I Deleted All of My Social Media and 60,000 Followers - <AUTHOR> https://petapixel.com/2019/02/19/why-i-deleted-all-of-my-social-media-and-60000-followers/ <comment><USER2> I took a photography class from this guy! Ohio represent!

On topic: I've experienced exactly what he's talking about in the field of indie game development. The entire gamedev industry is on Twitter. It was an endless treadmill of validation seeking for me. At first it's screaming into the void, then it's strategically following and unfollowing people, then eventually it's one mega tweet that gets retweeted by your childhood hero or one of the cool indie illuminati kids. It's never enough and you're never happy.

There's a super indie hip event in LA called IndieCade that I've probably spent $250 in application fees over the years trying to get my game into. I was devastated every time I got rejected. A couple months ago I got tickets for free, and coming from a fresh perspective outside the industry, it was shockingly underwhelming. There was a dad with 13-year-old daughters showing off a painfully amateur interactive fiction they wrote as a family. I couldn't believe THIS was the thing I had cared about so much.

Whatever industry bubble you're in... it's not that important and no one outside the bubble cares. And when I realized that, it felt like a huge burden lifted. :)

<comment><USER3> I belonged to an indie game community where the only people making money were the ones making development tools and selling it to the community.

If you want to make games, really what you need to actually do is make a game and don't stop until it's done, and wrap yourself up in your customers, not other game developers.

<comment><USER4> I agree with you. The biggest challenge I have is wrapping myself up with my customers. I have no idea how to go about doing that. Any ideas? Resources? Tips?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here's [0] the conclusion of a paper on optimizing population sizes in genetic algorithms:

> The use of smaller populations result in lower accuracy of the solution, > obtained for a smaller computational time. The further increase of the > population size increases the accuracy of solution. This effect is observed > to a population size of 100 chromosomes. The use of larger populations does > not improve the solution accuracy and only increase the needed computational > resources.

The same effect may be what this article is describing, applied to culture. As the audience grows, the neural resources applied to judgement grow, but after a point the accuracy does not. A larger population does not translate into a more thorough search of the solution space compared to the same population divided into smaller niches that do not communicate.

I doubt it would be a great improvement to divide the population back down to the tiny tribes of prehistory, but the optimum is likely somewhere between that and our global melting pot.

Inclusion is a modern creed and battle cry, but to a point exclusion also has its place in increasing innovation, in that it creates independent niches that each attempt to climb different maxima.

[0] [https://annals-csis.org/proceedings/2013/pliks/167.pdf](https://annals- csis.org/proceedings/2013/pliks/167.pdf)

<comment><USER6> _" The use of smaller populations result in lower accuracy of the solution, obtained for a smaller computational time."_

Here's a different view:

 _" Small Populations over Many Generations can beat Large Populations over Few Generations in Genetic Programming"_[1]

The results of AI research is often very problem-dependent, as there are so many variables that vary between problems, and many ways to tweak the algorithms themselves. They're also often not reproduceable. So I take their claims with a huge grain of salt.

[1] - [http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.42.7...](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.42.7326)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> What I find interesting is what he says he loses by doing so.

60000 followers.

No word about losing business. Or interesting discussions. Or inspiration. Or meeting likeminded people. Or getting feedback. Or anything.

I think many people come to this conclusion over time. That the number of social media followers is just a number. With little to no real world impact.

<comment><USER8> I'd be curious if Instagram is actually a lead gen for a photography business? Or many small businesses. Might be a quick way to maybe see what someone's posted as a portfolio, but i'm pretty sure more people would just go to the artists website to see their actual portfolio work.

I think Twitter even less so.

Facebook might be convenient for people to message them? But even then, I imagine it's mostly over email.

I think there's a pretty big illusion that social media sites add tons of value to a lot of small mom-and-pop businesses. A good website, email, and word of mouth, and in-person contacts, is likely more effective...

<comment><USER9> My fiancée found most of the photographers we evaluated for our wedding through instagram. I think her friends have done the same.

<comment><USER10> I'm looking at tattoo artists and judging them on their Instagram photos. There's a few things like this I would check social media for, but mostly I'm looking at reputation (reviews and writeups) rather than photos and other social presence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The energy that goes into writing tweets is also energy that could instead go into works of lasting value. I've noticed that with all of my favorite writers, the moment when they turn to Twitter seems to be a moment when their production of high quality books/essays seems to go into decline. One of my favorite economists had a 10 year streak when he was absolutely on fire, then he started tweeting on Twitter, and his production of books and essays almost vanished. When it comes to fiction writers, I could also put J K Rowling into this category.

Everyone should beware of small, frivolous activities that keep us from achieving our life goals. And it seems Twitter is almost uniquely destructive in this regard. Not quite as bad as meth, but not a whole lot better either. And social media, in general, sucks up too much time, for too many people.

If you want to do something great with your life, be careful how you spend your time. If you'd like to create a great game, or a write a great novel, you need to focus on that. Don't waste your energy on Twitter.

<comment><USER12> I guess HN is like that too. _goes back to work_

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Yup, very true for small businesses. I get almost 100% of my clients through client referrals (I own a test prep company).

While I am not rich, my businesses is growing really well and I feel confident that we will reach my goals for the company in the next year or two.

And all of this without almost any presence digitally.

We have a website that is actually more extensive than most tutoring/test prep companies our size (I did some freelance Wordpress stuff), we get almost no business from it.

I tried doing some Facebook ads a while ago, but it just seemed like more work than it was worth. It's better for me to focus on making sure my students get their scores than to drum up business from spending money on Facebook or whatever other social media.

I feel like getting business through Facebook or Google or Instagram would just take way too much effort, time, energy and money for me.

I would rather keep improving my test prep courses than do that.

And if you get students the scores they need, not only will it change their lives, they will give your name and number out to everyone they know.

<comment><USER14> Agreed in general, but don't feel it needs to be either or. An assistant could handle it and other time sinks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've said it before and I'll say it again: the only thing cooler (in this age) than having millions of followers is not needing any followers.

If you care about and are trying to improve your number of followers, you clearly haven't made it. If you've made it, you don't need followers. You probably won't even have a social media account at all.

<comment><USER16> If you've made it, whatever that means, you probably have a large rolodex of connections and/or clients, an industry-wide reputation, a widely read blog, a large newsletter, a large social media audience, or something else to that effect. In every single case it's about followers in some form or another.

<comment><USER15> Exactly. Social media will be your least concern, if at all

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> And yet he blogged about it and the blog has _share_ buttons.

Trying to figure out which connections matter and how to get them is always a challenge. I'm always bemused by pieces like this because it describes a way of relating that is alien to me.

My experiences on Twitter have been overall pretty positive. I don't have a lot of followers. I'm still working out how to interact constructively with the space. But I fundamentally don't do social media the way so many authors of pieces like this describe doing it. I imagine that's somehow pertinent.

</comment><comment><USER18> So social media is good for marketing, but bad for true creatives trying to be innovative.

That makes sense. I've heard a lot of film makers and authors who don't really watch movies or read others books so that they voice will be unaffected and stay unique.

<comment><USER19> > So social media is good for marketing, but bad for true creatives trying to > be innovative.

I dunno, there is some interesting and innovative work being posted to the likes of Instagram, etc, you just don't see it so much in the explore feed or hear about it outside of the fine art photographic circles because it's not the kind of work that attracts tens of thousands of followers.

The original post, somewhat ironically cross-posted to the largest photographic news and blog post aggregator on the web today, seems to be more a case of redefining success at a tangent to what social media defines as success. There are plenty of photographers making a good steady living doing what they do without worrying about follower count, likes, or getting on the content treadmill. Arguably they have found success within their photographic niche.

If you're really trying to make it as a photographer you're probably concentrating more on calls for work, portfolio reviews, attending seminars/retreats, building a body of work, networking with those in the art world who can get your work in front of the "right" people, personal projects, long term ideas, and so on. Social media won't help you achieve those things.

It seems that the author had the revelation that success on social media (from a photographic point of view) is more an indication of how good you are at marketing yourself and not necessarily how good you are[1] as a photographer. Another example is YouTube, there are dozens of very popular photography channels run by photographers that produce mediocre, uninteresting work. That's not a bad thing, per se, but if it redefines what "success" is as a photographer to those who go purely by follower counts, etc then, well, who knows?

An analogy would be Red Bull: a hugely successful marketing company that happens to also produce really awful soft drinks.

I should probably turn this into a blog post...

[1] Beyond the realms of the boring technicalities i should say. There are countless photographers creating technically excellent, beautifully composed, utterly mundane work.

<comment><USER20> >Beyond the realms of the boring technicalities i should say. There are countless photographers creating technically excellent, beautifully composed, utterly mundane work.

This is the real definition of success in my opinion. A few years in, pleasing composition and technical prowess is not exactly hard anymore. To create something with meaning, or a real story behind it, that's the meat of photography. I'm at this point now, and I hate it. I'm creating beautiful photos of nothing. I think the author is seeing this too however. Social media encourages you to make frequent, beautiful compositions that fit your brand or style, and that often compromises the soul of your work. If you're thinking about how your photo will fit on your feed, then you're victim of this anti- creative pattern of thinking, if your intention is to create meaningful, personal work.

<comment><USER21> Certainly you have something to say photographically. Keep seeking. Recall that the big names are all remembered for a tiny fraction of their work. Ansel Adams is remembered for approximately 40 photographs, out of a lifetime of art images and countless advertising photos from his commercial business that paid the bills. Weston, Eisenstadt, Cartier-Bresson, Karsh, we remember them for a fraction of their output.

As you point out, social media rewards what people want to hear/see, not whatever it is you have to say. Mastery of craft should serve articulating the message, and the message must come from within, not serve someone else's utility function.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> As an ex Agile Coach (currently back doing real work as tech lead) I used twitter a lot. Could learn from people in my bubble and maybe teach other. For the moment not working Agile anymore as most of the people I met on conferences and on twitter are toxic. I cut down on the people I follow on twitter drastically. Now just follow some people for fun and not too much for work.

I also have a custom motorcycle shop and instagram/facebook are super important for marketing reasons. We try to build an audience because people will order a custom bike if they like previous work. Also I follow other builders on these platforms to see what they are building.

I got into building custom motorcycles by my love for them. By getting inspired by seeing what other builders are doing. Thanks to instagram I'm no longer dependent on buying magazines and seeing what they put into it. Now I can follow obscure builders and have a wider range of influences. By doing and sometimes by copying you get better at the craft and in time you will find your own voice.

</comment><comment><USER23> > No social media account or agent or client is going to be your savior.

No, it's a tool, a channel to reach your audience.

> If I create something beautiful — something I am immensely proud of — do I > need to share it on social media? Do I need others to affirm it?

This is strange, social media share are for traffic and engagement to drive ad revenue. If done for affirmation, then it's probably not the best thing to do.

</comment><comment><USER24> They wrote a blog about it which has comments and that's a form of social media. So they didn't really delete all their social media...

<comment><USER25> They are being more discriminating with regards to boosting constructive social media and disregarding pop social media.</comment></comment>


Tech entrepreneurs [including Ward Cunningham] defy recession - <AUTHOR> http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2009/05/tech_entrepreneurs_defy_recess.html

<comment><USER2> Ward Cunningham has joined his first startup. Who woulda thunk it would take so long.

The article is about the startup scene in Portland, OR. Portland has some pluses, like talented developers and money, and some minuses, like the inability to attract seasoned executives because of the lack of large companies (executive pool).

>"There's not one-upsmanship here," he said."I have friends in Austin, where I used to live, telling me they have a hard time building a technology community because there's a lot of rivalries. But that's not the case here."

Tatoo that on your hand. An area will fail if there is secretiveness instead of cooperation. I rate it as a good read for those wondering if their area has potential for startups.

<comment><USER3> Yup, Ward is my boss. He joined AboutUs over 2 years ago.

Portland is a great startup town. There's a few VCs specializing in PDX startups (Voyager Capital from Seattle is one, they funded AboutUs in Dec).

And we hired another news.yc member qhoxie(<http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=qhoxie>) from here to move to Portland and join AboutUs.</comment></comment>


Media Query Breaks Modularity, Use Container Query - <AUTHOR> http://d6u.github.io/react-container-query/ <comment><USER2> +1</comment>


Political start-up set to take on the two party system - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/opinion/sunday/24friedman.html?_r=1

<comment><USER2> _The only rule is that a Democrat must run with a Republican or independent, and a Republican with a Democrat or independent._</comment>


What Is Wrong with Seattle's Startup Scene - <AUTHOR> https://www.geekwire.com/2018/whats-wrong-seattles-startup-scene-despite-top-talent-lack-venture-capital-stunts-growth/?lipi=urn%3Ali%3Apage%3Ad_flagship3_feed%3BcBof7J90SpyAt%2F9yejLHSA%3D%3D <comment><USER2> Plenty of people have made their billions in Seattle. Gates and Bezos obviously but plenty more besides. Maybe it's time to support the community that gave them their opportunity?

<comment><USER3> It is hard to say Seattle "gave them the opportunity". They would likely have succeeded anywhere and one could argue they "gave to Seattle" with their creations.

Another billionaire, Ballmer, said at a private party that he does not care about the Seattle startup community. "Not in a callous way--I am all for more startups succeeding--it is just that I have only so much time in a day. Right now I care about my basketball team , my non-profit and learning Hebrew".</comment></comment>


Nintendo's Biggest Blunders - <AUTHOR> http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2012/03/feature_nintendos_biggest_blunders

<comment><USER2> Nintendo's biggest blunder was letting Rare go. Whatever they needed to do to prevent that, it would have been worth it.

<comment><USER3> Rare went from hitmaker for Nintendo to also-ran for Microsoft. Unfortunately, their recent offerings are not AAA titles:

      Notable Nintendo Hits:
       Killer Instinct
       Donkey Kong Country
       Goldeneye

      Microsoft Games:
       Kameo
       Perfect Dark Zero
       Viva Pinata

I imagine their Microsoft offerings have sold decently, but nothing on the scale of games-you-buy-a-console-for like Goldeneye or Donkey Kong Country.

As someone who only had the DKC series for the SNES and bought a N64 for DK64, their transition into the 2000's was underwhelming and disappointing.</comment></comment>


Foursquare Merges with Factual - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/foursquare-merges-with-factual-another-location-data-provider-11586193000 <comment><USER2> Back in college I used to love Foursquare (about 9 years ago). It was fun, lightweight, addicting (competing to be 'mayor' of my apartment building). Actually I feel like all social media was fun back then. When they split off the actual fun part into it's own app, I knew the fun was just dead. Sure Swarm was more polished, but I didn't really understand why would I move out to another app to do what I was already doing in the Foursquare app. I think a better product owner could have kept it unified somehow.

But alas, Foursquare simply had no way of making money. The often quoted 'How Not to Die' by pg seems especially relevant to foursquare. Compare the company they started out as, to the company they are now. They may not have 'died', but they sure as hell aren't the same company, product, or userbase. They figured how to not die by pulling a Ship of Theseus, replacing fun with features, features with ads, replacing ads with 'tools'.

Is there a way for social media to stay fun and profitable? I guess Instagram is probably the closest thing to staying fun, though for some reason I never latched on to Instagram. Perhaps it's focus on vanity never really resonated with me. When I think of goofy fun, I don't think of Instagram - Instagram is for the beautiful and that's not what I think of myself as.

Reading the line 'Foursquare is No. 1 when it comes to attribution and ad effectiveness, when it comes to app developer tools' is so the opposite of what I considered Foursquare to be when I used it.

<comment><USER3> As a long time Foursquare user who switched to Swarm I can say it's still the same FourSquare it always was. It's just as "fun" as it ever was. It's awkward to have two apps on my phone and I hate that product decision too, but it's better than them killing off the check-in feature altogether. That's what Google would have done.

<comment><USER4> There are almost no badges in the new app, useless coins (at least if you could upgrade your badges with them as back in the day).. I fail to see how it's the same "fun" as it ever was. I have a few friends that still use it religiously, one day I plan on thinking deeply about what these people have in common because on the surface they seem rather random -- some are technologists, some aren't; all of them are 30+.

I think there is a _lot_ to be done in the field. As with anything these days it would most likely require a large effort with sizable investment, but I think it's an area that's grossly overlooked.

<comment><USER5> I still use it and I'm well over 30. I can't speak to your friends, but I like the history of where I've been. I love driving and finding new places -- at least, back when things were open, remember when there were cafés and stuff? -- and, on the flip side, I (used to) go out to eat for most meals and could fall into regular patterns, and sometimes checking Swarm to remind me that, yes, I _had_ been to such-and-such place twice already this month could kick me into trying something new.

Making the coins utterly useless irritates me, though, and I'm kind of surprised they dropped the whole notion of partnering with businesses to offer specials to regular customers they had in the pre-Swarm days. While I presume they pivoted into selling location data because the partnerships just didn't make them enough money, I'd hope the partnerships weren't _losing_ them money, and I think they really drove usage.

<comment><USER4> > but I like the history of where I've been

This is kinda the deep down reason I still use it. I sort of passively compete with the friends that use it, especially when I'm traveling, since I get to check into a ton of new stuff. The list of friends that use it is _very_ static. It's been the same group for _years_ now, w/o a single new person (and I don't think anyone's dropped). We're not close friends either. All in all, it's a fascinating experience in that regard.

<comment><USER6> I hadn't thought about that, but my experience is the same: no discernible changes to my Swarm friends in _years_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's sad how many mistakes they've made with foursquare along the way. The checkin thing was fun, then they moved the only fun part of the app to a mostly neglected junk drawer secondary app (Swarm) and turned the name brand app into just another yelp.

Now it seems it's just going to double/triple-down on the data mining part, and there's no clear indication of what value this adds to the user.

The only thing I really use Swarm for is to keep a little calendar-integrated diary of places I've been (with an IFTTT), but I can do all this myself much simpler and with less data mining. So long, 4SQ.

<comment><USER8> The original 4SQ was awesome, but it was also absolutely non-viable (no business model whatsoever, besides selling branded badges to advertisers).

Putting aside the nature of their current business, I really admire 4SQ ability to pivot and re-invent itself several times, while keeping beloved functionality like the check-in (even if it's through another app).

This is a company that by all measures should have died in any of those past struggles. They even had a couple of down rounds. And somehow they managed to overcome all those dead-ends.

Very few startups have done that, and I can't think of a single one that did it at 4SQ's scale.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, as a business they've been amazingly resilient. I just wish the product was still fun/worthwhile.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> (EDIT: Hmm, WSJ frames it as a Foursquare merging into Factual, but both companies are framing it as Foursquare "purchasing" Factual. [https://www.factual.com/blog/factual-joins- foursquare/](https://www.factual.com/blog/factual-joins-foursquare/))

I started using Foursquare the day it launched over a decade ago, and still check in to every single place I go... and I don't know why. It might literally be the only habit I actually have. I love having a log of everything I've done over the past decade, it's amazing. It's also so great to see where people I know have been in random countries or cities. It makes the world feel a lot smaller.

I was glad they found a way to monetize it with data, and I really really hope Swarm never goes away :) Great job Dennis and team!

<comment><USER10> Just turn on Google location services. If you want to see where you've been and when, it'll show up on google maps timeline.

I like using that to find out where I've been overseas.

<comment><USER9> There's a signal vs noise issue, and it doesn't feel intentional. I add comments and photos, I mention who I'm with, etc. I much prefer Swarm over Google.

(And, not really the point, but I trust Swarm with my data more than Google, even though I know Google already has it...)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The business model of these companies seems in question long term given that they rely heavily on location data "opted in" from users that honestly probably didn't realize they "opted in" to share their data for such uses.

As more efforts continue (by Apple, Firefox and others) to crack down on that sort of thing the proportion of reality represented by the data such companies hope to sell gets smaller and smaller.

It's increasingly not "people shop here" but "people with bad privacy settings on their device shop here."

</comment><comment><USER12> I love foursquare so much. I still use it all the time and in every country I visit. The community is unique and always delivers solid recommendations. There's much less noise when compared with yelp, tripadvisor, and google.

<comment><USER13> I use Swarm a lot and it has been invaluable for me to remember places that I have been to. I use it all of the time to remember what places are worth returning to and to tell my friends who are looking for recommendations in certain cities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> How crazy is it that at one point there were 5 or 6 check-in apps, it was all the rage and now there is essentially 1 (which itself is neglected). There were startups that were getting serious funding with the hopes of being 3rd place in the check-in category.

<comment><USER15> I mean Instagram is, in many ways, a check-in app, and is spectacularly successful.

<comment><USER14> Sure, if you stretch it far enough every social network is in some way a check-in app.

<comment><USER15> Right. But they weren't when Foursquare launched, and now they are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The main business model of these two firms is quickly becoming selling location data to hedge funds. This needs to be illegal.

<comment><USER17> I've really appreciated that Android has started telling me when apps are pulling my location in the background. Every once in a while I am ok with that application doing it, but for the vast majority I immediately disable that app's location access.

After a couple weeks, I'm much more confident that my location data isn't leaking all over the place.

<comment><USER18> They don't need gps location shared to know where you are. They can get this data via sniffing wifi and bluetooth devices in the area (including other phones) and knowing where those devices are.

<comment><USER19> That's not what they were referring to. Android alerts you when an app tries to access location data in the background and allows you to disable it.

There's a system-wide setting to disable app access to BT and wifi location data.

<comment><USER18> Turning off gps based location data provides a false sense of security, which is the point I was trying to make. There are other ways to get your location that are nearly as easy and precise. I don't know anything about disabling app access to BT and wifi location data, what does that mean exactly? Is it disabling the ability for apps to sniff nearby devices?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Where does Factual get their data from? They've got tons of big name partners, who I assume share it with them, then combine it to get a wider view:

[https://www.factual.com/company/partners/](https://www.factual.com/company/partners/)

Since Foursquare seems to be caring less about their consumer-facing products I'm guessing they'll shift more towards a collection + analytics style product? Where they integrate with other popular apps instead of collecting their own data.

But I'm just speculating.

<comment><USER21> Factual is probably the biggest vendor for selling user location data and audience targeting for advertising, and I would imagine adding in foursquare creates lots of new possibilities for both companies.

<comment><USER22> It would be nice to get a full list. Just phone apps?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I lived in New York for a good chunk of Foursquare's life, and while it was magical, at least half of the population hated the concept, for good reason. Every woman I knew who had used it was terrified by the privacy and safety risks engendered by making their location public. The ones who did check in somewhere would typically only do it as or after they'd left. The "magical power" to see through walls that Dennis touted was a nightmare for women, who already deal with constant harassment and stalkers in the city. Which was a shame, because it really could feel magical to meet up with friends because of where you'd checked in.

For a while, Foursquare also had the most reliable review data – or at least its users tastes better aligned with mine. It was refreshing to get useful content about a restaurant without reading through paragraphs of self- indulgent drivel on Yelp. But after the launch of Swarm, the reviews more or less rotted over time.

The founders of Foursquare got to take a lot of money off the table in a relatively early round, ($8M each? Series C?), which is something I'd love to get the present perspective on from investors and employees who were there along the way.

</comment><comment><USER24> Whoa! Congrats to Gil and the rest of the team back at Factual. I'm eternally grateful to them for giving this ex-bioinformatician a shot and starting my career as a data engineer, I learned from some of the very best. They were doing some brilliant stuff, both from a technical standpoint and an organizational standpoint, so I am glad to see them continuing forward!

Gil is also responsible for bringing Google to LA when they bought his previous company Applied Semantics so he had a lot of cultural imprint on that office as well.

<comment><USER25> +1 for Clojure companies

<comment><USER26> They aren't much of a Clojure company at this point. Also laid off most of the remaining Clojure devs today.

<comment><USER25> Sorry to hear

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Apple needs to deprecate IDFAs and the business models of all these location tracking apps will come crumbling down. If you can't identify users, then the point is moot.

<comment><USER28> Doing that basically hands whatever is left of retail after this coronavirus to Amazon.

Brick and mortar has so few tools to compete comparatively. The big guys even buy our data from equifax/transunion to improve marketing efforts.

<comment><USER27> This is never a good argument. We can't let these smaller companies completely flout all privacy/tracking rules just so that they can sustain. The model is broken to start with.

<comment><USER28> No one is flouting a privacy rule.

You are talking about a group of people using freeware in exchange for their data.

No need to disable the functionality as it's entirely opt in.

<comment><USER27> It is fine. You need to educate yourself more on how companies like Factual get their hands on location data. If you think Facebook flouted privacy rules, you haven't seen anything yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I was just thinking about Foursquare when I crossed a foot bridge I (and others) used to check in at all the time.

I remember liking it and then they turned into something(s) else and I'm pretty sure I remember not really understanding what they were supposed to be and I sort of gave up / couldn't figure out why it got so much media talking head attention after that and then ... I don't think I heard anything about it again.

The whole process of "Do a neat thing that isn't really profitable (or at least not a unicorn profitable), then pivot into something else / away from users." thing happens time and again.

Honestly I think I try / don't install as many apps anymore because of such things.

<comment><USER30> For me, the Foursquare of today is a more accurate, more up-to-date Yelp. I find it more useful now than when it was first released as a check-in app. Not all pivots are net negatives.

<comment><USER29> Humm that sounds pretty good. Not the thing I remember liking about it but certainly I could go for something beyond the noise of Yelp with all the "I had a bad time this one time" and "This place isn't as good as that place that is 3x as expensive" or the worst of "I think Pizza Hut is the peak of cuisine but I ended up at this french place and it sucked!" It seems all services sort of devolve into that noise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> AFAIK, Foursquare was also the first mobile app to start the if-you-think- there-are-tabs-your-users-don't-use,-now-they'll-really-never-use-them-again- in-a-separate-app trend.

I thought they still had a pretty good differentiator making an effort to make recommendations in the main app based on your specific food tastes etc. Too bad they were a bit half hearted focusing on it.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've used FourSquare/Swarm a lot but I have also developed apps using their API. I've been watching their documentation stagnate and I was worried that the API might get shut down entirely due to 4sq shutting down. Glad to see they are still alive. Hopefully this gives them incentive to improve their docs, and support.

</comment><comment><USER32> Some years ago a foursquare founder got forced out of the company (cant recall why) and was bought out by the investors iirc. I suspect he cashed out the most from this whole saga despite how it must have felt and looked at the time.

<comment><USER33> 7 years ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6159963](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6159963)

<comment><USER34> Sadly that interview didn't reveal that much, only that he left not by choice, and "still hurts him".

The only somewhat objective info about it was that he didn't have a defined role in the company anymore.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Long live Gowalla!

But seriously, Foursquare pivoted away from consumers and went down the data broker path many, many years ago. 2011 maybe?

As much as I despise both of these companies and their business models, the merger makes a ton of sense.

<comment><USER36> I miss Gowalla! Wish I backed up the data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Wonder what this means for Swarm? It's still a fun game, even all these years later (although seeing lower use I'd imagine during this pandemic).

<comment><USER13> I hope swarm doesn't go away, though I still lament them splitting the apps in two.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> the split of the apps wasn't detrimental. Swarm is for your daily/weekly checkins to places - acts as a diary/bumps up the activity on restaurants etc

Foursquare is great when you're away/on trips/in a foreign city - to look up places to visit, get recommendations, make planning lists etc. Proven useful for me for many years.

</comment><comment><USER39> Can anyone here explain how Foursquare's business works? It seems like they are capitalising on location data that they gather from devices, but AFAIK the Foursquare and Swarm apps are pretty much dead.

So how exactly are they getting possession of the location data? Or is that not even their biggest source of revenue?

Just genuinely curious.

<comment><USER40> I interviewed there a few years back- I actually really liked the team there and came close to taking a less lucrative offer to work there. To the best of my knowledge, this is not in any way secret information, its just not widely known.

Foursquare is essentially a service for other apps at this point- They are a library embedded into many apps. Foursquare is likely on your phone somewhere. The app owner gets a whole lot of location data "for free", and Foursquare gets is own copy. They give you analytics on the data fed to them- the details were not laid out to me, but its not hard to fill in the blanks here- how many people walked into your store that day- how many people walked into your store after you covered that zipcode in an ad campaign, etc, what is the shape of your traffic in terms of people coming in from 9-10am, vs 10am-11am (helping them refine their staffing) etc... None of this couldn't be built themselves, but its already built and refined, and more refined.

On the flip side, there are some very lucrative uses for this data in aggregate. I am a hedge fund, and I want to know how many people are walking into a Macy's, or Chipotle after its dust-up, or even an entire mall (to get some edge on the owner's health). Right now it would probably be very interesting to look at someone like Home Depot's foot traffic- they are "essential"\- but is anyone going? Combine this with some data like Yodlee (for e-commerce- they sell gift card data) and you can get a quite accurate model for where their revenue is going to land. Hedge funds are willing to pay a lot of money for this type of data.

This was the state of affairs 3 years ago, things may have evolved since then.

<comment><USER39> Hey, thanks for your comment! This definitely makes sense. I just wonder how they are able to gather this location data.

From my naive point of view, most people have their phones on standby in their pockets with GPS turned off most of the time while they go shopping. And even if it is turned on they are probably using Whatsapp or Insta. So, in a real life scenario, what circumstances would have to come together for Foursquare to successfully collect data?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> [https://archive.md/8wYjr](https://archive.md/8wYjr)

</comment><comment><USER42> This was the only somewhat-popular alternative to Yelp and Google Reviews. Sucks that their City Mapper service will probably go away.

</comment><comment><USER43> Still using foursqure over yelp for reviews.

</comment><comment><USER44> EBITDA is not profit

</comment><comment><USER45> About time

</comment><comment><USER46> next up: yelp & groupon

<comment><USER47> Does groupon have a meaningful amount of incoming data?</comment></comment>


Fluther raises 600k for crowd-sourced answers. - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/24/fluther-raises-600k-from-top-valley-investors-for-crowd-sourced-answers/

<comment><USER2> Congratulations guys. You guys have been around for quite a while, and even though I thought you weren't going to make it this long, you've seemed to have pushed through and convinced some top quality VCs that you're in it for the long haul. Good work!

</comment><comment><USER3> Congrats Ben! It's been a long time coming. Great work on keeping one of the most top-notch communities on the web.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow, a dollar for every monthly unique:) Congrats for the top-notch VC line up.</comment>


San Francisco gym owners livid after discovering gov gyms have opened for months - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/san-francisco-gym-owners-livid-after-discovering-gyms-in-government-buildings-have-been-opened-for-months <comment> just-juan-post There is no science in these decisions they are purely political at this point.

This virus never was as bad as people thought it would be but governors are unable to admit that because to admit that would be to admit they ruined lives for no reason.

Slow openings will continue because governors want to get re-elected, not because they care about your health.</comment>


How do you avoid burnout as a remote worker? - <AUTHOR> https://www.remotequestions.com/t/how-do-you-avoid-burnout-as-a-remote-worker/40 <comment><USER2> Over the past couple of years of remote work, I've made a strong effort to keep my social life healthy and focused on in-person activities. That's been blown out of the water by the lockdowns. It's certainly been a great deal more taxing to have a remote job now that my normal social activities have been snuffed out.</comment>


This just isn't functional - <AUTHOR> https://codewords.recurse.com/issues/six/this-just-isnt-functional <comment><USER2> > In an immutable world, the coupling of functionality and data is extremely > difficult to use because any functionality would have to be rebuilt any time > the facts change.

This is wrong. The problem is lack of support for immutable data in Javascript, not with immutable data in itself. Consider the OCaml equivalent:

        class person name = object

          val _name = name

          method name = name

          method greet other =
            "Hello " ^ (other # name) ^ ", my name is " ^ _name

          method set_name name =
            {< _name = name >}

        end

This creates an immutable person class. Calling 'set_name' on a person creates a new person and the methods of that person use the new value. You can even use inheritance :

        class whistleblower secrets name = object
           inherit person name
           val _secrets = secrets
        end

        let bradley = new whistleblower (...) "Bradley"
        let chelsea = bradley # set_name "Chelsea"

The new person is an instance of "whistleblower" and has the same value for "_secrets" as the original object.

</comment><comment><USER3> I found the initial example of a problem with context and this to be incredibly contrived. If you have people who hate you dropping bind into your code and misusing a function only meant to be used with constructor calls, why wouldn't they do the same thing with your protocols?

By this author's logic, his own implementation is no good, because what if someone comes along and writes Protocol = "foo" in global scope? There's a difference between writing defensive code to prevent mistakes anyone could easily make, and trying to push your pet implementation forward through ridiculous hypotheticals.

Also, no mention of ES6 fat arrow functions and no mention of Immutable.js indicate that maybe this guy isn't interested in solving problems as much as he is in promoting his personal style.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, an example which doesn't involve "assume the caller will deliberately use your API wrong" would have helped me maintain my suspension of disbelief.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Yet another article written by someone who doesn't have enough perspective to understand when the failure is a failure of _Javascript_ rather than a failure of a fundamental concept.

</comment><comment><USER6> It's great that JavaScript is flexible enough to allow these completely different styles without requiring any changes to the language, but I wonder if the author wouldn't be better served by switching to a language that uses similar patterns but with better syntax.

Introspecting into this code seems very complicated and could make future refactors painful.

</comment><comment><USER7> It seems like we're using dynamic language features and metaprogramming facilities to try and jury-rig something that would solve _exactly_ the problem that static type systems are designed to solve. I'd rather trust people to call new Dog() instead of Dog.bind(cat), or alternatively I might just use TypeScript and my code will still look mostly like JavaScript.

</comment><comment><USER8> Btw react-with-addons ships with react.addons.update which gives effcent enough immutable updates without needing to leave plain old is data structures like the mentioned mori and immutablejs. I don't know why react.addons.update was released with such cripplingly bad syntax, but you can trivially use it to implement clojure's assoc, update-in and the like, see here: [https://github.com/dustingetz/update- in](https://github.com/dustingetz/update-in) (this tiny library is production quality and the basis of react-cursor). When my consulting clients are ready to taste immutability but have all this jquery style code that they can't leave behind and which isn't compatible with redux, I point them in this direction. (Hi from RC batch S'12!)

</comment><comment><USER9> > When we change the name of our functional object by copying it and > refreezing, we will not change the functions inside the object. All those > functions will still only have access to the old version of the object > through reference.

That is why I use deep-freeze. I also have a mutate/copy function that only changes from the changed property up to the root. Everything that can stay frozen as the original object will stay frozen.

</comment><comment><USER10> There is an error in at least one example, it's small but confusing to run into:

var sonalisTemp = get(sonali, "name"); // sonalisTemp === 22

I think you meant

var sonalisTemp = get(sonali, "temperature"); // sonalisTemp === 22</comment>


Google Noto Fonts - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/get/noto/ <comment><USER2> I wonder how the decisions for inclusion of languages were made, as there are some very odd decisions. For example, Osmanya is a script created for the Somali language that was hardly ever used (Somali literacy was only widespread after the latin alphabet was adopted - previously Arabic was commonly used). The population of actual users of this script is pretty indisputably 0. 100,000 would be a wildly ambitious estimate of the number of people who had ever actually even seen the script.

On the other hand, Oriya, which has over 33 million native speakers, including 80% of India's Odisha state, does not appear to be supported.

<comment><USER3> In their defense, when you click India and scroll down, it does say, "not supported yet". Which leads me to believe they picked both languages with few characters (or straightforward to render?) and those most common, and they'll get to the rest shortly. :)

Oriya appears to be quite complicated to render: [http://www.microsoft.com/typography/OpenTypeDev/oriya/intro....](http://www.microsoft.com/typography/OpenTypeDev/oriya/intro.htm)

Meanwhile, I wonder if this means we'll see OCR and ePubs for all kinds of scripts now; or if this will help enable Google Translate in more languages? ;-)

<comment><USER4> Also maybe this was a %20 time thing and the programmer who started it just wanted to do those languages (probably because they couldn't be found elsewhere).

<comment><USER5> I thought they didn't do 20% time anymore.

<comment><USER6> It's still a thing, though it does depend to some degree on one's manager.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I like the implementation of CJK fonts in Noto, which was just released this week. I particularly like that I can illustrate that the various Sinitic languages ("Chinese dialects") do NOT all use the same written characters, so that Chinese people who travel to different dialect regions sometimes find written signs that they cannot read, even if they are literate in Modern Standard Chinese. (I have seen this regional illiteracy on the part of native speakers of Chinese in several contexts.)

How you might write the conversation

"Does he know how to speak Mandarin?

"No, he doesn't."

他會說普通話嗎?

他不會。

in Modern Standard Chinese characters contrasts with how you would write

"Does he know how to speak Cantonese?

"No, he doesn't."

佢識唔識講廣東話?

佢唔識。

in the Chinese characters used to write Cantonese. As will readily appear even to readers who don't know Chinese characters (if you have a good Unicode implementation enabled as you read Hacker News), many more words than "Mandarin" and "Cantonese" differ between those sentences in Chinese characters.

<comment><USER8> I thought Han Unification meant that (most of the common) CJK characters were represented by the same Unicode code points, and that the way to differentiate like this is by specifying metadata that indicates the "language".

Obviously I'm wrong, because these are just regular Unicode characters, without an HTML "lang" attribute.

What gives?

<comment><USER9> Two separate issues. Pan-CJK fonts like Noto solve a problem that arises from the fact that many CJK characters are only ever used in certain locales. Since most CJK fonts are made for a given locale, they tend not to include any of the (many) CJK characters never used in that locale. Hence, if you render mixed CJK text in (say) a Japanese font, any characters that don't appear in Japanese won't render at all. That's what (I believe) this comment refers to.

The Han Unification problem arises from the inverse case - characters that are used in several languages but rendered differently depending on locale[0]. For those characters, they'll render even without a pan-CJK font, but the problem is they'll render in a way that's not appropriate for their locale.

[0] Another way to phrase this would be "distinct characters which share a code point becaus Unicode mistakenly thinks they're a single character whose rendering differs by locale". The difference is basically subjective.

<comment><USER10> > if you render mixed CJK text in (say) a Japanese font, any characters that > don't appear in Japanese won't render at all.

In theory, yes, but that almost never happens. What really happens is that any missing characters will fall back to a different font, so the text is legible but looks terrible from an aesthetic point of view.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is brilliant, particularly the newly released Noto CJK: [http://www.google.com/get/noto/cjk.html](http://www.google.com/get/noto/cjk.html)

I'm not aware of _any_ other font that does a decent job of handling all of Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, and Korean simultaneously, and with light, bold, thin etc variants to boot. Most existing fonts, even expensive commercial ones, are lucky to support two, and even then usually regular text only.

</comment><comment><USER12> Still no Nastaliq [1] for Urdu and Persian script. There's a great piece on Medium [2] about the death of the Urdu script at the hands of the more structured Arabic Naskh font.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasta%CA%BFl%C4%ABq_script](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasta%CA%BFl%C4%ABq_script)

[2] [https://medium.com/@eteraz/the-death-of-the-urdu- script-9ce9...](https://medium.com/@eteraz/the-death-of-the-urdu- script-9ce935435d90)

<comment><USER13> Could you file a bug at [https://code.google.com/p/noto/issues/list](https://code.google.com/p/noto/issues/list) ? This is a great place for @eteraz to get involved.

<comment><USER13> Since nobody did it, I filed a bug at [https://code.google.com/p/noto/issues/detail?id=39](https://code.google.com/p/noto/issues/detail?id=39) through my phone.

the title is messed up, but I hope the message is clear.

<comment><USER14> Since this article is still on the front page of HN, let me paste the response: "We are working on a Noto Nastaliq as well. So stay tuned."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Hopefully this will be a big step forward in solving the problem of Han unification: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_unification](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_unification)

It's infuriating how many Japanese sites still don't use Unicode, purportedly because of this issue (though I suspect that it's just another example of Japan lagging when it comes to web/computer tech).

<comment><USER16> Oddly, the following more modest proposal hasn't gotten much traction: characters that share history but have divergent graphical representations in the various dialects of alphabetic script shall share codepoints, and a mechanism beyond the scope of Unicode (like lang attributes or plain guesswork) shall be used to decide whether a given codepoint means L or ᴫ or Λ or whatever.

<comment><USER9> Actually I think that's roughly how things work today. It's not my area, but here's how this was explained to me recently by a colleague (the lead font guy at Adobe Japan):

There are two ways of dealing with glyphs that share code points. The first is TTC (truetype collection) fonts. A TTC is basically one set of glyphs with several sets of mappings (i.e. which code point maps to which glyph). When you install it, assuming your computer groks ttc, your system shows you a separate font for each mapping. Taking for example Source Han Sans, which adobe just released - if you go to the download page[0] and get the complete version (the "OTC" one), you get a bunch of files like "SourceHanSans-Bold.ttc". If you install one of them you'll see four new fonts: "Source Han Sans J", K, SC, and TC. Then when you use the font, depending on which font name you used the system will change which mapping it applies to the combined set of glyphs. (Hence the choice of font name is the selection mechanism you described.)

The second way is that TrueType fonts have a way to build locale settings into the font. I'm less clear on the details here but apparently it's similar to TTC behind the scenes, except that the mappings are associated with locales - so in an app that supports TT locales, even if you select "Foo J" as your font, when the locale was simplified Chinese you'd get the SC glyph. Of course now the selection mechanism is whether the application knows what locale the content is. (And also whether it supports the mechanism - I don't know how widespread this is.) Either way though, in principle you get different glyphs for the same code point, depending on context.

Or anyway that's the understanding I took away as a font layperson - happy to be corrected.

[0] [http://sourceforge.net/projects/source-han- sans.adobe/files/](http://sourceforge.net/projects/source-han- sans.adobe/files/)

<comment><USER16> The modest proposal was to extend this approach with all its complications to western alphabetic scripts where possible. Of course nobody wants to do that for obvious reasons, which also apply to the various languages that use Han- derived characters. The extra mechanisms required to work around unified Han remind me of the pre-unicode days when you needed to know what language a text was in to render it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think this is amazing. I have never seen Cherokee glyphs that beautifully rendered before. Apparently there are still missing scripts, but this is a great step forward. This couldn't have come cheap, and I'm happy that Google is investing effort into this.

</comment><comment><USER18> The Google Code page used to have a comment on the origins of the name. Noto is short for 'no tofu', tofu being the rectangles you get when you don't have a font covering that glyph.

</comment><comment><USER19> This is incredible and is going to be very useful for people developing applications for use in Eastern Asia. Nailing typefaces for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean is a huge challenge. Noto and the accompanying Source Han Sans is going to be a huge boon for people in Eastern Asia and hopefully it will have widespread adoption.

Sadly, it's probably still not possible to use as a Webfont. A single font weight is over 8mb, but there is a distinct possibility this could go into mobile devices and operating systems which would be awesome.

<comment><USER20> I wonder it could be split up, and the necessary segment(s) could be dynamically loaded based on OS language preferences?

<comment><USER21> It is possible. There is a technology called dynamic subsetting that only loads the necessary glyphs on a web page:

[http://www.monotype.com/services/screen-imaging- solutions/dy...](http://www.monotype.com/services/screen-imaging- solutions/dynamicsubsetting)

[http://en.justfont.com/](http://en.justfont.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> In these enlightened Unicode days, why are fonts still "for" a language?

<comment><USER23> Well, one reason would be that your web font would be 134Mb or so? (looking at the size of the comprehensive Noto download)

The other is simple practicality - these things take time to develop, you can either wait until all the glyphs are done, or release subsets that cover languages as you work; a subset that covers part of a language isn't very useful but subsets that cover whole languages are.

<comment><USER24> That is a technical problem to solve. There should be a way for browsers to only download the characters being rendered in the current page; so even if the file is 134Mb it could get only the little pieces of it that it needs.

<comment><USER25> There is a solution already: you split the font into separate files declare which characters are present in each file:

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/unicode- ran...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/unicode-range)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I have been using Noto fonts for a more than 6 months now (mostly Indic fonts) and quite pleased with them. And just saw that they have "Noto Sans Brahmi" in the pipeline. Although Brahmi script (ancient Indian script used around 300 BC) entered Unicode in 2010, there is not a single font available that covers Brahmi.

I also couldn't find any font that covers mathematical symbols from the SMP.

EDIT: Just downloaded the zip archive. Unix permissions for the Bengali and Gurmukhi fonts are different from the rest of them.

<comment><USER27> For math Symbols: Cambria Math and DejaVu Sans should have them. [http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/fontsbyrange.html#u1d400](http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/fontsbyrange.html#u1d400)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights" I love the fact that they use The Universal Declaration of Human Rights as the text for showcasing the fonts, using every opportunity to stand for human rights!

</comment><comment><USER29> I am in love. Why don't they offer a monospace programming version? Noto Sans outdoes my Consolas easily for clarity. No easy feat! Please release a Noto Sans Code Google!

<comment><USER30> If they released a monospace version, I would switch from Inconsolata! Although it is probably more important to continue work on supporting more languages.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Is there any reason that these could not be included as standard fonts in windows, linux, mac, android, IOS etc at some point in the near future?

<comment><USER32> No technical reasons, but it would be unlikely for Apple or Microsoft to adopt a font made by Google, when their own alternatives exist, despite technical superiority. Android already uses Roboto, which has been heavily invested in for Android 4+ and now with Material design too. Of course, by Linux I'm assuming you mean the popular distributions of it like Ubuntu, but even Ubuntu has its own font which it is unlikely to change - other non-"branded" distros probably would be the only ones who might.

<comment><USER31> Was hoping for a moment that we could all come together in harmony and enjoy universal access to fonts for all languages without relying on webfont kludges... hope springs eternal

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Might be just me but i don't like the Sans Serif font at all, renders really bad in Safari.

<comment><USER34> It looks awfully blurry in Firefox on Linux.

<comment><USER35> On the website, they are pre rendered into images. Example, [http://www.google.com/get/noto/images/samples/noto- sans_en_4...](http://www.google.com/get/noto/images/samples/noto- sans_en_400_normal.png)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Anyone know what license they are released under and if it is ok to use them freely for commercial projects?

<comment><USER37> NotoSans/NotoSerif downloads have a LICENSE file which starts "Apache License Version 2.0, January 2004 [http://www.apache.org/licenses/"](http://www.apache.org/licenses/").

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I really like Noto Sans. From what I can tell, it's a fork of Open Sans. For the Latin alphabet it's mostly the same, but with a single story lowercase g.

<comment><USER18> Which itself is a redrawing of Droid Sans. This Typophile thread has some comparisons, and a couple comments by the designer, Steve Matteson: [http://typophile.com/node/101655](http://typophile.com/node/101655)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> [https://www.ruby-lang.org](https://www.ruby-lang.org) has used Noto for a while and it looks great.

</comment><comment><USER40> I looked at sample serif font, and it renders both blurry and jagged. At that size, this is quite an "achievement".

<comment><USER41> I have the same effect on Safari for Mac. This is lame.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Nice, so glad that it support for Chinese!

</comment><comment><USER43> Note that this neatly integrates into their plan of digitizing all books ever written. Next: Brahimi Captchas.

</comment><comment><USER44> This page seemed really slow on mobile. I thought it was just me but...

[http://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=h...](http://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Fget%2Fnoto%2F)

<comment><USER45> On my netbook, Firefox warned me about an unresponsive script.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I find the Canada->Cree glyphs very interesting (geometrical). The art from the area is also very beautiful. If you are ever in Ottawa a trip to the Canadian Museum of History (was Civilization) is well worth it.

Cherokee (US) is one fine looking set of glyphs.

</comment><comment><USER32> Nice to see Material design in use on their sites for one of the first times!

<comment><USER47> Not so sure. Commandeering of my scroll-bar and slight enlargement of clicked element along with dark outer glow didn't sit well with me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I have a question. Why would anyone list Greek under "Egypt"?

<comment><USER49> Greek was spoken in Egypt for 1000 years. I imagine it's not that common today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Will Noto be available in Google Web Fonts later? That will be awesome.

<comment><USER51> It has been for quite some time (at least a year).

[https://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/Noto+Sans](https://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/Noto+Sans)

<comment><USER50> But this is for english only, not for other languages.

<comment><USER52> Link at the top of the page, [https://www.google.com/fonts/earlyaccess](https://www.google.com/fonts/earlyaccess) has fonts, including Noto.

<comment><USER53> Unfortunately no Noto CJK available yet

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Largest .ttf in collection: 762KB

Smallest .otf in collection: 4093KB

</comment><comment><USER55> Took me a while to work out just how to preview fonts on that page.

</comment><comment><USER56> Nice, we look forward in the future for Chu Nom scripts.

<comment><USER13> I suggest you file a bug [https://code.google.com/p/noto/issues/list](https://code.google.com/p/noto/issues/list)

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> My safari on my ipad crashes when I visit that page.

</comment><comment><USER58> it is like NATO :)

</comment><comment><USER59> Interesting behavior when you do an in-page search for a language.</comment>


China's TikTok Sued by U.S. College Student over Data Use - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-03/china-s-tiktok-sued-by-u-s-college-student-over-data-use <comment> li-z "...her lawyers said in a filing that didn't provide evidence to back up the allegations." WTF</comment>


The Real Story of JPG Magazine - a cautionary tale for founders - <AUTHOR> http://powazek.com/posts/534 <comment><USER2> _'... 8020 bought JPG from Heather and I for a modest sum ...'_

This bit caught my eye. I wonder what the condition of sale was? At this stage I would have either kept the 2/3 partnership (assuming equal and maintain control) or completely sold out making the ownership clear. You can't have it both ways. Selling out brings its own set of problems.

_'... It would have been in the author's interest to not reveal it at all online ...'_

I tend to agree with their thinking in _telling their story_. JPG was an public online community. Exposing problems in the open, certainly gives fair notice to the community who for all intensive purposes helped create it. In the end some story is going to be told. It may as well come from someone from the inside even with the possibility of legal action.

<comment><USER2> what I didn't realise at the time posting this is that the Heather mentioned here is from flickr ~ <http://laughingsquid.com/jpg-magazine-founders- leave-8020-publishing/>

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> There's also a discussion on MeFi: <http://www.metafilter.com/61170/Heather- and-Derek-are-suddenly-out-of-JPG-Magazine>

</comment><comment><USER3> There's a lot more to this story. If they gave up because the CEO re-wrote to bio page and took down the links to old issues of the mag then they're gave up too easily.

</comment><comment><USER4> As true as this account may be, It would have been in the author's interest to not reveal it at all online, Since after all he still has equity in the company.

</comment><comment><USER4> As true as this account may be, It would have been in the author's interest to not reveal it at all online, Since after all he still has equity in the company.

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe he cares more about his creation (not to mention his reputation) than his equity...

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'll just throw out a bit of advice for no good reason: Don't name anything after a file format. They tend to go obsolete.

<comment><USER6> For no good reason, indeed.

The guy behind mp3.com didn't seem to do to badly. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Moral of the story: You can dress it up however you like, but there is only one person at the top, always.

</comment><comment><USER8> Why did he start off saying "don't lie?" That's not what the post was about.

</comment><comment><USER9> You should submit this to Reddit.</comment>


Flynn effect and its reversal are both environmentally caused - <AUTHOR> http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/06/05/1718793115 <comment><AUTHOR> For those without access: [https://sci- hub.tw/http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/06...](https://sci- hub.tw/http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/06/05/1718793115)</comment>


Dean Kamen's Newest Invention: A Stirling Hybrid Scooter - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/ariel-schwartz/sustainability/dean-kamens-newest-invention-stirling-engine-equipped-hybrid-moto <comment><USER2> A Stirling engines emissions _can_ be minimal because it does not use explosions to burn the fuel.

The real killer app for Stirlings is in AC, solar powered Stirling driving a secondary Stirling engine in refrigeration mode (backwards).

For transportation the efficiencies are good but not stellar, and maintenance (especially of the seals) has always been a real problem. Rollsocks anyone ?

</comment><comment><USER3> I love the quote "And since the engine doesn't release any unburned hydrocarbons, CO2 emissions are minimal"

We really should start teaching science in schools.</comment>


The all-male start-up is dead. - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/articles/201109/how-to-combat-the-all-male-startup.html

<comment><USER2> "Women own about 40 percent of the private businesses in the United States, according to the Center for Women's Business Research"

Okay, can the women's groups stop complaining then? Or does this number need to be 100% before they will stop complaining about "disparity" and "inequality".

</comment><comment><USER3> Woot!</comment>


Teens Need the Truth About Drugs - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/teens-need-the-truth-about-drugs-11551976039 <comment><AUTHOR> I think the article is saying: instead of just telling kids to "just say no", it's better to give them good information about what it does to your brain. Also, try to give them alternative ways to relieve stress.</comment>


How Well Can You Hear Audio Quality? - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2015/06/02/411473508/how-well-can-you-hear-audio-quality

<comment><USER2> Interesting. I picked the 320 Kbps mp3 for each of the samples. There really is not much difference with wav at this bit level. I would have like to see some examples at 160 or 192.</comment>


Why MySQL's DATETIME can and should be avoided - <AUTHOR> http://billauer.co.il/blog/2009/03/mysql-datetime-epoch-unix-time/ <comment><USER2> Right, stop using those "complicated" built-in date processing functions and instead roll your own. What could possibly go wrong? Storing a number that's only meaningful when defining it somewhere outside of the database is much more fun! Finally you get to meet all your co-workers in person, at least all the junior developers who will stop by your desk to ask why there are these weird numbers in the date columns.

<comment><AUTHOR> A junior developer who doesn't know about epoch time should not be given any tasks other than "bring more tea" and "go pickup the chinese food order".

Also, let me see your "complicated" built-in date processing functions convert a date from Gregorian calendar to Julian or Mayan. You'll always come down to using your own tools.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> tldr: In this article from 2009, consider storing UTC plus the local timezone instead of the local server time when building applications that have users in multiple timezones. Use a time or a time offset as appropriate to capture a point in time (e.g. a birthday) or a timespan (e.g. the number of seconds this thing ran), resp.</comment>


REST over WebSockets instead of HTTP - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@jonathangrosdubois/rest-over-websockets-instead-of-http-81b0f0632295 <comment><USER2> I'm doing this right now with an Elixer/Phoenix backend and a VueJS frontend. I use Phoenix socket client and register events that commit mutations to a Vuex store. It feels super snappy. It's still naive though. It doesn't promise anything, so if the channel stops sending for some reason ... well that hasn't happened yet.</comment>


A crash course in UX - <AUTHOR> http://richoakley.com/2011/11/a-crash-course-in-ux/ <comment><USER2> The item on content strategy is interesting and I think spot on. I'm just completing a project with a company that wants to rejig their content strategy - and managing an external agency who are building a new Drupal-based site.

I rather mucked up their nice ganntt chart by insisting that content entry was bought way forward, before the site design was signed off. "Lets the get the content types defined and get some real content in there - give me any kind of cobbled together basic back-end you can" then we can see how the designs work with real content.

It actually worked very well - and avoided the death march at the end of the process where you have to port all the old content into the new system at the last moment.

<comment><USER3> We've started doing something similar. We build a lot of sites upon WordPress and upload a basic version of the twentyeleven theme (with a few base plugins) and start getting content populated ASAP, this gives the designers a good base to start from and also highlights potential content-styling before they're a problem rather than the day before go-live.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The design part is nice, but this former HN submission made a stronger point:

<http://www.visualmess.com/>

</comment><comment><USER5> Maybe it's UX lesson #1: Host your blog on a scalable platform :).

(the website is down at the moment)

<comment><USER6> One could say that the crash course crashed.

</comment></comment><comment> daniel-warner-x Here's a UX tip for him... people click on underlined text. Find another way to highlight content.

<comment><USER7> Also, he uses low-contrast grey text on a white background (might be better readable on a better screen, but on my shitty laptop it makes things harder to read than necessary) + the navigation links on top have no text at all on them (this might be intentional, due to his server having problems).

I, for one, like my advices best from people with at least basic skills in the area. Or from people who at least try to adopt the things they say/just learned/want to pass on.

<comment><USER8> In the author's defense, the advice is from a talk by Rian van der Merwe: [http://speakerdeck.com/u/rianvdm/p/an-introduction-to- user-e...](http://speakerdeck.com/u/rianvdm/p/an-introduction-to-user- exeprience-design)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The link to MailChimp's "Voice and Tone" style guide was an interesting find. I wonder who their target audience for that site is? New hires? <http://voiceandtone.com/>

I could see many UGC sites needing something like this as a boilerplate starting point before creating content (or even customer service reps before engaging users). But even if this was simply a publicized internal document, I really like it.

</comment><comment><USER10> Anyone have a cached version?

<comment><USER11> [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://richoakley.com/2011/11/a-crash- course-in-ux/&hl=en&strip=1)

Might be of help

<comment><USER12> Being a page on UX, looks horrible. Hopefully the orignal was better?

Edit: Reader on Safari makes it not-so-bad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Is this Hacker News effect?

<comment><USER14> A crash course in traffic spikes.</comment></comment>


Designed for Microsoft Windows - <AUTHOR> http://www.paulgraham.com/designedforwindows.html <comment> patrickg-zill I suppose you are aware of the Fry's story, where a guy goes into a local Fry's store, picks up a Philips brand nose hair trimmer that they have at the checkout, and asks if it is compatible with Windows XP?

The clerk picks it up, no doubt scanning for the sticker or a printed logo, then hands it back and shrugs his shoulders.

</comment><comment><USER2> That's a pretty low blow. I expected better from pg, especially after the disagreement hierarchy essay. Go ahead and criticize Windows if you want, but do so in an intelligent manner.

<comment><USER3> I agree. While I don't like Windows very much, I'd expect a criticism to at least be mature, or clever even.

However, those stickers are annoying though and should be dealt with accordingly. Perhaps if we all mail the stickers to BG's private residence in Redmond (or wherever) along with notes asking that they not be included anymore?

<comment><USER4> Novell has had a solution to the Windows sticker dilemma for a while now, recycle!

<http://www.novell.com/products/desktop/decalkit.html>

<comment><USER5> Ubuntu should come with a couple of those.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I dunno. That lever seems a little too intuitive for a Windows machine.

</comment><comment><USER7> Where's the start button?

</comment><comment><USER8> Immature.

Scatological humor forces us into "DH0".

</comment><comment><USER9> Nobody is perfect. And Microsoft(R)(TM) is _not_ nobody.

</comment><comment><USER10> Yeah , windows is a great big toilet and all thier shit should be flushed.Well good thing we have Paul Graham around to decide what kind of excrement needs flushing. Probably some of those unhappy caged idiots that Paul doesn't have is his lavender smelling claws into. I suppose Paul's toilet flushes pure roses. Get over yourelf man.</comment>


Is breakfast actually bad for you? - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/health/breakfast-actually-bad/ <comment><USER2> TL;DR:

"In a recent study at Cornell University in New York, David Levitsky and Carly Pacanowski found that when study participants were given a light breakfast of 350 calories, their calorie intake later on was unchanged. In other words, a small breakfast didn't make them eat more later on as has often been believed. Moreover, when they ate a large breakfast of 600 calories or more, they reduced their lunch calories by just 144 calories." ...

"There's also research, detailed in Professor Kealey's book, that people with diabetes do better when they skip breakfast and eat a larger lunch and dinner. "</comment>


Yahoo's rules for web performance - <AUTHOR> http://developer.yahoo.net/blog/archives/2008/03/yahoos_latest_p.html

<comment><USER2> The simplest thing you can do to speed up page load times is merge all of your external scripts and external css into one file.

I never understand why some sites include dozens of external files (e.g., washingtonpost.com).

Even uncompressed, the reduction in load time significant.

<comment><USER3> that was from Yahoo's first set of tips. This post is for an additional set once you have done all the first set</comment></comment>


Show HN: PDF Unlock – Batch PDF Password Remover - <AUTHOR> https://www.uconomix.com/Products/PDFUnlock/Default.aspx <comment><USER2> I fail to see when/why this would be required, other than cases where a user forgets the password and doesn't have a back up..

<comment><AUTHOR> I receive a lot of password protected documents regularly - bills from utility companies, bank and credit card statements. It's a pain to input the password every time. So I created this software to remove the passwords from a bunch of documents at once. Others like me might find it useful.</comment></comment>


Linux System Information Decoded - <AUTHOR> http://www.linux-mag.com/id/7768 <comment><USER3> More Intel DMI decoded on Linux, but if you didn't know about DMI decode then a good article.

Tip: modern Linux kernels expose all those info via seperate files in /sys, which can be easier to parse.

PS, if you're on a Windows box, run:

        get-wmiobject

To see the same stuff.

<comment><USER3> Replying to myself: if you're in python, get 'tuna' from kernel.org GIT - <USER2> has a sysfs module.</comment></comment>


Swift Intermediate Language Ownership Model Proposal - <AUTHOR> https://forums.swift.org/t/sil-ownership-model-proposal-refreshed/16872 <comment><USER2> I am only vaguely familiar with Rust ownership model and last I programmed Swift was version 3.x.

Does anyone have any thoughts on where Swift is going with ownership models in relation to Rust? What sort of different priorities will these languages set?

It has been my impression that Rust seeks to be more of a tool for the more experienced programmer while Swift attempts to be more user friendly or appeal more to the average programmer.

I would thus speculate that Swift team will never try to force Swift users to understand ownership models the way Rust developers have to. What do you think? Where can we expect this to be going?

<comment><USER3> > It has been my impression that [...] Swift attempts to be more user friendly > or appeal more to the average programmer

I would dispute this somewhat. I really think Swift was conceived to be a better C++. The stated "world domination" goal has always included systems programming. (I don't find it realistic personally that a single language can reasonably span from writing an OS to utility scripting, but that's been the pitch.) I would guess that, privately at least, Swift sees Rust as a competitor.

That said, the Swift core team _does_ take learnability and what they call "progressive disclosure" seriously. They've emphasized that this particular feature should be something that most Swift users won't need to know or think about. They definitely do spend time and effort on people who are new to the language.

The other thing that may contribute to the impression that Swift is "less advanced" is simply its userbase. Its life started in GUI application development for Apple platforms and that's also key to its success -- iOS is hot right now. That's the majority of its deployment, and I think it will remain so for quite a while.

We iOS devs may be average or not, but _most_ of the code we write is not high-performance mission-critical algorithm-laden wizardry, just grabbing some JSON off a REST endpoint and animating the information into a table view. ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, this is Apple's official point of view on Swift's purpose.

> Swift is a successor to both the C and Objective-C languages. It includes > low-level primitives such as types, flow control, and operators. It also > provides object-oriented features such as classes, protocols, and generics, > giving Cocoa and Cocoa Touch developers the performance and power they > demand.

Taken from [https://developer.apple.com/swift/](https://developer.apple.com/swift/)

> Swift is intended as a replacement for C-based languages (C, C++, and > Objective-C).

Taken from [https://swift.org/about/](https://swift.org/about/)

<comment><USER3> Yes, good point, thanks. But this is not quite what I was intending to say. The _character_ of Swift is not very C- or ObjC-like. C's philosophy is largely (to borrow from Python) "we are all consenting adults here": raw flexibility is the name of the game. ObjC's class system is famously late- binding and runtime-malleable, and it carries all the flexibility of C. These are things that Swift eschews.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is the approach here effectively about extracting from the (existing) implementation a kind of operational specification to help ensure the non- existence of undefined behavior ...?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not, it is a means to better support the ownership model, similar to Rust, that was introduced in Swift 4.0.

<comment><USER5> But note that the full ownership model is not exposed in Swift. It is only present in the Swift Intermediate Language (1) - an intermediate language used by the Swift compiler to perform diagnostics and Swift-semantic aware optimisations before emitting LLVM IR bit code.

It is likely that more ownership features will be added to the Swift language, but it is out of scope for the next major version as you can see on this dashboard: [https://swift.org/abi-stability/](https://swift.org/abi- stability/)

(1) [https://github.com/apple/swift/blob/master/docs/SIL.rst](https://github.com/apple/swift/blob/master/docs/SIL.rst)

<comment><USER6> My guess is that they will make this explicit in SIL first, to be able to add that into the language syntax later.

For instance, as far as i know, the auto ref-counting model is on SIL, who injects lower level refcounting ops into the intermediate code, before going through the LLVM pipeline.

This was a good thing to do, now that they are willing to open the ownership model to other kinds of ownership. Which will probably be controlled by the dev in the end.

At least, that's what i understood from what i read. Its SIL only for now, but it means what is it implying it means. A opt-in manually controlled ownership model when ref-counting is not the best approach.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The acronym is S.I.L.O.?</comment>


OpenBSD 5.7 highlights - <AUTHOR> http://www.tedunangst.com/flak/post/OpenBSD-57-highlights <comment><USER2> That is one incredibly annoying web site.

[edit - it stops after a while]

Regarding: _" The etc sets are now gone. All the sample /etc files are now included in the base set. This should make sysmerge must [sic] easier and faster in the future, since there will be many fewer conflicts to resolve. On the other hand, even rc and rc.conf are now overwritten, so it's not possible to maintain local mods without additional work. This makes sense, though, since /etc/rc is as much a part of the base system as /sbin/init. You don't want to be running a five year old edition."_

I thought (and the manpages always indicated) that the rule was that /etc/rc and /etc/rc.conf were fair game, and that if you wanted to make changes that weren't overwritten by a system upgrade, to put them in /etc/rc.local and /etc/rc.conf.local. I'm unclear why this is considered a problem.

<comment><USER3> I'm thinking that might be an April Fools design. I've been to his site before and never got the giant animated text-blocking overlays.

<comment><AUTHOR> It is, I read flak as often as Ted publishes something new and I never saw that. Couple that with the fact that Ted loves to rant[1][2] about bad UI design, especially on the web, and it becomes obvious that his latest "feature" will be gone tomorrow.

1 [http://www.tedunangst.com/flak/post/the-wiki-box-is-out- of-c...](http://www.tedunangst.com/flak/post/the-wiki-box-is-out-of-control)

2 [http://www.tedunangst.com/flak/post/no-im-not-running- git](http://www.tedunangst.com/flak/post/no-im-not-running-git)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> According to [http://www.openbsd.org/57.html](http://www.openbsd.org/57.html) "IPv6 router solicitations are now sent by the kernel ("inet6 autoconf"); rtsol(8) and rtsold(8) are no longer necessary and have been removed."

Does this mean we might finally get IPv6 and DHCP support enabled by default? Currently dhcpd does not support IPv6

<comment><USER5> IPv6 is not enabled by default. It is compiled in the kernel, but interfaces don't get an IPv6 link-local address if you don't explicitely say so. When you enable IPv6, you get a link-local address, send router solicitations and process router advertisements ("IPv6 autoconfiguration"). Router advertisements carry the prefix information, and the gateway address, as well as a DNS resolver. The latter is not always processed. It does not happen on Windows 7, on Linux you need to install rdnssd and I'm fairly sure it's the same case with the various BSDs.

Sometimes, this is not enough to get global IPv6 connectivity. The router advertisement has a flag that can indicate that the host must/can request additional information through DHCPv6. While similar to DHCP, DHCPv6 is quite a different protocol; therefore you need a separate client (or you need to merge it in your DHCP implementation; much like ISC's dhclient does with the -4/-6 command line flag).

So no, OpenBSD ships with IPv6 support as well as DHCP support. it's just that IPv6 is not configured by default, and IPv6 and DHCP have little to do with each other.

<comment><USER4> Thank you for the clarification.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think I will wait a day or two, hoping the seriously annoying pop-over is gone on April 2.

<comment><USER7> Actually you only need to wait a few minutes. Or use a simpler browser such as links.

<comment><USER6> Kept coming back.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I really like the support for tls in syslogd. Unfortunately it looks like it is not yet supported server-side. At least in current, syslog.conf(5) doesn't mention anything about specifying a private key.

</comment><comment><USER9> If the person is engaging in April Fool stuff, we obviously can't take any of this information seriously anyway.

</comment><comment><USER10> My UX - click, _ugh!_ ,back.

</comment><comment><USER11> Why is SCSV a sucky feature?

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't know too much about it but it's a LibreSSL compatibility feature to stay compatible with OpenSSL. Basically it's a mechanism for client software to fall back to reduced encryption when better options fail. Considering their stance on security I can see why the OpenBSD guys look at this as a bad idea. But on the other hand if they want people to adopt LibreSSL some "compatibility over maximum security" choices have to be made.

More here... [https://github.com/libressl- portable/portable/issues/36](https://github.com/libressl- portable/portable/issues/36)

<comment><USER11> It's not a way to fall back, it's a way to detect fallback and prevent downgrade attacks.

[https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-tls-downgrade- scsv-05](https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-tls-downgrade-scsv-05)

A client sends a ClientHello trying to connect with TLS 1.2, MITM does not let that through, the client sends a ClientHello for TLS 1.0 with a signal that means "this is a fallback", the MITM lets that through, the server sees this and does not allow a connection, foiling the attempted downgrade attack.

I know that, that's why I asked: "Why is SCSV a sucky feature?".

<comment><AUTHOR> OK, my bad, I just checked the RFC[1] and reading it agrees absolutely with what you are saying.

I am probably misunderstanding the thread I linked to in my OP but reading through it (I remembered seeing this a while ago when I read your question) I got the impression that the LibreSSL guys looked at it from the opposite angle.

From my link:

 _TLS_FALLBACK_SCSV is only useful in the case where a client willingly chooses to do a downgrade and attempts to establish a second connection at a lower protocol after the previous one unexpectedly failed. In short, the client should not do this - client-side fallback is dangerous ( "a landmine" to quote agl). TLS_FALLBACK_SCSV only works if both ends support it and it is largely a case of adding a workaround to support/enforce insecure behaviour. Unless you control both ends, you cannot be sure TLS_FALLBACK_SCSV is available and if you do control both ends you can either force TLS 1.2 and/or avoid client-side downgrade._

And the final reply: _Server-side TLS_FALLBACK_SCSV support has reluctantly been added to LibreSSL._

I guess in the end the reluctance is more about it being new and untested and not so much a bad security practice.

[1] [https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-tls-downgrade- scsv-00](https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-tls-downgrade-scsv-00)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is obviously incorrect, and a seizure trigger to boot.

</comment><comment><USER9> The site is a possible seizure trigger.

</comment><comment><USER9> This site is still totally unreadable.

</comment><comment><USER9> Flagged as seizure trigger.

</comment><comment><USER12> Great marketing! I liked you on facebook.</comment>


Anti-vaxxer leaflet found inserted in book sold by Amazon - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/apr/29/amazon-investigates-after-anti-vaxxer-leaflet-found-hidden-in-childrens-book <comment><USER2> How is this news? You buy books on eBay and half the time they come with random crap like that in them. Usually it's religiously driven but I think that's just the difference between the eBay demographic and the Amazon/Whole Foods demographic.

</comment><comment><USER3> Perhaps some lawyers here can opine:

Is it not possible for some of those affected by the recent measles outbreak, and others adversely impacted, to file a class action against the anti-vaxxers ?

Call me paranoid, but lately I've been thinking about getting the MMR as an adult who is in mid 40s - and I'm pissed. So, I can't even imagine what someone who is directly impacted might be feeling.

<comment><USER4> Aren't you only affected by the measles outbreak if you're an anti-vax in the first place... ?

<comment><USER5> Or too young, or immunodeficient, or your vaccination expired (some of the older models only provide some decades of immunity, where a lifetime protection was expected) etc. Nope, this is not "mere" self-harm: innocent bystanders have already been killed this way.

<comment><USER4> I didn't know, thanks for the explanation !

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My understanding is that Amazon commingles FBA inventory from different Amazon marketplace sellers with their own, so maybe this leaflet ultimately came from an Amazon Marketplace Seller, even if the book wasn't directly ordered from them.

</comment><comment> shaki-dora Funny how everyone is in this threat is objecting to "this useless crap on the frontpage", on an article describing parents upset about useless crap coming with their book.

</comment><comment><USER7> a perfect opportunity to start a conversation with her coming-of-age son about critical thinking and how to make informed decisions. ignorant ideas and opinions are everywhere. the best defense is being capable of logical reasoning.

it's also important that we are exposed _and open_ to ideas that challenge our beliefs. wisdom begins in doubt.

<comment> shaki-dora By that logic, no propaganda could ever have any negative impact. We should therefore put fliers with all sorts of maybe just random text, or even a sampling of the most vile hate speech we can find into every book sold. Then, we sit back and watch the world improve. Because a thousand monkeys with typewriters may not be Shakespeare, but they are a learning opportunity.

<comment><USER7> what do you mean "by that logic"? i can't even follow your argument.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Who gatekeeps the front page? How does inane crap like this get up here, with only 11 upvotes?

<comment><USER9> The order in the front page is essentially points/age^2. (The exact details are elsewhere [1].)

This post has less than an hour, so the priority is 11/1^2=11

The third post is currently [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19778023](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19778023) that has 98 points in 3 hour, so the priority is 98/3^3=10.9

So ... probably just a weird order when the story is too young, let it age and drop.

[1] The exact formula is something like (poins-1)/(age+1)^1.6 or something like that. points/age^2 is a not very bad approximation, but it's much easier to calculate by hand. There are also flags and penalties applied automatically, by the mods and by the users. (The exact details are elsewhere.)</comment></comment>


Elite colleges that design MOOCs aren't using them for their own students. Why? - <AUTHOR> http://bostonreview.net/us/are-moocs-good-students <comment><USER2> Georgia Tech certainly is.</comment>