Mercator puzzle - <AUTHOR> https://embed-dot-more-than-a-map.appspot.com/demos/visualization/puzzle

<comment><USER2> There's some odd behaviour when a country ends up over the South Pole. Apparently it turns inside-out.

</comment><comment><USER3> Seems there are only a handful of countries that are considered for the puzzle pieces?</comment>


$50,000 Spock Entity Resolution Challenge - <AUTHOR> http://challenge.spock.com <comment><USER2> This is a good way to find a) people to hire, b) publicity, and c) solutions to tough problems. I have to assume they're doing it for the first two reasons, not so much the latter. My guess is that they've already got a good solution to this, given that it's integral to their business. Maybe they think they'll find a better solution out there, and if so it'd make sense to hire that person.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yes, this very much confirms my theory that startups must do unorthidox methods to gain traffic, especially when the users of the site impact other users.

spock is worthless without other users on spock. What is a phone book/directory without people? If they can break through the chicken or egg problem that many others have faced in the past, they'll be very successful because that same problem will arise as a barrier of entry to competitors.

Having competitions, paying users, or even sending spam are all viable methods to getting initial traffic for a site.

<comment><USER4> _spock is worthless without other users on spock_

From what I understand it crawls the internet to find people rather than getting people to submit information. This way it's useful even without other users on spock.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> A small prize for a big problem. Is this problem (differentiating individuals) not what spock claims to be its core technology? If so, it is a mite worrying that they need to advertise for a solution.

<comment><USER6> They are copying Netflix with this approach. However it makes much more sense for Netflix: prize is $1m, they are an established company, and recommendation system is important but not the core of what they do.

I will go ahead and download the corpus though - the problem is interesting and you can't easily find datasets like this.

Edit: Anyone care to post it as a torrent? I think posting a link here and in Reddit will be enough to get a good download speed. I wish someone posted a torrent for the Google N-grams corpus as well...

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Here's the Reddit discussion link: <http://programming.reddit.com/info/1hy27/comments>

If we had Alex's social comment site we'd already have this linked in.

</comment><comment><USER2> Ok I'm registered. Downloading the 1.5G document set now. This is pretty interesting.

<comment><AUTHOR> way to go matt. Did you say 1.5G? For those reading & who want a summary the problem is on 'entity resolution'.

 _'... A common problem that we face is that there are many people with the same name. Given that, how do we distinguish a document about Michael Jackson the singer from Michael Jackson the football player ...'_

<comment><USER2> Yes, 1.5G. And that's just the small dataset to get you going! They really should used a Torrent for this thing. Right now I'm hoping my wireless keeps up with the download.

<comment><USER7> There are times when you want to keep things in your house. They're using amazon s3 so it's costing them $0.30 per download. Pennies compared to the 50k prize.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The web, it's for everyone - <AUTHOR> http://thewebitsforeveryone.tumblr.com/ <comment><USER2> I agree with the principle of this, but i disagree with including the javascript-is-disabled errors. If you browse the internet with one of the most important components of the internet disabled, you're going to find that a lot of stuff is broken, and displaying a warning that "hey, things are going to be broken here" is preferable to just displaying broken stuff.

<comment><USER3> You might be surprised at what can be accomplished with HTML and CSS alone. Most of github.com works just fine without Javascript. Much of Twitter and Facebook work too. Facebook does give a warning, but they say you should enable Javascript "for a better experience" instead of "for _any_ experience."

I agree that showing a "hey this is broken" warning is better than rendering a totally broken page, but it's still not as good as presenting at least a partially working version, perhaps minus all of the usual bells and whistles. Now, of course, this is not super-feasible if you've chosen to build most of your site using client-side code, especially if that's where most of the rendering happens. But then again, the lack of server-side rendering is the obvious downside of building your site that way.

<comment><USER4> Not everyone has the resources that Twitter and Facebook have to mantain what essentially are two version of their website.

My position is that if you disable Javascript you get what you get (both you and I will be happy to know that I don't do web development anymore).

<comment><USER5> If you use progressive enhancement, you don't _really_ need two versions. You have the base version, and you layer javascript and css on top of it. Granted, it might be a bit more work than just rushing out a javascript-dependent version, but it's definitely not twice the work. And you then have a much better structured, more solid base to work on - in the long-run, I'd be surprised if it weren't less work to do things the progressive way.

<comment><USER4> Yes, that's the ideal. Try and do it. Remember to test all the different progressively enhanced paths that only a tiny minority of your users is using.

<comment><USER5> Do you also take that attitude to your code? I.e. "it's alright, that code path only executes one time out of fifty, doesn't matter that it crashes the program".

<comment><USER4> That is not what I meant. I meant: "that code path only executes one time out of fifty (thousand), but you have to test it exactly like the core code that runs thousands of times more, so maybe you can drop the feauture since it's used by a handful of users".

(I have my doubts one in fifty people disable Javascript)

<comment><USER5> Well now you're talking about an analogy that's 3 orders of magnitude away from what we're actually dealing with, so it doesn't really hold up. BTW, we're not really talking about 'testing' here, either - you don't actually need to test plain HTML beyond the most cursory of glances.

<comment><USER4> We are talking about people disabling JavaScript in their browser. One in several thousands is still a large over estimation.

<comment><USER6> [Citation needed]

<comment><USER4> What a thoughtful and insightful remark. If you don't believe that statement to be in the right ballpark you are out of touch with the world outside HN.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The Chrome extension example is pretty weak. I don't know why anyone would think you could get something form the Chrome Web Store using Firefox.

<comment><USER8> I disagree. Two points:

1\. The vast majority of things on the Chrome Web Store are web apps, not browser extensions.

2\. Should GMail really only be able to work offline in Chrome?

<comment><USER9> > _2\. Should GMail really only be able to work offline in Chrome?_

Does anyone but me remember offline email clients (hello Thunderbird!)? You can take Gmail offline already.

<comment><USER10> I really enjoy nmh, with sufficient scripting and aliases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I am so torn about this.

On one hand, I think that information should be available to the technological lowest common denominator. I hate apps that should be websites. I hate having my browser use 100% of my CPU for 30 seconds while trying to render a page with just 300 words of actual text content.

On the other hand, I work on web applications and I want to be able to create rich interactions using the best tools available. So I constantly wish I could require all my users to conform to some pretty steep minimum requirements.

I guess it comes down to appropriateness. There is a place for rich applications and there is a place for accessible content.

<comment><USER3> As someone who also enjoys building rich interactions as well, I find that it's just a matter of understanding the trade-offs.

Requiring Javascript support is sort of like relying heavily on the latest HTML or CSS features (a recent example: WebRTC). I have to consider what happens in browsers where the feature is unsupported or disabled, and if I'm okay with narrowing those visitors out of my userbase, then I move forward. Otherwise I make sure that something is in place for them to fall-back on.

Javascript is a bit tricker than, say, the fancier CSS selectors, because I often rely on Javascript for polyfills/webshims, etc, and you can't polyfill a lack of Javascript. But when I can I still make use of that old "progressive enhancement" idea by starting with the basic HTML/CSS elements required to make a feature work, and then enhancing it with Javascript and more modern styling. It doesn't work everywhere, and certainly not in cases where most of the work is done client-side, but I still get plenty of miles out of that technique.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> IE and Safari have self-interest motivated reasons for not supporting webrtc and for propagating their own technology, so no, I don't agree with this. I'm not going to avoid building apps that make use of technology that companies like Apple and Microsoft don't implement, and I don't care if that this is a problem for people. These companies don't really want to support the web as a platform. They want a crippled web because it beats their ecosystem lock in.

</comment><comment><USER13> Not really sure what the point of this is. How do Google Now and GMail Offline == 'The Web'? They are specific Apps designed to work in a specific manner, they are not 'the web'. GMail does work with any browser when accessed via 'the web'.

100% agree with the Apple example though. Why didn't they stream in a more accessible format?! It just served to annoy people and exclude even more people from the Apple elite.

a few years ago banks and financial institutions seemed to be especially bad at restricting access to just IE. Thankfully they seem to have got better, but maybe that's because I don't use Opera anymore!

Originally I thought this was going to be an attack on Hungary's Internet Tax or some freedom of speech protest, alas.

<comment><USER14> > GMail does work with any browser when accessed via 'the web'.

But last I checked Offline Gmail does not. Which I think is the point this Tumblr is trying to make.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> "Javascript apps don't work when I turn off Javascript :( :( :( :( :( :("

If you think the things made by jerks like me aren't part of the web or whatever, then fine. You stay on your version of the web and I'll stay on mine, and never the twain shall meet.

.....Until you actually need to do something useful.

<comment><USER16> Can you provide an example of a useful web-based activity that can't be done without javascript, other than web-based games?

I've seen a huge number of sites over the years stop working because they redesign to incorporate javascript; yet, when I visit them at work (with a javascript-enabled browser) their shiny new site doesn't actually have any new features.

Things that don't need javascript:

\--Form verification (you should always be doing this on the server, and optionally in client-side javascript)

\--<video> tag

\--Popup site menus

\--Web-based chat

\--Webmail

\--Message board comments (unless you locked yourself into Disqus)

\--Nearly everything

<comment><USER17> Yeah and the web doesn't need CSS either.... Come on this is ridiculous, web- based chat? Webmail? I can't imagine using those without JS. So the user is supposed to refresh the webpage constantly to see if they got a new chat/email?

<comment><USER18> >So the user is supposed to refresh the webpage constantly to see if they got a new chat/email?

I remember web chatrooms working that way back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, or maybe they had meta-tags that refreshed the page periodically.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The web has moved so far away from its original purpose that we need something to fill the role the web was originally supposed to be for. I hate having to have a massive complex piece of software that takes up a GB of RAM and includes an entire programming language just to be able to view simple text documents that link to each other.

<comment><USER20> I agree. Browsing is important enough that there should be browsers just for browsing.

What we have now are browsers that support browsing but also support access to web applications. The need to serve two masters makes the browsers we have now suboptimal for just browsing.

In particular, a browser just for browsing would be able to be significantly simpler than a browser that serves two masters, and as a general rule, when we are talking about something as complicated as a browser, making a program simpler makes it more reliable and makes it easier for a human to predict what it will do and consequently makes it less frustrating to use.

<comment><USER18> Regardless of what the web once was, it now _is_ an application environment, for which one application is documents ("browsing".)

You already have what amounts to a "browser just for browsing" when you turn off javascript in the one you're using now. But a browser which _only_ interprets html and css and not javascript is just a broken browser.

<comment><USER19> That's the point. The web is completely broken for the use case of "browsing the web". We need a replacement for the web, and for web browsers, to do fill that use case again that the web used to fill.

<comment><USER18> Your use case, and your definition of "browsing" which excludes dynamic content, isn't typical though. Most people keep javascript turned on by default, and for most people, it isn't broken.

Nothing has changed about HTML or browsers that prevents anyone from building a minimalistic site, or one that degrades gracefully, they just choose not to. This isn't a problem of the web, but the culture of web design, and the tendency of people to only use a few corporate sites which follow the same design paradigms.

<comment><USER19> I didn't say it was typical, what does that have to do with anything. It seems like you are trying very hard to avoid reading my words and instead read what you wish I said.

Yes, it is a problem with the web. The culture of web design is part of the web. This is why we need a replacement for the use case that the web was originally designed for but no longer fills.

<comment><USER18> No, I think you're misunderstanding my intent. I'm just saying basic html and hyperlinking still works perfectly fine, and most people read the web as hypertext in almost exactly the same way they always have. The original use case still exists and it still works.

<comment><USER20> It does not work as well as it used to, and more to the point, it does not work as well as it would if it did not have to do double duty as an application-delivery platform.

On a very long web page, do you ever hold down the mouse button on the slider in the scroll bar so that you can scroll up and down rapidly? If you do that on the web page on which these words appear, it will (probably) work smoothly and well, but on certain Javascript-heavy pages, it is very jerky. The whole page blinks rapidly. It is tedious and difficult to see the text while the page is moving up or down.

That is just one of many examples where a particular functionality useful to people who read and who "browse" (which might be defined as deciding what to read next among many, many alternatives) does not work as well on the web of 2014 as it did in the past because of the need for the web of 2014 to support ever more complicated or sophisticated web applications.

(The many examples include tasks that are not strictly part of reading -- tasks like making a copy of part of a web page or making a copy of the page's URL in preparation for emailing the URL.)

Publishing static documents and reading and browsing static documents over the internet is an important enough function in our society that we should feel sad that it does not work as smoothly and as quickly as it could. The next Einstein and the next Charles Darwin will use the web to learn and to share their discoveries. What the next Einstein and the next Darwin need the most from the web is the ability to browse static web pages quickly and reliably without their having to devote a lot of their attention to the user interface or to getting a particular page to work with their browser.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The web IS for everyone - even for those who want to make proprietary apps and pages. I don't see a problem with any of these examples unless I missed the one that tax dollars paid for.

</comment><comment><USER22> You need Chrome to use Chrome extensions? Oh, the humanity!

That said, it's time to call bullshit on Google's whole 'do no evil' shtick, considering how so many of their web apps only work on Chrome.</comment>


Show HN: Gcmc – G-Code Meta Compiler - <AUTHOR> http://www.vagrearg.org/content/gcmc <comment><AUTHOR> Full disclosure: I didn't make this, but a friend of mine did. I found it to be a very clean and useable syntax, and some of you might find it useful.

<comment><USER2> Even though you're not the author, it would probably make a good regular submission rather than a |show hn|. I mean, showing HN stuff is what regular submissions do.</comment></comment>


British woman faces Dubai jail over Facebook 'horse' insult - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-47847740 <comment><AUTHOR> What this highlights is that even if a social media post in your country is fine, even if posted there. Be mindful that whilst traveling, such posts can come back to haunt you. As not all country laws are the same, yet they all still see the same social media sites (mostly).</comment>


Django security releases issued: 3.0.1, 2.2.9, and 1.11.27 - <AUTHOR> https://www.djangoproject.com/weblog/2019/dec/18/security-releases/ <comment><USER2> This the same as the unicode email collision that was found in GitHub the other day:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21809390](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21809390)

[https://eng.getwisdom.io/hacking-github-with-unicode- dotless...](https://eng.getwisdom.io/hacking-github-with-unicode-dotless-i/)

It makes you wander how wide spread this vulnerability could be with two independent implementations found so far. I'm guessing this was found when someone audited the Django email comparison code after reading about the GutHub one.

Everyone who maintains a password reset form should be auditing for the same issue ASAP.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, and goes to show that the intricacies of character encoding need to be more well-understood by developers, instead of the incredibly small subset of Unicode Wizards leading the way and everyone else (me included) barely keeping up.

Naturally, the top-rated comment in the thread you linked makes a much better point than I ever could!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> django-allauth also affected: [https://github.com/pennersr/django- allauth/issues/2413](https://github.com/pennersr/django-allauth/issues/2413)</comment>


Game designer Brenda Romero quits IGDA following party with hired female dancers - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2013/03/28/game-designer-brenda-romero-quits-igda-following-party-with-hired-female-dancers/ <comment><USER2> You're invited to a conference that's relevant to your position and your industry.

When you arrive, a number of hired twentysomething men are milling about wearing tight tee-shirts, padded crotches, and skintight jeans. They're dancing, drinking, flirting with you and your coworkers, and subtly drawing attention towards their ample bulges. Some people in the crowd are really getting into this, having their pictures taken with them. The room starts getting sweaty, the music amps up, and the paid gogo boys start thrusting their cocks in rhythm with the music.

Comment freely!

<comment><USER3> I don't think I would resign from a job because somebody from the company invited Techno Viking to dance at some party.

Feminists really should man up and stop crying over everything. One can't take them seriously.

<comment><USER2> Troll. But just in case you're not permanently damaged yet:

Imagine you're invited to a party where you are the oldest, fattest, least appealing person there, and you're not particularly made to feel welcome.

Now imagine you're expected to attend dozens of these parties in the course of your employment.

Now imagine that these parties are intentionally arranged this way, and that the pretty people are paid to be there for the express purpose of making you look and feel old, fat, shabby, and unwelcome.

Does this compute? Does it seem fun?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm tired of this shit. I'm tired of these people getting more attention than they deserve over inane PC-BULLSHIT.

So she quit because at an after-party, where the vast majority of attendees were men, there were exotic dancers? Apparently I should be in a hissy-fit where I work because every other Friday my company has a ladies-night and the VP (who is a woman) and the other ladies that work here go out to have fun as a group.

Next story, please. I'm tired of this crap, I'm tired of reading about it, and I'm tired of people fawning over it.

Edit: This will probably be the last time I comment on these type of posts. I'm just going to flag them moving forward as they are against HN TOS with no political posts being allowed.

<comment><USER5> _So she quit because at an after-party, where the vast majority of attendees were men, there were exotic dancers?_

Wow, So is your idea that when there are mostly men at an event, exotic dancers will just naturally follow? Is your idea that events with mostly men are natural too, rather than being a result of, say, the lack of women in the industry?

"All group X" parties don't seem terribly threatening if group X happens to be under-represented and under-empowered in an organization. Similar parties are very threatening in the opposite situation. Consider a "white people's night out" in a company with lower minority representation - that would be a very bad thing (legal, morally and for company morale). Yeah, events for over- represented-group to get together and do things that might make under- represented-group annoyed are problematic. They send a message to a person in the under-represented group _even if_ that person doesn't have problem with the activity per se.

Edit: Double wow, your wasn't top-voted when I started my reply.

<comment><USER4> Oh yeah, this looks really inappropriate and sexist! Pffff.

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/carolpinchefsky/2013/03/27/reall...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/carolpinchefsky/2013/03/27/really- igda-party-at-gdc-brings-on-the-female-dancers/)

<comment><USER5> Can read you your link: _"To explain the problem with female dancers at an industry party is that these women are on display. Even if they were dancing in a PG-13 manner, they're still detracting from the purpose of the event: a professional gathering."_

Which is what I say in the post you're replying to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Gender politics is still politics.

> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're > evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or > disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's > probably off-topic.

Is this an evidence of some _interesting new_ phenomenon?

<comment><USER5> Surely, "politics" means things like elections, politics in-generals. I would assume hn would be interested in the politics of programming, the politics of game design, the politics of intellectual property.

I mean, patent trolls are at it this year like last year and it's news for us.

<comment><USER6> Things like IP law are our "inside baseball" politics: things that only make sense/matter to hackers. I can see a place for that here.

Gender politics which _happens to affect a game designer_ isn't, though; it's immediately understandable to anyone in the general population, and will likely pop up on many other more "general-interest" sites like Reddit. (And, like the guideline says, could be covered on the TV news.)

I take the "spirit of the law" of the HN guidelines as being not that there are _certain topics_ that are bad to talk about on HN (in est, a blacklist); but rather that HN is mainly for discussing things that go "over the heads" of the general population (a whitelist.) HN brings together people who crave other knowledgeable folks willing to discuss subjects usually lost on the people around them.

HN is a _respite_ from the inanity of general news/trivia/discourse, and to ensure it stays that way, we have to be willing to forgo the usual logic of "this instance of [general topic] affects _one of our own_! Surely [general topic] itself is now on-topic for any manner of discussion or debate." It seems to invade, and eventually dilute, every community that doesn't specifically have a rule about "these are the subjects we talk about here."

An instructive parallel: in my experience, every knitting community has an entire sub-board to talk about pregnancy. What expertise do knitters have to contribute on the subject of pregnancy? Wouldn't these people be better off going to a pregnancy forum, where actual expert knowledge can be aggregated? They're having the same conversations happening in every other pregnancy subforum of every other tangentially-related community, instead of getting together to have _one_ conversation.

What special expertise does HN have on gender politics?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> In case somebody wonders what constitutes "women dancers in revealing clothing".

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/carolpinchefsky/2013/03/27/reall...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/carolpinchefsky/2013/03/27/really- igda-party-at-gdc-brings-on-the-female-dancers/)

</comment><comment><USER7> IGDA's official response, which I don't see on their own website: [http://gamasutra.com/view/news/189548/IGDAs_official_respons...](http://gamasutra.com/view/news/189548/IGDAs_official_response_to_its_controversial_GDC_party.php)

<comment><USER8> IGDA asks for opinions, and that's great, but it's demonstrative of how hard social change can be when it's a democracy: You wait for the majority of voting members to speak up about it before you really see it as a problem to address. Social change should probably be proactive, but that's a hard problem to solve.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you're not familiar with her, Brenda wrote a book called "Sex in Games." She worked on a game about the Playboy Mansion. She's no prude, and she's very anti-censorship.

Combine that with the actions in the article, and I think there's a very compelling discussion that can take place about the difference between sex and sexism.

</comment><comment><USER9> I don't know why jpxxx's comment is hidden:

\---

You're invited to a conference that's relevant to your position and your industry.

When you arrive, a number of hired twentysomething men are milling about wearing tight tee-shirts, padded crotches, and skintight jeans. They're dancing, drinking, flirting with you and your coworkers, and subtly drawing attention towards their ample bulges. Some people in the crowd are really getting into this, having their pictures taken with them. The room starts getting sweaty, the music amps up, and the paid gogo boys start thrusting their cocks in rhythm with the music.

Comment freely!

\---

For my own commentary, I agree with jpxxx, or at least the point I think he or she is trying to make. It's the same hypocrisy seen with homosexuality in a lot of males: "gays are gross, lesbians are hot" -> "Half naked dancers are okay, as long as they're female! Duh!"

And that is precisely the problem. It's not acceptable either way. It's not about being PC, it's about being appropriate. It was a conference, not a strip club.

<comment><USER7> It was alive earlier, which means it got flagged into oblivion pretty quickly. My response:

This isn't the point. Even if everyone thought the dancers were sexy, or they had men as well as women dancing, it was still inappropriate for an industry event. This isn't even an organization trying to sell something, it's a group for employees in the games industry. Completely pointless.

<comment><USER9> Well hmm, maybe we interpreted his comment differently. I took it as satire and as pointing out the same thing you are. I agree, it's not appropriate and it wouldn't be any more so if it were just men, just women, or a mix. (The vivid imagery of a man dancing around like that is meant to point out that "but they were hot" or whatever is not a valid response to the issue at hand).</comment></comment></comment>


LXD 2.0: Live migration - <AUTHOR> https://www.stgraber.org/2016/04/25/lxd-2-0-live-migration-912/ <comment><USER2> It's another great feature of LXD, recently moved many services to LXD using the same ansible scripts for server deployment, what a relief. Docker was a constant struggle fiddling between shell scripts, Dockerfile and probably init process hacking. For me bye bye Docker and complex tooling to manage it.</comment>


The Twelve People You Meet On Twitter - <AUTHOR> http://xidey.wordpress.com/2008/07/14/the-twelve-people-you-meet-on-twitter/

<comment><USER2> Thank you. Try the veal!</comment>


People Will Pay To Support Creators, Even When Free Is An Option - <AUTHOR> https://www.techdirt.com/blog/casestudies/articles/20121210/12422821338/infographic-people-will-pay-to-support-creators-even-when-free-is-option.shtml <comment><USER2> That seems to be in line with what I thought most ebooks should cost: $3-$5. $10 is still too much for the digital world, and it's a lot of the times even more expensive than paperbacks. Considering that after you recover your initial investment, it costs virtually nothing to create and distribute another copy of the book (unlike with paper books, where every extra copy has costs tied to it), that makes no sense to me.

Plus, selling for a lower price could get authors more money, too. I believe it was on Techdirt where I saw how a $2 book brought twice as much money than the same book sold for $10.

</comment><comment><USER3> Being a creator myself, I want to support other creators by making a purchase. All I want is a little extra something for the people who buy and to not try and extract the absolute maximum amount of money from me. Especially if its a digital product.</comment>


What happens when patients find out how good their doctors really are? (2004) - <AUTHOR> http://newyorker.com/archive/2004/12/06/041206fa_fact?currentPage=all <comment><USER2> Great article. Might be hard to get through, so I'll put out this quote which I enjoyed and compelled me to read the rest of it.

" _Matthews had started a cystic-fibrosis treatment program as a young pulmonary specialist at Babies and Children's Hospital, in Cleveland, in 1957, and within a few years was claiming to have an annual mortality rate that was less than two per cent. To anyone treating CF at the time, it was a preposterous assertion. National mortality rates for the disease were estimated to be higher than twenty per cent a year, and the average patient died by the age of three. Yet here was Matthews saying that he and his colleagues could stop the disease from doing serious harm for years. "How long [our patients] will live remains to be seen, but I expect most of them to come to my funeral," he told one conference of physicians._

 _In 1964, the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation gave a University of Minnesota pediatrician named Warren Warwick a budget of ten thousand dollars to collect reports on every patient treated at the thirty-one CF centers in the United States that year—data that would test Matthews's claim. Several months later, he had the results: the median estimated age at death for patients in Matthews's center was twenty-one years, seven times the age of patients treated elsewhere. He had not had a single death among patients younger than six in at least five years._ "

<comment><USER3> What grabbed me:

"In this short speech was the core of Warwick's world view. He believed that excellence came from seeing, on a daily basis, the difference between being 99.5-per-cent successful and being 99.95-per-cent successful."

<comment><USER4> I took notice of that passage also. But the main reason the 99.5 to 99.95 percentages is meaningful is that they were measures of a daily risk. So it quickly compounds into a meaningful percentages; the 99.95% rate meant an 83% chance patient would stay well this year, the 99.5% rate meant only a 16% chance of staying well for this year.

Many of the medical percentages that we see quoted in media are derived using a lifetime risk basis, _not_ a daily one. On a lifetime basis the difference between 99.95% and 99.5% _is_ negligible.

I wonder how many people reading this article are aware of the difference.

<comment><USER5> It is well explained in the article, since the point is about daily treatment compliance. I would expect the readers to grok that in context :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have Cystic Fibrosis. I don't think it's fair to assume that the bell curve associated with treatment results is fair to attribute to the quality of care. Factors such as climate and pollution can significantly contribute to health, as can socio-economic and average distance patients travel, as well as access to insurance.

For instance, I'm from North Texas; I went to college in Oklahoma. Back then (1996) Texas had a type of insurance for children with CF (it actually extended to age 21) unavailable in Oklahoma. I ended up losing care, going off of my meds, and by the time I was back in Texas and had the income to support my needs (I came from a very poor family) I had lost 30 pounds (down to 98lbs) and had lost 25% of my lung capacity. Was this attributable to the clinic in Dallas? Of course not.

(FWIW, I'm up to 155lbs these days and my lung capacity is probably in the upper 5-10% of all CF patients)

<comment><USER7> Of course there are other effects that go into that bell curve (I'd be more worried about doctor-to-patient ratios and time per patient), but I think the article does an excellent job of highlighting the differences in care.

<comment><USER6> Very true. It's important to note that the majority of a (well maintained) CF patient's health is the result of the the breathing treatments and enzyme treatments; I could probably not see a doctor for years if I had my meds. (Probably true of many chronic conditions I'm sure, but speaking to my experience only)

<comment><USER8> I'm sure you know this but a good physician will closely track your lung function and on a dip will get a sputum test done and then get you on the right antibiotics asap. That is a very important part of CF treatment that does need regular trips to the clinic. BTW I'm glad you're doing so well :-)

<comment><USER6> I've had the fortune of being pretty consistent lung function-wise - the dips tended to be when I was doing poorly with my treatment regimen. (Of course there are many who have issues despite their best efforts)

Thanks :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Medicine is like any other profession - it shouldn't be surprising that some doctors are better than others, like some lawyers/engineers/teachers are better than others.

There are a lot of challenges with healthcare metrics. Medical problems are more complex, arising from more factors than practically any other problem. Most other sciences can be resolved by theory or relatively convergent empirical data. Medicine is empirical, but the scatter is huge.

Data is not tracked well. When it does exist, it is in formats that are not well conducive to analysis and sharing. This seems to be slowly (and expensively) improving. Pressure for privacy adds to inertia for innovations that could use medical data for improved outcomes.

With the title of the article, I was hoping there would be some more discussion about implications of some 'rating system' for doctors. It would probably superficially be a good idea, but such a system would obviously result in some level of gaming. Does a doctor in a rated system only take easy cases to keep a good track record? Are hard cases given more weighting? Who/ how is such a weighting decided? Such a system could offer a results-based compensation scheme for doctors, which is lacking from most publicly funded systems.

<comment><USER10> "Medicine is like any other profession - it shouldn't be surprising that some doctors are better than others"

Surely, some doctors are better than others, but (for the sake of discussion :)) I don't think every professions or activities are equivalent with respect to 'rating'. Take the extreme example of walking. All human beings walk equally well. This is unlike playing music or solving math problems for instance.

I'm certainly not saying that medicine is as easy as walking, but maybe for a wide range of health problems, there are well known standard procedures or solutions that all doctors are competent enough to follow. And in doubt, they usually refer their patient to a specialist, who in turn can send them to a more competent doctor.

<comment><USER11> "All human beings walk equally well."

This is obviously not true.

<comment><USER10> I think you got my point. Usually, you don't stop looking at people in the street thinking how great is their walking. Walking is a simple enough task so that in normal conditions you don't see a wide range of abilities. Unlike swimming, playing music or cooking where even in normal condition you can see that some people are incredibly better han others.

An other example that comes to mind are regular airline pilots: nobody wonders whether they are good or bad. We never have to worry that the pilot is unable to fly the plane.

<comment><USER12> > nobody wonders whether they are good or bad

Again, this is a _terrible_ example. I'd say that a good third of passengers are wondering exactly that. (It's irrational to do so, but that's another story.)

<comment><USER9> And further, skilled pilots can be recognised by their landings, particularly in making soft ones in stormy conditions. Perhaps also in their customer service with witty commentary over the PA.

Divergent, but any skill I can think of will have a distribution of abilities. Some of these skills have a threshold beyond which incremental improvement gives little benefit. Walking example: if you can walk 100m in one go, you are better off than someone who can walk 10m. Likewise, 1000m > 100m. Does 500km give any more benefit than 50km? Maybe, but probably only for extreme use- cases (maybe competitive extreme-distance walking? I'd rather drive!). Similarly with technique - if walking technique is horrible it matter for mobility and injury risk. Beyond a certain level, it probably matters less. And maybe walking extremely well is a visual-social signal, as a marker for someone who is in good shape? I'd read somewhere research done on dancing as a marker of fitness for attractiveness to the opposite sex.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What stuck out for me was the difference in attitude between the two example centers. It's "67% is still pretty good, so keep it up" vs "90% is a big decrease from 105%; this is a _failure_ and we need to make adjustments." In articular, the former type of attitude is certainly the norm from my experience (with medical care in general, I have no experience with CF).

<comment><USER13> This idea applies to more than medicine. A boss once told me, speaking about a piece of work I thought was pretty good, "If it could be better, it's wrong." It stuck with me, and I've found that everyone I meet who is exceptional at some skill has this attitude.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, that's sorta stuck with me. I know a lot of people who say that the perfect is the enemy of the good.

Well, buddy, that just means that if you have a good solution, it's stopping you from getting a perfect solution.

<comment><USER15> When I hear "the perfect is the enemy of the good" it's usually in response to the sentiment, "I can't ship this yet; it's not 'perfect'".

In the context of this article: You have a patient who needs to be treated -- today. They can't wait for a hypothetical perfect treatment. Indeed, more fundamentally, the only way to discover a "perfect" treatment would be to use today's least-worst solution, with the determination to measure and improve it continually.

Also the point of the article was that it's not so much the techniques -- which all the CF centers know about and use -- but the aggressiveness of their consistent application.

This isn't about a perfect design. It's about doctors who are willing to coach/goad/persuade patients into doing consistently what they already know they need to do. (And who are willing to be sticklers for consistency to the point of being a bit of a PITA to their colleagues.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This reminds me of a true story I once read about the best car salesman in the country at the time. Single handedly he was selling more than some not-so- small entire dealerships. The difference was his incredible focus and approach to even the tiniest detail that could help a sale and willingness to try new things.

One thing that stands out in my memory about this was the fact the he made sure he always had 3 (!) pens for the customer to sign the sales agreements. Just in case 1 pen stopped working and the backup pen malfunctioned. He brought this sort of laser focus to absolutely every aspect of the business.

How many salesmen would have a spare pen, already in place, let alone 2 spares. How many would even have thought about it and what the right number might be?

Focus, attention to detail and continuous innovation.

<comment><USER17> Unfortunately, there's also a cargo-cult aspect to this kind of thing, when managers start saying: "Everyone is now required to have three pens at their station at all times."

I'm in a company where the suit-wearing side says "we need innovation" to the tech side, but they don't actually want a discussion about what they see as opportunities or directions. They just want to invoke it by rote ritual, or order it as if we kept some on shelves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> _Patients with CF at Fairview got the same things that patients everywhere did—some nebulized treatments to loosen secretions and unclog passageways (a kind of mist tent in a mouth pipe), antibiotics, and a good thumping on their chests every day. Yet, somehow, everything he did was different._

I found this quote especially interesting. I've often found this to be true, that you look over at someone who's much better, and on one hand they're just doing the same things you're doing, but somehow they're just on a different level. It's very difficult to distinguish exactly how someone achieves better results, that is, until it's been explained. Here, we see this clearly in how the level of lung function is perceived. Both centers provide the same treatment, but at the Cincinnati center lung levels around 70% are "okay", but at Minnesota, any drop is unacceptable, even if the patient is already at above-normal levels.

It sort of reminds me of the "Don't deal with it, fix it" article that was also posted recently. You'll be coasting around at a certain stable level of engagement until one day you see something you've never considered before and all of a sudden you see a whole new world of possibilities.

</comment><comment><USER19> Good article, but I feel Atul Gawande mischaracterized "evidence-based practice" in a way that does our whole planet a disservice when he poo-poohed it to lionize Warwick.

Evidence based practice isn't really new, it's been a thing since '92\. And while it is about using studies to make treatment decisions, it's not about forbidding doctors from thinking for themselves.

But what really got my goat was the fact that evidence-based _medicine_ is the new thing, and it's an essential step in the evolution of medicine, and more people need to understand it. Evidence based medicine is about applying statistics to determine when treatments cause more harm than good. With modern medicine's advances in imaging techniques, we're hitting all sorts of new and dangerous problems where the benign abnormalities we all accumulate over our lives are treated at great expense, inconvenience and loss of health.

<comment><USER20> I don't think he was "poo-poohing" it exactly. If everyone only follows evidence based medicine there will never be any improvement because there will never be any changes.

So someone has to be the person who ignores it, who tries new things. And that someone, in this field, is Warwick.

The evidence part comes in when that person also _tracks_ their results! i.e. makes it a study, and Warsick certainly seems to do so.

<comment><USER15> Yes I got the impression his attitude about evidence-based medicine is similar to that saying about accounting -- that "accounting is the art of looking in the rear view mirror and dragging your ass into the future".

i.e. Accounting isn't worthless. It's necessary, but not sufficient.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Money quote, applicable to hacking in general:

 _"We are used to thinking that a doctor's ability depends mainly on science and skill. The lesson from Minneapolis is that these may be the easiest parts of care. Even doctors with great knowledge and technical skill can have mediocre results; more nebulous factors like aggressiveness and consistency and ingenuity can matter enormously... What the best may have, above all, is a capacity to learn and adapt—and to do so faster than everyone else."_

</comment><comment><USER22> Doesn't the central limit theorum imply that most sane distributions of quality of care (including all doctors are equally good) will result in a bell curve?

There are tests you can do to tell if the variance between care centers exceed that you would expect from chance, but the mere observation of a bell curve seems completely uninteresting.

<comment><USER23> Say each doctor's patients had a common constant death rate for that doctor, not a crazy assumption, and those constant death rates across doctors followed a gamma distribution (not hard, because I could fit my ass with a gamma), then the distribution of each doctor's patients' life expectancies would be exponential and the distribution of life expectancies of the whole group would be Pareto.

Exponential is completely positively skewed and thin-tailed, and Pareto is roughly the same shape but very fat-tailed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I hope that more and more data becomes available around healthcare and outcomes!

Medicare recently produced this data [http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/04/09/health/medicar...](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/04/09/health/medicare- doctor-database.html) and the center that my wife works at used it to to produce this graph [http://blog.parathyroid.com/parathyroid-surgery- medicare/](http://blog.parathyroid.com/parathyroid-surgery-medicare/). They are quite a bit better at this particular operation than anywhere else in the US, not surprising given how many more they do, however it is often difficult for patients to know or understand that - who should they trust? More data please! Interestingly this operation is one that Atul Gawande (who wrote this article in 2004) specializes in too.

<comment><USER25> If you're interested in referral patterns:

[http://omni.docgraph.org/](http://omni.docgraph.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Significantly, this article neglects to consider how sample size (and demographics) might affect the measurement of hospital treatment quality.

tl;dr: If you don't adjust for the sample size, what may appear to be the best, or worse, hospital, may look like that only because of how they have (un)successfully treated a single patient, and thereby yield an unrealistic estimate of patient quality (ie; 100% cure rate of a single patient, which may not be reflective of the actual caliber of doctors).

Further reading, which is strongly recommended if you want to learn more;

[http://nsmn1.uh.edu/dgraur/niv/TheMostDangerousEquation.pdf](http://nsmn1.uh.edu/dgraur/niv/TheMostDangerousEquation.pdf)

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry...but I don't get what you're postulating...that the doctors and hospitals whose reputations are at stake...nevermind the lives of their patients who are affected by policy decisions...would be totally ignorant of that basic statistical caveat? That it's possible that the top-of-the-line hospital just happened to cure a couple of really lucky patients and everyone who has lauded that hospital has never heard of regression analysis?

I guess it's possible...but it's probably more likely that the New Yorker is not trying to be a reference on statistical methods. In any case, the statistical caveat you mention is arguably addressed in this catchall- paragraph that briefly describes the problem of quality-of-care statistics:

> _In recent years, there have been numerous efforts to measure how various > hospitals and doctors perform. No one has found the task easy. One > difficulty has been figuring out what to measure. For six years, from 1986 > to 1992, the federal government released an annual report that came to be > known as the Death List, which ranked all the hospitals in the country by > their death rate for elderly and disabled patients on Medicare. The spread > was alarmingly wide, and the Death List made headlines the first year it > came out. But the rankings proved to be almost useless. Death among the > elderly or disabled mostly has to do with how old or sick they are to begin > with, and the statisticians could never quite work out how to apportion > blame between nature and doctors. Volatility in the numbers was one sign of > the trouble. Hospitals' rankings varied widely from one year to the next > based on a handful of random deaths. It was unclear what kind of changes > would improve their performance (other than sending their sickest patients > to other hospitals). Pretty soon the public simply ignored the rankings._

 _Even with younger patients, death rates are a poor metric for how doctors do. After all, very few young patients die, and when they do it's rarely a surprise; most already have metastatic cancer or horrendous injuries or the like. What one really wants to know is how we perform in typical circumstances. After I've done an appendectomy, how long does it take for my patients to fully recover? After I've taken out a thyroid cancer, how often do my patients have serious avoidable complications? How do my results compare with those of other surgeons?_

(the author himself is a surgeon and has written a lot about the problems of reliably measuring quality of care performance)

<comment><USER26> To be clear, I'm not at all suggesting that doctors do this out of malice - only that effective statistical analysis is really, really, hard, and it's not immediately clear that surgeons (regardless of their international reputation) would have the background required to properly analyze these studies in a coherent framework, especially when it's not immediately relevant to a patients outcome in an operating theatre.

I'm not suggesting that they're ignorant of basic statistical facts, but I am definitely suggesting that they're not immediately aware of the subtle assumptions implicit in many of the statistical models they use.

For example, given the large numbers we're talking about, not only is it possible that the "number 1" hospital in any particular field is there because of statistical fluke, it's actually likely that this is the case.

The (mis)use of statistics certainly isn't limited to medicine, but it is one of the places where its misinterpretation has the biggest impact.

[https://www.sciencenews.org/article/odds-are-its- wrong](https://www.sciencenews.org/article/odds-are-its-wrong)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Ostensibly an article about medicine but really more about how to achieve true excellence at what you do ... definitely a long read but well worth the time

</comment><comment><USER28> The same question came to my mind and I asked a doctor "Sir, what happens to the students in MBBS who just pass taking a border mark?" The doctor said you should still be ok because passing score itself is like 60% + lot of practice involved. I did not bother to check the pass mark required for the course but now-a-days I go to doctor who have at least 10+ years of experience.

<comment><USER29> > now-a-days I go to doctor who have at least 10+ years of experience.

That's not very Kantian. How are less-experienced doctors supposed to get experience?

<comment><USER28> With some else :) Keeping the joke aside. I would want them to assist senior doctor for some time and personally i always use second opinion. BTW, if you do not you can get anti-biotic off the shelf and most of the doctors will give you in first visit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Really good takeaway near the end of the article: "What the best may have, above all, is a capacity to learn and adapt—and to do so faster than everyone else."

</comment><comment><USER31> Q.What do you call the guy who passes out last in his class on his med finals? A. Doctor

<comment><USER32> Q. What do you call the guy who scored just a teensy bit lower than that?

A. Mister.

IOW, this joke/insight is only valuable if the standard for passing is set too low.

If it's set correctly, then everyone who passed has shown they are prepared to be a competent doctor.

<comment><USER33> If competence is, as the article suggests, normally distributed, then there's no natural level at which to draw the cutoff line. But anyway, iirc, studies show no correlation between outcomes and class rank (nor selectiveness of medical school), at least for surgeons.</comment></comment></comment>


The future of R - pessimistic thoughts by R founder Ross Ihaka - <AUTHOR> http://www.r-bloggers.com/%E2%80%9Csimply-start-over-and-build-something-better%E2%80%9D/ The recent post on the shortcomings of R has attracted a huge number of readers and Ross Ihaka has now posted a detailed comment that is fairly pessimistic… Given the directions drafted in this comment from the father of R (along with Robert Gentleman), I once again re-post this comment as a main entry to advertise more broadly its contents. (Obviously, the whole debate is now far beyond my reach!) <comment><USER2> _> The license will need to a better job of protecting work donated to the commons than GPL2 seems to have done. I'm not willing to have any more of my work purloined by the likes of Revolution Analytics, so I'll be looking for better protection from the license (and being a lot more careful about who I work with)._

Not having used R or being more than passingly familiar with it, I'm wondering if anyone could shed some light on what this is about? I notice that on the Revolution Analytics website, they are selling an "enterprise" version of R which they claim has a number of advantages over the mainstream form of R.

How exactly is a proprietary form of R even able to exist if R's codebase is GPL'd?

<comment><USER3> Revolution Analytics has released some extensions that are proprietary, for instance their doSMP library that provides multicore support under Windows. They have also released several of their libraries into the "commons" -- doMC and foreach are the two that immediately come to mind.

I'm sort of torn on this issue because setting aside the terms under which RA releases their libraries, what they produce comes with great documentation, and tends to be pretty useful. Using foreach and doMC I was able to cut down a calculation that normally takes 8 hours to 3 hours on a 6 core machine.

On the other hand, I strongly believe that proprietary code should be avoided when doing scientific research because it inhibits peer review and makes it harder for others to replicate your work. As Warren DeLano said: _"The only way to publish software in a scientifically robust manner is to share source code, and that means publishing via the internet in an open-access/open-source fashion."_

<comment><USER4> And Robert Gentleman has always been one of the strongest proponents of reproducible research, which includes being able to create packages that can be shared and freely distributed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> To me the problem with R isn't performance problems, which I've never run into myself, but rather the complicated and confusing semantics of its data types.

R's aggregate data types are: vector, matrix, array, dataframe, and list. The semantics of these types and the relationships between them are extremely confusing. I wish I had gathered examples of this so I could be more specific, but I have basically come to the conclusion that I will never get familiar enough with them to do any better than random guessing until it works right. And I've written somewhat in-depth analyses in R.

<comment><USER6> I may be wrong but I think that:

list => are basically hash, or an array that can have mixed objects inside

vector, matrix, array => are all the same thing. They are what in most computer languages are called arrays, and can have only one type. The difference between those three is just the number of dimensions (vector:1, matrix:2, array:3+).

dataframe I will concede is a little more complex, and I still have some problem with it. But I basically think of it as a table, where a row represents a value (say temperature) and the column different measuremnts. So, for example:

rows=> temperature, humidity, hours of light, peak UV columns=> Day1, day2, day3, day4, ...

Hope that helps.

<comment><USER7> Lists are hashes on acid. The default return value of indexing in is NULL. That's a weird semantic for a list, but maybe not so much a hash. The weird part is that if you explicitly assign null to an element of the list, it deletes the element. That's particularly weird because the list has knows all the elements in it, so it's not like it can't tell the difference between a value that has been set to NULL and a value that has never been set. See <http://gist.github.com/578110> for a little transcript.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> To be honest I've been using R a bit lately for my work and while I like it I don't find it at all innovative. That's not a criticism of R: the libraries it has are amazing, as well as the mindshare among people who care of statistics.

But I wonder why R actually needs to exist as its own language. It seems it could be recast in Ruby for example or one of the latest functional languages.

So I am kind of pleased my this news... if there's gonna be a need for R to have its own language, speed seems to be the most important distinguishing feature. A bit like Fortran is still used in science.

(incidentally... don't let people tell you otherwise: Fortran(90+) is a very nice language... much more pleasurable than C to use and gives you better performance (unless you know a lot about compilers and compiling flags... but most scientist don't ^_^))

<comment><USER8> _But I wonder why R actually needs to exist as its own language. It seems it could be recast in Ruby for example or one of the latest functional languages._

Indeed - it would be a shame for them to start over from scratch and end up coming up with a brand new language, brand new syntax, brand new quirks, brand new performance problems, etc., while they could have simply searched around a bit for something that's already mature and somewhat optimized as well as suiting their needs.

If they wanted to add on to or modify an existing language (for instance, to provide more concise syntax for some of the things that are more important in statistics than in general purpose programming), that would be just fine, it could become a dialect of some other language, but starting fresh seems like an awful waste of energy...

Something that ran on the JVM would be awesome, they'd have no trouble at all rebuilding the massive library of contributions.

<comment><USER9> For JVM, there is Incanter which is a statistics library written in Clojure. It is backed by Parallel Colt for the heavy number lifting. Note that I'm not trying to say that Clojure would be a scientist-friendly language :)

<comment><USER6> How does Incanter work on HPC? R is pretty awful from that point of view, and if there ever will be room for a specialised statistical language it's got to be able to do massive number crunching.

I've heard bad things of JVM for tightly coupled jobs on HPC (though I know there's been some improvement: e.g. a lot of work done by EPCC in Edinburgh). Does Clojure manages to offer a good parallel implementation on top of the JVM or has no work been done in this area?

<comment><USER9> According to the website, Parallel Colt supports multicore machines. There's no mention of MPI though. As far as I know, Incanter only wraps it, so it does not influence the performance that much..

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I would welcome a replacement for R just because the new language's name might be easier to google. I hope they don't call it Q.

<comment><AUTHOR> BTW, that was my motivation for starting the www.r-bloggers.com website. It now has over 110 bloggers (who write about R) there. When I started and looked for them on google, all I could find was bloggers who wrote about pirates :D

<comment><USER11> Google thought R = Arrrgghh? Lol...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It almost sounds like they want to switch to Haskell.

<comment><USER13> Or perhaps incanter with all it's lispy goodness.

"Incanter is a Clojure-based, R-like platform for statistical computing and graphics."

<http://incanter.org/>

<comment><USER12> Wouldn't get you pervasive laziness, though I don't know whether R is lazy by default or like Clojure in that you have to ask for it.

<comment><USER14> if you use Clojures primitives you pretty much end up with laziness by default. for, map and most of the other list processing functions all return lazy lists. So while Clojure does technically require you to "turn on" laziness in most cases you'll find it's turned on already.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> a translator from R to Maxima would be another idea. Maxima is Lisp based, use an algol like language, is used in education and is free. But developer are scare so more hands are needed. Maxima can use BLAS and other libraries for numeric computation, and it support many implementations of Lisp (sbcl, gcl, cll, ecl ...), some of their member are working in a java based lisp (Arms beast?). With so many tools available it is a something to consider.

</comment><comment><USER16> python

has, RPy2 so you can still access R's statistics libraries <http://scikits.appspot.com/statsmodels>, and <http://pandas.sourceforge.net/> (dataframes)

plus, scipy has a decent stats library as well (random variables, etc)

still rough around the edges, but a good solution in my opinion</comment>


Instagram is not worth $1 billion to Facebook - <AUTHOR> http://www.isaacsukin.com/news/2012/04/14/instagram-not-worth-1-billion-facebook

<comment><USER2> Something that you're forgetting to consider in your analysis is that while Instagram is a mobile first company right now, there is demand and a place for them to have a stronger web presence. There have been other media outlets to speculate on this topic but obviously before the acquisition they did not have the resources to dedicate time to a better web experience. Now that they will be given significantly more resources they will now be able to deliver such an experience. As you've noted web advertising is far more effective of a method and therefore will be an area for revenue generation. Instagram would also have the possibility of creating a platform for people to sell their photos or have them made into art like other companies do right now. Things like promoted pictures could be implemented much more easily to work with brands. In the same way that Facebook generates a primary amount of its revenue while leaving mobile untouched for the time being I believe the same can be done for Instagram. Mobile is the bread and butter for Instagram and still will be as it continues forward but a web based experience can greatly help the company both grow its user base and grow revenue.

<comment><AUTHOR> Basically what you're saying is that Instagram actually does have the potential to make $1B. Care to ballpark some numbers as to what income your suggested methods of monetization would actually have to produce to make Instagram be actually worth $1B?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Something is only worth what someone is willing to pay.

<comment><USER4> Exactly. Beyond everyone's need to rationalize _why_ Facebook paid that much for Instagram, it's clear that Instagram _is_ worth $1B to Facebook, because that's what they paid.

<comment><AUTHOR> The relevant question is not "what is Instagram worth" but rather "what should it be worth." That is, we already know that Facebook values Instagram at $1B; the question is whether that valuation makes sense.

<comment><USER4> But "what should it be worth" can be debated until you're blue in the face and still have no real outcome. What Facebook paid is a fact, not speculation.

For all you know, Google is kicking itself for not making a $2B offer to them, because Google Plus could use all the help it can get.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


What it is like to be a Muslim woman, and why we know what freedom is - <AUTHOR> http://aveilandadarkplace.wordpress.com/2013/07/01/what-it-is-like-to-be-a-muslim-woman-and-why-we-know-what-freedom-is/ <comment><USER2> I know a woman from Iran who has gone through something similar. She came to Canada to study as a grad student. Brilliant woman! At first we were the enemy. She wore the hijab, maintained links with home and didn't socialize.I think having adult male students treat her like Canadians generally treat teachers really threw her for a loop! Gradually she started making friends and connecting with colleagues. Eventually the hijab was tossed in the bin and she seemed essentially Western. She also completely cut off contact with her family and is still apt to spout off angrily if Iran is even mentioned. Her family's worst fears were made manifest. She was seduced and corrupted by Western devils. She is probably an embarrassment to them, but a distant one.

This is the scary thing. For many women, the price of freedom in the West is losing their home and family forever. I've seen other equally brilliant women in similar circumstances maintain their walls throughout their studies and disappear back home never to be heard from again. For them, the price of freedom is too high. I can't imagine what it must be like to face such a choice.

\</comment><comment></comment><comment>-----

Edit: While some would say this is a social issue that doesn't belong on HN, these women are potentially your coworkers or employees. I would argue that they have special needs which may be important to understand. Specifically, if your workplace is full of people who don't socialize with each other outside work hours, the odds of these women going back home, possibly without much warning, probably increase significantly.

<comment><USER3> Iran is in a specific situation right now. Unlike Saudi Arabia or Lennon, Islam practices are mandatory in public. Things like wearing hijab. As you might or might not expect, this have reverse effect in practice. It also lowered islam's repetitation in our culture. I would say more than half of Iranian yought do not believe in Islam. As a result you will see less violence against women from Iranian people. it's hard to find young Iranian in the USA or Canada that still practices Islam. It peobably means that person is from a family with strong religious belifes. It's hard to deal with both your family and enjoying your freedom. I appreciate your understanding on this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It can't be said often enough: Islam does not have an exclusive license for religious nutjobbery.

What it _shares_ with other groups _known_ for nutjobbery, such as Fundamentalist Baptist churches or ultraorthodox Judaism is the fact that Islam does not have an established hierarchy with established public figures: anyone can hang out their shingle, call himself Imam and open up a mosque in part of a rented warehouse, just as anyone can call himself Pastor and set up their church with their band of dedicated followers.

The public eye is a strong force for good.

</comment><comment><USER5> One of my best friends in high school grew up in a conservative Christian household, and her life was a strikingly similar (if less extreme) version of what's stated here.

She's 17 and doesn't have a key to her house. Her parents read and question her about her texts, Facebook account, and internet history. In middle school, she read popular fiction (Harry Potter, Inkspell, etc.) in class because only Christian-themed books were allowed at home. Her parents usually refused the permission slips on PG and PG-13 movies. She's not permitted to ride in a car unless the driver is a relative or adult friend of the family (which _seriously_ impedes social life in a quiet suburb). Shortly after her 17th birthday she was granted permission to date, then bowed to her parents' pressure to break up with one of our mutual friends _because she liked him_ but it wasn't going to result in marriage. Before that magical threshold, she wasn't allowed to be alone with me (or any other male friend), even in a public place. Her parents expect straight As. The only exception was the test on evolution in freshmen biology. That one, she was required to fail.

She is occasionally upset by her parents inteference, but is on the whole a firm believer in piety, strict parenting and plentiful spanking. She instinctively rejects any suggestion that a parent's judgement could ever be wrong (like when friends complain about their parents), or that _any_ of what was taken from her could be considered a right. The Saudi Arabian Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Suppression of Vice (morality police) came up in the news one day, and that struck her (to my horror) not as Orwellian, but as a brilliant idea and something we need here.

And now, having been trusted with exactly 0 important decisions in her life, she's moving away to college this fall (secular, fortunately). I hope she has a moment like Marwa's. I hope she realizes the signficance of the fact that she has keys to her room, the password to her computer, and the PIN to her phone. I hope she realizes that she can Google and text and email without fear of retribution, that no one will tell her that her 15 minutes of internet time are up or demand to know why she checked out that book or called that boy. But if I had to put money on it, I'd say she'll raise her children the same way.

Aggressively protecting the sexual and religious purity of daughters isn't unique to the Muslim world. Some would call it responsible parenting. But I think it's important, before we write this off as a "those people" problem, that not-otherwise-outwardly-crazy Christians do it too.

</comment><comment><USER6> Is it naive to say that any change in terms of discrimination will have to come from within? What _are_ effective ways we can improve the situation, globally? The imperial solution is right out, it causes a lot of harm and probably flat out does not work. Think global act local, and work on getting rid of discrimination of women and others in our own societies? Lean on governments to legislate societal change or at least stop legislating the status quo? Cut economic ties to punish discrimination, or increase them in the hope that this will, somehow, lead to a globalization of our attitude?

I'm sure many people here will stress the positive effect easy communication can have on the issue; global communication gives people a glimpse into other, less discriminatory regimes, local communication brings together people who might feel isolated otherwise and lets them organise. I suppose the cell phone has done a lot to improve the situation, in its way; even if she had to hide her (male) contacts under female pseudonyms, it offered her a way of communicating in a clandestine manner, that feature not being limited to talking to guys, obviously.

<comment><USER7> > What are effective ways we can improve the situation, globally?

In many ways, we've already done it, and are doing it, and it just takes a long time to take effect. It takes generations, and, as you said, trying to do it more quickly (that is, the imperial solution) is likely to not only fail, but backfire and result in a real solution taking longer and being uglier in the end.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is a great, moving piece, broadly reflective of a lot of issues I feel strongly about, and I was thrilled to read it.

But I also don't think political stories like this belong on HN, even when those politics overlap mine almost entirely. I can't imagine how HN will find a way to disagree with itself on this article, and dread any discussion we might have about it.

I flagged this and hope others will too.

<comment><USER9> It is all politics: snowden, positive discrimination, global warming, women in it, starving children in africa.

Yet somehow womens rights in muslim countries are not even tolerated for discusion.

<comment><USER10> Lebanon is not a Muslim country. There is a difference between a discussion on women's rights in Muslim countries and an "Ex-Muslim's" rant on a certain religion.

<comment><USER9> 54% Lebanese are muslims. Do word count on "muslim", only a few times. Most of her "rant" is about not being able to walk on streets and abuse from her family. I really do not get how this is religion related.

I sugest we should not write about rape cases in India either, it would be just a rant.

<comment><USER10> This is a question of whether the post is relative to HN, not whether it is related to Islam or not. Rape and Anti Islam are all good, just not this specific rant. You are doing exactly what the OP does, hasty generalizations.

i must say, it is very easy for such a post to fall under controversial categories. i believe well informed individuals on HN will flag this as an attempt to go viral by being controversial.

<comment><USER9> there is lot of unrelated junk on HN. Nobody cares to flag socialism vs kapitalism discussion. So why flaging this post?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


MBAs & Startups - A VC's contrarian view - <AUTHOR> http://bostonvcblog.typepad.com/vc/2013/11/unicorns-and-mbas.html

<comment><USER2> Great post - So looks like MBAs aren't that bad after all.</comment>


Living in a van - an inspirational story of frugality and achievement - <AUTHOR> http://www.salon.com/life/pinched/story/index.html?story=/news/pinched/2009/12/06/living_in_a_van <comment><USER2> This line caught my attn:

"Not including tuition, I lived (and lived comfortably) on $103 a week, which covered my necessities: food, gas, car insurance, a cellphone and visits to the laundromat."

To each his own, but if it was me and I wanted to live on $103 a week I would skip the van (-$1500), gas, car insurance, and probably cell phone too. I know you can find rooms in Durham for under $300 a month. Find a friend to share the room with and you're each paying $150 a month. You then have windows (fresh air), a kitchen, shower and toilet. Maybe buy a bicycle from the Salvation Army for $10 and you're more than set.

<comment><USER3> I think it is all pocket change compared to what he is paying to attend Duke. From his blog:

"Anonymous said... I'm curious why you chose a very expensive private uni over a public. Perhaps you could write an article on that from a frugal perspective. Cost/Benefit comparison?"

I'd love to see his response. Particularly since a common theme here on HN is that you go to an elite school to be with intelligent, driven people; the classes are almost superfulous. You could get them via open courseware if you really wanted to be frugal.

I bring this up because according to his article the van caused him to avoid all contact outside of classes with other students for fear of being found out and reported. Seems like he isn't frugal at all, unless he just wants the cheapest path to a 'prestigious' degree and doesn't actually want the best experience he can get. But being in anything for 'prestige' seems antithetical to the type of thought pattern that would lead you to live in a van. The whole thing comes off confused (and braggardly... "60 miles north of the Artic Circle," etc., etc.)

<comment><USER4> His reply:

"Anon-I chose an expensive private school because it wasn't that expensive for me. Typically it's $3000/course but they knocked it down to about $1000/course for me because of my destitution. Public school wouldn't have been any cheaper. Another good question might be: why didn't you just try to get your school paid for like most grad students? My answer: I tried this. I applied to 6 history phd programs and 4 MFA writing programs and got denied from all of them. And I'm glad I got denied. I'm better off in Liberal Studies, which keeps me from becoming "specialized" in something, which I wish to avoid like the plague."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have a grad-student friend who is much better off financially than the blogger, but decided to go the van route himself after reading about other van dwellers on line. I think the primary motivation was a desire to achieve as much independence as possible. He could quit his job tomorrow and not have to worry about scraping up any money for years, his only real concerns being cell phone, car insurance, gas, and food. He had other, environmental reasons (not being a consumer) for doing it as well, but basically I think you have to be obsessed with independence to take a step like this.

I admire people who are able to do it. Myself? No desire for it at all. I'm perfectly all right with the idea of interdependence.

<comment><USER6> What happens when you have to take your house in for service?

<comment><USER7> This was asked in regards to the RV link posted a month ago. He said most places that service RVs and vans are setup to work on them during the day and allow you access to it at night. Otherwise you spend a little more that week for a really cheap hotel. Big deal, it's a lot less than what you'd pay per month on average.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> While the adventure of van-living is fun and the rant on loans and cost of education are true, I think you can get the education you need in a financially responsible way without having to live in a smelly van all alone. I made it through my undergrad by working part-time, living at home, and going to state and community colleges. It took me over 5 years but I had no loans of any kind at then end. Maybe that's the difference between CS and English majors.

<comment><USER3> The adventure of van-living isn't always fun: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=917395>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Dude, I'm not judging you but if you are homeless and living in a van and having trouble getting regular meals here is something that might help you out a little. It is going to get very cold soon.

There is a program called Section-8 vouchers that might be able to help you out. I think you can just pick an apartment and the state of North Carolina will pay for it. They get reimbursed by the federal government from the taxes we pay.

Here is a link from the Durham Housing Authority near Duke University: <http://www.durhamhousingauthority.org/>

Best of Luck

</comment><comment><USER10> He also has a blog (which is often excellent) here:

<http://spartanstudent.blogspot.com/>

</comment><comment><USER11> _Most undergrads imagine they'll effortlessly pay off their loans when they start getting paid the big bucks; they're living in a state of denial, disregarding the implications of a tough job market and how many extra years of work their spending sprees have sentenced them to. But "facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored," as Aldous Huxley famously said._

No, they don't. The facts are that your prospects as an English major are, on average, fairly dim. However, your assumption that everyone will be in your position after graduation is woefully self-absorbed.

 _I have sympathy for my fellow students. I did many of the same things when I was an undergrad. Plus, escaping student debt -- no matter how frugal they try to be -- is nearly impossible. Even if they do resort to purchasing a large creepy van, most will still have to go tens of thousands of dollars into debt to pay for tuition._

I think not.

 _The idea of "thrift," once an American ideal, now seems almost quaint to many college students, particularly those at elite schools. The typical student today is not so frugal. Few know where the money they're spending is coming from and even fewer know how deep they're in debt. They're detached from the source of their money. That's because there is no source. They're getting paid by their future selves._

And? He states this like it's _prima facie_ ridiculous. The world runs on non- liquid assets and loans. If he thinks that he's somehow permanently escaped loans and debt he is going to have a rude awakening when he goes to buy a house and needs to take out a mortgage. Of course, he could always choose never to buy a house and live in a van for the rest of his life, but that completely ruins his idea of how "sensible" he is for avoiding college loans.

In essence, if he enjoys living frugally and does it for internal reasons (Thoreau's ideal) then that is perfectly fine. However if he believes that he is somehow in a better living and financial situation than the rest of his peers he is simply deluding himself. Yes, college education is exorbitant and yes loans make take years, even decades, to pay off. However, the idea that loans are _obviously_ a negative thing have no basis in math or economics. One can construct situations in which loans and debt result in disaster, sure, but one can also create similar situations that have no negative consequence. That is, it is not the loan itself which is _prima facie_ negative, but the circumstances surrounding it.

<comment><USER12> Your statement "However, the idea that loans are obviously a negative thing have no basis in math or economics" seems a little odd, in that he is putatively trying to live without debt.

Mathematically speaking, the sum of the amount of money he will have left after x years is greater if he has no loans, which have interest attached to them.

<comment><USER11> _Mathematically speaking, the sum of the amount of money he will have left after x years is greater if he has no loans, which have interest attached to them._

With a huge penalty in disposable income while in grad school. Spending more in the long term and spending less in the short term are two different cases -- neither of which is objectively better than the other. The better is dependent on circumstances.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Wait -- his mom offered to buy him lodging (and possibly tuition). Is it really "frugal" to turn down a place to sleep, or just shortsighted?

<comment><USER14> Well put.

Does the world not already provide enough difficult challenges? I encourage others to test themselves by endeavoring to make the world a better place.

Yes, I know that sounds condescending, but I cannot stand the author's self- absorbtion: "By making life harder for myself, I prove how macho I am!"

<comment><USER15> You're being downvoted, but I think you bring up an interesting contrarian position that I'm surprised so many here disagree with. Couldn't he be working on a startup, instead of living off rice in an ant-filled van?

<comment><USER7> > instead of living off rice in an ant-filled van

Uh, I think you mean "instead of going to graduate school."

<comment><USER16> Plenty of people go to grad school on limited means and still manage to live in a heated, watered apartment. IMHO this whole exercise seems more like an attempt to escape consumerism (in whatever way the author has defined it), more than it is about being able to afford education.

<comment><USER17> The author is 100% clear that the exercise is an attempt to escape debt. He's got plenty of options if he just wants to afford an education.

<comment><USER15> Exactly our point. He's going to great lengths to avoid any debt, which in this society is a bit masochistic. A little debt for your future isn't going to kill you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> _"... I was only a few dollars away from having to rummage through Dumpsters to find my next meal. I was -- by conventional first-world definitions -- poor ..."_

I was talking to a mate while working on his property ~ [http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/sets/72157621928042355...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/sets/72157621928042355/) and the talk moved around to some friends we'd gone to school with. One in particular, _"R"_ went to medical school, expensive anywhere. He mentioned the lecturer asked _"R"_ one day why he wasn't writing anything down and found out he couldn't afford a pen. Now _"R"_ saved for all the required medical books, clothed & fed himself but had nothing left for things like pens & paper. It didn't stop him from becoming a surgeon and rotating as an Army surgeon through the ADF.

 _"... To me, the van was what Kon-Tiki was to Heyerdahl, what the GMC van was to the A-Team, what Walden was to Thoreau. It was an adventure. ..."_

 _"Kon-Tiki"_ ~ <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kon-Tiki> is a papyrus boat sailed from Morocco to Barbados by Heyerdahl as shown the film, _"The Ra Expedition"_ ~ <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThorHeyerdahl#TheBoatsRaandRaII>

</comment><comment><USER19> This reminds me of an experiment I did in college to see how small of a food budget I could go on while still maintaining three healthy (and delicious) meals per day.

I think I got it down to under $2/meal with a carb, protein, and veggie/fruit component to each meal. Pretty amazing when you factor in that I did ~50% of my shopping at Whole Foods. (they have quite competitive prices when it comes to frozen veggies and dried pasta)

Amazing how far money will go when you don't have very much of it.

<comment><USER20> Could you give us a sample ingredient list/menu for a typical day?

<comment><USER21> Probably involves a lot of peanut butter ;-)

<comment><USER19> haha peanut butter and... rice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It's cool and all, but I've found attempting to live too sparsely compromises what I get from school. If I eat too frugally, I can't think properly. If I try to save too much on transportation by sleeping on campus, I am not well rested.

As my parents told me when I was hemming and hawing about whether or not I should buy a certain text book for a class, or try to get by without it- I'm already paying thousands and thousands of dollars in tuition and living expenses; I should get the most I can out of it, even if it means buying that $150 book.

Or, to put it more simply- penny wise, pound foolish. I've come to realize I agree; I'd rather go into debt and make the most of college than scrape by as cheap as I can, and not learn anything.

</comment><comment><USER23> He learned to live like the homeless: tucked away in his van, quietly hoping campus security didn't notice (they probably were generously keeping an eye on him and his van for his own sake). Seems a stretch to romanticize his lifestyle vis-a-vis Thoreau, who lived in the wilds rather than a parking lot. And he's a long way from Thoreau as a writer:

 _"During rainstorms, I listened to millions of raindrops drum against the roof and watched them wiggle like sperm down my windows."_

Caught between the security guards and the sperm, it seems a bit isolating, nearly paranoid.

<comment><USER24> Thoreau's cabin was only 45 minutes' walk outside of Concord, however.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> See also this HN thread from October:

"Living in an RV as an Internet Nomad- 3G, solar, cost savings, and flexibility."

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=910626>

</comment><comment><USER26> Good for him I guess. Personally, I wouldn't have minded the financial help, but everyone has their own idea of what path to follow for happiness. Kudos for having the discipline to stick with his plan.

If anyone is interested in a CS student counterpart to this guy, follow the link below:

<http://www.newhavenadvocate.com/article.cfm?aid=14809>

</comment><comment><USER27> This site is full of "stealth" camper stories like that. Pretty creative people and some fascinating reading.

<http://cheaprvliving.com/>

</comment><comment><USER28> These are fun:

<http://www.tumbleweedhouses.com/houses/purchase/>

The chance the security guard keeps walking is much lower though.

</comment><comment><USER6> I like the bit where he's paranoid about being discovered so he lies about where he lives, etc. Perhaps Salon has less readership than I'd imagined...

<comment><USER29> most recent entry from his blog:

      1. My identity is revealed.
      2. Duke knows about the van.
      3. I... am... fucked.

<http://spartanstudent.blogspot.com/2009/12/no-he-dint.html>

<comment><USER30> It seems really odd that he'd use his real name in the byline. Getting caught after doing that is not exactly an unforeseeable consequence, which means he was probably ready to move on to the next phase anyway, and getting the byline is more valuable to him than maintaining the status quo.

My guess? He's going after a book deal or something.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I loved the post, could you recommend other sites about the minimalist lifestyle?.

<comment><USER32> [http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/09/mark- boyle...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/09/mark-boyle-money)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Yow. Patrick Farley meets Chris Farley.</comment>


Understanding How Neural Networks Understand - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pd3IcLrc0VY <comment><AUTHOR> Summary: Lauren Hayward Sierens from the Perimeter Institute gives a pedagogical lecture to a group of high school teachers, walking through the very basics of feed-forward neural networks. A great talk for anyone just getting started with the subject.</comment>


Ask HN: Review my startup, GetPlaylists - <AUTHOR> http://www.getplaylists.com

<comment><USER2> Like the idea. Wanted to do something like this a few years ago. It's an actual pain point: I have thousands of albums, and it's a pain to mix them so that I enjoy them and listen to most of them regularly.

Hate HATE the stock-footage girl on the front page.

What's with "My cart (0)"? I went hunting for the thing that costs money. Is there one?

I assume I can upload my iTunes playlist and you'll fit it to what's in your database, that being the value prop.

I assume your key viral loops are Facebook and Twitter, broadcasting to friends portions of playlists.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. That is definitely one of the pain points we are looking to relieve. Good to hear that it resonates.

Yeah the stock photo is probably a bit too market-y, will work on replacing with solid content.

You are able to add any songs you don't own to your shopping cart for purchase. The downloadable software not only allows you to upload and share you itunes playlist, but it also allows us to provide you with purchase protection so you don't buy music you already own. The software also syncs playlists from the website with itunes or windows media player.

I am definitely hoping that Facebook and Twitter turn into viral loops.

Thanks for your feedback. It is much appreciated.

<comment><USER3> Playlists are not something I have much use for (I prefer listening to whole albums at a time), but as a graphic designer I'd like to second the thing about the stock photo.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> As other people have said, the stock-photo girl has got to go. It makes me feel like you're trying to sell me insurance or tooth whitener or a mortgage or something.

My main issue after poking around the site for a couple minutes is that I still can't tell what you offer that I can't already get from iTunes and sites like Pandora/Last.fm/etc. The iTunes "Genius" feature works well enough for assembling quick 'n dirty playlists out of my current music collection. If I want to share my music tastes with my friends, I'm already on last.fm. If I want to share a specific playlist with my friends, I'll burn them a CD or something, since their collections don't overlap with mine much.

Maybe I'm not your target audience, but, regardless, here's what I'd like to see: really interesting curated playlists. I can't find any on the site right now. The playlists I can find now are all very, well, functional, but they're not compelling. Ideally these playlists would be more like mixtapes than unordered jumbles of songs. It seems like it wouldn't be too much trouble (or too expensive) to get some good online or college radio DJs to assemble some quality content for you. You could also just use show track lists as playlists, but the results wouldn't be quite as nice.

(It'd also be neat to get suggestions for playlists that contain mostly, but not entirely, music I already own.)

That's the smallest delta from the current site that I would find motivating. I'd argue, though, that there's still nobody who really does music discovery "right", so there's a lot of room for innovation. I'm glad to see you're exploring the space.

</comment><comment><USER5> Saw you demo at SF Musictech today - good demo, and very solid product.

I don't think the stock photo on the front page is that bad - people who work with websites might cringe, but other than that it's not so bad.

My one criticism is that it's not immediately obvious why I should sign up or that I need to download a client. This page [1] is an excellent explanation, but it took a bit of hunting to run across it - at a very superficial first glance, it looks like I'm supposed to buy the music from you. It should be a lot more obvious that it works with my existing music collection (maybe say that instead of "works with your digital music player" on the front page).

[1] [http://www.getplaylists.com/sync/download/?next=/playlist/11...](http://www.getplaylists.com/sync/download/?next=/playlist/1198865)

</comment><comment><USER6> I would like an app that would scan my mp3s then generate a few Pandora stations from that. "Rap Music I listened to in High school" for example

</comment><comment><USER7> Interesting idea, I like the site, although might want to clean the design, it's a tad bit busy.

The only crticisim I see here is you only get 30 second previews instead of the entire track, and I don't feel like paying up $100 for a playlist... Grooveshark solves this by allowing playlist sharing and full track playbacks which solves that problem. Any thoughts about that?

<comment><AUTHOR> We don't currently have the rights to stream full songs, but it is something we would love to be able to do for our users. We would need to find a way to make business model work for us.

You do have one other option (as alex_c pointed out our message on this was unclear). You can listen to the full playlist with your music collection. If you have the software installed then we can match the playlist to your collection.

We are working on cleaning up the design. Is it too busy visually or is it more information overload?

Thanks for the feedback!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> 3 points for 2 cents:

1\. I didn't get within 10 seconds what you offer. Work on that.

2\. I agree with some of the other commenters; curated lists (from a trusted source) would be a great idea, if thats the direction you want to head in.

3\. It would be great if I could buy a track without having to create an account. You'd probably make more money too.

</comment><comment><USER9> 1\. Looks like a pretty good product. 2\. Clean up the page. Make it simple! It looks so cluttered, I've no clue where to look. Way too much text, and too many moving flash images.</comment>