Dune Official Trailer - 0-_-0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9xhJrPXop4 <comment><AUTHOR> Noticed that Paul Atreides says 'There's a crusade coming' in the trailer. In the book they specifically use the word 'jihad' repeatedly and the book draws from a variety of influences in the Middle East. I hope they haven't toned things down too much for a modern audience. Part of what made the book so special was its vocabulary.

<comment><USER2> I can't completely blame the writers. Since Dune was written, a few things such as 9/11 have happened. Radical Islamic terrorism was nowhere near what it ultimately became after the book for dune was released in 1965.

Prior to 9/11, I think the majority of the public probably had a very different association with the word "jihad." It pretty much conjures the image of crazy bearded Muslims in Afghanistan strapping bombs to themselves and blowing things up.

That image simply does not describe precisely what happens in the book. I think the word "jihad" also creates a jarring interruption and a distraction also.

"What the hell, why is this white guy talking about jihad?" It feels like a non sequiter and a distraction. Do white people jihad things? What???

The media will jump on it and start calling this a racist tv show which perpetuates stereotypes. It's also cultural appropriation by modern standards, which are crazy.

HBO has had a HUGE blowback to Game Of Thrones on this topic in a dozen ways. I think the blowback was so bad they changed their entire programming to be more diverse and inclusive (Watchmen, Lovecraft Etc). George Martin has been constantly pestered with questions from concerned audiences about white saviors and other such things.

Long story short, the term jihad is an unwelcome distraction, too loaded, opens HBO to criticism they don't want and it doesn't accurately describe precisely what happens in the book.

I think crusade is correct and doesn't create this interruption.

<comment><USER3> Try mentioning "crusade" in an online game when playing with Turks.

<comment><USER4> Why would they get offended by it?

<comment><USER3> From "Why Muslims See the Crusades So Differently from Christians" [1]

Are jihad and crusade related?

PC: There is a family resemblance because they share roots in monotheism, where God is a jealous God. And both Crusades and Jihad offered martyrdom to those who die. But while they look alike, they have some important differences. Crusades were directed at the liberation of sacred land considered rightfully Christian, whereas Jihad was about rescuing souls.

SM: I personally don't find any structural difference between the two. Jihad has an Islamic concept: religiously sanctioned aggression. The Crusades were precisely that.

What was the impact of the Crusades in the Muslim world?

SM: The legacy of the Crusades in the Muslim world is that a lot of Muslims think of where they are today in terms of Western encroachment. For some, the Crusades are seen not just as a medieval threat, but as a present one—a perpetual Western attempt to undermine Islam. It could be physical colonialism or cultural colonialism.

[1] [https://www.history.com/news/why-muslims-see-the-crusades- so...](https://www.history.com/news/why-muslims-see-the-crusades-so- differently-from-christians)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not really digging it.

Really liked Lynch's, even though it's a bit off in a few aspects(weirding way changes, trying to 1:1 a book:movie, etc). But just the amount of passion and effort that went into it(costumes, practical effects, sets, etc). How strange and unique everything was and looked.

This really just feels like a SciFi paintjob on a modern SuperHero movie. Kind of sterile.

Also not really feeling the StillSuit's looking like motorcycle and airsoft gear slapped together. Versus the old rubber looking ones in the original.

<comment><USER6> It is the dialog. There is not one drop of Dune in it.

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure I agree. They have taken some liberties with the dialogue, but many of the quotes in the trailer are near-direct from the novel. Anyways this seems like something that would be hard to tell from what little the trailer offered in terms of talking.

Just from the trailer, this seems like it will at least be more faithful to the source than the Lynch version.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> All the Villeneuve movies that I've seen, whilst technically impressive, lack something fundamental and come across as sterile.

In Tarkovskian terms, they have no soul.

This looks to be more of the same.

<comment><USER9> Have you seen any of his movies prior to Arrival and Sicario?

 _Incendies_ , _Enemy_ , and _Prisoners_ are all quite emotional in distinct ways. Although, I personally feel _Arrival_ was definitely emotional in its own way.

<comment><USER10> Enemy is seriously underrated, and was better than I anticipated given the source material (Saramago books are deeply eccentric).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The Dune subreddit community (/r/dune) organized a discord server featuring two reading clubs that will begin book 1 very soon. One club is for first timers and the other for those who are re-reading and potentially spoiling in discussion. There's something unusual about this and thought it was worth sharing here. People are very passionate about the Dune stories and are desperate for a remake worthy of the book. I hope that the film can meet expectations.

</comment><comment><USER12> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcZPZGq3Zy8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcZPZGq3Zy8)

1984 version looks better, even in the side-by-side trailer. I'll just watch that one again.

<comment><USER13> The designer David Rudnick has a term he uses for this aesthetic of modern sci-fi: "future without art"[0]. The hazy, dark, washed out palettes being used the portray the concept of "dystopian future" are truly underwhelming and I think he term makes sense -- why must ALL modern sci-fi movies just be mixtures of shiny plastic and grime? It makes me appreciate Luc Besson so much more.

0\. [https://twitter.com/David_Rudnick/status/1249834809138053121](https://twitter.com/David_Rudnick/status/1249834809138053121)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Chalamet's Paul seems to lack the unshakeable self-confidence of McLaughlin's Paul from the few seconds I saw in the trailer. Paul should not wince during gob-jabber. Nor should he grimace in pain or fear in battle.

<comment><USER15> In the book it described Paul feeling almost unbearable pain, almost to the point where he was pushed too far, but the Priestess turned off the gom-jabbar just in time. Wincing was the last of Pauls problems at that moment... Paul was not a cold robotic person - he was subject to great emotions all the way through the book.

Also: [https://i.ytimg.com/vi/QrCfivcQe48/hqdefault.jpg](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/QrCfivcQe48/hqdefault.jpg)

<comment><USER16> Just a note: the gom jabbar is the poisonous needle while the box was the pain component of the humanity test.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've always felt you can't do Dune in a single movie, the world is just too big. I'd say it has to be a minimum of two or three parts to really tell the story.

<comment><USER18> This film will cover the first half of the first book in the saga.

<comment><USER17> ahh great, that will improve things I think. The first movie attempt just felt so rushed and skipped over so many details.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> 0-_-0 I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

</comment><comment><USER19> The trailer ends with "Only in Theaters". What does this mean? Did Warner Bros decide to wait it out until theaters open again, or this was just an oversight ?

<comment><USER20> Moves are coming out in Theatres, not sure if people are going... I think Tenet came out recently

<comment><USER21> I'm in EU, I watched Tenet in theatre. It's a nice experience, lot of room, very few people, you can order everything online. They even reserve an empty seat on each side of your tickets to help with social distancing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> One aspect of the original novel: Frank Herbert is rather terse on his descriptions of the environment, world and universe, leaving a lot for the reader to imagine. He excels at world building without being prescriptive, I think it's a strength in the novel and allows for a certain timelessness.

Lynch's film production design was pulled out of nowhere and it isn't any more accurate than Villeneuve's. It just has a more direct relation between the subject - a future space feudal society - which most people correlate with pomp and elaborate visual motifs.

In fact, if you consider the only visual work based on Dune that Herbert himself endorsed, it recalls the the newer film more than the baroque aesthetics of the former - the work of John Schoenherr for an illustrated edition of the novel: [http://ski-ffy.blogspot.com/2010/08/illustrated- dune.html](http://ski-ffy.blogspot.com/2010/08/illustrated-dune.html)

</comment><comment><USER23> The sandworms look amazing. I really like how they have these wispy "tusks" in their mouths instead of teeth.

</comment><comment><USER24> The 1984 trailer, for comparison:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwPTIEWTYEI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwPTIEWTYEI)

</comment><comment><USER25> Looks promising, hope covid19 doesn't kill any chance of the 2nd half of the book being filmed :/

</comment><comment><USER26> That seems promising. Couple of odd bits, but to be expected I guess.

</comment><comment><USER27> For some reason I don't remember Dune being about a massive war.

<comment><USER28> The first novel is the build up to a massive war.

<comment><USER29> And Herbert skips over all the details of that massive war. You go from one chapter describing the start of the war to the next chapter of Alia standing before Baron when most of the action has taken place. Anyway, that is at the end of the novel, which will not be included in this movie. So, I guess the clips shown are from the arrival on Arrakis and the battle that took place during the night to overthrow the Artreidies, which in the book is described as a relatively short battle and also not in much detail.

<comment><USER16> Right, and it makes sense given the perspectives the reader gets around those events.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> To be honest, the premise of the story is pretty retarded.

Control of the galaxy is determined by intergalactic space travel, and to do that, you need "The Spice", which is the shit from these giant sand worms, that are tamed by the locals of that planet.

Then, to add further suspension of disbelief, you have a guild of these space folding specialists that uses the power of their brains to conjure up the space warp travel, because apparently a computer system couldn't handle the complexity of the physics of space travel. The whole premise falls apart, and dwells in nonsense.

I can't imagine what is so good about this story, except that it is some space soap opera from a lost generation trying to make its mark.

<comment><USER31> You're misremembering (or didn't follow far enough to get?) a few things.

The spice prolongs life, in a way they are unable to replicate or otherwise export __production __of. Production of the Spice also is devastating to the ecology of Arrakis (nee Dune). The natives haven 't tamed the worms - but do co-exist with them. The Houses exploit both however, and the planet itself.

The guild navigators value is NOT they can perform computations machines cannot - it's NOT a complexity problem. Some spoilers so I will be oblique, but their ability is tied directly to what the Bene Gesserit are trying to breed. And to what Paul is/his abilities are. It's inherently an "organic"/meat-puppet power - as it is implied it's tied to forebears and progeny...

And finally, as noted, there is a deeply held proscription against "thinking machines" due to an... event. This actually isn't HUGELY relevant, but allows Herbert to eschew futorology in favor of his allegory.

The story's GREAT :) (especially up to and including Book 4, which completes a full arc.)</comment></comment>


Dwolla: Startup that moves $350m and wants to kill credit cards - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/this-28-year-old-is-making-sure-credit-cards-wont-exist-in-the-next-few-years-2011-11/?

<comment><USER2> I wonder how much of that 350m was Bitcoin related, since Dwolla was one of the main ways to add USD to MtGox.</comment>


$175mn fraud by Chinese companies in India - <AUTHOR> https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/enforcement-directorate-freezes-bank-accounts-after-firms-found-running-chinese-betting-apps-2287408 <comment><AUTHOR> Arrested Chinese national says he is only a translator, when the person was listed as the CEO.</comment>


Show HN: The Hawaii Project – A personalized book discovery system - <AUTHOR> http://www.thehawaiiproject.com <comment><USER2> As usual with this kind of thing, I've spent about five minutes looking round the site just to get a general feel of the thing. Here are my first impressions:

1\. This is a great idea. I'm /always/ looking for book recommendations and I find that Goodreads doesn't do the job for me.

2\. Thank you for giving me a 'Not yet, I just want to look around' button. This turned a potentially irritating moment to a moment of 'Huh... that's a nice touch'.

3\. I'm afraid I say that I think the design is horrible. Not necessarily layout, but more the CSS, e.g. the background colour, the style of the buttons, etc.

4\. I think there's too much stuff in the navbar at the top. This includes a few things that I don't really know what to do with. It's all a bit cluttered, and that makes me a bit anxious. Couldn't this be stripped down a bit?

5\. The menu is absolutely full of options, some of which seem a bit repetitive. I've got 'Edit my authors', 'Edit my channels', 'Personalise', etc. Isn't there a way all this kind of stuff can be put in one place?

6\. When I click 'Edit authors', I'm not really sure why I have to do this on a separate page (or indeed why I'm telling you about /authors/ I like). Can't I just tell you which books I like?

7\. I don't really know what 'My Articles' is. I wouldn't mind something that /only/ dealt with books.

8\. Loading times are a /bit/ on the slow side, especially on the 'Recommendations' page.

Conclusion: Interesting idea, so I've signed up. For me, the biggest thing that needs to improve is the general look of the site (not necessarily layout, but the CSS), followed by the fact that everything feels a bit cluttered.

This is all just my opinion, though...!

<comment><USER3> ACK on 2) - I was about to close it again when I saw the button to look around.

I only did a few searches and sadly only found one of the books I recently read/started (and the only "well-known" one) - the one I didn't like that much.

<comment><AUTHOR> which books are we missing? want to take a look....thx.

<comment><USER3> For example 'Spin' by Robert Charles Wilson and some other SciFi titles (not many I checked)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for passing that along. Spin is actually in the system ([http://www.thehawaiiproject.com/book/Spin--by--Robert- Charle...](http://www.thehawaiiproject.com/book/Spin--by--Robert-Charles- Wilson--51483)) but I think my keyword search ranking approach isn't picking it up in the keyword search box...something to improve.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is there an advantage here over Goodreads?

The design could use quite a bit of help, but otherwise this could be something I could use.

How are the recommendations generated?

<comment><AUTHOR> Goodreads tends to be more of a socially-driven environment, I find that my friends don't read what I read.

The Hawaii Project is constantly scanning what the blogosphere is writing about in terms of books, and then matching that to your tastes and interests (topics, authors, website sources), so the recommendations always stay fresh and timely - vs Goodreads, which tends to be pretty static (if you like X you'll like Y). I may not care about all the books that say, the New York Times Book Review writes about, but if I'm into historical fiction and they review a book of that sort, I'll get a recommendation for it.

THP also has an index of articles from the web about particular books, and the ability to quickly browse what sites are writing about - kind of like a books- oriented news reader

It also generates a weekly mail with books that match your interests and authors that are being written about, so you don't have to go looking for them or miss a book from your favorite author.

And yes, my design skills need help :)

<comment><USER5> Would it be fair to say it's sort of like a Hype Machine but for books?

I'm also always interested in hearing about books that authors I like are reading or maybe books that they've been influenced by.

Regarding the design, there is definitely a lot of gradients and drop shadows happening which makes the page feel "heavy" and not relaxing like I think Hawaii brings to mind. I'm not sure if it's that but something is making the large grid layouts to load slowly on both my desktop and laptop.

<comment><AUTHOR> Very much so, like Hype Machine (which I love), with the caveat that THP is personalized, whereas Hype Machine is more one-size-fits-all in terms of the music it recommends, it doesn't really know whether I like EDM or Jazz and act accordingly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> FYI, I browse with cookies and localStorage disabled... your site doesn't come up at all for me. I understand that as a logged-in user I'd need to have cookies enabled, but for just browsing around the site it seems weird that it wouldn't show me any content at all.

<comment><AUTHOR> Let me investigate. Neither of those should be required but perhaps something's busted. Browser you're using?

<comment><USER6> Current version of Chrome on Mac OSX El Capitan.

I'm not using an ad blocker or anything, just have "Block sites from setting any data" checked in Settings > Show Advanced Settings > Privacy > Content Settings > Cookies.

Thanks.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I can reproduce when I set "block sites from setting any data", caused by a 3rd party tool I use. I will have to figure some way to fix it. Thanks for reporting. In the meantime if you want to explore you'll have to turn that setting off... :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's not working for me. Firefox 42/ OS X El Capitan

[http://i.imgur.com/6vlsFMY.png](http://i.imgur.com/6vlsFMY.png)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Looks like jquery's not loading. either it's because of load, or perhaps you have javascript blocked? (more likely somehow load related. I'll take a look)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> they don't have "The New Turing Omnibus" service fail.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for looking. Because I get book recommendations from the blogosphere, older books don't get found as quickly unless someone is writing about them.... I added in Omnibus - here: [http://www.thehawaiiproject.com/book/The- New-Turing-Omnibus-...](http://www.thehawaiiproject.com/book/The-New-Turing- Omnibus-Sixty-Six-Excursions-in-Computer-Science--by--A.-K.-Dewdney--186413). Thanks!

<comment><USER8> thanks, and it led me to find Turtle Geometry which looks like it could be an interesting book.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: My weekend project, DomainShuffler.com - <AUTHOR> http://www.domainshuffler.com I am always on the hunt for good domain names. Keyword search is a start, but I've always wanted to just browse random domain names to spark ideas. Built this quick web app in a weekend to shuffle through expired domain names which are available for registration. <comment><AUTHOR> I am always on the hunt for good domain names. Keyword search is a start, but I've always wanted to just browse random domain names to spark ideas. Built this quick web app in a weekend to shuffle through expired domain names which are available for registration.

</comment><comment><USER2> >Go Daddy

You must be new here.

<comment><AUTHOR> First post on HN, but definitely familiar with GoDaddy reputation (SOPA stance, some think GoDaddy sucks, etc). I've thought about this. May offer other registrar options for the GoDaddy haters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Interesting. I would post the domain price on the initial screen. Also, how are you generating the names?

I would also put "Would you pay $x for this domain?" Then when the person clicks say "guess what, it's only $12.99"

<comment><AUTHOR> A tagline to draw interest is a good suggestion! Will consider adding one.

The domain names are retrieved from expired domain lists published daily (various sources). I wrote a backend script to check domain name availability with a Whois lookup (runs every 2 hours for updates). At any given time, a random sampling of a larger domain set is available on the site for quick shuffling.

<comment><USER3> I would also give people the option to "mark" a domain to add it to a running list and/or the ability to go "back" in direction as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great ideas also! Will add to the feature enhancements list.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://thoughtmaybe.com/all-watched-over-by-machines-of-loving-grace/ <comment><USER2> We are not only being colonized by machines, we are becoming machines, and gladly. We are already acting like and being treated like idiots by our technology. In the car it is turn by turn navigation, on foot it is stumbling with our phones in our faces, for music it is auto-tuned, formulaic pop songs, for dance it is the robotic pop-and-lock dubstep moves that amaze us...we defend our heads with noise-canceling headphones the size of earmuffs, are interrupted every moment by smartwatches...we bumble from one mediated moment to the next, always alone, always accompanied by no one--just the glow of a screen or a hum, a talisman. We're not sane without checking our notifications, need entertainment...can't stand not watching something, can't stand dead space, can't stand our own thoughts, can't stand our own minds.

Please take my mind over, AI, we constantly beg. Put us out of our misery and upload us to the digital nirvana.

/yea I know hackernews ain't exactly the right place to blah that out there, but couldn't. stop. --karma

<comment><USER3> I had a friend who posited that the Wall-E/Inception scenario would have been a far more interesting prequel backstory for The Matrix than what was actually presented in Reloaded and Revolutions.

Basically, that the remaining "real world" humans were deluding themselves with this grand narrative of a lost war against the machines, when in fact it was humanity's own environmental screwups that blotted out the sky, and most people willingly submitted themselves to a simulated fantasy world that was set right before the collapse of civilization. And if there were multiple "one" persons or matrices or whatever, it was only to keep resetting the simulation and re-playing that golden period. Basically, you would turn the first movie on its head, where Morpheus becomes the character who has to question his world and assumptions, and break free from a tyranny of lies.

<comment><USER4> Precisely! However, if you think about it, the Matrix Trilogy does not contradict this notion. Many people believe the "real world" presented is in fact another layer of the Matrix, otherwise, how would Neo have superpowers in that world (among other issues)?

I hope this is taken up in a fourth movie.

<comment><USER5> > Many people believe the "real world" presented is in fact another layer of > the Matrix, otherwise, how would Neo have superpowers in that world (among > other issues)?

Short answer: WiFi

Longer answer: For reasons (probably involving systems of control, because, hey, it's the Matrix), in addition to the high-bandwidth wired connections, the implants in humans attached to the matrix also include lower-bandwidth wireless units, and the machines (obviously) have wireless network connections to coordinate mobile units. Neo can hack machines (or formerly Matrix- connected humans) via his (and their) wireless interfaces, giving him "superpowers" in the physical world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6>
      I like to think (and
      the sooner the better!)
      of a cybernetic meadow
      where mammals and computers
      live together in mutually
      programming harmony
      like pure water
      touching clear sky.

      I like to think
      (right now, please!)
      of a cybernetic forest
      filled with pines and electronics
      where deer stroll peacefully
      past computers
      as if they were flowers
      with spinning blossoms.

      I like to think
      (it has to be!)
      of a cybernetic ecology
      where we are free of our labors
      and joined back to nature,
      returned to our mammal
      brothers and sisters,
      and all watched over
      by machines of loving grace.

        -- Richard Brautigen

<comment><USER7> Minor correction: It's Richard Brautig _a_ n.

<comment><USER6> It's both, [https://www.google.com/search?q=richard+brautigen](https://www.google.com/search?q=richard+brautigen)

<comment><USER7> It's not [1], though. All your search does it fix your misspelling:

        Showing results for "richard brautigan"
        Search instead for "richard brautigen"

[1] [https://www.britannica.com/biography/Richard- Brautigan](https://www.britannica.com/biography/Richard-Brautigan)

<comment><USER6> I apply the pragmatic maxim to spelling (and language in general and many other things).

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

<comment><USER8> So you're an intentional idiot, how quaint.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Obligatory. If you enjoy Adam Curtis, you should have a look at 'The Loving Trap of Pandora's Nightmares' \- its only 3 minutes long and rather amusing.

[https://youtu.be/x1bX3F7uTrg](https://youtu.be/x1bX3F7uTrg)

<comment><USER10> Hahaha, brilliant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Really interesting documentary. I've heard good things about Adam Curtis's documentaries.

He works, or at the very least use to, at the BBC and I remember reading a post if his on his blog where he saved something like 50 terabytes of rare unedited video of Afghanistan that was decades old, before and during it's Marxist revolution starting in the late 70's.

Probably the most interesting of his documentaries that I've seen is on the rise of propaganda and the public relations industry in his documentary "Century of the Self".

Link here: [https://youtu.be/eJ3RzGoQC4s](https://youtu.be/eJ3RzGoQC4s)

<comment><USER12> When I watch Adam Curtis I always feel like he's so close to getting to something really good but never quite makes it. They are well produced docus though, you can tell that he has incorporated quite a few lessons from his study of propaganda.

<comment><USER13> I think its because he never sets out to be prescriptive, only descriptive, if that makes any sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> >All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace is a series of films about how this culture itself has been colonised by the machines it has has built. The series explores and connects together some of the myriad ways in which the emergence of cybernetics—a mechanistic perspective of the natural world that particularly emerged in the 1970s along with emerging computer technologies—intersects with various historical events and visa-versa. The series variously details the interplay between the mechanistic perspective and the catastrophic consequences it has in the real world.

This style of writing has always bothered me. I don't know how to describe it. College-writing? Like, "The series variously details the interplay between the mechanistic perspective..." What does this sentence _actually mean_? Surely there's a more efficient way to write it. At the very least by throwing out useless fluff like "variously."

<comment><USER15> It's basically using poetic flourishes to hide sloppy, simplistic thinking. Just like when the article accuses science of imposing machinery on nature (or something). "Part two shows how the modern scientific perspective of the natural world is actually a fantasy. It has little to do with the reality of nature. It is based on mechanistic ideas that were projected on to the natural world in the 1950s by scientists..."

That's unfortunately par for the course in humanities. Occasionally that kind of language can be used to enhance good ideas but more often used to let artists have their feelings and not investigate further.

<comment><USER16> I have watched Adam Curtis' documentaries and understand the context of that quote. It's not wrong.

Scientists have models for the natural world that are fantasies. Scientific models intentionally simplify reality in order to be able to analyze them. It is arguable with our current understanding of reality that a perfect model of an aspect of reality will never be possible with quantum uncertainty.

Most of what you've said in your comment is non sequitur, and I suggest you edit it out.

<comment><USER14> >Most of what you've said in your comment is non sequitur, and I suggest you edit it out.

I believe this is unnecessarily rude. I appreciated the content of your comment but I feel your mild personal attack devalues it.

<comment><USER16> I don't. It wasn't a personal attack. I think he jumps to conclusions that are unwarranted, and I'm asking him to kindly edit them out. In no way did I attack his person.

<comment><USER17> In the same spirit I perceive that you that telling people to remove comments that you don't agree with reduces my opportunities to read and consider them. Please refrain from doing this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I watched this documentary and I actually disliked the perspective he gave. As a person with an Bachelors Degree in Computer Science and I took an AI course I came from a position that for the most part Computers Improve society. While I was watching this I started to pick apart his viewpoint.

As I have been to more AI ethics meetups I now think of ways to democratize data / AI instead. I may have forgotten his viewpoints in the documentary since it was awhile ago but now I am more inclined to agree with him.

<comment><USER19> Can you provide some examples of points you disagree with?

I do feel like Curtis can be a touch hyperbolic at times, but that's also part of storytelling and I think it's especially important to strongly represent the viewpoints that are non-normative. I think of curtis much like michael moore, he gets a few things wrong sometimes but also offers a lot of insights.

I've always wondered if electronic technics have decreased world suffering or expanded it. Will AI democratize power or concentrate it?

<comment><USER18> His storytelling method usually creates an idea of us vs them and its very black and white on who is causing the problem and the people being exploited. For example the combination of disciples of Ayn Rand and 60s counterculture group seems painted too broad of a brush. I think the group was bigger than those two groups and there were many more shades of grey instead of black and white.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> All his documentary series are worth watching. These are

Hypernormalisation

Bitter Lake

All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace

Every Day is like Sunday

The Power of Nightmares

The Century of the Self

The Trap

Pandora's Box

The Mayfair Set

Inside Story

Inquiry. The Great British Housing Disaster

The last one is particularly relevant after the Grenfell Tower Fire.

<comment><USER21> Pandora's Box is my favorite introduction to Adam Curtis. In short, the theme is "times that people thought they knew what they were doing, but actually didn't."

<comment><USER22> Watching now, I've seen most of his stuff but oddly never watched this one, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I saw them all a few years ago and I highly recommend them.

Adam Curtis's movies are more like long essays than documentaries but all worth watching.

<comment><USER24> > Adam Curtis's movies are more like long essays

... with a great soundtrack. ;-)

Seriously, though, thinking of them as essays is a very good idea. When I hear documentary, I usually think of David Attenborough, fact-conveying kind of film.

Curtis is more about ideas, and my usual reaction to his films is "Now that gave me a lot to think about."

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Alright, time for another rant:

Curtis sees the connection between machines, hierarchies, capitalism, and technology. Curtis aptly points out that in our world, technology has not bred equality, that rather, the very concept of ownership spits in the eye of non- hierarchical society. I also question the degree to which Silicon Valley types fundamentally believe in (socioeconomic) equality - while Rand supporters often invoke freedom, liberty, justice, etc. they generally fail to mention equality at all. Instead, they opt for lofty "rising tide" rhetoric or relate back to a "free and open web". However, Curtis is dead right about the type of fantasy that technological progress has given our world.

This fantasy - that if we just keep pushing forward, we can solve our problems belies a fundamental, inherent fallacy in late-capitalistic logic. That is: when the problems are necessary parts of the system, it is impossible for the system to solve them. Current nation-state-capitalism relies on a few tenets that cause many of our planet's problems. Nations and people must compete, rather than cooperate. Growth must always continue, lest we face stagnation. Property and the means of acquiring wealth must not be equally distributed, in fact, such distribution would be inherently immoral. The last point here is explicitly Randian and is at the heart of global society's moral compass. That what one man has, no other has a right to take, regardless of how that property was acquired. Thus it is _wrong_ for Palestine to contest the land given to Israel at the end of the 2nd World War, it is _wrong_ for young black men and women to stand on the bridges that wealthy San Franciscans take to work, it is _wrong_ for the government to appropriate the wealth of Mark Zuckerberg - despite the fact that his idea and wealth was ostensibly stolen from others.

The fantasy of a "free web" can be only be recognized in its relation to property and ownership. While megacorps like Google and Facebook make lofty claims about freedom, they unequivocally deny that the rest of the web ought to have access to their data, their infrastructure, their systems. They support the laws that make hacking illegal, and in many cases, prove two-faced about what they really want: a free web, but with some limitations that favor them. Google, for instance, supports net neutrality but does not have any interest in limiting their own ability to profit off the web. What we end up with is a "free society" where the ultimate arbiters of justice are not beholden to society in any way - capable of setting their own rules and saying "you may enter _if_ ..."

<comment><USER17> My response would be that you are casting society and societal organisation in terms of absolutes and extremes. Some people - Rand for example - believe that all redistribution is always wrong and immoral. Some people participate in this fantasy. Many, many people don't, many many people pay taxes happily, and vote for taxes because they realise that redistribution prevents poverty and promotes social harmony - due to ensuring that there is a minimal population of murderous starving feral children. Many nations do not compete all the time, many nations co-operate and support each other, most of the time.

At the same time most people see elastic limits in redistribution of wealth, space, time and privilege. For example it is widely believed that it's ok for less privileged groups to take public space and media time to protest and illustrate the injustice that has placed them in extremis. However to do so to the extent that others cannot care for their children or enjoy their basic rights - safety, shelter, is unacceptable.

Isaiah Berlin is a good read.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Oh, Adam Curtis is great. Bitter Lake and Hypernormalization are also well worth a watch. Didn't see this but I look forward to it!

</comment><comment><USER27> I think every Adam Curtis documentary link should also have this appended to it: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1bX3F7uTrg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1bX3F7uTrg)

</comment><comment><USER28> 'Bitter Lake' is one of his harder to watch films. Still good, though [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRbq63r7rys](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRbq63r7rys)

</comment><comment><USER29> I was fortune enough to catch a screening of this at the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, TX for $3. It was my first exposure to Adam Curtis, and I have been hooked ever since. His work is hypnotic, unnerving sometimes, misleading / biased often, but always a good jumping off point for exploring ideas and people on your own.

I read a description of his latest, "Hypernormalization," the was something like "a three hour journey through 100 wikipedia tabs" and it perfectly described his documentaries. They start with a basic premise but then veer wildly through topics whose links are tenuously held together by their relation to each other + stock footage and great music.

</comment><comment><USER30> "Machines that make us smart" argues that what makes us human is not that we can build machines, or that machines = intelligence but that human + machine = intelligent system.

By Don Normal, ex Apple designer.

[https://www.amazon.com/Things-That-Make-Smart- Attributes/dp/...](https://www.amazon.com/Things-That-Make-Smart- Attributes/dp/0201626950)

[https://msu.edu/course/cep/900/readings/NormanChap3.pdf](https://msu.edu/course/cep/900/readings/NormanChap3.pdf) (Sample chapter)

</comment><comment><USER31> While we are on the subject, here is another video from the same site on becoming a machine. Stumbled across this lecture while looking for more Curtis documentaries and thought it was a very good guide through a cybernetics roadmap of the recent past, focusing on the work of Professor Kevin Warwick, who makes this subject quite entertaining and very accessible for the general/non-technical viewer.

[https://thoughtmaybe.com/the-cyborg- experiments/](https://thoughtmaybe.com/the-cyborg-experiments/)

</comment><comment><USER32> As well as the long multi-part documentaries, Adam Curtis wrote short five minute clips for the show NewsWipe, which are also worth watching, e.g. his talk about news reporting and "oh dearism" \- [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8moePxHpvok](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8moePxHpvok)

</comment><comment><USER33> Future Shock by Alvin Toffler in 1972 narrated by Orson Welles is well worth adding to the list of documentaries to watch. Much of what Toffler/Welles touch is very relevant now. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkUwXenBokU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkUwXenBokU)

<comment><USER34> Also _The Society of the Spectacle_ by Guy Debord, which will just be completely weird to most viewers at first.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> >The film posits that it is perhaps as all past political dreams of changing the world for the better seem to have failed

What about antibiotics? That seems like a clear case of changing the world for the better.

<comment><USER36> >What about antibiotics? That seems like a clear case of changing the world for the better.

At first glance, yes, but then you remember that the universe is not static, but dynamic, constantly evolving, and the introduction of antibiotics, while useful --- miraculous, even --- at first, eventually results in "antibiotic- resistance"[0], and now we have a worse problem than the one we started with.

There is a wonderful essay by Paul Kingsnorth, titled "Dark Ecology"[1] that identifies this pattern as a "progress trap".

This quote from the Tao Te Ching is especially apt:

"Do you think you can take over the universe and improve it? I do not believe it can be done."

[0] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4378521/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4378521/) [1] [https://orionmagazine.org/article/dark- ecology/](https://orionmagazine.org/article/dark-ecology/)

<comment><USER37> > a worse problem than the one we started with

Bacterial infections are no longer a serious threat -- even bubonic plague has been brought under control. It's unlikely that bacteria will ever become fully immune to one or another antibiotic, but if that does happen we've still got penicillin, bacteriophages, and sterilization techniques; bacteria will never again be as dangerous as they were as recently as the late 1800s.

For further clear-cut changes of the world for the better, there's smallpox eradication, the immanent eradication of guinea worms, the extirpation of polio from most of the world, and the development of anaesthesia.

<comment><USER34> I don't disagree, but bear in mind that 'better' involves a whole bunch of implicit assumptions. Some people think a more austere and purely Darwinian world would be better, and that humanity has gone soft. I don't agree, but try to get in the habit of examining your opinions from radically different perspective to realize how fundamentally subjective they are.

<comment><USER37> (Sorry for the late response!)

"Better" here just involves the assumptions that pain is worse than not pain, and that human life is intrinsically valuable. I'm fine with making both assumptions -- especially since I've read Timothy Snyder's _Black Earth: the Holocaust as History and Warning_, which explores the thought of the most famous proponent of the mankind-needs-more-Darwinian-selection-pressure alternative. "I disagree with Hitler" isn't exactly compelling evidence for "my opinions are fundamentally subjective."

(I'm also of the opinion that the earth isn't flat, and that both sides of a contradiction can't be true. In those cases, too, I'm comfortable with saying that those who disagree with me are wrong -- and in uninteresting ways, too.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Tiny sans-serif light grey font mean you hate your readers' eyes. This site _hates_ your eyes.

</comment><comment><USER39> It's only a matter of time until one of these things kills a person.

</comment><comment><USER40> all the cities at once

Pretend is a city bigger than New York, bigger than all the cities at once.

<comment><USER6> My friend Bill turned my Brautigan this past spring. [http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/the-life-and- de...](http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/the-life-and-death-of- richard-brautigan-19850411)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Meta: Please, for the love of less-than-perfect eyesight, use more than 3.3 contrast ratio for 13px fonts.

[http://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/?fcolor=8e8e8e&b...](http://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/?fcolor=8e8e8e&bcolor=ffffff)

On topic, this does seem like a video series I'll have to look at. Human/Machine interactions will only become more important as time goes on; it will be interesting to watch both the philosophy and the reality of it all evolve.

</comment><comment><USER42> Am I the only one hoping this would be about the defunct industrial band?

<comment><USER43> Mike got the name from the poem.

<comment><USER42> Yes I know.

I was hoping they reformed or something when I saw the title.

<comment><USER43> Nope, sorry. You might be interested in Mike's solo album -- [https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/fellow- prisoners/id5013550](https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/fellow- prisoners/id5013550)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Just going off the summary of part 1, I'm not sure what I'm supposed to make of this. Every cultural voice in the US -- except a few eccentric Greens -- was pro-computer-revolution; the Left wanted decentralization and freedom, while the Right wanted prosperity and anti-Communism. Neither major side in the US saw surveillance capitalism coming. If the author's trying to absolve the Left of responsibility for surveillance capitalism, he's wasting his time -- think of Apple Computer, the Free Software Foundation, 37signals.com, and the whole close association of computers (especially personal computers) with the counterculture...

He also enumerates the following goals that the personal-computing revolution was after:

* No economic risk or failure

* No boom-bust cycle

* Decentralized political power

* Democracy

* Connectedness

* Non-hierarchy

* Pursuit of self-interest

* Desire to improve the world

Which of these does he think we shouldn't have pursued? Which of them does he think are bad? If you oppose all of them, you're asking to live in the Egypt of the Pharaohs, and not even the neo-reactionaries want _that_.

<comment><USER26> At the risk of sounding glib, watching the documentary itself would answer your questions, no? If you're interested in the topic, as you seem to be, they are likely worth your time.

<comment><USER37> > watching the documentary itself would answer your questions, no?

I'm definitely feeling engaged, but not entirely enthusiastic... (EDIT: But I feel like I'm picking a fight with you, and I apologize for that. I'll definitely give this documentary a shot!)

Part 1 sounds like the fascist mode of thinking: "all our intractable emergent problems are due to an evil conspiracy of outsiders in our midst, with an inexplicable desire to destroy the world!" The whole problem with Ayn Rand is that she tried too hard to be anti-communist and accidentally turned fascist; seeing her followers pointed to as a fascist-style internal outgroup is as depressing as it is silly.

As for the other two parts -- tearing down the Gaia hypothesis and the Selfish Gene -- what does he think are the right things to think, if these are the wrong things? Are we going to just start pretending that the establishment Left was always anti-hippie, now that hippieness has turned out to have nasty emergent consequences?

I'm particularly annoyed that he blames the Congo situation on the Selfish Gene. The establishment likes to pretend that the Congo is too complicated to understand -- because the alternative is owning up to how the French backed the Hutus during and after the Rwandan genocide, and how the international community is still more sympathetic to the Hutus than the Tutsis. (See also the allegedly inexplicable causes of WWI.)</comment></comment></comment>


Don't Fear the Internet: Basic HTML & CSS for non-Web Designers - <AUTHOR> http://www.dontfeartheinternet.com/ <comment><USER2> Why are the tutorials presented in reverse order? Surely this must scare new designers if I look at the first video and it says "CSS". The site needs to reverse the order with Part 0/1 at the top and 5 at the bottom.

<comment><USER3> "Why are the tutorials presented in reverse order?"

Probably because it's a WordPress site and the author didn't get around to adding

      query_posts($query_string."&order=ASC");

to index.php before the if(have_posts()) logic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The site looks like a mess! No visual hierarchy at all - a mess of full caps, bolding, non-bolding, lines, diamonds.

And why is "the" in "don't fear the internet" underlined in white on the title text? Aside from gratuitous use of design elements, there is no reason to focus attention on a grammatical article (part of speech) unless they want to say that this is THE internet we're talking about! - which is very obvious and stupid. How many other internets are there?

I expected more from these "designers" - am I the only one who thinks this kind of design is completely unsuitable for the online medium? In print it would look pretty good, but my eyes just got assaulted - and I was really distracted and could not absorb any of the information on that page.

It's like @font-face and the new css styles are the "blink" tag of today.

<comment><USER5> The website is very consistent and has a very clear visual hierarchy.

It seems your subjective impression colored all your subsequent judgments about the site. What you are writing there in the first sentence just makes no sense at all, caps, bolding, lines and diamonds are all used consistently to create a clear visual hierarchy.

Don't hate on it just because you don't like the look of it.

<comment><USER6> Though it could have been said more constructively, I don't the the parent is completely wrong about the grouping of the elements. I find the diamonds a bit distracting because to my eyes it makes the right column a long string of different sized line lengths. If they just removed the diamonds I think it would be much clearer visually that the videos and text were grouped together.

<comment><USER5> That's a small (even debatable) thing. Nothing that would warrant the language the grandparent used.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This site looks great, but if you want to get the basics of HTML/CSS, this is the best $20 you'll spend. Some of the Head First books are not the best, but this was the best resource for box model, table less HTML/CSS I've found. I went from having almost no knowledge of markup to being able to do anything I could imagine.

<comment><USER8> It looks like you had a link on "this" that got swallowed by HN. HN doesn't allow <a> tags in comments; you have to put the URL you want directly in the text, and it will be linked automatically.

Did you mean _Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML_, <http://headfirstlabs.com/books/hfhtml/>?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Great site, I agree why are the videos in reverse order. It's ironically not a very well designed/organised site.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is well put together. Just a little nitpick though, HTML and CSS are part of the Web, not the Internet as a whole. If you're going to start teaching you might as well start at the beginning. Other than that it has a unique layout and the bold use of typography is pretty cool. It would be nice if the videos were accompanied below by the lesson in written form. The videos are high quality. Props!

Edit: Regarding my nitpick, I see that you start off with an actual introduction to the Internet, so I retract my nitpick. :)

</comment><comment><USER11> Its not enough to know just html & css. Design is more different thing. If you have a nice idea and could sketch on the paper even ordinary web designer could implement that. Dont waste your time with these crap things. Just try be best painter, photographer or illustrator forget the html and other things, just sharpen your design skills.

<comment><USER12> I understand your sentiment but I know a lot of designers who, while they love what they do, are finding it harder to land non-web gigs. So for them, it may be necessary to learn html/css in order to keep making money at a job that's at least somewhat related to their existing skill set.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Wonderful. I feel like I learned HTML/CSS/JS from observing and guessing. Having an explanation would've been a hell of a lot easier.

Unfortunately, most brilliant web designers are terrible at communication. Not all - I _know_ there are at least several exceptions.

Look at Twitter Bootstrap for example. It's great, and I'm guessing it's made for non-web designers, or people who want to make something quickly. In the prior case, I can't imagine any design newbie understanding how to use it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think that Twitter Bootstrap is actually targeted toward the experienced front-end developer who needs to put together a prototype or other simple app quickly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Nice idea, but sadly, it's a series of videos. I'd expect good web designers to be able to express themselves well using text on web pages.

<comment><USER15> Videos are easy to digest, and considering the target audience is not web designers I think this is a great resource. I can point my friends to it when they ask what I do :)</comment></comment>


A History of College Grade Inflation - <AUTHOR> http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/14/the-history-of-college-grade-inflation/

<comment><USER2> Walter Russel Mead of The American Interest offers a nice summary:

 _"43 percent of all grades given in American colleges are A's. Social science grades are higher than grades in science and math. Humanities grades are higher still. Grades in private colleges are higher than grades at public universities. Northern schools give A's more freely than southern ones, and prestigious colleges have flabbier standards than their less fashionable rivals."_</comment>


Apple patent to remotely disable iPhone's camera, ringer, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.computerworld.com/privacy/22743/apple-patent-demonstrates-risks-innovation

<comment><USER2> This is getting ridiculous.</comment>


Android apps, IMEIs and privacy - <AUTHOR> http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/46266.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter <comment><USER2> It's definitely rare in that respect. Read phone state is needed to do things like stop music for calls, even after 6.0 the permissions aren't that granular.</comment>


New insights into "bradykinin storms" suggest potential therapies for Covid-19 - <AUTHOR> https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-human-os/computing/hardware/has-the-summit-supercomputer-cracked-the-covid-code <comment><USER2> Very interesting reading this and comparing to my wife's experience (5 months since she had covid for less than two weeks - not a terrible case of it, and was up and about towards the end of the 2 weeks even heading out for walks. Very quickly after that she went down hill and been terribly ill ever since).

Many of the symptoms they described match her journey. Her latest diagnosis from a cardiologist is PoTS - but it could well be the bradykinin issues causing very similar symptoms. Interestingly many people on her groups who have been as ill or iller than her, have made almost spontaneous recoveries. I hope she recovers soon.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sometimes with enough data and powerful enough computers you can brute force ideas that otherwise might take forever to examine. If you can identify the reasons why certain symptoms appear, you can begin to format potential solutions faster. In programming terms once you understand why something is broken, it's much easier to fix.

</comment><comment><USER4> These are two very cool findings about the genetic mechanisms which might be at work provoking specific lethal symptoms that are pretty unique to COVID.

This is such a great use of the world's second fastest supercomputer and a fascinating discovery achieved through genetic data mining!

It might be the coolest thing you read today and even if it doesn't immediately lead to a treatment breakthrough, it's at least heartening to know our world's best resources are being deployed in this fashion.

</comment><comment><USER5> Grateful for anyone that studies this but there has been so much false hope in the past six months that I came to ignore all these findings.

<comment><USER6> What kind of hope were you holding if I may ask, that it's been crushed that many times already? My government (NL) has always been very clear that a vaccine would not be expected until late 2020/early 2021 at the earliest, and that we would have to cope until then.

Also, we haven't been treating the disease yet. We have gotten better at managing/alleviating the symptoms and relying on the body's own immune system to clear the infection. If this discovery allows for a more targeted treatment of the infection itself rather than its symptoms, it's actually very good news. But even then, it's going to take months before we can validate the efficacy of such a treatment.

<comment><USER7> > What kind of hope were you holding if I may ask, that it's been crushed that > many times already?

Not the OP but the expectations were that in 6 months' time we would have gotten better at treating at least "some" of the disease. No-one knowledgeable enough expected a vaccine by this autumn but some people were hoping for a greatly increased standard of covid care in August 2020 compared to February 2020.

Re: the vaccine thing, I don't think that's logistically possible to give the vaccine to billions of people in less than a year (even a 50% covid vaccination rate for our species would mean administering 3.5-4 billion vaccines), so 2022 at the earliest looks like our best bet (hoping that we'd actually have the vaccine by early 2021). Looking at past vaccination campaigns I personally think that even a 3-5 year timeframe looks optimistic, but that's just me.

<comment><USER8> March or April compared to now seem to indicate we _do_ have a greatly increased standard of care, resulting in a much higher infections per death ratio.

<comment><USER9> This isn't necessarily true - there is a implied assumption that the infections are still following the same distribution among people with different risk factors, but that isn't necessarily the case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The original paper _A mechanistic model and therapeutic interventions for COVID-19 involving a RAS-mediated bradykinin storm_ [1]:

> ...our results indicate that the pathology of COVID-19 is likely the result > of Bradykinin Storms rather than cytokine storms (although given the > induction of IL2 by BK, the two may be intricately linked).

> Several interventional points (most of them already FDA-approved > pharmaceuticals) could be explored with the goal of increasing ACE, > decreasing BK, or blocking BK2 receptors (Table 1).

[1] [https://elifesciences.org/articles/59177](https://elifesciences.org/articles/59177)

</comment><comment><USER11> "We have to get this message out," Jacobson said. "We have started to be contacted by people. But … clinical partners and funding agencies who will hopefully support this work is the next step that needs to happen."

Yes! Clinical trials are required to isolate bradykinin dysregulation as a primary cause of COVID-19 morbidity. If that happens, the good news is that drug therapies already exist, which means the death toll from the virus could be cut dramatically in a short time.

It's bizarre that the chief scientist for computational systems biology at a prestigious government research facility such as Oak Ridge National Labs doesn't already have connections to facilitate clinical trials in advance.

This is the true cost of the crony capitalism that has seen sham treatments such as hydroxychloroquine dominate clinical opportunities and administrative bandwidth of the pandemic response.

</comment><comment><USER12> With ebola was standard the use of blood transfusions from people that developped antibodies against it. This path is not being explored here, and sometimes I wonder why. We have plenty of people that recovered

<comment><USER13> It is happening, on quite a large scale too, e.g. [1]

1: [https://www.redcrossblood.org/donate-blood/dlp/plasma- donati...](https://www.redcrossblood.org/donate-blood/dlp/plasma-donations- from-recovered-covid-19-patients.html)

<comment><USER12> Looks like a good idea, but It seems that neither Europe nor the official healthcare US system is adopting or giving a lot of credit to that.

So maybe is basically a PR and blood donor campaign from the american redcross, a charity managing several private hospitals.

I had seen several strange measures adopted with the excuse of COVID. From ozone machines to, for example, the university requiring than students for the next year tie their hair when in the faculties. I can't see any relationship between having long hair and having COVID...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> We're well past the time when good ideas were needed. Our biggest problems at the moment are proving ideas up and logistics.

I have a fairly rosy outlook; we're starting to enter the phase of this where the scientists will have useful observations to make. One of my reasonable worst-case scenarios for the next 12 months is someone develops a $5 5 minute coronavirus test and central health agencies don't notice/delay the rollout/start throwing out arbitrary sensitivity & specificity threshold roadblocks so the pandemic continues for stupid reasons.

<comment><USER15> It looks like this isn't going away any time soon. Good ideas may not make a difference in the short term (though with medications already approved for other uses, maybe this one will), but they might reduce the burden of this disease in the medium-long term.

As for the testing, I would be thrilled if there were home covid-19 tests that were as fast and reliable as home pregnancy tests. Spit/pee/whatever on a stick, wait a couple of minutes, get a result. But I don't think anyone is working on something like this, and I suspect it's not as easy as it sounds.

<comment> T-A [https://www.colorado.edu/today/2020/07/22/new- covid-19-test-...](https://www.colorado.edu/today/2020/07/22/new- covid-19-test-returns-results-45-minutes-without-nasal-swab)

<comment><USER15> 45 minutes is pretty good. People might be able to integrate that into their morning routine (assuming it's cheap enough and easy enough to use). Wake up. Spit. Eat. Get dressed. Check results before heading out.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Want to sell your side project? - <AUTHOR> Does anyone have a side project laying around that they haven't touched in a while and want to sell it? <comment><USER2> What are you looking for?

<comment><AUTHOR> A Website,App or Saas with a small number of customers generating a little bit of revenue.

I basically want to buy something I can grow.

In the past a bought a website for $5K and sold it for $30K after growing it.

I think that starting with something small is better than starting at zero.</comment></comment>


Thanksgiving Reflections: Stepping Out of Sergey Brin's Shadow - <AUTHOR> https://segahmeer.com/post/stepping-out-of-sergey-brin-shadow-thanksgiving-reflections/ <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15767839](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15767839)

Just renamed.</comment>


A feline genome in full (evolution of domesticity) - <AUTHOR> http://www.unz.com/gnxp/a-feline-genome-in-full/

<comment><AUTHOR> Fulltext: "Comparative analysis of the domestic cat genome reveals genetic signatures underlying feline biology and domestication" [http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Razib_Khan/publication/2...](http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Razib_Khan/publication/269094600_Comparative_analysis_of_the_domestic_cat_genome_reveals_genetic_signatures_underlying_feline_biology_and_domestication/links/54816dd80cf263ee1adfb8ce.pdf) , Montague et al 2014</comment>


Microsoft Bing Blocked in China as Tensions, Crackdown Intensify - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-23/microsoft-bing-search-engine-inaccessible-to-some-chinese-users <comment><USER2> And a day later, that it is a technical error, but way to jump to conclusions lol: [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-24/china- is-...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-24/china-is-said-to- block-microsoft-s-bing-due-to-technical-error?srnd=technology-vp)

</comment><comment><USER3> Happy to report it's working again today. It's not Google but once I got over that, I found the cn.bing.com service is still really useful here in China for things like returning technical queries in English from sites like StackOverflow. I really hope they don't get China banned.</comment>


How Goldman Sachs lost $1.2B of Libya's money - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-goldman-sachs-libya/ <comment><USER2> Matt Levine's take, discussed here a few days ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12610352](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12610352)

<comment><USER3> Matt Levine is brilliant, thank you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > From his hotel room, Kabbaj called Michael Sherwood, one of Goldman's top > London executives, who said the bank would do whatever it took to get them > out. Goldman's security team called back, telling Kabbaj it was looking at > options for "extraction" and ordering him not to leave the Corinthia. The > hotel housed the U.S. embassy and a complement of armed U.S. Marines, not to > mention hundreds of foreign witnesses to anything unpleasant that might > occur. The next morning, a Goldman partner called to say the bank's security > team was increasingly concerned about their safety. They hustled to the > airport and a flight to London.

Goldman has an extraction team? Pretty cyberpunk.

<comment><USER5> Virtually everything has come true except 'trodes, razor blade implants, and Rastafarians in space.

Wait...

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcranial_direct- current_st...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcranial_direct- current_stimulation)

Okay, so razor blade implants and Rastafarians in space.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a repost. See previous post from 3 days ago => [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12605043](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12605043)</comment>


Ask HN:Why did Gigster become so huge despite being another dev shop? - <AUTHOR> And why other dev shops stay small and don't scale beyond a point? I'm trying to figure out the "secret sauce" here.
Everyone says services based agency business won't scale. And here is Gigster. Got into YC, raised $30M and growing!
Did anyone of you figure out the "secret sauce" behind the success of Gigster? <comment><USER2> As far as I read about them, their model is not similar to a typical dev shop.

The main constrain that hinders the exponential growth of a dev shop is it's revenue - operational cost ratio. As your revenue increases, operational cost increases linearly. That is not something loved by VCs.

But Gigster executes projects using their freelance talent network. So they don't have to keep them in their payroll when there is no work for them.

This information is based on what I read about them. I'm not sure how smooth it will be to execute a software development with a team of freelancers though.

But if it works, then I think Gigster's model can achieve exponential growth.</comment>


Yahoo scan by U.S. fell under foreign spy law expiring next year - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/us-yahoo-nsa-idUSKCN1252NR <comment><USER2> > Former Yahoo employees told Reuters that security staff disabled the scan > program after they discovered it, and that it had not been reinstalled > before Alex Stamos, the company's former top security officer, left the > company for Facebook last year.

Quite a fitting location for surveillance advocate.

I'd like to know what went through the minds of the security staff who stumbled onto that find, and how the heck did it stay running for so long?

Nothing goes a long time without breaking in the ops world. I don't believe that they just happened to stumble onto it.</comment>


Ask HN:  "Blender" type program for Audio? - <AUTHOR>

Blender allows users to describe 3D objects made of various materials and assign lighting and cameras to produce some sort of visual output.  Is there any open source program that follows the same process related to sound wave?  For instance, a modeled piano in a concert hall, where in place of cameras speaker outputs would "render" the sound in a given location. <comment><USER2> Audacity may have some filter effects that will do the trick, <http://audacity.sourceforge.net/>. Some subtle use of echo would be the place to start.

You would need a recording of a piano to begin with which could be from a MIDI recording. I haven't used any but there is a good list here: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_MIDI_editors_and_sequen...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_MIDI_editors_and_sequencers)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah Audacity seems to follow the traditional reverb and digital effects route. You choose a few parameters (frequency modulation, amount / time of delay) and a generic "room" is available to pass a sound signal through. There may be a way of getting more fine-grained with the inputs to exactly simulate a specific room, but this is not evident to me from looking at the docs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Vienna MIR seems to do more or less what you're asking:

<http://www.vsl.co.at/en/211/497/1687/2002/1691.htm>

...though it's not open source. (I share it anyway, in the event it's helpful to someone here for whom being open source is not a hard requirement.)

</comment><comment><USER4> There's a realtime programming language called 'Supercollider' designed for use with audio, and they have a facebook group. I'd ask this question there. Amongst all the devs involved, someone ought to know of something like what you're after.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is really a fascinating project. Never heard of Supercollider before. If a "blender-for-audio" does not already exist, it looks like the sort of language that could be used to build an implementation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Voxengo's Impulse Modeler sounds similar to what you're describing.

<http://www.voxengo.com/product/imodeler/>

<comment><AUTHOR> This seems like the closest - from a UI perspective. The screen shot indicates the ability to design a room in 2D (rather than 3D). App appears to be windows only and closed source.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Had someone ask me this recently - and I talked around the actual question a bit. Sampling techniques for instance can provide similar results. Visual special effects are in constant demand (where physical scene creation can be expensive or dangerous) while most audio effects can be created cheaply and safely. Still, it is an interesting question - when you boil it down to physics, it's all just waves y'know :).

</comment><comment><USER6> C-Sound and Pure-data may also be able to do this if you spend enough time learning their ins and outs.</comment>


Istio: A robust service mesh for microservices - <AUTHOR> https://istio.io/blog/istio-service-mesh-for-microservices.html <comment><USER2> Comments moved to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14410533](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14410533).</comment>


HOWTO: online riot against MasterCard - <AUTHOR> http://images.4chan.org/b/src/1291809665506.png

<comment><USER2>
      > 404 - Not Found

Submitted by a completely new account.

Flagged.

<comment><AUTHOR> _404 - Not Found_

Not for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Is this link SFW?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Project ideas for hands-on year-long programming class? - <AUTHOR> I'll be leading a non-compulsory programming course at my local high school during the next academic year. There will be around 10 eighteen-year-olds which all have one-year experience with Python (i.e. they know the basics: loops, functions, datatypes etc), most of them wanting to continue their education at a university in CS or related field. I'll have 90 minutes per week for the course.
I think the best way for them to continue their foray into programming would be to do a large project that would help me demonstrate the more advanced programming concepts like architecture, testing, and model design, and also some of the things closely related to commom programming work, like build tools, git, and basics of command-line.
My current idea is to group them to teams of two or three people and let the teams choose a project from a small selection of related projects. During the year they'll be working on different parts of the project, with the lectures being mostly filled with discussion about that weeks' "task" and maybe a short presentation on the topic by me. I'd also like to give detailed feedback on the code during the year (that's the reason I want three teams rather than 10 individuals).
Firstly, do you think it's a good approach to a programming course? And if so, which projects do you think would fit, considering they ought to be "iterative" in nature (so that we can split them up to parts), interesting and should demonstrate some common programming patterns? <comment><USER2> YES, this is a great approach. The last class I taught was a flipped graduate level machine learning. The students loved it, learned the material exceptionally well, and we had near perfect attendance. We gave the providence and they responded with perseverance.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Another idea I was entertaining was teaching them Lisp (Racket?), Haskell and Prolog, just long enough for them to get a feel for other programming paradigms and ways of thinking. However, I settled for the project, eventually.

Anyway, any ideas what should the actual project be? What kind of project would you, as a student, prefer to be coding? What lind of inout from the teacher would you find valuable?

<comment><USER2> I'll come back and respond after work, or you can email, address is in the profile</comment></comment></comment>


It's No Myth: Robots and AI Will Erase Jobs in Nearly Every Industry - <AUTHOR> http://singularityhub.com/2015/07/07/its-no-myth-robots-and-artificial-intelligence-will-erase-jobs-in-nearly-every-industry/

<comment><USER2> Here's the problem: b/c the whole economic system is based on jobs, the government will create increasingly more complicated bureaucracies to ensure jobs for people. This is what has happened to the healthcare industry, for instance.</comment>


Uber launches flat fares in San Francisco through subscription - <AUTHOR> https://www.uber.com/info/plus/sanfrancisco/ <comment><USER2> Uber has taken $12B of capital, broken the regulatory regimes and opened the drive-for-hire markets, marketed the benefits of drive-for-hire and ride- sharing to drivers and consumers, and helped drivers finance vehicles – but now there seems to be no barrier to entry for any competing service except writing an app. I'm happy to let VCs pay for my comfortable daily ride to work but I don't see how this is sustainable...

<comment><USER3> > but now there seems to be no barrier to entry for any competing service > except writing an app.

Except network of drivers, network of riders with the app installed, name recognition, capital to run the backend systems and delve into mapping algorithms, etc.

<comment><USER4> Yeah I think barrier to entry is misunderstood as a technical attribute of a company.

Of course it's possible to build some app that tells people nearby to pick them up with metering/billing services built in.

From a business standpoint, it would almost be impossible to duplicate what they have today.

<comment><USER5> I entirely disagree. I don't see proprietary technology that can't be duplicated or bought. I see _some_ network effects but ultimately the drivers will go to the highest bidder and the riders will go to the lowest price. I see _some_ brand equity, but not much. Maybe a little economy of scale, but not much. Yes, they have a head start, but they are far from enthroned.

Ultimately, this space will operationalize out to the company that can manufacture safe and reliable self-driving cars most efficiently. That's kind of how you can tell uber hasn't won yet: if a company came along that was doing that, it would eat their lunch.

Further, faced with the awesome self-driving car company, uber's hungry huge capital needs thus far will be nothing but a burden.

I believe they timed this all wrong -- they are myspace and in the wrong business.

<comment><USER2> My points exactly – but I don't see how self-driving cars can ever work in midtown NYC without dedicated lanes. If you can't credibly pretend that you are willing to hit another vehicle, you'll just get cut off continuously; if you can't credibly pretend that you are willing to get hit, you can't change lanes. Self-driving cars can't do either – and will be the nemesis of hire drivers who will cut them off just to slow them down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I used Pool last night in the city. Took me from the Fidi to Inner Richmond. $2.37. It was almost cheaper than Muni. I can't imagine the drivers are making much _at all_.

<comment><USER7> I had the same reaction when I rode UberPool from the south bay into SF (a 45 minute ride) for just under $18, and nobody else pooled with me. How could this be fair to the drivers? So I asked the driver how much he was getting for the trip. I believe he said something like $50. Fortunately, he wasn't getting shortchanged.

Later, someone pointed out to me that Lyft and Uber are aggressively competing right now. It seems that Uber might be artificially deflating its prices to try and kill the competition, or discourage new companies from even entering the market. If they do manage to kill Lyft, you can be sure they will raise their prices again.

<comment><USER8> Margaret Thatcher once said "The problem with socialism is, you eventually run out of other people's money", which makes it ironic and humorous that Uber, the poster child of Valley Objectivism, has basically the same problem with their "price dumping funded by VCs" model.

<comment><USER9> The key difference being that in the case of Uber, those VCs and investors gave their money voluntarily.

<comment><USER10> Presumably (hopefully) the socialist government for this hypothetical nation would have been voluntarily put in place by the voting public.

<comment><USER11> LOL. Go look at Europe. The answer to that is a definite hell-no.

<comment><USER12> Socialists have historically been some of the biggest proponents of democracy. You're probably trolling, but it'd be amusing to know which countries you think have socialist governments in place by force.

<comment><USER13> Perhaps you have heard of the People's Democratic Republics of East Germany, Poland, Romania, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Czechoslovakia, and Albania? Socialism was imposed by a foreign occupying army.

Or take the Soviet Union itself. The democratically elected Provisional Government was overthrown by force. Even the socialists-only Constituent Assembly election was simply voided and ignored by the Bolsheviks when they overwhelmingly lost.

Your claim is empirically false. Socialism has historically been imposed involuntarily at gunpoint in almost all cases where it has achieved any measure of real power. Moreover, once established, its show elections are a farce, with only pre-selected Party approved candidates allowed to win.

You will no doubt reply that none of this was done by "real" socialists, and that <insert your favorite sub-sub-branch of socialism here> are the only "real" socialists. This is the "No True Scotsman fallacy".

<comment><USER14> Ideally, political change can happen without violence or bloodshed. But we don' live in an ideal world. We never have, and we never will.

Pretty much ANY political system gains power through bloodshed. The United States, Canada, England, France, Germany, pretty much the entirety of South America, Africa and Asia... With the wide ranges of political systems that span all these places, each and every one of them was put in place by violence.

You point out the horrible regimes that adopted the word "Socialist" or "People's" in their name and point out all the atrocities that they have committed. While adopting those monickers != actual socialism, you've headed off that argument, so I'll give you that. However, don't lay violence as a means of gripping power at the feet of Socialism... That's a human trait.

<comment><USER15> Disengenuous to ignore the appallingly violent way Socialism has historically grabbed power and suppressed their populations. Very different from rebellions for independence for instance.

<comment><USER14> Sure. The Stalinist were a horribly violent.

So were the US backed gorrillas in every violent uprising in South America in the 1980's.

So were Belgian trading companies in the Congo.

So were the French people during the Reign of Terror.

So were the Catholics during the all of the Inquisitions.

So were the Spanish during the expulsion of the Moors.

I could go on. The point being that this is not a Socialist trait. The first two were done with Capitalist intent. The last two were carried out with both political and religous power in mind. It's clear that you don't like Socialism, and that's fine... to each his own. But it's "disingenuous" to ignore history for the sake of proving your point.

<comment><USER15> Ok lets make a list of Socialist societies that formed through rebellion and the formation of popular governments? Its seems to be a Socialist trait that it cant happen without being forced on a population by intelligentsia. Is that fair?

<comment><USER14> > Its seems to be a Socialist trait that it cant happen without being forced > on a population by intelligentsia. Is that fair?

No, given the evidence, it's not fair. You could say the exact same thing for Capitalism.

Please. Now you're just being purposefully insulting.

<comment><USER15> I'm not confusing Colonialism with capitalism.

<comment><USER14> What do you think the purpose of Colonialism was?

<comment><USER13> "Colonialism" does not exist as such. It's merely a sometimes useful intellectual abstraction, not a real thing. It has no objectives or purpose, because it does not and never actually existed as a real thing. It's merely a summary shorthand for a certain set of ideas.

Trying to impute motives to an unreal analytic abstraction is the reification fallacy.[1]

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reification_(fallacy)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reification_\(fallacy\))

<comment><USER14> > "Colonialism" does not exist as such.

That is an empty refutation...

Colonialism was(is?) as very real practice. I really don't understand how you can claim that it is an "intellectual abstraction"

You went to Wikipeda for the definition of reification, but not for the definition of Colonialism[1]?

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The copy on this page is super unclear. I just realized(after signing up) that the subscription is to get the special $2/ride pricing, not the _actual_ ride. Put another way: after you have the $30/month subscription, you can get UberPools for $2/ride.

<comment><USER17> I thought that was clear. What were you confusing that with? I'm trying to understand what you initially thought it was.

<comment><USER18> not op, but i assumed the 'upfront' would fund the rides as well, vs. just 'unlocking' them. i read it as more of an initial prepayment.

<comment><USER19> Same; this is how it read to me. I was confused seeing this in the comments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > Flat fares are designed to cover full fares for almost every trip, with a > $20 limit for uberPOOL and $25 limit for uberX. You'll be responsible for > paying portions of the fare that exceed those maximums on each trip.

The pricing felt convoluted even before I saw this part. I can't see this being worth the effort, if you can't even guarantee the $7 prices.

<comment><USER21> Yeah, this seems like a step backwards from their promise of transparent prices ("what we do on UberPool, but for everything"). What the heck is the point of flat pricing if you have to pay for overages anyway?

<comment><USER22> Next step for Uber would be to create Zones like Caltrain, and charge subscription based on travel between zones. Then no need of coverage.

But going by Uber's history, this would be too transparent and wont workout for them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Back in September of 2009 JetBlue offered an all you can jet pass because September is traditionally the worst slump of the year. Summer's over, people start schools and jobs, travel drops overall.

This is the same trick to get you out there more. It's also inevitably the end game for Uber. Deliver value for less than your monthly car payment.

Someone is crunching the numbers right now figuring out exactly how much LTV they can extract from you in exchange for paying $500 a month every month to Uber.

Then when Uber wins that game by the end of next year many other CPG and big box retailers will follow suit, riding along the subscription box model.

By 2020 it will be normal for you to receive income from the government just so you can hand it over to lifestyle providers of all stripes every month to live how you personalized it to be.

Latest fashion every month from WalMart! Semi-prepped meals every day from Safeway! 30 day supply of customized toothpaste from Target! Just insert token.

<comment><USER24> Sounds like a communist utopia, just replace the big corps like Walmart and Safeway with GovMart and GovWay. Maybe Marx was unto something on how capitalism would evolve, just got some parts wrongs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Makes sense as a way to lock riders into Uber rather than Lyft. Wonder how drivers will react.

</comment><comment><USER25> Interestingly, Ola in India had already done something like this very recently.

[https://www.olacabs.com/olaSelect](https://www.olacabs.com/olaSelect)

</comment><comment><USER26> They launched this yesterday in San Diego also. I signed up.

[https://www.uber.com/info/plus/sandiego/](https://www.uber.com/info/plus/sandiego/)

<comment><USER27> Boston too - [https://www.uber.com/info/plus/boston/](https://www.uber.com/info/plus/boston/)

Edit: Looks like it's only available for uberPOOL.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I pay $3 to commute to my office in Uber Pool or Lyft--cheaper than Metro. Usually no other rider. I don't know how this is sustainable.

<comment><USER29> All electric vehicles that drive themselves will make it sustainable. They can afford to burn cash while they get the fleet going and then they replace all their expensive and error prone human labor with cars that drive themselves and don't need to sleep.

<comment><USER30> The word "sustainable" in your reply is a joke when you consider the unsustainability of the automobile for single rider transit. Electric or not, it's a tough sell compared to mass transit.

<comment><USER31> Not if one car serves, let's say, 200 people a day instead of a single owner.

<comment><USER32> One car serving 200 passengers a day is one passenger every 7.2 minutes. This equates to roughly 4 miles at 35 miles an hour. This assumes perfect routing and perfect loading/unloading (i.e. - the passenger magically appears and disappears in the car and that a new passenger is always ready to magically appear when the last one disappears). This seems rather short, and is a conservative estimate.

These 800 miles would be reimbursed at $460 using the IRS mileage rate which is for gasoline vehicles, but assume that only 1/3 of that is gas and the other 2/3 is depreciation, wear/tear, licensing, etc. then we see that Uber would need to have each rider pay $1.53 just to break even on the cost of owning the vehicle. This ignores the fact that self-driving cars are likely to be much more expensive when it comes to non-gasoline costs. I believe I read somewhere today that the Teslas takes ~3mile/kWh so this cost would need to be added in, this is ~$0.07/mile at 20 cents per kWh. Total cost to break even is then roughly $1.80 per passenger, plus whatever additional costs a new and experimental all electric fleet with undefined insurance statistics costs above a regular vehicle.

Assuming their current model of $8 per uberX ride is an example of what they expect to hit, then Uber is taking in $6.20 per passenger or $1240 per car per day or $452,600 per car per year assuming perfect efficiency.

The question that really matters though is how will Uber's fleet deal with peak passenger demand? These 200 riders are not spaced out evenly at 7 minute intervals - most of them all will want to ride at the same time. People will stop using Uber if the waits become too long and Uber will lose its competitive advantage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> How does this affect driver compensation?

</comment><comment><USER34> Seeing from the point of view of an investment banker, the money that Uber was going to get at the end of the month ($20-$30) will receive it now a month advance and Uber investors can put it towards whatever investments they want and in this way make extra $$$ and have another revenue stream going.

Or Uber can pay off its drivers more earlier and in this way win more of their loyalty for Uber. Brilliant.

</comment><comment><USER35> They also have flat fares in Chicago for $3.12 with uberPool, Monday to Friday 6am to 10pm. All trips must begin and end south of Irving Park, north of 71st Street, and east of Western Avenue. [https://www.uber.com/info/chi- uberpool-312/](https://www.uber.com/info/chi-uberpool-312/)

</comment><comment><USER36> This is being offered in Seattle as well.

</comment><comment><USER37> Hey Uber, it is very nice to offer this in SF, SD, Boston, but what about NYC? :-(

<comment><USER38> Seems like they offered something similar last month: [https://www.giltcity.com/newyork/ubernycjuly16](https://www.giltcity.com/newyork/ubernycjuly16)

<comment><USER37> Unfortunately, there was a limited number of offers and I was unable to get one. The SF, SD, Boston offers don't have that limit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Clicking on the link launched the Uber app for me. I then rage quitted it before reading anything more.

Also happens in "no so" private mode on the iPhone. Apple should really fix that as it leaks information.

</comment><comment><USER40> I do not really like Uber. The company does shady stuff quite often but also their drivers seem to be bad. They do not care at all about traffic laws. Illegal u-turns, stop wherever they want, etc.

I can't surely be the only one who experienced this?

<comment><USER41> Because taxis don't do this??

<comment><USER42> As a cyclist (in Boston), it's somewhat easier to predict that a taxi might (suddenly) decide to park in the bike lane, and it's more surprising (therefore slightly more dangerous) when another car does it.

<comment><USER43> I wish that it wasn't the exception to be ticketed for that. I see it all the time, as long as drivers get off with a warning (and not a fine) it will keep happening.

<comment><USER44> Have you ever ordered a package from Amazon, had a pizza delivered, or taken a taxi? Been picked up by a friend or parent somewhere that didn't have its own parking spaces?

If so, I'm guessing you've benefitted from a driver stopping or parking in a place they weren't legally allowed to stop.

Do you think these services should go away, or what?

<comment><USER40> There is a difference in stopping somewhere illegally (e.g. in front of a fire lane for 5 minutes) or stopping anywhere and impeding traffic.

Just this morning I saw an uber driver stopping at the sidewalk but having the back of his car hanging in the lane making people having to drive around him. That is, in my opinion, just egoistic and annoying. On the other hand if you stop in front of the fire lane without impeding traffic, no one will care.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The forgotten part of memory - La-ang https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02211-5 <comment><AUTHOR> Forgetting was also forgotten in a different memory model: [https://www.nature.com/news/the-unavoidable-cost-of- computat...](https://www.nature.com/news/the-unavoidable-cost-of-computation- revealed-1.10186).</comment>


Show HN: New A/B Testing Service  - <AUTHOR>

Hey Guys -- Looking for feedback, especially from developers, on an A/B testing service that I launched last week.   It's a very simple API based service for calculating and automatically displaying a/b test winners.
Here's the URL: http://pixelgauge.com
The idea came about because I wanted to A/B test a number of things… different home pages, email body, email subjects, etc. and I didn't see anything out there that could accomplish what I wanted as simple as I'd like it to.
What I'm not trying to do is replace someone like Optimizely, whose service is awesome for making basic variations on existing pages… though you can certainly use PixelGauge for just that. <comment><USER2> In addition to the doc you may want to actually show the example on a demo page/site. Just copy with a button - have it go red/blue and a remove cookie button to "redo" the test, etc.

Just a suggestion

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestion. I definitely want to get some more examples on there, especially some examples integrating with other services... like showing how to use this service along with Sendgrid to a/b test email subjects and stuff like that.

<comment><USER2> Keep me posted as I am finishing up a idea that I need some a/b test for copy/etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Nice being able to A/B test from the backend, without using javascript.

I've gotten some really click through rates from A/B testing religiously.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks JJ -- We do plan on having a JS SDK though so you can use it as either server side or client side.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> New A/B blog <http://icelandingpagedesign.com/#blog></comment>


"Quirky Stands Strong Following Oxo's Response" - <AUTHOR> http://www.quirky.com/blog/post/2013/01/quirky-stands-strong-following-oxo's-response/

<comment><USER2> Not sure what Quirky's trying to do here, but if their default action is to impulsively picket competitors who legally release products, it's safe to say I'm not going to buy products exclusively offered by Quirky.

I assume the intention is to appear as if the underdog getting shafted, but it just looks like a highly-funded company is using its VC muscle to bitch and moan.

OXO's broom is arguably an improvement on Quirky's "invention," and for Quirky to consider it IP is silly. It's like Sony suing Samsung because they both offer 50" TV sets.

</comment><comment><USER3> I read that as Quirky's CEO saying "I didn't think it through properly and this is a poor attempt at saving face, I sincerely hope OXO don't make me look silly again."

Honestly, it is never a good idea to do a negative campaign. Concentrate on telling people why you're product's great. Don't mention the competition because at best it comes across as lacking class and at worst you dig yourself a hole. And keep digging apparently...

<comment><USER4> Sadly the populous responds well to negative campaigns. Thats why its so heavily used in politics. Even Apple used them effectively with their "I am a Mac. I am a PC" ads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting that they ignored the whole "here's a suite of products that Quirky offers that are clearly copies" part of the OXO post.

</comment><comment><USER6> "We do not plan on further engaging in a tit for tat open letter writing campaign."

That they initiated.

</comment><comment><USER7> OXO's post was much more convincing.

</comment><comment><USER8> Sorry, but you guys got completely owned. You don't have to apologize, but this isn't exactly helping either.

</comment><comment><USER9> Unnecessary bravado in your own title sounds disingenuous.

I'd also like to see Quirky give an example of a past patent which added ergonomics to household items, since this post claimed that their dustpan was just as original as oxo's products.

</comment><comment><USER10> This whole thing smells like a publicity stunt cooked up by both companies together.

<comment><USER11> I thought it seemed more one sided, pr stunt by quirky.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Digging themselves a bigger hole.

</comment><comment><USER13> Well, I guess it is kinda working. I had never heard of Quirky before, and now I browsed a bunch of their stuff.</comment>


Show HN: See happenin' spots around you right now - <AUTHOR> http://hapninow.tumblr.com

<comment><USER2> We tried to crack this nut back in 2006. It's tough. If you don't have an event someone is looking for, they'll never come back. It's impossible to offer 100% nationwide, or hell, even regional event coverage.

For example, I just tried your app and it came back with zero results. Do you think I'm going to launch it again?

Event apps/destination sites are some of the most attempted businesses out there. Some have even raised tens of millions in funding without really making a splash, mostly due to the problem cited above.

I've pontificated ad nauseam about what I think could potentially work in the event space, but it all gravitates towards a single point: focus on niche and grow organically.

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> To solve this problem one needs to be able get users location anonymously and apply machine learning to figure out future density at a given location. Unfortunately we have the technology but cannot utilize it to its fullest, based on the fear of privacy.

True that the app comes back with zero results for your city but it might be useful when visiting a foreign city like New York, San Francisco, etc. where there is more user activity related to virtually checking in.</comment></comment>