The E-Cigarette Industry, Waiting to Exhale - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/27/business/the-e-cigarette-industry-waiting-to-exhale.html <comment><USER2> E-Cigarettes are going to save millions of lives in the coming years. They're harmless, and, if you get a brand that feels like the real thing, easy to transition to. I hope the tobacco industry takes a huge financial hit from the sale of these things because they literally prevent people from dying.

That being said, when I switched to e-cigarettes, it was very easy to switch back to regular cigarettes. That "narrow bridge of familiarity" was easy to cross back over, especially when I ran out of vapor cartridges. Ultimately for me to quit it took stopping cigarettes cold-turkey. Nicotine gum and a transition to regular gum helped a lot. It's been one of the hardest but most rewarding things I've ever done in my life.

<comment><USER3> 1\. E-cigarettes are not harmless and I wish people would stop perpetuating that lie. It is not clear exactly how harmful they are, but they are not harmless.

2\. Ecig marketers are trying to push this story line of e-cigs vs the tobacco industry. It is mostly bs as the major ecig company blu is owned by a major tobacco company and every other major tobacco company has an ecig line now. The ecig industry is the tobacco industry.

I am very happy for you that you were able to quit. And it seems to me that is the only way.

<comment><USER4> I agree that they're not harmless. They're addictive, and being forced into reliance on a substance is never good.

Though, this is the only detriment we know of.

<comment><USER5> > They're addictive, and being forced into reliance on a substance is never > good.

How bad is it? Unless I'm exercising hard, I'll get caffeine withdrawal symptoms if I stop drinking coffee. I have read of both beneficial and detrimental effects of caffeine. What's the threshold for considering the accompanying physical addiction a problem?

<comment><USER6> > What's the threshold for considering the accompanying physical addiction a > problem?

If something is addictive but not physically harmful the threshold is when it starts to affect your day to day life.

Gambling is fun. Some people have a problem with gambling. When you think that gambling is affecting your day to day life it's stopped being fun and turned into a problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I used to run a custom e-cigarette company. We sold it this summer.

My take away was that the federal government eventually will get involved and start regulating the shipping of these items. Unfortunately the stuff people are getting now is mostly made in China and you can't be too certain of what the heck you are getting when you take a big inhale and just taste the apple flavoring or whatever. Who knows what chemicals are used to make them.

Most of the testimonials I received was from people that were able to quit smoking because of my product, but I definitely got some complaints as well. The biggest benefit of the e-cig is that is is little to no smell. Definitely hit them on airplanes before with no problems. It is an interesting market though where it seems like new types of e-cigs are coming out all the time.

Another thing about e-cigs is that people are making them into e-joints. This is very popular especially in medical marijuana states. Before they banned synthetic marijuana, we were developing a synthetic marijuana e-cig. Would have been fun to have around, but ultimately I am glad not to be filling in mass them any more!

<comment><USER8> _Definitely hit them on airplanes before with no problems._

If you were flying on an airline based in the United States, you violated their rules.

[http://www.businessinsider.com/you-cant-smoke-e- cigarettes-i...](http://www.businessinsider.com/you-cant-smoke-e-cigarettes- in-planes-2013-2)

Beyond that, what gives you the right to put other people's health at risk? You have either judged them safe or decided you don't care about the risks. You can't make that decision for other people and you're not in a position to know what genetic or other disorders that someone might have that make them more susceptible to any kind of tobacco (ex: [http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/condition/alpha-1-antitrypsin- deficie...](http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/condition/alpha-1-antitrypsin-deficiency)). How is this any different from me walking onto a plane with a clump of asbestos fibers and waving it over your head on the plane?

<comment><USER9> > more susceptible to any kind of tobacco

That is, of course, assuming that the e-cig uses tobacco, for which I see absolutely no evidence.

Please at least stick to the ingredients actually present when attempting an attack.

Additionallym please bear in mind that saying "oh but we've no guarantee it was actually made with those ingredients" is pretty equivalent to "oh but we've no guarantee somebody's lipstick wasn't actually made with rat poision", so your 'strawman argument' claim down thread doesn't make any sense to me.

> I understand why my mother started smoking when she was 16 and then smoked a > pack a day for the next 43 years until she died from cancer.

I fear that this statement elsethread - combined with your sneering tone anc crusader's mindset - indicates that you're not actually interested in discussing the matter clearly but rather in rationalising your hatred of the thing you blame for your mother's death. That would be a shame; under the thick layer of condescension I think you actually have some valid arguments, although it's a little difficult to tell for sure.

<comment><USER8> _That is, of course, assuming that the e-cig uses tobacco, for which I see absolutely no evidence._

Here's some evidence for you to see:

[http://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/PublicHealthFocus/ucm173146.ht...](http://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/PublicHealthFocus/ucm173146.htm)

 _Diethylene glycol was detected in one cartridge at approximately 1%. Diethylene glycol, an ingredient used in antifreeze, is toxic to humans._

 _Certain tobacco-specific nitrosamines which are human carcinogens were detected in half of the samples tested._

 _Tobacco-specific impurities suspected of being harmful to humans—anabasine, myosmine, and β-nicotyrine—were detected in a majority of the samples tested._

You appear to just be taking all the claims that these e-cigarette companies are reporting at face value. Just like people used to take what the tobacco companies said at face value. I won't fall for it.

Are e-cigarettes safe than regular cigarettes? Maybe? Probably? Are they safe though? I have no idea and neither do you or anyone else.

<comment><USER10> That DEG bit has nothing to do with them using tobacco, and instead has everything to do with a company in China not using USP Propylene Glycol (as non-USP PG might contain some DEG.)

And just to elaborate on this, non-USP PG is used everywhere. If you cook and use flavorings, take a look in your cupboard and check out the ingredients. PG will no doubt be used as a carrier in some of them. Aside from flavorings it's also used in the manufacture of many foods: my grandfather, who works at a cheese house, told me they use it in their process and it no doubt gets into the production.

The nitrosamines are from the nicotine extraction, which again indicates that they were probably not using USP nicotine. The company that produced that particular e-cigarette is now out of business.

The dose makes the poision; analyze everything around you and you may find a very small percentage of unwanted and dangerous chemicals.

Conflating the e-cigarette industry with the tobacco industry is entirely incorrect. The e-cig industry was not started by a tobacco company, and big tobacco has only recently taken interest by buying up companies and starting their own brands.

Also note, that the amount of DEG and nitrosamines were well within acceptable standards enforced by the FDA. The whole media circus around it was very shady.

<comment><USER11> >The dose makes the poision; analyze everything around you and you may find a very small percentage of unwanted and dangerous chemicals.

Very good point. Toxicologists hate the term "poison" because it is misleading. Water is poisonous when we take too much.

There was some terrible anti-ecig research recently that reported all of this dangerous stuff in them (still vastly less dangerous if you look at it merely because there is no burning lignins).

Anyhow, the flaw in this study was burning e-liquid at 900 degrees C, the temperature of the cone of a burning cigarette, versus the 200-250 C of an ecig. It is sort of like saying a car isn't safe to drive on a highway because we tested it at 200 MPH.

All of these people raising concern in this thread, writing NYT articles, etc. are not informed about the body of research and able to put it in perspective.

BTW, with how much is consumed on average taken into account, FDA-approved gums/patches contain more tobacco-specific nitrosamines than ecigs (and this is so minor to not be a concern).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It is really interesting to look at this article through the lens of the PR agency/strategy that helped place it for NJOY.

1) Quotes from CEO

2) Little anecdote from Chief Marketing Officer

3) Big vision "Vaping" becomes common place.

4) Key differentiators: "building e-cigarettes that look, feel and perform like the real thing" (this is sprinkled throughout)

5) Celebrity endorsement, Big names: Peter Thiel, Brunno Mars

The rest (post first page) is a nice over view of the e-cigarette industry, and some challenges facing NJOY. I wonder how long they were working on a NYT article, of if this was something pretty easy for them to get, given interest around e-cigarettes.

<comment><USER13> There's been a fair number of fluff PR and guerilla marketing - even directly at HN readers - around vaping. It's likely organized and funded, etc. blah blah. How far did you have to read through this article to get any voice of someone NOT paid by the company or by the company of the author?

The whole e-cig thing is trying to re-build the signalling that real cigarettes have had instead of the self-medicating, addicted idea people have at this point. Rebellion, authenticity, ritual, nostalgia, freedom etc. vs. Addict

It must be turned into something you do in front of people to be safely contrarian. Why not just have little capsules that you can get a high dose rush from that essentially is minimally enveloped nicotine? Just enough toying to get it straight to the blood stream?

<comment><USER14> > Why not just have little capsules that you can get a high dose rush from > that essentially is minimally enveloped nicotine?

They have these too. Look for the '4mg nicotine mini lozenge' made by Nicorette and generic by many companies. Unfortunately they're expensive and you need to use 2 or 3 (8-12mg) to really get effect from it. Also, they are slightly irritating to the mouth at times (but much less so than nicotine gum or any tobacco).

> The whole e-cig thing is trying to re-build the signalling [...]

That's an interesting point. I think you're right on that for the companies like Njoy and Blu, which are imitating the feel of real cigarettes. They're tapping into the smokers' rebellious psyche but interestingly, it's because those smokers are generally too self-conscious to use an e-cig with a giant battery and refillable tank that looks odd. Essentially, smokers feel (perhaps rightly) that smoking is accepted on some level, but people definitely do find it strange seeing someone inhale from a giant piece of metal that many might assume is some kind of hard drug.

However, as a result of their design concerns (to look like a real cigarette... or 'analog cig' as many say) they've sacrificed on tech specs and also on price. It's much more cost effective and also an overall better experience to buy an e-cig with a large battery and refillable tanks to hold the liquid. But Blu and others do not offer this. Compare their $7.99 e-cig that is equivalent to 20 cigarettes to the $7.99 10ml bottle of e-liquid for refillable e-cigs which will last at least a week (probably equivalent to 200 cigarettes), and batteries that last upwards of 1-2 days between charges. Some Blue e-cigs aren't re-chargeable and the ones that are run of out charge after a few hours of use. Also, Blu does not deliver the amount of nicotine to the user that a refillable tank + large battery can (which is bad b/c then smokers don't feel satisfied).

So, if smokers can find the self-confidence to vape on the most effective device (regardless of its appearance) then they'll save lots of money, get a better nicotine experience, and thus be much less likely to return to smoking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I am starting to see people puffing on these stupid e-cigarettes in restaurants that ban cigarette smoking. When you say something to them they invariably try to "educate" you on what an e-cigarette is and how it's different. The problem is that e-cigarettes have not been shown to be safe. From the article:

 _Most public health officials seem to agree that the levels of toxins in e-cigarettes are far lower than those in traditional cigarettes. But they also say that far too little is known, not just about potentially harmful aspects of particular brands of e-cigarettes, but also about whether there is harm from "secondhand vapor." Dr. Glantz of U.C.S.F. says that in the absence of data, indoor smoking bans should also cover e-cigarettes._

The FDA is collecting reports of adverse effects and there are plenty:

[http://www.fda.gov/downloads/aboutfda/centersoffices/officeo...](http://www.fda.gov/downloads/aboutfda/centersoffices/officeofmedicalproductsandtobacco/aboutthecenterfortobaccoproducts/ucm361437.pdf)

I understand why my mother started smoking when she was 16 and then smoked a pack a day for the next 43 years until she died from cancer. Why in the world are people starting to smoke today with everything we know about it?

<comment><USER15> > I am starting to see people puffing on these stupid e-cigarettes in > restaurants that ban cigarette smoking.

Most reasonable people in the vaping community discourage that kind of behavior. At the end of the day, there will always be assholes.

> The FDA is collecting reports of adverse effects and there are plenty

There are four ingredients in e-cigarette juice: propylene glycol, vegetable glycerin, nicotine, and flavoring.

Adverse effects generally come from an allergic reaction to PG, which is uncommon but well known. Those who are allergic are advised to use 100% VG mixtures.

Aside from that, PG is well known to be safe for human consumption as regulated by the FDA. It is an ingredient in inhalers for asthma and is used in smoke machines. It can cause a humidicant effect on the throat, which leaves it dry, but drinking liquids easily avoids this problem.

No one is arguing that e-cigarette companies should not be regulated to make sure that the juice they produce is of a high quality, but arguments to regulate them heavily (or like regular cigarettes) is based mostly on FUD.

> Why in the world are people starting to smoke today with everything we know > about it?

Because humans aren't rational machines and there are many things that cause people to take up habits that aren't healthy. That's not something that's ever going to go away.

While long term data on e-cigarettes is not yet available, most experts agree that even in the worst-case scenario, they are nowhere near as bad for you as regular cigarettes. The FUD that exists in the debate can mostly be traced back to groups that have a temperance movement-esque attitude toward nicotine habits.

Nicotine is no more addictive or harmful to a person in a normal dose than caffeine, and its effects are similar also.

E-cigarettes are helping millions of people to get themselves off the dangers of regular cigarettes. That in itself is a public health miracle. The rates of cessation for cigarettes through traditional methods are frighteningly low, yet with the introduction of e-cigarettes, many people (including myself) will never touch a regular cigarette again after the first day.

I have a more advanced device than the ones you pick up at a gas station. It has variable wattage, variable voltage, an ohm-meter, a puff counter, and I can charge my iPhone from it via USB. As well as getting me off tobacco, it's also given me something else to geek out over, and I really enjoy it and the community around it.

Access to these devices must be made available widely and without encumbrance to as many people as possible. Regulations that come in should be about quality of product, not discouragement of purchase.

<comment><USER8> _Because humans aren 't rational machines and there are many things that cause people to take up habits that aren't healthy_

I get this, but usually there is some substantial benefit to the habit.

To start smoking cigarettes today, you are well aware of the fact that it will:

1\. Make you less healthy while you are alive

2\. Will prematurely end your life

3\. Will make you reviled by a large portion of the population

4\. Will cost you a ridiculous amount of money

5\. Will cost you a tremendous amount of time while you seek out cigarettes and smoke them

... there are many more negatives.

What possible positives are there that outweigh these negatives?

 _Nicotine is no more addictive or harmful to a person in a normal dose than caffeine, and its effects are similar also._

This is just so incredibly ridiculous. I've never smoked a cigarette but I have been addicted to caffeine multiple times in my life. I've gone "cold turkey" several times and the only effect was a slight headache that was off and on for a week. I think it's actually pretty easy to quit caffeine but from what I hear, it's nearly impossible to quit smoking cigarettes.

And if the effects of caffeine are similar to the effects of nicotine why not just use caffeine? It seems to have few of the negatives and all the positives (including the social impact of smoking which can be transferred to the social impact of getting coffee).

I just don't get smoking at all. I don't see any benefits to it in a vein similar to I don't see a benefit of smacking myself in the head with a hammer. It's hard to explain away such things with, "Yeah, people aren't rational" because you don't see many people smacking themselves in the head with a hammer.

<comment><USER15> I started smoking in university, and where I'm from a very high percentage of university students smoke (usually roll-your-own cigarettes, though).

I can remember the first time I had a puff of a cigarette, and I was quite drunk at the time. The thing about smoking while drinking is that, at least at the start, a cigarette seems to make you twice as drunk as you were before, while also making you feel really good.

Of course before this I had smoked weed a bunch of times, and here that is usually mixed with tobacco in a joint, so I was used to it at least in that aspect.

But most people here who smoke weed and not cigarettes are quite able to handle the occasional tobacco in a joint without making a cigarette habit out of it.

Anyway, basically it just started out as something that I would do while out drinking. I would get drunk with my roommates, and occasionally have a puff or two from a cigarette in that state. Eventually I would have a whole roll-up to myself. Eventually I started buying my own tobacco to use with my own weed, and at times I would occasionally have a pure tobacco roll-up with no weed, just for the nice feeling.

For a lot of people, it generally starts out with the connection to drinking. Drinking and smoking are very conducive to each other, and it's how many many people get started.

I don't think I need to go into the details of how alcohol affects your judgement.

How my addiction came about was a slower process. At one point for whatever reason I decided to have a cigarette in the morning just as I was walking to my college, and by god did it feel great. At this point I was still convinced in the back of my mind that I had it under control, and could quit whenever I wanted.

The tradition of a morning cigarette turned into a necessity. Within about 6 months, I had an awful nervous feeling in my arms and stomach until I had the first cigarette of the day, and once it gets to that point, you're screwed.

I was young and foolish, I was drinking, I was doing it with my friends, I was getting social satisfaction from it. I enjoyed the ritual of making the trek to the smoking area with a friend or two for a nice chat while everyone else was inside.

I was smoking up until early August this year. I'm not a drinker at all anymore, and it's always been completely clear to me the health risks of smoking cigarettes, but the excuses still pile up: stress at work, stress at home, no time, trying to find as much enjoyment from my free time as I can, etc.

I switched to an e-cigarette (I hate that term, by the way, much prefer vaporizer) then in August, and the difference has been night and day. I never had another cigarette after that day, and to be honest, I despise them now. I've never had a craving for one and the smell of the smoke disgusts me now like it never did before when I was a smoker.

My cravings have gone down as well. I no longer feel that nervous feeling when I wake up in the morning. My nicotine requirements have gone way down. I'll be moving to a lower nicotine % juice when my current bottle runs out. My blood pressure is great, I can run again, my circulation is better and I don't cough up gunk.

I still have no full intention of quitting. Nicotine for me, like caffeine for some, is an aid to my work pattern. Walking down to the curb for a cigarette or leaning back for a few puffs from my vaporizer are the things that get my mind past a difficult bug or coding problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> A lot of smokers I know switched to these things. They 'smoke' (is that the proper word with such an e-cig?) far more than they did before. Some of them use them every second they have nothing todo with one of their hands, which basically means they're puffing most of their waking day. I hope for them these things don't turn out to be as bad as/worse than normal cigs...

<comment><USER15> As someone who switched to an e-cigarette, I might be able to answer this for you.

The first thing is that the level and effect of nicotine that is absorbed though vapor is a lot less than a regular cigarette. The reason for this is twofold: firstly, the lungs/mouth/throat seem to simply not pick up as much as in a cigarette, and secondly, cigarette smoke also contains MAOIs, which increase the sensitivity of the brain to nicotine's effects.

In addition, users can choose the level of nicotine that they use. Most e-cig users who are regular smokers tend to start at around 18mg/ml. When I first started, I was using this liquid in a 1.6ml tank. One tank worked out to about 1 pack of cigarettes worth of nicotine, and I got through about a tank a day: the same amount that I used to smoke in cigarettes, except spread out through a longer period of time.

Most vapers will puff way differently to cigarette users. We take one or two puffs at a time and then wait, while a cigarette user will smoke the whole thing quickly in one go.

Nicotine has been shown[1] to increase creativity in the brain, and I know from my own experience that I find it to be great while working. Most of my 'House' moments when tackling difficult coding problems have occurred on the curb with a cigarette in my mouth, and now I lean back at my desk and have a few puffs of fine-tasting menthol e-liquid.

[1] [http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-08/uoc-- bcw08150...](http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-08/uoc-- bcw081507.php)

<comment><USER17> I don't disagree with your sentiment at all, but have you thought about the "curb" being the primary factor behind the increased creativity? Is leaning back and puffing from a vape as effective for you?

<comment><USER15> Of course I have, and yeah, it is as effective. Sometimes I will still get up and walk around while doing it.

I'm not going to claim any scientific miracles from it (that would be dumb), but for me the combination of taking a break from the screen and having some nicotine is what gets my brain going.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I can't fathom who thought these things were a good idea. I see people "smoking" these things everywhere: on the bus, on the train, at the effing university during classes!

I don't care if it's just steam, I don't want it in my face. I can't believe people don't get this.

<comment><USER19> People tap-tap-tapping at their fucking phones gets the same reaction from me. Of course it's irrational for me to feel this way, so I've learned to ignore it.

<comment><USER20> I am extraordinarily allergic to the glycol in e-cigs. Just a few seconds of exposure is enough to send me into anaphylaxis. I am pretty sure somebody tapping away on their phone wont kill you.

<comment><USER21> If you're allergic to propylene glycol then you're allergic to pretty much everything.

That same propylene glycol is used in cakes/cupcakes, frostings, many ice creams, beers (as a foaming agent), some coffees, candy, many salad dressings, flavoured coffees, dried fruits, some brands of milk, many beauty products (makeup, shampoo, soaps)...

There are a lot more people with peanut allergies and we don't ban people from eating products containing peanuts anywhere in public. Why is this case different?

<comment><USER20> Because you're not vaporizing peanuts and spraying it into the air where somebody with a peanut allergy has absolutely no choice but to inhale it?

<comment><USER22> People wear perfume. Some people are allergic to perfume. So what. At some point it's the person with the allergy's responsibility to manage their immune response through medical treatment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> _"The very thing that could make them effective is also their greatest danger," said Dr. Tim McAfee, director of Office on Smoking and Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention._

It's exactly this kind of thinking that started and perpetuates the pernicious war on drugs. It's the root of the (proven false) "gateway drug" phenomenon.

The "thing" by the way is the fact that _they don 't do any harm_. How absurd and ridiculous ..

</comment><comment><USER24> Smokers getting annoyed looks at a Stones concert??? My how times have changed. The last time I saw the Stones in concert the entire venue was so filled with cigarette (and I'm sure other) smoke that when the house lights came up at the end of the show the place looked like a Cheech and Chong scene.

</comment><comment><USER25> I do not understand why some people try to regulate this. My guess is that income from smoking-tax is shrinking.

I never smoked cigarette in my life, but I tried e-cigs as a replacement for coffee. It works, no hassle with tea or coffee preparation, also it is probably healthier. But being labeled as a smoker puts me off.

<comment><USER26> "I tried e-cigs as a replacement for coffee...it is probably healthier." I'll grant that vaporization ameliorates the problems merely caused by smoke inhalation, but doesn't inhaling nicotine cause many health problems on its own? I'll also not aware of there being health issues that result from drinking a normal amount of tea or coffee.

<comment><USER27> > but doesn't inhaling nicotine cause many health problems on its own?

Nicotine on its own causes very little harm.

(A word of advice, though, if you decide to read up on this topic: it is extremely common in the research literature to lazily conflate tobacco with nicotine. You will routinely find abstracts which say something like 'we sampled smokers...' and then in the conclusion write '...we conclude that nicotine damages cognitive performance', as if tobacco was nothing but solidified nicotine. When you find something negative about nicotine, you need to check that tobacco is not driving the results.)

<comment><USER28> > it is extremely common in the research literature to lazily conflate tobacco > with nicotine.

It is also assumed that the tobacco is burned. Sure, snuff can cause oral cancer (unlikely though it may be in comparison to cigarettes), but if you dodge the oral cancer bullet what are the other potential problems? I have no idea because everything I find conflates tobacco use with burning it and inhaling it. Smoking is bad, we get it. Smoking automotive tires is probably bad, too. How about the effects of tobacco itself, separate from the bad effects of burning something and inhaling it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> If I smoked, it certainly wouldn't be something I would show off to others readily or be proud of in any way, I'd see it as an embarrassment. Even if these are safer, I still consider them to be anti-social.

I'm not a smoker, but I can't see why e-cigarettes should be anything more than a way to help stop smoking.

<comment><USER30> Why not? If the are not dangerous to others, what is the big deal? If it is just an image thing, we have an advertising industry quite good at changing those images.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Since people here talk about the difference of e-cigs and cigarettes , i.e. the lack of effects on MAOI, have anybody tried any juice that claims to have that effect on MAOI, for example "aroma ejuice" ?

How were the results for you ? And does anybody know about research or regulation of this types of ejuices ?

And since those same MAOI affecting compounds(probably beta carbolates) found in tobacco ,are found in brewed coffee, kinds of seasoning, grilled foods and other stuff, have anybody noticed a combination of vaping and some food more effective ?

<comment><USER11> Beta-carboline MAOI's were originally hypothesized to be what is important for those who feel something is missing with nicotine-only eliquid. After 3 years of working on this, I can tell you that this is not true. What's important is the other "minor tobacco alkaloids" like anatabine, anabasine, myosimine, etc.

Beta-carboline MAOI's, like the minor alkaloids, do have a potentiating effect with nicotine and therefore increase satisfaction or the potential for addiction; however, these MAOI's are pyrosynthesized (created by burning) 20-40x. This means that these MAOI's are not a significant component of a WTA eliquid or non-burned tobacco like the snus many people turn to for the "something missing".

<comment><USER27> > What's important is the other "minor tobacco alkaloids" like anatabine, > anabasine, myosimine, etc.

Interesting. Could you provide more info about this?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I really feel like an ET. I'm from a world of cigarrete tv commercials; marlboro mclaren car; my mom, at 73, still smokes, daddy smoked until his last day and his death cause was not related to tobacco; grandfathers too; I studied in a technical high school where the teenagers could freely smoke; in university, there was one teacher that smoked cigars in the classroom...lost world of youth.

</comment><comment><USER33> I recently switched from smoking half a pack a day to vaping about 95%. I still smoke here and there, but the craving is covered.

I had one of those smokes that looks like a cigarette, but it was garbage. The e-liquid with a KangerTech EVOD is the way to go.

Outside of the health benefits or whatever, the smell is one of the best reasons to switch. It's a good career move.

</comment><comment><USER34> I used a nicotine spray. I have done for a few months now, it works sublingually. I used it (and patches) to quit smoking, and I'm nearly there, only a few weeks left.

What I find interesting though, is that while the spray does indeed get rid of the cravings, it (and the e-cigs I've used) is not the same "feeling" as smoking. This is possibly because of the lack of any MAOIs in the liquid itself.

How many of those using e-cigs here are ex-smokers? How many picked it up because it's a socially "acceptable" drug that you can now take without killing yourself slowly? I find it such a fascinating topic!

<comment><USER35> I am an e-cig user, and an ex-smoker. There are five of us now in my group of friends.

I love the things. It's become a fun hobby for us. We swap flavours, buy hardware to show off, and talk about our experience whenever we're together. Way more fun than smoking ever was.

And, take this with a grain of salt (sample size of one), but I feel _way_ better. No more coughing in the mornings, I take hills on my bike like a pro, and I'd swear I look healthier.

<comment><USER36> > _And, take this with a grain of salt (sample size of one), but I feel way > better. No more coughing in the mornings, I take hills on my bike like a > pro, and I 'd swear I look healthier._

This is the same for me. A huge thing for me is that the tiredness that I feel when I smoke is nonexistent on ecigs.

<comment><USER37> Here's another anecdote for the train!

Quit smoking in about 1 month from vaping, and that was 2-3 years ago. It's an awesome hobby, I have great stamina, and I can taste food. For the last year or so I've been riding a bike to work every day, averaging about 6-8 miles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I've always thought that part of what made quitting cigarettes so hard is the social aspect. Laws preventing it force fellow smokers together in designated areas where I guess they smoke and chat. To suddenly quit not only means you're suffering from the physical withdrawl but also the social aspect. e-cigs seem like the only alternative to actual cigarettes which mean you don't lose that social aspect since you can hang out with other smokers while you vape, should you wish.

</comment><comment><USER39> One thing these e-cig companies could try in order to boost their rep is raising public awareness of the importance of recycling batteries.

Imagine battery recycling stations at all the places that cell these e-cigs which contain batteries themselves.

</comment><comment><USER40> Here is my guess: 2/3 of cancer is from smoke, 1/3 is from nicotine. E-cigs are 66% safer/better than analog cigs.</comment>


Vagina Video Game Devs: Apple Asked Us to Change Everything for App Store - <AUTHOR> http://kotaku.com/vagina-video-game-devs-apple-asked-us-to-change-everyt-1781024948 <comment><AUTHOR> It is, of course, true that Apple has a perfect legal right to choose the content they make available through their platform. At the same time, if they chose to exercise that right to promote games about slaughter while excluding games about mutuality in pleasure, that don't have a right to be immune to people calling them on their priorities.</comment>


LGC 09: Microsoft dismisses OnLive threat - <AUTHOR> http://www.mcvuk.com/news/36269/Microsoft-dismisses-OnLive-threat

<comment><USER2> And Netflix just announced that their stuff will be streamable to PS3 - <http://www.netflix.com/InstantStreamingDisc></comment>


Selecting which apps to build - <AUTHOR> http://chriseidhof.tumblr.com/post/9415214701/selecting-which-apps-to-build

<comment> g-garron I think you need to focus on:

\- Potencial audience \- Is that audience one that will be willing to pay? \- Does the price times the potencia sells, worth the effort?

With those three points you can start.

</comment><comment><USER2> A quick remark: Watch out for building too many small apps. Just like with building too many websites, at some point you're unable to maintain all of them as customers will demand updates/add-ons.

</comment><comment><USER3> There already is a site dedicated to arthouse torrents: karagarga.net</comment>


How to get better at UI design - <AUTHOR> http://ui-patterns.com/blog/How-to-get-better-at-UI-design <comment><USER2> For "Usability Testing", I would recommend Steve Krug's second book, "It's Not Rocket Surgery", rather than "Don't Make Me Think".

"It's Not Rocket Surgery" is entirely about usability testing, whereas his first book only dedicates 1-2 chapters to it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Also in my top UI books shelf: Jenifer Tidwell's "Designing Interfaces". It's about patterns that show up in UI and when it's appropriate to use them. I browse it whenever I find myself with a UI issue that I'm not sure how to deal with.

</comment><comment><USER4> What are good sketching software tools? I know about Balsamiq and Pencil, but I'm not a fan of either for various reasons.

<comment><USER5> I've tried both, I seem to like OmniGraffle better, perhaps mostly due to the huge number of templates on graffletopia.</comment></comment>


Apple Suppliers Suffer as It Struggles to Forecast iPhone Demand - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-suppliers-suffer-as-it-struggles-to-forecast-iphone-demand-1542618587 <comment><USER2> "suffers to forecast" = "experiences lower than expected" ?

<comment><USER3> I expect they're also getting higher demand for older models. I wanted to get an Xs but when I held the smallest model in my hand it was just too monstrously big.

I want a phone not a portable TV. It's the first time I didn't buy the latest phone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Apple can't stop being evil in any realm of it's business/existence!

\- "Doing business with Apple is very risky as it often reverses what it has promised," said an executive with a supplier

\- "Apple tightly controls margins and asks many suppliers to make big investments in specialized machinery to make its products, suppliers say."

Apple wants the suppliers to take on undue risk for it's products, but doesn't part with any of the benefits! Typical

<comment><USER5> "it's" -> "its", twice.</comment></comment>


Google plans to stop selling handsets (Nexus Ones) - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/14/google-changes-nexus-one-plans-will-stop-selling-handsets-onlin/

<comment><USER2> _Actual_ headline: Google changes Nexus One plans, will stop selling handsets online.

Not the same, at all.

<comment><AUTHOR> Language nitpicking. Sorry for the ambiguous headline, but what I meant is what you said.</comment></comment>


The dirty little secret of online learning: Students are bored and dropping out - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/65408/the-dirty-little-secret-of-online-learning-students-are-bored-and-dropping-out/

<comment><USER2> This article misses a significant point: access to online learning is different from and cannot replace motivation to learn, which is what's investigated in the article. The business model of most online universities is based on number of enrolled students, not number of graduating students. Since the barrier to entry is low and the enrollment associates sell well, people often end up enrolling without sufficient motivation to study and quickly drop out after getting overwhelmed by the responsibility they overtook. A more fair evaluation would take students of equivalent motivation to study a degree/subject, and then compare their performances in offline and online classroom settings (of course if you truly want to understand before you speculate with "dirty little" titles).</comment>


Why this CEO believes an MBA is worthless - <AUTHOR> https://fortune.com/2015/04/27/tien-tzuo-starting-your-own-business/

<comment><USER2> This has been on my mind ever since I read The World Is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman a while back, those days are gone.</comment>


Ask HN: Are People Aware of the Brave Browser Fake Tor Tab? - <AUTHOR> The Brave Browser added a "Tor Private Browsing" tab.  But it really isn't.
It's a Google Cloud Proxy tab, that then forwards to the Tor network.
What does this mean?  It means that people will be lured into a false sense of anonymity.  Many people will not understand they actually need to be running the Tor daemon to have any aspect of anonymity.
Google and the Brave team will be able to see every request a person makes and in some cases, HTTPS, for google certs.  Try it yourself.  Enable the Tor tab, then use any of the many sites that show your headers and see the Google Cloud Proxies.
What is their data retention policy and what enforces it?  What is paying for that cloud?  To support all brave users would require a large auto-scaling infrastructure. <comment><USER2> I tried it but I don't see any headers relating to google?</comment>


Hands That Speak - <AUTHOR> https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/hands-that-speak-gestures/ <comment><USER2> What I find interesting is that gestures seem to be a part of the thought process itself. Its always fun watching people gesturing while speaking _on the phone_.

<comment><USER3> Interesting observation.

I wonder how gestures differ for blind people, or for deaf people who normally use sign language?</comment></comment>


The Forced Social Network - <AUTHOR> http://doubledbl.tumblr.com/post/31749098669/the-forced-social-network

<comment><USER2> It takes 5 seconds to create an account. It takes up to a year to start using it. I would venture a guess that # of posts is the shyest metric and takes a while to gain momentum with new social networks.

But here's a metric which doesn't exist but probably should: how much perceived value are users getting out of a service? On Google+ I can watch a live stargazing session take place complete with through the telescope views. On Facebook I can see what that douche I talked to once had for brunch.

<comment><USER3> G+ definitely feels "higher quality" for some reason.

Some of it is the interface (Google's a _lot_ better at this stuff than FB) and some of it is the userbase (G+ seems to skew towards techies, and er, "intentional" users, rather than "everybody, and that includes uncle merl").

The question I have is if G+ manages to really get some traction, and does start to attract the unwashed masses, how will this feel change? G+'s more nuanced contact model might help a bit, but...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> thekungfuman: you've been hellbanned for almost two months now.</comment>


Open science: why is it so hard? - <AUTHOR> http://lemire.me/blog/archives/2012/01/10/open-science-is-hard <comment><USER2> It's not hard, it's that most researchers just don't care. Most researchers have access to all papers they need through their universities, and if they don't, most papers are only an email away. Publishing in those journals for which you need to pay (which is only a minority) is paid for by grands or the university. How many people do you know who couldn't get their papers published _only_ because they couldn't afford the journal charges?

The truth is that only a small (albeit vocal) minority cares about 'open science'. For most researchers, it just doesn't matter, and there is no incentive to pursue it. Actually having time to write papers worth publishing is more of an issue than those that do get published being accessible to people who, in all honesty, have no interested in them (i.e., the general public).

(it's quite interesting to note that (in my statistically undoubtedly non- representative experience) the demographic that advocates 'open access' the most is quite homogeneous - mostly PhD students with a new professor here and there. Maybe it's the cynical me, but I've been in the game long enough to see people I meet at conferences convert from being advocates for open access to not caring about it any more once they get some years of experience and realize it doesn't matter that much.)

<comment><USER3> I think you underestimate the potential interest in open science (and by extension, open data).

The access limitations act as a barrier when it comes to the application of research. Yes, of course, a multi-billion dollar company with huge R&D departments will have all the subscriptions available, but what about the smaller companies and start ups? What about individual people?

Also, the current system rewards incestuous island thinking. There isn't a giant catalog of knowledge, and it's a shame. Imagine one library with all the world's research and data, open, categorized, expandable, for everyone to use.

<comment><USER2> "I think you underestimate the potential interest in open science (and by extension, open data)."

Probably. Like I said, my impression is based on personal observations only. That said, I don't really have objective reasons (of the cuff) to believe otherwise, nor do I have data (or even an idea of how one would measure it correctly). For example, I don't know anyone except from undergrads who don't know how to use their libraries who have ever been unable to get a certain paper.

Likewise, how hard is it really for a small company or individuals to get access? They can do exactly what everybody else can do - shoot the author an email asking for the paper. I've _never_ had anybody not send it to me, once I got a hold of their current contact details, which with the web nowadays is very easy. How many people really do independent real research, completely disconnected from anybody involved with universities? They may exist but they're such corner cases that they certainly don't have the critical mass to make 'open access' a real issue.

My point is: while 'open access' is a theoretically nice idea, the _practical_ realities are that it's just not a real problem for the vast majority of people. It's a philosophical objection to certain practices at best. Which is not enough to instill enough urgency in those whose support is needed to change things.

<comment><USER4> A good fraction of the freelance work I have done has required looking up papers (eg the current implementation for <https://github.com/jamii/texsearch> is based on a bioinformatics paper).

It's fine when you only want a single specific paper but when I'm often looking for a solution to a problem I don't know the name of which means scanning through a couple of hundred papers an hour to see which ones are relevant.

<comment><USER5> But paper abstracts are always free (even with paid journals).

If you have to scan random papers to find a solution to a problem you cannot name, I fear for your well-being :-)

<comment><USER4> > If you have to scan random papers to find a solution to a problem you cannot > name, I fear for your well-being :-)

The disadvantage to being a generalist is that I don't know the terminology of the field I need to research. Take the texsearch example above. Given a LaTeX string I want to find similar strings from a large corpus so I start by googling things like "code search" and "syntax tree search". After scanning a few dozen papers and following links I find that the magic search term is "approximate string matching" which nets me an overview paper. I scan through the links from that paper and dismiss most of the algorithms as unsuitable for my particular problem until I'm left with a few candidates for prototypes.

Back then I had access through my university. Today I wouldn't be able to read half of those papers. For recent math/CS papers I can usually find a preprint but anything else is a struggle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Astronomers are incredibly dedicated to outreach. You can get data used by professional astronomers in publicly-accessible databases on the web. Here's a collection of these resources:

<http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/help/links.html>

The challenge is you have to learn a bit about the databases and visualization software to get going. Then you might need to learn some electromagnetism, relativity, and astrophysics to interpret the data. There are excellent tutorials, some many years old, that you can find.

Open science is hard because science is hard. It takes knowledge to interpret the data. It takes effort to transform the data into something that can be interpreted. And there's a lot of data.

<comment><USER7> > Astronomers are incredibly dedicated to outreach.

I really don't want to sound overly critical - I'm sure that there is good will behind whoever made the site you linked - but that site is what represents _astronomers' dedication to outreach_ then I don't really know what to say...

See, if researchers _really_ wanted to let their research known to the public the efforts on their behalf would be much, much more focused than what it took to put together that site. Take your average startup as an example - they're _seriously_ dedicated to outreach, their success depends on it - would you give them even a 1% chance of success if their website looked like that?

<comment><USER8> The point is that data is there _at all_. You won't find that in many sciences. What it looks like is profoundly unimportant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think it's difficult to refute that if the funding was public, the results should be public. But the scientists have to publish in big journals to win public funding grants, and the big journals aren't motivated to go open access and surrender their cash cow.

So you're not likely to budge either the scientists or the journals by arguing about what's ethical. It seems to me like the best approach is to change the way public grants are awarded. If grants become conditional on you ONLY publishing in open access journals, well you don't have much choice do you? Ultimately this whole game was only ever about attracting the money you need to do your job. Pretty soon the expensive publishers stop getting submissions because they're all diverted to open-access journals.

Of course it would never be so easy in reality. There is a pretty entrenched chicken-and-egg situation with science publications, and it will be unavoidably messy to break it.

</comment><comment><USER3> I find it really aggravating that schools such as the ETHZ get billions in taxes a year yet refuse to publish the majority of their papers online.

<comment><USER10> To be fair to the university, many journals have legal contracts that forbid you from publishing your manuscript online within X days of publishing in their journal. Basically, they get first publication rights.

After a certain period of time most journals let you publish on your own site (although few authors actually do, which is a different issue)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I am an Engineer and an Operations Research professional. Yet I have mostly worked for companies that do not do engineering or are very small organizations. They do not want to allocate me the resources to research or software. So I've had to rely on what is open. I've used Free Software as a toolset to perform a lot of my work. Yet access to the research behind a lot of those tools is very hard to come by. Places like Penn State's Citeseer <http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/index> and R-Project <http://r-project.org> have been a great haven for open research for my work.

I do believe science should be open. Yet I also believe that the scientists behind the research should be compensated. But all the while there is great research out there sitting behind a publisher that limits access to us practitioners who do not have the resources to gain access. I think there is definitely an opportunity to find somewhere in-between where the two can meet.

</comment><comment><USER12> What open access does do is help researchers in smaller institutions and institutions in poorer countries to have easier access to papers.

This is HUGE. If you work/study at a place with less resources it becomes annoying to try and get papers for journals your instn doesn't subscribe to. This is a barrier to research that just should not be there.

</comment><comment><USER13> One of the reasons the status quo is very hard to change is that academia is built on reputation and prestige, and there is really no other measure of success. That means that if we are at some stable steady state going outside the system and doing something like opening up your data to everyone versus trying to publish in a brand name journal will be a disadvantage to you since the number of publications in these types of journals are they way that you are judged. The issue isn't about whether the journals charge for content or not. Journal subscriptions are cheap compared to labor and reagents and, as always with third-party payer systems, the incentives aren't really aligned to skimp on them. The real question are there better ways of giving people credit for their work in a way that enhances their career in a proportional way to their achievement? Are alternative systems better for rewarding the right people faster, and thus moving research faster? The answer may be yes, but there is a significant energy of activation barrier to making any kind of switch from the publishing-as-a-measure-of-achievement model.

</comment><comment><USER14> Open is not profitable?

</comment><comment><USER7> > Repeat after me: scholarship is not a publishing business.

Nope - it's much more than that. It's a way for a caste of too-often incompetent and self-absorbed university dwellers to perpetrate itself.

I've had the misfortune of working in university for a while. People on department are living in a bubble - they write books and they publish on journals that are read only by other professor "studying" the same "subject". They treat subjects like "the history of mining in scandinavia". Why? Because they're often the _only_ person in the world (or one of the 2-3 people in the world) who is studying that. What does it mean? A grant, and later a position as a full-time professor. Everyone of them has his small little niche in which he's the best specialist in the world... that is used to both justify their research and to avoid real world competition.

Publishing rules will never change if the underlying ecosystem doesn't. If professors will ever be interested in _expanding_ their audience (now they're interested in the _opposite_ ) then publishing will change accordingly.</comment>


How Edison uses water to store excess power - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-big-creek-20150823-story.html <comment><USER2> > State regulators in October 2013 set a target for utilities to bring 1,325 > megawatts of new storage online by 2024. It would take more than six times > Eastwood's 200 megawatts of hydro storage to meet that goal.

Shouldn't storage be measured in Joules instead of Watts? Or are we talking about the maximum power output of such facilities? (In which case, the more important number of the actual storage is missing here.)

<comment><USER3> Could they have been mixing up megawatts and megawatt-hours? Regardless, personally, I despise the ubiquitous usage of *watt-<time> over joules.

<comment><USER4> Why?

After all, a Watt is simply a Joule/second.

Watts are how we measure power. A Watt second (joule) isn't particularly useful. A watt-hour (or kWh or MWh) makes sense for many industrial processes.

Otherwise we're talking 3600 Joule / kilojoule / megajoule quantities (seconds per hour).

Or multiples of 86,400 per day.

Sensible units aren't always decimal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is there any good write-ups on how pumped hydro has responded to the new reality of cheap noontime solar power? Naively it would seem that they could double their effectiveness by running two pump-discharge cycles per day.

</comment><comment><USER6> What are the costs of using hydro energy storage in places not affected by the drought, and just sending the energy over transmission lines? Obviously this results in substantial loss along the lines, but those costs might be very acceptable stop-gaps if droughts are sufficiently rare. I just have no idea what the orders of magnitude are.

<comment><USER7> UK National Grid transfers power from North to South reflecting the population density gradient (not because of drought!). The Wikipedia article on National Grid will give you a ballpark figure on line losses and distances involved.

 _" There is an average power flow of about 11 GW from the north of the UK, particularly from Scotland and northern England, to the south of the UK across the grid. This flow is anticipated to grow to about 12 GW by 2014.[12]

Because of the power loss associated with this north to south flow, the effectiveness and efficiency of new generation capacity is significantly affected by its location. For example new generating capacity on the south coast has about 12% greater effectiveness due to reduced transmission system power losses compared to new generating capacity in north England, and about 20% greater effectiveness than northern Scotland."_

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Grid_%28UK%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Grid_%28UK%29)

Another quote I can't resist...

 _" Following the unauthorised but successful short term parallelling of all regional grids by the night-time engineers in 1937, by 1938 the grid was operating as a national system."_

Imagine hacking the electricity supply for a whole country?

<comment><USER8> What does that last quote mean?

<comment><USER7> Good question. I've been googling and found nothing.

I think it means that they had regional power grids running with emergency links between them (nearest neighbour basis?) already in case a large part of the generating capacity in one region was lost or in case a site near the boundary of one region became disconnected from that region's main line.

One night they decided to try to activate all the inter-regional links so that power from all the power stations was available across the whole country. I got confused by the 'in parallel' bit, but then you would hardly be connecting them in series!

The grids would have been 3-phase and the frequency was controlled to be near exactly 50 Hz, but then you would have to synchronise the phase of each pair of grids before you made the link active... Any electrical engineers around?

This historical incident would make a good magazine article I think.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If I had money to invest, this is why I'd be dropping it into commercial battery backup manufacturers. Losing the ability to store electricity will cause greater discrepancy in costs during peak hours and non-peak hours. Instead of just maybe $0.03 per Mwh between peak and non-peak we might start seeing $0.05-$0.10 differences. It won't even be about being able to sell the energy BACK during peak times, it'll be so companies have more control over the costs of this utility.

</comment><comment><USER10> Similar plant is near my home in Central Europe. It uses the same turbine to generate electricity and push water up 1,670 ft (reversing turbine). Startup time from zero to 650MW is 150 seconds.

</comment><comment><USER11> Perhaps another benefit for having a desalination plant. Create fresh water to be pumped into these hydro storage facilities?

</comment><comment><USER12> It seems to work well in Scotland, but then there aren't exactly the same drought problems.

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

<comment><USER7> There are quite a few pumped storage schemes in UK [1]. We have the advantage of the national grid (and a smaller country!) so we can have a mix of base load stations and spin up higher cost peak demand stations. Pumped storage allows some base load power to be stored against demand peaks.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped- storage_hydroelectricit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped- storage_hydroelectricity)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Who, if anyone, owns the chat conversations? - <AUTHOR> This is mostly about digital ethics.
I'm working on a service that allows users to make their own copy of chat conversations (from Slack, Telegram, HipChat, etc.) The conversations are those which the users are participating in and have a rightful access to.
However, sometimes when users do use the service, and their team admins become aware of that fact, the admins treat such a copying as a "situation", as a full-fledged data breach, and trying to mitigate "the problem". Though what is being archived is exactly the same data that the user can see via chat's native clients. All this looks like those DRMs when you can read the book on your PC, but can't copy a quote: look, but don't touch. And I'm surely not happy with my service being treated as some shady hacker's tool.
Do the users have some kind of moral right to download their conversations, especially if those conversations are going to disappear otherwise? To what extent? As there are other people' messages in the talks, making them public is obviously not the best idea. <comment><USER2> IANAL, but when you say "team admins", do you mean their teams in the workplace? If so, then I would assume that it is all property of the company, in the same vein that work e-mails, documents, and source code generally is. I imagine it is mentioned in the small-print of their employment contract or IP agreement. If the conversations are being had during working hours, with company tools, then wouldn't the company "own" those conversations?

<comment><AUTHOR> I can see your point in cases where there _is_ a contract or an IP agreement or a TOS. How about less formal teams like open source communities, online courses, clubs, etc.? There is no employers who legally owns the conversations, just an admin who usurped rights to control them.

Case in point: many online courses use team chat services like Slack for informal communication and socializing between students, to act as virtual campuses. One wouldn't expect private conversations between students to be moderated by the faculty. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Dunno about Slack, Telegram, etc but we could take Facebook as an example:

Sharing Your Content and Information

You own all of the content and information you post on Facebook

from [https://www.facebook.com/terms](https://www.facebook.com/terms)

<comment><USER4> Absolutely. Especially since this is a service. Sure, employees could copy the chat locally, but by using this service they end up sending the data offsite. Certainly sounds like a security breach to me.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree that this _is_ a security breach if there's a legal agreement (a contract or TOS), and in this case this is certainly not a question of ethics.

But in my case, this is happening with informal communities.

And btw, in case of Slack and HipChat, the data isn't "on-site" to begin with: it's already on someone else's server :)

Also I want to point out that there's reason why users want to have their own copy of the conversation history. Most admins don't care about preserving history, especially if this means any hassle. Slack, for example, keeps just 10K recent messages for free teams, and having full history requires paying for Slack. If they can't pay or won't pay, the users are out in the cold. What else can the poor sods do?</comment></comment></comment>


OpenBSD to replace BIND with nsd and unbound - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/#!/HenningBrauer/status/171205032870543360 <comment><USER2> NLnet Labs puts out some quality work: NSD, Unbound, Ldns/Drill. I liked NSD quite a bit when I used it.</comment>


Show HN: Intro to Python and Programming for non-CS majors - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/webartifex/intro-to-python <comment><AUTHOR> Hi there,

I am a PhD student in Operations Research and developed an Introduction to Python & Programming course for the Bachelor program at a business school.

Due to Corona, I got a chance to video tape it thoroughly (should have done that earlier).

Maybe someone here finds my lectures (playlist: [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-2JV1G3J10lQ2xokyQow...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-2JV1G3J10lQ2xokyQowcRJI5jjNfW7f)) useful or knows someone who does. The recordings are 25 hours in total. If you do the readings and exercises, you should allocate 90 - 120 hours roughly.

The GitHub repo is really an interactive book in Jupyter notebooks: [https://github.com/webartifex/intro-to- python](https://github.com/webartifex/intro-to-python)

As I didn't study CS myself, I think I provide another angle for newbies.

Pull requests with improvements are highly welcome. The materials contain lots of references to the Python community as well. I love this community: I started without any knowledge of Python in 2014 and the many conference talks and repos really help when learning.

Stay safe everybody, Alex

</comment><comment><USER2> Forgive me if I missed this, but I would highly recommend talking about virtual environments, pypi, and the existence of other things like pipenv.

The environment/dependency management story for Python is such a tire fire and I wish someone introduced me to it from a reasonably high level at the very beginning of my time with Python.

It doesn't have to dig deep. Just needs to talk about what these things are, why they exist and why it's such a challenge.

Too often I think people skip over these topics, considering them as nothing more than a means to an end. But by far and wide my largest challenges with Python has been environment and dependency management.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree that this is important.

My personal choice is to use pyenv together with poetry on a Linux machine.

Yet, please understand that I teach this course to absolute (!) beginners. That is why I chose to use the Anaconda Distribution in class, which comes with every package installed that I want my students to study.

Making your first steps in programming is hard enough and so I want to keep the "boiler plate" as small as possible.

But dependency management will be part of the more "advanced" lectures I will do in the future.

<comment><USER2> I hear you. There's probably no one "right" answer because as I type this, I'm already conflicted with my own opinion. There's already a mountain of important topics to teach.

What's on my mind is that all of the "meta" parts of programming are usually seen as "boilerplate" when they make up such a critical part of "authoring" meaningful software.

I'm approaching this concern from my personal experience in university. I took a 100 level "CS for Non-CS majors." We did all the formal CS stuff like talking about variables, functions, loops, recursion, etc. but by the end of the course I was still never taught how to take my java applications and package them in a way that I could share with my friends. It felt very much, "you can do so much with a computer... as long as you stay within the environment we rushed you through setting up and use the few libraries we gave you." (I wrote a Reversi game for my girlfriend and shipped it by installing the entire development environment on her laptop! Hah.)

I guess my $0.02 is, maybe near the start, I would have loved a little detour block, "If you want to learn how to take these Python scripts/programs we're writing and share them with the world, check out this advanced chapter at the end of the book!" The same might probably be true for, "if you want to play with other Python libraries, take a peek at this chapter that talks about pypi and environments!"

<comment><USER3> As a related note, this is what I think we really lose as we move to computing environments like the iPhone with absolutely mandatory code signing.

I've heard it said that "oh, if you're a kid with an iPad and you just want to learn, you can download the little Swift playgrounds app, easy!"

But the thing is that the children I've worked with don't _want_ to create stuff inside a toy app that only other people with the toy app can use—they want to create programs that feel _real_. Sure, maybe the only thing that real app does is display a guess-the-numbers game, but still, you can install it on the computers of your parents and friends and say "look, I made this app!"

iOS devices just don't let you do it. Android, Windows, and macOS does, and I _really_ hope we don't loose that in the name of security.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Amazing content, thanks for making it public! For people lurking, it has Notebooks, Quiz (review) questions, AND exercises. This is very good.

@webartifex it could help the spread of your course if you could put the Notebooks in a self-hosted Jupyter Notebook environment, so students don't have to install anaconda and all that.

Shameless plug here, I'm the creator of Notebooks.ai, which is a hosted Jupyter Lab environment for students, 100% free (we only charge big schools, so teachers and students are free to use). Here's a quick demo of your first lecture: [https://notebooks.ai/santiagobasulto/intro-to-python- demo](https://notebooks.ai/santiagobasulto/intro-to-python-demo)

And aside from ours, there are other options like mybinder or Google Collab.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good tips. I will look at this.

I am planning to use Google Collab for a totally remote class next weekend to set up group work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> If looking for more of a "crash course" to be up and programming a web-based project rapidly, have a look at: [http://www.web2py.com/books/default/chapter/29/02/the- python...](http://www.web2py.com/books/default/chapter/29/02/the-python- language)

</comment><comment><USER6> At this point, I feel like there are too many "Intro to Python" courses floating around. It will take a newbie, multiple hours of reading reviews and recommendations to find a course. There are many good ones out there.

I wish there was more effort spent on creating intermediate courses. It would be great if there were more people trying to write books like this Nicolas Rougier is trying ([https://github.com/rougier/scientific-visualization- book](https://github.com/rougier/scientific-visualization-book)). Take a specific library and help people become proficient in them. Usually, the core contributors to a library are not always the best people to teach people how to use that library.

<comment><AUTHOR> What would be contents you expect from an intermediate Python course?

<comment><USER6> Some example topics that took me a lot of reading from different sources to understand.

\- how to write a python library that you can host for public/private use

\- adding test coverage to data science python projects

\- learning libraries like matplotlib, seaborn beyond what you see in tutorials

I think material for all fo this exists in different sources like documentation/stack over flow but either it's too detailed or too superfluous. The middle (intermediate) layer is often missing.

<comment><AUTHOR> I get you.

The plotting tools I would actually consider in an "Intro to Data Science" course, not in an "Intro to Programming".

I started to write a library implementing Gilbert Strang's Linear Algebra book assuming nothing but core Python. What inspired me to do that was reading Philip N. Klein's book "Coding the Matrix". I thought writing a LA library for fun and study purposes makes sense if you want to go on and study data science. However, that project is not yet ready to be published. Would that be what you are looking for?

<comment><USER6> I agree with you about the tools being in a data science course. What I'm pointing out is a lot of people have spent energy creating intro to programming courses but similar amount of effort has not been spent in creating intermediate courses that help people become proficient with the tools of data science. It's usually "intro" level content or library documentation.

I think writing code really helps you understand the algorithms in more depth so I'm all for exercises for LA like you suggest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > The course's main goal is to prepare the student for further studies in the > "field" of data science.

Does the material seem to have major gaps for DS to anyone else? There's no pandas, no matplotlib, no ML. It seems like more a tutorial with a computer science focus, with recursion and bit manipulation. Those are great programming topics but rarely used by data scientists. For that I would probably use .py files, not jupyter notebooks. It just doesn't align with my experience as a Python-based data scientist.

<comment><AUTHOR> Pandas and numpy & friends will be in Chapter 9 that I had not yet time to finish (the semester runs until end of April and is currently at Chapter 5).

Furthermore, it is a programming (!) course, not (!) a data science course.

Please define data science to me. Is it "only" curve fitting to you? Or also optimization (e.g., in logistics)? Then, dynamic programming (and because of that recursion) is super important.

I rely on Jupyter notebooks mainly because it is a course for people with absolutely no prior experience that also do not major in CS.

.py files are actually explained in Chapter 2 and will be used in a follow-up course.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> What I never understand about intros like this (even intro courses in college), is why not start with types? Reading the content, it's obvious there's something different between a string and a number, and a list (or a dict) is obviously very different again. You quickly figure out that these things are also capable of doing completely different operations, but why? And what things (methods) are they capable of?

I was helping a friend who decided to start a CompSci degree recently (the 101 course was taught in python), and she was massively struggling with type coercion and understanding type methods. Looking at the course forum, so was everybody else. I helped her understand what types were, why they were important and what the built in type methods were (and how to read the python documentation), and it was a major breakthrough for her. She's now getting close to 100% on her tests.

I was also blown away by how archaic some of the content was, like using .format() instead of fStrings, but that's a seperate topic.

<comment><AUTHOR> I introduce the idea of a type right in chapter 1 because of exactly the argument you make.

As Python is really more about the behavior of objects and not so much their type, I introduce these already from chapter 4 onward, for example, iterable vs. container, and many more. I actually would say that this is the essence of any dynamic language (duck typing).

"and how to read the python documentation" -> that is an important point you raise!!! I found that beginners have real trouble reading the docs because they are screening for words like "list" instead of "iterable". However, as I teach abstract behaviors early, they actually understand the docs.

"like using .format() instead of fStrings" -> I mention .format() but mainly use f-strings and tell the students right away that they are both faster and easier to read and that they should default to them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wow this is really thorough and well thought out. It's not just an "intro" but goes into all the language builtins, and common usage patterns (e.g. zip, map, etc), which many "intro-to" style courses skip over.

Code in repo is MIT licensed and videos are tagged as Creative Commons (CC BY). Finally a good OER course for people to learn Python!

<comment><AUTHOR> The Python community is basically one big OER course. Just look at all the recordings from the many PyCons.

I have a second half for the "book" planned but "unfortunately" also need to do some research for my PhD.

Maybe someone wants to provide some more advanced chapters via a pull request?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Can I suggest adjusting it for some other consumer platforms, such as, for example, _Pyhtonista_ on the iPad? That would make it easier to divulge in these turbulent times when many people are stuck using somewhat unusual instruments and platforms.

<comment><AUTHOR> Does Pythonista for iPad support Jupyter notebooks?

<comment><USER10> I don't think so, no. But I might be wrong.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is it really this easy to become a data scientist today? Can you go from 0 to 1 with online programming tutorials like the original post and fast.ai?

<comment><USER12> You still need to know SQL, and algorithms are helpful unless you expect to be spoon-fed pristine datasets that are ready for analysis.

The applicant pool seems to be full of those who took an online course and whose "personal" projects consist entirely of projects ripped from fast.ai or similar. Anymore, I get seem to get more spam on LinkedIn from people looking to be hired as a data scientist at my company than I do from recruiters looking to hire me. And looking over their resumes, I can see why they need to hustle so much. Successful candidates need to know how to do more than classify pet images from the Oxford dataset.

So to answer your question...Maybe? I mean, these candidates are certainly trying much harder than I ever needed to for a job. But presumably they eventually get hired into roles with less discerning companies.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agree. I actually found that I set up a Postgres instance to put the data of an object and use pandas only via sqlalchemy. Most of the stuff pandas does, can be achieved a lot more efficient if done right in a real database.

I also agree about the algorithms part. For my research, I look into vehicle routing problems a lot and there is no sklearn for that or something alike. Maybe an idea for a future project.

An experienced data scientist with deep knowledge in the topics you mention easily replaces 10 of those "candidates". I feel the best way to train more serious programmers and data scientists is to teach kids to program earlier in high school. Maybe make it mandatory just as math is today. Then, a lot more students may choose CS or math as a major in college.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> That's a really cool project! I will probably be recommending this to beginner Python programmers I know.

As a side note, I think sharing lessons as Jupyter notebooks is a really great idea for programming education. I would like to see more of this style of course for other programming languages as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree. Although at some point, any beginner must be exposed to the command line :)

My observation about myself when studying is this: Nothing, no video course, beats a well written book. And, such books are often "slow" reads as you have to think a lot when reading. I found Jupyter notebooks a good instrument to put a lot of info in. My guess is that there is three times the info in my course's notebooks as there is in the 25 hour video recordings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Awesome work!

I can't wait to test this on my non-programmer friends who want to learn how to code. This seems to have a somewhat different approach to the usual Python tutorial, it might do the trick!

Thanks

<comment><AUTHOR> I tried to put in everything I myself would have wanted to know when starting in 2014.

That is why I spend so much time on the memory diagrams in the videos in particular. It literally took me years to figure that out. I have watched a lot of online lectures (e.g., from OCW), but only rarely do instructors talk about that. Maybe formally studying CS would have done the trick for me as well :)

<comment><USER14> It's not necessarily covered in a traditional CS program, it really depends on the instructor.

This is a good resource.

Regarding the videos: they're hard to watch because the text size is very small and it seems to be blurry due to compression/encoding issues and in some of the videos, the audio track has a high-pitched hum in the background that makes it very hard to listen to.

If you still have access to the source materials, you should seriously consider cleaning up the sound and re-encoding the videos for better quality (as well as making the text bigger where possible).

<comment><AUTHOR> Two videos have the hum. This cannot be changed because the lecture capture system in the lecture room does not allow this (It's Panopto).

The quality is actually high enough. Maybe that is due as YouTube is currently lowering the quality due to Corona?

My plan is to incorporate the feedback everyone gives in the next weeks and do the recordings again in studio at the end of summer for the next semester.

The videos are actually intended to only support the chapters in the Jupyter notebooks.

The funny thing is this: Once I started doing the memory diagrams in the lecture, the students' work exhibited a lot more quality. Further, absolute beginners understand, for example, the concept of an iterator vs. iterable.

BTW: chapters 9 and 10 will be released soon on GitHub.

<comment><USER14> > The quality is actually high enough. Maybe that is due as YouTube is > currently lowering the quality due to Corona?

Maybe. Also, for newer videos YouTube takes a while to expose higher qualities. I see now that the videos have very few views and that only 720p is available. This could also be the reason.

> Two videos have the hum. This cannot be changed because the lecture capture > system in the lecture room does not allow this (It's Panopto).

You can probably get rid of the hum pretty easily with pretty basic filtering in a video/audio program (or even a Python library). You might also be able to re-upload just the audio tracks. Just say if you want my help with this.

> The funny thing is this: Once I started doing the memory diagrams in the > lecture, the students' work exhibited a lot more quality. Further, absolute > beginners understand, for example, the concept of an iterator vs. iterable.

I'm not surprised. I've been saying for a while now, that learning programming is analogous to learning how to play an instrument (e.g. the piano) where you need to learn the right techniques and concepts early on if you want to be able to become highly skilled later on. Otherwise it's unlearning and relearning a bunch of stuff, which is less than optimal. Thank you for validating this idea of mine, somewhat.

<comment><AUTHOR> The videos are actually available in 1080p.

If you can re-do the audio and tell me how I can do that in YouTube without re-uploading the video (it's embedded, for example, in the university's Moodle), I will gladly do that. If not, as I said, I'll do proper recordings once I got more time. I did up to 4x 2.5 hour videos a day last week to get the lectures up on time. You can actually hear that in my voice sometimes.

I absolutely agree with your approach to learning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Is anyone aware of a repo with an introduction to Angular (2+) that's a similar style and equally high quality?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd be the first reader :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Why Chapter 6 has no exercises? (It's not a complain. Just asking in case you forgot to link it.)

<comment><AUTHOR> They should be ready tomorrow evening. Within the next two weeks, a missing chapter 9 on arrays will also be there. I spent around 50 hours doing the videos in the last couple of days while also holding remote office hours for the 80 students in my class at the university. Crazy situation at the moment, putting everything online due to Corona. We even had an infected student on campus, luckily mild version.

Didn't think anyone would comment here as there are so many Python intros out there :)</comment></comment>


Forecaster: A Graph Transformer for Forecasting Spatial and Time-Dependent Data - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1909.04019v3 <comment><USER2> I have only read the abstract of this paper so far. But the idea of minimal graphs representing the dynamics of a system goes back (at least) to the work of Jim Crutchfield [[http://csc.ucdavis.edu/~chaos/](http://csc.ucdavis.edu/~chaos/)] in the '80s.

<comment> dave-anderson The paper is really novel in terms of embedding the minimal graph into the Transformer for time series forecasting. As far as I know, there is no paper having done that before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The baselines they compare to are only other neural network models, rather than models that actually state of the art for time series. This makes the author's abstract rather disingenuous.

<comment> dave-anderson The paper has no problem there at all. Many prior papers have demonstrated that neural network models significantly outperform non-neural network models in transportation forecasting like [https://arxiv.org/abs/1707.01926](https://arxiv.org/abs/1707.01926), [http://www-scf.usc.edu/~yaguang/papers/aaai19_multi_graph_co...](http://www- scf.usc.edu/~yaguang/papers/aaai19_multi_graph_convolution.pdf) As this paper has chosen the state-of-the-art neural network models as baselines, it has already done enough and decent jobs on choosing baselines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting paper. Adapt the Transformer to spatiotemporal forecasting for the first time. SOTA results in taxi demand forecasting.

</comment><comment><USER5> This paper presents a rather interesting idea that the Transformer, an NLP model, can be modified for spatio-temporal prediction. The first work on applying the Transformer to this domain.

</comment><comment><USER6> Any implementation yet?</comment>


Ben Huh can has reddit? I respond entirely in LOLcat photos - Alexis Ohanian - <AUTHOR> http://alexisohanian.com/ben-huh-can-has-reddit-i-respond-entirely-in <comment><USER3> Reddit can be monetised today, right now, without a single intrusive advert.

The key is affiliate programs.

Go talk to Skimlinks, point out your traffic, laugh at their rates and then stop to think for a moment. If reddit signed up to every affiliate program there was and didn't share revenue with skimlinks or anyone... if reddit took care of explaining what they were doing and how they were doing it... the readership would be fine.

Hell, you want me just to use the site as normal and inadvertently through doing so I end up clicking links that lead me to buy stuff occasionally and this gives you some pennies. Sure thing, doesn't bother me.

Pennies, yeah, that's all it is. Except that's a penny or two per click. Reddit has size and traffic. Reddit could link to the odd item here or there behind affiliate paywalls and those unobtrusive and naturally organic links created by virtue of creating such a large community could monetise the whole thing.

Don't believe me? Try it for one month. And then when your jaw hits the flaw remember to give me some credit for it. Affiliate schemes keep most forums alive and allow them to exist with minimal advertising. There, I've let my secret out. I run small forums, and they are making me a lovely nest-egg... if I had the cash I'd buy reddit just to put affiliate links on it... it would be an immediate cash cow, and the readership would be fine as they'd understand why, and visually no garbage would have changed the experience.

The key is to do _all_ affiliates, leave no penny on any table. Every click that could earn you money, should.

Technically all you need is a set of rules to process any existing link in any post or comment, and to detect whether that URL goes to a destination that has an affiliate program. If it does, strip any existing codes and drop in yours, if it doesn't then leave it alone.

Oh,and tell people explicitly not to game it. No-one need ever create fake clicks or fake atricles. The organic mass is enough.

<comment><USER4> Well there's an idea for historious! Seriously, though, while users might rebel against this in many communities (rewriting their links to make you money sounds bad), I think reddit could easily pull this off, as it's not immoral or in any way reprehensible.

Besides, the community has been very understanding and accommodating time and time again. I don't know about reddit, but this idea sounds like a goldmine for my own sites. Thanks!

<comment><USER3> It couldn't work for historious. Your ability to store a cache of a whole page is based on the same safe harbour that Google use to provide their cache. Namely that you merely act as a cache and the page is unmodified in any way. Modify the page, and you no longer have that safe harbour, now you'd have taken content from elsewhere and re-purposed it to have affiliate click- throughs... you'd have no defence to copyright infringement claims.

Historious has to store and present the cached page unmodified.

<comment><USER4> Oh, no, not the cache. There's much more opportunity in the links themselves. You historify an amazon item to go back to it later, and when you click the link to go there, our affiliate tag is inserted. Besides, you don't look at the cache when shopping, you look at the links.

I already pushed an initial version of this yesterday, it leaves your cache alone, is unobtrusive and gives us some extra money as you normally use the service.

If it goes well, we can even think about removing the limit for free users!

<comment><USER3> That works, in fact that use is going to be fine.

For your size, you probably would benefit from just applying skimlinks as they would give you a slice of revenue that you're not tapping into.

Once you go beyond a certain amount of traffic, ditch skimlinks and do it yourself. They take too much revenue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "If you made it this far still expecting LOLcats, I'm sorry. I lied."

Sad.

<comment><USER6> You're right. I feel bad now. Adding LOL-TL;DR.

<comment><AUTHOR> Someone forgot to sign up for reddit gold account (spez too). /r/lounge without reddit founders just doesn't seem right.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> of course reddit is monetizable...all it takes is flooding it with ads

768x90 adsense unit just below the submission title alone would probably make reddit instantly profitable.

and that doesn't take into account the premium google adsense ads.(imagine if a random #1-#5 url title from the top was an adsense ad?)...one that had the exact font style as regular reddit ads. Those just browsing, wouldn't even notice the little gray "powered by Google" text.

then add CPM based ads...maybe something that would play on mouseover...those tend to bring in the big bucks.

or just sell advertising directly for some brand awareness campaigns. Honda, Walmart, McDonalds.

And boom...you got a profitable "community".

So there is no reason for Conde Nast to sell reddit(especially at a loss)...if they were interested in generating more revenue, they could do it at a flip of a coin.

Sure it would piss off a lot of users...but it's not like people would abandon a site, just because there are a few more ads present.

<comment><USER8> These suggestions, while normal on any other site, wouldn't work on reddit.

The real problem reddit has is that it's community, which can be amazing at times, has grown used to a great user experience when it comes to advertising - the lack of it that is. Just ignore the box on the right and the occasional sponsored link in the top box. Should a flash-based ad appear in the right- hand box there'll be a front-paged topic on it in an hour. reddit has treated it's users well, but they baulk at the slightest change in that - and herein lies the real problem to monetising reddit. reddit has to monetise while keeping it's community happy. Since community happiness and advertising seem to be pretty much polar opposites it seems to be impossible.

What I'd do is increase advertising aggressively for non-logged in users, reduce it greatly for registered users and keep the option to remove it completely for gold members. Hopefully those that really hate advertising would sign up for gold, however there is probably a correlation between those that make the most noise about advertising and those that wouldn't do that as they don't believe in paying for things on the internet - completely unfounded but a gut feeling.

> Sure it would piss off a lot of users...but it's not like people would > abandon a site, just because there are a few more ads present.

Being a technical audience AdBlock (already is but) would be widely used rendering it useless. I know reddit was monitoring adblock usage at some point - I'd like to know the results of that.

<comment><USER9> Why is it necessary to keep the users happy? So some will leave, but others will join. They are big enough that if they loose some, they'll be OK.

And actually I don't think they'll leave anyway.

They'll use adblock? So? What do they have to loose? You are worried that users will block ads, and the solution is not to run any?

<comment><USER10> It's a user driven site. At millions of people it's obviously not entirely personality driven, but still the site is driven by the actual individual people who submit and comment. They generate not just the content but the tone of the site, which is what keeps people coming back. You can't treat them like a straight up commodity that can be swapped in and out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> So I guess no one has learned anything from the previous discussions on HN.

Reddit has hit critical mass and therefore has a substantial user base - <USER2> charging a monthly fee. Even at $1 a month, I'm sure they could be pulling in 6 figures every month.

Or perhaps I'm mistaken and all they need is more ads.

</comment><comment><USER12> Cheezburger sites are definitely tilted towards the annoying side of the ad balance. Which is probably fine for the their audience but would be tragic for reddit.

<comment><USER13> There is a middle ground there.

<comment><USER10> In the case of ads, "middle groud" is often a few steps down the slipperiest of slopes.</comment></comment></comment>