Ask HN: What is your method for up/down votes? - <AUTHOR> I upvote any article i read fully and i upvote comments i believe to be worthy of prominence.<p>What is your method? <comment><USER2> I have to admit I am a little careless with upvoting stories (I upvote a lot of stories). I upvote articles that seem to fit HN rules, generates curiosity for the audience, something critical to know (i get a lot of news from HN like sites being hacked etc), encourage a decent Show HN etc.

But I upvote comments selectively. I do this to try and ensure that my vote helps to get really good quality comments on top of the page. Of course, sometimes controversial comments get a lot of upvotes. I also upvote helpful comments including when someone adds a clickable link to a Show HN in comments etc. If I learn something new with a comment, I upvote it. I sometimes upvote comments that have been downvoted incorrectly.

I seldom downvote but when I do, those comments are one or more of these:

1) Blatant hate speech, personal attacks, racist remarks, sexist remarks etc. For these type of comments, I just downvote with no comments.

2) Irrelevant comment that has nothing to do with the topic being discussed. Comment that adds no value really and distracts from the main topic. For example, someone commenting like "NSA is coming for you" in a topic about "privacy" etc. Again, I don't add any comments for the downvote for these.

3) Factually incorrect information added as a comment. Sometimes, the commenter might not even know that they are providing false information while sometimes they don't care. In either case, I downvote those comments not because I am trying to prove them wrong but because incorrect information should be marked as such. But be careful with this. I said "factually incorrect" and not "opinionated". For these though, I always try to add a comment with an explanation.

4) Criticism that is not constructive. It is easy to say "you are so wrong" or "Why do we need another site builder" etc but it takes more to write a comment explaining how somone could have done something better.

It is tempting to hit the downvote arrow for things that you "disagree" with and I am sure most of us have been guilty of this (I have been) but we should watch out for this temptation.

</comment><comment><USER3> I downvote comments that strike me low-effort, trolling or as part of the "HN echo chamber", and I upvote things that seem to give rise to interesting discussions, sometimes even regardless of their quality (which might contradict my downvoting principles).

Kind of related: Did HN happen to change the way the site responds to votes recently? It seems that it was possible to see the effect of a vote immediately by reloading the page up until a couple of weeks ago. Either they have changed something (a new CDN, score blurring as on reddit), or I have somehow lost my comment voting powers. Perhaps it's because my avgage score has dropped below 1 lately?

<comment><USER4> If your average dropped below 1, I'm sure that would do it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I downvote (and sometimes flag) mean comments. In my opinion they are toxic to the community and should not be tolerated. Other than that I upvote comments and stories that are thoughtful and/or contribute something new to the discussion.

<comment><AUTHOR> respectfully, i feel that this is a bit heavy handed. i take issue with the use of 'mean'. it is mean to say someone's breath smells of poo, but that does not make it inaccurate or unnecessary. maybe i am assuming too much from your statement about your intent. i come from a crowd where there was a fair amount of hazing, razzing, and general meanness applied to the newer members. this served to discourage folks who did not want to take the time to learn the way of things.

TBC, i only take issue with you flagging a mean comment. i believe the downvote is the best option if you are opposed to mean comments.

...please dont flag me bro

<comment><USER6> Many other parts of the internet do more to encourage or tolerate or ignore meanness. That's what makes them other parts of the internet and not HN.

The degree to which StackOverflow has more actively discouraged these things and succeeded to a greater extent than HN is one of the reasons for its success.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I find I am having a much easier time upvoting people I disagree with here than I do on Reddit. So I systematically do so if I believe the person has a worthy point.

As for articles, I upvote anything that I think has had an impact on me, however minor. Usually it's articles that actually made me think for a few minutes, but sometimes it's also serious lessons I learn.

</comment><comment><USER8> Regarding downvoting when disagreeing here's what pg said a few years ago:

"I think it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement. Obviously the uparrows aren't only for applauding politeness, so it seems reasonable that the downarrows aren't only for booing rudeness."

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171)

<comment><USER9> I think that's a terrible approach. There are plenty of times when the most popular opinion isn't necessarily correct. Downvotes are a way to suppress discussion—they should only be used in obvious cases of factual errors, logic fallacies, mean spirit, etc. The proper response to disagreement is a follow- up comment.

The problem is that up/downvoting is used by the software to determine how prominently the comment should be shown—even, in extreme cases, hiding it completely. If the metric was simply displayed, with no further action taken, then I might agree with pg's statement.

Funnily enough, I found myself instinctively hunting for a downvote button (even though I don't have downvote powers yet) to mark my disagreement with pg's assertion. That behavior seems to be deeply embedded in many of us, even if we intellectually hold to the opposing view.

<comment><USER10> It's not a great approach but it's probably better to acknowledge that people will use it that way than to make a unenforceable policy against it and have people whine about HN-iquette when they get downvoted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I upvote when something is important, insightful, or interesting. Thought-out comments or ones that add real value to a discussion get one too.

Downvotes are carefully considered. Probably less than one a week. I reserve them only for comments that are either actively hostile to the community or demonstrably false. Even then, I think about it two or three times before clicking.

</comment><comment><USER12> I try and spend 20-30 minutes everyday going through the "new" tab and up- voting the new submissions I find interesting (think of it like volunteer work). Somehow I tend to up vote Ask HNs more often than posts that are links to website.

<comment><AUTHOR> that behavior is definitely analogous to volunteer work in one's local community. i used to spend a lot of time on Imgur; now i just spend my time in User Submitted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I upvote articles which interest me and I think I might want to read later, because they appear in "saved stories".

I also upvote stories I think that would interest others.

I rarely upvote or downvote comments.

<comment><AUTHOR> i have just started using Pocket app in an effort to gather all of the things i do not have time to read. i have only been using it for a few days, so i am not sure if it is worthwhile or not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't upvote a lot of articles, but with especially good ones I usually remember to. I really don't read a lot of the articles, and always after reading the HN comments -- I'm not going to click through to an article with no summary other than an often-abstruse headline until I know what it's actually about. (Slashdot > HN here, since Slashdot at least had article summaries, even if they were often biased. [1]) If I actually go read the article and like it I usually remember to upvote it I think.

I flag articles every so often, usually political rants and such. As far as I am concerned, the purpose of an article being posted to HN is so an interesting discussion can follow it: if the article is not going to generate a worthwhile discussion (which political articles don't) then there's no reason for it to be on the site.

For comments, mostly I upvote grey comments that I don't think deserved downvotes. Rarely do I upvote comments that are already at the top of the discussion -- they don't need more help. I upvote other comments too if I like them, I suppose.

I probably do use downvoting as just a "disagree" button too much though. But I figure posting an arguing reply just adds more noise to the discussion; it's better to just downvote and move on.

[1] I like how I refer to Slashdot in the past tense here.

</comment><comment><USER15> I rarely upvote stories, unless they were either very interesting, or were interesting but didn't seem to have enough votes yet.

I upvote comments when they raise an interesting point that I hadn't though of before (even if I disagree) in an intelligent way. I rarely upvote just because I agree with something, and I never downvote out of disagreement.

I only downvote when the poster clearly has no idea what they are talking about it. (Or is just being pedantic and critical to no apparent benefit).

</comment><comment><USER16> I vote purely emotionally. If a comment makes me feel something, I click the appropriate button.

</comment><comment><USER17> I never downvote. I don't believe in it. I believe downvoting promotes echo chambers and group think. Should there be an alternative? Perhaps, and it would be "flag with a reason", in other words, choose from a list of common reasons why something should be flagged (like reporting posts on Facebook and other social networks). Anything flagged sufficiently would be investigated; until an admin determines that a post is abuse, it might remain (cannot decide clearly about this). Excessive false flagging would result in the flagger being dinged on karma. And losing the ability to flag. (Another would be to allow one flag per 100 karma points or some such thing.) We know from behavioural psychology that punishment rarely works, that rewarding desirable behaviour is far more effective. Why do we, a supposedly intelligent crowd guided by facts and well established science, behave like schoolyard bullies, shouting down the voices of others?

I upvote anything that piques my interest, intrigues me, expresses well what I thought myself, expresses well a thought completely counter to mine (which often means it is the first two things listed as well), and I often upvote downvoted items; the first paragraph implies why.

</comment><comment><USER18> I upvote most of SHOW HN, because I like supporting guys who are doing projects.

</comment><comment><USER19> I upvote articles on which I would like to see more discussion. I upvote insightful comments and rarely downvote as it discourages participation. I think downvoting should be only used for extremely rude or misleading comments. If I disagree with a comment I reply with my point of view.

</comment><comment><USER20> When commenting, I first immediately upvote the underlying story before I even begin to write, with little exception.

The reasoning is that doing so does everything in my (limited) power to maximize the number of people taking part in the discussion I'm about to enter.

</comment><comment><USER9> For stories: I upvote only ones that I've completely read myself and found to be high-quality, and only after I've also read the comments (to make sure there aren't any obvious inaccuracies or other problems with the story).

For comments: I try to upvote ones that contribute to the discussion, but to be honest I do catch myself using it as an "I agree" button from time to time. My goal is to promote a high level of discourse, especially on both sides of controversial issues.

I don't have enough reputation to have downvote powers yet, but when I get there I plan to use it sparingly. Codegeek's approach to downvoting (sibling to my comment) strikes me as a model to aspire to.

<comment><AUTHOR> the 'upvote as agreement' stance seems pervasive, as well as largely justified. i wonder if having a selection of up-'s and down-'s might worthwhile.

<comment><USER9> The problem is that the software uses a post's score to determine how it is displayed. Therefore, upvote-to-agree philosophy can have the effect of promoting the most popular opinions rather than the most well-argued ones.

To make a real-world comparison: If this were an in-person forum, an up/downvote would be the equivalent of raising/lowering the volume of the speaker's microphone. As much as it is in our nature to do so, we don't want to simply raise the volume of the speakers whose views align with our own. In fact, we should be trying to do the opposite so that we can seek to learn—we have a lot more to learn from our detractors than from our adherents.

If the score was simply displayed as a metric of who has expressed [dis]approval, then I'd agree with you. A system of specifying a reason for up/downvotes could accomplish this (i.e. maintain separate scores for the displayed count vs. the metric used to alter the comment's presentation), but the UI could get fairly convoluted.

<comment><AUTHOR> agreed on the UI clutter aspect. Thank you for the mic metaphor, it was excellent, i got the warm feeling of clarity in my gut as i read it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I upvote articles that I find interesting or want to follow up on later, as the vote puts them in my "saved stories" list. I used to flag blogspam and like, but that got my flag button disabled for a year or two.

I downvote stupid posts and obnoxious posts. I upvote interesting posts and posts that make me think. I see a lot more of the former than the later, the last few weeks...

I also tend to downvote any post sticking up at the top that doesn't seem highly worthwhile. Kind of like that recent reposting of the Fogus list of papers every programmer should read, where the top-rated comment was by a guy who complained about the title and indicated he hadn't even read the article.

</comment><comment><USER22> I always forget to upvote articles (sorry).

I upvote comments that speaks the truth and not the politically correct thing to please the HN crowd.

I sometimes upvote comments that have merit but I know will be massively downvoted (any criticism of PHP falls in this category ;-)

<comment><USER23> Criticism of PHP will be down-voted?

<comment><USER24> Fair criticism is acceptable. But too often you see unhelpful comments like, "Why anyone would put themself through the hell that is writing PHP code is beyond me."

<comment><USER22> Your example is exactly the kind of comment that speaks to my soul and I would upvote it ! ;-)

It's not objective nor fair, so maybe it's a disservice to the community.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Based on a suggestion from a long lost comment on here, I avoid upvoting the first top level comment in a thread, unless it was just posted. Too often a mediocre comment gets pinned to the top because it is the first thing everyone reads.

</comment><comment><USER26> I mostly upvote intersting articles in 'new' (coding and science things), comments that advocate rational and logical approaches to problems, and replies to my comments that challenge my assumptions. I rarely upvote things on the main page because they're already publicised, and I rarely downvote things because a comment explaining why something is worthy of a downvote is far more useful than a downvote.

I also upvote articles in 'new' that I've commented on so they're more likely to hit the front page and get my comments votes. I have no idea if it works but it makes me happy.

<comment><AUTHOR> do you thing some sort of color code to the upvotes would be worthwhile? say, a red up- means a lurk up-; a blue up- is an upvote from someone actively commenting? it might be an interesting perspective on how the discussion is proceeding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I don't upvote many articles. From time to time during the day I go through the "new" articles, and I'll upvote a few articles that I'd like to see on the front page. They usually relate to programming or general science topics.

I upvote comments that I think are strong contributions to the discussion. Simple enough. HN has enough quality participants that I often find several comments per article to upvote.

I tend to save my downvotes for comments that are overly snarky or pedantic, as I think we see a bit too many of those sorts of comments on HN, and I reward them with downvotes.

</comment><comment><USER28> Articles: upvotes for things I read, or things I want to comment on (because of the flamewar weighting.) Occasionally I'll upvote an article that doesn't fit these criteria, e.g. because it is important but I don't have time to read it right now (it then appears in my saved articles list, for later.)

Comments: I upvote comments that teach me something I didn't know, or which are particularly good rebuttals to parents, or if I came to say the same thing. I downvote intolerance (of people, ideas, languages, etc.) and poorly thought out/obviously flawed assertions.

</comment><comment><USER29> I downvote poorly thought comments, although given some of the abusive uses of downvoting here, I would rather that it not exist.

I upvote articles I find to be interesting reads, articles worth significant discussion on subject matter (tech or non-tech related - does not even have to be math/science/engineering related), or comments to counter bad downvoting. I also will upvote comments I like due to thoroughness, even if I disagree with the argument(s) made.

</comment><comment><USER30> I vote stories up when It looks interesting and I want to here what other HNers have to say on the subject. I tend to upvote a wide variety of subjects, I just like it interesting.

I don't like down voting for disagreeing, but I tend to down vote when something is factually inaccurate. I'll upvote stuff I disagree with as long as it is well written. Cannot really have a discussion without different points of view.

</comment><comment><USER31> Pretty simple:

upvote what I value and want to see more of on HN (this often includes substantive, well-presented comments that I disagree with.)

downvote what I find to be a waste of time and want to see less of on HN (this specifically does not include material that is well-presented, seems topical for HN's stated focus, but that is just not particularly interesting to me.)

</comment><comment><USER32> I upvote articles that seem particularly interesting and/or that I want to read later. Since recently receiving some harsh downvotes simply for expressing an opinion, I've changed my strategy to upvote comments that I feel have been similarly mistreated. I rarely downvote anymore.

</comment><comment><USER33> I downvote all comments that have only one link in them yet the author puts the link as a citation.[1] Same goes for footnotes.[2]

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8703949](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8703949)

[2] ...

<comment><USER34> Why do you do this? I find this improves readability.

<comment><USER33> It absolutely does not improve readability when there's only one think to cite or reference and when it's a comment as short as the one I linked.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I'm usually logged out, so I only upvote if it's worth my typing in my password to log in.

I don't have enough points (263) to downvote. I should probably engage more.

(I logged in to upvote the Schwab post. This comment was secondary.)

</comment><comment><USER36> I up-vote the stories I intend to use or share with others in the future. These stories usually resonate with me on some level so I find myself reading significantly more stories than ever actually up-voting them.

</comment><comment><USER37> Other that interesting stuff: stories and comments by known commenters, both parties on interesting discussions (so they think that some people aggree and continue talking).

</comment><comment><USER38> I upvote articles for archival purposes (read it later, reference, etc.), and on topics I am collecting opinions on.

</comment><comment><USER39> I downvote political stories and comments. I upvote anything I find funny, insightful, or polite.

<comment><AUTHOR> interesting. is that because you feel like they [political flavored typings] do not belong on HN, or because you personally dislike their presence? No judgment whatever the case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I upvote anything that I find interesting, amusing and/or makes me think.

</comment><comment><USER6> When I feel like it, I click on an arrow.

</comment><comment><USER40> If I shared it with anyone, I upvote it.

</comment><comment><USER41> I upvote randomly as a sort of meta-trolling

<comment><USER7> That'll show 'em!

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Agreement with my own point of view, and also posts that are clearly contributing to the overall discussion. For down votes: posts that are clearly wrong and/or nonconstructive. Also to spite people I don't like.

Oh, and I upvote submissions that I like, and also submissions that I want to see more discussion around, even though I might not like the submission.

<comment><AUTHOR> your candor is refreshing. thank you for being honest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Pretty sure most people treat the downvote button on comments as an "I disagree" button, which I don't think is helpful.

<comment><USER7> I downvoted you... not because I disagree (I believe you are somewhat correct), but because not only aren't you answering the OP's question, you are actively sidetracking it which I believe is harmful to the topic at hand.

Paradoxical, I know. YMMV.

<comment><USER32> Whilst no-one wants off-topic discussion, sticking rigidly to the original point with no flexibility whatsoever is a bit claustrophobic for good discussion to ensue. So I'm upvoting the original comment, but not downvoting yours :-)

<comment><USER7> Well, I meant what I said about this entire ordeal being paradoxical. OP asked about our own private upvote/downvote policies, and them being applied within the comments of the thread itself leads to this actually being very much on- topic.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why Patriot Missiles Weren't Protecting Troops in Iraq and Why They Still Aren't - <AUTHOR> https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/32025/heres-why-no-patriot-missiles-were-protecting-us-troops-in-iraq-and-why-they-still-arent <comment><USER2> Somewhat unrelated but interesting...in the article it states the US is supplying Iraq with F-16 fighter jets? Do the Iraqis know this is a 40 year old fighter jet? The Pentagon's fourth-generation fighter fleet no longer enjoys a massive technological advantage as they did in years past.

For around the same price you could pick up a faster, newer, more capable Mutiroll SU30 with thrust vectoring and half a chance to evade phased array anti aircraft missile defense. Im guessing perhaps the bidding process in Iraq wasnt exactly as open as it could be.</comment>


Evacuate Hong Kong - <AUTHOR> https://joelx.com/evacuate-hong-kong/15217/ <comment><USER2> _As one of the last bastions of free people in the world, we have a strong ethical and moral obligation to help these freedom fighters. Taking no action or even worse, barring them entry is tantamount to murder. We need to be courageous and do the right thing and evacuate Hong Kong._

Sounds very bold.

I'm assuming the author made a similar plea in regard to the refugee crisis in Syria - yes?

<comment><AUTHOR> Syria was a different situation, and I would actually have recommended an even more dramatic intervention early on there.

In Syria there was a very weak government and strong revolutionary forces. A few ground troops could have helped topple al-Assad. There are risks to this strategy though since the Russians were providing military aid to him... could have risked turning into a proxy war like Vietnam or a quagmire like Afghanistan. At the start of the Syrian war, sending in troops may have worked. I would send in troops now to Venezuela before Maduro finishes his purges and solidification of power.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> We hear a lot about immigration being a destabilizing force, or at least people perceiving it as such.

Immigration is conversely a stabilizing force. Potential dissenters have been leaving China for years so that allowing Chinese immigrants in to your country is really a gift to the communist government.</comment>


A Wired.com reporter was first to register mcdonalds.com (1994) - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.10/mcdonalds_pr.html

<comment><USER2> I read every issue of Wired cover-to-cover as a teen, from issue 3 until around 1999 when I decided that the magazine was past its peak.

I remember reading this story quite vividly. I say this not to brag but actually in humility: I'm quite embarrassed at my own failure to take action. When I read the article it was immediately clear to me that this was going to be a Very Big Deal, and I simply sat on it.

Now, Wired was not some underground zine and it's not like I was privy to anything secret or proprietary. After all, getting covered in Wired is often the beginning of the end; see Bruce Sterling's article on Burning Man for proof.

Sometimes I feel like there's no way a photograph taken today could be special in the way Kodachromes of Afghanistan in the 70s seem to be. Too many cameras, too little soul. Yet it's obvious that in 20 years most of today's photos will be long gone and the ones that remain will seem fascinating windows to a different time.

Every time I think that the .com domain space is saturated it only takes two years to be humbled on the race to the bottom.

<comment><USER3> _I say this not to brag but actually in humility: I'm quite embarrassed at my own failure to take action. When I read the article it was immediately clear to me that this was going to be a Very Big Deal, and I simply sat on it._

So you have a few tens of millions less :)

sucks, doesn't it? I did take some action and did relatively well but a better name or two would have made the difference. Sucks now, but they are some .cctld still. Dangerous and not as lucrative as .com but that's the next best thing.

Google has sucked most of the money from domains, as they have done with almost everything else online.

<comment><USER4> How has Google sucked money from domains?

Do you mean because everyone now just hits up Google and not the address bar?

<comment><USER3> Yes, and Google had a lot to do with it, it didn't happen by chance (buying Mozilla off, omnibox, exact domain name "updates" in search etc.) Google wants people to search and be greeted by dozens of ads first.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Fun story. And a bit 'o nostalgia here:

Back in 1995 (or so), IIRC, InterNIC basically required that you have a contact email address and a DNS server to host the domain. The latter wasn't terribly easy to come by, so it wasn't as easy as today to register names.

A friend of mine, however, had another friend at an ISP, which gave him (relatively) easy access to a simple DNS server.

So, seeing the same sort of opportunity as I imagine many did, he went kind of nuts. He was into fashion at the time, so for at least a short period of time he bought and owned versace.com, calvinklein.com, donnakaran.com, and armani.com. Not a bad batch of names to own, eh? I think he (somewhat scummily) sold at least one of the names back to the rightful owner, and had to give up the rest when the lawyers got involved. But for a while, he had some fun and had some cool email addresses ;)

</comment><comment><USER6> The person who owns <http://nissan.com/> has somehow against all odds managed to hang on to it.

<comment><USER7> That's Uzi Nissan. When I lived in Raleigh, he was my ISP as he was one of the few people who supported channel-bonded ISDN connections (at the time).

Cool guy, but I have to admit he messed up when he started accepting ads on the site. The ad network (LinkExchange?) immediately started running automobile-related ads, and that's when the lawyers for Nissan Motors pounced.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I see a lot of comments in this thread along the lines of "oh I'm kicking myself for not doing that." I actually thought that squatting on a domain name was a pretty scummy move. I saw it coming, I had some money, but I elected to not do so because I think that it's simply _wrong,_ in quite the same way that I think some simple-idea software patents are wrong.

<comment><USER9> Sorry, but for xx million dollars, you can call me scummy for doing something that is 1/10 on the scum scale. Now if were talking about stealing or installing malware, keyloggers or extreme forms of spam that may be another story, but come on. This isnt' a disney movie, and if it makes you a huge amount of money to do something completely legal albeit it 'annoying' for the other person who wasn't quick enough, I'd say do it.

<comment><USER8> I would agree if you were creating value, but you are not. You are causing pain, and then offering to make the pain go away. That's just not my style.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> _"It's easy to find an unused domain name"_

Oh, how I wish 12 year old me had foresight. And money.

(I have more of the latter now, of course, but probably about the same quantity of the former.)

<comment><USER11> Domains were really expensive back then. IIRC, $35 per year, with a minimum of 2 years.

I think it priced the speculators out of the market.

<comment><USER12> In the early days, and I don't recall if 1994 was within this range, domains were free. You filled out the email form and sent it off. If you had a valid handle (remember those? Two initials and your duplicate count?), and nobody else had the domain spoken for, it was yours.

 _This_ is why we old timers kick ourselves over skipping the land rush.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Well, the company obviously got the domain in the end. Any one know if there was a follow up to this story?

<comment><USER14> <http://www.bitlaw.com/internet/domain.html>

He returned the domain and talked McDonalds into making a donation to charity.

<comment><USER15> Awesome the people eating tasty animals as PETA.org

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Delightful bit of writing! It'd have been fun if I could've participated in the domain name gold rush. I didn't even get to use email till we got a shared boarding house email address in Nigeria during the '98-'99 school year, and I didn't browse the web till I returned to the U.S. after high school.

</comment><comment><USER17> "I could set up a Mosaic home page"

Classic. :)

</comment><comment><USER18>
        No burger_king.com either.

is this a typo, or could domains back then contain underscores (or maybe the reporter is mistaken)?

<comment><USER19> He's probably thinking of a dash. They were a lot more common in '90s domain names, I guess people weren't so used to concatenating words together at the time and it wasn't certain that SpaceFreeDomains would end up winning.

<comment><USER20> I wonder if it has anything to do with mobile phones and their limited keyboards.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Great quote:

 _The guy in registration? One person is responsible for assigning domain names on the Internet?_

 _Actually, "We have 2.5 people doing it," Williamson said, meaning that the half person is really a full person doing it part-time. Or something. Regardless, 2.5 humans is not enough people, or parts of people, to do the job. (Would one person be assigning quit-claims to a gold rush?)_

</comment><comment><USER22> Fast-forward twenty years to today and this is still possible, but on a much smaller scale.

Here in Jersey, Channel Islands we have exactly one McDonalds (hey, it's a small island) and our own country code TLD of .je

Out of curiosity, I just checked and mcdonalds.je is unregistered. It's available but at £55/year not worth the trouble I guess. Not worth it to me but might be to a competitor...

</comment><comment><USER23> Domain names weren't exactly cheap back then. What was it, $70 a year? As a college student from 94-98, it was obvious there were good domains available, but most of us didn't have the money to invest in it for the years it would take to pay off.

<comment><USER24> Domain names were free until around ~1996. The big issue, as 'nlh says, was that you had to be running your own DNS server, which wasn't trivial in those days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> "noting that three requests for the domain name, mci, came in almost simultaneously"

Doesn't that mean that the 'other company whose initials are MCI' has equal rights to that domain name?

<comment><USER26> In 1994, it was the first to register. As registration was a manual process requiring human intervention, errors were made.

I remember receiving other registrants' confirmation emails on more than one occasion and had to email back the person at "firstname.lastname@example.com" to have them take my NIC handle off of the domain and return control of the rightful owner.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> That's another reason I would like to see a peer-to-peer DNS take off.

<comment><USER28> I think there would be lots of backlash against any new DNS alternatives (i.e. not controlled by central authorities like the ones that allowed[1] all the trademark disputes of the last 15+ years... of which McDonalds was one of the earliest and most well-known). I think consumers would have no opinion as they do not understand DNS or the history behind it. But I think geeks and nerds would attack any new service that improved on the old one we've stuck to through 15 years of needless antagonistic registration behaviour. Do you agree? What do you think?

1\. With proper knowledge of both the legal and technical issues, it is theoretically possible to implement a system that prevents these disputes before they occur. I have a project that aims to do this.

Maybe it would be important for any new DNS service to be honoured by geeks and nerds, not criticicised (except on technical merits), such that non- technical consumers, who might look for guidance to what geeks and nerds (e.g. blogs) say on these matters, would not be led to believe alternative DNS services were some sort of faux-innovation.

IMO, DNS needs more principled people involved. A lot of monkey business (i.e. unneeded trademark disputes, namespace hoarding, etc.) has occurred over the DNS's history because few technically capable people were aware of the problems and/or willing to break from the status quo (and the dirty money) to fix them.

<comment><USER27> Why would the geeks attack the new service? The consumers don't know any better but hackers do. If a system like this gets momentum in the hackers world, then it it's just a matter of time until the centralized "authority" will become irrelevant. Just like CVS and the like versus distributed version control.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> For those who like this type of stories (domain name gold rush etc.) I highly recommend "The Domain Game" ([http://www.amazon.com/Domain-Game-People- Internet-Names/dp/1...](http://www.amazon.com/Domain-Game-People-Internet- Names/dp/1436332273)).

Also great interview from Michael Zapolin (who owned beer.com, diamond.com, etc): <http://www.domainsherpa.com/michael-zappy-zapolin-interview/>

</comment><comment><USER30> Reading this article for the first time, but now I understand why it used to be mtve.com for so long...

</comment><comment><USER31> > plus some other administrative stuff that meant little to me but would > probably help a system administrator, lawyer, or someone who spends far too > much time in front of the computer and ought to get out more.

ouch

</comment><comment><USER32> So did he sell it? What happened next?

<comment><USER20> "He returned the domain and talked McDonalds into making a donation to charity"

From this comment with source <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5180693>

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Yes and in other news, many drugs that are illegal now were once legal and full auto-weapons were once legal, etc.</comment>


You've Got Java in My Ruby - <AUTHOR> http://www.engineyard.com/blog/2009/youve-got-java-in-my-ruby/ <comment><USER2> A lot of pure-Ruby people don't get how powerful this is.

My startup, which will have an early alpha up at the end of the month, leverages a lot of JRuby's easy Java integration features. Solr, for example, has been a big win for us -- I've written a Rails plugin that ties to an embedded Solr server, and because there's no network overhead, search requests on indexed data finish up in under 30ms before the cache has warmed up, and 1ms once the index has been cached.

On top of that, the JVM (with JRuby, Rails, a database, and Solr) uses less than 200M of RAM even when being pounded by our benchmark suite, and produces impressive performance results... even when running on my laptop. On a full- fleged server machine, the numbers are even more impressive.

And all of this, without having to write a single line of Java. It's a good time to be hacking on Ruby.

<comment><USER3> Have you tried running it in 64 bit mode? It'll probably use about twice as much memory, but my app is about 20% faster compared to 32 bit mode.

<comment><USER2> You know, I did, but I found that the app was significantly slower than in 32-bit mode on three different JVMs (Sun, Apple, and OpenJDK), by about... 20%, actually. And it did use twice the memory.

Some googling about seems to show that this is normal; perhaps there's something else I can tweak in 64-bit mode that I missed?

Even so, we don't reap a lot of benefit from using a 64-bit JVM at this point, because our app uses so little memory, although that's likely to change down the road as we load the system more heavily.

<comment><USER3> I haven't done any tweaking, just a simple comparison between -d32 and -d64.

My current working theory is that the JITed code takes advantage of the general improvement of 64 bit mode (eg greater number of registers). But right now performance isn't an issue, I'm running in 64 bit mode for the memory not the speed.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What ML datasets do you wish were available as a real time event feed? - <AUTHOR> <comment><AUTHOR> A few ideas:

\- App store downloads

\- YouTube viewing statistics

\- Stock market data

\- Tweets from specific individuals

\- Hacker News upvotes by story</comment>


Ask HN: What are your favorite speeches? - <AUTHOR>

I'm building a site that collects all the world's best speeches. I believe that the repositories that exist for speeches are often cluttered with ads and/or unappealing layouts. Speeches are works of art and they deserve to be displayed in pleasing manner. My prototype is here: http://beautifulspee.ch/ <comment><USER2> This is one of my favorite books: [http://www.amazon.com/Worlds-Great- Speeches-Fourth-Enlarged-...](http://www.amazon.com/Worlds-Great-Speeches- Fourth-Enlarged-ebook/dp/B008TVM050/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1409789052&sr=8-2)

Has roughly ~300 speeches in it and they're fairly well picked.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Malcolm. This looks great. I'll check it out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Dananjaya Hettiarachchi just won the 2014 World Championship of Public Speaking. Check it out:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=bk8xNZQ3ZwE</comment>


Which movie is going to rule the box office this holiday season? - <AUTHOR> https://fliq.ai/blog/movie-trailer-tracking-2017-end-of-year/ <comment><USER2> I think it's going to be the Last Jedi. It might just be because I'm older but I feel that Snyder's DC films don't hit any emotional notes and the action is over the top but still somehow flat. They just don't resonate with me or my friends group.

</comment><comment><USER3> I predict it will be a remake, or a prequel, or a sequel, or a teenage-comic spinoff.

In other words, a frothy flick that is meaningless except as a source of teenage-male cash.

</comment><comment><USER4> Hollywood sex offenders, who will give their earned currency to support this? congratulations.</comment>


Why This CEO Trained His Employees to Do His Job - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/40468078/why-this-ceo-trained-his-employees-to-do-his-job <comment><USER2> Good one. So nothing wrong gonna happen if he doesn't come back, right? :P</comment>


Experiment suggests people may sense single photons - <AUTHOR> http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/people-may-sense-single-photons/ <comment><USER2> Perhaps for some people, but certainly not for me. I experience my vision like an old television set between channels, but with an extremely high pixel density (though perhaps a similar frame rate). When there's sufficient light, there's a strong bias to one color/brightness or another per pixel, although even then I can perceive the noise if I choose to. In the dark, it's all noise all the time - dark colored noise, but noise nonetheless - not to mention ghost patterns I hypothesize are due to minute transient pressure or chemical differentials. Far, far too much noise to distinguish a single photon. I've perceived this noise for as long as I can remember, back to early childhood.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here's the original paper: [http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2016/160719/ncomms12172/full/nc...](http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2016/160719/ncomms12172/full/ncomms12172.html)</comment>


Italian seismologists to be tried for manslaughter - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.nature.com/news/2011/05/italian_seismologists_to_be_tr.html

<comment><USER3> This isn't the first time Italy has reduced itself to the status of reactionary backwater by attacking scientists, Galileo being a case in point.

In the wake of that travesty, Louis XIV didn't have a hard time convincing Cassini to abandon his post in Bologna and emigrate to France, where he could continue his work safely. Given the extraordinary military advantage conveyed by Cassini's work in improving cartography through increasingly sophisticated astronomical observation, the Netherlands and England were quick to join the seventeenth-century's war for technical talent.

Not grasping the extent to which the world was passing it by, the Papacy kept Galileo's works on the list of banned books until the mid-nineteenth century. By the time they came off, Italy's once formidable lead had been squandered permanently.

File this current fiasco under 'lessons not learned'.

<comment><USER4> Pope Urban VIII's beef with Cassini wasn't over his assertion that Copernicus was right, but rather because Cassini was asserting that which he could not prove. He was basically saying that he was right and everyone else was wrong and they should just believe him because he was right.

The pope said (rightly so) that unless Cassini could offer proof as to the cause of planets allegedly circling the sun, he should present both the Copernicus and Ptolemy model and leave it up to the reader to make up his mind. (He couldn't prove it because the theory of gravitation was not known at the time)

Instead, Galileo tricked a priest into printing his book without a papal seal of approval, after he had promised the pope that he would present the Copernicus model as a hypothesis and not as proven fact.

So, in this case, the church was on the side of the scientific method. You don't just assert something extraordinary without some extraordinary evidence to back it up.

<comment><USER3> I think you mean "Pope Urban VIII's beef with Galileo...", not Cassini.

For what it's worth, Galileo made two critical observations with his telescope - specifically, his discoveries of the Jovian moons and the phases of Venus. The former demonstrated that the universe contained more than one center of gravity. This served as a fundamental contradiction of the Aristotelian metaphysics that anchored the Ptolemaic scheme, and which the Church had, by then, adopted as canonical. The latter phenomena made no sense in the context of a terracentric cosmos, but was perfectly consistent with a heliocentric model.

In other words, Galileo was not "saying that he was right and everyone else was wrong and they should just believe him because he was right." Rather, he was offering observational proof of the Copernican theory. His own theories about gravity, and specifically, WHY there could be multiple centers were - <USER2> this stage - irrelevant. The mere fact of these other centers' existence was enough to upset the intellectual status quo.

Indeed, the real bone of contention had nothing to do with the Church insisting on evidence in support of theory. The evidence was right in front of them. The problem was the inconsistency formed between the the revelation that Earth is a orbiting planet, and the (repeated) Biblical assertions that it wasn't. For instance, "He has fixed the earth firm, immovable." (1 Chronicles 16:30), "Thou hast fixed the earth immovable and firm ..." (Psalm 93:1), "He has fixed the earth firm, immovable ..." (Psalm 96:10), "...who made the earth and fashioned it, and himself fixed it fast..." (Isaiah 45:18), etc. The obvious solution - a concession that the Bible made heavy use of metaphor, and should not be taken literally - presented intractable political problems for an institution that had amassed formidable power around interpretations that treated large amounts of the Bible as actual history.

Really, the notion that "the church was on the side of the scientific method" could not be further from the truth - not least of all because the scientific method depends on the freedom of consciousness, and the ability to change one's mind based on observable reality - regardless of contrary views based on scripture, fiat, or tradition. This degree of liberty was - quite literally - anathema to an institution that claimed something approaching a property right in the laity's souls. To say they were supporting it is flatly absurd.

<comment><USER5> You're telling this as if the rules for knowledge and deduction had already been worked out -- you're telling it in a way where we are invited to take our current understanding of how science works and drop it willy-nilly into a time many hundreds of years ago. It doesn't work like that. To them, holy writ _was_ another form of valid observational data. The struggle religion is having is an internal one -- how literally to take the holy words. Offenses to science are just collateral damage in that larger debate. There was also a personal thing going on between Galileo and the Pope.

I don't say that as an apologist. I really feel like there is nothing to defend here. Mankind's belief system impeded and advanced the acquisition of scientific knowledge in various ways. For instance, I'd argue that the reformation was the biggest thing to happen to science, encouraging individuals to see and prove things for themselves.

I was just taking issue with not having enough context. Yes, the big picture is Galileo had a hard time of it. But all the little details -- the personality issues, the issues of evidence, the way his work was constructed, the way knowledge was generally gathered and advancements made at the time, etc. -- to me those are the juiciest parts of the story. Gives it a wonderful 3-D feel. To tell it like a comic book from the 21st century where the church is evil and Galileo was some kind of uber-hero is to commit a crime against the joy of history, in my opinion. It's a much more enjoyable story than that, and I'm not sure the listener of the comic book version really understands what was going on from this version of the telling. To be more blunt, and speaking as an agnostic and non-religious person, it sounds a bit more like anti-church propaganda instead of an honest look at how people lived. Listening to the apologist doesn't put me on the church's side by any means, but it sure makes the whole thing into a hell of a better story.

<comment><USER3> @Daniel - I hope you weren't expecting Galileo's full biography, a comprehensive survey of 16th century intellectual life, along with a dissection of approaches to the accumulation of knowledge that had developed over the previous, say, 2,000 years - all packed into a single HN comment. Context - remember?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As a former science major, this kind of stuff is scary...

1) Scientists, with a crapton of data, interpret results to the best of their ability.

2) Scientists report results, with caveats, to Country.

3) Country reported results to Public, (possibly without caveats) in an effort to "look good".

4) Public ignored caveats (if given), took Scientists words as absolute proof.

5) Public ignored Common Sense during what must have been a major seismic event, and instead of blaming themselves, blame the Scientists.

Oh, what a demon Science hath wrought.

<comment><USER7> Assuming the court has any sense they will agree with: Low probability of X doesn't mean X isn't going to happen.

<comment><USER8> I've seen so little evidence of common sense _anywhere_ in the last 10 years that I wouldn't hold my breath. My guess (based on zero evidence and being fairly cynical) is that they will be found guilty.

<comment><USER9> You better be right about this common sense deficit or I will have to drag you into court.

<comment><USER10> Drag him anyway, he'll probably settle. It's what all the latest patent companies are doing. I see no reason why it can't work on a smaller scale.

<comment><USER9> And if he doesn't settle, I can always sue you for saying so. :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> That's phenomenally stupid. Rather than getting best estimates, they are explicitly requesting that scientists over-estimate the probability of disaster and cry wolf. That in turn will mean they will have even less warning should something genuine turn up.

<comment><USER12> Ever hear of "defensive medicine" where doctors will prescribe extra courses of care and tests, just to validate what they already know to be true in order to avoid possible litigation in the rare case that they might be wrong?

Asking for certainty in areas where it can't be mathematically guaranteed is extremely expensive.

<comment><USER13> "just to validate what they already know to be true"

Not to forget, making money from it, or, at least, bringing money to the associated laboratories or doctors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> As someone working in the field of earthquake engineering this is very scary for me. Earthquakes are caused due to buildup of stress between two giant pieces of rocks trying to slide past each other. A swarm of small earthquakes can sometime release the stress thus lowering the probability of a big earthquake, so the scientists were not entirely wrong in their statements.

Also earthquake predictions are discouraged since false positives can have huge adverse economic impact (people and businesses fleeing the region) the best way to prepare for an earthquake for a community is to build good safe earthquake resistant houses rather than blaming scientists for not predicting some inherently random phenomenon.

<comment><USER15> Taking your argument one step further ... At what point are the number of earthquake deaths more economically costly than repeated unnecessary evacuations? Perhaps 300 deaths is worth keeping hundreds of thousands at their workplaces over an extended period of time.

Consider that millions of Americans use public roadways every year at the cost of 30K fatalities.

I wonder if the politicians made the correct economic decision but the wrong ethical decision?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Aside from the question of whether or not these seismologists gave truly criminally bad advice in this case, it's a good bet that after this prosecution Italy is going to have a very hard time getting anyone with a clue about seismology to go on record with their objective scientific opinion.

</comment><comment><USER17> I am Italian (although I don't live in Italy). Those seismologists are being accused to have made statements and claims of "no worry" without bearing sufficient scientific support. The trial will likely end in a mediatic bubble (hopefully).

It may also help you knowing that the main man behind this accusations is Guido Bertolaso. He is very close to Berlusconi's government and got his own, more serious, legal troubles having to do with bribes after constructions in disastered area and prostitution. As usual, things in Italy are more complicated than what it may look.

Edit: adding this link [http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article70...](http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article7025719.ece)

<comment><USER18> It may be helpful to remember that they were not 'scientists' at a meeting. They were members of a committee (Grandi Rischi), part of a government agency (Protezione Civile). They are accused because of their public 'role'. The title is somewhat misleading, it should be: "Italian Major Risks Committee to be tried etc.", if you search in italian press the trial is called "Processo grandi rischi", "Major Risks trial".

(My opinion is that the congress was just a 'public relations' thing to 'reassure' people. The words "the scientific community tells me there is no danger", served, very likely, as an excuse for the 'politicians' to do nothing in order to prevent risks [because of the typical italian cynicism, I can't assure they were not aware of the misuse of their words.]

Please note that after the earthquake the public debate was focused on the stupid problem of 'prediction of earthquakes'. Yes we can't predict earthquakes, but we can predict the effect and take measures in order to prevent risks. And it is clear that nothing was done.)

[Excuse me for my bad english.]

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah, someone at work just reminded me that the context was that someone was going round warning about a major earthquake (based on argon release? which i think hasn't been found a reliable predictor) and this was all in response to that.

while the scientists were probably correct that the earthquake warnings were not justified, it turns out that the prediction was vaguely correct (iirc the time was off by long enough that evacuations would have been impractical).

[edit: radon, not argon - [http://articles.latimes.com/2009/apr/07/local/me- quake-predi...](http://articles.latimes.com/2009/apr/07/local/me-quake- predict7) \- and he didn't have the correct location or time, but was close]

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Next week's news: Italy suffers severe shortage of qualified seismologists. Government officials are baffled.

<comment><USER20> On the upside, government officials don't have to explain why a small city that's plagued by earthquakes had such poor building practices that a 6.3 earthquake killed 0.4% of the population.

<comment><USER21> I've been to L'Aquila twice before the quake. Many buildings consisted (at least in part) of old structures. The city was founded in 1258.

<comment><USER22> > The city was founded in 1258.

For an Italian city, that's fairly recent, actually!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> contrarily to what I'm reading here, I think that it is a good idea that the trial goes on. The point is not that a best estimate was wrong, but rather that the conclusions could have been steered by political pressures, which is actually not unlikely, considered the history of man-made or man-facilitated disasters in Italy (e.g. the Vajont dam).

I believe that the purely scientific advisors will be cleared at the end, but bringing everyone to trial is inevitable as the firt step. ("inevitable" in standard italian judiciary practice, that is).

</comment><comment><USER24> What's next, jailing doctors who fail to predict the common cold?

I bet there won't be very many seismological press conferences in the near future.

<comment><USER16> Sure doctors in the US get sued for malpractice all the time. If they were advising a large population (e.g., they were on TV) and gave bad advice which led to many people's deaths, you can darn well bet there'd be consequences.

<comment><USER25> In this case, it seems like like the difference between

      <scientist> There is a low probability of a
      major quake

and

      <politician> Scientists assure me that you
      are all completely safe

That and a fundamental misunderstanding of statistics by the general population (e.g. low probability == no going to happen).

<comment><USER10> So they should be hanging the politician...

<comment><USER26> Yes, and leave the scientists out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Reason #347 the Italian justice system should be used as a Model of what NOT to do...

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> playing devil's advocate here (from what i've read, i don't think this is a good idea at all), my limited understanding (i develop software related to seismic detection, but was not educated as a geophysicist) is that we really have no clue about earthquake prediction. so the "best" scientific advice may well have been "we don't know"; perhaps they were guilty of being too confident?

<comment><USER28> It looks like they gave some politician a detailed, comprehensive explanation that boiled down to "We don't know, but if we really had to give a definite answer we'd guess that a major earthquake is comparatively unlikely, because...". That politician turned around and told the public "Definitely no earthquake, everything is completely safe, go back to work." It's like a game of telephone where everybody in the middle is drunk or stupid and one side is getting sued for what came out the other end.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Be wary in drawing clear distinctions between scientists and bureaucrats, because figures such as presidents or directors of scientific institutions, here in Italy, are usually more bureaucrats or politicians than scientists, and their actions or statements might not be motivated by science alone.

So while it might be fun to imagine us italians running with our pitchforks after a bunch of lab-rats to burn them at the stake for their failure at quake-prediction, what's really happening is that a prosecutor has doubts about the "quality" of work of some people paid lotsa public money to be part of a committee whose task was to assess seismic risks for that area at that time. Was the risk assessed correctly or not?

And if not, why?

Note how (<http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100622/full/465992a.html>) nobody is willing to take responsibility for the reassuring statements that in the end convinced the otherwise alarmed population to stay at home. The scientists say that the meeting was too short to consider all the data, while the civil protection agency responds to them that they should have not waited six months to object to that.

An aside: back in 2009, before and after the quake, there was one guy claiming to be able to foresee when and where earthquakes would strike with a certain precision by measuring radon emissions. Except the quake he foresaw a week earlier nearby L'Aquila never happened, and after the big one caused 300 deaths, he went on record saying to have foreseen it by something like 6 to 24 hours, depending on which interview. He became somewhat popular at the time, and probably still is, to the point that the public opinion might be left with the notion that quakes can indeed be foreseen - this trial might not be that bad thing for science after all.

</comment><comment><USER30> This is just the latest demonstration of the precautionary principle[1] at work. People in authority act as if the worst-case scenario will happen (regardless of the actual risk of that) because it's self-preservative.

We're so focused on always looking for a scapegoat when something goes wrong that the only way to pre-empt potential persecution (either by the mob or the press or the justice system or whoever) is to always cover your ass, regardless of what the actual risk analysis tells you. Warning against events like terrorist attacks and earthquakes is a win/win: if they do occur, you're the heroic prophet who saw it all coming. If they don't, no one will call you out on needlessly spending large amounts of money on their prevention.

There is quite a bit of precedent for this kind of reasoning. For examples, see Blair's role in the invasion of Iraq (45 minutes, remember?) and the United States' Homeland Security Advisory System (never lower than "Elevated"). And did anyone get nailed to the metaphorical cross for the enormous sums of money flushed down the toilet to protect against Y2K?

To dismiss this as a uniquely Italian issue, as many of my fellow HN'ers seem to be doing, is a failure to see the wider picture. Don't kid yourself, this happens everywhere.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle>

</comment><comment><USER31> I am not sure what to think of it but when De Bernardinis said "the scientific community tells me there is no danger, because there is an ongoing discharge of energy. The situation looks favorable", it occurs to me that "there is no danger" is incorrect. And dangerous. A more precise statement would have been "there is danger, but we have no way to know the probabilities of an earthquake". Am I right or missing something here?

</comment><comment><USER9> The possibility of going to jail for interpreting data will certainly deter scientist from interpreting data.

Which is great, because the average person can just look at the seismic data each morning and decide for themselves. Right after they sift through the weather data to see if any tornados might have swung by while they were sleeping.

</comment><comment><USER32> like in the good old times when court astrologist would be rewarded until the day of disaster when he would be beheaded. It was just a professional risk of being an astrologist, and i don't see any difference between an astrologist and seismologist making any definitive predictions - both ride the chance presenting it as scientific result and harvest benefits until the chance is in their favor.

</comment><comment> daniel-cussen Is that lawsuit against Google over that one Youtube video still going on there?

</comment><comment><USER33> _there is no danger_

Was that a misquote, or what the seismologists actually said? Their position is a little more shaky (ha, ha) if they said _there is NO danger_

<comment><USER26> Here's a more complete article:

<http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100622/full/465992a.html>

It seems like the committee contained 6 geophysicists who reported to a civil defense bureaucrat (who has a PhD in Fluid Mechanics - think Civil Engineering). The geophysicists said the standard things ("we can't rule it out").

Then these deliberations were summarized by the bureaucrat for the press conference, which the geophysicists did not attend, as (presumably in Italian ;-):

"The scientific community tells us there is no danger, because there is an ongoing discharge of energy. The situation looks favorable."

And there's your trouble spot.

It is wrong to misrepresent appropriately-hedged claims where life and limb are at stake. It should be a scandal.

And incidentally, this is why it's _really hard_ to be the technical person who stands in front of the press conference. Doing it well is a gift.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> The old world seems to be eager to dig themselves into a luddite grave. They want to live in a world with a "safe" internet and predictable, politically malleable science. We've been down such roads before, they're not good roads (the result is oppression; intolerance; corruption; stagnation of society, political thought, science, technology, and commerce).

<comment> Anti-Ratfish Not sure that the new world is any better. All those specified areas have direct new world examples. Can everyone be going backwards? We are where I am...

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Old news (May 2010), but worth revisiting.

<comment><USER35> ?? The article is dated May 2011.

<comment><USER28> <http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100622/full/465992a.html>

The charges were originally filed over a year ago. The news now is that, after procedural delays, the judge succumbed to idiocy and actually let them go to court.

<comment><USER36> Then it's not old news, is it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> 26 May - Scientists fail to predict earthquake, internet rallies to defend scientists. 21 May - Harold Camping fails in rapture prediction. Internet piles in on Camping as a fraud.

Just saying ;)

<comment><USER28> Scientists make best prediction they can based on three hundred years of observation, experimentation, and careful, systematic application of the scientific method; politician makes idiotic statement based on fundamental misunderstanding of scientists' report; scientists end up in court for politician's idiocy; internet rallies, along with every other person with a brain. Harold Camping makes prediction based on no observation, no experimentation, no method, only madness; Camping is fractally wrong, refuses to admit that he made a mistake; internet attacks, along with every other person with an unimpaired brain.

I suspect you're trollan, but I figure there's no such thing as "too safe".</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Know a good tool to purge all posts/likes/photos from Facebook? - <AUTHOR> Hi HN! I want to reduce my footprint on FB, i.e. delete all posts and photos, unlike all likes, etc. I'd like to keep the account active, so simply deactivating isn't the way to go (yet?)
I did some digging and there seems to be some Chrome extensions that - according to reviews - can give mixed results.
Most of what I could find - including past posts to HN - were 4 or 5 years old. So my question: is there a recent, go-to tool that you know of which can help me achieve the above? Or should I try my luck with the random years-old tutorials you can find online?
Thanks! <comment><USER2> This is tangentially related to this, but apparently their mobile app now automatically downloads all the photos on your phone if you give permissions to access photos? My wife and I recently had a child, and when I opened up the app to post one single photo of our child, Facebook was showing in my newsfeed a video they made with all of my photos I had taken. This seems like a gross violation of my privacy. Is there any way to prevent this aside from deleting the app and no longer sharing photos with family and friends via FB?

<comment><USER3> I use the mobile web now instead of the phone app now. I realize it's probably paranoia but there have been far too many times when I've talked about something and a related ad magically appears in my news feed.

Hasn't been a problem since I deleted the app.

<comment><USER4> Reminds of these ads.

[http://ghostinfluence.com/the-ultimate-retaliation- pranking-...](http://ghostinfluence.com/the-ultimate-retaliation-pranking-my- roommate-with-targeted-facebook-ads)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's impossible. A few years ago I manually went through and "deleted" all content. It probably took me five or six hours all told. A year or so later someone was showing me something on their profile, and I noticed a picture that I thought was gone. Digging around, everything I marked for deletion had re-appeared publicly. I've since "deactivated" my account (there's no apparent way to actually delete it) and refuse to use the service, much to my family's chagrin.

tl;dr: Even if you delete things, they will eventually reappear.

<comment><USER6> What I did was to feed them noise. I clicked the like buttom on popular things, followed popular people. It is kind of a chore, and it can prompt their anti-bot measures (like asking me if I'm interested in pig (the animal?)).

This, of course, has its drawbacks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> A related personal experience. I deleted my facebook account few years ago. Much Later (actually around 2 years later), when I wanted to check something related to facebook sdk, I created a fake account but gave my original mobile number.

Surprise! Surprise! Facebook was recommending all the people from my deleted account magically to my newly created account which has nothing in common with my old account except for the mobile number.

For all those sharing content in FB, worrying about your privacy is pointless and a total waste of time.

My personal opinion is that, Google somehow values people privacy more than Facebook, that why its social networking attempts are failing. On the other hand, Facebook is just ruthless when it comes to handling people's data and that is why it is having much success as a social networking platform.

<comment><USER8> > that why its social networking attempts are failing

IMHO the real names policy killed their projects even before release. I would've loved to use Google+ as a less invasive alternative to FB but the policy killed the deal for me (and generally everyone around me, both tech- savvy and not... who wants another Facebook?)

AFAICT they relaxed on the policy but it was way too late.

<comment><USER9> Facebook exists with that policy, though.

<comment><USER10> Which is why you can't beat it. You need to offer something in better to win, you can't just offer the same service.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Just deactivate first and forget about it. Your life does not cease to exist because you are not on Facebook anymore. If there are people out there who genuinely care for you, they'll know how to get a hold of you. You can then share your life with them, if you care for them. The world has existed like this for thousands of years.

</comment><comment><USER12> Facebook detects automated activity or scraping and tries to stop it. That being said, only this one seemed to partially work for me: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/timeline- cleaner-f...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/timeline-cleaner- facebook/ooimeknpoejjpkmgeibojeklnklcjchf?hl=en)

<comment><USER13> Thanks! I've tried similar tools without success, but this one is sort of successful. It has completely cleared things a few times, but I've had to keep re-running it since yesterday as they re-appear. This morning I was down to only things from 4 years ago or more showing up so I'm running it for a fourth time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> They introduced the ability to restrict those who can view your past posts quite recently, which might be useful. A link to news article is here:

[http://thenextweb.com/facebook/2016/07/28/facebook-remove- ol...](http://thenextweb.com/facebook/2016/07/28/facebook-remove-old- posts/#gref)

That news article also mentioned: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/facebook-post- mana...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/facebook-post- manager/ljfidlkcmdmmibngdfikhffffdmphjae)

</comment><comment><USER15> If you are outside of the US or Canada you are entitled to request all data Facebook holds about your account. This may be useful in determining what is actually deleted.

[http://www.europe-v- facebook.org/EN/Get_your_Data_/get_your_...](http://www.europe-v- facebook.org/EN/Get_your_Data_/get_your_data_.html)

</comment><comment><USER16> I've found that there are old messages of mine that Facebook will not let me delete. I took the manual approach of scrolling through my history and deleting every post I no longer wanted, and I found that some of my early posts produce an error when I try to delete them. I believe it has something to do with them being on a friend's wall, but I really am not sure. It's frustrating to not be able to remove my own content.

<comment><USER17> It's definitely on purpose. They've done the same with "Likes". I've been trying to unlike all the dumb pages I liked when in high school ("When you flip your pillow to get to the cold side ;]", "Brock Obama", "texting late at night", "peeling plastic off of new electronics", etc...) and once I got my 2k likes down to about 300ish, they stopped showing me my likes when I look at my profile. It literally says "326 likes" on the tab itself but it's just not populated with anything. Every once in a while, a defunct page will post again and I'll have the opportunity to unlike "Tiger Blood", but the infrequency kills me.

Just wish I could firewall <22 year old roninb from >22 year old roninb.

<comment><USER16> I remember the "likes" counts always being incorrect. Specifically for categories of things such as how many movies, bands, TV series, etc I had liked. Back around 2010 I cleaned up my list of liked movies and experienced the same thing: the count displayed was not synchronized with the number of movies appearing on my page.

I wonder if this isn't something akin to the YouTube "subscribers" bug. Users could repeatedly subscribe then unsubscribe to a channel. Only the unsubscribe actions were counted, and the channel's subscription count could be driven down to 0. That bug was around for over a year before being addressed.

<comment><USER18> Wouldn't surprise me if there are bugs.

There are some weird issues with facebook.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> My plan is to corrupt my data. I'll warn my friends that if they see stupid stuff going on with my profile, it's just me.

If they won't delete it, might as well make it useless.

<comment><USER20> I'm curious about this. How do you plan to corrupt your _existing_ data? (i.e. stuff you've done/uploaded in the past)

<comment><USER19> FB does allow you to edit >:)

<comment><USER21> I doubt this is actually overwriting anything, it just adds more data to facebook's database.

<comment><USER19> That's fine. It just means I've become a bi-coastal, transgendered, red headed, left handed bag pipe player with a speech impediment.

Regardless, the data is corrupt at that point, and that, is the point.

<comment><USER22> I feel like this is a very naive way to look at this. As kpcyrd said, you're simply adding to their data, not 'corrupting' anything you've previously shared. If anything, you're sending up a big red flag from suddenly changing your gender, location, etc all at once.

<comment><USER23> It may not hide anything from FB, but it will hide from anyone using FB to observe you, which seems like what the OP wants.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Another idea would be to flood your page with a lot of stuff: like everything that FB suggests (unless it's controversial or possibly illegal), create posts with random content (you can make it visible to "Just Me", reshare everything that pops in your timeline, etc

<comment><USER25> That's just going to insult people given that about 10% of FB users do that while thinking its the correct way, and mistakenly believing that behavior is "socializing". I don't want the fallout from Bill and his friends thinking I'm parodying or imitating Bill, ditto jackie and angela and richard and becky and denise and

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Anyone know a tool to stop people from being able to tag you (in their posts)? this shit is getting out of hand..

<comment><USER27> You can change your privacy settings so you have to approve everything before going on your wall/feed.

<comment><USER28> This has been around for years. It's interesting how many people complain about Facebook allowing oversharing and tagging when at this point, they give you more options to handle and restrict your interactions than ever.

<comment><USER29> While I agree that the knee-jerk reaction is overblown and 90% of the time people can do exactly the thing they complain about not being able to do on FB, it's not as easy a process to find the page and manage the settings as it could be. Most of the non-tech people I've talked to about this don't even realize FB has an "account settings" screen.

<comment><USER28> Facebook does have a habit of switching things up often (not in the best way) but right now it's not _too_ bad, here are some examples:

[https://i.imgur.com/vxtiePM.png](https://i.imgur.com/vxtiePM.png)

[https://i.imgur.com/1epcmNA.png](https://i.imgur.com/1epcmNA.png)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> There is the "Limit Past Posts" feature under the privacy settings. It doesn't delete your stuff, but it does make it less visible. Not ideal, just a start.

Go to "see more privacy settings"... then look for 'Limit the audience for posts you've shared with friends of friends or Public?'. It will present a "Limit Old Posts" button.

</comment><comment><USER31> Did you know it's impossible to disallow comments on your facebook posts? You have to allow them and then remove them manually.

FB is like a poorly-featured blog.

<comment><USER32> If you think FB is bad as a blog, just try using it as a source code management system, it's _really_ bad at that. And don't even get me started about the lack of ray-tracing support! Worst. 3D modelling app. EVER.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Selenium driver and manual clicking through history.

</comment><comment><USER34> Funnily tonight I've spent about 3hrs going through and marking everything "only me" which leaves everyone that was tagged or has commented on it with access. So it is completely doable through a chrome extension, would just take time to do. Plus now the site is all react based it should be fairly simple. My goal was to reduce my public footprint and each month I'll go through and close out the previous 2nd month of content.

</comment><comment><USER35> There was an app that did something related to this called facewash (renamed to simplewash) [https://www.facebook.com/simplewash/](https://www.facebook.com/simplewash/), but it seems to since have been shut down. May be worth it to shoot them a message

</comment><comment><USER36> Reading all the comments on how little control users have over their data on fb. Isn't this kind of messed up? How is FB still able to get away with this? Especially when Apple and Google are pushing for more privacy and user control over data, I'd think FB would get called out more.

</comment><comment><USER37> Slightly unrelated to OP's question... but something I just thought of, how would trying to reduce one's footprint impact the algorithm? i.e. would a lot of removals of likes invoke Facebook to suggest radically new content different than the thing which was removed? Or would it continue to suggest similar content?

For example, if someone unliked and removed every post and/or action that had to do with goats. Would they still get suggested content about goats or animals in the same family; would they get more animal-based suggestions than someone who'd never liked goat content? Or would those kinds of suggestions drop off entirely and change to common trends?

I have not used Facebook in a long time, so I'm curious if anyone has insight into the behavior.

</comment><comment><USER38> Not sure how possible it is, but i've used Javascript from the web console to do some interaction with Facebook, perhaps they have restricted this though?

But if that is allowed that could be one route, getting all the elements by Xpath that are posts.

Otherwise automation with Selenium or similar could work?

</comment><comment><USER39> There's [https://github.com/chander/social-network- cleaner](https://github.com/chander/social-network-cleaner) which more or less worked for me when I deleted my account. (Over a year ago now.)

</comment><comment><USER40> To my knowledge fb doesn't allow apps to delete data. Or, better, an app can only delete data it created in the first place. This is the reason, I guess, there are no such "server-side" services.

I don't know the status of client side, sorry.

</comment><comment><USER41> delete it. that uncomfortable feeling in your gut is telling you something important.

</comment><comment><USER42> Not a tool and Maybe not for photos. But I'd recommend doing potential edits instead. Where possible (comments and text posts). As this will screw with a lot of the undelete aspects and archiving. I do this in a variety of places and is far better than "delete" in most scenarios.

Tl;dr; better footprint reduction method than delete: Replace all text posts with a single letter or word.

</comment><comment><USER43> I'm trying this right now and it appears to be working. Although it looks like it will break once the timeline scroll gets too large. Maybe a page refresh will fix it.

[https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/9106-facebook-timeline- cle...](https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/9106-facebook-timeline-cleaner)

<comment><USER43> Looks like Facebook undeleted all the stuff from the last time I ran this.

Last time I made it to 2014 before my browser locked up. But now I'm seeing stuff from early 2016.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> You could take a look at testing with spock & groovy. With those you can instantiate browsers and control their behavior with just some lines of groovy code. Haven't heard of any tools that still work and do the job right, so though it might seem a bit of an overkill, it may just be worth the effort and you learn something cool ;-)

</comment><comment><USER45> As far as I can tell, the only surefire way is to delete your Facebook account permanently.

</comment><comment><USER46> I did this once for fun. At the time I used Sikuli (it just controls your mouse / keyboard and find things on screen). easy to code it, takes quite a while to run and makes your computer useless to do other things.

</comment><comment><USER47> I wonder if you could breathe life into this and perhaps mold it to do what you want ?

[http://fbcmd.dtompkins.com/](http://fbcmd.dtompkins.com/)

</comment><comment><USER48> I had good luck with a greasemonkey script but it was 5 years ago and it no longer works. I did have to run it several times. Maybe see if there's an updated one.

</comment><comment><USER49> Change your name to another language (another alphabet). All of your history will appear that way and will be rather useless.

</comment><comment><USER50> There is an app Xpire that should do what you're looking for. I have it for iOS.

</comment><comment><USER51> People would pay for this!

</comment><comment> awinter-py the court system

<comment><USER23> It's not clear that FB is required to delete your content if you ask them to, especially if it says in your terms that you explicitly give up this right (and I haven't actually read it, but I'd not be surprised if this was the case). I suspect you could claim someone stole your account and posted things that libeled you, and FB would be a party to the harm. But that's not quite the situation for the OP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Nuke them from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

<comment><USER52> Aliens references aside, you can't actually 'purge' anything, deletes don't actually delete.

Apart from marking stuff as private you can increase the noise. Like lots of stuff you don't like, add photos of people you don't know. Randomly unlike stuff. Eventually you will have washed your profile.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Send your SO some romance/sex coupons to their Passbook for V Day - <AUTHOR> http://www.romancepass.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> FYI this is hosted on one of those $5 VPSs at Digital Ocean (discussed here yesterday). Let me know if you have any questions or ideas for more coupons.</comment>


Normal - <AUTHOR> http://adactio.com/journal/6884/

<comment><USER2> What, Political Correctness wasn't bad enough? Now we want more layers of hypocrisy and lies? No, I'm opposed. Instead, I motion to force the Sun to add "Page 4" with clothe-less men for the amusement of women.

There is nothing indecent with men's sexual appetite. The indecent thing is to deny women the same pleasures.</comment>


Publishers Bought Millions of Website Visits They Found Out Were Fraudulent - <AUTHOR> https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/these-publishers-bought-millions-of-website-visits-they <comment><USER2> > An estimated $16 billion will be lost to ad fraud this year, and a > significant portion of that will go to criminals who use bots and other > nefarious means to siphon money out of the digital ad ecosystem.

That's a mind bogglingly big number, if true. I don't really find myself feeling sorry for advertisers, though.

<comment><USER3> You shouldn't feel bad for the advertisers, but you should be worried about the content producers you love who provide you free content based on advertisements.

If true fraud levels were exposed it could shift the digital economy in a massive way.

Say you have an unpopular dishwasher and it breaks. It's great to go to Youtube and find someone showing you how to fix the problem even for a relatively niche dishwasher. But if the ad money dries up for that content producer, that video won't be there the next time you look for it.

Or you will be forced to pay $1.00 to watch it.

<comment><USER4> _It 's great to go to Youtube and find someone showing you how to fix the problem even for a relatively niche dishwasher. But if the ad money dries up for that content producer, that video won't be there the next time you look for it._

Not everyone who makes YouTube videos is doing it for ad money, especially the sort of content you're referring to. A lot of people just do it to document things for themselves and use YT as a "convenient place to put videos"; the fact that everyone else can see is incidental.

<comment><USER5> Very true.

But the only reason that YouTube is there as a platform that allows people to upload videos for free is that they expect to make money either off of that video through ads, or through other videos through ads.

<comment><USER6> Not necessarily true. Some want to get famous with their videos, some want to express themselves in a creative way, or spread ideas, or build an online following to capitalize later on...

<comment><USER7> I think the point is that _Youtube_ expects to make money off that video. If _Youtube_ could not make money from people's content, it wouldn't exist.

<comment><USER8> For a while now I've been thinking about the idea of having a state-funded free and open video and image sharing platform. In the modern world I view sites such as imgur and youtube as vital infrastructure, and would really like to see them removed from commercial influence.

Just like roads need to be created regardless of their profitability, I think it's important for society that we have means to share and view image and video content regardless of profitability.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Every layer of abstraction and complexity is another chance for fraud and the advertising and content generation industries are layered like onions.

These business models seem like they've been modeled after real world JIT manufacturing logistics. Deliver X units of product A to site B on this schedule to meet these quotas and fulfill this growth pattern.

But real world manufacturing chains deal in real physical goods that can be easily verified at the point of use. But in the world of online content manufacturing, all the intermediary products are ephemeral electronic side effects of human action that are easily duplicated artificially.

I hate to say that this world is due for a bubble burst but I hope it happens sooner rather than later. Because if it's working as envisioned currently then our world is going to get more and more unpleasant.

</comment><comment><USER10> A bank spends $1000 on advertising and it ends up with dozens of accounts and credit cards opened and they decide it's a good ROI. So they spend another $1000 on advertising and get the same results again.

Why does it matter that millions of the ad impressions were fake?

<comment><USER11> It matters to buzzfeed it their competitors are getting deals off fake traffic :)

But really, when you are a large corporation that advertises through hundreds of channels there is no way to attribute conversion to particular ads. You are paying to have your ads seen by real people to create brand awareness and get the multiple touches that will result in conversions. If those ads aren't getting seen then obviously they are not effective.

<comment><USER12> There is if you manage you ppc and display advertising properly. btw I think you misusing channel here there are not "hundreds of channel's".

A channel is say Display vs PPC or Organic - I think you meant campaign.

<comment><USER11> You are only talking about online advertising.

I am talking about large corporations like JPMorgan Chase (the subject of the article) that are on the internet, tv, radio, billboards, print, sponsoring conferences, sports teams, lobbying governments, thousands of physical locations and ATMs that people see every day, etc, etc, etc.

Even with a PPC ad that results in a conversion can you really attribute that sale to that particular ad?

For a large corporation no, because you can't tell what part of the sale is due to the corporation's existing brand that is built up through exposing the consumer to that brand thousands of times across multiple media.

Conversion rates for digital ads are only meaningful relative to the conversion rates for other digital ads. They do not not allow you to attribute a value to digital advertising relative to the rest of your ad spending.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Why is it legal to buy any amount of traffic and specifically "view" ? Most of the time even if the traffic is "real" it actually originates from some developing country.

Edit: Here's the part I am referring to:

> _Publishers often buy traffic at the end of the month or quarter to 'make > its numbers.'_ Traffic sellers often promise the publisher that the traffic > is human and will pass through all ad fraud detection filters.

So I am not questioning advertising but blatantly buying traffic.

<comment><USER14> Are you asking why advertising is legal?

Edit: In response to OP's edit. "Buying traffic" is literally just advertising. You spend x dollars and that drives y traffic. Its worded like that so it sounds bad.

<comment><USER15> As someone who's built a few sites that relied on "buying traffic" to increase user growth, we always called it "buying traffic" and I don't really think it sounds all that bad.

The problem is when you're paying per impression in advertising, as that's the easiest to game - the number of shitty impressions I've seen coming from small, not-well-known data centers has taught me that cost per impression is so prone to advertising fraud as to not be worth it.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, so blacklist that data center. You can't just spend money and assume everyone will give you a good deal. Optimize your campaign to buy good traffic.

<comment><USER15> > Yeah, so blacklist that data center.

The most egregious fraudulent traffic came from at least a dozen different no- name data centers, and it was actually easier for us to cut out the fraudsters selling us the traffic than to blacklist the traffic itself (even though it was several steps away from the original source the traffic was purchased from).

The traffic itself was actually rather easy to identify independently of its actual network source, because they were using Selenium locked to a specific, outdated version of Firefox that also happened to consistently throw some errors that our standard infrastructure monitoring caught and alerted us to.

I still think that cost per impression is a difficult traffic source to properly verify (especially if you end up with a traffic source that is botting from compromised PCs) and as such should be treated with skepticism. Cost per conversion/install/etc. generally seem to be slightly less gameable (excluding, of course, the farms spread around economically disadvantaged areas where workers have hundreds of actual devices on which they are installing apps to game the cost per install ad traffic)

<comment><USER14> Yeah cpa is less gameable for sure. I don't have any exposure to that.. I've only ever seen cpm. (Or cpm converterted to ecpa after the fact)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If the stats are true then the whole internet ecosystem is at risk. Just look at where the big internet services get their money. It is all advertising. If the ad impressions are bunk then eventually advertisers will pull their budgets due to declining sales or adjusting their ad budgets.

Also consumers are getting smarter by using ad blockers.

The only thing left is these schemes making the illusion that real people are watching.

<comment><USER17> Yeah I was also thinking (orthogonal to this specific post) that if you show people ads of things they were already going to buy, then you can attribute your impressions to the conversion. The business can become predicting what people will buy versus directly influencing what they buy. That isn't to say that there is no value to advertisers, but it might be oversold, especially for large brands.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Surely part of the reason that this is the case is that online ad impressions are a fraction of the price of traditional media.

You can "reach" thousands of people for less than $200 online, whereas conventional advertising is substantially more expensive.

This has to be one of the underappreciated reasons that traditional media has been savaged so badly by the internet - the price difference is stark, especially on a CPM level. But that price difference is also jacked up by massive fraud everwhere - for example Facebook has told advertisers they have access to more people in the US, than live in the US.

That's not to say that traditional media is clean in how they measure their audience, but at least with a traditional ad you can turn on the TV and watch it, or pick up a newspaper and read it, or drive past it. How many digital ads never get seen by a human?

</comment><comment><USER19> Talking Points Memo put out this great piece on the glut of publishers and how advertisers want video more than website visitors do: [http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/theres-a-digital- media-c...](http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/theres-a-digital-media-crash- but-no-one-will-say-it)

Fraud seems to happen more frequently in situations of distress. Like Madoff, who had to expand his fraudulent operation to hide his past wrongdoing.

</comment><comment><USER20> Ages ago when I'd see something like this, I'd grab their affiliate code from the URL, then email the advertiser the site and offending affiliate code to them as an FYI.

No idea if anyone ever bothered to look, I just moved on.

</comment><comment><USER21> Why can't we do ad payments based on location? I know it's not foolproof but that will at least not reward click farms or IOTs from third world countries.

</comment><comment><USER22> My favorite part of this article is the block of bright red text advertising their tip line. Who has any interest in snitching for the benefit of advertisers?

<comment><USER23> That sort of banner is trying to get reports from disgruntled former employees of the ad-fraud business</comment></comment>


Groupon flunks Peter Thiel's startup class - <AUTHOR> http://bfe242.com/groupon-flunks-peter-thiels-startup-class-at

<comment><USER2> Groupon isn't exactly a startup anymore - they're a public company. And what do public companies generally do? Try to keep up with startups.</comment>


Skinny People Rarely Diet - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/02/why-skinny-people-dont-diet/463419/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> _many of the registrants used "non-restrictive" strategies, like listening to hunger cues, cooking at home rather than eating out, and eating quality, non- processed foods_

These strategies are only "non-restrictive" because of the attitude of the registrants. For someone who struggles with their eating habits, listening to hunger cues or eating quality foods will take discipline and restriction.

<comment><USER3> I'm struggling with weight and if I listened to hunger cues, I would weigh even more. I would be eating about twice more.

<comment><AUTHOR> But, are you more likely to answer you hunger cues by eating a salad or veggies, or eating crap? I bet it's the latter. If you can change this to genuinely prefer healthy food, even if you eat a lot of it, you shouldn't be fat. I am at healthy weight, but I can easily eat 2 pounds of veggies in one sitting (that's in addition to meat, and I am a woman). On the other hand, I can also eat 2000kcal of pizza in one sitting, and this is why I avoid eating pizza or cookies. I know in advance that if I start, I'm going to eat entirely too much. So I am what article declares as "consciousness of what I eat".

<comment><USER3> Depends, I eat pizza or other fastfoods once-twice a month. Typically it's sandwiches for breakfast and lunch and self-made home dinner. Yep, maybe I'm not eating as healthy as I should (only veggies and chicken), but just listening to hunger would cause me to eat even more.</comment></comment></comment></comment>