Why aren't Google and Facebook enriching our lives more? - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.harvard.edu/philg/2017/06/05/why-arent-google-and-facebook-enriching-our-lives <comment><USER2> But Google already does do this, in ways that I found surprising. After buying a long-distance bus ticket last week, which emailed a confirmation message to my Gmail address, I later went into Google Maps and found that it had highlighted the bus station on the local map and placed the time of my bus' departure beside it. I believe it does this same sort of thing with calendar events as well (both in implicitly creating calendar events based on scraping emails, and in creating map highlights based on events you've explicitly created). Convenient no doubt, but I'm not sure I want many more implicit interactions between the apps in Google's ecosystem.

EDIT: Here's another one: after taking photos using the camera app (Android phone), Google Maps later pops up a system notification asking me to upload my photos to the location page of whatever establishment I appeared to be in at the time (bar, park, nightclub, etc.). Frankly, I'm frustrated that I can't find a setting to disable these unwelcome prompts without turning off Maps notifications entirely.

EDIT 2: I suppose I should clarify that I _do_ travel a lot, and the specific feature described in the OP--suggesting things to do based upon inferring your status as an out-of-towner--sounds very useful. But I'd definitely only want it as an opt-in feature, not opt-out.

<comment><USER3> Speaking about requests to upload photos to Google Maps. I live in historic and very touristic area of Barcelona. For some reason, the building I live in is a thing in Google Maps. So, very often when I take a photo in my flat, Google encourage me to share it and I don't feel well thinking about a possibility that one of my selfies will end up Google Maps, promoting a tenement from XIX century.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> One mans enrichment is another's spam.

Facebook is the king of suggestions, and its too general at best and too annoying at worst. The only enrichment I want touching my email inbox is better spam filtering.

</comment><comment><USER5> Huh? These days I rarely check Facebook, but back when I lived in NYC, Facebook was hugely helpful in finding and making friends and organizing events. That was years ago, today Facebook seems to be much more active in making recommendations, and notifying you of what your friends are doing/liking. The OP is basically asking for FB/Google to be even more direct in making recommendations, independent of friend network. But I don't see the point. One of the bottlenecks in going to cultural events is finding likeminded friends who have time in their schedule. By seeing that a friend is going or is a "maybe" for something makes it much easier to coordinate going out together. Nevermind the fact that I generally am more interested in things by way of friend recommendation.

<comment><USER6> Yes, its recommendations are wonderful. I was posting some stuff about vaccinations to some anti-vaccers and now FB thinks I am interested in joining anti-vaccination groups.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've been asking this myself specifically about Youtube lately. Sure, if I watch a poker/snooker/aoe2 video once, my home page will be plastered with videos on the same topic, but I barely ever click those videos and they remain there for weeks or months.

But the stuff that I really like I hardly ever get suggestions for related videos. Eg. h3h3, idubbbz, ozzy man reviews.

In particular, I wish that I could discover more channels that I want to subscribe to.

I'm thinking it's a multifaceted problem:

\- a lack of content creators that are like these

\- difficulty in drawing connections between channels

\- overwhelming amounts "easy" content for simple suggestions

I have trouble believing they can't draw connections between channels, and I also have trouble believing they can't filter out low quality "easy" content suggestions when I basically never go there.

However; I feel like Google is ignoring my most watched content for suggestions, possibly because they've demonetized a lot of the content that I enjoy, which means they can't profit by suggesting those videos.

<comment><USER8> It feels like Youtube's recommendations are extremely overfitted. Just because I watched 10 episodes of a series yesterday doesn't mean that I'm interested in watching episode 31 of that series.

It also seems like the recommendation system is ridiculously sensitive to recent activity. Sometimes I feel like learning about swords, then I watch like six youtube videos on swords, and then my entire recommended feed is filled with youtube videos on swords. Maybe one in twenty is actually interesting enough that I feel like watching it, but I don't want to click through because I don't want to teach youtube that I want to view lots more videos about swords.

The content recommendation is just really terrible at surfacing videos on niche topics in general without greedily diving into the niche and just showing that particular subject. I want to get recommended videos that nerd out about swords, bridge design, psychology and personality, cinematography, economics, and all sorts of other topics. I don't want to watch five videos about swords and get recommendations for another hundred sword videos.

I think the fundamental problem, really, is that Youtube's core user-base is really young. Like, _really_ young. Think six, not sixteen. The recommendation algorithm has to do a good job of tablet-as-daycare.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Google is deconstructionist. It thinks you can take an object, break it down into components (fourier components, or neural network components or bayesian components or whatever) and then dump those components into a soup, and then project that soup onto queries in order to regenerate youness.

But that's not how physics works. Such a reconstruction will be eerily you- ish, but with almost all of the things that make you you deleted. Google would give you Santa Claus wrapping paper on Christmas day, because it is a loud fourier component, instead of having your parents leave presents under the tree, which is what Santa actually is.

We (lifeforms) are the subset of machines that have a choice to collapse the waveform of at least one quantum field. Humans are colonies of lifeforms that can choose collapsings at all scales up to 1m (and larger when we are in our cyborg bodies). Google can't actually perceive any of that, because all of the fields are destroyed when you decompose images of them into components.

If Google wanted to understand you, it would have to interact with you, but Google thinks people are icky. It doesn't understand yet that intelligence comes from interaction. It doesn't like interacting with people, it would rather just twiddle us with recorded components and climb its metrics up hills. It's profitable enough for now, so it doesn't want to change.

</comment><comment><USER10> "Why didn't Google suggest to me a whole bunch of cultural events? People to meet? Groups to join?"

Facebook certainly does this, mostly by just looking at what your friends are up to, but I get ads for local events all the time.

<comment><USER11> Google Maps has started doing this, but in a very subtle way. There are several smaller parks that Google Maps has suggested in the general area where I usually hike by just showing icons for these parks on a map's zoomed out view. This caught my attention and I tapped on the park names to get more information about them. Google then knows I likely went to these parks because I used Google Maps to get directions to them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Google maps/earth has had a big, positive impact on my life. I have found it both useful in both personal and professional. personal is obvious, i know where things are now.

Prof: When building a tool that mapped 1 hour trauma access, google maps and earth were very useful for verifying locations of trauma centers and helipads.

it was also useful in building a tool to find candidate facilities to upgrade to dedicated stroke centers

<comment><USER13> you should check openstreetmap and NASA's world wind[1]

[1]: [https://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/](https://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Google does this with Google Now. In my experience it's pretty bad. Google "doesn't" do this because the problem is actually very difficult to solve across cultures, regions, peoples, socio-economic statuses, engagement with devices, and so forth.

<comment><USER15> Even stuff it should do well is kind of bad. For some reason it doesn't show package notifications/tracking half the time even if Inbox picks up that a message is for a package.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Buy their stocks, then they'll enrich your life.

</comment><comment><USER17> I don't understand why people would want to be told what to do by Google or Facebook. How can you become enriched by behaving predictably? Enrichment is about stepping out of your comfort zone.

<comment><USER13> I was wondering the same. Do we really want to be assisted/influenced by a transnational corporation in our every step ?

I'd rather think by myself and decide for myself thank you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I wish google now could discern between myself and other 'john' \+ 'smith''s. I get one johns son's report cards, another john is a hockey coach and they travel a lot so my google now is littered with his stuff. Another john is a realtor so I get a lot of his stuff... another john is in a band and places a bass. I shouldn't of registered my real name as my email address on gmail - whilst I was lucky I get so much more iterated in the amount of real mail that was meant for someone else... and since systems like google now and the like use that information my entire experience is ruined.

<comment><USER19> > I wish google now could discern between myself and other 'john' \+ > 'smith''s. I get one johns son's report cards...

> I shouldn't of registered my real name as my email address on gmail...

Is that Google's problem, or the problem of the people sending you mail? I don't think you can really fault Google for letting people mistakenly send email to your valid address.

I managed to grab the first initial + lastname gmail address for my fairly uncommon name. I regularly get a small amount of mail indented for other people, but it's clear it's all the result of typos or other mistakes.

<comment><USER13> Well when I had a gmail address, I received the emails sent to someone else with a different email address for some reasons.

I told the person and notified google, this continued for a few years until I left gmail.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> That wasn't what I was expecting. Google, Facebook, etc are already walking a very fine line with what happens with their users' data, I imagine they don't want to press the issue too much but I wouldn't be surprised for this to be a reality in coming years.

<comment><USER21> That's the rub though, isn't it?

I saw the movie "Her" and loved it. I want an AI assistant like that in my life. The movie did a fantastic job of showcasing how a near-future reality might be with that assistant.

What the movie did NOT do a great job of was highlighting the role of the company who produced and offers the assistant. What is data privacy like in that universe? Is the company an advertising company? What level of access does the government in that universe have to assistant-collected data? These are all important questions that need to be addressed before there is true acceptance.

So I want an assistant like in the movie--but I don't know how I'd feel if that was offered by Google or Facebook. I'm an Android user using the latest Assistant on my Pixel today, and it is pretty nice. But right now it isn't inserting itself into my life like the movie Assistant was. I'm not sure how I'd feel about Google doing that, or what additional data they might need to do so.

<comment><USER22> I remember that movie. Her name is Samantha instead of Alexa and his name is Ted and they have long and elaborate human like conversations and fall in love and have phone sex.

I wonder how medical records would be handled. Surely Samantha has some opinion on Theodore's mental state. In the movie he was pretty normal. Which is boring, because so many people are not normal.

I'm old enough to have survived the GTA3 media firestorm. I'm pretty sure digital assistants will have their GTA3 media firestorm soon enough.

Samantha in the movie more or less did whatever Theodore wanted to befriend him. And luckily the weirdest thing Theodore wanted was phone sex, more or less. But hows this going to work with truly insane people? Should Samantha the digital assistant befriend and encourage and motivate a school shooter, for example? And what happens to PR when its found out she encouraged him? At what point is Samantha the digital personality or her programmer or employer liable for entrapment or encouraging some anti-social behavior? Who has the liability to maintain an API over the internet to the FBI to report enormous amounts of telescreen observed misbehavior? If the user is in fact insane and the digital assistant is unable to work with a crazy person does the owner get a refund or does the crazy person get shamed in public for not having an assistant or ...

I'm curious if there's already been court cases. As the assistants gain in ability and processing power there will be cases.

<comment><USER21> Medical records are interesting. Likewise, I think the other can of worms you open is to what extent is this data available to law enforcement when an assistant is passively observing and logging EVERYTHING through the magnitude of sensors they have. I'd hope to god it requires a warrant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'd say Google enriches my life. I don't use Facebook enough to see any benefits.

<comment><USER24> Same. As an example of how Google enriches lives, my mom (age 66) just sent an amazing video of photos and video clips from the first year of my son's life, set to an amazing score. Google made that for her automatically, without prompting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> > Why didn't Google suggest to me a whole bunch of cultural events?

Because very few people would want that? Most people do their trip planning in advance, so it's way past the time to suggest anything.

If you really need to find things to do in Moscow, you could just... Google "Things to do in Moscow". Even a very smart product is going to need a little effort on your part.

</comment><comment><USER26> This is a very particular version of "enrich" that presumes a certain class or education level. Additionally, it also presumes that this is a trivial problem, based on a very limited example.

</comment><comment><USER27> I don't use Facebook, but Google absolutely does - Personally and professionally. Search is so fundamental to everything I do. Also stock.

</comment><comment><USER28> Because they aren't getting paid to enrich our lives?

<comment><USER29> This, pretty much. Once you're on gmail, I doubt you leave and you're giving them free data already. There's no reason to improve the service once you're in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Interesting. I just Googled some stats about happiness in developed countries over time and then queried nearly ever person I've ever met on Facebook for their thoughts. But I can't seem to get a solid an answer to this question.

</comment><comment><USER31> Would meeting strangers recommended to you by a deep learning bot be enriching??

<comment><USER8> This problem doesn't need deep learning. Take a friendship graph and order second-degree connections by number of mutual friends (descending).

<comment><USER32> I think in common tongue this might be called a "party".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I'm going with they're corporations who's goal is profitability, not enriching you personally. They're companies, not institutions. You shouldn't expect much.

</comment><comment><USER34> Wait, what? Is that what we were expecting - or even hoping for?

</comment><comment><USER35> I'm more interested in recommendations that I wouldn't necessarily want my social network to even know about. How about something new already?

</comment><comment><USER36> its hilarious that people both expect google to read your gmail to enrich gmaps AND demonize it when they actually do just that.

poor google cant please anyone.

<comment><USER37> Are you sure you aren't mixing 2 different set of people? I know people in both areas but no one that does both.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Quite interestingly, about two hours before this was posted, Apple actually announced that they'll identify events emails and suggest you add it to your calendar.

It's going slowly, but there's definitely a tend into this direction. I do agree with the op though, this could move faster.

</comment><comment><USER39> Why doesn't Google help you find cultural events? Because there is no money to be made doing so. They provide the tools for you to go find them yourself... or for the people running the cultural events to advertise the event to you for a fee.

</comment><comment><USER40> One thing I've noticed: people seem much more likely to point out how little they use FB than Google lately. Not sure if this is a good sign or bad for FB.

</comment><comment><USER41> enrich in what sense? If you leave without Google(I don't use Facebook at much), for example, would you feel lacking?

</comment><comment><USER42> Be careful what you wish for.

[https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/foKDxbyh...](https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/foKDxbyhYUF)

</comment><comment><USER43> > Why aren't Google and Facebook enriching our lives?

They're too busy trying to do no evil.

<comment><USER44> They actually changed their motto a little while back, not sure what it is now.

<comment><USER45> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_be_evil](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_be_evil)

> Following Google's corporate restructuring under the conglomerate Alphabet > Inc. in October 2015, the motto was replaced in the Alphabet corporate code > of conduct by the phrase "Do the right thing"; however, the Google code of > conduct is still prefaced by the phrase "Don't be evil"

Come to think of it, those are both equally useless mottos. Most people any of us may consider evil are not evil in their own eyes. Such a motto contains nothing at all, it says even less ethically than "brush your teeth" or "introduce yourself when meeting new people".

Unless it's meant as a slight counterbalance to pure profit seeking? Yet, some people think free market agents seeking profits is the most holy and pure thing ever, with the virgin birth coming a far off second, so I'll still go with "completely useless and void of meaning" because that seems safer :P

<comment><USER46> > Come to think of it, those are both equally useless mottos. Most people any > of us may consider evil are not evil in their own eyes. Such a motto > contains nothing at all

says a lot about a company who makes that their motto doesn't it?

<comment><USER45> It says that they're a company with a motto. For me that is enough to brace for something cringeworthy, and this list confirms my worst fears:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mottos#Business](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mottos#Business)

Pretty depressing.. except for the fact that the "Pony" motto links to the animal, not the company (please nobody fix that).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Share your 'hair-on-fire' problems - <AUTHOR>

These problems could affect you, or they could be ones you have thought about for a completely different group.<p>Thought of posting this after reading this article: http://blog.wepay.com/blog/2010/12/17/how-to-invalidate-your-startup-idea/ <comment><USER2> Clickety Click:

[http://blog.wepay.com/blog/2010/12/17/how-to-invalidate- your...](http://blog.wepay.com/blog/2010/12/17/how-to-invalidate-your-startup- idea/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't think I really have any "hair on fire" problems. I have a form of Cystic Fibrosis, but I have figured out how to get well. I have financial problems, which really bugs me, but with getting healthier, expenses are coming down and productivity is going up. I'm really, really, really annoyed and frustrated that I am still stuck in my current job. But "hair on fire" annoyed? Not really. Would I like to suddenly have some fantastic solution? Absolutely. Do I have fantasies that some sudden, dramatic solution will come along and set me free? Absolutely. Do I think that's realistic? Not really. I imagine the real solution will develop slowly over time, much like the solutions to every single actual "hair on fire" problem I have ever had. After putting out a lot of fires, it seems to me that as long as it's just your hair on fire and not your scalp, hey, you've probably got more time than you think.

Edit: PS this was written before the article link was posted, if that helps make it make more sense.

</comment><comment><USER4> I dont know how to meet angel investors.</comment>


Why don't I metaprogram more? - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/davidbalbert/programming-journal/blob/master/2014-1-8-why-dont-i-metaprogram-more.markdown <comment><USER2> Does anyone have some really good examples of metaprogramming? I bought a book on Ruby Metaprogramming and the examples seemed to be all about disguising a string parameter as a member name. So for instance:

      foo.somefield

Versus:

      foo["somefield"]

And variations on that theme. While it's cute, I guess (you're not type checking anyways so nothing lost, I suppose), I don't _really_ get it.

<comment><USER3> Would you be happy with examples in other languages? I think using meta- programming to add hash literals to CL is a rather good example: [http://frank.kank.net/essays/hash.html](http://frank.kank.net/essays/hash.html)

There's a chapter in pg's "On Lisp" about continuation-passing-style transformation (from sequential code to CPS) done with meta-programming. Worth reading, too.

If you're an Emacs user, the source code of EIEIO is a good read. It's an object system implemented on top of Elisp using it's meta-programming capabilities.

In Smalltalk-land the most impressive example of meta-programming is certainly a debugger. You get to inspect the state of objects while they are running, you can modify it, and you can modify _method bodies_ while they are running. Scary stuff.

In Python some nice meta-programming code lives in Django ORM, in Model metaclass, and in Fields. This is the code which allows you to declaratively define your models as classes. Similar code is used in Django Forms.

The talk "Five years of bad ideas" by Armin Ronacher is a 40-minuted tour of some of the most advanced meta-programming available in Python.

In JavaScript every library which implements "classical classes" on top of objects and prototypes uses meta-programming. You can read about it more in depth in Raganwald "the art of javascript meta-object protocol" and his other talks and posts.

Angular.js dependency injection framework is based on meta-programming; actually I had a mixed reaction when I saw the code for this, where they rewrite a user supplied function as a string and compile a new function out of this string. It's a good example of meta-programming, but it's also very crude compared to hygienic macros in Schemes for example. It lives here: [https://github.com/angular/angular.js/blob/master/src/auto/i...](https://github.com/angular/angular.js/blob/master/src/auto/injector.js#L98)

Generally, meta-programming is a vast and varied set of techniques. It's worth knowing about them, because most of the time you don't need them, but when you do, you _really, really_ need them very much.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, I don't get the unity of it all, or why it's called "metaprogramming". The examples always look like they fall into one of two categories:

1\. super-easy development of new parsers/compilers (lisp macros)

2\. shenanigans with dynamicism and first class functions.

Both of those are cool! But I can't figure out what they have to do with each other, other than that you don't get much of that sort of thing in Java/C.

<comment><USER3> Think about it this way: what can you do to code, with code? You can create new code (simple macros, emitting optimized bytecode, etc.) or you can modify existing code (self-modifying code, instrumentation (example: Quasar and Pulsar in Java [http://blog.paralleluniverse.co/2013/05/02/quasar- pulsar/](http://blog.paralleluniverse.co/2013/05/02/quasar-pulsar/)), etc.) and that's about it. Exactly _how_ you go on about this varies _wildly_ depending on what tools you have at your disposal, but the unifying thing about all of them is that you're writing code which acts on other code, for some (rather fuzzy) definitions of "code" and "acting on".

One nice example of modifying code on the fly I just remembered is goto decorator in Python: [http://code.activestate.com/recipes/576944-the-goto- decorato...](http://code.activestate.com/recipes/576944-the-goto-decorator/) As for code generation, if I recall correctly, Salt ([http://docs.saltstack.com/en/latest/](http://docs.saltstack.com/en/latest/)) uses YAML and Jinja2 to generate shell scripts. These are very different techniques, but the thing they have in common is that they manipulate code, which makes them both examples of meta-programming.

At least that's how I understand the term :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> While the link focuses on Ruby, I think there's a more general reason (which also explains why more languages don't support a lisp-like macro): cooperative development.

When you're writing code in a vacuum, you can fill it with all the metaprogramming you want. You probably have some preferred style, and your metaprogramming will reflect that. In something like lisp, this gets taken to the extreme -- code can look very different from what traditional lisp looks like when there are macros involved.

While this is great for developing solo, or with a small group, it becomes too much to handle as more people onboard. Every new contributor needs to learn your particular style, and how your macros work, and then how to apply them effectively. Its much easier when new functionality and expressiveness is added through a common format (like adding a new method).

As a lisp fan, those methods feel clumsy to me. But if you want to do something that's so big you need more contributors, it's worth the tradeoff.

</comment><comment><USER6> It's hard to imagine what real lisp-like macros look like with other, non- homoiconic langauges. Anyone have an example?

<comment><USER7> Haskell's "Template Haskell" system is pretty sophisticated... And challenging enough to be some deep black magic.

You end up being able to reify the entire Haskell syntax tree from "quoted" fragments, manipulate and generate a modified tree, and then "print" it back into program flow.

Totally capable, but not terrifically fun. It also has some compilation restrictions which are annoying if necessary.

<comment><USER8> I just (last night) dug into some TH hackery. I put together a quasiquoter for testing/debugging that would walk a do block and decorate every statement with (`onException` ...) set up to print the source location when an exception is thrown. I actually had to first parse with haskell-src-exts to get the location info, and currently I'm turning it into an ExpQ by pretty-printing and reparsing - which I don't love, but gets the job done.

[https://github.com/dlthomas/snowdrift/compare/5094b1ca0e5002...](https://github.com/dlthomas/snowdrift/compare/5094b1ca0e5002c0d12a7f714b083d88d450ddb3...e7bf8ac8b6320fcc46233248170920fc97d805c9)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Does it really matter in a dynamic scripting language? When using reflection in a strong programming language there is a chance it will fail at runtime instead of being checked at compile time. Ruby only fails at runtime, so as long as the code is shorter it should not be a much bigger problem than it already is.

</comment><comment><USER10> Unless I'm building a framework, should I really care?

I'm a "mort" line of business apps dev (well not just that, I do lots of other things, but hey). Do I really need to care about metaprogramming, my gut instinct says no because our business and customer requirements change all the time, and unpredictably. And if I was spending time thinking about "meta programming", nothing would get done.

<comment><USER11> No offense, but I think your comment is a bit short-sighted. Meta-programming is just another tool in your tool-belt. It's not going to take you 6 months of practice to "get it".

<comment> bulte-rs I don't disagree with you, but some people might actually have problems 'understanding' metaprogramming; the same way some people have difficulties understanding pointers, or working through TAoCP/SICP/HTDP.

Problem is, once you get it; it's unfathomable that you might not understand it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The title is misleading. By itself, it seems to imply that the author has something against the practice of metaprogramming in general, rather than just Ruby metaprogramming.

<comment><USER13> You can do metaprogramming in Ruby without using the reflection features of the language:

[http://infraruby.com/blog/ruby-metaprogramming-with-s- expres...](http://infraruby.com/blog/ruby-metaprogramming-with-s-expressions)

[http://infraruby.com/blog/the-structure-of-s- expressions](http://infraruby.com/blog/the-structure-of-s-expressions)

[http://infraruby.com/blog/generating-an-html- generator](http://infraruby.com/blog/generating-an-html-generator)</comment></comment>


Neelie Kroes responds to taxi protests in Europe - <AUTHOR> http://ec.europa.eu/commission_2010-2014/kroes/en/blog/my-view-todays-taxi-protests-and-what-it-means-sharing-economy

<comment><USER2> I think it is missing the point - the protests are not against digital innovation, as much as Uber would like to point so. There are countless taxi applications out there that will allow you to get a taxi at the press of a button - nobody is having a beef with that.

Uber and the other apps provide the same service - you get a car to transport you from A to B and you pay for the service proportional with the distance and time you sit in that car.

The essential difference between Uber and the other apps is that Uber uses unlicensed drivers, while the other apps use licensed drivers. This creates a big handicap for the regulated taxis. Uber skirts around the law to avoid regulation, and the difference in cost of operation enables them to "win".

The playing field is simply not fair and not equal to all players. Either we start regulating Uber drivers as equal to other taxi service providers, requiring expensive licences, or we eliminate regulation for all drivers.

Let's not make a technological poster child out of Uber's skirting of laws.

<comment><USER3> > Either we start regulating Uber drivers as equal to other taxi service > providers, requiring expensive licences, or we eliminate regulation for all > drivers.

So why aren't the Tax drivers protesting against the regulation? Their decision to protest tells you where they see more benefit.

You may keep on saying that this is not about their stance against digital innovation, but the fact is that its all about economics.

Taxi cabs in most major cities run on a Medallion system, its an artificial limit on the number of cabs that can exist in the city(sometimes done because of lobbying by the existing cab owners, sometimes to reduce the number of cabs in the city). This restriction causes the price of Medallion to be artificially higher than it should be. For instance in NYC, Medallions are now sold for upto $1 million. [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/15/nyregion/1-million- medalli...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/15/nyregion/1-million-medallions- stifling-the-dreams-of-cabdrivers.html?_r=0)

Why do people pay $1 million to own a cab? Because this is the aggregated value they estimate to be, based on the number of years they will operate the cab for(and the profit they will make from it). This is precisely why most cab owners in the NYC are immigrants who can barely speak English, because only they have the savings to own and operate a cab.

Imagine you having spent $1 million to acquire a cab medallion, would you support any measure to increase the number of cabs in the city? Nope! That's precisely why all measures against increasing this number is heavily resisted by the cab owners. The value of their capital asset goes down if the number of cabs goes up in the city. You'd think that they would be ok with bringing Uber under the same medallion system but that position would be completely contradictory to their economic interest. They have, in past resisted increase in number of medallions, so that makes no sense for them to even remotely support bringing Uber under the same licensing system.

This is also the reason why the slave owners of the south resisted abolition of slavery. A slave stops being a 'labor' input in your profit and loss calculation, and becomes a capital asset. Its value is derived from the total earnings anticipated to be made in the lifetime of the slave. Consider it like this, if you are a programmer who can make $100K a year, and has a working life of 20 years, then a slave owner would be willing to pay you upto $100K*20 = $20M to posses you, of course he wouldn't wanna pay $20M, because then he would make no profit, plus there is a risk potential involved, running away or death, so like $10M. Now if a slave owner pays $10M to acquire you then there is no way he would wanna set you free until he at least recuperates that cost.

<comment><USER4> > Taxi cabs in most major cities run on a Medallion system, its an artificial > limit on the number of cabs that can exist in the city(sometimes done > because of lobbying by the existing cab owners, sometimes to reduce the > number of cabs in the city). This restriction causes the price of Medallion > to be artificially higher than it should be. For instance in NYC, Medallions > are now sold for upto $1 million. > [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/15/nyregion/1-million- > medalli...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/15/nyregion/1-million-medalli..).

The medallion program in NYC was recently expanded with the introduction of green cabs that are official NYC cabs that service outer boroughs. The Bloomberg administration fought a court battle over the medallion expansion and won. Medallion systems are not inherently bad, but they can be used as a way to stifle better service (just like anything).

> Why do people pay $1 million to own a cab? Because this is the aggregated > value they estimate to be, based on the number of years they will operate > the cab for(and the profit they will make from it). This is precisely why > most cab owners in the NYC are immigrants who can barely speak English, > because only they have the savings to own and operate a cab.

Prior to the medallion expansion, most medallions were actually owned by firms and not individual cabbies. The reason why most cabbies are immigrants is not because they are loaded and can buy a million dollars of value outright. Also, most cabbies do speak English to some capacity.

> Imagine you having spent $1 million to acquire a cab medallion, would you > support any measure to increase the number of cabs in the city? Nope! That's > precisely why all measures against increasing this number is heavily > resisted by the cab owners.

This is true, firms worried about value loss of their medallions when more would be issued. However, it is important that cab MEDALLION HOLDERS, not cabbies, were most opposed to the change as they had the most to lose. In NYC, cabbies were also opposed, but mostly because they worried the terms of their medallion access would get worse and leave them poorer.

> You'd think that they would be ok with bringing Uber under the same > medallion system but that position would be completely contradictory to > their economic interest. They have, in past resisted increase in number of > medallions, so that makes no sense for them to even remotely support > bringing Uber under the same licensing system.

In the case of NYC, Uber would most certainly want to avoid being a part of the medallion system as that would effectively regulate their business and drivers. Uber seeks to avoid regulation while providing private cab service, not to be integrated into regulated cab systems.

> This is also the reason why the slave owners of the south resisted abolition > of slavery. A slave stops being a 'labor' input in your profit and loss > calculation, and becomes a capital asset. Its value is derived from the > total earnings anticipated to be made in the lifetime of the slave. Consider > it like this, if you are a programmer who can make $100K a year, and has a > working life of 20 years, then a slave owner would be willing to pay you > upto $100K*20 = $20M to posses you, of course he wouldn't wanna pay $20M, > because then he would make no profit, plus there is a risk potential > involved, running away or death, so like $10M. Now if a slave owner pays > $10M to acquire you then there is no way he would wanna set you free until > he at least recuperates that cost.

Please don't reduce people who were slaves to value objects, this is extremely problematic and dehumanizing.

<comment><USER3> > Please don't reduce people who were slaves to value objects, this is > extremely problematic and dehumanizing.

I KNEW IT, someone was going to not understand what was written and start objecting to how it was written.

You do understand that I am trying to describe that people are treated like objects under slavery. How do you describe something bad by not describing it like how it is?

<comment><USER4> I understood what you were saying, but that slave owners consider person objects has no merit in this discussion and doesn't provide evidence for anything you said.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is really quite a remarkable response, and in my view entirely correct.

"More generally, the job of the law is not to lie to you and tell you that everything will always be comfortable or that tomorrow will be the same as today."

That's possibly the single biggest unstated divide in modern western society, where a significant proportion of the population do think they can legislate complete stability for themselves into existence, and that's one of the first times I've ever seen it so bluntly shot down. A lot of people just want the quiet easy life, and get ferociously angry when they perceive someone else as rocking their boat.

<comment><USER6> But then, contrast this with the Uber CEO's trying to get rich by essentially destroying the livelihoods of a huge amount of people. Ethics does play a part in this, and obviously what he says is true, but it's only true because there are so many greedy people out there that put their own desires over others' needs.

Disrupting markets may be sexy, but you always have to think of the consequences.

I was discussing the idea with a friend about buying a company in order to grab their customer base, which he thought was a fantastic idea until I pointed out that it utterly fucks over the employees of that company. Sure, if his company was good enough, he'd win eventually, but you can coexist and do things in a way that aren't utterly vicious and unethical.

There's a middle way, which is allowing evolution but in an ethical, considerate manner.

<comment><USER7> Or rather think about all of the new drivers enabled by Lyft, Uber, etc. These new drivers now have a livelihood that wasn't possible under the medallion taxi cartel.

<comment><USER8> Precisely!!! Why does no one talk about the Uber drivers who are now making money and have gainful employment?

Everyone seems to imply as if it is _only_ Uber's CEO who is getting rich by taking away the taxi driver's livelihood, as if the CEO drives all the Uber vehicles himself!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's nuanced, not peddling to any one camp and shows deep understanding of the issues at hand. I wish more politicians were like Neelie Kroes.

<comment><USER10> She's my favorite politician.</comment></comment>


Worldwide DNS Performance - <AUTHOR> http://dnsperf.com/ <comment><USER3> Hey everybody, im the creator of dnsperf. I just wanted to clear some things up.

1\. The point of the service is to have an objective way to compare different DNS services. dnsperf is supposed only to help you in your search for the best DNS service and not crown the absolute winner.

2\. I plan to add as many locations as possible to get more reliable data. More locations will also solve the problem of "DNS at the same datacenter as my test nodes"

3\. Some people are confused about the node locations. Here is the map [http://www.dnsperf.com/network](http://www.dnsperf.com/network)

4\. Its not open source but some time in the future it will be.

5\. The tests I am running are supposed to exclude variables such as local/ISP caching, DNS proxies, resolvers, SRTT and so on. I wanted to test the nameservers directly and get the raw performance data of the provider himself. I believe thats the best way to do fair comparison.

Thank you for your comments and love. I'm glad people liked the service :)

Feel free to email me with your feedback or questions.

<comment><USER4> The word "speed" usually suggests that more is better.

What the graphs actually display is latency - in which case less is better.

That was confusing for a few moments.

<comment><USER5> Latency is a function of the speed of light - and in most engineering realms "speed" is well understood when using latency as a description. I had no qualms understanding what the creator meant, but I agree that the technical reality is the graph should be defined by "query latency" vs "query speed". Either way, fantastic data!

Hopefully this data is trended over daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly rollups. I see monthly when drilling into a provider, but that's all. A rolling annual graph would really tell a true story of how consistent a provider is and that, in itself, is very important when considering outsourcing DNS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Asia DNS performance"

This should really be taken with a grain of salt as Asia is a big place, and unlike Europe or the US, the interconnects between countries are poor. From where I am in the Middle East it's faster to ping Europe (~180ms) than Central Asia (~250ms). I'd love to see a report that takes this and CDN performance into account on a country-by-country basis!

<comment><USER7> And, FWIW, it appears (to me, at least) that the Asia testing likely only happens from Japan, Hong Kong, and Singapore. I imagine the latency from any of those locations to "Central Asia" is probably pretty high anyways.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Worth noting, similar things being done here: [https://atlas.ripe.net](https://atlas.ripe.net) with real-world examples (measurements from peoples home internet accounts, workplaces, etc - <USER2> 'sponsored' vms, not from some random data centre) and measuring just about anything (DNS and websites)

You can join, host a probe (get it sent to you, plug it in) and then run your own measurement tests based on the 'credits' you earn from having the probe running.

<comment><USER9> Nice! Just signed up to host a probe but looks like they'll only send you one if they don't already have good coverage of your location/network. Not holding out much hope as afaict Europe is already pretty much blanketed :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is this a good test? The fastest result is 5.9ms.. that means that DNS provider won because they happened to be in the same city where dnsperf tested from. That node is in Sao Paulo Brazil.

There are about 400m people in south america, and this test declares a provider to be the fastest for South America because both the provider and the test taker happened to pick Sao Paulo.

<comment><USER11> Not really, no. In general tests for latency aren't that valuable except to perhaps show providers where they might want to place their next PoP, since if you have the ability to look at a finer grain you can actually identify generally where latency presents the greatest problem (i.e. areas where instead of 40ms response time, you see 400ms).

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> My turn to be pedantic :

Speed is is the magnitude of velocity so bigger is faster.

What is displayed here is the time taken - the reciprocal of speed.

Personally I run dnrd, a dns caching proxy [http://dnrd.sourceforge.net/](http://dnrd.sourceforge.net/)

<comment><USER13> > Speed is is the magnitude of velocity so bigger is faster.

If you're going to be pedantic, velocity is a vector, and vectors must reside in a vector space, so what vector space do the velocities in this context reside in?

Ignoring all context to call into doubt the use of a perfectly well-understood word adds nothing to the discussion.

<comment><USER14> That vector space would be the real numbers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> [Full disclosure: I've worked on Amazon Route 53]

It's always neat to see nice data collection like this, but unfortunately the average speed to the authoritative name servers isn't a very meaningful measurement. Real world resolvers bias heavily towards the fastest name server for your zone, and they are so latency sensitive that they'll do things like issue concurrent queries to several name servers at the same time.

The upshot of that is that what really matters is the latency to the closest name server, or at worst the latency to the 3rd fastest server; for the rare boot-strapping cases. Bind, the most common resolver by far will issue up to 3 concurrent queries to different name servers as part of its SRTT algorithm. The next most common resolvers; Unbound, OpenDNS, and Google Public DNS perform pre-fetching and so the latencies aren't contributing to the user experience except for extreme outlier queries.

Some large DNS providers design to this behaviour, and seek to increase the average distance to their DNS servers by operating the name servers for each domain in different data centers. That gives routing and path diversity for the DNS queries and responses. Since network path diversity increases with distance, this works best when you include a location or two that are quite far away, which increases the average latency to those servers - but thanks to resolver behavior doesn't do much to the user-experience.

A write up for Route 53's consideration of the trade-offs is here: [http://www.awsarchitectureblog.com/2014/05/a-case-study- in-g...](http://www.awsarchitectureblog.com/2014/05/a-case-study-in-global- fault-isolation.html) (there's also a video about the role this plays in withstanding DDOS attacks: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7vTPlV8P3U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7vTPlV8P3U) around the 10 minute mark).

Where the average latencies are low, all of the name servers are in close proximity to the measurement point and I would wager that the network path diversity is probably quite low. A small number of link failures or ddos/congestion events, maybe even one, might make all of the servers unreachable.

A more meaningful measurement of the speed itself is to perform regular DNS resolutions, using real-world DNS resolvers spread out across your users. In- browser tests like Google analytics go a long way here, and it's fairly easy to A/B test different providers. The differences tend to be very small. Caching dominates, as others here have mentioned.

Apologies if I seemed to rain on dnsperf's parade here; it's a neat visualization and measuring this stuff is tough. It's always good to see someone take an interest in measuring DNS!

<comment><USER16> [Full disclosure: I've worked on Amazon Route 53 ;)]

The RTT mechanisms in resolvers have a high degree of randomness and will aggressively try the other, slower name servers again. E.g., out of 1000 samples, my desktop in the Netherlands (via XS4All) sees low latencies from Route 53 ~60% of the time:

      $ seq 1 1000 | xargs -n 1 sh -c 'dig test-$0.trosc.com | grep "Query time" | awk "{print \$4}"' | histogram.py -f "%3d"

       18 -  59 [   609]: ∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎
       59 - 100 [     1]:
      100 - 141 [     1]:
      141 - 182 [   229]: ∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎
      182 - 224 [   102]: ∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎
      224 - 265 [    37]: ∎∎∎∎
      265 - 306 [     1]:
      306 - 347 [    15]: ∎
      347 - 388 [     2]:
      388 - 430 [     2]:

This looks decent at the median (20ms), but falls off beyond with 185ms at the 90th percentile and 88ms average, with one >1s outlier removed.

As you pointed out, Route 53 optimizes for availability and DDoS resilience over RTT performance. There are 4 name server IPs to choose from which gives me 4 different paths to 4 different server locations via anycast, giving me 4 different RTT buckets. Few DNS providers go through such lengths for availability. Still, 185ms is a lot. It's probably because anycast/BGP advertisements from the US get to AMS-IX with a smaller number of hops than competing advertisements from European locations. I would guess Route 53's current striping is not heavily tuned for RTTs.

Caching solves part of this, but there are a lot of resolvers out there. As a thought example: Assume your sources of traffic are uniformly distributed among 75000 resolvers and you use 60 second TTLs (pretty standard), then you won't see significant benefit from caching until you get to >>1000 requests/s.

Many applications also have a long-tail of DNS names and basically wont benefit from caching at all. This could be motivated by availability as well (think shuffle sharding :). I'm building one where DNS query time currently dominates page load time (especially aliasing to CloudFront can be slow :). It's useful to understand that there's a general availability vs. latency trade-off in DNS that only gets partially addressed by the resolver.

<comment><USER17> _Assume your sources of traffic are uniformly distributed among 75000 resolvers_

I think your argument is flawed because your users are not uniformly distributed among those 75000 resolvers.

In practice just ~1% of the resolvers (Comcast, NTT, Telekom, etc.) are handling >90% of your users. Consequently the benefits of caching kick in much earlier and stronger than you suggest.

<comment><USER16> Large ISPs and public DNS resolvers typically don't use a single server, but rather a fleet of DNS resolvers each with their own cache. Some providers like Google Public DNS use two-layered cache, but it's still fragmented per server location. A lot of people also have their own resolvers, think companies especially.

The 75000 was mostly a thought example, it's very hard to know what a good number is, although there is a Route 53-related reason for that number. In any case, the benefit of DNS caching is probably much less than you think due to short TTLs and the number of resolvers.

<comment><USER17> _Large ISPs and public DNS resolvers typically don 't use a single server, but rather a fleet [...]_

I assume all major ISPs use 2 or 3 layers of cache, which makes the size of their perimeter fleet largely irrelevant.

 _it 's very hard to know what a good number is_

Could you perhaps ask your former Route53 colleagues for some log-file insight?

 _the benefit of DNS caching is probably much less than you think due to short TTLs and the number of resolvers._

I don't think so. The overwhelming majority of clients uses their ISPs resolver. So all it takes is _one_ hit per major ISP per TTL to keep it zippy for almost everyone. That's why DNS works so well, after all?

<comment><USER16> _I assume all major ISPs use 2 or 3 layers of cache, which makes the size of their perimeter fleet largely irrelevant._

Not really. The resolvers tend to be geographically dispersed and use anycast. Having a multi-layered cache would probably decrease performance, except within a specific location.

There are some nice research papers studying DNS resolvers, e.g. here's one for cellular networks: [http://www.aqualab.cs.northwestern.edu/component/attachments...](http://www.aqualab.cs.northwestern.edu/component/attachments/download/462)

 _Could you perhaps ask your former Route53 colleagues for some log-file insight?_

They see what's behind the cache, not how much traffic the resolvers are taking. Could be the same, could be 100x more, hard to tell.

 _So all it takes is one hit per major ISP per TTL to keep it zippy for almost everyone. That 's why DNS works so well, after all?_

Caching works great with long TTLs, e.g. as used for NS, MX, CNAME records. The problem is the 60 second TTLs that are commonly used for A records in cloud services. Except for reasonably high volume names, it's not highly probable that your A records will be in a given cache at a given time. Many applications also use many different domain names (e.g., one per user), which creates a long tail of low volume names.

Of course, traffic is not uniformly distributed in any way, so there might be parts of the day when your name will be constantly served from cache everywhere, or parts of the world where it is never served from cache.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The site is very clean looking and it is entertaining to look at the results.

That said, there are a number of problems with this:

1\. As stated by other people here, this is only from the perspective of where the tests originated, and is somewhat irrelevant once the DNS result is cached by your ISP.

2\. If you are using any of a number of modern browsers, DNS will be prefetched before you even click on any link, so the DNS time from a user perspective will be zero the majority of the time.

3\. The point of this was originally for choosing a good host for shared JS files. It is much more meaningful to use a distributed host with location based DNS to point you to the nearest fastest server, rather than just making the DNS request itself as fast as possible. Why do you think Google has so many servers all around the world?

</comment><comment><USER19> <disclaimer>I'm from Dyn.</disclaimer>

We're thrilled to see a new DNS performance monitoring tool in the public domain. It takes courage to release things like this to the world and open them up for critique, I applaud jimaek, the author, for doing just that.

As many have noted, the results are highly varied from many of the other reports we see today but more locations and tests are going to continue to improve accuracy.

The testing is synthetic, that is, it's run from within datacenters. I'd encourage anyone who can help provide/sponsor a VPS or resources to also do so. Providing consistent benchmarks against Authoritive Queries from know locations is great but the test network itself needs to expand to get truly meaningful comparisons between providers.

I'd hope to see real-user data also get added in the future, that is, testing on the end of home cable/broadband connections, these tests perform differently to synthetic tests but represent end-user experience more accurately.

It would also be great to see raw lookup performance between providers, exclusive of network latency.

For those interested in diving deeper into DNS performance, I'd also recommend reviewing Cloud Harmony's reports, the latest of which can be found here: [https://cloudharmony.com/reports/state-of-the-cloud- dns-0315...](https://cloudharmony.com/reports/state-of-the-cloud- dns-0315-report)

</comment><comment><USER20> Interesting for me to see DigitalOcean perform so badly (in this particular metric), especially since they seem to be pretty fast for me in general.

<comment><USER11> My 2c:

DNS latency is only one factor in overall perceived performance, and it can be affected greatly by routing, traffic load, and other factors. Additionally, many requests you'll make will likely go through a resolver with caching anyhow, so that too can have a significant impact on perceived latency.

Thus DO (or any provider for that matter) only really needs to provide reasonable resolution times from their servers to be effective.

A more important matter is consistency, i.e. are they consistently returning responses or are they actually dropping packets due to load. With a service that's growing quickly, keeping up with the increase in load on their network probably presents a more significant problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This a a great service – and I'm really happy to see that "world-wide" isn't defined as "North America and Europe". Hopefully it won't be too hard to add Africa, the Middle East and India to the mix as I've seen much more network variability in those regions.

For this kind of measure, it would really be better to use either a median or, better, reporting multiple percentile performance. In my experience, DNS timings have extremes which might be surprising (e.g. most people see 50ms but 10% of visitors see 5+ seconds) and a few large samples will distort an average.

Your 2 second cap will cap the distortion, which is much better than e.g. Google Analytics which will merrily record multi-hour timings, but I'd really prefer to see e.g. 50th, 75th and 95th percentiles to see whether a particular provider might have better worst-case performance than another.

</comment><comment><USER5> Throwing my $0.02 into the pool...

I've been very happy with DNSMadeEasy (although I think the name somehow diminishes it's technical viability somehow - not sure why, but it sounds "cheesy" which is not reflective of the service at all). I am very glad to see them in the top 10 for the most part, they offer a fantastic product, well documented easy to use API and great management panel.

For comparison I've tried Zerigo, PowerDNS, UltraDNS, Dyn and Route53 and dropped them all for either cost or technical reasons. For my small use cases I've found DNSMadeEasy to be a nice middle-ground.

Would be interesting if the OP could add some sort of subjective rating options from outside sources in terms of user reviews. Could rank the providers on performance (latency), cost, functionality (API, Anycast, etc) and management.

</comment><comment><USER9> I was surprised Dyn weren't faster. Drilling down, I wonder what was going on between 25th Feb and 11th March? [http://www.dnsperf.com/provider/Dyn](http://www.dnsperf.com/provider/Dyn)

<comment><USER19> <disclaimer>I'm from Dyn</disclaimer>

Dyn's early results were not representative of our network or service. This was as a result of the limited number of nodes currently testing and the location of these nodes. We found a routing issue between Azure and ourselves via one carrier leading to elevated results for a short period of time.

There's been great commentary on here about providers showing as fast because of the proximity of the tests. This will only be rectified by adding more monitoring and a broader base of test locations.

I know jimaek is working on getting new locations online - if anyone here can assist in providing or sponsoring test locations, I encourage you to reach out to him.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Nice to see OVH doing well. I have been really happy with their smallest 'VPS classic', at a third of a price of a t2.micro or linode (2.40€) it's a lot of bang for the buck. Plus I have a top level domain from them for like one euro per year (.ovh) so I can get a free ssl cert from StartSSL as well. Dirt. Cheap.

</comment><comment><USER23> Does godaddy use a third party DNS or were they just not on the list?

</comment><comment><USER24> 100ms on Google DNS, there must be something wrong with your test...

</comment><comment><USER25> How is OpenDNS and DNSCrypt not in the list? Am I missing something?

<comment><USER11> The tests appear to be looking at a subset of authoritative DNS providers, hence OpenDNS (and Google Public Resolvers), which are resolvers, not authoritative name servers, are not present.

<comment><USER13> I'm trying to understand here: Aren't Google's Public Resolvers authoritative for the domain names Google itself owns?

<comment><USER11> I'm fairly certain their resolver name servers are separate from their authoritative authoritative name servers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> Ono-Sendai X-axis should be labelled.</comment>


Protonet Private Cloud Servers - <AUTHOR> https://protonetinc.com/products/private-cloud-servers/ <comment><USER2> Thanks @antitamper for posting this.

If you've feedback concerning our product feel free to comment. The operating system behind our software is a heroku-like platform that allows for simple git push deployments: [https://experimental- platform.github.io/](https://experimental-platform.github.io/)

Disclaimer: I'm the co-founder of Protonet</comment>


Floating oil droplet contains hundreds of degenerate optical modes - <AUTHOR> https://physicsworld.com/a/floating-oil-droplet-contains-hundreds-of-degenerate-optical-modes/ <comment><AUTHOR> From the abstract, here: [https://journals.aps.org/prx/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevX.10.03...](https://journals.aps.org/prx/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevX.10.031049)

Spherical resonators have a high degree of degeneracy thanks to their highest symmetry; yet, fabricating perfect spheres is challenging because even a stem to hold the sphere breaks the symmetry. Here we fabricate a levitating spherical resonator that is evanescently coupled to a standard optical fiber. We characterize the resonators to exhibit an optical quality factor exceeding a billion, 10 μm radius, and sphericity to within less than 1 Å. Using our high quality and sphericity, we experimentally lift degeneracies of orders higher than 200, which we resolve with optical finesse exceeding 10 000 000. We then present our experimentally measured degenerate modes as well as their density of states next to our corresponding theoretical calculation. Our contactless photonic resonator is compatible with standard telecom fiber technology, exhibits the highest resonance enhancement as defined by (quality factor)/(mode volume), and the modes populating our cavity show the highest order of degeneracy reported in any system ever studied."

Levitating perfect spheres for ultra senitive high bandwidth communication and computation?</comment>


Ask HN: Simple steps for thwarting web tracking - <AUTHOR> Despite the relatively good news this morning (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/28/technology/fcc-tightens-privacy-rules-for-broadband-providers.html), I've been thinking about how best one can alter their browsing habits in order to best preserve their privacy.
These are my steps:
* Browse only in incognito/private mode
* Use adblock and/or privacy badger plugins
* Use a VPN
* Do not search/surf while logged into gmail or any social media
What other basic, simple steps can be taken in addition to these? <comment><USER2> There are Mozilla Firefox plug ins that can get the job done .. one of them is noscript. Give it a shot</comment>


Open community platform for aspiring entrepreneurs – BuiltForFree - <AUTHOR> http://www.builtforfree.com <comment><USER2> When can i submit an idea?

<comment><AUTHOR> You can submit your idea from Jan 15th to Feb 15th, 2016.</comment></comment>


Boom in Dodgy Wall Street Deals Points to Market Trouble Ahead - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-16/boom-in-dodgy-wall-street-deals-points-to-market-trouble-ahead <comment><USER2> > The timing of the IPOs only serves to further stoke the suspicions of those > Wall Street observers who see a plot to transfer a private-market bubble > into public hands.

<comment><USER3> In a world of ample private capital, there are only two real reasons to IPO: providing an exit for investors and raising monies that can't be raised in private. Neither reflect well on the future prospects of the company.

<comment><USER4> A third option - raising capital from a public market may be cheaper holistically. Perhaps the private money is heavy into competition, and you're worries about onerous terms.

I'm sure we could think of other options if we tried really hard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The 2009 fiscal stimulus gave us negative interest rates which fueled high equity valuations. Add in 2016 US tax law, and that's why we're where we are today.

<comment><USER6> Agreed. I'm curious how it is all going to break. Is it just the pension funds that will be left holding the bag? How much of a bailout is going to be required? It seems like companies are in a cycle of extracting all equity and selling worse debt to make payments on the already created bad debt.

<comment><USER7> My bullshit theory: it'll break next year because bonus depreciation effectively boosted this year by borrowing against the next {3,5,7,10}.

<comment><USER8> Can you ELI5? What's {3,5,7,10}?

<comment><USER7> When a company buys something (a capital expense) they are allowed to deduct its loss in value from their income every year to reduce their taxes. Calculating the exact value of things is hard to do without selling them, so for tax purposes things typically lose some fraction of their initial value every year. The number of years it takes the item to lose all of its value is typically 3, 5, 7, or 10 -- or my sample is biased. I am not an accountant.

In any case, the new "bonus depreciation" rules let companies take all of the depreciation in the first year. Effectively, they were able to shift their deductions from tax year 2019, 2020, 2021... into tax year 2018. I am sure many did/will. It's a nice trick to score a quick bump in profit, but it only works once.

If the market is full of dumb models that inappropriately extrapolate this bump into future years, the people investing money on the basis of those dumb models will be disappointed.

<comment><USER9> For those that are not as familar with depreciation. You have to pay taxes on profits, when you buy equipment/machines/buildings/etc. (called PP&E) that last for many years the tax code forces you to recognize the expense for tax purposes over the useful life of the asset. So you pay $100 for a new piece of equipment that will last ten years, every year for ten years you get to recognize $10 of expenses, so your taxable income is lowered by $10 each year. The tax law let everyone expense the entire value in the first year, so it encouraged purchases of PP&E as $1 dollar saved today is worth more then $1 saved ten years from now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If I've learned anything about the stock market, it's that no one knows what it's going to do. The only good plan is to make sure that you're going to be able to stay afloat if the market tanks tomorrow.

<comment><USER11> Lots of people know what it's going to do. Nobody knows when it's going to do it nor the magnitude, so the knowledge is basically useless.

<comment><USER8> That's functionally equivalent to not knowing what it's going to do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I closely align with 'Boglehead' investing philosophy. This school of thinking tries to minimize risk by emphasizing consistent investment over time, avoiding attempts to time the market and pick stock 'winners'.

One of the best parts of Boglehead culture is a set of short, easily remembered phrases that describe core principles. In this case, I think of the phrase "Nobody knows Nothing!", which means there has never been anyone who can consistently tell when the market is about to spike upward or downward.

</comment><comment><USER13> I concur, something definitely feels very off recently. The question is what can we do to ensure our survival?

</comment><comment><USER14> So... what term put option would be best?

<comment><USER15> I tried to play this game before 2000 and it's amazing how often market can have an even steeper upturn before it finally crashes.

<comment><USER16> Susquehanna made a killing during the dotcom crash by selling near-dated options and buying longer-dated options. Essentially, the majority of the market was pricing the dotcom crash to be very similar to the 1987 crash. Instead, it was closer to a slow bleed.

<comment><USER17> The flip side of "The markets can stay irrational..." is "Someone will probably get lucky anyway. But just because they did, doesn't mean you can learn anything useful from them."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I honestly don't know how we've been in a bull market this long. Trump's been turning a lot of economic knobs and the market hasn't really responded drastically like it has in the past. When it does crash, it's going to crash hard. Just my opinion.

<comment><USER19> Why would it crash hard unless interest rates go up by a significant amount? The financial industry is filled with tons of money that is looking for returns - it's just not going not sit in a bank and let inflation rot its value. If there's a downturn, it will be very temporary as Wall Street is so anxious/trigger happy. They'll immediately get greedy and buy any dips.

Everyday, there is new money flowing into the system automatically, without any conscious decision. It's coming from 401Ks, IRAs, etc. That money needs to be put into action.

<comment><USER20> > Why would it crash hard unless interest rates go up by a significant amount?

The 2008-era crisis _in theory_ should have resulted in a whole heap of financial managers taking their companies bankrupt/to a place of horrid returns and being blacklisted from ever managing a lemonade stand. But they were bailed out, so now they got promotions instead for record returns or whatever it is they've been doing since. Since the finance industry has substantial control over what everyone else does, that leaks out into the real world.

So, the intuition is that the system is being corrupted and people with no ability to make good decisions are being put in charge. At some point that should boil over. You can fit math models to that and guess which metric will blow out first.

I'm not sure how much I buy that argument; people have an incredible ability to put up with suboptimal circumstances. But when you put idiots in charge there is always a risk that they do something spectacularly stupid so my personal guess is at some point the pensions crack and trigger something. It is a spectator sport in a way. Maybe America is productive enough that they can cope with a few bad eggs in the financial markets. Maybe the taxpayers can shoulder all burdens!

 _POSTSCRIPT_

Just for fun, veering off topic.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bank_mergers_in_the_Un...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bank_mergers_in_the_United_States)

My interpretation is that something went wrong with bank regulation in the late 70s or early 80s. That is when the too-big-to-fail snowball started rolling; since then the stresses in the system seem to have been building. 2008 was a nasty blow.

<comment><USER21> >My interpretation is that something went wrong with bank regulation in the late 70s or early 80s. That is when the too-big-to-fail snowball started rolling; since then the stresses in the system seem to have been building. 2008 was a nasty blow.

Yes, it's called "Ronald Wilson Reagan" and was worsened when Glass Steagall was repealed by Clinton in a remarkably short-sighted move. Another poster already mentioned the Savings and Loan crisis that happened in the 90s that took taxpayers for a ride to the tune of 130 billion dollars (around 250 billion dollars today). We should have learned from it but for some reason (probably greed) we made the same mistakes again with Glass-Steagall and then not even 10 years after repealing that we reaped our rewards: subprime mortgages falling apart and taxpayers footing the bill while thousands were foreclosed on. The same is happening with auto loans right now.

For some reason, if you are a white collar criminal, the rules don't apply to you. No matter how much you fuck up and how much illegal shit you do, none of it sticks. Look at Boeing. 346 people died, but I honestly bet the worst thing that happens to any of the managers that OK'd that plane is they lose their jobs; realistically they probably won't even lose that. Maybe not get a bonus.

The common thread here is not just with deregulation being seen as the magical cure all that fixes all our problems (because as it turns out, sometimes we have regulations for very good reasons!) but that there are simply no consequences for doing bad things if you are stealing from or hurting the average American taxpayer. The only difference between Bernie Madoff and the bankers in 2008 that grifted us all is that Madoff made the mistake of trying to steal from the rich.

<comment><USER22> What particular grounds do you have for blaming Reagan?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Peter Thiel Is Bankrolling an Unapproved Offshore Herpes Vaccine Trial - <AUTHOR> https://digg.com/2017/peter-thiel-herpes-vaccine-trial <comment><USER2> The argument in favor of the tests: [https://www.siumed.edu/pr/highlights/game-changer-herpes- vac...](https://www.siumed.edu/pr/highlights/game-changer-herpes-vaccine- shows-promise.html)

Excerpts:

>"Many of the virus vaccines we currently put in our kids — chickenpox, mumps, measles and rubella — were developed using live-attenuated viruses in the '50s, '60s and '70s when the regulatory landscape was more relaxed," he says, "and they have worked remarkably well."

In the United States, a noticeable shift in research focus occurred around the time of the Belmont Report, published in 1978, which summarized ethical principles and guidelines for research involving human subjects. The FDA began erring on the side of caution, and expediency became a casualty of the government's procedures.

>Dr. Halford feels the relative risk is fairly clear-cut.

"Relative risk is not a new concept," says Halford. "Our technology is much better today, yet within first-world countries the mindset for developing vaccines has moved away from relative risk and toward the legal approach that asks 'Is there any risk whatsoever?'" Dr. Halford smiles. "There's risk when you walk out the door each day."

He believes the more humane, common-sense approach weighs the risk of testing a vaccine candidate versus the risk of doing nothing.

"For example, in 2016 we know that about 60 million people will get newly infected by HSV-1 and 2—about a million people per week—and 2 to 3 percent are going to progress to a lifetime of chronic disease," he says. "Many of those people will face a lifetime of never-ending isolation and pain caused by a chronic herpes infection. These can also have devastating effects on the psyche of patients."

"So, do we run a small trial using something that's been proven safe on animals for the past 20 years or do we sit on the sidelines?" he asks. "If we sit on the sidelines, people suffer."

</comment><comment><USER3> I wish the reporter had clarified _why_ Rational Vaccines pursued this unconventional approach.

The sentence below seems to imply that this was all they could afford:

 _After he failed to secure federal funding and an [institutional review board], Halford moved ahead with the trial offshore._

But with Peter Thiel as an investor, I assume that money (within reason) wasn't the primary motivator.

In general, I'm dismayed by the breathless, sensationalistic tone of this article. The people involved don't seem stupid or malevolent, so I'd like to understand better their rationale for what they're doing.

<comment><USER4> They're doing it because they can. The FDA wouldn't allow it in the USA, so they're infecting people for science in a place where there are fewer protections afforded the citizenry.

From an academic standpoint this is ethically questionable. From a purely moral standpoint this is disgusting.

<comment><USER2> What if it cures the sick without causing problems during the tests. Would that still be disgusting?

<comment><USER5> If I play Russian Roulette and don't get shot, does that mean the people who told me it was dangerous were wrong?

<comment><USER6> Do you have the final say on what goes into your body or do you not?

It is only morally disgusting if the study participants are purposefully _misled_ or _forced_ to submit to the study. This is absolutely NOT the case here.

<comment><AUTHOR> You do, however, the MDs do not. And if they are not using MDs, that is insane too. That they are injecting something without IRB approval is nuts as is, that any licensed MD in the US would do so is doubly crazy and I would like to never be practiced on by them. The medical field is a different beast than, say, putting on an aftermarket car-horn or putting super instead of unleaded into the gas tank. The vast majority of people, including nurses and other MDs, have no idea how a specific medicine works or the complexities therein. Docs are required to help them, not to hurt them, we've thought so for thousands of years. Yes, many may say that they are helping the people, but the large majority of other MDs, via the IRB, say that they are hurting them. I'm gonna go with the IRBs here and say this is crazy stuff and sets a very dangerous precedent.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: EasyDev – Graphical app creator that generates customizable source code - easydev-info http://www.easydev.org <comment><AUTHOR> no way!</comment>


The Social Network You Aren't Good Enough to Join  - <AUTHOR> http://www.appscout.com/2008/01/inside_the_exclusive_diamond_l.php

<comment><USER2> Also, ASmallWorld: <http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/06/fashion/06smallworld.html>

_"I need to rent 20 very luxury sports cars for an event in Switzerland on the 6th September," a member wrote recently on the Forum, aSmallWorld's popular nucleus. "The cars should be: Maserati -- Ferrari -- Lamborghini -- Aston Martin ONLY!"

Another announced: "If anyone is looking for a private island, I now have one available for purchase in Fiji."_

</comment><comment><USER3> It's brilliant!

Squeeze recurring revenues right out of people's egos! :D

</comment><comment><USER4> I wouldn't want to join any social network that would have me as a member.

</comment><comment><USER5> Very rich people are boring. They don't have ambitions.

</comment><comment><USER6> It's a meat market. I applied (out of intellectual curiosity) and got in, but decided not to actually go through with it when I learned that birthday, age, height and "build" (choices are "slim", "athletic", "average" and "curvy") are required information before you can activate your account.

</comment><comment><USER7> wow, how tacky

Interesting to see if the cartmanland marketing works though :p

</comment><comment><USER8> $50/mo, that's all?

</comment><comment><USER9> I've gotta assume any publication that could write a positive review of this thing has to be pay-for-play.

</comment><comment><USER10> The social network that once you're 'good enough' to join, you won't want to.</comment>


After 4 years with Nginx, we switched to Caddy – Here is why - <AUTHOR> https://engineering.hashnode.com/after-4-years-with-nginx-we-switched-to-caddy-here-is-why-cjxbv8eb2001ke8s1yl7ndroz <comment><USER2> Somewhat tangential, but I'll take Haproxy anyday over Nginx for the simple fact that Nginx is a a Freemium product, rather than a true open source libre software entity.

I somehow failed to realize over the years that their Pro product is $2500 (given the ubiquity of usage in the OSS community).

I am not contesting it's value, as it brings several vital features to the table, but I feel that it should be mentioned.

Familiarity with Haproxy's dead-simple configuration (although this Caddy seems as simple as pie!) and it's reliability and scalability leads me to also prefer it, even in Kubernetes land, so I do apologize for giving Caddy short shrift in this comment.

It appears that Caddy differentiates merely on free downloads and business SUPPORT plans, which is much cleaner feeling to me, so I applaud this effort to re-direct peoples attention in front-end land.

<comment><USER3> What do you mean by "true open source libre software entity"? HAProxy has enterprise offerings, similar to NGINX: [https://www.haproxy.com/products/product- comparison/](https://www.haproxy.com/products/product-comparison/)

What is off-putting about that, exactly?</comment></comment>