Chinese hackers are arrested at the behest of the U.S. government - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/in-a-first-chinese-hackers-are-arrested-at-the-behest-of-the-us-government/2015/10/09/0a7b0e46-6778-11e5-8325-a42b5a459b1e_story.html <comment><USER2> I feel the US must have a gun to China's head right now. This is such a stark reversal from what we believed was going on over the past few years. The fact that China would agree to stop attacking the US, much less arrest those involved is mind blowing.

Previously, it appeared that the hacking groups worked very closely with the government. They would attack targets that would directly benefit state run organizations. For China to flip and arrest the people who they employed tells me the US has some serious leverage right now. Either that or these arrests are just a show and won't stick.

<comment><USER3> Money talks, and China's in serious trouble and it desperately needs to cooperate with US. That's why the Chinese president _came_ to US to resolve issues with cyberhacking.

\- $141.66bn capital left China in August [http://bit.ly/1jh7E7z](http://bit.ly/1jh7E7z)

\- "by 2018 all of China's excess reserves — cash that it has on hand to use immediately — could be gone." [http://read.bi/1jkK6hv](http://read.bi/1jkK6hv)

\- "actual Chinese GDP is probably a third lower than is officially reported" [http://bit.ly/1JsjaC0](http://bit.ly/1JsjaC0)

\- "The exodus of factories moving out of China in search of lower-cost options in southeast and central Asia is accelerating, as manufacturers face increased pressure to reduce unit costs." [http://bit.ly/1hw8Zp3](http://bit.ly/1hw8Zp3)

\- "average new home prices in China's 70 major cities dropped 6.1 per cent" [http://bit.ly/1jh9eGp](http://bit.ly/1jh9eGp)

\- "Total debt has reached 282 percent of GDP" [http://bloom.bg/1evYSQ5](http://bloom.bg/1evYSQ5)

<comment><USER4> That the Chinese government likely over-estimates GDP is widely known (some indicators are reported magnitudes faster than any other country). The increased debt and factory exodus are probably uniformly bad.

On the other hand, a decrease in cash reserves is almost certainly in China's favor. The government has been struggling for years to get rid of its enormous US currency holdings. Especially as we start to see the yuan strengthening and the Fed raise interest rates, it's important for China to extract as much value out of the USD as soon as possible.

<comment><USER3> 1.) Dollar is strengthening. Janet Yellen said she'll raise rates by the end of the year. Most emerging market currencies have crashed 25-40% this year.

2.) Yuan is weakening. Otherwise Chinese corporate dollar-denominated debts, which is around 1 trillion, will crush the economy right away when the fed raises rates. Plus the government already signaled it is willing to guide yuan lower a month ago.

3.) That's kinda like saying 'well, my 3 houses in the hamptons are burning down, but at least wood structure is the strongest right now!'

<comment><USER4> Hmm. Haven't followed the econ beat in the last couple months, my bad.

I don't follow your 3rd point though. What do you mean?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Of course, NSA is not a state-sponsored hacker organization.

<comment><USER6> Well in this case we are asking China to stop hacking for commercial profits. The NSA doesn't hack for commercial profits. We aren't criticizing China for hacking the OPM in this case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Do you think China arrested talented hackers or dummy replacements?

<comment><USER8> Honest (albeit provocative) question: from a political point of view, does it matter?

The fact that China is willing arrest any of their own citizens at the behest of the US government is a pretty big deal. I'm not sure exactly what it means, but China doesn't strike me as the kind of country that's especially keen on being the US's lapdog.

<comment><USER9> _China doesn 't strike me as the kind of country that's especially keen on being the US's lapdog._

I agree, and it's also possible that they arrest the real ones, sentence them, and then let them out the back door sometime later.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is probably somehow related:

>U.S. officials could soon send a Navy ship steaming by a chain of man-made islands that China has built in the South China Sea, Pentagon officials said, potentially exacerbating tensions in an area in which Beijing is expanding its presence.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2015/10/08...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2015/10/08/u-s- navy-to-china-well-sail-our-ships-near-your-man-made-islands-whenever-we- want/)

</comment><comment><USER11> Finally. It's refreshing to see US try to drive a stake between the corporate interests and a big monolithic government. This is a country that is spying on economic allies all over the world and callaborates by horse trading secrets to corporate interests. I understand that they can't talk about the length of the list, who is on it or the crimes they comitted, but just knowing they they have a list feels like justice to me, and these hackers will face retribution.

China has to realize that it is hurting the financial position of the entire country and it's own credibility, by funneling secrets to private companies. If the reverse were true in the US, companies funneling secrets to the governement, it would be treason. America has the advantage of complete isolation of the government and corporations, which just isn't possible in a communist nation, so only in the most _extreme_ cases do the two share finances or data.

China approves state sanctioned hacking against their allies and citizens in private companies and it gives them an unfair advantage. If private companies had that sort of clout in the US, you would see laws structured favourably for corporations and they would yield a lot more political influence. China is the kind of country that would commit industrial espionage against private companies it is allied with economically and politically. If it were possible for them to configure Danish and Malaysian servers via network and physical intrusion, they would be able to tactically engineer a super virus that would affect >50% of a whole country, not to mention collatoral damage. It would hurt the companies reputation, jeopardize it's secrets and causing them millions in damages as well as the hundreds of thousands affectd.

The article says:

"Chinese prosecution would entail the United States sharing evidence linking the cyberintrusions to the individuals. And to do so could compromise sensitive information on how the U.S. government tracked the suspects."

THESE ARE HACKERS. We shouldn't be afraid to get a win once in a while. We have to do something and a good first step would be to go to China, and tell them how we caught them breaking into private companies in the US and abroad, and we were able to document these records. They need to know that if they hit a multinational, a data center, resedential citizens, etc. that we are there, we will catch you and we will bring you to justice.

Im glad the US is taking a stand against this. I look forward to watching these hackers face trial, but ultimately, their government and citizens should be ashamed of themselves. It's a shame the Cyber Security bill failed to pass the senate a few months ago, that way organizations would monitor for cyber threat indicators and they would be forced to protect us from these hackers. I think I echo the words of the unnamed source, when I say "Look, here's these guys. Round them up".

<comment><USER12> "their government and citizens should be ashamed of themselves" Really? Are you ashamed of your government's cyber attacks on other nations? I could just replace the word "China" with "USA" in your comment and everything is still true.

<comment><USER13> > Really? Are you ashamed of your government's cyber attacks on other nations?

The U.S does minimal hacking and when it does, it's nearly surgical in nature. It's a precise target for a precise reason. This is unlike other countries' hacking (read: China & Russia) where it's indiscriminate and relentless. They hope to steal anything and everything.

The world isn't black & white. It's infinite shades of grey. Believe it or not, one form of hacking can be "less bad" than another form. Regardless, China and Russia's government hacking programs are orders of magnitude larger than the U.S's program.

> I could just replace the word "China" with "USA" in your comment and > everything is still true.

No you couldn't. Again, the world isn't black and white and not all crimes are the same. Is a mass murderer and a petty thief the same? They're both criminals, right? If you don't think they're the same, then you begin to understand that the world isn't black and white.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Doesn't make up for the OPM hack.

Conspiracy theory: The CIA helped crash the Chinese stock market in response

</comment><comment><USER15> I feel bad for the hackers, their government orders them to hack some US servers, then their government arrests them for doing their job. Each a scapegoat if I ever saw one.

</comment><comment><USER16> Reason why the Chinese might be cooperating is because the US has a very significant person of interest on their soils, one that the Chinese party is desperate to get back because this man knows state secrets and inner workings of the secretive CCP.</comment>


This Is How Fast America Changes Its Mind - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-pace-of-social-change/ <comment><USER2> _The case comes amid a wave of gay marriage legalization..._

This phrase, and the title, mask the fact that in the majority of states same- sex marriage legalization came from court cases, not through legislation or referenda[1].

"America", broadly construed, is quickly changing its mind, too, but this "wave" is more a product of judicial thought than public opinion.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same- sex_marriage_in_the_United...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same- sex_marriage_in_the_United_States#States_that_fully_license_and_recognize_same- sex_marriage)

<comment><USER3> In America, there's no longer much legitimacy placed in legislation; we generally look to the judiciary for any actual governing thought these days.

Legislation is mostly seen as a stepping stone; it's not until it's been tested in court that a law is really valid.

<comment><USER4> I find that sort of statement deeply disturbing.

<comment><USER3> Well, yes. So do I. That's why I felt I had to say it.

<comment><USER4> Sorry, I got that. I just didn't reflect it in my response.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> They probably should have left abortion out, since it's not clear that American ever changed their mind on that. Over the last 20 years, it's still roughly 50/50.

[http://www.gallup.com/poll/170249/split-abortion-pro- choice-...](http://www.gallup.com/poll/170249/split-abortion-pro-choice-pro- life.aspx)

<comment><USER6> They should have indeed left it out. Abortion is a different (and tougher) issue because there isn't just a preconception/prejudice at work -- there are multiple important values in tension with one another.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Abortion and gay marriage were changed in the courts, so I don't know if that counts as America changing its mind. That being said, I would posit that any increase in the rate of America changing its mind is due to the increase in the rate of information exchange due to advances in communication technology.

<comment><USER8> Gay marriage has been steadily gaining in public approval, as seen here: [http://www.gallup.com/poll/169640/sex-marriage-support- reach...](http://www.gallup.com/poll/169640/sex-marriage-support-reaches-new- high.aspx)

This is indeed America changing its mind.

You're right that there is not a direct connection between America's laws and America's minds, but the article was clear in what it was reporting.

It would have been interesting to also include information on public polling of these issues, but this information doesn't exist beyond a few decades ago.

<comment><USER9> There is a chart with "age" on the y axis and "year for the poll" on the x axis. The delta is also shown for each group from 1996 to 2014.

[http://content.gallup.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Prod...](http://content.gallup.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Production/Cms/POLL/tbpelkodp0spw8exj7rmuw.png)

I wish there thy y axis was birth year. That way we can see if older people are actually changing their minds instead of just aging into the next bracket.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hmm. This seems to focus on a few issues that neatly fall into a sense of "progress" in social change, in which something changes in a number of states culminating in a Supreme Court decision that causes that change to affect the entire country.

However, it ignores some issues that don't fall into such a pattern. For example, the issue of teaching evolution vs. creation in public schools; where teaching about evolution has never been questioned (as far as I know) in some states, while others have had laws on the books, and there is continuing pressure and laws that offer limited "workarounds" of the supreme court decision in order to promote "teaching the controversy", so it's not really a clear cut case of progress.

Another that isn't covered is capital punishment; some states have never had capital punishment, some have repealed it over the years, and the Supreme Court briefly suspended it nationwide but it was reinstated later, and many states still practice it.

Abortion, which is used as an example in this article, faces a similar problems as teaching of evolution. While abortion was allowed nationwide by Roe v. Wade, states are slowly introducing laws that restrict it so heavily that it's not available to a large fraction of people who need it. The turning point nationwide is being slowly turned back by laws that skirt the existing precedent.

It seems like picking these couple of issues, to show how "it may happen again", is a bit disingenuous without also covering major cases in which change hasn't followed this pattern, or has backslid since the original change.

<comment><USER11> I don't think capital punishment and creationism follow the same trend as women's suffrage, interracial marriage, etc. The issues in the article started with low state-level support and rapidly gained acceptance across the country; at some threshold the Supreme Court stepped in and said "this is now accepted as law nation-wide.

I don't have the numbers to back this up, but I don't think creation teaching and capital punishment started at a low level of support and rapidly ramped up across many states. State-level legislation on creation-teaching is limited to a few conservative areas. Capital punishment has been around forever and support for it has fluctuated with the times.

I agree that abortion doesn't really fit the pattern of the other issues in the article, though. Supreme court approval seems to have come prematurely in that case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The gun laws are missing from these graphs.

How fast would America change its mind about them?

<comment><USER13> This graph is focused on expansion of rights, not retraction.

<comment><USER14> With a few exceptions, gun rights have, for the most part, expanded over the past couple of decades. More and more states are adopting some form of carry laws, and to my knowledge, those that have expanded gun rights have never reversed. The one notable exception that comes to mind is Colorado, with its ammo capacity ban, but even that's sort of up in the air at the moment.

<comment><USER15> There's a new line of attack you might not be aware of. Well protected by his own armed security Bloomberg is now the most effective gun controller (he and his people engineered the Colorado debacle, and gerrymandering is likely to keep it all), and he's pursuing deceptive transfer laws through state initiatives, with initial success in Washington state.

These laws ostensibly regulate private transfers, but in the fine print are aimed directly at hindering the creation of new gun owners and otherwise trapping us in flypaper, by criminalizing the lending and renting of guns even under supervision. The Washington state officials say they won't enforce that part of the law, but....

Next up are Nevada and Oregon, last time I heard about this.

<comment><USER14> The Oregon situation was particularly questionable, and I was saddened that I591 was narrowly defeated.

The chaos agent in me was hoping that 591 would pass alongside 594, to see how the state would have to reconcile directly conflicting bills. Sadly, 591 was massively outspent.

<comment><USER15> When you're fighting the 13th wealthiest person _in the world_ , who can also get other billionaires to join in at least for Washington state (note to others, there were Washington state initiatives), you're going to get outspent heavily. We haven't yet figured out how to counter him, and like e.g. the BATFE, might not until there are enough atrocities to wake people up to the threat. Which would require an anti-gun state's people passing one of these, and the state then using it as more flypaper. Less likely with less viciously anti-gun states like Washington.

<comment><USER14> On the up-side, at least you haven't run into the "confiscation through anonymous tip line" issue, yet.

I am hopeful that, eventually, for-cost registration schemes will eventually go the way of the dodo, as I personally equate them to a poll tax, so either the laws will be rescinded on those grounds, or FFL fees will be eliminated, which should ameliorate at least some of the issue.

I'm a long way from Washington. Is the current interpretation of I594 being applied to temporary transfers? I'm in Maryland, and we have a similar transfer limitation, but were at least able to press the AG into issuing a formal opinion on some aspects of the law, though the specifics of it currently elude me.

<comment><USER15> I'm in Missouri, so paradise compared to Maryland, and initiative wise better than Washington. Heck, our recent constitutional amendment on the subject ([http://ballotpedia.org/Missouri_Right_to_Bear_Arms,_Amendmen...](http://ballotpedia.org/Missouri_Right_to_Bear_Arms,_Amendment_5_%28August_2014%29)) ought to make such an initiative impossible, but the one very bad thing about the state is our courts. So I'm not following Washington state closely, but as I recall there was an "on pain of lawsuit" AG opinion/pledge not to prosecute on temporary transfers. Or see Colorado where the authorities promised not to prosecute folks who left their guns with friends during the nasty flooding not long after the Bloomberg laws passed.

But of course each state's enforcement will be different, and subject to change. The really nasty states didn't start out enforcing their laws in truly nasty ways until the _zeitgeist_ changed enough and laws aimed for blacks and disfavored immigrants were applied to all but the anointed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The problem with the analysis re: Marijuana is that it appears to leave out the anti-drug treaties we've signed with other UN members. As I understand it, federal legalization is a nonstarter w/r/t that agreement.

<comment><USER17> Correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding has always been that the US has been the one pushing for those treaties. If that is the case, it seems possible that if anti-Marijuana policy loses support here, its support in the UN won't be so strong.

<comment><USER18> The US has been behind it and putting mountains of cash along with it to enact the treaties.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is an interesting analysis, but it would be more interesting to look at the generalization of the trends, rather than the cherry-picked examples of "interesting" policies.

Specifically, take all US Supreme Court decisions that resulted in the invalidation of state legislature, and track what the trend looked like in terms of historical trends of states that conformed to the decision before the decision was made.

Is anyone aware of any data sources that would have this information in some form? The complexity seems to be that if a law was struck down by a state in 1956, and the Supreme Court made a decision relative to that law in 1960, determining whether the law would have been struck down could be more subtle than a binary yes/no. But even having this data in a basic form, measuring state legislature activity leading up to a relevant federal court decision, could at least give an indication of how long issues take to gain some momentum.

This ignores the other axes; like state judicial decisions being overridden or validated by the federal level, or other variants, but still would be very interesting.

</comment><comment><USER20> I love the data, but the animations are just obnoxious.

<comment><USER21> You only see them once, so I didn't think it was that bad.

<comment><USER20> You see them every time you scroll.

Want to go back and look at something again? You now have to wait for the animation.

This is objectively bad design. I want static PNGs or SVGs, not JavaScript.

Also, that site got in my shitlist for taking control of my keyboard. I prefer to use the arrow keys to scroll one line at a time, and the stupid JavaScript on that site made that impossible.

Actually, I'd be happiest if that entire page was just a single static .svg file.

<comment><USER22> Every point you have made here is subjective.

<comment><USER23> No, it's not. The animations add no information that isn't conveyed by the graph already--it just creates a delay before you can see the information. And changing the behavior of core functionality like the keyboard/pointer will confuse people, and on this page there is nothing to be gained in return.

<comment><USER22> I too hate when i don't get to use my computer as i see fit, but you have to admit that every point you have mad, previous to the comment i am responding to now, has been made from a personal, preferential point of view. I am not saying i do not agree with; i am saying its just, like, your opinion man.

<comment><USER23> You can make objective conclusions about subjective preferences. Most users do not want to wait to see information being presented to them. Nor do most users want to deal with websites that randomly change how their computer works. The distribution of subjective preferences can make design decisions objectively bad.

<comment><USER22> fair point

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> While the speed of change is good for these issues, could that speed be detrimental in other scenarios? For example, what if this increases the speed to reverse good policies, such as carbon emissions taxes? What if the speed of change from political influence of much larger entities (corporations) also increases the influence to reverse things even faster?

<comment><USER25> The title is misleading. "America Changes Its Mind" sounds like it's talking about people's opinions, but the data presented is about legal status at the state level. This is misleading because there's a strong discontinuity there, and the speed at which states legalize something doesn't have to be related to the speed at which opinions change.

For an extreme case, consider some issue where opinions are evenly spread out among all the states, and it _very_ slowly changes, at a rate of, say, 0.5% per year. It would take two centuries to go from all-against to all-for at that rate, yet once you pass 50% you'd expect all the states to switch over more or less simultaneously.

The real world isn't so clean, but the same idea applies. Looking at the data, the recent examples of marijuana and same-sex marriage are changing faster, at more like 1-2%/year, but you can still see that the rate of change in state legalization is way faster than the rate of change of public opinion, as one would generally expect.

A couple of random pages with relevant poll data:

[http://www.gallup.com/poll/117328/marriage.aspx](http://www.gallup.com/poll/117328/marriage.aspx)

[http://www.gallup.com/poll/1657/illegal- drugs.aspx](http://www.gallup.com/poll/1657/illegal-drugs.aspx)

<comment><USER26> And looking at something already settled by the courts, it's also interesting to compare the article's chart on the legal status of interracial marriage with public opinion data:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interracial_marriage_in_the_Uni...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interracial_marriage_in_the_United_States#/media/File:Public_opinion_of_interracial_marriage_in_the_United_States.png)

Note that the "Approve" line doesn't cross the "Disapprove" line until the mid-1980s, long after the USSC had spoken. With same-sex marriage on the other hand, the "Approve"/"Disapprove" cross-over happened a bit over three years ago and the USSC has yet to speak as definitively as it did in _Loving v. Virginia_.

(One could argue that in invalidating most of DOMA, the USSC has already spoken strongly - if not definitively - in favor of same-sex marriage, and therefore that we should use that decision when making analogies to _Loving_. I'm not sure about that.)

<comment><USER27> > One could argue that in invalidating most of DOMA, the USSC has already > spoken strongly - if not definitively - in favor of same-sex marriage, and > therefore that we should use that decision when making analogies to Loving

Not very convincingly, because it did not hold that States cannot deny equal marriage, which would be the equivalent of the holding in Loving.

<comment><USER28> That was only because it wasn't the question put in front of the court (and the people involved wouldn't have standing to sue if it was, because they had been married of years).

<comment><USER27> > That was only because it wasn't the question put in front of the court

The "only" here is pure speculation. The _fact_ is that the US Supreme Court has not issued a _Loving_ like decision on same-sex marriage, and that same- sex marriage remains illegal in many states because of that. Therefore, it does not make sense to treat _United States v. Windsor_ (which struck down Section 3 of DOMA) as an equivalent, in the domain of same-sex marriage, to _Loving v. Virginia_ , in the domain of interracial marriage.

The federal government never did something like DOMA on interracial marriage (there was, relevant to Section 3, no _federal_ policy against recognizing state-sanctioned interracial marriages), so _Windsor_ naturally has no parallel among the interracial marriage cases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> It is worth noting that the first two issues were settled via Constitutional Amendments, whereas the second two were decided by the Supreme Court. If I were a betting man, I would bet that the SSM issue will also be settled by the Supreme Court, not by Constitutional Amendment.

It seems that, as a nation, we Americans can no longer settle divisive national (and therefore Federal) issues via the democratic process envisioned by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution: amendment of the Constitution itself. Instead, we leave ultimate decision making power in the hands of the Supreme Court.

Former Chief Justice Earl Warren expressed concern that if the Court's power became too widespread, America would have, instead of democracy, kritarchy: rule by judges.

<comment><USER29> Correction: It was Supreme Court Justice Stanley Reed [1], not Chief Justice Earl Warren [2], who "expressed concern that if the Court's power became too widespread, America would have, instead of democracy, kritarchy". He did so in late July 1953, specifically regarding the not-yet-decided Brown v. Board of Eduction decision of May 1953, in a discussion with one of his law clerks, John David Fassett. He confronted Fassett with the question, "Are you one of those people who believes in krytocracy?" Apparently, he discussed this question at length with his law clerks in the months leading up to the Brown decision. I could find no evidence that he spoke with his Supreme Court colleagues about it, but, then again, I've done no real research.

Also according to Fassett, in a February 1953 memo--three months before the Brown ruling--fellow Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson [3] used the term "a ruthless use of judicial power." Although Jackson did not use the term "krytocracy," Fassett commented, "That was sort of Justice Reed's feeling too --his krytocracy thought was the same thing."

I found all of the above in this article [4].

Finally, it is worth noting that, regardless of certain Justices' concerns about the Constitutional limits of judicial authority, the Brown v. Board of Education ruling overturned Plessy v. Ferguson by a unanimous vote, 9-0.

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

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

[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_H._Jackson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_H._Jackson)

[4] [http://www.roberthjackson.org/files/theman/speeches- articles...](http://www.roberthjackson.org/files/theman/speeches- articles/files/articles/15fc4e650c204cfe9e7170bc4428d890.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> It's incredible to see how apparently progressive Kansas used to be. As someone who lives here now, I always assume we're going to be one of the slowest (I guess "most conservative" might be a nicer way of putting it) states to adapt to social change. But I guess I really would have liked the Kansas that existed before the middle of the last century...

</comment><comment><USER31> From the last graph, it seems like the rate of change (if that's what you'd call it) is closely related to the time period in which the change is taking place, or at least the time period in which the change started. I wonder if this has to do with a general increase in malleability of (judicial) opinions, or faster information transfer, or something else.

<comment><USER32> Perhaps it's a sampling bias - a slow change that started recently may not yet have been detected to be included on the graph (or may not have enough reliable data to support inclusion).

<comment><USER31> True, that's an interesting point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> "In any event, the sloppy and fatuous nature of American good will can never be relied upon to deal with hard problems. These have been dealt with, when they have been dealt with at all, out of necessity — and in political terms, anyway, necessity means concessions made in order to stay on top." \- Daniel Baldwin

</comment><comment><USER34> On a long enough timescale (which can still sometime be pretty short) stuff seems to move together. The centre. The fringes. The legislation, the courts. And of course, public opinion.

Democracy form a certain perspective is built in to us. Or at least people (demo) have in built mechanisms for moving together.

</comment><comment><USER35> The flip-flop is not as fast as the law makes it seem, because a law against X only gets passed when X seems like a real possibility. Nobody was passing gay marriage bans in 1850 -- only when it seemed imminent did people try to fight it.

</comment><comment><USER36> They should scale each state by its population, or you overemphasize the (ostensible) opinions of the people in very small states.

</comment><comment><USER37> OT but took a while before I realised the table was actually a representation of a map and not according to some other taxonomy.</comment>


Plastic Micro-Particle Patch Bigger Than Mexico Found in Pacific - <AUTHOR> http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/07/ocean-plastic-patch-south-pacific-spd/ <comment><USER2> Moore has a history of exaggerating his plastic finds.

His original account:

"as I gazed from the deck at the surface of what ought to have been a pristine ocean, I was confronted, as far as the eye could see, with the sight of plastic.

It seemed unbelievable, but I never found a clear spot. In the week it took to cross the subtropical high, no matter what time of day I looked, plastic debris was floating everywhere: bottles, bottle caps, wrappers, fragments."

[http://www.naturalhistorymag.com/features/172720/trash- revis...](http://www.naturalhistorymag.com/features/172720/trash-revisited)

This contrasts with other estimates of one to two bottle caps worth of plastic per 50 Olympic swimming pools worth of water.

A decade later he backed off those claims, emphasizing the micro particles.

amp.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/the_next_20/2016/09/the_great_pacific_garbage_patch_was_the_myth_we_needed_to_save_our_oceans.html

Other scientists say it is troubling, but exaggerated, and not getting worse in spite of increased production and use of plastic:

[http://oregonstate.edu/ua/ncs/archives/2011/jan/oceanic-"gar...](http://oregonstate.edu/ua/ncs/archives/2011/jan/oceanic-"garbage- patch"-not-nearly-big-portrayed-media)

<comment><USER3> As someone who has picked up literally tons of plastic trash off Pacific beaches with my bare hands, let me be the first to say that you have no idea what you are talking about. Charles has consistently been on the forefront of discovery in environmental concerns and has been proven right over and over again, and you want to berate him for exaggerating. He's not exaggerating, he's just ahead of the curve.

Also, please don't conflate estimates with eye witness accounts. If you want to dispute his claims, use data from actual expeditions.

> > [http://oregonstate.edu/ua/ncs/archives/2011/jan/oceanic-%E2%...](http://oregonstate.edu/ua/ncs/archives/2011/jan/oceanic-%E2%80%9Cgarbage- > patch%E2%80%9D-not-nearly-big-portrayed-media)

This article is from 2011. If you RTFA above, you'd have noticed that things have gotten significantly worse in just 6 years. What's changed since then? Organized, industrial scale dumping from eastern pacific countries (Indonesia in particular).

<comment><USER2> Garbage on beaches is by definition not garbage in the "patches." If you are picking up plastic with your bare hands, you're not picking up the microplastics which even Moore now describes as the problem with the garbage patches. At best you can say that plastic chunks you pick up are hopefully not going to end up as microplastic bits in the gyres.

"[for a week] plastic debris was floating everywhere: bottles, bottle caps, wrappers, fragments" \-- Moore, 1998(?)

vs.

"It was and is a thin plastic soup, a soup lightly seasoned with plastic flakes, bulked out here and there with "dumplings": buoys, net clumps, floats, crates, and other "macro debris."" \-- Moore 2011, in the slate article above

And regarding the "plastic soup", every eye witness account I've found except Moore's say it's visually just ocean water, and occasionally you find a chunk of junk. (e.g., [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sea-unworthy-a- pe...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sea-unworthy-a-personal- journey-into-the-pacific-garbage-patch-slide-show/)) Another research group cited in the Slate article decided to phrase it as "plastic smog" rather than soup.

When I've found videos or pictures claiming to be from the garbage patch, they're either of garbage-clogged harbors, or of an item or tangle of debris surrounded by clear blue waters, or as you describe, beaches with garbage. Do you have other pictures?

Where Moore has historically over-sensationalized his descriptions, I find I take his sensational descriptions with a grain of salt.

This isn't to say plastic in the oceans isn't a concern, or isn't something we should work really hard to avoid, just that sensational claims, along with sensational estimates need critical examination, rather than simple acceptance.

"Bigger than Mexico!" What does that even mean? An area the size of Mexico has detectable bits of plastic? What's the density threshold that defines the area? And they made this size estimate based on a single traversal? This suggests the size estimate is based more on the area of currents rather than measurement of the particulate density.

If you have better documentation of the area claim or densities than was given or linked from R-ing-TFA above, I'd love to see it. Something more along the lines of that 2011 study you glibly dismiss: [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/234157160_Plastic_p...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/234157160_Plastic_pollution_in_the_South_Pacific_subtropical_gyre_Marine_Pollution_Bulletin_68_71-76)

<comment><USER4> Why does the density matter since any plastic in the ocean will eventually get broken down to smaller pieces by the salt water?

<comment><USER2> The density is the amount of plastic in an area or volume of water, rather than the density of a particular piece of plastic.

It's the difference between 1 bottle cap worth of plastic in kilometers of open ocean and kilograms of plastic in a few square meters.

It lets you quantify the problem, and actually measure the severity, knowing where it is a problem and if it gets worse over time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A quite good documentary has been made on the effects of plastics, and specifically micro plastics that proliferate the world's oceans. Called "A Plastic Ocean"\- [https://www.plasticoceans.org/a-plastic- ocean/](https://www.plasticoceans.org/a-plastic-ocean/)

After seeing this, I now always think twice about single-use plastics like water bottles and grocery bags.

<comment><USER6> Both water bottles and grocery bags are recyclable. While the grocery store I go to the most removed the grocery bag recycling bins they used to have, I believe they are still accepted at the Target stores around town, along with other types of recyclables. You may have easy options for recycling where you can drop stuff off as part of normal shopping trips.

<comment><USER5> Where I live, the trash company is the same as the recycling company, so it's very likely the recycle (at least some portion of it) ends up in the trash. Better to just avoid the plastics, which is actually pretty impossible for some items.

<comment> unkown-unknowns > the trash company is the same as the recycling company, so it's very likely > the recycle (at least some portion of it) ends up in the trash

No that doesn't make sense. If they didn't care about recycling why would they make people sort their trash in the first place?

<comment><USER7> _" If they didn't care about recycling why would they make people sort their trash in the first place?"_

At least in EU, companies can get generous grants for recycling, but there's little oversight, so often "recycling" part is only on paper or small part of total waste. Few years ago there was scandal in Lithuania, because thrash companies put different containers for plastics, glass, organics etc. but everything was collected by the same truck and mixed in the same trunk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Does anyone have any follow-up on this article from 2011 titled "Marine microbes digest plastic" [1]? Seems like some kind of bacteria can consume our discarded hydrocarbons.

[https://www.nature.com/news/2011/110328/full/news.2011.191.h...](https://www.nature.com/news/2011/110328/full/news.2011.191.html)

<comment><USER9> This is very very bad idea because this bacteria can also consume the not discarded plastics (unless this only happens under certain controlled conditions).

<comment><USER8> in the article i cited, these bacteria were discovered to be out there in the ocean consuming plastic. so the genie is already out of bottle, so to speak. i'm curious if any negative externalities have been found due to their activity, or more optimistically, do they really metabolise the hydrocarbons into something non-toxic that other life forms can use?

<comment><USER10> The genie may be out of the bottle, but maybe if we cut off its food supply before it gets on land...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> VICE has a good documentary on what this actually looks like: [https://video.vice.com/en_us/video/garbage- island/563b9c912a...](https://video.vice.com/en_us/video/garbage- island/563b9c912aab5c416bc75039)

<comment><USER12> _> This page is using an unminified build of React._

 _> The React build on this page appears to be unminified. This makes its size larger, and causes React to run slower._

ಠ_ಠ

<comment><USER13> They ask that you report technical issues to @ViceTech on Twitter:

[https://www.vice.com/en_us/page/vice- about](https://www.vice.com/en_us/page/vice-about)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This news seems to pop up every few months ever since it was first reported on about 10 years ago.

<comment><USER14> Actually, per Wikipedia, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch has been known about since 1988

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This needs a solar powered [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymerization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymerization) plant to eat the whole thing.

<comment><USER16> A massive ocean-going Mr. Trash Wheel.

[http://www.baltimoresun.com/features/baltimore-insider- blog/...](http://www.baltimoresun.com/features/baltimore-insider-blog/bal-mr- trash-wheel-gets-his-googly-eyes-temporarily-20151030-story.html)

<comment><USER17> There is also "The Ocean Cleanup" project [1] which is worth checking out if you haven't already. It's a pretty cool project which is under active development and in the prototype phase.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> More of a garbage nebula.

</comment><comment><USER19> So what is the behaviour of this stuff? How does it come together to form "patches"? If it really agglomerates naturally into (admittedly, very big) clusters this actually sounds kind of like good news, as it seems more viable to come up with a way to clean it.

But I'm curious what the mechanism is. Static electricity? Sounds too distant and "wet" for that to be possible. But why else would it cluster?

<comment><USER16> Ocean currents [http://www.seos- project.eu/modules/oceancurrents/images/gyre...](http://www.seos- project.eu/modules/oceancurrents/images/gyres1.png)

<comment><USER19> Ah, neat! Thank you :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Always good to keep in mind that this plastic will be consumed by bacteria. Sunlight and wave motion break apart the plastic into smaller and smaller pieces until bacteria completely consumes it.

Even so, we really need a solution to keep plastic out of the oceans for a plethora of reasons. One of the most alarming ones being the largest consumer of plastic in the ocean is the same bacteria which can cause flesh eating disease.

<comment><USER3> > Always good to keep in mind that this plastic will be consumed by bacteria. > Sunlight and wave motion break apart the plastic into smaller and smaller > pieces until bacteria completely consumes it.

That's all just speculation. Recent discoveries suggest some bacteria may be able to ([http://www.iflscience.com/environment/bacteria-evolving- eat-...](http://www.iflscience.com/environment/bacteria-evolving-eat-plastic- dump-into-oceans/)), but there hasn't been any demonstrated at-scale digestion of plastic by them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I wish stories like this had some photos.

<comment><USER22> From the story: _" The pieces of plastic are not necessarily floating bottles, bags, and buoys, but teeny-tiny pieces of plastic resembling confetti...These microplastic particles may not be visible floating on the surface, but in this case, they were detected after collecting water samples..."_

So, photos probably wouldn't help much.

<comment><USER13> A density graph of the Pacific Ocean showing plastic particulate count measured at various points, with the gaps filled in using gradients, would be _stellar_ here.

<comment><USER23> But the article would lose all clickbaitiness.

Not good when the website that hosts it relied on page view and ads to make a profit !

EDIT : National geographic isn't an offender for clickbait.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> If we selfishly look up the food chain, how does this affect fish we eat? What are the human health impacts of eating fish that ate micro-particles of plastic?

<comment><USER25> The plastic absorbs various pollutants. Fish eat the microplastic, and thus the pollutant. Bigger fish eat small fish, and we eat those bigger fish.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is not a problem. Microorganisms are already evolving to metabolize plastic:

[https://www.sciencealert.com/new-plastic-munching- bacteria-c...](https://www.sciencealert.com/new-plastic-munching-bacteria- could-fuel-a-recycling-revolution)

The real problems start when microorganisms that can metabolize plastic become so ubiquitous that plastic will rot over time.

<comment><USER27> > microorganisms that can metabolize plastic

Subject of a Doomwatch episode in 1970: [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0564476/?ref_=ttep_ep1](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0564476/?ref_=ttep_ep1)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> It always blows my mind that we can still "discover" something as large as Mexico on our planet that nobody previously knew about.

<comment><USER29> Because it's not really something as big as Mexico. As stated in the article, these "plastic patches" aren't a big visible dump of plastic in the ocean. If you seem through it, you wouldn't know it was different from the rest of the ocean. It's basically a large area of the ocean with a significant concentration of microscopic plastic higher than the rest of the ocean.

<comment><USER30> Well, it may not be very dense, but... It's still big, right?

<comment><USER31> Yes but it's not like you would notice it unless you filter the water.

It's bad but if you would be sailing through that patch you wouldn't notice a damn thing.

If you are a fish on the other hand you would probably not like it very much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Plastic Plastic Everywhere, but not a drop to drink... I still won't be drinking ocean water any time soon.

<comment><USER32> Do you think there will be de-plastic-zation plants like de-salinization plants in the future? ( will we ever run out of plastic? )

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Also mentioned in the article: 91% of plastic is not recycled.

How many readers have disposed of a plastic container today?

</comment><comment><USER34> Most plastic bottle and bags will never be recycled. Avoid it like the plague.

<comment><USER35> Even if you think you are recycling it, it might be going to the landfill anyway. Only a few plastics, also aluminium and cardboard, are profitably recyclable. In some areas all the rest just goes to the landfill.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> And they said it was a myth just like the Bermuda Triangle...

</comment><comment><USER37> This is a misleading title regularly used by the media. TLDR: This area has a higher concentration of micro-particles. It is not visible to the naked eye.

<comment><USER30> What would a less misleading headline be? "High concentration of plastic found in ocean area bigger than Mexico"?

It seems like this is still a pretty significant phenomenon, even if it's not visible to the naked eye.

<comment><USER38> Agreed. But that doesn't justify making it sound like there's a Mexico garbage barge out there.

<comment><USER39> "Mexico garbage barge" sounds like it be a great band name.

<comment><USER40> This post is either meta or deja-vu... I swear someone commented this last week.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I am always amazed about how surprised people are that materials that are specifically engineered to decompose as slowly as possible are in fact doing just that.

<comment><USER42> Could it be that the surprise is actually at the fact of the materials being dumped into the ocean rather than contained in landfills and the like?

<comment><USER43> So how _does_ the plastic get into the ocean? Clearly litter washes into rivers during storms and thus ends up in the ocean, but that seems like it must be a relatively insignificant source. Are there countries who are dumping barges full of trash out at sea? Which ones?

<comment><USER44> Victoria BC actually pipes all sewage right out to sea currently. So anything w/ micro plastic beads gets sent right into the ocean. This is also the case with the storm drainage system, so anything left on the road also right into the ocean.

<comment><USER45> Source? That's crazy if true. I assumed only poor 3rd world countries still did stupid stuff like that.

<comment><USER44> [https://thetyee.ca/News/2015/01/26/Victoria-Raw-Sewage- Dumpi...](https://thetyee.ca/News/2015/01/26/Victoria-Raw-Sewage-Dumping/)

There's one for you. People here actively protest against building a tertiary system for tax reasons and because they think they don't need it (there's actually a lot of people who even think that it's less environmentally friendly to have it dealt with on land). It's been an on going debate for over 30 years.

These people also see themselves as "green".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> If the patch is bigger than Mexico, then why doesn't the article provide a picture? A Google Earth link? Color me suspicious - and I used to trust National Geographic</comment>


Alternative Periodic Tables - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_periodic_tables <comment><USER2> I was recently reading this article along with electron shell/sub shell articles specifically for the purpose of learning about alternative representations.

My real interest is in alternative representations of the 4 cube/hyper cube/Tesseract.

All I can really find are the commonly accepted representation as seen here: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesseract](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesseract)

And Hinton's colored cubes: [https://higherspace.wordpress.com/tag/hintons- cubes/](https://higherspace.wordpress.com/tag/hintons-cubes/)

If anyone can link any other alternatives.

</comment><comment><USER3> I always found it strange that the standard view usually depicts Lanthanum + Actinium on the main block and Lutetium + Lawrencium on the auxiliary. I suppose historically it makes sense that valence was the motivating factor, but at my (totally layperson at this point) glance, the pedagogy seems like it would be simpler to just adopt a more electron-orbital-focused design like the "left step" one.

In any case, it's not like anyone should really be looking at the table placement of an element say to themselves "ah yes now I know everything about how this behaves"; the exceptions are basically an intractable necessity in chemistry.

<comment><USER4> Lanthanum + Actinium actually do have the electron configuration you'd expect for a leftmost d block element--their third electron goes into the d block instead of the f block.

In practice, the period 6 and 7 elements have quite a few violations of the Afbau principle, and some predictions of period 8 predict some truly anomalous things for electron configuration (e.g., let's start filling up the 9s/p shells before the 8p shell is finished).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you're in Cambridge, there's an exhibition of alternative periodic tables on until Friday at St Catherine's: [https://www.cam.ac.uk/news/exhibition- marks-the-150th-annive...](https://www.cam.ac.uk/news/exhibition-marks- the-150th-anniversary-of-the-periodic-table)

</comment><comment><USER6> Another 'fun' thing to go through is the _naming_ of the various elements, and some of the elements that were named, but turned out to be other elements already (Canadium, for example).

Tom Scott has a great video on how Ytterby, Sweden managed to get four (!) elements named after it : [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6lGe5jgZgI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6lGe5jgZgI)

More on the naming of the elements here:

[https://www.carolina.com/teacher- resources/Interactive/namin...](https://www.carolina.com/teacher- resources/Interactive/naming-the-elements/tr28303.tr)

[https://books.google.com/books?id=Ck9jBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA223&lpg=...](https://books.google.com/books?id=Ck9jBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA223&lpg=PA223&dq=canandium+wiki&source=bl&ots=D0iomr5Qe0&sig=ACfU3U25eqT1F2eZg- XPNdukJmCnyGG68w&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiskuyl_rHhAhVCbKwKHWPnC4MQ6AEwC3oECAcQAQ#v=onepage&q=canandium%20wiki&f=false)

<comment><USER4> > how Ytterby, Sweden managed to get four (!) elements named after it

Those four elements are yttrium, erbium, terbium, and ytterbium. The short answer as to how a small village could get so many elements named after it is that rare earth elements are so difficult to separate from each other. So the compound that was thought to be yttrium was actually a mixture of several of them. (Cerium provided the other group of rare earths--this eventually resulted in didymium, which was considered an element for a few decades until people realized it was actually a mixture of praseodymium and neodymium). Terbium and erbium were the second and third elements found from yttrium.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> What a coincidence, I stumbled upon this page very recently!

I like the left-step one actually, it makes so much sense, more than the standard one in fact I would say (but I'm not a chemist though)

<comment><USER4> The left-step one actually disguises a few important facts from the normal periodic table.

The obvious one is that He (which is only a full s shell) is _far_ more similar to elements with full p shells than those with only a full s shell. In terms of bonding, the outermost s and p shell influences bonding the most. He, who has no p shell, acts far more like an element that has a full p shell than an element that only has a full s shell and an empty p shell because of the influence of the p shell on bonding, so you do want to stick He in the same group as Ne, Ar, Kr, Xe, and Rn.

The other thing that is tricky is where the f block starts to integrate in the table. The f shell of electrons is far less involved in bonding and observable effects than the d shell is. Furthermore, even the basic electron configuration breaks down because the f and d blocks are so similar in energy. La and Ac both fill their first d electron before the f electron, and several actinides actually retain this single outermost d electron rather than dumping everything in the f block. There is some dispute as to whether or not you should put La/Ac in the d block, or Lu/Lr in the d block, or instead put the entire La-Lu/Ac-Lr block in that one-element hole (this is perhaps one of the reasons why people like using the short form a lot--you can be somewhat vague here).

<comment><USER8> I haven't thought about chemistry in a while, but He as an alkaline earth metal just makes me laugh.

(I have seen layouts where H is above F, though, and I can get behind that...)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is there a name for this field? I guess it is all rate limited by the amount of data that can be categorized and visualized in this way, which feels very specific. But I love it.

<comment><USER10> A taxonomy. See Edward Tufte if you like this stuff.</comment></comment>


Owning Payment.ly - <AUTHOR>

If you owned Payment.ly and had the funding you needed, what type of business would you create? <comment><USER2> Do you think, Libya has secured DNS management. Check this news, it happened in our country, <http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/08/google-bangladesh-hacked/>. If it happen again with payment.ly for the careless management of Libya? In that case, people will lost the trust. So, what about that?

<comment><AUTHOR> Good points, but Bangladesh isn't Lybia. And if the "worry" was the case, companies/site's like bit.ly or page.ly would have a .com redundancy - like we will as well - just in case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Do you really think basing a payment service on a domain controlled by Libya inspires trust?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, why wouldn't it? It would be a US based LLC with the proper US licensing and insurance and hosted in the US.

<comment><USER4> According to the US State Department "Libya remains on the list of designated state sponsors of terrorism."

Since part of the registration fees go directly to the government, registering a .ly domain is about the shortest route you can take to get funds into the hands of terrorists planning attacks on western countries without being subjected to a criminal investigation in the US.

It is fun to play pretend on the internet that your actions have no impact on the real world, but you should take a few minutes to reflect on what your business is supporting.

<comment><USER5> Buying domains supports terrorism, so does paying Tax's [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_and_state_terrori...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_and_state_terrorism)

If it was such a wide spread problem, an issue to fight for, the US government disallow any payments to Libya from US banks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I understand why you may have framed your question the way you did, but isn't getting a domain before knowing what kind of business you're going to create a little backwards? If you're going to attempt to compete in the payment space, you'd need a great niche, or else do a bunch of things better/cheaper than the others. There may be more room in B2B, than C2B/C2C.

The .ly domains are attractive, especially considering so many great names under that TLD are still available. However, I'm personally a little wary (whether there is just cause to be or not) and I would be wary x10 for anything commercial/financial.

<comment><AUTHOR> I know what we are going to do with it - we have a great idea, I just wanted to see what others would do with it.

True, that is what is holding us back. We're exploring some .coms

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Competing with Paypal, Google Checkout and the rest would be difficult without major funding. You need to find a USP such as <https://squareup.com> or <http://flattr.com/>

If a USP to compete with the likes does not come to mind, then find a niche business activity that makes payments. Then design it around their and their customers requirements, I have a similar project on the drawing board.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, competing would be and we do have a USP. Some parts of our services are similar with the traditional payment companies (google checkout and paypal) which will allow us to take part of their market share.</comment></comment>


We Now Have Water Sommeliers - <AUTHOR> https://www.barrons.com/articles/20-minutes-with-celebrated-water-sommelier-jessica-altieri-01555344764 <comment><AUTHOR> I'll save you the read with this gem:

"Data and research has shown the premium bottled water market is booming and I believe this will correlate to an increased demand with water sommelier professionals in the hospitality industry globally. I think water sommeliers will help others realize water is more than just water, it's a hydration celebration."

</comment><comment><USER2> TLDR in the comments: "Is this The Onion?"</comment>


Guerilla Scrum: Minimum Viable Process - <AUTHOR> http://blog.winfieldpeterson.com/2011/04/13/guerilla-scrum-minimum-viable-proces/

<comment><USER2> Standups have a common failure mode where they become about justifying yesterday's time instead of serving their most important functions- distributing knowledge and highlighting blocking factors.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed. I find talking about exactly what story you're working on and how you moved it forward helps, since people can get bogged down in things outside the scope of the story/feature.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Excellent article about the core necessities of an agile process. See the forest not the trees!</comment>


The best offline growth hack ever - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@claus1860/the-best-offline-growth-hack-ever-80c31c3e205e

<comment><USER2> Great write up, I did the Forum in 2012 and got a huge amount from it. I've "enrolled" about 10 people over the last 2 years to also do the Forum and they in turn may have also brought other people to do the Forum. The technology is powerful, it works and so does their growth mechanisms. There is nothing more powerful than a friend recommending and inviting you to use/buy a product or service that's why the Net Promoter score ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_Promoter](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_Promoter)) is such a valued metric by brands.

In addition the value you get from having your friends/colleagues/family also do the Forum increases the subsequent value you as an individual get from it as you have a common understanding, language, world-view and an environment that demands integrity, empathy, accountability and performance.

"A rising tide lifts all boats"

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your comments Klaus!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I did the Forum a few years ago in New Zealand and I know a few other people in the startup scene who have done it recently. Personally, I found the marketing side distracting for the first day of the course because I kept analysing everything (from the room layout to the viral mechanic). Then at some point during the weekend, I realised that I did this type of meta- analysing with everything in my life instead of just being present and actually engaged. From then on I got a lot out of the weekend and it was probably the main factor in me leaving my corporate job and moving to London.

</comment><comment><USER4> Cool. Turns out growth hacking is not new...

<comment><USER5> Ha! Fancy that...</comment></comment>


Show HN: Be notified on new open source releases - <AUTHOR> https://releasly.co <comment><USER2> please correct this typo: "Releasly is a tool for open source lovers like our- self."

... like ourselves.

Good luck, but (in my opinion) even the most dynamic open sources don't change rapidly enough to justify your tool.</comment>


Pretty Easy Privacy - <AUTHOR> https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/pep-pretty-easy-privacy

<comment><USER2> [https://echt.guth.so/why-you-should-not-support-pretty- easy-...](https://echt.guth.so/why-you-should-not-support-pretty-easy- privacy/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Hmmm,

Awful lack of documentation and real information about how they are actually going to implement what they say they want to do here...

I'm gonna stick with Open Whisper Systems and Moxie for the moment thank you.</comment>


Google Chrome Has Dropped Support for Windows XP, Vista, and Mac - <AUTHOR> http://johnhaller.com/blog/2016-04-13--google-chrome-50-drops-support-for-windows-xp-vista-today <comment><USER2> Headline got trimmed so missing key info: "Google Chrome has dropped support for Windows XP, Vista, and Mac OS X 10.6 - 10.8"

Seems a little aggressive and user-hostile.

</comment><comment><USER3> I really don't understand why they are doing this. I have a rather old Mac Mini I wanted to give to my mom, and it would be perfectly suitable for her uses. But as of about a year ago, Chrome stopped supporting it because the hardware is too old.

I get that it is more work to support old hardware and operating systems, and I think it would be forgivable if it was a small shop and software that has limited number of users. But this is Chrome, and Google. What exactly is their reasoning in being so aggressive?

<comment><USER4> Perhaps you should take that up with Apple who unsupported OS X 10.8 over 6 months ago - last September.

I'm working really hard to not be snarky here. I would suggest that you may want to reassess which companies are being aggressive in ending support and why.

<comment><USER3> I don't agree with that either, but the Chrome issue is the one that prevents me from making better use of that Mac.

<comment><USER5> You can't expect a company to support an os that the os developer is not. I guess you are using an old version of os so use the old version of chrome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> *Mac OS X 10.6 - 10.8

Can we please fix the title? Seems pretty misleading

</comment><comment><USER7> Misleading title is misleading. Just dropping OS X 10.6 - 10.8

</comment><comment><USER8> Nice click bait by not putting version number. Surprised didnt just say Chrome Dropped Support for Windows and Mac.

<comment><USER9> at least some minor restraint was exercised

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Can you also remove the "most visited site thumbnails" each time I open a new tab ? or at least give an option to disable that? because you removed this option. I know there are Chrome developers lurking here, frankly what does it cost them to re-enable an option to remove these ?

<comment><USER11> can you not set google as your new tab page?

<comment><USER10> Nope, you can't AFAIK, there is a very long thread on this issue on Google Q&A site. And the typical answer to that is "why would you want to do that?". "Well because you could before".

<comment><USER12> There are multiple extensions that let you set your new tab screen to a blank page, or just a list of apps, or whatever you want.

<comment><USER10> > There are multiple extensions that let you set your new tab screen to a > blank page, or just a list of apps, or whatever you want.

You didn't need them before. Most extensions I found were hacks that stopped working after a Chrome update. See nobody answered my question, why was the option removed at first place.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


On FPGAs as PC Coprocessors (1996) - <AUTHOR> http://fpgacpu.org/usenet/fpgas_as_pc_coprocessors.html <comment><USER2> Good writeup by Jan Gray.

If we look at it from today, some things have changed, but the end result holds true - at least for general purpose computing.

The FPGA vendors (esp Xilinx and Altera) have released devices where the intergration between a hard CPU core and the FPGA is much tighter than using a standardised bus like PCI. This gives a much lower latency. In these devices the CPUs are normally ARM based.

The prevalence of GPUs as PCIe connected coporocessors and OpenCL has also made FPGA based computing connected via PCIe much easier.

One thing that has not improved, but rather worsened is the difference in clock frequency between CPU and FPGA. In Grays posting he talket about PPro running at 200 MHz. Today we have cores running at 2-3 GHz while FPGAs are hard to push beyond 200 MHz.

For applications that are highly parallel, takes a lot of cycles and not suitable for GPU processing, FPGAs might be useful as base for custom coprocessors even for x86, Power, SPARC based servers. But otherwise probably not.

For embedded systems FPGAs makes more sense, but cost of the device and power consumption might make it less so. The integrated SoC devices from Xilinx and Altera can do cool things like media processing, SDR competitively.

The Novena is an example of a modern system where the CPU has access to a FPGA over a low latency interface which makes it useful as a coprocessor. But the Novena is really not built to be cost efficient.

<comment><USER3> Zynq from Xilinx uses an AXI bus between the CPU and logic. The first gen ones are not cache coherent between the logic and CPU but I believe UltraScale will be. I don't know much about PCIe, but how is AXI much lower latency?

<comment><USER4> There is a cache coherent FPGA-CPU DMA interface in Zynq-7000: the Accelerator Coherency Port (ACP).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> To me the biggest viewpoint shift was moving the CPU onto the FPGA instead of the other way around (which was the way we thought it would go for quite a while).

Putting one or more ARM cores on an FPGA is mostly matter of including some lines in a specification file. Putting an FPGA onto a CPU requires a lot of capital and minimum orders that are simply scary.

See also: soft-core vs hard-core FPGA CPUs.

<comment><USER6> That was a surprise. I thought they'd put FPGA's onto the CPU's, too, given they were always trying to max interconnect speed and minimize latency. However, we might still get our dream: Intel & Altera merger w/ Intel needing a boost in datacenter performance. They'll do it eventually if they haven't already.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I can think of two apps that can leverage this kind of FPGA+CPU setup.

Heavy duty image processing: Giga pixel images processing - probably mainly for defence related app like this: [https://youtu.be/MVFeMH3ahtw?t=34m45s](https://youtu.be/MVFeMH3ahtw?t=34m45s)

Video processing: I used to work on one - 10 years ago. We have 1U system that process feed ip videos in and provide video/decoding/transcoding service. It has 37 Virtex Pro FPGA each with 450Mhz PPC processor inside. It was a very fun project, make some good $ for the startup too. Deploy a lot of them at comcast and other major cable company til some stupid VC impose their own CEO and piss off of the three MIT founders. I think transcoding system probably still be useful for all the internet video datacenter app. FPGA transcoding app can provide real time transcoding service for youtube to a lot resolutions to various phone screen site.

FaceBox, Youtube, Amazon, Netflix can probably use those device/services.

Anyone else can think of any good/interesting applications for FPGA+CPU setup?

<comment><USER8> Another obvious example that can benefit from the setup is a crypto coprocessor, whereby private keys are side-loaded onto the coprocessor by means of a separate hardware bus, such that the key is never exposed to the CPU or main memory, and the coprocessor can handle all encryption/decryption with said keys.

<comment><USER7> FPGA+CPU type setup is not cheap to develop or deploy.

Crypto with modern CPU such as pentium works wells. Also almost all the ARM Soc comes with crypto co-processor already with private memory that's not share with main CPU.

Not too sure about the value add there.

<comment><USER8> The value is not about performance, but security. Crypto done by modern CPUs is susceptible to many side-channel attacks. Having a separate SoC is nice, but the SoC is not upgradable with new algorithms or patches if there are any problems found in its implementation.

Also, just having a separate memory space for the purpose of computation is not sufficient. I'm arguing for an entirely separate hardware bus to load keys onto the chip, such that they never exist in CPU, memory, or the storage for the machine being used for general purpose computation, because keys there can be obtained via side-channels if other software (such as the kernel) is exploited.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think that with architecture design becoming increasingly important in processor performance, and on the heels of Intel-Altera, CPUs or GPUs may gradually add "FPGA-like" aspects, where the configuration of the silicon can be dynamically shifted in order to achieve different tasks.

Personally, I would love to see a day when FPGA coprocessors are a thing, and FPGA companies are big enough to make it happen.

<comment><USER10> There are apparently already a thing (Xeon processors with FPGAs seem to have come out a while ago).

<comment><USER11> Xeon processors with FPGAs have been _announced_ over a year ago [1] (June 2014) and we haven't heard any details or exact dates since then.

[1] [http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/184828-intel-unveils- new-...](http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/184828-intel-unveils-new-xeon- chip-with-integrated-fpga-touts-20x-performance-boost)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It is a good idea as long as a. An openly standardized direct-to-PC bus is used b. An openly standardized interface to co-processor is used (not utilizing blobs). c. Possibly a transparent to user mixing of CPU and special instructions.

<comment><USER13> Both Xilinx and Altera are using ARM AXI protocol for the FPGA-CPU interface in their current SoCs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> A company called Xtremedata Inc used to make an FPGA coprocessor module that plugged into an x86 socket using AMD hyper transport bus. I thought it was cool enough to do my MASc thesis on some potential applications for it:

[http://www.hypertransport.org/docs/wp/FPGA_Acceleration_in_H...](http://www.hypertransport.org/docs/wp/FPGA_Acceleration_in_HPC_Nov06.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER15> There have been a few projects to generate VHDL/Verilog using an LLVM backend, a quick google brings up some interesting presentations. I imagine constraints similar to those that the links OP brings up are why these aren't more mainstream.

<comment><USER16> Generating HDL out of C (or OpenCL) is a very bad idea anyway.

<comment><USER17> How come? I guess it would be quite fun if you could write your algorithm with well-defined input/output in a high level language and generate HDL out of it. Let's say you just want to crunch numbers. Today you can use CUDA for that task, but what if you just use a subset of the CUDA features, maybe the compiler might use the gates in the FPGA more efficiently compared with the already defined GPU.

<comment><USER16> In a high level language? Absolutely. In C? No, thanks. There is a huge semantic mismatch with the highly parallel nature of FPGAs.

A high level language suitable for HDL generation must expose much better abstractions for parallelism. CUDA is just the same thing as C, too bound to the underlying architecture.

<comment><USER13> I think a high level HDL would be great. C really isn't a good starting point because as you said it doesn't really fit the parallel hardware paradigm. The existing tools that do this feel like they're trying to shoehorn C into this application and it doesn't work too well, because of all the extra information you need to synthesize hardware, e.g. should every iteration of this loop happen simultaneously, or are you making a shift register?

Something that started with a Verilog/VHDL paradigm but provided higher level abstrations would be nice, a good analogy would be something like how Python is to C.

<comment><USER16> This is actually something I am currently working on. An extensible HDL which allows to gradually add abstraction layers (and operate solely on any chosen level), while keeping an ability to express anything down to gates.

<comment><USER13> I'd definitely be interested in checking that out if you have a link

<comment><USER16> I have not published the language yet, have to produce some nice looking examples first. But you can take a look at my approach to extensibility in general (the HDL language is using exactly the same thing) and some of the earlier mixing Verilog with C experiments here: [https://github.com/combinatorylogic](https://github.com/combinatorylogic)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> If Intel is desperately looking for stuff to put on silicon besides yet another core, and they've already "gone there" for Graphics, why not an FPGA.

How far are we from a gigabyte of on-die cache, anyway?</comment>


Ask HN: How do you measure traction? - <AUTHOR> Besides Google Analytics, what tools do you use to measure stuff like DAU, LTV and Growth rate? <comment><USER2> Mixpanel for tracking user actions and cohort analysis (useful for retention).

Hotjar for on-site surveys for NPS.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanx!</comment></comment>


Etihad allows flyers to bid to keep adjacent seats empty - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2017/06/travelling-space?fsrc=scn/fb/te/bl/ed/ <comment> tuna-piano My two tips for how to keep the adjacent seat empty on normal flights:

1\. If you book when there are still many empty seats, choose a window/aisle seat near the back of the plane. Those middle seats are usually the last to be filled.

2\. If you're traveling in a group of 2 and there are 3 seats per section, choose the window and aisle of an empty section (preferably near the back of the plane). Chances are good that if there are any empty seats left on the plane, it could be your middle seat. If someone does happen to book that middle seat, I think 99.99% of the time that person would be happy to change to the aisle/window so you can sit next to your partner.

<comment><USER2> Likewise, whenever I book a last-minute flight with only middle seats available, I make sure to ask the agent to place me between two passengers with the same last name.

<comment><USER3> Of course, the last time I did that I ended up between two people who did not want to move, yet still wanted to talk to each other the entire flight with me in the middle.

<comment><USER4> That's when you join in on the conversation.

<comment><USER5> Which sounds like a fun way to punish them, or coerce them into switching with you, but as an introvert, I think I'd rather just put on my headphones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is really interesting from a game theory perspective.

What's really going to matter is how it's executed. If someone bids $100 to keep a seat empty and the flight is empty, do they still get charged the $100? Or is it only when there's a limited number of empty seats and more people that will pay to have an empty seat next to them.

One interesting way would be that each person gets charged the lowest amount of everybody who has an empty seat next to them. This obviously limits what the airline makes, but keeps things generally fair.

Another way is when people go to reserve seats, if someone is willing to pay $x to keep an adjacent seat empty, the price of selecting that seat goes up by $x. This guarantees the airline gets paid at least $x as soon as someone bids that. It also makes it more important to book seats early, but will of course, get much more complicated to execute.

One of the things I do when booking flights for two, is choose an aisle seat and a window seat. Odds are if the flight is not full, a solo traveler will not book the middle seat, and we end up having all three seats for us. If someone does book the middle seat, we just trade aisle/window for the middle, so we're together, and he other person feels like he got an upgrade.

<comment><USER7> > _This obviously limits what the airline makes, but keeps things generally > fair._

What possible incentive would an airline have to do that, then?

> _If someone does book the middle seat, we just trade aisle /window for the > middle, so we're together, and he other person feels like he got an > upgrade._

This infuriates me. My wife and I traveled cross country last month and due to a maintenance issue the previous night, our 6am flight was cancelled and we were pushed to 10am. What resulted was us trying to select seats when every row on the plane was either full or window-aisle. Had people flying together actually selected seats next to each other, it stands to reason some of those would have opened up and we may have been able to sit together.

Not a big deal for a 30-minute connecting flight, but not the best 5 hours to start a trip with.

<comment><USER8> In this situation, wouldn't the person sitting in the middle be willing to trade for either the aisle or the window seat?

<comment><USER9> I think the point of the parent comment is that the strategy of capturing the two end seats of a three-person row displaces noncoupled passengers across more rows which has the potential to make finding coupled seats less likely for other fliers.

<comment><USER7> Yes I didn't do a great job explaining it but this is what I meant. You end up with a lot of couple + single filled rows and couple + empty seat rows. If you selected the seats you _wanted_ instead of trying to game everyone else on what is probably a full or nearly-full flight anyway, there would be more rows filled with 3x single passengers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> From an ecological point of view, this is very problematic. As far as it's value as a business idea goes, I'd say this an interesting idea.

<comment><USER11> Sure. At the bottom of it, it's subsidized by the relative inexpense of oil, and how much we can do with that energy.

Which reminds me: Is there a name for and can I read more about the problem of economy, market and pricing of resources for sustainability?

<comment><USER12> > Sure.

No. The seats are not being _made_ empty. You're just moving the empty seat next to you. Zero energy impact, save for moving the information around.

<comment><USER13> Hmm, I dunno... it relieves some of the financial pressure of having empty seats, by extracting some value from them. Therefore there will be less incentive for the airline to maximize seat utilization (through overbooking, for example, which saves money but costs reputation for the airline every time someone gets booted). Therefore we can expect seat utilization to go down.

<comment><USER12> That's true. That's a pretty complex effect, so you'd need some decent data to estimate its magnitude. But you're right it should be above zero, unless there's some other effect to suppress it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Doesn't go into how it works - if I bid $50 to have an empty seat next to me, and the flight ends up being fully booked, is my $50 refunded?

<comment><USER14> Presumably, because you'd have lost the auction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> If you don't fancy the price of premium economy or business class, you can get some great deals at the literal last minute.

Go through with your flight as normal, check in, go through security, and find a member of staff for your flight. Ask how much an upgrade costs, and if they have the space available, they're open to offers.

For example, about 5 years ago I got economy+ on British Airways LHR -> LAX for $200, and business offered for $600 or $700 IIRC. Not bad for a 12 hour flight!

<comment><USER16> I think Seatfrog are now gamifying the last-minute-upgrade trick.

[http://seatfrog.com/](http://seatfrog.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> If you're flying with another person, you can try booking the window and aisle, then hope the middle doesn't get filled. If someone does take the middle seat, they're usually willing to trade so you and your partner can sit next to each other.

This has worked for me on several international flights.

</comment><comment><USER18> This is a smart move. Such a model could allow passengers to choose from a continuous range of options from being packed like sardines, to flying first class, to flying completely privately on _any_ flight. Picture an airliner cabins as easily reconfigurable as a minivan's.

</comment><comment><USER19> Hmm, AirBerlin is offering this now for 1+ years. Note that Etihad heavily invested in AirBerlin.

</comment><comment><USER20> Another technology solution to a non-technical problem.

      1. Fly Southwest.
      2. Board earlier than most others.
      3. When someone eyeballs the adjacent seat, yell into your phone, "The ointment works much better than the lotion when the boils open!"

<comment><USER21> You're getting downvoted but this is a good point - southwest does it right.

For whatever reason, people dislike the back of the plane but if you can tolerate that, you typically have your choice of isle or window, even with crappy line placement.

<comment><USER22> The back of the plane is not ideal when you want to get off the plane sooner to catch your connecting flight.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Flew back to the states from London yesterday. Had the whole row to myself (planned it that way). People in front of me were upset that I wouldn't give up one of my seats. Nope. Slept like a baby.

<comment><USER24> I'm quite certain that they could have just taken one of the empty seats and you would have been powerless to prevent it. However the English are polite to a fault.

<comment><USER23> Nope, they were Americans. If I would have refused the flight attendants probably wouldn't have pushed the issue. Usually they won't.

<comment><USER25> How in the world can you _refuse_ to have the plane's staff seat people in whatever empty seat they see fit? They are in the right to do so and you are in the wrong to act as if it's up to you to have any part in the decision. You are basically just taking advantage of the airline workers' aversion to having someone make a fuss.

<comment><USER23> The staff didn't. They took it upon themselves to move. They asked the staff if it was ok and the staff said yes but didn't help reseat them.

I love how downvoted I'm getting in this thread. LOL

<comment><USER25> "If I would have refused the flight attendants probably wouldn't have pushed the issue. Usually they won't."

As I didn't vote on your comment I can't say for sure, but probably people are downvoting you because your own statements make it sound like you're bullying busy airline staff into getting what you want even though it's not owed to you.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Unblockable Email Images - 4 ways to Embed Images in Emails - <AUTHOR> http://blog.danielwoelfel.com/2011/04/four-methods-of-embedding-images-in-emails-one-of-them-is-really-cool/

<comment><USER2> Actually pretty cool idea.</comment>


The effects of social recommendations on network diversity - <AUTHOR> https://blog.acolyer.org/2018/05/24/algorithmic-glass-ceiling-in-social-networks-the-effects-of-recommendation-on-social-diversity/ <comment><USER2> >Men show a stronger bias towards connecting to other men than women do for connecting to other women. This happens even when controlling for content productivity.

If this is true then it seems to be the important piece of content here. Recommendation algorithms are generally designed to show the user what they want to see, rather than an equal, fair, or diverse set of options, so it sounds like they're working as intended here. This type of analysis could be done with any characteristic, not just gender, leaving me unsure as to what the specific purpose of this article is - if users want X more than Y then it should be no surprise that X is presented more often or receives more traffic.

</comment><comment><USER3> It seems like their model is too simple to draw any firm conclusions? It essentially treats all types of content the same. That is, what about this causality flow:

group -> type of content generated -> audience reach

People in different groups will prefer to author different kinds of content at different rates, and this could entirely account for audience reach.

For example, suppose we classify content by the language it's written in? One would expect people who write content in English or maybe Chinese to reach a larger audience than people generating content in a less well-known language.

But there are plenty of other dimensions that will affect audience reach.

<comment><USER4> Even with a perfectly time-ordered feed with sharing/retweet functionality, a pareto distribution will emerge among content that bubbles up. That's how networked economies seem to work.

[http://www.labs.hp.com/research/idl/papers/ranking/adamicglo...](http://www.labs.hp.com/research/idl/papers/ranking/adamicglottometrics.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The problem is that the popularity of products in a networked economy follows the power law:

[http://www.aspeninstitute.org/policy-work/communications- soc...](http://www.aspeninstitute.org/policy-work/communications- society/power-curve-society-future-innovation-opportunity-social-equity)

You might recognize the power distribution curve, as it's the same as the graph of the long tail:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_law#mediaviewer/File:Long...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_law#mediaviewer/File:Long_tail.svg)

What happens is that you have a handful of people who make a LOT of money / bust out virally, a small few who do OK, and the vast, vast majority starve. Since our economy is increasingly becoming an online, globally networked one, these effects are becoming stronger, and are a contributor to economic inequality.

Power Law phenomenon on the net has been observed for ages. Here's a post from 2003 where Kottke notes the distribution in the popularity of blogs on Technorati: [http://kottke.org/03/02/weblogs-and-power- laws](http://kottke.org/03/02/weblogs-and-power-laws)

I imagine the curve fits similarly for things like app store rankings, Reddit and Hacker News post popularities, top Steam sellers, Amazon rankings, etc.

> The world still rewards value, even if it takes some time. The people > clamoring that it doesn't are doing so because they want to believe that it > isn't their fault they didn't succeed.

The funny thing is, this is not entirely true. Quality is only important up to a certain threshold, after which you're at the mercy of what are essentially chaotic network effects early in the lifecycle of your product.

Salgankik, Dodds, and Watts performed an experiment that begins to provide some empirical support for this intuition [359]. They created a music download site, populated with 48 obscure songs of varying quality written by actual performing groups.

 _Visitors to the site were presented with a list of the songs and given the opportunity to listen to them. Each visitor was also shown a table listing the current "download count" for each song — the number of times it had been downloaded from the site thus far. At the end of a session, the visitor was given the opportunity to download copies of the songs that he or she liked._

 _Now, unbeknownst to the visitors, upon arrival they were actually being assigned at random to one of eight "parallel" copies of the site. The parallel copies started out identically, with the same songs and with each song having a download count of zero. However, each parallel copy then evolved differently as users arrived. In a controlled, small-scale setting, then, this experiment provided a way to observe what happens to the popularities of 48 songs when you get to run history forward eight different times. And in fact, it was found that the "market share" of the different songs varied considerably across the different parallel copies, although the best songs never ended up at the bottom and the worst songs never ended up at the top._

 _Salganik et al. also used this approach to show that, overall, feedback produced greater inequality in outcomes. Specifically, they assigned some users to a ninth version of the site in which no feedback about download counts was provided at all. In this version of the site, there was no direct opportunity for users to contribute to rich-get-richer dynamics, and indeed, there was significantly less variation in the market share of different songs._

 _There are clear implications for popularity in less controlled environments, parallel to some of the conclusions we've drawn from our models — specifically, that the future success of a book, movie, celebrity, or Web site is strongly influenced by these types of feedback effects, and hence may to some extent be inherently unpredictable._

[http://www.cs.cornell.edu/home/kleinber/networks- book/networ...](http://www.cs.cornell.edu/home/kleinber/networks- book/networks-book-ch18.pdf)

<comment><USER5> That is just an amazing comment, with wide reaching applicability.</comment></comment>


The Basics of Loop Vehicle Detection [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.marshproducts.com/pdf/Inductive%20Loop%20Write%20up.pdf <comment><USER2> It's obvious, but not addressed in the pdf: What about motorcycles and bicycles?

Based on the effect that smaller vehicles have higher frequency increases, would we see a bicycle as the highest? Also, if I am a cyclist and I want to trigger a left turn arrow, for example, should I pay attention to where in the loop I stop to wait?</comment>


Kaspersky Labs preps its own OS to guard vital industry against cyberwarfare - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2012/10/16/kaspersky-labs-preps-its-own-os-to-guard-industry-against-cyberwarfare/ <comment><USER2> This sounds like a good idea, but won't get the traction it needs to be successful.</comment>


HTML5 Fluid Simulator - <AUTHOR> http://rkive.org/stuff/water/

<comment><AUTHOR> Any critique or things that should be changed?</comment>


First Covid-19 reinfection documented in Hong Kong, researchers say - <AUTHOR> https://www.statnews.com/2020/08/24/first-covid-19-reinfection-documented-in-hong-kong-researchers-say/ <comment><USER2> Does anyone know if they only tested for RNA, or for live virus?

At this point in time it is absolutely unacceptable to assume that presence of viral RNA equates to infectious virus. Hence the question.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Good news: the person in question was infected by a different strain of the virus and his immune response seemed to prevent more serious symptoms from manifesting.

Bad news: herd immunity from natural infection seems unlikely and would only achievable with a vaccine.

<comment><USER3> The researchers caution not to jump to conclusions like this</comment></comment>


FDA Approves Magnetic Helmet For Treating Depression - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/3004658/fda-approves-magnetic-helmet-treating-depression?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+fastcompany%2Fheadlines+%28Fast+Company%29 <comment><USER2> Well there's also a better way on it way for managing Bi-polar than using Lithium.

<http://www.ox.ac.uk/media/news_stories/2013/130108.html>

</comment><comment><USER3> I guess it will help you to think positive.</comment>


Ask HN: Developer salary at nonprofit in Bay Area? - <AUTHOR> I see numbers all over the place, so I'm wondering if there's some kind of rule-of-thumb for figuring this out (average % lower than for-profit?).
The position I'm concerned with is a lead data analyst position at a well-funded nonprofit in the Bay Area.
But I'd love to hear your thoughts/experience about compensation at nonprofits in general. <comment><USER2> I worked at two technology-focused nonprofits over a stretch of 11 years (mostly in management). At a well-funded nonprofit, you can expect salaries to run around 25 - 30% below market rates.

For organizations that are closely aligned with humanitarian causes (e.g. health projects in the developing world), I've noticed a much higher gap, presumably because these organizations are able to attract talent that's more passionate about the cause/willing to accept lower compensation.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow that's much lower than I thought.

I've been looking through some 990s to get a rough idea, but that ballpark percentage difference is what I haven't been able to figure out.

Thanks!

<comment><USER3> There's a few statistics about salary adjustments for work that is perceived as more or less socially responsible in Jeff Schmidt's book "disciplined minds".

What is the "moral reservation premium" in salary expected in return for selling out and working for an employer seen as less socially responsible?

* a typical student would rather work as an advertising copywriter for the american cancer society than an advertising copywriter for camel cigarettes, and would want a salary 50% higher to do it for the cigarette company

* a typical student would want +17% salary to work as an accountant for a petrochemical company instead of doing the same job for an art museum

* "men are more likely than women to sell out, and this accounts for at least part of the gap in average salaries between men and women"

more detail in: R H Frank, "Can Socially Responsible Firms Survive in a Competitive Environment?" 1996

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Non-profit does not mean charity, though it can. If the non-profit is well funded then there's not necessarily a reason that employees ought to make direct donations via their paycheck.

None of which is to say that a particular individual might not wish to take a position with a particular non-profit that pays less than market rate for a variety of reasons. Only that non-profits often pay full market rate for development [in the context of donors] and fund-raising and administrative staff as well as for services and goods from outside organizations.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'd say it depends on how well the non-profit is doing. I recruited a couple dozen engineers for a couple of successful non-profits in the Bay Area. They usually paid 10% to 20% less than my startup clients, and probably offered a less demanding life style.

</comment><comment><USER6> 30% below market is considered competitive for well-funded Bay Area nonprofits. 70-80k for software engineers.

<comment><USER7> That's FAR below 30% less than market.

<comment><USER6> Depends who you talk to. But yeah, it can be a much bigger pay cut for some people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Non profits vary widely enough that you see places that can only take volunteer developer time and maybe provide some sort of tax benefit, maybe not, and places that pay something approaching market rate.

What's important is that you feel fairly compensated, and that you don't have to fight for that too hard, so that your income continues to grow.

</comment><comment><USER9> Kaiser Permanente is technically a non-profit. Their wages are more or less in line for tech jobs at bloated big bureaucratic companies where the performance demands are low and the meetings schedule is full.

edit: but other non-profits will typically pay much lower.</comment>