Sleep sort (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://dis.4chan.org/read/prog/1295544154/ <comment><USER2> Just to be 100% clear, in case anyone who is new to the field stumbles on this thread, this is NOT breaking math or anything. This is a fun, but totally normal result.

First of all, there are quite a few linear time sorting algorithms. Radix, pigeonhole, and counting sort are all linear time sorting algorithms. The popular result that any comparison-based sorting algorithm works in O(n log n) applies _specifically_ to comparison-based sorting algorithms, and not those like the above. So, even if you ignore the underlying mechanics of the OS scheduler and assume sleep works "perfectly", the result would not that unusual.

Second off, in the comments there appears to be considerable time worrying about the technicalities of the scheduler, the nondeterministic nature of sleep, and so on, and whether this really implies linear time bound. IMHO these are not worth worrying about because we already have linear time sorting algorithms. It's fine to assume the scheduler adds no significant asymptotic cost here, even if we know differently.

Third off, remember that all of these sorting bounds assume machines of the Von Neumann architecture. In particular, this model assumes constant time memory and constant time comparison operations. In cases where you're comparing really big numbers, these bounds get worse. This is easy to forget, but worth remembering just since we're on the subject anyway.

<comment><USER3> This is not "linear time" in any decent sense--we shouldn't conflate the number of elements with the size of the elements (in this case, O(max element) is actually exponential in the input size!).

<comment><USER2> This isn't really right. If the numbers can be arbitrary in size, then you can't compare them in constant time, which means that comparison-based sorts are quadratic.

This is directly related to my third point. Traditional analysis of sorting algorithms assumes the Von Neumann architecture, and in particular, it assumes constant-time comparisons.

<comment><USER4> The computational model will define what you can and cannot compare in constant time. It is perfectly fine to say that comparing elements of arbitrary size is a constant time operation - that's precisely what a computational model is: an enumeration of the operations that are considered basic.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, I know.

Go read the parent again. The author claims that sorting in this case takes time proportional to the size of largest element, and I'm saying, if it takes time proportional to the space consumption of in the largest element (presumably where the cost of the sort comes from), you can't define a computational model where comparison takes constant time -- it still has to read the digits, which we know takes linear time.

If your point is that you can define a model of computation with contradictions in it, then you should rethink whether what you are saying here is even relevant to the thread at all.

<comment><USER5> You can shurt circuit comparisons but that's not always going to happen. Consider it's completly reasonable to assume long int is sorted as fast as int on a 128 bit CPU. If nothing else it's useful to have a fairly long cycle even if you could in theory use a 20GHz CPU that has some comparisons finish in 4 cycles and others just 1. Sure, it might be slightly faster than a 5GHz CPU with constant time comparisons, but the added complexity is not free.

<comment><USER2> I am not sure I understand your point here.

Short circuiting comparisons is still linear for integers of unbounded size. But besides that, it's incredibly common to assume that 64-bit primitives are done in constant time, because to the asymptotic analysis, what matters is that the integers are _bounded_ in size. As long as it's bounded, the asymptotic analysis here doesn't care -- you can pick any size you want, as long as it's bounded.

One thing to keep in mind here (which it seems you are maybe confused about) is that these bounds are _asymptotics_ of the input size generally, and have very little to say about any particular choice of input size. 64-bit, 32-bit, whatever, it doesn't matter, if the size of the operands is bounded, the they're the same thing to the asymptotic analysis. As long as they're bounded, you can say that the operations on those operands is proportional to a constant times the (bounded) size of the operands.

The consequence of this is that when you deal with operands of _unbounded_ size, all of this asymptotic analysis goes right out the window. You can't possibly have a meaningful comparison operator, for example, that operates in constant time on unbounded integers.

<comment><USER5> With parrell analysis comparisons are log N operations. P1 compares N bits, P2 compares N bits, if use P1 unless it's equal then use P2.

Short circuting cuts that to log(log(N)) on average and log(N) worst case.

It's actually generally faster to compare X bytes of Vary large numbers than X Bytes of long int's. Degenerate case being 2 numbers of x/2 bytes.

Anyway, the point is treating log(log(N)) as constant is generally reasonable especially when N is small.

<comment><USER2> The discussion is about big O, yes? This isn't really relevant to our discussion. Parallel analysis and average case, for the purposes of the discussion here, are fancy games you can try to play to get nice bounds, but they do not really have any impact on the big O of these algorithms.

<comment><USER5> "You can't possibly have a meaningful comparison operator, for example, that operates in constant time on unbounded integers."

We don't really deal with unbound integers worst case is something like 2^(2^1,000,000,000,000,000,000)) before we can't actually store them.

Even then log of log of N makes random numbers of that size practically constant time to compare. Put another way there is less than 1 in 2^64 you need to do more than 3 comparisons and less than one in 2^128 you need more than 4. One for length, one for the chunk which might be just one bit and one more for the next 64 bits. Sure that might happen, but reolistically random input is unlikely to need many comparisons.

Stings on the other hand are more of an issue.

<comment><USER2> Retric, look.

Do you realize that the whole point of asymptotic analysis is that _we do not care_ what integers we "really" deal with? These bounds specifically deal with sorting arbitrary data of unbounded size, and _no other assumptions_.

Do you understand? No assumption that we can use parallelism. No games with integers you see in "real life". None of that is relevant. You can't play games with practicalities to get a better bound. This is the general bound, and if you fiddle with it to get something else, you are changing the scope of the question to be something else entirely.

If you want to have a discussion about those other models, fine, but that's not the discussion we're having.

<comment><USER5> What your talking about is a type of overly simplified model that's irrelevant for actual computing. My point is there are other models out there. If you actually want the fastest algorithm out there you need to design it for actual hardware with finite data, cache, limited registers, limited ram, and sometime aproximating a real instruction set etc.

However, by changing your assumptions you can still use O notation with more complex models.

<comment><USER2> Yes, everyone knows this. This is not helpful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sadly, the somewhat lengthy Wikipedia entry for Sleep sort was deleted. Here's archive.org's version:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20110622073615/http://en.wikiped...](https://web.archive.org/web/20110622073615/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_sort)

Reading through Wikipedia's existing pages for other esoteric sorts makes me laugh as I did when reading Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy's various entries for scientific theories (e.g. Bistromathics)...There's Bogosort, Stooge sort, American flag sort, and my favorite, "Gnome sort", named thusly because "that is 'how a gnome sorts a line of flower pots'" [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnome_sort](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnome_sort)

<comment><USER7> I like the comparison between the incredibly inefficient Bogosort:

        1) Shuffle the list.
        2) If it's sorted, halt.
        3) If it's not sorted, go to step 1.

and the incredibly efficient Quantum Bogosort:

        1) Shuffle the list.
        2) If it's sorted, halt.
        3) If it's not sorted, destroy the Universe.

According to the Many Worlds interpretation, step (1) creates multiple Universes, each with a different ordering of the list. Step (3) ensures that, by the anthropic principle, we must be in a Universe where the list was sorted correctly (otherwise we wouldn't be around to observe anything).

<comment><USER8> how does it destroy the universe though? I am really not very familiar with things in the quantum world and that kind of stuff.

<comment><USER7> That's an implementation detail ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Didn't saw this post before

 _I heartily disagree with all the attempts to downplay the brilliance of the sleep sort algorithm. Many of you have missed the important point that while traditional sorting algorithms can only utilize one core, sleep sort has the capacity to use the full power of a massively parallel execution environment._

 _Given that you need nearly no computing in each of the threads, you can implement them using low-power CPUs, so this is in fact a GREEN COMPUTING algorithm._

 _Oh, and did I mention that the algorithm can also run inside a cloud...?_

 _Sure, you 're a genius!_

</comment><comment><USER10> One should know that it is the timer scheduler of the kernel which ends up doing the sorting. With Linux, this is probably a red-black tree[1], so performance of sleep sort (when it works) is O(n *log(n)).

[1] [https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/timers/hrtimers.txt](https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/timers/hrtimers.txt)

</comment><comment><USER11> With fluxcapacitor it will run in fraction of a second!

[https://github.com/majek/fluxcapacitor#basic- examples](https://github.com/majek/fluxcapacitor#basic-examples)

$ ./fluxcapacitor examples/sleep_sort.sh 1 4 20 3 55

<comment><USER10> I remember a few years ago, I hacked up the Wine source code so some skiing game would run at half speed. It totally worked :) It was even simpler than fluxcapacitor since you don't need to hook anything but just change the implementation of some time related functions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Pardon the shameless plug, but I've recently used a similarly unorthodox approach for replacing the heap inside Dijkstra's algorithm, and got a speedup - I use an array indexed by the vertices' current distances, and scan it from start to finish.

A paper is currently making the rounds, would love to hear feedback:

[https://www.dropbox.com/s/zy1gx1azfvvqm6i/NetSciComm%20versi...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/zy1gx1azfvvqm6i/NetSciComm%20version%2C%20December%202014.pdf?dl=0)

</comment><comment><USER13> For the record, in that thread, there are implementations in Bash, Erlang, Haskell (I think), Perl, C, and Racket. It also is interspersed with entertaining banter and unentertaining racism. So, basically, a more caustic more technical less orderly version of HN. Think about that.

There's a reason 4chan should be considered a national...maybe not treasure, but it's pretty awesome.

</comment><comment><USER14> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2657277](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2657277)

Pretty sure it's been posted a couple other times, but I'm on a tablet at the moment.

</comment><comment><USER15> Recently I wrote about sleepsort for the Perl 6 advent calendar, mostly as a fun topic to talk about threads, promises etc.

[http://perl6advent.wordpress.com/2014/12/23/webscale- sorting...](http://perl6advent.wordpress.com/2014/12/23/webscale-sorting-of- the-sleepy-kind/)

</comment><comment><USER16> C implementation for Windows:

      #include <stdio.h>
      #include <windows.h>
      #include <process.h>

      void sleep_on_it(void* param)
      {
          int n = *(int*)param;
          Sleep(n);
          printf("%d ", n);
      }

      int main(int argc, char **argv)
      {
          int ar[argc];
          HANDLE threads[argc-1];
          for (int i = 1; i < argc; i++){
              ar[i] = atoi(argv[i]);
              threads[i-1] = (HANDLE)_beginthread(&sleep_on_it, 0,  &(ar[i]));
          }
          WaitForMultipleObjects(argc-1, threads, TRUE, INFINITE);
      }

Compile with gcc -std=c99 (because of VLA's it won't work in Visual Studio).

Example:

D:>sleepsort 1000 9 2 150 1 7 17 624

1 2 7 9 17 150 624 1000

</comment><comment><USER17> Radix sort, with time as the buckets...stylish.

</comment><comment><USER18> This guy makes the rounds every once in awhile it seems. Here's a /r/dailyprogrammer thread with solutions in various languages: [http://www.reddit.com/r/dailyprogrammer/comments/yqydh/82420...](http://www.reddit.com/r/dailyprogrammer/comments/yqydh/8242012_challenge_91_easy_sleep_sort/)

</comment><comment><USER19> javascript version (faster):

        var input = [5, 3, 6, 3, 6, 3, 1, 4, 7];

        var timeAxis = [];
        // Put every element to the corresponding time point.
        // Time point would hold an array, as we can have
        // equal elements.
        for (var i = 0; i < input.length; i++) {
            elem = input[i];
            timeAxis[elem] = [elem].concat(timeAxis[elem] || []);
        }

        // skip all empty (UNDEFINED) time points
        // and contact all the arrays:
        var sorted = timeAxis.reduce(function (accum, cur) {
                                         return cur ? accum.concat(cur) : accum},
                                    []);
        console.log(sorted)

<comment><USER19> The speedup is from usage of _virtual time_, which we don't need to wait for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is my new favorite after bogosort.

I'm sad nobody has implemented my idea, rock, paper, scissors sort.

<comment><USER21> And what, exactly, is rock paper scissors sort?

<comment><USER20> The comparison function is a game of Rock Paper Scissors with the winner being given the 'greater than' position. Games proceed until all items are in sorted order :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Do you mind if I submit a javascript version!?

[http://js.do/code/48519](http://js.do/code/48519)

[http://js.do/code/48526](http://js.do/code/48526) (Optimized milliseconds). :)

</comment><comment><USER23> if you'd like to trade space for time, here is another sort with _no_ comparisons: [http://codepad.org/0k2Ou2Db](http://codepad.org/0k2Ou2Db)

<comment><USER24> I don't know Perl, so I rewrote it in Python in an attempt to understand what's going on: [https://gist.github.com/vlad003/35105af5892cb9cc5051](https://gist.github.com/vlad003/35105af5892cb9cc5051)

I'm not storing key,value pairs for elements that don't exist (not sure what the Perl code's doing), so it shouldn't be too bad in terms of space used.

<comment><USER25> I'm not entirely sure about this, but it looks more like Counting sort [1], than Pigeonhole sort.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> (impure) ruby implementation:

ruby -e '[3,1,2].each{|n| system("sleep #{n} && echo #{n} &")}'</comment>


Parallel Computing: Why the Future Is Non-Algorithmic - <AUTHOR> http://rebelscience.blogspot.com/2010/02/parallel-computing-why-future-is-non.html

<comment><USER2> Concurrent programming is non-algorithmic?

Tell that to anyone hacking erlang.

"a one-dimensional sequence of operations to be executed one at a time"- is this a parody?

<comment><USER3> If you read the other articles on the site you'll see that he's either a troll or a crank.</comment></comment>


Isis tells its terrorists not to travel to Europe – because of coronavirus - <AUTHOR> https://nypost.com/2020/03/15/isis-tells-its-terrorists-not-to-travel-to-europe-for-jihad-because-coronavirus/ <comment><USER2> Splendid idea. While they're at it, they should also self-isolate and quarantine themselves in the middle of the desert forever or they can simply ring an ambulance so we can take all of them into the nearest dungeon.

Either way, if they can't catch Coronavirus, then it will catch them; soon enough.

</comment><comment><USER3> Be thankful for small blessings!</comment>


Show HN: Magic Keyboard - <AUTHOR> http://magickeyboard.io/ <comment><USER2> Nice.

I just wasted 20 minutes messing with this in work trying to figure out what I could do.

If I hold a key down for 10 seconds or so the letters tend to rain down about a minute later lol.

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice but needs some form of clean up running as the animation slows down more and more. A quick peak at the code shows there's a platform to catch the letter but there doesn't appear to be a clean up to delete them after?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's right. I should delete the letters after they collide with the platform.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice.

Its performance in Chrome is very good. But in Safari it is very bad.

</comment><comment><USER5> those words like matrix reload

</comment><comment><USER6> Fantastic!</comment>


Simon Pegg Admits He Used Wikipedia to Fact-Check Script for 'Star Trek: Beyond' - <AUTHOR> http://sciencefiction.com/2016/04/20/simon-pegg-admits-used-wikipedia-fact-check-script-star-trek-beyond/ <comment><USER2> <nit> Memory Alpha is a _wiki_ (generic), not a _Wikipedia_ (trademarked).

<comment><USER3> should the title be changed to reflect this?

<comment><USER4> It should be - changing "wikipedia" to "fan wiki" would be far less misleading.

<comment><USER5> Except the title is reporting what Pegg said, right? So, wouldn't it be better for the title to report Pegg exactly, and not corrected? Perhaps they should just have quotes to indicate.

<comment><USER4> No? The purpose of the title should be to describe the content of the article. If reporting what Pegg said exactly makes the title misleading there's no reason to quote him. Even if you wanted to use his words exactly I would have put "fan website 'Memory Alpha'".</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Amazon bans incentivized reviews tied to free or discounted products - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/03/amazon-bans-incentivized-reviews-tied-to-free-or-discounted-products/ <comment><USER4> FINALLY!!! You can't buy a single tech accessory on Amazon without these fake reviews.

Next they need to get rid of grouping reviews for different product versions.

They also need to ban merchants from hounding me to review their products. One of them even called me on my phone. I don't know how they got my number.

<comment><USER5> > Next they need to get rid of grouping reviews for different product > versions.

This is huge. It seems to be a common tactic for companies to get a product's rating up to 4.5 stars, then replace it with a lower quality version. I notice only when I filter for the most recent reviews.

<comment><USER6> I think this is a slightly different issue, which first entered widespread public discussion in the SSD market.

Basically Kingston (I think?) and a few others released a new SSD and used very high quality components in them, so that they exceeded advertised specification. After the early-adopter reviews came in with the benchmarks and whatnot, they altered the build to use lower quality / cheaper components. When discovered and confronted, their argument was that the lower quality builds still met spec, so it was appropriate to sell it under the old model number and listings, but the upshot was that they got to produce low quality products while benefiting from reviews and benchmarks that were run against a higher quality product.

I don't think there's much Amazon can do about this particular issue... although yes it would be a great help if you didn't see reviews for the 900x version of something while looking at the 1x version page.

<comment><USER7> From a few things I've read, I don't think this is specific to Kingston. It's apparently pretty common for offshore factories to optimize for cost while keeping the product apparently the same.

There is a principal-agent problem. The company whose brand is on the line needs to be diligent about catching it in QA.

I seem to remember reading somewhere that Walmart will ask the manufacturer to build a special lower-quality version of the same item to keep costs down. So a direct price comparison can be misleading.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, I wonder if it's always the fault of the brand, actually.

I remember that during the FTDI fiascos[0] one of the often-raised complaint is that many vendors don't even know they're using fake FTDI chips, because it's the factory that decides to replace the genuine chip with a counterfeit to cut down on costs.

Then again, a cynic in me sees this as a plausible deniability scenario - <USER2> brand can always _say_ that they didn't know about the component switchup, "it's that Chinese factory that did it, and we're _investigating_!".

[0] - FTDI supplies the most popular USB-to-serial chips, which are present in pretty much any USB-connected device you have; on two instances they released driver updates that detected and _bricked_ devices with counterfeit USB-to- serial chips.

<comment><USER9> There's a fine line here between "counterfeit" and "clone". It's only a counterfeit if it's sold _as_ a genuine FTDI part.

<comment><USER10> Gomorrah ( [https://www.amazon.com/dp/0312427794/](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0312427794/) ) has an interesting discussion of the workings of the fashion industry in Italy. It goes like so:

1\. A fashion label invites a bunch of clothing manufacturers to a pricing auction. They all meet somewhere.

2\. The representative of the label describes the clothing they want. The manufacturers bid for the contract, with bids taking the form "X many items within Y period of time at Z cost". For example, 800 items / 20 euros per item / 1 month.

3\. Eventually, the brand will accept a bid. At that point, every manufacturer may commit to fulfilling it. Any manufacturer accepting the winning bid is given the material for free.

4\. Whoever delivers first gets paid. Everyone else is left with a partially- complete order that they can no longer sell to the brand that commissioned it.

(4a. Manufacturers who show a history of accepting bids for the free fabric and then failing to deliver get blacklisted.)

5a. The brand sews its label onto the clothes it bought and sells them at "high" prices.

5b. The slower manufacturers may sell their too-slow clothes to the mafia, which sews a counterfeit label onto them and sells them at "low" prices.

So now we have the mafia selling "counterfeit" clothing that would have been "real", if only it had taken a little less time to create. The fabric and cut are to brand specifications because the clothes were made at the brand's direction to bear their fancy label. Would you call those clothes counterfeit?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I sell a niche music accessory on FBA. I didn't have many reviews, and it was hard to gain traction as a result.

I found a very relevant subreddit and offered to send a sample to anybody who was willing to leave an honest review, up to 10 total. I got very enthusiastic responses, and sent out the samples.

Every review that I received from this group was five stars. I at no time asked for five stars, and was very explicit about asking them to be honest. Maybe my product is just that good, but I suspect there's at least a little bias there.

More to the point, every organic review I've received since has been five stars, which leads me to think there's a crowd effect going on.

I think what I did was a good deal less scummy that what ReviewKick et al do, since they explicitly find "good" reviewers for you, and the reviewers aren't necessarily knowledgeable about the product or niche. That said, even my targeted approach yielded a lot of bias.

For what it's worth, this exercise doubled my sales. I now effectively earn the equivalent of a full time minimum wage job through one tiny niche product, and an hour's work every couple of months.

<comment><USER12> Out of curiosity, what do you sell that takes you half an hour per month to manufacture but sells for enough to make a living?

<comment><USER11> Honestly it's easy enough to duplicate that I don't want to describe the product itself on HN of all places. :)

But I will say that FBA is very easy to get into. If you ever find yourself thinking "I wish that exists" about a relatively simple product, and can't find it already on Amazon, jump on to Alibaba and source a factory that makes something similar and ask them if they'll make what you want.

<comment><USER13> And there's the bit that makes me never want to get into FBA. Half the sellers won't even mention what they sell because their business is so indefensible that if someone found out and competed it would no longer be profitable.

Doesn't strike me as particularly sustainable. Especially if you have all your eggs in Amazon's basket given their willingness to take over entire product lines with their own brand.

<comment><USER14> This used to be my feeling too, but I changed my mind when I worked with a company doing just what you describe. They grew it to a 50-people company within 5 years. Initially I felt smarter than them and wondered how on earth they could have put all their eggs in the same basket in such a way.

Then I realized that with the money they had, they had been able to hire me to do this work, so perhaps I wasn't the smartest guy in the room after all...

The thing to understand is that capitalism is about identifying opportunities to accumulate the largest amount of capital in the shortest amount of time.

The truth is if you focus only on "logical", sustainable, defensible, infinitely scalable business models, you'll be missing out a good 60% of the opportunities.

If you could let's say accumulate $600,000 in 5 months with a non viable business, you'd have all the time in the world to work on the viable businesses you mention.

In capitalism, you rarely know for sure which game the other person is playing. It's not because she is moving cards around that she is playing cards.

So the bottom line of my comment is don't be too smart . Being able to make dumb money is as important - if not more important - than being able to make smart money.

And I can even say : making dumb money at the right time is more valuable than making smart money at the wrong time.

<comment><USER13> Fair enough on your main point. But I'll ask the obvious question... What stopped you or the other employees who understood how the business worked from sourcing the same or similar products and competing?

<comment><USER14> I won't mention basic things like non-competition clauses, honesty etc... The majority of people are usually honest - especially those senior enough to be exposed to this kind of secrets / overview.

But past that starting a business, especially a physical product one is not a trivial thing to do. You need to be very motivated. Like with software you discover many time-consuming details as you implement. And here not everything can be automated once solved. Even established competitors do not copy as fast as one may think because of these forces.

It might be dumb money but it still isn't easy money - and that's what make it even dumber : why not invest the effort in something "better" someone will say.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I don't think I'll take this seriously until Amazon stops gaming their own review system.

For instance, if you take a look at Comcast's rating on Amazon the have 4 stars, but if you click in and look at the breakdown _85%_ of the ratings are one star. The fact that this magically translates into a 4-star rating in Amazon's world is a huge issue.

<comment><USER16> I was in sort of disbelief so I had to look it up.

[https://www.amazon.com/Xfinity-Internet-Mbps-12-month- term/d...](https://www.amazon.com/Xfinity-Internet-Mbps-12-month- term/dp/B01B6ZHV7C/)

Yep. 4 stars with 85% one star ratings. Amazingly awful.

To be fair, there are certain categories that amazon weights differently based on the average rating of those categories. Some types of things are just always rated poorly. Maybe that has something to do with it?

<comment><USER17> Quoting...

"Amazon calculates a product's star ratings using a machine learned model instead of a raw data average. The machine learned model takes into account factors including: the age of a review, helpfulness votes by customers and whether the reviews are from verified purchases."

<comment><USER18> But what is the machine learning to do? It sounds like it could be optimising for sales.

I actually mean that quite seriously - a machine learning system needs to have some goal to optimise for, sone way to tell whether the rating it produces is "good". In Amazon's case that is quite likely to be some measure of clicks or sales.

 _[Edited to remove typo]_

<comment><USER19> I only buy from Amazon when the product isn't available anywhere else: Between counterfeit products, external vendors that I don't know how to distinguish from Amazon itself, stuff "Available in 2 days" that gets delivered 2 months later, bought reviews, strange ratings and pictures which don't natch the description — I have a 70% chance of paying the return shipment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Keep in mind that this is more of a monopolistic move than a quality move; Amazon was already scrubbing for a while. 1\. Amazon Vine reviews are still live and will still go live -- there's no more editorial quality to them than some of the other services. 2\. This policy doesn't impact book reviews, where fake reviews, incentivized reviews, and review trading is most rampant. 3\. The easiest way around the policy will be for vendors to get shadier and not offer upfront discounting. Instead, you'll see non-disclosed reviews where the reviewer is compensated for the product costs afterwards. If done properly, that'd be hard to catch.

As disclosure, I'm CEO of Intellifluence, which is essentially a marketplace for reviews (one supported platform of which is Amazon). We emphasize honest reviews and have been trying to fight some of the shadier players, but this policy move isn't going to fix things...it just is a move to push Amazon's own program.

<comment><USER13> Can you share any stats on the distribution of your review scores? I'd be shocked if it didn't skew positive to highly positive since presumably those who don't rate positively would find nobody wanted them to review or would stop using your service.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This came up recently: Article summarizing the embedded video "Data Proves Amazon Reviews with 'Free or Discounted Disclaimer' are Extremely Biased"

[http://lifehacker.com/why-amazons-incentivized-reviews- are-b...](http://lifehacker.com/why-amazons-incentivized-reviews-are-biased- even-if-1786840382)

<comment><USER22> On that note, I'm sure this announcement will make for an interesting day over at ReviewMeta.

<comment><USER23> Searched to see if anyone here mentioned ReviewMeta. If anything, this will make their service even more important because the beauty seems to be in tying all the fake reviews together, not necessarily using these keywords.

<comment><USER22> Hmm. They actually may have a really good pitch to make to Amazon if they're even interested in being bought. If they have some really good models for detecting fake reviews (which presumably they do beyond disclaimer string matching), that might be a good investment for Amazon to make for enforcing their new guidelines.

<comment><USER23> True. I'm close to Tommy at ReviewMeta because we're "competitors" in the supplement space (he's a great guy), but I'm not sure what his end game is.

What's infuriating is that you _know_ that Amazon has the talent and data to stop all the fake reviews. Makes you wonder why they allow it..........

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is our story, We have been selling on Amazon since 2011 and about 5 months ago, some hijacker took over our listing and started selling smilar item but of lower quality. It took us 3 months for amazon to take action and got the seller kicked out of amazon. Basically he used of of those review services to upload over 1000 reviews with images to make it seem like they are the owner of the listing. We have been trying to clean up all this mess and we are getting no help from amazon.com . Here is a sample review of counterfeit product. [https://www.amazon.com/review/R2X5VE3JT02KCU/](https://www.amazon.com/review/R2X5VE3JT02KCU/) if you look at the listing, our product is totally diffrent.

<comment><USER25> Very interesting but I think there is something more at play here.

Look at the person who left you that review: SpilledInk788

She is "Stay at home mom" but she reviews over 30 products DAILY - some not cheap at all.

I suspect this is some sort of paid troll who writes positive/negative reviews (depending on the order/assignment) and post it online to whether boost someone's company rating or lower them.

No wonder she never replied to you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> How in the world will this new policy be enforced? I see only one possible outcome:

The reviewers who used to begin their review with "I received this product at a discount in exchange for a fair and honest review" will now begin their review with "I totally paid full price for this product and am a legit reviewer without paid-for bias."

<comment><USER27> first of all it is illegal to lie like that. so most reviewers will not do that.

also, amazon employs statistic engine (i am afraid to call it ai yet) and also a lot of humans who constantly monitor content (results of which goes back into stats engine)

so yes - they can enforce it on a global scale.

<comment><USER28> I think it's a stretch to think most reviewers will care about the legality (especially because it's pretty unlikely to get enforced against them) but it may get the "career reviewers." I wonder what proportion of these reviews are from those "whales."

<comment><USER29> Every once in a while the FTC goes on a rampage and Amazon not doing due diligence to ensure product reviews it uses to sell it's wares poses too much of an organizational risk as its one of the largest targets out there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> It's probably worse than the spread between 4.74 average rating (product discount) vs 4.36 average (paid full price).

If you paid full price, you probably did at least a little bit of research and made a semi-informed decision, so it would stand to reason that you should be pleased.

For a generic product being used by someone with no particular vested interest in that product or category, you'd expect a much lower rating.

(on the other hand, I suppose you could argue that the high expectations of the 'desired' product might tend to bring down satisfaction a bit)

<comment><USER31> Most people who are happy with a product will never leave a review. Everyone who receives a discounted product is required to leave a review.

<comment><USER32> Interesting, I hadn't thought of this, and this effect could actually explain the difference without any bias from incentives.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> As both a buyer on Amazon and a seller, I have mixed feelings regarding this.

On the buying side, I've seen how hard it is to wade through the reviews to buy simple products. Though I would say that it's mostly recently about product quality rather than review quality.

On the seller side, the issue is that when you launch a product and have no reviews, you won't get sales. Without reviews and sales, your product slides down into the depths of Amazon. Without the ability to give away products for reviews, we are only left with waiting for reviews to come in naturally or paying a lot for Amazon PPC to continuously force the product to the top of the stack hoping to generate some sales and then ultimately reviews.

There has to be some sort of middle ground for this sort of thing. I would think there has to be a way to launch on Amazon that can get products out to real reviewers, and still somehow weed out the "fake" reviews. It's telling that they didn't remove it for book sales as pre-release reviews are so entrenched that they didn't dare mess with it. If it's working for books, in theory, it should work for other categories.

Of course, Amazon does have a way to do this legitimately through their mysterious Vine program that you need to be invited to. Though it doesn't seem they really have a direction or know how to handle the issue themselves. For the time being, I can only assume that this will drive the review sites underground.

</comment><comment><USER34> I have a lot of respect for Amazon here. Having every product have a 5 star review is great for Amazon in the short term, it lets you "do your research" and hit that one-click ordering button without hesitation. Making the scores go down will probably reduce sales (of items that would make people unhappy anyway, but reduced sales are reduced sales).

Long term, if nobody trusts Amazon reviews, then they'll turn elsewhere to do that research. And elsewhere probably links to a retailer other than Amazon, that you might click on because you happen to be there.

It is weird that I have to be happy about the right long-term business decision, but I guess that's the world we live in. Every day I think Amazon is going to grow complacent and slowly cease to exist. That day is not today ;)

</comment><comment><USER35> About time. I hate these "free reviews".

I had to start looking at verified purchases and read a few of these with 5, 3 and 1 star ratings to get a sense if the product is worth buying for.

Was becoming too much of a hassle.

<comment><USER36> One of the few of those silly "life hack" tips that I've seen floating around that was really useful was a suggestion to look at the 3-star reviews on Amazon, if you aren't sure about something. They generally aren't especially biased (people who are biased for or against the product are going to leave 5 or 1-star reviews) and tend to have the most useful weighing of pros and cons.

That's not to say there aren't valid 5 star and 1 star reviews -- including my own, because I tend not to review products unless they stick out for some reason -- but a lot of the 2/3/4 star reviews are the most diagnostically useful.

<comment><USER37> Among products whose review distribution is heavily skewed toward 5-stars, the 1-star reviews are often the most useful, since this is where you might learn that reviewers are being offered compensation in return for removing their negative review (either by stating it directly, or as evidenced by an aggressive comment left by the seller in response to the unhappy customer).

<comment><USER38> Understanding the rate and nature of bad reviews provides much better signal than high-star reviews.

You will get a lot of garbage in 1-star reviews but I find you also find information about expected uses of the product that don't work, or other types of important feedback (for example, I was looking for a "bluetooth splitter" a while back and lots of 5-star reviews said that the product worked as advertise, but some percentage of 1-star reviews stated that several of the products added a few hundred milliseconds of latency to the audio). I also use the percentage of low-star reviews between similar frequently reviewed items (for example, coffee makers with hundreds of reviews each) to approximate design defects, manufacturing defect rate and/or ease of use issues.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> If Amazon doesn't realize its reviews are one of its main selling points, then it's stupid. I'm surprised they don't meticulously curate/maintain reviews to ensure high quality/accuracy.

</comment><comment><USER40> This is long overdue! I'd like the option of a partial refund on all the items I've purchased that had these sorts of reviews.

</comment><comment><USER41> Not far enough. They need to flush all reviews from their site and let them re-accumulate organically over time.

They can do this in phases and as a percentage of sales for a product. They have the data. I am sure they can come up with an equation to determine how many reviews to flush out per week. Having all products go to zero reviews overnight would not be sensible.

Good products will continue to receive good reviews. Same with bad products. It's the products with scammed/paid reviews that will suffer. Yes, some of those products might be good and, if they are, they'll receive organic reviews just as the others.

The other approach, and probably fairer, is to simply age reviews. Anything more than N years old (or N months old) is deleted. Simple.

</comment><comment><USER42> I applaud this but how about getting rid of the vine reviews too? I don't trust any Amazon review where someone has gotten something for free.

<comment><USER43> If they want to keep Vine (essentially monopolizing paid reviews), then at least give me the option of filtering them out with a checkbox or something.

Still not exactly forthright.

<comment><USER42> Agreed. I would like the opportunity to filter them out. I read an article once about people who spend most of their day reviewing products, even products they never purchased. I sense these are the types that get invited to Vine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Why doesn't Amazon have a simple 'verified purchaser' flag that users can filter by?

      They know who actually *paid* for the item (since they collect payments).

<comment><USER45> They do. Note the "&reviewerType=avp_only_reviews" flag in this set of reviews:

[https://smile.amazon.com/Marvels-Captain-America-Civil- Blu-r...](https://smile.amazon.com/Marvels-Captain-America-Civil-Blu- ray/product- reviews/B01D9EUNB4/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_viewopt_rvwer?ie=UTF8&reviewerType=avp_only_reviews&pageNumber=1)

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Meanwhile here few tips for fake reviews:

Select "Show only Verified Purchases" to get rid of most of fake reviews according to this 96% of "Incentivized Reviews" are not verified purchases

[http://reviewmeta.com/blog/what-can-we-do-about-the- problem-...](http://reviewmeta.com/blog/what-can-we-do-about-the-problem-of- incentivized-reviews/)

Another tip is finding products with most reviews so you get more overall rating even it has some paid/sponsor reviews. "Most reviews" sort option is hidden in most of the categories but there is a way to do it. Here is my detailed writing about this. Disclosure: I am the author of medium story and [http://www.jeviz.com](http://www.jeviz.com) which provides more sort options including "most reviews" to Amazon searches.

[https://medium.com/@ceyhunkazel/amazon-search-hack- eliminate...](https://medium.com/@ceyhunkazel/amazon-search-hack-eliminate- amazon-products-that-have-4-or-5-starts-but-only-few- reviews-f485d35d5969#.84yeyaffk)

</comment><comment><USER47> I suppose that would also work against the reverse (paying for 1 star reviews). This charity pays for one-star reviews of "culturally appropriative" halloween costumes.

[http://heatst.com/culture-wars/this-charity-will-pay-you- to-...](http://heatst.com/culture-wars/this-charity-will-pay-you-to-give-one- star-amazon-reviews-to-culturally-appropriative-halloween-costumes/)

</comment><comment><USER27> For me personally it will mean way harder to launch new products on Amazon, i.e. to get that initial visibility. This is since their search algo is based on sales of product and reviews of the product, so any new product will be lost in their search results.

(Vine they mentioned is invite only program for large corporate sellers)

<comment><USER48> This is the outcome I desire. The number of times I've been looking for a specific product, only to find all the reviews are from people who clearly only have the product because of these programs, is bordering on infuriating. Reviews like "I don't really understand how to use this but it seems well- made" are completely useless. Even for institutional purchasing I made the decision years ago not to conduct business with any seller who behaves like this.

<comment><USER49> When I got my S7, I went to amazon looking for a case and screen overlay.

I _ALMOST_ pulled the trigger on the most reviewed and almost 5 star average product when one of the negative reviews caught my eye. The screen overlay didn't fit. Then I went digging and almost all of the negative reviews pointed out that the product didn't actually fit. Hundreds of 5 star reviews for something that would not work at all.

On occasion, the reviews are helpful, but that is becoming less and less frequent and frankly I've soured on Amazon as a supplier as a result. Prime isn't the deal it once was, and pricing isn't particularly competitive for a lot of products when I shop around.

I remember this happening with Ebay a number of years back and I rarely look to ebay for anything these days. Amazon is a little stronger because they are still the go-to resource for books and cloud compute resources.

<comment><USER27> Keep in mind that amazon has listings per product (vs eBay with listing per product and seller)

It is quite likely that original product was fine, that's why all the reviews, but then it got out of stock and new seller brought new product, which was different (by mistake or on purpose) and that one was people complaining about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> About time! The paid reviews were getting really annoying and I started to feel that Amazon's amazing review system was going down in terms of quality. It's a bold move for Amazon and it sends the right message: high quality, trust-worthy reviews are much better than high quantity, biased reviews.

</comment><comment><USER51> For all those complaining about reviews based on free products, I'd just point out that most non-crowdsourced reviews have been based on free products (which may or may not be returned after the review is written) for pretty much forever. Some exceptions like Consumer Reports of course.

Arguably, Amazon reviews are different--because you theoretically expect the reviews to be coming from regular buyers. But I strongly disagree, as a general principle, with the view that if you're given a free copy of a product/book/etc. to review, you're going to simply give a positive review no matter what. Frankly, discounts feel much more like an implied quid pro quo.

I don't do a lot of reviewing (and I do reviews on my own blog, not Amazon) but I give an honest assessment and I clearly disclose if I've been sent product to review.

<comment><USER52> You don't seem to fully understand the issue. Companies aren't giving out free products to random people in the hope that their products will receive positive reviews; instead, companies are using services like Amazon Review Trader[1] and Review Kick[2] to find reviewers who only write positive reviews and who accept free products and discounts in exchange for reviews. For more information, visit the ProductTesting subreddit[3] where these reviewers chat about their favorite freebies and discounts.

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

[2] [https://www.reviewkick.com/](https://www.reviewkick.com/)

[3] [https://www.reddit.com/r/ProductTesting/](https://www.reddit.com/r/ProductTesting/)

<comment><USER27> They do not leave only positive reviews. This is not encouraged by group owners, nor reality I experienced first hand.

<comment><USER53> That's not really the reality.

Have a look at the FAQ on AMZ Review Trader where they gloss over issues that will "make Amazon delete your review", including mentioning the product name in the review, and other things that sound spammy.

They talk about reasons why your request to review might not be selected and hint about how your previous reviews may not appeal sufficiently to the seller.

The sites advertise to seller as "make more money!". You as a reviewer get free products to use in exchange for these reviews.

It's an exercise in hopeless optimism, or naivety, to say that the expectation is that you'll write honest, including negative reviews.

I'm sorely tempted to sign up and write honest but negative reviews and see how long my account lasts. I suspect "not long". It'll be flagged for "other reasons".

In their list of tips for "awesome reviews", great headlines and such are up there. "Things you didn't like" gets... half a sentence from twenty bullet points.

"Leave a disclosure. But don't do it at the start. No one wants to hear that anyway."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Eh, I'd treat them as ads. The person is paid to review them, the manufacturer can pay to have that review displayed on Amazon, clearly marked as "Sponsored Content". Amazon's already showing ads, so there's precedent.

<comment><USER55> but then I feel like the point of an ad that looks like a review is to intentionally mislead. Even if it's labeled sponsored content, the idea that it looking like an ad would be better than a normal ad admits a level of knowing that it's misleading.

ads should look like ads, and reviews should be left to real humans.

<comment><USER54> I agree; that was my intention with the 'clearly marked as "Sponsored Content"' bit. At a bare minimum, if it's clearly marked it can be flat out ignored or even filtered out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Its about TIME. I emailed amazon support about a month about this (many items I was looking for were 80-90% "incentivized" reviews), and they responding by saying they would forward it to a team to look for "fraud", but gave no indication it was a problem.

Their response afterwards was:

> "The vast majority of the millions of reviews on Amazon are authentic, but > we will continue to protect the integrity of customer reviews by taking > action against those who abuse them."

which left a bit of a bitter taste. I suppose I didn't expect them to say anything about a change in policy but I wish they had admitted that it was even a problem.

</comment><comment><USER57> Amazon is in a weird position on this.

On one hand, they want more and more sellers and try very hard to grow FBA, because

1\. having outside sellers trying to market new products offsets the cost of market research and development to those sellers (instead of doing the work in house)

2\. competition between sellers drives the prices down, which drives prices up

On the other hand, they need to police sellers and try to keep reviews honest, or they risk losing customers' confidence.

My guess is, the first objective (many sellers) is more important than the second one (honest reviews), so they will probably not enforce this new policy very aggressively.

<comment><USER58> > so they will probably not enforce this new policy very aggressively.

I don't know about that. I left one of those "in exchange for my honest review" reviews without using _that_ exact language, and they refused to post it. I had to re-submit with the right phrase pasted in.

The language I used in the original review was even more upfront about receiving the product for free and my review procedure. So I'd guess that they will enforce something broadly across the board and then be kind of tone deaf about the way they enforce it.

I think a big part of the problem with reviews is, when you're looking for something to buy, _and_ you're a savvy buyer, you generally want the product to fulfill conditions X, Y, and Z. If you receive it for review, you are generally only looking to fulfill condition X, and _maybe_ Y. For example, you'd probably never think, "oh, I should test this bluetooth transmitter from the back seat of my carpooling minivan" if you work from home all day.

That you didn't think of condition Z and still gave the product five stars will probably piss off somebody somewhere, but really, people with special conditions or who are aware of specific issues with that kind of product should be researching _within_ reviews, not just taking some random reviewer's five stars as a green light. They should be asking product questions. They should be contacting the manufacturer directly if they buy the product and they think it sucks. But they almost never do those things.

I agree there are dishonest reviewers, but I think Amazon's goofy review system--in which 3 stars == failure, and 4 stars == "think twice," is really the perfect setup for that kind of situation.

<comment><USER57> I'm not saying those paid for reviews are good. I think they are worthless, for many of the reasons outlined in the article (vendors select reviewers that only leave 5 stars) and in your comment (professional reviewers don't "need" the product they are reviewing and therefore don't even know what qualities to look for (even if they were inclined to be completely honest)).

But what I am saying is, Amazon needs new sellers... and new sellers need reviews.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> I like the move, however small sellers will have a hard time gaining traction now. It would be nice if they limited the number of reviews, or there's a tag where if you leave a review you say you were incentivized. Those reviews are hidden by default and does not contribute. Or Amazon shows two reviews, one incentivized and one not. Even their vine program reviewers can have bias, so really it's about more control for Amazon.

Full disclosure: I was given a chance to read the article for free in return for my unbiased and honest comment.

</comment><comment><USER60> Can they please go back and clean up all the existing reviews? I never understood the 'honest review in exchange of the product' thing because it was always 5 stars and rarely honest.

</comment><comment><USER61> Amazon Vine requires you provide tax identification number as to declare FMV on your income tax. That's a real non-starter for a lot of reviewers.

</comment><comment><USER62> > However, it has allowed businesses to offer products to customers in > exchange for their "honest" review.

Seems like a pretty bizarre exception to begin with.

<comment><USER63> I've been in the Vine program that they mention in the article for several years - I can tell you that, seriously, honestly, no kidding, there are no repercussions for posting a negative review of a free Vine product. I've posted scathing reviews of terrible (but free) products, wondering if I'd be mysteriously "removed" from the Vine program for doing so, and never gotten so much as a question about them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> I know someone who spends a good part of day looking to get these discounted products, although the reviews he writes are honest, biased - I am not liking the addiction he has got, buying cheap unnecessary stuff non-stop.

Everyday he has to buy something, this might not be sane on a long run, happy it will end soon.

</comment><comment><USER65> Sure these trumped up reviews are not arms' length from the vendor, but they often give details of the product that are not in the official specifications. That's been useful to me on more than one occasion when deciding between two similar options.

</comment><comment><USER66> This video[1] posted Sept. 19th 2016 got more then 500k views, I wonder if it has anything to do with Amazon's decision...

1\. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdLI62JKpCk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdLI62JKpCk)

</comment><comment><USER67> Finally. Reviews, especially on highly contested catgories, had turned into a cesspool over the last couple years. The varieties of gamesmanship will doubtless continue but this is at least one of the hydra's heads.

</comment><comment><USER68> About time, but I think it would be beneficial to have a way of filtering these "paid" reviews or not counting them towards the overall rating. Something for everyone ...

</comment><comment><USER69> This is actually a terrible idea, IMO. Currently people announce when their review was of a freebie. Now people will still do it, they just won't disclose it.

</comment><comment><USER27> [http://imgur.com/a/QQ4bk](http://imgur.com/a/QQ4bk)

<comment><USER70> If you're "Me" in that chat, you have this chat record to fall back on. My mom is an Amazon Seller (got the top 25% Holiday Seller Award twice) and her experience when asking about policy matters is the SellerCentral Associates tend to shoot from the hip and give whatever they think the answer is.

So note to other sellers, ask first and save the record of the conversation, instead of relying on the something you found on Imgur. Seller Performance (the legal team) will always give you a pass for bad information from Amazon Reps when considering the death penalty. No such leniency is granted for "the other guys were doing it" or "a third party told me something that directly conflicts with the Amazon Business Services Agreement".

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> I don't know. The phrase "free and unbiased review" were a strong negative signal.

</comment><comment><USER72> It's about time. I can't believe they ever allowed it in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER73> Good. My highest up-voted comment ever on HN was specifically about this problem. Clearly something that resonates as a problem with their customers:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12033964](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12033964)

</comment><comment><USER74> "Set up an Amazon Giveaway" They promoted it to boost the sale.

</comment><comment><USER75> I buy almost nothing on Amazon without using fakespot.com these days.

</comment><comment><USER76> Is this a move to consolidate paid reviews into the vine program?

</comment><comment><USER77> Is this retroactive?

Really should be.

</comment><comment><USER78> There are plenty of budding entrepreneurs that will be unable to move new products because everyone is going to be afraid to buy without reviews

</comment><comment><USER79> ... except their own

</comment><comment><USER80> I think reviews tied to discounted products should be be given a weight reduced by the amount proportional to the discount received. So a product with a 75% discount should be given a 25% weight in the weighted-average review score.

<comment><USER81> Sellers will just game this by paying someone to buy the product at full price for a good review.

<comment><USER57> Maybe, but how? I mean, how does it scale? You can call a few friends for your first product (maybe) but at some point you run out of friends and you need to recruit people you don't know.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER82> As a top reviewer, I got sent a link to a secret Chinese Amazon with 31 pages of free and discounted products to review (some show lingerie in this screenshot so careful if you're at work):

[http://imgur.com/a/LfO82](http://imgur.com/a/LfO82)

</comment><comment><USER82> This sucks. I worked REALLY hard to become a top reviewer (ranked ~10,000th) so that I could get free and discounted stuff, and just these past few months, I've finally gotten to the point where I get 1-3 offers per day now.

<comment><USER35> But how do I know you really needed the product and use it in an everyday situation?

That's the problem I have with these freebie reviews. I want to know if the product that I need works as advertised as told by people who actually need it and use it themselves.

Not by people who just liked getting free stuff.

Or do you actually pick what you actually need for free and thus are able to give a good review?

<comment><USER63> I (not OP) am in the Vine program that they mention in the article. I admit that it puts me in sort of an odd position to be trying to write an unbiased review of something that I got for free, but I always do my best to mention in my review whether I feel like I would have paid the cost of the item, all other things being equal. For me, the most difficult part of the review is that we're on the hook to review the product within 30 days of receipt - <USER3> some cases, that's not enough time to really get a sense of how well the product holds up.

<comment><USER83> Personally, what I'm looking for _is_ a biased review by a person who bought the item intentionally.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


7 Principles of Effective Icon Design - <AUTHOR> http://psdtuts.com/articles/7-principles-of-effective-icon-design/

<comment><AUTHOR> I know that this isn't traditional news.yc fair, but nearly every application created these days needs a full compliment of graphical elements.

We're having some custom created for us, and some, we're making ourselves (Eugh).</comment>


Recent post about a Tee-shirt startup - <AUTHOR>

The article was about customer service etc and how they started the company because they saw a market for no-money down teeshirt campaigns.  My search foo is failing me now, can someone link it to me. <comment><USER2> Teespring <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5172255>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you</comment></comment>


Transitmix (YC W15) Cuts the Paper Out of Bus Route Planning - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/18/transitmix/

<comment><USER2> Very interesting and encouraging to see a public transit service in YC.

Article says that you all don't have prior experience in transit. Are you learning from your early adopters as you go?

How much and how often do agencies re-plan their routes?

How much of planning is driven by politics vs driven by data?

What positions you all vs the consultancies who do planning? Would you expect consultants to be your customers or competitors?

<comment><USER3> >How much of planning is driven by politics vs driven by data?

I recall living in Seattle around the time the light rail route was being planned. It seemed to be about 80% political. And so you meander through everywhere before you get to a useful destination. Like transit systems which stop short of an airport.... Or take the circuitous route to the airport...

<comment><USER4> Two of the best air-rail connections are Narita and Schiphol.

The transitions are so seamless that you can disembark and accidently end up on the train platform without even trying.

Two of the worst are in the USA: Honolulu and SFO.

Honolulu has the ideal topology for a light rail (straight line from airport to Waikiki), but won't build a light rail to the airport because then all of the taxi drivers would become unemployable.

SFO is breathtakingly bad. Just try transferring the first time from Caltrain => BART San Bruno => BART SFO on a cold weekday to really appreciate how awful it is. I just tell people to take a taxi from Millbrae.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have met the Transitmix team while I was at Code for America and all I have to say is that these guys are just plain ol' _awesome_. If you have not seen their demos yet, search them in YouTube. Amazing stuff.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi, founder here. Throw any questions you have my way.

<comment><USER6> I know you're just getting started with a lot of this, but how much planning are you doing with counterintitive transit issues, like bus holdovers at major transit centers? There are a lot of frustrations of busses scheduled to drop off or pick up passengers at stations, but with no layover to do both duties. This naturally leads to rather grumpy transit riders. Is your application going to be set up to handle situations like that?

<comment><AUTHOR> Those are called pulse points. There's some great background here: [http://www.humantransit.org/2010/12/basics-finding-your- puls...](http://www.humantransit.org/2010/12/basics-finding-your-pulse.html)

Today, planners use some scary excel sheets to try to figure this out. They are scary enough that most don't.

Definitely on our list of things to tackle.

<comment><USER6> Interesting article, and I can just imagine the scariness of figuring out the pulse points of the various Bay Area transit hubs and agencies (aside: can we please get like half of the agencies to just go ahead and merge already, interagency transfers are the worst) using tools like massive excel sheets and the like. Anyways, best of luck in incorporating all this info.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Pretty cool! I imagine something like this would be especially useful in rapidly developing countries.</comment>


Will software that writes code alter tech's script? - <AUTHOR> http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/6c6ccace-521d-11e5-b029-b9d50a74fd14.html

<comment><USER2> "We learnt that we were building the same thing over and over, and realised that the more interesting thing to do was to cut out the wasted effort and cost, and work out how to automate 90 per cent of writing code."

I view that as a failure of abstraction and composition, not as a failure of automation. If it's tedious to hook up window controls to underlying data, or to handle properly a form validation loop in a controller for the millionth time, we should be asking why the abstraction layer we are using requires that tedium instead of being more succinct?

Often the abstraction is complex because of the degrees of freedom it has. Automation on the other hand reduces the degrees of freedom. This is great if you are the one who is reducing and making the choices, but if you are letting someone else make all the choices about what is possible... It's like the difference between driving and being chauffeured.

Even if this system were like the mathematician: "show me all possible worlds satisfying X" it would require either a huge search space to pick the desired answer or present only a handful of preselected choices. Search refinement is more interesting, sounds like a great deal of complexity to avoid (less?) complexity of actually doing the work-- especially in meanial cases-- i.e. I don't want to sift through 1000 variations of form validation to "find" the magic one that completely meets my business needs.

</comment><comment><USER3> Here's a good comment from a reader, which I think addresses a misunderstanding behind this article about what programming actually is:

> The thing that takes time is humans understanding what they want. > Programmers are like therapists who help them crystalize their thoughts to > the point where they are at least vaguely consistent. The program is just a > representation of that idea.

<comment><USER4> Yet the widely recognized most effective way to crystallize the idea, is not via therapy but through rounds of prototyping. Now only if prototyping is as easy as snap a finger.

Coding automation too will help to make better software.

What programmers have done is to translate human ideas into machine understandable symbols, or graphic layout. Not he latter is probably far more difficult than the former which itself can be as hard as NLP and essentially the goal of the almost entire computer language evolution, to improve the effectiveness of translations human ideas to computer understandable symbols.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> We already have code that writes code. Guess who uses it: programmers.

It doesn't matter how smart the computer gets, a smart programmer with the computer is always going to be more useful than the computer on its own.

<comment><USER6> I would be careful with the word "always", because that's a pretty long time span compared to since when "programmers" even exist...

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think having the computer translate your natural language intentions into code is at least as hard as translating your natural language intentions into a different natural language. I don't see that problem being solved to sufficient accuracy, so I really doubt that this approach will replace traditional programming in the next ten years.

</comment><comment><USER8> The shark example brings to mind Star Trek TNG, when someone would 'write' a programme by simply giving vague voice commands to the computer, and end up with exactly what they wanted.

In reality it's very difficult to describe visual things in words.

Also, how does a fierce shark look different to a shark?

<comment><USER9> This is how I would imagine the 'fierce shark' being programmed:

1) The "fierce" plugin is installed and immediately run. It is targeted on the shark sprite.

2) "Fierce" is an evolutionary algorithm. It will create several hundred generations of a shark, mutating the shark sprite in some small way. The shark's fitness is based on how 'scary' the shark is, and the 'scariness' of the shark is calculated based on a dataset compiled by children that rated how scary colored pictures were from a scale of 1 to 10. The evolutionary algorithm's goal is to maximize the fitness of the shark.

3) The final shark (with the highest fitness) is outputted to the user. It will look very similar to a normal shark, with some minor variations in color to increase the scariness of the shark.

What these people are doing is not impossible. However, the potential for so- called "leaky abstractions"[0] messing up the development process is very high. Programmers will likely be necessary, if only to ensure the abstractions are functioning well enough for non-programmers to use.

[0][http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/LeakyAbstractions.htm...](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/LeakyAbstractions.html)

</comment></comment><comment> geoff-codes Ha. Having conquered the paywall:

Ridiculous. COBOL. AppleScript. Lego Mindstorms. Also:

Is it difficult to develop a programming language which is closely related to human language? ([http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/267489/is- it-...](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/267489/is-it-difficult- to-develop-a-programming-language-which-is-closely-related-to-hu))

Or, in one of the clearest and most succinct pieces Dijkstra ever wrote:

On the foolishness of "natural language programming".

[https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/E...](https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/EWD667.html)

</comment><comment><USER10> I doubt if anyone could describe in natural language a complex enough idea clearly and consistently without doing it.

It's not AI, it's Super Intelligent.

</comment><comment><USER11> So first they try and get me to download an app and when I decline, I get a paywall. I suspect the content isn't with the cost or effort to work around it.

<comment><USER12> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989)

<comment> geoff-codes Ok, got it, and fair enough. So, per said item/policy:

> It's ok to ask how to read an article or to help other users by sharing a > workaround.

So, can anyone share the workaround for this one? In a desktop browser, I get a paywall; 'x'ing out of it, I'm redirected to the front page; and blocking the paywall's html element reveals that the article behind it is empty.

<comment> geoff-codes To answer my own question (and for anyone else who's an idiot like me): Google the title of this post and look at Google's cache. i.e., [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:EI3f-tS...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:EI3f-tS04ZkJ:www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6c6ccace-521d-11e5-b029-b9d50a74fd14.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This day finally comes... yet.

</comment><comment><USER13> lol... this is Andrew Ng being asked whether machine learning will solve software anytime soon:

[http://www.reactiongifs.com/r/tmimn.gif](http://www.reactiongifs.com/r/tmimn.gif)</comment>


Bing returning highly censored results in China – any insight? - <AUTHOR> Bing suddenly started returning highly censored results on its China-facing search engine. Non-sensitive subject words still return very few results, extremely poor results and only from 'official' websites like chinadaily or other government sites.<p>Any insight here? Is this just censorship as usual, is it something new, or is it just a Bing screwup? Any thoughts appreciated! <comment><USER2> No idea what is going on (disclosure, MS employee in China, don't work on Bing). It could just be a glitch.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was thinking this, it would have to be a major screwup though. It's basically killed the entire search engine for at least 24hors now.

<comment><USER2> Tell me about it, nothing like fully harmonized web searching! Looks like it's back to normal now.</comment></comment></comment>


Thieves and Geeks: Russian and Chinese Hacking Communities - <AUTHOR> https://www.recordedfuture.com/russian-chinese-hacking-communities/ <comment><USER2> Screen amount left for an actual content on this website is less than 50% on mobile. This is obscene.

<comment><USER3> Looks fine to me? If you're talking about ads, why not use a blocker?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This article uses the word "hacker" solely to mean activities like breaking into computer systems and conducting illegal business online. This is perhaps appropriate because in Chinese, the word is always translated as the soundalike "heike" (黑客) which literally means "dark guest", thus alluding to that same meaning. If you talk about, or are seen using, Hacker News in China, they will initially only think of you as being a _criminal_ or _wannabe criminal_ , despite the other definition of _hacker_ as being anyone interested in tech and programming (according to Wikipedia and Paul Graham).

<comment><USER5> I would say that almost all Americans outside of technology think it only means a person breaking into computer systems.</comment></comment>


Could Louis C.K. Make His TV Show Using The Direct-To-Fan Model? - <AUTHOR> http://www.techdirt.com/blog/casestudies/articles/20120706/14054419608/could-louis-ck-make-his-tv-show-using-direct-to-fan-model.shtml

<comment><USER2> Steve Coogan pretty much did this last year, with _Alan Partridge's Mid Morning Matters._ It went out on youtube, sponsored by Fosters and then I think it got bought by sky and shown on TV. They were only 15 minute single camera things though. Plus, he already part owns his own production company, so I guess it's not a direct comparison.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid_Morning_Matters_with_Alan_P...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid_Morning_Matters_with_Alan_Partridge)

Also, just last week there was a 20 minute comedy pilot called _People Just Do Nothing_ on the BBC which started life as a series of 10 minute youtube shorts. It had various industry people behind it, such as the producer from _The Office._ It'll likely get a series.

It seems that in UK comedy at least, instead of pitching your show to commissioning editors at the channels, who probably won't understand it, you just make your own pilot and put it on youtube to demonstrate the concept. Peter Serafinowicz did this back in 2007: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Peter_Serafinowicz_Show>

<comment><USER3> > _It seems that in UK comedy at least, instead of pitching your show to > commissioning editors at the channels, who probably won't understand it, you > just make your own pilot_

That's less common than people who pitch traditionally, but yeah there are people who do that. I think the reason it works with comedy is that often you can make a good pilot with a tiny budget, and possibly the reason it happens more in the UK than the US is that our (English) comedy is slightly less formulaic and more crazy - subjective point of view, though.

A couple of other examples... American sitcom "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia", the actors spent $200 shooting a pilot that they showed to networks as their pitch. The Office (original UK version) was originally a student project by Stephen Merchant, with Gervais as the only actor in it, and they then sold the show to the BBC based on that video they made. Gervais said in an interview something along the lines of "the BBC never would have bought it based on a traditional pitch because it only makes sense and is funny when you actually see it".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> 'It's only a matter of time...'.

Somehow, I doubt it. Louis C.K. is in a pretty unique space to try and do this kind of thing, and as mentioned in the article he would have no obvious reason to do this for his own show. To my, admittedly limited, knowledge no-one has managed to replicate the success that Louis has had, so if the implication is that we're on the cusp of major disruption in the distribution model, then I remain sceptical. In the next 10-20 years? Sure, why not.

<comment><USER5> His show was on a few years back and got cancelled (which was part of the reason I was interested in the new show - because I used to watch the other one) so I imagine he understands that, while things are good, they can flip in an instant. I can't imagine if his show did get cancelled that he wouldn't make an attempt to bring it back.

<comment><USER6> Yes, but the entertainment industry changed vastly since his first sitcom, both in trends and in distribution. It's not merely a matter of "you win some you lose some" now, but a new world of "this is how I can make things happen, without a major studio behind me"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'd sure like to see Dave Chappelle get the cast back together and resurrect his old show. Maybe if he was in total control he could deal with the pressure. He could even stage it on his Ohio farm if he wanted.

</comment><comment><USER8> I can't see him doing it for the show "Louie" itself, since it's already in a good position.

But I could completely imagine someone else in a similar position doing, perhaps even with Louis CK's help and the same platform. Imagine if Chris Rock wanted to launch a new crazy-experimental TV show. Funding via the Internet, with Louis CK's help, and then license it to a TV channel as well. I think it would be a huge success.

</comment><comment><USER9> a thousand times yes, tv production needs that sort of disruption.</comment>


Courtney Love redefines music piracy and blasts the RIAA - <AUTHOR> http://archive.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/06/14/love/index1.html

<comment><USER2> Very nice article, and I remember reading it alot. Don't forget that it is 9 years old though.</comment>


How to Learn Cryptography as a Programmer - <AUTHOR> https://soatok.blog/2020/06/10/how-to-learn-cryptography-as-a-programmer <comment><USER2> I've really been enjoying your recent articles, especially your GCM post - thanks.

As an aside I feel like so much of the security scene is about brand building, presenting talks, etc - I feel this pressure myself and it's hard to imagine someone working a full time security job and then having energy leftover to do blogging, streaming CTFs, etc, and doing it without any recognition. I know you explained your reasoning somewhat in your previous post but I still can't wrap my head around it!</comment>


Phone companies, attorneys general announce broad campaign to fight robocalls - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/08/22/phone-companies-state-attorneys-general-announce-broad-campaign-fight-robocalls/ <comment><USER2> Wonder why this has taken so long? On several occasions, I've gotten calls from my own cell number - which seems pretty crazy - and then that leads to more calls because sometimes real people call back after missing the robocalls. At first I took screen shots because I couldn't believe it, but it's happened frequently enough that the novelty wore off.</comment>


I had to compare parallel GoL in Java, C and Haskell on 24 cores for school - <AUTHOR> http://files.getwebb.org/download.php?id=cre62rvl

<comment><USER2> Did you use bitboards or not?</comment>


Anti-foreword to the Unix haters handbook by dmr - <AUTHOR> http://pastebin.com/vBRynAXw <comment><USER2> I've still my copy of the UHH, and my barf bag.

It remains probably one of the best books on the subject of operating system design, and all the better for being insanely opinionated.

Fundamental objections included: * It was user hostile (still is) * It didn't handle text very well (still doesn't) * The "de-facto standard" mentality where bugs are promoted as features (still present) * Lines of text are a bad model for program composability. (If you believe this is false, ask why perl exists.)

If you want to see alternatives to the "lines of text" mentality, you can look back in time to LISP machines, or just play with powershell on a windows box.

<comment><USER3> Last I checked almost all source code is "just lines of text". Convention is what gives speech / words / code / user interfaces meaning. The Unix command line interface was designed for programmers, and in particular systems programmers; as the old joke goes Unix _is_ user friendly, it's just particular about who its friends are.

In the end though Unix doesn't concern itself with lines of text, it could hardly care, what Unix cares about (at the user interface as opposed to the kernel interface) is files with a stream of bytes. "lines of text" belongs in the domain of application programs.

<comment><USER4> A lot of the criticisms of UNIX in the UHH come from LISPers with fond memories of the LISP Machine which (like HyperCard) had virtues orthogonal to the virtues of most programming environments today.

Much of the remaining criticism is of its command-line interface. The people who wrote the book were and are very much programmers and systems engineers, so the "UNIX is to 133t for too" argument is off-point. This isn't a bunch of people who think learning Microsoft Word is computer science complaining than reading man pages is too hard.

E.g. I don't know of _any_ UNIX user who hasn't been bitten by a typo with rm.

Anyway, UHH is a fun book to read, and it was nice to be reminded of Ritchie's anti-forward.

I love this line from Don Norman's actual forward:

"Unix survives only because everyone else has done so badly."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This has always been my favorite part of the whole book:

"Here is my metaphor: your book is a pudding stuffed with apposite observations, many well-conceived. Like excrement, it contains enough undigested nuggets of nutrition to sustain life for some. But it is not a tasty pie: it reeks too much of contempt and of envy."

It's quite a good book--the modern world of computing has been so strongly shaped by Unix that it's easy to forget that there are other ways. Of course, it makes me giggle when I read Lisp Machine programmers complaining about the size of Emacs (come on, guys, your machines took an hour to boot--I don't think your environments were especially small either), but it's nice to get some perspectives from outside the Gulag :) Reading the UHH led me to go poking around with old systems like ITS and TOPS-10 and VMS--mostly they just annoyed me, but I also learned some interesting things.

<comment><USER6> Mine is: "C++ is to C as lung cancer is to lung".

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I very fondly remember this caricature from the anti-forward: [http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/unix- haters/DennisRitchie.gi...](http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/unix- haters/DennisRitchie.gif)

</comment><comment><USER8> It's interesting to see which parts of the handbook are dated, and which are not. Surely nobody these days would criticize Unix for crashing every few days, or complain that copy and paste doesn't work in X, or about a "massive 3/4 megabyte binary", or `ed`... but `rm` is still an irreversible operation (and versioned filesystems still esoteric). Pipes still suck, even if all the alternatives are worse. C programmers still have to deal with manual memory management...

<comment><USER9>
        `rm` is still an irreversible operation

It does what it's supposed to; it gets rid of the file while freeing up space. If you don't like it, then use "git rm" instead of "rm".

        C programmers still have to deal with manual
        memory management...

Manual memory management is still required because of our current reality. A garbage collector for instance creates a fake reality, one in which you deal with memory as if it is unlimited and extremely fast. This simply does not work for system software. It is possible and it's a romantic notion too, but just as with micro-kernels, people kind of fake it (as in, putting lipstick on a pig) otherwise you're not getting anything useful done.

I do hate Unix operating systems, but the alternatives are much worse. I also liked this quote from the article:

        sometimes one wonders why you just don't
        shut up and tell people to buy a PC with Windows
        or a Mac. No Gulag or lice, just a future whose
        intellectual tone and interaction style is set
        by Sonic the Hedgehog.

Well, DMR definitely preferred the bazaar.

<comment><USER10> > A garbage collector for instance creates a fake reality, one in which you > deal with memory as if it is unlimited and extremely fast.

Actually no, GC does not suggest that memory is unlimited let alone imply anything about its speed. Systems with GC will happily punish anyone who makes those assumptions, just like any other memory management scheme.

GC merely says that a given address may become available for reuse after the last identifiable reference goes away.

<comment><USER11> I think he meant that GC is a "solution" to the problem of memory management only if you consider memory to be unlimited and fast; in other cases, it incurs a penalty and isn't really a "solution". You took is comment far too literally.

<comment><USER10> Manual memory management isn't "required" - it's merely the best option in some cases. However, GC is the best option in some others. (Every memory managment mechanism, including manual and even static, has costs.)

Yes, GC can be the best option for system software.

No mechanism is best in all circumstances.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Link for anyone looking for the Unix haters handbook: <http://simson.net/ref/ugh.pdf>

<comment><USER13> Thanks. The article makes more sense now.

For example, from the preface:

      "I liken starting one's computing career with Unix,
       say as an undergraduate, to being born in East Africa.
       It is intolerably hot, your body is covered with lice
       and flies, you are malnourished and you suffer from
       numerous curable diseases. But, as far as young East
       Africans can tell, this is simply the natural condition
       and they live within it. By the time they find out
       differently, it is too late. They already think that the
       writing of shell scripts is a natural act."
              — Ken Pier, Xerox PARC

<comment><USER14> Yeow. That's a pretty harsh criticism. What alternatives were they in favor of?

<comment><USER15> It's PARC so likely a smalltalk environment is one of the alternatives.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The Unix haters handbook was a great read (although mostly quite dated by now I think) dmr's forward was the best part though.

</comment><comment><USER17> Eloquent rant... that is unfortunately as applicable to itself as to its intended object.

Unix has its good qualities, but anyone who is not aware that systems before it had other good ideas that have been lost, is sadly ignorant of history.

</comment><comment><USER18> Indeed it was an amusing tongue-in-cheek point of view on unix.</comment>


Neurogrid: Stanford circuit board simulates million neurons and billions synapses - <AUTHOR> http://www.stanford.edu/group/brainsinsilicon/challenge.html

<comment><USER2> This talks about offering simulating millions of neurons and the interactions accurately. But since Google's famous cat experiment and further work succeeded simulating 10 billion of neurons(with a simple model) on a small number of Gpu's , it raises the interesting question: has someone been able to show any interesting benefits of accurate simulation ?</comment>