Why inflation is not theft - <AUTHOR> http://cmontanaro.com/2012/10/05/inflation-and-theft/

<comment><USER2> people complain about artificial inflation, when states print money for no reason, while this article talks about inflation generated by real economic facts (like a bad year in agriculture).

So yes, if you ignore half of reality, you are right!

and what is this? "If the state endows the money with value". Money have a certain value because everybody using them agrees on that value. Dictatorships tried and failed to "endow the money with value". What happened in my country was that some alternative, valuable papers were created. Like a card for bread ratio. That piece of paper had value even if nobody was calling it "money". Or other papers that gave you some rights like buying a car, getting an apartment, vacation tickets etc.

</comment><comment><USER3> So if the President decided he wanted to build a mansion on Mars, and printed enough trillions of US dollars to achieve this, it wouldn't be theft?

<comment><AUTHOR> I expect you would have elected a new president before we had time to find out.

<comment><USER3> It's not a question of waiting to 'find out.' It's a question of using logic applied to the premises you've already stipulated. In other words, you dodged the question.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you can't differentiate between living in a democratic economy and a capricious dictatorship, then it really isn't me who has a question to dodge.

<comment><USER3> That doesn't even make sense. If we could agree that some things a government could do with currency are improper and tantamount to theft, then it's just a matter of degree over whether things they _actually_ do with currency manipulation are also theft (at least potentially).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't necessarily buy into "Austrian" economics, but this guy is really engaging in a bit of a straw man here.

"When someone pays me, I receive the purchasing power of that money at that time, why shouldn't I be entitled to that purchasing power in perpetuity? Well, because purchasing power is temporal; if a bubble bursts, or the economy dives, there is no reason at all why I should be able to buy the same basket of goods as I could at the top of the bubble."

Of course. That's not the point. The point is that there is a central authority that can manipulate the value of money and in so doing can favor of disfavor different players in the economy. It's also quite un-democratic. There are criticism of this from the left as well as the right. (For the life of me I've never been able to figure out why some on the left consider the existing Federal Reserve system progressive.)

The author also conflates libertarianism and conservatism, which isn't something you can just do with a hand-wave. The former is far more complex than that. He also tosses out red herrings about the 9/11 "truth" movement and similar things to achieve guilt by association.

Crummy article.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm saying that a central authority with that kind of power is necessary and advantageous in a recession. And that they (central banks) are more accountable to the people than e.g gold mining companies.

And the propensity for libertarians to indulge in conspiracy theories is more than guilt by association.

<comment><USER5> Gold mining companies are accountable to reality: they can't extract gold that isn't there. Nor can they extract gold that isn't profitable to get at given the technological context. Money is supposed to be a representation of wealth, and private banking does that perfectly.

In contrast, government banks are "accountable" only to the whims of politicians and a public that wants its cake ("reasonable" taxes) and to eat it too (immoral entitlement programs). That's one purpose that statist banking serves: to make up for the inherent, recurring government budget shortfall by printing boatloads of money, forcibly lowering the standard of living of anyone that saves, in order to "benefit" those that won't or can't.

<comment><AUTHOR> The entire article deals with this. I'm not going to reiterate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> <<Inflation is really no worse than taxation ... An objection to inflation is an objection to tax a priori; which is fine, I simply ask for an awareness that the two items come as a package.>>

Which is the point Libertarians are trying to make! Taxation is theft according to libertarians. Inflation, like taxation, is theft. You actually ended up agreeing with them by saying that inflation is no worse than taxation. To libertarians, tax and inflation are both theft.

<comment><AUTHOR> And both positions are absurd. That was the point.

<comment><USER6> The point that you made was mere opinion you hold. You did nothing to substantiate why either positions are absurd.

Instead of telling libertarians "Why inflation is not theft ", you ended up echoing the libertarian sentiment that inflation is no worse than taxation.

<comment><AUTHOR> If the article persuaded libertarians that their claim 'inflation is government stealing your money' is as fanatical as 'taxation is government stealing your money', then it has done its job.

It simply argues that both statements should be treated with contempt, especially since the former has recently been in vogue.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Science Exchange Reproducibility Initiative - <AUTHOR> http://reproducibilityinitiative.org <comment><USER2> This is excellent. I have a few questions:

 _You need to provide the background of your study, the types of experiments undertaken, the materials and methods, and initial results of your study._

Do the technicians reproducing the results get to see the initial results? It seems like it might be more accurate if they didn't. Lots of parameters can be fudged and adjusted, a la Millikan's Oil Drop, when the results don't quite match. I imagine this might be exacerbated with the necessity of researcher- validator communication.

How are conflicts resolved? If my results are not validated, someone made a mistake - me or the validator. If both parties stand by their mutually incompatible results, where does it go from there? I can imagine a lot of researchers I know feeling annoyed that someone whose expertise they cannot verify (due to anonymity) won't "do my experiment correctly".

I imagine that in time there might be specific requirements or explicit funding allocations for such reproduction on grant applications, which would really allow it to take off. As it stands, I imagine a lot of PI's would just ask "hmm, I can spend money that might risk my already high-impact paper, or I can keep the money and not be considered wrong."

Still, this is a great first step toward facilitating a central tenet of the scientific method. Congratulations.

<comment><USER3> This is Bilal from Science Exchange, and we greatly appreciate your support for our initiative!

We will provide the methodology of the original study to those reproducing the results, while the results we believe will be helpful to check against.

For conflicts, it's true we can't force an investigator to publish or note the lack of reproduced outcomes. We do hope they will through the PLOS Collection, for transparency. We do feel though it can provide a valuable check for 'failing fast', for those investigators who want robust results.

In this initial stage, we also agree that funding will be difficult. That's why we hope to focus on small biotechs and research labs that are interested in commercializing their research, and need to show robustness of results for licensing opportunities.

Hopefully then, it can serve as a proof-of-principle for funding agencies to provide a requirement or increase support for reproducibility.

<comment><USER4> I think this will be a very valuable service for small biotechs. It would improve the value of their patents and increase chances of getting further funding.

As an experienced scientist myself, I can say there is plenty of scope for misunderstanding and misinterpretation, no matter how careful the original authors were. So I only hope that there will be some (maybe blinded) mechanism for communication between the original researchers and those replicating the published findings, in the event of the "usual" complications.

Also, who would do this replication? Would some of it be outsourced to academic labs with the requisite experience? Advanced findings often depend on advanced techniques. Outsourcing could be problematic, politically, since Big Shot No.1 might not be too interested in shooting down his pal, Alpha-MD-PhD.

<comment><USER3> Thank you for the support!

To clarify, the validation studies will be matched to core resource facilities and commercial research organizations, who specialize in conducting certain experiments on a fee for service basis. As they are paid upon completion of a service, regardless of outcome, we feel they are the solution to many of the misaligned incentives in academic research.

With respect to communication between the original authors and those conducting the validation, we definitely agree there needs to be some degree of communication, given the complexities of research. We will originally match a researcher to their provider in a blind fashion, so they have no choice in who conducts their study. But once a provider is selected, they can communicate with one another in explaining the methodology, experiments, etc.

<comment><USER4> It's probably a bit late to respond to this... However, given that this work is likely only to be undertaken when the stakes are high, I would think that blinded communication between the original researchers and those replicating the work would be a good idea. If they are going to shoot it down, they probably don't want the original people to know that they did so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Some supporting information:

\- Nature: [http://www.nature.com/news/independent-labs-to-verify- high-p...](http://www.nature.com/news/independent-labs-to-verify-high-profile- papers-1.11176)

\- Slate: [http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/201...](http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2012/08/reproducing_scientific_studies_a_good_housekeeping_seal_of_approval_.html?fb_action_ids=10102435251603084&fb_action_types=og.likes&fb_source=aggregation&fb_aggregation_id=288381481237582)

\- Reuters: [http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/14/idUS117855+14-Aug-...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/14/idUS117855+14-Aug-2012+BW20120814)

</comment><comment><USER5> It's very expensive (prohibitively so) to reproduce any substantial study. It also feels like there's a lot of potential downside and very little reward, since there's a presumption of correctness in published papers today. Further, wet lab protocols are subjective enough that I'd imagine most labs would ignore a negative result as having been performed incorrectly.

Where does the money for this come from? Are you expecting that labs will write this cost into their grants? Have you seen interest from grant agencies to then actually pay for this?

<comment><USER6> > Further, wet lab protocols are subjective enough that I'd imagine most labs > would ignore a negative result as having been performed incorrectly.

That kind of illustrates the usefulness of replication! If the effect is so finicky that it cannot even be replicated in another lab, in what sense is that result interesting, useful, - or even real?

<comment><USER5> I think you overestimate most biology labs. It's really easy to screw up a protocol in subtle ways. Often it took the original lab weeks of debugging to get it to work (yes, to get it to work, not to produce a false positive).

Things get more reliable as time goes on and methods become better understood, but the critical steps in most experiments are usually nontrivial to replicate in the beginning. Especially by CROs, which are notorious black boxes, incredibly expensive, and often just plain old unreliable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There are very few journals that do this -- I can't imagine this ever taking off.

Reproducing experiments seems like a costly (and mostly thankless) effort that few PIs would ever take up.

The only journal I know of that completely reproduces results is Organic Syntheses (<http://www.orgsyn.org/>), which reproduces every reaction before publication and has a Procedure Checklist for authors: <http://www.orgsyn.org/AuthorChecklist.pdf>

<comment><USER3> Hi, this is Bilal from Science Exchange. Appreciate your concern, but that is why we feel Science Exchange is uniquely positioned to make a difference. We have developed a network of 1000 core facilities and CROs on our platform, who operate on a fee-for-service basis to conduct experimental services. The Reproducibility Initiative will leverage this network to outsource specific experiments within a study to these facilities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The part I like about the execution is where you have CROs and Core Facilities, and not scientists themselves validate results. Apparently Milikan when he measured the electric charge was off (smaller than actual) in the measurements... but researchers who checked, worried perhaps about their academic reputation (speculating here) slowly adjusted this number upwards over several years till it asymptotically approached the truth. Having a 3rd- party, that is less impacted by academic politics might be a good thing.

From Feynman's Caltech commencement speech on this:

 _We have learned a lot from experience about how to handle some of the ways we fool ourselves. One example: Millikan measured the charge on an electron by an experiment with falling oil drops, and got an answer which we now know not to be quite right. It's a little bit off, because he had the incorrect value for the viscosity of air. It's interesting to look at the history of measurements of the charge of the electron, after Millikan. If you plot them as a function of time, you find that one is a little bigger than Millikan's, and the next one's a little bit bigger than that, and the next one's a little bit bigger than that, until finally they settle down to a number which is higher._

 _Why didn't they discover that the new number was higher right away? It's a thing that scientists are ashamed of--this history--because it's apparent that people did things like this: When they got a number that was too high above Millikan's, they thought something must be wrong--and they would look for and find a reason why something might be wrong. When they got a number closer to Millikan's value they didn't look so hard. And so they eliminated the numbers that were too far off, and did other things like that. We've learned those tricks nowadays, and now we don't have that kind of a disease._

[1] <http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/cargocul.htm>

</comment><comment><USER9> I was very surprised when I first learned that results could be published _without_ first having been reproduced. I thought at the least they should have been published with a separate label.

This is a worthy initiative.

<comment><USER10> _I was very surprised when I first learned that results could be published without first having been reproduced._

A lot of psychology journals have been burned by that over the years,

[http://chronicle.com/blogs/percolator/is-psychology-about- to...](http://chronicle.com/blogs/percolator/is-psychology-about-to-come- undone/29045)

[http://simplystatistics.org/post/21326470429/replication- psy...](http://simplystatistics.org/post/21326470429/replication-psychology- and-big-science)

[http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2012/04/26/reproducibilit...](http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2012/04/26/reproducibility- an-attempt-to-test-the-psychology-literature-underscores-a-growing-fault- line/)

and as a consequence, just within the last year or so, the most prestigious psychology journals are beginning to ask authors of papers on new experimental research to show replication across at least two distinct data sets. This, in turn, is driving more collaboration among researchers at different research centers. It's a long overdue development, one in accord with best practice in science,

<http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html>

and I hope this practice spreads to most disciplines that publish new research reports in the major journals of the discipline.

(Although the requirement for prepublication replication is not explicitly mentioned in the publication guidelines of Psychological Bulletin,

<http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/bul/index.aspx>

which is the most prestigious psychology journal published in the United States, I have been told at the University of Minnesota behavior genetics "journal club" that replication across more than one data set is becoming a tacit requirement for publication in most of the better journals. Perhaps that guideline will eventually be made explicit for all of the better journals.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't see this approach really able to solve the underlying problems that it references from

[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/17/science/rise-in- scientific...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/17/science/rise-in-scientific- journal-retractions-prompts-calls-for-reform.html?_r=1) and other articles.

"Each year, every laboratory produces a new crop of Ph.D.'s, who must compete for a small number of jobs, and the competition is getting fiercer. In 1973, more than half of biologists had a tenure-track job within six years of getting a Ph.D. By 2006 the figure was down to 15 percent."

I would claim that science requires some basic integrity in its practitioners and if an institution is treating it's members as so many throw-away resources, it is hard to expect those members to move ahead with great idealism. The model of every desperate competitor watching every other competitor seems to be the replacement for model of science as a high ideal. I don't see it working out well.

<comment><USER3> It's true the issue of reproducibility in research is a complex one, with many underlying factors. Culture, misaligned incentives, and lack of resources play strong roles.

We believe however our Initiative can help in laying an initial framework for how one can possibly address aspects of the problem. We've tried to build incentives (ease of outsourcing, rewarding publications) that factor into this issue, and can assist in improving outcomes. But we definitely agree that a holistic solution will require further changes to the academic research infrastructure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Proofs are for math, not science.

<comment><USER13> Agree, the title is poorly editorialized. Proofs and validations are very different things. Validation is about being confident that a model can make useful predictions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The NSF CISE guidelines (which apply to much of the funded CS research that folks on HN care about) currently require you to retain all data required to reproduce your experiment and make them available to any reasonable request: <http://www.nsf.gov/cise/cise_dmp.jsp>

My advisor is on appointment there right now, and they're working on guidelines that require you to provide full reproducibility of your program results (modulo system differences). At least for software, things are looking up. Of course, reproducibility is both infinitely easier (I can do it on any system!) and harder (what do you mean the kernel patchlevel or CPU/GPU sub- model-number matters?).

</comment><comment><USER15> Plasmyd does this via crowdsourcing, it lets users comment on papers so that researchers can point out anomalies or post their inability to reproduce the same results. It also gives the author a chance to explain their work.

<comment><USER4> It is frustratingly difficult to get biomedical scientists to openly discuss the work in their field. PLoS tried to have discussion sections to papers, and Nature has tried various approaches as well. Neither have worked. I looked-up my favorite topic (a popular one) on Plasmyd, and found 20 papers, none of which had a single comment associated with it.

It's honestly a vast waste of intellectual potential, I wish I knew the solution!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> "Validations are conducted blind, on a fee-for-service basis."

Seems like a potential conflict of interest there.

<comment><USER17> How? If they don't know what the answer is supposed to be, it's not clear how they can fake data. This can further be improved by universities contributing to a 'noise' fund, where requested experiments are expected to _not_ turn anything up.

Also, the main purpose of this is not to catch corruption, just prevent mostly honest researchers from fooling themselves (and then others), and increasing the base line for research.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is great! Too often scientific papers are published that are never actually checked by anyone else. A key part of the scientific method is reproducibility though.

</comment><comment><USER19> The title irks me. Instead of "prove it", how about "let us reproduce your results" or "show us the data". Proof in this context is a mistaken concept.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Title changed -- geeeeeze #cowersinthecorner</comment>


Ask HN: What programming language is exciting to learn and to work? - <AUTHOR>

Hey HN! I am bored with the programming languages ( Java, PHP, Ruby ... ) =/ I try to make a project that be breathtaking, funny to work, to learn more about these programming languages; but at the same time, i tell to myself: "this already there is! Why make something that already there is?!" So, someone can tell me a programming language that be exciting for learn and work in the web? <comment><USER2> If you enjoy living at the cutting edge, then it would be well worth looking at Clojure. I've had a great experience. For me the highlights have been: a proper LISP macro system that lets you treat "code as data", fantastic Java interoperability so you can use all the great Java libraries, great support for concurrency and functional programming.

</comment><comment><USER3> Lua is very small, mature, stable, interesting, and implemeted with a small footprint. There is a new JIT based system which improves performance.

For a video introduction by the creator, Roberto Ierusalimschy who is a professor at the Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janro , watch the video: _Small is Beautiful: the Design of Lua_ at <http://ee380.stanford.edu>.

Roberto has done several books on the language which are very helpful and interesting.

<comment><USER4> I'm going to learn Lua for FreeSWITCH scripting. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've found the things you do in python pretty fun.

You might want to try seaside/smalltalk for something completely different: [http://www.seaside.st/?_s=XBRlPkWQFO4mUh21&_k=uMS3uuIb&#...
Smalltalk is where the objective part of Objective-C came from. It is not at all a C based language itself though.

</comment><comment><USER6> Hmmm, assuming since you posted an Ask HN that you read HN comments, it's difficult to believe you haven't seen lots of people talking about the usual subjects (at the moment) - node.js (javascript is the language), clojure, haskell, OCaml, scala, erlang. All of these will give you a new perspective coming from the three you mention, the first two are probably the most web- focused (though perhaps people will disagree with that?). Also, plus one for smalltalk/seaside, and minus one for python, which isn't mind-bending enough coming from Ruby in my opinion.

</comment><comment><USER7> Of all the languages I've mastered over the years, by far my favorite one was Ruby. It's a different experience than other languages such as C, PHP, or Java. Also: python and, to some extent, perl. Some of the emerging languages, such as scala and erlang and haskel, are fun as well, but if you're looking for an easy and fun web language I'd definitely try out Ruby. And then, after you know Ruby, take a look at the popular frameworks: Ruby on Rails and Sinatra. They really make web development fun. Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER8> Lets be honest here most languages are much of a muchness, religious wars aside, and will probably all end up with pretty much the same set of features.

Sure I would like to have the time to play with OCaml / Erlang / Haskel but what I really want is the time to work on an exciting application!

Thats where the fun is. If I had the time to play with robotics, telepresence or virtual reality I would learn whatever language I would need to do it.

Languages, meh

</comment><comment><USER9>
        ?- exciting(prolog).
        true.

Whether you'll actually use it for some bigger projects is questionable, but it's certainly a challenging task, just because it's a very different approach. And e.g. SWI-Prolog actually has a nice web package at <http://www.swi-prolog.org/pldoc/package/http.html> .

</comment><comment><USER10> For the majority of people I don't think that it is the language that makes it fun. I think that finding a project that makes you want to wake up at 4am and go to sleep at 2am because it is so interesting is what makes it fun. Yes, I am a coder but ultimately I think of myself as a puzzle solver. When you approach the problem from the right direction you're already much better off than you would've been before. Try a bunch of languages out for a month, that's what I'm doing (OCaml starts tomorrow), and figure out which language works with you, not against you (Java!), to help you solve your puzzle.

PS: There were articles on HN in January about the 12 languages in 12 months but I don't want to look them up so I will provide you with the link I saved from them [http://www.coderholic.com/12-new-programming-languages- in-12...](http://www.coderholic.com/12-new-programming-languages- in-12-months/)

</comment><comment><USER11> I have been experimenting with clojure and I am impressed and very excited every time I use it. I am planning to use it in a project with arduino since I want to learn more about it too.

</comment><comment><USER12> CoffeeScript!

It's got all the power of JavaScript (which, in addition to its monopoly on browser scripting, is now a respectable server-side language thanks to Node.js et al.), it's very new (first source push was in December), and the syntax is just beautiful—even nicer than Python's, in my opinion. I've been totally thrilled since I've started playing with it, and I'm using it for some serious browser-based projects.

</comment><comment><USER13> "a programming language that be exciting" makes me want to recommend some pirate-based language, but I don't know one unfortunately.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'd suggest finding out for yourself as it's a personal choice. Try a few and see what sticks.

This book would be a good start:

[http://pragprog.com/titles/btlang/seven-languages-in- seven-w...](http://pragprog.com/titles/btlang/seven-languages-in-seven-weeks)

</comment><comment><USER15> clojure.</comment>


Deobfuscating the Facebook Spam Script - <AUTHOR> http://www.kahusecurity.com/2011/deobfuscating-the-facebook-spam-script

<comment><USER2> Here is the proper deobfuscated code:

<http://pastebin.com/nkBx8GbH>

reddit disusses it nicely:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/h9ke3/facebook_being...](http://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/h9ke3/facebook_being_hit_by_an_xss/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Wouldn't it be possible to deny any scripts that looked like that? I know that it must obviously be legal Javascript, but if it's formatted like one blob of text, deny. This might be a too naive approach to work, I'm mostly raising the question out of curiosity, is it possible to spot obfuscation programmatically.

<comment><USER4> Harmless Javascript minification can be difficult to distinguish from intentional obfuscation. Packer in base62 mode (<http://dean.edwards.name/packer/>) is a good example.

<comment><USER3> Interesting, but what purpose does that serve? Wouldn't it be possible to formulate a rule for an organization, where you deny this as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was drawn to security for a while mostly because javascript like that must be so much fun to write and encrypt. Although it's almost as much fun to decrypt. Until I get some more free time I guess I'll settle for reading about it.

Also, I love the first comment on this article: "Didn't you just violate DMCA?"

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm no user of Facebook, and when I see this material, I highly doubt I will ever try it. Why is Facebook unleashing this kind of stuff on its members? It shows the traits of malicious JavaScript that shady sites use to exploit security vulnerabilities in browsers. Why aren't Facebook members not allowed to know what they're made to run? Does Facebook have something nasty to hide?

<comment><USER7> This is an XSS; it's not something that Facebook put out.</comment></comment>


Warren Buffett: US Rating Still AAA, No Matter What S&P Says - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnbc.com/id/44056326/Buffett_US_Rating_Still_AAA_No_Matter_What_S_P_Says

<comment><USER2> I'd be more impressed with S&P if their attitude towards accounting errors on the order of 10^12 wasn't "so what, we're still right."</comment>


Zipcar CEO on How the IPO Hopeful Has Weathered the Recession - <AUTHOR> http://earth2tech.com/2010/04/15/zipcar-ceo-on-how-the-ipo-hopeful-has-weathered-the-recession/

<comment><USER2> Here in London I use streetcar (<http://streetcar.co.uk>) and don't own a car. It's proved to be a fantastic service.

</comment><comment><USER3> 10 years and still not profitable? yikes! Is this typical for non-software based companies?</comment>


Judge tosses proposed class action accusing Google of CAPTCHA fraud - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/02/judge-tosses-proposed-class-action-accusing-google-of-captcha-fraud/ <comment><USER2> This bit from the judge's ruling underscores how ridiculous the lawsuit is:

> In addition, at oral argument, Plaintiff did not represent that if given > leave to amend she could allege that had she known the second reCAPTCHA word > was used to assist Google with its other services she would not have > completed the reCAPTCHA. To the contrary, counsel represented that he had > not asked Plaintiff and he did not know what she would say. (Dkt. No. 60 at > 20:23-25.) Such question, of course, should have been asked and answered > before this lawsuit was filed and pursued in two states. Regardless, it > defies common sense that the answer would be yes.

[1] [http://boothsweet.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Google- Orde...](http://boothsweet.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Google-Order- Granting-Dismissal.pdf)

<comment><USER3> This. Fraud generally requires that the victim rely on the "fradulent" statement to decide to move forward (e.g. solving the captcha). So even if you assume that the terms "free" and "security" were intentionally meant to deceive, you'd have to prove that the user would not have otherwise signed up for Gmail if those labels had been different.

The fact that they didn't cover this important point is ridiculous.

<comment><USER4> Just playing devil's advocate, but look at the UI. The box I saw says "CAPTCHA" and "type these two words". So the argument for fraud would be that 50% of words Google solicited under the guise of CAPTCHA were actually used for the sole economic benefit of Google's other services. Maybe on a count for fraud the plaintiff's can't prove that they would not have created a Google account having known the 2nd word was not for CAPTCHA; however, the Plaintiffs could certainly prevail on a unjust enrichment claim.

As the company who invented the anti-trust defense "competition is only a click away", Google should equally be capable of acknowledging there in absolutely no burden on Google to create 2 boxes for new users, one identified as CAPTCHA, and the other as a crowd-sourced word to be used for Google's other services.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Distorted text isn't even used in reCAPTCHA all that much anymore -- Google used a Deep Convolutional Neural Network and got over 90% accuracy in reading street numbers in Street View, and 99.8% accuracy in solving distorted text reCAPTCHA ([http://arxiv.org/abs/1312.6082](http://arxiv.org/abs/1312.6082)).

Most users will just check a "I'm not a robot" box now; and if you do get a test, it will likely be a computer vision / image labeling problem: [https://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.com/2014/12/are-you- ro...](https://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.com/2014/12/are-you-robot- introducing-no-captcha.html)

<comment><USER6> I wonder what will happen once there are no more problems left that 99.9% of humans can solve in a short time, but computers can't.

<comment><USER7> Generally, the point of a CAPTCHA is to prevent automated use of a service. If we get to the point where CAPTCHA's no longer work in preventing automated access to services, we need to look for atypical use of services.

For example, if a computer passes a CAPTCHA in order to use gmail to automate the sending of spam emails, look for users that mass-spam; typical users won't do that. On the other hand, the computer may try to approximate the usage of a typical user to avoid detection. But if you cant distinguish automated use of your service from typical use of your service, then at that point maybe it doesn't matter so much.

<comment><USER8> Another alternative to CAPTCHA is the obvious three-factor authentication. Send a random code to your mobile number, if its really you, you can verify yourself by entering that number on the web-page.

Another way is to send the same using email which is a bit more convenient than sending it to cell-phone.

In other words, we need to keep inventing more sophisticated ways of telling the difference between humans and computers (and the great progress in the field of AI is certainly going to push us to do that more frequently)

Looking for atypical use of services is something that we should be already doing, but there are limits to those. The said users you are talking about keep churning new email addresses and hide behind dynamic IP ranges of countries like Mongolia or Kyrgyzstan over which we have no control. We can't tell the difference between good/bad IPs for traffic coming from there, otherwise there is no need for Google to keep re-inventing the CAPTCHA every few years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Surely the spare word allows the dictionary of potential CAPTCHA words to add a new word for every CAPTCHA solved (sure they probably run them past many users for validation purposes). This effectively allows the CAPTCHA service's dictionary to scale/evolve continuously, preventing an anti-CAPTCHA service from 'learning' the whole dictionary.

I thought this was the entire point of re-captcha, so regardless of the 'time necessary to complete' element, their case doesn't seem very well thought out.

<comment><USER10> anti captcha (against recaptcha) works via captcha farms, the biggest being deathbycaptcha.com. $10 gets you about 10k solved captchas.

They work quite well. I tend to get about a 1 out of 5 correct of the squiggly words, whereas the service is more like 4/5

I am not aware of any successful dictionary attack on recaptcha. And the only OCR techniques to bypass recaptcha was by xrumer[0] but that was a few years ago

[0]xrumer: once popular forum spamming software waned in popularity / effectiveness in recent years

<comment><USER11> deathbycaptcha.com is ...

> A hybrid system composed of the most advanced OCR system on the market, > along with a 24/7 team of CAPTCHA solvers. An average response time of 11 > seconds,...

My understanding is that this is mostly humans in third-world countries staring at a screen and working for peanuts (or maybe less than the value of a peanut). I don't see how any system for recognizing humans can succeed against real humans.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The judge's argument makes sense to me, and seems right.

But I'd argue that the CAPTCHA itself is a greater benefit to the end user than the cost (not just Gmail or Google Maps). If Google had to stop using OCR CAPTCHA tomorrow, they would have to use an alternative, and frankly most of the alternatives are worse. Further still without the ability to hinder bots services like Gmail couldn't exist.

Arguing that Gmail is a greater benefit than the CAPTCHA costs to complete is fine, but potentially leaves the gate open to sue later because someone finds a service which they claim doesn't benefit the end user (e.g. paying a bill). Arguing that the CAPTCHA method itself has more benefit than cost completely destroys any future lawsuits.

<comment><USER13> What a sad world. We have pretty reasonable judge with an reasonable verdict that seems obviously right but you can be sure there is automatically a bunch of lawyers looking for loopholes to crash it all and make money on it.

Sometimes I have the feeling like the whole judicial apparatus has gone from solving real life problems to creating absurd problems that allow you to sue somebody.

<comment><USER14> Like everything in life, there are two sides of the coin. When I was in law school, I worked with a small town in central Illinois that Big Chemical Co. had left polluted with heavy metals after a decades-long mining operation. Making headway in the lawsuit was extremely difficult because of all the legal barriers put in place to protect defendants. The legal system has become very unfriendly to plaintiffs over the last 20-30 years and it's affecting a lot of legitimate cases.

<comment><USER15> Why would the EPA not be taking that case? And extract a financial penalty for Superfund cleanup?

<comment><USER14> EPA and state departments of environmental protection have limited resources to take on these cases, prove them up, and follow-through over the years it takes to do cleanup. In our case, Illinois EPA actually entered into a consent decree with defendants regarding the site, and defendants argued that the consent decree preempted our common law clams. But IEPA pretty much ignored enforcement for 15+ years. So we were stuck in a situation where enforcement power had been shifted from the courts to the agency, but the agency wasn't interested in acting.[1]

What ultimately happened was that regime change happened at IEPA and they got serious about enforcing the consent decree. But that still doesn't compensate the townspeople. Good luck getting someone to buy your house in a former superfund site, even if the heavy metals on the school grounds have been cleaned up to a reasonable, cost-effective standard.

[1] This problem is recurring. Agency enforcement is a _lot more efficient_ than lawsuits. But agencies only have the resources to go after the biggest fish for the most egregious violations. And they're far more susceptible to political pressure ("you can't sue XYZ, they have 10,000 jobs in our state!")

<comment><USER15> Thanks for taking the time to respond, I appreciate it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Quite a frivolous case, nice to see the legal system working for once.

One interesting thing I've learned from the court rule though: apparently software delivered online and through downloads does not qualify as a good or service under the California's Consumer Legal Remedies Act, unlike boxed software delivered on physical media (pp.14-16)

</comment><comment><USER17> What a bizarre lawsuit. Even if the CAPTCHA required 30 mins of work for a free gmail account and that work was used for significant gain for Google only, why would you be entitled to compensation?

<comment><USER18> Not that I agree with it, but the premise is this...

\- reCaptcha presents 2 words for the end user to solve

\- the purpose of the second word has nothing to do with security. The word itself is not known to Google.

\- the "fraud" is that Google is deceiving you into helping them decipher the second word for their own financial gain

(paraphrasing from [http://digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl...](http://digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1904&context=historical))

Edit: Please note that I am not in agreement with the premise above...just trying to summarize it.

<comment><USER19> Not mentioned is that it actually _does_ have something to do with security, because once enough users have transcribed a word, in addition to it being returned to the digitization project, it can be used for future CAPTCHAs as a known word. According to Wikipedia, this was at least historically the case for reCAPTCHA.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> What concerns me is the attitude that users can be used and manipulated without their permission or knowledge; they have no choice or right to be informed, in this or in tracking or in many other situations. They are just objects of commerce to the developers, not human beings. This leads to bad practices like widespread confidentiality violations, free-to-play user manipulations [1], and the sorts of manipulation of customers practiced in places like Wall Street.

My feeling these days is that either you're on the inside or you're a sucker.

(On the level of fairness and justice - I don't know enough to comment on legality - I don't think this particular incident rises to the level of damages. However, Google could just display, _In return for our free service, please help our computers read this word! Even Google 's computers can't do everything - read more about it <here>._ \- Why not disclose it if you are doing nothing wrong? If you don't disclose it, you're manipulating people.)

[1] [http://toucharcade.com/2015/09/16/we-own-you-confessions- of-...](http://toucharcade.com/2015/09/16/we-own-you-confessions-of-a-free-to- play-producer/)

<comment><USER21> From the reCAPTCHA site itself:

> reCAPTCHA offers more than just spam protection. Every time our CAPTCHAs are > solved, that human effort helps digitize text, annotate images, and build > machine learning datasets. This in turn helps preserve books, improve maps, > and solve hard AI problems.

That seems like disclosure to me?

<comment><USER20> Thanks for pointin that out. Having filled in many CAPTCHAs, I was unaware of that disclosure. Assuming I'm representative, I don't think it's meaningful to disclose something where very few will see it - for example, burying it in a EULA doesn't help either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > As Google suggests, it strains credulity that Plaintiff or class members > would forego access to a free Gmail account and higher quality Google Books > or Google Maps because their brief transcription of a single word might, > indirectly or directly, facilitate Google's profit earning

Call me a data point to the contrary. I don't use gmail or Google Books at all, and Google Maps rarely. I contribute to OpenStreetMap. It sticks in the craw that whenever I use any Google Captcha-enabled site (even if the site's not owned by Google) I'm helping to increase the quality divide between Google Maps and OSM.

<comment><USER23> It really sticks in your craw that you are improving the quality of data, just because that data belongs to Google? Seems petty.

<comment><USER24> Why should I help Google make money, for free? I'll gladly discuss their employment options if they need my help.

<comment><USER23> You are helping Google make money for free whenever you are using one of their services. I fail to see the moral issue with that. If you don't want to help Google make money, don't use them.

<comment><USER25> In their defence, reCaptcha are fairly ubiquitous. Very difficult to avoid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I have always found Google's way of getting data at the same time as some other activity pretty clever. Offering a free 4-1-1 (directory) service for phones so that you can collect millions of minutes of voice recognition code with various accents? Seemed pretty brilliant to me. Using a security technique to fix hard to fix otherwise OCR errors? also pretty clever.

When you think like that, all sorts of interesting things come out. For example, something I don't think anyone has done but could be pretty amazing, put a camera in a store which tracks gazes, set up a set of mannequins with different looks and compare male and female gaze time. Sure it used to be you could change the window display and count sales, this is so much more informative than that.

So are you using their interactions for your own benefit? Sure. Is this a new phenomena? No. I totally think the judge called it on this one.

</comment><comment><USER27> Is it just me, or does it seem like Google is being the target of a large number of obscure law suits lately (especially in Europe)?

</comment><comment><USER28> Ot but arstechnica is now using the shitty mobsweet ad network making reading the article impossible on mobile - and they complain when the users fight back!

</comment><comment><USER29> I wish people would stop feeding the class action lawyers.

There are plenty of legit class actions and stuff like this diminishes them.

<comment><USER30> It really does serve to make lawyers look like extortionist thugs. Had the lawsuit gone forward, it would have been funny if Google had proposed compensating everyone -- lawyers and "victims" alike -- with free Gmail accounts.

<comment><USER31> Even better, it should have offered exactly what the plaintiffs claim was stolen from them. It would tell the plaintiffs what word is in an image of their choice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> At least captcha worked and helped digitalize books.

After google bought them and moved to useless training for their image classification, which helps nobody, i was simply banned from contributing to all sites that demand captcha. Because it simply refuses to work with my phone.

</comment><comment><USER33> So what is the future?

Will all site who used google captcha be affected by the result of this case?

<comment><USER34> The "result of this case" is its being tossed out of court, leaving it with zero effects.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What mouse? - <AUTHOR>

Looking for some suggestions as to the best mouse to use with my MacBook. I have an apple magic mouse currently but I'm finding it really uncomfortable for long stretches. For a guy I think I have pretty average size hands. I would prefer a bluetooth mouse so that I don't need any extra cables or dongles. Thanks! <comment><USER2> Performance MX ([http://www.logitech.com/en-us/product/performance-mouse- mx](http://www.logitech.com/en-us/product/performance-mouse-mx)) is still my favorite mouse for more than 4 years. I still haven't found anything better. It has few extra buttons, good battery life, good DPI, scrollwheel that you can set to two different modi and it lies well in my hand.

It's a little pricy, but it's worth it.</comment>


McCarthy: Programming - You're Doing It Wrong - <AUTHOR> http://lemonodor.com/archives/2007/10/youre_doing_it_wrong.html <comment><USER2> Heh, I'm curious how many people here actually know who John McCarthy is. :)

<comment><USER3> _"... Heh, I'm curious how many people here actually know who John McCarthy is. :) ..."_

All those who can lisp when they speak.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> great!

forgive my noobery, but who is the person in the second poster?

<comment><USER5> Djisktra (or however you spell it) I think ??

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> LOVE IT</comment>


We are all peasants now: The student-loan crisis is destroying the middle class - <AUTHOR> https://www.condemnedtodebt.org/2019/02/we-are-all-peasants-now-student-loan.html <comment><USER2> It's a one-way bet for the Education Industry because these massive loans can't be discharged by bankruptcy.

We have similar problems (thankfully not yet as bad) here in England.

If the pieces of paper they are peddling are truly a gateway to a middle class lifestyle then surely the Education Industry would be happy to provide them in return for a fixed percentage of the above average wages that their recipients will be gaining?

And if not, why not?

As always, Incentives Matter. We need incentives to provide the best education at the cheapest cost. The Education Industry is ripe for disruption.

</comment><comment><USER3> Lots are sucked into the idea that a good education will get you a good job. WRONG! Maybe a job for the rest of your life, but who wants to work for someone else till you die?

Student loans is big biz, and the govt makes lots of money from it. It's insane!</comment>


The Extropian Roots of Bitcoin - <AUTHOR> https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/extropian-roots-bitcoin/ <comment><USER2> Man, I wish I'd kept my Extropy magazines. I ditched them in a move about 15 years ago.

I haven't really thought about it, but it's likely I've taken to bitcoin so easily because it's an idea I encountered so long ago. Just sort of inevitable that it would come along, or so it's seemed.

Extropy, Transhumans, Cypherpunks, all those early 90s fringe technocultures. Crazy, out there ideas that still had concrete directions to explore.

It feels to me like there's a sort of throughline from the late 60s computer/counter culture mix, to the 70s/80s personal computer folks, to the 90s extropy people. But I'm not sure where it went after that. Surely there's a current generation.

Cryptocurrency has some of it, especially in the more ambitious fringes, but I've lost track of whatever group is on the broader picture of extreme technological ambition.

<comment><USER3> > Man, I wish I'd kept my Extropy magazines. I ditched them in a move about 15 > years ago.

Well, for what it's worth, here's the archives I have been collecting. I also have other extropians-related files, but this is somewhat of a "I don't know what I have" issue, so it will just take some more poking and prodding for me to categorize and upload the rest.

extropians: [http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/irc/extropians/](http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/irc/extropians/)

cypherpunks: [http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/irc/cypherpunks/cypherpunks-199209-1...](http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/irc/cypherpunks/cypherpunks-199209-199812.tar.bz2)

> but I've lost track of whatever group is on the broader picture of extreme > technological ambition.

Mostly it's the same groups, except not where you first found them. For example, the cypherpunks and cryptography mailing lists haven't degraded as terribly as extropy-chat/extropians.

There is a transhumanism/biohacking channel on irc.freenode.net ##hplusroadmap which has logs here [http://gnusha.org/logs/](http://gnusha.org/logs/) since 2008. (Disclaimer, I am the resident optroll.)

... and there's a bitcoin/cryptography wizardry channel on the same server in #bitcoin-wizards (but also #bitcoin is reasonable), logs can be found here: [https://download.wpsoftware.net/bitcoin/wizards/](https://download.wpsoftware.net/bitcoin/wizards/) In general, I would recommend #bitcoin for most messages.

As for the rest of the cryptocurrency world, that's a little more difficult to explain and keep track of...

You know, the weird thing is that looking back on the extropians, they weren't really all that ambitious. Sure, they would talk about DNA or something, but did any of them ever bother to spend a few hours in a molecular biology lab? And what about software, how many of them (who didn't already code) bother to pick up code slinging to advance their interests? That's not to say that they were unskilled-- many of them were extremely skilled, but they sort of showed up like that, and didn't move the needle. Oh well, different times.

<comment><USER2> Fair point about not accomplishing a whole lot (outside of Finney). Ambitious, maybe, but not so effective.

Also reminded me there's a DIY Bio mailing list, with lots of interesting bio- hacking sorts of things going on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think my best memories from lurking on the Extropians mailing list Back In The Day were hearing about the "Terrorism Futures Market" months before it went public. All the objections that would later be made came up on the list and Robin Hanson did a pretty good job of answering them. Too bad it didn't take longer for the media to discover it.

</comment><comment><USER5> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extropianism](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extropianism)

</comment><comment><USER6> A wonderful, albeit dense, read that touches on Extropianism among many other things is Techgnosis

[http://www.amazon.com/TechGnosis-Myth-Magic-Mysticism- Inform...](http://www.amazon.com/TechGnosis-Myth-Magic-Mysticism-Information- ebook/dp/B00N6PBCP8/)</comment>


Rate My Startup: DomainPigeon.com - <AUTHOR> http://www.domainpigeon.com

<comment><AUTHOR> The short of it: Domain Pigeon helps you find unregistered domain names for your websites. Please let me know what you think.

The long of it: In March of last year I was in the process of writing some poker software and trying to decide on a name for it. I wanted a good name and also wanted to own the corresponding domain name so that people could easily find it. I used Ajaxwhois, a great site that lets shows you the availability of domain names as you type, and quickly got pulled in trying to find a good domain. I would spend hours trying things like "pokerguru.com", "pokermaster.com", "pokercalculator.com", "pokerexpert.com", and so on. After a lot of time and energy later, I found "allinexpert.com", which became the name of the software.

Fast forward to about July. ALL IN Expert had just flopped and I was trying to decide on a new project to work on. I had several ideas in mind and again, I wanted a good domain name for whatever it wound up being. It was kind of sick: I wound up going back to Ajaxwhois and using it as the tie breaker. If I could find a good domain name for one project and not the other, that would be what I worked on.

It was crazy. There's got to be a better way. I wrote a small piece of software that played with various word combinations and displayed their availability. Surprisingly, there are a lot of decent domains out there... you just have to be patient enough or resourceful enough to find them.

Then it hit me: This is something other people could use too. I put the other ideas on the back burner and started on this one.

Domain Pigeon, an eccentric but hopefully memorable name I discovered with the same software, is intended to make finding unregistered domain names easier. It has been my learn Rails/JavaScript/web development nights and weekends project over the last few months. I hope you like it.

This is round two of its launch. Last week I posted a link to Philly on Rails, a local group of Rails aficionados, and received a lot of great feedback. The result is what you see today (hopefully, depending on how DreamHost does with the traffic).

I've got a list of about two dozens features I intend to add over the coming weeks, which will be modified and prioritized based on your feedback.

For me, Domain Pigeon has been as much about learning the process as it has been about the releasing the product. On that note, all feedback, positive and negative, is welcomed. I also keep a blog, mattmazur.com, where I write about Domain Pigeon and its progress for anyone that is interested. I try to be as transparent as possible, as that's the best way to get valuable feedback.

On a final note, a lot of the design decisions for Domain Pigeon were adapted from feedback given to other people launching their sites on HackerNews and for that, I owe you all a thank you.

Please let me know what you think.

<comment><USER2> The name immediately made me think "So, what, it's going to shit all over my site and be a general annoyance?" You need a better name :)

Bloodhounds come to mind.

<comment><AUTHOR> Six months from now, I bet you're going to remember the name though :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think the headline at the top is longer than necessary, too much of a sentence.

So instead of:

" _We help you find an unregistered domain name for your website_ "

Maybe:

" _Find the best unregistered domains_ "

Or something else short and sweet?

Just a thought. Best of luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> It's funny, I must have changed it about fifty times. It's amazing how many variations you can get on the same phrase. For example:

\- "We help you find an unregistered domain name for your website"

\- "We help you find unregistered domain names for your websites"

\- "Find an unregistered domain name for your website"

\- "Find unregistered domain names for your websites"

\- "Find a great unregistered domain name for your site"

Etc etc. I think I'll get rid of the "We help you", as that was something I was indecisive about.

Thanks --

<comment><USER4> I would drop the "for you website" bit. It sounds a little 1994. What else would they want the domain name for?

I too fell into that trap. One day I woke up and saw "best * on the Internet" in my copy and hated myself all day.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think keeping "for your website" makes it clearer for normal people.

<comment><USER4> At the same time, "normal people" who don't know that domains are for websites will not have a prayer of understanding what domainpidgin.com is about.

How do you expect these "normal people" to find domainpidgin in the first place?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm pretty big domain collector, and to be honest, I see no compelling reason to use this service. Something like Freshdrop.net, which allows sorting by numerous data types, searching, and the ability to get the jump on newly expired domains is much more useful.

Of the 10 most popular domains, only 1 (campdeal.com) is moderately attractive. I browsed through a bunch of the categories and most of them were terrible. There is also no ability to search a keyword and have relevant names appear.

I would be very interested in a service like this, but you will need much more functionality to compete. I think you may have opened up for review before the product was ready.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback and I understand your critiques.

The 10 most popular were only elevated to that level from people testing out the site (all of those were on the front page when people were testing it). I don't think they accurately reflect the best domains the site has. It should as the site gets more traffic. Plus, eventually some will start to get registered, which I'll highly prominently on the homepage. It needs time though.

As far as releasing before it was ready, all I can say is that there's a lot more I'm going to do, but wanted to get something out there to get feedback. This is not a final product by any means; it's an iteration.

Edited to add: While Domain Pigeon may one day be popular with domain collectors such as yourself, I'd consider it more successful if it becomes popular with non-collectors. If you go to the site expecting to find domains worth thousands of dollars, you'll likely be disappointed--most of those are taken. My objective is to make a good place to go for people simply looking for options.

<comment><USER5> I think you should reconsider targeting more serious collectors. I personally buy 5 or so domains per week, so that adds up to many more sales than the average person who might buy 5 domains their entire life.

<comment><AUTHOR> You might be right. I'll try to make it a great site for both audiences.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> You have some competition, how do you stand out? (like nameboy.com, domainit.com, domainnamesuggest.com, domainsbot.com )

<comment><AUTHOR> Eventually, do everything they do better (and more).

<comment><USER6> thats not an answer :P

why should I use your service over theirs?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I know :D

Here's a start:

1) You don't have to type in any keywords, you can just browse and see what you like. Soon I'll add the ability for people to generate lists based on keywords similar to those other sites, but I wanted to get this out there.

2) Sometimes you don't know what type of domain you want. For example, consider a domain like "posterous.com". That's not something any of those other sites would likely show you based on your keywords. Domain Pigeon would.

3) You can quickly tell what's popular based on the shading, making registration a kind of game. At the moment, the recently added list is mostly white, but it will light up as more people visit the site. The top 10 will change accordingly too.

4) Usability is valued and the site isn't littered with ads.

<comment><USER7> How do you make money?

<comment><AUTHOR> Membership, affiliates, and maybe some quality ads. There's a lot of options down the road depending on how things go.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I hate to say this, but do you know who you are up against? Domain squatters are the sleaziest web entrepreneurs known to man. You are basically making their job much easier...

If this site gets _at all_ popular, domain squatters are going to scrape your site for domains that have _any value whatsoever_ and register them. That's how they operate. They are set up to register domain names quickly and cheaply, and squeeze any profit from them at all.

For example, it used to be the case (might still be) that if you did a search on GoDaddy.com for some domain, and did not register that domain within X hours, GoDaddy would sell their searches to squatters which would then often register the domain you just searched for. My guess is their whole process is automated based on how long the domain is, which dictionary words it contains, etc. Shitty, right?

You are a dream come true to them: more than just data on if the domain was searched, but actually tracking non-registered domains' popularities... and posting it for all the public to see! All it takes is one of these self proclaimed "web real estate guru" assholes to come along and see your site has decent domain names listed, and tell his programmer crony to scrape and register them.

I see your only option being using images to display domain names, and mangling up the URLs, to hopefully stifle anyone trying to scrape your site. Then, if you have a lack of morals and want money really bad, you can sell a feed of popular domains to squatters from some good money.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER9> This will be useful to a lot of us, I'm sure.

Just nitpicking here, but you have the words "Click a domain name to begin" that shows up no matter what page I am on (including the registration page). Feels a little out of context there...

Maybe its just me. Great job.. Wish you the best

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks and good point about the click message. It now only appears when the user is within the domain controller.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> A bit late in the day perhaps, but I had a couple of observations:

* Search should be above the fold. On my MacBook I have to scroll down to see the input field. Also on the results page I'd put a search box at the top, auto-focused (a la the Google homepage) so I can quickly perform another search.

* "You may have better luck with an account :)." - Why not tell me how many domains I could see if I did sign up instead? I'd be much more likely to fork over $14.95 if I knew what I was getting in advance.

</comment><comment><USER11> Just purchased 3 domain names, oisie.com (for the shape and look on paper), sayideas.com (maybe a live video site, for idea sharing), idgeo.com (hmm, maybe a tracking solution of some kind)

</comment><comment><USER12> \- Put your price on the front page. I'm distrustful if you try to hide it.

\- Does the search do substrings? Auto-acronyming? regexs? Startup folks may enjoy that.

\- You probably killed off the cream of your inventory crop by showing it here first :-)

Also, perhaps do AB testing with $14.99 and $9.99. See if there's a psychological barrier there. You may find the drop in price is compensated by the increased conversion.

<comment><AUTHOR> Very good observations.

\- I'm not sure what the best way to show the price is. I played with having it big and bold on the registration page but couldn't get it to look right. In an effort to learn how to do it better, I've been taking photos of price tags at Walmart, the mall, etc and have got some good ideas in mind on how to make it better. There's definitely an art to it...

\- The search does do substrings. No auto-acronyming (not sure what that is). No regex, as I don't think most people would use it.

\- $14.99 vs $9.99... its tough. I figure I'll start higher and drop lower eventually if it seems necessary. It's easier to lower your price than to raise it.

\- Inventory... most people haven't scanned past the first few pages. I'll need to find a way to make this easier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It must be kinda good, because I just bought one of the domains I just saw on your front page - rollwall.com. Sure I can find a use for it :)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's the nicest compliment the site could have received. Appreciate it --

<comment><AUTHOR> Someone just got campdeal.com too :)

<comment><USER14> yeap, I got it! thanks mate :)

<comment><AUTHOR> I realized after you grabbed this that the color calculations were also including registered domains, which it shouldn't have been doing. I fixed that so now that you grabbed campdeal, which was by far the most heavily clicked domain, everything is a lot more colorful.

<comment><USER14> I think your site is great - could use some synonym heuristics to suggest simillar domains and, ofcourse, an easy way to buy domain through you as a reseller.

<comment><USER14> or it looks like I wasn't fast enough when I bought the domain even though I was charged, weird. :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Search should be much more prominent. I have a set of product names with a common keyword and I always am on the lookout for good domains with that keyword. Search should be the first input box I see on the page, not tucked away in the left sidebar below the fold.

<comment><AUTHOR> When the site has 100K domains rather than 10K domains, I'll definitely make it more prominent. Right now most search results will be 'No domains found' which is why I don't want to showcase it too much.

Also, as mentioned elsewhere in this thread, I'll eventually add a feature that finds unregistered domain names based on your keywords. Domain Pigeon will go hunting for your domains and show you what's available. In time...

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I like the look. I thought that clicking on one of the domains felt a little slow. After clicking and waiting, all the info I got was 'This domain is available', with no further action items. Do you keep a blog or feed that we can subscribe to for updates?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. No feed available yet and because of the way the site tracks popularity, that may never be an option. At some point I will add the ability to sort by specific dates and for people to "mark as read" domains for that date, allowing you to make sure you're not looking over domains twice.

As for the speed, well, that's a function of DreamHost and Verisign... what are you gonna do...

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Put the search at the top, next to the sort. Put the login at the top. Five letter 'sort' is a filter. Make the sorts reversible with a second click. Add registry links for available sites. Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER18> Users can "view" a domain name repeatedly to make it look more popular...should assign 1 view per domain per ip

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, as someone who voted up "adenosineetriphosphate.com" figured out, that can be done. I limited it to one view per unique IP address to avoid that problem in the future. Thank you.

<comment><USER3> Still riggable with a little effort (Tor re-login + BeautifulSoup script).

Does dicking with this affect anything important or is it more of a prank?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's more of a prank, but, one I need to solve.

When shitty domains get voted up to the Top 10, people will see those and infer the overall quality of the domains on the site. Worse, no one will ever register those domains and they will sit on the Top 10 list forever, unless I delete them manually. So I've got to figure out some way to make the Top 10 list accurately reflect which are the best domains. Currently I'm thinking something along the lines of a popularity equation which uses time and clicks, similar to what HN does with time and points.

Thoughts?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm bookmarking this, love it!

<comment><USER11> BTW, I use aplus.net to register all my domains. If you put a drop down box to select the register that I would like to use, I think that would be very convenient.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> ".com Checker:" must be a real pigeon; it ran forever it never came back.

</comment><comment><USER6> how are you defining good?

one peeve: I can't copy and paste the domain name text.

campdeal.com is available? wow.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, good question.

There's a tradeoff between adding less domains but making them of a higher quality and adding more domains but risking that some are of poor quality. At first, I was religiously nixing the bad ones, but I realized it wasn't worth the effort. Not only is it time consuming, but surprisingly, someone may actually register it. You should see the list of registered domain names... there's a lot of garbage out there :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I will never use it. I take as my enemy any site which supports and enables the crimes-against-humanity naming scheme of modern Internet startups!

<comment><AUTHOR> What?

<comment><USER20> I mean that any site which helps some random social spreadsheeting startup choose some dumb name like Oodlu or Uffli is NOT MY FRIEND.

(Thankfully for you and them, my friendship is not worth much in USD.)

<comment><AUTHOR> My hope is that Domain Pigeon will give people options so that they don't have to use names like Oodlu if they don't want to.

In a sense, we're on the same team :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Quick pg, register hackerer.com!

</comment><comment><USER22> Why are you not making money off the sale? For example by using a referral code to a domain registration service?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's in the works.

<comment><USER23> It's a tough business selling the domain name ideas.

I make a buck or two on each sold domain at <http://HotNameList.com>. But it's too easy for users to skip your link, or have an ad blocker etc. Then you get nothing for the sale.

Site looks nice, though.

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> The tougher a market is the more you can make by doing it well, no?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> There are no more interesting domains left.

He who comes up with a solution to that problem will become filthy rich.

Time to drop the addressbar and use a wordbar with disambiguation?

Who is in charge of pushing the world forward?

<comment><USER25> Sorry, I'm the guy in charge of pushing the world forward. I accidentally fell asleep.</comment></comment>


I'm Ahmed. Except I'm Not Brown - <AUTHOR> http://ihnatko.com/2015/09/16/im-achmed-except-im-not-brown/ <comment><USER2> In my very similar case, I was suspended and subsequently offered to be sued or to quit school by the school board in my Mississippi hometown (100-200k pop). It was in 11th grade in 2002-2003. My mother was not even involved. I quit, because we were a poor family raking in $600/mo. Sue was an unfathomable word. Things worked out for me, but that's dumb luck.

My criminal case? I ran the ping -t from a windows cmd prompt to see if an IRC server (I administrated) had rebooted. Screenshot evidence of my hardship on their servers and the 'attack' on my own server could not be argued.

My earlier suspension (1064 pop town in MS) was for bringing a flute made from cane to school. It was a project item for art where we had to make a musical instrument. The cane was considered a physical assault device. I was suspended, had to walk home, and faced 3 months of Saturday school. My art teacher was the one who claimed it was a weapon.

My wife was driven home by the school principal (alone at 14) in the first town because she 'appeared drugged', and no parents were there and she was left on the porch. She was given a Benadryl for allergies. She was suspended afterwards.

<comment><USER3> nauseating. how long did it take you to trust "grownups" again (if ever)?

<comment><USER2> I do not really have this association due to the events that took place with the ping scenario. I just assumed they felt they were doing the right thing and negating any side effects from something that was misunderstood.

The flute situation on the other hand seems like an almost personal attack, but that's just petty nonsense that quickly fades with time.

My wife's scenario (and various others) still has an impact to this day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> One thing that people haven't been pointing out enough is that the administrators didn't make the mistake when they questioned Ahmed about this device. If there's even the smallest chance that it could cause harm, they need to investigate. What they did wrong is everything after they learned that it wasn't harmful or anything resembling a weapon. They should have apologized and then sent him on his merry way. Instead, they're doubling down on this "no tolerance" BS and taking it out on a kid who has done nothing to deserve it. It's ridiculous. /endrant

<comment><USER5> School administrators should investigate whenever there's the slightest bit of harm? That would be an awful allocation of resources, only made wise because of fear of lawsuit. It would also be a theatrical exercise in neuroticism.

Sounds like schools should appropriate part of their budget for threat consultation.

<comment><USER6> I think you're not appreciating that most people don't know anything about electronics. So a bunch of wires and LEDs does in fact look very scary from their perspective, and you know.. better be safe than sorry.

Would it have been better if the school staff were all familiar with electronics projects? Sure.. but that's not the reality we live in

<comment><USER7> Well, then, why not consult a subject matter expert? They didn't ask his teacher or any of his potentially qualified colleagues; the police didn't consult anyone on their staff who might have been as knowledgeable. They didn't even try their bomb squad. There's no suggestion that even a semblance of a credible investigation took place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm glad he said this is a problem with America and not just Texas. Zero tolerance is hurting kids with bringing scissors to school or handing Advil out for headaches. It's probably one of the most distructive policies we could ever have.

<comment><USER9> "zero tolerance" is more like "zero thinking".

<comment><USER10> What they're hoping for is "zero liability"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If the school administration was so certain it was a bomb, why was the building not evacuated immediately?

For the threat they're making it out to be, they sure didn't act as if they believed it themselves.

<comment><USER12> That's what I've always loved about the "random" screenings at security lines in the airport. "We need you to turn on your laptop." and "Give us your bag so that we can swab it" are inane. If you think it's a bomb, everyone should be removed and no one should be allowed to touch it, at all. It's all just theater and no one gives a damn. It's sad.

<comment><USER13> That isn't really what that test is about. They don't think there's a 99% or even 80% chance that it's a bomb. They think there might be a 0.0001% chance that it's a bomb so they're going to test (along with hundreds, thousands and eventually millions of others that nobody thinks might be bomb) just to put off anybody thinking that this is an effective way to smuggle a bomb onto a plane.

<comment><USER12> My point is if it's a bomb, you shouldn't touch it, at all. If you don't think it's a bomb, you're being annoying. Which is it?

Moreover, why even target a plane? A bomb in a security checkpoint is just as, if not more, scary and deadly.

<comment><USER14> Let say you are a terrorist, would you try to bring a bomb through security like that? Situation A: They mostly never check bags because they need to close the airport for it. Situation B: They mostly check bags.

Just increasing the odds of being checked is a deterrent.

> A bomb in a security checkpoint is just as, if not more, scary and deadly.

Is it really? I'm not that good in physic but a plane that explode, or that's hijacked does at least 100 deaths, and has the potential to do even more. Could you do that at a security checkpoint?

<comment><USER12> > Let say you are a terrorist, would you try to bring a bomb through security > like that? Situation A: They mostly never check bags because they need to > close the airport for it. Situation B: They mostly check bags.

B doesn't exist though. The TSA has an abysmal record of passing tests. They mostly don't check bags, and if they did check one with a bomb, the attacker could make it go kaboom. You don't think that would make the public fearful? "Bomb at Security Checkpoint" as a headline would be terrifying to most people.

> Is it really? I'm not that good in physic but a plane that explode, or > that's hijacked does at least 100 deaths, and has the potential to do even > more. Could you do that at a security checkpoint?

Have you ever been to a security checkpoint? At a larger airport there is easily hundreds of people in line, usually in a confined space.

<comment><USER14> > The TSA has an abysmal record of passing tests.

Probably but my point is all about fear of getting caught before succeeding. Does the truth matter as much as the fear?

> You don't think that would make the public fearful? "Bomb at Security > Checkpoint" as a headline would be terrifying to most people.

Well finding a bomb doesn't mean it will actually explode and as long as the number of death is way smaller, they would have way better target than that (one that doesn't have a ton of security guards and multiple layer to stop you).

> Have you ever been to a security checkpoint? At a larger airport there is > easily hundreds of people in line, usually in a confined space.

I haven't no but by what I see they aren't in confined space, the walls are far away, and they are one in front of the other, acting like human shield.

<comment><USER15> From a statics point of view, there are no terrorists. But let's assume there are, only a dumb one would be afraid of being caught in line. But let us suppose you are right, TSA deters the boogeyman. So instead he will just attack something else. But were are all these attacks? Why do we assume only planes will be attacked?

<comment><USER14> > only a dumb one would be afraid of being caught in line

Really? You begin to say they are statically insignificant and then follow by saying they wouldn't care with failed operations. That doesn't seems like an intelligent solution when you doesn't have much opportunities. I'm pretty sure by giving your life you would hope to kill more than a few dozen people... which you can do pretty much anywhere.

Sadly, any potential solutions will always seems like they aren't effective because of the likelihood of an attack.

> Why do we assume only planes will be attacked?

Who assume that? I don't...

All we can do is minimize the ratio effort:death, that include not having a huge crowd in a confined space. I remember a documentary about train technology to limit death in trains, I don't remember the conclusion, but the goal wasn't to stop explosion, just to limit death. Sure any death is bad but no solution will be perfect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's difficult how much of this is a race issue and how much if it is a zero tolerance issue.

At first I wanted to say, "If he were white today the same thing would have happened," but the more I imagine a nerdy white kid with circuit board in a case, the more I think that race played a big role.

<comment><USER17> How does an imagining of a nerdy white kid provided you with some factual evidence this story has anything to do with ethnicity. These stories happen now and then. Its ridiculous yes, but don't fall for identity politics click bait nonsense.

<comment><USER16> I obviously have no evidence to back this up, (I'm not sure what evidence there could possibly be outside of a long psychology study) but I could imagine a white kid in my High School getting away with it while an Arab was instantly questioned.

I live in a very, very conservative area, where minorities are given a lot of crap.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is not just a "brown" vs "non-brown" issue.

When I was in school, I was almost arrested at my school for having phreaker box diagrams in my backpack, which was searched illegally (do kids in public school actually have privacy rights anyway?) by police after an unrelated complaint. I was unfairly targeted this way many times in different schools. I am as white as they come. This is not a brown vs non-brown issue; all schools treat their intelligent, inquisitive students like criminals. I say this having attended five different middle + high schools, public, magnet and private.

<comment><USER19> No, students in school have minimal privacy rights particulary when it comes to searches. And that's not new.

<comment><USER20> I am so happy to be in Germany. A teacher once asked me to give her my phone (we were forbidden to use phones in school), so I put it in my bag and closed it.

She instantly went to the director, who then started to discuss it with me (after 45 minutes of him shouting at me in a hallway, which had become a public attraction, he gave up), but at no point did anyone try to access my bag.

The fact that my parents studied law might have something to do with it, though, so I'm not sure if other people would have been treated the same.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> From the article:

> I'm angry, and I'm a little upset with myself because I want to be useful.

I'm thinking the same thing. What I'm wishing is that I held a position of influence at a private high school, so I could offer him immediate entrance and a full scholarship. Mostly to correct the injustice, but also because he's clearly a top student: unassisted home-made clock trumps perfect SSATs.

So if anybody reading this has such a position -- even a little bit -- please try to make it happen.

<comment><USER22> It seems that clock only took him 20 minutes to make, the night before.

He's made other things as well that are impressive. He makes his own radios and fixes his go-kart. Lots of potential there.

As for me, if flushing the toilet doesn't help, I need to call someone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Can anyone explain how you can immediately attribute any of this to outright racism and his brown skin, when the staff and students are predominantly non- white in that school.

School body is 86% non-white:

[http://www.usnews.com/education/best-high- schools/texas/dist...](http://www.usnews.com/education/best-high- schools/texas/districts/irving-independent-school-district/macarthur-high- school-19313/student-body)

And in the entire disctrict, whites are 12%, and "browns" are 70%.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irving_Independent_School_Dist...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irving_Independent_School_District#Demographics)

<comment><USER24> Racism is the unequal distribution of privilege, and goods dependent on race. It does not deal with race distribution in a population. However seeing racism should even be more apparent when the race with power is in the minority population. A good example would be South Africa in apartheid; or the south during segregation.

But basically if this kid was white, and was named Chris(the christian equivalent of Mohamed).. He would not have been subjugated to any of this. That is privilege that is racism.

<comment><USER25> Racism is the individual or collective act of blindly favoring one race over another, or hurting one race over another. There's this thing called the dictionary. If you don't like the definitions in there, come up with a new word and definition!

You have no evidence that this wouldn't happen to a white kid, but that's the most likely outcome. If this were pre-9/11 (pre-Patriot Act BS), I'm not so sure. Racism and prejudice to some extent is just part of the human condition. Perhaps one day we'll advance enough to make it a non-issue, but we need to stop the hysterics about "only in America" and "whites always get favored" without some concrete evidence and historical context.

<comment><USER24> 1\. I never said "only in America". Racism, and classism are prevalent all over the world. My example even lists both a US and Foreign example. And racism isn't only with whites.

2\. There is tons of evidence that whites get favored in pretty much everything from home loans borrowing rates, being accepted to rent a house, pay, and the number of times they get pulled over by a cop.

[http://www.jconline.com/story/news/2015/05/06/among- favored-...](http://www.jconline.com/story/news/2015/05/06/among-favored- renters-whites-preferred/70907340/) [http://mije.org/mmcsi/criminal- justice/white-crime-victims-f...](http://mije.org/mmcsi/criminal- justice/white-crime-victims-favored-mainstream-media-reports) [http://ndsn.org/march93/favored.html](http://ndsn.org/march93/favored.html)

<comment><USER25> Fair enough. I was alluding to some other comments I had seen.

As for your evidence, I think you're going out on a limb with "whites get favored in pretty much everything". While that may have been true up until the 1960s, we've progressed to Barack Obama and Oprah. Still a very long way to go with regards to the specific things you mentioned (some of which may be more socioeconomic factors rather than skin color), but your claim just doesn't hold water.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Sadly, Ahmed is being taught a lesson that all minorities in the US learn as part of growing up. Just like African American kids are taught to be terrified of the police and other authorities. If they behave the same as white kids or make similar assumptions about how the power structure interacts with them, then they're going to get murdered or punished in unfair ways.

</comment><comment><USER27> Circuit board and wires? Must be a bomb. - Texas teachers and police 2015

D cell batteries and LED lights? Must be a bomb. - Boston police 2007

<comment><USER28> Speaking of which, Star Simpson tweeted yesterday:

"I hope Ahmed finds the community he seeks at MIT — & I hope MIT's administration can support future engineers in need of legal protection."

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I'd like to think the overwhelming majority of people share your complete disdain and frustration at this terrible story. Racism is a problem, and we should be discussing it out in the open, facing it head on.

</comment><comment><USER30> > If I had been a black kid? No way. I can't imagine that the teachers of a > white, white, white suburban Boston high school would have patted me on the > head for all of that. Opening unlocked doors would have been taken as > breaking and entering. If I told them that I'd put in a lot of time to > decipher the mechanical workings of a common school lock and how to exploit > its weaknesses, they'd have assumed the only reason I'd have gone to all of > that trouble was because I planned to steal stuff, not because I was > intellectually excited by an intriguing puzzle.

Too polarized and emotional. There is a problem, yes. But that doesn't mean that all teachers will treat a black or brown child differently from the white one. And also America is not the worst case. Here in Ukraine almost everyone hates black and brown people.

<comment><USER31> almost everyone? another sweeping generalisation?

<comment><USER32> When on vacation in Poland, I had the opportunity to meet some Ukrainian emigrants. And they asked me in Polish, in earnest: "...so, are black people dangerous? I hear there are a lot of them in America."

They had never met a black person in real life.

Your culture is different than theirs.

Wolfram-Alpha agrees: they will likely never have met a black person. [http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=black+people+in+ukraine](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=black+people+in+ukraine)

<comment> david-given Absolutely. (Although bear in mind that the term 'African-American' for someone with brown skin is American-centric, and other countries don't use it. Luckily WA understood you.)

On the other side of the coin, while visiting Dallas on work from Europe, I was asked, quite seriously, whether I was worried about the the Muslim campaign to control Europe by outbreeding the natives (or something, I'm not good at remembering this stuff). I don't think they'd ever met a _Muslim_ in their life.

<comment><USER33> There is a large Muslim population in the Dallas area. The problem is a combination of (self or social) segregation and poor integration of the immigrant communities. Not knowing members of your society just because you have preconceived notions about them is pathetic, but painfully real.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> There is zero evidence this story has anything to do with the child's ethnicity except the insinuation from a Tech Crunch article to stir up clicks. This fallow on Blog post is silly, American style race baiting and hyperbole.

The post 911 Patriot Act paranoia of the American authorities is ridiculous, but pleas do not get sucked in by click bait demagogues. There is no bottom the stupidity when it comes to these stories. There has been several cringe worthy stories of this type in the past few years about people with "homemade gadgets".

[http://tech.mit.edu/V127/N40/simpson.html](http://tech.mit.edu/V127/N40/simpson.html)

</comment><comment><USER34> Im from a very white, rural town. In 2005 I was a Junior and a kid got suspended for bringing a 3 foot section of 2x4 to school. He was white. We live in a zero tolerance time, Ahmed brought a bundle of electronics and a ticking clock. It wasn't a good idea. Should it have been handled better? Yes, of course. But we live in a shitty time where two yahoos can learn to make a bomb online and cause mass destruction (see Boston Marathon Bombing).

<comment><USER35> A kid can cut out the pages from a book and hide a circuitboard in a book. Should we ban books from schools? No. A kid can put a piece of benign electronics in a backpack and just leave it in a crowded area without telling anyone.should we ban backpacks from schools? No.

The answer to stupid overreaction isn't to say that benign educational activities are stupid; It is to stop overreaction.

<comment><USER34> Im sorry, was I approving the overreaction? No. Im saying I don't think its truly race motivated and that a High schooler should be knowledgable enough to know how it may appear. Maybe he could have left it with his shop teacher or gotten a note from the teacher. The teacher would have saved the kid some trouble since the teacher obviously thought it wouldn't be great if another teacher saw it.

Imagine if it was a bomb how the media would be damning the school for not acting.

<comment><USER36> Imagine? Shoes can be a bomb. Any backpack could contain a bomb. An electronic thing with lights and a battery is no more likely to be a bomb. This whole manufactured issue is simply Idiocracy at work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Do we really have to spin everything into a race issue these days? I never got the sense that race had anything to do with Ahmed's story.

</comment><comment><USER38> This made me think about a book I had read where it stated Humans are very bad at estimating risk. I think it could have been Nate Silver's book The Signal and Noise. It might have even been the Black Swan by Nassim Taleb

<comment><USER33> It is Nassim Taleb. The irony is, with his name he would've been rounded up in the same school just like Ahmed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Let's not pretend that his name had nothing to do with it; it's all cute acting PC but let's get real. I've lived in Texas and the racism/segregation is very subtle but it's there (generally speaking).

I find it funny that as an outsider that Americans don't let their kids walk/play alone in their neighborhood because "they are so naive and innocent", and there are child/sexual predators out there. Yet they somehow believe the same kid named Ahmed (guilt by association?) can somehow conjure up a bomb.

</comment><comment><USER39> >There was never any negative fallout. Yes, partly because it was more than a decade before 9/11.

Lede buried.

</comment><comment><USER40> This is kind of reaching to be honest.</comment>


Pluto is way cooler than it should be, and now we might know why - <AUTHOR> https://www.popsci.com/g00/pluto-is-way-cooler-than-it-should-be-and-now-we-might-know-why <comment><USER2> 'Oops! Something went wrong. Please scroll down to find your content'</comment>


The Shoulders of Giants [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://static1.squarespace.com/static/50363cf324ac8e905e7df861/t/5e97612725e5300cfd2b1739/1586979175547/2020+Shoulders+of+Giants+1.1.pdf <comment><USER2> This is a bit of a boring analysis without much of a conclusion. As someone from the stone age would say:

We've put stones next to eachother, we've put them on top of eachother, we've thrown them at eachother. What more can we possibly do?

<comment><USER3> I agree, though we can't expect much from a venture capitalist. It's their job to inspire others to innovate so they can make money. If they actually knew how to innovate they would just do that instead.

<comment><USER4> Recognizing innovation is a competitive advantage, so good VCs compete on recognizing innovation early and often. Part of that is spotting market trends and marking their passing. It is possible to innovate in investing with better knowledge and processes leading to better portfolios and a stronger firm. Arguably innovative.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I agree with others, the analysis fell flat at the end. But I DO appreciate the recognition that e-commerce companies are essentially retail companies with a website and not tech companies.

</comment><comment><USER6> For all who would like to know before trying to read:

The 14MB pdf linked is actually titled:

"Tech in 2020: Standing on the shoulders of giants"

Benedict Evans, February 2020

In his words:

"Every year, I produce a big presentation digging into macro and strategic trends in the tech industry. This year, 'Standing on the shoulders of giants'."

</comment><comment><USER7> All I see on there is painting the Web as a platform for global-scale consumerism, and nothing more.

Good work everyone, let's pack it up.

<comment><USER8> That's exactly what's happening. New web time? Let's make a web where it's physically impossible to exchange money on.</comment></comment>