My daughter taught me to fail more - <AUTHOR> http://www.whitetailsoftware.com/2012/02/my-daughter-taught-me-to-fail-more/

<comment><USER2> I'm teaching my daughters to view mistakes as learning something, not failing at something. It's amazing to see that it's becoming ingrained in their way of thinking. When they forgot their favorite Littlest Pet Shop figures at church last weekend my youngest daughter's immediate reaction was "Dad, I learned to not bring my favorite toys with me in case I forget them". That was her actual way of letting me know we had left them behind. She was not complaining about it all, which I think is a great way to look at life.

The way I teach them is in two ways: Whenever they show me something they have written or drawn I point out the spots where they have corrected mistakes i.e. by striking a word and say "Wow, look how much you learned!". And whenever they hurt themselves or mess up something bad enough to complain or cry about it, while I comfort them I ask "So, what did you learn?".

I've done this consciously for several years now and it is interesting to see that it is actually affecting how they think.

<comment><USER3> Relatedly I go out of my way to teach my 8 year old that there's no such thing as "being good at" something, only things to which you've applied yourself enough. (Though in adulthood this might sound a little trite -- I'm no good at guitar for example -- in childhood it's absolutely true.)

I think I'm going to steal your bit about failure being a lesson.

<comment><USER2> That's excellent, I too want my kids to know that they can do or accomplish anything with sufficient preparation. I try to work into their vocabulary (as well as my own) to say/think "Wow that person has trained a lot" when seeing feats of skill. When they themselves accomplish something I try to say "seems you have trained a lot!" rather than "nice drawing" or whatever.

Another hack I've applied in the way I talk with my kids is to sometimes say things that are obviously wrong. Starting with very obvious errors and as they grow older moving to more subtle lies about the way things work. If they don't catch the error I continue reasoning along the same line far enough into absurdity for them to get that I'm wrong. It makes them aware of questioning what people say and to think through themselves what is reasonable and what is not. And they now are very proud and happy whenever they are able to point out when I'm wrong about things.

I also never, ever proxy them towards other adults. If we are eating at a café and they want a napkin or buy another pancake they have to talk to the staff themselves. When they want ice cream I give them money and they have to buy it themselves. Because it is such an asset to be comfortable talking to people and getting what you want. It makes them believe in their own abilities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> As longs as you keep in mind that as you grow up, failing costs more, and often takes more time for you to realize the failure. If you just keep shooting in all directions, you might as well fail all and achieve nothing.

So do fail more, but also focus in achieving goals.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think the lesson to take away here is to not take life sitting down. Stand up more often and keep trying when faced with adversity. To error is to be human but if we don't learn through our mistakes we are bound to do it again.

Most adolescence strives in it's innocence. It has not learned limitations of the body to give limitations of the mind. I do suggest never stop being a child. It's good advice from the perspective to never limit your imagination of what you are capable of.

</comment><comment><USER6> We can learn so much from watching children: creativity, determination, love, honesty, etc.. A lot of people look at having kids as an obstacle to their careers. I found the opposite to be true. I've learned so much from playing with them. That combined with the desire to set a good example for them makes me push harder in everything I do.

</comment><comment><USER7> I understand that this example is just an anaology, but there is a fine line that the author doesn't acknowledge between trying something new and difficult to stretch your boundaries, and taking too big of a risk that may compromise other aspects of your life. Taking any risks shouldn't be a flip-of-the-coin situation. Yes, the word risk is subjective so hopefully you can see how I interpreted it.

Being reminded of the carefree mindset of a toddler in reference to trying new things was refreshing. As a 24 year old single male, toddlers are the last thing on my mind. There are a lot of little things to forget about when you have no interaction with them.

</comment><comment><USER8> When I was a youngster skiing, we used to say, "If you're not wiping out, you're not trying hard enough."

Fear of failure limits your potential. How many of us have raised our hand and asked a "stupid" question about something we didn't understand in class or a company meeting only to find that most everyone else in the class/meeting was wondering the same thing - but was afraid to ask because they were afraid to look stupid?

<comment><USER9> > How many of us have raised our hand and asked a "stupid" question about > something we didn't understand in class or a company meeting only to find > that most everyone else in the class/meeting was wondering the same thing - > but was afraid to ask because they were afraid to look stupid?

The fear isn't without cause, though. If you _do_ ask these legitimate and useful questions all the time, some people _will_ start thinking of you as "that guy who doesn't know anything". If these people are responsible for pay raise, promotions or other benefits, you will be left out.

It's not a _good_ or acceptable scenario, by any means, but it pays to try to understand the nature of the otherwise irrational fear.

<comment><USER8> If pay is based on performance, the guy asking the "stupid" questions is going to be the one making progress while the colleages who stay ignorant are going to fall behind. In the end, it isn't that the questions are stupid, it's the the asker is afraid of asking key/necessary questions for fear of _looking_ stupid.

Falling back to the skiing anology; the guy who never wipes out never gets very good either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Can someone instantiate an example of when it would be better to fail more? I feel the author's advice is too abstract for me to appreciate.

<comment><USER11> Certainly:

Person A tries to do something, fails, and in order to not fail again givesup.

Person B tries to do the same thing, fails, then tries again and fails, and tries again and fails, each time learning something more until on the 100th time they succeed.

Person A failed once, person B failed a hundred times, person B is better off for they have learned how to succeed rather than given up.

If you avoid doing something for fear of failure you're worse off than if you fail at it until you get it right.

<comment><USER12> That's not a real-world example. It's still pretty abstract.

<comment><USER13> Man invents great fried chicken recipe. Tries to sell it. Fails. Tries to sell it. Fails. Repeats this cycle 1000+ times until eventually someone buys. People call him Colonel Sanders.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Thumbs up.

I think the point to get from this post is to not allow failure stop you from achieving absolute success. Or as they put it during "those" days, try and try until [die] succeed.

<comment><USER15> I second.

Also, I think, the author would like you to keep pushing for whatever it is that you desire. Because really, it's impossible to not succeed when you just go for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The enemy is not failure, it is boredom. With failure you learn, with boredom you don't.</comment>


Ask HN: What would you do with the data sets of Google, FB, et al? - wu-ikkyu Hypothetically, say you had full unfeterred access to the major world data sets as possesed by the likes of Google, FB, Amazon, Twitter, etc., what would you do with them?<p>Curious what interesting and creative use cases HNers could think up besides using the data to sell advertising. <comment><AUTHOR> Ignoring all privacy-related concerns: Build a service to give users a personality analysis. What are their defining character traits, strengths, weaknesses, etc. I'm sure much of that could be read from a dataset of such proportions. I at least find it invaluable to have a good understanding of myself - so a service like that would hopefully benefit lots of other people too.

</comment><comment><USER2> Select a set of people at random every week and ask them to do something nice for someone. The other person has to post the good deed publicly for everyone to see. If the selected person refuses to do it then publicly shame him/her in carefully targeted ads. This is how a revolution begins.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not quite happy about the ethical implications of forcing people to "do nice things" on threat of public shaming... It seems somewhat - hypocritical.

<comment><USER2> Read the the rest of the fantasizing comments and try to find something ethical in having control over the personal data of millions of people.

<comment><AUTHOR> True that. Good point ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> cd / && rm -rf .

<comment><USER3> surprisingly the asterisk is escaped so rm -rf "*" without the quotes is displayed as rm =rf

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'd hand them over to the Chinese. To do something impactful with that amount of data requires resources that nobody else has.

</comment><comment><USER5> Predict the stock market. There has to be alpha in abnormal increases in product-related queries.

<comment><USER6> You can already get that through Google Trends.

<comment><USER5> I doubt that's as timely. I was assuming exclusive, quick access not available to others, especially since the Ask HN prompt said the data was worthy of being sold.</comment></comment></comment>


Avatar Kinect Promises Second-Life-Like Thrills Through Your XBox - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/04/avatar-kinect-promises-second-life-like-thrills-through-your-xbox/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+Techcrunch+(TechCrunch)

<comment><AUTHOR> As cool as it may be, I was actually hope for an Avatar game leveraging the Kinect to the fullest. Damn.</comment>


H - The surprising truth about heroin and addiction - <AUTHOR> http://reason.com/archives/2003/06/01/h <comment><USER2> As someone in the medical field, this article does a very good up job of restoring the balance and correcting some preconceptions regarding substance dependence and addiction - ie. that not all substances are going to lead to lifelong dependence and addiction, and in fact it only occurs to a small percentage. This is established medical fact and is taught in all medical schools now. However I worry that it might make people consider heroin as something that will be okay to have a crack at... There are very real psychosocial dangers of heroin should you end up being dependent and addicted - and the depths of despair that users end up in should not be ignored. No-one can predict ahead of time if you will be okay on it, or if you will follow the stereotypical pattern with which we are familiar with from popular culture.

The article also fails to mention that once addicted, and then having returned their lives to some base level where they are able to seek help (assuming they have not died of an overdose), 90% of patients that start on the methadone program are still on it 10 years later- in Australia the methadone program grows at about 4-6% per year, representing new people coming on and no-one really leaving. Not cool, and not a good lifestyle!

<comment><USER3> A couple comments:

1\. Is chronic methadone usage really that bad? It's never great to be dependent on a substance to function, but if all it takes is a trip to the methadone clinic for your daily dose, but the rest of your life is relatively normal, is that so bad considering the alternative?

2\. I've heard methadone withdrawal is much worse than withdrawal from heroin. Heroin WD symptoms are very intense, but last about a week. Methadone WD symptoms aren't that intense, but they last for months. It take an impressive amount of willpower to put up with being tired, weak and "sick" for months.

<comment><USER2> Chronic methadone usage has a number of problems associated with it, the ones I am most familiar with (From my experience working with D&A specialists) is poor teeth - easily chipped and broken, cavities etc (? related to bone mineral density changes? I am not entirely sure) as well as the significant hassle of going to a methadone clinic and having to deal with the social crowd and second hand drug market that usually exists just outside a hospital dispensary (In aust many pharmacies don't dispense methadone because of the crowd they think it attracts, and those that do charge for it, which can be a couple hundred a week, vs. free from a govt-provided system) However I did meet some people during my time at the methadone clinic that had what you are saying - a steady job, etc - but if you have a job and have to be at a clinic every day, which opens only from 8-1, and only serves 1 at a time, you better have an understanding boss...

with regard to 2, I don't know about methadone withdrawal being worse than heroin; worse here is perhaps relative; you are exactly spot-on regarding the aspects of both of them in terms of length - heroin withdrawal only lasts around a week, and incredibly you can't die from it, although it may feel like you will! \- as an aside, the only drug you can withdraw from that can kill you is Alcohol (Delirium Tremens causing convulsions and death)

\-- EDIT -- This image <http://img546.imageshack.us/img546/9791/422a.jpg> shows the biochemical effect of opiate withdrawal. This image shows enzyme activity levels in a specific part of the brain associated with perception of pain - Pain relief is correlated with the initial decrease in cAMP formation. However within a short period AC increases leading to cAMP returning to normal levels, and thus the return of pain; amplified by sudden withdrawal of the opiate - now AC acts uninhibited, there is a massive increase in cAMP and thus the 'pain' of withdrawal is experienced as physical pain, as real as being cut open

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Addiction is a weird beast. As I understand it is has two parts:

1\. Physiological dependence as evidenced by tolerance and withdrawal symptoms; and

2\. Psychological addiction.

(2) can manifest itself in many ways that go well beyond drugs--gambling, adrenalin junkies, even Farmville.

The danger of some hard drugs is that they can, for some unfortunate segment of the population, be a potent mix of (1) and (2).

Further to (1) is that genes seem to play a role [1]. My personal view is that like many complex "traits", genetics will give certain people a predisposition to addiction.

The real danger of certain hard drugs (IMHO) is that you often don't you're predisposed to something until it's too late. It's almost certainly the exception rather than the norm but (I believe) you can get addicted to certain drugs very very quickly.

You may be able to use them just fine and not get addicted. Or you may not. Is it really worth the risk in case you turn into one of those people who spends the rest of their (much shortened) lives chasing that initial high?

[1]: <http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/addiction/genetics/>

<comment><USER5> And yet, the exact same argument applies to alcohol and alcoholics. So, why take the risk of drinking and becoming an alcoholic? For some people who _are_ genetically predisposed to alcoholism, this is exactly what prevents them from drinking, even though it's still legal. Yet, this small chance of being an alcoholic doesn't prevent anyone else from drinking alcohol, so why should it prevent people from doing drugs? It seems as though we run under the foolish assumption that being an alcoholic "isn't as bad", without realizing just how bad alcoholism can get. Double-standards like this are the entire point of the article.

<comment><USER6> Of course everyone knows that alcoholism is garden variety addiction, and cigarettes are addictive as hell.

Nobody is actually saying that being an alcoholic is any good at all; that's a straw man. But we do have some level of cultural accommodation to and regulation of alcohol. By now we have nearly the same level of facility in dealing with marijuana, which is also a drug of abuse which is not that hard to use safely.

But every compound is unique. Taken in the ways they are almost always taken, alcohol and marijuana are pretty mellow and easy to dose and don't have wild side effects like immediately blinding you or shutting down your lungs if you screw up slightly. But they are not the same as each other and neither is the same as datura or belladonna. Many psychoactives are blow-your-head-off powerful tools that should never be used in the casual, vacuous party-time way that our culture likes to do for the last 60 years or so. And many, it's just prudent never to use at all.

Heroin is (or was) legal for UK hospitals to use in killing pain and I believe in its usefulness for that reason. But I am not going to defend high-dose, party-time heroin use as a reasonable and prudent practice any more than I am going to defend promiscuous, unprotected sex with many HIV+ individuals (which also has a very surprisingly low per-instance probability of doing anything - yet that is exactly how it continues to spread and ruin people's lives).

In any case, saying 'alcoholism is also bad' is certainly not a reason to suppose that heroin addiction is not bad.

<comment><USER7> > Of course everyone knows that alcoholism is garden variety addiction

Really? Try doing a straw poll of everyone over the age of 50 in a British pub at the weekend, see how many of them think alcohol is addictive. Then ask how many of them drink every day.

I think you are repeating the party line boogey man mantra regarding "hard drugs", alcohol does far more harm than any other drug, so how do you draw the line for "hard"? Not based on harm, clearly, not based on lethality, but instead based on... what?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> i think this quote really sums it up, "I try very hard not to use when I'm miserable, because that's what gets me into trouble."

it all depends on your personality. if you can get high and be responsible you can probably cope with using in moderation. unfortunately, i imagine a majority of people are not like that. i know several friends that have very addictive personalities and getting into junk would have ruined their lives.

a lot of it depends on how its taken as well. mainlining vs snorting vs smoking are all significantly different experiences, the amount taken as well. one can function when its only a small amount taken, increase the dose and you'll be lying around not being able or wanting to move.

i've tried everything under the moon though and i consider heroin pretty dangerous. i would not advise anyone to try it unless they have a very strong head. it is also one of the most amazing experiences i have ever had. the singer of sublime thought he could jump in and get out when he wanted, he overdosed, quite a sad story.

<comment><USER9> >i imagine a majority of people are not like that.

The studies cited in the article seem to challenge that assumption.

<comment><USER10> So then the analysis becomes the calculus of whatever benefits there might be as a function of the odds of use 'without serious consequences' whilst considering the potential outliers of serious negative physical and psychological consequences, including death, all the while ignoring the consequences of the realities of the present legal environment, as though disagreeing with the moral rightness of what actually exists is sufficient to make it go away?

<comment><USER9> I'm not sure who you are arguing with. OP said this: "if you can get high and be responsible you can probably cope with using in moderation. unfortunately, i imagine a majority of people are not like that."

The article specifically refutes that. It cites studies that show the majority of heroin users are able to use heroin in moderation.

Also you should edit your post to make it a bit easier to read. It's quite long for just one sentence.

<comment><USER10> I understand papaver's statement is contrary to the article's assertion that the majority of heroin users are able to use in moderation.

My response is challenging the implicit assumption in the article (and in your reply) that the moderate use of heroin is worthwhile in light of the real risks that are entailed in that use. In other words, is the high really worth the chance of becoming dependent and/or possibly dying from overdose? At what point does that risk become so suboptimal that deciding to go forward with a decision to use for the first time (when the individual cannot know for certain how he or she will react) is considered folly?

And I would try to edit that long sentence, but I cannot figure out a way to break it up without losing the intent. If only there were some symbols I could use to express the same thing mathematically in a way that would be more easily understood . . .

<comment><USER9> >My response is challenging the implicit assumption in the article (and in your reply) that the moderate use of heroin is worthwhile in light of the real risks that are entailed in that use.

Oh I don't think that moderate use of heroin is worthwhile--I simply think it is possible.

I don't disagree that for most people the inherent risks of using heroin outweigh the benefits, but that doesn't preclude from believing that the risks of using heroin are still exaggerated.

For instance, I believe that it would be optimal if the majority of 10th graders didn't have sex, but I don't believe we should tell them sex will likely result in death.

Present the actual risks, not exaggerated propaganda.

I'm not sure if you're from the US, but here we have an anti drug program called D.A.R.E where police officers talk to young kids about the dangers of drugs.

The dangers presented are so ridiculously exaggerated, that when kids inevitably learn that smoking marijuana doesn't necessarily lead to death and destruction--they begin to question everything else they learned from the program. Lying in order to persuade children is almost never a good option.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Never tried heroin, but I had to come off oxycodone cold turkey (from about 40mg a day). My pain doctor was trying to slowly bring my down from a peak in the hospital of 150mg of Demerol every 4 hours. It was going too slowly for my patience, so (out of the hospital) I just stopped. The withdrawal sucked-- about 4 days of sweats, shaking, tachycardia, and a real hard time sleeping. I ended up using pot to help get me through it.

But ultimately, despite the physical dependance, it was easy to quit because I wanted to. Most people that fail to get off opiates fail because they don't entirely want to get off. They may think they want off, or think the need to get off, but at some level they still want the drug, and that is the essence of addiction.

<comment><USER6> 40mg oxycodone is on a different level from 300mg of heroin; although the mechanism of action is pretty much the same, you are talking about radically different doses and time courses. As well as a prescribed, regularly taken drug vs. one taken ad lib for pleasure, building up a self-driven habit.

When drawing conclusions about why people have trouble getting off opiates, I'd suggest taking the same care comparing your experience to heroin addiction as you would take comparing your weird dreams to a schizophrenic's psychotic episodes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Of my two friends who started using heroin as teenagers, both destroyed their pancreas by their early thirties. As of now (age 37), one of them has died from an overdose. The other is intermittently homeless.

<comment><USER13> Good friend died of an OD at 26. Three others I know who used to use struggled in life while on it. I know nobody who handled it well.

<comment><USER9> Selection bias can easily account for that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> According to this article[0] the street price of a dose of heroin is $10-$25 dollars. However, that street place is suffering 40-50 times inflation[1]. If heroin were relieved of price inflation, a dose would cost between 20 cents and 63 cents.

Compare that to cigarettes. I once heard from a foreign cigarette manufacture that the cost of manufacture for a pack of cigarettes if 50 cents. A pack of cigarettes contains 20 doses of nicotine and costs around 14 dollars (in New York City, American Spirit Brand). Each dose (cigarette) costs 70 cents inflated and took only two cents to produce. Nicotine suffers from a 35 times price inflation due to legalization.

These look like two industries that are ripe for disruption.

[0]<http://heroin.net/about/how-much-does-heroin-cost/>

[1]<http://reason.com/archives/2003/06/01/h/1>

<comment><USER15> >These look like two industries that are ripe for disruption.

Please go on— how would one disrupt these industries?

<comment><USER6> By competing with piles of incumbents. Who are already comfortable with illegal, armed action outside the free market...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Having struggled with addiction off and on for more than half my life, I would say that the opiates are some of the more enjoyable drugs, though they can be quite difficult to kick, and the legal and financial risks are very high. Cigarettes are far harder to kick. And pot isn't nearly as harmless as most make it out to be, since it literally makes people stupid with regular long- term use.

I kicked everything except cigarettes for nearly 20 years, then went back to some of them during a difficult time. I was hooked again for longer than I intended, and it was much harder to kick again when I was older. (I've been abstinent again for some years now, including cigarettes (after 30 years ... finally!!).)

The vast majority of those who experiment never become addicted. But for those who do, it is very costly, and fatal frequently enough that it is not worth the risk, at least from my minority experience perspective. There are lots of other ways to relieve stress and/or alter your consciousness.

I have a libertarian bent, and think drug laws have mostly accomplished the militarization of the police forces in America. They certainly have not reduced the availability of high-quality drugs. But that does not mean I agree with the idea that using heroin is just some harmless fun to be had from time to time. Reserve that category for things like skydiving or working out in a gym or getting a massage or writing some code.

(What's that? Writing code isn't fun, it's something you have to do? Maybe it's time for you to kick the habit then.)

<comment><USER16> >The vast majority of those who experiment never become addicted. But for those who do, it is very costly, and fatal frequently enough that it is not worth the risk

Are you talking about heroin, or alcohol?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Had a good friend who was educated, healthy and ran his own business. He died from an heroin overdose shortly after selling off most of his business assets to pay for his addiction.

Yes, this is one anecdote. But I bet you my anecdote is a fuck load more common than that of the successful New York business man cited in the article.

<comment><USER17> Selection and availability effects should account for this, though.

<comment><USER13> It might, but there are thousands of people with awful stories about Heroin. Negative effects extend far beyond the individual user, entire communities can be crushed by it's use.

<comment><USER7> Most of the effects that extend beyond the user are more a facet of prohibition than the drug use itself, no?

<comment><USER13> That is another point in entirely. But yes you are quite right. That is true for most drugs and how they are consumed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Disregarding the pro/con heroin issue, this article also illuminates that anti-drug campaigns are having a "facts crisis". If you say "x drug is bad for you", you should also be able to say why and how.

To memory-quote from a pregnancy leaflet we got a few years back:

\- You should avoid drinking alcohol during pregnancy, because it can cause harm to the child's nervous system in the early stages.

\- You should avoid smoking tobacco during pregnancy, because it can cause oxygen deficiency and low muscle mass in the child.

\- You should avoid smoking hashish during pregnancy, because _it is illegal._

I'm not exaggerating - that was literally all the evils of hashish they could list.

<comment><USER19> That's very likely because there are many serious studies about the effects of tobacco and alcohol on the fetus, but not that many for hashish.

<comment><USER18> I agree that's probably why - for all the studies not showing any concrete harm from hashish use, I've yet to meet an avid hashish user who can count to 100 without assistance.

But still, they should at least say _that_. "The effects of hashish on the fetus are not well studied, and doctors heavily recommend abstinence."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think addiction has less to do with the 'drug' and more to do with the person. Be it heroin, pain killers, sex, gambling, smoking, or alcohol segments of society are able to use these in a way that does not interfere with their own life or those of people around them.

There are also people who use these as a means of escape or have limited coping resources. It is not that the cigarette is bad, or the pain killer is bad, or sex is bad.

In saying that, having a methadone dispensary four doors down from where I am sitting, I see first hand the obvious effects of drug addiction and how people struggle to escape it's grasp.

<comment><USER13> Addiction is a physiological dependence. It has much more to do with your body than your personality.

<comment><USER21> sure, physical addiction. But what drove those people to try the drug in the first place? its a set of circumstances - such as poverty, lack of other leasure activities etc.

<comment><USER13> I was responding specifically to... _"I think addiction has less to do with the 'drug' and more to do with the person."_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I wonder how this business man was doing with his teeth, pancreas and kidneys.

I also wonder how his control of heroin would hold should he lose his job or his wife.

Isn't the danger of such drugs in the things they whisper to your ears when you're beholding the abyss?

<comment><USER7> > I wonder how this business man was doing with his teeth, pancreas and > kidneys.

Would uncut, correctly dosed heroin have an effect on those?

<comment><USER10> Where are you going to find uncut heroin? Are you going to join the Taliban?

<comment><USER7> Wasn't planning on it, was just wondering whether uncut H would have those effects or not. If not, then if anything it's an argument in favour of regulation.

<comment><USER10> I had a good friend whose first taste was uncut or nearly uncut China white while he was in Viet Nam. He kicked when he got back stateside in 1970, then used again for a time in the late '70s. He drank a lot and used cocaine at different times, too. He died of liver failure this spring at the ripe age of 62. I tend to believe the alcohol did most of the damage, but he thought the powders contributed a lot to it too. Hard to say without some kind of controlled study on a large population, I suppose. My scientific curiosity doesn't extend far enough to make such a study worth it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Theordore Dalrymple, a prison doctor that writes under a pseudonym, has long maintaind that a) heroin isn't as addictive as people claim, and b) withdrawal symptoms are minor.

<http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/_wsj-poppycock.htm>

</comment><comment><USER23> If you'd like a deeper look into this issue across a wider variety of substances, I highly recommend the book "Saying Yes":

[http://www.amazon.com/Saying-Yes-Defense-Drug- Use/dp/1585422...](http://www.amazon.com/Saying-Yes-Defense-Drug- Use/dp/1585422274)

</comment><comment><USER24> I can't see any good reason why someone would go to so much trouble to defend heroin, other than to assume that this is some kind of PR requested by establishment and/or intelligence groups which profit from heroin grown in places like Afghanistan (or, in the previous era, India).

<comment><USER25> Reason has an agenda they are trying to spread to you. They don't want to live in a world where something the government regulates, actually is dangerous. They want to have their cake and eat it to. "People should be able to destroy their bodies if they want. Oh yeah, and since that is not very convincing to you, here's some statistically insignificant reasons why heroin doesn't hurt you anyway, neener neener. Oh, and now the government can just get rid of the regulations."

Maybe libertarians sometimes feel silly telling people "I know this would destroy people's lives and society would decay but it is immoral for the government to do anything about anything." I don't know why ... :)

<comment><USER9> Libertarians believe that ending drug prohibition would _reduce_ the harm to society--that the problems caused by drug use are exacerbated by prohibition.

You can argue with libertarians all you want about whether you think their proposed actions will help or hurt society, but stop acting like libertarians are monsters who don't care about the welfare of others.

>"I know this would destroy people's lives and society would decay but it is immoral for the government to do anything about anything."

You seem to have fallen for the reddit caricature of libertarians. Again you can argue with the methods, but stop acting like libertarians are heartless bastards. As a group they believe that reducing regulations and limiting government will _help_ society.

<comment><USER25> I haven't fallen for any Reddit caricature, I just actually know what libertarianism is. I'm not saying any libertarians are monsters. Apparently some just want their cake and eat it to. L) Actually, you're wrong, a pure libertarian view has no judgment about whether or not people do better on heroin than people normally think, or that heroin only has bad effects because of the big bad government. It's like libertarianism provides no view about whether duck-typing is a good thing.

It is a convenient ploy to pretend all these things in the article or simply make counter-intuitive statements. I think a libertarian should be more like "Oh, so heroin actually makes you more productive and a better person? Well, I don't really care but the government should stay out of it."

A true libertarian view is that the government should just stay out of it, whether it harms or not. I am not making a judgment about that basic position. I think that people that proclaim to be libertarians don't want to state their true beliefs because they know they are going to be made fun or at least not taken seriously in practical society.

<comment><USER9> You have fallen for the Reddit caricature--you have _no_ idea what you're talking about.

The closest thing you could get to a "pure" libertarian philosophy is that libertarians are against coercion.

Whether that coercion is public or private has no bearing. You seem to have distilled libertarians beliefs down to "government bad"--a clear caricature.

Many (in my experience most) libertarians support the existence of government to provide services they believe the private sector can't--some don't. And yes, Most libertarians want to limit government and supplement it with voluntary association, but only because they believe that is what's best for mankind, not because of some irrational hatred of government.

"Government bad" is not the central tenant of libertarian philosophy, that you think it is.

But you seem to know more about what libertarians think than libertarians themselves. Let's take a look at some of your wording.

>I just actually know what libertarianism is

> I think a libertarian should be...

>A true libertarian view is...

>I think that people that proclaim to be libertarians don't want to state their true beliefs...

The beliefs that fall under the term _libertarianism_ are so varied that libertarians themselves can't agree on a definition--How can you possibly come here and decide what is and isn't a libertarian view? Libertarian beliefs range from anarcho-capitalists to libertarian socialists. Everyone from tea party protesters to Noam Chomsky call themselves libertarians.

Libertarians haven't been able to agree on these issues for decades, so it's very kind of you to come here and clear it up so nicely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> >If heroin really is "so good," why does it have such a tiny share of the illegal drug market? Marijuana is more than 45 times as popular.

One possible reason is that people are squeamish about needles and uncomfortable consuming drugs intravenously.

<comment><USER6> I am not a fan of marijuana (or any street drug) but it is incredibly hard to mess it up. It has a fantastic 'therapeutic index' - a big fat window between the dosages where it starts having useful effects and those where it starts potentially harming you.

(anecdotally I would wonder about impact on lifestyle, but killing yourself with pot would be pretty tough, and expensive)

This is a big contrast from serious downers which put the happy zone right next to the off switch, and build up tolerance...

<comment><USER27> > killing yourself with pot would be pretty tough, and expensive

As far as I know there's not a single death directly caused by the substance yet.

<comment><USER10> Other than those inconvenient people who have died as a direct result of the errors of drivers under the influence of the substance, of course.

<comment><USER27> To be more specific I was talking about dying from pot itself, not from extended effects.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Heroin is so awesome but so profoundly bad for your life. Please be careful with your opiates.

</comment><comment><USER29> Yes, some people can have functional lives on heroin.

But almost none of them stop using, ever.

<comment><USER30> Did you actually read the article? It quoted studies that contradicted exactly what you said. Most studied people stopped using it at some point.</comment></comment>


Recommending music on Spotify with deep learning - <AUTHOR> http://benanne.github.io/2014/08/05/spotify-cnns.html <comment><USER2> This would be awesome. The one problem I've had with Spotify's radio service is only being able to pick up on genres and such. Many times I might like only 1 or 2 bands from a more obscure genre, but spotify radio does not understand this no matter how many songs I downvote.

In fact, my "starred" playlist radio is currently stuck on some kind of 80s metal thing. I have no idea how it got that way, but it refuses to play anything but metal, when that's not really what I like. If I make a copy of my starred playlist and make a radio from the new playlist, it reflects the actual songs at hand..

There's also the matter of unique bands that while fitting into a very wide genre, don't really fit into any widely known sub-genre. Meaning radio for the band is almost useless in many cases. There is the "related bands" bit which helps it a bit, but this only works with popular bands and still is very mismatched often times

<comment><USER3> I've had a similar experience. At one point the radio was 90% Childish Gambino despite only having one of his songs in my playlist

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is all great stuff. But until Spotify fixes some very low hanging fruit problems, such as not playing a song ever again if I click "don't like", I find it hard to believe they will use anything remotely complex as this.

<comment><USER5> Well yes, but it is "just" an internship, in which you can do something else than the company is doing. I hope they eventually will use this work, after fixing the low hanging fruit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great post! It was fun to see 4 tracks in the (first convolutional layer) filter 242 set that I recognized from my own 'ambient' Spotify playlists, and pretty impressive at the topmost layer as well. Loved that approach of looking at a few tracks that represented maximally or average activated filters.

Curious if you think the low-level features learned from the vector_exp latent factors are different from, say, unsupervised learning with sparse autoencoders? For example, are there phonemes associated with Chinese pop or Spanish rap that are learned at a low level, that the network might not learn with "unlabeled" data?

<comment><AUTHOR> I haven't tried it, so I can't say for sure, but my intuition is that learning to predict the latent factors is a much less 'complex' task than learning good features to reconstruct the input (i.e. the spectrograms), in terms of the required capacity of the model.

With a purely unsupervised approach, you are basically wasting capacity on modeling aspects of the data that are relevant for reconstructing the input, but not for solving the task at hand. For example, the model doesn't have to care about precise pitches and timing, because those are not relevant for recommendation (and latent factor prediction) anyway. That means no model capacity is wasted on these things. With a fairly complex task such as this one, I think that probably makes a big difference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is it possible to get my own listing history natively from Spotify?

I'm not interesting in scrobbling to another service, etc. Seems like this should be a well documented and used service from the Spotify API, but as far as I know, it does not exist.

<comment><USER8> I once heard that they don't store that info, though I would love to be proven wrong.

<comment><USER9> They definitely store it, as you can find it on the Play Queue page under the "History" tab.

<comment><USER10> I think that this data is only local to each computer. I use spotify on two computers and the phone: The history tab does not sync between these devices.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> the web api [1] looks like it just lets you play with a users play list.

I agree listing history is more usefull

[1] [https://developer.spotify.com/web- api/](https://developer.spotify.com/web-api/)

</comment><comment><USER12> So what's the activation function on the last layer? Linear?

With the intriguing exception of the Global Temporal Pooling layer, this matches up with a lot of my ideas for music analysis. Nice work!

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, it's linear. This is essentially a regression task and the distribution of the factors across the dataset is pretty close to Gaussian in most cases, so it made sense not to have any nonlinearities there.

As a sidenote, if it weren't for the L2-pooling in the global temporal pooling layer, the network would be completely piecewise linear from input to output :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Great stuff! However, I thought that the Echo Nest tools that they bought were already doing such stuff. If not, what are they currently using for content- based recommendation?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's true, there is quite some overlap with what the Echo Nest are doing, albeit using a different approach. As I mentioned in the post, a lot of different collaborative filtering techniques are currently used together, so the same could be done for content-based techniques.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Nice post - i am not extremely familiar with mel-spectrograms but I was wondering if you have considered using an advanced wavelet transforms as features?

<comment><AUTHOR> I haven't really optimized that part of the pipeline, for now I'm just using what I always use because getting the data and massaging it into the right format is quite time consuming.

There is a lot of knowledge about good time-frequency representations for music analysis among the people who were formerly at The Echno Nest (which was acquired by Spotify a few months ago), so it would definitely be a good idea to apply their knowledge to this and come up with a better input representation. I only have a few weeks left though, so it doesn't have a high priority at the moment :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This web page is using up a lot of processing power and crashes a lot. And the playlists don't work for me at least. It just opens a blank page.

</comment><comment><USER16> How come people with papers on machine learning are doing internships? Is this absolutely necessary before landing a job?

<comment><AUTHOR> I can't really answer this question in general, but I can speak for myself: while it's not something a lot of PhD students do in Belgium (it seems to be more common in the US actually), I felt like it would be a great opportunity to experience what working in industry is like. When I finish my PhD, I'll have to decide whether I want to stay in academia or move to industry, and this internship is hopefully going to help me make that decision.</comment></comment>


My Famicase Exhibition 2020 - <AUTHOR> https://famicase.com/20/index.html <comment><AUTHOR> Famicase is an annual exhibition of Famicom (Japanese NES) cartridges for games that don't exist. It's been going on for many years now and accepts submissions from all over the world. If you click on a cartridge you can see it in larger resolution, along with a description of the game (about half in English and half in Japanese), and details about the creator.

Normally there's a physical exhibit in west Tokyo where you can actually see all the cartridges. That didn't happen this year for obvious reasons, but you can still enjoy all the cartridges online for this year and previous exhibitions.

There's also a game jam called A Game By Its Cover where people make games based on the cartridges. This is not run by the same people who manage the exhibition and is conducated mainly in English, you can find more details on their Twitter:

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

<comment><USER2> What do you mean "games that don't exist"? Are these fake games, demo games or unreleased games?

<comment><AUTHOR> There is no actual game, the label and description is all there is.

Carts that would be an advertisement for an existing game or event are prohibited by the rules; I wouldn't be surprised if some had slipped through but none come to mind.</comment></comment></comment>


Steroids Kill Fertility - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/health-48396071 <comment><USER2> Is there primary literature? I know steroids can damage your fertility, but 90% of users become infertile? That seems really unbelievable to me.

The article makes it sound purely anecdotal</comment>


Dataset of VCs investing in seed and Series A+ rounds - <AUTHOR> https://unicorn-nest.com/dataset/ <comment><USER2> Judging by the 100% match rate with Crunchbase I'm guessing this is an analysis of CB data. It's still valuable, but I'm curious if/how they managed to secure a license to redistribute this publicly. I've spoken to their sales team before and they've very particular about how you can export & share their data.

</comment><comment><USER3> Can't be used for analytical purposes... Welp looks like no one should even download or look at it. You could violate the ToS by looking at the data and drawing conclusions!

<comment><USER4> Feels like someone in legal wanted that written in without appreciating that you don't release datasets just to look pretty. You release datasets so people can look for insights.

Or was PR the point?

<comment><USER5> Looks to me like it is basically a sitemap to their website with some additional info sprinkled in.

I'm not really involved much in VC so I don't know how useful and reliable that information is or how hard would be to come by otherwise?

<comment><USER6> I had the exact same question.

Edit: and judging by the sites robots.txt you could just scrape the information your self and avoid any ToS problems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Shall not be used for any scientific or academic research, in commerce, for > analytical purposes, for or any mailout or information distribution > purposes, as well as for any illegal purpose

Well that's a bummer

<comment><USER8> Not to worry. It says "shall not" instead of "must not."

<comment><USER9> RFC 2119:

> MUST NOT This phrase, or the phrase "SHALL NOT", mean that the definition is > an absolute prohibition of the specification.

[https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2119](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2119)

<comment><USER8> RFC's aren't legal documents. See [https://feltg.com/shall-will-may-or- must/](https://feltg.com/shall-will-may-or-must/) "The only word of obligation from the list above is must – and therefore, the only term connoting strict prohibition is must not. The interpretation of everything else is up for debate."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Today we published the database of funds for free. This is currently the largest, most complete and most relevant dataset in the world. It contains more than 500,000 data cells about 26,000+ venture funds and more than 30,000 employees who make investment decisions, including the rules of their email formation (we cannot share emails directly because of GDPR). We will update investor profiles on our website on a weekly basis, and this database on a quarterly basis.

<comment><USER10> Incredible. What led your company to divulge this valuable data?

<comment><AUTHOR> We don't see any intrinsic value in owning the dataset. We are working on a tool that optimizes the search of investors and saves dozens of hours. We are happy to share the dataset with those entrepreneurs who know what they need and what type of an investor they are searching for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If I want to publish a public visual on some of the most common words in the field "Some of TOP industries" \- does this fall broadly under analytical purposes? I'm not sure I even understand the purpose of releasing the data if it's not to be analyzed. In a commercial manner I understand...

<comment><AUTHOR> we meant prohibition of use in a commercial manner. Will have to adjust the terms accordingly. Thanks for pointing this out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is there not massive irony in publishing "very valuable" something that is then restricted to any practical use? seems to echo the bizarre and tortuous legal world these funds, and their people, live in...

</comment><comment><USER13> wget [https://backend.unicorn-nest.com/investor/csv](https://backend.unicorn- nest.com/investor/csv)

They purport to assert some undefined kind of intellectual property rights over the data using a clickwrap contract. I modified the DOM to say "Disagree" before clicking. In the US, I'd think _Feist_ would protect you from any copyright claims on the data, although I haven't looked at it in detail, so it might be creative.

<comment><USER14> "Your honor, I simply modified the DOM to my liking and now claim ownership of all copyrighted material everywhere!"

<comment><USER13> That does seem to be the reasoning behind clickwrap contracts in general, yes — that by someone clicking on a button or opening an envelope or whatever, they are signaling their agreement to whatever contract terms are in the DOM or written on the paper or whatever. It's absurd, but if you accept it, it seems that you would have to accept that the fact that the button I clicked said "Disagree" means that clicking on it did not signal any such agreement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think this is cool. Not going to bother anyone just yet. For any VCs reading this, do you like this sort of thing or is it intrusive? Feels like your inbox would get powerbombed with shitty dealflow.

<comment><USER16> Most shitty deal flow gets ignored and it doesn't serve founders well. The best approach is to spend time to research the firm and the partner you're looking to seek investment from. You'll get results when what you're building matches what the partner's thesis or perspective is.

<comment><USER15> I agree. It just seems like basically giving out their email addresses is a bridge too far, even though it's not that hard to figure them out.

What if this data was clustered not just by top industries invested in, but by thesis and ethos?

<comment><USER16> Yes agreed. That would be very helpful indeed. Even more so, which partners invested in which companies would also be good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Hit Agree but no idea is 3 is true. If they scraped it, then they do not own it .

1\. Is for information use only

2\. Shall not be used for any scientific or academic research, in commerce, for analytical purposes, for or any mailout or information distribution purposes, as well as for any illegal purpose

3\. Is the property of Unicorn Nest, all rights reserved.

</comment><comment><USER18> I used to find the reviews on thefunded interesting (especially the companies that tried to get them suppressed). Anything recent like that?

</comment><comment><USER19> Very useful. Big job. Thanks Denis

</comment><comment><USER20> Saving this as a binary excel file (.xslb) speeds the spreadsheet up a bit.

</comment><comment><USER21> From the ToS it seems to belong to Disney

</comment><comment><USER22> WOW! Thanks for this!

</comment><comment><USER23> I bet this dataset will be much more popular in investor's network.

</comment><comment><USER24> You guys rock! Thanks

</comment><comment><USER25> For those that want to use this dataset for analytical purposes, research. Use this link:

[https://backend.unicorn-nest.com/investor/csv](https://backend.unicorn- nest.com/investor/csv)

No terms are required to be agreed to if downloading directly.

<comment><USER9> Wait, are you an owner of this?

> No terms are required to be agreed to if downloading directly.

That's not how terms work... Downloading something from a deep link doesn't mean it's automatically WTFPL. (Unless you're an owner and you say so, of course.)

<comment><USER25> Not the owner.

Those terms were only presented and asked if you agree if you went through the landing page. This provides a direct link. Follow local laws.

<comment><USER26> This doesn't seem to hold up at all. What about using bots to scrape a page, they dont see the EULA but still can violate licenses.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


GLAVE: A debugger for the Vulkan API - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=60&v=miZmas6sGqM

<comment><AUTHOR> It appears to have some inspiration from VOGL [https://github.com/ValveSoftware](https://github.com/ValveSoftware) which is Valve's OpenGL debugger.</comment>


My Experiment Opting Out of Big Data Made Me Look Like a Criminal - <AUTHOR> http://time.com/83200/privacy-internet-big-data-opt-out/
<comment><USER2> Just to be clear, the store selling gift cards had a signed out stating that they will report excessive number of cash transactions to the authorities because they are forced to by FinCEN and other U.S. regulatory bodies. If a merchant fails to report cash gift card sells over the legal limit per day, they can be criminally prosecuted and put in jail.

So please don't blame the merchants for this. I can assure you that the merchant doesn't care if someone wants to pay in cash. In fact, they prefer it usually (e.g., cash discounts at gas stations).

What people see as "corporate oppression" is quite often government oppression.

Personally, I think both corporations and multinational corporations are engaged in this kind of misbehavior. Indeed, the line between powerful politicians and powerful corporate leaders blurs more and more each passing year.

If each side of the political spectrum continues to ignore the fact that both government and large corporations are at fault here, things will never get better.

<comment><USER3> The FinCEN threshold is $10000. The article mentioned buying enough Amazon gift cards to buy a stroller. The most expensive stroller I could find on Amazon in a minute was less than $600. So I don't think we can blame the government in this particular case. Probably just a lazy clerk who didn't feel like selling that many gift cards.

<comment><USER2> First, the $10,000 doesn't apply to "closed-loop" gift cards, like Visa or MasterCard gift cards, which is likely what the OP may have been looking to buy (although it's possible she was looking for Amazon gift cards). In the case of closed-loop cards, the limit is $2000 a day, not $10,000.

Second, that's a 10,000 limit per day, not per purchase.

Third, as someone else indicated, no clerk said anything to the OP. She just noticed the sign saying that large gift card purchases would be reported to the authorities, which would make me uneasy as well (how much is "large"? to what authorities?).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I loved this bit:

> For example, seven months in, my uncle sent me a Facebook message, > congratulating me on my pregnancy. My response was downright rude: I deleted > the thread and unfriended him immediately. When I emailed to ask why he did > it, he explained, "I didn't put it on your wall." Another family member who > reached out on Facebook chat a few weeks later exclaimed, "I didn't know > that a private message wasn't private!"

Ordinary people have _no idea_ what they're actually trading for "free" Facebook, "free" Google, "free" Chrome, etc. Heck, I'm technologically savvy and I don't really understand either.

<comment><USER5> I'd be interested in knowing what Facebook's privacy policies are regarding private messages. Are they data mined? Did the congrats on the baby message result in baby related advertising?

<comment><USER6> This would be an amazing way to troll your friends (or people you hate).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> (Karma burning time. Summary: The only way to not swallow the Blue Pill is to make powers that be use trusted execution made by and for the people. Unfortunately: Not going to happen.)

 _It's time for a frank public discussion about how to make personal information privacy not just a series of check boxes but a basic human right, both online and off._

The problem is, is that there is no suitable infrastructure for guaranteeing such a right, and there is no one everyone trusts enough to implement it. To have this in actuality, we really need some sort of trusted execution environment. Unfortunately, this is the same thing as DRM, and we already know how manufacturers and big software companies might collude with the authorities to turn this against us.

In a way, this is a _win-win for totalitarianism, big-data style._ If the powers that be can implement DRM as they want, they control computing from the substrate-up and we've all swallowed the Blue Pill. However if the public has a vehement reaction against DRM, then the population is effectively inoculated against implementing such tools for themselves so they can hold authorities and website operators to account. Either way, the oligarchs/equity lords/0.01% win.

If you look at the activities of groups like the IRA, resistance has relied on the power of social networks in the oppressed population. Now, online social networks have embedded the structure of people's social networks in big data itself. That is a lot of aggregated power. Power corrupts.

EDIT: After engaging in the discussion below, I'll bend my position a bit. Such infrastructure would be nice (where "nice" = "really the only sane way to do it") but a social and legal framework to set expectations might be the pragmatic thing to go after first.

<comment><USER8> This is a totally false and a distraction. We don't need a trusted execution environment. We just need rights enshrined in law.

Rights do not have to be _guaranteed_ by bulletproof technology in order to be valuable. We might not be able to guarantee that corporations never overstep the bounds we set, but the threat of a lawsuit can be a powerful disincentive.

<comment><USER7> _This is a totally false and a distraction. We don 't need a trusted execution environment. We just need rights enshrined in law._

From a certain POV, this is correct, and I don't disagree with the general aim.

 _Rights do not have to be guaranteed by bulletproof technology in order to be valuable._

Entirely correct. What's of more concern is that we not only have a general public, but an "expert" population of programmers and other technical workers that doesn't make decisions about these things in an informed rational way. This is why I get on the soapbox in support of trusted execution environments and point out how they can be used against the authorities.

 _the threat of a lawsuit can be a powerful disincentive._

But I would argue that the "trusting trust" problem encompasses not only privacy and security, but political power as well. When transparency itself is strictly voluntary and comes into competition with the temptation of money and great power, we've seen that such a deterrent loses some of its potency. The threat of a lawsuit also doesn't work as well against certain governments in certain contexts.

You may well be right that technology is a distraction, for now. The social and legal framework might be the thing to establish first.

<comment><USER8> Sure - some kind of trusted execution environment (which I would argue we don't understand well yet) would be an ideal solution.

But... a trusted execution environment would be no use if it wasn't mandated, so it is secondary to having rights enshrined in law.

And yes, there is a trust problem. But I think it would be very difficult to operate a massive data collection empire on the scale of Google or Facebook without at least one whistleblower exposing it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Every time there is a debate about the intrusiveness of Google, or Facebook, there is a chorus of people around here saying "If you don't like it, don't use it" in defense of some kind of capitalist or libertarian ideal.

Hopefully this article helps to put the lie to that kind of thinking, and we see this pervasive intrusion for what it is: corporate oppression; the abuse of the corporate power over individuals.

<comment><USER9> Let me play devil's advocate here:

So what? Apart from an ideological view on "privacy is good mmkay", how exactly does it hinder your life if Google knows that you are pregnant, or that if Facebook knows that you are planning up a party for a friend? Or that if company X knows you are anticipating movie Y?

What concrete things do I _gain_ from opting out? What do I lose? How does it actually _affect my life_?

Edit: It's weird to receive downvotes for this as I'd assume a comment like this _exactly_ contributes to the discussion about the topic at hand.

<comment><USER10> Personally, if I have to watch 3 ads on Hulu before my video, I'd rather them be for things I might want to buy than things I will never buy.

<comment><USER11> Why are you telling us that? It was never your choice to make. And _that 's_ the problem.

<comment><USER10> My point is that in this case I actually do get some value from losing privacy.

I could just watch regular TV instead of Hulu. Those ads are just targeted broadly by the viewership of a particular show or time-slot.

<comment><USER8> This tradeoff was forced on you.

<comment><USER12> Piracy is ALWAYS an option. And piracy guarantees privacy in viewing. It doesn't go into RedBox's DB, nor does Netflix see what I watch, and nor does Hulu, nor even YouTube/Google. Nor will those Internet-bluray players tattle what I've seen.

And there's no ads, ever.

And I can watch when I want, how I want.

Better yet, call it Rights-maintained Media.

<comment><USER13> > piracy guarantees privacy in viewing

It does nothing of the sort; it only makes it less likely you'll get a targeted ad, and more likely you'll get a nasty letter from your ISP instead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Digging through the other pieces of the story to the headline nugget, we find this: """ But then my husband headed to our local corner store to buy enough gift cards to afford a stroller listed on Amazon. There, a warning sign behind the cashier informed him that the store "reserves the right to limit the daily amount of prepaid card purchases and has an obligation to report excessive transactions to the authorities." """

So, it's an interesting point, And it's worth noting that we are leaning very heavily in the direction of assuming that people who want to be anonymous are doing so for criminal reasons. This could be partially mitigated, perhaps, if there were a way to give cash to Amazon (but it's probably the case that large cash transactions would be looked upon with the same scrutiny).

<comment><USER15> It's long been a trope of dystopian (even utopian! see also: gold pressed latinum in Star Trek) scifi that cash is relegated to the shadier transactions, with legitimate transactions happening in the digital realm.

<comment><USER16> That's not science fiction; it's anthropology (see: Graeber2011 ;-)). Most societies have always seen fit to use some form of credit (or other "virtual money") for more trustworthy transactions while employing "cold, hard cash" for more transactions between individuals with more transient, uncaring, insecure relations (which of course includes criminals).

The problem is that "trustworthy" has come to mean "watched over by our corporate overlords".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The author of this editorial recently presented the material at the Theorizing the Web conference. A recording and details are available at [http://mashable.com/2014/04/26/big-data- pregnancy/](http://mashable.com/2014/04/26/big-data-pregnancy/) . Three people submitted that latter link to HN (see [https://hn.algolia.com/?q=pregnant#!/story/forever/prefix/0/...](https://hn.algolia.com/?q=pregnant#!/story/forever/prefix/0/%22pregnancy%20from%20big%20data%22) ) but there have been no comments.

<comment><USER18> In addition to Tor, I didn't see in the article, did she use Ghostery or any other browser privacy plug-ins?

<comment><USER19> Ghostery phones home, doesn't it?

<comment><USER20> Ô.Ô

I thought it just checked for updates. Does it really phone home?

Damn, is it really impossible to be anonymous in today's world without appearing to be a criminal?

<comment><USER21> Disconnect[0] is often touted as a more privacy conscious alternative. I haven't investigated it thoroughly, but it's open source so you can look into it yourself pretty easily.

[0] [https://disconnect.me](https://disconnect.me)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> We have significantly more privacy in the modern era than people did hundreds of years ago. Most of us live in cities large enough that no one will know that you've been to the doctor, what you bought from the butcher or who you spend your time hanging out with. If you think it's easy for people to find out that someone is pregnant now, it was absolutely effortless in 1714. It's common for people to spend days commuting to work and going out to eat and socialize without running into anyone that they know. In the past there was almost no privacy for anyone. People lived in a world comprised of dozens of people and saw many of them every day.

Are we moving into a scary new era of data collection and prediction, or cycling back to an old world where it's hard to keep secrets because everyone knows everyone else? Big Data is no more of a threat to privacy than Small Town used to be. But in modern society we have the option to opt out. Or at the very least, use Tor or private browsing and avoid social media. We have the ability to live with a level of anonymity that our ancestors would deeply envy. The only thing stopping us is our own desire to participate in services and online communities designed specifically to collect and broadcast information about ourselves.

Why do we do it? Because we really like it. Our cultural roots lie in societies where supposed secrets traveled fast and everyone knew if someone was pregnant or gay or searching for information about strange topics. Even when we're able to hide ourselves in crowds of strangers we invent new ways to connect to each other and broadcast our statuses and purchase habits to as many people as possible. Everything old is new again, and instead of trying to hide on social media we should focus on figuring out how to take advantage of new technology to give ourselves the level of privacy that we want. Modern data collection presents challenges, but challenges that we can overcome to create a world that is better than the one we came from.

<comment><USER23> Uh, did you read the whole article? The author's point was you can't opt out and not seem like a criminal. This was because if you wanted to stay anonymous online and actually buy things, you need to purchase gift cards with cash. The place she went (or her husband did) to purchase multiple gift cards had a sign that said something like they're watching people that buy a lot of gift cards.

You're response sounds more like a marketing brochure to me. While I love tech and am in the tech world, the fact is, mine and everyone's private info is out there for anyone to buy and many companies to sell. Sure, we can make tools (some day) to put the equation in our favor, but this is not that day. Simply saying we can use Tor/private browsing/avoid social media is only part of it. Actually buying things not in cash leaves a trail and that info is sold to whomever pays.

Regardless if you could easily find out in the 1700's if someone was pregnant, the article was not a commentary on the past. It was about opting out in the present, which is pretty much impossible if you use any kind of connected technology in your daily life. Be it your atm/credit card, phone, internet connection - they all leave trails.

Sure, in the 1700's a butcher would see your face and maybe remember it. Maybe retain enough info to track you down if need be. But now, it's more than absolute. The more everything becomes digitized, the less anyone can be anonymous. You'd have to really be into the spy mindset to cover your tracks and do the things that would need to be done to get false ids, etc. And I don't know how much that would even help as machine learning and face recognition (coupled with ccd's everywhere) get better and could probably link up those fake ids.

Honestly, I don't care much because I'm not a very important or interesting person. So in a sense that way, I have some anonymity. And I love tech (still). Interesting experiment from the author, but we've already crossed the privacy line and there's no going back or opting out.

<comment><USER24> > The author's point was you can't opt out and not seem like a criminal.

But why is that? Let's face it, if you care _very deeply_ about INFOSEC then you're probably someone who _actually_ has something to hide from people (criminals, military, etc.), or someone who cares about the principle of the matter.

If you're the latter then you'll correlate yourself with the former whether you like it or not, and while we all agree that correlation is not causation, it is something that might get you examined at the very least.

Remember, police can't psychically predict who among the population has actually committed a crime or not when it happens, so they have to do "good old fashioned police work" (as I've seen it described in NSA threads) to investigate suspicious activity and verify it's innocuous, to determine who in a possible set of people actually committed a given crime, etc.

By behaving in almost the same fashion as actual criminals you make it that much harder to be discriminated _out_ of the "possibly criminal" set early in the course of an investigation.

In this case the only thing she mentioned that seemed criminal was converting cash to gift cards to shop anonymously on Amazon — exactly the kind of thing a criminal would _actually_ need to do to procure materials for a crime, if they wished.

Is this unfortunate? Absolutely! But so are many other tradeoffs society makes, even down to waiting at a red light even when the intersection is actually clear. If it were easy to separate criminal activity from other activity we would hardly need police or forensics.

<comment><USER25> I just realized that the same argument could be made regarding gun control.

> But why is that? Let's face it, if you care very deeply about GUNS then > you're probably someone who actually has to protect from people (criminals, > military, etc.), or someone who cares about the principle of the matter.

I think it all boils down to the amount of trust we put in our governments. Both guns and privacy are a protective measures against corrupt governments. In todays world privacy is probably a magnitude more important and also associated with lesser drawbacks than guns, as it would be impossible to organize resistance while being under todays surveillance.

<comment><USER24> Yeah, there are a lot of parallels. But for every person who is genuinely concerned with government overreach and that alone, I see 50 more Bundys who use government as rhetoric to play up anti-social/selfish ends.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I prefer to go the opposite route. When any of my close friends is having a baby I sign up for all the baby clubs with approximately the same due date, then hand over all the free samples and good coupons to the real expectant parents. Some of our friends and family did this when my ex-wife and I were having our daughter, it saved us a bundle.

</comment><comment><USER26> This was an interesting article, but isn't the title begging the question? Unless I missed something, no one made any criminal charges, or even raised any suspicion regarding the author's behavior.

<comment><USER27> When trying to pay cash for several pre-paid cards in order to place an anonymous online order for a stroller on Amazon, the transaction was rejected and possibly reported to the authorities for suspicious behavior.

<comment><USER28> > But then my husband headed to our local corner store to buy enough gift > cards to afford a stroller listed on Amazon. There, a warning sign behind > the cashier informed him that the store "reserves the right to limit the > daily amount of prepaid card purchases and has an obligation to report > excessive transactions to the authorities."

All the article says is that there was a sign on the wall. I didn't get the impression it stopped them.

<comment><USER29> Precisely. As a diehard paranoid, I wanted to sympathize with the writer, but I felt betrayed.

 _Nothing actually happened_. They saw a sign. So the writer gives the impression of being an alarmist worry-wart.

Could this article have been selected for publication so as to fuel the idea that people who are worried are merely overly anxious? The Snowden papers proved that government organizations have been feeding us confusing information to sway public opinion toward obedience to central authority. This may be a good example of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Rather than fear being 'outed' by her uncle on Facebook whilst pregnant, she would have been better deactivating or 'deleting' her Facebook account. Nobody could have tagged her or posted anything on her wall, nor sent her private messages.

You don't dance with the devil if you intend to hide from him.

<comment><USER31> Facebook already maintains placeholder "Ghost User Accounts" for possible future members, so I see no reason that they wouldn't continue to track associations with an inactive account too.

<comment><USER30> Indeed, but for 9 months of pregnancy she still wouldn't have feared being outed by her Facebook contacts.

Facebook 'delete' is in itself an oxymoron. I believe that they logically delete everything, and then everything gets analysed and archived for posterity.

As I was in the process of deleting my Facebook account last year I noted several bugs that suggested that the counts of checkins and photos did not tally with the things I had deleted. I.e. Everything.

I have some screenshots somewhere on imgur I should dig out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I wonder if rather than focusing on completely opting out, if the author had tried a deliberate confusion strategy in addition to minimizing her digital footprint would she have been "more" successful? (I recognize the difficulty in measuring "successful" outcomes with this metric).

One of the "dirty" secrets of Big data is that for the Analytics to work is that the data has to be "prepped". How about deliberately using different names, genders, etc etc in social media, stores (first abbreviation, maiden name etc).

Once the data trail gets muddy enough, you cannot track anything.

Hmmm Might even be an "app" idea in this :)

<comment><USER33> My mother has done this her entire life, and passed the habit down to me. She alternates between her married name (from a 35 year old divorce) and her maiden name and both, hyphenated and unhyphenated, intentionally typos when she can get away with it, uses a lot of off-by-1-or-2 for numbers in registration profiles, old addresses, and alternately combines and separates her first and middle names (because of her particular name, it works.)

She's also a data person professionally, and once worked at Acxiom. At the time, when she checked into what they had on her, she found that Acxiom thought she was no fewer than seven people, some of them male:)

<comment><USER34> I find it weird that a person so concerned w/ her privacy would work for Acxiom; did she ever mention how she squared that?

<comment><USER33> There's no contradiction between those two things that I'm aware of. All jobs and all purchases under capitalism play their part in the general oppression of the working class:)

There is the day to day disgust with how directly what you're doing enforces the status quo - but alternatively, there aren't a lot of good (or morally good) computer jobs in Arkansas; ask a Wal-Mart employee.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> People should be suing these companies, like in the example with Target. She should've sued Target for that. Eventually they'll learn their lesson. Look at Google, they're already backtracked on some privacy invasion stuff because of some recent lawsuits.

</comment><comment><USER36> I am not putting a value judgement on big data, but I don't think the author's experiment is true to her objective. Instead of testing how easy it would be to opt out of using Facebook or Amazon, she tried to hide something from Facebook and Amazon. She is basically trying to get the advantage of digital life without the downsides. The experiment would have been much easier (and closer to the normal opt out suggestions) if she quit Facebook and made her baby purchases in person from brick and mortar stores with cash. Sure that is an incovenience, but isn't nearly as much trouble as trying to censor your communications with everyone online or trying to launder your baby purchases through multiple anonymous payment methods.

<comment><USER8> The 'downsides' as you put it are not inherent in the digital lifestyle.

The whole point of the article was to see whether it was possible to do this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Is there a better way to purchase prepaid credit cards (perhaps with BTC, check, cash, etc) that isn't likely to be reported?

<comment><USER38> As far as I know, gift card stores like Gyft.com don't require personal information and you can pay with BTC. For example, in the case of the author, she would buy a Target gift card with BTC, then check out at the register with her smartphone.

The limit is $200 per gift card, so it's not very low for normal use. I do this with Amazon and it's pretty easy.

<comment> vertex-four Getting BTC without an audit trail is in the first place fairly difficult, especially if you're not used to having to watch out for scams.

<comment><USER38> Well, being realistic, I doubt that most exchanges like Bitstamp are sharing their customer's info with other companies, so the original issue that the author was talking about doesn't really apply here.

If you're paranoid, you can use Local Bitcoins or the Mycelium Local Trader app to do in person transactions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> The story about Target outing the pregnant high-schooler has circulated for some time now, but has it ever been verified? I don't doubt Target's capability to discover if a woman is pregnant, but the citation given [1] sounds a bit too anecdotal (and isolated) for my taste. Are there more cases of this happening? Any other sources?

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping- habits.h...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping- habits.html?pagewanted=7&_r=3&hp&adxnnlx=1398981417-ya9Av3whlYn03kadQuwzMw)

</comment><comment><USER40> She could've just done this instead:

1\. Delete Facebook account.

2\. Use cashier checks.

</comment><comment><USER41> Her experiment while interesting does not demonstrate that all of her elaborate steps were even necessary, just that she put a ton of work into doing this and was successful, who knows how much of that work was needed.

Also no where in her article does she reference someone else thinking she looked like a criminal. Yes there was the sign at the store about gift cards but nothing about the cashier caring at all. She alternates between 'look like a criminal' and 'feel like a criminal' while I agree she might of felt like quite a badass criminal using tor and paying for everything in cash and gift cards, the article in no way indicates others thought she looked like a criminal.

It does however show that she negatively views people who perform those type of actions, since she views them as actions that make her feel like a criminal; and, as with many people, views criminals negatively.

Also if you are going to have to go buy the gift cards to use at Amazon in the first place? Why even shop at Amazon? Why not go to your local Babies R Us (or wherever people buy strollers and such) and buy your items with cash there. The convenience of Amazon seems lost on me when I have to go to a physical store prior to ordering something on Amazon.

</comment><comment><USER42> Just for illustration, in Europe I usually carry around equivalent of $700 in cash for petrol and other daily expenses. Less hassle and practically no risk of being robbed. But yes, most people here prefer credit cards.

<comment><USER17> I think there's a large regional variation. That is, in Germany and Switzerland, the small hotels I've stayed at want payment in cash, and often don't accept credit cards. See [http://www.thestar.com/business/2012/07/27/germanys_tough_ba...](http://www.thestar.com/business/2012/07/27/germanys_tough_bailout_stance_rooted_in_cash_only_culture.html) for example, which describes how IKEA in Stockholm accepts credit/debit cards, but not IKEA in Berlin, which is cash only.

In Germany one time I bought a camera at the electronics store Saturn. Again, the store didn't take a card, though there was an ATM in the lobby so I could draw the cash for it. This pro-cash view is also why Germany pushed for the 500 EUR bill. Apparently many people don't trust the banks, and prefer to keep their wealth in cash.

In the UK I've found that the taxis basically don't deal with credit cards, while in Sweden, every taxi supports it. Most Swedish banks are trying to get away from dealing in cash.

And I spent a week in Iceland without ever having Icelandic money. Even the local corner stores took my debit card.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Fantastic story. I've been wondering if there is a truly private, easy to use chat. Something cryptographically secure, but easy enough that I could get other family members and friends to use it.

<comment><USER43> I've read that Wickr is working on a desktop client, but it doesn't exist yet.

The lack of password recovery could be an issue for some people.

<comment><USER19> Yeah, I had a hard enough time getting family to update their passwords after Heartbleed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> so, she did have something to hide after all. One more example that the rule is working

</comment><comment><USER45> An excellent use case for Bitcoin. We need anonymous payments.

<comment><USER46> The assumption that bitcoin is anonymous isn't really a great one. It's _pseudonymous_ at the very least, but as it's possible to track every transaction ever made (even moreso than cash transactions), it's not a trivial matter for typical users to anonymize their transactions.

Even if Bitcoin (and tumblers) became ubiquitous, the legal frameworks that exist to handle cash transactions (e.g. making an unusually large amount of cash purchases of gift cards, moving an unusually large amount of money across the border, etc.) will be revised to include bitcoin, with the result that using BTC in the way that people seem to think it's destined for will become, if not illegal, then at the very least highly suspect.

Ideally, we should be fixing the broken systems that are in place, rather than trying to concoct technology to try to work around it (which can then just be regulated/criminalized anyway).

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwWMrDbvpzE&feature=share](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwWMrDbvpzE&feature=share)

</comment><comment><USER48> I don't get the story that pregnant women are such a valuable demographic that marketers would spend so much money trying to give them coupons.

<comment><USER49> You must not have any children. :-)

When a child comes, there are all kinds of new expenses: diapers, formula, clothes, pediatricians, strollers, cribs, baby monitors, toys. . . .

Personally though, I'm surprised the canonical example isn't buying a new home. I bought my first home two months ago, and it seems like every day in the mail I get two offers for life insurance, another for lawn care, and another for furniture/blinds. But I'm not seeing a deluge of online ads for those things. Maybe it's an opportunity?

<comment><USER50> But this only applies for the first child, when the parents are the most nervous about living up to expectations. By the second or third child, they're like: "I get onesies at Goodwill and garage sales since they're cheaper and they'll only be in it for a couple of months before the knees are worn-out, or they've outgrown it." and "Pack-n-play? Those are expensive - I just take a blanket along for them to play on. Takes less room in the car and easier to clean."

<comment><USER48> I think it's clear that this is about gathering data, not selling anything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Amusing occurrance of spell-checker-failure:

 _While it has a reputation for facilitating elicit activities..._

Did the author misspell "illicit" in such a way that the spell checker changed it to "elicit", or did she write "elicit" originally? It makes a difference in how I view this unknown-to-me-author's credibility.

<comment><USER52> I noticed this, too. I think it speaks less of spell checkers and more about Time's ability to do copy-editing.

If I submitted a piece to a major outlet such as this, I would do so in full faith that they would assign at least one person to read through it and copy- edit it before publication. Apparently, Time is not a sufficiently reputable institution of journalism to believe in doing this, or at least is unwilling to spend enough money to have it done by competent people.

EDIT: As for Janet's credibility, I can speak to it personally, having spent a year with her working down the hall from my office. Probably the coolest stuff she's done relates to how decisions are made in big teams of scientists (she studied the sociology of scientists running some Mars rover missions: [http://janet.vertesi.com/projects/social-life- spacecraft](http://janet.vertesi.com/projects/social-life-spacecraft)).</comment></comment>


How To: Install NginX, PHP-FPM, MySQL, PHP 5.3.3 & WordPress on Ubuntu - <AUTHOR> http://tutspundit.com/howto-install-nginx-php-fpm-mysql-php533-wordpress-ubuntu-part-1/

<comment><USER2> It's getting ridiculously easy to install an NginX environment. I distinctly remember hours upon hours of hunting down libraries and compiler problems, for a working combination of NginX/PHP/PHP-FPM and so on. Then I accidentally hosed my long-running EC2 instance two moths ago and discovered that a few "yum install"s can now do the job in a matter of minutes (essentially replace all apt-get from this tutorial with yum).</comment>


Geohash: text representation allows you to sort locations by proximity - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geohash <comment><USER2> If you like this stuff, have a look at Healpix: [http://healpix.sourceforge.net/](http://healpix.sourceforge.net/) It splits sphere into pixels each with separate number. It is sort of fast hashing for spherical purposes in astronomy. It does not require trigonometric operations and is very fast.

</comment><comment><USER3> There is another free library to do that, among other things, by Google. It's not well known, but it was used all over the place internally (at least by the geo team).

[https://code.google.com/p/s2-geometry- library/](https://code.google.com/p/s2-geometry-library/)

The key difference with geohash is that it uses a Hilbert curve instead of a z-curve and it projects the world in a cube instead of using directly cartesian coordinates.

</comment><comment><USER4> It only attempts to "allow you to sort locations by proximity", as explained in the article.

</comment><comment><USER5> Or to get rid of fault lines you can store two geohashes - the second one shifted so between the two, you can find many more "near points".

That said, geohashes like this are bad because they rely on lat/long without normalizing for distance first

</comment><comment><USER6> When the prefix (or infix) doesn't match for something that is close it looks like the prefixes are simply inverted. So 10000 and 01111 are obviously close. I haven't verified.

</comment><comment><USER7> Ruby implementation: [https://github.com/davetroy/geohash](https://github.com/davetroy/geohash)

<comment><USER8> Why would you link this?

It wraps around a java jar file. I can't study the code to see how it's implemented.

<comment><USER9> I believe by default it uses the C implementation which you can read here: [https://github.com/davetroy/geohash/blob/master/ext/geohash_...](https://github.com/davetroy/geohash/blob/master/ext/geohash_native.c)</comment></comment></comment>