What happens to a tiny town when Walmart disappears - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/02/05/what-happens-to-a-tiny-town-when-walmart-disappears/ <comment><USER2> The title could be changed to: "What happens to thousands of tiny towns when the big business that brought the town into existence stops making money".

Old mining and factory towns are extremely sad. When the region stops generating the value that drove its initial growth, the result is an endless downward spiral to widespread poverty. Lots of former workers are unable to make a transition to another job. The only real money left is in the retirement accounts of those who "made it" before the layoffs, and the only jobs available are in the service industry catering to these folks. That money and those jobs eventually fade away. The youngest and most capable workers see the writing on the wall and get out of Dodge. Others hang on as long as they possibly can.

Of course Wal-Mart can't make a profit selling a full-size warehouse full of cheap goods in an area like this. Nobody can. But now that they're gone, somebody will succeed with a small, overpriced grocery store that pays local teenagers minimum wage and has a produce section the size of my bathroom. And even that store will go downhill over time as the people with money continue to pass away and move out.

I wish I knew the solution to this problem.

<comment><USER3> I often wonder, when driving through remote rural communities, how the economics work. I expect what you wrote is generally the case. Retired people with some savings and/or pensions, social security, etc. plus a minimal service economy for those people.

<comment><USER4> People travel distances that would be unimaginable for some of us to get to work. 30-40 miles one way is not terribly rare. Or they spend the week living at the job site, and go home for the weekends.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure 30-40 miles one way is terribly unusual even in relatively urbanized coastal areas :-) But I agree with your basic point. I'm not personally familiar with how shifts typically work with oil drilling on land, but when I was working in the offshore drilling industry it was week-on/week- off in the Gulf and many of the workers came significant distances--often from rural towns in Louisiana, Mississippi, or Alabama.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The article points out that in 95% of cases, there's another Walmart within 10 miles of the one they're closing. It seems like the Post is choosing the most extreme case it could find.

The article also points out that the town had already shut down before Walmart had come in. But it still seems to take the angry-corporate-greed angle. This wasn't a place where Walmart came in and displaced businesses. This is where Walmart came in where there had been nothing.

People always like to play the "there's no way this isn't making money" card like companies like to close things that make money.

The article also doesn't really talk about how most of the closures are really Walmart Express stores. If BestBuy decided to end BestBuy Mobile, it's more a decision about the format than locations.

Walmart is closing 12 Supercenters and 6 regular Walmarts. The other closings are other formats. For example, Walmart is killing off their Express stores which number 102. The second most closings is for the Neighborhood Markets which (from the map) are in urban areas where people will have other options.

From a PR perspective, Walmart should have announced that it was killing off the Express concept independent of any other closings. Close those now. Then, over the next 18 months, close a single Walmart each month. Saying that you don't like the Express concept is just a business direction. Closing a Walmart each month isn't national news. And just trudge along with some of the rest. By closing 154 all at once, it becomes news and it becomes "Walmarts" that are being closed when the vast majority are Walmart Express stores that were an experiment started in 2011. The majority of the locations being closed are an experiment where Walmart tried to create a CVS-sized store.

It's going to be crappy for a few places. But to be fair to Walmart, the residents of Kimball say that all the other shops had left before Walmart even came in. Big numbers make for news and Walmart should have been smarter and shuttered the Express stores independent of any real Walmart closings. If they had shuttered 102 Express locations and then just closed a Walmart here and there, people wouldn't make news out of it because it wouldn't be big numbers. There would be news about how Walmart can't do smaller-format stores, but that's a very different story from the Post article. The real story here is that Walmart didn't manage the closings in a PR-friendly way.

<comment><USER6> It depends on Walmart's overall motivation.

Maybe they don't care about the short-term bad PR.

Maybe they figure they actually benefit from some PR that complains about the bad things that happen to the local economy when Walmarts close. That will help them in negotiating with other towns and employees/unions elsewhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> My town has about 8k people, and the local Walmart services our tiny micro- metro of about 15k people.

If Walmart vanished, almost no one in town would miss it because everyone complains about how high the prices are compared to local stores, and how little there is on store shelves; and what local stores can't sell us, we'd just order online.

If someone showed up with a time machine, and told me Walmart went out of business 10-15 years from now, I'd believe it. If all Walmarts are mismanaged as badly as this one, how does that company even exist?

The only thing I go there now for is paper towels and toilet paper and cat litter. Everything else I use, they either don't carry, or I can get cheaper elsewhere.

<comment><USER8> > If Walmart vanished, almost no one in town would miss it because everyone > complains about how high the prices are compared to local stores, and how > little there is on store shelves; and what local stores can't sell us, we'd > just order online.

I've read a lot of complaints about Walmart, but never once about how they are expensive. Fascinating.

<comment><USER7> Apparently it isn't unique, it is a product of Walmart corporate interference into how each store individually operates.

Basically, no one, not even the Store Manager, has much flexibility in store pricing. Walmart corporate punishes stores by taking unapproved differences in pricing out of the store budget, and stores are all generally severely under- budgeted to begin with, so no store, especially not ours, is going to do it.

In poor areas like mine, Walmart doesn't give the store the flexibility to compete. Not that I care about Walmart's bottom line, but that can't be very cost effective for those stores.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I noticed that we didn't get any national coverage when Fry's destroyed all the electronics stores in the Bay Area and then decided to stop stocking and selling electronics. JDR, Quest, Jade, Sunnyvale Electronics, and Quement.

Ok so I'm still a bit pissed off about that. When I saw the story on Whitewright texas [1] the thing that struck me was not that Walmart leaving would leave them without a grocery, but that the previous store chose not to re-open, nor was anyone stepping up to take over the lease of the Walmart and sell groceries there.

So why not? Generally the answer is that they would have to raise prices to make it possible to survive and that the townsfolk would still dive the 22 miles away to the nearest Walmart that was still open to save that money. And since gas has come down in price, probably less than $4 out of pocket to do that.

[1] (video) [http://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/parisattacks/with-no- walmart-t...](http://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/parisattacks/with-no-walmart- texas-town-has-no-grocery-store/vp-BBoSGHg)

<comment><USER10> RE Fry's :You can pick a lot of electronics components up at the Jameco in San Carlos. They don't have it on display but they stock it and you can pick it up right there in a few minutes.

<comment><USER11> HSC Electronic Supply in Santa Clara is also amazing if you've never been. 3500 Ryder St, Santa Clara, CA 95051. Their hours aren't amazing but the store definitely is.

<comment><USER9> Love HSC but since most of their stock was surplus their variety has gotten worse and worse as more and more manufacturing moved out of the Bay Area. But if they have something you might want, better buy it because it won't be there when you need it. This has always frustrated me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Am I the only one okay with small towns which no longer serve a useful purpose closing down? Save some history in a nearby museum and on Wikipedia then turn the lights off on the way out.

<comment><USER13> How do you go about "closing down" a small town?

The very small city where I grew up (pop. 4,700) had, 25 years ago, a Carpenter school bus manufacturing plant, a limestone company, and (at least) two other small factories. If you didn't work at one of those, you likely worked in the service industry supporting them.

First, the school bus plant moved to another location a few hours away. If memory serves, most of the employees were offered the opportunity to transfer but few did. While they could have moved their households, most of their immediate families were there and they didn't want to leave them.

Then, the other factories closed down one by one. One was purchased and its operations moved to Mexico for the cheaper labor. The other factory was shut down as well, its operations moved to a different state where another factory was expanding.

The limestone company still exists but there are no new jobs there. The folks who do work there mostly started right after high school when, for example, dad (who worked at the company) got his son a job there.

The jobs are all gone but, somehow, the city remains.

Myself, I moved out of town as soon as I had the chance. I live 45 minutes away in a city 15x the size. I drive past there occasionally, when I have to go to my company's office for some reason (I work remotely). I usually stop by and see my grandmother who still lives there. Everyone else in my family has pretty much left. The population has mostly stayed the same.

In my opinion, this small town no longer serves a useful purpose. It has been overrun with drugs. The only "jobs" available there are in the service industry and anyone with a "good job" works out of town and commutes.

That brings me back to your question. How does one just close it down? You just can't tell thousands of people to get out, that "we're turning the lights off on June 30th so you better be gone by then".

<comment><USER12> A few towns have done it: [http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-goldbar- disincorporati...](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-goldbar- disincorporation-idUSBRE86B1II20120713)

Probably the easiest thing to do would be to be conglomerated with the nearest larger town, so the small town of A becomes no longer its own town but a small area of the still active town B.

A town near where I was born went through this. Originally it was known as Port Robinson, now it's just the Port Robinson area of Niagara Falls.

<comment><USER14> That's a fairly common practice around major metros. I know in Edmonton they eat up surrounding areas as they grow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm wondering if Wal-Mart could allow the community to adopt the stores (without their brand name attached) and manage them as a coop instead of shuttering them. In other words "It's not worth it to us to keep this building around, but if it is worth it to you, feel free to keep it running"

<comment><USER16> Would the community be able to get together and buy the building or take over tge lease?

Why would walmart just give away all of that money they invested? Especially in an economy that is starting to decline.

<comment><USER17> I dont think changing WalMart in to farmers market would be that expensive. If farmers and small business could get more exposure for a bit of rent, why not. Local governments should be interested in this as this would generate jobs in area.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "For her granddaughter Hailey Noe, a high-schooler with long hair and heavy eyeliner, the Walmart was the last thing that made staying in the immediate area even viable.

"You want to leave," she said. "You feel like, what is there for me now?""

I hope you get out Hailey.

</comment><comment><USER19> Presumably this is a chance for small local shops to come back. Usually the arrival of a large supermarket like Walmart means the death knell for many small local shops in its catchment area, and a savage blow to that areas society.

<comment><USER20> I saw an economic study from several years ago showing that the arrival of a Walmart actually stimulated the growth of "Small shops" around the Walmart. That it stimulated commerce in the area-- in part because walmart brings in people from quite a distance (especially in rural areas) and the stores showed up to capture that traffic.

<comment><USER21> Link, please. Not that I doubt you, but that kind of statement needs to be backed up. Every study and article I've seen over the past 10+ years that concludes the effect is neutral at best. Directly from the federal reserve bank:

"Given some positive and some negative outcomes, it's probably safest to say that Wal-Mart's net imprint on a county's health appears to be smaller than most perceive." [1]

[1] [https://www.minneapolisfed.org/publications/fedgazette/the-w...](https://www.minneapolisfed.org/publications/fedgazette/the- walmart-effect-poison-or-antidote-for-local-communities)

[2] [https://ag-econ.ncsu.edu/wp- content/uploads/2015/12/novdec05...](https://ag-econ.ncsu.edu/wp- content/uploads/2015/12/novdec05.pdf)

[3] [http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/03/31/of- course...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/03/31/of-course- walmart-destroys-retail-jobs-thats-the-darn-point-of-it-all/#5f7df6c8152b)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The non Express stores were long known as poor performers, even if they were new openings. The newish CEO has razor sharp skills and keeps making decisions that long ago should have been done.

</comment><comment><USER23> Could be a tactic by Walmart get rid of the competition. They open smaller stores, get the small businesses to close. Then by closing their smaller stores they force people to go shop at their larger stores.

</comment><comment><USER24> Imagine the opposite of a Walmart a store that primarily sold local products.

<comment><USER25> Have you been to a farmer's market recently?

<comment><USER26> Not trying to be snarky, but the majority of farm markets I've been to are overpriced. 6$ for raspberries, 7$ for a hummus. I know we lived in an era of low-quality, cheap food but for people like my family cheap grocers like Walmart are a necessity.

My small town for example. [https://www.google.com/maps/search/grocery+stores+near+Ellij...](https://www.google.com/maps/search/grocery+stores+near+Ellijay,+firstname.lastname@example.com,-84.5081625,14z/data=!3m1!4b1)

These days it has grown a bit, but Walmart is a very important part of the community. Before Amazon, it was the one stop shop for food, guns, toys, toiletries and other categories.

<comment><USER27> How does the price of actual produce compare? Raspberries are a luxury crop, and hummus is processed. How about lettuce, tomatoes, bok choi, herbs, fruit, etc? At my farmers' market, the produce is significantly less expensive than at the grocery store, and far tastier.

<comment><USER28> What makes raspberries more of a luxury than "fruit"?

<comment><USER29> Compared to something like apples or oranges, raspberries are land-intensive to grow; very expensive to pick and pack; fragile; and have a short shelf life.

Fresh raspberries have always in my experience been expensive items. (Frozen, less so, because it mitigates some of those issues).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Remember this is being published by Bezos. It's a great tactic to frame the closing of these stores as afflicting the poor and downtrodden.

Woe to the wretches wrought by way of Walmart. But wait! Perhaps there is a way they can be saved, all without leaving the comfort of their homes...

<comment><USER31> You are seriously heartless. Many small communities utterly rely on buying groceries. Can you imagine not having anywhere to buy food and having to drive 3 hours just to get it?

Walmart drove into these small communities, destroyed the smaller stores, then realised after deliberately making either a loss or tiny profits it wasn't economically viable, then buggered off.

I think the only lesson I can see in this is that small communities should _always_ oppose multinational retailers when there is a local option. Even if they have to spend a few dollars more. Otherwise, they'll be left with nothing.

<comment><USER32> > Can you imagine not having anywhere to buy food and having to drive 3 hours > just to get it?

But why wouldn't smaller stores open again now walmart is gone?

Edit: Say what you want about them being mom & pop stores that somehow cant start up again, if it takes 3 hours to drive to a shop and back there is a market opportunity. People will pay more for groceries when it doesn't involve a 6 hour round trip. I thought the idea of Americas great free market is that this void would be filled?

<comment><USER33> The old mom and pops bootstrapped organically, grew both inventory and the know how to stock it over decades, in lockstep with the community.

Today, takes a big start cost to go from zero to viable, and the lack of intuitive mom and pop know how is a risk too. In these locations, that startup money itself will be risk adjusted, so expensive.

<comment><USER34> There's probably a lot of truth in what you say. But, the economy abhors a vacuum, and there will either be "something" that starts up, or in some cases not and those towns may die. The dead towns will have a complicated story that in many cases will probably include the death of local businesses by Walmart.

If I ran 7/11 or Shell, I might be thinking about how to put in gas 'n goes with a somewhat larger retail footprint, a larger percentage of life groceries than potato chips. That would have the backing of a large corp, so the first yearly lack of profit wouldn't kill mom and pop's retirement, and comes with knowledge of running the outlet and managing supply lines.

Bonus, you're gonna gas up before you make that three hour grocery run, maybe what they have at the gas station is good enough, or reduces the number of trips you need to make.

<comment><USER35> I'm not sure you quite grasp how hardscrabble these areas are, and 7/11 and Shell are both franchise operations in the first place. The capital still needs to come from somewhere, and gas has worse margins than grocery in the first place.

<comment><USER34> I understand the area is hardscrabble. And yes, 7/11 and Shell are franchises, that's the point. It's a response to the idea that mom and pop might not be able to step up to serve the community. That would be preferred, but if they don't, it's still possible to reduce the need for three hour drives, with a BigCorp that already knows how to do retail and already has the lines in place.

There are lots of ways to fill a hole.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I've hit my article quota from WaPo for the month, and as such was unable to view this in my browser. For anyone else having this problem, wgetting the URL worked for me.

I'm sure there are more convenient ways of bypassing the paywall, too.

<comment><USER37> You can also open the link in an incognito window.

<comment><USER36> Good call thanks.

<comment><USER13> The best way I've found is to copy the link from this discussion/comments page you're on now, open a new incognito window, paste the link and pull up this same page in the new window, then click on the "web" link just below the title / above the comment textarea.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Python cloud hosting? - <AUTHOR>

I am writing a web application in Python. Forms, authentication, simple stuff. Think of a glorified guest book app, in terms of basic functionality. I want to be able to scale to millions of requests. So the guest book page should be served statically, and updated from the database periodically.
What cloud host should I use? Google AppEngine seems simpler to set up, but AWS seems more flexible.
Within this cloud service, what Python web framework should I use? If I use the AppEngine API, do I get scaling automatically? If I use Pylons or Django, do I have to be careful to get things to scale correctly?
What is the simplest path to a minimum viable product? <comment><USER2> Definitely go with Google AppEngine (GAE). I started off with zero Python experience and an interest in checking out GAE as well as learning Python, and rapidly picked up both thanks to the ease of developing and deploying on GAE. Just go through the Getting Start Guide (<http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/python/gettingstarted/>), which will covers some of the services you get with GAE out of the box. In fact, the Getting Started Guide walks you through building a simple guestbook app. Feel free to contact me if you need more information or have questions.

<comment><AUTHOR> GAE user authentication assumes that your users have Google accounts.

Is there an existing library to allow user authentication by creating an account for my particular website? i.e. not using a preexisting account.

<comment><USER2> <http://code.google.com/p/google-app-engine-django/>

<comment><AUTHOR> If I use Django on AppEngine, do I get automatic scalability through the Django database ORM?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I prefer AWS/VPS. That way I have root access to a virtual machine and can pick and choose what I install. Personally I prefer Ubuntu environments, apt- get is so convenient. I do my development on a personal system and upload working code for testing / deployment. From my experience GAE imposes constraints which may turn into issues.</comment>


Show HN: LearnStreet - The Best Place to Learn How to Code - <AUTHOR> http://www.learnstreet.com Hey HN -
We've built a site where you can learn Python, Ruby, and JavaScript in a fun, engaging and interactive way. How is LearnStreet different from other learn-to-code sites you ask?
UI/UX: A key aspect of LearnStreet's courses is its distinct UI/UX. In order to see this, simply sign up!
Multi-modal: Our courses are designed for beginners, and we have multiple ways to help you learn, including live chat, Twitter, Q&A, hints, videos and background material. If you don't know which language you want to pick up, check out our teaser videos in the Courses page! http://www.learnstreet.com/lessons/languages/javascript
Code Garage: If you already know how to code, check out Code Garage where you can try your hand at cool coding projects like building a Mastermind game or a Sudoku Solver. http://www.learnstreet.com/cg/simple/projects/javascript
Dev Tool: We've culled the web to provide some key resources beyond the core programming language that will help you gain a better understanding of what it takes to become a competent coder. http://www.learnstreet.com/dev_tools/
We just launched about a week ago and would love to get your feedback.  We are looking for expert coders to help build out our other courses so check out the Contribute section on our site as well.
Coding Starts Here!
-The LearnStreet Team <comment><USER2> Still waiting for a code teaching site that actually explains how everything fits together.

What's HTML used for? What's CSS? What's the bigger picture? What's the difference between java and javascript? Why are there so many languages. What are all these terms you are spitting out? Can we get some real world analogies so we can grasp some concepts?

But every single lesson from all these startups starts with type 'this' in or 1+1.

I don't think coding lessons should start with 1+1. It should start what coding is, what the language is, why I am learning it and what I could do with it and most importantly, what is different about it compared to rest of the languages. You got Python, Java, HTML, CSS, Ruby, C+ and the list goes on. I think it'd be very beneficial to have a map, that shows every day stuff that people use and list how it was built. ie: iPhone are built on 'X', Android are built on 'Y', Websites are normally built with 'Z', but you can add 'A', 'B' and 'C' to make it even better etc.

To me, the approach taken by these sites are almost identical. And they're all missing something…

<comment><USER3> Actually, most of that information is unnecessary to start coding. In fact, it actually works as a barrier to entry. People who don't understand a programming language aren't going to understand the different nuances between Python and Ruby.

Instead, you teach development by having people start coding as soon as possible. You get them playing with the code, manipulating values, and seeing the outcome. Once they see that they're creating something and they enjoy doing it, that's when you explain it to them. Khan Academy has taken this approach and it has proven extremely effective in getting children to start coding.

It's really basic game theory - you don't have to explain the entire backstory or all the controls to get someone playing a game. You drop them in a situation and go "OH SHIT YOU'RE UNDER ATTACK - PRESS X TO ATTACK." You give them one instruction and get them hooked. After that, you can then go through the basic tutorials that explain the menu system and or what numbers mean or how you level up or whatever. But the point is to explain things to them as they need to know them and not before.

The point is to get people coding as quickly as possible. If someone has to read 60 pages of introductory text, they're not going to do it. It's asking for too much up front.

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure what the research on that methodology looks like, but speaking anecdotally as someone who's teaching themself how to write dynamic websites, I find that methodology to be very unengaging. '1+1=2' and 'Hello world' console input may hook a younger mind, but I need to see a bigger picture to know whether or not this is going to amount to anything I might be interested in. I shouldn't have felt like I was _willing_ myself through CodeAcademy at times. My time as an adult is limited, so it's important that educational products like these forge a framework for my creativity (and therefore interest) as quickly as possible.

Learning piano, Norman Monath's 'How to Play Popular Piano in 10 Easy Lessons' did exactly this, whereas a lot of the material I ran into did things the classical way, which was entirely boring.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'll be "that guy".

You should change your Github OAuth permissions. I'm never giving you access to private repos - and would only give you access to public repos if you were creating a repo for me to do the Code Garage stuff (it isn't clear if you do that or not).

I'm happy to auth with Github if you just request my public profile.

<comment><USER6> Same here, it was a instant nope.

<comment><USER7> +1 for feedback's sake. i'm not trying to save anything to my github. i just want to try a garage demo so i can see if it's worth sharing with anyone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN -

We've built a site where you can learn Python, Ruby, and JavaScript in a fun, engaging and interactive way. How is LearnStreet different from other learn- to-code sites you ask?

UI/UX: A key aspect of LearnStreet's courses is its distinct UI/UX. In order to see this, simply sign up!

Multi-modal: Our courses are designed for beginners, and we have multiple ways to help you learn, including live chat, Twitter, Q&A, hints, videos and background material. If you don't know which language you want to pick up, check out our teaser videos in the Courses page! <http://www.learnstreet.com/lessons/languages/javascript>

Code Garage: If you already know how to code, check out Code Garage where you can try your hand at cool coding projects like building a Mastermind game or a Sudoku Solver. <http://www.learnstreet.com/cg/simple/projects/javascript>

Dev Tool: We've culled the web to provide some key resources beyond the core programming language that will help you gain a better understanding of what it takes to become a competent coder. <http://www.learnstreet.com/dev_tools/>

We just launched about a week ago and would love to get your feedback. We are looking for expert coders to help build out our other courses so check out the Contribute section on our site as well.

Coding Starts Here!

-The LearnStreet Team

<comment><USER8> I don't understand why we cant skip around the lessons in the python tutorial. I don't need to start at lesson 1; i want to skip around to different lessons.

<comment><USER9> > I don't need to start at lesson 1; i want to skip around to different > lessons.

There's a good reason for this, which I will explain with an analogy:

Lesson 1: Write the Great American Novel.

Lesson 2: Learn how to write engaging, readable short stories.

Lesson 3: Learn how to write internally consistent essays.

Lesson 4: Learn how to write coherent paragraphs.

Lesson 5: Learn how to structure grammatically correct sentences.

Lesson 6 Learn how to use and spell common English words.

Lesson 7: Learn how to enter text on a keyboard.

Get it? Lessons have a natural order, and each lesson requires what was learned beforehand.

<comment><USER8> I get it. It's just that I'm not a beginning programmer. I mean, unless the site is only for novices with zero programming skill, you're requiring all intermediate programmers to relearn stuff they've already mastered.

Also, I wanted to browse around the lessons in order to evaluate the quality of the site so that I could decide whether to recommend the site to non- programmer friends.

<comment><USER9> > It's just that I'm not a beginning programmer.

That should have been the first thing you said. :)

But such tutorials are obviously for rank beginners, experienced programmers don't use these kinds of sites. Unless it's a dramatic jump, like from COBOL to Haskell, to learn a new language they go straight to the language's documentation:

Python 2:

<http://docs.python.org/>

Python 3:

<http://docs.python.org/py3k/>

<comment><USER10> I'm mentoring a few people learning Python, and I wanted to quickly evaluate LearnStreet and decide whether to recommend it.

With Codecademy I could do that, here I cannot. So Codecademy it is.

Skipping is a really important feature for those who you hope would promote your service for you :-)

<comment><USER11> We will be adding this very soon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Disclaimer: I'm a teacher at Dev Bootcamp (<http://devbootcamp.com>). Everything I say comes from love -- if I didn't care about this deeply I wouldn't bother to remark in the first place. :)

Very nice! We can always use more absolute-beginner tutorials in the world.

Just started the Ruby tutorial:

"Great! So what just happened here? To begin with, let's define what you typed 2 + 2 as instructions. The ruby console reads your typed instructions, interprets it, and then acts on the instructions the way you gave it. This step is called evaluation. Instruction when complete are called an expression. If the instructions you have typed are incomplete (for example, if you typed 2 + and hit enter), this console will show an error message. The instruction you typed, 2 + 2 is an expression. It is important to remember that evaluation of an expression always returns a value. This value is what is shown as result on the console. In this case, 4 was the result of the evaluation."

If someone honestly knows nothing about coding, you've probably just lost them right there. Questions a beginner would ask:

* What is a "ruby console?"

* What instructions? I typed "2+2."

* What does "interprets" mean?

* How can instructions be complete? Were they ever incomplete? How do I know when they're complete?

* "Returns?" "Value?" "Result?"

In a few sentences, with jargon highlighted:

I type _instructions_ into a _console_ which turn into _expressions_ when they're _complete_. The _console_ _evaluates_ the _expression_ and _returns_ a _value_ , which is _shown as a result_ on the _console_.

A beginning programmer won't have the mental models necessary to make sense any of that. It's context-free. Most of those words have no prior associations, and those that do will lead them astray. Metaphor is your friend.

For reading, I recommend Bret Victor's essay on Learnable Programming: (<http://worrydream.com/LearnableProgramming/>) and Mindstorms by Seymour Papert ([http://www.amazon.com/Mindstorms-Children-Computers- Powerful...](http://www.amazon.com/Mindstorms-Children-Computers-Powerful- Ideas/dp/0465046746)).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback! We're always iterating on our course content, so we'll keep this in mind.

<comment><USER12> Read Mindstorms before you do. :)

<comment><USER13> I second this. For anyone trying to teach computers (and anything else), this will save you from repeating all the mistakes that all the other computer programming education startups are making/will make in the future.

Again, just to be clear, this book is really really really really important.

Hope that landed. :)

<comment><USER14> Mindstorms? I did a quick google and there are assorted books with that title (after you filer out "lego"). None seemed to be relevant to this discussion.

Who wrote it? What year?

<comment><USER12> I linked to it at the end of my comment, where I also mentioned who wrote it.

Here it is, again: [http://www.amazon.com/Mindstorms-Children-Computers- Powerful...](http://www.amazon.com/Mindstorms-Children-Computers-Powerful- Ideas/dp/0465046746)

Lego Mindstorms are named after it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Looks great, really nice. Minor point, I have a feeling (and can't find evidence to the contrary) that Twitter's stack is actually Java, not Ruby [1]. They may have changed back since then, but I can't find anything about it. Maybe I'm totally off though, and other parts of their stack are rails. I don't know - I'm not really a webdev guy...

[EDIT] - any reason for the downvote? I'm totally fine with being wrong, or have I just completely missed something?

The reason I brought it up was because when you select Ruby, one of the motivational messages opens with, "Twitter uses Ruby to power 400M incredible tweets every day."

[http://www.readwriteweb.com/cloud/2011/04/twitter-drops- ruby...](http://www.readwriteweb.com/cloud/2011/04/twitter-drops-ruby-for- java.php)

<comment><USER16> Twitter runs a whole range of different technologies, as you can see from their Github page [1]. Much of their performance-sensitive code is Scala, but they also run Python, Ruby, C, and Javascript tools.

Their front-end, however, remains Ruby. The link you posted is just about search infrastructure.

[1]: <http://twitter.github.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Admittedly IANAL, but I'm very confused about how this doesn't infringe on Amazon's trademark for "TeachStreet":

[http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4008:ir...](http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4008:ir2pel.2.1)

[http://www.geekwire.com/2012/exclusive-amazoncom-buys- teachs...](http://www.geekwire.com/2012/exclusive-amazoncom-buys-teachstreet/)

</comment><comment><USER18> Although these types of sites (Codecademy, etc) are great and teach absolute beginners all the basics of programming, they've left me lost as to how to continue developing my skill set. I've hit a wall for some time and am stuck in this strange better-than-a-beginner-but-still-terribly-amateur middleground where the resources I keep coming across are either tailored for fresh beginners or more advanced programmers.

Does anyone have any suggestions or good resources that are tailored to my level?

<comment><USER19> Everyone is different. Speaking for myself, I never found books or tutorials useful. My mind simply balks at the prospect of doing exercises for the sake of it.

Instead what worked really well for me is to find a practical problem that I wanted to solve (maybe with the goal of making money from it). It turns out that just about any interesting project that you dream up for yourself will have aspects that are outside of your current knowledge/ability. Then as soon as you hit these parts start looking for reference materials, documentation or tutorials specifically related to this problem. Before you know it you're learning new stuff.

And the upshot of this approach is, that if you stick with it you may end up with a functional product at the end, which you can sell.

Also read other people's code. I find it really humbling to read well crafted code. It also motivates me to continue refining my own code.

<comment><USER20> And I'm the exact opposite. I love exercises. You should find what works for you and stick with it until it doesn't work for you! For a while, I would read a section out of a programming book, think to myself "Could I explain this better?", and if I could, I'd write an article. If I came across an exercise in a book, I'd think to myself "What if these requirements had to be met? What if this needs to be read in from a keyboard? A database?", and I'd expand the exercise into a full fledged project. Just do your best to keep yourself interested. Find a reason to stay excited.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I like it, I agree with the GH comment, I used twitter, your tutorial is great, though a bit long, didn't wait till the end. I would add a "skip the basics" option for people who already know adding numbers. but besides that looks great, but how are you different from all the others? (See partial list here <http://eranmedan.com/post/22359967135/codeschools>)

</comment><comment><USER22> If you are looking for a new approach in learning how to code, check out CodeHS. While LearnStreet is an amazing tool, and another great way to be introduced to programming, the site immediately feels very similar to Codecademy. A responsive console is very cool, but I don't think it is the best way to connect with absolute beginners.

Our philosophy is that the key to teaching beginners is on providing help from real people, and that is what we are doing at CodeHS. Would be grateful for any feedback from the HN community.

</comment><comment><USER23> LearnStreet is a great introduction to the world of coding. They have a bunch of really awesome Code Garage projects, and I especially like making the games, and Conway's Game of Life. Their teaching methods are very welcoming to someone who hasn't been exposed to this stuff yet, and I recommend anyone who is even remotely interested in learning how to code to give it a try, you won't regret it.

</comment><comment><USER24> It wouldn't work for me in Safari 6.0 / OSX 10.7.5. Never made it past the green progress bar.

</comment><comment><USER25> Comments:

When I log in with Github why do I have to enter my name and email on the sign-up form?

You guys already got permission to read that from github, if you want to offer flexibility then at least put in the defaults and let me edit them.

Also "Email Id" could be named better.

</comment><comment><USER26> LearnStreet coming out with a bold statement, but from a quick review of the site, they are offering something different. This is going to be a big market for the service that cracks the code...pun intended.

</comment><comment><USER27> I can't play around with code after the lesson is over. As a UX analyst, this bothers me. The interpreter shouldn't just shut down after the lesson is complete.

</comment><comment><USER28> I'm logging in with Facebook but I keep getting this error:

      The page you are looking for is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, please email us at firstname.lastname@example.com and we'll help you out!

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I'd like to see a course that teaches new languages by first teaching me how to read existing code before asking me to write a single program.

<comment><USER9> The argument is often made that understanding a language comes more quickly by writing and executing small examples than by reading examples.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Liking the Code Garage stuff at least. Not your typical "hello world" fodder, which I never found too practical.

</comment><comment><USER31> the indentation the code editor shows does not always reflect the actual indentation of the code. so i had to c+paste it into another window and then back again to get the code to run...

<comment><AUTHOR> We will be releasing changes to the code editor which will resolve the indentation issue in Python.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> It's like Codecademy for Builders/Makers. LOVE IT.

</comment><comment><USER33> here's a suggestion: start immediately with a cool project, like a game or a web server.

Beats the "here's 2+2" type problems.</comment>


Is Nuance Overrated? - <AUTHOR> http://chronicle.com/article/Is-Nuance-Overrated-/232771/ <comment><USER2> No, it's a critical part of determining fact from fiction. This article is absurd.

> It is not the job of theory to verbally reproduce the complexity of the > world.

Yes, _it is_. That's what a theory is -- a verbal/symbolic model meant to account for the complexity of the world. I think this guy just doesn't like rigor and would rather apply blanket statements about the world without having to back them up with actual data.

<comment><USER3> >a verbal/symbolic model meant to account for the complexity of the world

I think you and I have very different notions of the word "model." Rational spherical cows in a vacuum may not be precise or nuanced, but that doesn't make them _inaccurate_ , and the simplified view is a useful model for learning about big-picture concepts. It's true that it won't catch every corner case, and when you're making decisions about human beings sometimes that's dangerous, but there's value at every level of granularity. Looking at each grain of sand and learning everything about the rock it came from will let you put it in the perfect place, but you'll never build a sandcastle that way, and if you want to reshape the whole beach you'll need yet another level of focus.

Generalization is a good thing. It's powerful. Humans got where we are by spotting patterns - not because everything matches the pattern perfectly all the time, or even ever, but because you can see general commonalities and start to abstract them away into something that can be reasoned about.

If there's one theory that explains more of the detail and variation in the world than another, at a finer granularity, without giving up generality, then yes, it's clearly a superior theory. But throwing out highly general theories just because they aren't perfect is intellectually lazy.

<comment><USER2> Sociology is full of chaotic systems, so slight deviations in the premises can have wide effects on the outcome of the system you are describing.

I would replace your cow analogy with a 2-pendulum analogy. Depending on the nuances of what is being observed, a small change in the inputs of your system can create dramatically different behaviors. It's important to account for how you define your initial conditions and variables so that you don't end up with a model that matches early in a simulation but ultimately diverges into something that looks nothing like what can be observed in the world.

<comment><USER4> I don't buy the 2-pendulum analogy. Nuance, as I read in the article, is about detection of ever decreasing observed quantities ad nauseam. It would be fine- grained discussion of the non-chaotic ranges of said pendulum. Basically a pissing contest, which is as good as any, but still just that. Once it goes beyond any practical use, has no more value.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think this "discovery" is less about nuance in general and more about nuance in sociology. But that, again, would require some nuance.

Relevant XKCD: [https://xkcd.com/451/](https://xkcd.com/451/)

<comment><USER6> [https://xkcd.com/915/](https://xkcd.com/915/) too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The paper underpins the political philosophy of President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho.

</comment><comment><USER8> When you make something a metric, people will game the system. Nothing new. Nuance is a tool, and should not be a goal.

</comment><comment><USER9> AKA: bikeshedding is a waste of time.</comment>


Stupid EU cookie law will hand the advantage to the US - <AUTHOR> http://eu.techcrunch.com/2011/03/09/stupid-eu-cookie-law-will-hand-the-advantage-to-the-us-kill-our-startups-stone-dead/ <comment><USER2> As numerous commenters have noted, this article twists/omits facts, blows things out of proportion, and doesn't talk about the benefit to consumers.

Tracking is currently a hot topic in the US as well, where a different approach, labeled _Do Not Track_ is being pursued. I happen to be at the thick of it, so I thought I'd add that to the discussion.

Do Not Track (<http://donottrack.us/>) is fundamentally an opt-out from tracking rather then an opt-in, which makes it much harder to claim that it will threaten the ad industry, startups, puppies, or anything else [1]. It is an HTTP header which, if enabled, signals to advertisers and other trackers to stop tracking you across multiple third-party websites. First-party tracking is OK.

The Do Not Track option has already been implemented in Firefox 4. As of yesterday it is an Internet-Draft[2], and on the legislation side, Congresswoman Speier recently introduced a bill to give the Federal Trade Commission powers to enforce Do Not Track.[3]

I'm a computer scientist and this is my first major foray into the policy arena, and having worked with most of the people/entities involved in this effort, I have to say I've been pleasantly surprised how the disparate parts of the technology/policy/regulatory machinery started to work together.

I don't want to get into which approach is better, but just wanted to describe how we're doing it in the US. Feedback welcome.

[1] <http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/node/6592>

[2] <http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/node/6633>

[3] [https://speier.house.gov/index.cfm?sectionid=48&itemid=6...](https://speier.house.gov/index.cfm?sectionid=48&itemid=683)

<comment><USER3> I'm always skeptical of a legal solution to a technical problem, but I wonder how this is to keep me safe from trackers on foreign soil? Wouldn't these companies just move there server a country over? What if our ISP allowed us to block traffic from those who don't comply with the don't track header, would that solve our problem?

<comment><USER2> Excellent question. One solution for this would be to prohibit US-based first- parties from doing business with noncompliant third-parties (similar to what you propose, but doesn't cut across different layers, so less messy, less potential for abuse). It is similar to how some other laws work, and it would be up to the FTC to make this rule.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is being blown out of all proportions.

[http://www.edps.europa.eu/EDPSWEB/webdav/site/mySite/shared/...](http://www.edps.europa.eu/EDPSWEB/webdav/site/mySite/shared/Documents/Consultation/Opinions/2008/08-04-10_e- privacy_EN.pdf)

Read point 50.

The general gist seems to be, that if you use a cookie to track the communications between you and the user (à la sessions), no problem. But if you are using a cookies to track where and/or what the user has been doing across sites then you need to make said user aware.

Please correct me if I am wrong.

<comment><USER5> You are not wrong. Some examples: A login for your site needs no concent. A session to store some status-message to a user ("comment posted!") is allowed just fine. But Google (analytics) must provide a warning before it is allowed to track people, because it tracks people across domains and sites.

edit: I wrote opt-in but meant to say "provide a warning"

<comment><USER6> Google Analytics does not track user behaviour across domains and sites, unless those domains and sites are specifically linked.

Google Analytics uses a 1st-party cookie set by the website that runs it.

[http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/concepts/gaConcep...](http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/concepts/gaConceptsCookies.html#HowGAUsesCookies)

<comment><USER7> Google Analytics is a third party service that is tracking users' behaviour around the Internet, quite possibly without their knowledge or consent. It doesn't matter what the original site operator can see. _Google_ can see everything. This is _exactly_ the kind of shady behaviour that this law is supposed to prohibit, and Google getting screwed on this point appears to be in keeping with both the letter and the spirit of the law.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> And stupid enviromental laws don't allow excessive mining and require costly procedures when handling waste. It hands the advantage to China, and other less restrictive countries.

'This is how its always been done' is not reason enough. Many sites require you to accept terms&conditions. Another checkbox really won't matter.

<comment> john-n While this is true, alot of cookies are used without any login/signup process, so you need to provide these pop-ups alot more often.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I can't figure out how this will hit EU startups. Actually, this is promoting transparency and I really like it. I won't be suspicious if the site is gathering some data from me or not; if it is, it'll just display a friendly _warning_.

This is actually beneficial for users; and the ones who refuse are probably not the users you are looking for.

<comment><USER10> Isn't it clear from the article?

"It clearly makes UK companies less competitive because sites we build will need to be plastered with warnings – and our competitors will not. It is a well known fact that at each stage of a signup process you lose customers – if you have to have a big warning sign just for a cookie that will remember you for purely convenience so that it keeps you logged in. The user wont read that detail – they will just think your a privacy nightmare and wont sign up."

<comment><USER11> >It clearly makes UK companies less competitive because sites we build will need to be plastered with warnings – and our competitors will not.

An American startup doing business globally and with citizens of the UK would have to abide by this law too, though, right?

<comment><USER10> In theory yes, but in practice not really. Consumer doesn't care, doesn't know.

On a side note, In theory if you are EU company you _cannot_ use a CRM which hosts your data outside of the EU. For a USA CRM company only way to get around this "Safe Harbor Policy". Do you know how many SaaS CRMs apply Safe Harbor Policy? AFAIK Only 1, SalesForce.

But obviously there are thousands of Europan users of these CRM companies which violate this EU law.

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure about CRM specifically, but certainly various serious companies are aware of the EU data protection rules and take specific steps to comply. For example, I've been looking at off-site back-up for one of my companies recently, and while talking to Mozy they confirmed unambiguously and with specific details that any data from my company (in the UK) that was backed up using their service would be held in various protected ways in specific data centres within the protected area.

If you're in a business like that, where people are trusting you with that kind of sensitive information, I think you expect that serious customers are going to ask and they're going to need straight answers. I would agree that this is a barrier to entry for start-ups, but I think if you're trying to enter that kind of market but you aren't in a position to provide that level of service, you're already dead anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Both the EU and US regulations will backfire badly. They both interfere with site optimization and advertising targeting, and both site optimization and advertising targeting impact profits.

Rather than taking the hit to their bottom line, publishers will adjust by making explicit user opt-in mandatory. Since explicit opt-in is nice and unambiguous, the targeting itself can then be a lot more invasive.

I really don't understand the desire to mess with the current system we have today, which works well enough. The small percentage of users who truly care about tracking have simple and effective technical solutions available to them. Publishers turn a blind eye to these unprofitable users, since their numbers are small. Finally, since most ad targeting currently falls in a policy 'grey area', the ad industry self-polices reasonably well.

At least there's going to be some interesting startup opportunities in detecting tracking circumvention and forcing compliance.

<comment><USER7> I couldn't disagree with you more.

The current system does not work. Tracking people around the Internet is shady behaviour any way you cut it, and a lot of people don't like it.

A lot more people don't even know about it, which is why the effect on sites today is still relatively small. Try sampling a population who have been fully informed about what is going on and see the reaction you get.

Ultimately, businesses do not have _carte blanche_ to engage in whatever shady practices they like in the interests of increasing profits. This is why we have laws and why we punish businesses that break those laws.

If publishers who want to spy on everyone make opt-in mandatory in response to measures like this, they will just create a market for publishers who are willing to share their content with ads based on that content alone rather than on tracking individual visitors' personal details. This worked well enough to establish things like Google ads in the first place, after all.

I have about as much sympathy for any company hit by these measures as I have for cigarette companies who are forced to display a warning about the proven health implications of their product in big letters on the packet.

<comment><USER12> _Try sampling a population who have been fully informed about what is going on and see the reaction you get._

I've yet to see a 'fully informed' sample from anyone. While people don't like getting tracked, they don't like getting tracked in contrast to an imaginary situation where they can access all the same content with no tracking whatsoever, which simply isn't possible.

Whenever people complain about ad targeting, you should think of the guy who spends all his time grousing about taxes while still wanting the government to pay his for roads and his Medicare and his Social Security. Same thing.

 _Ultimately, businesses do not have carte blanche to engage in whatever shady practices they like in the interests of increasing profits._

Of course. This is why online businesses will end up doing what, for example, a credit card provider or a magazine publisher does - they'll tell you that they're going to sell your information six ways as a condition of receiving the service, and the public will say 'well, I want the service, so what choice do I have?' Unless, of course, the government makes the very practice of ad targeting illegal, in which case the content goes behind a paywall where the poor don't get to read it.

 _If publishers who want to spy on everyone make opt-in mandatory in response to measures like this, they will just create a market for publishers who are willing to share their content with ads based on that content alone..._

Now _this_ argument is like the guy who thinks the government can balance its budget and lower taxes just by getting rid of some sort of vague unspecified 'waste'.

You are more than welcome to try to make real money through contextual advertising alone. Unless you own a search engine or are churning out made- for-AdSense content tailored specifically to search queries, you will fail. Brand advertisers doesn't do much contextual, so say goodbye to agency CPMs. The contextual stuff itself performs horribly when users aren't explicitly in 'search' mode. Why do you think those 'three weird tips to losing belly fat' ads are everywhere instead of Google AdSense? Yes, even that spray-and-pray CPA stuff outperforms contextual. Now picture all your brand advertising going away and trying to subsist solely on the pittance you get from education loan and car insurance ads. Now picture doing this while trying to produce quality content. Good luck.

I get that people don't like advertising, and I get that they don't like analytics. People expect the web to be like a backlit newspaper, and when they find out that their reading material is reading them back, they're disconcerted. However, they're just going to have to get over it, because that's the real price of 'free'. The alternative is paying for it, which helps turn the internet into a place for the privileged.

I've yet to see a scenario that's going to end up better than the muddling- through we're doing now. You can effectively opt-out just by installing an extension, as can anyone else who really, truly cares about a website knowing they're a college-educated male between the ages of 25 and 34. Stop trying to fix the world, you're simply going to make it worse.

<comment><USER7> I guess my problem with this whole debate is that I'm struggling to think of a single site I visit at all regularly that offers this hypothetical content I wouldn't want to lose, yet which couldn't/doesn't have alternatives available other than pseudo-spyware advertising.

Most of the good small-scale sites I visit are related to some particular topic, perhaps a hobby or a particular technical subject. That means they already have a ready-targeted audience without any tracking whatsoever, so if there are any related products to advertise at all, they are pretty much a marketer's ideal channel. I don't know the operators of most of the sites I use personally, of course, but a few of those I do know get guaranteed rates from specialist advertisers based on real contracts that would make the average CPM-based ad-networked blogger cry.

Larger-scale sites tend to have more options open to them anyway once their user base has reached critical mass. You get to the scale of corporate sponsorship, serious donation volumes, and eventually the kind of mainstream advertising campaigns you see with mass media, major sports events, etc.

Obviously there are lots of other kinds of sites, but mostly run by people or organisations for their own reasons that don't necessarily involve profit.

What's left? Small-scale sites that need to make a significant amount of money yet have no particular speciality nor offer any particularly original and valuable content that others aren't contributing for free?

By the way, I don't accept your analogy between this situation and taxes at all, but I have no interest in getting into a superficial political debate that I don't think is particularly relevant.

Also by the way, I don't have much problem with prohibiting this kind of tracking outright either. Privacy laws are, IMNSHO, not nearly strong enough in most jurisdictions today. Far too many people wind up suffering significant harm in one form or another as a result, and if the trend for tracking everyone all the time continues along its current path, things will surely become much worse. If a few minor web sites have to be lost for preventing massive, organised surveillance of everyone's private lives, then I'm sorry but I consider that a small price to pay.

<comment><USER12> I would genuinely be interested in seeing examples of significant harm from web analytics or behaviorally-targeted advertising. Right now the most common (and frequently made) argument against FTC regulation of these fields is that no one has been able to bring forward an individual that's actually suffered harm, so your comment about "far too many people wind up suffering significant harm in one form or another" makes me cock an eyebrow.

'Mainstream advertising campaigns' for larger publishers are absolutely and completely reliant on third-party tracking and targeting - for frequency capping, serving verification, and demographic targeting. If these tools go away, the branded ad spend stays on television.

The New York Times is the most obvious example of a publisher (and journalism the most obvious sector) that'd be negatively impacted by Do Not Track. They're making significant revenue from their online business right now, but they also have very significant expenses. It costs money to run a news organization capable of international reporting and investigative journalism. 'Minor websites' are not the issue here - it's the major websites that are concerned.

I'm calling it a night, but I'll wrap up with a couple of quotes from the Online Publishers Association (which includes the NYT and every other major American news organizations) comment on the FTC's "Protecting Consumer Privacy in an Era of Rapid Change" preliminary report:

 _Online publishers should have the right to offer their content and services on any lawful terms that are explicitly communicated to consumers and withhold access from those who do not agree to such terms. To require otherwise would burden publishers' First Amendment speech with free riders who enjoy the benefits of access to valuable content without providing fair value in exchange._

 _[D]efault rules that prevent fair value exchanges of digital content for user data could harm consumer welfare by reducing incentives for some publishers to invest in the production of content and/or creating incentives for publishers to charge or charge more for content that they would otherwise make available for free or at a lower cost._

<comment><USER7> > I would genuinely be interested in seeing examples of significant harm from > web analytics or behaviorally-targeted advertising.

I think advertising itself is more of an annoyance than a serious harm in most cases, though I would certainly regard targeting certain profiles with advertising for certain products as abuse. That is mainly where the target is unlikely or unable to make sound judgements, for example where children, adults with learning difficulties, those suffering from a recent emotional trauma, or those who are recognisably not well-informed about things like legal, medical or financial matters are involved.

However, what really worries me is that it's not only advertising that can be driven by this kind of personal profiling, and the effects in other cases can be far greater than the irritation of seeing yet another toy advert because you just uploaded some baby photos.

For example, here in the UK, there was a lot of media attention a couple of days ago, because it looks like car insurers are going to be forced to stop offering different prices to male and female customers just because of their gender. The insurers, of course, have been profiling, and argue that _on average_ young male drivers are more expensive in terms of the accidents they have and the resulting cost. However, while there may be some correlation there, that doesn't imply a causative effect in any individual case, and it doesn't change the fact that there are many safe male drivers who are paying more and many dangerous female drivers who are paying less. Since all drivers are required by law to have insurance in my country, this sort of profiling has effectively meant that many good male drivers have been charged thousands of pounds of basically unescapable tax, just for fitting a naively constructed risk profile.

Is it such a leap to wonder what would happen if health insurance companies were able to start profiling on grounds that were not directly clinically relevant, particularly in countries where private health insurance is the norm?

What about profiling and employer blacklists: sorry, we can't give you the job, because even though you appear on the surface to be an excellent and highly qualified candidate, we've analysed your friendship network and several of your regular contacts have photos up on Facebook that our automated analysis software thinks show them being excessively drunk, which means that statistically there is a relatively high chance of you also having your work performance impaired for alcohol-related reasons. Oh, and just to save you some time, don't bother applying for any other jobs where your hard-earned specialist skills and useful experience would be relevant, because we know that the other four big name employers all check the same databases we do.

> I'm calling it a night, but I'll wrap up with a couple of quotes from the > Online Publishers Association

As far as I'm aware, no-one is saying that publishers can't offer content on their own terms. The publishers will simply have to be transparent and up- front about what those terms really are now, and compete accordingly. Moreover, where there are monopolies or essential services involved, consumer protection regulation may be warranted in the same way that state-sanctioned monopolies, such as our railway and postal networks, are sometimes subject to pricing constraints dictated to them other than by market forces.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The article does NOT describe the situation. The situation is different and is explained by this part of the Directive: "This shall not prevent any technical storage or access for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network, or as strictly necessary in order for the provider of an information society service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user to provide the service" And by the further comments to the text, clearly reducing the so claimed 'stupidity'.

Pascal Van Hecke wrote a useful comment explaining the situation and clearing the misunderstandings. The comment can be read here: [http://eu.techcrunch.com/2011/03/09/stupid-eu-cookie-law- wil...](http://eu.techcrunch.com/2011/03/09/stupid-eu-cookie-law-will-hand- the-advantage-to-the-us-kill-our-startups-stone-dead/#comment-162920924)

The real problem about this Directive (it's not a law, European Union does not make laws!), is how it will be converted in law by the single Countries; this could be the real source of confusion.

The real purpose of this directive is forcing to ask explicit consent for behavioral targeting purposes, not for simple analytics' cookies. We can't create buzz based on a misunderstanding!

</comment><comment><USER14> As a web-publisher, I find the general distaste of (advertising) tracking cookies a little hard to swallow. At the end of the day, tracking cookies exist because they allow the sites you visit (and probably don't pay for directly) to earn more money (on average) across all their visitors.

Advertising is the life-blood of publishers on the Internet. Without advertising (and by extension, tracking) many of the sites you enjoy every day would cease to exist.

At least using cookies you CAN opt out (via browsing settings and plugins). All that will happen is that the tracking networks will switch to browser fingerprinting making tracking harder to control and more opaque.

<comment><USER7> Your post is one unsubstantiated claim after another.

Just because _you_ fund your content through ads, that doesn't mean someone else can't use a different model. Sorry to be brutal, but if you can't find a viable alternative model when ads aren't cutting it any longer, maybe your content simply isn't worth that much and losing your site isn't a great loss to anyone else.

Moreover, just because _you_ associate ads with tracking, that doesn't mean everyone else does. The most lucrative advertising deals I know about are between sites catering to particular interest groups and advertisers who also cater to those groups and make a direct agreement with the site. It takes actual work to set this up, but can be very lucrative for all concerned, particularly without any middleman ad network taking a big cut of any money changing hands. Many models from classic sponsorship deals to modern product placement approaches are based on this idea.

> All that will happen is that the tracking networks will switch to browser > fingerprinting making tracking harder to control and more opaque.

That's probably going to be illegal, too.

In any case, browser fingerprinting is becoming a hot topic for all the wrong reasons. I expect near-future browsers will basically kill it as a technique anyway.

<comment><USER14> > Just because you fund your content through ads

Me and 99% of the sites I have read today...

> The most lucrative advertising deals I know about are between sites catering > to particular interest groups and advertisers

In my experience, the most lucrative advertising campaigns are based on audience tracking and retargeting.

<comment><USER7> > Me and 99% of the sites I have read today...

99%? Really?

I'm just looking through my browser history, and I can't see _any_ site I've visited today that appears to be funded only by the kind of targeted ads we're discussing.

> In my experience, the most lucrative advertising campaigns are based on > audience tracking and retargeting.

Perhaps you are fixating on certain types of campaign, then? Either that or you have very limited experience of different possibilities, but from your other comments, I doubt that is the case.

<comment><USER14> > and I can't see any site I've visited today that appears to be funded only > by the kind of targeted ads we're discussing.

I think thats a key point. ALL banner advertising would be affected by this change. All ad servers use cross domain cookie tracking of some kind. If not to track user behaviour, its (for example) to track impressions to make sure that you dont show the same ad to the same user more than a set number of times. That is also a 3rd party cookie.

Without that ability it will be hard (impossible?) to rate limit campaigns to users, thus increasing the cost effectiveness to the advertiser and eventually hurting publishers as advertising money is diverted elsewhere.

In short, this rule would affect ALL banner adverts on all sites. So 99%, yes (at least the _content_ sites I have read today).

<comment><USER7> > ALL banner advertising would be affected by this change.

No, it wouldn't. That's what several people in this discussion have been trying to explain.

Banners hosted locally and not by a third party service probably won't be affected at all.

Even banners hosted by a third party service won't be affected if they chose their content based only on the nature of the site where the banner would appear.

The only people who will lose out are the ad networks that track users as they move around different sites, and their business model and working practices are incompatible with my ethics (and, apparently, those of many other people, including those governing at EU level).

We should lose the conditionals, by the way. This has already been approved at EU level, and it _will_ therefore become law throughout the EU in due course unless something dramatic happens. Given that the only people I've seen objecting even slightly seem to be those who are currently doing exactly the dubious things that these measures are intended to prohibit, "something dramatic" seems unlikely.

> Without that ability it will be hard (impossible?) to rate limit campaigns > to users, thus increasing the cost effectiveness to the advertiser and > eventually hurting publishers as advertising money is diverted elsewhere.

Why can't the advertisers simply re-evaluate the rates they pay per impression based on the expected cost/benefit under the new model?

Or just adopt one of the many pricing models that is based on actual results like CPC, instead of assuming that CPM is always going to be the right answer?

<comment><USER14> >Banners hosted locally and not by a third party service probably won't be affected at all.

So you have to install and manage your own local ad server to earn ad revenue from your site? Many publishers large and small use ad servers e.g. doubleclick, adtech to avoid this overhead.

>Why can't the advertisers simply re-evaluate the rates they pay per impression based on the expected cost/benefit under the new model?

Yes, publishers loose out once again.

<comment><USER7> > So you have to install and manage your own local ad server to earn ad > revenue from your site?

No, you just have to use a system that doesn't try to track users everywhere they go.

> Many publishers large and small use ad servers e.g. doubleclick, adtech to > avoid this overhead.

That's fine. Those ad servers are free to continue offering their facilities to webmasters who would like to use them rather than setting things up themselves. The only difference is that now the centralised services won't be allowed to track everyone everywhere.

> Yes, publishers loose out once again.

You keep saying things like that, but I don't think you've ever explained _why_ you think this is inevitable. I and several other posters in this discussion have now presented you with numerous alternative ideas that still allow sites to carry advertising that is fairly well-targeted without violating the new rules that are going to apply after May. Those methods funded numerous sites for several years before the current generation of spyware-based ad networks took off, and given that hosting is far more competitively priced now, I don't see why today's enthusiast sites shouldn't be able to cover their costs if yesterday's could.

<comment><USER14> Ok, I think we will have to agree to disagree!

All nice in theory... the real world is very different.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Well, I'm against internet regulation in general, but I don't agree this is 'stupid' or a big disadvantage.

Sites could simply stop tracking users with long-term cookies. In this case, no warnings and popups need to be added. And everyone is happy...

<comment><USER16> If you don't want to be tracked with a long-term cookie just configure your browser to not accept long-term cookies or to delete all cookies on shutdown. Problem solved.

<comment><USER17> I think it's the responsibility of the website to do the best that it can to protect the user's privacy, especially for those that don't know what a cookie is or does. On the contrary, most websites do the minimum they can get away with and try to squeeze every bit of data for profit.

Those companies can cry all they want but they get ZERO sympathy from me. I'm sick of having to install three extensions to counter their hostile behaviour towards my privacy.

<comment><USER18> What responsibility? Man up and be responsible for yourself. If you don't trust companies with your data just don't deal with them. Or use your anti- cookie extensions! _You_ get ZERO sympathy from me.

I understand you feel companies have a hostile behavior towards your privacy. But you're part of a minority. If people really cared that much about cookies, the market would have responded accordingly and there wouldn't be any need for this kind of regulation at all. Why impose your obsession with privacy to the rest of us?

<comment><USER7> > If people really cared that much about cookies, the market would have > responded accordingly and there wouldn't be any need for this kind of > regulation at all.

That's naive.

For one thing, most people are not technically knowledgeable and don't understand the extent to which they are being tracked.

For another, even those who would care about such issues can't spend their entire lives becoming experts in every ethical, legal, regulatory and financial field that might affect them. It simply isn't humanly possible, which is one reason we have laws crafted by specialists but applying to everyone.

Your argument only makes any sense if everyone _knows_ about what's going on, _understands_ the implications, and _still_ doesn't care.

<comment><USER18> > It simply isn't humanly possible, which is one reason we have laws crafted > by specialists but applying to everyone.

You apparently haven't heard of the invisible hand.[1]

The role of experts is to educate and influence, not to impose their own values. People should be allowed to chose what's best for them and put their trust where they want, not be forced into putting their trust on bureaucrats.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_hand>

<comment><USER7> I think you're making my point for me. Right now, a lot of people simply don't know what is going on or the implications it has for their privacy, so they can't possibly make informed judgements about whether they are willing to accept that behaviour. Any argument that some sort of market forces would drive change is completely negated as long as you keep your market in the dark about what is really going on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> In 10,20 years people around the world may ask the europeans how they got such a rather high privacy standard. While I don't agree to all of the regulations, the tendency here is to make everything private by default and only disclose what is needed. We should be able do decide ourself what to disclose without having to install add-ons to block everything.

That said: I also use tracking, but anonymize as soon as possible. And: there are enough laws that contradict regulations like these (such as the goverments force the ISPs to store the communication data from the users).

<comment><USER20> I won't be asking that until places like London get rid of all the police cams. Although, apparently they are _highly_ effective: <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8219022.stm>

While I applaud the EU's efforts on this, it seems a bit of stepping over dollars to pick up pennies. The bigger battles for privacy still need to be fought.

<comment><USER7> > The bigger battles for privacy still need to be fought.

They do, but you have to start somewhere, and at least this is a step in the right direction.

My personal view is that a privacy backlash is building. For the past decade or so, we have lived under an unwelcome combination of commercial interests who now have the technology to conduct mass surveillance and government interests whose politics is governed by fear, which in turn drives the surveillance state. I think it's becoming increasingly obvious that the cost/benefit in both cases doesn't justify the price we're paying, and it's starting to be the common guy or girl in the street who is asking questions and not just the privacy advocates and civil liberties campaigners.

As debates like this one start to hit mainstream media like the BBC, the political winds will shift, helped by the fact that many of the over- reactionary post-9/11 government administrations have now been shown the door so the political resistance is lower. As long as those of us who care can keep building the momentum, and the global picture remains more one of hope as dubious governments are falling than one of fear after a string of terrorist attacks, I think we'll start to build a more reasonable regulatory framework for protecting privacy when it's important to do so, without unduly disrupting useful innovations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm usually not a proponent of EU regulations, but i don't think telling customers the truth should be considered harmful by any serious entrepreneurs.

Customers will probably be scared at first, but once they understand a bit more about tracking (which are harmful, which are not), opt-in system will definitely add to customer's confidence, and thus benefit to business in the long term.

</comment><comment><USER22> _if you have to have a big warning sign just for a cookie that will remember you for purely convenience so that it keeps you logged in. The user wont read that detail – they will just think your a privacy nightmare and wont sign up_

The only times lay surfers have heard about cookies is in the news when severe privacy invasions have occurred. To those that have never heard of it, it is new, so they are cautious. Some parts of the industry have misused that technology and now the whole industry is called to gain back the users trust.

The EU law's intention is to shift the responsibility from the companies to the user, i.e. they will be the ones to decide weather they want to use cookies or not. To make that decision they need to be informed about it's positive and negative sides.

Regarding opt-out models, how many people will know about that? So if I'm not aware of opting-out, is it my fault if some company goes berserk with my privacy rights?

</comment><comment><USER23> So don't track - and sell that to your customers and visitors as an advantage.

<comment><USER24> That's the issue - what's the definition of "track"?

I've not seen a decent discussion of this anywhere - the BBC site says "shopping baskets are exempt" but what about session cookies? What about font- size preferences or logins?

I've asked my MP (in the UK) to look into it...

<comment><USER23> I presumed tracking meant cookies which were used outside of one website. Good point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Is this about tracking via cookies only, or cookies in general ? Does it mean I have to ask for consent to use ganalytics as well ?

<comment><USER16> There are some lawyers in Germany that already now presume that Google Analytics is illegal: [http://eu.techcrunch.com/2009/11/24/google-analytics- illegal...](http://eu.techcrunch.com/2009/11/24/google-analytics-illegal- germany/). And due to the German "Abmahnung" law (see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abmahnung>) it's rather easy for them to "fine" you if you use it anyway: "One German lawyer that gets cited in the article says the penalties could amount up to €50,000 (about $75,000) per website that uses Google Analytics to keep track of its visitors' usage patterns."

<comment><USER17> Good. User tracking is antisocial and Google is one of the worst offenders.

<comment><USER26> They are not suing Google. They are suing website owners using Google Analytics without consent from the users. They tried to reach an agreement with Google first.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> They will need member states to actually enforce this law. Until then it's a dead letter like so many other EU laws that get ignored.

</comment><comment><USER28> There are already lawsuits in Germany against websites using AdSense or Google Analytics. Also the Wordpress plugin Akismet (distributed spam filter) is apparently a no go in the future.

Just some examples - so yes, I think this could definitely hurt EU startups, or at least smaller projects that rely on adsense.

<comment><USER26> It is by no means against the law in Germany to use adsense or Google Analytics. You just have to get the consent of the user before you are allowed to have their personal information processed by a third party.

<comment><USER28> I'm not a lawyer. Anyway, I have yet to see a web site anywhere on the internet that asks the user for said content. So we'll just have to wait how it plays out once web sites start doing that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> It will be interesting if this actually works out worse for privacy; say the site decides instead to remember you (for ad purposes) by ip address instead of by cookie, so everyone from that ip address ends up in the same profile target.

e.g. i visit a website to buy a birthday present for my wife, but later everywhere she browses she suddenly sees adverts for the shop or product that i bought.

<comment><USER14> They will use a combination of user-agent, IP address and other browser profile information. This is surprising good at uniquely identifying most computers.

It only really falls down when there are a large number of totally identical machines in the same IP range, where the machines are locked down so plugins (etc..) cannot be installed. E.g. a large office or university lab.

<comment><USER30> _They will use a combination of user-agent, IP address and other browser profile information. This is surprising good at uniquely identifying most computers._

But useless for the case he mentions where he cleared the cookies, but it doesn't matter...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Another case of well intentioned intellectuals trying to protect the poor consumers from themselves but ending up hurting them.

</comment><comment><USER31> See also <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2300202>.

</comment><comment><USER32> A tongue in cheek example of what users might face:

[http://www.davidnaylor.co.uk/eu-cookies-directive- interactiv...](http://www.davidnaylor.co.uk/eu-cookies-directive-interactive- guide-to-25th-may-and-what-it-means-for-you.html)

</comment><comment><USER33> Try configuring your browser to ask for your permission every time a cookie needs to be stored. Some websites have 4-5 cookies and clicking "accept" (or "deny") several times over for a site is just unusable.

<comment> mike-cardwell I use the Cookie Monster addon for Firefox. it provides a similar interface to that provided by NoScript. It blocks cookies by default, and lets you permanently/temporarily accept full cookies/session cookies, on a per domain basis.

I can use news.ycombinator.com because the first time I came to this site after installing Cookie Monster, I set it to accept session cookies from ycombinator.com, and to permanently remember that setting. I don't need to let ycombinator set long lived cookies, and I certainly don't need to let clickpass.com set a cookie on my computer when I visit the news.ycombinator.com login page.

</comment></comment><comment> loup-vaillant I don't use cookies myself for my web site, but Apache logs a good deal of data. I think this alone warrants a "privacy policy" page. I plan to set up one soon.

<comment><USER5> You may be interested in Weinberg's (founder of DuckDuckgo) blog-entry on privacy-aware logging. [http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2010/11/how-to- not-log-p...](http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2010/11/how-to-not-log- personally-identifiable-information.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> The point is not to prevent this law in EU but promote it in the US as well, we have to level the fields but in the same time move towards better privacy.

</comment><comment><USER35> EU to the internet: You shall store no state!

<comment><USER36> This is not about storing state, but using cookies to track users across domains in order to build up a profile about the user. It is only the latter that needs explicit permission under the new law.

<comment><USER36> Of course, phrasing new regulations to cover only that specific application of cookies while allowing any other legitimate or future uses is going to be interesting. And by interesting I mean pretty much impossible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> What if I write my app in such a way that makes it critical to use google analytics cookie, otherwise it won't work?

What defines critical?

</comment><comment><USER38> This is another stupid face of Europe's health and safety madness. No wonder the growth rate is going down day by day in EU. Due to all these unreasonable regulations a lot of young start-ups have already moved to the US.</comment>


Wayfair Furniture Employees Walked Out over Sales to Migrant Facilities - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/25/us/wayfair-walkout.html <comment><USER2> This is an incredibly exciting, and brave decision. Companies should be beholden to their workers' consciences—after all, we are colluding in everything the executives decide. For Wayfair CEO Niraj Shah to ask for workers' silent collusion in the facilitation of border atrocities is unacceptable.

We are all complicit in our vendors' and customers' impact on the world. The dependency chain stretches from JavaScript to imperialist torture, and genocide.

I'm proud to share an industry with these brave Wayfair workers, who are standing against tyranny in ways most in this forum cannot fathom.</comment>


Eric Schmidt Tells Charlie Rose Google Is "Unlikely" To Buy Twitter - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/07/eric-schmidt-tells-charlie-rose-google-is-unlikely-to-buy-twitter-and-wants-to-turn-phones-into-tvs/ <comment><USER2> Is this any kind of news at all? Wouldn't Eric Schmidt have to be made of stupid to tell Charlie Rose that Google was likely to buy Twitter?

From Michael Lewis' "Wall Street on the Tundra", writing about Iceland:

"They wanted to know," says Shearer, "why our share price had risen so rapidly over the past couple of days. So I laughed and said, 'I think you'll find the reason is that Mr. Einarsson, the chairman of Kaupthing, said two days ago, like an idiot, that he was going to make a bid for Singer and Friedlander.'" In August 2005, Singer and Friedlander became Kaupthing Singer and Friedlander, and Shearer quit, he said, out of fear of what might happen to his reputation if he stayed.

<comment><USER3> Well, if they wanted twitter they'd probably already attempted to buy it. My guess is that twitter is not for sale.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Went away with:

@Eric wants people to capture evil police people on their phones.

@Those crazy 20-percenters will solve how to make money off YouTube SOMEHOW.

@Micropayments of 1 cent, 3 cents, per video, so Ted Nelson now vindicated.

@Eric has a healthy sense of humour.

@"We've seen an explosion" [of usage...] - funny phrasing, given he was talking about evil terrorists using Google Earth.

@Map reduce isn't just CPUs - Google's developers tackle problems in parallel.

Great interview!

</comment><comment><USER5> Sounds to me like they really _want_ to buy Twitter.</comment>


Scientists in Abu Dhabi have successfully created 50+ artificial rain storms - <AUTHOR> http://dlewis.net/now-i-know-learn-something-new-every-day-by-email-archives/Making-It-Rain/

<comment><USER2> I tried to look around for a better source than the Daily Mail, especially on something scientific in nature. Unfortunately I wasn't able to find anything I could vouch for as authoritative. However I did notice the images in this page referenced many times in other sites:

[http://www.indiashines.com/Balgates-photos-95294-dubai- artif...](http://www.indiashines.com/Balgates-photos-95294-dubai-artificial- rain)

If anyone knows of a better source or can find information about it on the National Center of Meteorology and Seismology website:

<http://www.das.ae/>

I'd be most grateful.

<comment><USER3> Here you go

Telegraph: [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/uniteda...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/unitedarabemirates/8236350/Abu- Dhabi-weather-project-creates-man-made-rainstorms.html)

HuffPo: [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/03/abu-dhabi- rainstorm...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/03/abu-dhabi- rainstorm_n_803554.html)

Arabian Business: [http://www.arabianbusiness.com/abu-dhabi-backed- scientists-c...](http://www.arabianbusiness.com/abu-dhabi-backed-scientists- create-fake-rainstorms-in-11m-project-371038.html)

LiveScience: [http://www.livescience.com/environment/rain-makers- ionizatio...](http://www.livescience.com/environment/rain-makers-ionization- weather-110104.html)

Blog Post: [http://globalwarming- arclein.blogspot.com/2011/01/ionizers-b...](http://globalwarming- arclein.blogspot.com/2011/01/ionizers-bombard-abu-dhabi-desert-with.html)

Company: <http://www.meteo-systems.com>

<comment><USER2> Wow, a lot more sources than I was expecting. Thank you very much for providing this!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The Russians used similar tactics to ensure the nuclear fallout from the Chernobyl disaster wouldn't reach Moscow:

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1549366/How-we- mad...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1549366/How-we-made-the- Chernobyl-rain.html)

<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3943013.stm>

The Chinese also used cloud seeding to clear the smog-filled skies over Beijing for the Olympics.

</comment><comment><USER5> > _silver iodide and dry ice are the most commonly used substances in cloud > seeding technology_ (down-cased for your reading pleasure)

uh, how _much_ silver iodide? All of it eventually goes down a drain, and back into the water supply.

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

</comment><comment><USER6> This happens in the US as well. China and India do it although using different techniques. But I'm wary of using chemicals/technology to induce rainfall (I'm no scientist but is the water safe then?). Also imagine the resource wars that will start once countries start using this regularly.

</comment><comment><USER7> The last comment on man-made earthquakes is actually already here: man-made 3.1 in Switzerland:

<http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/01/geothermal_powe.php>

</comment><comment><USER8> Very cool. It'd be great if they could also build a system to actually scatter rainclouds. Northern European weather would become a bit more bearable.

<comment><USER5> Maybe a giant frickin' laser beam? It could prevent them from condensing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> ... and soon there were no more great worms and the spice stopped to flow.

Sorry, just couldn't resist.

</comment><comment><USER10> It's probably causing floods elsewhere, unless clouds obey international boundaries.</comment>


Ask HN: What will a crash in Silicon Valley do to the job market? - <AUTHOR>

Should ordinary developers be worried ? <comment><USER2> Yes.

Invest in things that you can use to survive. If you drive a car, then purchase car tools - like a sears craftsman ratchet set.

Don't buy a house that you won't be able to pay for if you're out of work. That was a real problem for me during the dot-com crash. While I managed to stay out of foreclosure, I was under a huge amount of stress the whole time. I could have either rented, or purchased a far-less expensive home.

Lots of people look to various kinds of paper such as stocks and bonds as "investments". I really don't. I invest in the tools of my trade.</comment>


N. Joseph Woodland, Inventor of the Bar Code, Dies at 91 - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/13/business/n-joseph-woodland-inventor-of-the-bar-code-dies-at-91.html

<comment><USER2> It's quite interesting to hear how the genius idea of a bar code was conceived by dragging four fingers in the sand. It's quite amazing that such an invention which I think is pretty revolutionary and is on everything these days is something not many people think about. "Who invented the bar code?" isn't a question that I've ever heard or seen anyone ask.

<comment><USER3> >It's quite interesting to hear how the genius idea of a bar code was conceived by dragging four fingers in the sand.

In 1920, fourteen-year-old Philo Farnsworth was tilling his family's Idaho potato field. He'd been thinking of how to transmit motion pictures electronically. Observing the neat parallel lines of the potato field, it occurred to him that a frame to be transmitted could be broken down into parallel lines, transmitted, and reproduced at the remote end, line by line, in synchrony.

<http://www.gladwell.com/2002/2002_05_27_a_televisionary.htm>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Mr. Woodland perfected a system for delivering elevator music efficiently.

This isn't directly on topic, but I don't like it when people say that someone "perfected" some sort of design/tool/technology. They may have made it much much much better than it was before, but is the new version ever really perfect?

<comment><USER5> Usually, in this context, "perfected" means "made good enough to actually use for practical purposes". Lots of neat ideas languish in obscurity at the edges of innovation because they're not quite "there" yet.

Most people understand this use of 'perfected' and do expect more improvements, probably at a much greater rate now that the idea finds widespread use.

Perfected might be better said "brought to the practicality tipping point?"

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> One of my elementary school teachers use to tell us that her uncle invented the bar code... I wonder if this was him.

I remember I couldn't believe that someone actually invented that, as a little kid that made me think being a scientist was so cool.

</comment><comment><USER7> _Had Mr. Woodland not been a Boy Scout, had he not logged hours on the beach and had his father not been quite so afraid of organized crime, the code would very likely not have been invented in the form it was, if at all.

...As a Boy Scout he learned Morse code, the spark that would ignite his invention...._

\-- Interesting note on the origin of invention.

</comment><comment><USER8> || |||| ||||| | ||||| ||| ||||||||| |||| ||

</comment><comment><USER9> Also worked on the Manhattan Project.</comment>


Transgenic plants could make for more nutritious salmon - <AUTHOR> https://newatlas.com/camelina-omega-3-salmon-feed/56734/ <comment><AUTHOR> If they're then farmed anything like Norwegian-owned salmon, which destroy the local ecosystem with underwater clouds of shit, sea lice, excessive antibiotics, higher levels of toxins than wild-caught (PCBs, dioxins, toxaphene, dieldrin and mercury), feed preservatives, lower Omega-3 levels than wild fish and corrupt politicians pretending everything is okay, adding more GMOs to the mix seems like putting lipstick on a fish.

[http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/eats/norway-farmed- sal...](http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/eats/norway-farmed-salmon-safe- public-eat-article-1.2047012)

[http://salmonwars.com/](http://salmonwars.com/)

[http://www.rcinet.ca/en/2013/07/23/salmon-confidential- docum...](http://www.rcinet.ca/en/2013/07/23/salmon-confidential-documentary- raises-disturbing-questions-about-farmed-salmon/)</comment>