Ask HN: Consider banning paywalled articles like those from wsj.com please - <AUTHOR> I can't read the paywalled articles on wsj.com anymore. So it's breaking my web experience of reading HN.
The first post on the page is mostly a TLDR or a link to an alternative article instead of a real comment. For example the current #1 post : Samsung to Permanently Discontinue Galaxy Note 7 Smartphone (wsj.com) - https://gyazo.com/440858bfcc2f94d912a087ca2ef7ce26
There will always be a discussion about paywalled articles and or alternative sources, which takes the discussion away from the topic and there is a high chance that this will be a top comment ( because of upvotes).
The current #1 link and #7 link are currently unusable to me : https://gyazo.com/578b105ce67f9b6d14cefe0dfeb43efb
The trick with bypassing it through the web doesn't work for me anymore ( and multiple others). This was good in the past, but not anymore.
An alternative like automaticly hiding articles from wsj.com would be nice, but i think it's more effectively to just ban the domain? Because it has no use for many HN-readers.
Suggested alternative: Add (paywall) automaticly to the link
Please discuss or give your opinion? <comment><USER2> This is one of the oldest arguments on Hacker News.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989)

Note that "incognito window" is one of the "standard workarounds" 'dang mentions in that thread.

<comment><USER3> That works for other paywalls but not WSJ (or at least, not consistently: sometimes it works, but it usually doesn't).

<comment><USER2> It works reliably for me. Incognito, click the "web" link on the HN byline to generate the Google search. WSJ checks for cookies _and_ referer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'd like to see linking to paywalled sites discouraged, but banning them might be too inflexible. Perhaps a change to the submission form that suggests that the submitter looks for alternative sources first, and appends "(paywalled)" to the title if they opt to proceed.

Paywalled mass-media articles (e.g. WSJ) are very rarely worth submitting. Articles in paywalled journals (e.g. Nature) where the abstract is accessible may well be worth it. But it comes down to judgement.

Finally, I agree that (for the type of topics that HN concerns itself with) free access to information should be encouraged.

<comment><USER5> I agree.

The BBC do a similar thing with their football news roundup from the daily papers with "<short overview> <paper name> \- subscription required"

This doesn't stop people who do subscribe to the site from reading the content linked to and gives a heads up for people who don't.

The Samsung story isn't exclusive to the WSJ and there are plenty of other free to access news sites that would have been better for the submission. If we ban paywalled sites entirely it would prevent submissions of exclusive content (which could be an interview or journal)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I disagree with banning sites that have leaky paywalls. Sites that do good journalism deserve the pageviews. We shouldn't incentivize blogspam just because it's convenient. In the case of the WSJ, they were the outlet that did the investigative work that broke Theranos, among many other stories.

The question boils down to whether the paywall is leaky enough. The "web" option, which helps the user find the article via Google because the WSJ paywall let's through the Google-referer, still works for me and many others, but apparently, not for other users. That's a strange technical quirk. I've tried emulating it on desktop vs. mobile, and using a VPN for different parts of the world, and the Google-referer-workaround still works fine for me.

So why can't some users get it to work? Could they be using a plugin that blocks the referer? Is the use of such a plugin enough of a common-case to block good journalism for the rest of the users on HN?

<comment><USER7> About 6 months ago, I reproduced this problem, cleared my cookies, and then it worked. Although I've never been able to reproduce the problem after that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > I can't read the paywalled articles on wsj.com anymore. So it's breaking my > web experience of reading HN.

If a group of people at a party were talking about a book you had not read or a movie you had not seen, would that be breaking your party experience?

Of course not. You'd go converse with a different group that was talking about some other book or movie, or talking about sports or something.

You can do the same thing here. You have 30 submissions on the front page alone to choose from, and even more if you can bring yourself to hit the "more" link at the bottom of the page.

And unlike the book/movie discussion at a party, if you do go into the comments on an article you have not read you are unlikely to get any spoilers that will ruin it for you if you do later find the article somewhere you can read.

> An alternative like automaticly hiding articles from wsj.com would be nice, > but i think it's more effectively to just ban the domain? Because it has no > use for many HN-readers.

Every highly technical article discussed on HN is of no use to many HN readers. Do you think we should ban those, too?

Also, the utility of HN submissions is usually in the comments, not the article itself. The comments are usually quite useful even without reading the article. The article is merely a launching point.

<comment><USER9> > If a group of people at a party were talking about a book > you had not read > or a movie you had not seen, would that be > breaking your party experience?

Not really, but, while snappy, that's not really a good depiction of what's happening here.

A better analogy might be groups of people at a large exhibition discussing what's happening in the various booths. You're welcomed to go look in the relevant booth then join the discussion. Most of the booths you can just wander up to and take a look inside, but sometimes you walk over and poke your head in and the booth bouncer looks at your visitor badge, slaps you in the face to attract your attention and demands you fill out a bunch of forms and pay them before they'll let you in.

The wasted walk and the slap in the face kinda ruin your experience, so you ask if people discussing the slapping sort of booths might maybe warn people first, but they suggest you just put up with the slaps and move on if you don't want to pay up front for everything.

How does that make you feel?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I agree with the proposal to ban paywalled sites. Workarounds are annoying and/or temporary. HN should be about open discussion of freely available content; we shouldn't be encouraging the ghetto-ification of the web. The typical paywalled sites are almost never the only (or even the best) source of an article.

<comment><USER11> So having this mentality, HN should also ban any links to non-free books ( e.g. amazon ), links to apps and any other websites that offer a paid service / content, which you have to consume in order to be an active participant in the conversation, happening in the comments.

I don't agree with this position.

<comment><USER10> TBH, I don't see how a link to a book page on amazon would result in a productive discussion on HN - is there a precedent? I wouldn't ban apps/websites that _offer_ a paid service, only those that _require_ one. And I'm willing to row back _slightly_ from an outright ban, as I've said in other comments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't think these sights should be banned. WSJ and NYT in particular produce excellent journalism and the digital subscriptions are actually quite cheap, even if you're on a budget. If anything we should ban tabloids like Business Insider which mostly produce summaries of other sights and listicles.

</comment><comment><USER13> I propose that paywalled article be allowed, but as soon as a comment recommends a non-paywalled article for the same story, we switch to that.

HN already replaces article URLs with better ones, so the above will work through the old process with an additional parameter for what's considered "better" for HN.

<comment><AUTHOR> I like the idea in theory, but in practise it always takes some time till the link gets replaced and it's manual labor for HN.

I don't think it's something i as a developer would want to see as a solution ( just my 2 cents)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> And ban quora while you're at it? Ah, wishful thinking of course.

I do agree that inaccessible sites are of little value for discussions and would gladly have a visual indicator of these sites to avoid the click, close, flag response.

<comment><USER15> Protip: setting your user agent to GoogleBot eliminates a lot of bullshit like this. Most sites, including Quora, won't hold out on GoogleBot, although the WSJ does. I guess they don't care if 90% of their article doesn't get indexed, that's pretty brave.

There is a plugin for Chrome that makes that easy: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/user-agent- switche...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/user-agent-switcher- for-c/djflhoibgkdhkhhcedjiklpkjnoahfmg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Slap (paywall) into the article title. Then people who find it a problem know to skip it.

<comment><USER10> The trouble is, that's locking a set of people out of the debate entirely, which is surely not what we want to encourage. Much better to have an alternative, freely-accessible article from a different source.

<comment><USER6> Why is it so much better to encourage blogspam? Which is what you'll get when the topic is of worthwhile substance, such that there is no real alternative besides an aggregator?

Why shouldn't the burden be on the reader to jump into incognito (i.e. non- plugin) mode to read an article? Virtually everyone on HN has the technical chops to switch between an incognito browser instance and whatever they're using to read HN.

<comment><USER16> I block marketing domains in my daily-updated /etc/hosts file. This is a much more performant and much safer way to block malware and adware than using a browser plugin. Yet, your suggestion to just shut off your plugin helps me none.

<comment><USER6> Er, what help do you need? If you aren't using a plugin, then visiting the paywall article via Google should work for you as etc/hosts does not affect the referer attribute

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Screenshots of the comments of the current #1 HN post of a wsj article: [https://gyazo.com/440858bfcc2f94d912a087ca2ef7ce26](https://gyazo.com/440858bfcc2f94d912a087ca2ef7ce26) . Which takes the discussion away from the topic and will always be related to paywalled articles or alternative sources.

</comment><comment><USER17> I support this proposal. I support any independent company's right to perform their business how they want. I also support that popular sites that encourage open dialog and discussion should not include companies that disallow public viewing of their content.

Let's also extend this to companies that prevent those with content blockers from viewing their pages. Forbes is one, and techcrunch is another. Techcrunch doesn't block content, but their site UI is messed up enough that when content blockers are used that it makes their site unusable.

<comment><USER18> Techcrunch looks great in Reader mode.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The current policy is that articles from sites with easily-bypassable paywalls are allowed.

The WSJ paywall is not easily bypassable. The usual techniques to bypass paywalls are inconsistent with WSJ. Sometimes opening the 'web' link in an incognito window works, sometimes it doesn't. When it doesn't work, there's no way to get to the article.

The WSJ paywall should _not_ be treated like the NYT paywall. It's a different animal, and it shouldn't be allowed here because it fails the easily- bypassable test.

</comment><comment><USER19> I don't know if "banning" is quite right, sometimes the article only exists behind such a structure, but may be worthwhile for the community to discuss. Mods already replace higher quality links after they show up in the discussion. The same could happen by submitting a prominent paywalled source to get the discussion rolling, and then as a better source is made or discovered switch over to it.

And the comments on HN seem to be more coupled to an event than any given particular article, meta-metadiscussion aside.

</comment><comment><USER20> If nobody can read the content of a link then no discussion can take place on HN therefore it shouldn't be on HN. I say ban paywalled articles and stop generating free traffic for these websites that don't want to share information at first place.

</comment><comment><USER21> I'd like to see more summaries on HN. I'm often reading HN on my phone, and the connection is often too slow to read the actual article.

A summary will also help with paywalled articles.

<comment><USER22> I think a submitter of paywalled content should make sure a summary/excerpt exists on the site linked, or they should include one themselves. Sounds like a fair compromise between not being able to link and not being able to read, while still stimulating some discussion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Banning seems extreme. We have mechanisms on HN to self-moderate -- If you do not like paywalled articles, do not upvote them or post them. But as long as other people are posting and upvoting, it means some part of this community feels they have value.

So this discussion is great - lets make sure everyone takes the time to give it thought. But after those thoughts have had time to percolate, the actions of the community will self-correct. Or not.

</comment><comment><USER24> Does the web link work from an incognito session? I suspect that WSJ just sets a cookie on first visit to show the paywall on subsequent visits.

I personally agree with the current HN paywall policy. If the Google workaround doesn't work, then WSJ will get banned from Google, which is a far harsher penalty than getting banned from HN.

<comment><USER10> It's probably the best workaround that we have right now. The trouble is, it's an additional cognitive load to determine for each and every link whether it's one that requires incognito mode. If there's a good browser plugin that supports automatically opening links from listed domains in a new incognito window, that would probably be better than the current 'refer via google' workaround.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I don't think they want us to have this discussion :) - [http://imgur.com/a/GdMkz](http://imgur.com/a/GdMkz)

According to me, this should be a top discussion. But the ranking algorithm seems to be way off, like we have been punished in the algorithm.

Any thoughts what this could be?

<comment><USER25> This post was subjected to several ranking penalties, not least of which were user flags and the flamewar software. Many meta-discussions end up this way because they were off-topic for HN by virtue of not being intellectually interesting, which is why we're here.

The paywall issue in particular has received plenty of discussion already: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989).

<comment><AUTHOR> Never ever saw that article, thanks

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> On many subreddits, paywalled articles are prefixed "[Paywall]". I think that's a better option than banning it altogether.

</comment><comment><USER27> Another solution is to search for the words in the headline. This works for me even in a non-incognito window. Very little effort required.

</comment><comment><USER28> I agree, most WSJ articles are available on other news pages and the web workaround doesn't work for me either (since a few days).

</comment><comment><USER29> How about a host filter in the user options? At least that way people with a subscription can see the link.

</comment><comment><USER30> While we talk about how free apps are killing the market and making life difficult for an indie developer, we want to make it difficult for WSJ reporters too? If the story is broken or first reported by WSJ, example the suspicious cases one, by all means they should be the ones linked. At least that way people are aware of the good work WSJ is doing and maybe pay for the news.

</comment><comment><USER31> No, it's a bad idea. Pay for good content.

</comment><comment><USER32> For WSJ: Open the web link in an incognito window; click the search result. Does that not work?</comment>


Tricks for Getting Out of Bed in the Morning - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wired.com/geekdad/2009/02/10-tricks-to-ge.html <comment><USER3> I don't get much from productivity "tricks". I get excited for a little while, but the excitement wears off a week, maybe a few days later, and I'm back where I started.

The best long-term advice I know is to just do it fucking now. If you have to get up, then get out of the bed and get ready, whether you feel like it or not. It's not what you wanted to hear, but maybe you'll feel better hearing it from Paul Graham:

"But if you're trying to choose between two theories and one gives you an excuse for being lazy, the other one is probably right."

<comment><USER4> Couldn't agree more, although some of the suggestions make sense.

The best way to get out of bed, and to make it easier, is to have something decent to get out of bed for, and to know that the night before (point 6).

Flight I need to be up at 6am for? No problem getting up at 5.

Exciting day at work? Up at 8 no worries.

Also recognize your internal body clock's desired times (which I suppose is point 1). 1am-9am is my preferred sleep time, and although I can temporarily get around it, it's easier to adapt my schedule. Who wants to feel tired all the time?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't really understand the obsession with getting up in the morning. When everyone else is awake, they just distract me into not working. When everyone is asleep, it's dark out, and everything is closed, there's nothing to do but work.

I can't think of one useful thing I've ever done during the day, actually...

<comment><USER6> Since you're now asleep, I'm free to trash your comment here and accuse you of all sorts of bad behavior, and I have 12 hours to get away with it :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The _real_ trick is to never have to get out of bed in the morning.

<comment><USER8> Descartes was accustomed to working in bed until noon.

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

<comment><USER9> Even in his portrait René Descartes looks somnolent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> couple of steve pavlina articles on the same topic:

[http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/05/how-to-become-an- ea...](http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/05/how-to-become-an-early-riser/)

[http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/04/how-to-get-up- right...](http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/04/how-to-get-up-right-away- when-your-alarm-goes-off/)

</comment><comment><USER11> Have young children.

<comment><USER6> Yeah I laughed when I saw the headline, thinking to myself "some people need _tricks_ to get out of bed?, how silly". My daughters wake up at 6:30 every morning, that means I'm up too no matter what. Problem solved.

<comment><USER12> I take my four-year-old to preschool in the morning, which means I have to wake _him_ up so he can get dressed and have breakfast in time to catch the bus. Which means I have to get up before he does.

On weekends, the boy stays in bed until 8:00. Unfortunately, his brothers do not follow his example.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Morning news on the radio works for me. Within 15 minutes, there's guaranteed to be something infuriating enough to make me leap out of bed in an angry funk.

<comment><USER14> I like to listen AM talk radio to keep me awake on long road trips for the exact same reason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Does anyone else here use a computer desktop or online alarm clock, like the author?

 __Note/disclaimer Im curious because this is my start-up's field.

<comment><USER16> I used to with software called awaken but I stopped ever since my macbook's fan started to spin all the time... I love silence when sleeping and fan noises go against that

<comment><USER17> Awaken is great, it gets me up every morning. You can put your Macbook to sleep and Awaken will wake it up, so you can have it turned off during the night. You can get it at <http://www.embraceware.com/products/awaken/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm surprised everyone here dances around the issue rather than using brute force.

I own 4 alarm clocks, which I set to go off at 5 minute intervals. I also stuff small wads of paper into the alarm on-off switch, to force myself to use the snooze button. 20 minutes from the first alarm, I have 4 alarms going off a few seconds apart.

<comment><USER19> I'd hate to be your S/O

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Reading on the toilet can cause you to spend way more time on the toilet than you really should. Bad things can happen, especially if you have a family history of digestive problems. I'll spare you all the medical details and obligatory puns: Google it yourself.

</comment><comment><USER21> What helped me most was having food easily available. I always have oat-shakes ready in the fridge to minimise the amount of time between the alarm going off and having enough blood sugar to think rationally.

</comment><comment><USER22> Had to become a morning person this semester (early classes). My tactics are twofold:

Coffee by the bed. Literally within about two feet. I'm a little crazy, so I've hacked my coffee machine together, but programmable store-bought stuff works too.

iPhone by the bed. It's really bright, I hold it a few inches from my face and start going through my RSS reader. Gets my mind in gear and my pupils to contract.

<comment><USER23> I bought one of those pod coffee machines. Set it up next to my alarm clock. (In theory), when I stumble over to my alarm clock to shut it off, I just hit the button on the machine and my coffee is ready in 4 seconds.

Usually, by the time I get up to snooze it a second time, the coffee is sitting there, smelling all coffee-like (yummy). That's my Pavlovian trick.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> actually i am more of a stick person (though not always)... so i find that reminding myself of a failure motivates... especially when its 5AM and freezing - the reminder of having to spend all my hours at a sucky job and not doing anything useful, just springs me out onto my laptop!!! and not to mention the "zone" is just brilliant...

</comment><comment><USER25> Light is the only thing thats done it for me, ever. In high school I made myself get up and turn on a light, which was permission to go back and lie on the bed for another 15 minutes. Without light, I've never been able to get up.

The funny part is I sometimes forget this for extended periods of time and suffer awfully trying to get up in the morning.

<comment><USER26> Skin has light receptors that help the body changing states. It helped me a lot to find out this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> The low tech version that was supposedly used by native americans was to drink a lot of water the night before. I agree with "comatose_kid" though - <USER2> children are a great way to get up early - my alarm goes off at 7:15, but our daughter usually goes off about 20 minutes before hand.

</comment><comment><USER8> Here's an interesting list of alarm clocks that might help:

[http://www.uberreview.com/2006/03/top-ten-most-annoying- alar...](http://www.uberreview.com/2006/03/top-ten-most-annoying-alarm- clocks.htm)

</comment><comment><USER28> Sleep on the floor. Bang. You're out.

<comment><USER29> Actually this is pretty good advice. I can pretty much sleep anywhere, floors included. When I wake up in bed, the warmth and comfort prevents me from leaving. When I wake up from sleeping on the floor however, I want to leave because it isn't very comfortable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Reasons to get out of bed early:

1\. Young child as stated earlier 2\. Dog that needs to go out NOW or will crap on the floor. 3\. Sunlight streaming in through the East-facing window. Bonus if it's a subzero morning and I'm curious if there are sundogs. 4\. Roosters crowing reminding me chickens want to be let out(I live on a farm). 5\. Wife still too sleepy to be in the mood.

After all this I usually just yell at child(1) to put dog(2) outside and roll over and go back to sleep until wife(5) is awake enough :-)

</comment><comment><USER31> Get to the shower as quickly as possible. I find that I tend to snooze or go back to sleep if I don't immediately get out of bed and go directly to the shower when my alarm goes off. If I give myself any time to think about it, any time at all, I can usually rationalize another 10-60 minutes of sleep, and then I'm done for.

On a similar note, I always place my alarm clock on the opposite side of the room, which forces me to get out of bed to stop the noise.

</comment><comment><USER32> I've previously written two popular articles on the same topic which may also be helpful:

[http://www.davecheong.com/2007/06/15/waking-up- early-15-tips...](http://www.davecheong.com/2007/06/15/waking-up- early-15-tips-that-work/)

[http://www.davecheong.com/2006/06/14/waking-up-early-and- con...](http://www.davecheong.com/2006/06/14/waking-up-early-and- consistently/)

</comment><comment><USER33> These help me with early wake-ups (3:00am):

* My pre-alarm goes off 15 minutes early. After this alarm, I start thinking and worrying about what I need to do. When the real alarm sounds I'm ready to jump out of bed.

* I don't use the bathroom in the morning when I'm sleepy. A full bladder helps me stay awake.

* I nap whenever I can't work.

</comment><comment><USER34> My problem with the "going to bed when tired" suggestion is that I've found that the most effective way to manage my ADD is to do most of my productive work after a long day because by then my brain has settled down enough to allow for extended periods of concentration.

</comment><comment><USER35> 1\. Don't drink coffee, ever. Don't drink alcohol, or use any other drugs that mess with sleep.

2\. Sleep in a room with lots of morning sunlight.

3\. Don't use an alarm clock unless you have a hard deadline you absolutely can't miss.

4\. Plan your day the night before, at least in your head.

5\. Find a breakfast you enjoy.

</comment><comment><USER36> Best thing I do is wake up and go to the bathroom or shower. I mean showering is practically sleeping anyways, white noise, quiet, warmth. Your just verticle for it.

</comment><comment><USER37> Here's my method:

1) Remove sheets 2) Move to an upright position 3) Place feet on ground 4) Stand up

Now, if anyone could help me with falling asleep again in the shower...

</comment><comment><USER38> If you have a programmable thermostat, set it to drop to 64 around bedtime and rise to 72 when you want to wake up.

<comment><USER39> Why?

<comment><USER40> This really does work. On a cold day my inclination is to stay underneath the covers. I've even gotten my laptop and read e-mail from quite often.

It may also be biological. Rising temperature indicates that the sun is coming up and the day is starting. On the same idea light helps. Turning on the lights can wake me up, but natural sunlight coming through the blinds is even better.</comment></comment></comment>


Big Five Traits and Inclusive Generalized Prejudice - barry-cotter https://psyarxiv.com/6vqwk/ <comment> barry-cotter The thrust of the study is that people low in agreeableness have a low opinion of more or less everybody and all groups, whereas previously it had been thought they were prejudiced against low status groups.

Seems relevant to this discuss about Mencken

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16199762](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16199762)

> Existing meta-analytic evidence finds that low levels of Openness and > Agreeableness correlate with generalized prejudice. However, previous > studies relied on restricted operationalizations of generalized prejudice > that only assessed prejudice toward disadvantaged, low-status groups. Across > four samples (total N = 7,543), we tested the associations between Big Five > traits and generalized prejudice using an inclusive operationalization of > generalized prejudice. A meta-analysis of these findings indicates that > Openness was only very weakly related to inclusive generalized prejudice, r > = -.03, 95%CI [-.07, -.001], whereas low Agreeableness was reliably > associated with inclusive generalized prejudice (r = -.23, 95%CI [-.31, > -.16]). We additionally found that perceived target ideology moderated > relationships between Openness and Conscientiousness and prejudice, and that > perceived target status moderated relationships between Agreeableness and > Extraversion and prejudice. These results provide new and more nuanced > insights into the relationship between personality and prejudice.</comment>


M*A*S*H (2003) - <AUTHOR> https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2003/11/6/mash-for-the-most-monastic-undergraduates/ <comment><USER2> Context, since this has nothing to do with the book series, movie, or TV series by that name, and I had to do a DDG search to figure it out.

The link is an editorial commentary on FaceMash. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Facebook](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Facebook) says:

> "Facebook's predecessor, opened in 2003, developed by Mark Zuckerberg; he > wrote the software for the Facemash website when he was in his second year > of college. The website was set up as a type of "hot or not" game for > Harvard students. The website allowed visitors to compare two female student > pictures side by side and let them decide who was more attractive."

The editorial title's styling as the TV series has no deeper connection to that series.

For those who want something about the TV series, I recently watched this lovely hour-long fan review of it: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1a8l1QFHj5Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1a8l1QFHj5Q) .</comment>


Robot Reality: Service Jobs Are Next to Go - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnbc.com/id/100592545

<comment><USER2> It's fascinating to dream about a "robot revolution" in the service industry. However, before we engage in too much hand wringing it's important to consider how many times such sweeping claims have been made in the past. Color me very skeptical until we see more validation in the form of simpler use cases before we start worrying about the social impact of robotic barristas.</comment>


MySQL+PHP iPhone app - <AUTHOR> http://www.letscocoa.com/2010/02/16/mysqlphp-iphone-app/ <comment><USER2> This is a rather long-winded way to say: "by making HTTP requests from a Cocoa Touch app to your web server".</comment>


Ask HN: What is equivalent of "planned obsolescence" in internet world? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Javascript frameworks/libraries: you master one and two years later it is old news. Must master a new one or won't get jobs.</comment>


AWS Summit New York – Summary of Announcements - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/aws-summit-new-york-summary-of-announcements/ <comment><USER2> AWS Macie sounds quite an exciting offering.</comment>


Eventjoy (YC W14) Makes Its Ticketing Service Free for Organizers - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/insider/2014/05/02/y-combinator-backed-eventjoy-makes-ticketing-service-free-organizers/

<comment><USER2> While it's always tough when one of your main competitive advantages is price, this is a smart move for them. Really good talking point to get people in the door and away from Eventbrite. Best of luck!

<comment><USER3> Thanks Andrew. We found a lot of organizers to be pretty price sensitive around ticketing fees.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It looks great, except of course for other ticketing companies, from the outside but it's really unclear what the paid services are. For example I'm sure EventBrite calls their events directory "promotion" so I think your paid services need to be more explicitly spelled out. I agree if you are going to compete with EB you are going to have to do something drastic and with ticketmaster holding contracts with all the large venues it will be very interesting to see if this takes off or just destroys value in the industry.

<comment><USER3> In our opinion, event discovery via a directory isn't that effective. Real discovery comes from social proof and recommendations from friends/connections.

We're working on some things to assist with this, but we're also looking into other channels of mobile commerce (beyond ticketing) that we can monetize.

<comment><USER4> But how do you then monetize it? Is your paid promotion program something like you get a percentage of the sales that a directly attributed to your promotion (aka "social proof / recommendations") like for example bandsintown? I guess what I'm still saying is it's unclear if I pay you X what is the value you are providing me. The service is very cool just trying to understand the premium service.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Thanks for posting. I'm one of the Eventjoy founders. Happy to answer any questions.

<comment><USER5> I just signed up for an account and moved to the plan an event page. Your UX is very slick, its effortless.

You are obviously a competitor to EventBrite, but could you also be a competitor for eVite, FB events, etc?

eVite is full of garbage ads and has terrible UX, FB has obvious privacy issues (is my event public? I have no idea)

<comment><USER3> Thanks. Considering that event management covers a lot of areas, there is definitely some overlap into other spaces. For instance, we do offer lightweight email campaigns and will soon offer custom email invites.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Patch Management for Ubuntu - <AUTHOR> https://sysward.com/

<comment><USER2> What advantages does this offer over tools like vfense & spacewalk?

How much time/effort do I save, vs deploying an in house solution using vfense (or go to an even lower level with mrepo and configuration management).

With the sysward agent, I still have to install the agent, configure & test it out, open firewall rules etc etc...but most importantly, I have to send security data over to 3rd parties (sysward), which means I have to hope that sysward is also secure.</comment>


Whose bug is it anyway? - <AUTHOR> https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2020/07/whose-bug-is-it-anyway/ <comment><USER2> The bug is with whoever decided to use a (greedy) URL _parser_ as a URL _recognizer_. Those are two different tasks — like facial recognition vs. facial identification. "Drawing a box" that separates a face/URL from the rest of the image/prose, vs. actually "understanding" that face/URL.

There should exist (and, I believe, do exist) algorithms specifically for _segmenting_ micro-format data like URLs, phone numbers, etc., out of prose text. These algorithms are specifically tuned not just for the features of these micro-formats, but also for the features _of_ prose text that might conflict with them (like trailing periods!) The output of such segmentation algorithms can then be fed to actual parser/scanner regexes, to validate and extract meaning from the microformats. (The segmentation algorithms don't always trigger only on _valid_ instances of the micro-format, so you need a stricter check after.)

One might then say that, having such an algorithm in hand, it's the responsibility of any API of a rendering engine that knows it's going to be _used_ for rendering mixed prose+URL content (where the URLs aren't marked up in any way to indicate them), to offer an API for such a URL-segmentation algorithm, and in its docs to mention that this API should be used in place of just throwing the lower-level URL _scanner_ at the problem.

But that supposes that the implementers of such an API _have_ such an algorithm in hand. Often they aren't even aware that such algorithms exist.

Really, I would say that this is a "tragedy of siloed development": if this were a FOSS rendering toolkit, probably someone who knows about the existence of this algorithm would have raised an issue within a relevant repo; and then the folks working on the project could have taken a look and realized it would be better to offer/implement that API, and document its use-case (and warn, in the lower-level API, that it shouldn't be being used for the higher-level use- case.) But because this is a big opaque-from-the-outside project, there's no clear way for a meeting-of-the-minds between "the person that notices the bug and knows that prose:URL segmentation algorithms exist" and "the team that could benefit from that information" to happen.

This is what bug bounty programs are for in security land—to provide a channel for this meeting-of-the-minds to happen. But there isn't really anything like this in UX land.

<comment><USER3> Note that this "whoever" are the authors of Signal chat application which is completely opensource. The bug report for this was closed on a technicality that has very little to do with usability or even understanding the issue.

But this is kinda standard with Signal developers - they are repeatedly giving me the feeling of not quite understanding usability while they build the app. Just think of the PIN verification mess and the mess that's their backup functionality.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> All of the involved parties should fix the problem on their own. Any single one of them fixing the issue won't prevent it from popping up again, since you can substitute or circumvent the fixed layer.

Signal should handle this case explicitly in the app, since it's a common frustration for their own users when typing dots, commas and parenthesis.

Android should maybe fix the library, but at the very least fix the documentation to mention that it is not intended to be used in context of prose. Android fixing their library is the least useful of all possible fixes, since it won't propagate to users of Android in any meaningful way for a decade.

The Virgin web team should see that there's elevated 404's, and configure their system to ignore trailing full-stops.

A company the size of Virgin probably already has a process to review marketing messages, but it's likely to be someone eyeballing it, and they should fix it to catch this automatically. They probably already use a marketing automation and scheduling system, that could fix it by verifying the links before pushing.

<comment><USER5> If I was the web team I wouldn't fix it. You have the chance of breaking some other thing that's intended to work that way, and you're guessing what the visitor wants to do, and shouldn't assume

<comment><USER6> As the web team, you could specially redirect that one single URL. That wouldn't make any assumptions on what the user wants - it's clear they want to go to that specific URL.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Among the ways in which the early web may have been an improvement upon its successors: [https://www.w3.org/Addressing/URL/5.1_Wrappers.html](https://www.w3.org/Addressing/URL/5.1_Wrappers.html)

<comment><USER8> I always delimit URLs with spaces. For example, I might punctuate your comment this way:

> Among the ways in which the early web may have been an improvement upon its > successors: > [https://www.w3.org/Addressing/URL/5.1_Wrappers.html](https://www.w3.org/Addressing/URL/5.1_Wrappers.html) > .

It's surprising to me that nobody else does this.

<comment><USER9> I do, and I wouldn't be surprised if more people here do so as well. Then again, I also wouldn't be surprised at people here _not_ doing so and expecting URL classifier to strip trailing punctuation even though the spec allows it.

<comment><USER10> I also do it, because sometimes the parser does the 'right' think and sometimes it doesn't, and it's easier just never to rely on it. It's tough to fight when the parser thinks it's doing the right thing but isn't; for example, I literally couldn't find out how to send someone a link to

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Only_the_Super- Rich_Can_Save_U...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Only_the_Super- Rich_Can_Save_Us)!

in Slack; the trailing ! is part of the URL, but Slack resolutely refused to recognise at such. (I don't know what HN's parser does, so I guess we can regard this as an experiment! EDIT: HN also refuses to recognise it. I tried the <> wrapper suggested elsethread, with amusing results: it makes HN's parser gobble both the ! _and_ the trailing > as part of the URL! Maybe a percent-encoding would have been the way to go.)

<comment><USER11> > I literally couldn't find out how to send someone a link

The usual work-around is to encode the offending character(s). In this example, `!` becomes `%21`.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Only_the_Super- Rich_Can_Save_U...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Only_the_Super- Rich_Can_Save_Us%21)

> HN also refuses to recognise it.

The HN software is RFC ignorant. Could you please send an email to the Web master so the bug can get fixed?

<comment><USER10> > The usual work-around is to encode the offending character(s). In this > example, `!` becomes `%21`.

Yeah, that was my speculation:

> > Maybe a percent-encoding would have been the way to go.

> The HN software is RFC ignorant. Could you please send an email to the Web > master so the bug can get fixed?

I try to be conscientious in general about reporting bugs I find in software, but arguing about the details of Markdown parsers is an endless full-time job with no reward. Of course you are welcome to do it if you think it's worth the time.

<comment><USER12> It reported this bug to HN (back in 2016…), and they acknowledged it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's the media team. They created an ambiguous URL given the context. When you're making a web page you control the context and markup so you can make it unambiguous. If you don't, and you're putting a URL at the end of a proper sentence, it becomes ambiguous.

<comment><USER14> The media team do not know and should not be expected to know the exact minute details of how URLs can and cannot be validly formatted. Especially given that common parsers handle these cases in violation of the standards. Nobody ever uses URLs ending in a ., and for 99.999% of humans it is completely reasonable to write [http://example.com](http://example.com).

It's a different thing to say that they should have at least tested it first.

<comment><USER15> > The media team do not know and should not be expected to know the exact > minute details of how URLs

Someone paid to communicate via digital media should understand the limitations of these media. The rule is pretty simple, old and does not require "exact minute details": Don't follow URLs with punctuation characters.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> To avoid this issue when writing URLs in plaintext, I add a space at the end.

> Check out [https://example.com/thing](https://example.com/thing) . They've > got...

Let's say we were serious about solving this problem (without adopting a strategy like mine above). We would need a set of rules for plaintext-safe URLs. It would comprise:

\- An extension to the URL syntax to specify the subset of URLs that are plaintext safe. It might be as simple as a list of punctuation characters that cannot appear at the end of a URL (unless they are percent encoded).

\- Guidelines and test vectors for implementers of URL identification algorithms.

\- Guidelines for content authors. E.g., "The only characters that may immediately follow a URL are..."

\- A recommendation for web developers to ensure plaintext safefy when creating new URLs.

<comment><USER17> There's already RFC 3986 appendix C [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3986#appendix-C](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3986#appendix-C) but delimiting UTLs with <> has gone out of fashion, and sometimes is not supported. e.g. hacker news gets it wrong by counting the > as part of the URL even though it isn't a valid URL character.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> If we are considering URLs have entered the realm of regular content we produce/consume as text, then the bug should be fixed by the lowest layer in the stack (dunno if it's the URI library or the OS a browser app or whatever). We can't expect people to understand the concept of a hyperlink while we scold them for not adding a blank space after them (which is stupid, we don't do that in regular text) or something like that. We need to handle URLs gracefully. I have seen legal papers with URLs at the end of sentences multiple times with period marks right next to them because a text editor works like that. The user is not to blame here. In theory the person who sent the SMS is not to blame either, SMS is a text document.

<comment><USER19> The highlighting is done by the messaging app, it should be corrected by the messaging app.

The issue is specific to messaging apps, in the context of text messages and copy/pasted URL, where an URL might get an extra dot as if concluding a sentence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> "Virgin Media's Marketing Team" for sure, because it's their responsibility to test if their message works. There always will be some buggy software around. It could be feature phone, iOS, Windows Phone (devices are still alive), some tablet with SIM or whatever. It is "Marketing Team"'s responsibility to test if their message can actually reach their customers. Everything should be tested. Always.

</comment><comment><USER21> It doesn't really matter whose bug it is. If you're sending urls through a lossy medium, and you want them to work, your server needs to be accepting of trailing garbage and (where possible) truncation and case insensitive.

If you send a link via sms, some number of people are going to type it in a url bar while looking at their phone, that's a lossy process. In addition to whatever terrible things happened during sms transmission.

</comment><comment><USER22> For me it's fairly clear that the only unambiguous way of delimiting a URL in the context of plain text is using whitespace. Only a space, tab or new line shouldn't be considered as part of the URL. This means virgin media are at fault and should put a space after the URL.

<comment><USER23> There apparently is also an RFC someone mentioned earlier in the comments of this thread which says you can use double quotes " [https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=23951099&goto=item%3Fi...](https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=23951099&goto=item%3Fid%3D23926357%2323951099") or angle brackets < [https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=23951099&goto=item%3Fi...](https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=23951099&goto=item%3Fid%3D23926357%2323951099>).

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> If the UA encounters a 404 it could offer to strip the ".", perhaps.

<comment><USER11> No, the server should offer it because the UA is clueless about the URI space.

Apache httpd comes with mod_speling. [https://httpd.apache.org/docs/mod/mod_speling.html](https://httpd.apache.org/docs/mod/mod_speling.html)

</comment></comment><comment> gray_-_wolf And this is why I always put space before the punctuation when sending a link to someone.

</comment><comment><USER25> All of the above. Any of those layers could have fixed the problem, and should have.

<comment><USER26> But it is a valid url. 'Fixing it' in a deep layer would cause eventual regressions. The bug is in the interpretation of intent, which imo, clearly lies at the UI layer in this case.

edit: it's not "clearly the UI layer" as I said... it should be fixed at the layer that transforms the text into structured data. That's where I'd put my tests

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> The issue is sending a bare URL. They should have said, "To visit our support page, click here." With "click here" being a link. If they're concerned about people with email clients that don't support HTML mail, they should also put on a line by itself the full bare URL. This is email communication 101.

<comment><USER28> It's an SMS, not email.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> The biggest problem here is that the company involved is ran by monkeys and there's no way to report this issue. In a proper company this would either not have happened (if competent people were behind the feature and would've tested this properly) or would've been resolved the same day as soon as a customer reported the problem.</comment>


This year's mass coral spawning is about to kick off - <AUTHOR> https://citizensgbr.org/explore/spawningGBR <comment><AUTHOR> Annual spawning sees billions of corals across the Great Barrier Reef release their eggs into the water on one night of the year. Hundreds of researchers are currently on the reef, and there's a bunch of major research projects underway to coincide with it. Most interesting is 'IVF for the Reef', an effort to reestablish degraded corals by redistributing larvae from healthy areas of reef. Before it's resettled the larvae is mixed with lab-produced symbiotic algae to boost its energy and increase its chance of survival. [https://citizensgbr.org/p/larval-restoration- project](https://citizensgbr.org/p/larval-restoration-project)</comment>


Ask HN: How do you backup? - <AUTHOR>

Is it automatic, how quickly can you recover and what service(s) do you use (or is it all done in-house) ... or not at all? What thought-process prompted your chosen solution?
Personally, I keep all of my important stuff in git, mirrored to GitHub and augmented with cperciva's Tarsnap, into which the majority of my home directory goes, excepting large files but including my Firefox history & sessions.
This post was prompted by the fact that I've taken a hard look at my budget and cannot justify paying GitHub a bunch of money to do something I can do on my own* -- that is, archive my git repos with a degree of assurance that the data is secure.
I am, as I type, pulling all my data out of GitHub and throwing it onto tarsnap to guard against the chance that my laptop's disk will die in the next week. However, removing my data from GitHub as produced a lot of anxiety -- I feel like I can't live without a distributed, redundant backup solution.
So, how do you backup?
* I will probably keep the cheapest GitHub plan because GitHub is useful for active development, but very overpriced for what I mostly use it for --  keeping my data safe, backed-up and distributed (but it worked for a while, long enough to show that I like this system).
(Yes, I know this has been addressed before: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=786225 and
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=99194 etc.) <comment><USER2> Somehow I get the feeling that you don't need me to explain how and why I do my backups. :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> _laughs_ Indeed.</comment></comment>


Gnome 3.14 Released - <AUTHOR> https://help.gnome.org/misc/release-notes/3.14/

<comment><USER2> Is Fedora 21 Alpha my best choice for trying this out?

<comment><USER3> Probably, but I heard Debian unstable is already packaging it, so that's an option too.

<comment><USER4> Both Debian and Fedora are good options. As summed up nicely by the "Introducing GNOME3 3.14" video at 2:15 [1], here is a probable order of 3.14 landing in various distributions:

1\. Arch

2\. Fedora

3\. Debian

4\. Mageia

5\. SuSE

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7p8Prlu3owc#t=135](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7p8Prlu3owc#t=135)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Gnome Shell is really beautiful and practical. I'm switching to Fedora Rawhide (I tried Arch Linux, but got a bit disappointed with it), because I got tired of Ubuntu's effort to boycott Shell (although you can still install it) instead of merging efforts to create desktop experience at par with Windows and OS X. My only issue was the lack of a dark Gnome 2 theme in Adwaita. Does anyone know if 3.14 fixes that?</comment>


Novelist Neal Stephenson Once Again Proves He's the King of the Worlds - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/culture/art/magazine/16-09/mf_stephenson

<comment><USER2> I'm looking forward to this, but it annoys me how many "advance copies" of this book appear to have been floating around for months, and have now been read by (apparently) everybody except me. I understand that they might want to get copies into reviewers' hands a couple of weeks before the release date, but months?

<comment><USER3> There are 3 copies available on ABE:

[http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?an=Stephenson&...](http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?an=Stephenson&tn=Anathem)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For those of you in the Bay Area, Stephenson is giving a reading from the book on September 7th in SF:

<http://www.longnow.org/anathem/>

Unfortunately, tickets are $10.</comment>


Tencent may have accidentally leaked real data on Wuhan virus deaths - <AUTHOR> https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3871594 <comment><USER2> There's speculation that the CCP is lying about the actual numbers of dead/infected due to 2019-nCoV, but this article is pure speculation based on a single screenshot.

It's easy to change the numbers on Tencent just using the "Inspect" button in your browser. Here is my Tencent insider leak with the _real_ numbers:

[https://imgur.com/a/WxvA9q6](https://imgur.com/a/WxvA9q6)

Looks like the entire globe is infected, with more than 2 billion deaths.

<comment><USER3> True, it's easy to just change the website in your browser. What's concerning is that (a) many people saw these same numbers at the same time and all independently commented on this online, and (b) China has a known history of falsifying data that makes it look bad.

For example, based on multiple independent analyses, including of (pig) feed supply chains, more than half of pigs in China have died in the swine flu outbreak, or more than twice what China currently reports. (See for example, [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/01/opinion/china-swine- fever...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/01/opinion/china-swine-fever.html) which goes with the August 2019 numbers, but compare to [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-swinefever- archer-d...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-swinefever-archer- daniels/african-swine-fever-in-china-more-severe-than-previously-thought-adm- cfo-idUSKBN1XN2EE) which uses October numbers.)

With SARS, it took more than a decade for the true numbers to come out--and that only because a new leader wanted to embarrass his predecessors.

<comment><USER4> "more than half of pigs in China have died in the swine flu outbreak"

I was just reading something that said farmers are having trouble getting enough feed for their livestock, such as chickens, and "millions" of them could be in jeopardy. But it also mentioned that there are something like ~300 million chickens living in all, and ~500M slaughtered normally in a year. So on average, millions must die every day _anyway_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Take a look at official numbers for how many die of regular influenza. Then compare/contrast with the rest of the world. That's all you have to know.

</comment><comment><USER6> The fact that the official numbers keep the death rate at a very precise number for a long periods of time indeed make them suspicious</comment>


Cultural Cringe - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_cringe <comment><USER2> Similar to how we percieve our food as normal compared to other countries food; we all see things differently, where you grow up changes perspective a lot. In my experience, I have never been negative enough to think badly about my country or my culture. It is a matter of being a positive person and putting yourself in others shoes and realizing how amazing everything can seem. Get yourself a foreign friend, you're set.</comment>


Federal fugitive freed because evidence takes too much space (2TB) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.backblaze.com/2012/08/20/federal-fugitive-freed-due-because-evidence-takes-too-much-space/

<comment><USER2> Though this seems like a good trolling type of post for Hacker News (government incompetence about technology = guaranteed upvotes), reality is that Panama will not extradite him so there is no reasonable possibility of ever convicting him in the United States. Prosecutors ask for cases to be dropped all the time and there is pro forma language for the reasoning, that it is a burden on the government (rather than a reason like, "because we found out the guy is innocent"). The DEA will probably do exactly what you might think they would do, which is to copy the data onto a couple of drives and file them away in a filing cabinet somewhere, in case they should ever be useful. The DEA's data-handling facilities need to be large enough to handle all active cases (and no larger), and there is no evidence that they are not. Perhaps this one case represents 5% of their data storage, all other cases combined represent 45%, and the other 50% is empty.

Move along, nothing to get upset about here.</comment>


Fertilizer that fizzles in a homemade bomb could save lives around the world  - <AUTHOR> https://share.sandia.gov/news/resources/news_releases/ied_fertilizer/

<comment><USER2> Most people don't have Alkaline soil. That's why you put lime on fields, because it is too acidic.

We don't use Iron Sulfate as a fertilizer because it is absorbed by the plants and in things like corn the increase in Iron can make the things raised in the soil poisonous to Children and pets.

This isn't "new". And and it isn't patentable because it is a chemical that has been used for fertilizer in Kale and Spinach for 100+ years.

<comment><USER3> I don't understand why everyone in this thread keeps missing this. It doesn't matter what soil "most people" have, the place where they have all the IEDs has highly alkaline soil that could actually benefit from this change.

<comment><USER4> IANAF, but it seems to be suggested that once land starts getting used for agriculture, the breakdown in organic compounds you will see in farming tends to make the soil more acid, less base.

So there are already factors that deal with the issue. Which, hey, makes the fertilizer great for bootstrapping a farm I would guess. Not for what the article suggests though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It might also cost many more lives than it saves. For example, if governments outlaw conventional fertilizer but the new one is more expensive to manufacture, then the cost of food could rise, causing starvation in poverty- stricken areas.

<comment><USER6> The article is pretty explicit about it being as cheap to produce and more effective.

 _"iron sulfate, a readily available compound that steel foundries throw away by the tons."

"Fleming said iron sulfate in fertilizer adds iron and acidifies soil. "It does good things for soil health. It takes alkaline soil and makes it more neutral, closer to an ideal pH level," he said. "The closer you get a neutral pH, the more crops grow. Crop yield would improve significantly.

"And iron-containing fertilizer added to the soil would be taken up in crops and help fight anemia and other iron deficiencies in people who eat them."

The soil in Afghanistan is alkaline with a high pH, and could benefit from an ammonium nitrate/iron sulfate fertilizer, Fleming said. "What they use now, ammonium nitrate with calcium carbonate — which makes soil more alkaline — doesn't make sense," he said."

"But he said there are some ideas about how to get the non-detonable formula, which would not cost more to produce, into the marketplace. "We could give the formula to a neutral party and let them work with the Afghans, Pakistanis and others," he said. "They could set up side-by-side demonstrations to see which fertilizer works better. Prove it to them gradually."_

<comment><USER5> _"Iron sulfate, a readily available compound that steel foundries throw away by the tons._ "

It won't be free for long. Once there's a demand for it, steel foundries will sell it to the highest bidder. That effect has already happened with municipal recycling: NYC once had to pay to have its recycled paper carted away. Now there are companies that will pay good money to receive the recyclable paper that the residents of NYC throw away. (And it's valuable enough that NYC tries to prevent rogue collectors from stealing it off the curbs before the city's garbage trucks can get to it.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Plants need nitrogen in much greater quantities (10-100x) than they need iron. For this fertilzer to not be used as an explosive it would have to contain much more iron than would ever be used by plants. Too much iron can be toxic to plants, make plants poisonous for humans to eat and cause other problems. Another issue is that most soil is not alkaline, it's acidic, especially if it has been used for agriculture. The sulfur in this "fertilizer" will further acidify the soil, making it more difficult for many plants to absorb nutrients through their roots (and in a vicious cycle, requiring more use of fertilizer). I'm sure the people involved had their hearts in the right place, but this development doesn't solve anything and by reducing crop yields could lead to many hungry people.

<comment><USER3> The soil in Afghanistan extremely alkaline, adding the iron sulfate brings it closer to a neutral pH (good for food crops, bad for things like Opium poppies). The low iron content of the soil also leads to a high occurrence of Iron Deficient Anemia.

<comment><USER7> 1\. It wouldn't surprise me if much of the virgin soil in Afghanistan is alkaline, soil in arid areas often is. Once soil is used in agriculture and is cultivated and/or irrigated, it tends to become more acidic due to the breakdown of organic matter.

2\. Opium poppies may be better able to _tolerate_ alkaline soil, but they do not require require it. You may be surprised by this, but _Papaver somniferum_ is still widely grown in the US as a garden ornamental, and in all kinds of soil, alkaline, neutral and acidic.

3\. For plants, iron is a micronutrient, nitrogen is a macronutrient. A typical fertilizer such as Miracle Grow is 0.15% iron for example. High iron concentrations, such as those that would be necessary to make ammonium nitrate non-explosive would be toxic to most crop plants.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have a Chemical specialization in the secondary school (but we obviously didn't study too much about explosives).

There are some details that I don't like. The ammonium nitrate is good to make explosives because it has many nitrogens and many oxigens, IIRC it is not important that the ammonia is "bounded" to the nitrate (it's even only an ionic bound).

The mix that they are proposing doen't solves this problem, the nitrogens and oxigens are still there. For example, the potassium nitrate is an oxidizer and can be used to make explosives ( <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potassium_nitrate#Oxidizer> ). The iron nitrate is an oxidizer too ( <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron(III)_nitrate> ) but I really don't know whether it can be used to make explosives.

My concern is that they tested that after the chemical reaction, there is no remaining ammonium nitrate. But apparently they didn't test if it was still useful to make explosives. (Note: This test can be dangerous, don't try this at home.)

<comment><USER4> err, well the Idea here i think is that the reason ammonium nitrate makes a good oxidizer for explosives is because of its weak bonds. The exchange of atoms lowers the chemical energy, and lowers the fertilizer's efficacy as an oxidizer.

I would of thought it would of lowered the fertilizer's efficacy as a fertilizer as well... I'm not a chemist though.

<comment><USER8> It's more complicated. Nitroglycerine has strong bounds.

<comment><USER4> damn it.

I hate chemistry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Ireland (Which has heaps of money and time to waste unlike Pakistan which has aid programs to run) tried something like this years ago, the IRA just developed a way around it.

I suspect like all self made security experts they have created a product they can't crack but bomb makers quickly would.

</comment><comment><USER10> They say they're not patenting the mixture - does anyone have more details on the chemistry?

It sounds like they've found a way to prevent the nitrate-sulfate substitution from occurring directly in the fertilizer, which is very interesting if true.

<comment><USER11> Well, the compounds themselves are typically in solid phase. I would assume that the mix is just composed of an adequately well mixed combination of iron sulfate and ammonium nitrate crystals. If you make them have pretty much the same size, and sufficiently small, then you make mechanical separation unlikely/impossible.

<comment><USER10> That's certainly a possibility. I'm just wondering if Sandia has provided more details themselves.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Al Qaeda and similar militants use potassium chlorate and sulfur for bomb and IED making. I don't see how the fertilizer blockade on those countries has made any difference in the amount of deadly explosions that happen in Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria on a weekly basis.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm hopeful we'll be able to look back in 30 years time and see this development as pivotal in helping to curb the use of explosives where diplomacy would be more suitable.

<comment><USER14> "... where diplomacy would be more suitable."

What do you mean by that?

<comment><USER15> I think he means that this development would encourage the use of diplomacy over explosives. I initially read it the other way (diplomacy being more useful than this development).</comment></comment></comment>


Purely Functional Retrogames - <AUTHOR> http://prog21.dadgum.com/23.html

<comment><USER2> The actual post linked here is basically an intro and is kind of "meh" by itself, but the series of posts it introduces is quite good and answers a lot of the questions people have about how you do a seemingly "imperative-style" application in a purely functional language.

<comment><USER3> Yes. I also remember there being a previous discussion about those posts on HN. Does anybody care to dig it out?

<comment><USER2> I checked HNSearch, but I couldn't find one with more than a tiny handful of comments (I think with this comment we're already halfway to matching the most active one).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you like this series of posts, get yourself a copy of The Haskell School of Expression [0]. It covers various multi-media applications of Haskell, including reactive animations.

[0]: <http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/hudak/SOE/>

</comment><comment><USER5> What I would really love is a post--or series of posts--just like this, but using FRP so that everything could be purely functional. Perhaps something like this exists already?

<comment><USER6> 1\. Install reactive-banana and read its docs and Apfelmus' intro (i).

2\. Write a simple, 80s-style game using it.

3\. Write a short tutorial explaining it.

4\. ???

5\. Profit.

(i) [http://apfelmus.nfshost.com/blog.html#functional-reactive- pr...](http://apfelmus.nfshost.com/blog.html#functional-reactive-programming- frp)

<comment><USER7> The following brief tutorial does not fit your criteria, but you might be interested in it anyway, as it is geared towards making games using FRP:

<http://booki.flossmanuals.net/fluxus/frisbee/>

<comment><USER6> Thanks.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Node.js vs Erlang: SyncPad's Experience - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mysyncpad.com/post/2073441622/node-js-vs-erlang-syncpads-experience <comment><USER2> It would be really useful for him to say what Node.js version he's using. Node <=0.2.3 has a bug related to reaching the file descriptor limit of the OS that makes CPU usage go through the roof, for example.

<comment><USER3> To be honest, though, this is the result you really should expect. Node.js is a relatively new thing that is a bit of a clever hack on top of a language runtime that is powerful but was not directly designed for this usecase, running a language that is also powerful but not directly designed for this use case. Erlang is a language that has been open source for 12 years (and was actually started in 1986), both the language and the runtime are specifically designed for this use case and has had years of tuning and bugfixes, and this problem is right smack dab in the middle of what Erlang targets.

This isn't a criticism of Node.js... it's just the way it is. Every language was young sometime.

(It will be interesting to see if Node.js ever quite catches up, though; when you've really pushed the performance to the max for a given design decision, you get down to the point where you can't improve without changing those decisions. Erlang's GC, for instance, is absolutely written around having a lot of threads that may be running on different CPUs, which adds a lot of complexity that the V8 project, or any JS runtime project in general, may be loathe to introduce into what is still fundamentally something that should be able to go into a browser. But that's for the future to resolve.)

<comment><USER4> Yes! This! Let's be reasonable adults about this: node.js and V8 are very new projects that are really impressive given their age. OTP is an incredibly mature and proven platform.

EDIT: If you're interested to really see what node.js's main issues are, check out Ryan Dahl's (node.js creator) presentation at JSConf.eu 2010. [http://jsconf.eu/2010/speaker/techniques_for_a_single_stack....](http://jsconf.eu/2010/speaker/techniques_for_a_single_stack.html)

EDIT (2): Yes, meant OTP, not OLTP. :)

<comment><USER5> Minor pedantry note: I think you mean OTP (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Telecom_Platform>), rather than OLTP (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OLTP>).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Google Cache: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:blog.my...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:blog.mysyncpad.com/post/2073441622/node- js-vs-erlang-syncpads-experience)

</comment><comment><USER7> Why does JSON have to be involved at all? A binary format using UDP packets would perform much better.

I was trying to use SyncPad with my dad last night to try out as a means of doing Hangul lessons over the net, and performance was usable but uncomfortably laggy.

<comment><USER8> It sounds like he tried to figure out how to process binary data with Node.js using "Buffers" but didn't get it working before switching to Erlang.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why not combine both? Use Erlang/OTP for writing telecom-grade servers and Javascript for embeddeded scripting engine. Both Riak and CouchDB do exactly this. Use erlang_js OTP application:

{erlang_js,"Interface between BEAM and JS","0.4.1"}

</comment><comment><USER10> The page is now showing "We'll be back shortly. Our servers are over capacity". Now I'm really interested in which one they are currently using.

<comment><AUTHOR> tumblr :/

<comment><USER11> Interesting... Just a heads up if anyone cares: We had at least one tumblr submission yesterday, too, that had trouble. Two days in a row might be a larger red flag for tumblr or tumblr users.

<comment><USER12> > Two days in a row might be a larger red flag for tumblr or tumblr users.

Twitter has been having this sort of problem since always. Users don't seem to care about a little downtime.

<comment><USER13> Hacker News itself has hiccoughs, too, but here we are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's not because Node.js is a new thing. It just that JavaScript is a client language, why would use it on a server anyway? Use the appropriate language for your projects and in this case it's Erlang.

EDIT: For all those Node.js zealots, thanks for downvoting.

<comment><USER15> > It just that JavaScript is a client language

No, JavaScript is a language, it's been used on clients and servers for quite a few years now.

<comment><USER14> ...and it's quite clear that using it on the server is not that efficient compared to other languages that were designed to run on the server. The article proves that point.

<comment><USER15> I'm afraid you've confused a language with a particular virtual machine that runs it. That's like criticizing CSS because Internet Explorer implements it badly. The article proves nothing other than one particular JavaScript VM isn't as efficient as Erlang, not exactly a big surprise considering that's not what the VM was written for.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Answer Factory: Fast, Disposable, and Profitable as Hell - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/10/ff_demandmedia/ <comment><USER3> The implications of this article are depressing. While I usually keep a tiny violin handy for when I run across writers bemoaning the death of journalism, the bleakness of an Internet full of crappy howto videos busted out for $20 a pop has gotten to me. We already have far too much slapdash, zero effort link- baiting blog drivel. But the worst part is the Orwellian (or perhaps Huxley- ian?) idea of all those people being driven to satisfy the demands of an algorithm on tiny margins, because it makes me feel somewhat culpable as a web programmer with an interest in statistics.

But then I observed that I was reading a more than 3000 word article, one which includes several interviews (with at least one on-site). And I wondered: is Wired itself a dinosaur? It's still apparently paying for pretty high journalistic standards. I imagine this article would have taken at least a few days to file, and presumably cost thousands of dollars. Why hasn't Wired figured out that the way to make money in online Journalism is to rip out dozens of 100 word articles per writer per day, consisting of facts plagiarized from others, with a few pithy statements and a linkbait title?

It's like Wired is some nostalgic holdover from the heady days of the print magazine, when they had people like Gibson and Stevenson writing grandiose, timeless (if a bit naive) articles on the coming digital wonderland. It made me want to search into Wired's archive and re-read Mother Earth Motherboard for the umpteenth time -- perhaps before Wired folds like the other dinosaurs and takes its archive with it. But then it occurred to me: the fact that I could, on a whim, pull up an article that was published in an ephemeral magazine more than a decade ago is itself a result of the Internet.

When that article was originally published, Wired's entire opportunity to make back the commission it paid was the shelf life of the issue in which it was printed. After that it would have spent perhaps a few years in library periodical departments, and would have eventually ended up on microfilm in archives, available to those who know the issue and volume number. I would have only been able to access their back catalog with great effort, and their ability to make money off of my doing so would have been nonexistent.

But now Wired's entire catalog is available online -- years and years of articles. And they all have fresh, revenue yielding advertisements around them. I think about how much time I've spent in Wired's archives. Just a few weeks ago I read a huge article about Project Xanadu that made the rounds. If you look at the link-broker sites like news.ycombinator, there is a good deal of blogspam -- no doubt -- but just yesterday there was a Dijkstra essay from the 1980s. It makes me think that perhaps there is a market for quality on the Internet. It's just hidden, because the quality isn't rewarded upfront by the initial wave of attention, but by the slow, slow trickle of back-issue readership -- still producing impressions on articles written and paid for many years ago.

<comment><USER4> Just BTW: Regarding the time to prepare the article itself, it's standard practice for companies to send press releases to magazines/articles that are already _ready for publication as is_. It makes sense: they will benefit massively from the publicity, and they have the best access to the material. Who knows, in this case they may even have included the "too slick" passage for verisimilitude (with an ironic wink). Most probably, wired did extra work, and just used the press release as a base. I'm just saying that that base reduces the work they had to do.

In the long term, quality will improve, in tiny marginal steps. The company already talks about that extra $1 for fact checking; but if another company is doing the same thing, and starts ranking higher, there will be pressure to increase quality. (That is, assuming the ad-clicks are _worth_ fighting for...)

It occurs to me that Google's pagerank is out of date: today, few people will add a link to their webpage/blog to one of these $20 videos, so pagerank can't rank them using links. (this isn't a danger to google; and their algorithm already uses many factors other than links). It would be a valuable to rank them somehow, using the behaviour of users. How to do that?

<comment><AUTHOR> Most likely Wired didn't do anything based on a press release. The P.R. industry would like you to believe they are able to drive the news agenda, but when it comes to the Wireds and The New York Timeses of the world, it's rare for a press release to lead to a story of this magnitude.

Most likely, Demand Studios' P.R. people freaked out when Wired inquired.

This story likely took weeks to report and write. A graphic artist probably spent at least a week preparing the chart. Good journalism takes a lot of effort, and so few people realize that.

As someone who has been paid to write and edit news for 30 years, this article was pretty depressing, but I already knew about Demand Studios. And you know what? It looks like they take good care of their writers, at least in the karma department. These seem to be folks who have always wanted to be paid to write but never had the opportunity to get paid for it, enjoy surfing the Web, and can bang out three or four of these articles in a day and have some good walking-around-money.

They seem to be mostly American, but at some point I'm sure the Third World will be recruited to drive the price down even further. Seen what they are paying on Mechanical Turk?

<comment><USER4> I wonder if we'll ever know, factually, who wrote to whom first?

I don't mean to slight wired; but I'm sure that many technology companies would like to be covered by wired, and if they have any sense, they'd prepare an article in the most convenient form for wired, and send it to them - <USER2> the guy running Demand definitely knows how to make things happen at this point. They wouldn't have any control over what Wired did with it, of course.

I wouldn't worry about it too much - it's just a drop in the ocean, and there are lots of other sources of information on the web. Probably, it's fair to say that having a crappy $20 video is quite a bit better than nothing. And if there's a few results to a google search, most people will look at more than one.

Example: I had a blocked toilet yesterday, google came up with a several excellent hits on it. I tried the suggestions in order, and problem solved. The internet is pretty cool.

I guess the depressing part is that higher quality can't be supported by _adwords_ alone - it would _seem_ , anyway. I think quality is often best rewarded in niches audiences and uses, where quality really matters.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think you mean AdSense. AdWords are a way for content creators to <i>spend</i> money, not make it.

In any event, AdSense revenue is trivial compared to the cost of creating content that has any widespread impact.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Eek... Reading this article was like watching a nightmare become reality. I've been getting thrown into ehow.com quite a bit lately, now I know why the answers are so terrible. This sort of mathematical approach to maximizing profit is, to me, a cancer on the web.

The analogy in the article was perfect, they're like the kid that screamed out the answer to every question the teacher had, but with absolutely 0 insight.

<comment><USER6> As I understand it, the mathematics approach is for finding questions, and I don't think there is something inherently nightmarish about that. It's the quality of the answer that matters. I don't know, I just watched the "What is the best vodka?" video, and being an amateur in this area, I actually found it quite useful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I hope this doesn't get buried. Fascinating article about how a media company is scaling itself in real-time (by analyzing over 100 high-value sources of what people are searching for) and algorithmically determining what obscure piece of content will generate a lifetime profit (at 55 to 60 cents per adsense click). They match the costs of production to the expected life-time profit, for example $15 for a few-hundred word article (fully acknowledging that most content on the Internet is cheap)

</comment><comment><USER8> _Instead of trying to raise the market value of online content to match the cost of producing it — perhaps an impossible proposition — the secret is to cut costs until they match the market value._

This is the reality that Rupert Murdoch is trying his best to ignore.

<comment><USER9> Interesting excerpt. But isn't Murdoch actually something of an "upstart" in media, who himself has been viewed as corrupting the journalistic standards of yesterday?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_Murdoch#Beginnings>

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Full page:

<http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/10/ff_demandmedia/all/1>

</comment><comment><USER11> While it is a bit of a race to the bottom, it doesn't have to be.

Especially if you include the PG-style democratic effect, where the good eHow articles float to the top and the bad sink, which creates a feedback loop that rewards quality. As quality becomes more important, the eHow statistical analysis will demonstrate that and eHow will adjust the process to increase quality.

Alternatively, they might just stick to such simple topics that this is unnecessary. "How to Be Popular" is not a simple topic, but "How to Use a Can Opener" is. Using a can opener is a useful thing to have available and doesn't need expensive production values.

Over time, if the business is truly data-driven, it should adjust to reflect these realities and lend itself to fulfilling true human needs, not just yelling the loudest for short term profit.

<comment><USER12> Whoa, there. They _do_ look at the data, and do what the data tell them makes the most sense. That's what that means. You can't say that you would do what your analysis tells you is right, and then decide what you'll conclude in advance!

Also, you might have noticed that the "democratic" parts of the web are mostly terrible.

<comment><USER11> What I'm saying is that the quality-effect would take time to become prominent.

First they have to profit off all the low-hanging fruit simply because there is no competition.

Then, once competition starts to build up, there is no more low-hanging fruit left and they are forced to compete on quality.

Over time, a democratic effect takes place and quality rises.

There is a difference between saying, "Cat pics are more popular than articles" and saying, " _This_ eHow video is higher quality than _this_ other site's HowTo video"

Cat pics don't compete with articles except on reddit and digg which love to compare apples and oranges. In a google search though, they are totally separate. So yeah maybe eHow will make 10 times more cat pics than informed videos but the point is that the cat pics will be automatically filtered out unless you search for "cat pics".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm skeptical of this type of business, simply for the reason that I think you have to actually help people to make money. You can trick them in the short term or exploit some discrepancy, but this doesn't sound much different than spam, so I can't imagine it being successful long term.

</comment><comment><USER14> There are some cool elements to this system - the algorithm for determining what content to create and the ambition of the founder but overall the system seems to be designed to produce the video equivalent of sludge.

Incentives are structured so that quality, in-depth content will be penalised while terrible, quick to produce movies will be rewarded highly. The only check on the terrible videos is the fact checking process but if you think you're going to get any kind of quality fact checking for a dollar then I have a bridge to sell you.

Given the rewards are much higher for the latter kind of video, these videos are going to grow to dominate the service. The producers of these will make videos about anything they can, not anything that corresponds to their field of expertise so essentially all you'll be getting (at best) is educated guesses about your topic of choice.

In fact there's probably a nonzero amount of money to be made in creating an automatic video generator which automatically composits videos and submits them under various names; remembering, of course; that it doesn't have to have actual information, it just needs to be good enough to get past the dollar per video filter.

The internet doesn't suffer from a shortage of information (we're already drowning in it); it suffers a shortage of quality. I can't see this doing anything to solve that.

That said, perhaps there's a market for sludge. If people want a few factoids about 'the best vodka' or something else that's utterly irrelevant, well maybe this will satisfy that demand. At least it's doing it cheaply.

Finally on an unrelated note this seems to be video for videos sake. Unless there's something being conveyed in the video that can't be done easily in text (for example recordings of the Dean Kamen robotic arm) I'd much rather stick to text - it's faster to consume, easier to parse and much more in depth.

</comment><comment><USER15> I told a bunch of journalism friends about this over beers tonight. A few of them were really depressed by this.

One of them is actually on the margins of it. He just started writing for an AOL site and said that this is the direction they're going to start going with for their weblogs inc. sites. He gets a list of topics culled from Google Zietgeist and other sources that his editor wants him to write short posts about for $50/pop. They don't really care what he writes so long as they have content available on the topics that people are searching for right now.

This is the world that's been built.

<comment><USER16> While the lack of a strong editorial voice can be a negative, the pay surely isn't. As you note, $50 a pop for "short posts." For someone who's skilled in an area (as most Weblogs Inc writers were, at least) $50 to put out a 300-400 word post in 30 minutes or so is pretty good pay.

<comment><AUTHOR> Word count is not an indication of the effort involved. Itg's not merely a matter of typing in words like a monkey. You have to know about which you write. The more you know, likely the more time it took you to learn it. Time is money, words are just words.

<comment><USER16> _Word count is not an indication of the effort involved._

If it's for writing small news bits, it can be. Let's say you're a total expert with using GMail and you have to write a couple of posts linking to GMail news, the occasional tip, etc, each day - you can probably bash short posts out in no time.

You have the many hundreds of hours invested in actually become the expert in the first place, but I doubt anyone becomes an expert _so_ they can write $50 a pop pieces - so that cash is extra value, not a payback for the time you spent learning (as is the case with a professional's fees).

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, OK, but that's an awfully narrow example. What happens when you are asked, or want, to write of something about which you know only a little? Or something you sort of know well but which requires a modest degree of fact- checking and verification?

Put another way, how much do you expect to earn per hour for this sort of work? How long does it take you to write an informative 300 words?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's the new domain squatting (kinda). Content producers are laying claim to keywords/searches that are under served but provide questionable value to those that they seek to reach.

Maybe eHow articles could serve as a flag to better content producers that moderately valuable yet under served "real estate" exists in a space. They might then claim some of that revenue by targeting the topic and providing higher quality content.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is at the same time really cool and horrific.

</comment><comment><USER18> This is the modern information economy equivalent of a manic episode.

</comment><comment><USER19> All hell will break loose when algorithms start writing these articles, imagine information just getting recycled with no new information conveyed. Of course, algorithms could detect correlations and patterns in text but would they be able to produce original and genuinely interesting articles?

<comment><USER15> Machine-generated sports stories via Northwestern's CS department: [http://www.medill.northwestern.edu/innovation/page.aspx?id=1...](http://www.medill.northwestern.edu/innovation/page.aspx?id=134675)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm cautiously excited, but am withholding judgement until I see the quality of their products:

From the article:

"Howcast, one of Demand's largest competitors, also produces explainer videos and how-tos. Unlike Demand, the company employs a staff of editors and writers and gets freelance voice-over pros. Filmmakers can earn a couple thousand dollars shooting the videos, and the difference is noticeable. (Howcast's "How to Make Friends at a New School" includes such useful tidbits as "sit in the middle of the classroom to surround yourself with as many potential new friends as possible." Demand-owned eHow's "How to Be Popular in School" video, in contrast, offers such vague guidance as "be nice to everybody.")"

<comment><USER21> It's crap. Just take a look at eHow.com and judge for yourself.

<comment><USER22> Howcast actually seems fairly good.

I'm optimistic about eHow (and the rest of those). A mining company is happy to get 6 grams of gold out of a ton of ore. The world's internet community will collectively sift through the sewage looking for good content, and pagerank / Twitter will bring it to the rest of us.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> > _This, Reese says, is the ultimate promise of his algorithm: "You can take > something that is thought of as a creative process and turn it into a > manufacturing process."_

That scares the shit out of me.

<comment><USER16> If it continues, this is what all music will sound like: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oGFogwcx-E>

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> See the previous discussion here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=892290>

</comment><comment><USER24> A similar, though less automated and small scale, variant of this scheme was discussed some time ago:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=511935></comment>


Atmos Clock - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmos_clock

<comment><USER2> If you appreciate Swiss watchmaking and wouldn't mind spending a few thousand bucks on a mechanical timepiece that you can bequeath to your grandchildren some day, you should also look at Jaeger-LeCoultre's Master and Reverso lines. They make some of the most beautiful watches IMHO, with a focus on understated design.

If you're a man looking for a posh, classic wristwatch that doesn't shout its original price to everybody who doesn't care, the Master Control Date [1] should tempt you; the Master Ultra Thin line [2] is even more subtle; for something sporty, look at the Master Compressor line [3]. The Reverso Lady [4] is the finest women's watch that I have seen to day.

(Obviously, if you want your coworkers to know how much money you spent on your wristwatch, Rolex or Omega are better choices. They make excellent watches too, no doubt.)

[1] [http://www.jaeger-lecoultre.com/US/en/watches/master- control...](http://www.jaeger-lecoultre.com/US/en/watches/master-control- date/1548470)

[2] [http://www.jaeger- lecoultre.com/US/en/collections/master#mas...](http://www.jaeger- lecoultre.com/US/en/collections/master#master-ultra-thin)

[3] [http://www.jaeger-lecoultre.com/US/en/collections/master- ext...](http://www.jaeger-lecoultre.com/US/en/collections/master- extreme#master-compressor)

[4] [http://www.jaeger-lecoultre.com/US/en/watches/reverso- dame/2...](http://www.jaeger-lecoultre.com/US/en/watches/reverso-dame/2608411)

</comment><comment><USER3> Good writeup: [http://www.hodinkee.com/blog/the-amazing-incredibly- affordab...](http://www.hodinkee.com/blog/the-amazing-incredibly-affordable- atmos-clock-from-jaeger-lecoultre)

</comment><comment><USER4> For those wondering about buying one: a used, working Atmos is in the $1k range and a new one (JLC still make them) is ~$6k. Not cheap.

</comment><comment><USER5> >Its power source is an internal hermetically sealed capsule containing a mixture of gaseous and liquid ethyl chloride, which expands into an expansion chamber as the temperature rises, compressing a spiral spring; with a fall in temperature the gas condenses and the spring slackens.

So it's basically a clock powered by a really simple Sterling engine?

</comment><comment><USER6> also: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shortt- Synchronome_clock](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shortt-Synchronome_clock)

</comment><comment><USER7> Its brilliant. I wonder if we can use this effect to power a small (very low power) microchip for an indefinite period of time.</comment>