Wikibollocks: The Shirky Rules - <AUTHOR> http://whimsley.typepad.com/whimsley/2010/04/wikibollocks-the-shirky-rules.html

<comment><USER2> I like Shirky's writing very much, he is fluent and brings great perspective and ideas, not to mention great soundbites, but i will admit that the problems presented in this counter article make sense.

It seems digital media analysis and the media studies derived from them share this mild case of schizophrenia, or put another way a case of academic attention deficit disorder, the nature of the commentary is similar to the environment in which it is conceived.

I probably muddled what i was trying to say, but when you actually slog through a scholarly work (of say historical analysis) that presents an exhaustive attention to details, and reference you are struck by a wholly different kind of academic style, one that seems increasingly old school and unfashionable, which is very sad.

This mode still exist in the hard sciences, but in certain humanities it is viewed with suspicion, even disdain, at least that is my anecdotal observation.

It can be summed up as brilliant ideas, that fall apart due to lack of rigor in research.

<comment><USER3> "It seems digital media analysis and the media studies derived from them share this mild case of schizophrenia"

Then again, the philosophy underpinning all of modern science was supposedly delivered by an angel:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92pBIw0f_Og>

<comment><USER4> Hmm, thanks. For those with no 'tube', I found a bit of text here: <http://www.dedroidify.com/science.htm>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Story-telling is what struck me (and what I liked) about the New York Times and the New Yorker when I first started to read them, especially as I'm a Briton and not use to that style.

Argument by analogue, and story-telling, reminds me of what I found unsettling about freakanomics and gladwell's work. Not that I didn't enjoy those books, I did. But I was oftentimes only left with the story.

<comment><USER6> I too immediately thought of Freakanomics and Malcolm Gladwell, as well as Thomas Friedman. There seems to be a trend of writing books around "anecdata", as the OP calls it - anecdotes presented as patterns, while failing to account for selection bias in the process.

Of course, there's probably an irony in the fact that _I_ drew a trend from merely four anecdotes as well...

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I enjoyed this as both a critique of Shirky's writings (which I admittedly enjoy) and as an excellent lesson in marketing.

</comment><comment><USER8> >analysts Visible Measures add in all copies of a video together with spoofs and pastiches, and their list of the top fifteen videos is as follows

I disagree with the reasoning that "spoofs and pastiches" belong to the "complex business model" set of videos and not the "creative amateur" set.

</comment><comment><USER9> Very well-written critique. But I wish people stopped putting giant disclaimers on their blog titles such as:

 _Occasional badly-informed opinions, worth exactly what you pay for them. Mostly technology and politics with a pseudo-philosophical twist._

Is that meant to be funny or protect the author from criticism?

<comment><USER10> You're asking if we like him or hate him :)

Because a friend would say he's humble and funny, and an enemy would say he's deceptive and ignorant.

Then again, I don't personally know him...

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you haven't read it, I do highly recommend Tainter's _The Collapse of Complex Societies_ as a worthy attempt to quantify the process of collapse as a function of diminishing returns on added complexity.

I recall it being damned expensive to buy, but you should be able to borrow it from a well-appointed library.</comment>


Ask HN: Conversion rates for free trials for Freemium - <AUTHOR>

Would love to hear from the community about their conversion rates and any tips with regards to free trials.
In my view, there are generally to types of free trials: with and without asking for a credit card upfront. Has anyone done any comparisons re: conversion rates?
Also, if anyone has any rates or stats to share regarding Paypal vs roll-your-own, would be interested in that too. Basically, all metrics welcome!
Finally, if you dont ask for CC info upfront, how much chasing do you have to do to get them to provide that info at the end of the free month? There's probably a dev effort to build the emails, reminders, warnings and eventual expiry right? <comment><USER2> On our site, we have only free accounts and are working on producing paid accounts. Signing up for an account requires no information aside from email and password, plus name for displaying onsite.

Right now our conversion rate is hovering around 6%, with obvious shortcomings that we are working on ironing out. I believe hitting 10% is practical with some serious tweaking and a/b testing, and that is my current goal.

I don't have any actual experience with asking for a credit card upfront, however I have a serious personal revulsion to handing my card to a company without them earning my trust. If I can't see their offering with a free trial, I will not hand them my card. Many people I have talked to have the same revulsion, unless the product comes with strong recommendations from friends or other family. I think the problemis getting your product to enough people to generate those strong recommendations needed to tip wary people over the edge.

Personally, I feel that in an internet world where it can extremely difficult to gain traction, throwing up another barrier is a bad idea. However, I am interested in the numbers as well, because I could be completely off base with this opinion!</comment>


Big Data in Excel - live stream - <AUTHOR> https://datanitro.com/meetup_live_stream.html

<comment><USER2> I have large databases I need to drill down on. Any help on the best way to do this would be greatly appreciated

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm Victor, one of the founders of DataNitro. Please reach out to me at email@example.com, I'll help you with this.

<comment><USER2> Thank you Victor I will email you tomorrow AM.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: I built an online image editor using WebGL and CSS transforms - <AUTHOR> https://pqina.nl/doka/image-editor/ <comment><USER2> Cool!

Can't help but to mention photopea; [https://www.photopea.com/](https://www.photopea.com/) Pretty impressive stuff made by one guy (it was initially). Basically a viable alternative to photoshop in a browser.

<comment><USER3> I started to use Photopea for making thumbnails for my videos and blog posts a few months ago but I wish it were more stable.

Sometimes it has network connectivity issues that prevents the app from working -- even if you download the "offline" app.

Like 2 days ago I couldn't add text to an image because the font list couldn't be loaded over the network due to the site having connectivity issues (and it doesn't work when offline). I had to resort to using gimp otherwise it would have delayed a video from being published.

Of all of the online or offline non-Flash image editors that try to replace Photoshop this one is my favorite. I hope it continues to get more developed. It lacks a lot of things but it's good enough for whipping together basic multi-layer layouts. Little things like being able to auto-center things vertically and horizontally by just dragging things around saves so much time. Also supporting Photoshop style layers for doing outlines and shadows speed things up.

<comment><USER4> Hi, I am the author of Photopea :)

Photopea is used by 120,000 people every. We rarely get reports about the site not loading correctly. We received one in June from a user from Malaysia. After some communication, we noticed that it worked well when he used his mobile data, and did not work only on WiFi, so probably the problem was with ISP.

If it happens again, just let us know!

<comment><USER3> This was on a wired connection in the US (75mb down / 25mb up). I'm not sure what was up but every other site worked and I had no packet loss anywhere else. I had a 7ms ping time to my gateway and <= 20ms to a bunch of sites I tested.

It's just photopea.com is down for me completely and that prevents the app from allowing you to use text since that depends on network loaded fonts.

It's actually still happening now every once in a while over 24 hours later. Like right now it took 2 minutes to access the program but it eventually loaded (this was due to the site having 100% packet loss at the time).

A few "is it down for me?" sites are reporting it down as well but it seems to be pretty spotty (sometimes they report up, sometimes down). I'm from the east US if it helps.

Is there any way you can have the program use local fonts when no network is detected? With the current behavior when there's no network you click the text tool and then it sits forever while the font selection window fails to load.

<comment><USER4> I usually check the accessibility at [https://www.uptrends.com/tools/uptime](https://www.uptrends.com/tools/uptime). Now, it says that "it works everywhere" (e.g. it was loaded in 0.7 seconds in NY). 18 people are using Photopea in NY as I type this message.

Could you write me an email to firstname.lastname@example.com, and help me investigate it?

Sadly, if websites knew about specific fonts in your computer, it would be considered "fingerprinting" :( so browsers do not let us access fonts.

<comment><USER3> I'm getting 100% packet loss as soon as the connection reaches masterinter.net when I do a traceoute. Uptrends is also showing 5-10s load times for that domain.

I sent you an email with the trace results.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Well done, the app is really smooth even on mobile and I can definitely see it being used for the most common types of image processing. I like the premise of using WebGL and CSS filters. Are you going to open source it? I'd love to see how you implemented that.

Edit: Never mind, I just realized this showcases Doka, a commercial component for image processing on the client so that you don't need to do the image processing in the server. Neat product as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! And indeed, it's a full feature instance of Doka, I figured it might be useful for some people to do quick image editing and offering it for free feels good.

It isn't open source, I do use income from Doka to finance my other open source products (like FilePond).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> As I'm doing something very similar (but different) for my new product so I definitely checked it out.

What I like:

* Image orientation (from EXIF) support

* I like how intuitive it is

* I will absolutely use some minor ideas in my product that I have not considered using.

What I dislike:

* I have uploaded 10000 x 6672 image (this one [https://unsplash.com/photos/2S4FDh3AtGw](https://unsplash.com/photos/2S4FDh3AtGw)) and I see that you scale it down. My experience shows that both Firefox and Chrome handles such large image without problems.

* Delay between action and reaction is too high for my taste. It feels unnecessary sluggish. UPDATE: tested with Chromium and it feels response. Only Firefox is sluggish.

* Flip does not center around zoom

Anyway, awesome work as I know some pain points you might have experienced :)

<comment><USER7> > UPDATE: tested with Chromium and it feels response. Only Firefox is > sluggish.

If you're feeling up to it you might want to file an issue with Mozilla on this.

<comment><USER6> I usually do when I am sure that it is not me who did something wrong. The last time I did naive JSON.parse(JSON.stringify(x)) and Chromium was way faster than Firefox if there are a lot of data in x. I don't feel that this is Firefox bug even if it is slower. In this situation I don't know what might be causing slower behavior on Firefox so I don't feel like a could write good bug report :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Cool! Congrats! Welcome to the club! ;-)

BTW, does anyone know if there is a transpiler I could use to write an image processing/geometry algorithm/animation algorithm once and then target whatever output language/platform combo is desired? I really dislike JavaScript, I am way more productive in e.g. C++, but I need to rewrite my algorithms from C++ into Java/Swift/JavaScript/Python/CUDA/Kotlin, depending on a platform I address, and frankly I am getting tired of that. I just want to have a vanilla algorithmic code that is pretty transferable across platforms (desktop/web/iOS/Android) automatically transpiled to another language as I need (with platform-specific stuff done in a custom fashion of course); I don't care about performance optimizations for that (no time for that per platform anyway). WebAssembly is supposed to help but it's still not there yet.

Thanks for any advice!

<comment><USER9> Figma is pretty successful and is written in C++ compiled to webassembly:

[https://www.figma.com/blog/building-a-professional-design- to...](https://www.figma.com/blog/building-a-professional-design-tool-on-the- web/)

[https://www.figma.com/blog/webassembly-cut-figmas-load- time-...](https://www.figma.com/blog/webassembly-cut-figmas-load-time-by-3x/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> i've been looking for an online web tool that allows me to :

\- paste image 1 from clipboard on canvas

\- paste image 2 from clipboard on canvas

\- play with canvas overall size to adjust surface of ima1+ima2

\- anotate (text, arrow, square)

\- maybe some template background colors

\- copy entire canvas to clipboard or download png

today i've came back to native powerpoint on my machine with a template that i have to clean on startup (no blank template possible :()

Can you help ?

\- [https://whimsical.com/a](https://whimsical.com/a) => not quick and dirty enought \- [https://screenzy.io/](https://screenzy.io/) => do not manage 2 images

<comment><USER11> Sounds more like diagramming functionality, have you tried draw.io or alike?

<comment><USER10> i have indeed, but i thing you've hit it in the middle (of the problem). My need is much more like [https://screenzy.io/](https://screenzy.io/) than draw.io.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is perfect, thank you.

I need to crop and annotate images all the time for work. I used to use Skitch when I had a Mac, but since moving over to Linux there seems to be a complete lack of simple tools to do basic editing and markup.

<comment><USER13> I mean, I use gimp...

<comment><USER14> I think his point is slightly different. GIMP is neither basic, nor obvious for simple editing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Nice, and cool name too (I suspect you mean doka = Donkere Kamer = Dark Room?)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, it's the perfect fit, I have someone else to thank for that as I'm horrible at naming things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It doesn't work in Firefox 69.0 :/ Am I the only one? I select one of the images provided in the webpage and it gets stuck on "Loading image...". Sigh...

<comment><USER17> Gets stuck for me too on 68.0.2 (64-bit/Linux). Works in Chrome. Looking at the console I get:

<SetDimensions>: Failed to create WebGL context: WebGL creation failed: * Refused to create native OpenGL context because of blacklist entry: FEATURE_FAILURE_GLXTEST_FAILED * Exhausted GL driver options.

This is my work laptop so I never bothered to setup Mesa/GL correctly .. probably the issue. The app should still do a check and report that WebGL isn't enable to the user.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I'll look into this. If I understand correctly you do get the "WebGL isn't enabled" message?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Very nice.

Suggestion: in the aspect ratio constraint picker, change "free" to "unconstrained", "variable", or "fully variable" to avoid the confusion with "no charge".

<comment><USER19> and free is not actually free. i had a very wide image which i chose 16:9 for then back to free and I could not actually move the box back to the original content

<comment><AUTHOR> I think you had to zoom out the image (scale down with scroll wheel or multi- touch), maybe this needs to be more clear.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> You forgot to add that it works well on a phone! Amazing work.

<comment><AUTHOR> I specifically build it to work well across multiple different contexts :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This looks great. I'm working on a small experimental project which will allow multiple users to collaborate on an image. I will fiddle around with Doka to see how this can fit in with our use case. Great work!

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome, let me know if you have any questions, just use that chat widget thingy on the product page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Really nice and simple, loads quickly unlike competitors and seems more useful for making memes / simple image changes. Please add splicing images together, and freeform drawing.

</comment><comment><USER23> This is cool. Please consider adding a way to increase the size of the artboard and compose images on it. Put differently, let me "uncrop" the image or add margins.

Multiple times this week I had to pad height or width to a trimmed image to look good on apps like Instagram, or Tinder, or a Facebook cover page.

</comment><comment><USER24> I've really enjoyed watching Rik build this library. Congrats, Rik!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Cool tool. Also I like the animations, improves the experience a lot!

</comment><comment><USER26> Would be cool to make as a PWA so I could use it offline

</comment><comment><USER27> Nice ;) How come you use WebGL rather than e.g. SVG?

<comment><USER28> Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think WebGL is the most performant graphics pipeline available in browsers today.

I'm hooked on SVG's promise of semantic graphics, but every time I tried building something with SVG in a browser the performance just wasn't there, especially on low-end devices.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're absolutely right, you either go for CSS 3D Transforms, or WebGL, WebGL being faster still.

<comment><USER29> What's your take on 2d canvas? I always see these 2d Toole using webgl and wonder how big of a difference it is.

Filters of course work best in webgl. But the rest?

Also, do you use offscreencanvas in chrome?

<comment><AUTHOR> Every operation is just way faster in WebGL.

I currently use WebGL for display preview and 2D canvas for generating the actual image.

I suspect you'll run into performance issues if you plan to animate the image in a 2D canvas context (like I do when rotating / flipping / etc.)

I've been planning to use offscreencanvas but haven't gotten around to it yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Looks good. I clicked crop, dragged the handles, then clicked resize, but it zoomed in and the image went underneath the menu.

Browser: Brave on Ubuntu

<comment><AUTHOR> It'll show the actual output size of the image, I'm not a 100% happy with this yet. The fact that you report it here (as a bug) is a good indicator that it needs to be changed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Absolutely wonderful UI design. Though I'm not sure if there's any contrast controls etc...

</comment><comment><USER32> Looks great. Excellent work.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> This is lush – great work

</comment><comment><USER34> Great work. Checked out your other products, they are cool as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> NIce job. Tested with Chrome. Excellent performance. Great work.

</comment><comment><USER36> You're trying to charge people money for this? $1999 per year for unrestricted access? You can't be serious?

[https://pqina.nl/doka/#pricing](https://pqina.nl/doka/#pricing)

<comment><USER37> There's a charge if you want to use the image editor in your own app. You're buying a library, and if your organization has more than 20 developers working on implementing it $2k is peanuts.

<comment><USER38> Honestly, if you have a single developer working on an implementation, $2000 isn't _that_ much, so $109 is practically a steal!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> wow so creative</comment>


The story behind Instagram - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/Instagram/What-is-the-story-behind-Instagram <comment><USER2> I applaud their boldness to throw all their previous work away for a simpler idea. Sometimes we get too attached...</comment>


What happened to the inaugural class of travel startup Remote Year - <AUTHOR> http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/remote-year-promised-to-combine-work-and-travel-was-it-too-good-to-be-true?Src=longreads <comment><USER2> It's amazing how much money these people are spending on this trip, especially with such inexperienced founders/staff. $3k down, $2k a month, and $2.5k to leave, while many don't have solid income streams in place?

Unfortunately, after having been in this "digital nomad" scene for over a year and a half now, it is nothing new. I've lived across 14~ countries since 2014 and have met my fair share of people who dropped everything to come to Chaing Mai, Ubud, Saigon, etc to work on their next big company, only to end up struggling to make a living off a travel blog or affiliate marketing tactics. It feels like many don't make it past a few months, before it sets in that not everyone is cut out for it.

<comment><USER3> I always assumed the term "digital nomad" would refer to a kind of stabilished digital freelancer that had relevant (if unstable) source of income. I indeed don't see it working for founders developing a company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> for $2000, all they are getting is a workspace and shared-accommodation?

That amount of money is a lot in countries like Vietnam, Thailand, etc. You could easily get yourself a 2-bedroom place and cooked-meals everyday for less than that.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, simply taking a bit more initiative to manage those things yourself could easily save you 75% of what they are paying...

As someone who has done some travel while working, I'd say it sounds very cool in theory but the price you're paying to have them manage your accommodation and office space is _way_ too high.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I heard through the grapevine that it was total amateur-hour, drunk American bro nonsense.

This article doesn't really dispel that.</comment>


Xerox Alto File System Archive - <AUTHOR> http://xeroxalto.computerhistory.org/xerox_alto_file_system_archive.html

<comment><USER2> I still have a three-vertical-button Alto mouse that somehow ended up in a box of my stuff when I left PARC. I had assumed it had yellowed with age but it's the same color as the one in that picture. Perhaps that picture is recent and the same yellowing happened. There were also some with the three buttons arranged top-bottom but I think everyone figured out quickly that they were hard to use.

I never used that chord keyboard (note that it _hasn 't_ yellowed).

I still have some old custom D machine microcode lying around although I suspect the media are now unreadable. Sigh.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> So, time machine question... I think visiting each milestone in computing history and mastering the tech of the time would be how I used a time machine :-)

</comment><comment><USER3> Reading this made me remember how much I loved TENEX and TOPS-20. Many thanks for the post!</comment>


Managing DbContext the right way with Entity Framework 6: an in-depth guide - <AUTHOR> http://mehdi.me/ambient-dbcontext-in-ef6/

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a really great guide to db context pitfalls. Entity Framework has a lot of really awesome features. It's object tracking is akin to React's virtual DOM(in a way) and the way unit of work is rolled for you is super handy. Unfortunately it's also quite massive and you might end up all over the internet searching for how to do something the best way. Idiomatic EF is hard to locate, if it even exists. One of those difficulties is when to use proxy objects and when/where to create your db context. If you don't utilize the same context within your "unit of work" you'll end up with errors about the connection being closed(for lazing loading) or that your object can't be tracked in multiple trackers.

I'm hoping to try out the project linked to from this guide to help with better utilizing the context in a clean fashion.

Now if I can just find a better way to handle createdAt/updatedAt time stamps, validation, and other things usually handled in life cycle hooks I'll be a happy camper:)</comment>


Etherbots: Strategic Battling and Reward-Based Economies in Multiplayer Games [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.docdroid.net/5sazIH2/etherbots.pdf <comment><USER2> Game economies have fascinated me since I sold a party hat on Runescape for the real-world equivalent of several hundred dollars. Scarcity is the main driving force of value everywhere, and the guaranteed transparency of smart contracts should have unique This is a really interesting read; I'm impressed a crypto game has put this much effort into their system.</comment>


Do You Know What Your Users are Doing?  A Guide to Understanding Search Behavior - <AUTHOR> http://blog.constructor.io/2015/10/09/understanding-user-search-behavior/ <comment><USER2> Do you think qualitative or quantitative research is more important?

<comment><USER3> I think using them together is crucial. Qualitative research gives you insight into what you should look for through quantitative research. It's important to start with some basic qualitative research (talking to a few customers) and then scale it through quantitative methods (analyzing logs).

<comment><AUTHOR> i liked poking about think-aloud protocols ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_aloud_protocol](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_aloud_protocol)) - jeff shrager always said to wait until they're swearing while they're doing whatever it is you're having them do and then you know you've started doing a think-aloud protocol properly.

<comment><USER3> Cool beans! I like that.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ex-Enron CEO Skilling launching new digital marketplace for oil investors - <AUTHOR> https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-enron-skilling-new-venture-exclusive/exclusive-ex-enron-ceo-skilling-launching-new-digital-marketplace-for-oil-investors-sources-idUKKBN23A32L <comment><USER2> If you don't know much about Enron's history and ultimate demise I recommend giving "A conspiracy of fools"[0] a read. It's a long one but there's also an excellent audiobook available. It's very detailed, based on countless interviews and very well fact checked. If it wasn't a true story, it'd be pretty unbelievable fiction, the things management got away with.

Also a cautionary tale of tying your financial stability to your employer more than strictly necessary (your salary). Most employees kept all their retirement savings as Enron stock and got burned badly.

If memory doesn't fail me, the book also mentions Skilling starting to come up with plans for his follow-up venture whenever he got out of prison, shortly after being arrested - which I guess has now been published.

[0] [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29519.Conspiracy_of_Fool...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29519.Conspiracy_of_Fools)

<comment><USER3> I'd also recommend The Smartest Guys in the Room (and the documentary based on the book)

[0]: [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/113576.The_Smartest_Guys...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/113576.The_Smartest_Guys_in_the_Room)

<comment><USER4> seconded. this doc was amazing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > However, at least one investor who listened to his presentation was > reluctant to invest in the venture because of his Enron past, that person > said.

Only one!??!

Throw away the moral discussion of what he did. You can completely ignore it and you still must conclude that his track record is of one of destruction of investor value.

<comment><USER6> It says at least one, not only one.

<comment><USER5> Only one confirmed is still low.

<comment><USER7> This reminds me of the critic's reply to Gertrude Stein

[http://www.openculture.com/2013/06/gertrude_stein_a_snarky_r...](http://www.openculture.com/2013/06/gertrude_stein_a_snarky_rejection_letter_from_publisher_1912.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> From his Wikipedia page:

" guilty on one count of conspiracy, guilty on one count of insider trading, guilty on five counts of making false statements to auditors, guilty on twelve counts of securities fraud "

If you invest money with the guy, I think you should go for the package deal and also buy that one bridge they are selling in Brooklyn.

<comment><USER9> When does one decide to give people second-chances?

<comment><USER10> Giving him a second chance means letting him out of jail, not trusting him immediately with large sums of money when he gets out.

<comment><USER11> Nobody is forced to invest with him though. It's not like the government is forcing money onto him, people can choose to invest or not.

If you think the legal punishment for securities fraud should include being barred from running investment funds ever again, that is a fair position but it's not part of the law right now and it was not part of his sentence. Petition your local politician and/or run for office yourself if you feel strongly about it and want to change it. He served his sentence and when he got out he went to get a job in the field he's most experienced in. Can't really blame him for that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> As someone who ran a hedge fund, I would be a little surprised if it turned out that people simply gave this a chance like any other investment.

When you do due diligence, especially when investing other people's money, you need to be able to justify your choices. If the investment sours you don't want to be the guy who decided to invest with a convicted criminal. You also want to be doing business with "fit and proper" people, this might even be a term that shows up in various documents as a necessity (eg Premier League has such a test for potential owners). Needless to say a guy with his history isn't fit and proper. In some countries you might even be barred from serving on a board if you got convicted of this sort of thing.

</comment><comment><USER13> If I were an energy investor, I would be _extremely_ wary of anything Enron's former CEO touches. I'm honestly surprised he's trying to stay in that part of the market or even in finance at all.

</comment><comment><USER14> This idea has been tried a few times. There's a fairly liquid market for the resale of oil and gas wells already. There is also advanced software packages for analyzing the data. If the angle is exposing retail investors to these assets, it'll go as well as $USO.

</comment><comment><USER15> Well... The guy knows all about securitizing and trading energy.

That said, do you really want to be buying assets from a guy who's claim to fame is how well he is able to hide the risk in esoteric or complex structured products?

<comment><USER16> Andy Fastow (Enron CFO) is really the one who executed all of the structured finance shenanigans. Skilling's sin was lying about it to investors.

<comment><USER17> Lying to investors is the _worst_ sin you can commit in the eyes of the SEC.

<comment><USER11> That's why he went to jail. Hopefully he learned his lesson and won't do it again. TBF, anyone investing with him and not double checking every single word he writes deserves what is coming to them. Even then, I bet the SEC will keep a close eye on him.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Anyone who invests in his business, as a VC or as a customer, deserves whatever calamity befalls them. I'm actually sort-of shocked there wasn't some provision in his terms of release barring him from starting a similar type of business.

He should hire Elizabeth Holmes (whose father was a low-level Enron employee himself — by all accounts he was wholly unrelated to the whole fraud thing, but it's still funny) just to bring the 21st century con artists full-circle.

<comment><USER18> Yeah it's crazy that he's allowed to do this after only being free for a year. People get their balls busted by probation for years after doing much, much less significant crimes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> How on earth was he not barred from the investment industry?

</comment><comment><USER19> What can one person say? It is strange for this market to be similar with Enron. Keeping people in poor conditions without work is not good for so many people leaving jail. But he really hurt many.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This article states:

"The venture, called Veld LLC, plans to profit by charging a fee for marketing stakes in operating oil and gas wells, one of the people said, and will offer analytical data to investors interested in the well stakes.

Investors can acquire holdings in between one and 10 wells, which the presentation described as "pods," and will be sold to the investors as high- yield investments, the people familiar with the business pitch said on the condition of anonymity."

What's the competitive advantage with this venture?

<comment><USER5> > What's the competitive advantage with this venture?

I fear that it will be retail investors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> my wife loves Tom Skilling (meteorologist for WGN 9/Chicago)

Jeffrey Skilling is his younger brother:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Skilling#Personal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Skilling#Personal)

</comment><comment><USER21> A lot of the comments here are about investors. Think about it this way as well: if you were an engineer, would you work for Skilling? Hell, if you were anyone that did anything, would you work for him?

<comment><USER22> A lot of people would if he can satisfactorily answer the question "How much are you paying?"

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> "Are you smoking crack?" enron

\--google it before downvoting, all these ignorant people making my Karma go negative

</comment><comment><USER24> "In addition to Skilling, Veld consists of a Stanford mathematician with a doctoral degree helping start the venture." Does Stanford teach cooking the books in the math department? I remember almost investing in Enron except I couldn't understand how they really made money.

Now that I live in CA I feel this is like announcing Jeffrey Dahmer is opening a BBQ joint.

</comment><comment><USER25> What could possibly go wrong?!

</comment><comment><USER26> #nottheonion</comment>


Fire TV, and Amazon's Commitment to Consumption - <AUTHOR> http://newyorker.com/online/blogs/currency/2014/04/fire-tv-and-amazon-commitment-to-consumption.html

<comment><USER2> Fire is the name of flagship product from Amazon for example Kindle Fire. Now Fire TV it's all about making best use of supply chain and Amazon store present worldwide.</comment>


Show HN: Atri: an experiment in web economics - <AUTHOR> https://www.atri.me/ <comment><USER2> You're pitching it to potential customers entirely the wrong way.

Most consumers of web content (>99%) don't care about this in any way. I mean, to be perfectly honest, I'm only mildly interested in exploring alternatives to the ad-supported web. I almost never see ads anyway.

You should be selling this as something that will give access to paywall content. That's it. Because that's the only possible thing that there is even a sliver of a market for. Recruit content providers (the bigger, the better), figure out how much they are currently making off paywall revenue, possibly sell at a loss to build a user base (and demonstrate traction to more content providers and possible investors).

Once you have a user base and demonstrated traction, allow future content providers (of any size and viewership) to join your "platform" and earn payouts based on viewership. Obviously, still target large, valuable content providers directly.

As the number of content providers grows, your value proposition grows.

As it is, you're charging $10/month for a service that offers less value than what most people get for free through AdBlock.

The real economics experiment is if people will pay more money for less value. The utility of "fixing the web" doesn't even come close to spanning the value deficit.

</comment><comment><USER3> The problem here (as I see it), is consumers don't care about this problem - and thats who you need to buy in. If ad-block already works for them, why download + pay for something else (that doesn't block ads anyway)?

<comment><USER4> You're absolutely right that consumers as a whole don't care about this problem. The Atri experiment isn't intended for all consumers - we're looking for people who really care about the problem.

It won't be long before there's a paywall and subscription for every site you want to read, because publishers on the whole aren't trying to innovate, they're just holding on to what they know.

Consumers aren't paying attention (as they shouldn't - this is insider baseball), but some of us don't like what we see happening, and those are the kind of people we're looking for with Atri

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> To me this seems like it would suffer from a chicken and egg sort of issue. To expand, this is useful to me as a consumer if I could install it and browse the web ad and guilt free, as well as having access to pay-walled content with my Atri subscription essentially paying for it. As a content provider, I'm only going to want to provide this avenue of "subscription" if it nets more money than my current method of monetization of my content. By the looks of it, this is trying to recruit users first, but what value is a user being provided for the $30 over 3 months other than being included in an artificially limited experiment?

edit: To be clear, I like the idea, and I think something needs to be tried in order for something to work. These are just my initial skeptical criticisms.

<comment><USER4> You're absolutely right that there is a chicken and egg problem. As it stands right now, publishers are desperately holding on to every last advertising and subscription dollar they can find, and aren't looking for new things. We've realized the only way to show publisher new revenue sources are possible (and we've spoken with almost all of them) is to actually give them a check. To start, the value to Atri users is limited - but we think there are enough people out there willing to give this a shot that we can get the ball rolling.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, that was pretty much what I gathered. Out of curiosity have you tried working with content producers to form some limited partnerships that you might be able to offer users? I was thinking something along the lines of a limited (to prevent abuse) subscription to a variety of news sites that are normally pay-walled. In addition, you might be able to bundle the extension with a partnered ad-blocker that could estimate revenue lost (on average) by the loss of impressions that could be used to compare to the amount of revenue that the site could stand to gain from the portion of the subscription fee. Some hard data could go a long way towards convincing content producers of the value of supporting a service like this.

<comment><USER4> We've starting talking to content producers, and its an avenue we want to pursue further, but as you pointed out the hard data we're gathering here is going to be key to our negotiations.

As to your idea of bundling an Ad Blocker, while we support ad block as a product, we don't want to be building two products, and there are plenty of great ad blockers out there already. We also think that there might be some people who, for whatever reason, don't want an ad blocker but do want to support creators, and we didn't want to limit Atri to only adblock users.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Paymail.net is a competitor in this space. Our app doesn't need a chrome extension. We're all for shaking up the economics of the web. You can see a demo of the app here: signal.city/sigcity.mp4

One of the things I think publishers probably want with stuff like this is an open standard for letting people hop over paywalls.

We'd be happy to cooperate with Atri or Blendle or anyone else on this. I think if companies give up on the fantasy of owning the entire distribution channel there is still a ton of other ways to build products that add massive value in this market.

</comment><comment><USER7> There's a lot more info on this page for some reason: [http://www.fairtread.com/company/about/faq](http://www.fairtread.com/company/about/faq)

</comment><comment><USER8> I'd put "HOW DOES THE "EXPERIMENT" WORK?" higher up. I shouldn't have to scroll down to find out what atri is. I think an evocative explanatory one- liner should be above the fold.

</comment><comment><USER9> Flattr has been trying this since 2010. It got a lot of attention back then and is still used today.

[https://flattr.com/](https://flattr.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Also we've been working (stopping and starting) on this problem since 2009. Here's the Hacker News post for the original implementation, In-a-Moon: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=586798](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=586798)

There was a lot of learning that went on during that time. The biggest difference in implementation though was that In-a-Moon required sites to install JavaScript snippets, and we tracked at the site level. For Atri, we're bypassing sites and going straight to individuals by looking for Twitter handles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Very close to flattr, which unfortunately never really took off.

<comment><USER4> In a way, yes. But what we found when building adieu.io was that people who were willing to support content creators want to have it done automatically, and Flattr required a considerable amount of work on the part of the donor. Atri does all the work for you, figuring out what content earned your attention, and then assigning funds appropriately.

<comment><USER8> I wonder how BitWall and ChangeTip are doing?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> You should partner/merge with pocket: [https://getpocket.com](https://getpocket.com)

</comment><comment><USER11> Sometimes I visit a website I don't want to give money to. I think it is doing a disservice to the world.

<comment><AUTHOR> Atri allows you to "block" by domain name or @screen ... ultimately you're in control.

That said, we think it usually works itself out automatically, based on attention.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> You should accept bitcoin, that would at least get you a lot of attention and play in a niche community.

<comment><AUTHOR> We take bitcoin for payout.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> As site owner, how do you plan to contact me and alocate to me some funds?

<comment><USER4> Atri contacts you the same way it identifies you - via twitter. When possible, we'll email or reach out directly, but we use twitter to verify identities and know who to send the money to, so we use it to communicate as well. Once we get in contact, we can send money via ACH, paypal, bitcoin, etc

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Let the paywalls come!

</comment><comment> santiago-north Cool Idea.</comment>


Don't Bet on Direct-To-Consumer Automotive Retail Yet - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@RudiThun/don-t-bet-on-direct-to-consumer-automotive-retail-just-yet-c6d9fe0c5d08 <comment><USER2> I think the arguments are pretty weak here and it comes off as a little "dealership-apologist". All of the cons of direct-to-consumer can just as easily apply to the dealership model. Yet none of the cons of the dealership model apply to direct-to-consumer.

It's also a bit of a mistake to assume that the way Tesla does things is the way the rest of the automotive industry would do things. Tesla has inventory problems because they're new and can't keep up with the demand. As if Honda is going to have problems keeping Civics in stock.

<comment><USER3> It also doesn't do a good job of explaining that the advantages of the dealership model in the early days have been greatly eroded by just in time supply chain techniques and other improvements in manufacturing efficiency.

That and most of the actual argument boils down to "it's too hard to do both". Which I think is a poor argument at the best of times when the 2 goals are orthogonal and not at all at odds with each other.

Almost every industry is going back to direct sales. Even Microsoft a behemoth of the channel style of distribution and sales has started making direct sales one of it's higher priorities.

<comment><USER2> Yep, McDonald's has begun purchasing franchises back as well. I think you're right, that this distributed ownership model is an artifact of an earlier time. I might attribute this to better communication abilities. It made sense to have autonomous dealers; it was hard for everyone to communicate with each other using telephones and snail mail. With the internet, companies can run advanced inventory databases, run prediction algorithms to shift inventory to areas with expected demand, have regional managers focus on local communities, instantly update pricing across the country etc. etc.</comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft has EARNED my distrust - <AUTHOR> http://locker73.com/2012/05/09/ie-pay-your-dues/

<comment><USER2> Alright, enough is enough.

I've had my own blood, sweat and tears thrown in to making things work for IE throughout the years. Developers need to grow a pair and understand that the only people who really give a rat's behind about whether you support IE are the folks who use IE. Your "stance" doesn't affect Chrome, Firefox or Safari users in any way. You're not cool for acquiescing to mediocrity, you're mediocre.

If you cannot, as a developer, figure out an intelligent way to let your users know of missing features, or figure out a good way to ensure your site works from browser to browser, that's your problem. It's not IE's problem. Quote all you want about how much it "costs" to test for a browser. Frankly, I think it's like anything else that requires practice and knowledge in the programming field. That is to say: the more you work with IE and the various eccentricities that come along with it, the better you get at identifying and skipping over them entirely.

Yes, Internet Explorer can be difficult. Yes, Internet Explorer is getting much better than it was. Whining about it hasn't worked the past five years and nothing magical is going to make Microsoft suddenly have an "aha!" moment that will make things better. If you are unable to recognize the improvements that are being made then you haven't been in the game long enough or you're just too cool for school to acknowledge them.

This whole high and mighty "if it doesn't work for me it's not good enough" thing is such a sign of the superiority complex some developers have for their product and themselves; it's sickening. No two browsers have ever been 100% equal to each other and I don't think that will happen any time soon.

Developing and programming things to work across different platforms has always and will always be a challenge. This is not unique to programming. Manufacturing, medicine and many other fields absolutely require ensuring their products work across a variety of platforms (or humans, or animals, and so on).

Please don't mistake me for thinking IE cannot be a pain in the butt to develop for. I know full well it can be a harrowing and heartbreaking process sometimes. Developing isn't easy. That's why we are who we are and why we do what we do; it's a challenge that we take head on because we're good enough to reach the summit. There's nothing awesome or cool about not being talented enough or not having the resources (which I find entirely arguable) to develop for a platform so much of the market uses.

</rant>

</comment><comment><USER3> oh please, "the distrust of the entire development community"

You don't speak on our behalf, and you are sending a "message" to Microsoft about 5 years too late.

If you have a real argument then put it together and communicate it properly, otherwise this is just a continuation of shallow tribalism that really shouldn't have a place here.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm getting rather fed up with this witch-hunt so I'm going to defend the witches...

Yes IE6, 7 and 8 were absolute bastards, but they've done good with IE9 and IE10 is looking even better.

They know what they've done wrong and are making amends.

5 years ago was the time for the witch hunt, not now.

<comment><USER5> The article acknowledges IE9 is fine, but questions whether it is too little too late.

<comment><USER6> It doesn't really. It's far closer to saying IE9 may be fine but they need to pay penance for past crimes.

Surely the approach is do bad things, we punish you, do good things, we reward you? IE9 and IE10 are, broadly speaking, good things. To continue to punish MS for them looks a little emotional at best, petulant at worst.

But surely the real decision should be what is right for the individual business? Different companies have different user profiles using different browsers.

This whole decision should be an unemotional one based on resources, customers, revenue and profit.

<comment><USER7> Sure. And in a repeated game theory environment, tit-for-tat, that is punishment for a default, is successful general strategy. No emotion required.

<comment><USER6> And a more successful strategy is tough but fair where when the other party resumes good behaviour (which MS have) you resume good behaviour.

<comment><USER7> Well, there's a queue of tats to work through first.

<comment><USER6> That's not how game theory works.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The market environment is characterized by myriad unnecessary and often equivalent products, all trying to struggle their way to success by way of generating popularity through people telling their friends about positive user experiences.

In an environment like that, wantonly deciding to rudely alienate 20% of your potential customer base simply because you've got a chip on your shoulder about the company that makes their web browser is a recipe for failure.

</comment><comment><USER9> So business decisions based on grudges is good now?

</comment><comment><USER10> Oh... your distrust uh? Do you seriously hold grudges against companies when they release a good product after some bad releases? And it's not like you need to do anything if IE 9 is not good enough, just don't be an ass and block them.

I know some think it looks "cool" to appear tough and act like an internet super hero, but really it's counterproductive and this witch hunt is getting ridiculous.

Gosh, sometimes I wish the HN and tech crowd was a little more mature technology. Grow up a little bit and stop the knee jerk reactions to everything you see.

<comment><USER11> Trust isn't necessarily about grudges or emotions. Microsoft has had a long history of being very web-developer un-friendly; providing terrible tools for debugging, making it very difficult to test different browser versions, not implementing features that developers asked for because users (who wouldn't know about them) weren't asking for them, turning old browser versions into mandatorily legacy software (abandoned on old operating systems... like windows 2000, XP, etc.), not doing more to encourage people to upgrade, and just building a bad browser.

Mozilla, google, apple, and opera, have shown that it doesn't need to be this way. They have put in the effort to earn the trust of developers. Microsoft has not. Microsoft has shown a pattern of not listening to or caring about the web developer community. They seem to have not viewed their browser as a product in itself, but rather a tool to help sell their operating systems. All other concerns are secondary. That means web developers (or let's be honest, even users) have not been top of mind in the strategy that has traditionally been applied to Internet Explorer... corporate strategy has. That's fine, it's their prerogative to do so. They've had the market position to use IE as that kind of tool. Other companies playing the underdog have instead had to build their browsers and manage their strategy to provide the best possible product in order to win market share. I TRUST that they understand it is in their interest to do so.

Is Microsoft starting to play catch-up? Yes, and that's great... I hope they continue to do so. But they have not EARNED my trust that they have my interests as a web developer (or even a user) as their top priority. IE9 is a good effort, but it just hasn't been out for very long. I need to see a longer history of improvement and earnestly creating the best product and listening to developers. I believe their best interests are now served by building the best possible product... I just need to see more track record before I TRUST that they understand this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> IE9 and IE10 still have terrible things in them: try creating an audio tag with preload=none. They will happily display an _invisible_ audio player on the screen.

Every other browser understands this to mean, place a (visible!) audio widget on the screen, but don't preload anything.

</comment><comment><USER13> Article doesn't give one solid example.

</comment><comment><USER14> Isn't that what Rey was doing?</comment>


Online Intro to CS Programs: Why NYU isn't any better than community college - <AUTHOR> https://www.seanmcwillie.com/2019/04/introduction-to-computer-science-nyu-vs-local-community-college/ <comment><USER2> Intro students need mentorship, TAs, or tutors. They need feedback and guidance. This makes far more difference than any language, learning path, or interactive web portal.</comment>


Ask YC: Whatever happened to "The Future of News" RFS? - <AUTHOR>

Whatever happened to "The Future of News" RFS. http://ycombinator.com/rfs1.html
Did any startups do serious work on this?
These two articles today reminded me about it:
http://features.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2011/06/21/read-all-about-it-great-american-newspapers-headed-for-oblivion/?iid=A_F_News
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/06/21/news-aggregators-score-a-big-win/?iid=A_F_News <comment><USER2> NewsTilt (formerly NewsLabs) was shut down fairly quickly. Here's the deets: [http://blog.paulbiggar.com/archive/why-we-shut-newstilt- down...](http://blog.paulbiggar.com/archive/why-we-shut-newstilt-down/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I was working on an idea for this RFS myself. Basically it was an itunes model for news. Users could purchase a single news item (called a newslet) and by doing so you would get access to all published and unpublished information that are associated to that news topic.

Unfortunately, the only dev working on this with me left for greener pastures and so I'm left working on this alone. I am a web designer with limited coding skills, so I would not expect this project to launch anytime soon.

Here's a sneak peek at it though: <http://i.imgur.com/1Ltoz.png>

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool. What price points were you thinking would work?

<comment><USER3> $0.99 and $1.99 for most news topics and $4.99 for the headline/big news topics.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think the problem is that internet users have generally become accustomed to the idea that written content, especially news, on the internet should be free (supported by ad revenue). When ad revenue cannot support high quality writing, the quality of journalism generally goes down (compare the news you can read at AOL vs a print issue of The Economist).

The challenge is to create some value proposition that internet users will pay for news content - I will be very interested to see how magazine subscriptions perform on the iPad (and other tablet formats). Obviously magazine subscribers would be the best market to go after as they are the users who already are paying for written content.</comment>


ODROID-H2: A Brand New X86 Platform Device - <AUTHOR> https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-h2/ <comment><USER2> this is really cool, I need cheap x86s as my CI builders.</comment>


Kalman and Bayesian Filters in Python - <AUTHOR> http://nbviewer.ipython.org/github/rlabbe/Kalman-and-Bayesian-Filters-in-Python/blob/master/table_of_contents.ipynb <comment><USER2> Author here.

I struggle a lot with the choice of medium. In many senses Jupyter (IPython Notebook) is fanstastic in terms of workflow. With latex+external program+external data+external output it is hard to keep everything in sync. Here, it all happens in one place. And, of course, it should make it easier for the reader. "What happens if I change this constant?" (A normal question with scientific processing). Trivial to find out in the notebook; much more painful with a paper book.

OTOH, latex is mature technology, and I mean that in in the most positive way possible. I don't have to worry that version 1.7 is coming out tomorrow, and that \int will no longer display an integral sign. I would like to make the book much more interactive - go all 'Bret Victor' on it, but at what cost? I just tried to use Plotly, for example, but they don't support the current version of matplotlib; they are skipping a version for whatever reason. I can't expect readers to play the version war just to read a book. Even with core Python+scipy stack I have doomed myself to endless maintenance as new, breaking changes occur. That is not hypothetical; IPython changed the format of the notebooks, and there went a weekend of work. And, with all of that said, I think most are just reading the PDF version, or using the static nbviewer rendering, not running it locally on their machine. Heck, that is how I read the other IPython books - in nbviewer or PDF form. You know what you can do in PDF that you can't do in Jupyter? Search. I can ctrl+f in a PDF and search an entire book; in Jupyter, which has no concept of a 'book', I have to go from notebook to notebook.

Anyway, I welcome ideas on how to approach this. I come from a world of C++ where code I wrote in 1995 is still running today, and still compiles with the latest compilers. I'm sure I'm not approaching this problem optimally due to lack of experience in web based mediums. But I do fear, not unreasonably, that once I move on the book will become essentially inaccessible in just 10-20 years or so.

<comment><USER3> A brief introduction stating what Kalman/Bayesian filters are and what they can be used for in the real world would be good for the start of the book.

In your Preface/Motivation section, you currently mention Kalman filters (4 times in the 1st 4 sentences) without explaining what it is and that seems to be the only intro to the topic.

<comment><USER2> Good point, I will do that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have just started, and will likely take a couple of days to finish, but I already like what I've read so far.

I really appreciate this author (Roger Labbe, yes?) as well as all the other authors of these online interactive ebooks or whatever they're called ("interabooks"?) for taking the time to prepare such comprehensive and informative material, purely to help others. Surely, preparing something like this could not have been easy or quick. The other day there was a fantastic one on digital signal processing, and today this.

Really, a big thanks to all you e-authors out there!

<comment><USER5> If you're one of those authors I too would like to thank you. Also I like to toot my own horn and help you. With some help I built ipy_pep8[1]. It helps iPython Notebook authors to make their code pep8 valid. It has already been used to improve "Probabilistic Programming and Bayesian Methods for Hackers".

[1]: [https://github.com/bobjansen/ipy_pep8](https://github.com/bobjansen/ipy_pep8)

[2]: [http://nbviewer.ipython.org/github/CamDavidsonPilon/Probabil...](http://nbviewer.ipython.org/github/CamDavidsonPilon/Probabilistic- Programming-and-Bayesian-Methods-for- Hackers/blob/master/Prologue/Prologue.ipynb)

<comment><USER2> Sweet tool; I didn't know about it. I will be running it tonight against my source.

<comment><USER5> Cool! Please let me know what you think.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Just got started on this over the weekend and was really impressed with not only the content but the presentation as well. Really enjoy learning through iPython notebooks (now Jupyter) and can only imagine things getting better in the future.

<comment><USER7> My Machine Learning professor uses iPython notebooks to teach the content in a format much like this. I think its a fantastic way to present it. You have working code snippets right next to theoretical LaTeX formulas and all of the text and matplotlib graphs to explain it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I really like the subtle hat-tip to Star Wars with the use of TIE fighters in the graphs.

(see [http://nbviewer.ipython.org/github/rlabbe/Kalman-and- Bayesia...](http://nbviewer.ipython.org/github/rlabbe/Kalman-and-Bayesian- Filters-in-Python/blob/master/01_g-h_filter.ipynb))

<comment><USER9> I see error bars...I really don't think those were intended to be anything but error bars.

<comment><USER2> Total accident. Is it not clear to some that these are error bars?

<comment><USER9> Apparently there was some confusion, but from my perspective it was perfectly clear.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > I with IPython Notebook had spell check, but it doesn't seem to.

I got a chuckle out of this. :) PS, I love the presentation thus far.</comment>


Golden Code: Progress 4GL to Java converter - <AUTHOR> http://www.goldencode.com/services/prog4gl/p2j/end/overview.html

<comment><USER2> What a surprise, I've never expected to find Progress posts here!

Please leave a msg here, just to know each other

</comment><comment><USER3> Hi, I'm a Progress programmer as well.

Would rather be working in Haskell though....

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> There's nothing interesting about Progress except for ways to get rid of it.</comment>


US jury slaps $940M fine on TCS - <AUTHOR> http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/ites/us-jury-slaps-940-million-fine-on-tcs-tata-america-international-corp-in-trade-secret-case/articleshow/51853894.cms <comment><USER2> Apparently a TCS employee consulting at a US hospital running Epic's software employee created a false employee account and used it to access massive amounts of documentation cf. [http://blog.thomsonreuters.com/index.php/consultant-stole- tr...](http://blog.thomsonreuters.com/index.php/consultant-stole-trade- secrets-for-competing-software-suit-says/)</comment>


How to use MapTool to build an interactive dungeon RPG - <AUTHOR> https://opensource.com/article/19/6/how-use-maptools <comment><AUTHOR> its a git:

[https://github.com/RPTools/maptool](https://github.com/RPTools/maptool)

im messing around klugeing out a general plan for a FPRPG browser based game just for the shissenfrueden.

likely a HTML5 JS CSS hobby.</comment>


Good Ideas, Through the Looking Glass  (2005) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://people.inf.ethz.ch/wirth/Articles/GoodIdeas_origFig.pdf <comment><USER2> If curious see also:

2018 (a bit): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17331168](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17331168)</comment>


No Studying After 5pm: Using Parkinson's Law to Kick Procrastination's Ass - <AUTHOR> http://blog.seangransee.com/post/35254966580/no-studying-after-5pm-using-parkinsons-law-to-kick <comment><USER2> Clocks vs alarms is a new insight. During hour-scale procrastination, I do check the clock often. An alarm near the deadline, instead of clock-checking, could force me to start the task immediately because of uncertainty. I'll try it right now.

EDIT: I just tried it. Unable to check a clock, I felt a real urgency to get things done. Very interesting idea.

<comment><USER3> I've tested exactly this last week, for an entire week. Result: I procrastinated like hell. Both in my private life and at my job.

<comment><USER4> I'm halfway through the book "The power of habit" at the moment and here's two little titbits I've picked up so far:

1\. Habits have a trigger and a reward and you'll get nowhere unless you work within this fact.

Yesterday I had some success, I was trying to fix a dumb programming mistake and getting frustrated. Normally that would _trigger_ my usual behaviour of running off to /r/funny or HN to get my little _reward_ of amusement/knowledge. This time however I was mindful of the loop and said to myself that my reward would be the feeling of fixing it and having the tests pass. It worked. I got my head down, fixed the bug, and felt good about myself.

2\. People who successfully adhere to a habit change routine, visualize and practice how to deal with "inflection points" upfront. Inflection points here are those tough spots where you are more vulnerable to regressing to your previous behaviour.

I've been having a bit of trouble lately sticking to my habit of getting up at 5am to work on my own stuff (open source and writing a book). Last night I thought about my alarm going off, feeling the cold outside the duvet and having an overwhelming desire to roll over and go back to sleep and visualized myself just getting straight out of bed. Sure enough, this morning my alarm went off and I was out of bed before I was even fully awake.

I think it's going well, however here I am procrastinating by writing a big post on HN, so YMMV :-)

<comment><USER5> Visualization, if you have the underlying motivation, is how to get started. Then after 5 minutes of focus can be right into it..

At the moment I've gone through my morning websites, consumed everything I need to, replied to emails I need to, and now this is my second visit to HN ... so it times to make my work environment a clean slate, eliminate all distractions, and focus for a little while... perhaps I'm not awake enough for the focus required though either... |)

<comment><USER6> I think you'll enjoy this

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PppCBDHeytg>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> That must be nice if all you are doing is being a student. I on the other hand don't even get off work till 6. Home by 7, then dinner. If I'm lucky I sit down to study at 8. Lets face it, you really don't realize how good you have it as a student, but your advice isn't terribly useful to the rest of us now in the work force also trying to continue to learn/enhabce/keep up.

tldr: student life has a lot of freedom and perks over working a job, nanananana.

<comment><USER8> It's 11:14 pm my time, and I just got done with work. Legitimate, not- procrastinating, i-work-in-the-startup-salt-mines, since I began this morning...work.

I'm now faced with either getting a little more sleep, getting to read a book series I started recently, trying to get some of my russian studies done, or maybe actually learning something about programming today.

I think I developed more as a person when I was working a 9-5. I never even got to experience the freedom of academics, because I couldn't afford to go to college.

Fuck it, I'll read another article about monad transformers and then pass out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> One trick I've always tried to maintain is daily releases, namely that I'll always check in code at the end of the day so that it can run in the smoke tests overnight.

Running stats on our version control, I do about 4000 checkins a year, the next highest is 1000, and most team members average about 300.

That being said, my focus is horrible. Using the pomodoro technique has helped me in the past, there's something about not being allowed to multitask that means you can avoid context switching off of a difficult task to something easier (eg: the coding equivalent to cleaning off your desk).

My other problem is a willingness to work overtime. It's one thing to do it for deadlines, but because I internalize monthly deadlines I always have something that I think is so important that it Has To Be Done Now.

</comment><comment><USER10> "I've noticed a trend. The ones who are most successful seem to be the ones who value their physical and mental health."

This could be skewed. I'd imagine entrepreneurs who are already successful have the mental peace to order their life and make time for these things. Those without success will be overly concerned with making something work and figure they can deal with physical and mental health when they have achieved success. So the statistics or things you are reading may look like there is a causal relationship between exercise, sleep --> success, but it is really success --> exercise, sleep.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm sorry but I can't see how this is applicable for my situation. What kind of studies are you talking about? University (First degree)? Second degree ? High School? I've just started my first year of computer science and mathematics. I study all day long and still don't find time for anything else. Also, try adding a girlfriend or a spouse to the equation. With all the positive sides of it, it adds a lot of distractions during the day that you can't control.

<comment><USER12> I doubt you are being productive. You have to isolate yourself from distractions (on a college campus this is most likely people).

If you really are studying with perfect productivity, then you need to ask yourself if you are triaging your time properly. For instance, say you have three tests: one easy, one medium, and one hard. Do you study equal amounts for all of them? Probably not. If you have already spent seven hours studying for the hard test, how much will one more hour help you? Maybe an 85 to and 87? But then if you spent that hour on the medium subject maybe your grade would jump up from an 80 to a 90. Thus your time would better be allocated to the medium test.

There is an economic concept about this though I cannot remember its name. Marginal Returns and the Law of Diminishing Returns, I think.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> My problem with this is this: "I tell myself that everything has to be done by 5pm"

Thing is, i cant tell myself anything if its simply not true. I cant force myself to get everything done by 5pm because i simply dont have to, i can do it later and i know it even if that means stress and doing it in the last hours.

<comment><USER14> That is true, but if you need a way to rationalize it, it's a Schelling fence[1] you're using on yourself. It doesn't need to be false, you can agree to make it true by pragmatism.

[1] [http://lesswrong.com/lw/ase/schelling_fences_on_slippery_slo...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/ase/schelling_fences_on_slippery_slopes/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> For me, productivity changes on a day by day basis. There are days when I'm able to stay focused and work from 8am to midnight, taking a half-hour lunch break and a 5 minute break every 3 hours and I actually get _a lot_ done in that time. On other days I work for hours on end on the same thing and won't get it done because I keep procrastinating, checking HN, reddit, whatever.

I think it's a lot about being motivated and excited about what you do. If it feels really interesting, the work is basically doing itself. If I've got other things on my mind (which I have lately), everything feels like a chore. Still have to do it though. The same even applies to my personal projects to a lesser degree.

</comment><comment><USER16> This is great, and honestly I've found the same. I'm actually taking this term off from school to work on my business while remaining on campus. I also need to follow a pretty rigorous exercise schedule as I'm on the varsity track team.

I've found that achieving a consistent sleep and exercise schedule has been extremely difficult without any real commitments in the morning. I think one of the best things you can do to stick to a schedule is to commit yourself to something at 9am every morning.

That said -- the evenings are hard not to indulge. Weed and alcohol are pretty hard to resist... got any tips for that? :)

<comment><USER17> > Weed and alcohol are pretty hard to resist... got any tips for that?

Get some self control.

<comment><USER18> That's easier said than done. There needs to be a mechanism to reinforce said "self control". It's not good enough to just repeatedly tell yourself "I'm going to do better" (Although that is a good first step). I don't have any magic answers here, but willpower alone is not enough to change habits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> YMMV. I'm also working part-time along with full-time school, and my average school day doesn't end till around 3. This ends up with me not home till 8 usually. I would never be able to hold to any kind of schedule like this, since my days vary so wildly, both in amount of school work and work work.

Personally, what keeps me from procrastinating is that at this point of my school career the work I have to do at home is mostly project based, so I actually find most of it somewhat interesting, unlike the busy-work laden gen- ed courses I was in the first two years (when I did have a big problem with procrastination).

</comment><comment><USER20> I think it essentially is a question of personal character. I consider myself very lazy and procrastinate all the time, so it would not help to just cover the clocks for me to get things done. I would still procrastine, probably even more.

The change needs to happen on a completely different level to get out of the old routines of laziness and inability to focus. I'm talking about some kind of life-changing experience. For example, people being diagnosed with cancer often makes them appreciate life and spend their time more carefully -- or something else that has an impact on our core values and instincts.

<comment><USER21> From what I can tell from a broad study of self improvement, the idea of personal character reduces to an abstraction of the training and habits that actually define us.

You can think of it as the difference between "that square way over there is green" and "that square is covered in tiny blue and yellow dots, with some a few reds ones for good measure".

Our brain performs that compression of "myriad behaviors to broad categorization" automatically, by the way, so we have to drum that mental compression with conscious effort.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I essentially did this throughout my college career. I don't think it was 5pm, though, more often 7pm. What set me off was getting so frustrated one night doing Calculus at 10pm. I tend to need 8+ hours of sleep per night, so by 10 I wasn't in the best mood for studying.

It got easier once I moved out of the dorms. I'd have most (if not all) of my work done by supper and finish up a little bit after. I studied Saturdays but not Sundays. That left my nights open for things like irc or setting Red Hat up on my machine.

I found I was a lot less stressed than my friends that played N64 all day and STARTED studying at 8pm.

</comment><comment><USER23> Are you actually able to get all of your work done by 5pm on a consistent basis? I really like the idea you're promoting (and I may well try it myself), but that seems like a stretch for me. Between 2.5-3.5 hours of class a day, lunch, and the time it takes to go from class to another etc, that would really only leave me 2-3 hours for work every day...I honestly don't think that would be enough even if I could focus 100% for the whole time. Is your experience different?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I actually have been. It seems like a stretch, but being really disciplined has made it possible. Sometimes if I start zoning out in class, I'll start doing some homework instead. Usually that leaves me with around 3-4 hours a day to get stuff done. Then there's the Sunday catch-up day. If I'm really behind on stuff, I'll take most of my Sunday to catch up before the week starts.

(Mostly) following this schedule has made me get everything done at least twice as fast, and given me more time to work on jobs and side-projects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Racing to get everything done by 5 pm, telling yourself that you can't work on weekends... hmm, sounds almost exactly like being a parent!

</comment><comment><USER25> It's the same story every time someone posts one of these. 1\. Be Motivated 2\. (optional) Use (1.) to be healthy, and therefore increase your ability to be (1.).

Yep, that's been the story for as long as people have been thinking about success and communicating to others on how success works.

</comment><comment><USER26> This is cool and all but a lot easier said than done. The author is in college where free time is in abundance. I'm not disparaging the principles but working a full time job, getting 8 hours of sleep, and exercising an hour every day isn't always possible...

<comment><USER17> Why not?

If you work 9 hours a day, exercise for an hour, commute for an hour, and sleep 8 hours, you're left with 5 hours every day.

Real-world tasks that fill those remaining 5 hours \- Showering and getting dressed \- Working overtime \- Eating meals \- Random errands and appointments \- Shopping for food and preparing meals (could be off-loaded to the weekend)

It seems like you should be able to cram that stuff into 5 hours a day.

I think another factor the OP doesn't factor is time spent with a significant other. This varies from relationship to relationship, or family to family, but the expectations to spend time together can be quite high, and that can cut into personal productivity.

<comment><USER27> So, no parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, cousins, friends and others that may regularly need your help or just your company?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> You have some great student life there. I'm 2nd year, full time CS student + working part time(30h/week) as a developer. My day starts at 6.30am and usualy ends at about 1am working/studying all day.

I could only dream about your schedule.

<comment><USER29> quite

I was thinking, wow, at university I had classes from 8am to about 4pm 4 days a week (Wednesday afternoons were "free")

Evenings were spent cracking the books and in the computer lab when I needed access to resources I couldn't get over the network.

Still managed to work part time.

Tasks can expand to fill the allotted time, that's true. But, conversely, if you don't have enough time to contemplate and to fail, you often don't chose the best route. You do what's familiar rather than what's correct.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> What classes are you in? The labs for my OS class seem to usually take on the order of 20 solid hours per week and my school requires at least 5 classes per semester.

<comment><AUTHOR> Machine Learning and Databases (both graduate level courses), plus Physics (electrostatics and magnetism) and Differential Equations.

My school has three trimesters instead of two semesters, so we have 3 terms of 4 classes each.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> thanks for the insights. it's always amazing to see in what convulted ways our brains works. if we'd all be completely rational minds we wouldn't need to limit our daily work/study time. yet here you go - and now that the article mentioned it, I actually remember quite a few (academically successful) friends who limit their daily study time as well.

</comment><comment><USER32> What was your schedule like during hackNY?

<comment><AUTHOR> Go to work approximately 10-6 on weekdays. Some days I would stay a bit longer. I didn't really follow any sort of schedule when I wasn't at the office.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> To summarize:

Get adequate sleep and exercise Maximize flow time

<comment><USER30> This is a terrible summary. The post was about limiting the amount of time you allow yourself to work in order to maximize productivity during work time.</comment></comment>


Obama Supports DNA Sampling Upon Arrest - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/03/obama-supports-dna-sampling-upon-arrest/ <comment><USER2> I don't see what the big deal is. We already fingerprint people when they're arrested. This seems like the natural extension of that. Why should law enforcement not be allowed to keep up with advances in technology?

Looking at past histories of many crimes, both solved and unsolved, there are many cases where, had the technology been there and DNA been available, it would have greatly aided in both convicting and clearing individuals of the crimes they had been charged with.

Yes, you can get "more information" from DNA than you can a fingerprint. Big deal. 99% of the time it wouldn't matter, and for those rare instances where it would, we can create laws and regulations on how that information is used.

<comment><USER3> Once they have the information, any attempt to control it's use will fail. Remember the government is only allowed to use your SS# for things related to social security, and that isn't even close to how it works.

<comment><USER4> Excellent point.</comment></comment></comment>


My weekend project - Create a self-signed SSL certificate instantly and for free - <AUTHOR> http://www.cert-depot.com/

<comment><USER2> This is nice. I could see myself using it even though I normally do this on the command line, as this would be faster.

Comments:

* You're often too literal, especially given your audience is going to be largely people that find it too complex to do it manually themselves. People don't think of "common names", they think "url" or "hostname".

* Where's my back button?

* Again on the literal front, you've copied the OpenSSL descriptions of OU and stuff and expect the user to know what it is. Fill in sample data or placeholder so that it helps the user figure out what they want, should they want to customize it. Consider removing fields if no one cares.

* Do you even need the second screen? You could just put "domain name" and "secret key passphrase" on the front page and go straight to the download after that

* If you want to make it more helpful, on the download page have something like "What next?" and have some pointers to installation/configuration instructions.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the constructive feedback! Will add to my todos.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Pretty cool, but there are a couple injection vulnerabilities when you make the cert.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I haven't enforced proper security yet. Proper throttling handling should be added too. Will add. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice work. This is easier to share with someone than pointing them to openssl. Also, misspelled oxygen in "feedback is my oxigen".

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed, thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> as I stated the last time a site like this appeared on the front page: the third party running the site has your private key, so they can decrypt everything

are two openssl commands really that hard?

(yes it's a self signed cert, but it's still a bad idea)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> You comments / suggestions / bug reports are very welcome. Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER6> you could also integrate the paid verified ssl's into this. I remember generating it from godaddy was a pain.. by the way nice work.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I'll have to integrate with trusted CAs for this. Will check this out.

<comment><USER7> Wait... you're not using the browser's SSL engine, as far as I can tell? So you have copy of the secret key? Please, _do not_ integrate directly, the way your server is set up now.

That said, it's a nice GUI(WUI?) for generating the needed openssl.conf- parameters -- so I'm sure you could offer to download that or something, along with copy-paste tools for the need openssl-stuff (openssl -config genrsa... etc).

Also, while you need to do your own req, I find <http://CAcert.org> actually is great for my use of private/personal/etc certs.

I actually use a script along the lines of:

      #!/usr/bin/env bash
      # Helper script for generating ssl keys/reqs

      #Set the variables used for the script
      #Expands filenames and paths
      function expand_vars
      {
        stamp=$(date +%d%m%Y)

        prefix=.

        conf=$prefix/conf/$host.conf
        key=$prefix/private/$host-$stamp.key
        csr=$prefix/csr/$host-$stamp.csr
      }

      #Print usage help
      function usage
      {
      cat<<eof

      $0 <hostname>

        Generate new key and csr for <hostname>

        Files:
        $conf
        $key
        $csr
      eof
      }

      if [[ $# -ne 1 ]]
      then
        #Set host to a format that lends itself for the usage()-text
        host="<hostname>"
        expand_vars
        usage
        exit 1
      fi

      host="$1"
      expand_vars

      if [[ ! -r $conf ]]
      then
        echo "Cannot read config file $conf"
        echo "Please make a symlink in ./conf to $conf"
        exit 1
      fi

      for f in $key $csr
      do
        if [[ -a $f ]]
        then
          echo "$f exist! Please move/delete before attempting to generate new cert"
          exit 1
        fi
      done

      echo "Warning: Generating *new* key -- manually create cert if this is not what you want!"

      openssl req -config $conf -keyout $key -new -out $csr

chmod 0640 $key

Along with a config file of the form:

      #This is in conf/example.com.conf
      [ req ]
      default_bits = 4096
      prompt = no
      encrypt_key = yes
      default_md = sha1
      distinguished_name = dn
      utf-8 = yes

      [ dn ]
      C = EX #Company code
      O = Organization Name
      CN = example.com
      ST = State
      L = City
      firstname.lastname@example.com

More advanced scripting is possible -- but now I just copy the config-file and edit the CN -- and run the script and end up with a separate key-file and csr. Upload the csr to cacert.org, get back a cert that I save alongside the key and the csr -- all named with timestamps of generation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I just sent an security issue (via github).

<comment><AUTHOR> Got it, thank a lot.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: General Consensus on Buying Content - <AUTHOR>

Hello, I'm in the process of creating a heavily user content based web application. But the thing is that for the app to work as specified user content must be present.
I'm thinking of buying initial user content the first week of release, in order to fill the void of a content-less site upon completion.
What is the general consensus when it comes to buying content?
Can it actually hurt my product? <comment><USER2> As long as it's original content, I don't see a reason why it would hurt your product.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, that's what I was thinking.</comment></comment>


Amazon Is Capturing Bigger Slice of U.S. Online Holiday Spending - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-12-16/amazon-is-capturing-bigger-slice-of-u-s-online-holiday-spending <comment><USER2> Their return policy is really great during the holidays, which might contribute to it.

As a (late) holiday shopper and Prime member, their shipping guarantees are top notch though. No praying that it arrives in time.

(Whereas Amazon says, order within x hours for delivery tomorrow, a lot of other shops here just feel like "Usually shipped within 1-2 days, if your hair is green, Tom is working in the office and your order number ends with 4")

<comment><USER3> Unfortunately I had several things in my Amazon cart which said "order within 8 hours and it arrives December 24" (or whatever), that when I looked back at 3 hours later had lost the guarantee, and now could only promise to arrive by the 26th/27th.

Didn't turn out to be a big deal, but folks shouldn't take those guarantees for granted.

<comment><USER4> I have seen that as well, and believe it to be genuine/OK. I take it to mean that the warehouse nearest you has it in stock and if you add to your cart and order it, you'll get it by that promised deadline.

If a few hours pass and in the meantime that warehouse sells out, you might be past the cutoff for the next warehouse that has it in stock.

(Not an Amazon employee, just an extremely frequent customer...)

Except for the USPS last-mile shipments, I've rarely (< 5%) had Amazon miss a guaranteed delivery date. On USPS last-mile shipments, they only seem to make about 2 in 3 on-time, which means I get a free month of Prime everytime they miss. I'm almost to the point of trying to figure out the pattern that gets last mile USPS to pickup free months instead of doing the "no rush" which only nets me $1 or $2 towards e-books and video rentals.

<comment><USER5> They should still add "(while supplies last)" as a clue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> No surprise there. This year I did almost all of my shopping on Amazon and it worked out excellently, especially considering that I was having Christmas in another location and just got everything delivered straight there.

Our family also discovered something great this year: Wishlists. By creating and sharing Wishlists we were all able to get a much better picture of the specific items and areas of gifts that each family member was interested in. It results in much more lucid shopping than blind guesses and/or plain text communication.

<comment><USER7> Likewise - I wanted to get my mother a new computer - (a NUC PC, SSD, Memory, HD, Anti-Static Strap, CD Drive, USB Keyboard).

I was able to get everything I wanted shipped in 4 days to 100 Mile House British Columbia, including Clearing Customs, from amazon.com, not even amazon.ca. No worries about carrying packages while traveling, was able to specify everything exactly as I wanted.

There is zero chance I would have been able to do something exactly like that in the local computer shop (The Source), and probably wouldn't have been able to do it in Vancouver at the large computer retailers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Amazon's product search is amazingly bad and the user reviews are getting faker over time. To me it's amazingly hard to shop on there. Feels like the engineering team is focused on their many other businesses and ignoring their retail stores.

<comment><USER9> The fake reviews are really frustrating. I try to work around it by focusing on longer reviews that discuss both pros and cons, but fake review writers are probably getting more sophisticated too. It'd be nice to have separate averages for verified purchasers and real name reviews, since those would at least cost more to rig. One could write a script for that, so long as Amazon doesn't throttle/block you. Sounds like a fun and useful small project.

<comment><USER10> Right now the practice is for the manufacturer to give people a refund on the product in exchange for their 5 star review. It is infuriating. Amazon should ban these companies from the store or they may lose me as a customer (and I buy nearly everything there.)

<comment><USER11> It's not so much manufacturers as the sellers of the merchandise. I've had multiple sellers offer full refunds in exchange for better reviews after I left 1,2 or 3 star reviews of some pretty shitty products.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Amazon feels like more of a crapshoot all the time. Just bought a pricey Thunderbolt dock. Didn't see anything I plugged into it, despite being new. Went to MicroCenter, paid $50 more for same one, worked great. (even tried new cable on Amazon unit, just in case that was the problem)

My point isn't a story about a particular product, but to say that I'm not as surprised as I once was. During the holidays I had two boxes of food etc delivered (one Prime Pantry, one regular purchase) that were busted open or otherwise required my cleanup.

Amazon is truly becoming the online Walmart: cheap, compelling, but you expect the worst.

</comment><comment><USER13> Amazon provides an incredibly valuable _3 month_ return policy during the holidays (buy on Nov 1, return window ends on Jan 31). This is particularly useful when buying a bunch of computer parts that might exhibit failures after more than a month.

<comment><USER14> They have an incredible return policy period. I've had items that I bought, completely forgot about, contacted them a year later and they gave me a full refund, shipping and all. Granted, I do have over 200 orders from them in the past year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I shopped for Christmas on Amazon, it was kind of a pain. I had to ship it all to myself, wrap it, put on gift notes and then pack it all up and ship it all to my family across the country. I was going to do their individual gift wrapping but it was $6 PER ITEM. Considering I got about 15 items, that really adds up.

I think I'll still do some shopping on there next year, I just wish they had cheaper gift wrapping and card options.

<comment><USER16> The biggest savings of Christmas shopping on Amazon is _not_ having to go to a physical store to do the shopping. No driving around wasting hours in traffic, waiting in lines, and dealing with cranky people. The added benefit is that Amazon also usually has the thing you are looking for too. So if you add up all that time saved, time spent wrapping is really not that bad.

<comment><USER17> It's really the biggest saving of shopping online, period. I would pay a great deal more to not have to stand in a line and get stuck behind someone pulling out coupons and a checkbook and doing a price check at a checkout aisle in a store.

Physical stores can't even implement the obviously better solution of getting everyone in one queue, and then directing them to the next open register (except for TJ Maxx and Marshalls and a couple others)

<comment><USER18> Target was doing that during the liquidation sales in Canada (at least at the ones I was at). It's worth noting that I don't recall them doing that before they went belly-up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> For me, Amazon is the way to go. I live an hour from the nearest Walmart or department store. The FedEx and UPS delivery people know me really well.

<comment><USER20> Where do you live? I didn't realize places that remote still existed! (Only partially joking)

<comment><USER21> There are plenty of places like that. I go to school in upstate NY and while I live in a decent sized town, there are plenty of towns inbetween there and NYC that are pretty barebones.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Say goodbye to brick and mortar retail.

"There's always parking at Sears."[1] (Yes, Sears is that desperate.)

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLmu98-wkmk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLmu98-wkmk)

</comment><comment><USER23> This doesn't come as a surprise. Amazon has created fantastic consumer and merchant experiences and brought buyer friction down to almost nothing.

I'll be interested to see how they plan to tackle the in-store experience. There are obviously the perishable aspects of grocery store products which, with intense and continual establishment of their current strategies, will eventually present opportunity to become a viable part of the company. But on another end of things, shopping as a hobby is something to overcome. No amount of UX or UI (in current stages, at least) can compare to the coveted experience that shoppers seek when going to a mall. This is an area where Amazon might find value in AR. Ex. being able to try on an outfit without leaving your house.

An obvious method would be to open their own physical stores but that would probably just be a "tiller on the car" fix.

Whatever direction the company goes, I look forwards to seeing what Amazon has in store. (Seriously though, no pun intended.)

<comment><USER24> Am I the only one who thinks their site is bloated and slow? I mean, it _works_ but it's not that pleasant to use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I went with BestBuy this year, and was pleasantly surprised. I've noticed Amazon is slowly raising prices. I'm not knocking it; just like the competition.

Plus--I've always liked Bestbuy. I bought a iPad mini ($under 350.00) at 12:59 p.m. Pacific time, on the 23rd of December. For $12.00 it was delivered to my door at 11 a.m. the next day.

<comment><USER26> I've noticed the same thing. Walmart.com often has cheaper prices than Amazon.com for the same item. Walmart's selection is a little more narrow. But it definitely pays to comparison shop if you have a bit of time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> The article is comparing Amazon to, for example, Walmart online. Not Amazon to Walmart sales in general.</comment>


New Application Engagement Metrics from Facebook - <AUTHOR> http://www.insidefacebook.com/2007/08/29/new-metrics-focus-on-engagement/

<comment><USER2> I'm sick tired of these applications... I'm not logging in any more not to see notifications which of my friends installed what... Who cares?

</comment><comment><USER3> very interesting. this changes things significantly.</comment>