Show HN: A simple interactive resume-making tool - <AUTHOR> https://danplisetsky.github.io/resume-maker/ <comment><USER2> Resumes live in that weird world between documents and data, trying to manage, edit, and share them neatly is invariably going to fall off onto one side of the fence.

I eventually gave up and now just use Microsoft Word stored on Dropbox. Anything that gets primarily touched and read by humans just needs to use a presentation-oriented tool. Building a pandoc workflow for a resume is so far into overkill territory that you may as well direct the soldiers to pour salt into the battered soil of your creative sanity.

<comment><USER3> My strategy had been latex for resumes, where I can play all the dirty formatting tricks I want in the name of presentation, and pandoc/markdown for my CV, where content is more important and the document needs to be updated frequently.

<comment><USER4> My favorite dirty LaTex formatting trick is \phantom

<comment><USER5> Is this LaTeX equivalent of   padding?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Resume also needs to have some basic aesthetic value. You're much better off using something like [https://latexresu.me/](https://latexresu.me/), for example.

</comment><comment><USER7> There is interactive resume-making tool made by European Union [https://europass.cedefop.europa.eu/documents/curriculum- vita...](https://europass.cedefop.europa.eu/documents/curriculum-vitae)

</comment><comment><USER8> I've had some success in the past years using "Hack My Resume" [https://github.com/hacksalot/HackMyResume](https://github.com/hacksalot/HackMyResume)

</comment><comment><USER9> Some suggestions:

* The buttons that appear on hover below the name don't have tooltips. That makes it difficult to understand what each button does without trying it.

* The icons for those buttons are also smaller, making some of them look very similar to each other.

I didn't proceed beyond this because it wasn't very easy to use.

</comment><comment><USER10> I've been lazier in recent years. I keep my Stack Overflow Developer Story updated and send that as a link for something résumé-like in emails. This is usually good enough, if not better because of hyperlinks and a chronological order, for a lead dev or director to get the interview. Usually after everything went well already, HR wants a PDF for whatever bookkeeping reason and I just hit the print button since the design and layout is irrelevant at this point.

</comment><comment><USER11> Although I have my resume in plain old MS Word, I'd love to automate it to create resumes on the go for various areas I apply to (web dev, SEO, content marketing etc)</comment>


Gradient Descent: The Ultimate Optimizer - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1909.13371 <comment><USER2> Still no comments? Surprising.

If this technique works, then it ends all hyperparameter tuning, forever. The paper's humble on this point, but quite clear.

</comment><comment> jerome-jh The abstract's worth reading. Cannot tell yet for the article.</comment>


Data-Intensive Text Processing with MapReduce - <AUTHOR> http://beowulf.csail.mit.edu/18.337/MapReduce-book-final.pdf

<comment><USER2> I bought the book a couple of years ago. Extremely useful because it shows how to implement a lot of algorithms (e.g., inner joins, outer joins, etc., etc.)

Saved me a lot of time n a large customer job.

<comment><AUTHOR> Which part of the book did you find most useful?

<comment><USER2> A few years ago I found the material on aggregation, joins, and indexing most useful.

Now, Chapter 6 on HMM is more closely matched to my interests.

<comment><AUTHOR> Have you done any work with graph algorithms? What are your thoughts? ( chap 5)

<comment><USER2> I haven't done anything real with map reduce graph algorithms. Real, in the sense that someone has paid me to do it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was wondering when it makes sense to use MapReduce graphs at work? And how it works in a real setting?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Only gotten a few pages in, but what I've read so far was informative and understandable. Thanks

<comment><AUTHOR> It was a very exciting find.</comment></comment>


Request for Startups: News, Jobs, and Democracy - <AUTHOR> https://blog.ycombinator.com/rfs-news-jobs-and-democracy/ <comment><USER2> Education should be on this list.

The root of all these problems stem from a lack of effective education.

1) The current methods are highly ineffective for teaching

By getting more effective at teaching children, and helping them to self educate, we get better informed citizens who can interpret news more accurately and effectively participate in democracy.

2) The current goals for education do not align with current & future needs

Our current system is designed to produce factory workers for the industrial economy, which was adapted to produce knowledge workers for the information economy. But we are moving towards full automation of most of those jobs.

We will need to prepare people to be adaptable in a fast changing automated world: more entrepreneurial type skills are needed.

<comment><USER3> See, I hear techies grumble about education constantly. Our education system is teaching the wrong skills or not challenging students or just an elaborate babysitting racket.

I hear teachers, on the other hand, complain that after decades of trying everything they can, they've realized that they cannot help students unless those students have safe, stable, supportive home lives.

It's easy to say we should introduce children to programming early, even easy to do. It is easy to complain about critical thinking skills and kids these days. It is easy to see that overtesting schools and overreacting to those test scores wastes resources and the time of children and teachers.

It's hard to find a way to ensure one in six children in the US subject to food insecurity always get three good meals a day. It is hard to figure out how to provide stability in a single family, let alone all families. It is hard to say a child shouldn't drop out of school and work whatever job they can when their parents have been unable or unwilling to provide for them.

We have been talking about and trying to fix "education" my entire life; maybe we should try fixing some of the underlying problems first, even if they are hard.

<comment><USER4> None of those are particular hard. Start by ending snap and using the money to increase the number of meals in schools to three a day. Second those meals must be some protein, some veggies and potatoes, pizza, etc are not food.

<comment><USER3> One of the difficulties in guaranteeing adequate childhood nutrition is that children are only in schools for about 180 days a year, in the US, but need to eat approximately 365 days each year.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am a little ambivalent about this. On the one hand the intent is probably good but on the other hand companies like YC and Silicon Valley are drivers of a lot of developments that led to the current situation.

\- Silicon Valley is a great example of growing inequality. Most of the rewards go disproportionally to a select few at the top

\- A lot of VC companies are killing a lot of previously relatively stable jobs. Uber is giving its drivers a job for a while but it's pretty clear this will not be sustainable and they will soon be out of a job again

\- The biggest companies like Facebook and Google are pretty much aiding "fake news" because in the end the only thing they care about is impressions and fake news sells better

Don't want to be too negative but technology is not only a force for good but also causes problems for a lot of people. Maybe these people are looking at the wrong guy for solutions but their concerns are valid.

<comment><USER6> _Silicon Valley is a great example of growing inequality. Most of the rewards go disproportionally to a select few at the top._

That's a good thing: [http://www.paulgraham.com/inequality.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/inequality.html)

"Decreasing economic inequality means taking money from the rich. Since risk and reward are equivalent, decreasing potential rewards automatically decreases people's appetite for risk. Startups are intrinsically risky. Without the prospect of rewards proportionate to the risk, founders will not invest their time in a startup. Founders are irreplaceable. So eliminating economic inequality means eliminating startups."

<comment> shawn-furyan This _actual analysis_ from The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, which uses long running public (easily accessible) data from the Census Bureau, the BDS report[1], suggests that income inequality hurts startup creation rather than helping it.

Note: The specific relationship that they find is that startup creation is associated with home prices. This makes sense in the US, as home prices are a good proxy for middle class wealth. Here's a quick not fully vetted interpretation of this finding: When the middle class is relatively rich, they start businesses. When it is relatively poor, they don't. The aspirational income inequality that Graham posits doesn't immediately jump out when looking at year by year new startup numbers on a graph. I'm currently analyzing these numbers, but it's pretty clear that they don't support Graham's assumptions.

Note 2: The FRBoSF analysis isn't perfect for answering this question, but at least it's a good start, unlike the pure logic approach (despite the easy availability of good longitudinal Census data on the subject) that Graham published.

Note 3: The Graham essay is an essay on income inequality that came out before the atomic bomb that Picketty dropped on the subject. It really shouldn't be dragged out now because the research landscape on the field has been completely changed since it was written.

Final Note: I know that every time the word startup is used on HN, it spurs a 'No True Scotsman' debate about what qualities invalidate a new business from the label startup. Not remotely important. The FRBoSF article notes that new businesses have faster job growth than older businesses and that's the larger subject in question. Trying to throw companies out only serves to move the conversation from fact based to conjecture based by throwing out a perfectly good source of facts relevant to the matter.

[1] [http://www.census.gov/ces/dataproducts/bds/](http://www.census.gov/ces/dataproducts/bds/)

<comment><USER6> _The specific relationship that they find is that startup creation is associated with home prices. This makes sense in the US, as home prices are a good proxy for middle class wealth. Here 's a quick not fully vetted interpretation of this finding: When the middle class is relatively rich, they start businesses. When it is relatively poor, they don't. The aspirational income inequality that Graham posits doesn't immediately jump out when looking at year by year new startup numbers on a graph. I'm currently analyzing these numbers, but it's pretty clear that they don't support Graham's assumptions._

He addresses this line of logic in a separate essay: [http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html](http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html)

"A surprising number of people retain from childhood the idea that there is a fixed amount of wealth in the world. There is, in any normal family, a fixed amount of money at any moment. But that's not the same thing.

When wealth is talked about in this context, it is often described as a pie. "You can't make the pie larger," say politicians. When you're talking about the amount of money in one family's bank account, or the amount available to a government from one year's tax revenue, this is true. If one person gets more, someone else has to get less.

I can remember believing, as a child, that if a few rich people had all the money, it left less for everyone else. Many people seem to continue to believe something like this well into adulthood. This fallacy is usually there in the background when you hear someone talking about how x percent of the population have y percent of the wealth. If you plan to start a startup, then whether you realize it or not, you're planning to disprove the Pie Fallacy."

<comment><USER7> A couple things you should do, if you want to have better discussions:

First, you should stop quoting pg's essays as though they were infallible sources of truth. It's not helping your argument. I like some of his essays; others are misleading or dead wrong (for example: [http://idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm](http://idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm)). Empirical evidence always beats philosophical pondering; shawn-furyan provided _data_ that pg was wrong, and you did nothing but post another data-free essay.

Second, you should stop assuming your ideological opponents are idiots who don't understand simple concepts like growth of wealth. We do; of course it is possible to "grow the pie". But since the 1970's, the majority of GDP growth has translated to income gains only for the top decile. And in such a regime, why should everyone else bother to grow the pie? What income inequality has done is create people who make a rational, and perfectly valid, calculation that "growth" is pointless and not worth fighting for, since they won't see any of it.

<comment><USER6> You're reading much too far into my comments. I posted the quotes to see what other people think of them, nothing more. If the response is that data beats logic, then that's a fine point.

 _you should stop assuming your ideological opponents are idiots who don 't understand simple concepts_

This is a personal attack, though. Please don't do that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A category of applications that I'd like to see YC helping along are those things that could help ordinary people run for office. The things off the top of my head I can see technology helping with:

* Leveraging social networking to generate social permission for people to stand for office, which I think is the most important obstacle facing people who might consider running --- far more so than money.

* Using technology to bypass the expensive outreach vectors traditional candidates are stuck with.

* Informing constituencies and potential candidates about the local offices available to run for.

* Crowdfunding campaigns with Kickstarter-like dynamics to make it safer to commit funds to speculative candidates.

* Capturing the stories of people who have or are standing for election, so that we can all compare notes and see what the challenges (or lack thereof) are.

* Building informal parties and coalitions of officeholders in states and major metro areas, to build tickets and slates of candidates around common ideals.

* Building common platforms for constituent services, so that fresh new officeholders can outcompete incumbents both in responsiveness and in making their newfound influence available to their constituencies to pressure other parts of government.

I've been calling my Senators about the Sessions nomination nonstop for the past 2 weeks and I've gotten calls through just 3 times. I haven't the slightest clue how to reach officeholders in my Chicago suburb. Clearly there's room for major innovation here.

Incidentally, if you're building things like this, I'd love to help in any way I can. I'm easy to contact. I've set a goal for myself to get a specific number of friends and acquaintances to run, and I'm happy with the progress I've been able to make and pretty excited about the concept.

<comment><USER9> > Using technology to bypass the expensive outreach vectors traditional > candidates are stuck with.

This is a huge frustration of mine. It is nearly impossible to get the attention of politicians unless I'm willing to spend a vast amount of my time on the phone, because they don't pay attention to email, social media, etc.

It would be awesome to have a social media platform that is dedicated to political communication. And with ample features related to communicating about policy. Like for example:

1) The ability to search for a pending bill based on the text of the bill, highlight text, and comment directly on it.

2) The ability to +1 someone else's comments in a meaningful way.

3) The ability to publicly challenge a politician's claims through research, data citations, or other types of analysis.

4) The ability to find the appropriate politicians/appointees for a specific concern.

5) The ability to facilitate directional communication from politicians on specific issues. It would be great if a politician had a common platform to explain in detail why they voted yay/nay or abstained from voting for something, with quick crossreferences, data visualization, etc.

<comment><USER10> I have a feeling part of why they don't use tech solutions is that the 'cost' of making a statement is valuable information: if a ton of people are willing to spend 10 minutes to make a call, that tells you something. Having 100 people, half of them Russian bots, click on a "+1" button, might not tell you as much.

<comment><USER11> Having worked myself as a constituent contact in a Congressional office, I can tell you from experience that you are exactly right. Someone who's willing to hand-write a letter and pay for a stamp is seen as a more motivated constituent -- more likely to care enough about the issue to have it decide how they'll vote in November, in other words -- than someone who makes a call; and the caller is more motivated than someone who clicks "send" on an email; and the emailer is more motivated than someone who signs a Web petition.

For a long time, in fact, this mindset meant that a _really_ effective way to "hack" the Congressional contact system was to send your message in a _telegram_ \-- because if you were willing to pay to have a messenger run your message across town and deliver it by hand, you were assumed to be very motivated indeed!

(I doubt that's true anymore, of course; not least because I'm not sure you _can_ send telegrams anymore. But now I'm wondering if you could get the same effect these days by sending your message via FedEx's most expensive service...)

<comment><USER10> I asked this elsewhere, but does being a donor matter at all for calls/letters? If so they check the dollar amount?

<comment><USER11> I was never asked to; Congressional offices and campaign offices are supposed to be legally distinct, and that information would have all been held by the campaign.

That being said, once the sums you contribute get large enough you will almost certainly get to be known around the office -- either explicitly (e.g. the Chief of Staff tells all the people who handle correspondence "Bob Smith is a good friend of the Congressman's, if you find any messages from him bring those straight to me") or implicitly (e.g. the staff of the Congressional office notices that when Bob Smith comes in to meet with the boss he's ushered right in and stays for a long time). So large contributors' messages can easily get special attention, even without that kind of direct connection to their contributions ever being made.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, I'm sure if you're a Big Donor that's one thing, but that's not what I want to do. Was just curious if by saying you're a donor on your phone call whether it might make a difference.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The thing that is needed most is a laboratory of ideas for what will replace the neoliberal order. A corporate democracy that increases inequality and only panders to justice by gestures towards identity politics is seemingly over. What we're faced with now is either devolving into an Ethnic Nationalist state on par with Russia, or something entirely new that has yet to be described.

What needs to be recaptured is a vision of the future based on science, health, the arts, and shared prosperity. And it has to be described in actionable political terms.

We can do this. We have the majority of scientists, engineers, philosophers, and artists behind us. But we have to move quickly because returning to the kind of managed democracy we had before is no longer possible.

<comment><USER13> > _What needs to be recaptured is a vision of the future based on science, > health, the arts, and shared prosperity. And it has to be described in > actionable political terms._

We need a Star Trek: TNG for the (pun not intended) next generation...

If someone is willing to start a movement that wants to create United Fedration of Planets, count me in.

<comment><USER12> Right I agree. The command and control framework of the Star Trek universe will be unpalatable to American biases, so it would have to be something more networked along the lines of the federalism we already have. But given our technology, building a more directly democratic system of feedback should be possible. Trump's success is using Twitter to transform himself into a disruptive avatar of his supporters. The next generation of politicians has to do the same, but with democratic impulses as opposed to authoritarian ones.

We also, as much as possible, must try evenly distribute the future. For example, if we want to defeat climate change, we have to rally manufacturing and technological solutions in places like the rural Midwest. In even the reddest of states, their are bastions of support for future-oriented ideas, and we should begin networking these places togehther as forward bases of operation.

<comment><USER13> I wasn't really even thinking about "command and control framework". More about the culture of Star Trek universe - "the future based on science, health, the arts, and shared prosperity", where people _respect_ science, competence, teamwork and humanitarian values.

One thing I always loved about Star Trek worldview is that characters in the show always believe people they meet are _competent_ at what they do, instead of assuming that they're working with morons. Ditto for the bureaucracy of the UFP - it's assumed competent until proven otherwise; not like in our world, where the government is always assumed idiotic by default.

<comment><USER12> Right, but framing is desperately important in this context. If you say we want to build a Star Trek future, in no short order you'll have people jumping all over you about how it's an authoritarian communist fantasy. I've seen this exact thing happen on this forum.

If instead, its framed as expanding the idea of American Federalism, diverse entities working towards vision of the future rooted in these ideals, I think it will be more successful.

<comment><USER13> I understand now. A good point, I agree.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Democracy can be improved by having democracy in the workplace.

Modern corporations are run like totalitarian, authoritarian regimes with top- down orders being barked down. If you disobey, you're out.

People in Western democracies are no longer putting up with non-democratic control of their political institutions, but are completely oblivious to non- democratic control of their economic institutions and are perfectly willing to take orders where and when it matters most -- every day, 9 to 5.

When employees can directly vote and democratically elect the CEO/CFO and other executive and managerial positions, across the wide range of industries and in majority of organizations, it will be a huge win for democracy, and that will spill into a much more engaged population politically as well. Also, at that point, employees are no longer employees.

<comment><USER15> > Modern corporations are run like totalitarian, authoritarian regimes with > top-down orders being barked down. If you disobey, you're out. People in > Western democracies are no longer putting up with non-democratic control of > their political institutions, but are completely oblivious to non-democratic > control of their economic institutions and are perfectly willing to take > orders where and when it matters most -- every day, 9 to 5.

This sounds strikingly socialist.

As a small business owner, the one who took the risk to start it, invested my own savings, and put things together so I could coordinate selling products with paying employees, _you 're damn right it's my regime._ If I didn't think it would be mine, I never would have started it. The future rewards would be non-existent, relevant to being a cog somewhere else. _And my customers would never get the added value of what I make from the business I never would have started._

Instead of having increased ownership, autonomy, and earnings potential, I have to negotiate and play politics with other people who I know aren't as intrinsically motivated as myself? Forget it, that's entirely unrealistic. Think about what you're saying - this is not how value, wealth, and prosperity is created. Nobody is going to vote me out of being CEO, because if that were possible I wouldn't have put in the tough work (and created the value) that goes along with being a CEO.

And the capitalist system works fine, because if these employees think I'm doing a shit job, they do have a vote: leave and start their own company. The parts that don't work are actually the more socialist parts of the system, such as bailouts for big behemoth, and regulatory barriers to starting competitors.

Sorry pal, but surface-level idealism doesn't square with real-life incentives and rewards. What I'm in favor for is reducing regulations and other burdens so that you or any employees in general have the option of starting their own companies and competing with me. That's a much better way for them to "take" the value of my shares, rather than just voting it to themselves with no work done.

<comment><USER16> > And the capitalist system works fine, because if these employees think I'm > doing a shit job, they do have a vote: leave and start their own company.

I didn't know it was this possible to be so non self aware.

> The parts that don't work are actually the more socialist parts of the > system, such as bailouts for big behemoth, and regulatory barriers to > starting competitors.

Socialism is when the government does things, and the more things it does, the socialister it is!

<comment><USER17> _I didn 't know it was this possible to be so non self aware._

No matter how ignorant you may think another poster is, it's never okay on HN to be uncivil. Particularly with contentious topics, it's even more important to raise to level of civility to ensure constructive discussion.

<comment><USER16> This isn't uncivil. This is pointing out that OP's statement is factually ignorant of the economic possibilities for 99% of the population.

<comment><USER17> If you believe the poster is missing important facts, and you're willing to take the time to do so, let them know what it is you think they're missing in a constructive, non-combative manner. Claiming someone is heretofore unimaginably non self-aware is a direct personal insult, which is never appropriate on HN. Please contribute substantively and civilly, or refrain from doing so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think an important question to ask with regards to Democracy is "why do people believe the things they believe" or "how do they acquire their political beliefs?" The biggest influencers are likely 1) their family and 2) their friends. Essentially, they come from social interaction.

People need a (fun) way to increase the number of real social interactions they have with other people. What's really dangerous right now is that many (including Liberals) are socially shunning those who don't share their political beliefs (or are not pure enough in their beliefs). Pushing people to the fringes of society will just force them to find a home in the most extreme among us.

For a long time, Americans relied on social clubs that allowed people to engage in diverse political discussions but also build friendly relationships with others. I would like to see startups try to revive long lived, persistent social organizations that are aimed first at building a friendly community among its members and second at making people listen to different points of view.

<comment><USER19> I don't think this is going to be possible until the basic arguments over what information sources are factual is resolved. Over the past decade I've seen the social structures that I grew up bifurcate because discussion between the two sides is basically impossible.

<comment><USER20> I don't think the basic arguments over facts are going to be resolved so long as people shun those who don't agree with them politically. Especially in the current social media climate, false claims spread like wildfire while the debunkings languish because people only spread or listen to stuff that supports their existing beliefs. My Twitter feed is probably typical for HN and I've been seeing this multiple times a day. There isn't even any media panic over it like the one over conservative "fake news" because it supports their existing beliefs too; often journalists are helping spread the claims on social media like everyone else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I've been thinking about Robert's Rules of Order [1] for some time now, and the idea that it would be nice if it were updated for today's world of discussion forums, in which the interactions are more drawn out, rather than conducted with all participants active at the same time. I think it would be nice if there were a discussion forum that implemented some sort of policies that had been as well thought-out as Robert's rules.

What I was thinking is that some policies regarding responsibilities incurred by posting a comment in an asynchronous discussion forum are needed. For example, one should not be able to simply post a comment then leave the discussion. The persistence of their comment should be tied to whether they continue to participate, and respond to refutations and the like. Similarly, I see a lot of specious reasoning and appealing lies get posted, rapidly upvoted, but only eventually debunked: the people who upvoted should be notified of the refutation.

It would be nice if karma could actually be useful, and this always reminds me of PageRank [2]. Surely there must be some way to normalize the weights of highly-voted comments in less populated but serious subforums (like subreddits) so they are not overwhelmed by the karma granted to silly jokes in unserious but hugely populated frivolous subforums (again, I'm thinking of reddit here).

I think all of these things would do something to counter the fake news and echo chambers.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert's_Rules_of_Order](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert's_Rules_of_Order)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank)

<comment><USER22> I've played in this space! A few years ago, I half-assed the world's worst startup for asynchronous political debating that focused more on identifying and understanding opinions as opposed to expression and dialog, because dialog necessarily breaks down to dichotomies and outgroup homogeneity which are exactly the problem. I never really figured out how to elevator-pitch the damn thing, but here are some blog posts I wrote back in the day: [http://blog.agreethepeople.com/](http://blog.agreethepeople.com/) If you do follow that link, start at the bottom and work your way up. And let me know what you think!

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is a great move by YC! I'd also love to see the "left behind" Americans addressed. There's a lot of people hurting in America who need training and jobs for the new economy and investment opportunity. I suggest opening YC branches in a former coal mining states and former manufacturing hubs in lake states. If folks can get their stability, hope and pride back, they'll be less likely to turn to fake news, placing blame on outsiders and divisive politics.

<comment><USER24> > If folks can get their stability, hope and pride back, they'll be less > likely to turn to fake news, placing blame on outsiders and divisive > politics.

Hear, hear, I think this is the key. Happy people tend toward stability for the societies they're in. I'm all for education, for anyone who wants it, as much as they want it (price and payer to be negotiated). That said, I suspect that education by itself will not fill the job supply-demand gap, nor that those educated jobs will be well-matched to the places where people live. And, if there's more to life than jobs, then maybe the jobs need to move to where people are, rather than making people move to where the jobs are. I think answers that will work will have to work for, say, everybody in the 'Rust Belt' as they are today, not as they might be if they jump through all the right hoops. For an example some people will dislike, a government run single payer health care system would take the financial burden off of employers as well as being cheaper for employees, supporting small business growth and entrepreneurship. Don't like that example? Fine. Bring on your favorites.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> About news: Back in the day, Groklaw did a phenomenal job covering the SCO v. world court cases (and, more broadly, the intersection of law and technology). It was run by a semi-anonymous paralegal who really _cared_ about the cases, about the law, and about technology. ("Semi-anonymous", because her name was known, but it was a fairly common name, and her city and state were not known.)

Groklaw became _the_ source of authoritative reporting about the SCO cases. It had analysis from lawyers, paralegals, and technologists. It had (voluntary, amateur) reporters attending hearings and giving in-depth reports, and then thorough analysis from a wide variety of people. People cared enough to voluntarily take vacation days to go to the courthouse and attend hearings, and then spend the next 2+ hours writing it all up and posting it. People voluntarily gave money to keep it all going. It was _amazing_.

It also was subject to significant attack, both from SCO and from trolls. It consumed the life of the paralegal running it for a decade. It was probably not sustainable.

I think that moderation is essential for any online community that isn't going to fall to the lowest common denominator, but sustainability is an issue. (HN at least has multiple moderators, so hopefully they won't burn out.) For news, multiple reporters are needed (Groklaw didn't report on a hearing until multiple reports came in, because sometimes trolls sent in false reports.)

I think the answer may be multiple small sites that each care about a focused area, and attract enough of a following that there are multiple reporters available when needed. (This probably won't work for something like foreign policy. I can attend a court hearing in my town and write up a report, but I can't get an interview with the Secretary of State and start asking uncomfortable questions.)

This isn't really a firm idea, just some thoughts and observations...

</comment><comment><USER26> _> We're looking to fund... new revenue tools that can bolster and sustain independent media organizations._

Dear YC: I wholeheartedly support this and strongly recommend these books as required reading for anyone seeking to change how media works in our society.

1\. _Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media_ by Noam Chomsky & Ed Herman[1]

2\. _Taking the Risk Out of Democracy: Corporate Propaganda versus Freedom and Liberty_ by Alex Carey[2]

I realize these have an "anti-corporate" bent to them but they are truly good analyses and well worth reading with at the very least a critical eye. As Carey documents, it is the corporate sector that has developed much of the modern tools of manipulating mass opinion.

More than mere fact checking, I think you will find that the chief challenge to achieving sustainable independent media is the business model. Advertising necessarily biases media towards at least the class interests of advertisers (if not any particular one), or else it would go out of business. Meanwhile it has trained readers to not pay the full price of quality content. This is a fundamental problem.

Another challenge is that companies have business models that support their own PR and lobbying while ordinary citizens do not. That is unless they are organized and combined resources, but with the dissipation of unions there is no strong popular economic counterpoint to corporate PR. This is part of our news system as well.

I very much hope some good work can be done here, with a sober and clear understanding of the fundamental challenges.

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

[2] [https://www.amazon.com/Taking-Risk-Out-Democracy- Communicati...](https://www.amazon.com/Taking-Risk-Out-Democracy- Communication/dp/0252066162)

</comment><comment><USER27> > News: We're facing two major issues with news. The first is fake news. The > business model for online media rewards the people who get the greatest > number of page views, clicks and likes. That results in a system that prizes > virality over truth.

This is insanely difficult as interpersonal trust is expensive and getting first-hand information/data is extremely non-trivial. I agree that "mainstream media" (quotes because that phrase makes my mouth taste like ash) has happily devolved into BuzzFeed-style clickbait, but another parrot of AP isn't progress.

Paul Graham suggests that the best way to come into a good startup idea is to become the sort of person that has them, which I think applies to informing the public at large -- I don't think it's realistic to expect to build a revenue model off of people that will only give you their eyeballs for 20 minutes a day in the hopes of finding something to have an opinion on. I think this is a much larger, nearly intractable, problem of making societies into the types that are interested in nuance and dry detail.

<comment><USER28> Paul Graham is right that it has to be something you want to do, but it is possible to build large new media sites on short attention spans -- if your site is designed for them. My site, an actual working solution to the problem of both fake news and bias, is doing great (Over three million page views last month). However, we most likely won't apply to YC this time, or ever again, due to Sam Altman's anti-Trump bias.

<comment><USER29> No offense, but looking at your website, you've solved the problem of fake news by not showing __any news __. Unless you 're talking about no bias in UFC news specifically.

<comment><USER28> No offense taken. See my answer above.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> About news - I think this recent tweet by Elon Musk is particularly relevant: [https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/825936326264360961](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/825936326264360961)

"Reading the source material is better than reading other people's opinions about the source material"

It'd probably need a few iterations to get it right, but I'd be willing to pay somewhere in the range of $25/mo for something that published or linked directly to the source material that is driving the current news cycle along with a succinct summary with no commentary.

Something vaguely HN-like but for all current news topics, not just tech news.

</comment><comment><USER31> I applied to Y combinator with an app that addressed both points raised under news section three years ago and didn't get accepted.

Back then we were facing the same issues in Turkey. Ultimately, we had to close down the site because Turkish government was silencing every opposing voice.

Funny how you guys are now thinking this is a big issue NOW.

<comment><USER17> _Funny how you guys are now thinking this is a big issue NOW._

How is this sentiment useful? _Sorry, guys. Whatever you do now is invalidated by what you didn 't do before._ The past is only useful as something we can learn from. Focussing on what can be done now is something we can actually grapple with, change, and improve.

<comment><USER31> That is your interpretation of my comment. Notice how you are twisting it with the "Sorry, guys".

I support YC's effort. After all, I spent many hours of my life on solving this very problem through my non-profit startup.

Fake news has been a big problem for a long time for many countries. It would have been great if YC took an action before it became USA's problem. Think about the impact they could have made! I guess hindsight is 20/20.

<comment><USER17> Indeed, that's how I interpret it. I generally try hard to avoid snark myself in responses, as it rarely is effective at engendering sympathy or support or understanding. I'm getting exhausted at all of the accusations of "why weren't you concerned then?" that are being thrown around HN the past couple of days. They're absolutely not constructive. I apologize for letting it slip this time.

 _Funny how you guys are now thinking this is a big issue NOW._

It's hard to interpret this charitably. On the face of it, it's a sideways, snarky accusation of hypocrisy. I have a hard time reading it any other way.

People are human. People grow and change. People pay more attention when things affect them directly, or at least are closer to home. Is that really wrong? Or just realistic? It's wonderful but mistakenly idealistic to think that everyone can be concerned about everything that's wrong all the time. People have limited resources.

Of course people should be held accountable for their actions, but we also have to allow for the possibility of change, of becoming better. Sometimes it takes a significant kick to get people moving. Are we going to begrudge them the fact that they're moving now?

And as a sibling comment pointed out, I'm sure there's a lot that goes into the evaluation YC candidates.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Conventional Wikipedia-quality news outlets are doing well at present, btw - the NYT reported in November that subscriptions had skyrocketed since the election. [http://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/17/new-york-times-says- subscript...](http://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/17/new-york-times-says- subscriptions-are-booming-after-trumps-election.html)

I've been very pleased to see in the past couple of weeks that journalists have discovered actual journalism again, the sort that doesn't go for false balance and instead paints obvious BS as BS. Which is heartening to see, if a year late.

Having the customers be _the readers_ , not random advertisers, appears to be a way to get the right things happening. So if you want to do a news startup, work out ramen profitability in the era of adblockers.

I might note also: my Facebook two weeks ago was "here's fun stuff your friends are doing, here's their funny cat pictures" and now it's 24/7 "LATEST DISPATCHES FROM THE WAR AGAINST THE INVADING HELL DEMONS". My wife boots her brain every morning reading Facebook on the tablet and I've asked her to keep it to only the _worst_ news from overnight. (I used to read my Facebook to get a rest from that sort of thing on my Tumblr. I must admit I'm not doing so well at making my own FB anything other than LATEST HELL DEMONS news.) I mean, this is understandable - a lot of these people are seriously worried for themselves and their loved ones. So there's a market of pissed-off liberals who've newly discovered radicalism and would like it without BS, that present liberal-pandering outlets aren't quite feeding. What would something that works for that look like? How would _you_ get their $3/month?

</comment><comment><USER33> I'm happily engaged in a DevOps startup and won't pursue this idea, but I proposed a new kind of news format shortly after the election at [https://joshpadnick.com/2016/11/25/a-proposal-for-a-new- type...](https://joshpadnick.com/2016/11/25/a-proposal-for-a-new-type-of- media-source-true-news). Personally, I'd love to be a consumer of something like this, or to know if there are startups working on this.

<comment><USER34> Reading what you wrote... It almost seems like facts in news is a dependency management issue?

I mean, it's going to be a way more complicated dependency situation than with code - imagine a fact determined by a study which had to make decisions about categories - but the gist remains:

An interpretation of facts depends on those facts, some of which themselves are collections/transforms on facts, but ultimately, there's a physical reality from which they stem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> If you're concerned about jobs and democracy, open an office in a swing state. The way the us electoral system is organized, every young educated person who moves from the heartland to California is a vote for Trump.

Alternately find some way to get uneducated heartlanders to move to Fresno or something.

Also it would help if you show just the smallest amount of empathy people in the U.S. who don't live in one of two half states. (i.e. people whose tax dollars benefit Stanford and the origin of Silicon Valley in defense contracting, people who buy your products, whose stock market investments make it possible for you to get rich, etc.)

<comment><USER36> "uneducated heartlanders"?

<comment><USER37> I'm going to pass along something my wife told me about, that happened when she was living in Idaho with her first husband. It was seriously suggested by some of the locals that she should undergo an exorcism. The evil spirit allegedly possessing her, that was to be the target of this procedure: her university education.

There are lot of people in rural areas in the US who not only do not have a lot of education but who have an active antipathy to it.

One shouldn't let this observation degenerate into a stereotype, but I don't think one should dismiss it either.

<comment><USER36> I try not to let the anti-vaxxers, hippies, or the Hollywood stars brand whole areas, or my experience in San Francisco in 1988 with a broken down car and told to go find a tow truck.

"a lot of education but who have an active antipathy to it."

An yet, I live with people who cherish it right here in rural America. Parents sacrificed to get kids in college. Doctors are listened to (yep, get your shots).

Its ok, really. It is socially acceptable to degrade and demonize all us NFL & MMA watching morons. You can feel superior based on one story, and frankly, most in these parts don't go in for the trouble to correct you. Its not like TV treats people much better.

The funny part is the little digs. The NYT article[1] on TV shows by region claimed folks in rural American liked "Walking Dead" because it is "for people worried about immigration". I'm more thinking that its a fun show and frankly most people here can imagine there survival a lot more than those goofballs in the show.

Oh well. As the graphic floating around Twitter said "you spent 8 years weaponizing the federal government" then you get this.

I guess, I ask if someone had the same story about say, a racial group, would you be passing it along on a board like this as an example of why "uneducated X" would be true?

1) [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/12/26/upshot/duck-d...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/12/26/upshot/duck- dynasty-vs-modern-family-television-maps.html)

<comment><USER38> The attitude you're responding to is a big reason for why Trump had so much support per David Wong:

[http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-trumps-rise-that-no- on...](http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-trumps-rise-that-no-one-talks- about/)

I find his analysis good on top of being entertaining. Echos a lot of what I've heard living in Red states. Forgot to add that most people around here are just down-to-earth, working-class people who go to work, raise kids, have fun with friends, etc. Normal people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> If anyone wants a free idea for a "deal with fake news" startup: [https://docs.google.com/document/d/13TK_uYpXRc3cODePnfV16Kzl...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/13TK_uYpXRc3cODePnfV16KzlIpxD7frAHsPM2Lt8ewE/edit)

I literally do not have the time to build this, as I'm busy trying to make PHP secure.

I just spitballed an idea and passed it along hackers who gave me feedback.

I don't want to be contractually tied to VCs either.

Just, if you like the idea, take it. Run with it. Make it successful. Use modern crypto. It's yours.

Maybe see if the folks that run Snopes are interested?

<comment><USER40> Hey, cool idea! We could add this to it: [https://nochio.com/?kind=bad](https://nochio.com/?kind=bad)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> _Building tools for fact-checking and helping people decipher fact from fiction will become increasingly important to keep the electorate informed_

Sadly the electorate doesn't care about being informed. They seek out news that confirms their world view. Any information that contradicts their world view is deemed "fake news".

<comment><USER13> People usually believe what their friends believe - information is used to make social objects and ways of doing social signalling, not to get at hard facts.

A lot of bullshit starts to fly around when you have two or more stable "positions" around a subject in a society. People divide into sides and keep using information only to signal to which side they belong.

This leads me to (maybe a pretty dumb) idea: what if we found a way to _destroy_ such stable positions? Destabilize them, so that people couldn't stubbornly signal their support for a single side? Of course all sides would end up using such a tool to destroy their "opponents"; I feel like this could lead to two outcomes: a) (bad) there aren't any stable positions anymore, and b) (good) the positions keep getting disrupted until they rearrange into one that is actually aligned with the facts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> In many respects, Y Combinator, or really, start ups more broadly, seem uniquely ill equipped to solve this problem. Startups seem to be especially incompatible with the business challenges that face media companies right now. While perhaps the S curve of user growth could be attained by a media startup, the S curve of revenue isn't. And if it was, the quality of the journalism it produced would be terrible. Viral content is almost invariably superficial, frivolous and uninformative, or has an emotional quality very different from the impartial, sober thinking that we now need.

Americans have so many prejudices against publicly funded media. There's a widespread belief that if the government funds your media, its editorial perspective will reflect the government's interests. It's a completely misguided assumption in the case of, say, the CBC. The insulation from competition, and, therefore, not having to optimize content for sharing or views is necessary for producing quality, informative content. The New York Times seems to be holding onto at least a sliver of its integrity because it doesn't use such metrics, and instead is funded by subscriptions. But government funding could be valuable too (although there'd be hurdles).

That being said, the person who cracks the code for how to run a lucrative content/journalism business will make a lot of money.

</comment><comment><USER43> How about starting a new political party? Is that too crazy to consider? Maybe this is the time to do it.

I think one thing that happened recently is that we saw a desire for change. The number and enthusiasm of Sanders and Trump followers points to that. Maybe there is a place for a party to represent the views and values of those who followed Sanders.

Just thinking about it, there was a previously unknown, old, white, male politician who had such a tremendous following from so many people. What happened to that crowd? Those people are still out there, young, many in college, new graduates, minorities. It probably includes factory workers from Rust Belt and so on. There were so many followers despite media ignoring them in-large, despite the main DNC establishment disliking them and they still got so many votes.

I think doing the same thing over and over with the DNC as before, is probably not going to work. How feasible is to take all those invested billions and create a new movement instead of fighting fake news, why not generate good news. Instead of forgetting about the workers whose jobs are being automated away, perhaps talk about basic income in the way that would be accepted and not be seen as a humiliating hand-out.

What better to improve Democracy by creating a more parties to represent and replace the crusty old one with all their baggage and corruption.

<comment><USER44> New parties are hard. Still, I've found it interesting to think about a group that was only active in 3-5 evenly contested states, that collectively controlled a few percentage of the vote in those states.

This small group might have tremendous power to set the agenda, either as a distinct party or one that influenced the presidential candidates.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Hmm, we applied with our non-profit tool, Umbrella App, for managing the physical and digital security of journalists and activists ([https://www.secfirst.org](https://www.secfirst.org)) a few years ago when we were only getting started but didn't get in. It seems like it's needed now more than ever, so we might look at making another application to help bring us to the next stage of our development.

</comment><comment><USER46> Oh boy, fake news is just getting started! People are scared now? Wait until an entity can generate _your_ voice saying whatever they want it to say, generate your body _doing_ whatever they want it to do, generate scenes and events _which never happened_.

Fake news now is less effective against well-educated, smart, skeptical, scientific people. It just so happens that fake news is dumb enough to only fool 80% of us. As the methods for generating false information ("fake news" is not a general term) get more advanced, people will need to be more and more educated to resist falling into machine dependency.

If you're gonna get on the fake news train, _do it now_ , as fake news is _easy_ right now. Bots are still dumb, etc. In the future it won't be so easy to combat fake news. It will be a much, much more grave problem. If there are people who are uneducated enough to be influenced by fake news _now_ , they will be sheep in the future even more so, when they are told lies of events, audio clips, video clips, etc. that never even happened.

Fake news, or more generally, false information, is going to be a big problem in the 22nd century. As our machines get smarter, so do our deception methods. At some point, humans will begin to place trust in machines because we will no longer be smart enough to figure it out ourselves. Currently the non-savvy population (maybe, ~80%?) has begun to do this already. At what point will our scientists begin to fall on the same side of that partition, until only a few scientists in the top of their field _actually get it_. We have already observed this God-Effect in esoteric fields.

God-Effect: Where a piece of technology, mathematics, or code becomes so complicated, eventually only a few people (or zero) actually understand it. E.g. complicated edge-physics, library implementations, encrypted data, etc.

</comment><comment><USER47> We have an epistemological crisis. Tech can't fix that.

</comment><comment><USER48> Are there any resources out there for tech folks that might be interested in working full-time for a non-profit, backed by YC or not?

I have a strong interest in these areas but not really in the zone for building a team to apply for YC. Increasingly interested in a career pivot towards working with an organization in these areas however. Where should I look?

<comment><USER49> Look at companies the fast forward accelerator features on their website (mobile or would link otherwise).

<comment><USER48> Good tip. Thanks ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> If YC is serious about fixing "online media [that] rewards the people who get the greatest number of page views, clicks and likes. That results in a system that prizes virality over truth," it should open up Hacker News itself for Hacking. What better way to stimulate experimentation and facilitate the testing of ideas for better collaborative news filtering?

I believe many potentially world-changing ideas in this area never see the light of day because the barriers to entry are too high. Innovation is hindered by a chicken-n-egg barrier to entry: you need a successful site like HN to be able to run useful tests and experiments. Imagine there were only four chemistry labs in the world. Only a fraction out of the world's chemists could run experiments. The only labs we have are Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and HN.

Hackable Hacker News. Doesn't that just make sense?

</comment><comment><USER51> One of my favorite "public good" websites is in the UK and called "theyworkforyou.com"

The workflow is that you punch in your postcode and get a list of all the people who represent you. From house, senate, european parlaiment.

You can then fill in a form and send a "constituent letter" to all the correct people for whom your opinion should have an impact.

After a reasonable wiating period, a survey comes to your email asking if they replied and some other questions.

Those "roll up" into a report on the member's responsiveness to their constituents.

Of the times I used it when I lived there, I always got responsiveness and only once was the response rude / unsatisfactory. (a member of european parlaiment was a total dismissive jerk)

Anyways - as far as ideas go, I think that would be a useful "start" \- I also think there was more they could do to improve that further.

<comment><USER52> Check out the "Congress" app. [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sunlightla...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sunlightlabs.android.congress)

<comment><USER51> That's really great - though I do think a web page is more inclusive. Additionally the phone-call aspect is something really cool which I hadn't thought of, but I believe the form would allow a letter to be posted directly to multiple representatives.

The return address would clearly indicate "I live in your constituency" while a phone call might not have that same impact.

I think there's also room to improve on the formula of TWFY like allowing an option for users to post their letters "openly" and allowing them to upload photos of the responses.

Though open-source on the congress APP makes it a really exceptionally cool foundation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Is the application page out of date? It's still referring to Winter 2017, and a deadline of October 4. However, this post says YC apps are reviewed on a rolling basis.

<comment><USER37> Yes, I wondered about that too. Have they switched to reviewing all applications on a rolling basis? Or is it just applications in these particular categories?

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> I assume the same rules apply.. have to move to SF..

I can't help but comment that we did have a great democracy machine (& education) with something called Television. Virtually free. So much potential. I guess before that - radio. Even newspapers. Before that word of mouth. Each machine had it's masters who rose to the top.

We are in the beginning of phase 2 ( my def.) of social media. We are all in the middle of the 5 layer cake while it's cooking and because of Donald Trump we already don't like the recipe.

This phase of social media too will deform into something less than we thought it was going to be. Just like television. It is fun to watch but clearly it is too late to save it.

I doubt the next 'newspaper,radio,tv,social media' will be created by those inside of it.

</comment><comment><USER55> The best technology we can apply to democracy is to have our elections be conducted entirely by pencil and paper with a completely open, public and full count of all votes.

<comment><USER38> And of popular votes with no shenanigans on registration or voter ID's.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> What do you think about a following evolution of the advertisement network idea that could support higher quality content creation?

A company Foo connects content creators, consumers and businesses.

Creators can join the 'Foo' network and display a short 'join the Foo to support this site' info on their pages without any other ads. Consumers can join the Foo network to have access to deals offered by businesses. Businesses can reach to the Foo network members offering discounts for their products.

A part of such discount is transfered to the consumer, giving an incentive to buy on the Foo network. A part goes to the content creators. After each purchases a consumer is asked to which creators the money should go. A small part from each transaction goes to Foo.

Unlike with ads network today, the user is in full control of which sites receive money from the user transactions, so the incentive to create useless clickbait sites is gone. Content also no longer needs to be cluttered with ads, because there is a separation between content consumption and business transactions that support the content.

</comment><comment><USER57> Yikes. The idea that any kind of news should be handled by a Ycombinator startup does not make me comfortable at all.

<comment><USER58> reddit, now frequently a primary news source, was in the first class of YC companies. I don't think there's any inherent contradiction, though I would be concerned that HN would only want to promote news sources that had reddit-like audiences and outcomes.

I have some loose interest and IMO some relevant experience in creating a next-gen reddit, would like to try it some day. I have no intention to apply to YC.

</comment></comment><comment> grey-area I think we need something a little more revolutionary for news than holding current news sources to account, or fact-checking tools. Most of the problems we see in our news outlets are around the competition for attention as the article says, but also around old business models for newspapers/tv which still haven't changed to adapt to a world in which anyone can report from anywhere live using a simple phone and anyone in the world could contribute to a story, if only they'd let them.

Better something that encourages primary sources on the ground to contribute (video, text audio), and puts them in context chronologically, geographically and perhaps socially, but is not based on an advertising business model.

Difficult to know what it could look like to but we need something fundamentally new which uses the internet not just as another medium.

<comment><USER59> It's an interesting idea, and one I've been thinking about for a while.

Issue is, I think that's kind of what social media is meant for. Anyone can contribute news as a primary source and share it with others online via sites like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc.

So my worry is that any system like this would basically be just another social media service (albeit with a 'news slant' in the marketing material) and therefore be very difficult to promote.

User created news is an idea that seems obvious and logical in theory, just very hard to promote in a world where it's competing with thousands of other services offering (in your user's eyes) very similar functionality.

<comment> grey-area Yes sure, Twitter (moments) and fb (live) are converging on this to some extent.

I'm thinking of something less social and more verifiable source of info though. You'd need incentives to keep it real, probably some form of verifying in a local web of trust, and incentives to read/watch so grouping by geography and interest.

I'm thinking more make your own local newspaper than share videos to your friends. Probably you'd have to start in a niche like school news and expand out.

Twitter is really interesting here because they are making and breaking news and being used as a broadcast medium in spite of huge failings for that use (spam, trolls), I think they're the closest thing but still a long way from something letting people publish verified info to the world in chunks bigger than a procrustean tweet.

<comment><USER59> Thanks for clarifying on this. Such a system definitely needs a way to verify news, though I'm not quite how a web of trust might be integrated here.

Grouping by geography and interest is definitely needed (Medium/WordPress style tags can help with both here, especially if users can follow/subscribe to them).

Making your own newspaper sounds interesting as well. You mean like a sort of blog or Medium publication? Or a social network type feed?

<comment> grey-area I think you need the feeds from verified individuals first, then you need some new way to integrate those resembling neither Twitter nor newspapers but tailored to specific audiences who know their stuff and can contribute/correct too. There should be no comments section, the article should be made of comments with context and commentary. For example some people do stats, some do a map some do commentary from the ground, and maybe someone ties it together.

What are your thoughts on the way news should evolve, I'm genuinely really interested in this area.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> As far as truth is concerned, there can be no algorithm that can take care of that for a very simple reason. Media has an inherent bias all the time, be it geographical, cultural, political, etc.

Read an article in the BBC about the Russian Federation or China, and it will always have some sort of, oh but check this bad thing these guys are doing, or they are weird in some way.

Do the same with Fox News and you will come out with a view that Democrats are ruining the country.

I could go on and on, but the most effective way to get your daily fix is, read both sides of an issue by their promoters. Read what the bigot and the gay guy are saying. What the jew and the muslim are saying. What the Chinese and Japanese are saying.

Make up your mind, choose sides, but at least you will have tiny pieces of info that were conveniently left out by the other side.

</comment><comment><USER61> Fake news is going to be hard to address.

Imagine a browser warning for fake news. Every article about religion or God would need to be accompanied by a warning: speculative, no concluding evidence available, too many competing theories.

I guess that wouldn't gain many users.

<comment><USER62> When I hear "fake news", I understand "news about fake facts" and not "opinions which may be erroneous".

The issue is to favor the true debates, with different points of view, and to remove the noise which prohibits and prevents from speaking or hearing others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> I realize this is incredibly naive of me, but I've always thought that there must be something unskilled or lightly trained laborers can do that would scale infinitely and reliably for the company hiring them, something that had to be done in the area for which it provided the service (to prevent the global market from driving price down).

The gig economy stuff is interesting, but it's still somewhat limited, and at least partially physical. I am thinking more like M Turk but... somehow localized. Not sure, maybe I'm sniffing up the wrong tree, I dunno.

</comment><comment><USER64> I have a very specific idea on how to improve democracy. Make all public spending easy to search. Let me elaborate: Via direct and indirect taxes democratic governments take and redistribute between 30% and 50% of our income[1]. Yet we usually have no idea how exactly is it the money spent. This has two effects:

1) many disenfranchised people think state spending is somehow secret therefore "all politicians steel" and "the system is evil". This leads to low participation in election, populism etc.

2) even if we try to be good citizens we make uninformed decisions. Specific example from UK: how should we decide whether to keep a fleet of nuclear Trident submarines or axe 30,000 teacher jobs? Is the cost even comparable?

During the Brexit campaign someone once posted financial hoax on my FB feed - how much we spend on X. I went to verify the facts only to discover it is absolutely impossible to find how much we spend on anything. After hours of researching all I could find were perplexing .gov websites, unsearchable PDF documents, CSVs too big to open in excel and that obfuscated by impenetrable accounting jargon.

Compare it to this: if I ask you what were the earnings of the second movie produced by whoever produced Angelina Jolie's last movie you could probably find the answer on IMDB in less than a minute.

And I don't mean only government spending, I mean the whole public sector. States, departments, bureaus, agencies, offices, cities, towns, courts, libraries, schools, hospitals, public benefit corporations. In the end public finance is by definition public and the information should be available to everyone. If you think of it there are only 3 ways a tax dollar could leave public finance: as a salary to employees, as a payment for goods and services from private sector or as a transfer to another organisation or individual.

Build a website, get all the data, make it extremely user friendly, easy to search, navigate and share and people will start fact checking each other in FB conversations a participate more in local politics.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_Freedom_Day#Tax_Freedom_Da...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_Freedom_Day#Tax_Freedom_Day_around_the_world)

<comment><USER65> I support transparency in government spending, especially financial information in a standardized format. However, I don't share your optimism regular people will be able to make sense of this data.

Just take the financials for public companies for example. Because all public companies report their financials in GAAP formats you'd think that therefore it would be easy to look at a company's balance sheet and cash flow statement to figure out what's really going on, right? Except it isn't. Despite standardized accounting rules and a standardized reporting format it's still very difficult to tell what's really going on behind the numbers. With the stock market there is a huge incentive for analysts to figure out what the numbers represent, for obvious reasons. And yet, more often than not, analysts get it totally wrong. There won't be similar army of analysts for public spending disclosures, just a couple of dedicated individuals, think tanks, and PhD students.

I still support full financial transparency for the public sector, but I don't think it will have a huge impact because numbers by themselves say very little.

<comment><USER64> > numbers by themselves say very little.

They may say little but in the age of "alternative facts" it is more than all the words.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> There's some interesting ideas in this link, about people wrangling data to show information about Putin's information warfare.

I'd be intrigued to see these techniques of analysis applied to Trump and democrats.

[http://index.hu/kulfold/2017/02/04/orban_is_a_tool_for_putin...](http://index.hu/kulfold/2017/02/04/orban_is_a_tool_for_putin_in_his_information_war_against_the_west/)

</comment><comment><USER67> I have a startup idea I've been working on for quite a while, that I stopped when I realized I needed to reexamine the technology from the ground up. I've since learned a lot which will allow me to proceed -- this election and mainly the political climate has me wishing I could work on it full time and I would absolutely love to apply. Should I apply late or wait for the next funding cycle?

<comment><USER68> YC is more than halfway through the Winter batch. Start working on your company now and you'll be in good shape to apply for the Summer batch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> I have a pretty good idea for an app that I'd like to make and I'd like to apply. However after reading through the article it seems as if the deadline has already passed?? Would I be applying for Spring 2017? Also, any advice on what constitutes a strong application (in other words: I don't yet have a working product, can I still apply? )

</comment><comment> wu-ikkyu The problem of "fake news" is the same as the age old Koan of truth vs. falsehood. Truth is subjective and relative to the time period and cultural mythologies, and is always changing. How can we even begin to solve this apparent problem if we can't even objectively define our variables, lest we become digital Don Quixotes?

<comment><USER40> "1 + 1 = 2" is true and objective for an infinite time period.

<comment><USER70> But if you want to share that truth it relies on a mutual understanding of what those symbols mean.

The language of math is near universal, but political language isn't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> @sama I'm heartened to see "Jobs" included in this list, but can you clarify whether this is a change in investment focus - will you be giving priority to startups which have greatest potential for job creation? If so, how would you qualify / prioritize those jobs (ie., part-time, full-time, educational requirements)?

</comment><comment><USER72> I wrote up some free startup ideas around digital work. [http://blog.kirigin.com/digital-work](http://blog.kirigin.com/digital-work)

tldr: smartphones are a platform to learn skills, to facilitate a network of contractors, and to do work. Put that together for something powerful.

</comment><comment><USER73> I've been working on a project that makes data-driven reporting more transparent: [https://thegamma.net](https://thegamma.net), which might very well fit with the accountable news theme. Any feedback on how to make it better would be much appreciated :-).

</comment><comment><USER74> A creative associate of mine has been talking about founding a _new_ US Political Party, which, while not really in-line with this call-for- submissions, can probably benefit from reading the context of what YCombinator is looking for and intending to benefit a large population. Hmmm...

</comment><comment><USER34> Here's a question: What secret sauce do [you think that] we, as software people, bring to this table?

</comment><comment><USER75> Speaking about the Future of Work:

[http://qbix.com/blog](http://qbix.com/blog)

Check out this compensation model. It is an evolving experiment in transparency which I believe can power the future of work. Would like some feedback.

</comment><comment><USER76> For startups working on improving democracy, I'd suggest you start helping these three groups in any way you can:

[http://www.fairvote.org/](http://www.fairvote.org/)

[https://represent.us/](https://represent.us/)

[http://www.wolf-pac.com/](http://www.wolf-pac.com/)

Creating a more fair representation in government that doesn't only involve the duopoly parties as well as getting money out politics should be the two main priorities before anything else. Unless these two things are fixed first, everything else will continue to be broken.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tu32CCA_Ig](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tu32CCA_Ig)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mw2z9lV3W1g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mw2z9lV3W1g)

</comment><comment><USER77> Regarding news, can someone please re-make the original concept of the fantastic news app Circa?

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circa_News](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circa_News)

<comment><USER28> So it can fail again?

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> What about a new media organization focused on covering politics in a way that contributes to strengthening democracy? Is that something YC would be interested in?

I'm exploring this idea and trying to figure out how to make it work.

</comment><comment><USER79> What we don't need is another "Spotify for Truth". Recommendation engine tech, reworked, is laregely responsible for the siloed echo-chambers we tribaly inhabit.

You like that fact? Here's another one just like it.

</comment><comment><USER80> This seems kind of hypocritical, given what Thiel did to Gawker.

</comment><comment><USER81> I've had shower thoughts about "transparency as a service" before, but putting together the business case for this has proved difficult.

</comment><comment><USER82> This is what business leadership looks like. Truly inspiring to see the corporate world embrace civic responsibility like this.

</comment><comment><USER83> This RFS isn't listed under "which RFS are you applying under" on the application page.

</comment><comment><USER84> Really happy to see new jobs on this list. UBI seemed like a lazy way of addressing job loss

</comment><comment><USER28> Given Sam Altman's recent statements, will pro-Trump founders be discriminated against?

<comment><USER28> It doesn't matter anyway. Even though I am building a social news search engine that aims to minimise bias and eliminates fake news, given @sama's statements I don't think there will a culture fit. So I'm not going to apply this time, or ever again.

<comment><USER13> > _given @sama 's statements I don't think there will a culture fit_

Could you summarise those differences?

<comment><USER28> There are several issues, which overlap 1) Credibility: Altman's call to fix the fake new problem is ironic, because Altman's most recent statement [1] propagates the very fake news he decries. For example he refers to Trump's travel executive order as a "Muslim ban" and bases his thoughts on that false premise. 2) Woolly thinking: His statement that "most of them [Trump voters] voted for him for reasons other than the promise of a Muslim ban," is not only false because it's not a Muslim ban, but false because increasing security at the border was one of the main reasons they actually did vote for him, and the actions Trump has taken have high approval from his followers. 3) Being a smug liberal: See point 2. The idea that Trump voters are misled fools is a common theme of liberals. Altman is determined to try to show Trump supporters the error of their ways instead of making any attempt to understand their concerns. It's useful to note at this point that Trump flipped states that had been previously held by Obama. 4) Hypocrisy: Where was Altman when Obama was actually bombing Muslims? I know where he was -- organising a YC fundraiser for Obama [2] 5) Hyperbolic: I'm all for reasoned arguments, but his previous post [3] bordered on hysteria, saying Trump is "irresponsible in the way dictators are" and making outlandish comparisons to Hitler. 5) Poor business decision: It's surprising that Altman would damage his business by creating a culture of intolerance for founders who have political views from him. How must Trump supporting founders, employees and investors inside YC and beyond feel when Altman claims the moral high ground? 6) Emotional: When emotion takes over business, business fails. 7) Evasion: Despite numerous requests Altman has not clarified his position regarding the status of pro-Trump founders.

Put all of these together and I just lost respect. I thought he was smarter. And I certainly I don't feel the need to justify my support for Trump to _any_ investor. So, no, I don't think there's a culture fit.

[1] [http://blog.samaltman.com/time-to-take-a- stand](http://blog.samaltman.com/time-to-take-a-stand) [2] [http://www.vanityfair.com/news/politics/2014/05/obama- fundra...](http://www.vanityfair.com/news/politics/2014/05/obama-fundraises- tech-stars-hollywood) [3] [http://blog.samaltman.com/trump](http://blog.samaltman.com/trump)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER85> Please please please remember that any tool created can and will be used against you.

</comment><comment><USER86> I wonder if Democracy has anything to do with the move to accept ACLU today.

</comment><comment><USER47> Democracy in the US sounds like a great idea. Republicans have won exactly one of the past 7 Presidential elections (viz. 2004) but took power in two more thanks to the Electoral College.

<comment><USER87> The electoral college was designed so the highly populated states don't have too much leverage over the rest of the country, and worked as was intended. There are many areas of the country seeing a declining quality of life, and those areas happened to vote for the candidate who spoke of economic issues more.

<comment><USER88> The electoral college was designed so that slave states, who got extra seats in the House compared to their population of citizens through the 3/5 compromise, would have Presidential electoral power proportional to the degree to which they were overrepresented in Congress, rather than in line with their number of voting citizens. It is designed as a positive reward for the remaining enfranchised population for disenfranchising a portion of the population counted for apportionment.

It is, indeed, working as intended, the problem is that the intent was ill from the beginning.

<comment><USER87> Don't race bait. The issue was a lot more nuanced than that: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_College_%28United_St...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_College_%28United_States%29?wprov=sfla1)

<comment><USER88> I'm not race baiting, its really not a lot more nuanced (the popular alternative explanation is the sales pitch made to New Yorkers to get them to buy off on the scheme, because we've taken 18th Century campaign propaganda as unvarnished truth as part of our national cult of veneration of the four ding fathers), and your source doesn't even address the motivations (well, it briefly addresses one participants description of the reason of the change from the Virginia Plan, which had the same salient features and served the same purpose, to the EC, but that doesn't address why the basic alignment with Congressional representation underlying both the Virginia Plan and EC was chosen; the reason, like the 3/5 compromise and the express protection of the slave trade.in the Constitution, was to overrepresent the slave states and alleviate their fears that the long term course was toward abolition), only the mechanics and the history of operations under it.

<comment><USER87> I provided a source that says there were more considerations than slavery. Can you please provide a legitimate source that proves otherwise?

<comment><USER88> > I provided a source that says there were more considerations than slavery.

You provided a source that does not address the motivations for the particular feature at issue at all, much less ascribe them to "more considerations than slavery".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER89> Reputation. Reputation is the problem.

<comment><USER90> Care to extrapolate?

<comment><USER3> Two hundred years ago if you stood up and told a pack of lies, someone would challenge you, and you would either have to back down or face them in a duel. Nowadays you just repeat your lies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER91> I want to take an alternative route. I want to start a company that generates fake news. I believe that AI could be used to analyze social media and determine the popularity of various threads or which stories get the broadest circulation in social media circles. Then analyze the content and wording to determine transmissibility; what makes something "go viral". Obviously a lot of this technology could be used to tag other fake news, but I'm in it to make money. Lies, deceit and deception; "Alternative Facts" and "Signaling" if you prefer, are the name of the game now. Nobody ever went broke underestimating the gullibility of the American public.

That being said, I think it would be a huge challenge for AI to comprehend all the nuances, inferences and subtle hints in many tweets or facebook posts and dig out both the explicit and implicit meanings.</comment>


Angiotensin converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) crucial in SARS-coronavirus lung injury (2005) - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/nm1267?v=1 <comment><USER2> __ __This is not medical advice. Do not go out and take a bunch of losartan without a doctor, you could die. ____

Here's the article's main point (from 2005): Kuba et al showed that by injecting losartan into mice (a common ACE inhibitor that is off patent) with a SARS-Coronavirus protein leads to less lung injury than the controls without losartan. No studies have shown this works in living, breathing humans, but...

(Oral) losartan is widely available (at least right now), it can be prescribed off-label by doctors and picked up today. As its on-label use is treating hypertension, obviously it will lead to low blood pressure, along with all the other possible side effects including life-threatening swelling and more. And since dehydration and sepsis can also lead to lower blood pressure, you'd be playing with fire in life-threatening ways without careful watch by a doctor. You can bet this is a source of ongoing research and trials, probably already underway.

__ __This is not medical advice. Do not go out and take a bunch of losartan without a doctor, you could die. ____

<comment><USER3> This wasn't in a petri dish actually, this was an in vivo study using mice. Other in vivo studies show similar.

There are actually no known trials with ARBs and SARS-CoV-2, which is really weird. There should be. One reason why is because most of the non-crazy (eg Chinese medicine) drugs being trailed were selected by semi-brute force from in vitro type testing. ARBs wouldn't work in vitro AFAICT, which is a reason they haven't been tested; the drug won't stop the virus from entering cells the same way other drugs might, but instead may stop some or all of the major damage the virus does to the body.

There's lots of discussion and papers collected here on this subject:

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

<comment><USER2> Thanks, corrected my comment. I'd also expect observational studies since ace- inhibitors are so widespread.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> That's a quite old (2005) article, dating to the original sars outbreak. [https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.26.919985v1](https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.26.919985v1) is a much more recent one, specific to covid-19.

(Edit typo)

<comment><USER5> That particular preliminary linked to is too new and requires critical interpretation for a number of issues

<comment><USER6> > is too new

it's on bioarxiv, what exactly does 'too new' mean?

<comment><USER5> a preliminary submission has not passed a peer review with the rigor of scientific defense.

these sorts of things may be passed among researchers for extended periods of time [years] until all the kinks are worked out of the thesis and a working theory with no known exceptions and independently confirmed agreement of results occurs.

jan 26 2020 is the submission date.

<comment><USER6> What exactly is the standard of peer review you're expecting? Unless you have reason to think they flat out fabricated the data, the analysis is probably no better or worse than your garden variety nature or science or cell paper.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> ARB stands for AT1R blockers ( angiotensin II type one ) and they represent a major class of antihypertensive medications. These drugs end in sartan.

They will not block ACE2 which is a protein which gets expressed in the lung tissues.

Please Do not get carried away. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angiotensin- converting_enzyme_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angiotensin- converting_enzyme_2)

<comment><USER3> They won't block ACE2 but as indicated in the article they may prevent the lung damage associated with SARS by blocking AT1R which is the receptor that may mediate lung damage.

There's lots of discussion and papers collected here:

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> What are the implications of this?

<comment><USER9> the meds modulating ACE family of proteins are also commonly available as blood pressure meds, actually. But interestingly, the side effect is...coughing...

But the research behind what is needed to modulate ACE is already there..

<comment><USER10> Sorry I don't know much about the topic.

0\. How can I find out if I have too high (?) ACE2, and what can I do about it? Are there symthoms at least?

1\. What does modulating ACE means? 2\. Do you mean shall everyone get those blood pressure meds? Or what is the relation now with these meds in terms of action? Does it mean people who need it must get it for sure? 3\. Research what is needed to modulate ACE: can you please give a pointer.

<comment><USER5> have a look here ;

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22458302](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22458302)

<comment><USER10> Thanks a lot

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> One of the most popular blood pressure medications, Lisinopril, is an ACE inhibitor. A lot of people worldwide (including myself) take it daily. Its mechanism of action is to prevent the conversion of ACE to ACE2.

<comment><USER12> Lisinopril is a competitive inhibitor of ACE that prevents it from converting Angiotensin I to Angiotensin II

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> How can I find it out if I have high ACE2?

<comment><USER5> having high ACE2 is not something that you need to worry about as you only need enough to get the virus in you.

\- having "high" ACE2 could actually be a benefit if it turns out that you retain proper ACE2 functionality after infection and through the course of the physiological challenge of the virus.

<comment><USER13> This seems to be in contradiction of other published results. Can you provide a source?

<comment><USER3> As far as I can tell, there are no studies showing a higher ACE2 causes more severe disease. Sure, it could, but the pathophysiological models and animal data suggest that it is the _loss_ of ACE2 that may drive disease severity.

There is a contradictory preprint (that hasn't passed peer review) on ACE2 mRNA expression in smokers' lungs being higher than non-smokers; but there is data saying the opposite happens in animal models of mice exposed to smoke:

[https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20178811-losartan- attenuates...](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20178811-losartan-attenuates- chronic-cigarette-smoke-exposure-induced-pulmonary-arterial-hypertension-in- rats-possible-involvement-of-angiotensin-converting-enzyme-2/)

There is also an inaccurate preprint on ethnic groups and ACE2 expression with a low n count which also didn't pass peer review.

ACE2 loss is probably bad, having more ACE2 probably doesn't drive disease severity:

[https://twitter.com/__philipn__/status/1229568317167243264?s...](https://twitter.com/__philipn__/status/1229568317167243264?s=21)

Relative ace2 reduction correlates w disease severity; viral load growth the same between groups - check out study! Chinese paper discusses this as well:

[https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32061198-inhibitors-of- ras-m...](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32061198-inhibitors-of-ras-might-be- a-good-choice-for-the-therapy-of- covid-19-pneumonia/?from_single_result=Inhibitors+of+RAS+covid)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Can we get a (2005)?

<comment><USER5> there is a difference between tech and science with regard to correlations between recency and quality.

Scientific articles gain credibility as they age and no known exception to elucidated principles is apparent.

in this case the [2005] article is superior to a [2020] article.

i do agree however it is helpful and conventional to include a date of publication

<comment><USER14> People reading quickly might mistake it for being about the current Coronavirus. The date would help rule that out.

<comment><USER5> for all intents and purposes it is about the current coronavirus. regardless of drift the viral peplomer is still being used to dock with the ACE2 receptor protien and still uses a small sequence region to bind the receptor.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Book of Beasts: The Bestiary in the Medieval World - <AUTHOR> https://www.lrb.co.uk/v41/n24/tom-shippey/throw-your-testicles <comment><USER2> _> Who in 12th-century England would have seen an elephant or a crocodile? Tales filtered back from Crusaders and distant travellers of a giant herbivore with a nose so long and pliable that it could pick up men and seat them on its back, and of an armour-plated carnivore that lurked in water and could be mistaken by the unwary for a log of wood. These were as improbable – and therefore as possible – as a white horse with a long horn in the middle of its forehead_

I wonder if there's anything similar today? Subatomic particles or astronomical objects? Mental health seems to be an area where we currently have no idea how things really work in the brain.

<comment><USER3> I know that the context of your statement pertained to modern globalized society, but if you consider isolated peoples [1], then it might be the case that exactly the same phenomenon that inspired medieval beastiary exists today.

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

<comment><USER4> Going out on a limb, you could argue that cryptozoology is alive today in out interconnected world. I would be surprised if a bigfoot were found today, but it wouldn't upend my worldview. Comparable creatures (gigantopithecus) have existed in human prehistory, and we still find previously undocumented animals today. I don't think we'll find evidence of a bigfootesque creature existing in historical times, but if presented with the evidence in 1818 I might have bet on it. There is still popular media being produced that is profitable because people want to see Survivorman find a bigfoot, and they think he might.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> [http://archive.md/Pwkp7](http://archive.md/Pwkp7)</comment>


This Is the Country That's Spent the Most Searching for MH370 - <AUTHOR> http://time.com/2854385/mh370-search-spending/

<comment><USER2> straya

<comment><USER3> mate</comment></comment>