Facebook to Let Users Rank Credibility of News - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/19/technology/facebook-news-feed.html <comment><USER2> This is the opposite of what they should have done. Shows just how much of an echo-chamber Facebook has become. This is just adding another metric by which garbage can be made legitimate and vice versa.

Facebook would be a much better platform if they removed the like and comment count from every post. It's those numbers that lead people to believe that garbage is legitimate in the first place. By hiding these numbers it would force people to think for themselves.

Same thing with YouTube. Fake News becomes real news when it had enough views, likes, upvotes, comments, etc.. These counts don't really need to be shown to the end user.

<comment><USER3> If you really want to fight the root of the problem, it's not likes and comments, but education.

Should we censor social media, because people are too stupid to deal with it? I don't think so and if you do, you're playing in the hands of corporations who want a cheap work force.

Your "solution" isn't a solution, but a hot fix that will cause more damage in the future. It's exactly the shortsighted crap politics are trying to do right now to get immediate results.

<comment><USER4> > If you really want to fight the root of the problem, it's not likes and > comments, but education.

I agree, but it's impossible to educate everyone on any subject. I think in this case, people who are experts in the matter, should give a reputation rating on the article. That would be really great. For example, I am no expert in theoretical physics, but I may enjoy an article about it, but how do I know it's not a bunch of bullshit I am reading? If I see that Stephen Hawking gave it a 5 star reputable source rating, I "know" I can believe it.

<comment><USER5> > I agree, but it's impossible to educate everyone on any subject.

Critical thinking is universal though. It's not a necessity to have a solid judgment of a piece. "Critical abstention" is a possibility, and primarily formal analysis is another (eg. search for common communication red flags).

I don't think that the parent idea of removing likes and counts is realistic (in any imaginary scenario I can think of).

<comment><USER6> > Critical thinking is universal

I'm assuming you don't spend a lot of time on Facebook?

<comment><USER3> I'm assuming you do. Otherwise you would have understood the comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This seems very lazy on Facebook's part. Rather than employing people who will research and fact-check, they're punting the problem to the users. This whole situation arose _because_ users are very bad at determining which sources are credible. People will believe anything that confirms their biases, and disbelieve anything that doesn't.

<comment><USER8> I'm sure Facebook wouldn't care about a few million spent on a panel of the world's greatest connoisseurs of real news.

This feature is in fact guaranteed to cost far more than a few experts ever would.

But Facebook knows that any expert panel will without a sliver of doubt quickly converge to a ranking that has the Economist and the New York Times in top positions, and Breitbart somewhere behind a random word generator.

Any working statistical method will lead to the same result, obviously. But it gives Facebook the option to invoke HN's favourite argument: "it can't be political because it's the algorithm. See: here are numbers."[0].

[0]: Compare, for example, the libertarian love for bitcoin, and how it's free from the politics that undermine Central Banks,

<comment><USER9> Any working statistical method will lead to the same result? What do you mean by that?

I read articles in the New York Times, the Economist and also Breitbart (UK edition) fairly regularly. Whilst they cover very different stories as you'd expect given their political biases, I have not noticed any major difference in accuracy when dealing with objective facts. This is partly because "mainstream" media is quite unreliable, rather than any awesome quality of reliability inherent to Breitbart, but the idea that it's unreliable seems to be to be coming from people who simply dislike conservative worldviews ... and desperately want to stop people from reading them. Same reason they try and smear anyone who goes looking as nazis, bigots etc. They fear that if someone reads things from the "other side" they might find it's not so unreasonable after all ...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > "There's too much sensationalism, misinformation and polarization in the > world today," Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's chief executive, wrote in a post > on Friday. "We decided that having the community determine which sources are > broadly trusted would be most objective."

Is this truly ignorance or is it malice?

<comment><USER11> It's arrogance. Zuck wants to be in control of which sources are seen as trustworthy and which are not, but he doesn't want to actually be on the hook for making these decisions. So he implements a faux-democratic facade, and gets to make the actual calls behind the scenes by tweaking algorithms. He wants to have his cake and eat it too.

<comment><USER12> Let's be clear here. Facebook is a private website.

They legally, morally and ethically have the right to determine what content their users see. Especially given that we have demonstrated evidence of fake news being disseminated.

The idea that this was supposed to be a democratic process was never claimed nor should it have been expected.

<comment><USER13> They are, for now, as most monopoly industries were before their negative effects caught the attention of govts and they suddenly found themselves regulated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is a frankly awful idea. I do not want Facebook acting as some sort of arbiter of what information is truthful. The cure is worse than the disease.

<comment><USER15> This is worse than that. Imagine your Trump-supporting extended family voting down CNN news stories as "not credible."

Expect mass brigading by The_Donald.

<comment><USER16> You think CNN is 100% honest and credible? The same could be said of liberals or any arbitrary group of people.

<comment><USER17> I don't think that was the point.

The point is that even credible sources are going to be voted down as "idealogically biased" no matter how neutral the story is.

Headline says candidate Johnson lost by 15%? Better vote it down. After all, you hate candidate Johnson. Doesn't matter if he actually lost.

<comment><USER14> That's true but that seems like the easiest issue to deal with, considering how much information you have about user's political preferences if you're Facebook.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Holy hell, Facebook! For a cash-rich company employing some of the cleverest people on the planet, you're managing to be incredulously stupid here. People who aren't qualified to rate sources should not be asked their opinion. If you want peer review, do peer review... But ask-the-audience isn't that.

That all said, there is a redeeming possibility here. You could _also_ do an in-house monitored, _qualified_ peer review of select articles from popular sources and use those results to audit users. If somebody keeps hating on WaPo and pushing Fox you could make assumptions about the quality of their judgement.

<comment><USER19> What if Facebook is weighting the votes based on content consumption and interests of users? If that's the case, then it's possible to get some interesting results. We need to be doing experiments like this.

<comment><USER18> Just remember that divisive interests —where "fake news" lives— cut two ways. Inferring too much from consumption might confuse "can't stop watching this trash-fire of a government" and "MAGA". Or "aren't these right-wingers a bunch of nutbags" and "lock her up". There's significant overlap in consumption.

Worthy of experimentation, but not to decide what's shown on my wall.

You probably _can_ get there in the end, but it's probably easier to pay somebody to objectively rank to the political position, and journalistic integrity of major publications.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > "There's too much sensationalism, misinformation and polarization in the > world today [ed: because we rely on users to decide what can be trusted]," > Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's chief executive, wrote in a post on Friday. "We > decided that having the community determine which sources are broadly > trusted would be most objective."

Its a bit tone-deaf, Mark. Remember the "we had no effect on the election" line that everyone laughed at? This year its "user curation is the answer to fake news". Everyone is laughing at you again.

If you want to determine credibility, hire people to judge credibility. Hire a mix of viewpoints. Its not that hard, it just costs money, which you have more than enough of. Maybe give some of that money back to the users who turn over their online lives to you and actually improve their lives, instead of just monetizing them by feeding users garbage that gets them to click and consume while at the same time you go around complaining that users aren't discriminating enough with those clicks and consumption.

<comment><USER21> Zuckerberg said no such thing. He said _fake news articles_ on Facebook did not affect the election.

Also, that people were using some sleazy disinformation on Facebook as a convenient excuse.

> "I think there is a certain profound lack of empathy in asserting that the > only reason someone could have voted the way they did is because they saw > fake news," Zuckerberg said. "If you believe that, then I don't think you > internalized the message that Trump voters are trying to send in this > election."

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> > The same criticism has also engulfed other social media companies such as > Twitter, which on Friday said it was emailing notifications to 677,775 > people in the United States that they had interacted with Russian propaganda > accounts around the time of the 2016 election.

Wonder if they included the part where they (Twitter) went to RT, which is pretty much Moscow's propaganda arm, and offered to sell them $200k worth of adds geared specifically for US elections crowd.

</comment><comment><USER23> You have been able to do this on Google News for a long time:

 _See more stories from preferred sources, and block news sources you don't like._

 _\- Under "Preferred," list publications you want to see more news from._

 _\- Under "Blocked," list publications you don't want to see any news from._

[https://support.google.com/news/answer/1146405](https://support.google.com/news/answer/1146405)

</comment><comment><USER24> Why not remove anything except from social interaction from FB instead of this?

IMHO anything on FB beyond connecting with people is worthless anyway and mostly driven by bots and not people these days.

<comment><USER25> Because they'd be giving up a big chunk of traffic and "engagement".

[http://fortune.com/2017/09/08/facebook-twitter-snap- news/](http://fortune.com/2017/09/08/facebook-twitter-snap-news/)

<comment><USER24> ^ using social media as trustworthy news source is troubling IMHO. That could only work if social media was under the same legal regulation as press is.

But user ranking is basically FB saying "no, no. We don't do news, that's not our business. Sign waiver here"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is a genius move by FB.

Now it becomes a battle of which side can marshall more FB users to flag stories of the other side as fake. Which, in turn, results in more views and clicks for FB.

<comment><USER27> This also precludes malicious actors are more incentivized to continue flagging posts while other users move on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Bad or good, this is an admission of failure. Facebook just flat out said "screw it, you all decide what's real...because we sure as shit can't."

<comment><USER29> They sure as shit can, but they sure as shit don't want to. They could have tackled this 10 years ago but instead they optimized for likes, clicks, traffic, and revenue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> This of course just shifts the problem to Facebook then ranking the credibility of users, on which they will base the raking of credibility of news.

<comment><USER31> Or they already have a good idea about the credibility of the news sources and this will let them determine which users are credible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> This is so stupid. For one, people tend to have herd mentality. An article seen the wrong way could trigger an immense backfire where a medium's credibility tanks in a matter of days. And then it would take years to reverse the damage.

Furthermore, it opens the way for anyone with a botnet of infected machines to rig the credibility of any news outlet to his liking.

<comment><USER8> It would seem that Facebook is rather well-positioned to identify such problems in the data.

They could, for example, only count votes by long-term users. They also have almost complete knowledge of their users' political leanings, making it possible to counteract any attempts at manipulation.

<comment><USER33> Eh, if FB doesn't release those algorithms to an independent 3rd party, one I'd to assume that the manipulation is on FB's part.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> They would be better off auto-blending articles at the other end of users' opinion spectrum into their news feeds (or comment threads) to try and burst the echo chambers.

"Here are some articles at the polar opposite to your norms."

<comment><USER35> I don't think that would work well at all. "The polar opposite to my norms" is stuff like Alex Jones and Breitbart. I won't learn anything from exposing myself to such idiocy. Dishonest clickbait is worthless, even if it comes from a diversity of viewpoints.

No algorithm is (yet) smart enough to judge the quality of journalism. Facebook shouldn't try.

<comment><USER25> This is exactly why we need to be broken from echo chambers. If you think the polar opposite of whatever you believe is conspiracy and idiocy, you are in an echo chamber. There is rational journalism for whatever is the opposite of your beliefs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Slightly off-topic: are there any social networks out there _not_ polluted by news -- fake or otherwise? Is there room for a new social network that's for, you know, people?

Snapchat's a tabloid, Facebook is basically a news RSS feed, and I'm even starting to get news "stories" when browsing hashtags on Instagram. I just want to discover _people_ and talk to _people_. Apart from dating apps (Tinder/Bumble/etc.), it seems that all social networks have become news networks.

<comment><USER14> That might be because "the news" isn't some abstract thing that has no effect on people's lives, so _people_ want to talk to _people_ about the news and politics.

<comment><USER36> Not saying you're wrong, but I don't know, I was perfectly happy chatting with friends on AIM messenger a decade ago. Myspace was also super spammy, but never became a (literal) news feed. I don't mind stupid pro/anti-Trump memes or whatnot, but giving news distribution companies (from Breitbart to the Economist) a platform on your social network seems like an anti-pattern.

<comment><USER14> I'd much rather see a news article someone thought was trenchant or interesting than a meme image that serves no purpose but to try and rile people up. Which one is a better basis for conversation?

<comment><USER36> Let me rephrase: I think it's perfectly fine to _share_ news articles and talk about them, etc. But the distribution of news has become fundamental to FB and Snapchat (and to a lesser extent Twitter and IG) -- see FB's trending stories, or Snapchat's "Discover" tab. It's not at all like "oh Bob thought this Fox News article was interesting" \-- although to be honest, I would actively discourage that, too.

<comment><USER14> I get a lot of news in my feed, but I willingly subscribed to multiple news sources and regularly comment on articles, so I can't comment on the idea of news being foist upon me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> ban certain users from voting on certain topics of even seeing them and game the system to always lean unfairly to your political leanings. no watchdogs, no transparency.

</comment><comment><USER38> Perfect for collecting more user attributes and use them as future "targeted" advertising.

Future Republican candidates can put out FB ads only target Orange County Voters who dislike CNN's news article on Trump.

Democrat party can put FB ads asking for campaign contributions only from folks in SF that like CNN's news article on Trump.

<comment><USER12> That's not how this works. It's more like an electoral poll. From the article:

"It declined to say how many people were polled or which news outlets they were asked about."

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I can't wait till 4chan gets wind of this one!

</comment><comment><USER40> What they should do isn't show me news that _I'm_ likely to agree with, but news that nearly noone disagrees with. It should be very easy to notice what has both large numbers of people disagreeing and agreeing with, and people within the same social networks agree with eachother. That type of news could just be supressed. If all that's left is news with kittens then that's a glorious success. I can get actual news elsewhere, and Facebook can select a few publications of good quality and _replace_ anyone that shares a breitbart article with a corresponding one from the guardian.

<comment><USER41> > news that nearly noone disagrees with

Well, in a country where 30 states voted for Trump, 20 states voted for Hillary, and 100 million people chose not to vote (and that's 42% of the eligible electorate[0]), who shall be arbiter of what news, at least U.S. political news, "nearly noone disagrees with"? I mean, given that a majority of politically active people in a large majority of states voted for Trump, I expect that you'll agree with me that Alex Jones' endlessly pro-Trump daily videos should be featured right at the top of everyone's News Feed. I know _I 'd_ love that.

[0] [http://archive.is/NDUkb](http://archive.is/NDUkb)

[https://www.youtube.com/user/TheAlexJonesChannel/videos](https://www.youtube.com/user/TheAlexJonesChannel/videos)

<comment><USER42> Not all news is political news.

I don't use my Facebook much except to occasionally share vacation photos these days. Checking recently seems to show no news of any sort. Just some silly memes, weather phenomenon (supermoons!), pop-geek-culture stuff, and daily status updates. Since it's the season, there's some American football discussion, which people obviously have disagreements on, of course, but in that "sport" sort of way. :) I'm sure major news (like major weather events) will still make my feed, but there seems to be a noticeable decrease in political stuff.

My cynical take on this announcement is that, for those that post and share a lot of news, there is a high probability that your news bubble will be more heavily reinforced. Not all Trump voters are Alex Jones heads, of course, but if you are one, maybe Alex Jones will still be at the top of your news feed, and you will get all of the Alex Jones-y shares you want. It just won't be on the feed of the friend who prefers is apolitical merely sharing silly cat videos, or the person who is sharing Rachel Maddow clips. Facebook, in other words, will strive to bring you the best news feed that you will never disagree with, all the better for dopamine-inducing clicks and likes.

(I don't really know, of course, if my cynicism is off the mark, but these sort of opaque-algorithm news feed games Facebook plays are a large reason why I rarely use my Facebook feed. :) )

<comment><USER40> I believe Facebook has a responsibility to not show Alex Jones videos even to those that would agree with them.

<comment><USER42> Well, on the one hand, sure. I think Alex Jones is a conspiracy-theory charlatan, a good representative of "fake news" as a matter of a fact (see: Pizzagate). The fact that his site also pushes dubious supplements (like "super advanced vitamin B-12" and "survival shield", which is a "proprietary nascent iodine" formula) says it all to me.

On the other hand, no. I'm not comfortable with a social media network that determine your news feed "appropriateness", via an opaque Brazil-esque (the movie, not the country) bureaucratic process that says "yay" or "nay". And while Alex Jones may be an easier business case here due to the "fake news" elements, I'm not seeing much transparency about what their post blocking process really is. Other than it seems real messy and haphazard, and a lot of people complain about it for various reasons, whether you are a black person posting police brutality videos, or are activists documenting the Rohingya genocide, or have conservative opinions, or are Palestinian, or post breasts no matter the purpose, or post iconic Vietnam war photos, or various other reasons that come up in articles.

If Facebook made their guidelines clear, and the process was transparent, I'd be more comfortable. When the Wikipedia community decides a source is no longer reliable, you can at least read the debate on the reliable source noticeboard. They have guidelines ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability#Reliab...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability#Reliable_sources)) and an ID guide ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Identifying_reliable...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Identifying_reliable_sources)). It's possible to disagree with the decision still, but at least you have better context.

<comment><USER40> > On the other hand, no. I'm not comfortable with a social media network that > determine your news feed "appropriateness", via an opaque Brazil-esque (the > movie, not the country) bureaucratic process that says "yay" or "nay"

Completely agree. But I'm actually less comfortable with the status quo of state controlled botnets spreading a goo of fake news, and people living in those fake media bubbles it creates. Wikipedia is definitely a role model here. Unsure if twitter and facebook could achieve the same level of control, if they could it would be great.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> This is a horrible idea in general, but very good for facebook.

Facebook users will be in even greater echo-chamber re-assuring their world- views therefore they will be more engaged with the website, and this is all FB cares about.

<comment><USER41> Here's my theory, and I think it's quite obvious: Zuckerberg, as someone with a reported $74B in net worth[0], is actually a Republican, and strongly supports Trump and is pushing for his reelection. All the apologizes and damage control is just virtue-signalling to appease the entertainment industry (by which I include the news industry), which relies on and trusts Facebook for their very existence.

[0] [https://www.forbes.com/profile/mark- zuckerberg/](https://www.forbes.com/profile/mark-zuckerberg/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I just wish they would implement a "Snopes.com filter" which marked things as proven false. I would say something like 1/5 posts some of my relatives make is easily disproved by Snopes.

<comment><USER45> I liked snopes.com more when they were a site that debunked urban legends and not a place people went to for political info.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Will Facebook allow users to rate the credulity of other users? That might make this feature more useful ...

</comment><comment><USER47> I enjoy seeing FB sabotage thier brand into the ground, not because of it's service, but rather because of it's sess pool leadership.

My feed is basically a bullshit mill of news instead of actual "freinds" experiences. Even given the bullshit, a good % of the experience stuff is basically just selfie show-offs. It's almost become a mirror of the self, with very little socially valuable interaction.

oh you're on a beach ...like

oh you want to signal your virtue ..share

Facebook is starting to become the anti-social platform in the sense that it has an overall negative social effect.

</comment><comment><USER48> And Rome lets the mob run the Comitia Tributa via popularity contests, including dismissing opposition Tribunes.

I'd argue Rome died not in 476 but in -121 when the Senate killed Gaius Gracchus and didn't realize they needed reform and create an actual political process that doesn't lead to smooth talkers and thus tyranny.

I believe Plato's and the Founding Fathers' preferred solution here would be for each individual to find the smartest willing person they know and let them offer their analysis for consideration.

</comment><comment><USER49> So they're now going to rank news stories based on the reported (i.e. _subjective_ , not objective as they claim) familiarity and credibility of the source. It's hard to know how this would help without more details. Does anyone have any more information on precisely how this heuristic is defined? I have my doubts that this could even work at all. It seems the whole lesson of recent events is that the average person is _not_ qualified to judge the credibility of hardly anything.

</comment><comment><USER50> When you let users contribute to any kind of measurement, it turns into a measure of popularity. It's now a game of "get enough users to do X". By relying on end-users to rate and rank things, we're letting popularity stand in for all kinds of quality measurements. Lots of 5 stars on Amazon = must be a good product. Lots of Yelp reviews = must be a good restaurant. Lots of upvotes = must be a good comment. Talk about doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results!

</comment><comment><USER51> A fraction of revenue from popular pages should fund a manual fact checking process that either temporarily grants or denies that page a trusted status.

<comment><USER8> People don't care about "fact checking". The NYT, or the Wall Street Journal's newsrooms simply don't make factual errors, except occasionally spelling someone's name wrong, Nobody cares.

<comment><USER51> Your counter example uses a trusted source of info. The people who actively read those sources likely DO trust them. Facebook lets anyone post anything (to the extent that fake news is a huge problem), and reaches a much larger audience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> I think Facebook's main benefit from this is that they will now have users clicking a button essentially to say, "yes, I believe this." Now they have a direct metric for what type of manipulation works for that user. Because really, no user can actually verify the truth of a media outlet's claims without heroic efforts.

</comment><comment><USER53> What will be done in response to a bot storm?

</comment><comment> ryan-allen I would expect people will downvote things they don't agree with, I'm not sure how I see this working?

<comment><USER14> Well, easy, only "mainstream" sources end up being considered trustworthy, and any alternative news source that challenges the world view of NPR, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, et al (sources that are frankly more alike than different) just gets shut out. Look how quickly places like the Washington Post ate up that "PropOrNot" stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> So they're going to ask general accounts to rank things for reliability in the era Russian "bot-armies" able to up-rank en-masse?

Suddenly they're going to be able to buy credibility the way they buy likes?

I'm not sure I'm a fan of this. I hope they've gamed that out.

</comment><comment><USER55> Before I go in, I must say this comment is not about politics , and I am not a Donald Trump supporter (I can't believe I have to always prefix this before saying anything sane nowadays otherwise I get stoned to death online)

That said, here's a story. One day during the presidential campaign I saw a person who normally really despised Donald Trump say "Hey I hate him but I think he kinda made sense on his speech today". Remember she watched the speech because she hated him and was looking for every chance to make fun of him but instead came off rethinking things for just that speech.

Then the next day she watched a mainstream TV news anchors go through the speech, one by one line and criticizing, using Trump's past history and etc. Then she said "I knew it he's an evil, he almost made me listen to him, so devious".

I normally never watch TV so observing someone else reacting completely opposite ways based on just a 30 minute TV show is when I realized how mainstream TV is shaping people's minds and propaganda in 2018 is stronger than ever. Most people won't want to believe that they are under heavy influence of political propaganda because their identity is connected to it, but that is the truth.

Just to be clear, this is not even about politics. This phenomenon is increasingly common across every aspect of the society. For example, if you look at what's happening in the cryptocurrency ecosystem, it's full of propaganda by people who have more knowledge manipulating people with less. The only way to overcome this is to:

1\. Try to be as emotionally detached from the events as possible

2\. Actually try to learn what is going on, instead of listening to what everyone else is saying, because even your most trustworthy friend, family, or even a very reputable nobel prize winner is under this influence unless they followed this principle, which most people don't have time to engage in.

3\. If you ARE that reputable person, be careful what you tell your followers. If you haven't gone through step 1 and 2 and just saying "This is who I am, I'm just expressing myself, take it or leave it, just unfollow me if you don't want to hear what I say", you are being extremely irresponsible. You are basically taking your own gullibility and amplifying it to hundreds of thousands or millions of other people who are probably in less fortunate position that you are (which means they will suffer exponentially more from this misinformation than yourself)

Facebook doing this won't help fake news, it will only accelerate what they are already guilty of, because most people aren't even aware they are misinformed and furthermore don't want to believe they are wrong. So it will only result in larger and larger filter bubble which separates people even more.

It's like religion, when was the last time you were able to convince a religious person into believing that God doesn't exist? Imagine telling people on Facebook to vote whether God exists or not on Facebook.

Personally I think there's a huge opportunity hiding in this madness somewhere if you're an entrepreneur.

<comment><USER56> Welcome to the machine!

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> A good way to prevent false stories, would be to reward users who take the time to find evidence to the contrary, with some gamified rank system. "Mamothhunter of Lies"

</comment><comment><USER58> This is really the best they can come up with... So much wow - no way someone can manipulate that... Glad the world is save again _tadatam_

</comment><comment><USER58> Wow - that's such a high-tech solution... No way someone can manipulate that...

</comment><comment><USER57> Automerging similar comments would at least reduce the ilusion of a crowd.

</comment><comment><USER16> "Facebook to let Users Rank Credibility of (pre-filtered) News"

</comment><comment><USER59> What could possibly go wrong. coughthatshowyougottrumpcough.

</comment><comment><USER60> If enough people believe something it must be true, right?

</comment><comment><USER61> What a horrible idea.

</comment><comment><USER62> What could possibly go wrong?

</comment><comment><USER63> This can only end badly.

</comment><comment><USER60> If enough people believe it it must be true, right? Right?

</comment><comment><USER11> BuzzFeed. The most trusted name in news.

<comment><USER64> Actually BuzzFeed has recently been doing some excellent investigative and long-form journalism. Surprising turnaround; kind of like Vice.

<comment><USER65> The BBC article ([http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-42755832](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-42755832)) made the point that this system would have stopped Buzzfeed being able to make that change (to the extent they'd still rely on FB traffic):

> For instance, Buzzfeed's initial beginnings as a viral site would have > almost certainly hindered its growth into a serious news organisation had it > been subject to the ideas about to be put in place by Mr Zuckerberg's team.

I'm not really sure what the answer to this is - but they are really good now and would definitely have been perma-black-holed before now by many measures I can think of.</comment></comment></comment>


Understanding OS X Malware: "Methods of Malware Persistence on OS X" - <AUTHOR> http://osxdaily.com/2014/06/25/advanced-guide-to-understanding-os-x-malware-synack-pres/

<comment><AUTHOR> The linked KnockKnock script is interesting:

"KnockKnock is command line python script that displays persistent OS X binaries that are set to execute automatically at each boot. Since KnockKnock takes an unbiased approach it can generically detect persist OS X malware, both today, and in the future. It should be noted though, this approach will also list legitimate binaries. However, as KnockKnock by default, will filter out unmodified Apple-signed binaries, the output is greatly reduced, leaving a handful of binaries that quickly can be examined and manually verified."

[https://github.com/synack/knockknock](https://github.com/synack/knockknock)</comment>


Coral – A gradually-typed, optimizing mini-Python compiler written in OCaml - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ja3067/Coral <comment><AUTHOR> Hey everyone! This was a 3 month student project and doesn't include classes or several other major features of Python. However it can speed up Python programs that don't rely on these features by several orders of magnitude. See examples in the "demos" folder on the project Github.</comment>


An exploration of human emotion, in six movements (Opens Java applet window) - <AUTHOR> http://www.wefeelfine.org/wefeelfine_pc.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Found this gem on another site being discussed here. Takes about 10seconds to load</comment>


Self-driving delivery robots roll out in the U.K - <AUTHOR> http://www.newsweek.com/self-driving-robot-deliveries-london-starship-technologies-driverless-435414 <comment><USER2> Why aren't more companies looking into this? I'm thinking these couldn't cost more than $1000-2500. Something like a MSkinect would be good enough not to run into people and GPS could keep it out of traffic. If you charged $3 it would still be better than the $10 for groceries. Stream video over cell phone network for $1/hr.

</comment><comment><USER3> The example was 1.7 miles. That would be great for local merchants but not for Amazon, etc.

P.S. I wonder how many will be stolen.</comment>


Ask HN: How to save old stories on HN? - <AUTHOR> I often bookmark a few HN articles I want to read that I don't have time to read at the time.
When I finally get around to reading them, it may be 30+ days later. I've found that HN doesn't allow old articles to be saved (upvoted).
I can understand they don't want someone going through and up or downvoting old articles; however, the fact that the upvote button doubles as "saved stories" creates a problem for me, as I now want to save that article, but have no way to do so.
So my option is to either bookmark the article, or email it to myself, or something along those lines.
Long ago, I'd use a service such as del.icio.us for saving articles, but no longer have that option.
Anyone else experience the same issue and have a decent solution? <comment><USER2> I use getpocket.com for that. Doubles as offline reading app for long plane rides :)

I also just installed "Hacker News Discussion" Chrome extension which shows whether there are HN comments for any webpage I visit. This should be a very handy way to go back to comments for an article I am reading much later.

</comment><comment><USER3> I use pinboard.in for probably what you used to use delicious for.

It's a one time fee of about $9 (haven't looked recently).

I'll bookmark an article there, or they also have a read later feature. If the HN discussion is relevant enough to why I bookmarked the article, I'll paste the HN link in to the bookmark note field.

If you pay a small yearly recurring fee to pinboard, then when you bookmark a page, they'll also save the contents of the page, in case the page disappears.</comment>


Review my project - Team Search - <AUTHOR> http://teamsearchapp.com

<comment><AUTHOR> My first submission to Hacker News (I hope I didn't screw it up). This project may not be relevant to many of you, but any feedback on the app or the website would be greatly appreciated!

<comment><USER2> The app sounds interesting, and the website is polished-- but I don't think that you are going to be getting a lot of sales via the website. That's not how "Enterprisey" software, even at a low price point of $1499, is usually sold.

I think you're going to have to give some thought to your customer acquisition process (which is going to be different than the usual B2C or B2B methods you read about most often on HN.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting, any suggestions?

<comment><USER2> Start by talking to customers (or prospects) in detail about their evaluation and purchasing process.

I assume you know folks in big organizations; otherwise you wouldn't be screwing around with TFS, right?

So, find out how they find out about software, and how they decide to buy it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Setting up a Raspberry Pi 4 as an development machine for your iPad Pro - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/sausheong/setting-up-a-raspberry-pi-4-as-an-development-machine-for-your-ipad-pro-3813f872fccc <comment><USER2> A detailed introduction to setting up a RPi as a network device using the usb gadget interface.

It's good to have options if you already own an iPad.

c.f. tablets supporting Crostini, WSL2 or termux - or GNU/Linux native with the (forthcoming) PineTab!</comment>


This 29yo Was a Waitress – Then Got a Cat with Dwarfism, Quit Job and Made $100m - <AUTHOR> http://uk.businessinsider.com/meet-grumpy-cats-owner-tabetha-bundesen-2014-12

<comment><USER2> Grumpy Cat for the win!</comment>


The Linux Kernel Is No Longer Free Software? - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIQaU3WOmnc <comment><USER2> The video is about DRM (digital restrictions management) in the kernel. A better source would be [http://techrights.org/2019/09/26/linux-as-open-source- propri...](http://techrights.org/2019/09/26/linux-as-open-source-proprietary- software/)

When it comes to big entertainment corporations, _always_ pirate. Otherwise, you are funding your own enslavement.</comment>


Tell HN: Hug a Startup - Morpheus Startups hiring event in Bangalore on Jun 9th - <AUTHOR> http://has.themorpheus.com/ <comment><USER2> One piece of advise from someone who was at Delhi event, stay away from words like 'hacker', 'ninja', 'rockstar' and so on.

<comment><USER3> Isn't that the usually advice from everyone on HN or in YC? I thought we were pretty well decided on the hipster terms like rockstar, ninja or brogramming.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I am actually looking for a job, But I am in chandigarh and still in college. Location makes all the difference I guess.

</comment><comment><USER4> If you are looking to join startup , this is perfect opportunity to meet the founders face to face , discuss!

</comment><comment><USER5> Guys, this is very good opportunity to meet startups and the people behind the scenes.

</comment><comment><USER6> We are hiring at this event too. Here are more details:

We are looking for a core team member based in Bangalore.

Background:

Gaglers is a scalable real-time chat platform. Currently, we offer live chat with unlimited operators and community chat for support. More at <http://gaglers.com/>

Our high-level technical challenges are,

         scaling a real-time platform to millions of concurrent users.
         measure all interactions to make data driven decisions

Typical Day at the Job

Here is how a typical day will look like. You start by looking the status of the production dashboard and bugs. With a quick scan you find that that the message counts are not getting updated in the dashboard after the code push last night. You jump on it right way and send a short code-review out, after testing it on your staging setup.

With that out of the way, you get back to the feature that you have been working on. You know exactly why you are building this feature and what impact it will have on the customers. The feature was specced out last week in some intense design discussions. You finished a quick prototype yesterday. You throw it out today and start the code and unit testing for the initial release. The plan is to deploy a basic version this week sometime, gather feedback over a few days and then fine-tune it based on what the customers say.

Just after lunch, while you code, you come across a bug in the queuing sub- system. You decide that it would be simple for you to fix it as well and so you do. While you fixed the bug, you thought about how you can make the queuing system much more scalable. You write a quick note to yourself to talk about it later.

By the end of the day you'll have a good chunk of the new feature implemented. You'll send that queuing system bug fix for code-review tomorrow morning and continue your work of the new feature.

How the role will develop

Initially, the tasks you take on will be smaller and fairly well defined. Longer term, the requirements you get will be more general, and you'll interpret them to produce great solutions. You'll also generate tasks on your own initiative as you identify opportunities.

As we grow, we may need to take on more developers. You'll have the opportunity to be responsible for these folks if you want.

Technical Qualifications

You will be,

         fluent in Django and Python and comfortable using Git
         be happy with HTML and Javascript
         have designed and written applications using Django
         comfortable managing a group of remote linux servers.

You'll have the opportunity to work on all areas of our stack. Our technology stack includes,

         Django, Python, Erlang
         Redis, MySQL
         RabbitMQ, Celery
         MemCache
         Bootstrap, JQuery, Javascript

We are looking for someone who sees their role as bigger than just programming. You'll also get to know our business. You'll also look for opportunities to make things cooler for our customers.

<comment><USER7> Freshly passed out hacker, pythonista, and Django-ist. Everything fits except, that I'm based out of Chennai. Sorry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Glad to see this posting didn't advertise _"ready to invest long hours", "those for whom work is the only life", "Family.. what's that?", "weekends at home or out of office are a waste of time"_

>>Not _For those who are happy in their cushy jobs_

This can be alarming though!

Why say so? People are always looking for sth better, "cushier". Or are you planning to pull the same trick here - "in compensation we'll give you challenging work and awesome problems to solve, instead of top salary and other benefits and shares are exhausted or we stopped giving that away"?

The last bit was more of a careless rant.. Once burnt fingers....blah blah.

Cool names. Good luck!</comment>


Multitasking for Common Lisp - <AUTHOR> http://www.ddj.com/hpc-high-performance-computing/199702507;jsessionid=LY0ZDO2XJPLB0QSNDLPSKH0CJUNN2JVN?_requestid=224629

<comment><USER2> This must have been REPRINTED in 2007, right?

Nobody has used GCL in years, as far as I know.</comment>


Stop Freeloading and Pay for Your Programming Books - <AUTHOR> https://booksoncode.com/articles/pay-for-your-programming-books <comment><USER2> I get my programming books by Wikibooks or open source PDF files. I also get them from Amazon Kindle when there is a sale for Python books so to speak.</comment>


Should bike helmets be compulsory? Lessons from Seattle and Amsterdam - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/oct/12/bike-helmets-compulsory-seattle-amsterdam-cycling-safety <comment><USER2> Many times I've seen Seattle compared to Amsterdam, particularly on the topic of bikes. One simple distinction between the two most often overlooked is topography. Amsterdam is flat; it's proudly engineered out of the lowlands, and it has canals to prove its level. Seattle is quite hilly, and has a major freeway and an interstate which run through its middle, both overburdened with traffic. Consequently one is nigh perfect for the bicyclist, and the other is at best a significant challenge.

<comment><USER3> > has a major freeway and an interstate which run through its middle...

I'm not sure what this means... are you talking I5 and 99 ? There are underpasses and overpasses for those.

<comment><USER2> Of course there are limited means to get around, over, and under, those very large sources and attractors of car traffic; in a notably limited space. So attempting coexistence between those and bicyclists is a challenge. That was my only (apparently) poorly expressed point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Surprisingly, there are very few studies on the actual effectiveness of bicycle helmets. Lots of times, articles will just say "X% of people that are injured aren't wearing a helmet". Which of course is next to worthless.

<comment><USER5> And most studies that _have_ been done, are done by people from the medical field, who are at best only qualified to comment on a slight portion of the issue. Their conclusion is always 'if you fall sideways on a curb without a helmet, you'll be dead' (duh), but then the dangerous part is where they conclude 'so we need to wear helmets always, and make them compulsory'.

<comment><USER6> That argument could apply to pedestrians as well. We don't make Grandma wear a helmet the day she's issued a walker.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This argument is remarkably familiar; it's basically the same (on both sides) when the motorcycle helmet laws were being argued in the 1980s. It's easy to forget that people actually argued that motorcyclists might be safer without helmets, but they did.

<comment><USER8> In what ways is it safer to ride a motorcycle without a helmet?

<comment><USER9> It's easier to see what's going on around you, and you can hear better. I don't consider this worth the risk of head injury personally, but the difference is there, and it's noticeable, particularly vision.

<comment><USER10> It's also somewhat less tiring to eschew the helmet, but I similarly always wear the helmet anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> People fall and hit their heads and die walking and running all the time. Why not make pedestrians wear helmets?

Or how about you stop using the law (violence) to protect people from themselves.

EDIT: Laws like this are also a great excuse for police to harass people. We don't need more of these.

</comment><comment><USER12> I wear a helmet, because I want my daughter to wear a helmet when she rides and so I set a good example. But I have no idea why anyone believes it's appropriate to make a law about this. Risky behavior that puts others at risk is fair game -- you can't speed in your car, for instance. But to have another adult forcibly stop me, scold me, and fine me if I don't want to put a piece of plastic on my head? That's insane. Same goes for motorcycle helmet laws, seatbelt laws, and drug laws. With that in mind, the premise of the article is flawed. I do not care which policy "saves more lives." I don't care which is safer. If I see another adult riding around without a helmet, the thought doesn't occur to me "Oh no! How unsafe! Won't someone compel him to protect himself?" So should I accept the same sentiment applied to everyone collectively? (And if someone wants to argue that my getting injured imposes a cost on society, blah blah blah ... we're just not going to agree about the responsibilities of the individual to the collective and the role of government therein)

<comment><USER13> The argument is that if you get severely injured the tax payers get stuck with the bill (US may be different) so other people are affected; I'm in favour of compulsory motorcycle helmets and seat belts, if you want to opt out fine, but pay a higher insurance premium.

<comment><USER12> I know that's the argument, but I disagree with the premise -- you're essentially saying that it's valid for the government to enforce healthy decisions when it wants to limit the chances of a future payout. This would mean that the government can use its status as the "insurer" (in the sense that it operates the safety net) and the "enforcer" (in the sense that it alone can use force to compel you against your will) in complementary ways. Why not make a law that I can't have junk food? Or that I must exercise? Obesity has a cost on society as well, no?

<comment><USER13> You do have a point but unlike eating junk food, having a seatbelt on is a binary and can be detected without much argument.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think you _should_ wear a helmet, but I think it is ridiculous for the government to _require_ you to wear one.

Same with seatbelts, frankly.

<comment><USER12> Agreed, I just finished writing the same thing in many more words before seeing the point had been made.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> As I understand it, making helmets compulsory makes people _use their bikes less_ , making them get less exercise, shortening their lives _more_ than they would have saved (statistically) by wearing a helmet.

</comment><comment><USER16> While I'm not one to subscribe to conspiracy theories, I've always thought that bicycle helmet laws and related press were pushed by helmet manufacturers.

</comment><comment><USER17> There's been fairly interesting data piling up about mandatory helmet laws.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/29/business/a-bicycling- myste...](http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/29/business/a-bicycling-mystery-head- injuries-piling-up.html)

> The number of head injuries has increased 10 percent since 1991, even as > bicycle helmet use has risen sharply, according to figures compiled by the > Consumer Product Safety Commission. But given that ridership has declined > over the same period, the rate of head injuries per active cyclist has > increased 51 percent just as bicycle helmets have become widespread.

...

> Many specialists in risk analysis argue that something else is in play. They > believe that the increased use of bike helmets may have had an unintended > consequence: riders may feel an inflated sense of security and take more > risks.

Cars are more reckless around bicyclists and drive closer to them when they see they are wearing a helmet:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/10/magazine/10bike.html](http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/10/magazine/10bike.html)

We also see here that bicycles are the lowest risk of head injury while traveling streets and sidewalks:

[http://www.howiechong.com/journal/2014/2/bike- helmets](http://www.howiechong.com/journal/2014/2/bike-helmets)

Turns out you're much more likely to suffer a head injury in a car, or walking than on a bicycle. Should helmets be mandated for driving and walking? Evidence suggests it would make more sense for those activities.

Wearing helmets increases the likelihood of neck injuries: [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0001457500...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0001457500000488)

Feds had to stop claiming bike helmets prevent 85% of head injuries (a commonly cited statistic) after their statistical analysis was found to be bogus:

[http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/19036/feds-will- sto...](http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/19036/feds-will-stop-hyping- effectiveness-of-bike-helmets/)

</comment><comment><USER18> The type of cycling in Amsterdam is certainly different than what I see here in DC. In Amsterdam, most bikes are the classic "Dutch" style utility bike - slow, stable, and easy to step down/off the bike. Here in DC, cyclists are almost universally on some variant of the "10 speed" \- most with drop bars, higher COG, and higher average speeds.

As a cyclist myself, I ride with or without helmet based on conditions. On my road bike or mountain bike? Helmet, always - I've had enough concussions to know I don't want another. My cruiser - usually no helmet, but it's use is almost exclusively below 10mph and on a bike trail, not roads.

<comment><USER19> Some of that is just the preference of the demographics likely to bike, but in urban cycling with cars particularly, speed equals safety. Hence why female riders bear the brunt of harassment such as close overtakes.

Much healthier to be able to be assertive and occasionally accelerate away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's been compulsory in New Zealand since the late 80's or early 90's. I'm sure initially people felt like dorks but after 20+ years its normal. People will get over it.

<comment><USER21> Where is the argument? Reading the comments on HN becomes worse every day. People just writing some stuff to prove, I don't know, that they are very cool or extremely liberal or whatever.

<comment><USER20> The argument that people won't wear a helmet because of a fashion statement? It's not in the article - but its a fact that kids for instance won't wear helmets because of pair pressure. The same as people used to not wear seatbelts before they were compulsory.

<comment><USER21> Ever been to NZ?

<comment><USER20> Kind of where I live.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I say no fines for not wearing a helmet. It is only an excuse for local law enforcement to make more $$.

</comment><comment><USER23> It's actually the same question as should marijuana be legalized

</comment><comment><USER24> Bike helmets should be compulsory only if

\- Having a five-point harness for every car is compulsory (alright, I'll admit this is somewhat overkill and rhetorical)

\- Cars are certified yearly as being road safe (not the case in all states in the US, but I think this _is_ the case in the EU)

\- Drunk driving has extremely severe penalties (10+ years in prison) beginning with the first offence.

The motorist is driving a much more dangerous vehicle capable of causing serious injuries to themselves and other parties. Let us all behave in a responsible manner.

<comment><USER25> >Drunk driving has extremely severe penalties (10+ years in prison) beginning with the first offence.

Maybe you haven't noticed, but at some point, a meaner nastier criminal justice system does little or no additional good at the expense of harming innocent people. That point's long been passed with DUI laws, and people still do it.

<comment><USER26> Which, given how many repeat DUI offenders there are, is great justification for long prison sentences.

If a person can't be trusted to put either the bottle or the keys down, then they need to be restrained. I'd rather find a cheaper way than prison, but it's insanity that you can drive drunk and receive a punishment that serves as almost no disincentive to continue to do it.

<comment><USER27> Most of my friends would be in prison under your idea, and their children would have grown up without their parents, and I fail to see how the world would have been better off that way.

Oh sure, they MIGHT have killed someone because they were a little bit over an arbitrary and always decreasing blood alcohol limit, but they didn't, so I'm not sure what a 10 year prison sentence would accomplish.

I suppose at some point you can create such massive penalties for every possible misdeed that people become too terrified to leave their homes, but I don't want to live in that world.

<comment><USER26> Most of your friends have children, then drink and drive? And "my idea" is what's wrong here?

I don't even know where to begin...

<comment><USER27> Look around you next time you're out at a restaurant. See all the beers and glasses of wine? You think they all took Uber or have a designated driver?

Everyone drinks and drives. That's not even illegal. But it's not that hard to take one sip too many and break the law. Seriously, get off your high horse. There are over a million DUI arrests per year in the US. That's just the tiny percentage they catch!

<comment><USER26> It's not a high horse, so much as it's an avoidable problem. $59B/year in the US is spent on alcohol-related crashes. (Just crashes, not the insane amount of crime that's alcohol-related.)

There's a death every 51 minutes from it. 31% of traffic-related deaths.

17% of children under 14 who die in a car crash involving an alcohol-impaired driver. Over half of those are in the vehicle driven by the drunk driver. That's utter insanity, and I wonder how many of those people were close to the limit and something you'd deem just fine.

I'm not naive enough to think everyone at the restaurant took Uber or have a designated driver, but I trust _you 're_ also not naive enough to think that it's not a serious problem, and it's one that, more often as not, kills innocents.

The problem is that people can get away with it, and largely do. (As you allude to.)

Please don't pretend it's a small problem, and that discussing whether longer/harsher/different sentences would motivate more people to take Uber or get a designated driver is the problem. That's as counterproductive as adopting a smug tone when discussing policy.

Edit:

> I suppose at some point you can create such massive penalties for every > possible misdeed that people become too terrified to leave their homes, but > I don't want to live in that world.

Enough with the straw man, BTW. I'm pretty Libertarian. But the moment you demonstrate that you can't safely manage the responsibility of driving, then I'm all in favor of strongly limiting your ability to do others harm. It's the height of American selfishness to think that the current system is sufficient relative to the problem that exists.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Legal docs should be written like code. - <AUTHOR>

I've been getting a bit crossed eyed reading a bunch of crap legal documents. I now recognize patters and see that words, phrases, and structure have specific meanings. A lot of that are definition statements and conditional constructs.
Now I see lawyers as programmers who write really crappy code with an ancient language and grammer.
It would make a lot of sense to modernize their tool set and structure their documents like well written code.
"Your honor, the defendant violated the contract on line 325 by failing to perform the 3rd AND condition." <comment> mark-r I've often been glad I'm not a lawyer. Could you imagine writing code (a contract) that you can't test before putting into production, and running it on a processor (Judge) that would execute it inconsistently from every other processor?

</comment><comment><USER2> You could always have your own internal "compiler" which will translate from this language to your "machine" code. Similar alternative would be to express the flow of the document in Lisp/Scheme. That way you can quickly spot bugs in the document.

</comment><comment><USER3> Humans are much more complicated.

</comment><comment><USER4> They are doing something like this for accounting and financial information via XBRL.

</comment><comment><USER5> man, I have been thinking this for years. If ilaws were written in code there would be no reason to have judges or lawyers. We have those only because spoken language is ambiguous and open to interpretation.

<comment><USER6> It's not that easy though, for example, Jacobellis v. Ohio - how would you go about defining the threshold of pornography?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it>

<comment><AUTHOR> Great point. Your question reminded me of the scene from Aviator: "Dr. Branson is a mathematician of some note...yes. And he will prove that, in fact, Ms. Russell's mammaries are no more prominant than any of these other fine ladies. Doctor? Doctor... you forgot your calipers."</comment></comment></comment>


New Optimization Algorithm Exponentially Speeds Computation - <AUTHOR> https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/computing/software/new-optimization-algorithm-exponentially-speeds-computation <comment><USER2> Papers by Balkanski, one of the co-authors, including the one discussed, "An Exponential Speedup in Parallel Running Time for Submodular Maximization without Loss in Approximation", are at [http://ericbalkanski.com/publications/](http://ericbalkanski.com/publications/) .</comment>


Google: Self-driving cars in 3-5 years. Feds: Not so fast - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/147940-google-self-driving-cars-in-3-5-years-feds-not-so-fast <comment><USER2> If anyone is interested in some of the algorithms behind this technology, then I highly recommend Sebastian Thrun's "Artificial Intelligence for Robotics" course on Udacity [1]. He makes unintuitive probabilistic methods easily understandable. I'm not aware of a better source for getting a basic understanding of complex methods like Kalman filters and particle filters [2][3]. I had never even heard of a "histogram filter" until recently reviewing this material, and it's a perfect solution for a problem that I currently have.

[1] <https://www.udacity.com/course/cs373>

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalman_filter>

[3] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particle_filter>

<comment><USER3> I was surprised by how understandable the concepts are behind this stuff. I second this recommendation. They are really cool algorithms.

For real life, there is obviously a huge engineering component, but you can definitely see how the ideas could come together to build something like the automated cars.

<comment><USER2> Exactly! I linked to Wikipedia for contrast with how unintelligibly these topics are often presented for we mere laymen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think the best way to roll out self-driving cars would be to build up a base product (like Google has done), and then open source at least a large portion of the software. Run a campaign that anyone reporting a critical bug gets their name on the underside of the hood in every first generation car that Lexus/Honda/Toyota and Google collaborate on. Then, run an ad campaign based on X thousands of programmers reviewing code totaling X thousand days of effort. Easily the safest strategy, and it gives an easy response to any competitor: how many programmers have reviewed THEIR software?

<comment><USER5> Sure, and give away prototypes to test the software.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I can't wait till the day I can have my self driving car drive me to work while I read a book and when it drops me off it goes to recharge it's battery, pick up my family from work or school and maybe when it's not in use I can rent it out as a cab.

<comment><USER7> The economics won't support it being _your_ car for long, at that point.

When you can just ask for a car to pick you up and one will arrive, corporate robo-taxi fleets will have economies of scale over family cars sent off to earn their keep. With ordinary people not needing to buy a car, facilities for maintaining and supplying them will dry up too, as the manufacturing effort shifts to taxi-ready cars for fleets. And the price will shift up out of your range to reflect the earning potential.

The robo-car will end the private car as anything but a hobby comparable to the classic car.

<comment><USER8> Except no company is going to want to buy enough cars to handle the demand during rush hour.

<comment><USER7> Given those cars make two reliable paying journeys per day, minimum, why wouldn't they?

<comment><USER9> Because two is not enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Another good article today on self-driving cars.

[http://www.wired.com/autopia/2013/02/continental- autonomous-...](http://www.wired.com/autopia/2013/02/continental-autonomous- vehicle/)

 _"I drove to West Virginia in this car," he recalls. "It's about a nine-hour drive from Detroit. Out of that entire nine hours, I drove for 45 minutes. And the only reason I drove that much was because there was this nice mountain pass, with sharp S-turns."_

</comment><comment><USER11> I can appreciate that there are a lot of benefits to self-driving cars - safety, the possibility of reduced traffic and congestion, amongst other things. That being said, I'm always stunned at the complete lack of discussion about the topic of environmental impact (whether the impact of this technology will ultimately be positive or negative.)

If we are going to undertake such a major shift in how we all get from point A to point B, shouldn't that be a significant point of consideration? It is rarely even mentioned in the context of this discussion, which I find to be disappointing.

<comment><USER12> I actually have read discussions of the such, but unfortunately don't remember where... :(

However, that being said, here are some of the points I've seen:

Pros: Car sharing is easier, since you can pull out a smartphone and "order" a car to come pick you up at any point, there is less of a need to actually own a car. This should lessen the total number of vehicles manufactured/maintained/etc. The huge amounts of energy for making steel come to mind here. Also, if you are using a CaaS(car as a service) many would probably opt for a cheaper option where the car will stop and pick up other passengers on the way, offsetting the cost and therefore reducing price. A person doesn't have to arrange a carpool this way. If you make it easier and cheaper to carpool than to not (currently it is cheaper, but a hassle) then people will do it more.

Reduced traffic congestion: This sets the stage for the other benefits. Cars stopping and accelerating less equals less fuel used. Many, many more autonomous vehicles can share a roadway without reducing speed than human drivers.

Cons:

More suburbinazation/low population density: This is a big possibility. While living in a distant exurb would mean you probably have to own an autonomous vehicle, or schedule one to pick you up well in advance, car sharing suddenly works less.... but a 90 minute commute today would be much faster with autoomous vehicle roads, and people can read/chill/watch news/surf the net etc while cruising to work. Commuting is made more relaxing, so more people do it....

It's a very complex issue to try and understand the implications, but I really think that it would be an environmental net gain, due to the fact that, if everyone is using Car as a Service, then the CaaS providers will have cost minimization as a priority, and work to constantly increase efficiency. People only care about fast acceleration and performance when they are driving themselves. Computers don't have small penises to compensate for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The key thing is that the government is not going to (and should not) get very deep into regulating/legalizing this tech until it actually works, which is fine. 2020 does seem more realistic for a mass market roll-out.

So long as it's ready by the time I'm too old to safely drive, I'll be happy.

<comment><USER14> As long as the car can pass the tests set out for humans, there really shouldn't be need for government involvement. We already have defined standards that we find acceptable. It is not like humans are perfect and the machine has to match that, though I do hope that the machines can exceed those existing expectations.

<comment><USER13> We've defined standards _for humans_ that we find acceptable, in part because there is much that is implicit in the operator being a human. For example, a cop at an intersection, holding his hand up, then pointing left to redirect traffic is not something we test in a driver's test, but is something we expect human drivers to understand and obey. Perhaps the cars can handle this already, but there are likely hundreds, if not thousands, of these scenarios that are going to be necessary to think about now.

There is also a lot of legal work that will begin as these roll out, especially dealing with liability, and these things take time that simply selling millions of these cars in 3-4 years will not allow for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> One thing that always comes to mind, and this may just be the pessimist in me, but remember the "flash crash"? Where a bunch of trading algorithms triggered short sells as a reaction to other trading algorithms triggering short sells?

Well think of that, but with cars, with people in them...

Edit: I think it's being misconstrued that I am somehow against Google Cars, when in fact I'm very much for them. Regardless of the likelihood of the aforementioned scenario, I agree that it's still far better than the wildly unpredictable human factor. And ultimately I think that self-driven cars will be a boon both for road safety as well as fuel economy and overall emissions. (Not to mention traffic, I can't wait for a world when traffic is basically non-existent)

One thing I realized after making this comment too, is that road situations are far easier to predict than the randomness of the market, and the consequences are much higher than 0's in a bank account, so I'm sure there will be fail-safes.

<comment><USER16> As the flash crash showed, if you screw up enough in the market, they'll just hit the reset button and undo the trades.

The same isn't true for cars, and that'll likely affect the code testing process.

Plus, if you're going to reference the flash crash, I'll point out that people, not computers, caused the Great Depression.

<comment><USER17> That's a good point. For every Flash Crash we've seen, how many human-error market crashes have there been? For every algorithmic auto crash that could ever happen, how many human-error auto crashes have there already been? Just 24 hours ago I had to go pick up my girlfriend from the side of the road after someone swerved into her car after not looking in his mirrors. The complaint that algorithms might cause an unintended car crash so we should continue to only have people behind the wheel rings a bit hollow when people-driven cars is one of the biggest killers in Western society.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This technology has the potential to save tens of thousands of lives each year. How can anyone possibly argue that the technology shouldn't be on the roads until it's 100% safe (which will probably never be possible)?

So, it's okay for tens of thousands of human drivers to be killed while driving, but inconceivable for tens of people to die at the hands of a computer?

<comment><USER19> Imagine that some crazy schizophrenic-paranoid-whatnot-wacko manage to create a botnet made of 100 000 autonomous cars and decide to make them accelerate simultaneously and crash into each other...

Note that we're living in a world when hardly a day passes by without some major security exploit being discovered and hardly a day passes by without hearing about some foreign goverment taking control of domestic computers. What if Iran manages to gain control of all the autonomous vehicles? Isn't that worth a thousand atomic bomb?

And, yes, there's a psychological problem when there's no human to blame but just a computer or a software (and, actually, ultimately the entire chain up to politician that allowed such car to be used on the road and software programmers to write that software). It's alienating to society as a whole and it's a real issue. People are trying to find solution to deal with this problem.

<comment><USER18> That assumes that the cars have some mechanism to wirelessly communicate over very large distances. Are you sure these cars are being designed with mesh- style communications?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Release early, release often? Wonder if that'll work for driving software. Chrome Version 24.0.1312.57 here.

</comment><comment><USER21> I don't see how it could be any worse than some people's driving already. Compare the failure rate of embedded devices, software and servo hardware and that of a tired human being coming home after a long day's work and I'd take the "smart car" over the exhausted human any day.

</comment><comment><USER22> "We expect to release the technology in the next five years" It's extremely unlikely that it will be the entire car, more likely backup/safety features, at most the self parking like we say at ces at least until there is enough data to support their expansion.

</comment><comment><USER19> Ah, HN's double standards...

I mean: it's amazing to see all these people saying, on one side, "It's normal that there are hundreds of millions of zombies part of gigantic botnets, we'll never have 100% secure software" and, on the other side, these very same people saying: "Can't wait to have an autonomous car in 3 years / 15 years".

So what is it? Insecure software or safe cars?

So are there going be theorem provers used to proove that the OSes in these cars are bulletproof? And the compilers of course shall have been prooved secure too?

If not it means there are software security issues right? Someone commanding one million zombie PC is not cool. Someone commanding one million zombie autonomous car is downright scary.

<comment><USER23> I don't think that there is any double standard here. I think most of us who have driven in most countries have noticed that there are some truly incompetent human drivers on the road who raise risk for everyone. It's enough for self-driving cars to reduce the risk of traveling from place to place. If I must travel, why not let the machine do the driving, while I think about my work with full attention or engage in undistracted conversation with fellow passengers? You are of course entitled to travel only by means like commercial airlines or railroad lines that will not be self-driving as soon as some cars will. I think the regulators of highway traffic in each country will make reasonable trade-offs about the timing and conditions under which self-driving cars will be allowed on the roads I travel. I look forward to that day, having seen how local human drivers drive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> On a second thought I'm thinking about something: everybody here seems so convinced that AI is so advanced and computer software so secure that the benefits here far outweight the drawbacks (including the loss of more and more individual liberty at the benefit of giga-corporations)...

So what if there are actually zero dead? The car so good, with a feedback loop so fast that you simply can't have accidents anymore...

Will the speed limits be then raised to 100mph in the street and 200mph or more on the highway?

<comment><USER24> > the loss of more and more individual liberty

wait, what?

> giga-corporations

... wat. Google is at most a kilo-corp.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> There are already today software failures in cars which created serious problems: like drive-by-wire cars who wouldn't stop accelerating.

As of now the problem is mitigated by having someone behind the wheel. Even when the motor shutdowns and when you lose assistance, you can still turn the steering wheel, brake and/or use the handbrake. This has saved many lifes.

But now how often do OS / software have bugs? Security issues? I can't imagine for a second that these cars are going to be fully autonomous and not connected to a network. How can we possibly make that network safe?

Lately on HN the consensus seemed to be: "Every software has bugs, every software can be exploited if the attacker spends enough time".

So is the software in these cars going to be safe? Safe from ill-intentioned exploits, safe from bugs potentially threatening lives?

Now if there are less dead then what we typically have in a year, ok. You'll have to check the numbers.

But there are going to be deads. That is just a fact.

And the public reaction when there's going be a dead due to a "computer driving" is going to be terrible.

I mean: it's amazing to see all these people saying, on one side, "It's normal that there are hundreds of millions of zombies part of gigantic botnets, we'll never have 100% secure software" and, on the other side, these very same people saying: "Can't wait to have an autonomous car in 3 years / 15 years".

So what is it? Insecure software or safe cars?

<comment><USER25> _Insecure software or safe cars?_

Your implication being that there is such a thing as a safe car. I think that people are excited for self-driving cars on the basis that they will kill fewer people on average than human drivers do.

It's a slightly depressing way to think about things, but it's realistic. However, the media hysteria that will surround the first self-driving car accident/killing will be critical.

<comment><USER26> I'm curious where or with who the buck stops. If my driverless car causes an accident who is to blame? It couldn't have been me as I gave it full control and was asleep in the back. Is it the developer of the software or the builder of the car? Maybe a sensor failed and thus the finger is pointed at me but I point it at the dealer who service the car. Given that the people who would most benefit from this tech are the same people who are least likely to give a shit about the upkeep of their car we are going to have a few years of interesting news headlines.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> _"We expect to release the technology in the next five years. In what form it gets released is still to be determined."_

You're talking, what, another 2-5 years of testing and adaptation from car manufacturers, _if_ they choose to go with Google? Almost all of them have their own projects and, IMO, are unlikely to be tied to Google and their likely demands.</comment>


Reddit for Sale: How We Bought the Top Spot for $200 - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/jaymcgregor/2016/12/14/how-we-bought-reddit-for-200/ <comment><USER2> Anyone reading reddit in the last 3 years has to know this is going on. But having seen some of these services I can say there are also HN accounts available on more than a few. HN's with over 200 karma are quite valuable there, I wonder why.

<comment><USER3> wow. I wonder how much I could sell my account for!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can't read unless I disable adblock? Anyone know a workaround? I'm on iOS so it's not as simple as a few clicks to whitelist, plus I don't particularly like the idea of being forced to do so by one of the scammier news sites.

<comment><AUTHOR> There's a YouTube for it, does that help: [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FxNvUWN3vYk](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FxNvUWN3vYk)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Given values of 'top spot'. /r/uk has submission to all turned off, and a recent silly post about 'lynx england' got well in excess of 1000 votes.

And it got removed as spam...

</comment><comment><USER6> Watch</comment>


Still no Windows Phone 8 SDK - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/computing/137621-two-weeks-away-still-no-sdk-windows-phone-8-teeters-on-the-edge-of-failure <comment><USER2> I find the list of Ryan Whitwam's blog posts on ExtremeTech (<http://www.extremetech.com/author/rwhitwam>) to be almost universally negative in tone. Maybe we should all just cheer up and see how this one goes. Microsoft have done some innovation here, and I'm happy to try it out either way.

</comment><comment><USER3> _what are the first questions people ask when they get a new smartphone? They don't want to know the best way to expose data on the home screen; they want to know which apps to download._

Agreed, but if MS shares with the _right_ 'limited audience', it could work out OK. If they have Facebook, Twitter, Instagram (still looks doubtful), a few more big names and a few major games, >80% of users will be fine. Us techies won't be, of course.

Don't get me wrong- this still seems like a weird move from MS. But I don't think it leaves them "teetering on the edge of failure".

<comment><USER4> Substitute "Linux on the desktop" for windowsphone in your argument and this is something we techies have been arguing forever. I would be fascinated if you could explain how the position of today's windowsphone is in any way different from the position of desktop Linux for the past 12 years.

<comment><USER5> Phones need a much more limited set of apps than a desktop or laptop. Many(not all) people just use the phone functions plus Facebook, Maps, Twitter and a couple of other apps and other use cases are covered by web apps. Multiple studies have shown that most people use very few apps.

While with the PCs, if you don't have some applications(like say AAA games, Office, Autocad etc.), it cuts away more of the potential audience than on a phone.

<comment><USER6> Phones also have the need of "my friends are playing X, I want to play X too". Words with Friends and Draw Something being two fairly recent examples. Windows Phone doesn't have these, so when my friends want to play their social games with me, I have to use my Android tablet. Nokia has said the games will be released at some point with a two-month exclusivity deal for Lumia phones (which is ridiculous and hurts the ecosystem), but I don't think they've been released yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Seeing as there are over 100k windows phone 7 apps already on the market which will work on windows phone 8 this seems a little sensationalist.

</comment><comment><USER8> Definitely a click bait title. Since all of the WP7 apps will run on WP8, there really is not much risk in releasing the SDK with the phones. I agree that it's not ideal, but I think that they're doing it this way because they want to announce all of the new features at the same time as they release the SDK.

<comment><USER9> I've never _not_ been broken by a .NET update or service pack since .NET 3.0 (.NET 3.0, 3.5, 3.5 sp1, 4.0, 4.5).

This schedule rules out any chance for developers to catch these bugs and report them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Compare that to Office 2013 which is not even out in beta-form and already has lots of docs available.

This is pretty bad.

I dont think I've ever heard of a Microsoft launch like this.

<comment><USER11> Office 2013 is out in beta form (MS calls it a "preview"), and has been for some time now.

</comment></comment><comment> at-fates-hands So many rippable quotes in this article. Here are just a few of my favorites:

"If you were expecting Windows Phone 8′s app ecosystem to be one of its main selling points, think again."

Windows app ecosystem has never been one of its strongest setlling points. At no time has its app store even come close to competing with Apple or Android. Its main selling point is the integration with its existing platform. Bing maps, Skydrive, Outlook, etc. I have no idea why this guy thought it should be a major selling point now.

"A multitude of pundits have weighed in, and the consensus from them is that Microsoft might just be buying time because the platform isn't quite done yet."

After Apple completely bungled their recent release, I would've thought there was going to be some praise following this paragraph. The funny thing is, I'm wondering if this guy even reads the articles on his own site. Just last week this article was on their front page:

"Microsoft promises major Windows 8 app improvements before Oct 26 launch" [http://www.extremetech.com/computing/137469-microsoft- promis...](http://www.extremetech.com/computing/137469-microsoft-promises- major-windows-8-app-improvements-before-oct-26-launch)

"Microsoft is letting marketing dictate the deployment of software instead of what's really best for the product"

FALSE. I would instead give them credit for seeing the failures of Apple's release and the backlash which ensued. Can you fault them for making sure their product is ready when it hits the stores?

"Almost any other company on the planet would have washed its hands of Windows Phone after a second unsuccessful holiday season."

Yes, because supporting a handset manufacturer who just lost a multi-billion dollar patent infringement case is so much safer right?

There's more, but these are the ones that stuck out at me.

</comment><comment><USER12> I thought the reasoning was that MS didn't wand devs tomstop developing for 7.x and since these apps would run on 8 anyway, why not wait a while before releasing the SDK.

</comment><comment><USER13> Maybe they don't want certain entities on their platform so they are holding the SDK?

</comment><comment><USER14> What I'm worried about is MS removing XNA support in WP8.

</comment><comment><USER5> Microsoft had already announced previously that the SDK will be out at WP8 launch, there will be 100K+ WP7 apps available in the store at launch. The API and dev tools went through a huge shift from Win CE as the kernel in WP7 to the NT kernel in WP8. It makes more sense to launch when it's ready instead of rushing it out to meet a deadline.

So the "two weeks away, still no SDK" is just trolling for page hits, and unfortunately getting them.

<comment><USER15> Actually, there has not really been a huge shift in the API _or_ the dev tools.

Yes, there is a new native layer called "Windows Phone Runtime", which is a partial, semi-overlapping subset of the Windows Runtime found in Windows 8.

However, it's partial and incomplete, and mostly targeted at game developers - to access most of the features of Windows Phone 8, you need to write your apps in a managed language, accessing the .NET API for Windows Phone, which is pretty much the same as it's always been, with a few minor incompatibilities, even in so-called "compatibility mode" for WP7 apps.

EDIT: That was a hideous run-on sentence, but I kinda like it.

<comment><USER5> >Actually, there has not really been a huge shift in the API or the dev tools.

I had meant dev tools as in the API and SDK code written by Microsoft. There is no big change in the app developer facing dev tools, but internally the kernel has shifted, thus Microsoft developers needed to port the same API to a different kernel, so that's what I meant by a big change.

<comment><USER15> Ah, gotcha - I misunderstood what you meant there.

I've seen the current state of the SDK and API, and while I understand porting to a new kernel was probably a lot of work for them, it makes even less sense considering that most of the WinRT APIs available in Win8 are not there in WP8 - it leaves me wondering what, exactly, they hoped to gain; so far it doesn't seem like a win for developers, and you can't write a full-featured native app for WP8. Maybe you'll be able to for WP9 (if the platform survives that long).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This UI they are pushing with Metro (or whatever it's called now) is horrendous. Has nobody at Microsoft ever read a design book?

<comment><USER3> Seriously? Metro (/Modern, whatever) has been almost universally praised by designers. You're entitled to your own opinion on it, but suggesting that no- one has read a design book is a bizarre statement.

<comment><USER17> I don't know... this UI would scare my mom away from using her phone: <http://i.imgur.com/Sbh9x.png>

<comment><USER18> That's perfect, you just wrote their next marketing piece:

" _It's not your mother's phone_ "

<comment><USER19> Recent Samsung Galaxy phone commercials have been mocking Apple for being parent-friendly--e.g., hipster man-child 30-something is just holding his parents' spot in line for an iPhone; they return, and mother asks "Is this the line for apps?"

It's a nauseating commercial IMO... which isn't to say it isn't effective.

<comment><USER3> I thought that part of the ad was an interesting counterpoint to the "I'm a (boring, businessman-like) PC, I'm a (cool, hip, trendy) Mac" ads.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>