KrebsOnSecurity is now up and hosted on Google Cloud - <AUTHOR> https://who.is/dns/krebsonsecurity.com <comment><USER2> I've always wondered how Google would deal with a client on GCP being DDoSed. Mainly as were in online advertising and DDoS extortion isn't uncommon.

Guess with this I'll now find out, as crapping on Krebs' site is practically a right of passage when you've got a botnet now.

<comment><USER3> I'd wager this is Project Shield rather than regular GCP. [https://projectshield.withgoogle.com/public/](https://projectshield.withgoogle.com/public/)

<comment><USER4> There's a "server: shield" response header for krebsonsecurity.com, so this is probably a good guess.

<comment><USER5> Krebs confirmed this in his latest blog post [1].

 _Today, I am happy to report that the site is back up — this time under Project Shield, a free program run by Google to help protect journalists from online censorship._

[1] [https://krebsonsecurity.com/2016/09/the-democratization- of-c...](https://krebsonsecurity.com/2016/09/the-democratization-of- censorship/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've always wondered just how much a network run by someone like Google or Facebook or one of the other absolute top tier providers like AWS or Azure might be able to 'handle' in terms of dealing with DDoS attacks.

Presumably these giants can easily handle such traffic as long as someone is willing to pay for the privilege? 665gbps seems tiny in comparison to the capacity someone like Google might have at its disposal but I'm speculating as I haven't seen anything detailing their network stats.

To give something of a concluding statement to this waffle I guess I have respect for Google in running this public service type protection for sites that have a strong enough 'public good' element.

<comment><USER7> For what it is worth: My GCP-hosted site ([https://cloud.sagemath.com](https://cloud.sagemath.com)) was hit by a DDoS attack in April (a WordPress amplification attack), which was about 5GB/s at peak time. The GCP network had no problem handling the traffic, but the Linux network stack in my cluster of GCE VMs -- which were running nginx -- simply couldn't handle the load. I now use CloudFlare.

<comment><USER8> Sorry for your troubles! Why'd you let it through, Bill? (Also, did Support help you out with this or not? You can email me your case number if so).

Disclosure: I work on Google Cloud.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If the 665 Gbps botnet was indeed powered by mainly IoT devices, then this is only the very beginning. We're about to see multi-Tbps botnets soon, all because most IoT companies could care less about security, and because most of them want to connect every IoT device to the Internet _by default_ (rather than through a gateway, which at least could limit infections).

<comment><USER10> > and because most of them want to connect every IoT device to the Internet by > default

Stuff is going to get even worse when IoT devices begin using IPv6. By design, devices are publically reachable and not hidden behind a NAT router, which makes RCE exploits way, way easier.

I'd take a guess that loads of IoT devices have "backdoors" like open SSH/telnet with insecure default passwords, too - the same shit that hit el- cheapo routers, for example.

<comment><USER11> Let's hope router manufacturers include sensible firewall defaults. They probably won't in many cases, though.

<comment><USER10> They can't, because IoT.

IoT devices like surveillance cams, VoIP babyphones etc. have two options:

1) depend on third-party servers for operation, so no outside-to-device- initiated communication is needed. Downside: costs money to run the servers, and just imagine the sausagefest when a camera cloud server gets hacked. Upside: you can firewall off your private network as you like, and the device will still work.

2) allow the owner of the device to directly connect to the IoT device via IPv6. Downside: everyone and their dog can access (and exploit) your devices, provided that they know the IP address. IPv6 addresses are long and pretty random, but e.g. if the MAC address is used for assigning the IPv6 address, not so random any more. Upside: no SPOF/centralized node that turns your device into a brick if the operator shuts down.

Basically, the only way to "securely" operate IoT devices is inside a separate VLAN. FritzBox routers can do this, but not many others, e.g. because the router can't independently manage the Ethernet ports, because it's cheaper to put in a GBit switch than to choose a SoC that's beefy enough to drive four GBit ports individually. I put "securely" into quotation marks, as a hacked surveillance cam or babyphone is an open invitation to any hacker.

<comment><USER12> i would say making secure tunnels a default for home routers would be a better mitigation... there is no need to control my "smart home" or what ever from my neighbors phone...

Some things just do not make much sense without being able to control them remotely. A separate VLAN for devices would only allow them to communicate with another which probably is not what you want. BTW. i could not set up VLANs on a fritz box with FritzOS last time i tried. However nearly all routers with OpenWRT will do without a problem.

<comment><USER13> The only way to get it well-adopted would be if you could get Google, Apple, Microsoft and router manufacturers to agree on some user-friendly and secure way to set up tunnels and connect to them from your phone/devices. Good luck with that...

<comment><USER12> While a common agreement on how this should be done would be the best solution, it should be enough to have at least some option to setup such tunnels through an API. Router manufactures could develop an App to make that setup easier then.

Although this wont be practical for any device that is not a phone or a (desktop) computer.

<comment><USER14> And then there would be malware running in your browser that uses the API to expose your IoT devices. There is precedent for that where Javascript in the browser was accessing your router's web interface (with default credentials) to change your DNS server.

<comment><USER15> That's just another target among many in the broader class of XSS attacks, and there are protections that router manufacturers (and anyone else hosting a website) are able to build in to protect against it.

Unfortunately, this belies the meat of the issue with IoT. After you've bought the router, there's no reason for your router's manufacturer to keep updating the firmware and fix bugs that allow an XSS attack, and even if the manufacturer does upgrade the firmware, there's no no way for the manufacture to force the firmware to be updated on _all_ of the devices that have been sold, hence installed devices with older firmware that's been exploited and is now part of the botnet used to attack Krebsonsecurity.com

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Can somebody please enlighten me, why is this vague post on the front page with no comments and 8 upvotes?

<comment><USER17> The original post [1] about krebsonsecurity being kicked of akamai (for valid reasons) had a lot (480) of reactions. I think a many of readers of that post see this as a valuable follow-up.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12561928](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12561928)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> >KrebsOnSecurity is now up...

It isn't for me. I get "This site can't be reached - krebsonsecurity.com refused to connect."

<comment><USER19> Looks like redirect from naked domain to www.krebsonsecurity.com is missing. This seem to work better [http://www.krebsonsecurity.com/](http://www.krebsonsecurity.com/)

<comment> semi-extrinsic Clicking your link doesn't work either for me (connection refused).

<comment><USER4> DNS might still be propagating. krebsonsecurity.com pointed to 127.0.0.1 while the site was offline.

<comment><USER20> Works fine in Germany also.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Now that he has quickly found another safe harbor, this attack may well have a sort of Streisand effect and give Brian Krebs more prominence than he already had. Would be nice to see something good come out of this and maybe even cause future attacks to be seen as counterproductive by potential perpetrators.

</comment><comment><USER22> The solution I'd like to see:

1) Put the site behind CloudFlare.

2) Wait for an attack...

3) Force all users to go through a capcha before accessing the site.

Note: The capcha setting can be enabled with 3 clicks in cloudflare UI and it takes 2-5 minutes to propagate. (Yes, I speak from experience)

<comment><USER23> Krebs won't use Cloudflare because Cloudflare protect DDOS-for-hire sites from each other. He thinks, before CF offered this protection, the DDOS-for-hire services would take one another offline; and that it's an ethical problem, for CF to be protecting the very people whose criminal acts create (some of) the demand for their services.

Cloudflare, in their defence, say they don't censor/check/approve sites and that's a good thing - after all, sites like wikileaks should be allowed protection.

<comment><USER24> I'm all for free speech, but protecting sites that commit criminal activities is not a "good thing". In fact, they should be partly liable for the damage if they were aware of it and did nothing to stop it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> seems to be down again at 6:06AM PST

sometimes you can get the HTML to load from :80 but the CSS breaks. HTTPS doesn't seem to work at all.

</comment><comment><USER26> How would that solve anything? He would have to pay crazy Google CDN fees now:

[https://cloud.google.com/cdn/pricing](https://cloud.google.com/cdn/pricing)

At 650 Gbps (81.25 GB/s) he's looking at $1.625/sec ($5850/hr) in cache egress fees alone.

I would go CloudFlare, which is flat rate.

<comment><USER27> He's not using Google CDN, but Google Project Shield: [https://projectshield.withgoogle.com/public/](https://projectshield.withgoogle.com/public/) . Project Shield is a free service.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Unfortunately I can't get to the new site (without changing my DNS servers) because Verizon is resolving krebsonsecurity.com to loopback. Presumably doing it for (poor) DDOS mitigation, but this sort of censorship is ridiculous.

        $ nslookup krebsonsecurity.com 188.8.131.52
        Server:   188.8.131.52
        Address:  22.214.171.124#53

        Non-authoritative answer:
        Name: krebsonsecurity.com
        Address: 127.0.0.1

EDIT: I see downthread that this is a DNS propagation issue. Nevermind.

<comment><USER29> A wild claim without any source. The owner set the IP to localhost himself.

[https://twitter.com/briankrebs/status/779144394360381440](https://twitter.com/briankrebs/status/779144394360381440)

<comment><USER28> While in this case I was wrong, DNS poisoning is certainly not out of the realm of what Verizon will do, and when a site resolves properly on one ISP and not another, I don't think it's a "wild claim" to assume that it's the ISP's fault.</comment></comment></comment>


Some security standards and mapping that can be imported in MONARC - <AUTHOR> https://objects.monarc.lu/organization/MONARC <comment><AUTHOR> You will find a little more details here: [https://www.monarc.lu/news/2019/03/01/monarc-280-released/#m...](https://www.monarc.lu/news/2019/03/01/monarc-280-released/#management- of-multiple-security-referentials)</comment>


Show HN: Kitchen Cabinet Estimates - <AUTHOR> https://riskfirst.org/estimating/Kitchen-Cabinet <comment><AUTHOR> Part two of a series on the complexity of estimating in software development, exploring the conceit of estimating the time to move a kitchen were it to contain some cabinets, which themselves might contain other cabinets, and so on.

(An idea brought up on hacker news one day)

How does this model square with the estimation problems we see on a day-to-day basis?

Would love some feedback as I write this - there are a few more pages written and further ones planned in the series

Thanks

</comment><comment><USER2> Doesn't account for political problems, time management problems or the ever- present issue of people turning your estimate into a commitment, but sure.</comment>


San Francisco Weighs Ban on Employee Cafeterias - <AUTHOR> https://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/article215493815.html <comment><USER2> > "People will have to go out and (eat) lunch with the rest of us," Aaron > Peskin, a San Francisco supervisor who co-sponsored the proposal, told The > San Francisco Examiner.

I get what they're trying to do but this is silly. Good intentions tend to make terrible government policy.

> However, the proposed ban would not affect the 51 employee cafeterias > already in San Francisco, only future office buildings, "so it's not goring > anybody's ox," Peskin told the Examiner.

Ha! So one more perk that only existing, large, entrenched players can offer. A level playing field indeed.

> The nearby city of Mountain View recently barred a new Facebook office from > offering free- or reduced-cost meals at its cafeteria, reported the > Chronicle.

Does this include ordering a pizza to a war room or is it specific to a separate structure for day to day dining?

<comment><USER3> Amen. San Francisco is ground zero for well-intentioned, but ultimately awful public policy. Often these policies further make whatever problem they're trying to solve worse, because it gives the illusion that they've actually done something about it.

I, as a 20 year SF resident, would much prefer Aaron Peskin do something about the feces and hypodermic needles before he worries about cafeterias.

<comment><AUTHOR> > I, as a 20 year SF resident, would much prefer Aaron Peskin do something > about the feces and hypodermic needles before he worries about cafeterias.

But that would require him to deal with various unlawful behaviors and individuals! Much easier to pass some law, when you know law-abiding corporations will respect it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > We don't want employees biking or driving into their office, staying there > all day long and going home. This is about getting people out of their > office, interacting with the community and adding to the vibrancy of the > community

Cool, but why is this a decision of SF government?

> However, the proposed ban would not affect the 51 employee cafeterias > already in San Francisco, only future office buildings

Making it harder for new companies to compete with the benefits offered by existing companies.

<comment><USER5> This ban is just a bunch of restaurants threatening city hall into some short sided vision of theirs.

Ban cafeterias and you'll just get more delivery services.

Funny how this ban won't affect the city hall cafeteria.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Does Aaron Peskin share his lunchtime location? I would be more than glad to join him for lunch.

</comment><comment><USER7> If you want them supporting SF restaurants, stop fighting density and let them _live in SF_.

</comment><comment><USER8> Soon, SF will ban kitchen in new homes, everyone should eat out. /s

</comment><comment><USER9> San Francisco makes it clear that tech companies aren't welcome here. Will tech companies finally take the hint?

</comment><comment><USER10> What the SF City officials are covertly asking for is campaign contributions!! This is literally not affecting daily life or commerce for residents, but it's a great distraction and fundraising opportunity for city officials

</comment><comment><USER11> this is such bullshit... like do yall even private property? like how is this even being considered? smh</comment>


Ask HN: Where is Dropbox headed? - <AUTHOR>

Long-time Dropbox user here. I feel like it's time is starting to get short. Now that I'm getting emails more frequently from them, which feels unlike them, I feel like their desperation is  setting in. The integrations with Google Drive, particularly Google Docs, both of which seem to be getting better all the time, make it hard to compete. Dropbox's products seem stagnant and not impressive (Carousel - tried to like it for months but its syncing was terrible). This is weird considering their frequently mentioned technical prowess. I wonder if hiring all the MIT/Stanford/Ivy league grads they do, causes the same problem we see in professional sports where stats don't buy championships. What's everyone's thoughts on Dropbox's trajectory? <comment><USER2> Dropbox's service has always been something that an engineer who wanted to, could implement with a server and an rsync alias. Their company is not built on the same technical challenges that companies like Apple and Google and Microsoft have. Their success comes from creating and (relentlessly) iterating on personal cloud storage solution for the average computer user.

Cloud storage has been (sort of) commoditized. By that I mean it's easily obtainable from a variety of different sources (Google, Microsoft etc). It's not immediately obvious which service is "better". However Dropbox does have strong brand awareness going for them. People in Tech frequently underestimate the value of an established brand.

My personal opinion is that Dropbox will continue to do well in revenue for small sized businesses and sole proprietors. However, it's medium/large business solutions do not have as strong of a reputation (things like access control are relatively new features, I had to check if it even existed). As long as they stay first-to-mind when people talk about personal cloud storage, they will do okay.

The difference between jumping from 1-10 billion to a 10-100 billion will be how well they execute on b2b solutions.

<comment><USER3> It's a little more than just rsync. There's file history, desktop and mobile apps with nice (enough) GUI's, selective sync/offline-ing, and more. But past that I agree with you. Google Drive is looking better and better as I exclusively use google drive for all documents. Crap like not being able to view basic text files online in drive is annoying but I rarely use dropbox's web interface so it might not be an issue...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I can tell you where I think Dropbox is going.

I believe that the time of cloud providers like Dropbox raking in profits, whilst accepting absolutely none of the liability is coming to an end.

Right now Dropbox has tens of millions of its customers who entrust some of their most valuable personal and business files to a cloud provider who does not give them an SLA and who fails to properly insure their customers against data loss, downtime or cyber attack.

It is one of the dirtiest secrets of cloud and something nobody talks about ever. I would argue that Dropbox is an accident waiting to happen and their customers will be left holding the can. Only a matter of time I believe.

<comment><USER4> Sorry I had also meant to say that Dropbox is going to start providing a basic SLA and some form of insurance coverage for their users, they have no other choice and know that if their customers wake up to the fact that they are holding the can, there will be a huge fallout.

Expect them to get ahead of this.

<comment><USER5> I completely agree. Here's my 2 cents.

A few buddies of mine back in 2009 were joking around that Dropbox would undoubtedly launch an email service. Then they bought MailBox. Personally, I think it's only a matter of time that a entry-level bundle will become available under the guise of a free email service.

Users get free email address, and access to MailBox + 2 GB storage. The email is just bait. I think at the point the `*@dropbox.com` emails become available, they would be wise to implement at the very least a basic SLA.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> From time to time, I think about the same thing. I'm not convinced they shouldn't have taken the 9-digit offer from Apple.

Although I was an evangelist and used it frequently (on the must-install list of apps) now I often forget that I have it. Like just now, I had forgotten about it until seeing your post. I think it is installed on my home machine somewhere.

And wow does it feel like Box eliminated them in enterprise. I mean my experiences are anecdotal, but when I see 30,000-members organizations handing out Box accounts by default to new employees (and it syncs and ties into their company's CAS for authentication) it makes you think, "Dropbox who?" So I really hope they dominate the persona-user space.

</comment><comment><USER7> My 50GB Samsung Galaxy promo and years of Dropbox Pro are expiring within 60 days. I think I'm finally moving to the OneDrive space that comes with my Office365 subscription.

<comment><USER8> A good move, I think. The sync on my Macs, Windows laptop, android phone, and iPad all work fine. Also for $99/year everyone in my family gets 1 gig of cloud storage, web browser versions of all the Office apps (really nice for Linux laptops) and if you want installabe Office apps. I wish they had a Linux sync client however.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> the free tier is killing them. the strategy to get more free tier base to lead to more paying requires getting deeper with vc. the photos apps are a distraction and as other posts say smell of desparation. the future of storage is one monolithic platform that stores everything, including apps you havent yet purchased, and costs something. all your device will be imaged here making the hardware disposable. because their culture and their competition strategy are so tied to free, it is unlikely they will pivot away from this. they are now only an acquisition target for a company that can build a for pay product on dropbox. yet they seem to be long haulers so they will lumber on until something comes along to put them out of their misery. the product they achieved really works, just the business model didnt.

the only way out i see is for them to build another smartphone os and a device and market the hell out of it so their "db cloud storage" and "db app store" become indispensible rather than one of many free commodities.</comment>


Land Speed Record Broken, Now 402MPH - <AUTHOR> http://us.cnn.com/2016/08/14/us/bonneville-danny-thompson-speed-record/index.html <comment><USER2> Great respect for anyone who follows their dreams despite financial obstacles. Even more impressive when the the dream doesn't necessarily come with financial reward.</comment>


Action Potential... In Action [dancing about science] - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQ7NIvXEpVY Please flag my submission if you think it is too 'reddit'. <comment><AUTHOR> Please flag my submission if you think it is too 'reddit'.</comment>


Zuckerberg's name may be removed from the hospital to which he donated $75M - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnet.com/news/bay-areas-zuckerberg-hospital-may-be-getting-a-name-change/ <comment><USER2> Why not give back the 75 million too?</comment>


Stupid Apps and Changing the World - <AUTHOR> http://blog.samaltman.com/stupid-apps-and-changing-the-world <comment><USER2> > Facebook, Twitter, reddit, the Internet itself, the iPhone, and on and on > and on—most people dismissed these things as incremental or trivial when > they first came out.

With the exception of the internet itself, I think they still are. Are we really that much happier with our social media and iPhones than we are without them? I think that for the most part, the answer is no. Most use is superficial and procrastination rather than meaningful connection with people.

Check out The Progress Paradox by Gregg Easterbrook. He talks about how we've made all of this "progress" in our standard of living, but that it isn't actually making us happier.

However, I agree with the central idea that "toys" are often dismissed prematurely.

<comment><USER3> Twitter and Facebook have changed the world; I don't have a doubt about it. And not only in a micro scale, also in a macro level.

I have gone from writing letters to my distant friends, to writing them emails, to writing them facebook messages. And believe it's much easier to keep in touch with friends now that there is facebook. If I travel to LA I can go to FB and check out who moved to LA in the last few years and actually meet them. Had I been in the email era, I wouldn't have had any idea of who was in LA. This is just a minor example for how facebook has changed the world on a personal level.

When it comes to the big picture, look at the Arab uprising, it used the social networks heavily. We don't know what would have happened without Facebook or Twitter, but my guess is that not much. But you don't have to go to developing countries to see the effects of the social networks on politics and society in general. [1] This is a graph of the Spanish bipartisanship going down the drain after May 15th, 2011(15M/Spanish revolution)[2]. The movement started on Twitter, and slowly moved to Facebook.

So these "toys" are changing the world, both on a micro and macro level, and denying that is like denying that TV changed how people view wars.

[1] [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BuWphzlCUAAdwqX.png:large](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BuWphzlCUAAdwqX.png:large)

[2] [http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movimiento_15-M](http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movimiento_15-M)

<comment><USER2> You've mentioned a few examples of how social media is having a positive impact on the world. And after thinking about it some, I think I underestimated how big an impact they have. I still think the proportion of the usage that is meaningful is low, but given the huge _amount_ of usage, it has lead to a pretty decent amount of meaningful interaction.

But what about the downsides? I don't have too strong an opinion and can't argue it well, but I do suspect that social media has its downsides, and that has to play into the equation. Something along the lines of "kids in the neighborhood used to all play outside together and now they're inside gossiping on social media".

<comment><USER4> I bet there are downsides. But there were also downsides when every home got a telephone. And when everyone started carrying cellphones.

My point is that new technology which changes the way humans communicate with each other is a phenomenon that has played out many times in the past few centuries.

<comment><USER5> >And when everyone started carrying cellphones.

in 1984 George Orwell talks about TeleScreens,

Here's a little excerpt from wikipedia:

>"Telescreens are fictional devices which operate as both televisions and security cameras....telescreens are used by the ruling Party in Oceania to keep its subjects under constant surveillance, thus eliminating the chance of secret conspiracies against Oceania. All members of the Inner Party (upper- class) and Outer Party (middle-class) have telescreens in their homes, but the proles (lower-class) are not typically monitored as they are unimportant to the Party."

now consider recent NSA revelations (dragnet surveillance) including: [http://www.wired.com/2014/07/nsa-targets-users-of-privacy- se...](http://www.wired.com/2014/07/nsa-targets-users-of-privacy-services/)

Cellphones are __Telescreens __... they are a source of entertainment for most (like TV) and function as security cameras -- with your location and data connectivity being constantly logged, complete with backdoors which allow full remote access.

The middle class is being destroyed ([http://time.com/money/2917709/wealth- inequality-doubled-over...](http://time.com/money/2917709/wealth-inequality- doubled-over-last-10-years-study-finds/)) and anyone who opposes the party will be subject to indefinite detention (NDAA) or wiped out.

Apps are primarily a distraction mechanism and social networks are services which profile every aspect of an individuals life, data which can and will be mined and used against you if you commit a thought-crime.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/15/technology/15twitter.html](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/15/technology/15twitter.html)

[http://www.theverge.com/2014/7/7/5878069/why-facebook-is- bea...](http://www.theverge.com/2014/7/7/5878069/why-facebook-is-beating-the- fbi-at-facial-recognition)

Try and stop _them_ : www.cnbc.com/id/101669271

<comment><USER6> > anyone who opposes the party will be subject to indefinite detention (NDAA) > or wiped out.

Then why are you and countless other people like you allowed to post your alarmist b.s all over every day? Try moving to north korea and posting against the government, if you want to know what being in a totalitarian state is really like.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's actually quite simple - Silicon Valley nowdays is an engine of _money making_ , not _technological progress_. Those two values are correlated with each other, albeit not perfecly, and I'd hazard a guess that they are becoming more and more disconnected. So SV is optimizing for profit, and it's easier to make money by doing stupid throwaway stuff than by doing something actually useful.

Also things seem to have changed in the last few years; profit and usefulness are becoming visibly more disconnected. Startups nowdays lie about their "products" \- the goal of New App X is _not_ to be useful for you (the user/customer). Any actual use is a lie used to get userbase growth. When the "product" has enough users, it gets slaughtered, the team lands dream jobs, money changes hands, and everyone _except the users_ is happy.

<comment><USER8> Meant to upvote you but may have fudged it. You've hit the nail precisely on the head. SV is now a well oiled machine for taking ideas and turning them into money for investors via IPOs. Technology and "saving the world" have got nothing to do with it, other than being convenient tools and marketing to achieve the primary goal of money making.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why would we blame Silicon Valley for this? Silicon Valley largely builds problems that solve issues for Silicon Valley.

This isn't a bad thing, it just means that we have to decentralize the concentration of developers and entrepreneurs from one concentrated physical location.

If only there were a way for people to communicate at large distances with each other in an interconnected way....like a network of devices or something.

</comment><comment><USER10> Kinda exactly what I needed this week. Every time I go on HN, Reddit, really much of anywhere all I see are people bitching and moaning about the most inane things, criticizing products for not being something they were never intended to be, or tearing into decisions for being idiotic when it's pretty obvious someone's hand was forced.

The last paragraph is important. As much as I've enjoyed being on HN the past few years, and Reddit the past 8, I'm fairly close to swearing myself off of them entirely so I can focus better without rampant discouragement for the sake of the commenter's ego.

<comment><USER11> > _criticizing products for not being something they were never intended to > be, or tearing into decisions for being idiotic when it 's pretty obvious > someone's hand was forced._

The inverse, where everything is positive and criticism is ignored, is just as bad, if not _worse_.

The fact that we may not be able to predict the next big thing does not give everything immunity from critique.

<comment><USER10> There's a pretty obvious difference though between criticism for the sake of stroking your own ego, and criticism as a means of trying to better a product or legitimately point out its flaws. One introduces better conversation, another one is crowding around something to be kicked.

<comment><USER12> I believe it's called: Constructive Criticism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Am I the only who still see Twitter as useless and trivial? Facebook has some undeniable values inside it's veneer of nonsense, such as out-of-state-Grandma getting to see the grandkids grow rather than waiting for holidays/care packages that may never come. Twitter, though, has never struck me as serving any use than as a shitty RSS feed for celebrities (including 'celebrities' in your field).

<comment><USER14> Yes, you're probably one of the only ones. The ability for Twitter to allow people (and machines) to quickly share information and allow it to go viral has certainly changed the world. The fact that the instant anything happens in the world there is a record of it on Twitter speaks enough about the impact it has.

<comment><USER15> OP has never heard of the Arab Spring.

<comment><USER13> I remember it, but I also remember Twitter's contribution to it be largely overblown PR.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > _People often accuse people in Silicon Valley of working on things that > don't matter. Often they're right. But many very important things start out > looking as if they don't matter_

Not really. And the counter-examples he gives either didn't look trivial at first (the iPhone: actually everyone gapsed upon its introduction), or aren't really "world changing" (Facebook, Twitter: just some social networks _).

_ As for the "Arab Spring" thing. Revolutions happened all the time without them. There were huge movements and shakedowns throughout the sixties, seventies and eighties, including in the Arab world (Iranian revolution anyone?). It's mostly Silicon Valley and western media bullshitting that made some believe Twitter et co role in Egypt etc was "crucial". Plus it's easy to make starts out of the few Egyptians who tweet etc, and are usually of the more affluent and easier to talk to the press classes).

<comment><USER17> I find it quite mindblowing that people on HN can dismiss Facebook/Twitter as "just some social networks" that aren't "world changing".

Maybe you are all high and mighty and don't use "just some social networks", but they have definitely changed the world, in HUGE ways. I would say facebook's global permeation (circa 2009) is probably the most world-changing thing since global consumer internet availability (approx 1998?).

Just the other day, we on HN watched as a hotel business most likely crumbled because of worldwide attention on such social media [1]. Similarly, entire businesses are livelihoods are being built upon being visible on facebook. News travels like wildfire, opinions can make CEOs step down, a viral video can turn a beginner musician into a contemporary sensation, the list is endless.

How does one deny that these things have changed the world compared to before? They may not be all good changes, or any of them good changes, but they have changed the world, in huge ways, and we had best learn to accept it and take it into account in our lives.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8131162](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8131162)

Edited to actually add link.

<comment><USER18> Because news already traveled like wildfire. Its just didn't make it out to the people who weren't actually involved as often as it does now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm having a hard time understanding what he means by "hyperexponential". If N grows exponentially and there's some function of N that's O(N^2), it's still exponential.

He can't mean the hyperexponential probability distribution, that's something different.

<comment><USER20> I think he was using that word not as a technical term, but as a way of saying "even faster/sharper than exponential". I.e., hyper- (the prefix meaning above) + exponential.

Certainly O(N^2) is not at the top of the food chain -- for example, it is beaten by O(2^N) or O(N!) or O(N^N). All of these could, colloquially, be referred to as "hyper"exponential.

Imagine a hockey stick graph (exponential). Now imagine that hockey stick graphed on a logarithmic scale -- the logarithms more or less cancel out the exponentiation if done right, making the graph appear to be linear even though the data is exponential. Now, imagine data that, even when graphed on a logarithmic scale, _still_ looks like a hockey stick. _That_ is hyperexponential.

And I think I just proved Sam's point -- that it is hard to visualize/grok.

<comment><USER21> O(N^2) is not exponential but just polynomial. O(2^N) is still exponential. O(N!) and O(N^N) are faster than exponential but not that much; O(N^N) grows slower than O(N!)[1].

Hyper-exponential is most likely double exponential O(a^b^N). There is an exponential growth of apps on these platforms and another exponential growth of users on these apps.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirling's_approximation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirling's_approximation)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> "Facebook, Twitter, reddit, the Internet itself, the iPhone, and on and on and on—most people dismissed these things as incremental or trivial when they first came out."

So, are Facebook and the iPhone bettering the world right now?

<comment><USER23> In many ways, yes.

In foreign countries (not first world), Facebook has persisted as a primary means of communication; including finding lost relatives or friends and connecting people who have lost someone or something during catastrophic events. There's a lot of additional ways other countries are using the technology that we, here in the US, haven't dreamed of: setting up stores and selling things via Instagram, forming action groups and protest events on Facebook, etc.

The iPhone helps in many of those same instances, by connecting people to resources and other individuals.

Can there be simpler ways to accomplish the same goals? Absolutely! But the argument isn't to say these technologies are the be-all end-all. Instead, the point is to make it clear that these technologies can absolutely do good for the world if used to do so.

Just because you and I use Facebook to stalk our exes doesn't mean it's a useless tool for good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> While there are many useless critics, i wonder - was it really that hard to imagine Facebook("the identity layer of the web"),Reddit("democratic news"),The internet("duh") or smartphones("The versatility of computing, everywhere") becoming valuable under the condition that everybody uses them ? Doesn't seem so.

But there are many apps, that even under that condition, that it would be hard to imagine any unique value over what we have today, And do warrant criticism .

<comment><USER4> I think you're suffering from hindsight bias. Less than two years ago, I was still explaining to people that the emergence of online social networks is a Big Deal.

<comment><USER24> This is not hindsight. At the beginning of those products, at least some people described it that way.

<comment><USER4> Based on the content of the article, and you language you used, I assumed you were wondering if it really was hard _for most people_ to imagine the impact of things like Facebook, Reddit, smartphones and the internet. Not that there was a small number of people who did, but most people. And for all of those technologies, I think the answer is, yes, it _was_ hard for most people.

<comment><USER24> When reading the article , i was thinking more about the criticisms we hear at hacker news. People here are not "most people" and can have vision, but still there's a lot of criticisms about useless apps.

But maybe i read the article wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This reminds me of one of PG's old essays, "The Power of the Marginal" \- [http://www.paulgraham.com/marginal.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/marginal.html)

People never see disruption coming and by its very nature, the best contrarian value investments will always be dismissed, and overlooked, by insiders early on. And probably the same is true of the founders behind them.

WhatsApp and Jan Koum are perfect examples of this.

<comment><USER26> "The best contrarian value investments will always be dismissed, and overlooked" is a tautology.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The value of a piece of tech is not determined by the number of users, but by a change in the quality-of-life a user of the technology receives. Meaning "value" varies from individual to individual. Companies should focus on the individuals that they bring the most value too.

Probably what pisses people off about the "arrogance" of companies like Facebook is in their _claims_ of bringing value to everyone (who uses their product -- and sometimes beyond). Which is not true (and _is_ arrogant/obnoxious). Also, Facebook is not the only company to have this attitude.

Companies building something for the long-term are certainly not claiming value for anyone in the present (SpaceX is not claiming to be significant in your life now). But once their inventions (rockets, cures, transportation, etc.) are actually bringing benefits to the mass majority of humanity, then they have the right to brag.

But, the climatic 'era of benefit' from an invention usually comes after the inventors/founders have died. Edison's and Tesla's ambitions bring far more value today then they did in their time. On the other hand, Facebook will very likely 'die as a fad' within 5-10 years. In other words, the greatest figures/companies (should) appear very humble in their day.

So did Facebook change humanity? Did Reddit change Humanity? Yes, they are a temporary perturbation on the 'average state of human condition' over the grand scale of time. But, other inventions bring much longer-lasting benefits/changes to a greater number of people. _Those_ are the inventions that people classify as truly "changing the world". _Those_ are the inventions that _should_ be worked on __more so __than the 'perturbative' & temporary world changers.

We are not seeing that. It's a reflection on the abysmal failures of humanity (in its entirety) rather than on any sub-set (Silicon Valley) or individual.

</comment><comment><USER27> If you build something you love, chances are someone else will love it, too. If you use something you love, chances are someone else will love it to. Incremental things that we love can spread like wild fire (Facebook, Twitter, and reddit), and they have changed the world; further incremental products will likely do so, too.

...An interesting discussion is whether these things we love make the world a better place. Another interesting discussion is if engineers and entrepreneurs focus too much on the things we love instead of the things the world needs.

<comment><USER28> Yes. It's easy to argue that Facebook has changed the world, but that's not inherently good or worthwhile.

We could stand to pay more attention to direction of the impact, not just the magnitude.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I've got a few bones to pick with this post.

1\. Its main message, "build things you love" and "let the haters hate" seems to be pretty well-worn at this point. There was no value added in the way it was conveyed (no personal story, no anecdotes, no real insights). In fact, there was value subtracted by the jarring, undeveloped thoughts and the use of profanity that was censored in the original story on Businessweek.

2\. I don't think anyone dismissed the internet or the iPhone as "incremental" or "trivial" when they first came out. Especially not in the way we often wonder about services like Snapchat and Secret. This seems like quite a silly comparison to me.

3\. I don't agree with the idea that the value of a service is solely defined by its user base. User acquisition is only one part of a complex equation. "Hyperexponential growth" is worthless in the long run without a system that can capture and monetize user interest over time. Plenty of fads come and go:

-Planking

-Swag, #YOLO

-Pet Rocks

-Livestrong Bracelets

-Pets.com (symptom of the .com investing fad)

My opinion is that these fads add very little value relative to advances in healthcare, infrastructure, education, and technology that have made quantifiable progress towards a better quality of life for billions of people all over the world. Fads are like tumors that grow off of cultural and psychological excess.

</comment><comment><USER18> There is this funny thing about progress that I think about sometimes. Most old people I've spoken too say that things were better when they were young. They also say that things are easier now. Sometimes I wonder if that is the disconnect technologists don't quite grasp.

</comment><comment><USER30> Facebook, Twitter, reddit are still trivial.

I'm not doing SO MUCH BETTER than my parents because I have those things and they didn't.

The internet isn't trivial but I wouldn't say that my life is SO MUCH BETTER because I have internet. My parents did great without internet.

<comment><USER31> "Farming is still trivial. I'm not doing SO MUCH BETTER than my parents because I grow food instead of hunting for it. My parents did great as hunter- gatherers."

<comment><USER30> Hunter gatherers had violent lives, experienced starvation and died in their thirties. So it's not a fair comparison.

<comment><USER7> They also had happy lives, didn't have to slave themselves for 2/3 of their lives to get food and shelter, and no, they didn't die in their thirties, they lived as long as we do. Oh, and also they didn't have so many diseases - it's another thing we got from settling down and becoming agrarian.

<comment><USER30> The point is, just because we have reddit and facebook now doesn't mean we're all just so much better off. The contribution of those products to our lives is rather trivial. Even the internet, while it's very impressive and useful and interesting, has not made everyone in our generation better off. It's cool to have but like I said, my parents and grandparents were fine without it. In fact they were probably more fine than many of technologically most advanced people on this forum.

<comment><USER7> > _The point is, just because we have reddit and facebook now doesn 't mean > we're all just so much better off._

That I agree with.

> _The contribution of those products to our lives is rather trivial. Even the > internet, while it 's very impressive and useful and interesting, has not > made everyone in our generation better off._

And that I disagree with. The Internet, and services like Facebook and Reddit are turning humanity into a giant hive mind - millions of people constantly connected in amost-instant form of communication and exchange of ideas. This is something unprecedenced.

> _It 's cool to have but like I said, my parents and grandparents were fine > without it._

Your parents and grandparents were probably fine without it, but this is the standard case of Blub paradox - people always work with what they know and every improvement feels like useless nonsense until you actually try it; then you start asking, how people could live without said improvement.

My previous comment was picking on the notion of old hunter-gatherers being in significantly worse situation than societies nowdays. My current belief is that our technology makes world for the current generation better than the generation of our fathers and grandfathers, but we might not be necessarily better off than people in pre-agrarian times.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> > Most of the "intermediate" companies, although it would take a separate long > post to explain why, end up not having a big impact.

Couldn't this just be explained with power laws? Some small percentage of companies will have a disproportionate share of the impact.

</comment><comment> d--b It's not about the amount of change one is bringing, it's about the arrogance. It's about giving oneself more importance than anyone else. It's about believing that what you shitcode is golden

</comment><comment><USER32> I think the real issue is not that these companies might not be changing the world, but rather that a lot of these companies don't have sustainable business models.

<comment><USER7> That't a feature, not a bug. It all makes sense when you realize that the "products" are all throwaway, their _only_ reason to exist is to get many people onboard fast, so that the company can be sold for lots of money (the product usually gets killed at this point; users are only score, why would anyone care about them anway).

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Why is it that intermediate companies do not end up having a big impact? And what are some examples of such companies?

<comment><USER34> The overly ambitious aren't expected to succeed, and the frivolous aren't seen as amounting to anything. What they both have in common is that - when they work - they come as surprises, and surprises means you've probably discovered something new.

Middle-of-the-ground companies are more predictable in a sense, less likely to stumble upon something new, and thus less likely to have a big impact.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> >build something that some people love but most people think is a toy

best quote...

<comment><USER36> dildo fits the description :)

<comment><USER37> I just donno man..this is easily the funniest comment in a long time.</comment></comment></comment>


Brewing a Better Rating System - <AUTHOR> http://blog.steepster.com/post/226679106/better-rating-system <comment><USER2> Hi, I'm Mike from Steepster. We thought we'd share our new ratings system we just deployed with HN as we think it's relevant for products with customer reviews, ratings, etc. It's our attempt to combat the 4.3 dilemma (discussed here recently: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=883890>).

Background: Steepster is a community site for tea drinkers to share their tasting notes, get recommendations, and discover new teas.

Feedback appreciated!

<comment><USER3> Mike, great job on this. Very informative. I have 2 questions for you:

1\. is your slider from the jQuery UI or other js framework?

2\. in regards to combating the 4.3 dilemma, have you found the average ratings on steepster to be lower? maybe its too early to tell, but I'd love to see some sort of curve on your ratings distribution in a future post ...

thanks

<comment><USER2> Thanks, callmeed.

1\. Yep, slider implementation is jQuery UI.

2\. It is too early to tell, but we're definitely planning to share a follow up. As mentioned in the post, we had a simple thumbs up/down for ratings and were seeing a greater than 90% positive average, so we were definitely experiencing that bias. Just today, albeit with a much too small sample size, we're starting to see a more diverse mix of averages. We still expect to have that positive skew but because we're now operating with a 100 point scale in the UI, we hope the granularity will help users distinguish subtler differences in rating.

<comment><USER4> It'd also be interesting to know if the number of ratings decrease or increase. I wonder if your users will find the added granularity a nuisance or an incentive.

<comment><USER2> It will be interesting. It's important to note the nature of our community and whom we expect to contribute. Generally, we're geared toward a more passionate user who we find to be more than willing to contribute at this level of granularity. So we've made the choice to cater toward their needs while still trying to remain accessible.

But, this is a good point, and I think an important one to consider when evaluating the mechanic that works best for your community/site.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I love that the sliding meter shows tick marks for your previous rankings of other teas - the UI reflects that your judgement of a particular tea is relative to your other experiences.

<comment><USER6> I suspect under closer analysis ones scoring breaks down to be inconsistent - "in retrospect I like tea X better than Y but not as much as Z, but I rated Z lower than Y because I didn't like it as much as P which had a higher rating", if you follow.

<comment><USER7> It seems that, pairwise, it is pretty easy to decide. Maybe one could go further than this and eliminate the absolute scale all together (at least at rating time).

I'm imaging a UI which asks you to pick a favorite among the item you are viewing and one similar item. You could stop there, or ask repeatedly with new comparison items until the viewed item's position on the absolute scale is unambiguous. The user could provide some rating data with just a single binary decision, but some ajax-y fade out/in of another pair could enable further ratings if they desired.

<comment><USER8> If you do that, the Elo rating system is a good place to start algorithm-wise.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elo_rating_system>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The problem with this system is in the sorting. The list of "Highest Rated" teas is dominated by results where 1 person rated the tea 100.

Steepster should use a Bayesian average (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_average>) so that the uncertainty of a small number of ratings is reflected in the sorting.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, sorting is an issue we're still looking at (and is still very much in transition considering the new rating system). Appreciate the suggestion! We'll add it to our list of potential solutions.

<comment><USER10> Start everything off with a single 50-point score. That way one person ranking it 100 will bump it up to 75, the next to 83, and so on. Such a system would cause teas that have more people upvoting them to rank higher than those that just happen to have one or two good opinions.

<comment><USER11> That's a special case of a particular sort of Bayesian average.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The genius is adding some previous scores. I always struggle to rate stuff fairly without anything obvious to compare it with.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is THE best implementation of a ratings system I've seen. Very good job.

</comment><comment><USER14> I feel like this really combines the best of the granular 4 star systems with the specificity of a percentage rating. Really good stuff, I'd be interested to hear a follow up with user feedback on this approach and how it holds up long term.

</comment><comment><USER15> This is cool, but I think virtually all rating systems suffer from the same basic problem: there's no way to turn it up to 11.

Take movies, for example. They are usually rated on a four-star scale. And yet, a three-star movie is a clear success. Few movies can realistically aspire to more than three stars. Even many four-star movies are really just trying desperately to avoid two-star land. Francis Ford Coppola was sure he was going to be fired any day from _The Godfather_. The production crew and actors on _Star Wars_ thought it was practically a joke. Please, God, let _Star Wars_ not be a _B_ movie, they must have been thinking.

When you say ★★★ out of ★★★★, you make it look like it wasn't good enough: 75%. Movies really should be rated on a three-star scale: ★★★ out of ★★★; ★★★ = _A_ = 100%. Anything else is gravy.

So, rate tea on a three-star scale. Three stars means "excellent tea, no clear way to make it better". ★★★½ means "Whoa, there _is_ something better than ★★★!" ★★★★ means "This is _The Godfather_ of tea! This tea makes me an offer I can't refuse."

</comment><comment><USER16> In this context, it looks like the user has incentive to rate (to get better suggestions), but on rating in general:

Why even ask people how they feel?

Depending on the content, you can analysis how they use it to get a much more accurate rating. For video: Did they watch the entire thing? Did they leave after a few seconds? Did they share it somehow?

That (slightly off-topic) being said, this looks great.

</comment><comment><USER17> Something else you could think about in a rating system like this would to instead of using generic faces, you could associate each with a common tea that most tea lovers have tried.

The notches kind of do this but theres always the risk of someone rating there first tea 80, then deciding subsequent teas after are better so they need to be rated higher, when the first one should have been more around 60.

</comment><comment><USER18> I think main reason sliders aren't used is that users find it too troublesome, hence up/down and 5 stars are mainly used. I remember from my pys class that a 7 point rating system is best. But the 5 stars' simplicity and ubiquity probably trumps the benefits gained by a 7 point system. I think the best compromised is a 5 star UI implemented as 6 points by allowing 0 point assignments.

<comment><USER18> For those who marked me down, would you please comment on reason? I'm getting tired of spending my time commenting and getting disapproval without reason. I don't think down votes should be on disagreements; it should be on spamish, childish, or comments that does not add anything to the topic. My main point is that sliders aren't used much because they are too troublesome for a typical user. If you disagree with that, please add your opinion. I'm not trying to take anything away from the author. In fact, I think it's an ingenious idea. But I usually dislike repeating "wow, cool" comments since so many others have done so already. It's part of my DRYness kicking in.

<comment><USER19> I voted you down because you asserted that a system was 'best' because you remember from a 'pys' class. This has to be one of the weakest 'arguments from authority' I have seen. You then asserted that a 5-star allowing zero is even better. Then why didn't your (psychology?) professor say so?

I didn't vote down because I disagree, but because you haven't made much of a case. I also downvote the 'wow, cool' comments as unhelpful, and upvote the comments that seem like they will lead to useful discussion. Without intending offense, I didn't think your comment was pitched at the right level for this audience.

Personally, I think you are on the right track, although I think 5 stars allowing halves is even better. Interestingly, Netflix (experts in this field) started out with allowing half-stars and then got rid of them, making me worry that they know better than I.

<comment><USER18> You are taking every single word of my comment too seriously. If every assertion needs to have strong backing in order to be commented, the hn comments will probably be only < 10% of what it is now (again, just a guesstimate, don't take this one too seriously too). I forgot if my professor has research backing for a 7 point sys being "best", maybe he did, maybe he didn't. But I don't think I need to remember if there was indeed research backing for it to add to the discussion. Again, I don't think you should down vote every discussion just because they didn't state the research backing, but I'm not the one to tell you that, maybe others can comment on this.

As for the 7 point system being "best" (for general purpose rating), I remember it's because 5 star does not give enough granularity, while 10 points is too much. Maybe that's why Netflix took that out. Now why not 6, 8, or 9? I forgot, again, maybe there was research being done.

As for my "idea" of allow a 0 on a 5 point system; it makes it a 6 point system while retaining a 5 point UI that everyone is accustom to. What is wrong with that? Again, just asking for discussion, not trying to say it IS the best.

Now back to the topic of down vote because I don't have enough backing. If I need backing in order to comment, I wouldn't even be able to comment any of this. Is this what you think is the way hn should work? Also, in order to not make you think I have the research to back up my thoughts, I need to say that in almost every sentence. I also don't think that should be the way hn works.

<comment><USER19> _As for my "idea" of allow a 0 on a 5 point system; it makes it a 6 point system while retaining a 5 point UI that everyone is accustom to. What is wrong with that?_

Nothing is wrong with it necessarily --- it's all a matter of implementation and audience. I think the first thing you are going to run into is a need to visually differentiate a non-vote from a zero. I'm also not sure what problem it's trying to solve.

What I would find more useful (from a 'build a better recommendations engine' perspective) is a 5+: a short list of favorites that can stand in for someone's favorites. Personally, I'd also like a better way to better differentiate the gradations between standard, good, and great. Whether I hate something or 'hate-hate' it isn't going to make much of a difference. Do you think your audience is going to be persuaded to reduce their average rating by a point, or are you still going to find the oft-quoted 4.3 average? I'm doubtful, but this doesn't make it a a bad idea to try.

As to the downvote, I stand by it. My goal is to rearrange the page so that the comments that are most useful to me are at the top. If others find your comment useful, they will see the injustice and bring it back up to the top.

As to the need for 'strong backing', I think we just have different worldviews. With due respect to my friends who are psychology professors, "a [nameless] psychology professor told me" is barely a step up from "I'm not a doctor but I play one on TV". We obviously respect different authorities in our lives.

<comment><USER18> Re: "Need for 'strong backing'": I think this goes back to the seriousness of how you take the discussions here. For me, forum/msg threads are just causal discussions (one level lower than blog posts), it would be nice if the person stated where they get their backing for the idea or assertion, but it's neither "necessary" nor "too helpful". If every idea/assertions needs backing, there would be almost no discussions at all. Innovation often comes from idea/assertions that have no backings.

It is not "necessary" because to me, if I believe in it and it's important to me, I will test it out. It doesn't matter if the idea came from Steve Jobs or Joe Doe. It's not "too helpful" because often the research being done on it is flawed, outdated, or just really not too trust-able. An example for example I remember reading some group has done research on max width of cell phones people like before feeling discomfort. The Motorola design team was the first to ignore that when they designed RAZR.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is very cool thank you. I posted earlier today about the need for a better rating system than the five star system. I'm really glad to see you working on a great solution. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER21> Meh...</comment>


Six-Second Commercials Are Coming to N.F.L. Games on Fox - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/30/business/media/nfl-six-second-commercials.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fbusiness&action=click&contentCollection=business&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=3&pgtype=sectionfront <comment><USER2> Blipverts are back!

[https://books.google.com/books?id=aCu2a-wfYVkC&pg=PA111#v=on...](https://books.google.com/books?id=aCu2a-wfYVkC&pg=PA111#v=onepage&q&f=false)

(second paragraph)</comment>


Sexism, racism and bullying are driving people out of tech, study finds - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/27/tech-industry-sexism-racism-silicon-valley-study <comment><USER2> I stopped reading when I saw they were quoting Ellen Pao.

<comment><USER3> And of course the article doesn't mention she lost the lawsuit.

<comment><USER4> This is such an astute observation. If you take an article about individuals or companies the media loves to denigrate, they will take every opportunity to not only mention other negative things but cross link to every previously written negative story they've published, sometimes to the point where half an article is referenced to many of the past negative things.

<comment><USER3> This was related to the article. It paints her as if she's proved how systemic sexism caused her to lose her job, but she failed to lose that in court. In fact, it's the opposite - as far as I'm concerned the court showed that she was either making things up or blowing them way out of proportion.

You can't just conveniently leave that out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > _Thirty percent of underrepresented women said they were passed over for a > promotion, a rate significantly higher than white and Asian women_

It's weird that racism outside of tech is generally considered "whites vs everyone else", whereas racism in tech is "whites and asians vs everyone else".

Its a bit like when google got pinged for lack of diversity, because they had overrepresented asians and underrepresented blacks. Enough asians in fact, that in order to have their employee makeup match the general public, that as well as blacks, they'd have to hire more whites.

<comment><USER6> I think you are missing the point of the article. The article is not about initiatives to get pre-set numbers of people of a certain race without regard to merit and qualification (which is what your comment is about). The article is about people who met the requirements, and were qualified, and got the job on the merits. The article is about how these people choosing to leave tech in high numbers because they feel the environment is racist and sexist and it raises questions about how that can be properly dealt with by the tech community.

If Black and Hispanic women feel as they are being passed over for promotion at rates higher than other women despite qualifications, I think it's time to at least look at that and investigate instead of dismissing it out of hand. And really I think that dismissive attitude is part of what these people are complaining about.

<comment><USER4> The problem I have with these reports is that they are based on self reports and feelings. If you constantly tell people that their group is being victimized, they will start interpreting everything that happens to them through victim-colored glasses and will interpret many actions from actual discrimination to non-descriminatory actions as descrimination. We need objective measures of discrimination not feelings and self reports. Teaching people to interpret everything as discrimination by default actively harms them because it robs them of the opportunity of attributing the cause to their own shortcomings (when that is actually the cause) and therefore being able to come to the conclusion that they need to change to overcome the circumstance. If the desired goal is success at the _individual_ level, it is simply not productive/constructive to arrive at any conclusion where you externalize blame.

FWIW, I'm an engineer from Latin America myself. Latin America will never be as well represented as people from Asia, especially from China, India, Korea and Japan, because those countries academically value (1) engineering and (2) English more highly than any country in Latin America. Until countries in Latin America start doing the same, I don't expect this to change.

<comment><USER6> >Teaching people to interpret everything as discrimination by default

I don't see any evidence of anybody doing that. What I see is people complaining of discrimination and it being waived away and dismissed. In a normal, non-sexist, non-racist sector, when people say they feel they are being discriminated, it would be investigated to see if there is in fact any real discrimination. Apparently in tech it's dismissed as "ah fuck your feelings, you've just learned to see everything as discriminatory"

<comment><USER4> I'm all for measuring discrimination. What I expressed concern with is measuring the _perception_ of discrimination which is fraught with all sorts of biases.

In fact, just today there was another front page story today that got flagged that is perfectly demonstrative of this problem: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14252978](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14252978)

The headline is inflammatory and suggests falsely that they've measured something that "objectively" proves discrimination is happening and I'm sure people shared it and upvoted it based on the title alone because it confirms their biases about discrimination being all-pervasive. However a closer examination of the study shows that _once you account for differences in level of the engineer_ that there is in fact no difference. I see this all the time. Anecdotally, the majority of studies and articles claiming discrimination and using data fall prey to the base rate fallacy and misinterpret the results to show discrimination where none exists or where it it is small enough to not be measurable.

I am not disputing that discrimination exists, but it would be prudent to stop crying wolf all the time. In 2017, I have seen remarkably few "smoking guns" relative to the amount of noise we see. What I have seen is an increase in how everything is distorted to maximum effect by people with an agenda to say discrimination is the cause of all the problems.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Which Niche Q&A Platforms & Communities Do You Like? - <AUTHOR>

Greetings Everyone!
Quick Intro: I've been managing a forum community for the past ten years and based on that experience, I'm now developing a new and potentially much larger niche community concept based on Q&A.
It seems most popular Q&A websites these days lack a genuine community vibe...I believe Q&A can also be fun and approachable (unlike Quora which makes me feel like I'm taking a test). In terms of platforms, I'm liking Question2Answer (free, open source, simple, functional, customizable). In terms of niche websites, wetawa.com has a friendly feel and look that I like (although the name is questionable).
I'm searching for examples like the ones I mentioned above to help further develop my concept. I'm also wondering if it's better to start building a Q&A platform from scratch or to use an open source example like Question2Answer to build upon initially. Mind you, I'm not a Developer but I wish to be familiar with the technical requirements involved. Speaking of Developers, I have a Technical Partner but I am also seeking to network with Developers who have a real passion for creating community-based websites.
Thanks in advance for your time and I look forward to any feedback!
Sincerely, Antoine <comment><USER2> Stackoverflow.com and its kin. Not only are the people on it very knowledgable, but the site itself rewards civility and good communication skills. Worth studying!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the response and feedback on Stackoverflow. The site / network has been on my radar and I'm glad to know it comes highly recommended...I'll definitely be studying it, thanks again!</comment></comment>


Lyft may also suspend services in CA due to AB5 - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/12/lyft-president-says-it-may-have-to-suspend-service-in-california.html <comment><USER2> I wonder if people will go back to Cabs or complain to their local politicians? I've never used any ride service, but I can see how they'd be useful.

<comment><USER3> It depends on whether Proposition 22 passes in November. Prop 22 would create exemptions from AB5 for "rideshare" and delivery service drivers.

It contains a lot of the things that Uber and Lyft should have been doing from the beginning, like minimum earnings, healthcare subsidies, workers comp insurance, etc., that the would be required to do/provide under AB5.

<comment><USER4> They are things Lyft and Uber could have done, if there were not a kind of no- man's land between "employee" and "independent contractor". Maybe they could have tried to offer some of them by helping contractors form a professional association that brokered the healthcare and insurance and even contributed towards minimum earnings, and then lowering their commission -- but directly offering benefits basically forces you to make people W-2.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What's been really fun to watch is the collateral damage of AB5 - set out with malicious intent to "punish" Uber and Lyft and it also managed to take out all the independent journalists and writers too.

Many who are unabashedly liberal and were in support of AB5 until it took the legs out from under them too.

Serves them right.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm curious if this ruling also impacts things like instacart and other delivery services?

<comment><AUTHOR> As a former ic employee, this intrigues me more than Uber and Lyft.

But tbh theyre pretty different companies, esp. bc in some niches, IC is almost classified as an essential service, so I think IC has a little bit more leverage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Thousands loose their job during a recession. But at least a election is coming up</comment>