, but extreme production (witnessed in people with the Warrior Gene) is known for an increase in danger-seeking behaviour. Toxoplasmosis apparently acts like the warrior gene for mice, but will in fact likely prolong the life of a human infected with latent toxoplasmosis.

<comment><USER23> I had toxoplasmosis when I was 12. It made my vision cloudy for a day or so until I was pumped full of prednisone to fight it. I still have a tiny blind spot in my eye from it, but (to my knowledge) no other long-term effects. Sidenote: I had an eye exam the other day and the doctor could no longer recognize it as toxo - he thought it was histo, which is apparently something you get from chickens.

<comment><USER22> It's good to hear that your only lasting effect is a tiny blind spot; can you yourself observe it, or is it only noticeable on an eye exam?

Histoplasmosis IIRC is caused by a fungus spore. It's common in the ground everywhere, however in certain areas it's a lot more prevalent for some reason, I believe the states surrounding the Ohio and Mississippi rivers are the main place in North America. It's apparently on 80% of peoples skin in these areas, which is similar to ringworm (another fungus) in most people. However dirt infused with bird or bat droppings are a hotbed, so chicken litter of infected chickens is the common source for most humans. The only time fungi usually cause problems is when they get out of control, and dealing with infected guano is probably a good bet. IIRC it's usually an inhaled infection (causes something like pneumonia) but sometimes, often children, accidentally rub it into their eyes.

I had a severe outbreak of ringworm, my doctor told me it was highly contagious and I likely caught it from my dog. My dog was clean and when I visited a dermatologist he told me that because I have psoriasis the ringworm fungus basically struck it lucky and got through the skin. Incidentally the ringworm 'cured' my psoriasis (it used to cover about 20% of my torso and limbs, now I don't have a single patch).

<comment><USER24> You say you have medical knowledge. Regarding your claim that the ringworm cured your psoriasis. I find that a very exciting claim, if true. There are other cases of people using parasites to cure illness.

Is anybody using ringworm as a psoriasis treatment?

<comment><USER21> Perhaps by "other cases" you're alluding to accounts like this one, of using intentional hookworm infection to treat allergies. If not, you may find it interesting:

<http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2006/4/30/91945/8971></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Using Custom Domains for React Apps Deployed to GitHub Pages - <AUTHOR> https://www.pluralsight.com/guides/using-custom-domains-for-react-apps-deployed-to-github-pages <comment><USER2> Github has excellent documentation on configuring GH pages to use custom domains: [https://docs.github.com/en/github/working-with-github- pages/...](https://docs.github.com/en/github/working-with-github-pages/about- custom-domains-and-github-pages)</comment>


Google faces Russia Android probe after Yandex protest - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-31519068 <comment><USER2> What are they talking about, exactly? It's perfectly possible to "unbundle" Android and Google's services. Google goes furthest in unbundling possibilities for any popular operating system, since they give away the source code for the operating system to be freely modified and be bundled with other cloud services. Amazon, Microsoft+Nokia (Bing) and many Chinese smartphone vendors (Baidu mostly) have all shown that this is possible. People pretend that Android without Google Play Services is somehow worthless or necessarily incomplete, which I don't agree with in the slightest.

It seems to me that what they're talking about is actually that Google's cloud services package bundles default Google Search, and Google does not provide the user or vendors with enough flexibility here. Okay, I'll definitely grant them that. So they want to use Google's cloud infrastructure selectively for the Play Store, but not for other profitable and integrated cloud services? Sounds a bit like eating your cake and having it too. If you look at this way, it doesn't seem such a reasonable request, although I guess it would be better for the market if Google was forced to give in.

<comment><USER3> The non-free Google Play APIs, which are heavily used by many Android apps. This makes it a real pain to run popular Android apps on Blackberry, for example. So in practice, very few users do.

Edit: Warning - lots of downvotes in this thread, seemingly for any Google critical comments.

<comment><USER2> > The non-free Google Play APIs, which are heavily used by many Android apps.

I think this is an exaggeration. Some developers make too many assumptions, sure, but I don't think you'll find many high-profile non-Google apps that don't run on a Kindle Fire tablet for this reason.

EDIT: People seem to think that Google Services contain the bread and butter of the Android OS, but if you look at what APIs are actually provided by them [1], it doesn't contain anything that is not a client of Google's cloud services.

[1]: [http://developer.android.com/google/index.html](http://developer.android.com/google/index.html)

<comment><USER4> Even OpenGL extensions are now only available through the Google Play API. It is NOT an exaggeration.

<comment><USER2> I think you misinterpreted some of Google's documentation here, or are deliberately FUD'ing. You made me look around in Android's documentation and the web and I did not find anything about this. Care to share a link?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This complaint is a narrow one: It is focused on the requirement to make Google's apps the default apps. In that it is similar to the Microsoft case where Microsoft was forced to provide a selection of browsers on installation. So it isn't as ridiculous as some here have claimed, and it is possible Google and/or the OEMs selling in Russia will be forced to make some accommodation or exit the market.

This wasn't always a requirement if you remember that terrible Verizon phone with Bing as the default (and impossible to change) search engine.

The question is whether Yandex can make a case for Android as a monopoly, and whether the choice of making an AOSP-based Android variant with a Yandex ecosystem isn't enough relief from such a supposed monopoly.

<comment> at-fates-hands >> This complaint is a narrow one

While this is true, the implications could be far reaching for companies here in the US

Since Apple has instituted their "walled Garden" approach to all their software and now Microsoft is doing the same with their software, it would open the door for more litigation against both companies as "monopolistic" if Yandex were to prove its case against Android.

The interesting question then becomes, if "monopoly" means not having choices once you've selected a company's OS (meaning you have to use their apps, their browser, their API's), or is it irrelevant since you do have a "choice" to go with whatever OS you want to use to begin with?

<comment><USER6> I think the walled garden approach that Apple, Google, and Microsoft all ascribe to is definitely anti-competitive at it's core, and I truly hope more governments will start addressing it as such.

<comment><USER7> What walled garden does have Android?

You can change almost any default program, use alternative stores or sideload applications

<comment><USER6> Google Play/Apps. They're pushing more and more apps to be dependent on "Play Services", which is a monolithic Google cloud data platform. It ensures a large percentage of appealing apps are dependent on Google's platform, rather than the open source Android OS. Furthermore, the use of the MARA contract forbids OEMs from introducing any viable competitors into the market.

<comment><USER7> I repeat, what walled garden when it is not forbidden change or install anything on an Android device.

And still waiting any single proof of that MADA restrictions. perhaps you don't find them because you even can't spell it right.

<comment><USER6> MADA restrictions mandate Google Search be the default search provider, and that the long press on the center button goes to Google Search. And that over 20 apps must be preinstalled with a Google folder on the home screen with many of them in it. Ensuring every device must be sold with very prominent advertising of Google services.

This creates a very chilling effect on the ability for competitors to land on the platform, as at best, they'll be an unwanted second service on the device.

<comment><USER7> It seems that you learned the word MADA and you have to repeat in every post.

Do you have problems understanding what a walled garden is?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Off topic, but I am curious. To any Russian readers, how does Yandex hold up to Google for Russian users? Does it provide an experience better than Google in some way? Do people use it simply because it is domestic? Is it similar to Baidu in that it is a means of controlling the flow of information?

<comment><USER9> As far as i know Google beats Yandex in search (readed about this here [http://habrahabr.ru/post/173351/](http://habrahabr.ru/post/173351/)). But Yandex got more detailed maps (google missed some objects / buildings). Yandex got Taxi app, public transport app, navigator, metrika (google analytics copy) and etc, etc, etc. For me as developer - yandex provides much better api documentation and examples.

But I can't understand - how can they force monopoly protest, being monopolists itself? Example - Only Yandex.Transport got API for public data (bus stops, Position Tracking) in Moscow. I am sure, that Google can protest them back. How Yandex had the nerve for this? Nothing personal, business only?

P.S. All above is about Russia context. In USA I don't know which maps are more detailed.

<comment><USER10> Yandex.Transport bought an access to API for positioning, but it's not exclusive. Everyone, including you can buy this access too, it's not very expensive.

<comment><USER9> So, where I can get those API? Can you get me link or something?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Last year, Yandex had to fight against government attention to its news aggregating service (that has a significant share of user traffic and ranges sources automatically by quality instead of closeness to official propaganda). _Rumor has it (and I may be totally making things up)_ that Google conveyed an idea or two to the originators of the those censorship law proposals that were supposed to make Yandex manually filter "extremism" from news pages. Because Google doesn't have Russian offices anymore, idiotic government initiatives harm it much less than they harm Yandex.

</comment><comment><USER12> Under US antitrust law, that's a tie-in sale.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm surprised there haven't been more lawsuits like this. I expect we'll see more suits like this, plus some about bundling of Chrome, and even about making Google the default search engine in Chrome.

<comment><USER14> What I can't understand from this is why would there be a lawsuit about the default search engine in a browser built by a search engine company?

If you install Google Chrome, you do it voluntarily. It's not like the browser was forced up on you. I do understand why they sue for Android issue, as it is quite hard to find a good phone, running Android, that is not bundled with all the Google services.

<comment><USER15> Chrome comes pre-installed as of 4.1 -- so with that mind, it is anti- competitive. MS got in big trouble for doing pretty much the same thing.

I don't think the old browser is even available on the newer versions.

<comment><USER16> > Chrome comes pre-installed as of 4.1 -- so with that mind, it is anti- > competitive. MS got in big trouble for doing pretty much the same thing.

No, they didn't. Bundling IE with Windows was one component of a wider pattern of behavior which, _as a whole_ , Microsoft got in trouble for. They didn't get in trouble for pre-installing IE alone.

<comment><USER15> Fact: They got in trouble for the bundling of IE.

Yes, the case was bigger than just that, but now you are just nitpicking my comment.

<comment><USER16> > Fact: They got in trouble for the bundling of IE.

Fact: They were charged with illegally maintaining their existing PC desktop operating system market by, among other means, tieing IE to Windows _in response to a perceived threat that a competitive internet browser market on desktop OS 's would undermine its desktop OS monopoly_, and simultaneously for attempting to monopolize the internet browser market _by_ leveraging their existing Windows desktop OS monopoly through tieing IE to Windows. On both sides, the relation to the Windows monopoly was a key element of why they got in trouble.

They didn't get in trouble for bundling IE except in the sense that someone who gets a jaywalking ticket gets in trouble for walking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Heh, gotta love the folks downvoting anyone who criticizes Google. ;) Real classy, folks.

<comment><USER6> And for the appropriate meta: Folks who downvote anyone who points out they're downvoting people for criticizing Google. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> > act after three electronics comapnies

Don't often spot spelling mistakes like that on the mighty Beeb, tut tut etc.

</comment><comment><USER18> So they want to quietly hijack the setting, the way all the fucking windows crap does, to redirect the traffic, and when it fails they complained about unfairness?

How about writing your own OS and creating an ecosystem for hardware vendors and developers first?

<comment><USER19> > How about writing your own OS and creating an ecosystem for hardware vendors > and developers first?

I think it would be better for society if smaller companies will be able compete with monopoly without requirement to spend billions.

<comment><USER18> Is it a news that corporations are creating "ecosystems" to make money, not to benefit third-parties?

What if something wrong with the "strategy" of being able to be a very successful third party in someone's else ecosystem?

Google is no monopoly. There is windows mobile, of course.

<comment><USER19> > Is it a news that corporations are creating "ecosystems" to make money, not > to benefit third-parties?

Corporations do their job to make money of course, but it's better to limit harm they can create when making money. Regulations are productive in many ways including regulation of possibility to destroy or significantly limit competitors and competition.

> What if something wrong with the "strategy" of being able to be a very > successful third party in someone's else ecosystem?

Nothing wrong with it. The problem is that ecosystem owner can significantly limit competitors.

> Google is no monopoly. There is windows mobile, of course.

Strictly speaking yes, it isn't monopoly, but it is close enough to it, so it can use his position to harm competition.

<comment><USER18> This is very good rhetoric. I really appreciate.

How, how does "significantly limit competitors" relate to the requirement to make an explicit, conscious choice by the user instead of allowing a quiet change of device settings?

Not allowing any third-party search apps or not allowing to change the default app by the user could be _considered_ as a "significant limit", but there is no such restrictions.

<comment><USER19> Competition can be limited not only in "hard" way (like not allowing any third-party apps), but also in many "soft" ways.

Google uses his position to set default options for apps and this mean he gets all "unconscious" (and too lazy) users. This is unfair (not backed by any real superiority of his apps) advantage. Yandex tries to change default options for some vendors and Google again uses his position to limit it (limit competition). I'm totally for users making conscious choice, but with status quo it is unconscious choice and skewed in the way that gives Google unfair advantage.

In generally this Yandex vs Google reminds me AMD vs Intel case [1] when Intel used his better position to limit competitor without having real superiority.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Micro_Devices,_Inc._v....](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Micro_Devices,_Inc._v._Intel_Corp).

<comment><USER18> Should everyone in the market, including malicious vendors, have the ability "to change default options", or this is only for Yandex?

I am sorry, but Yandex is by no means AMD. It is ridiculous to suggest that Yandex "is second only to Google".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This should probably be viewed as an extension of the Ukrainian conflict. Everything else is garnish.

<comment><USER21> I don't think so. Yandex is very neutral company in that regard. They have Ukrainian office with developers. For Ukrainian users they show Crimea belonging to the Ukraine when browsing from maps.yandex.ua. You can check it yourself, compare maps.yandex.ua and maps.yandex.ru.

<comment><USER22> If they had balls, they'd show it as belonging to Ukraine -- or at least as disputed -- on both maps.

<comment><USER23> Google does exactly the same thing.

Currently I'm in a country that didn't recognize Kosovo independence and Google shows it as disputed territory, otherwise part of Serbia. Exactly the same way for Crimea and Ukraine.

It is neither of these companies job to take sides. The simplest way is to show to each party what they want to see.

<comment><USER22> Google apparently shows Kosovo as a disputed region in the U.S., as well (demarcated by a dashed, rather than by a solid line). Ditto for the Crimea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Google didn't set out to be evil. They just discovered, like Microsoft, that monopoly levels of domination are like the One Ring.

Bill Gates is Frodo. Larry Page is Bilbo.

<comment><USER25> There's also something to be said about the margins realized by being a monopoly. There's a reason you see fewer companies in cut-throat industries doing stuff like Microsoft Research or Google X. Research is expensive and that means you need big profits to support it and having a monopoly is a great way to guarantee big profits.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Freelance Debt, zero-risk debt collection for freelancers - <AUTHOR> http://www.freelancedebt.com <comment><USER2> Yet another financial services startup that didn't want to spend the $0 for an SSL certificate...

<comment><USER3> Friend of this team. They're using PaidAPI.com (yc alum) to warehouse all invoices, so no SSL needed on static site.

</comment></comment><comment> a-dub Having 1099'd for large institutions that were total shit at cutting checks on any reasonable timescale, I've put a lot of thought into this.

What I really wanted was a third party that would do the dirty work that _I_ was also contractually bound to as well.

"I'm very sorry to hear about your problems with the billing firm. Unfortunately I cannot call them off, discontinue using them or even bill further hours until your account with them is current as they function as both a billing agency and a creditor. If I do so, I risk a significant financial and legal exposure as part of the contract I signed with them."

</comment><comment><USER4> Awesome idea, think it can work for boutique service firms just as well as freelancers. Always very difficult for the little guy to collect from the Fortune 500 Co or even the heavily backed startup..

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi guys,

I believe there's a huge advantage to a 3rd party doing your "dirty work." In my personal freelance career I've experienced many cases of customers ignoring clients, until a lawyer or debt collection agency gets involved.

We built this to be the latter, and involve the former if necessary.

To getting paid,

Ryan / Freelance Debt crew

<comment><USER5> Debt collection agencies have not legal right/power to collect debts under the FDCPA. All someone has to do (if they are savvy enough to know this) is send you a cease and desist. Virtually every debt collection agency out there knows this and simply ignores the c&D until the victim, er, target gets a lawyer. But in doing so, they incur statutory fines of $1,000 per incident in many cases.

Are you simply going after the people who don't know they don't owe you money because they don't have a contractual relationship with you?

<comment><USER6> The FDCPA doesn't apply to debts owed by businesses.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What does "zero-risk" mean, in the context of debt collection?</comment>