Math even mathematicians don't understand (the sequel) - <AUTHOR> http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/brainiac/2012/12/math_even_mathe.html <comment><USER2> No one will ever bother to read this work. There are millions of claimed proofs of various conjectures. If you want to prove Goldbach or P=NP (etc...) you either need a very simple to verify proof (not a 1,000 page proof) or you need to prove a set of interesting conjectures along the way to give yourself credibility.

In the pages of this mathematician's proof, there must be a few smaller proofs he could publish that show genuine insight, which would give him credibility. Otherwise it's just another sci.math sideshow.

<comment><USER3> I wonder if it's possible for an machine learning algorithm to simplify these proofs.

I take it because of the rather strict domain specificness of math papers it should be possible to develop an algorithm that can parse these papers into lemmas. Proofs normally structured as a tree of lemmas right? Or are there proofs that have more complex structure?

A single basic thing could be to extract the leaf lemmas and assert their validity. If they are valid, and the relations between the lemmas are valid then the eventual conclusion should also be valid.

Has anything like this ever been attempted? A math paper proof verifying machine learning algorithm?

<comment><USER4> Automated Therom Proving is ridiculously hard and a guess would be that it is almost impossible to train an ML algorithm to do this efficiently.

However, _verifying_ that a proof is correct is somewhat simple, if you give the machine enough information to actually run the formalization details. In modern mathematics, this may be a necessary thing to do since nobody has time to verify these 1000 page developments anymore.

The problem is that the level of detail currently needed is very high. And this slows down the formalization process. But the area is in wild development these years, so hopefully something good comes out of it.

<comment><USER5> Just imagine inputting the final character of the last inference step, then waiting for a few minutes while the computer performs incremental compilation of the last few rules. Finally, it emits simply these four characters: "QED."

<comment><USER6> I like this, and it reminds me of the tagline from Asimov's _The Last Question_.

<comment><USER7> There was a billionaire in the book _Permutation City_ who uploaded his brain into a supercomputer, then let an optimizer run on it for years. The goal was to get his brain to run in real-time or better, but eventually it spit out an empty file and a log message: "This program produces no output."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Mathematicians who make big claims are obligated both to be right and to make themselves understood."

I spent most of this academic semester struggling with the material in MIT's 18.404 (Theory of Computation) class taught by Michael Sipser - at the end of one of his lectures, he mentioned that he keeps a large file of proofs on hand from people claiming to have resolved the P vs NP conjecture, but has little time or faith to read them... he calls this the "crank" file. It seems to me (and I'm just a lowly undergraduate math student, feel free to discount/discredit this) that solutions to many of the large, imposing academic challenges of our era might be found in the depths of other such professor's "crank" files.

Then again, there is definitely something to be said for establishing credentials - there's only so much time in the schedule of someone capable of verifying claims to be spent on verification, and it seems obvious that they should spend that time on solutions that come from people who have a track record of competence.

<comment><USER9> Scott Aaronson summarizes it well when he says, of papers that have signs of being by 'cranks' --

> _If I read all such papers, I wouldn't have time for anything else._ [1]

Crank papers often take a long time to read, by virtue of some combination of (i) using non-standard notation and terminology, (ii) lack of familiarity with the established literature, (iii) tortured writing style.

If you claim to have proved a big new result, and you don't already have the credentials that will ensure you get taken seriously, then it is up to _you_ to write in such a way that makes it easy for other academics to verify your work. Part of being an academic is interacting with other academics.

[1] <http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=304>

<comment><USER10> _If you claim to have proved a big new result, and you don't already have the credentials that will ensure you get taken seriously, then it is up to you to write in such a way that makes it easy for other academics to verify your work. Part of being an academic is interacting with other academics._

This reminds me of the introduction to Thomas Kuhn's _The Road Since Structure_ :

"Kuhn develops further the theme, which again goes back to Structure, that science is fundamentally a social undertaking. This shows up especially in times of trouble, with the potential for more or less radical change. It is only because individuals working in a common research tradition are able to arrive at differing judgments concerning the degree of seriousness of the various difficulties they collectively face that some of them will be moved individually to explore alternative (often—as Kuhn likes to emphasize—seemingly nonsensical) possibilities, while others will attempt doggedly to resolve the problem within the current framework" {Conant and Haugeland "Road"@3}.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Related read: Apostolos Doxiadis' novel "Uncle Petros and Goldbach's conjecture", an entertaining account of a mathematician's effort to prove the result.

<comment><USER12> Very heavily seconded. One of my favorite novels, it does a really good job of giving a "feeling" of mathematics, without including any actual mathematics.

This is the same author as Logicomix, which is aslo _very_ highly recommended - a comic about logic, Godel, and the foundations of mathematics.

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

[http://www.amazon.com/Logicomix-An-Epic-Search- Truth/dp/1596...](http://www.amazon.com/Logicomix-An-Epic-Search- Truth/dp/1596914521/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1357459643&sr=8-1&keywords=Logicomix) (this might be with a refferal link, I'm not sure - you have been warned :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This type of behavior was well documented in Underwood Dudley's "A Budget of Trisections." The problem is obsession and a deliberate cultivation of the ticks the public associates with genius are much more common than actual breakthroughs.

</comment><comment><USER14> So many of these proofs are of the form:

1\. Assume the desired conclusion is false. 2\. Make an error. 3\. Derive a contradiction.

And by the way, most mathematicians have made plenty of bad proofs. I told my thesis adviser I had a "proof" months before I actually did. Years before that, I found a short proof of Fermat's Last Theorem (which was however too long for the margin of my book ...).

Generally, the way "big" proofs go is that there's a whole lot of new mathematics, and some handwaving at various points along the way. Then the work starts of checking whether the handwaves are actually accurate. The better the mathematician, the more likely it is that they actually are ...

<comment><USER15> Yes

Because proofs (or disproofs) by contradiction are "the easy way out"

Proving something is right is much harder if not impossible (hi Mr. Goedel)

<comment><USER14> That wasn't my point. Rather, I was suggesting that proofs by contradiction can easily be in error (because if you make an error, you have a good chance of eventually getting to your contradiction).

Anyhow, when I did mathematics, I didn't run into people caring about proof by contradiction vs. direct proof. However, I did occasionally run into a preference for constructive vs. non-constructive proofs. E.g., my thesis used a prior result that included a funky existence proof, and my adviser pushed me to find an alternate proof that was directly constructive.

<comment><USER15> Oh yes, I had understood that "proofs by contradiction can easily be in error" but I suppose that's because people try the contradiction proof first, because it "should be easier"

And of course, constructive proofs are usually more complicated, in terms of proof structure as well as 'where to go and how to get there'

<comment><USER14> My comment was based on a more precise point, namely that #3 in the process below is very natural:

1\. Assume the theorem is false. 2\. Make some calculations based on that assumption. 3\. Eventually, make an error. 4\. Pursue that error to a contradiction. 5\. Claim victory.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> you know what this means? arxiv.org needs a cryogenics section, for potential resuscitation of mathematical campaigns using future technology. it'll be challenging to keep out the crackpots, though --

<comment><USER17> _for potential resuscitation of mathematical campaigns using future technology_

What does this mean?

<comment><USER18> To freeze the brains of our best and brightests in hope that future tech could let them live much longer, and possibly make some more discoveries.

<comment><USER17> I doubt the author meant "cryogenics" literally.

<comment><USER16> i actually meant an archive of papers where mathematicians from the future could try to improve or dig gems out of (using computerized theorem provers or just pen and paper). Papers like ramanujan's notebooks or this guy's proof of Goldbach. But freezing brains could be worth thinking about --- maybe a crowdsourced fund like kickstarter to freeze society's favorite brains.

<comment><USER17> _freezing brains could be worth thinking about_

Well, freezing destroys cell membranes, unfortunately. There's no way to repair every cell. And even if you could, there's no guarantee the overall system will function the same afterward.

Cryogenics will probably take the form of sustaining life, rather than freezing what has already expired.

For example, perhaps slowing a physical body's metabolism for decades would enable the body to last centuries before dying. So it'd be "time travel" to the future. But that has horrendous logistical issues, e.g. feeding, maintenance of the chamber, somehow retaining muscle mass of the person, avoiding bed sores, waste disposal, antibiotics during times of sickness, regulating body temperature, a failsafe for each system, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> How hard would it be to write mathematical proofs in a modular way? And have someone check a "module" of a proof and someone else another "module" and so on?

...and for the bits that's possible, write in a subset of mathematical language that computer can check, or at least partially check and ask the human reviewer for feedback on the parts that can't be automatically proven.

I always fount it odd that mathematicians use so little of the mind augmenting potential of computers. Is is true that there aren't any smart enough programmers to craft the tools they would need, or that the tools end up being so "user hostile" that they always go back to pen and paper? I know people tried to express physics proofs in "computer-like language", Sussman et all in Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics, but I've never heard of such things really catching on and being actively used and developed by mathematicians.

<comment><USER20> > How hard would it be to write mathematical proofs in a modular way? And have > someone check a "module" of a proof and someone else another "module" and so > on?

To a large extent, this is what we do. But of course, modules by themselves don't prove a thing about what we're originally interested in so that not one module can stand by itself as any advance in the proof, that theconclusion of any module of the proof are surely needed for all the others modules to make sense and that these conclusions are more often than not formulated in a new part of language (new words, concepts, and rules to play with them) introduced in said module. Parallel work of the sort I infer you have in mind might be possible in some instances, but there is so very few of them in my opinion that it's just not worth trying.

> ...and for the bits that's possible, write in a subset of mathematical > language that computer can check, or at least partially check and ask the > human reviewer for feedback on the parts that can't be automatically proven.

No can't do: in mathematical writing, what is actually written is the tip of a gigantic iceberg of implied reasoning and background scenery. There might be a way to make computer understand this, but as far as I know it has yet to be found. That, and making explicit what is not in mathematical writing would make the length of any proof grow manymanyfold - and I actually mean manymany....manyfold.

<comment><USER19> > in mathematical writing, what is actually written is the tip of a gigantic > iceberg of implied reasoning and background scenery

The programming equivalent of this as I see it is a program depending on lots of libraries encapsulating that "implied reasoning". And you can manage a program even with tens of millions of lines of code in libraries. And it doesn't make the program itself larger because that library code is _reusable_ , you can also use it in other proofs. Yes, it's incredibly hard to manage such a code base, you also need extensive documentation, something like "literate programming" - but it's not intractable.

You would have to write a big part of mathematics as library code, probably a multi-decade length project - but the benefits seem _huge_! "Translating" mathematics in such a form could augment a mathematicians brainpower "manymany....manyfold" and could be just as important as, let's say, a cancer research project taking decades and tens of millions in funding, but it should worth it! _Imagine that hundreds of "less talented" mathematicians could handle problems that only a handful of people can understand today (with the guidance of the "real geniuses", of course), revolutionizing many fields of science through the consequences of their results._

As an analogy, when people used roman numerals, only a handful of highly educated people could do complex calculations, but nowadays we all have more than basic arithmetic knowledge, thanks in large part to a "change of language". I think a "change of language" could really make mathematics a less "elite only" field (though I have greater hopes for letting "AI systems" give a helping hand than for letting "lesser mathematicians" do some of the work, in the end one can't predict what will make the most difference - hardware or wetware, it's still computing power, and, as the complicated software problems are solved, more and more of the computing power can translate into "mathematical reasoning power" I think).

<comment><USER21> The QED project was started in 1993 to build a database of all mathematical knowledge. It died out because formalized mathematics does not yet resemble traditional mathematics. All existing theorem provers and proof assistants such as Mizar, HOL, and Cow have major shortcomings. Very few people are working to improve formalized mathematics because there isn't any compelling profitable application of fully formalized mathematics.

<http://www.cs.ru.nl/~freek/qed/qed.html>

<comment><USER19> ...so it's one of those "someone has to do it to prove it can be done" or "someone has to first make it work to prove it's useful" problems?

Hopefully there are a few madmen to start working at it and they will be wise enough to do it all "in the open": open source code and publication of all developments, "blog stye", instead of the "talking about only after you've really understood it" approach. I would throw a helping hand on the programming side and maybe devops, even throw a few bucks at it if one were to crowd-source and crowd-fund such an effort ...just because I find it "so cool". And I'm sure there are others that would help any group of "brilliant madmen" trying to do this, even without any imaginable profitable applications. But for now, I'm trying to wrap my head around what the QED project was trying to do and what it did... _thanks for the directions to them!_

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The validity of a mathematical proof depends on a few very precise rules that can be checked by a computer, so I think it's interesting that we still rely so much on humans for the verification of mathematical proofs. As the article points out it's clearly problematic.

<comment><USER23> Machine checked proofs are intractably long and are not fully automatic except for very simple problems.

<comment><USER22> What do you mean by not fully automatic? What is the manual part?

I think right now the job of describing a (sophisticated) proof to a computer is analogous to the job of writing a sophisticated computer program like a game or Facebook in assembly code. What mathematics needs is a concise language that can easily be understood by people and computers alike, like Python.

<comment><USER23> The manual part is writing out steps of the proof. Some times these steps can be automated. Usually they are guided by a user. They are typically not written out step by step by hand because it is very tedious. I doubt complicated ideas expressed in advanced mathematical papers can be easily or succinctly expressed formally. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theorem_prover> <http://www.cs.ru.nl/~freek/100/>

But more importantly, the objective of a mathematical paper is to get readers to _understand_ the proof, a goal which is poorly achieved with formal verification.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I think this has an analog in software. The massive enterprise/ government systems which get bogged down for years and become almost impossible to replace.

Will be interesting to see if newer generations embrace collaboration and new technology more or will things still get pushed forward by the lone and difficult to understand outlier who becomes at least convincing enough for others to trawl through their complicated texts.

I guess issues of credit would have weighed into this method. In this case, if intermediate findings were published in a simple to understand way they may have attracted enough interest to be beaten to the final proof?

</comment><comment><USER25> Why not having a MathHub (like Github) for math, i believe even the toughest problem will have the pull request, and many people could understand the proof.

<comment><USER26> Math doesn work like that. You can't just create a git repo for PvsNP and expect that solving the problem is just a matter of accumulating enough commits. Not only does everyone involved have to know how everything works in order to come up with insight (making it hard to "delegate" subproblems) but you don't even know what subproblems need to be solved to come up with a solution!

<comment><USER25> Why not seeing "Theorems" like "Open source projects" ? I think they have the same meaning. Math theorems are the framework for other to use or extend. And they should be "open sourced", i think we don't solve the Conjecture with this "MathHub" but it will get solved and understandable by anyone who're interested in a time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> For a similar fate in the physics world, WP: Arthur_Eddington#Fundamental_theory. Which demonstrated that it's not enough to have an idea, you have to find some kindred souls with the stamina to be your soundboard - everyone else will be looking for any excuse to avoid the confrontation.

E.g. dare to suggest that the universe <i>might not</i> be simple, after all.

</comment><comment><USER28> If the Wikipedia page is correct then British publisher Tony Faber offered $1 million dollars if a proof was submitted before April 2002.

And according to this article it was submitted in March 2002.

So how come this guy didn't come forward to collect the prize ?

<comment><USER29> The timing explains a lot.

He almost certainly came forward to collect the prize in March 2002. Along with the probably hundreds of others who also submitted 'proofs'.</comment></comment>


The ECHO IV Home Computer: 50 Years Later - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerhistory.org/atchm/the-echo-iv-home-computer-50-years-later/ <comment><USER2> This article by Dag Spicer has good coverage of the background of the ECHO IV and the interview with Ruth Sutherland is priceless.

Coincidentally a different writeup on the ECHO IV can be found in the CHM's Volunteer Newsletter of last fall[1]. It has some different pictures, more technical details on the machine's architecture, and links to some other sources, including a gallery of pictures of the ECHO hardware in the CHM collection[2].

[1] [http://s3data.computerhistory.org.s3.amazonaws.com/chmedu/VI...](http://s3data.computerhistory.org.s3.amazonaws.com/chmedu/VIE_05_008.pdf) (PDF)

[2] [https://cortesi.smugmug.com/Other/ECHO-IV- article/](https://cortesi.smugmug.com/Other/ECHO-IV-article/)

</comment><comment><USER3>
      At this point, I cannot say or even comprehend all the
      things that a computer someday will be doing for our
      homes, but wouldn't it be wonderful if they could provide
      more time for parents to spend with their children,
      therefore, making every home a happier one?
      -- Ruth Sutherland

Somehow I feel that this was almost a golden age for computers. When they were still tools and not means of mass distraction.

      At first, I thought it might really replace me! From the
      cartoons and jokes we see and hear about computers, isn't
      this the general impression that most homemakers at
      present would have if they suddenly found out they had a
      computer in their home?

And this part made me laugh. My mother _hated_ my dad's GPS unit he purchased for traveling. And she still dislikes Siri, though it's more half-joking now. She actually resented the loss of participation, even given the relief from the burden of being navigator. Fortunately she's come close to Ruth Sutherland's realization/observation: These are tools, they don't replace us, only some of our roles. This leaves us open to other opportunities in both leisure activities and productive activities.

<comment><USER4> > Somehow I feel that this was almost a golden age for computers. When they > were still tools and not means of mass distraction.

It seems we always do this. A new tool comes along and immediately evangelists and early adopters are talking about how it will free us of some horrible thing that prevents us from spending time with our families or it will enable us to do something great with ourselves and become better people.

Then everyone gets one and it turns out we didn't need a device to do any of that. We're either still working a lot because we have to or we don't spend time with the family because we're horrible, lazy people and the tool gave us one more thing to do instead of this lofty goal of spending time with the family.

'Spending time with the family' is something people say to make them seem like nice, caring people but it turns out we're all looking for reasons to not spend any time with them at all.

<comment><USER5> So basically you're saying that people who are willing to spend time with the family will have more time to spend, and those who don't want to will make excuses? (Just making sure I've not missed a subtlety)

<comment><USER4> What I'm saying is that those that want to spend time aren't the ones looking for a device to allow it. Those that want to arrange their schedule so they can, just like everyone does for things they want to do.

Well, out side of those that work multiple low paying jobs to provide for their family. There are other forces at work there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The irony is most of the task 'requested' are still not being to be done by Home Computer.

What's worse? Some of the doable are done by Big-Brother's Computer

The list can be used as something we should aspire to achieve, in order to remove mundane and/or repetitive human effort.

</comment><comment> King-Aaron >but wouldn't it be wonderful if they could provide more time for parents to spend with their children, therefore, making every home a happier one?

Wouldn't that be wonderful, instead we just have introverts who don't even want to leave their LOL game to eat dinner.</comment>


Ask HN: What's up with the black table row at the top of HN now? - <AUTHOR> Am I blind, or was it not there before? Just curious as to what made you add it. <comment><USER2> If you search for "black bar"[0] then you will see why it appears every now and again. Here's a link for this occasion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14548030](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14548030)

[0] [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=black%20bar&sort=byDate&prefix...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=black%20bar&sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)</comment>


Ask PG: any plans for a YC startup book? - <AUTHOR>

By now YC and its startups must have created lots of invaluable knowledge on how to start and run a startup. Has YC considered distilling all of this knowledge and publish it as a book? I'm positive that there are lots of potential tech entrepreneurs around the world who would love to do startups the YC way but can't move to Silicon Valley and be part of YC for lots of different reasons. <comment><USER2> [http://www.amazon.com/The-Launch-Pad-Combinator- Exclusive/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Launch-Pad-Combinator- Exclusive/dp/1591845297/)</comment>


Show HN: A compilation of cybersecurity book recommendations from 25 articles - <AUTHOR> I've looked at recommendations in 25 articles and compiled a list of the most recommended books on cybersecurity sorted by how often they were mentioned.
Hacking Exposed 7 by Stuart McClure
Countdown to Zero Day by Kim Zetter
Ghost in the Wires by Kevin Mitnick
Spam Nation by Brian Krebs
Practical Malware Analysis by Michael Sikorski
Threat Modeling by Adam Shostack
Social Engineering by Christopher Hadnagy
The Hacker Playbook 3 by Peter Kim
The Practice of Network Security Monitoring by Richard
Bejtlich
Dark Territory by Fred Kaplan
The Code Book by Simon Singh
Hacked Again by Scott N. Schober
The Hacker Playbook by Peter Kim
The Art of Invisibility by Kevin Mitnick
The Art of Deception by Kevin Mitnick
See the full list at https://www.readthistwice.com/lists/best-cybersecurity-books <comment><AUTHOR> See the full list at [https://www.readthistwice.com/lists/best-cybersecurity- books](https://www.readthistwice.com/lists/best-cybersecurity-books)</comment>


How to Run CockroachDB on a Raspberry Pi - <AUTHOR> https://www.cockroachlabs.com/blog/run-cockroachdb-on-a-raspberry-pi/ <comment><USER2> This ends up being a surprisingly helpful tutorial on caveats and workarounds with Golang and CGO. In addition to being curious about CockroachDB, I've also been curious about compiling from source with CGO based apps in Golang. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER3> This looks like a perfect addition to my home lab - I have a few PIs lying around doing nothing (I know, shame on me) and running a distributed DB would be great to attach to a container-based network.

</comment><comment><USER4> Am I misunderstanding or is cockroachDB in a similar class to couchDB?

<comment><USER5> Not even close. It's like Google's Spanner database.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm wondering chow CockroachDB will work in a distributed mesh network. I've never seen someone talk about it but how would this work out?

<comment><USER7> Well, the basic design of Cockroach (assuming no bugs) prioritizes consistency over availability, which means that your data should be safe even if the network is misbehaves arbitrarily. So the really interesting question is, how much availability can you expect?

"Mesh network" implies that the network should reconfigure itself if individual nodes or links fail. That's fine, but it will necessarily take some time to detect a failed connection, which means temporary unavailability while the database performs a leader election. CockroachDB is sharded, so if any _single_ shard loses a majority of its nodes or becomes too badly partitioned, that shard becomes unavailabile until the network is restored. There's a tradeoff here -- if you're willing to accept slower performance, you can increase the number of replicas per shard.

(It's also interesting to think about what happens under heavy load. If the Cockroach daemons are handling requests as fast as they can, then whatever daemon is responsible for the mesh routing decision-making could become starved for CPU, leading to high packet loss or intermittent network partitions.)

<comment><USER6> Ideally the only thing running on the nodes is a set of programs logging data. The actual queries should come from outside the network.

Is it possible to get CDB to exfiltrate it's data into a single node or another cluster of nodes?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Cool and nifty. No joins is a deal breaker though. Maybe that doesn't matter with a key->value db though.

<comment><USER5> [https://www.cockroachlabs.com/blog/cockroachdbs-first- join/](https://www.cockroachlabs.com/blog/cockroachdbs-first-join/)</comment></comment>


How I Got My First 1000 Users in 1 Day - <AUTHOR> http://popcornryan.tumblr.com/post/65640245447/how-i-got-my-first-1000-users-in-1-day <comment><USER3> To get more users, have you tried approaching bloggers in different niches with different article ideas? The use cases for your app are different for different sets of people. Just write a one paragraph abstract about your app and email bloggers and editors to see if they'll cover your just released app.

Some headline and abstract ideas when you approach bloggers:

1) Tech/Business -- Popcorn: The hot new app to network at tech conferences

2) Student Websites/Newspapers -- The messaging app you need when a zombie apocalypse happens at SDSU (insert campus here)

3) Dating Blogs -- The newest app for singles: Popcorn lets you chat with others in high density bar areas

4) General -- When disasters strike, Popcorn lets you talk to others in your vicinity

5) Social media bloggers -- What are young teens using if not Facebook? Apps like Popcorn: hyper-local and addictive

6) Music -- Perfect for Coachella and SXSW: Popcorn lets you chat with others at music festivals

7) City Websites/Local -- New app "Popcorn" lets neighbors stay connected on what's happening on the block

8) Gaming -- Popcorn, the app you need to coordinate your next LAN party

If you get a bunch of these articles and blog posts up in the next week or two, it can help push that 1,000 number up higher.

<comment><AUTHOR> DUUUUDE! my mind just got blown. I haven't tried this. Great idea. And no way, you even wrote the headlines?!

> 2) Student Websites/Newspapers -- The messaging app you need when a zombie > apocalypse happens at SDSU (insert campus here)

hahaha that would be a hit.

<comment><USER4> This advice is posted to HN quite a bit, this is the same reason websites have press kits available. Long story short, journalists are lazy, just like the rest of us, and they have deadlines, just like the rest of us. Exploit them to your advantage and help them out at the same time, and if you are especially different, they will love to be the first to report.

Speaking of that, be careful about who you send what when, a lot of people will break your story before you officially release something just to say they were first, and then your site will be offline and all that traffic will be for naught.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think you need a 5th takeaway: write a follow-up blog post about how your HN post got you 1000 users, subsequently getting you another 1000 users that missed the post the day before.

<comment><USER6> how about a 6th takeaway in a follow up, in which he discusses retention of these initial 1000 users? I think it's great he was able to obtain those numbers early but I think those users are a bit ephemeral.

<comment><AUTHOR> yea that would be a good post... ill see what i can do!

<comment><USER7> yea it have :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've learned Facebook and LinkedIn can produce really disappointing results.

Over the last couple of weeks we've been pushing hard to develop awareness for a worthy cause (special needs education tools). Details here:

[http://www.tommyteaches.com/special- education.php](http://www.tommyteaches.com/special-education.php)

(Yes, taking the opportunity to also get a little attention on HN. Sorry, this is important.)

Analytics tells us that LinkedIn, in particular didn't have good engagement. A few strategic posts on CraigsList probably did ten times better LinkedIn.

The best results we got have been due to friends, family, neighbors and local teachers making a push to reach to their immediate connections (their friends, family and co-workers) to have them engage. Also some blogs produced results here and there.

In general terms building an audience for just about anything on the internet is really hard these days. Luck can be a factor, but more and more it seems to require a lot of hard work and "street smarts". For example, I contacted every host at a local TV station with slightly different versions of the same story in order to see if anyone would be interested. Call it A/B testing. One was, and that helped a bit (just a bit).

Good luck with your app. It looks interesting.

<comment><USER9> > I've learned Facebook and LinkedIn can produce really disappointing results.

(...)

> The best results we got have been due to friends, family, neighbors and > local teachers making a push to reach to their immediate connections (their > friends, family and co-workers) to have them engage.

Do you mean facebook ads in your first use of Facebook? Because I would think "organic" use of Facebook would be a contributing factor to "reach ... immediate connections"?

I've never quite understood the idea of Facebook "ads". If you want to do "viral" marketing -- let your product/cause spread via social media via actual human connections. If you want to do advertising, do advertising.

<comment><USER8> Reaching a mass of people via Facebook is, to some degree, relatively easy. If you have 50 to 100 people you can reach directly and they, in turn, reach out to their direct connections you'll "touch" a pile of people quickly.

However, from that to getting people to take action --be it install and app, vote for a cause, visit a website-- that's an entirely different matter.

In our case one of the things we came across is a demographic that simply does not use Facebook. Older parents of the very kids we are trying to help.

The next issue was triggered by a dialog that pops-up when you click on the vote button. Facebook tells you that you are about to share your profile and your friends list. Of course a lot of people recoiled at that immediately. The last thing parents of children with special needs want to do is open the doors to their facebook account. I get it. I absolutely do. We probably lost hundreds of potential supporters this way. It is perfectly understandable. I don't understand why facebook would not have the option to be able to simply log in or vote on something as a means of identifying yourself yet without granting access to your life (or projecting the fear of this happening).

I suppose the efficacy of trying to build an audience through facebook depends on your demographic. If your audience lives on facebook it is probably a great channel. If you audience does not or if they are concerned about their privacy there could be issues.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Please add push notifications?

If you log in, and no one is around, the app gets closed pretty quickly. I have checked back multiple times, and always seem to miss everyone chatting. I would love to know if someone close by is online or chatting, so that I don't have to sit there hoping someone sees my tepid 'Hello?'.

I don't know if push notifications are the correct answer, but letting me know that there was activity that I missed, after my last post, would be a good start. Letting me know if other people are active in my region would be nice, but it's mostly that I don't want to have a conversation with myself.

I would love to know if other people are chatting, because I want to join in.

In any case, thanks for the app, have you got a public issue tracker, or anything similar?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, you're absolutely right. I was kickin myself all day yesterday because push notifications weren't working. I couldnt figure out why but my guess was it had to do with the provisioning profile. i resubmitted late last night, and requested expedited review. hopefully itll be out in the next few days. either way, thanks for the constructive feedback!

<comment><USER10> How did you implement it?

I was writing that comment, and kept thinking of the possible annoying implementations. For example, I probably don't want a notification every single time someone within 1 mile sends a message.

Some seemingly sane ideas off the top of my head, which I think would be useful and not too annoying:

* A timeout, where I get a notification if there is a new message, after a period where no messages were sent near me

* Notification if I send a message with no reply, close the app, and then someone replies

* Notification if there is a particularly active conversation around me

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I like the app idea, but not a huge fan of your methods of attracting users. Because this is a highly localized app, I think the key takeaway is that you need to really push a single (or multiple) locations at once, rather than "everywhere" at once.

The app will do far better with 1000 users in one location than 1 user in each of 1000 locations.

Also, could you onboard users with no registration required to get them using it, then ask them to register if they want to use across multiple devices / retrieve their login?

<comment><USER12> Absolutely. This app is going to completely rely on network effects. Just like Facebook, once there are a few area "spheres" with a lot of active and concurrent users, this can start to take off.

I predict this may end up being the next big Snapchat-like app within a year. I may be totally wrong, and/or I may just be biased because I've always wanted an app like this (in part because I always enjoyed the local small-region chatting in MMO games, and this is the same thing applied to real life), but I think this has a ton of potential.

Right now it needs to be aggressively marketed and spread around.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Congrats on the success! I'm curious: the condition of <1 mile proximity isn't transitive, so wouldn't users be seeing only one half of a lot of conversations? Like if A was close to B, B was close to C, but A wasn't close to C, then A would only see what B says to C but not what C says back. Or have you divided up space into fixed cells roughly one mile wide to prevent this?

<comment><AUTHOR> This was probably my most embarrassing oversight. Your first point is the way it's working. I'm trying to figure out if there's a way to make that work without segmenting the map into fixed cells... any thoughts?

<comment><USER14> You should just make the text from 1 to 2 miles show at 50% alpha, and the 25% alpha from 2 to 3 miles.

<comment><USER12> Does this really solve the problem though? What happens if someone 3 miles away is talking to someone who's 1 mile away from themselves, but 4 miles away from you? Then you'd see the transparent text of them talking to some person you can't see messages from, yet also see transparent text of them responding to people you can see messages from.

I personally don't see how you could completely avoid this without some kind of fixed regions, unless you required people to do some kind of an "@user Hey..." for every message so that you would know if you share the same sphere with the destination user. This makes it more tedious and less fun, though, plus it takes away the whole idea of multicasting.

<comment><USER15> That is how it is working in real life. You can hear the person closer to you speaking, but not the one farther

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I have a side project (dmtri.com). It lacks active users right now. I don't mind not having too many registered users as the website doesn't require you to sign up. I just wish that people would visit more and write more. Obviously the problem is that there isn't much going on actively on the site.

However, I detest the thought of spamming every facebook groups and such. I tried organically growing by writing really good content ([http://dmtri.com/posts/28/alexis_ohanian_-_%22i_don%27t_regr...](http://dmtri.com/posts/28/alexis_ohanian_-_%22i_don%27t_regret_selling_reddit)), but that in itself is a problem because I have to get visitors for that.

I worked hard on the project but I feel a bit discouraged by lack of interest so far.

<comment><AUTHOR> if you believe in your product and think there's a need than why would you consider it spam?

<comment><USER17> I would report your facebook posts as abuse if I saw them on my newsfeed, most likely. "I joined a bunch of groups so I could advertise to them." Scummy.

<comment><USER18> Not all advertisement is scummy.

You could easily change the tone here. "I joined a bunch of very specific types of groups so I could manually write a post that tells them about a free app that I built for their demographic."

I felt the "scum" right away, but then I thought about the source of the feeling. Scummy is when you write bait. Telling people about your app - sometimes that requires a door to door cold call.

I think this app deserved to be shared with that group, and it's particularly un-scummy considering the fact that it's brand new, free, and isn't trying to mine for email addys.

<comment><AUTHOR> thank you! took the words right out of my mouth

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I feel like what you did might be considered spam - posting on FB groups, and reposting on HN. It's not adding any value to the community. But hey, what works, works.

<comment><AUTHOR> there are ways of posting tactfully. i believe in the app thus i think it's useful for those students. i dont continuously post over and over, so far, only once per page. i have students liking and commenting, even friending me telling me they like the app.

<comment><USER20> What if there were 1,000 developers with similar apps, each who thought their offering could be useful for the students in question? Even just one post from each of them would likely flood a community.

If you post like that in a community of mine, I generally delete your post and blacklist your link preventing people from discussing it even if they discover it organically. There is just too much spam coming through to give benefit of the doubt.

If you want to announce something in someone else's community, I think fairer and more polite behaviour is to speak with an owner/moderator about what they think is fair - it might be that they allow such posts or they ask that you advertise, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Great Article, thank you for sharing. It's interesting to follow a Product Launch and see what works / what doesn't work. I like how you've integrated a specific UX into the Product. Right now the Signup is probably one of the most important aspects to focus on (as you onboard Users). Choosing to skip E-mails (and E-mail verification) for a faster signup lowers the entry point barrier and makes the UX more enjoyable. This is something I'm currently working on with my App (the initial Signup Process). I've performed some customer validation and the results were in line with my assumptions. The preferred experience seems to be minimal time investment, and minimal effort. Following this train of thought, here are few basic options:

1\. User manually inputs an E-mail Address and Password (commonly w/ E-mail Verification) 2\. User manually inputs a Username/Password (less to type, no Verification needed) 3\. User taps twice and uses Social Media Integration (example, Facebook Login)

Of course each of these has Pro's and Cons. I will follow Popcorn and see how it works with the second option. I'm leaning towards the third option (minimal time investment), but I'm concerned about perceptions of the associated Social Network(s) and how that might impact the User's desire to create an account. For example, if a certain Network is "not cool" with the younger generation, and you present the "not cool" Network as the Logon method, would that make the App also "not cool"?

<comment><AUTHOR> You need to really think about 3. Asking someone to sign in using facebook or twitter is much more than the physical action of tapping twice. you're asking for something emotional, their personal data. It would help others and myself if you posted what your app does. i would only use those as a form of login signup if your app absolutely depends on it - Tinder is a great example of this.

<comment><USER21> I completely agree. Using option 3 has its own set of con's, and this is one of them. Many Users have been misused/tricked in the past and don't like the idea of associating a new (aka unknown) App with their Social Media Accounts. For all they know the App will steal their data and spam their friends. This is in line with some of the feedback I get when validating with potential customers.

You may have hit a sweet spot there with option 2. Keep us updated! An interesting Metric would be comparing the Bounce Rate between these options above (ala A/B Testing).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> There's some good advice here, but a majority of users came from HN, right?

So the takeaway is pray your story makes it to HN's front page.

Snarkiness aside, congrats on the launch!

<comment><USER23> His second main takeaway:

> If your post doesn't gain traction on Hacker News initially, delete it and > try posting another day. This probably holds true for sites like Reddit as > well.

Which makes me a little uneasy..

<comment><AUTHOR> why?

<comment><USER24> It's promoting repeated posting of the same article in attempts to get lucky. It borders in the grey area of spam.

Spam works. But it's still spam.

<comment><USER25> As the author notes, the fact that he finally did get a bunch of upvotes sort of proves that his posting wasn't spam to begin with. It was relevant to the community. What it shows more than anything else is that the system for achieving the coveted front page status is broken. I'm not sure what a good solution would be though.

<comment><USER26> It does show the importance of choosing a good title to attract enough attention to get to the front page. This is textbook copy writing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> FYI, I can't find Popcorn if I search for Popcorn in the App Store. I am able to find it if I search for Popcorn Messaging. I can just imagine many more people will find it if you'd call it Popcorn Chat.

</comment><comment><USER28> Nice post and always exciting to get a good start going. What I'm really interested in is the geographical dispersion of those 1,000 users (and however many you have now), how many conversations where actually formed, and the retention. I guess people fire up an app just after installing it, wanting to take it for a spin, and if they can't form even one conversation since nobody's around them, it would greatly affect retention.

An interesting metric would be 'conversations per day' and if technically possible 'potential conversations per day', that is to say how many pairs of people with the app running where in 1 mile proximity to one another.

Also, it would be interesting to see whether users take the conversation elsewhere (facebook, twitter, whatsapp), at what stage (as one is leaving the location or before that), and if they do - how does it affect their app usage. Does it make them use the app more (for example, to seek more connections and friends now that they see it's effective for meeting new people), or less (they took the conversation elsewhere and their social needs were met for now).

Just my $0.02. Hope to see an Android version soon to test if myself! Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER29> It's an interesting app, and a really cool idea.

However, should you be displaying the location of your users on a Google Map via your publicly accessible backend website?

I'm happy for location to be sent to the server for working out where I am. I'm less happy for it to popup where everyone can access it.

</comment><comment><USER30> Interesting that the "link-baity" title worked much better on HN.

(I consider any title which tells me what X "needs" or why / how X "must" do something to be link-bait)

</comment><comment><USER31> I think I totally misread this title as "how I got my first 1000 users - <USER2> one day" rather than, what I think it means, which is "how I got my first 1000-users-in-1-day"! Still, useful tips, and you obviously have a lot of energy when it comes to getting the word out, which can only be admired.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks! I'm trying to hustle as hard as I can right now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> About 14 years ago I used a chat client called popcorn that ran on local networks while I was at boarding school. It allowed us to chat after hours when outside internet access was cut off (around 10pm). Now I cant find any reference to it. Anyone else here heard of it?

</comment><comment><USER33> How were you able to get Apple to accept the app when it's locked by a login screen? I suffered with 2 different apps that had been rejected because they required the user to register/login before they can use the app.

<comment><AUTHOR> you can add a test login username and password in the meta data

<comment><USER33> It's not about that. They say you cannot require the user to share personal info before using your app. Maybe it's because you are registering with a username and not an email.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Congrats-- this app looks pretty cool.

I could definitely see this being useful/entertaining at a sporting event in a "join the conversation" kind of way. Everyone plays with their smartphone during breaks in the action anyway.

</comment><comment><USER35> Wow! Congrats on the app and I am really enjoying all the advices people are giving here. A lot of good stuff in the comments.

ps: I am still reading them with the voice of Morgan Freeman, though (maybe that is why they seem so inspiring?)

</comment><comment><USER36> 'x more users needed to unlock this area: invite users'

that is goddamn brilliant.

</comment><comment><USER37> I think having a list of usernames that match the input and have spoken recently when you type @ and then some letters would be a useful feature. Pretty minor, but just throwing that out there.

</comment><comment><USER38> Nice Idea, localized networks are trending fast. Do you remember what day of the week and at what time you posted the successful HN post? what about those that didn't work?

<comment><AUTHOR> It was wednesday at around 11 AM PST. I'm pretty sure the other times were closer to mid-day like 12 - 2. Although this post was posted mid-day as well, however on Thursday and it seemed to do really well.

<comment><USER38> thanks! A few days ago there was another article suggesting that the best time to post was around 19h in the evening (GMT) which is consistent with what you say of 11-12 AM PST. The only difference was the day, he was posting on sunday I believe.

what day of the week were the 2 failed attempts posted on?

I'm trying to sense the pulse of the HN crowd, to see when we all slack off the most ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> So basically, the conversion to the simple splash screen of the app did not work as expected at launch.

It's good copy writing and the corresponding HN traffic that got the users.

</comment><comment><USER40> Wouldn't that kind of Facebook spamming get you banned?

</comment><comment><USER41> > I deleted the post before it got locked in so that I could repost with the > same link another day.

Is this generally OK to do, within reason?

</comment><comment><USER40> Why was the title changed from "Show HN: The App Every College Dorm Needs (appsto.re)" to the one in the picture?

<comment><AUTHOR> HN changed it back to my original title once it detected I had posted before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> You could do User.count no point to do User.all.count unpess you want a hole bunch of user objects build.

</comment><comment><USER43> If you post something in the chat with the '&' character it's not displayed right.

</comment><comment><USER44> Users.all.count made me cringe.

<comment><AUTHOR> what would you use ?

<comment><USER45> In Rails 4, User.count and User.all.count both do the same thing:

      SELECT COUNT(*) FROM "users"

In earlier versions, User.all.count executes:

      SELECT "users".* FROM "users"

because it is pulling back all fields from all users into memory, instead of just asking the database to check the index for a count.

<comment><USER12> This is an easy mix-up to make considering .length, .count, and .size are all aliases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> It might be worth pushing this article up on the subreddit for marketing.

<comment><AUTHOR> which subreddit? r/technology hasn't been giving me much love

<comment><USER47> that's too general. r/apple, r/iphone, r/software are starting points and a lot more specific. If you plan on developing an Android version, then r/Android, r/androidapps

<comment><AUTHOR> nice! ok , ill try those then

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Out of curiousity, why would people choose this instead of WeChat?

www.wechat.com

</comment><comment><USER49> Nice little write up, looks like this could get huge!

</comment><comment><USER50> Android version coming? I'd like to be a user.

<comment><AUTHOR> working on it! sometime soon

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Congrats! Keep hustling

<comment><AUTHOR> cant stop, wont stop

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Interesting idea.</comment>


Google reportedly peeks into Android data to gain edge over third-party apps - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/07/android-user-data-gives-google-edge-over-third-party-apps-report-says/ <comment><USER2> Android 10 (on googlephones) has a feature called 'digital wellbeing' that can measure how much I gawk at the screen, and show that to me. Interesting, I think, let's see if that data stays locally. The only piece of info on data usage that I've found is a link to Google's overarching privacy policy. Oy vey. Some data-processing features in the settings are marked with 'data stays on the phone'—but this one isn't. So I have to _assume_ that 'wellbeing' snitches to Google, and can't use it.

"Collection of data is disclosed to and controllable by users"? Well, if the users presume that collection is going on unless said otherwise, then maybe.

Annoying thing is, I'd quite want to use the voice assistant. Do I like to fiddle with integrations and workflows? Oh boy. Damn well I do. Do I know that my voiceprint won't turn up on Google's servers the minute I use the assistant? Nope.

(Btw, another baffling trait of the Android ecosystem is how many well-known and widely-used hackish tools are closed-source: those from XDA and such. "Flash this binary to root your phone", "install this blob for low-level customizations". Eeeeh? I think I'll just disable all Google's misfeatures instead, for now.)

<comment><USER3> The digital wellbeing app is pretty much spyware. If you disable Google Play Service, the Wellbeing app (which cannot be disabled) will constantly complain that it won't work properly... The app has, among other permissions, the requirement to have full network access.

Similarly, if you use the default Gboard (keyboard) on Android, it's constantly trying to call home to Google servers, as with most other stock apps.

Android is just increasingly becoming spyware and best route is installing AOSP without GApps. Unfortunately, Google seems to be keen on limiting this behavior and increasing their lock-in with recent changes to Android, making it harder for the open source community to have control over the OS.

<comment><USER4> Google Play Services are the crux of the implementation of core services. If you're not okay with that don't buy the phone or install something else on it.

<comment><USER5> It may feel good to say it, because you get to offload the responsibility onto consumers rather than the entity committing questionable (but legal) acts, but in reality "just don't do X" is never going to affect any sort of change. It's simply shifting blame onto people with no power to do anything.

More to the point, you're essentially recommending that everyone pony up $1000+ for an iPhone. None of those lesser known options (or modern dumb phones) are known to the average smartphone user, average people don't know anything about these hardened Android forks, etc. Boycotts are really not very reliable, because most of it is exactly this: just telling people to do a boycott and then stopping there. I know it's not reasonable to expect everyone floating ideas to have a plan for implementation, but when it comes to these kind of boycott suggestions, _nobody_ has a plan. That's why shifting the responsibility onto the consume isn't going to work. You're not going to mobilize near enough people.

You know what does work, though? Strong privacy regulations with harsh penalties.

<comment><USER6> $399+, not $1000+.

<comment><USER7> More to the point, that $399 original iPhone SE is starting it's sixth year of OS and security updates.

Less than $70 per supported year.

<comment><USER8> I just got my wife the new SE and MAN it feels weird to use because it's just so QUICK! It's a really amazing phone for the price.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What truly flabbergasts me is that businesses today still feel that Google's platforms and services can help their business.

The reality is, if you are a business, _Google is your competitor_. Which means Google getting a hold of any information about your business should be part of your _threat model_.

You may not be in Google's sights today, but you very well could be tomorrow. And they will use your usage of their platforms to screw you.

<comment><USER10> In my direct experience being in SV startups for over 10yrs, this is also true for all major tech companies. They all abuse their platform power to enter into a new market segment. Just a few days ago this journal was published: [https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-tech-startup-echo- bezos-...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-tech-startup-echo-bezos-alexa- investment-fund-11595520249)

<comment><USER11> What's funny to me is despite wielding all this power and network effects - when tech giants try to enter new markets they fail at a seemingly higher rate then start-ups and other businesses. They have a ten mile head start and are still losing the race consistently. Which is probably good for most consumers.

<comment><USER12> I think they just expect a higher return than smaller start-ups. I mean, if Google tries to make a new service and it's 'only' generating a few million in revenue, that's not very exciting and they'll either i. directly kill the service, or ii. gamble with aggressive methods of growth that likely kill the service.

Meanwhile, give a start-up with 5 people a few million in revenue, and they'll be jumping with joy at their success. Plus they'll have a lot more passion, and more carefully manage risk while growing the business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> We desperately need a standardized open source phone. The raspberry pi of phones. Linux may be a better platform than AOSP. Android and iOS were designed for control first.

Control over apps, control over the store, over what users are allowed to do. If you don't need any of that to make money why not run a regular Linux distro.

Opens source phones will never be mainstream. Same as desktop Linux. But it would be nice to have a widely supported option for those of us that care

<comment><USER14> HN loves to talk about how Open Source and distributed system are going to change the world.

Apache and Linux were open source. The Internet was designed to be distributed. We failed.

We still had centralization. We still have SPoF...

The issue is economic, not technical.

When corporations like Amazon and Google have _severely_ unfair competitive advantages we're going up in this situation again and again and again.

The only way to change this is to reform tax law.

<comment><USER15> And the only way to reform tax law is to reform speech law to prevent blatant corruption.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Unsurprising. Another decade-old example: in the pre-iPhone/pre-Android era, when Google Maps was available on BlackBerry, Google created a vast database that associated cellphone tower locations to addresses, on the (smart) assumption that the "from" location is usually where you are.

They used this as a negotiating tactic for acquisitions they made in the space...

<comment><USER17> How does knowing where you are affect acquisitions? And why wouldn't they know just from talking to the target?

<comment><USER18> I'm not sure, but I think the OP meant that Google pointed out "we already have this DB, so you're _really_ not worth _that_ much to us" in negotiations with location data vendors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> To me the most worrying is that while I intellectually know this is bad, emotionally it gets a solid "meh" from me.

Google is desensitizing us to this kind of bad behavior, to the point that this sounds like it's only half the story, or not such a bug deal.

<comment><USER20> All I care about is whether this is opt-in and whether I can decide to not give then that data.

Other than that, Google being able to process more data about their own platform than others, is something to be expected.

<comment><USER19> Agreed, but there's a lot to say about what's the default and how you are supposed to opt-out.

If Google is artificially inflating opt-out costs for the user, then that's something to watch for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> > collects sensitive Android user data

Looks like it's basic metrics like how often the app is launched. It is not sensitive (user content of the apps would be sensitive).

It is an antitrust issue but barely a security/privacy issue.

<comment><USER22> Didn't HN collectively loose their s..t when Microsoft did something similar with Win 10 telemetry?

<comment><USER23> Microsoft did and continues doing that, correct? I don't remember any article on them stopping that or even explain what telemetry contains.

<comment><USER22> There is no suggestion that Google stopped said practice as well. But the indignation on HN (at least) is usually left for anything but Google.

You can see what information (broadly) Microsoft collects through Windows 10 in the opt-in screen for telemetry. More detailed information has been published here: [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/privacy/required- wi...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/privacy/required-windows- diagnostic-data-events-and-fields-2004)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> If Google is really doing this, you'd think they could make messaging and social media apps that are actually competitive.

<comment><USER25> Data won't get you very far here. You actually need good product/UX design.

<comment><USER26> Based on their current product line up I doubt that Google has a single UX designer employed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is the kind of crap that convinced me to switch to Apple handsets back in the day when they were still a pain to use for various reasons (remember upgrading by connecting to iTunes with a cable?). Apple does some shady shady things but not with my privacy.

Incidentally though they do have some settings you might want to check out though. One in particular let Facebook spy on your other apps so fine tune their ads.

<comment><USER28> This is a bizarre post considering that Apple collects very similar data via their analytics (there's an opt-out you need to select on your iOS device to opt out) and Apple Store itself (which counts downloads and knows about every update, install and uninstall of an app on your iOS device with no alternative option for you as a user).

If you really care about your privacy in this case, Apple devices won't save you either. The difference is just in the fact that ArsTechnica decided not to write an article about it, but your data is being uploaded all the same :/

<comment><USER29> No the difference with Apple is they don't make money off of your data, they make money selling you devices. Google needs to know about your data in order to sell it or ads or whatever to third parties.

<comment><USER27> They don't need your data to show you ads. DDG has a really nice post about that. They do it because they can and because they can sell the data itself. That sucks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> >The data was used earlier this month in India, where Google planned to roll out a competitor app to TikTok.

Ah! I was hoping the Google Cemetery meme would die out soon. Not so fast I guess.

<comment><USER2> And here I thought that 'stories' on Youtube is a competitor to Tiktok.

Apparently in this day only carpet-bombing with services bears fruit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Google loves to devour all the data it can so best to keep them as far away as possible from the devices and properties that you own and control.

</comment><comment><USER32> For everyone one of the apple / google huge privacy breach headlines / comments some quick thoughts.

Google and Apple can at least plausibly infrastructure an anonymized data collection service and control access to it reasonably.

\- You probably should worry more about the per user per connection logs your "loggless" VPN provider keeps in crappy open to the world datastores.

\- The data sniffing and tracking your own ISP is doing.

\- The uninstallable malware / bloatware etc that comes on huge number of phones built by third parties (ie, not google or apple).

Whenever I sign up for a "free" service (like google analytics or its equivalent for android) I am under almost no illusion that google isn't also using that data to help track users access the web target them, figure out what ads to show on my site (if I let them) etc etc.

And yes, we will find out that facebook tracks the URLs of sites people share on their platform and "snoopes" on that to figure out popularity trends. And twitter will watch tweet metrics related to their competitors. I wonder if we will get some headlines over those issues.

Finally, some folks come up with weird threat models - google is out to get me and now they can. Heads up, google could get you before this as well if they cared to. Can you imagine a govt having google's power. That would be a near dictatorship!

</comment><comment><USER33> This is an unfair advantage but I don't think is specific to Google. I don't know whether Apple collects such consumer usage metrics or not but Amazon, Walmart, Costco, etc. they all monitor consumer metrics and might end up building a competing product/service based on those metrics.

<comment><USER28> Apple certanly collects metrics about AppStore downloads (they're after all available to developers with [https://developer.apple.com/app-store- connect/analytics/](https://developer.apple.com/app-store-connect/analytics/) ). There's also a decent chunk of analytics going from iOS (probably order of magnitde less than Android though) you need to opt out of.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I always assumed they'd be doing this. Given that Facebook went as far as buying a VPN company and then turning it into spyware to get a fraction of that data, it'd be surprising to me for Google not to be using what they have.

</comment><comment><USER35> why AB test when your competition can do it for you ... SMH come on google

</comment><comment><USER36> Copying boring social apps seems like such a waste of the talent and creativity at Google. They should focus more on innovation instead of this kind of cut-throat bs.

<comment><USER37> Google doesn't innovate anymore. They acquire and throw most of their acquisitions in the trash.

<comment><USER38> Alpha Zero and Quantum supremacy don't count as innovation?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> >"The API doesn't obtain any information about in-app activity and our collection of this data is disclosed to and controllable by users"

Google is excellent at this kind of word maneuver, designed to confuse and mislead.

Google gets confronted about an egregious practice, and a PR representative responds with "well, we would absolutely never do [slightly worse unrelated thing]". This happens over and over again.

They get caught, MSM blindly repeats Google PR talking points with enormous spin and PR manuevering, and everyone forgets until the next scandal.

<comment><USER40> I have to say, my experience working with Google is that they actually resist the acquisition of information that's not in the public domain in a lot of ways. I've seen them fund another company's development team to do work, even buying the other company hardware for the task, just to avoid the data. I've seen them consciously exclude engineering tools you'd think are right up their alley, because the tools would acquire data which, while entirely in-scope and on-mission, could be considered too sensitive in some context.

If they're collecting this data, I strongly suspect they feel obligated to, maybe even compelled too. Possibly for purposes like app security, user security, OS security, user experience, etc.

<comment><USER41> > If they're collecting this data, I strongly suspect they feel obligated to, > maybe even compelled too. Possibly for purposes like app security, user > security, OS security, user experience, etc.

This doesn't really make sense; none of those are compelling use cases for such invasive data collection. And this _additional new_ tracking does not seem very useful for security, and even then there's no reason for all of the data to leave the device if it's for security.

<comment><USER42> Play collects certain metrics about app usage because app developers want them (not sure how much overlap there is with what's described in the article).

Source:

[https://support.google.com/googleplay/android- developer/answ...](https://support.google.com/googleplay/android- developer/answer/139628?co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop&hl=en)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> There is not a single good "mobile os."

Trash all of them and just put GNU/Linux on your devices if you really have to have a smart phone.

<comment><USER44> Android run on GNU/Linux, problem is not in the kernel but user land apps will track you

<comment><USER18> It doesn't run GNU, or at least not much of it.

<comment><USER43> It doesn't run _any_ of it. Much of the architecture of the OS seems to be built around avoiding the GPL in the kernel. That's part of why older devices can't get updates.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> The temptation to exploit data you collect is too high. Best not to collect this data in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER46> Honestly is anyone surprised..

<comment><USER47> If you fill a trough, pigs will come.

We have this saying in Germany about data collection. What it means is you can usually assume that given enough time, companies will do the worst with the data that exists, so the only reasonable approach is to never collect so much data in the first place.

<comment><USER48> I like that saying.

And i agree companies should only be allowed to gather the minimal data necessary in a given situation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Not three days ago there was this article about another company where people were immediately saying with great authority that Google would never do this.

</comment><comment><USER50> It's too bad there's not an open platform where apps can be deployed without a centralized proprietary app store...</comment>


"Or so they say..." Javascript demo - <AUTHOR> http://xplsv.com/prods/demos/xplsv_orsotheysay/ <comment><USER2> Runs awful for me in Firefox, but looks and runs great in Chrome. Really impressive - I think this is the first 'pure HTML' demo I've seen that really sells me on what can be done with Canvas, <audio>, etc - it doesn't feel like a compromised or 'it's cool because it's in the browser' experience, it's a legitimate demo that stands on its own without even considering how it was made.

<comment><USER3> The first few seconds work well for me in Chrome, but as soon as it gets to the Galaxies it starts to get real slow. This is on a 2GHz Core2Duo. What version of Chrome are you using?

<comment><USER4> You'll find the answer to that (amd more) in the blog post. <http://mrdoob.com/blog/post/702>

<comment><USER5> mrdoob rocks in so many ways.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I especially liked the part where smoke came out of the fan vent on my laptop.

But seriously, if this is where things are headed, why not just run compiled binaries in the browser? There, I said it.

<comment><USER7> Compiled for what platform? jamii mentions NaCl, but x86 is a very complicated architecture to emulate. Java applets are better, but there is still a lot of overhead (and most people never performance optimize their Java). I would like to see a plugin system based on LLVM, but we have a ways to go there.

<comment><USER8> <http://code.google.com/p/nacl-llvm-branches/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Amazing demo for JS. I was really hoping it would work on any iOS device but all they i've tried 3GS/IPAD don't work, but it renders beautifully in chrome.

On a somewhat related but off topic note, I've had this strange idea for a while now that if one had cassandra bindings for JS and a VM image that joined a cassandra image on boot and executed a JS file via Node.JS stored at a well- known key that you could build clusters of almost infinite size that would be accessible to almost every developer. Yes, I think that per node performance would be horrible initially but that the sheer scale and accessibility would make up for it.

<comment><USER10> How about using a chrome frame, then it can run across all browsers.

<comment><USER11> I believe it already includes Chrome Frame. And it doesn't run on Safari because the <audio> is ogg.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> That's pretty cool, _especially_ if you go fullscreen in Chrome. I can really see the potential for a JavaScript demoscene here.

<comment><USER13> There was a post about that yesterday: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1581400>

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Runs relatively decent on Chrome 5.0.375.125. As usual, utter functional failure on Opera (10.60).

Can someone more informed explain which one is closer to the truth?

      a) Opera's JS engine does not fully support standard functionality
      b) the demo uses yet-to-be-standardized functions that have been implemented in Chrome

<comment><USER4> Again, you'll find the answer to that (and more) in the blog post. <http://mrdoob.com/blog/post/702>

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Challenge: shrink it to 1k and submit it to <http://js1k.com/>

<comment><USER16> The minified 3D engine is 33k on its own!

<comment><USER17> That sounds like a challenge to me!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> INVALID_STATE_ERR: DOM Exception 11: An attempt was made to use an object that is not, or is no longer, usable.

Safari 5.0.1 mac.

<comment><USER4> Safari doesn't support .ogg for <audio>. I guess I should show a message for Safari (and IE9) users.

<comment><USER19> My copy of Safari must be broken then, because it plays the embedded .ogg audio just fine.

<comment><USER4> You probably installed a theora plugin to quicktime :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> NERDGASM!

I must say the program in itself is nicely made, not mentioning the javascript-fact of it.

Edit: Too bad does not work in IE9, was hoping to see what video acceleration can do for performance.</comment>


Groovy 3 Highlights - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.apache.org/groovy/entry/groovy-3-highlights <comment><USER2> Great to see after so long this has gotten done. This is the first major release under the Apache banner and driven entirely by community support instead of through Pivotal etc.

Groovy is a much needed piece of the JVM ecosystem as in my opinion there is no good other option that works really well as a scripting language while maintaining extremely small impedance mismatch with Java.</comment>


Magic Leap allows any app to track user's eyes without asking permission - <AUTHOR> I've recently discovered that the Magic Leap app allows any app to track user's eyes without asking permission.  This can be used for a wide variety of malicious purposes such as determining the user's sexual orientation for blackmail purposes (see https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/bj9ygv/the-eyes-are-the-prize-eye-tracking-technology-is-advertisings-holy-grail ).<p>I submitted a responsible disclosure to Magic Leap through BugCloud but was told that this does not qualify as a vulnerability, so I would like to warn people directly to NOT trust any Magic Leap app, and to please try to petition Magic Leap to make eye tracking require asking permission, rather than being automatically granted. <comment><USER2> Asking permission for eye tracking in a Magic Leap app is like asking permission to read screen touches in a mobile app...It's not an enhancement to the experience, it's fundamental to the platform - they need to do eye tracking to render AFAIK...

<comment><AUTHOR> What they should do is make the APP ask permission to get the eye tracking data. The system can get the data without passing it to the app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Isn't eye tracking going to be core to a great AR experience?

<comment><USER4> Many apps would have a poor experience if the user didn't grant them the permissions they were requesting. Can't it be both core to a great AR experience and something you should ask permission for?</comment></comment>


OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma exploring bankruptcy - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-purduepharma-bankruptcy-exclusive/exclusive-oxycontin-maker-purdue-pharma-exploring-bankruptcy-sources-idUSKCN1QL1KL <comment><USER2> They must of been closer to bona fide repercussions then I realized. Seems like pain pills of this class are nearing the end of their mass usefulness, perhaps something more novel like the kratom plant is in order for mild to moderate pain management?

<comment><USER3> Opiate agonists are a bad choice for analgesia. This includes the kratom alkaloids</comment></comment>


Trendr - <AUTHOR> Hello,
My team and I would like to showcase an application we made as part of a 3 and a half week project. We're very eager to see what people think of our app so we decided to share it here on HN! Our vision for this app was to empower people within the finance industry by allowing them to visualize correlations between finance sectors and keywords that are trending on Google.
http://trendr.xyz
Please keep in mind that this is an academic proof of concept. There are several issues regarding Google rate limiting our application since there's no real API for Google Trends; it's entirely possible 'new' keywords that are not stored in our graph database will fail to load because the initial data we need from Google won't load. <comment><USER2> If it meets the guidelines, this might make a good "Show HN".

Guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Alright cool, I'll resubmit it as a Show HN post.</comment></comment>


Pitch To Branson - <AUTHOR> http://www.virgin.com/entrepreneur/innovations/pitchtv

<comment><USER2> Richard Branson celebrates risk takers.

Two Dutch students got a lift on Sir Richard's private jet because they had the balls to ask him for a ride.

"As it was a cross-media congress, it was possible to text-message questions for Sir Branson to a massive screen. And so, thinking ahead a bit, we figured Sir Branson was traveling in a private jet..."

[http://kbiri.blogspot.com/2009/01/lens-story-about- yesterday...](http://kbiri.blogspot.com/2009/01/lens-story-about- yesterday.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> it's not really a pitch to branson - just the ability to get on inflight TV (which, arguably, could be better)

</comment><comment><USER4> Well, if you're submitting a video with your YC application, I don't see why you wouldn't send it in here as well (though you can make this one a little longer).

</comment><comment><USER5> A pretty nifty way to get original content</comment>


2008 Color Trends - <AUTHOR> http://www.colourlovers.com/blog/2008/01/09/happy-blue-year-2008-color-trends/ <comment><USER2> Picking a favorite single color seems about as pointless as picking a favorite key on a piano. It's not the color that matters, but how the color interacts with those around it.

<comment><USER3> I like the fifth black key from the left.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I can't do anything with this "information". It seems utterly arbitrary.

</comment><comment><USER5> I hope the code I'm writing today will be bringing someone value 20 years from now.

(5 years ago, while working on a local company's packaged software, I came across a program that I had written for the software vendor 10 years earlier. Weird.)

Somehow, "2008 Color Trends" seems pretty unimportant in the grand scheme of things.</comment>


Limit-Telephotography - <AUTHOR> http://www.paglen.com/pages/projects/nowhere/photos_images.htm

<comment><USER2> For anyone who's wondering and not inclined to follow the link to find out: that's "telephotography at distances near the limit of what's feasible", not "please put restrictions on telephotography". Engineering rather than politics.

Unfortunately there's very little actual information on the site. A few pictures, with brief notes of what they're of and how far away the camera was, but no details of the "unorthodox viewing and imaging techniques" used. Or did I just fail to find them?

<comment><USER3> Agreed!

I clicked around the site, and I experienced vast content-frustration. I noticed that many of his projects appear to be "exhibits" -- they have physical frames and are or were (apparently) displayed somewhere for the public.

Which is pointless. :P I mean, effectively pointless. I'm never going to see his exhibit, and neither is any significant percentage of the population of interested people, so why not put it all online?

Taking pictures of the unmarked CIA 737's operating from deep in the off- limits desert ... that's cool stuff. Why must there be so little info?

I expected one of the links to lead to a how-to. :P

<comment><AUTHOR> I conjecture that a detailed How-To would upset the Department of Defense quite a bit. After all, these remote USAF airbases in the deserts of the Southwest are remote for a reason...

<comment><USER4> Doesn't seem like anything the Russians or Chinese wouldn't see in great detail using satellites, or with their extensive spy networks.

<comment><AUTHOR> Suppose the U.S. is testing a new secret fighter jet. If you don't know when the new jet will leave the hangar for a test flight, your satellites will be useless. Long-distance photography would perhaps provide some intel. Of course, if the test flights were carried out at night, as it happened while the F-117 was being tested, then photography would not help much,

Do note that when most USAF bases in the Southwest were built, there were no satellites at all, and hence, no spy satellites.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's the name of a technique, not an imperative! At first I thought this was going to be a demand for laws limiting the taking of telephoto pictures in public.

<comment><AUTHOR> Would you be happy if I changed the post's title to _Limit-Telephotography_?

<comment><USER5> I'm generally happy nowadays. It was a factual statement about my initial misconception, not a complaint.</comment></comment></comment>


Playing Chess With Kubrick - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.nybooks.com/post/498370620/playing-chess-with-kubrick <comment><AUTHOR> Maybe it's just me, but Kubrick, Clark and chess--TRIFECTA!</comment>


Best Videos to Understand Venture Capital and Capital Markets - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/course?list=PLCADCB4565CFACEBF

<comment><AUTHOR> This is from Khan Academy.

Here is the Khan Academy Link

[http://www.khanacademy.org/#venture-capital-and-capital- mark...](http://www.khanacademy.org/#venture-capital-and-capital-markets)

Was very much helpful to understand topics - Raising Money, Assets, Equity, Debt and IPO's.</comment>


Dark Matter Needs New Kinds of Experiments - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/69/patterns/what-dark-matter-needs-are-new-kinds-of-experiments <comment> david-gpu I respect what he is saying, but at the same time he is essentially advocating for looking for your lost keys under a streetlight because that's where you can see well, rather than around the area where you most likely lost them.</comment>


INFOGRAPHIC: Wal-Mart Is HUGE - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/walmart-facts-infographic-2011-11 <comment><USER2> Hmm... The slug seems to imply this infographic designer does not like Walmart. Nonetheless, great infographic.</comment>


Ask HN: Is doing a PhD from Oxford a better option than a Research based Job? - <AUTHOR>

I have got an admit for distributed computing in wireless sensors at Oxford University. After my M.S. and a couple of years of working in the silicon valley, I was inclined to look for a job in an innovative startup or an industry research lab. But because of being on a H1B, I could not find anything satisfactory in the time-frame I had (I had to urgently look for a job between March '09 and July '09 - and couldn't find anything at that time).
Hence, rather than settling for a 'mundane' job, I decided to apply for a PhD. Now, after getting an admit at Oxford, I am at a crossroad- should I go in for a three year doctoral program or hold out for that 'Research focused Job' that I am looking for.
Some factors to consider are- I am currently self-employed in my home country working on a well-paying but uncertainity laden freelance consulting gigs.
My topic of interest is here: http://urbansensors.com
Any ideas or suggestions about the research interest or if there is something different that I should be exploring right now are welcome. <comment><USER2> _a three year doctoral program_

You do know that's a myth, right? When I turned up OUCL for my DPhil, one of the first things the department head told us was "in the history of OUCL, only one student has ever done the DPhil in 3 years".

I'm not sure if that's true or if he was exaggerating slightly; but the norm is 4-5 years, not 3.</comment>


Let me share a Mazur moment with you - <AUTHOR> http://nielsolson.us/blog/2013/05/01/mazur_moment/

<comment><USER2> Upvoted because of the many interesting resources linked to from this post. I'd be delighted to see more discussion of this submission, as I am trying to follow in the author's footsteps of going from kind-of, sort-of knowing about programming to being able to program as needed to work on my day-by-day projects.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> OP and author here. This a post about the tools I've been using to learn python.</comment>


Stand Out as a Speaker - <AUTHOR> https://science.sciencemag.org/content/365/6455/834.full <comment><USER2> I feel like any conversation about speaking/presenting skills should have a link to Patrick Henry Winston's "How To Speak" presentation.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjbmPuhuFv0&list=PL9F536001A...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjbmPuhuFv0&list=PL9F536001A3C605FC)

<comment><USER3> Thanks, this was great to watch. Now I'm looking forward to my next talk to be applying some of those techniques!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The biggest advice to a speaker giving a fixed speech is: PRACTICE!

People never put in enough practice on a speech. When I build a new speech, I practice it with a clock and record myself. And then edit the speech. And then deliver the speech again. And do it again. And again. And again.

By the time I'm done, you can take my slides, destroy my computer, put the room in a war zone, and I can still deliver that speech cold and make it at least passably interesting to the audience.

Yes, making a good speech is a ton of work. I don't do it often, and when I do I try to make sure I can give that speech multiple times to amortize some of the work.

<comment><USER5> Completely agree, people don't grok this.

I once gave a presentation 4 times in a row (venue was large with 4 rotating groups) and, man, the 4th time I gave it I was so freaking into it, it was so freaking good. You really noticed that it got better at the second, third, and fourth time. My talk actually got the highest rating of all presentations that day by a LARGE margin.

<comment><USER6> > Completely agree, people don't grok this.

I think most people grok it for _others '_ presentations; it just appeals to both vanity and laziness to think " _I_ can wing it."

<comment><USER7> > it just appeals to both vanity and laziness to think "I can wing it."

Some people are just good at ad lib. What is charisma without improvisation?

<comment><USER6> > > it just appeals to both vanity and laziness to think "I can wing it."

> Some people are just good at ad lib. What is charisma without improvisation?

Indeed, some people _are_ good at ad lib, and _can_ give a good talk without practice; but I think that it is almost always some combination of vanity and laziness to think that one can give a _better_ talk without practice than with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I found Toastmasters to be fairly reliable for practicing and improving my public speaking skills.

In my city, there are dozens of chapters that vary in quality and expertise. One chapter is really good for people who are shy. Another is for people who are quite advanced and are trying to get on the level of event speaker.

Over a few years, my speech writing and delivery improved to the point where I got compliments during public events. And a friend of mine from the club got to the point where he frequently gets asked to be an MC at friends/family events.

Plus generally speaking, I have found the people who go to be friendly.

<comment><USER9> There's one in San Francisco on Thursday nights that's all comedy speakers. Boost your confidence and make some fun new friends.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> From Planes, Trains, and Automobiles:

"Have a point! It makes it so much more interesting for the listener!"

In general, I find most technical and scientific talks are the person gushing about whatever they think is cool, sometimes rushing from topic to topic, and as an audience member, you're like, what is going on, and why is this relevant?

All this knowledge in this article is really good. But I think most people kid themselves about how much they can cover, and what is interesting to them might not be interesting to their audience. Although if you know what the takeaways are, you should be able to know that those are relevant for that audience. I love the part about having one thing you're focusing on. It's obvious, until you try to write something, and have a million good sounding ideas.

</comment><comment><USER11> I still remember one of the first professional talk I had to give. I was an intern in a company and I had to present my work to about 20 people, nothing very impressive.. Yet it was a terrible experience. My mouth was so dry that I could barely speak. I didn't think of bringing water, and too shy to ask.

I realised that I was much more stressed when I had to present my own work/research than let say, a class, or somebody else's work. It wasn't simply talking in public that affected me, but also the fear of being judged and criticised.

Eventually, I got more experience (I was professor for a while) and it became like second nature. It is really just a matter of practice.

That being said, I'm certainly not a great orator. For instance, I've always disliked giving longer lectures where you need somehow to keep the audience awake. In that context, because I can't rely on my eloquence, I try to engage the audience with some questions, exercises, and alternate the unavoidable boring parts with more interesting parts.

Another thing that I noticed when watching speakers on youtube, is that they often do the exact same speech hundreds of time! When you watch several videos of them, you realize that they tend to repeat the exact same sentences from one speech to the next, even when they answer questions. No wonder they are good speakers.

<comment><USER12> Same speech, same jokes, same anecdotes, even many of the same answers ... to different questions.

I've looked up presentation / lectures by people I've personally attended, though at different times and locations. The similarity will come down to timing and intonation.

It's far easier to appear polished when what you're delivering is a frequently-repeated performance, than when doing a one-off. The frequent advice and/or pressure for creativity and originality _all the time and under all circumstances_ is also actively harmful. Far better to get the basic framework right, perfect the delivery, and _then_ tweak or adjust slightly as you go, than to try to randomly toss out something wholly novel at one go.

The fact that practice (see: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20771763](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20771763)) is a major component also makes drastic changes expensive, and hence, not generally a good idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Zach Holman made a site with excellent tips on preparing and delivering a (technical) presentation: [https://speaking.io/](https://speaking.io/). That one covers a lot more ground.

<comment><USER12> Thanks, that's very substantial and practical.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> If you want to make great presentations, I can't recommend this book/website enough:

[https://presentationpatterns.com](https://presentationpatterns.com)

It completely changed the way I make presentations, and my evaluations skyrocketed after making the changes.

</comment><comment><USER15> I definitely support the author's message: have a point, use pictures, prepare. My style is derived from Lawrence Lessig's Free Culture (Flash, but legendary: [https://randomfoo.net/oscon/2002/lessig/free.html](https://randomfoo.net/oscon/2002/lessig/free.html)) and Edward Tufte (with whom I was fortunate enough to work for one summer).

<comment><USER12> OT: Are there any Web-based (or other) tools which will ingest Flash and emit video?

Because that format is so beyond dead to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I think it's on point that this article is written by a postdoc. It's true - when you're young/less established to have to be very careful about these things and do a good job. On the other hand, it's always amusing to me to observe the inverse correlation between fame and talk quality, at least in science. I once saw a Nobel prize winner give talk with pixelated images and with large blocks of comic sans text. It's honestly somewhat rare, at least in my field, to see a talk from an elder-statesperson of the field that isn't low quality.

</comment><comment><USER17> I've spoken at a few conferences over several years. I feel (and the feedback seems to reflect) that I've had some good talks and some that maybe weren't so good.

IMHO, perhaps the most important thing is to know your subject inside and out, upside and down. Given that, you can speak freely and ad-lib colorful comments to fill time if needed. You are also a much better Q&A responder.

The soft skills count for a lot, too. But I think super-deep knowledge is a must-have.

<comment><USER18> Deep knowledge is important but I think I can add a few more thoughts:

\- DON'T 'make-stuff-up' If you get a tricky question about something you don't know, just say you don't know - you will screw up and get caught out when you get it wrong. No one knows everything.

\- DO only speak on subjects that you have a passion about I believe that this is very important, and the difference between a good talk, a bad talk, and a _transforming_ talk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> [https://perl.plover.com/yak/presentation/](https://perl.plover.com/yak/presentation/)</comment>


Model NDA a Reluctant VC Fund May Sign Before the Term Sheet is Finalized - <AUTHOR> http://vcexperts.com/vce/news/buzz/archive_view.asp?id=932

<comment><USER2> Only if you're a goldfish or a Unicorn. Even in this watered down form I doubt you could get most VCs to sign this unless there was clear competition for a specific start-up.

And it will act as a serious bump in the road too, after all this will need legal reviewing before it gets signed.

Someone ought to give this a shot and report back on the results, if it materially changed the atmosphere for the better and/or caused the deal to fall through when insisted on.</comment>


ZeroNet: Decentralized websites using Bitcoin crypto and the BitTorrent network - <AUTHOR> http://zeronet.io/

<comment><USER2> Very cool. I would be really curious to see how the incentives/performance/etc of this would differ from something like Ethereum!

</comment><comment><USER3> a secret browser, where you can never clear your history because it will kill the internet for everyone

</comment><comment><USER4> how does this compare to ipfs.io?</comment>