Robot Is A Hijacked Word - <AUTHOR> http://rodneybrooks.com/robot-is-a-hijacked-word/ <comment><USER2> This is how language works. Words get tweaked, re-purposed, misunderstood, munged, combined, slurred, abused, enriched, extended, negated, confused, and broken. It's very likely you are the only person with your particular perception of any particular word and all of its connotations. But the rest of the world doesn't care. Life and language move on and evolve with or without your own favorite semantics. You can embrace and enjoy the change or whine and complain, but it will happen. Better to enjoy the ride.

<comment><USER3> > Words get tweaked, re-purposed, misunderstood, munged, combined, slurred, > abused, enriched, extended, negated, confused, and broken

Or as I call it, twepurdgerruchxtegused

ken

<comment><USER4> Google sure is fast:

[https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome- instant&ion=1&e...](https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome- instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=twepurdgerruchxtegused)

<comment><USER5> give them some time to crawl and this will be the only hit when googling that!! (I'ok add a reminder to check in 1 week from now!)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Soften the R-phoneme into an L-ish one, or harsh the L into an R, and maybe pronounce it a bit more Russian than Czech: 'Robot' is not a Slavonic root, it is a close cousin of the Latin 'labor'. Swap vowel and consonant in the first syllable: See, that's German 'arbeit' ('work'). A robot is a worker, the word is ancient and Indoeuropean.

Also: I am clearly not a linguist.

<comment><USER7> I don't think there is good evidence to suggest a connection between English robot and Latin labor (earlier labos), but robot is cognate with German Arbeit [1]. All the sources I normally use say labor is of uncertain etymology.

It is not enough to just rationalize a possible set of sound changes that would lead to a transformation; you need to also prove that such sound changes are consistent with sound changes that normally occur in the divergence of two related languages.

1\. [http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=robot](http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=robot)

<comment><USER6> Actually, looking up the Sanskrit for 'work' suggests to me that I am on fairly solid ground: '√अरर्य'. transcribed as 'ararya'.

<comment><USER7> That word is actually from the word for "awl" and means "to (work with) awl". There are lots of phonological coincidences in languages, which is why the methodology I was hinting at is so important.

<comment><USER6> I know there are.

But listen, we agree on the relatedness of Slav 'rabo/robo' and Germanic 'Arbeit' (same in all Scandinavian languages), right? That relatedness very clearly suggests a very old, common Indoeuropean ancestor. Latin 'labor' really doesn't sound like an all to unikely cousin, then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't think it's actually been hijacked at all, not like "hacker". If you say "I build robots", most people are going to understand that to mean electromechanical machines, not chatbots or webcrawlers. All it takes is context.

</comment><comment><USER9> The second hijacking is mostly "bot", not "robot".

For real hijacking, there's "android". An android is a humanoid robot, not a mobile telephone.

<comment><USER5> Give Google a couple decades and let'a talk about it then ;)

(Skynet is coming!!!!) ("They" monitor the everyday actions of millions, if that doesn't give Skynet an edge on how to take over humanity, what will????)

<comment><USER10> If Google Now would be capable of open topic conversation and reasoning, it would be worthy of the name "bot".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> So is _computer_.

It too, used to refer to a person, rather than a machine. (albeit a long time ago).

[http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=computer](http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=computer)

<comment><USER12> True, for some definitions of "a long time ago"

Dorothy Vaughan and other "computers" were doing calculations by hand as a career into the early 1960s: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Vaughan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Vaughan)

<comment><USER11> She was recently portrayed in the film 'Hidden Figures', right? I haven't seen it, but it looks quite interesting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Robot is also the word used for traffic lights in South Africa: [http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=387828](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=387828)

</comment><comment><USER14> There is nothing particularly remarkable about Czech/Slavonic word "robota" (serfdom) being mentioned in English as a technical term for the system in force in Austria (and the Czech lands), nine years before it was abolished. In some countries it continued even longer.

Undoubtedly Čapek had chosen that word for a good reason.

However, to make up some kind of thesis that this mention of serfdom in 1839 was therefore the first appearance of "Robot" in English is just one convolution too far. One could argue more logically, that the first appearance of "Robot" was in old Slavonic around 700 AD or earlier. Perhaps a few thousand years earlier in its Sanskrit form. Though, surely, that is not the point here.

The point is that it was Čapek in 1921 who first applied it in the context of some kind of "soulless servant" and thus created its modern usage.

</comment><comment><USER15> > According to this report the word "robot" first appeared in English in 1839. > 1839!

There are some appearances even before that: [https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?direct_url=t1%3B%2Crob...](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?direct_url=t1%3B%2Crobot%3B%2Cc0) But everything before 1920s seems to be a little more than just statistical/parsing error.

> […] but rather to a system, a "central European system of serfdom, by which > a tenant's rent was paid in forced labour or service"

Yeah, this is pretty much exactly what "robota" means in Czech. The most accurate English word i found for it is "socage": [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socage)

</comment><comment><USER16> A few years ago, I wrote a parser for some data in a loosely structured format. Its input was a google doc and its output was html, ready for copy+pasting into our CMS. The writers who produced the input took to calling it a 'robot' and the term stuck. As the sole 'technical' person in the company, I just had to suck it up and accept this horrendous misuse of the term. Unfortunately, it's not the only instance of this kind of thing; if you're a programmer working in a team consisting solely of non-programmers, you end up developing a pretty thick skin for all sorts of stuff, of which iceberg, language misuse is just the tip!

</comment><comment><USER17> This is nothing compared to "Hoverboard". That thing doesn't even hover!

</comment><comment><USER18> > the word robot comes from an old Church Slavonic word, robota, meaning > "servitude", "forced labor", or "drudgery"

I'm not a native Russian speaker, but isn't the normal word for 'work' Rabota, and for 'worker' Rabotnik, without the negative connotation (forced labour, etc) implied by the article? At least that's how I also remember it from school.

So Robot just means 'worker', which IMHO makes a lot of sense.

<comment><USER19> It comes down to the root word "rob", meaning slave [1]. There is probably an o->a shift going from west to east slavic. From "rob" you get "robota", or work, and "robotnik" is "robota" \+ "-nik", meaning a person who performs robota. The other word you can see used is служба, or servitude, which comes with less slavery connotations. You would never call a slave "слуга", servants are paid, not owned.

[1] [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/rob#Czech](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/rob#Czech) \- The page also lists several other slavic languages where it has the same meaning and has links to the proto-slavonic term

<comment><USER18> Interesting, thanks for the clarification!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Ornithopter -> RC helicopter -> Quad[copter] -> Multi-rotor -> Drone ...

which can be a $50 toy, a $5,000 photography machine, or $50 Million killing machine. bicycle -> cycle -> bike ... which can be a motorcycle too. Seems the trend is toward simple mono-syllabic words with high ambiguity in their meaning. Predict we end up with 'bot' when they are a part of everyday life.

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm more annoyed at how certain popular kind of robots get removed from the class "robots" and given their own names. For example, people think of autonomous cars as their own thing even though all the technology behind autonomous driving came from robotics. Same for aerial robots -> "drones", etc.

<comment><USER22> "Washing machines", "toasters", "toilets", etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Wait, someone (Disney?) is defending a trademark on "droid"? That seems pretty silly. Then again, I do think of Star Wars when I think "droid", so maybe they have a good case for defending that trademark. Still, it seems to be close enough to being generic that we should fight it.

<comment><USER24> Can you find popular use before Star Wars? If not, it's not silly. They've been actively protecting 'droid' for 40 years.

<comment><USER12> Apparently it first appeared on July 1952 in a story called "Robots of the World! Arise!" by Mari Wolf published in "If" magazine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> As an aside, the "Robots Return" story is totally worth reading.

</comment><comment><USER26> Language is constantly changing in all sorts of ways, and lots of people dislike that fact.

This might be slightly off topic, but I highly recommend the first chapter of R L Trask's Historical Linguistics [0] which is a very entertaining overview of how language changes over time.

He starts with the example of the word "bonk" which after 1986 meant "copulate" but prior to then meant nothing of the kind.

He also discusses the modern [ab]use of the word "hopefully", as in for example: "hopefully we'll be there in time for lunch":

"Here is what Mr Philip Howard, a well-known writer on language, has to say about it: he describes this use of hopefully as 'objectionable', 'ambiguous', 'obscure', 'ugly', 'aberrant', 'pretentious', and 'illiterate'; finally, playing his ace, he asserts that it was 'introduced by sloppy American academics'"

He then goes on to point out that "In spite of the vitriol which hopefully has attracted, then, this word provides us with a neat and elegant way of saying 'I hope and expect that', something that we couldn't say before without using a whole cumbersome string of words."

He goes on:

"Lest you suspect that my example of 'hopefully' might be an atypical case, let's look at something quite different. Consider these examples:

"My car is being repaired My house is being painted This problem is being discussed at today's meeting.

"Anything strange here? I doubt it - I don't think there's an English-speaker alive who regards these as other than normal.

"But it wasn't always so. Until the end of the eighteenth century, this particular construction did not exist in standard English, and an English- speaker would have had to say "My car is repairing", "My house is painting", and "This problem is discussing at today's meeting" \- forms which are absolutely impossible for us now.

"... when a few innovating speakers began to say things like "My house is being painted", the linguistic conservatives of the day could not contain their fury. Veins bulging purply from their foreheads, the attacked the new construction as 'clumsy', 'illogical', 'confusing', and 'monstrous'.

"But their efforts were in vain. Today all those who objected to the 'illogical' and 'monstrous' new form are long dead, and the traditional form which they defended with such passion is dead with them."

[0] [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Trasks-Historical-Linguistics- Rober...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Trasks-Historical-Linguistics-Robert- Mccoll/dp/0340927658) (this is the second edition - my copy is the first and I don't know if the first chapter is changed)</comment>


Why Paris Is Going Car-Free for a Day - <AUTHOR> http://www.attn.com/stories/2905/paris-going-car-free-day <comment><USER2> In 1815, you needed about one hour to go from Paris to Bondy. In 2015, you need about one hour to go from Paris to Bondy.

Our politicians prefer to revert to 1815, rather than to build modern infrastructure needed to transform the city into an efficient and modern environment.

(Now of course, teletransportation might become soon available to the masses and the problem become mute, but in the meantime, it's a shame that one cannot travel faster today than 200 years ago; the newly installed and very expensive trams go SLOWER than autobuses (and bicycles at that)).</comment>


Ask HN: Where is my cloud addressbook? - <AUTHOR>

All my info lives happily in the cloud- notes, to-do lists, documents, photos, music - except for my darn addressbook - you know, name, phone number, address, email, group. Now I am not looking for social networking solutions - what I wish for is:
1. An online way of managing addresses with a decent UI (no, Google Contacts is not a decent UI).
2. A way of sharing items with family members (so only one spouse has to enter the number of the plumber)
3. Decent offline clients (ideally sync, at least read-only) for the usual suspects - iPhone, linux (akonadi?), whatever Mac/Windows worlds use.
4. Web based import - eg. my electrican's website exporting their vcard/hcard so I would just click on an icon when browsing their website (like the RSS feed monitor) to import their data in my address book. Hell, maybe when they move their new address would automatically push out.
None of this stuff is rocket science these days, so where is it? At least is there a good solution for 1-3? (I realise 4 would require some kind of standard and viral uptake). What do people here use? Is everybody tied to their OS/mobile-specific addressbooks, or are they depending on stuff like Facebook/LinkedIn? I don't want to have to join Facebook to look up my plumber's number.
PS. Sorry if this is covered before, closest thread I was able to find was http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=544738 which had a good OP but comments petered out. After reading the comments I am tempted to add the suggestion I found there of:
5. Deal with multi-person addresses like husband and wife at the same location. <comment><USER3> I've looked pretty hard into this, and the prevailing opinion seemed to be that the trouble isn't technical, it's social. Do you really want your friends putting your contact info in the cloud? In order for this to work, you really need a mechanism for people to approve sharing their info, control what gets exposed, etc. If you built such a mechanism, it has some obvious advantages - e.g. someone can update their own address and have the change be automatically propagated - but it also makes it much more complicated. It's doable, but established social sites (Facebook, LinkedIn, Google, etc.) have such a head start that you'd have to worry about them stomping you from day one.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well I think there are two different problems - personal and professional addresses. While I may not want my info public in the cloud, my plumber (for the sake of argument) presumably does not feel the same way, because his details are on his website. So problem #1 is getting the kind of free-format contact info you find in the "Contact Us" sections of websites into my addressbook. There is no technical barrier here - vcards/hcards are a decent but under-utilised standard.

Problem #2 (personal information) you are right, it needs restriction. But a household is probably quite happy to share addresses - not in the sense of each member having an identical addressbook, but in the sense of sharing some common groups - just like sharing calendars works now.

I just can't understand the seeming lack of interest in this area - <USER2> info is the one untapped area that _everybody_ uses. But there must be some stunning lack of interest in it - which would also explain why the Google Contacts UI is so poor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Get a google apps account for a domain, it has shared contacts. Bonus: If you have an android phone, it'll integrate seamlessly...

<comment><AUTHOR> Okay, that would solve my personal problem (so would seting up an LDAP server), but for the general population, getting a Google Apps account is using a canon to smite a gnat.

I was hoping somebody would say "There's a start-up for that...." :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5>
        2. A way of sharing items with family members (so only one spouse has to enter the number of the plumber)

Having more than one spouse must make it hard to keep track of things :)</comment>


My Github Résumé: Résumé generated from github information - <AUTHOR> http://resume.github.com/

<comment><USER2> It seems a little noisy, but it does filter out forks and the dates are nice. Is the user language percentage also a new creation here?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> source: <https://github.com/TrevorBurnham/resume.github.com>

</comment><comment><USER3> Really awesome! Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER4> this is a cool idea.

</comment><comment><USER5> Very cool, I enjoyed that.</comment>


Carnegie Mellon's Open Learning Initiative - <AUTHOR> http://oli.web.cmu.edu/openlearning/

<comment><USER2> this is the greatest stuff on the web; not the cmu open learning initiative per se, but just universities & colleges doing this stuff generally speaking -- berkley, stanford (amazing for this stuff), mit (sort of set the standard) and several other top-tier schools. now i've never formally taken a programming class in my life, but via many of these on-line courses and their accompanying resources, I am now a software developer! i do have two (very unrelated) college degrees, but these on-line courses have definitely changed my life. thanks for the post...i love seeing this kind of stuff!

<comment><USER3> plessthanpoint5, I'm in the process of doing some research on techniques for learning software development online. Any chance I could email you with some questions? I'm at firstname.lastname@example.com.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm a CMU grad student and had to take a class using that over the summer. It's a cool idea, but sort of poorly written. Lots of time-outs, seems to only really work well in Firefox.</comment>


U.S., Canada ban offshore drilling in Arctic waters - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/obama-ban-offshore-drilling-arctic-atlantic-1.3905384 <comment><USER2> The "US" didn't ban anything. Obama just signed a piece of paper in his last few weeks in office.</comment>


Apple goes Flat - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2013/06/10/heres-a-glimpse-at-ios-7s-flat-new-design-its-all-ive/

<comment><USER2> This article was doomed the moment it was conceived. You cannot recreate art or art assets based on an oral description.

Of course the markup looks awful, you can't describe the Mona Lisa over the phone to your editor as "a portrait of a woman with long brown hair, sort of smiling" and capture anything worth telling. Nor can you describe the new iOS7 icons as "kinda the same, with duller colours and flat design".

Don't waste your time.

</comment><comment><USER3> That mock-up screen shot looks awful!</comment>


Ask HN: Please could someone review my CV? - <AUTHOR>

I was just wondering if someone with experience as in a senior position could review my CV (resume) privately and offer feedback on where I can improve? Especially looking for skills that I could be missing which are important. <comment><USER2> I'd be happy to give you feedback. I own a consulting firm and have seen my fair share of CV's/resumes and can at least give you my opinion. My email is in my profile, just send it to me and I'll respond privately.

</comment><comment><USER3> You'll probably get some more responses if you post an anonymized version of your CV? Also some background on what kinds of jobs you're targeting and where.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'd be happy to give you feedback. Email in profile.

</comment><comment><USER5> send it my way, I have reviewed hundreds this past year. email in profile.</comment>


Analyst says Apple will enter HDTV market in next 4 years  - <AUTHOR> http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/03/23/apple_positioned_to_introduce_connected_hdtv_within_2_4_years.html

<comment><USER2> Again? From October '08:

"Years-old rumors that Apple will roll out a line of Internet-connected displays have resurfaced in reports that suggest the company will bundle its Apple TV product within a new line of HDTVs."

[http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/10/13/apple_hdtv_rum...](http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/10/13/apple_hdtv_rumors_resurface.html)</comment>


Facebook facing class action lawsuit from Kansas lawyer over tracking cookies - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/facebook/2011/10/06/facebook-facing-class-action-lawsuit-from-kansas-lawyer-over-tracking-cookies/

<comment><USER2> Privacy 1 : Vanity 50?

It's a start I suppose.</comment>


3 Degrees of LinkedIn Separation from the Military-Industrial-Surveillance State - <AUTHOR> http://linkedd.s3.amazonaws.com/index.html <comment><USER2> An alternate take on this from the title: like any industry, homeland security (for example) is likely to be a tightly knit cluster of people -- you generally network on LinkedIn (and in life) with people in your own industry.

Now at even two degrees away, a _single_ tenuous connection from the author to this cluster would instantly put the bulk of that cluster into the author's "extended network", and lead to the scary visualization shown. This connection could literally be a recruiter connecting to two essentially random people. At higher degrees of separation, the probability of finding such a path increases dramatically, to the point of almost certainty.

In other words, don't use these so-called "extended networks" for any serious analysis, and don't always trust tree visualizations of social networks.

<comment><USER3> I feel like your comment goes so far and then stops short of the key takeaway from this.

From below >>The NSA reported using 3 hops for data dumps from their bulk surveillance store.

<comment><USER2> > >The NSA reported using 3 hops for data dumps from their bulk surveillance > store.

I'm not sure what this means, and you appear to be referencing a comment in this HN thread. I'd imagine that if an entity uses a hardware splitter to intercept all traffic, the number of alleged hops used in a network traversal isn't as important.

<comment><USER3> Ok no worries, it was quite a while ago that the article came out (I think around some of the early Snowden leaks). It that claimed that the NSA used a 3 hop rule to establish a 'targets' network. They claimed to only use 3 hops to protect the privacy and constitutional rights of US citizens ie 'this is not mass surveillance guys, we promise'. (paraphrasing from memory of course)

To the authors point, 2 hops could just about be anyone.

To your point, 2 hops could be a very tenuous link.

If you put both points together you get effectively mass surveillance of just about anyone whilst still claiming to be on the right side of the law.

<comment><USER2> Thank you, that makes sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> What % of people on LinkedIn are NOT within 3 degrees of separation from you?

</comment><comment><USER5> Facebook users averaged 3.74 degrees of separation in 2011: [http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-15844230](http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-15844230)

</comment><comment><USER6> Hi all - I made this. In case anyone is interested, I wrote up a statement about it here: [http://greetingsfellowalienatedsubjectoflatecapitalism.com/#...](http://greetingsfellowalienatedsubjectoflatecapitalism.com/#linkedin)

</comment><comment><USER7> How would this compare to a diagram of degrees of separation from other skill- sets?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not sure...the author's projects page ([http://lav.io/](http://lav.io/)) is full of politically satirical/subversive work, such as "CSPAN-5: autogenerated supercuts of CSPAN videos" and "Big Data Pawn Shop: leaked NSA documents printed on merchandise" and my favorite, "Yelp Prison Review Faxbot"...so it wasn't likely something he investigated.

OTOH I've been fascinated that these are even endorsement categories and of all the subcategories beneath them...not _shocked_...just surprised because the endorsement tags I always focus on on LinkedIn are things like "Ruby on Rails" or "Front-end development"

<comment><USER8> I could be mistaken, but I was under the impression that the endorsement categories were not a whitelisted set and that you could endorse someone for basically anything.

<comment><USER9> I've had a college endorse me for "dairy", "laughter yoga", and javascript. You can endorse anyone for anything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A third degree of separation on LinkedIn isn't really that meaningful in my experience (e.g. according to LinkedIn, Barack Obama is a third degree connection of mine). Whilst it put stuff like the NSA's three hops rule in context, it doesn't really reveal anything notable AFAICT.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'd like to see an anonymous representation of that first degree of connection. Maybe the number of empty boxes leading to that second degree. Or is this information implied in the grouping (i.e. this is all from only five of his connections)? I can't tell.

</comment><comment><USER12> The NSA reported using 3 hops for data dumps from their bulk surveillance store.

</comment><comment><USER13> Does the author suggest that having these skills is bad somehow? I don't understand — what's the implication here?

<comment><USER14> The NSA uses a "three-degree of separation" rule to determine whether your communications are "fair game" for interception and surveillance. As this exercise shows, three degrees of separation is a very broad criterion, and can be used as a justification to intercept almost anyone's communications, whether they are involved with terrorism or not.

<comment><USER13> Never heard of it before, thanks for the info.

[http://www.thewire.com/politics/2013/07/nsa-admits-it- analyz...](http://www.thewire.com/politics/2013/07/nsa-admits-it-analyzes- more-peoples-data-previously-revealed/67287/)

Best source I could find, unfortunately, couldn't find the testimony itself in text.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Anyone know how this was made? As I understand it is not so easy to scrape LinkedIn at scale.

<comment><USER6> Hey - author here. I used casperjs to do the scraping. It was a pain in the ass and I got temporarily banned a few times...

<comment><USER16> I tried this last year and was blocked after the scraper visiting 500 profiles for 24 hrs. not sure if tarpitting would have allowed more than 500 in 24 hrs. requests were spread with a random sleep of 1-5 seconds.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It would be nice to see the overlap between these, and to be able to see the same chart for my own 2nd- and 3rd-degree connections.

</comment><comment><USER18> With enough people working on population surveillance the desire for self- preservation alone helps keeping the system in place. Voter incentives, economic incentives of firms (many are contractors), etc.

Still a way to go until it's on par with China's (rumored) ~2 million[1] though.

[1] [http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia- china-24396957](http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-24396957)

<comment><USER19> If it's the only half ass solution we have to prevent the next Boston Bombing or Paris Attacks what else can be done?

Until we find better solutions its just par for the course along with comments likes yours.

<comment><USER18> Norway had a terrible terror attack a few years ago. They didn't opt for more surveillance.

[http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/27/norway- terror-a...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/27/norway-terror- attacks-prime-minister)

<comment> at-fates-hands Norway also has a fraction of the population and has a history of very low violence. It's easy to say this attack was an outlier considering the long history of _non-violence_ in their country.

Norway isn't a really high target on any terrorist hit list either. One of the reasons for mass surveillance is the idea if you have a massive population its the only way to keep tabs on the bad guys.

This of course begs the question how the San Bernardino shooters got away with their attack if the NSA was properly doing their job and mass surveillance actually worked; which it clearly didn't in the California case.

<comment><USER18> The non-violent history of Norway is true.

Still, I think this misplaced fear (which many feel) is what's tricking us. If you dig a bit, there are examples in the other direction.

===

# More likely to be crushed by furniture then killed by a terrorist:

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey- cage/wp/2015/11/2...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey- cage/wp/2015/11/23/youre-more-likely-to-be-fatally-crushed-by-furniture-than- killed-by-a-terrorist/)

# Guns kill many more than do terrorists (similar argument):

[http://www.vox.com/2015/10/3/9446193/gun-deaths-aids-war- ter...](http://www.vox.com/2015/10/3/9446193/gun-deaths-aids-war-terrorism)

# Spending isn't allocated to the common causes of death:

[http://i1.wp.com/thinkbynumbers.org/wp- content/uploads/2008/...](http://i1.wp.com/thinkbynumbers.org/wp- content/uploads/2008/03/594-1.jpg?resize=620%2C1546)

# Airport security 'causing' unnecessary deaths

Slow air travel due to security is shifting (some proportion of) travelers to cars, where accidents are more common.

[http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2012-11-18/how- airport-...](http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2012-11-18/how-airport- security-is-killing-us)

===

I could go on.

Yes, terrorism is an issue that should be dealt with. But it should be handled rationally and with proportionality.

<comment><USER20> >The non-violent history of Norway is true.

I disagree, based on what I've read about Vikings. Those were some pretty brutal people.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Exterminate Mosquitoes for the Sake of Humanity - <AUTHOR> https://quillette.com/2018/09/07/exterminate-mosquitos-for-the-sake-of-humanity/ <comment><USER2> I'm having a hard time judging if he's serious when writing this?

E.g. the bit about preventing the slippery slope by having someone nobody likes pull the trigger.

<comment><USER3> I'm the author and I am completely serious. The part you mention is to foreshadow my arguing that Trump should pull the trigger.</comment></comment>


White House Petitioned to Investigate MPAA Bribery - <AUTHOR> http://torrentfreak.com/while-house-petitioned-to-investigate-mpaa-bribery-120122/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

<comment><USER2> I'm just as disgusted as this as most people are, but how is this illegal? In the United States, so long as the MPAA isn't directly giving money to politicians, this kind of bribery is legal. Per Citizens United vs the FEC, the MPAA can spend as much as they want on re-election campaigns.

<comment><USER3> You can only "donate" money as long as there are no strings attached. This is clearly extortion.

<comment><USER4> There are always strings attached. Let's say you give money to support a politician who opposes SOPA. When you give the money you are perfectly free to say "I'm contributing to your campaign because you are against SOPA".

Would it be extortion for you to tell a politician "If you reverse your stance and later support SOPA, I can no longer in good conscience continue to contribute to your political campaign"?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Petition: [https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions/!/petition/investigate...](https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions/!/petition/investigate- chris-dodd-and-mpaa-bribery-after-he-publicly-admited-bribing-politicans- pass/DffX0YQv)

</comment><comment><USER6> MPAA should be allowed to spend as much money as they want to convince the American people. But they like giving money to politicians precisely because they get leverage to pull the money back when the politician does something they don't like.

This system is extremely broken.

I signed the petition because giving money to politicians with strings attached, and then threatening to pull the funding if they don't vote your way is clearly bribery.

</comment><comment><USER7> Hollywood should make a movie about this.

<comment><USER8> Thanks for the morning laugh. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> If there any traction in non-internet USA? Are "normal" people (the politicians think any one on the internet or who merely understand the internet are nerds and not worth listening to) seeing what is happening here? Not just the likes of the terrible SOPA bill, but the seedy corrupt way US politics seems to be for sale? If this really what any one in the US wants?

What I hope for is that what the MPAA actually does is blow the lid off the stinking corrupt system where money buys law. If America is lucky, the MPAA won't just fail in its aims, it will fail and expose the depth of the blatant corruption.

</comment><comment><USER10> Did anyone else have trouble "signing" here? I repeatedly signed in in Firefox 10b, it never let me click the "sign petition" button. Disabled ghostery & adblock, still no dice. Console showed the error "NREUMQ is not defined" but chrome shows the same and it worked there.

<http://screencast.com/t/xKdWfW5r3qvE>

C'mon whitehouse.gov! Maintaining a user's session: Yes we can!!

</comment><comment><USER11> Is it just me, or is the petition broken in Chrome? It wouldn't enable the "Sign this Petition" button even when the footer said I was logged in. Safari worked, but they bound the "enter" key so that it reloads the page without actually logging you in. Thus one must click on the button. blergh.

<comment><USER12> I saw that as well under Chrome. I don't remember what I did besides, logging out, closing the tab, coming back etc. Eventually it worked.</comment></comment>


Alexa on Two New Devices – Echo Dot and Amazon Tap - <AUTHOR> https://developer.amazon.com/public/community/post/Tx20VXYKVQUVLNB/Alexa-Available-on-Two-More-Devices-Meet-Echo-Dot-and-Amazon-Tap <comment><USER2> Since [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11216976](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11216976) has the more substantive article and the more extensive discussion, I guess we'll treat this one as the dupe.

We'll wait before merging the threads in case there are fiery objections to the above.

Edit: ok, comments moved to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11216976](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11216976).</comment>


How to Detect a Toxic Customer (2010) - <AUTHOR> http://www.softwarebyrob.com/2010/12/09/how-to-detect-a-toxic-customer/ <comment><USER2> I presume this came up because it was auto-tweeted from swombat.com (this got retweeted today: <http://swombat.com/2010/12/9/how-to-detect-a-toxic-customer> ). If so, it's worth pointing to Joel Spolsky's response to this:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1987223>

Definitely worth a read alongside this article.

<comment><USER3> It's not true that large companies will form the bulk of your revenue. It all depends on what you are doing.

If you are making something that every company in the world needs one of, than you will sell a lot more to the 501 through 5000th biggest companies in the country than to the top 500. (You might be able to charge those big companies a 50% or even 100% premium on various add-ons, but it won't come close to matching the other revenue.)

<comment><USER4> But that's not how software works most of the time.

With most software licensing schemes large companies are, for lack of a better phrase, gold mines.

They have more money, more users, more computers, more servers, require more support, and require higher up time. All of which you can charge them for if you license your software appropriately.

Not to mention it's usually easier to jump through hoops for one or two huge customers than it is for a hundred small customers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Never say no. EVER. I mean it. Not one single time, not under any circumstances ever. Make them say no. The way you do this is by determining just how much you would have to be paid in order to deal with the customer. It doesn't matter if it's a completely unreasonable number. Name it. Don't just presume they will refuse and turn them away. Tell them that your product which would normally cost $1k is going to cost them $50k or $100k. What have you got to lose? Worst case scenario they will pay you a giant amount of money, and you'll have a bit of a headache, but one that you have already determined you are willing to take on for the price you named.

This applies to customers, potential employers, and basically everything in life. There is ALWAYS a price. So take the gamble. Let them decide if it's worth it from their own perspective... maybe you'll get lucky!

<comment><USER6> 37signals had an article a few months ago that essentially argued you should never do that. The argument went that if your biggest customer is only worth $200/month, it prevents you from getting confused about who you work for. If Coke paid 37signals $2,000,000 a month for Basecamp, it would turn into Cokecamp. When Coke takes their business elsewhere they'd be stuck with a weird product highly customized to Coke which nobody else wants. This does happen in practice--it's certainly one view of what happened with BitKeeper and Linux.

I think both perspectives are worth considering.

<comment><USER7> BitKeeper user here; AFAIK BitMover got $0 for hosting Linux though they did get a lot of fame. And their biggest problem apparently isn't that BitKeeper "turned into a LinuxKeeper", but rather free BitKeeper clones like git and hg (the first of which was originally created for Linux). So, just curious about your interpretation of your Cokecamp analogy; to me their problems (to the extent that they experience problems) do seem very much related to losing their biggest, most visible user, but in a different sort of way.

<comment><USER8> That's true, but it's something of a self-inflicted wound.

The release of git and hg was a direct response to McVoy yanking BitKeeper away (withdrawing the free-beer licensing terms that had previously allowed gratis use for free/open source projects); both were initially announced on the Linux-kernel mailing list as responses to McVoy's move, and each had had only a few weeks' worth of work at that point.

Before that, there had been a good deal of grumbling about the ever-shifting terms of the "don't piss off Larry license", whose increasingly draconian terms were designed to prevent the development of competitive software. (The last available version purported to bind all users to a non-compete preventing them from contributing to another SCM; I'm not sure California law would have allowed McVoy to enforce a non-compete on his own employees!) However, so long as these difficulties remained theoretical, there was not, in fact, much serious work going on to develop such competition. But when Larry revoked the license, effectively forcing the kernel developers to come up with an alternative damn quick, they did --- and damn quick.

So, the clones aren't something that the customers did when they got dissatisfied with BitMover; they're something that happened _after_ BitMover chose, on their own, to end the relationship. Which makes them, as I said, a self-inflicted wound, that BitMover could have avoided through better customer relations management.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> One thing that has really surprised me is how little you can tell about a customer based on their initial email. When I get an angry or rude email, about 95% of the time they will turn into a polite human being once I respond calmly with help for their problem. A lot of people just do not expect to be able make contact with an actual human or to get any useful help, and are angry from the get go because of this. The article mentions "disrespectful & abrupt" emails. For me this extends this to include "angry and hateful." It is truly amazing the 180 people can do once they are talking to a person instead of an anonymous customer support address.

<comment><USER10> I think it is that they have usually reached a high level of frustration before they email and it all comes pouring out. The lack of expectation puts them off writing until they have reached the edge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> We got one yesterday. Had a list of changes he expected us to make for our app. Most were really redundant and outdated ideas. I wrote responses to each portion of his email: yes, no, maybe...

I got to the last paragraph: if we made all of the changes he'd be happy to bump up his rating of our app to 3 or 4 stars. At that point I deleted everything I wrote and instead politely brushed him off and offered a refund.

<comment><USER9> I get this all the time. My strategy is to respond honestly about whether any of the changes they are suggesting are coming and why I have decided not to add them if they are not, and when it comes to the rating bribery just ignore the fact that they mentioned it. Also popular: "I will buy your in app purchase if you add/change X" (So tempting! A whole 99 cents you say?).

Interestingly with this treatment I have not noticed these customers being any more trouble than usual as a group. They usually seem very happy to get an honest response from a real person. Even though behavior like this irks me, I think it is mainly a symptom of the fact that you often have to try so hard to be heard by customer support these days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Sounds like this guy has never dealt with any Indian prospects, which notoriously exhibit many of these characteristics. Our most recent lead, which was a subsidiary of one of the largest companies in the world, involved dealing with one of the most painfully disrespectful employees in procurement that we've ever dealt with. After giving them an ultimatum that we weren't going to sign their agreement and that they could take ours or not sign at all, another employee at their company finally stepped in, apologized, and signed.

Fortunately, the more qualified leads we've encountered and close in the area tend to exhibit only a few of these traits and are generally much more respectful, but prosecting is still quite different from the US.

</comment><comment><USER13> I don't see why asking for a discount is so toxic. We ask for a discount on every transaction with a 3rd party our business makes and more often than not we get one.

It seems like most business to business transactions start with the "dummy price" out the gate.

<comment><USER14> _> We ask for a discount on every transaction with a 3rd party our business makes_

I'm curious to learn why you do that? On _"contact a sales person"_ type sales I can understand but you use the term 'transaction' which implies you are doing this on self-service purchases.

Most self-service businesses are setup to streamline (ie avoid) human- interactions which would also suggest they are _honestly_ pricing their goods/services. By contacting them for a discount you're already increasing their CAC before you then ask for a discount too.

If you have sticker-shock on the price because it's not offering a return value to you or you cannot afford it then you're probably not a target customer. That's why I don't go into the Ferrari dealership and ask for 10% off.

<comment><USER15> > Most self-service businesses are setup to streamline (ie avoid) human- > interactions which would also suggest they are honestly pricing their > goods/services.

This doesn't follow. It shows they are concerned with reducing their costs, not that they will pass those cost savings onto the customer.

Don't ask, don't get. If you are going to be a solid, profitable customer for a business, they have a clear incentive to get you on board by sweetening the deal.

<comment><USER14> People build self-service businesses because they don't want to build a sales team and/or be able to keep their price point competitive.

If everyone emailed in wanting pre-sales and discounts the price would go up because there would need to be a sales team to service the requests.

I'm telling you that as someone who runs such a business that has both self- service and sales-led products that are priced differently _(partly)_ for that reason. _(that business is hosting the OP site as it happens)_

<comment><USER15> I don't think it's as big of an issue as you suggest. If you've spent umpteen hours developing the product, the amount of additional time and effort required to put a simple discount system in place is negligible.

You could even set up a standard response email. If someone writes asking for a discount, just send them a ~10% discount code.

It should pay for itself in the form of (even slightly) increased conversions in no time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This kicked off a nice long discussion last time it showed up here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1987146>

Well worth a read just for Joel Spolsky's comment at the top of the thread.

</comment><comment><USER17> Anyone who has worked selling...anything, can understand where you're coming from. There are some real d-bags out there, and some will end up as potential customers.

But as a guy who has been on the _other_ end of these calls, far too often, I can sympathize with wanting some directness. I can't tell you how many times I write an inquiry to a company with some basic questions, and next thing you know I'm bombarded by requests to get me on a sales call. I don't have time; phone calls are inconvenient, emails are not. I've done my research, please answer my questions so I can decide whether to buy your product or not.

That's my approach now. I try to be as cordial as possible, but I ask direct questions, usually via email. If you can't answer them, I _can't_ buy what you're selling.

<comment><USER18> I've experienced this both ways. Usually when I'm looking for business products or services they are more likely to want to do an annoying "sales call" but I've also experienced this as a business owner. We try to offer a very simple service where customers can sign up online and find all of the information they need on our website. However we still get customers that will literally email us and ask us to call them (as if they can't call our toll- free number) so that they can literally ask the most basic questions.

The worst is when they ask us to "send them a proposal" or "when you can have a conference call with us?".

We work with clients in the real estate industry, real estate offices, builders, etc... I think certain industries are accustomed to working certain ways or just follow the traditional "corporate attitude" of meetings and conference calls.

If you really want a low-touch, low pain customer base I think the industry you choose is also very important.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It looks like internal politics at the prospect were at play here. The guy didn't want to be doing this and decided to take his bad attitude out on the vendor he was assigned to deal with.

<comment><USER19> Now that you say that, that brings up the possibility that the guy was actually hoping to sabotage the purchase.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The point about asking questions you can get from the website definitely rings true. We had a customer ask us about 15 questions, the answers to which were all on the website on our features page. He then asked for us to walk him through the installation of our app and a demo. After 30 minutes, we had to cut him off.

We'll definitely be on the look out for these types of customers going forward - and the cost definitely outweighs any sales we would get from these toxic customers.

</comment><comment><USER21> The customer did sound like a hassle, but by the sound of the author I think he could have admitted ways he could have improved his customer support.

\- Multiple Questions that Can Be Answered from Your Website

Improve the accessibility of the questions, educate the lead/customer on its location.

\- Asking for a discount

Whether you like to haggle or not, there are people that think part of the buying process requires a haggle. Have a trivial bonus you can award to your haggler so they feel like a winner.

\- Carpet bombing info@ sales@ questions@ support@ and etc..

These emails are impersonal, people want to talk to real people. If you aren't a big company use your name or if you want a generic account that everyone can use just make up a name: firstname.lastname@example.com

\- Calling your cellphone multiple times

If you don't want to phone support. Don't list your cellphone on your website. If you have to list a number go buy one that goes to an answering machine.

\- Email Ping Pong

If you're lead/customer is getting frustrated with every back paddle of an email you send back its possible you aren't communicating in a way they understand or your not giving them an answer they'd accept. You don't have to give them the answer they want just one they get.

</comment><comment><USER22> Right-on! These scenarios are sadly straight out of real day-to-day life in a successful business.

The colleague one is classic, or worse yet, you're called by the 'expert' himself who trivializes your product yet somehow is calling to buy it.

Top of my list though is this: Customer negotiates again after delivery. "I want a refund unless I get convoluted feature X for free, or $Y off the price."

Don't be afraid to fire a customer just to improve your quality of life. Bonus points for describing your direct competitor as a perfect fit.

Finally, for sanity's sake, never give out your personal cellphone number. If you must be "reachable," use something you can block off-hours.

</comment><comment><USER23> I feel like I read about some of our customers in post and comments. 10% of our customers generate 1-2 percents of revenue, and 70-80% of support emails (all urgent), phone calls, complaints to quality of service, requests to implement tons of custom features for them, e.t.c, e.t.c.

</comment><comment><USER24> Am I the only founder here who enjoys the challenge of a toxic customer? Make the deal, sign a short term contract, then drop communication. A customer is only toxic when they know they have leverage. My strategy: build up a false sense of leverage during the deal cycle, then at the end DHV and threaten to pull away, close the deal, and make em feel like you did them a favor. Never say no. Never charge a higher price. Get the customer first, and then make them want you, not hate you.

In regards to the specific example of the 80 question doc, I would've simply replied "sorry, I'm not experienced enough to answer these, then tell him to wait to hear from another sales manager, then circle back in 3 weeks seeing if he got his questions answered (even though you know he hasn't). He's happier than getting a "no", and his boss will wonder why the purchase hasn't happened yet. Delay, delay, delay, and let the customer come back to you. That is the filter. No use in prematurely judging a customer and potentially losing business forever. Don't less SaaS economics ruin the salesman's tact. It's all we got left.

\- god of parking and traffic

</comment><comment><USER25> "can we hit the reset button on this please?" I like this expression

</comment><comment><USER26> > _But asking us to drop our price by 25% or 30% just for kicks is not > typically a sign of an outstanding customer._

Disagree completely. Repeatedly asking for a discount over a long period of time for no reason, maybe. But just asking for a discount at the beginning or out of the blue seems to be a wise tactic in financial transactions.

If I ask for a discount the worst they can do is say no, and very often they say yes and I pay less. If I ask and they say no I and I push it and they're firm about not giving a discount, great - I'm paying a fair price that we're both happy about. If I ask and they lower their price, great - they lowered their price and now I'm paying a fair price that we're both happy about. Just seems to be part of the game you play...

<comment><USER27> I work with a SaaS product, and we've noticed that almost every customer that asks us for a discount right off the bat tends to 1. Have a low LTV and 2. Not be a good fit for us support and headache-wise. Just our experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> maybe YOU need to stop bitching...

<comment><USER29> I know I shouldn't feed the trolls, but I find these one or two thoroughly killed comments at the bottom of threads fascinating and you actually seem to have other, mostly reasonable posts.

What is this post supposed to accomplish? What actual message are you trying to convey? What about this article made you feel compelled to write a one-off insult and nothing of substance?

<comment><USER30> Maybe he's the guy in the OP. :)</comment></comment></comment>


Schoolgirls who defied the Stasi - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/11/schoolgirls-defied-the-stasi-across-the-border <comment><USER3> If you find this era interesting, I recently read the book "Burning down the Haus"[0]. Most histories I've read of the region and era focus a lot on the mechanics or politics of it, but the book was interesting to me in that it made you aware of the changes, the ebbs and flows of the East German security- state over time as they fought against even harmless "dissidents" and the abuses (and to a lesser extent incentives) to address those. Now I'm not bleeding-heart, but a lot of the tactics really start to look familiar. Modern America isn't that far removed from the Stasi.

[0] - [https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/how- east-g...](https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/how-east-german- punks-helped-destroy-the-berlin-wall-722926/)

<comment><USER4> > _American journalist and author Tim Mohr admits that when he first arrived > in Berlin in 1992, he was clueless to the reality of what the post-Wall city > would look like. "I thought all of Germany was Oktoberfest basically," he > told punk writer Legs McNeil at Brooklyn record store Rough Trade last week > to celebrate the release of his new book Burning Down the Haus. "I was > shocked when I got off the plane and everyone wasn't wearing lederhosen and > holding giant beer steins."_

And that person, with that knowledge of global culture, was a journalist?

At least in this case, traveling did broadened the mind!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> _The bus had stopped under an archway, sheltered from onlookers. Tina and the others asked the driver to open the back door for fresh air. One of them chatted to the driver, while the others let Bernd in through the back. The teenagers stood in the aisle to block the view. Bernd folded his almost 2m frame into the hidden space, and the girls piled their coats on top._

This is astonishingly brilliant.

 _Some 20 minutes later, one of their friends picked up the onboard mic and announced: "Our guest today, live in our show: Bernd Bergmann from the GDR!"_

This is where they went wrong. They should have kept quiet about it after pulling it off, not announced it like they expected everyone to approve of what they had done.

They should have tried to sneak him off the bus. At most, they should have talked to their teacher or another adult to find out what they need to do now. They may not have known to take him to a police station so he could formally and officially "enter" the system/country.

 _All their lives they had been told to be brave in the face of injustice. Now they were being treated like criminals._

Well, duh. That's why it requires _bravery_ to begin with. If everyone was going to pat you on the head for it, the problem wouldn't exist to begin with.

<comment><USER6> If you don't feel like a criminal in today's society, you are complicit.

<comment><USER5> My mother actually escaped East Germany in her teens.

I have plenty of criticism of what's wrong with the US. For example:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19888281](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19888281)

But I don't actually agree with your assertion, nor with other comments suggesting that the US is currently about as bad as East Germany was.

After she escaped, my mother helped multiple relatives get out. Family stories indicate that part of the process was sending enough cash to help them cover bribes to get their papers. My dad was an American soldier. The exchange rate was 4 West German marks to the dollar and 4 East German marks to the West German marks, or 16 East Marks to the dollar. My father's relative wealth and pragmatic attitude facilitated a lot of this.

You didn't have any means to wire it or whatever. You sent cash. Sometimes it got to the intended recipient. Sometimes it didn't.

It took tremendous faith, willingness to trust and callouses to keep sending help in the face of that and not just accuse desperate people of lying, etc.

My dad was a remarkable man.

<comment><USER7> I agree it is not as bad as the DDR was, but it is way more decadent and that may end up being every bit as effective as a police state. No one wants to tip over this apple cart under some vague notion of ethics or actual equality - <USER2> goodness no, we want to keep on being entertained and to buy crap we don't need and have stuff. We have more attachment to stuff than we have to any sense of rights let alone normative behavior for leaders. It's a classist system of neo-feudalism and any attempt to moderate it is communism/socialism. Who needs a police state when most people believe the propaganda willingly and repeat it?

<comment><USER5> I gave up my car more than a decade ago. I spent nearly six years homeless. I have lived in an SRO for about 18 months or so.

Since getting divorced, I have mostly not owned a TV. I think I have been to one movie at a theater in the many years since my ex moved out.

I'm aware it is a classist, sexist, racist system in many ways.

I also seem to be the only woman to have ever spent time on the leaderboard of Hacker News. I hit the board under my original handle of Mz about a month or so after finally getting off the street, so a lot of the upvotes that got me to the leaderboard were gotten during the years I was homeless.

I bitch regularly about the classism and sexism both in the world and on HN. But I'm not really the right person to aim your remark at. Because if you imagine you are "talking about me," then you have absolutely no idea whatsoever who the hell I am.

<comment><USER4> > _Because if you imagine you are "talking about me," then you have absolutely > no idea whatsoever who the hell I am._

Making a point in a discussion is not about the personal circumstances of the one we're talking to. Doubly so if they're an outlier, and triply so if we don't know their circumstances to begin with, because the discussion happens in an online forum.

<comment><USER5> A. I made that inference based on the framing of the remark, not based on straight up stupidity.

B. Plenty of people here know plenty about my circumstances. I know because they routinely use that against me.

So it is not unreasonable on my part to assume some people here do have some idea who I am and what I'm about. I was, in fact, very recently told I'm full of shit if I assume they don't: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19776469](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19776469)

<comment><USER4> Well, I for one, never even knew the backstory. I wouldn't assume most do.

Could be a few that have grievances against you or something.

I've noticed that some people, on online forums, get an obsession with another they had a dispute with (and felt wronged or whatever), and follow them from post to post, gather intelligence, and act like stalkers. Then again, some people are cuckoo with no personal lives and compensate in all kinds of bizarro ways online. Best to ignore those kind of people...

<comment><USER5> I'm not assuming _most_ do.

I would thank you to stop trying to police my participation here. You have something of a history of treating me like an idiot.

If you want to engage some point I've made in a good faith manner: awesome.

If you want to continue your pattern of talking at me like I have no fucking clue how public discourse on HN works, please stop doing that. I view it as a form of harassment.

If you are not consciously aware of doing that, well, consider yourself notified that I have noticed a pattern of behavior here and it's something I don't like and don't want done to me.

And if you are suggesting I simply "ignore" jacquesm, I assure you I've tried. He's impossible to ignore. He's extremely influential here.

<comment><USER6> Hi,

No, I don't know you well at all. No, I don't have any wish to control you or silence you. With that out of the way, I've read a large amount of your comments on HN and you seem to have a habit of turning basically any discussion into a discussion about _you_. Not only a discussion, but one framed as "attacking" you.

It's why I initially didn't respond to your comment. I was a bit confused at how to relate your anecdote with my own post and eventually gave up.

It only related with a single sentence where you disagreed, and the rest was autobiographical stuff with which you put me in a position where I would have to disregard in order to move the conversation forward. I smelled a potential argument and moved on.

Just because someone has their own opinions doesn't mean they're trying to silence your own. And when you shift the conversation away from the topic at hand and act like a victim towards every single person that replies, it really just doesn't get anywhere at all. It just leads to cyclic, inflammatory posts.

I would suggest maybe reflecting upon this for a while, before replying to me with the standard, "you have no idea who I am". It's often said we can learn quite a lot about ourselves just by spending a few minutes with a stranger and asking them their thoughts.

To quote an esteemed member of HN:

 _If you are not consciously aware of doing that, well, consider yourself notified that I have noticed a pattern of behavior here_

You have a defensive streak that gets in the way of constructive conversation, and that doesn't make you a crappy person. I myself have a problem with getting aggressive at times when I engage in discourse. But we owe it to ourselves to consider advice from others before disregarding it.

<comment><USER5> I engaged you in good faith elsewhere: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19891676](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19891676)

You have chosen to not respond to that and then you come here to describe me as basically playing the victim card every time I open my mouth. You further go out of your way to make sure that if I defend myself or disagree with your accusation, that's just further proof of how I'm the problem and I'm in the wrong and so forth.

Your comment is a personal attack and it's rather nastily framed to ensure that whether I reply or not, anything I do is agreeing with your ugly framing. Suffice it to say that I don't think it consitutes any kind of good faith attempt to be helpful to me and I have no plans to try to take your claimed "help" seriously.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The most inspiring story along these lines that I know of is that of Sophie Scholl[1], who (along with other members of the White Rose[2]) was beheaded by the Nazis for distributing anti-war leaflets.

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

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

</comment><comment><USER9> This makes me wonder what the legacy effects of the Stasi today and one gauge of that would be a measure of age demographic uptake of social media for people who grew up under the Stasi and compare that to west german's of the same age demographic.

A quick dig into this and: [https://www.internetworldstats.com/europa.htm](https://www.internetworldstats.com/europa.htm) proved a bit insightful, whilst this only has the data for Germany (as a whole as it is again with no East/West) it does show in contrast to other EU members a lower uptake of social media when you factor in internet access. Whilst Poland does show lower, if you scale in internet access you see that Germany per population is a lower uptake. You could also see some impact in previous communist countries, though for many, internet penitration is lower and that plays a factor. Bulgaria shows low usage but in relation to those with internet access - it is pretty high. So hard to see any true correlation. A better set of statistics would enable some true analysis. But on a quick glance, it would seem to of had a legacy impact upon people who grew up in that time who may well have a predisposition towards - not sharing personal information.

<comment><AUTHOR> One of the clearest indicators that correlates with a difference in mindset is to look at Google Streetview. Most places it's fairly uncommon to see a property opted out. In Germany, it's really common to see properties blurred.

When it was first rolling out there were articles with pictures of streets where more was blurred than not. Not sure if acceptance has increased much in the years since then, but I'd assume the current young generation may be less bothered.

<comment><USER9> That's very interesting as it shows an active pursuit of privacy above and beyond policing themselves, but also others in regard to themselves. I also found [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Street_View_privacy_con...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Street_View_privacy_concerns#Germany) interesting, and thought the perspective from this quote "At a forum on privacy held in Berlin by the Green Party, a member of the audience asked whether future historians would blame the current generation for leaving German cities in digital ruins as bombs did the real landscape in World War II", to be one aspect many would overlook and equally a most elegant way of putting across a point that cuts thru the generation divides.

I suspect you are right about younger generations, but reading about an historical event and experiencing it are two different experiences. Whilst it is possible to learn from both, only one is a reinforced lesson.

<comment><AUTHOR> As interesting is that English language Wikipedia chooses to pick out that minority, but more US-typical, view - I suspect German language Wiki may emphasise it differently, whilst being equally neutral. :)

The Abwehr and SiPo, later Stasi and NKVD/KGB habit of adding people to lists - of elites, of jews, of defectives that are to be corrected, reformed or exterminated may be thought far more responsible than the current generation. As someone who was thought privacy conscious even prior to Snowden, I'm astonished the Dutch, Poles, British etc haven't turned out as strident on privacy as the Germans. There was a SiPo list, and Gestapo list of British elites and trouble makers to be eliminated on invasion, the Poles and Dutch had their lists actioned etc. All the former Eastern bloc had their own oppressive security apparatus just as long as the GDR.

> Whilst it is possible to learn from both, only one is a reinforced lesson.

As an aside that is why I am vehemently against the modern trend for professional politicians - that gave us mainly wealthy elites playing at it. Even if still young I want politicians with experience of a stint of war or at least in the military, of extreme poverty, of manufacturing, or healthcare etc. Those types of things used to be _the reason_ one went into politics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The stasi exists now. When east Germany fell all citizens could walk into their equivalent of the pentagon and look up their file. They had files on almost everyone. This was 1989. Imagine what you could look up on yourself today if the governments fell.

<comment><USER11> Although I'm sure that the NSA do their best, I would bet that Facebook and Google have a much more accurate profile. Not sure if there is a point in making this distinction, though.

<comment><USER9> Precisely, when it comes to public companies and government entities, lines can blur and governments do have a track record of introducing laws and regulations to enable access.

Another way of thinking about it is - if the NSA wanted coca-cola's or KFC's secret recipe; They would already have it.

But social media as a whole, is for governmental security services, the greatest invention they never made.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's a sad story that the East German Stasi and Communist party thugs avoided any type of punishment for their actions.

They should've been arrested, tortured, crippled, blinded and thrown on the streets to beg so the people that suffered their action can spit on them at will.</comment>


Cellular Connectivity for IoT in the USA - <AUTHOR> http://jllconsulting.tumblr.com/post/138924634286/cellular-connectivity-for-iot-in-the-usa <comment><USER2> I wonder why they only ship to the US ... ?

<comment><USER3> It seems to me that is where they want to focus their attention at the moment.

For small amounts of data, it also probably isn't price competitive with the devices that are available elsewhere.</comment></comment>


The Economies With the Most and Least Efficient Health Care - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-19/u-s-near-bottom-of-health-index-hong-kong-and-singapore-at-top <comment><USER3> The methodology here is not good. All they're doing is comparing average health care cost vs life expectancy. They don't measure standard of care, accessibility of treatment, etc.

This is especially important when looking at end-of-life care, which I speculate affects these both of these metrics the most. A hospice with private rooms, friendly staff, and social engagement will score lower than a hospital that keeps someone alive in a coma.

<comment><USER4> Bloomberg analysis gives one point of view.

OECD has published data where you can compares 5-year survival rates after major cancers, heart attack 30-day survival after hospitalization, stroke, ischemic stroke etc. They also keep track of infant mortality, maternal mortality etc. [http://stats.oecd.org/index.aspx?DataSetCode=HEALTH_STAT#](http://stats.oecd.org/index.aspx?DataSetCode=HEALTH_STAT#)

Data shows that Japan, South Korea, Israel and Nordics are have the best healthcare quality using these measures. US is often in top 10, or at least mid-tier. Beast cancer is treated very well in US.

But what is wrong with the US and infant mortality and perinatal mortality? How can the US be so low?

<comment><USER5> In the US, we make services used by the poor inconvenient and ineffective in order to (ahem) motivate people to not be poor. Lousy results are to be expected for that segment of the population.

<comment><USER6> Motivate? Most definitely yes. Equip? Not at all. The American Dream (especially that pesky part about "opportunity") died long ago. If you're born with a chronic condition such as diabetes or your parents can't afford an education giving you the chance of a decently paying job, better go die.

That being said, just looking at the raw numbers I'd dare to say that health care in the US is just about as inconvenient and ineffective for rich people as it is for poor...

<comment><USER7> Rektang was being facetious with that comment, as tipped off by the "(ahem)", implying the real reason we make services for poor inaccessible so they won't be able to use them and thus drive up costs for them.

<comment><USER5> That's part of it. But there are other factors at work including political concerns -- for example in exempting rural majority-white counties in Kentucky from Medicaid work requirements while imposing them full-force on urban majority-black counties.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> life expectancy is a bad measure of healthcare effectiveness

1) infant mortality heavily impacts life expectancy. The us has a few subpopulations that have very high infant mortality regardless of socioeconomic status.

2) The us has a high teen murder rate

3) The US has very high levels of obesity

4) There is a tremendous genetic component to life expectancy. Some sub populations (asians) have very high life expectancy, their home countries reflect that. Little dogs for example can live 20 years, where large breeds die at 15.

If you pull out 1 and 2, we are up there with other euro nations.

Better measures are things like life expectancy after <pick an age where you think we start needing lots of healthcare>

The sad thing is that the people who are experts in this _know_ these things, but still push the narrative that it is our medical system.

<comment><USER9> So if you simply eliminate some of America's health care problems, America is like other nations?

That's convenient.

<comment><USER10> The above commenter mentioned demographic and lifestyle discrepancies not adequately accounted for in this comparison of outcomes among countries... not health care problems, as you're implying.

<comment><USER9> An infant mortality rate far above other first world nations isn't a health care problem?

We're talking about kids too young to be be gunned down, so they're not part of America's remarkable teen-gun-death statistics.

They're predominantly kids from poor families, who don't live healthy lifestyles or have good health insurance. If the family doesn't have access to good healthcare, the kid's chances of survival are lessened.

Maybe Russia could improve its placement on the list if they ignored the health care issues caused by alcoholism.

And then America could improve its position by declaring obesity, and the health problems that come with it, a lifestyle issue instead of a health issue.

<comment><USER10> You're conflating health issues with health care issues. What health care system now implemented in any country, or proposed for implementation in America by anyone, controls how people eat, how much alcohol, tobacco, and other harmful drugs they consume, how often they exercise, how much they sleep, whether they provide healthy environments for their children, etc.?

Just as schools and teachers are simply one factor in educational outcomes, the medical system is simply one factor in health outcomes. You must consider lifestyle, environmental, and genetic/epigenetic factors to get a full picture. You must equalize for these factors - as far as this is possible - <USER2> fairly compare the effect of the medical system and associated policies alone on health outcomes in different countries. Properly accounting for genetic and lifestyle differences in different sub-populations is largely taboo, and this prevents a fair comparison of medical systems across countries.

Edit: Consider this article by the CDC on infant mortality: [https://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/MaternalInfantHealth/...](https://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/MaternalInfantHealth/InfantMortality.htm)

 _Over 23,000 infants died in the United States in 2016. The five leading causes of infant death in 2016 were: Birth defects. Preterm birth and low birth weight. Sudden infant death syndrome. Maternal pregnancy complications. Injuries (e.g., suffocation)._

While the medical system can intervene, these causes all seem far more dependent on genetics, the mother's (and to a lesser extent the father's) behavior during pregnancy and the infancy of the child.

 _In 2016, infant mortality rates by race and ethnicity were as follows: Non- Hispanic black: 11.4; American Indian /Alaska Native: 9.4; Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander: 7.4; Hispanic: 5.0; Non-Hispanic white: 4.9; Asian: 3.6_

Compare white Americans with European countries, and the discrepancy drops significantly. There's something beyond the medical / health care system playing a role here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> My favorite topic. And as always in the US there will be a lot of fingerpointing and no action....

<comment><USER12> As much as dissapointment the Affordable Care Act was, at least someone tried something. If only we could learn from those mistakes and make incremental changes. Politicians are to obsessed with either tearing it all down or healthcare for all for "free", no middle ground

<comment><USER13> Not free and no one's saying that. Free at point of service, like the NHS or the Canadian health care system, yes, but obviously everyone knows we'd pay for it with taxes.

We could just do it, cover everyone, for less than we're paying now, by rejiggering the system under a "medicare for all" banner. There aren't any other serious options on the table. (replace and repeal, or whatever, is not a serious option.)

<comment><USER14> Medicare currently pays less than what it costs to provide for a lot of services. And providers are either declining medicare alltogether or recouping the missing funds from the other patients. Where would all those other patients come from if medicare will be "for all"?

<comment><USER11> "Medicare currently pays less than what it costs to provide for a lot of services"

Is that even true? Personally I have my doubts.

<comment><USER14> American Hospital Association: Underpayment by Medicare and Medicaid Fact Sheet, December 2017 Update [0]

FINDINGS

In the aggregate, both Medicare and Medicaid payments fell below costs in 2016:

\- Combined underpayments were $68.8 billion in 2016. This includes a shortfall of $48.8 billion for Medicare and $20.0 billion for Medicaid.

-For Medicare, hospitals received payment of only 87 cents for every dollar spent by hospitals caring for Medicare patients in 2016.

\- For Medicaid, hospitals received payment of only 88 cents for every dollar spent by hospitals caring for Medicaid patients in 2016.

\- In 2016, 66 percent of hospitals received Medicare payments less than cost, while 61 percent of hospitals received Medicaid payments less than cost.

[0] [https://www.aha.org/data-insights/2018-01-03-underpayment- me...](https://www.aha.org/data-insights/2018-01-03-underpayment-medicare-and- medicaid-fact-sheet-december-2017-update)

<comment><USER11> After having dealt with billing from hospitals for services they never delivered or obscenely overpriced I am inclined not to trust them on statements about their actual cost. In my view the billing practices of most hospitals are very dishonest and intentionally confusing and opaque.

<comment><USER14> "billing practices of most hospitals are very dishonest and intentionally confusing and opaque."

Is that even true? Personally I have my doubts.

<comment><USER11> Check out some hospital bills for major procedures and there is a good chance that you will find things like charges for services nobody remembers or a doctor who was in the room for 3 minutes charged $1200 or receiving an aspirin costs $80. Maybe my experiences are all anecdotal but when I put my own experiences together with what I hear from others and things I read I am pretty convinced that something is going very wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Enslaving the population of doctors would improve the index, since it reduces salaries drastically. Halfway between slavery and market wages is where you find Spain.

</comment><comment><USER16> You look at the list of most efficient health care systems across the globe and they are not nearly as large as the US. They are typically small and homogeneous. I like the concept of single payor in the US but I do see big hurdles even if we get through the politics which is a big if. I'd point to heterogeneous population and a very wide range of care quality across the country and sometimes even within MSAs.

<comment><USER17> You look at any list of anything across the globe relating to countries and they are not nearly as large as the US.

For the very simple reason that most countries are smaller and more homogeneous than the US, so I don't think it really proves a lot. Unless you're suggesting US only compare itself to Russia and China in future?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I always look at these types of reports, and it makes me laugh. It doesn't tell the whole story, and it doesn't tell the true story. We left Canada precisely because of its healthcare system and came to the US. Canada would have require substantially more out of pocket (10s of thousands) with a much longer wait (years), whereas in the US, the out-of-pocket was substantially less ($500) and substantially less time (-2 weeks) to receive assistance. And that was without using insurance from my job.

<comment><USER18> I hate meta comments, but I love how posting facts gets voted down here just because people don't like the facts. That's why autism support in Canada is a shit-show.</comment></comment>


Roll your own secure dropbox alternative - <AUTHOR> https://www.danielandrade.net/2017/07/22/roll-your-own-secure-dropbox-alternative/ <comment><USER2> Does anyone know why rolling your own FTP/SFTP/rsync service isn't seen as an alternative to Dropbox and similar services?

</comment><comment><USER3> Or use Nextcloud.

HTTPS://Nextcloud.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Starting at 50 users for 1900€/year...

<comment><USER3> Nope.

It's free. As in beer.

You _can_ buy support. But it's 100% optional.</comment></comment></comment>


DeuterIDE - Android Compiler for over 40 languages. - <AUTHOR>

We just released our latest updated to DeuterIDE a mobile compiler. To celebrate our one year anniversary (coincidentally with google play), we've reduced the price from 4.99 to 2.99 for a limited time.
http://deuteride.com
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.didactic.DeuterIDE
More about DeuterIDE:
Compile online in over 40 languages, now including LaTeX.
Native syntax highlighter for programming awesomeness.
Customizable UI (Syntax Highlighting themes coming soon.)
If you have a blog or site and would like to review DeuterIDE, email us http://bit.ly/12yoa8R (to protect our email address from spambots). <comment><USER2> Truly awesome!</comment>


Show HN: Better Youtube academic video comsumption. - <AUTHOR>

demo use cases: http://bit.ly/uoOuRh
http://bit.ly/vfsn6z
This application came from an education Hackathon (http://educationhackday.org/) I participated in. It is an easy way to clip long youtube videos without having to chop them up. <comment><USER2> I like the map. Is this a crowdsource effort?</comment>


Secure your site from the "not secure" chrome/Firefox 2017 warning with this app - <AUTHOR> http://www.downloadcrew.com/article/34753-https_checker <comment><USER2> Link to source without the malware packaging (?):

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


Personalized Hey Siri - <AUTHOR> https://machinelearning.apple.com/2018/04/16/personalized-hey-siri.html <comment><USER2> My biggest problem with the homepod is that my 5 year old has learned that he can turn on _any song he wants_ whenever he wants by yelling "hey siri." He loves it! He yells at the dinner table, when his little sister is asleep, and when we are on the phone. His favorite phrase is "Hey Siri, set volume to 100%." His favorite song is the PJ Masks song, which Siri dutifully plays when called upon. Every. Single. Time.

I'd love it if HomePod recognized who was speaking, but I'd settle for Siri just recognizing "this is a kids voice" and ignoring it!

<comment><USER3> Unfortunately "Hey Siri" starts to grate the 70th time you say it in 3 days. I would actually now rather walk across the room to touch the Homepod than have to say the phrase so much. It's still in uncanny valley territory a lot of the time as it isn't smart enough to keep context between interactions or react in a human-like way.

I think a retroactive activation feature would be the way to go, ie. be able to say "Siri" at the end of a sentence and have it parse the phrase that came before. It feels more natural to say "skip this please Siri" than "Hey Siri, skip" because it lets you amend the mistake of not identifying the subject earlier in the sentence rather than the phrase-exasperation-hey Siri-phrase.

I asked Siri to DJ and my daughter said "hey Siri, I don't like that song". Siri said "I'll remember that" and played something else. Now I have no idea how to amend Siri's notion that I dislike one of my favourite tracks. There should really be a Homepod app where you can see recent interactions and correct misinterpreted ones.

There are also some artists and tracks with unusual spellings that are always going to cause problems for a voice interface and so they need a solution for that.

<comment><USER4> It could be worse. "OK Google" is annoying the _first_ time you say it.

<comment><USER5> You can say "Hey Google" now, though it's not quite as smooth as Alexa.

<comment><USER6> I recommend "Eh, Google!" 🇨🇦

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> To clarify, this is about training your phone to recognize only "Hey Siri" as spoken by you, as opposed to letting you personalize your trigger phrase to something other than "Hey Siri".

<comment><USER8> Yeah, they don't want to give users too much control; Siri is an important brand by itself and Apple doesn't want people going around skipping it.

<comment><USER9> Yes. In this case, the selection of a wake word ("Alexa") or phrase ("Hey Siri" or "OK Google") is driven primarily by performance (i.e., reduction of false accepts & false rejects). The folks designing these products know that, even though customers say that they'd like to customize the wake word or phrase, if the actual performance is significantly worse, those customers will not be happy.

We experimented with this extensively.

<comment><USER10> "Computer" should be the wake word, and everyone would be happy with that thanks to global, english interoperability in all places and contexts.

But thanks to the hubris of corporate branding and marketing departments we are unlikely to have this universally understandable command usable. Instead to use any light switch every consumer will need to ask what bloody set up the person has...

<comment><USER11> Alexa devices actually have "Computer" as an option. I did it for a while, because I dislike pretending a computer is a person ("Alexa") and I certainly don't want to address a company ("Amazon"). I ended up switching back to "Echo" after I realized that people in my house say "computer" too often for it to work well as a wake word.

<comment><USER8> Weak move by Amazon, "OK Computer" would have been so good of an option, also for being a small tribute to Radiohead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> On a separate note, I have yet to get Siri to transcribe "Isle of Dogs" correctly. It's always "I love dogs" which is quite ok by me :).

<comment><USER13> The title of that movie was chosen specifically to be a homophone for "I love dogs", so Siri's confusion is understandable. :)

<comment><USER14> In 1992 Apple gave me a T-shirt for supplying speech samples used to train their System 7 voice recognition. Below a picture of bunch of apple cores strewn on a beach was the caption "I helped Apple wreck a nice beach!"

<comment><USER15> That's amazing.

"I helped Apple recognize speech" for those struggling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Cool little insight into their progress.

I'm excited for the day Siri can differentiate my voice and my wife's so we can use a single HomePod with two iCloud accounts. For example, Siri reading off calendar appointments from an iCloud account based on who's asking.

<comment><USER17> That feature is not blocked by technical but by arbitrary limits. Whether it is a family iPad, Apple TV or HomePod, Apple strongly believes in 1:1 device- person (or more accurate, device-iCloud account) mapping.

<comment><USER18> Macs do multi account quite well, and iOS/iPad does it for schools. I'm not sure why Apple hasn't at least made iPads for consumers have the same multi- iCloud-account feature available, it would make things a lot easier at home!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> What's the technical reason to limit the wake words to only "Hey Siri", "OK Google", etc?

Should one be able to "Personalized" to his/her own phase PER Device such as "Hey Commander Data" for Iphone 6, "Hey Counselor Troi " for IPad Pro or "Ok Skynet" for the google phone?

That should also solve the problem where someone said "OK Google" in TV Shows/Podcast and wakeup all the google devices.

With the latest "Deep Voice" tech, the device should be able to response with the actors' voice too.

I remember seeing a clip of Chinese TV show when the actress said (in Chinese) "Honey, Honey where are you?" and the phone on chair wake up and said "Honey, I am here, I am here. " And tons of folks in the youtube comments ask "What kind of phone is that and I want it!". I told my wife that and she immediately said she wanted it too.

I still don't know which brand of Chinese phone actually has that features or if that was just imagination of the TV show writer. Someone should build and and I know my wife wants it.

<comment><USER20> I don't work on such projects, but on other ML projects, and I suspect the answer is: training data.

There are many, many, many samples of people saying the approved trigger phrases. Many, many, many samples. To use your own custom trigger phrases, you would likely need to say it thousands of times to being to approach the accuracy the current systems ship with out of the box. Maybe tens of thousands.

That's just my conjecture, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I would love this feature if they found a way to implement it without draining the battery by listening constantly and trying to recognize 'Hey Siri' from all the background noise. It's especially bad when you play music nearby!

<comment><USER22> Are you sure you're actually getting your battery drained from this? The phrase spotting happens in a super low power processor which can run without the rest of the phone doing anything.

<comment><USER21> I remember one day I played music through some speakers connected to my phone for about 6 hours and the battery usage showed 40% for music and 40% for Siri. I put two and two together and figured the music was keeping Siri awake.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm not convinced this Siri thing is really that revolutionary until I can invoke something on my phone by screaming "AYYYYYYY MUST BE THE SIRIIIIII"

</comment><comment><USER24> God this is depressing. Only 3 years behind Amazon and Google.

<comment><USER25> Really? I'm pretty sure "Alexa" is known for responding to the TV.

<comment><USER26> Yep [https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/01/07/tv_anchor_says_alex...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/01/07/tv_anchor_says_alexa_buy_me_a_dollhouse_and_she_does/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> related:

[https://maachinelearning.apple.com/2017/08/06/siri- voices.ht...](https://maachinelearning.apple.com/2017/08/06/siri-voices.html)

<comment><USER28> Your link has an extra "a" in it. [https://machinelearning.apple.com/2017/08/06/siri- voices.htm...](https://machinelearning.apple.com/2017/08/06/siri-voices.html)</comment></comment>


Office Depot, Best Buy Pull Kaspersky Products from Shelves - <AUTHOR> https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/software/office-depot-best-buy-pull-kaspersky-products-from-shelves/ <comment><USER2> What do you guys think, use or dont use? For me, i just switched to Kaspersky.</comment>


How to grow your reading habit - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/p/how-i-grew-up-my-reading-habit-again-5268e20672ab <comment><USER2> Reading tends to fill my head with cognitive dissonance, and especially when it becomes a habit. It is no secret that information is just as addictive as any other vice and as with all vices, there will always be the urban legend of the person who finds it hard to over indulge (in this case, a bibliophiles). Ignore them and cut down on your reading when you can.

Unless you must increase your IQ at all costs because your life depends on it, or that everyone around you is getting as smart as you, so you have to up your game!

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes true. So much information to consume and Today Read later apps are helping to bridging the gap. But yeah if you are more into books then you need to Balance.</comment></comment>