Human data shows how we move in cities - <AUTHOR> http://cities.human.co

<comment><USER2> Perhaps the decay times on the trails is too long, but I can't really detect any patterns here, other than that people seem to walk, run, cycle and drive down roads. After a few mins, all this seems to do is highlight the road structure of a city. A shorter trail decay would highlight the people commuting and show activity for transport type by time of day.

Another interesting metric would be to adjust brightness based on length of journey.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point. I played around with different decay times a lot, but it was very hard to settle on a decay time and opacity settings that worked for most cities, since the data set from city to city was varying in size. If I would re-render the movies, I'd definitely do try renders with lower decay times, especially for cities like NY, LA, etc.

<comment><USER3> It might be interesting to see whether or not an ideal decay time correlates with anything.

<comment><USER4> Using a wavelet time frequency analysis is what they generally do to highlight these kinds of patterns when dealing with brain activations of neural populations. It gives you an idea of power of a specific frequency over time [e.g., [http://www.lauriefrick.com/wp- content/uploads/2011/07/wavlet...](http://www.lauriefrick.com/wp- content/uploads/2011/07/wavlet_coherence_HRV_Amschler2.jpg)]. And apparently it's already been used for analogous purposes: [ [http://www.paramics- online.com/downloads/technicaldocs/wavel...](http://www.paramics- online.com/downloads/technicaldocs/wavelet_transforms_tec09.pdf)] :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Any chance at open sourcing the data? There are other cities that would be interesting to see that are not included in your sample. Are you interested in licensing out use of the data to 3rd parties? So much data!

<comment><AUTHOR> No concrete plans yet. We never share any personal identifiable data, without explicit consent of our users. So if we would like to make (parts) of our data publicly available, we have to anonymize and aggregate that data first. For now we're focused on our app first.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Strava, a run/bike tracking app, released something similar with their data.

[http://labs.strava.com/heatmap/#3/-56.00000/50.00000/blue/bo...](http://labs.strava.com/heatmap/#3/-56.00000/50.00000/blue/both)

<comment><USER7> HN discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7687900](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7687900)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This reminded me of a fragment from Cryptonomicon about collecting history of elevation of people walking around the city and trying to reconstruct a street map from it. While an interesting exercise, we just carry precise position beacons with us these days.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm from Mexico City, and I'm genuinely surprised by the biking activity.

Unfortunately, only in the touristic areas, and near the "Ecobici" routes, there are bike-exclusive lanes. On the other side, drivers feel entitled to use the streets exclusively, and they perceive bikers as a hindrance in their way.

I wanted to commute by bike to my work, but at the end I gave up, because I didn't want to get hit by a car and risk my life like hardcore bikers do.

<comment><AUTHOR> Our tracking accuracy overal is good, but slow motorized transport versus bike rides have the highest error rates. That means that in a small percentage of the cases slow, bumpy car rides might get detected as biking and the other way around. Movement patterns vary quite a bit from city to city, especially for public transport. Users can correct detection errors, but that doesn't catch all cases. We have a slight bias towards cycling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> At least in Dublin, it seems to confuse Biking with Sailing (see north of Dun Laoghaire pier)

Otherwise very cool!

<comment><AUTHOR> Sharp. Thanks! In some cases we mix up (slow) motorized transport and cycling. We only categorize walking, cycling, running, active (active at one location) and motorized transport, so any other moving activity might end up in one of those categories. For daily use our tracking is pretty accurate for most activity types and users can manually correct any mistakes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is pretty cool, although it would be nice to see the different types of transportation across the same city. I see dramatic differences in the visualizations, sure, but they seem as dramatic as the differences in the layout and structure of these cities.

While I'm giving feedback, I must say I had to pause and re-read this sentence many times: "Human helps people move almost twice as much in six weeks". As I'm not familiar with the app, I went straight to that sentence and was baffled about some person who helps people change their place of residence a lot more for 6 weeks, but a lot more... compared to what? Took a while to arrive at "An app named 'Human' helps get people to move around more than they otherwise would within six weeks of beginning usage".

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback.

We rendered visuals for different activities in all cities. Click one of the cities on the homepage for details. We've also shared all visuals (dark and light) and some bonus gifs on Dropbox: [https://www.dropbox.com/sh/58chppkj2ckim7s/AAAchKhSL56mjaaiA...](https://www.dropbox.com/sh/58chppkj2ckim7s/AAAchKhSL56mjaaiASKrMxP-a)

<comment><USER12> New York is missing a graphic

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Fixed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If you liked this, you may also enjoy Foursquare's visualization of checkins, which shows the pulse of the city and the change in human activities (and which areas are populated) as the day progresses:

New York City [http://vimeo.com/75413842](http://vimeo.com/75413842)

San Francisco [http://vimeo.com/75416817](http://vimeo.com/75416817)

Tokyo [http://vimeo.com/75404940](http://vimeo.com/75404940)

</comment><comment><USER14> Does anyone know if there is an app that will produce a similar map, but that uses just your own data? I would love to have a map like that that shows where in my city I have been and that would encourage me to see more spots.

<comment><USER15> Strava will let you do this if you pay for premium. It's called Personal Heatmaps. It's typically used for running/cycling/swimming, but nothing stops you from using it to track your location.

[http://www.strava.com](http://www.strava.com)

<comment><USER14> I use Strava for my runs and rides, and you can get the heatmap (or at least similar) through the third party VeloViewer ([http://veloviewer.com/](http://veloviewer.com/)) by looking at your "wheel".

I basically want my always on and exportable Moves ([http://moves- app.com/](http://moves-app.com/)) data to port into "Personal Heatmaps" of Strava.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Mexico City is not showing up as a leader in walking. I find that hard to believe.

<comment><USER17> This is a _really_ self-selected data set. If you look at the New York map you'd think people didn't exist in most of Brooklyn and Queens.

Ditto Vancouver where I originally come from - lots of activity downtown and in rich, young neighborhoods, but nearly zero activity in middle class or older neighborhoods.

It's not just selecting for iPhone users, it's selecting for wealthy, young, iPhone users. On a more meta level these maps are an interesting proxy for wealth, race, and age.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I can't make a meaningful interpretation from this. It looks pretty, but what does it mean?

</comment><comment><USER19> Does anyone know the name of the music that's playing?</comment>


[WIP] List of awesome web apps that work without asking for user account - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/aviaryan/awesome-no-login-web-apps <comment><USER2> Nice list. I recognize some of the entries. Looks like this evening will be spent testing new apps. _grin_ _grin_</comment>


OAuth of Fealty: Resignation beyond sorrow on the Facebook Platform and beyond - <AUTHOR> http://m.bogost.com/blog/oauth_of_fealty.shtml

<comment><USER3> Facebook Platform isn't the only offender.

Occasionally I found basic features on Facebook website just don't work. For example: 2-3 days ago, I can't put description on my newly uploaded photo. I have to complete the photo upload workflow, and then click the newly uploaded photo on my album and edit the description.

Regression on basic feature.

I suppose Facebook is just like any other companies with sharp growth: you don't want to know what's inside it (or how the sausage is made). That boils down to ship features and ignore everything else (documentation, good design, good habit, better architecture, better quality, etc).

I'm not saying that's a very bad idea for them because I've seen this practice a lot in our industry.

Having said that, this is one of the many reasons why young startups want to hire the brightest and smartest engineers out of college: they need warm bodies smart enough to move forward, to deal with legacy codebases and figuring a clever (but may be dirty) hack to workaround the legacy design decision, less on solving complex new problems. The latter may be reserved for the infrastructure teams where people develop back-end infrastructure component like Haystack or something along that line.

The recent "rant" stories/articles of the quality of Facebook Platform showed us the same repeated story we've read before in the past and to confirm that Facebook engineers were not way much better than Googlers or Yahoo or Microsoft engineers.

<comment><USER4> _Having said that, this is one of the many reasons why young startups want to hire the brightest and smartest engineers out of college: they need warm bodies smart enough to move forward, to deal with legacy codebases and figuring a clever (but may be dirty) hack to workaround the legacy design decision, less on solving complex new problems._

Wasn't it the brightest and smartest engineers who created these problems?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> What a great post. Given that Facebook's official motto is to "move fast and break things", I've always considered developing on their platform akin to contracting for the Marquis de Sade.

<comment><USER6> I wouldn't have put it so eloquently, but relying on consistency in a rapidly moving platform is risky.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> While working with the Facebook iOS SDK was a horrible experience, I don't get where this is coming from:

"Apple pushes new iOS releases...breaking software written relatively recently"

Can this really be considered true? I can't remember anything deprecated that didn't still function in iOS, with the exception of the UDID and mac address APIs which were deprecated for privacy reasons (and developers have had ages to move away from UDID). iOS 3 era code I download from Github still runs fine. At worst, this summer Apple required apps to support the iPhone 5 format, but that's a pretty easy upgrade to support, and a major user facing one.

<comment><USER8> Admittedly, it's mostly lots of little things over the course of iOS updates, small changes in the behavior of specific SDK packages rather than full-bore failures. I may have overstated that point and it certainly pales in comparison to FB. Still, you get the gist right?

<comment><USER7> Yeah I get the gist. Post definitely resonated for me and I've never written anything that's totally on Facebook's platform, like Cow Clicker was.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Quote of the day:

"Facebook is like a kindergarten run by child molesters."

<comment><USER10> I liked "The Facebook Platform is a shit crayon.".

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Another reason to support federated social networking platforms like [http://pump.io/](http://pump.io/) and [https://tent.io/](https://tent.io/) that are outside the control of any individual company.

<comment><USER12> I feel like these come and go every few years; look at StatusNet or Diaspora for example.

Hell, I still remember when MSN tried to integrate with AIM and Y! messenger by reverse-engineering the protocols and putting them into the MSN client.

<comment><USER13> status.net and diaspora are still here and working just fine... ?

<comment><USER14> Can you really say a social network is working if nobody uses it?

<comment><USER13> Yes, I can. The networks work fine. If people need more than "this works fine, it's free, and you can use it instead of the other way around" as a reason, the people are broken.

20 years ago we hardly had cell phones and that was just _fine_ , if you actually loved your Grandmother you'd always find a way to send her some baby photos... and now we start to cry because Diaspora is kinda basic? Even though that would change real quick if only 5% of the FB users would switch to it. I think that's silly, so I for one am reachable by phone and email, and my friends are always welcome to join me "on the actual web". Until then, I'm not supporting them in their self-harm: for whatever reasons people use Facebook, I try to avoid being one of them (edit: one of the reasons, that is).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Unrelated

Did a small oauth project a few weeks back trying to integrate with web mail providers - gmail, ymail and outlook.

Gmail was a bit of a pain, but basically worked.

Ymail - a much huger pain, and extra hoops and far less usable documentation explaining basic workflow - "oauth" libraries continually failed me, and _only_ using the crappy php4-style example code worked. At the end of the day, it didn't come close to being easy to use (and required my users to jump through extra hoops).

Outlook/microsoft webmail? Just didn't work at all . Oauth connectivity worked, as easily as gmail, but they simply don't allow sending at all - <USER2> access to the inbox at all. Oh sure I can 'download contacts!' but can't use outlook/livemail to actually handle the sending programmatically.

It really hit me that as bad or potentially bad that google might be in this space, they're 'winning' hearts and minds just because they're less bad than the alternatives. I used to wonder why so many services and add-ons were built on Google properties vs Yahoo and MS, but I wonder no more; Yahoo/MS just don't want to compete in that space (making stuff at least usable for developers). Facebook also seems to fall in to that camp, but right now they don't have any major competition (except from G+ it seems). But FB still has an upper hand with a full platform (however crappy). I suspect when G+ rolls out stronger API stuff, the game will change dramatically.

</comment><comment><USER16> I wish I could write rants as poetically as this.

</comment><comment><USER17> Weird. The site has both a www- and non-www version: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6141702](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6141702).

</comment><comment><USER18> This is a very poetic post. I like it for its literary value.

</comment><comment><USER19> I laughed out loud at this:

The Facebook Platform is a shape-shifting, chimeric shadow of suffering and despair, a cruel joke perpetrated upon honest men and women at the brutish whim of bloodthirsty sociopaths sick with bilious greed and absent mercy or decency. Developing for the Facebook Platform is picking out the wallpaper for one's own death row holding cell, the cleaver for one's own blood sacrifice.

</comment><comment><USER20> I was thinking of making a Facebook chat client as a fun project, but this post made me reconsider.

<comment><USER21> You can do something with Twitter instead. No reason to completely drop a project if the first place you look to host it doesn't seem appealing.

Twitter has their share of warts, but they're markedly different when it comes to the _speed_ of "breaking things".

Something to keep in mind though: You're working with someone else's platform which means you participate at their pleasure. Any API provider can do whatever they please with their product so try to decouple API handling from the rest of your client as much as you can so you can reduce the likelihood of being pulled by the tides.

<comment><USER22> The OAuth bit in the title of this post reminds me that that change broke one of the author's previous projects on Twitter: [http://www.bogost.com/blog/it_soared_a_bird.shtml](http://www.bogost.com/blog/it_soared_a_bird.shtml)

Twitter's responsibility does seem somewhat less, anyway, in that they've never been as platformy as Facebook: Facebook actively claimed that this was a place to deploy your games and other apps, but then broke stuff constantly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The "resignation beyond sorrow" \- what a phrase! It's such a Kierkegaardian phrase I was surprised to google it and find it was not an allusion but original.

</comment><comment><USER24> "OAuth of Fealty: Resignation beyond sorrow on the Facebook Platform and beyond" Would be a great metal song title.

</comment><comment><USER25> > "Here's a thing," young white dude founder blogs...

If he would've said black instead of white or dudette instead of dude, Hacker News would have had this guy's header on a platter. Racists, the lot of you.

<comment><USER26> Nope, he's asserting that the founders come from privileged groups. Punching up is acceptable, punching down is not.

<comment><USER27> Great metaphor. Stealing it. Thanks.

<comment><USER26> Thanks, but not mine. :) I think this may be the original:

[http://reasonableconversation.wordpress.com/2012/07/19/punch...](http://reasonableconversation.wordpress.com/2012/07/19/punching- up/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm surprised this article doesn't touch upon the unending hell that is "OAuth" and "federated identity"

</comment><comment><USER29> There is an excellent solution to the author's dilemma. He does not have to use Facebook or its API. That's the great thing about capitalism and the free market. He has a choice. Also, because he is not motivated by money, he can make his own, perfect platform, motivated by the plight of the proletariat and it will be noble and superior in every way. He can give away the games he makes because who needs money in such a utopia... Give me a break. Shut up and make a better API that cares about backward compatibility. Give the aloof moral superiority a rest.

<comment><USER30> Interesting, I wasn't aware that capitalism and the free market absolves everything from criticism.

<comment><USER29> Criticize Facebook. It sucks. However, arguing that it sucks because the developers are privileged white dudes motivated by making money is not a valid argument. The author even points to an example of a good api from Microsoft. Do you really believe the developers at Microsoft back in the 90s weren't motivated by making money? The Facebook API sucks for so many reasons. Zuckerburg originally wrote Facebook in PHP, he was not a computer scientist scientist, their motto is "move fast and break things". It's an experiment and they made some mistakes. To imply its flaws are rooted in capitalism is wrong. I realize profit and money are popular punching bags. It feels good to think you are morally superior and have other people think you are a good person. However, the hate and bile being spewed at anyone trying to make a buck is irrational. No one is holding a gun to anyone's head telling them they have to use Facebook. Go out and make something better.

<comment><USER22> I think you're reading some kind of general anti-capitalism into the post that isn't there. Bogost's view seems to be that chasing _short-term_ profit is a significant problem in this sector, which is why he uses Microsoft as a counterexample of something that _was_ a profit-oriented business but still managed to keep stable APIs, because they were oriented longer-term. If he were trying to make a general anti-market or anti-capitalist point it would make no sense for both his pro and con examples to be large for-profit tech companies.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The 11% for IE11 challenge - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.windows.com/ie/b/ie/archive/2013/10/28/let-s-build-a-faster-web-and-eat-pizza-take-the-11-for-ie11-challenge.aspx

<comment><USER2> The blog and the 11% for IE11 landing page both imply that if you complete the challenge, you will win the prizes described.

For instance, the blog entry says: "If you can get 11% better page load performance from your site, we'll send you and your team some 11 goodness." I'm no lawyer, but that sounds like a valid unilateral contract to me.

Similarly, the landing page says: "Show us how you got 11% better page load performance in your organization's home web page and we'll send you all this goodness."

But in the fine print, it says: "The first 11 organizations that meet the qualifications above will each receive the following: 11 pizzas (in the form of a $120 gift card), 11 year-long subscriptions to BrowserStack (ARV $240 each), and 11 copies of Parallels Desktop 9 for Mac (ARV $79 each)."

There's a heck of a big difference between "If you do this, we'll give you this" and "If you're one of the first 11 people to do this, we'll give you this."

The fact that there will be only 11 prize winners should be made more clear. After all, there is PIZZA on the line. And there's nothing like a pizza bait- and-switch to get developers angry at you.

<comment><USER3> @jawns. We have updated the blog post to clarify. I encourage you to try out the new tools and I hope the perf testing is worth the pizza+.

<comment><USER2> Thanks. I hope you'll also update the landing page of the challenge.

A little more feedback, which I hope you'll take as constructive:

As I said above, there's quite a difference between "if you do this, you'll win this" and "if you're one of the first 11 people in the United States to do this, you'll win this."

As I see it, if I have any chance of winning the prize, I've got to drop everything right now and scramble to complete the challenge, and even then, who knows how many other people are doing the same thing?

So, my incentive has just dropped from, "This is exciting! I have a decent shot at getting pizza!" to "It's extremely unlikely that I'll win. Why bother?"

I would therefore suggest that you look for ways to increase the value proposition to developers. I'm not saying you have to spend millions -- but maybe find some creative ways to reward developers outside of the first 11, such as by featuring some of the success stories on your blog.

<comment><USER3> You bet. Feedback well taken jawns and thanks! This has been live for 2 hours so I still think you have an opportunity here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Am I the only person who is sensitive to JPEG artifacts? Look at this image from the article. Why did they use such low quality JPEG?

[http://blogs.windows.com/cfs- file.ashx/__key/communityserver...](http://blogs.windows.com/cfs- file.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components- weblogfiles/00-00-00-59-33-metablogapi/clip_5F00_image002_5F00_2073DC23.jpg)

<comment><USER5> JPEG from article, 18,873 bytes:

[http://blogs.windows.com/cfs- file.ashx/__key/communityserver...](http://blogs.windows.com/cfs- file.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components- weblogfiles/00-00-00-59-33-metablogapi/clip_5F00_image002_5F00_2073DC23.jpg)

PNG grabbed from actual site: 19,764 bytes:

[http://f.cl.ly/items/3w3k2O3n0y0v2W0L1p40/lossless.png](http://f.cl.ly/items/3w3k2O3n0y0v2W0L1p40/lossless.png)

About the same size, _much_ better looking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Doesn't make up for the fact that I spent most of my time writing workaround for the stupid rendering bugs their "30% faster" browser introduces. Even just basic CSS layouts and constantly wrong in IE.

<comment><USER7> I know, I don't care if they are objectively the best browser (I doubt they are), my grudge against them runs too deep. I want them to fail. Does that make me a bad person?

<comment><USER8> No. But then again, I feel the same way, so my opinion may be biased.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Here's a challenge:

It would be nice if Microsoft would fix the issues with IE11. Like all the sites that work with IE10, that don't work anymore with IE11. Their solution was to issue an IE11 upgrade blocker with a shitty manual install routine.

<comment><USER10> Internet Explorer has been and continues to be hostile to the web. It easily makes my job as a web developer at least 50% more difficult which translates into costing my employer more money.

As far as I'm concerned, we as developers need to make a concerted effort to force Microsoft to either adopt WebKit or release a version of IE that is 100% standards compliant.

<comment><USER11> Diversity of implementations on the web is vital for continued innovation. Though it's _less_ important that IE stick with the Trident engine now that Blink and WebKit 2 have diverged, we should celebrate progress and encourage participation in the standards process - things IE has gotten a lot better about especially in the last two iterations.

> _has been and continues to be hostile to the web_

I'm going to have to dispute "continues to be": [http://caniuse.com/#compare=ie+11,firefox+25,chrome+31](http://caniuse.com/#compare=ie+11,firefox+25,chrome+31)

You have to scroll down quite a ways before you find feature differences between the browsers, and it's not quite clear which (except maybe Chrome) is the best. If we remove feature drafts, it's a good deal closer.

Now, regarding _has been_ : [http://caniuse.com/#compare=ie+6,ie+7,ie+8,ie+11](http://caniuse.com/#compare=ie+6,ie+7,ie+8,ie+11)

Well, there's no contest there. IE8 being the last supported browser on XP is a harsh reality for web developers. :(

<comment><USER12> > things IE has gotten a lot better

no it has not. IE9/IE10/IE11 dont even render the same page the same way , dont even get me started on CSS3 support.

You want things to get better ? let Microsoft drop the version number.and update its browsers automatically all the way back to IE8...

Oh , but why should they do that , they make money by making their os obsolete ... /sarcasm.

<comment><USER10> > IE9/IE10/IE11 dont even render the same page the same way

One could argue this is because each version is better than the previous. "Better" being relative here.

> they make money by making their os obsolete

This touches on a possible source of the problem. Their insistence on tying browser upgrades to major releases of Windows proves they care more about the revenue from the OS sales than they do about not breaking the web.

I'm encouraged that they have automatic updates now but the jury is out as to whether they'll make use of it in the way Chrome and Firefox have.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Microsoft now gets to continue to reap what they've sown after spending a solid decade pissing off web developers...

</comment><comment><USER14> "IE11 for Windows 8.1 is our fastest browser yet – 9% faster than IE10 and nearly 30% faster than the nearest competitive browser."

30% then what competitive browser?

<comment><USER8> Firefox 3?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Cool idea. Unfortunate that they limit things to the first 11 responses.

</comment><comment><USER16> Wow, the debugger tools looke very nice. Will need to check them out.

<comment><USER17> Thought so too, but then I remember the lack of "right click->inspect element" and no good plugin api

<comment><USER18> Click to inspect is in, they even have an example of using it in the linked introduction to developer tools. [1]

/works at Microsoft, but not on IE

[1] [http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2013/07/29/debugging- and-...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2013/07/29/debugging-and-tuning- web-sites-and-apps-with-f12-developer-tools-in-ie11.aspx)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> So basically I disable my CDN, show how slow it is, enable it. BOOM faster. Done.

</comment><comment><USER20> "IE11 for Windows 8.1 is our fastest browser yet"...and I still don't care, because my user base isn't using IE11.

In fact, I'm lucky if they're on IE9.

</comment><comment><USER21> I would test for IE, but there's no native Mac client outside of virtualization. Until they match Chrome and Firefox, it will be the browser of graceful degradation for me :(

</comment><comment><USER22> We need to forget IE for all times, and leave it for M$ own usage

<comment><USER16> We need to be pragmatic and deliver content to whatever device and software our users use, not hold grumps and use stupid nicknames like "M$".

<comment><USER23> Microsoft worked hard earning a bad reputation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> These must be really cheap pizzas because last time I checked you couldn't get 11 pizzas at Costco for $120.

<comment><USER8> If I recall those big ol' pizzas that they make themselves are around $10 each.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I wonder how they came to a conclusion that a pizza was 10.9090909 each

<comment><USER26> probably calculated it with javascript

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> "nearly 30% faster than the nearest competitive browser." \- Micro$oft. Absolute crap as can be seen here: [http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2413632,00.asp](http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2413632,00.asp)

I'm not loyal at all to _any_ browser. I swop and change (used to use IE, then went to Opera, then Firefox and now to Chrome), but when I hear obvious lies such as IE is 30% faster than any other browser I all of a sudden want to permanently leave IE alone

<comment><USER16> > I'm not loyal at all to any browser.

I don't see why you need to point that out. It's not saving your credibility after writing "Micro$oft" anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I noticed it was both obvious and trivial to add a web page to your home screen. Is that also the case on windows phones? Is it the case on any other phone? Or are webapps treated as second class citizens still on phones?

</comment><comment><USER29> Internet Explorer SUCKS™[1]

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrMOBKHqqc8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrMOBKHqqc8)</comment>


Twitter is down - <AUTHOR> http://status.twitter.com/

<comment><USER2> I get this fantastically helpful error page:

Title: Twitter / <%= reason.capitalize %>

Twitter is currently down for <%= reason %>.

We expect to be back in <%= deadline %>. For more information, check out Twitter Status. Thanks for your patience!

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow, Google Talk and Twitter both go down in the same morning? Crazy!

What's next? EC2 data center power issue?</comment>


Ask HN: How did you realize your ambitions? - <AUTHOR> Like many of you, I have multiple interests and now have to decide on what to pursue for college . What advice would you give and how did you realize your ambitions? <comment><USER2> I've taken the long path. I'm in my 30's and I'm finally figuring out what I want to be when I grow up. My advice is to try lots of things, keep an open mind, and try to enjoy life. It's a silly sounding cliche but life really is about the journey and not the destination.

</comment><comment><USER3> Looking back, I don't know if I can tell my former college self what the real world is like. But, I can easily pinpoint out what isn't going to work.

If you aren't getting an A in that subject, that isn't going to work out for you. An A can be literally be a grade in a course, or how relatively well you think you did in some other non-trivial project.

It's not just that it's a competitive world out there. If you didn't do A work, there is a strong chance that your interests don't line up and never will. Your ambitions likely will only be realized what you have all the odds in your favor.

Look at your track record and see where you have done well in the past.

</comment><comment><USER4> "what do I like doing?" -> "what is the most I can achieve doing that while keep doing what I want?" -> do it

Important to remember that the answers can change as we grow up and learn new things or situations change. Just because something made you happy yesterday it doesn't mean it will make you happy if suddenly the rest of the world around you shifted. It's a constant pursuit of happiness for me and adapting to new circumstances is key.

</comment><comment><USER5> I would suggest just taking classes you're interested in your first year of college to find the intersection of what you excel in and what you're interested in doing. The downside is you lose a year, but at least there's less of a chance of choosing the wrong career.

</comment><comment><USER6> Read "Mastery" by Robert Green. You will find the answer to your question.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll give it a shot :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> What advice would I give? I'll offer up a bit that runs counter to the current trend of denigrating maths education:

0\. You can't take enough maths and stats classes.

I'll posit this is true regardless of your major.

Beyond that, I'd offer up this:

1\. Major in something that has some relatively clear path to a sustainable career, as opposed to something where it's very unclear how you would build a career, or where opportunities are few. In other words, given a choice between Computer Science, and Medieval Art History, go with Computer Science.

2\. If you do major in something like Theater, or Medieval Art History or Womens Studies, consider at least doing a minor in something a little more practical like Business or something.

3\. I'd put a lot of value on taking at least a few classes in the fields of Psychology, Economics and History, even if you don't major in either of those things. Study World History just to get an overview of what has gone on in the world up till today. I'll help give a better appreciation for where we are, how we got here, and - possibly - where things will go in the future.

4\. If I were starting school today, I'd probably major in either Computer Science, Mathematics, or Statistics/Operations Research, or _maybe_ Economics. And I'd take extra Maths or Stats classes as electives (see (0) above).

5\. Even if you don't major in CS, learn some basic programming (not "Basic" the language mind you).

6\. If you don't major in Stats, at least take Statistics 101.

7\. Join clubs, fraternities, whatever kinds of organizations are out there to make connections with people. Everybody talks about how the real benefit of going to, say, Harvard or MIT, is the connections you make... but that's true pretty much no matter where you go. Build connections with people. When you finish school, participate with whatever kind of alumni association your school has and keep in touch with people.

8\. Don't ignore community colleges, either to knock out certain classes for a lot less money, or as a way to pick up an extra class here and there (even after your graduate with a Bachelors or whatever).

9\. Don't ignore MOOC's and online education. A lot of it doesn't count for academic credit (but there are some that do, so pay attention), but as a way to complement your education with some specific skills and what-not, there's a lot of good stuff out there.

10\. There's also non-MOOC online education... things like Pluralsite, Egghead.io, LinuxAcademy.com, Lynda.com, etc. that can be useful for picking up specific skills and certifications and what-not.

11\. Don't sweat it all too much. Most mistakes you make when you're young can be recovered from. You still want to have fun in college, just don't party non-stop until you flunk out, if you can help it. Yes, you can recover from mistakes (like flunking out) but what put yourself behind the 8 ball needlessly?</comment>


Radiohead's Warm Glow (or how economists don't understand tipping) - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/14/opinion/14sun3.html?ex=1350014400&en=304f58c7e0c1a3a2&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

<comment><USER2> I think that article was quite stupid. Sorry, but I didn't pay because I felt like tipping. I paid for inrainbows for the following reasons:

1.) I want radiohead to make more albums, so I wanted to show them that it is worth doing so. 2.) I want to hurt the RIAA (and other evil players) by showing them that they are not necessary anymore. Ideally, the success of the inrainbows scheme would lead to copycats, meaning more cheap and free music for me.

I think those reasons are perfectly rational. It pisses me off (sorry, but really!) if wannabe economists claim that rational beings should pay nothing.

Nor is tipping very puzzling: it guarantees that I get a friendly waitress in the restaurant, because if she is treating me badly, there will be no tip. OK, you have to think around several corners (ie pay it forward) to realize that, but the whole society works that way. It is not an impossible train of thoughts. If I don't tip, my fellow humans will suffer (angry cab driver), so if they hear about it, they will punish me. I think in the US waiters even come after you shouting if you don't tip.

<comment><USER3> It's a bit more complex than that though...

You have to consider that your actions won't change the overall situation much, unless you paid hundreds of dollars for the album. So, whatever happens will happen with or without you paying. From that point of view, you might as well save your money, no?

Of course, if everyone thought that way, things would go differently, and the experiment would fail. So, yes, homo economicus is too simple, but does provide food for thought.

I'm a lot happier with restaurants in Italy, where there is no tipping. You pay a fair price for the meal, and that's that. Most of the time you get good service, sometimes you get bad service, but not out of proportion to how things are in the states or here in Austria. And the food is way better in any case:-)

<comment><USER2> not much of a difference, maybe. But by the same logic, I did not pay very much. It is not like I gave them half of my income or something. So I might as well pay. I am not saying that it would be irrational to pay nothing, but to say it is weird that anybody choses to pay at all is too much.

I also like it better without tipping, and granted, it would also work if people just stay away from restaurants with unfriendly waiters.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's guilt. People tip cab drivers and pay for music because of guilt. It's funny though, I feel guilty stiffing a waitress but not for downloading the album of my favorite band for free.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think it's more about being fair.

I think one of Co-opetition's (<http://mayet.som.yale.edu/coopetition/index.html>) main ideas has it nailed. While this doesn't involve business competitors, it's still about players of a game giving up maximizing their own individual gains, to share it with one another

in this case we can think of the consumer as a player of a game where they have three general choices:

a) maximum gain - pay nothing (assuming they don't buy anything else from RadioHead; Radiohead loses big) and enjoy the music

b) minimal gain - pay what they think is full price (buy extra stuff, ...) and enjoy the music

c) mixed gain - pay what they think is a discounted price (less than a cd) and enjoy the music; neither Radiohead nor the consumer maximize their gains in the short term but both of them benefit moderately. Radiohead has an incentive to keep publishing hits and the customer can keep enjoying them (without being robbed by the record industry).

<comment><USER5> You nailed it. Because we live in a society whose rules we'd like for the most part to uphold, we impose norms on ourselves and on others. Fairness is among the most important of those, and it's the foundation of many others.

Check out the Ultimatum game (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimatum_game>) for another example of the same desire to keep people's dealings fair.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Tipping is just a corner case of supply and demand, where the good being demanded is supply.

</comment><comment><USER7> excellent article. nice hope for the future thx</comment>


Ideas Are Everywhere... So Why Do We Limit Them? - <AUTHOR> http://techdirt.com/articles/20080507/0114581051.shtml

<comment><USER2> The article that the link references is much more interesting than the post itself.

[http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/05/12/080512fa_fact_...](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/05/12/080512fa_fact_gladwell/?currentPage=all)

<comment><USER3> Also discussed here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=181392></comment></comment>


Teaching Alexa to ID Passing Airplanes with RTL-SDR - <AUTHOR> https://www.nicksypteras.com/projects/teaching-alexa-to-spot-airplanes <comment><USER2> Awesome, man. Well done! If you want to speed up your Lambdas, all you have to do is allocate more memory, re: [https://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/lambda- introduc...](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/lambda-introduction- function.html). It won't help MongoDB run faster, though.

<comment><USER2> [https://twitter.com/jeffbarr/status/877863723934691328](https://twitter.com/jeffbarr/status/877863723934691328) ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot for the tweet! I'll give that lambda link a read, would definitely like to learn more. Thanks again :)</comment></comment></comment>


ResearchNation.net - publish your insights, make money. - <AUTHOR>

Currently testing it, but have opened up the site for a few days for feedback. Would love to hear what you think of it! <comment><USER2> real clickable: <http://researchnation.net></comment>


FBI really doesn't want anyone to know about "stingray" use by local cops - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/02/fbi-really-doesnt-want-anyone-to-know-about-stingray-use-by-local-cops/

<comment><AUTHOR> Relevant letter section:

        In the event that the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension receives a
        request pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act (5 USC 552) or an equivalent
        state or local law, the civil or criminal discovery process, or other judicial,
        legislative, or administrative process, to disclose information concerning the
        Harris Corporation [REDACTED] the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension will
        immediately notify the FBI of any such request telephonically and in writing in
        order to allow sufficient time for the FBI to seek to prevent disclosure through
        appropriate channels.

This is a written policy that FOIA requests should by default be resisted. This combined with the change from a mission of "law enforcement" to "national security"[1] signifies a huge shift in the FBI away from a rule-of-law culture to a rule-of-man culture.

[1]: [http://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/fbis-main-mission-now- not...](http://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/fbis-main-mission-now-not-law- enforcement)</comment>


Show HN: Online dating for people who don't do online dating - <AUTHOR>

I've been quietly learning web development for about a year now after getting intoxicated by the media darling startup scene back when it was REALLY going mainsteam with the release of the social network. So I drank that koolaid and joined the club and I resolved to create a semi-competent web dev from my humble highschool CS 1 roots. A year's gone by and my first project is finally done. It's a simple online dating app that tries to make online dating appeal to a more casual crowd while removing a few of the major pitfalls of current online dating websites, most notably fear of rejection, by only selectively showing positive actions and obscuring all negative ones in some way or another. Here's the site.
http://www.heyithinkyourecute.com
It's not pretty and it's not perfect but fail fast and fail often right? Please tell me what you think! <comment><USER2> Good Luck!

White on bright blue hurt (not exaggerating) my eyes.

There's a type on "Head into Matchmaking" - "no thanks if you'rE not"

There's another type in 4, with an extra capital G.

The section "Do your thing" has a funny picture, with "masterful strategy" written over a crude message. Have you ever signed up to dating sites as a woman? Have you got market research from women? Women are an important part of your market, and I suspect that they'd like to know there are rigorous controls to protect them from creeps. So, maybe add that information before the joke? (I just noticed that you do have info about a quality block, but that's hidden behind a roll-over image. It's a great feature! Don't hide it.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! About that image; it's a relic from when I first wrote the landing page (it was late and the copy was decidedly more crude) but I'm changing to something more in tune with my audience now.

As for market research, I talked to quite a few girls about it but it was mostly relegated to visual design. The rest was just me using ux stories to make what I thought would the best functionality for everyone. Not the greatest strategy I know, but I'm learning

And I've been working on making the contrast between white and the background more bearable but it's been tough. I'll take another look at it today.

Thanks again!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Not a bad idea and UI/UX. I'm checking it out now. Good luck with it.

I was just running through the matches and there are like >10 girls (which is fine for a young startup). Nonetheless, don't just have a message that says you're out of matches. Allow the user to start his /her search over again. The site is of no use to me now because I couldn't see matches.

<comment><AUTHOR> There is definitely a chicken/egg problem at work here that will be hard to break early on. In the long run I'm hoping for a pool of users large enough that reaching the end isn't likely for your average signup, but for now you're completely right. I worry that repetition could be worse than blatant running out since a big part of the site is variety (whereas seeing the same girls over and over feels more like helpless stagnation), but I'll try and come up with a better way to engage new users while we're still really young. Thanks for taking a look!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Temp account to just say, congratulations, fantastic idea and nicely executed. I would change a lot of things, been in the online dating business many years ago. Great fun...loving it!

</comment><comment><USER5> "We should have sex some time" as an example message to send is probably giving off the wrong message and will not attract the crowd you want.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, sorry about that, it was addressed below(above?). It should be fixed now.</comment></comment>


Ask YC: Is MacHeist Good or Evil? - <AUTHOR>

The newest group of "12 Top Mac Apps" is now available for purchase in a $49 bundle at http://www.macheist.com/
I bought the last MacHeist for the simple reason that I wanted Pixelmator which is $59 alone and got a boatload of other software for -$10.
Afterward, I felt a little dirty. Like I just helped to undermine the otherwise thriving Mac shareware community.
What's your take? Developers: would you partake in MacHeist? Consumers: Do you buy bundled software when it's available? <comment><USER2> Gruber wrote on this a bit when it first came out- <http://daringfireball.net/2006/12/macheist_lousy_tshirt> and <http://daringfireball.net/2006/12/iniquities_of_the_selfish>

I'll admit that I bought the package for the same reason that you did- It was a way to acquire Pixelmator and Snapz Pro, for less than I could pay for either on their own.

Personally, I think that MacHeist is a good deal for a lot of small developers- It publicizes the names of programs such as Cha-Ching, which otherwise don't have nearly as many opportunities to gain the eye of a developer.

On the counterside, if you program has enough publicity on it's own, It may simply detract from revenue you have otherwise made.

Ironically, it seems superficially similar to the YCombinator program- It's a way for a small group of programs to gain publicity together, when they might not be able to get substantial publicity on their own. Some stars might come out of each group, but others would fade to obscurity.

The similarity between the two programs is only shared in the one aspect, however; While YC does offer greatly increased blog coverage the real strength of the program is the networking between developers and participation by other YC teams and leaders in helping to suggest and guide during the development process.

Given that we do see several developers repeating the process from one MacHeist to the next, they must find that the additional publicity is worthwhile to them.

</comment><comment><USER3> Admittedly there's often one app that makes MacHeist a good deal -- TextMate, PixelMator, each was more expensive than the whole bundle. But I haven't bought it. I would rather give a few more dollars to the developers of both apps.

Aside from the problems Gruber mentions in his post, I really don't like the man behind the curtain, "Phill Ryu". He takes advantage of a lot of goodwill in the community. His my dream app contest ended well over a year ago, and they still haven't even released the first app.

</comment><comment><USER4> Most of the apps in MacHeist (my opinion) aren't useful to me - nor to many - and therefore the value is much lowered. Many of these apps have competitors that are freeware anyway. I bought the first one just out of curiosity and don't use ANY of them</comment>


DebConf20: offer to speak in Palestine censored - <AUTHOR> https://debian.community/debconf20-palestine-messages-censored-debian-project/ <comment><USER2> If(?) you really want to read this, please note that the site is closely connected to a former Debian developer with an axe to grind and at least people in his very close proximity acting in bad faith [0][1].

Please use your judgement as to the quality of the contents of [https://debian.community](https://debian.community). I have no horse in this race, but I do notice it is a prime example of Godwin's law [2]...

[0] dig debian.community, dig danielpocock.com

[1] [https://nm.debian.org/public/people/dd_all](https://nm.debian.org/public/people/dd_all) \- no Daniel Pocock anymore

[2] [https://debian.community/nazi-rhetoric-creeping-into- debian/](https://debian.community/nazi-rhetoric-creeping-into-debian/)

<comment><USER3> Note that this is the same person whose message was allegedly censored.

The actual reason the message didn't reach the mailing list it that he's banned there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> IMHO the carefulness that was put in writing that message make it impossible to interpret it as antisemitic or bad faith. Actually interpreting it as antisemitic is bad faith.

<comment><USER5> I suspect the care put into the message was more to ensure that this specific example would look reasonable on its own. When set in the context of the site it's posted on, and the other sites associated with the author (e.g. fsfesicherheit's other postings to HN), it looks more like a pattern of quite targeted harassment.

I personally have no skin in this game, but if the message was censored from the list I would give the listmasters the benefit of the doubt that this was due to the author of the e-mail rather than the content per se.

<comment><USER6> >(e.g. fsfesicherheit's other postings to HN)

A single other submission (an article on the Berlin Wall) and two comments relating to said article consitutes a HN posting history?

I'm not seeing anti-semitism here but I am seeing censorship.

<comment><USER7> If you click through and read the article, it has nothing to do with the Berlin Wall.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Headline is misleading. He didn't 'offer to speak', he proposed splitting the conference 50:50 between Israel and Palestine. Fine, if that's something you think would benefit the community, but then should we also be splitting conferences in China between Beijing and Tibet? Russia and East Ukraine? India and Kashmir?

Either turn every academic conference into a geopolitical soapbox or just host it where the engineers are and leave it at that.

<comment><USER9> Why is in order for us to do this, we have to do that? What about supporting Palestine bothers you so much?

<comment><USER8> Nothing about supporting Palestine bothers me in the slightest. I'm explaining why someone might think a thread about organising a conference about an open source operating system in a city with many open source contributors is not the appropriate place to bring it up.

Don't bring geopolitics into everything. That way lies madness.

<comment><USER10> So would you have participated to a developer conference in apartheid South Africa? You think the issue was some sterile "geopolitics" debate?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> tek-cyb-org Why the censorship though? That is pretty nefarious.

Palestinians basically live in israel, but have manufactured concrete borders put around them. Inhibiting their freedom of movement in their own country. Not allowing them to go to conferences. So holding a deb community member asking the community if they would be willing to spend some time for the engineers less fortunate, is actually quite awesome of him.

<comment><USER11> We have only the account of "censored" one. Censorship is not a fact.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> > Can you see any way in which this message could be considered anti-semitic?

I accept the message can be disturbing to some (not to me) but I believe it is not anti-semitic.

<comment><USER10> > the message can be disturbing to some

How would it be disturbing?

<comment><USER12> For any kind of discussion where there are multiple conflicting ideas, it is likely that an argument based even at least partially on opinion can be disturbing to one or some of the parties.

<comment><USER10> There is no opinion here. Just someone who advances a pretty harmless proposal.

<comment><USER12> There are more facts than opinions there and thus, I totally support what the author is proposing! But this doesn't mean the whole piece is written in a neutral tone.

Here is the paragraph which includes the author's opinion, initiated with a seemingly rhetorical question:

> Is Wirt really fighting anti-semitism, or could the DebConf20 organizers > simply be afraid of any discussion that may deter wealthy Israeli sponsors? > This doesn't suggest that Israelis have actually sought such influence, it > is more of an indication of how easily some volunteers with official roles > in Debian are bamboozled when anyone, whether it is an Israeli company or a > Silicon Valley company, shows up with a fistful of cash.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Surprise someone flagged something mentioning censorship talking about Israel.

<comment><USER14> And now it's gone, why flagging, then taking it away? Why no infos? What's happening?

<comment><USER13> This way won't stay on the front page . Someone flags it and when time passes mods unflag it but it stays out of the front page , it reaches to less people. Perfect manipulation. Edit: I don't mean HN mods manipulation, just someone who doesn't want this info to reach a wider audience

<comment><USER14> Thanks for the input.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> _Many people remain uncomfortable about how DebConf organizers are handling the challenges presented in the middle east._

As someone, who has zero experience with DebConf whatsoever, I have to say, I can see how such an intro could be interpreted as anti-semitic. What _" challenges"_ would have an Israli conference have to handle? How and why. If it's just because it is Israeli then do all Israeli conferences need to "handle" this challenge?

Should DebCon be boycotted if it doesn't live up to said "challenges"?

But maybe someone can explain, what is meant by "challenges"?

Also, as a sidenote, the article doesn't help it's case either, if it uses the Holocaust as a reason to criticize Israel.

<comment><USER4> For example : the territory is zoned, there are military checkpoints and depending on your ethnicity, you are not free to go where you want. So if you are Muslim for instance you could be banned from attending the conference.

<comment><USER15> _> the territory is zoned_

Haifa is not zoned. It's inside Israel, which once entered you're free to wander around.

 _> there are military checkpoints_

Given the threat posed by terrorism, blaming the Israelis for having military checkpoints on their land borders is kind of disengenious

 _> depending on your ethnicity_

Arabic is an official language of Israel. 20% of its people are Muslim. I've never witnessed a security check where men wearing a Taqiyah were treated different. Please ride the Jerusalem tram, which is packed almost 50/50 with orthodox jews and orthodox muslims and tell me, this is an Apartheit-state and not a place of civic order.

 _> So if you are Muslim for instance you could be banned from attending the conference._

No, you're not. As the place of the conference is Haifa, once you've managed to pass border-customs at the airport your movement is unrestriced inside Israel.</comment></comment></comment>


Rap Genius Traffic Has Dropped By Over 80% - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantcast.com/rapgenius.com?country=GLOBAL&1=1 <comment><USER2> An interesting side effect of this is the phenomenon of less sophisticated users who use Google as their address bar. If you run a decently well-known website you see this in your analytics reports (at least back when you could see Google search keywords)--repeat visitors coming to your site from Google after searching for your site by name. This is why "facebook" is the top Google search.

Since you can't find RapGenius by searching for it there is a decent sized audience of people who are under the assumption that RapGenius _does not exist anymore_. It's bizarre to the HN crowd, but very real. Check out their twitter feed:

[https://twitter.com/RapGenius](https://twitter.com/RapGenius)

<comment><USER3> I consider myself sophisticated and I still use Google for something like Rap Genius:

"rap genius kendrick lamar swimming pools" would get me there quicker than any other way.

It's incredible that now that search string sends me to other pages that link to RG's lyrics but not directly to theirs.

<comment><USER4> If you actually knew how to use Google this wouldn't be a problem. The `site:` filter is your friend.

<comment><USER5> Or just set up a custom search engine in Chrome, eg:

chrome://settings/searchEngines

search engine: rapgenius.com

keyword: rg

url: [http://rapgenius.com/search?q=%s](http://rapgenius.com/search?q=%s)

Then just type rg<tab> in the omnibox and search for whatever you want, and get taken to rg's serp.

<comment><USER6> For most sites, Chrome should do this by default and the default keyword is just the site's URL. So simply:

        rapgenius.com<tab>search terms

autocomplete is supported so you can also just do

        ra<tab>search terms

if rapgenius.com is your first autocomplete result for "ra"

<comment><USER5> This feels like a bit of a regression. I used to be able to just use the automatic search, but it seems to be breaking for more and more sites recently. Even sites it used to pick up automatically, like tpb, now need to be manually specified.

And there's still no damned excuse for them not being able to search maps.google.com from the omnibox.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If RG thinks they're so great (and all the bandwagoners on HN), then they should prove it by playing fairly.

My suspicion is that the vast majority of people who search for lyrics don't care about song meanings or annotations. Azlyrics does just fine, which is why they've always been at the top. If people wanted song meanings they would search for song meanings.

My theory is that RG wasn't able to grow as fast as they hoped and have to resort to these methods. How else can RG justify a $15 million investment? Their biggest competitor, songmeanings.com, is bootstrapped with only a couple employees, which shows the true market size of the song meanings / annotations market.

Remember that most consumers want things that are insanely simple and give them immediate satisfaction. I'm not surprised that most people on HN think otherwise as they tend to be deeper thinkers than the average consumer.

<comment><USER8> The difference between RG and songmeanings, and really any other lyrics website in existence, is the quality of the annotations. My habit of listening to rap has changed quite dramatically since I have discovered RG - I don't have to speculate about what a line might mean, because now there's a whole community of people who love rap collate their collective wisdom and tell you what it means. The verified annotations are also amazing...I mean seriously, what other site has artists themselves explaining what they meant for their own songs? I think the $15 million can be justified if you look at their long- term plans. They've built a model with rap and now they're expanding onto rock, pop and poetry. I see it this way: the sell for RG is for their whole slew of websites to become the wikipedia for literary/artistic interpretation, a position they have already locked down with rap. Whether that is worth $15 million is of course up to you, but it looks like it was worth it to some big name investors.

<comment><USER7> Ok cool. So RG is way better than songmeanings.

That doesn't change the size of the market.

That is, unless you think the quality or features are so good that it will increase the size of the market. In that sense, I don't think RG is groundbreaking enough IMO.

Songmeanings has been around for over a decade. If the market demand was really there ($15mm investment worth), they would naturally gotten some funding, or enough revenue, to improve their product and soak the $ potential out of the market.

<comment><USER9> We've been approached a handful of times for funding as well as potential acquisitions into larger networks/sites throughout the years. However, the logistics have never made much sense, if I am being honest, so we've always declined.

Currently we are talking to a group which is very promising. Can't say much more, but hopefully we can in the near future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm not sure if it's right or wrong what Google did, but it was certainly a shit business decision. It's Google's job to be a proper search tool for anyone to get the best possible results when searching something as simple as "rapgenius". If I search "rapgenius" and don't get the hugely popular website [http://rapgenius.com](http://rapgenius.com) as the first result, then that's bad service on Google's end.

<comment><USER11> +1. Even if RapGenius did cheat, they are still the best solution for Google's customers (i.e. those sheep whose data can be mined and sold).

So I don't get why Google essentially fucks up with their customers.

<comment><USER2> Why is RapGenius the best result for Google searchers? I just want lyrics, if Google can get me to them I am happy. RG has a ton of bloat that I don't want or need.

<comment><USER12> Because when you google for "rapgenius" the best result is unquestionably rapgenius.

<comment><USER13> No, when you have the website you don't need to "google" it.

<comment><USER14> > _No, when you have the website you don 't need to "google" it._

You have the company name, not necessarily the website. It could be .com, .net and probably reasonably well a few other ones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Microsoft should jump on this. Run ads promoting Rap Genius as the best lyrics site on the web, and noting that you can find it easily with Bing, but not with Google. Kind of like those Visa ads that highlighted some cool place and then said don't bother of you use American Express, because the cool place doesn't take AmEx, it takes Visa.

<comment><USER16> I wish I was a Microsoft marketing exec so I could take credit for this idea.

<comment><USER17> I'm sure some exec already has.

<comment><USER18> This is from the same team that brought us the 'scroogled' campaign? I doubt they know what Rap Genius is....

<comment><USER13> This> [http://www.billboard.com/files/styles/promo_650/public/media...](http://www.billboard.com/files/styles/promo_650/public/media/rap- genius-techcrunch-conference-650-430.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I find Google's actions to be bizarre.

Getting people to link to you is what SEO is all about. Basically every site concerned with SEO does it in one form or another -- I thought this was what most every blog affiliate program was about!

So Google decides to "punish" RapGenius just because its program got a little bit of public notice, while 99.9% of other sites which do the same, continue doing the same thing, unpunished?

It just comes across as capricious and petty. For a site as large as Google, there should be some kind of _due process_ involved with clear published guidelines, or (preferably) they should just work on improving their algorithm.

How is what Rap Genius is doing any different than Amazon or iTunes paying you for affiliate links, or you paying a blog to advertise you, or buying a friend a beer to include a link to you? Where exactly does the line get drawn?

<comment><USER20> There are clear guidelines and due process.

Amazon and iTunes aren't paying you for the link they are paying you for the sale.

In the second and third cases it is no different if you're paying for a keyword link and if Google found out about it you would be penalized.

<comment><USER21> Where can you find those guidelines?

<comment><USER22> Besides the other links, here are the ones for link schemes, which are the issue in this case: [https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66356](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66356)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This has moved from an interesting case study in SEO to unadulterated schadenfreude.

<comment><USER24> schadenfreude by who? Certainly not by Google or the media.

<comment><USER25> By people who are not fans of Rap Genius, of which there are many. (I like the site, for what it's worth).

<comment><USER13> Right, but this is a link to a piece of data. Calling it "emotive" is odd.

<comment><USER26> All data is emotive. All emotions stem from data.

When you look at the Mona Lisa or hear _Sun_ by Koreless (IMO the most beautiful piece of music from 2013) you're processing data. It's just wave oscillations or light refraction.

<comment><USER13> No, data is not per-se emotive. You're confusing (amongst other things) the sub-set data that is _aesthtetic_ , with the complet set of Data, and in vaguely more technical terms making an inference that is invalid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> What I find shocking is a single company (Google) has the power to cause such a dramatic decrease of a website it deemed "unworthy".

Sure, it can justify its actions by saying they broke the rules, but pressing the a "death button" for a website is not a solution.

I feel as though Google needs to re-examine their core principles and determine how to better handle an issue like this. Otherwise, I suspect Google might have anti-trust and anti-competitive issues and the government might set the rules for them, and we all know how bad that would be.

<comment> V-2 > but pressing the a "death button" for a website is not a solution.

What is a solution then? It seems like a good deterrent. It has to hurt.

In Poland (where I'm from) they similarly punished Ceneo, Skąpiec, Nokaut (all most popular price comparator services) and even Tesco. See [http://www.seoportal.pl/ceneo-skapiec-tesco-ukarane-przez- go...](http://www.seoportal.pl/ceneo-skapiec-tesco-ukarane-przez-google) (Polish) or [http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&pre...](http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.seoportal.pl%2Fceneo- skapiec-tesco-ukarane-przez-google&act=url) (English by Google Translate).

Not one of these websites has died, but a lesson was taught.

<comment> grey-area Should Google have that sort of power over almost every business in the world?

<comment> V-2 I agree that this is troubling in its own right. I just don't think that this power was abused in this particular case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Which is really a shame, because RapGenius is a better lyrics site than all the rest by leaps and bounds. Google is acting like a cartel here and it's absolutely ridiculous. I hope they can beat this thing.

<comment><USER29> I greatly prefer AZLyrics - they give me the lyrics on a page with just the lyrics, that's all I want nearly 100% of the time.

It's not even a contest: [http://i.imgur.com/H1QixcN.png](http://i.imgur.com/H1QixcN.png)

<comment><USER30> Don't forget that rap genius didn't / doesn't want to just be a lyrics site, they also do the whole "what do these lyrics mean" deal. I'd have no idea what 2 Chainz was going on about half the time were it not for RG.

<comment><USER31> You'd have no idea what 2 chainz was saying, or the meaning of what he is saying?

Which begs the question: if you don't know what 2 chainz is going on about half the time why do you listen to him?

<comment><USER20> If you treat the voice as another instrument it can be enjoyable without making sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> It started out as rap genius and now its extending its tentacles to all types of music and even non-music related subjects Eventually, it would become just another annoying agitator website that clutters the search results with less than helpful results, so this was a good move on google's part.

</comment><comment><USER33> There really needs to be some checks and balances here. Perhaps an opensource search engine? I think an entity like Google having so much control over which businesses die or survive is a little ridiculous.

<comment><USER34> The issue is Google has become the only way to discover content on the web. Before Google, there was much more competition or alternative ways to make content discoverable. Now people basically only "google" stuffs up, and that's not going to change. And search capabilities on most websites are provided by Google too ,that's insane and dangerous. Google has become the WEB and if you are not on Google , you dont exist. Google is now an institution thus "too big to fail",and so much for anti-trust laws.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> ironically google trends shows a massive increase in interest [http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=rapgenius.com](http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=rapgenius.com)

<comment><USER36> This reminds me of the Miley Cirus insanity of past months. She gained more popularity than ever before by acting erotic and capitalizing on peoples' disgust. People were promoting her name in insults and jokes around the world.

Here, the term "Rap Genius" is being popularized by controversy.

<comment><USER35> "there is no such thing as bad publicity…" would be really interesting to see their analytics data / wonder that will be down 80% as well

<comment><USER36> Unfortunately, that quote applies far to often. I'm hesitant to comment on threads like this for the same reason; I don't want to encourage such behavior with my attention

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Hmm...

"This site reaches over 24 million monthly people, of which 12 million (48%) are in the U.S.The typical visitor watches Nickelodeon, visits pbskids.org, and listens to National Public Radio."

<comment><USER38> All I can glean from that is that the typical visitor to RapGenius can't be bothered to set up a separate user account for his/her children.

This brings up an important point: hardly anyone knows how to configure or troubleshoot their computer. This is by far a more important point than some arbitrary "learn to code" movement that doesn't teach CS, and does NOT teach programming – it's like giving somebody a hammer and telling them to nail a nail into a board of wood, without teaching them how to _build_ anything with that hammer. Instead, we should be teaching people how to maintain the furniture they already _own_ first. I just have zero respect for Code.org at this point, it's their own agenda they're trying to fulfill. They don't care about the future of the U.S., it's just self-aggrandizement as usual.

Sorry for the OT.

<comment><USER39> I'm confused. Do you think RapGenius visitors are children or adults?

<comment><USER38> RapGenius visitors are probably adults or young adults, but the fact that the average "visitor" visits NPR _and_ pbskids is indicative that the visitor has children or siblings, which means that a child and an adult are on the same browser on the same user.

<comment><USER40> > is indicative that the visitor has children or siblings

... or parents.

<comment><USER38> Fair point, but I doubt anyone visiting pbskids and Nick is upping their swag by checking out what verse Jay-Z just busted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Does this not prove the incentive to win at SEO at all costs?

Has google disclosed other sites penalized for the same behavior?

<comment><USER42> All kinds of sites regularly get penalized for this type of behavior.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> So everyone talks about RG being superior due to its annotation. (true) But doesn't this identify that 80% of it's traffic comes from "m-low dogg gangsta money freaks and junk lyrics" searches? So at maximum, 20% of users use annotation features (surely some still use it for purely lyrics simply due to it being it easy to remember)

<comment><USER44> That's ignoring the presumably large contingent of users including myself and other commenters here who use Google as a direct line to search Rapgenius, like "Rapgenius Kendrick Lamar swimming pools," as it's faster than going to Rapgenius itself.

You could get more accurate numbers by looking at at percent of search traffic to Rapgenius does not include the keyword "Rapgenius" (though you can't do that anymore since google now scrubs SERP referrers).

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I wonder if this penalty would have been this severe if their "apology" was an actual apology. If I was in Google's position and had waited to see the RG response, I would have been less forgiving after the tone of that letter. But that is just my opinion...

</comment><comment><USER46> Impressive what one company can do to you if they decide you're not playing by their rules. (Not defending RG, I just think this is a good example of how much power Google has..)

<comment><USER43> That's our world. Everytime we trumpet the fact that they're a power that can stand up to the Apples and NSAs of the world, remember where that power and strength comes from. Not a bad thing, merely a double-edged sword.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Has Google specified when the penalty will end?

</comment><comment><USER48> Why?

<comment><AUTHOR> See [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6956658](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6956658)

<comment><USER48> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> why is rap genius the best for lyrics? if i want lyrics, i want a simple print out of the lyrics

<comment><USER50> They have added value in their annotated lyrics, which comes in handy especially with cryptic word play/slang in rap lyrics.

<comment><USER51> You realize any Joe Schmoe can annotate what he personally believes the meaning of a particular lyric is.

If you read any Kanye West lyrics on that site, they break down every line like it's some kind of literary divine intervention of pure brilliance by grasping at every straw possible.

<comment><USER50> That's because every Kanye West line literally is a literary divine intervention of pure brilliance, of course. Anyway, there is a verification system in place and you can also discuss the line through a commenting system. I usually find their annotations to be precise and correct.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> "Don't be evil." Well, at least until you become a monopolist. Then go right ahead.

</comment><comment><USER53> it's ridiculous! Google cannot do this!

<comment><USER54> It's ridiculous because breaking the rules and not getting caught is the only way to win the game.</comment></comment>


Why Preventing Cancer Is Not the Priority in Drug Development - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/29/upshot/why-preventing-cancer-is-not-the-priority-in-drug-development.html <comment><USER3> This isn't a great representation of the issue. Everyone loves to hate the drug companies.

First of all, the basic science is lacking. The vast majority of animal models in no way resemble the normal process by which humans develop cancer. The models are designed to grow aggressive cancers extremely fast so you can test drugs rapidly, publish your paper and get the next grant. Even more than that, what actually takes place in the years before a cancer becomes clinically relevant is quite speculative. So a long term commitment to funding prevention research is needed from governments and funding bodies, because pharma can't fund this kind of basic science.

The other problem is that to do a good prevention trial, you need to identify people at risk. We aren't really that good at doing this (eg we screen ALL women above the age of 50 for breast cancer, we screen EVERYONE above the age of 50 for bowel cancer). There is some debate about whether screening in this manner is actually as worth wile as it has been made out to be, because it leads to over diagnosis without a survival benefit. So you have to be careful not to design an intervention that only prevents cancer in those who weren't going to be affected by it anyway. This is why you can't use surrogate end points - at the end of the day, for prevention, mortality is what matters. Are we going to give hundreds of millions of women drug X and make them suffer niggling side effects for 20 years because it reduces the rate of diagnosis of breast cancer? Definitely not - overall mortality is what matters (and quality of life).

It's not even a given that you can actually identify people at risk - <USER2> researchers think cancer is just bad luck (ie it is not predictable at all, or the predicting factors are unknowable). Even if this is wrong however, cancer risk probably involves weak effects from hundreds or even thousands of factors. We are very far from working all of this out.

A drug is probably not what we want. Actually a drug is really not what we want. They are too expensive and too much effort to distribute and monitor. Drugs also always produce health inequalities within and between nations. A holistic approach to improving our health and well being would be preferable, at least incorporating nutrition, exercise and psychology. Unfortunately the nutritional, exercise and psychological sciences are not hitting home runs in that regard, which is not surprising because they miss out on the billions we spend fighting an incredibly wasteful war on cancer.

<comment><USER4> I could run eight miles a day with full pack, eat only protein and vegetables, have the mental outlook of the Buddha--and yet still get cancer because BP poured nearly two million gallons of Corexit into the Gulf of Mexico, creating unexpected toxins in the fish I ate. If the drug companies were to provide a pill to mitigate my hypothetical cancer, I would take it.

As you wrote, cancer risk probably involves effects from many factors. However, I'm not sure how redirecting "billions" to, e.g., "psychological 'sciences'" serves to reduce the incidence of cancers that are essentially environmental in origin. Healthy lifestyle only goes so far; I suspect the vast bulk of cancers are due to environmental factors or are intrinsic to the human aging process.

<comment><USER5> _I could run eight miles a day with full pack, eat only protein and vegetables, have the mental outlook of the Buddha--and yet still get cancer because..._

Maybe, or maybe not. When you actually have cause to investigate this stuff deeply, as I have, it's surprising to discover how little is known about these kinds of things.

If you could take 100 people of similar age and health and had them all "run eight miles a day with full pack, eat only protein and vegetables, have the mental outlook of the Buddha", and 50 developed cancer and 50 didn't, little is known about why any given person would stay healthy and another would get sick.

 _As you wrote, cancer risk probably involves effects from many factors. However, I 'm not sure how redirecting "billions" to, e.g., "psychological 'sciences'" serves to reduce the incidence of cancers that are essentially environmental in origin._

Having researched this topic in great depth, I'm now persuaded by the medical researchers like Bruce Lipton and Rudi Tanzi who assert, with solid scientific evidence, that psychology - particularly subconscious emotions - are a major factor in determining whether a person will develop or recover from serious illnesses like cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer's, MS, ALS, etc.

Of course these ideas don't get much acceptance or affirmation from the majority of mainstream medical researchers, because, hey, everyone already knows that psychology and physiological health are totally independent, right?

It turns out we don't actually need to be _redirecting "billions" to, e.g., "psychological 'sciences'"_.

It would suffice to let go of some of the unexamined assumptions and prejudices that prevail in the current research landscape, and pay some attention to the more open-minded researchers who are already investigating these things and coming up with promising findings.

<comment><USER6> I would love to see some links to that scientific evidence especially about the developing an illness from negative outlook.

It seems almost an accepted wisdom that mental outlook would play some part in recovery process. Think positive and you will recover/improve somewhat faster(this has been in popular press many times in last 20-30 years).

However, I have a hard time finding evidence that negative outlook makes you get a serious illness.

This is something that I see in magazines of dubious nature("The seven all- natural cures to dementia that your doctor is hiding from you!")

Are there publications with peer-review behind that?

<comment><USER5> Here's a couple of links:

[http://www.wakehealth.edu/News- Releases/2013/Emotional_Stres...](http://www.wakehealth.edu/News- Releases/2013/Emotional_Stress_Reduces_Effectiveness_of_Prostate_Cancer_Therapies_in_Animal_Model.htm)

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/18190880/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/18190880/)

The process of stress leading to disease is fairly well-established and uncontroversial:

1) Any stress puts the body into fight or flight mode

2) When the body is in fight/flight, energy/nutrients are devoted to short- term survival, not long-term needs like immunity, cell-repair, digestion

3) After long enough in this state (chronic fight/flight) infections take over, cells break down, tumors form, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A drug to _treat_ cancer only has to be taken by people diagnosed with that cancer, for as long as they're diagnosed with it. A drug to _prevent_ cancer has to be taken by everyone at risk for the cancer (which might be the entire population), for as long as they're at risk (likely decades). Hence, a treatment drug can be expensive and can have some nasty side-effects, while a prevention drug would have to be cheap with minimal side-effects. That's a much tougher constraint to work under.

<comment><USER8> Yep. This is basically the same problem we have with Alzheimer's - the people you need to treat are healthy people. The FDA just won't let you test anything with any danger in healthy people. Since all new treatments inherently have risk it is basically impossible to give a new drug or treatment to healthy people.

Even giving something like metafomin [1] where we have decades of knowledge is in practice impossible to give to healthy people. No new treatment stands a chance.

1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metformin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metformin)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Just remember, Cancer isn't a disease.

It is hundreds of different disease related to mutations in the function of cell division. Cells that don't need to divide, start dividing but the daughter cells are not the same as the parent.

In order to treat Cancer with a drug, you need to identify which of the hundreds of subtypes it is and give the right drug. Either that, or give people cocktails of lots of drugs and hope that you can identify the right one before the other ones kill the patient.

At this point there do not appear to be any magic bullets that will cure cancer, just lots of work and research to chip away at the problem, one subtype or one patient at a time.

And cancer appears to be inherent in what we are, animals. It seems unlikely that we will be able to change what we are sufficiently to avoid cancer. No vaccines are likely.

On the other hand, all the investment in Cancer research is paying off and is chipping away at this family of diseases. There are lots of reasons, not just new drugs, but some new drugs are part of the solution.

Maybe the human race is at a point where we have solved all the easy problems and now have a hard slog to chip away at the rest of them, bit by bit.

</comment><comment><USER10> _" There's more money to be made investing in drugs that will extend cancer patients' lives by a few months than in drugs that would prevent cancer in the first place.

That's one of the findings from the work of Heidi Williams, an M.I.T. economics professor and recent MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant winner, who studied the problem along with Eric Budish, a University of Chicago economics professor, and Ben Roin, assistant professor of technological innovation, entrepreneurship and strategic management at M.I.T."_

I'm damn near 40, and the phrase "there's no money in a cure" has been around as long as I can remember. Heck, Chris Rock did a whole bit about it. [0]

Is this just putting good science behind that phrase? Is there anything new here?

[0] [http://anonhq.com/chris-rock-on-big-pharma-no-money-in- the-c...](http://anonhq.com/chris-rock-on-big-pharma-no-money-in-the-cure-the- moneys-in-the-medicine/)

<comment><USER11> If there's no money in a cure, how are the new hepatitis-c cures being sold for tens of thousands of dollars?

<comment><USER12> Because the only other cure is a liver transplant, and the market will pay anything up to that price.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Well, preventing Cancer has been a priority for evolution since the first multicellular organisms arose. It's just not that easy.

Developing a drug is an economically difficult thing: Spend billions for the chance to win billions. The only alternatives to big pharma in developing these drugs are big government and big charity (Gates' Foundation et al).

<comment><USER14> _Well, preventing Cancer has been a priority for evolution since the first multicellular organisms arose_

It's only a "priority for evolution" to prevent cancer before the better years for breeding have passed - and evolution has done a fairly good job with that. After breeding and a little time for rearing young in the higher life forms, evolution has no real use for us.

<comment><USER13> Multicellular organisms have to control the replication and renewal of their cells constantly. In a simplified view, cancer is a loss of that control.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Dean Baker's comment:

 _If Patent Monopolies Bias Cancer Research, Why Not Have Publicly Funded Trials?_

[http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/if-patent-monopolies- bi...](http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/if-patent-monopolies-bias-cancer- research-why-not-have-publicly-funded-trials)

</comment><comment><USER16> If there is in fact such a problem with incentives, what entity do you think might have the power to create proper incentives, and what are the odds of it happening?

Or perhaps let's shelf this discussion at least until we figure out how to incentivize sustainable development of new antibiotics.

In fact, one extremely effective way to reduce cancer-related mortality would be to keep ignoring the problem with antibiotics. We may not exactly like the way that plays out though.

<comment><USER17> I think that's a question we would benefit greatly from answering, if we could.could markets are a powerful and useful thing. But, the longer we play this game the more gaps emerge where human and economic incentives do not meet eye to eye.

If it were just a question of funding it would be solvable.

<comment><USER16> Sorry, I was kidding about "what entity". The same entity that traditionally steps in to solve the needs that otherwise are not met due to tragedy of the commons -- government.

Patents, copyright protections (yes, they're screwed up now, but better than without), infrastructure like roads or postal mail historically.

Just that US legislative process is spinning its wheels at the moment and for the foreseeable future.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The same, often perverse, incentives operate on the potential treatment of aging. Lots of work on tinkering with end states, meaning age-related disease in advanced stages, and next to nothing on prevention, meaning periodic repair of the molecular damage that causes aging.

<comment><USER19> Really? I would think the rich are very much incentivized to fund any research that may slow down their aging (as are the poor, but they don't have enough money). When you have achieved most of the goals in your life, the remaining goal you have is perhaps to elongate that success for however longer you can. For example, several Chinese emperors, starting from the first one, were _obsessed_ with living forever, giving tons of resources and power to "alchemists" who claimed to be able to produce medicine to keep the emperor young.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Preventative tools exist today that would significantly reduce the incidence rate of cancer.

Much of them require lifestyle modifications and regulation, unfortunately, which is admittedly very difficult to do. Still, I suspect investment in these areas would likely have a higher return on investment than R&D into broad preventative drugs.

(1) Smoking Cessation: Reducing tobacco use has a =huge= positive effect on cancer reduction - an order of magnitude higher than anything else we can do.

1 in ever 5 deaths of males over the age of 30 is due to to tobacco-induced illnesses, and a third of those are cancer [0]. Globally, 31% of men and 6% of women smoke daily. 17% of Americans are daily smokers. Over 1 billion people are projected to die due to tobacco-related illnesses in the 21st century.

(2) Obesity: A recent epidemiological study found that 4% of cancer in men and 7% in women was due to obesity. It was as high as 40% for some cancers such as endometrial and esophageal adenocarcinoma [1].

(3) Alcohol/Red & Processed Meat: Consumption of alcoholic beverages is a known human carcinogen. A recent study estimated that 3.5% of all cancer deaths can be attributed to alcohol [2]. A separate study found that 3% of all cancers, including 21% of bowel cancers, was attributed to red & processed meats [3].

(4) Environmental & Occupational Hazards: The WHO estimates 19% of all cancers globally are attributable to environmental factors [4]. This includes air pollution, which likely causes 3% to 14% of all lung cancers, as well as exposure to chemicals in the workplace such as asbestos.

[0] [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK54023/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK54023/)

[1] [http://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes- prevention/risk/ob...](http://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes- prevention/risk/obesity/obesity-fact-sheet#q3)

[2] [http://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes- prevention/risk/al...](http://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes- prevention/risk/alcohol/alcohol-fact-sheet#q2)

[3] [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/behindtheheadlines/...](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/behindtheheadlines/news/2015-10-27-processed- meat-causes-cancer-warns-who-report/)

[4] [http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs350/en/](http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs350/en/)

</comment><comment><USER21> tldr; money

</comment><comment><USER22> explain HPV vaccination then. and the banning of abestos. and all anti-smoking legislation. and all other EPA regulation banning carcinogens. etc etc etc.

</comment><comment><USER23> This logic is just dumbfounding. How do the people saying stuff like this explain the existence of things like vaccines?

<comment><USER24> What about vaccines? Those are quite easy to make, and are made using existing disease-causing viruses. We know the mechanism, it applies to the whole population, and it's relatively simple and cheap to produce.

The logistics are not the same with cancer preventing drugs at all.

<comment><USER25> Considering that there are no wide spread generic cancer prevention drugs how would you know?

<comment><USER24> We already know that cancer is not caused by a virus (at least in the general case), so it can't be fixed in the same way as vaccines.

And we've already been looking for cancer drugs for more than half a century to know that the logistics compared to vaccines are different. Let's put it this way: if they knew of a method to make cancer prevention drugs as easy and effective as vaccines, they'd have made them.

<comment><USER25> Nonsense there are multiple types of vaccines toxiod vaccines for example vaccinate you against toxic compounds such as snake bites. There is quite a bit of research into regressive therapeutic and preventative vaccines against cancer currently. A vaccine is a process which teaches your immune system to combat a certain condition whether it's caused by a bacteria, parasite, a virus or a toxin it doesn't matter. If you can teach your own immune system to combat cancer by either teaching it to attack certain markers, or by disabling the "stealth" mechanisms which many types of cancer use to fly under it's radar you've effectively created a vaccine.

Also vaccination is one of the most logistically complicated processes in medicine they are extremely short lived require very precise refrigeration and proper administration is considerably more critical than most cancer treatments, 80-90% of the cost of vaccination programs in developed and developing countries alike go into logistics. For cancer treatments even the experimental highly specialized ones it's completely the opposite, and run of the mill treatments like chemotherapy are easily administered by medical technicians under almost any circumstances.

<comment><USER24> > _If you can teach your own immune system to combat cancer by either teaching > it to attack certain markers, or by disabling the "stealth" mechanisms which > many types of cancer use to fly under it's radar you've effectively created > a vaccine._

All of that is known, and they've been trying that for half a century with not much success (besides the occasional report for a "cancer vaccine"). What makes you think they don't know the logistics involved already?

> _Also vaccination is one of the most logistically complicated processes in > medicine they are extremely short lived require very precise refrigeration > and proper administration is considerably more critical than most cancer > treatments, 80-90% of the cost of vaccination programs in developed and > developing countries alike go into logistics._

Not really relevant. Being short lived and requiring "precise refrigeration and proper administration", is not the same kind of problem as the research for cancer vaccines.

The former is actually a solved problem, and something that even all third world countries are able to do just fine anyway...

<comment><USER25> >All of that is known, and they've been trying that for half a century with not much success (besides the occasional report for a "cancer vaccine"). What makes you think they don't know the logistics involved already?

No it hasn't tumor antigens are a fairly recent discovery, the epigenetics of cancer as well as it's relationship with the immune system are also quite new fields. MUC1 was only discovered in the mid 80's it's expression initially linked to cancer in the mid 90's since the mid to late 2000's where we actually started trialing this out and started developing immunologic therapeutic processes. If we are talking about cancer specific therapeutic vaccines then there are already several on the market some of which are classified as orphan drugs and can be sponsored most of them are currently only life prolonging treatments for cancers with no other treatment course.

And again it's not like overall vaccination is a closed book there are only a handful of diseases we can effectively vaccinate against and those are ones which are immune system is pretty damn good in dealing with the begin with.

I really don't understand your argument anymore because at this point you are arguing about the logistics of vaccinating against chickenpox vs developing new cancer treatments which is asinine. New research is done everyday doesn't matter if it's into vaccines for new viral diseases or cancer the logistics of the research are the same. And if you are talking about delivery logistic than cancer would win every blood day of the week.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Share your photos & videos privately with family - <AUTHOR> https://www.wesnaplove.com/

<comment><USER2> Since there seems to be no free version, or free trial, I think the site needs some more information before sign up.

How are the backups performed? What does the interface look like on phone, desktop?

Looks great though.</comment>