Ask PG: No OpenID login option left me stranded - <AUTHOR>

Hi,
I used OpenID to access my HN account in the past. However, it seems that logging in with OpenID is no longer an option, and that left me in a bit of a pickle. You see, today I deleted all the cookies on my computer, so now I'm logged out of my account and unable to log back in. What can be done about this? It's not like I had an epic karma score, but still, I used that account for quite a long time now and I'd rather not have to create a new one if that can be avoided.
Btw, I only deleted the cookies on my home computer, so I'm still logged in on my work computer.
I'd appreciate it if you could help me with this. Thanks in advance. <comment><USER2> If you're still logged in at work, then just use the change password link on the profile page.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok, I'll do this, thanks for the quick reply.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Perhaps an email based recovery system could be added for people in this situation if email accounts are maintained in the HN database. (I think they are.)

<comment><USER2> There already is one, but he doesn't need it if he's still logged in.</comment></comment>


For Muslims in India, 'entire neighborhoods have gone empty in fear' - <AUTHOR> https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2019-12-26/in-protest-crackdown-indian-police-accused-targeting-muslims <comment><USER2> THere has been a lot of disinformation from both sides about the CAA. THe truth is both political parties have rallied for the CAA in the past and it was passed by Indias upper house (Rajya Sabha) which the BJP ruling party has no majority.

<comment><USER3> Are you saying that no Muslim neighborhoods have emptied out?

And why don't you tell us the true description of the contents and intention of the CCA.</comment></comment>


Evaluating the Opportunity Cost of Meetings & Events - <AUTHOR> http://blog.bowlabs.org/2013/08/17/the-human-cost-of-meetings-and-group-events/

<comment><USER2> 37Signals makes the same case for remote meetings in their book Remote. Meetings are expensive in terms of both time and costs. Sometimes a quick Skype call or a discussion over a project management interface fixes things up equally well.</comment>


I haven't used soap or shampoo in a year  - <AUTHOR> http://www.boingboing.net/2011/01/05/i-havent-used-soap-i.html

<comment><USER2> I have to say that I did try this for about 2 weeks (just under, 12 days, I think) and I don't know if it is just me or not, but there is no way I could get away with it.

My hair got really, REALLY greasy. I have very oily hair and it just got unmanageable. My wife complained about it on day 2. It didn't stop further into the experiment.

My skin, which is also very oily, just never felt clean and I looked like I needed to scrub good and hard.

Odor...well, lets just say that when I worked out I smelled something awful. It "went away" when I showered, but as soon as I sweat later in the day at all I started to smell again.

Just my simple experiment. Nothing more.

</comment><comment><USER3> He added this in the comments:

 _Adjustment time is not immediate, when you stop using soap/shampoo shit goes crazy for a few weeks, too me over a month to balance out. After that it was amazing. If you stop expect things to be really weird for a few weeks, then they level out._

</comment><comment><USER4> My experience with going soap free at various times in my life is that it works a lot better for me if I'm not showering in hard water. In soft water (I've mostly lived places with naturally soft water), I can scrub my armpits a bit and they are scent free pretty quick. In hard water the stink doesn't seem to come off quite as easily.

<comment><USER5> Wherever I've had soft water, I've felt a lot cleaner even with soap. The difference between soaps is nothing compared to the difference between hard and soft water.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've gone without shampoo for many months now, maybe a year. I keep my hair very short anyway, so it doesn't matter very much. It hadn't even occurred to me to try going without soap. I could probably see it working fine now that I think about it.

<comment><USER5> If you have traditional-man length hair, you don't need shampoo and you especially don't need conditioner. Hair grows about half an inch a month, and your hair can only get so fucked up in the course of six months, so if your hair is within three inches long root-to-tip, fuck it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> There was another article of this sort too. I'm curious about how soap itself originated though. It's alright if someone somewhere had an 'aha' moment and started using soap for hygeine, but for practically the whole world to use it, something interesting must've been happening?

<comment><USER8> I grew up on a farm. A pig farm. Between getting home from school and eating dinner, I had chores to do, in the pig barns. I usually came back from chores with pig shit all over my hands.

If I hadn't had soap to wash my hands before biting into my hamburger, I probably would have invented it.

Considering it wasn't that long ago (historically) that virtually all of the worlds population was agrarian, I suspect being dirty was a fairly strong motivation for the invention of soap.

<comment><USER9> In the comments he clarifies that he still washes his hands with soap.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What about when he actually gets dirty? Some stuff doesn't come off your skin without soap.

<comment><USER10> use olive oil like the ancient Greeks and Romans?

<comment><USER11> Or just use a plain old, natural soap. Soap is nothing but an alkali fat pressed in to a bar. If you can find natural soap without tons of fragrance and anti-bacterial, it's not bad for you or your skin. Overuse or overly harsh soaps are what kill your skin.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Ah, soap-dodgers. They remind me of people who say "you don't need to write unit tests". Also, hands too?

<comment><USER13> The no soap people still use soap on their hands, afaik. He mentions this in the comments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Depends on what you do for a living, or even what you do on occasion. There are days I come home and my hair is so grimy it's sticky, and my hands are black with grease, oil, and road grit. Water does not, I repeat does _NOT_ even touch any of that.

<comment><USER3> Right, oil and grease are hydrophobic. This is the purpose of soap. It acts as an emulsifier, bridging the water and oil molecules together and allowing you to wash off grease and oil (often trapping dirt) off of your skin.

Antibacterial soap also kills bacteria that can cause odors but most shower soap/shampoo is not antibacterial.

So maybe we could get away with only using soap when we are actually dirty.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Soap I can kind of understand, but I definitely can't see how no shampoo would work for me. If you ever put any kind of product in your hair that seems out of the question.

</comment><comment><USER16> I use soap on my nasty bits, and that's about it.

</comment><comment><USER17> I wonder about brushing without toothpaste?

<comment><USER18> Betcha that only works if you match an ancestral diet.

<comment><USER11> In my opinion, people give a little bit too much credit to living like our ancestors. A quick review of the historical facts show that we now live longer than we ever have [1]. I'm not saying this means everything we do today is better for us than what our ancestors did, but bathing is a matter of hygiene, and personal hygiene came along with the wonderful improvement we like to call indoor plumbing. I wouldn't dismiss its impact on our longevity out of hand.

Bathing regularly -- with soap -- has benefits, such as cleaning dirt from your skin better than plain water. Dirt; which is the home of such wonderful things as anthrax. I hate to use a scare tactic, but anthrax, as well as a host of other nasty vermin like MRSA, live in the soil. I know because my family owns a landscaping business, which means a lot of time spent in the dirt, and by consequence, knowledge of such infections. Bathing is good. Soap is good. Anti-bacterial-soap-with-ultra-lathering-action (tm) is probably a bit of an overkill, but I'm not convinced that it will be the end of our species.

On the topic of brushing your teeth and the ancestral diet, it's worth considering that our hunter/gatherer ancestors (Paleolithic) -- those who enjoyed the diet most frequently referred to as "ancestral" -- only lived to see 33 years of age on average. Without refined sugars and acidic soda, the primary danger to your teeth was biting down on a the hard pit of a fruit, or having them knocked out by prey that turned on you. Basically, you didn't need your teeth to last you 60+ years, so consider that before abandoning toothpaste on a naturalist kick.

I don't mean to be entirely dismissive, because I frequently question some of the practices we engage in daily, but the outcome of my questioning always involves the application of some common sense. Abandoning soap and toothpaste defies that principle.

1 - [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy#Life_expectancy...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy#Life_expectancy_variation_over_time)

PS - Yes, I'm citing Wikipedia. It, in turn, has many citations for the fact I'm claiming.

<comment><USER2> "In my opinion, people give a little bit too much credit to living like our ancestors. A quick review of the historical facts show that we now live longer than we ever have [1]. I'm not saying this means everything we do today is better for us than what our ancestors did, but bathing is a matter of hygiene, and personal hygiene came along with the wonderful improvement we like to call indoor plumbing. I wouldn't dismiss its impact on our longevity out of hand."

I'm not a huge fan of the life-expectancy argument. Goto any hospital or old folks homes and see how many people are basically the walking-dead. There are patients who basically died 20 years ago but can afford to be kept alive for quite some time.

I'm not saying we should live like a caveman, rather just that I'm not a fan of the life-expectancy argument b/c I think there are too many holes in it.

And remember, most people are not living longer b/c of things like diet, nor did our paleo ancestors die b/c of diet. We are living longer b/c of medicine, advances in science and other things....people died in the paleo era from sprained ankles. We can't readily compare them.

It just isn't fruitful to compare the two eras b/c we can't control the variables to make a valid conclusion. However, using common sense, modern medical findings on diet, we can deduce that eating like our ancestor is actually quite beneficial and coupled with our modern medicine we can get the best of both worlds.

<comment><USER11> Hey, we agree! :)

Notice I didn't say anything about diet. What I mentioned was hygiene. I also agree that comparing paleo man to current day man is about as useful as comparing the failure-modes a Model A Ford to a Toyota Prius. They operate in entirely different environments.

The analysis of life-expectancy and quality-of-life gets far more interesting when you move in to a period of more recent history, when humans stopped dying of things like tripping over their rock pile and started congregating in groups, dying of something they contracted from the pile of poo they left in the gutter. All of the sudden we start seeing disease and infection becoming a major player in bringing us to our end. In this case, something as simple as soap can help extend our lives by drastically increasing the effectiveness of bathing.

This is where we get in to some more "advanced" common sense. I don't think the goal ought to be eradicating bacteria from our bodies. If you set out to kill all the bacteria on your body, you will fail. It is simply impossible to kill all the bacteria without killing your own cells. This means that any remaining bacteria must have avoided an early demise either through resistance to your agent of bacteria-death, or adapted some way to hide. In either case, the bacteria is better equipped to survive the next round of cleansing, and will happily go forth and replicate. The end result is a whole heard of stronger bacteria. See also, MRSA.

Backing up, my point is that I'm right there with you. As silly as it is to try to drag our entire paleo life in to the 21st century, I think it's foolish to accept at face value the messages we're bombarded with by product marketing on a daily basis. They want us scared of bacteria on our bodies so we'll buy their new Super-ultra-cleansing-action-anti-bacterial soap instead of their competitors Just-ultra-anti-bacterial soap. Accept that for what it is, but don't write off soap altogether.

It's a game, and the winning strategy is to keep your head and as you said, "get the best of both worlds."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> people who are doing this: do you use deodorant or anti-perspirant?

<comment><USER20> By the way I've heard good things about kalinite, but I haven't tried it myself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Why are you telling us?

</comment><comment><USER22> I also use iSoap.</comment>


How I'd Fix Microsoft's Problem of Being Stale - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/p/c772bb3f7db7

<comment><USER2> One of the common problem programmers face is the customer telling them what solution they wanted, instead of describing what problem they have.

In this way, it is better to describe what you need / want out of Microsoft for you to achieve your business objectives, rather than a sundry list of of "what I would do."

For instance, one of my problems is that Microsoft keeps creating new platforms that my existing code cannot run on. For all that Microsoft preaches about embrace and extend, it doesn't embrace its old platforms very well when creating new ones.</comment>


Law enforcement investigators seek out private DNA databases - <AUTHOR> http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/2016/mar/26/law-enforcement-investigators-seek-out-private/all/ <comment><USER2> It's important to understand in the ancestry.com case they didn't ask for information about a specific individual. They provided a sparse sample with a few markers and asked ancestry.com, without a warrant, to do a fuzzy cold hit search of their entire database and provide them with information about any individuals that had partial matches. Ancestry found one, and related this existence, which was then speculated to be a possible relative. At that point police got an actual warrant to enable getting the name of this remote match, and ancestry.com provided it. The person was not even an ancestry.com customer. He was a person that participated in a scientific study years ago, the database results of which was later sold to by ancestry.com without his notified consent.

There are massive statistical problems with this approach, without even having to get to the obvious privacy problems.

<comment><USER3> This reminds me of:

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

<comment><USER4> His case against the PATRIOT Act was tossed because he didn't have standing!? Despite the fact that court documents (which _are_ permissible (unlike the Snowden documents which probably aren't)) showed he _was_ specifically targeted?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sweden have a national DNA registry that, while optional, practical all newborns are added to since 1975. The registry is purely intended for medicine and research, and the few exceptions when law enforcement had requested a sample, there have been outcry from both researchers and the public that such use would start make parents denying the request and ruin the extremely valuable resource that such registry create. Everyone loose when that trust is lost, from the pain and misery that happens from untreated disease, to the economical loss to society, to the loss of progress from a lack of research data.

<comment><USER6> This is exactly why the companies using this DNA data must fight the US government all the way to the Supreme Court for any such request. Otherwise, their businesses risk dying out before they even get a chance to take off, because people won't trust them anymore if they just end up handing the data over to the government.

<comment><USER7> Or you could get your DNA tested under a pseudonym with a prepaid card (if enough people started doing this they might even offer an anonymous or encryption option).

<comment><USER8> Been there done that. 23andme will not accept any prepaid/debit card and kit's shipping address must match billing address. Full name is obviously required - as I was told, for your own protection. Long story short, I withdrew.

<comment><USER9> How does this work with the option of shipping the kits as gifts to someone?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> Paul-ish > The Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation was launched by billionaire Utah > businessman James LeVoy Sorenson with the backing of the church. The > foundation's goal was finding a "genetic blueprint" for humans, and it > amassed more than 100,000 samples when Ancestry acquired the database in > 2007.

It is discouraging that this data that was ostensibly collected for non commercial purposes can be sold to Ancestry.

<comment><USER10> That's why I never participate I anything data related.

I turned down a $100 best buy gift card in exchange for a 10 minute interview. The guy wouldn't let me go because he couldn't understand why anyone would turn down $100 for a 10 minute chat.

When I was forced to participate in a study in university I always lied in my answers (how is forcing me to participate moral?)

Its _my_ data. I don't trust you, ill do my darnest to keep it from you or feed you wrong info.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'd love to check my DNA for potential diseases, and I'd like to know, for instance, if I'm a descendant of Genghis Khan - but this article reinforces my reluctance to send it in anywhere.

As I understand it, they refuse to do anonymous testing - they have good reasons, some of which are completely focused on privacy. I'd love to have an at-home kit, so I could check the contents of my DNA against a database of known facts.

<comment> Paul-ish > I'd love to have an at-home kit, so I could check the contents of my DNA > against a database of known facts.

I think sequencing at home would be difficult. What we would need is for them to sequence your DNA, then send that data to you, then destroy their copy of the data. This would need to be enforced contractually. The problem is that if you lose your copy of the data, it is gone. This has issues with usability.

If if they offered to keep your named detached from the sequence it wouldn't do much. Your DNA probably has more bits of entropy than your first and last name together.

<comment><USER11> Sequencing at home is done all the time by your own cells -- or anyway replication is. There's no inherent reason it can't be done by small cheap tools; we're just not there yet.

(Yes, privacy is why I never signed up with 23andme. I expected news like this.)

<comment><USER11> Added: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanopore_sequencing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanopore_sequencing) offers compact sequencers. Here's a handheld one: [http://www.wired.com/2012/03/oxford-nanopore-sequencing- usb/](http://www.wired.com/2012/03/oxford-nanopore-sequencing-usb/) There can't be any physical barrier to high-quality readout by machines as small as a cell, because our own cells do it. I only brought that up because, ironically, I know more about cells than nanopore sequencing.

<comment><USER12> We're still years off from sequencing at home for anyone other than dedicated biohackers. The MinION is really cool, but it's very much an advanced researcher's tool.

Honestly, if you're interested in having your genome sequenced/analyzed, I would suggest contacting a local genetic counselor and asking if they can find a sequencing core (or someone that does beadchips) that would agree to delete your data after analysis. They would also be able to discuss your data and the impact it has on your health with you, and provide referrals if more testing or diagnosis is needed.

<comment><USER11> I figured that was probably the case; even optimistically, the Minion costs around $1000. But the parent comment seemed rather too absolute in rejecting sequencing at home, like it'd never happen. I'm going to wait a few years and then reevaluate the choices.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is another perfect example of how the whole "If you've got nothing to hide..." thing is totally insane. This guy had nothing to hide, seven years later the police show up.

<comment><USER14> I wonder if it's possible for e.g. the Mormon Church to run a DNA program to be able to protect the data and identities under the 1st Amendment, similar to what the Catholic Church has done with pedophile records.

<comment><USER15> It would certainly help if the LDS Church was headquartered in its own sovereign nation but I think it's trickier here in the US. Though it would certainly make for an interesting test of freedom of religion if it ever came down to it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is where the Prosecutor's Fallacy is particularly dangerous ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosecutor%27s_fallacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosecutor%27s_fallacy))

Someone intent on finding a suspect can try to find a convenient suspect. Perform secondary sort on those who cannot afford a defense and/or persons of color and you've got someone who is suddenly in a world of undeserved trouble.

</comment><comment><USER17> And _this_ is why I will not do Ancestry DNA. As much as I want to do their DNA program I just won't until we have some major strict privacy laws regarding DNA. Once a third party has it, just like storing your data in the cloud, who knows _where_ this DNA will wind up or for what purpose.

<comment><USER3> Even with privacy laws there is very little in terms of guarantees. Too many ways in which data can be copied or read by those who should not have access. For some data, it is simply better if it does not exist in an easily accessible centralized pool at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This isn't going to end well. The minute the general public becomes aware that they're effectively handing their DNA over to the FBI and perhaps the NSA, companies like Ancestry.com and 23andMe.com will be out of the DNA business. I was thinking of registering my own DNA, but not any more. I'm not against law enforcement at all, but I'm sure against this kind of back door attempt to confiscate yet more of our private data.

<comment><USER19> The general public isn't worried about these problems. The general public is the people who voted for giving those agencies their powers and letting them keep them. Anyone who voted for Bush or Obama is someone who isn't worried about giving their DNA to 23andMe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I deleted my 23andMe profile for this reason. I've still got a .zip file of my (relevant) DNA on my computer.

There's Promethease ([https://www.promethease.com](https://www.promethease.com)), if you want a more open alternative. They're quite good.

<comment><USER21> > Implying your data is deleted from their servers

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Farcical comedy I know but imagine if one day you go on some sneezing rampage due to allergies on some sidewalk 5 minutes before a horrible murder took place and you're suddenly a suspect! At least that is my fear.

</comment><comment><USER23> 23AndMe says they will destroy your sample if you request and I would assume you can ask that they destroy your data.

<comment><USER24> That is not really true. According to 23AndMe, by law the lab that processes your saliva must keep your data for a minimum of two years. Moreover 23AndMe keeps your data forever if it's involved in any of their studies (it's in their TOC), which probably happens the second you submit anything to them. I do not believe that 23AndMe actually deletes data.

<comment><USER23> Looks like they won't delete your DNA data, but they will delete any personal information linking it to you. Fair enough.

[https://www.23andme.com/about/privacy/](https://www.23andme.com/about/privacy/)

<comment><USER25> Do they still keep a database of all previous customers? If only 1% request a deletion it would leave a fairly small group of people who requested the deletion. Then via genetic markers you could probably match them back up fairly easily with the right data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I've placed my whole genome on PGP. Anybody is free to use it. [https://my.pgp-hms.org/profile/hu80855C](https://my.pgp- hms.org/profile/hu80855C)

<comment><USER12> How was the process of signing up for the PGP? I've been interested in doing it before, but wasn't sure if it would be a major hassle or more of an in-and- out of the doctor thing.

Also I'm impressed at the amount of data, I expected a few VCF files, not a ~60GB BAM.

<comment><USER26> I just uploaded the data files to pgp and signup was trivial.

I did illumination wgs and just visited random doc for the blood draw.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> There was story a while ago on HN about some guy putting his 23andme on github

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2211928](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2211928)

</comment><comment> awinter-py If we improve the use case for anonymous medical care, I can live with 23andme being a subpoena farm.

Much scarier that you can't get a lab test without leaving 3 data footprints (insurer, lab, doctor's office).

</comment><comment><USER28> Time to ask 23andme to destroy my sample, I'm disappointed but not surprised. Not 23andme's fault though. Thankfully I had mine tested in the Canadian facility rather than the U.S. one; so they can legally comply.

No doubt they can get my sequence anyway, maybe they already have it; but at least I can say that they got it illegitimately.

</comment><comment><USER29> Appears the story linked to has a pretty limited amount of information, more information maybe found here:

[https://www.genomeweb.com/applied-markets/ancestrycom- shutte...](https://www.genomeweb.com/applied-markets/ancestrycom-shutters- smgf-database-amid-murder-case-controversy)

<comment><USER3> At $95 I think I'll pass.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> This is why I refused to contribute to a medical study on a condition I had in the past and that would have required me to provide some DNA sample. These databases should not exist given the weak legal protection and the non existent protection against hackers.

</comment><comment><USER31> The site was unusable (couldn't scroll) until I turned off Javascript.

</comment><comment><USER19> There's a lot of negative reaction here. What's wrong with the police searching DNA data to find a suspect? Is it:

A) They might do something statistically invalid like charging whoever matches, even if somebody is bound to match just by chance. That didn't happen here. Usry was only a suspect and interrogated then let go. If he did get wrongly convicted, that means there's always at high risk of that for any investigation even without DNA. If we don't trust our processes for protecting against wrongful convictions, then we should try to fix those because they'll already be being abused. If we don't want police to interrogate any suspects who aren't already known to be guilty, then we might find they become a lot less effective at solving crimes.

"... was interrogated for six hours and finally gave blood for a DNA sample. For the next month, he remained under suspicion until his DNA was determined not to match the samples taken from the crime scene."

That looks like a perfectly normal and acceptable way of investigating a crime. It looks like the system working safely.

B) Police accessing personal data is wrong. How about phone tapping with a warrant? How about searching a house with a warrant? Private surveillance footage? Where do you draw the line and not allow them to investigate crimes?

C) People confuse it with secret anti-terrorist or antidisestablishmentarian (I found a use for that word!) NSA investigations which don't follow the well accepted warrant process.

D) Other.

<comment><USER32> I have a few problems:

\- 23AndMe/Ancestry shouldn't __have __a database of DNA - > identity mappings.

\- Law enforcement shouldn't have the ability to compel surrender of data for which someone can have a reasonable expectation of privacy (medical records, private communications, journals etc.). Privacy trumps investigation for me.

\- Law enforcement shouldn't have any kind of "search" access to any private DNA database. I could accept them getting information for an exact match but including relatives and partial matches is too far.

<comment><USER19> I understand wanting to keep the police out of your private things. But we already let them in when they have a warrant. Are you saying DNA is more private than your house, computer, phone converations, etc? Or that all those things should be off limits to police with a warrant?

Of course this is not the same as giving them free access to whatever they want. Then I could understand people's worries. Individual policemen could use it to harass people they don't like, or other abuses.

<comment><USER32> > Are you saying DNA is more private than your house, computer, phone > converations, etc? Or that all those things should be off limits to police > with a warrant?

I can live with the police gaining access to my house but my computer and phone conversations are just as off limits to them as I want my DNA to be. Every device I own that can store data is fully encrypted so the police have no access to that regardless of their wishes. Same goes for most of my phone conversations.

I draw the limits at two things: my body (DNA) and my mind (communications, data).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Analytics Programs - <AUTHOR>

I'm launching a new website, and I'd like to do some detailed analytics on the usage on the page (i.e., more than just Google Analytics).  I love what KISS Metrics offers, but this is a bootstrapped startup, and I'd prefer not to pay the fees for KISS.
What other analytics programs are you guys using to do detailed split testing?
I need to know where users are looking, where they're clicking, how long they're staying on each page, etc (i.e., would be ideal to track usage from landing to exit).
Thanks for your help. <comment><USER2> I absolutely love Clicky. The best feature is "Spy" which shows you a live view of visitors as they interact with your site. Careful- can be very addictive. I'm watching mine right now when I should be coding :)

Referral link: <http://getclicky.com/245493>

Non-referral link: <http://getclicky.com>

<comment><AUTHOR> atldev, thanks for the response. Looks like my colleague has already responded, but we'll definitely check out clicky.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's Hiten from KISSmetrics. Feel free to email me hshah at kissmetrics.com - we are accommodating bootstrapped startups.

<comment><USER2> Hi Hiten. I know you guys must be slammed. Very cool for you to drop in. I'm glad to hear you are "accomodating to bootstrapped startups". I had been following you, but assumed I was priced out of the product. I'll be reaching out this week for info.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Have you already started with the obvious -- web server log analyzers?</comment>


Every Time Zone, visual aid - <AUTHOR> https://everytimezone.com/ <comment><USER2> Get rid of the screen obscuring pop-up that can't be closed, and I might recommend this site to others.</comment>


Zoomer (YC S14) shutting down - <AUTHOR> https://technical.ly/philly/2017/01/27/zoomer-shutdown/ <comment><AUTHOR> Zoomer, a YC summer 2014 company offering food delivery as a service for restaurants, is shutting down. They started with three founders, Justin Goldman, Robert Shedd, and Vasanth Elavarasan in 2014, reaching more than 200 employees and 5000+ contracted drivers and completed nearly 4 million deliveries. Zoomer was headquartered in Philadelphia, with the tech team based in San Francisco.

Zoomer is splitting assets between two larger competitors.</comment>


Bishop: A Webmachine-like Library for Clojure - <AUTHOR> http://twitch.nervestaple.com/2012/05/07/bishop/

<comment><USER2> Have you considered using protocols and records to achieve a similar result? e.g.

        (GET "/todo" []
          example.model.Todo{:items []})

This would separate your data structure from its representation.

You could then use middleware to convert it into the format the user requests.

<comment><AUTHOR> I can see what you are saying, that is definitely something that would work.

This library also handling some of the other interaction as well, for instance conditional requests (i.e. only GET the resource if it's changed since a certain date or if the ETag is different) as well as populating some header values on behalf of the application (supplying last modified dates and ETag values). I think that this could also be done in middleware and that would allow a more modular approach (i.e. you only care about conditional requests you could just use that piece).

For myself, I really wanted one widget that'd make it easier to figure out what I needed to do to get my web service to behave in a predictable way; I really wanted the whole enchilada. :)

<comment><USER2> I've recently become interested in HTTP caching myself, though I've started from the client side rather than the server.

My current idea is to have a ref that represents a HTTP resource, and takes advantage of the various caching headers like ETag and Cache-Control to limit requests to the server when you deref it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think that's a really interesting idea. I've been thinking a little bit about how this could be leveraged on the client-side as well.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Reddit transparency report, 2014 - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/wiki/transparency/2014 <comment><USER2> "As of January 29, 2015, reddit has never received a National Security Letter, an order under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or any other classified request for user information. If we ever receive such a request, we would seek to let the public know it existed."

Is this the warrant canary? Has this been around before?

<comment><USER3> [https://github.com/WhisperSystems/whispersystems.org/issues/...](https://github.com/WhisperSystems/whispersystems.org/issues/34#issuecomment-49910725)

Moxie saying "Every lawyer we've spoken to has confirmed that [having a warrant canary] would not work." Which isn't surprising. When the government tells you not to communicate something, you aren't allowed to communicate it. Not not not not communicating it isn't some clever loophole.

<comment><USER4> Wouldn't this essentially translate to the government forcing the company to mislead the public? This is different from forcing the company to be silent—that is perhaps understandable. But I would love to understand the rationale behind the government forcing a company to post a false notice with no benefit to anyone but the government itself.

<comment><USER3> Saying "the government is forcing me to lie!" is ignoring your agency is establishing the canary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There is little need for government takedown requests when the moderators of many subreddits are paid shills of various stripes. There are a few subs like r/undelete and r/undeleteshadow and r/longtail dedicated to snapshotting this sort of thing. Among the duplicate submissions that are legitimately deleted you can find some real gems.

<comment><USER6> When one views reddit moderation decisions through an anti- corporate/governmental lens, circumstantial evidence of mods being paid off seems to be everywhere. But there is not a single piece of direct evidence to suggest that mods are being paid by large organizations (corporate or otherwise) to manipulate reddit content.

<comment><USER7> Reddit has both explicit ads, such as paid placement at the top, and side bar ads, as well as Reddit Gold, but these are not extensive enough to support costs and make a decent profit. Reddit has nearly 200 million users and has taken almost 50 million in investment, and there is a lot of pressure to utilize the user base for marketing purposes.

Along with traditional explicit advertising models, internet marketing usually involves more subtle techniques such as seamless paid content interleaved with user content, as you see on Facebook and elsewhere. Subtle and invisible marketing is especially important on Reddit, as forum users are not tolerant of paid content, as evidenced by the collapse of Digg, so the operators of Reddit have to keep up the impression of Reddit being pristine and untouched by marketers.

But Reddit has to make revenue, as they are a business and not a charity. Reddit employees are mods of many of the default subreddits, and often post content to those boards that bubbles to the top of the front page. The evidence trail is direct, as you can directly view an employee's posts on their profile page. It would be absurd for Reddit to not use modern internet marketing techniques to generate revenue.

Not only does Reddit support marketing through posts, but they also control the narrative of Reddit. Just live television before it, advertisers are very sensitive to the content carried on the medium that their advertisements are part of, and use their dollars to influence what can and can't be said in that channel. The same goes for Reddit.

<comment><USER8> This is interesting to think about but your post does not contain a shred of evidence

<comment><USER9> They never do. They're baseless. I'm a default mod on reddit, have been for quite a while. I've never been approached by anyone looking to do shady things _ever_. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, SEO people would love an "in", but I've personally never experienced it. And certainly not from the reddit admins themselves. There are over a thousand default mods now. If reddit's admins were trying to control those mods, surely a few would decline their offer then "spill the beans". There _would_ be whistle blowers. And those whistle blowers have never come forwards because it hasn't happened. The accusation is steeped in an ignorance of how reddit actually works.

<comment><USER10> The top level comment, by _baseten_ , made a claim that is completely different from what has been ostensibly refuted in this thread. The OP never said anything about _Reddit_ controlling moderation.

Can you address the specific claim made by _baseten_ , namely that there are subreddits (whether default or non-default) that are managed for pay by _other_ organizations?

I'll note that I don't visit Reddit unless linked to a specific conversation, so I don't have a proverbial horse in the race. I just have my curiosity piqued when a chain of rebuttals gets so far off base from the original claim.

<comment><USER9> > _is completely different from what has been ostensibly refuted in this > thread. The OP never said anything about Reddit controlling moderation._

As I explained in other comments below, I have extensive experience moderating large subreddits and in my time, have not seen a single shred of evidence which shows anyone is "paying to play". If something like that was occurring, it would inevitably be discovered and become viral news everywhere, just like how it was on Digg. I'm sure the administrators of the site keep an eye on the actions, messages and PMs of the top mods so there are more checks and balances on that kind of behavior. More than most people realize.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> awesome, would love to know what sub-reddits received the illegitimate takedown requests. Can anyone take a stab at which ones?

<comment><USER12> The celebrity leaked nude stuff had a lot of DMCA flying around, pretty sure they even nuked a couple subreddits to comply with some of it

<comment><USER13> Yes, but those were subreddits that popped up and were dedicated to sharing those pictures. I doubt any genuine community was affected.

<comment><USER12> Oh I don't know any real details about it, or what "community" was affected, that's just what came to mind when they mentioned DMCA take-downs in the post. I don't think there was a ton of other content that got enough attention to warrant takedown notices

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is worthless as social sites, like Reddit, are one of the most heavily propagandized and manipulated places on the internet.

It's a tool for disseminating information and talking points.

</comment><comment><USER15> Glad to see they put up a fight as much as possible (or say they do atleast).

</comment><comment><USER16> Does Reddit allow anonymous users (e.g., via Tor)?</comment>


How to get Stackoverflow Reputation - <AUTHOR> http://www.codexon.com/posts/simple-tips-to-get-stackoverflow-reputation <comment><USER2> The strange thing about this is that the StackOverflow team seems to think that people will use these reputation points for hiring decisions. They have little widgets you can embed into your site to display your reputation, and I've even heard them suggest that developers put it on their resumes.

I can't think of a better indicator of somebody _not_ to hire than a guy with 10,000+ reputation on _any_ community site. You can only get that sort of rep with a 4hr+/day commitment over a period of several months.

That time is pretty much guaranteed to happen at the office. I'd hate to have to take up the slack for one of those guys. Worse, I'd hate to have a room full of employees spending their days gaming StackOverflow on my dime.

<comment><USER3> I don't have time to sharpen the saw, I'm busy sawing?

<comment><USER4> Not quite. We all have to study constantly. The question is how to balance work and study.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Out of the 6 tips provided, "write relevant, detailed answers" wasn't one of them. Quite the contrary, in fact:

"1. Be the First to Answer. Even at the cost of quality."

Gaming a reputation system just means you figured out how to maximize a number determined by some arbitrary formula. Real life reputation works differently. People aren't going to remember the dude with 10k points. They will remember the person who guided them through one of their problems. Or the person who consistently shows up with quality feedback under a certain topic.

By gaming the system you're only making it harder for others to use the mechanisms the site provides for signalling quality. Fortunately most humans have the insight to not rely solely on a number.

<comment><USER6> Tip No. 1 is a bit similar to Jeopardy strategy of ringing in the buzzer as fast as possible and figuring out the answer afterwards.

Sadly, people will respect someone more with 10k gamed points than someone with 1000 honest points, because we have placed implicit trust in SO ranking system.

<comment><USER7> At least we have become a little more educated about the weaknesses of the system

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Looks like Stack Overflow risks the same descent in to mediocrity that plagued Yahoo! Answers. This is the problem with points systems: people will game them, often to the detriment of the site. None of these tips involve actually providing a good, useful answers. Compare with Ask MetaFilter, which provides excellent quality with hardly any game mechanic - instead using community norms to keep the quality high.

<comment><USER9> The only advice that really worries me is the advice to downvote competing answers. Getting votes for providing quick answers that you then refine is not a bad thing. But I think Jeff and the team may need to prevent people who've answered already from downvoting other answers, otherwise you could be right.

<comment><USER10> No, it IS a bad thing. What you get (and what happens on SO) is that certain people will post something, anything, to new posts so they have the first comment. They then spend the next five minutes gradually expanding their answer either based on their own knowledge or worse of all, by cherry picking info from other peoples answers.

This is certainly not the case with every answer, and it it may be more prevalent under some tags than others. However it happens enough that I've become fed-up of crafting well thought out replies just to see them copy+pasted, with some minor word changes, into answers from first-posters.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Yeah, I do the downvoting thing from time to time. If there are few answers, and I think mine is slightly better, I will downvote them so mine goes to the top. This usually results in lots of points, since people see mine at the top and upvote, and see the others at the bottom, and downvote them. (The same thing works here, but I don't do it. My comments usually get upvoted anyway, for some reason.)

The funny part is that someone "noticed" this and complained to me about it. (There was a whole meta thread about it, which I thought was hilarious.) In that case, though, his answers were just plain bad, and I had to downmod his answer and answer the question myself just so that people would not be horribly misguided by his high reputation but wrong answers.

Anyway, I hate to "game" sites like StackOverflow, but there is no incentive not to. If I get banned, it just means people won't get my knowledge for free anymore. I have never needed to ask a question there; I have a social network for that (which can't be "gamed", btw).

(As to why I care about rep, I don't know. It just feels good to get a lot of points, I guess. It's like winning the lottery, except you can't cash in reputation for goods and services...)

<comment><USER12> _Yeah, I do the downvoting thing from time to time._ [...] _Anyway, I hate to "game" sites like StackOverflow, but there is no incentive not to._

So why do you do it?

Your "hate" doesn't overshadow the good feeling of getting a lot of points?

<comment><USER11> _Your "hate" doesn't overshadow the good feeling of getting a lot of points?_

Nope.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It is a secondary issue if individual users can hack the system to gain somewhat undeserved reputation.

The primary issue for the quality of Stackoverflow is whether good answers are generated, and whether the best (most correct, relevant and informative) answers float to the top. This seems to be the case AFAICT, so I don't think this reputation gaming is a big problem for the site. (It will be a big problem for somebody (theoretical) who hired people based on Stackoverflow reputation. But that would be stupid anyway.)

</comment><comment><USER7> You've exposed some systematic weaknesses of the SO quality score. If I worked for SO I'd thank you.

My proposed solution is to manually identify X judges who represent a nicecross section of programming backgrounds. These judges are selected by their continued support and passion for helping programmers. Over time their upvotes would create new quality judges in an intelligent manner.

I used a system like this for characterizing 3D shapes in the protein database (kinase). The templates were created from known kinase chains, we called them motifs. Thanks to Tony Sommese, and Jim Dwulit for really making it happen (I just helped out on that project).

Another case for this model is crystal formation. Seed crystals allow for fractal like formation of patterns in supporting media dishes.

Googles voting system also relies on "reliable" sources to help judge the value of links.

Reference papers use citations to determine how close an author is to a renowned scientist.

</comment><comment><USER14> People that game the system tend to get bored after awhile and go away. Only those that truly like answering questions and helping people stick around. Overall, most of the time questions are getting answered and that's the primary goal of the site.

If you're getting sniped and then having your content copied, post first or post faster. I have never had my content stolen for another answer.

Also if you want more rep with less games, stay away from the high-profile low-hanging fruit. Avoid basic language syntax lessons that are easy for people to answer quickly. Pick a few tags that you have more specific knowledge in and follow those. That's an easy way to get rep without as much competition.

</comment><comment><USER15> This kind of BS ruins the site. I suppose it's inevitable with points based system.

</comment><comment><USER16> Somewhere, a pointy haired boss exclaims "Hey, there's a site that rates developers! Let's base our hiring decisions on that!"

</comment><comment><USER17> What's missing from this piece is an answer to why I should care about getting Stackoverflow reputation? Besides access to the "special moderation tools", is there any benefit to justify the time I would spend to amass more than 10,000 points? I think that the only reason someone should use a site like Stackoverflow, or HN for that matter, is that he enjoys it. So from that perspective, there is little incentive to "game" the system.

</comment><comment><USER18> The more interesting question, for me at least, is to consider what kind of tweaks StackOverflow could make to the reputation system in order to improve the quality of the content.

I'm a bit surprised that Atwood & Co. don't seem to be more interested in this. (I opened a question on meta.stackoverflow.com to discuss precisely this point, and got almost no response whatsoever....)

<comment><USER19> My guess is that now it's on HN they'll do something about it ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Huhn. I go there to ask questions, and hope people answer them. Helps me learn. I'm not in school anymore, I don't need 'good grades.' I need to know how to do x with y.

</comment><comment><USER21> These tips describe a fairly "premeditated" approach to gaining reputation, but like anything that yields a reward, it's just reality that people look for optimizations.</comment>


Show HN: Updatable – Fix SEO and Web Dev issues independently from your CMS - <AUTHOR> https://www.updatable.com/ <comment><USER2> The service is technically mindblowning, A good way to let clients or the marketing department fiddle with their site copy while leaving us to get on with actual development work.</comment>


Size - <AUTHOR> http://www.marco.org/2011/10/08/iphone-screen-size <comment><USER2> I m myself a big admirer of large screens.. Galaxy note will me my next phone. With large screen I read HN better .

<comment><USER3> I personally prefer the smaller screen. It's why I have a hard time moving away from my Droid Incredible. It's the perfect size for something that lives in a pocket.</comment></comment>


This New Hotel Room Is So Groundbreaking That They Patented It - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherelliott/2018/08/26/this-new-hotel-room-is-so-groundbreaking-that-they-patented-it/ <comment><USER2> The kitchen triangle (fridge-cooker-workbench) has been a "thing" since formica was available in classic grey or white. I truly don't understand how this can be patented.

Isn't this "vitruvian man" for TV binge watchers eyeballs?</comment>


A Start-up Takes on Wal-Mart  - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/articles/2009/06/alice.html?partner=rss <comment><USER2> Wow, alice.com is somewhat annoying. They front-load the annoying, frustrating part of the process -- filling out who your family consists of, telling them what you buy, and actually registering for the site. This is all before you can see a price. They'd have more people if they let you see the prices with no hassle.

<comment><USER3> I especially enjoyed the price comparison chart, with all of the other competitor names blurred out and no hint as to what the product is.

The site looks great and the idea sounds like a winner, I'm just not so sure about the execution just yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> From their FAQ:

 _"If you live in Alaska, Hawaii, or another country, we hope to be able to serve you in the future."_

If that is true, they will make a killing in these states, since they would have no online competitor - just as Netflix checkmated in HI by opening a Honolulu depot; no other mainland-based service could compete. Also, there are not many brick and mortars competitors in some areas of HI.

Of course, making a killing in AK and HI is not going to get them megabucks (the population is too small), but still, it's nice to have a pond where you are the big fish.

As for the service in general - sure, I'd use it, even if it was slightly more expensive than going to the store. Who wants to waste an afternoon shopping for toilet paper in Wal-Mart? Off the cuff, I'd say I'd be willing to tolerate a 5% price increase of my current cost for the convenience. Whether that is enough to defray their shipping, I don't know.

<comment><USER5> Shipping is "free", but of course that just means the cost of the products will be higher. But if you're in a state with significant sales tax not having to pay that might even offset the higher prices.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hmmm....startups should take on inefficient businesses, not the MOST EFFICIENT BUSINESS EVER (Walmart).

<comment><USER7> I wouldn't say they are taking on Walmart. Here is the CEO on making money:

"We're really not a retailer at all. We make no [profit] selling goods. We make money on the advertising side of doing coupons, sampling and keywords – like if you type "shampoo," what shows up first, second, and third. We have a Google-like click model."

<comment><USER8> They are more in line with self service wholesalers like Metro AG in europe

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Here's a working link: <http://www.inc.com/articles/2009/06/alice.html>

</comment><comment><USER10> Now's a good time to try taking on Walmart; their prices are climbing faster than the other groceries in this area, they're still lower on most things, but not as many and not by as much. And the convenience factor should help a lot.

</comment><comment><USER11> The writeup makes it sound like a bold idea.

I'm curious to see where it goes. Yeah, as zck pointed out, the heavy sign up front will reduce turn over.

</comment><comment><USER12> sounds more like a competitor to Amazon's grocery dept and Drugstore.com

I like the UI but I have yet to really compare prices

</comment><comment><USER13> alice.com needs to fire their designer...the message is scrambled and lost down the drain.</comment>


The Earth's core is younger than previously believed - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencealert.com/recreating-the-conditions-of-earth-s-core-in-a-lab-has-revised-estimates-of-its-age <comment><AUTHOR> >Reconciliation of Experiments and Theory on Transport Properties of Iron and the Geodynamo

[https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.12...](https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.125.078501)</comment>


Commercial CAPTCHA breakers for sale - <AUTHOR> http://www.lafdc.com/captcha/

<comment><USER2> Many CAPTCHAs are positively pathetic.

Adding little bits of salt-and-pepper noise, light-colored lines, and other cutesy antics do nothing.

The simple fact is that machines are better at recognizing individual letters and characters than humans are.

</comment><comment><USER3> It might (obviously) tend to weed out the color blind, but I think these would be hard to crack:

<http://www.toledo-bend.com/colorblind/Ishihara.html>

</comment><comment><USER4> Isn't the best way to break captchas to offer "free porn"? Offer free porn, ask them to send you their email, respond to a captcha... send out spam about this free porn and bam...

millions of example images solved.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'd love to know what's written below.

<comment><USER5> I can't read Chinese, but I've read some English discussion about how that's done. You know how spam filters 'learn' what is spam and what isn't, this is the same idea. It first splits each letter from the image. Then you create an algorithm that compares the current letter it has to process versus what it has learned. The hard part is that algorithm. You can technically do it with just image matching, but it's far better to programmically teach it rules like "B" has two holes, "7" has two lines, etc. And then you feed the program the first 1000 with proper answers and then you check and see if it's guessing correctly.

Notice how images without proper 'rectangle-size letters' like the Google ones are hard to crack because it's hard for a simple line searching algorithm to find a rectangle box to split the letter. Random lines through the letters, like in Yahoo's also mess with it.

The key is to make letters human readable, but not completely obvious to a captcha reader where one letter ends and one letter begins.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is that price in Yuan?</comment>


MIT students scam Lottery for $8 million - <AUTHOR> http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/mit-students-scammed-massachusetts-state-lottery-8-million-report-article-1.1128482

<comment><USER2> This is old news: [http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2011...](http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2011/07/31/a_lottery_game_with_a_windfall_for_a_knowing_few/)

Also does "scamming" not involve some kind of lie or misrepresentation? They just bought lottery tickets.

</comment><comment><USER3> The article[1] that the posted links rips off (but links to) has more details and is less inflammatory.

[1] [http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2012...](http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2012/07/31/inspector_general_says_lottery_allowed_gambling_syndicates_to_take_over_winfall_game/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Scammed? They played by the rules.

</comment><comment><USER5> It just sounds like the reporter is pissed because he couldn't get in on the action.

If this is a scam then so is pooling in money with your friends and family to increase the odds of winning.

</comment><comment><USER6> This article doesn't explain anything, and heavily engages in libel and other name calling.

<comment><USER7> That was the first thing that struck me as well. This article didn't even pretend to be objective.</comment></comment>


OctoSQL Streaming: Adding Temporal SQL on Streams - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/cube2222/octosql/releases/tag/v0.3.0 <comment><AUTHOR> Hey everybody, one of the authors here!

This release contains all we did in terms of our bachelor thesis[0].

This release adds temporal SQL, which means SQL on streams of events, like Kafka, which understands the time the events actually have happened. This is all designed to be as ergonomic as possible. We finally added Parquet support too.

We're not so sure of our move to on disk storage, but for now you can kill and restart OctoSQL, it will stand up where it left off, without duplicating or losing messages.

We also added telemetry in a hopefully non-privacy-invading way, to better understand what users actually use.

Please let us know what you think! Feedback is greatly appreciated :)

[0]: [https://github.com/cube2222/octosql/blob/master/whitepapers/...](https://github.com/cube2222/octosql/blob/master/whitepapers/thesis.pdf)

<comment><USER2> This looks absolutely incredible! Bravo on the nice README page too. I will be trying this on some files and a database tomorrow. Great work. And thank you for adding to the Go data engineering ecosystem.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the kind words! I appreciate it. Feel free to reply with feedback when you've tried it!</comment></comment></comment>


Electric Mercedes Opens German Assault on Tesla - T-A https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-germany-daimler/electric-mercedes-opens-german-assault-on-tesla-idUSKCN1LJ17Y <comment><AUTHOR> How can reporters be so wrong?

>The market for upscale electric cars is Tesla's to lose, with sales of its entry-level Model 3 sedan expected to reach about 50,000 cars this year and almost double that in 2019.

The company has already exceeded an annual production rate of 210,000 Model 3 (cf. [https://electrek.co/2018/09/02/tesla-misses- model-3-producti...](https://electrek.co/2018/09/02/tesla-misses- model-3-production-goal-overall-q3-goal/)). Tesla also expects to build over 7K Model 3s per week by the end of the year, which would be 350,000 units for 2019 (assuming a two week downtime). From the 2018Q2 earning call ([https://seekingalpha.com/article/4193497-tesla- tsla-q2-2018-...](https://seekingalpha.com/article/4193497-tesla- tsla-q2-2018-results-earnings-call-transcript?part=single)):

>We're going to try to raise that rate of the Model 3 production steadily in the coming quarters and try to get to the 10,000 cars a week number as soon as we can. As we spent a lot of time debugging a wide range of manufacturing issues that the potential for our existing lines to be able to produce far more cars is much greater than expected.

Considering their current deliveries, I wonder why Reuters only expect 100K Model 3 sales in 2019. Are they dishonest or just terribly bad at journalism?

<comment><USER2> _I wonder why Reuters only expect 100K Model 3 sales in 2019._

They made two clear points in the article as to why Model 3 sales might not meet the most optimistic predictions. The first is that the Model 3 through most of 2019 will almost certainly be more expensive than first announced and secondly that the ~$50k electric vehicle market is set to see a lot more competition. Finally (not mentioned in the article) Tesla does have a history of missing production targets so it makes sense to discount any number given in an earning call.

All the being said it would have been nice I've they'd spent half a paragraph unpacking that number.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you expect Tesla to produce less Model 3 in each 2019 quarter than they have made in the past 3 months?

I understand that people can distrust Musk's goal but expecting Tesla production to go down significantly from now on is quite a stretch.

Again, they made 28,578 Model 3s in Q2 and will certainly produce 50K in Q3 (the low end of Tesla's most recent predictions).

The 50K for 2018 is proven wrong already. This Reuters number is simply bullshit or FUD.

The 100K for next years implies that Tesla can't even maintain the production level they've reach at the end of Q2, even though they've already surpass it.

Something's very wrong in their report and yet, all the mainstream media post it "as is".</comment></comment></comment>


Yasnippet: TextMate snippets for Emacs - <AUTHOR> http://code.google.com/p/yasnippet/

<comment><USER2> I use this library and like it. Snippet-like functuonality a one of the things that got TextMate as much attention as it received.

It's particularly nice when you have Emacs's terrific electric mode on along with yasnippet working with a relevant set of snippets. Code just magically Ppesrs in screen, perfectly formatted.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have to recommend technomancy's starter kit. I've been using it (and slowly customizing it to my own needs as I learn emacs) for the past couple of months.

<http://github.com/technomancy/emacs-starter-kit/tree/master>

Some of the forks include yasnippet as well, which I too use.

</comment><comment><USER4> found yasnippet some days back, also that Chrononaut provides snippets "automatically converted from the TextMate repository" to be used with the yasnippet.

blogged a tiny howto to get it running. <http://is.gd/ruUx>

</comment><comment><USER5> I've been using this in my Emacs setup for a while now. It's really nice, and works like a charm.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm a vim user and I've been using snipMate:

<http://github.com/meese/snipmate.vim/tree/master></comment>


Announcing Yggdrasil Network v0.3 - <AUTHOR> https://yggdrasil-network.github.io/2018/12/12/announcing-v0-3.html <comment><USER2> Am I the only one with a thought for [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yggdrasil_Linux/GNU/X](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yggdrasil_Linux/GNU/X) when reading the title?

<comment><USER3> Not the only one. Infact they mention it on the site somewhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Am I the only one having the most annoying mobile browsing experience with this page? The page is zoomed in out of the windows until I scroll.</comment>


Ask HN: What are the best websites you've seen in terms of design and copy? - <AUTHOR> One of my favorite sites all around is Stripe.com. It's very simple and clean, the copy is very good and descriptive, there is color but not too much.<p>I'm working on a new site for my company and just wanting to look around at the best out there for inspiration and ideas. I'm sure there are many others besides Stripe that are as equally good or better. <comment><USER2> [https://shu.git.xin](https://shu.git.xin)

[https://xin.git.xin](https://xin.git.xin)</comment>


NY State Deems 2 Ex-Uber Drivers Employees, Not Contractors - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/associated-press/uber-ny-driver-benefits.html <comment><USER2> So, Uber becomes popular because it's 'better', by destroying the unionized taxi industry and now the contractors want to be considered employees? If you wanted that, why not just drive a cab?

Many of these modern companies destroy what they think is old and out-dated and only come to realize that those companies already used that business model decades ago and it evolved into what we have now. Uber will eventually evolve into a cab company. I suppose it's a great way for some venture capitalists to make a ton of cash and destroy competitors, but not so good for the average person.

Bitcoin is another good example of this. It takes a centralized and federally insured organization to truly have the security that the general public needs. Many websites need to be hacked and millions of dollars stolen to come to this conclusion. Banks figured this out 100+ years ago.

The other issue is that they shouldn't be considered employees. Drivers can work as little or as much as they want, which doesn't sound like an employee to me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Although, driver's can't set their own rates. To me, this sounds like employment. Historically, part-time workers have usually had to set their hours in advance, for practical reasons. To me, the only thing Uber's tech does is minimize the advance notice, but not really fundamentally alter the relationship.

<comment><USER2> A part-time worker would have to be there a certain amount of hours, or they would be fired.

An Uber driver can come and go as they please. This is the fundamental difference.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's simply because the no-tech solution doesn't have the flexibility. But that isn't inherent to the concept of part-time employment.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Bottled water worse than tap: lab (very high bacteria count) - <AUTHOR> http://www.montrealgazette.com/technology/Bottled+water+worse+than/3071292/story.html

<comment><USER2> One kind of pathogen only; no mention of the heavy chemical innoculation tap water uses to get so "pure".

<comment><USER3> " _[H]eavy chemical innoculation_ " as in the use of chlorine, "the disinfectant that keeps on killing" to the tap and beyond (try doing a search on chlorine ozone cholera peru).

At the levels used, I think chlorine is both safe and a perfectly fine trade off all things considered.

<comment><USER2> Sure. But people drink bottled water to avoid things like chlorine. You may call them misguided, but the article naievely neglected this population of consumers.

<comment><USER3> Well, are those bottled water vendors telling their customers "No chlorine but with all the bugs it kills!" ?

Or "It's great stuff, but be sure to treat it with a rolling boil for 20 minutes before drinking"?

I don't view most of them as misguided so much as misinformed; they're making assumptions that this nicely packaged stuff is clean ... when it often isn't.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Platform Connecting Clients and Agencies? - <AUTHOR> Is there a platform out there, which connects clients and agencies for projects? I'm particularly interested in mobile and web apps.<p>I tried looking for that, but can't seem to find anything. Any ideas? <comment><USER2> clutch?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. That seems to do what I'm thinking about, but only from the side of a client looking for an agency.</comment></comment>


Life in an Internet Shutdown - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/02/world/africa/internet-shutdown-economy.html <comment><USER2> I was struck by one anecdote in the article, relating to Zimbabwe's internet shutdown in the midst of a banknote shortage, which left many Zimbabweans unable to use the internet-based cash-analogue they habitually used in lieu of cash, and how this caused one businessman to "throw away half of his perishable goods". WTF? Sell them on a "credit basis"! At worst you get nothing (which is equivalent to throwing them away, monetarily, with the added advantage that you actually are helping keep people fed) and in the best case leads to people settling their debt once the crisis has passed.

<comment><USER3> > Sell them on a "credit basis"!

In cultures where cash is king, broke people don't go to the store. They're not used to the store offering them credit.

<comment><USER4> I live in a developing country where cash is king. In my experience in cash cultures, stores offering credit is extremely common.

Your sweeping generalization is not just wrong but unnecessary. We're talking specifically about Zimbabwe, so all that matters is what is common in Zimbabwe and not what other countries do or do not do.

<comment><USER5> > Your sweeping generalization is not just wrong but unnecessary. We're > talking specifically about Zimbabwe, so all that matters is what is common > in Zimbabwe and not what other countries do or do not do.

I wouldn't be so hard on the grandparent. Cunningham's Law states "the best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question; it's to post the wrong answer."

My understanding is that stores do not offer credit to whoever just shows up. You need to build credibility or at least knows someone who knows the store keep.

I imagine if I were a shopkeeper and I had a choice between selling on credit to random people vs throwing something away, I'd probably throw it away or if I sold it, I'd want to mark it as money I won't get. I don't know why some random person would come back to me to repay me. Not that I know anything about Zimbabwe (my only interaction is with people who fled the country so I acknowledge my perspective is probably biased hence I won't try to make further sweeping generalizations about the government there).

<comment><USER2> Surely most of the people suddenly not having money would be habitual store clients (otherwise we'd need to understand why suddenly the store owner ordered twice as much produce as he usually does). So it makes sense that he would know them and presumably trust them. I summarise that embarrassed clients probably just stopped showing up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Infoamtion is a necessity, but disinformation is a weapon.

I have lived in an Internet Shutdown that lasted for about a week. I was actually thankful for it. Don't get me wrong, It was inconvenient to say the least, but it probably saved thirty-odd lives.

You have to actually live in a tense environment (and be a minority) to understand how quickly misinformation and rumours can be spread that incite extreme violence and then counter-violence. Facebook/WhatsApp isn't very good at quickly taking down rumours, and people are easy to get charged when in an emotional state. The percentage of people who keep calm and let the situation die down is miniscule.

Reg. Kashmir, there have already been multiple instances fake videos/images shared by influential people, let alone everyday folks, within the last month (I'll put up links below later). You can only imagine the amount of inflammatory disinformation being shared by normal people. This stuff has already spread quicker than it is usually debunked, so the damage is already there.

<comment><USER7> True. Shekhar Gupta explained in a recent video about how dangerous rumors and rumor-mongers can be.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=27&v=wqzCU1Y36ww](https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=27&v=wqzCU1Y36ww)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is happening right now in Kashmir.

[https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/08/28/india-restore- kashmirs-i...](https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/08/28/india-restore-kashmirs- internet-phones)

It really makes me wonder whether a strong movement towards mesh networks could resolve this. What are the ways authorities could block a community network? At least information could be spread this way, and might have saved the Zimbabwean journalist.

<comment><USER9> Cut electricity. That puts an end to modern communication.

<comment><USER10> Nope: solar panels, gas generators, even handcranked chargers are enough to keep a cellphone going.

<comment><USER11> But not a cellphone tower. Not covertly. And if cell towers are down, cellphones are useless.

<comment><USER10> > if cell towers are down, cellphones are useless.

The thread on the front page about HK shows that's not true.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I like how we supposedly have the serval mesh project but no APKs available any more or ever in iOS. I just wish we'd all pick one like Briar or Bridgefy to be the good enough default.

Heck, F Droid has Meshenger but it barely worked. Firechat and bridgefy are closed source so therefore compromised, so this is not an easy solve.

<comment><USER13> You are correct that the APK download at [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.servalproj...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.servalproject&hl=en) is dead.

However, you can still download it from [https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.servalproject/](https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.servalproject/)

RE: Briar, I've tested it before. It's a promising app idea, and generally has good UI, but I ran into a few issues I'll post for consideration/refutation.

My results were hit or miss as to whether messages would get delivered if both apps were open, one was open, one was closed, one or both were online, offline, or a mix. It's unclear as to whether it is supposed to work 'online' via Tor nodes or not, the documentation is confusing. Getting an answer to the question "will this work over normal cellular data?" has no definitive answer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> A Kashmiri can tell what it feels like.

Source: I am Kashmiri

<comment><USER15> Elaborate?

<comment><USER16> Just doing a websearch on "kashmir internet shutdown" yields a plethora of "elaboration".

Gotta be a bit active when looking for information, instead of just waiting for it to fall in your lap.

<comment><USER15> What? The commenter volunteered they could provide first hand details... Isn't that better than second hand news sources?

<comment><USER17> And could get locked up for doing so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> With the first link the chain is forged. The first speech censured,the first thought forbidden,the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably -picard

<comment><USER19> Well actually he's quoting the judge father of the woman interrogating him. But still a great line :)

<comment><USER20> Well actually that attribution is purely fictional. In reality the quote is properly attributed to Picard because Picard is the first fictional character to actually say the quote.

<comment><USER21> I'm not convinced that a "direct" quote from a fictional character bears any more weight _in reality_ than a fictional attribution to another fictional character. Shouldn't the quote be attributed to the show writer(s)?

<comment><USER20> It is a silly distinction, but: In reality, millions of real people have observed Picard uttering that quote while zero real people have observed the judge's father uttering that quote.

<comment><USER21> If we're making silly distinctions, in reality those people saw Patrick Stewart utter the quote.

<comment><USER20> I would argue that it is not remotely silly to make a distinction between phrases uttered by an individual and phrases uttered by an individual playing a character (especially with pre-written lines). I would be far more comfortable attributing the quote to the writers of that episode than to Patrick Stewart.

However, in practice, it is difficult to attribute specific lines to specific writers given how scripts are produced. As such, lines are generally attributed to the characters that speak them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Indian Occupied Kashmir faces internet shutdowns very often [1], for months on end. People are regularly arrested for voicing their opinion on social media and booked under draconian laws.

I was traveling to Kashmir (my home) recently and my whatsapp and phone image gallery was checked at the airport by Indian occupational forces.

There is also mass media propaganda that claims "everything is alright" in kashmir, when in reality India has been worse than a barbaric dictatorship [2] (fueled by jingoism and racism) in Kashmir.

[1] - [https://internetshutdowns.in](https://internetshutdowns.in)

[2] - [https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Countries/IN/DevelopmentsInK...](https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Countries/IN/DevelopmentsInKashmirJune2016ToApril2018.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER23> At first, I read "Life is an Internet Shutdown", and dismissed it quickly as new wave/internet absence article telling me, that real life is only possible when my internet is broken...

</comment><comment><USER24> Anyone catch the guy with the Namecheap shirt on?

</comment><comment><USER25> For some reason nytimes doesen't want you to read them in incognito mode. Luckily they simply hide the article afterwards with JavaScript, and can be read without it

<comment> m-p-3 The formatting is slightly messed up, but it's on IPFS now

\- [https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmTDqDoJv2UkHjYYYiTWNTEW8J9dBDvaM8dP7So...](https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmTDqDoJv2UkHjYYYiTWNTEW8J9dBDvaM8dP7So5LbKtqC/)

\- [https://cloudflare- ipfs.com/ipfs/QmTDqDoJv2UkHjYYYiTWNTEW8J9...](https://cloudflare- ipfs.com/ipfs/QmTDqDoJv2UkHjYYYiTWNTEW8J9dBDvaM8dP7So5LbKtqC/)

<comment><USER26> slick! do you know how can i search ipfs?

<comment><USER27> [https://www.ipse.io/](https://www.ipse.io/) is one of the various IPFS search engines - but it doesn't look like it's indexed this article yet...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The racism is actually shown by Kashmiri Muslims who ethnically cleansed Kashmiri Hindus. Hundreds of thousands of Hindus were forced to leave the Kashmir Valley.[1] Hundreds of Hindu temples were destroyed.[2][3] Even now they're forcing people from other Indian states to leave.[4]

If the behavior of Indian forces is really as bad as it is claimed then why no large scale migration of Kashmiri Muslims happened like it happened for Kashmiri Hindus or Rohingyas[5]?

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

[2][https://defence.pk/pdf/threads/208-temples-destroyed-in- kash...](https://defence.pk/pdf/threads/208-temples-destroyed-in-kashmir- in-20-years-says-j-k- government.488457/&ved=2ahUKEwiKueLI9LTkAhUmhOAKHdb7AZgQFjACegQIDxAJ&usg=AOvVaw3WE1KoiPqrpal5K5fFkVwn)

[3][https://www.google.com/amp/s/arisebharat.com/2019/02/13/a-li...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/arisebharat.com/2019/02/13/a-list- of-temples-destroyed-in-the-kashmir-valley-between-1986-1996/amp/)

[4][https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2019...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2019/08/workers- kashmir-told-leave-demography-fears-190825140146087.html)

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

<comment><USER29> Please don't use HN for nationalistic flamewar. At least the parent comment had something to do with the topic.

We detached this subthread from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20866359](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20866359) and marked it off-topic.

<comment><USER28> How can the parent topic be something to do with the topic but this comment is not? How can one talk about the Kashmir conflict without discussing it's history? There's regularly discussions about various political/controversial topics in HN without them getting shut down. You are really showing your bias here, dang.

<comment><USER29> The parent comment had at least a tenuous connection to the topic of internet shutdowns, while yours became unhinged from that completely and was only about the politics of Kashmir. Both were bad, but yours was worse for HN for that reason. This has nothing to do with which sides you and the other person are on. I don't care, nor even look at the comments for that information.

It always feels like the mods are biased. The other side feels the mods are biased the other way. In reality we know nothing about Kashmir; we simply know is that HN is not a place for people to have flamewars about it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


As a student in IT, is it normal that some HN's article are too complex for me? - <AUTHOR> Next year i'm going to go in my 4th year of IT studying, but i'm feeling simpleton in face of some articles here. <comment><USER2> Welcome to the team! We all feel that way at some point. Others have given some excellent reasons why this happens... so I'll just leave you with a quote.

"If you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room." \- Someone on The Internet

<comment><AUTHOR> Ahah love that's quote, but if we thinking about it, the world would be full of rooms with only one person in each

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> If it's research, it's normal. The beauty of HN is in it's diversity. You can't know everything, but we are all here to learn something, usefull or not.

Also, IT is an iterative process. Learn something and then something more. It all adds up ;)

Ps. Add: Ask HN: to your title

<comment><AUTHOR> I try to edit it, but i didn't seem to work. Thank you for your answer

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Well that's a strange question. We learn all our life. Depending on subeject and it's level - you will find articles too complex for you even 30 years from now.

You won't face times when _any_ subject will be a kids' literature for you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah i know, but IT is a subject that i love and i'm feeling frustrate when i can't understand articles</comment></comment>