People who have seen their work destroyed in a failed rocket launch - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/03/rocket-launch-failure-spacex-antares/520287/ <comment><USER2> Interesting article - I was always curious about how those people feel. Though sadly, "life's work" in the headline is pure clickbait - two years of preparations is not life, and the explosion left enough of that "work" on the ground that they could reconstruct the experiment in two _weeks_.

<comment><USER3> The people who work on the James Webb telescope or on some planetary missions will definitely have lost their life's work if something goes wrong. I am not sure I could take the pressure.

<comment><USER4> I knew a guy that worked for a huge computer company that for 10 years never saw a product ship. The projects were always cancelled before it got that far. Instead of feeling pressure, he pretty much stopped caring.

<comment><USER5> Been there. Done that. For much shorter period than 10 years, but still -- as long as I get paid and interesting stuff to do/research, why should I care if it goes to production or not?

<comment><USER6> I cared and cared enough to quit. Worked my last (and first real software) job for about 5 years and quit a month ago because of this kind of thing, at least in part. I was getting good at making the v1, but never learning how to really do anything beyond that. And figuring out how to ship an MVP is the least important part, so if that's all you're learning you're missing out on what will make you successful at a place that's actually successful.

Plus, I'll just generally disagree with you, sitting there making stuff that falls right into the garbage can is incredibly depressing. What's the point?

<comment><USER7> > sitting there making stuff that falls right into the garbage can is > incredibly depressing. What's the point?

A very journey vs destination thought. If the journey is your goal, then you already have the "point" you're looking for. If, however, the destination is the goal, then you are forever reaching out for your next "point", and the moment you reach one, you'll be reaching for another. Always looking for your next point that will never satisfy you.

The preeminent philosopher Jake the Dog had an interesting comment about this sort of thing:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFsQprx5pQM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFsQprx5pQM)

<comment><USER6> I get where you're coming from and hadn't really thought on that aspect explicitly yet, but my first thought is that rather I'm missing half of the journey that I want to have.

To torture a metaphor, I like hiking, my wife and I have a goal of hiking the whole SHT [1] in bits and pieces over the course of 5 years. We've found parts of the trail that are absolutely amazing to hike, we could just hike those sames bits over and over again because we know that they're amazing and not risk having to hike the bits that are just a mowed bit of grassland (which is uninteresting to hike), but then we'd be missing out on the whole experiance and not only that we might be missing out on even better sections that we haven't encountered yet.

I feel the same way about how I'm progressing in my career. I could keep doing the same bit over and over again and I'd probably be pretty damn good at it, but I just can't let myself. I'd rather keep exploring, keep experiencing not only what's new, but what's old-hat to others but new to me, and see if there's something out there that I'm even better at that I enjoy even more than what I already know.

[1] [https://shta.org](https://shta.org)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I had a year's worth of my life crater next to the launch pad. It's a terrible feeling.

It was ever thus. Before first light of the 100-inch telescope on Mt. Wilson in 1917 (at the time the world's largest), George Ellery Hale was so nervous that he only invited a poet, Alfred Noyes--no members of the general press.

Noyes later recounted the drama as part of a poem, "Watchers of the Skies":

      "To-morrow night! For more than twenty years,
      They had thought and planned and worked. Ten years had gone,
      One-fourth, or more, of man's brief working life,
      Before they made those solid tons of glass,
      Their hundred-inch reflector, the clear pool,
      The polished flawless pool that it must be
      To hold the perfect image of a star.
      And, even now, some secret flaw—none knew
      Until to-morrow's test—might waste it all.
      Where was the gambler that would stake so much,—
      Time, patience, treasure, on a single throw?
      The cost of it,—they'd not find that again,
      Either in gold or life-stuff! All their youth
      Was fuel to the flame of this one work.
      Once in a lifetime to the man of science,
      Despite what fools believe his ice-cooled blood,
      There comes this drama.
                              If he fails, he fails
      Utterly. He at least will have no time
      For fresh beginnings. Other men, no doubt,
      Years hence, will use the footholes that he cut
      In those precipitous cliffs, and reach the height,
      But he will never see it."

[[http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6574](http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6574)]

</comment><comment><USER9> It's bad to have your hard work blow up in a rocket. But to then re-make the entire thing, put it on _another_ rocket, and have _that one_ blow up too?

Hats off to Rachel Lindbergh for being part of a very exclusive club in that regard.

<comment><USER10> When in university, I worked on a cubesat project; the first satellite apparently got stuck in its launch container, never getting out to deploy its antennas and say 'Hi, mom!'. Good thing we had built two; now all we had to do was wrestle ourselves in on a later launch.

The second, duplicate one? Oh, that wound up in a Kazakh field while still attached to the launch vehicle. I like to think that second one made some poor farmer need a new pair of pants, if nothing else.

Then again, as far as impact goes, it would have been a lot cooler to receive one's telemetry from space rather than just having a pair of soiled pants to show for it...

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Here's my thoughts as someone who has worked on rockets, and even seen a few of them blow up (but not my fault). It is amazingly depressing. It happens so fast, and there's a feeling of sheer helplessness. You can't do anything, and it's just gone. I imagine it's exactly how you would feel it you were watching your house burn down, or get ripped up by a natural disaster.

That being said, being reproducible is key. Both in terms of production of vehicles, and scientific experiments and equipment. Some of these things are very expensive, but it's always a good idea to have at least two copies going around, and probably more. You'll want to do testing and comparison experiments if the space flown one comes back.

Another thing not mentioned in this article is the concept of launch insurance. It's the homeowners insurance for getting stuff to space. It is also very tricky in terms of wording, and what is covered when (for example, when AMOS blew up on the pad that's different for the insurance than blowing up en route).

Some of the biggest troubles come when you have a limited launch window, and might not see another one for years, or tens of years. You just can't get that time back.

</comment><comment><USER12> The consolation is that it is always _much_ quicker to build the second of something than it is to build the first one, because you know exactly how to do it.

I like to say that I could have done my PhD thesis in 3 months rather than 5 years if I had to do it all over again... Of course it's actually _figuring out what to do_ that is the real work, not the doing. ;-)

</comment><comment><USER13> ...then there's this scientist who apparently worked on scientific instruments on not one, not two, but _three_ failed satellites.

[http://www.nature.com/news/software-error-doomed-japanese- hi...](http://www.nature.com/news/software-error-doomed-japanese-hitomi- spacecraft-1.19835)

> Software error doomed Japanese Hitomi spacecraft

> Dan McCammon, an astronomer at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, helped > to design and build Hitomi's premiere scientific instrument, an X-ray > calorimeter that measures the energy of X-ray photons with exquisite > precision. He has been working on the technology for more than three > decades, flying versions of it on the ASTRO-E mission, which failed on > launch in 2000, and the Suzaku spacecraft, in which a helium leak rendered > the instrument useless weeks after its 2005 launch.

> McCammon says that it would take about US$50 million from NASA, and another > 3–5 years, to build a replacement calorimeter. A version of it is slated to > fly on the European Space Agency's Athena mission, but that is not due to > launch until 2028.

<comment><USER14> Dr. McCammon has endured even more failures than this article shows. He has a smaller calorimeter that he launches on NASA's sounding rockets. I was a telemetry engineer on another mission while both of our payloads were at White Sands in launch preparation. Dr. McCammon told me that he had been trying to have a successful launch since 1998, but launch vehicle issues (guidance failure cost one launch, command uplink cost another) and experiment issues ( the calorimeter is relatively fragile) had resulted in four consecutive failures.

For all that though, he is an accomplished scientist and still had a positive attitude, which made me admire him greatly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I thought this would be about the Antares team (who worked on that rocket significantly more than 2 year).

I heard however about the story of the experiment that blew up both on Antares and CRS-7. Glad to see an article about it. Space is hard.

<comment><USER16> "space is hard" is a fucking lie.

We knew why the Challenger blew up, we could have prevented it, we chose not to.

We knew why Columbia disintegrated, we could have prevented it, we chose not to.

None of this shit is hard. Engineers know how to prevent this stuff.

The hard part is choosing to care whether something is reliable or not, then doing what is necessary to make sure it is reliable.

Every engineer can tell you about some management fuckhole choosing to do the wrong thing. The hard part about our civilization is how many fuckholes there are pushing people to do the wrong things for stupid reasons.

"Space is Hard" is a lie we tell ourselves so that we can ignore the real problem. The real problem is our personalities, our laziness and our stupidity. These scare us because they are truly hard and we truly have no answers for them.

<comment><USER17> This is why I always tell people: If all we had were technical problems to solve, it would be easy. People problems are _much_ more difficult to solve. As the scale of the project increases, with more people, more personalities, more money -- so does the difficulty of the project. "Space is hard" because the scale of the projects are huge. It is hubris to believe that _we_ are the ones that don't contribute to the problem. It is naive to think that some manager isn't looking at _us_ and thinking, "That asshole programmer is going to sink this project for sure". If we can see the problems, why can we not fix them? Because of assholes? Or because we lack the skills to explain the issue and motive people to fix it? Or because we are wrong? All of those things come into play and if you want to be successful you need to navigate that minefield.

If only it were rocket science, it would be sooooo easy. Alas, it is not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> On the plus side: It's "built to print", we've already done all of the R&D work so it's just a matter of remanufacturing all of the hardware. The software's already tested and ready to go (an will get further testing when the satellite is rebuilt).

On the minus side: Long lead times, and payloads/instruments where the right things happened at the right time to make them possible. A failed launch on some projects could mean a 3-5 year delay - and then the whole point of the mission could be moot (technology moves fast).

And that's where you find yourself in the gray area: Ok, let's take our lessons learned and improve it!

</comment><comment><USER19> It usually results in a lot more work: things like failure review boards, fault tree analyses, corrective action recommendations, and endless status meetings from management wanting to know when they can launch the next one.

</comment><comment><USER20> I've known people who've lost huge amounts of work due to a failed hard drive. Stuff happens.

</comment><comment><USER21> respect to those people

</comment><comment><USER22> >is a member of a an exclusive group no one actually wants to be in: people who have seen their work destroyed in a failed rocket launch.

If I got to join this group, I kinda feel like it would be my lifes pinnacle.

Clickbait to the max here guys.

</comment><comment><USER23> At first I thought this might have been about the poor North Koreans forced to work on their rockets.</comment>


Unstaffed, digital supermarkets transform rural Sweden - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/06/unstaffed-digital-supermarkets-transform-rural-sweden <comment><USER2> I feel like the common Bank ID across the country is key here because it means if they can determine there was a theft then they can always just charge that person as long as they have a bank.

And I am guessing that it is linked to your home address and so they can also easily create criminal charges that would stick since you are positively ID'd.

The only problem would be people wandering in with no ID. But they can't since it's required to open the door.

<comment><USER3> People living in such small villages, all know each other. If there would be a series of thefts, the company could just remove the shop (as it is a in a portable container) and all the people in the village would get hurt. The kind of people that live in such villages, have no intention to cause this kind of hurt to each other. These kind of villages are so remote that it is just to expansive for an outsider to drive up to there and do some small shoplifting.

I guess the purpose of the camera is more to see if everything is okay with the shop than to prevent shoplifting.

<comment><USER4> That strikes me as working great until one person in a group destroys that trust for everyone. It's a tale as old as time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> We tested a similar project in Switzerland called urbanfoods.ch. We had a trial month and we made hundreds of transactions. 0 thefts. Here is why: In our shop you need to be subscribed, so you can only buy when you are a member. You can only buy with a credit card attached. When entering the shop, you need the app (your profile) to Open the shop, so we knew who entered the shop at what time. I guess this "control" and the sense of being part of a consumer community who wants to buy fair and sustainable made the system work.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Their website has some more information in Swedish: [https://lifvs.com/](https://lifvs.com/)</comment>


The most extensive set of D3 examples ever - <AUTHOR> http://bl.ocks.org/mbostock

<comment><USER2> You would expect so you know, since it's actually Mike Bostock's profile. (he created d3.js)</comment>


Google Drive: drive around Google Maps - <AUTHOR> http://www.phatfusion.net/googledrive/

<comment><USER2> Next up: Grand Theft Google, where you can steal the cars from Google Street View and drive them around.

Seriously, though, they should turn this into a game, kind of like road rally: you have to get from X to Y, touching waypoints P and Q, in the shortest time possible. Allow users to submit courses for other users to drive, and keep a high score list and some movies of the fastest drivers that you can play back on demand. Everyone will compete to have their best runs appear on the high score list!

They'll have to do something about the car's handling, though. It corners like a tanker truck.

</comment><comment><USER3> Clever, and a lot of fun to play around with for a few minutes.

It would be really impressive if they can analyze where overpasses are and include that in the system. Right now you are able to drive off the side of an overpass onto the lower road. Google Maps certainly factors those kinds of things into its paths, so maybe these guys can find a way to integrate Google's data somehow.

</comment><comment><USER4> I can't see any use for this, but it is pretty cool. Maybe next the car could bounce off of the side of the roads rather than getting stuck.

</comment><comment><USER5> My only complaint - the turning radius on the car is not tight enough to make it through the roundabouts at full speed. You can also drive through malls

</comment><comment><USER6> I hope I'm not the only one who tried to work out the top speed.

I make it about 300mph.

</comment><comment><USER7> The car even goes faster when you get it on a motorway - nice attention to detail.

</comment><comment><USER8> Definitely cool. Anyone estimate how fast the car is going?

<comment><USER9> It looks like at least 90mph driving on the highway...

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Nice.

It would be sweet to have the satellite view ...

</comment><comment><USER11> If only you could drive at that speed through London.

</comment><comment><USER12> Man, if you could do this with street view...Epic.

</comment><comment><USER13> Completely useless, but cool.

</comment><comment><USER14> if you need to save some time it lets you drive through the park.. McClane ;)

<comment><USER10> And on train tracks, too.

Makes speeding down the Henry Hudson much faster.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> who wants to race? :D</comment>


Show HN: fluxroll – Production support for modern teams - <AUTHOR> https://fluxroll.com <comment><USER2> Very useful tool for a engineering manager and a devops!</comment>


European Data Protection Board backs ban on 'cookie walls' - <AUTHOR> https://www.out-law.com/en/articles/2018/may/european-data-protection-board-cookie-walls-ban/ <comment><USER2> Didn't the EU legislate cookie walls themselves?

Once that behavior got normalized it seems every site pops up ads, pleas for money, pleas to enable desktop notifications, sign up newsletters, etc.

It is just poison for the mind and particular for the mobile web cause you often can't close out the window on a phone or tablet. People cannot see the site and the owners do not know or do not care.</comment>


That photo of Colossus - <AUTHOR> http://www.tnmoc.org/news/notes-museum/wrens-meet-70-years <comment><USER2> I'm not sure of the prior history, which may affect my appreciation for it, but as far as I know, what happened with Colossus was that they were aware the cipher seeds changed each day, and they obtained an Enigma machine so they could decipher Enigma codes, it was the fact there was a reliance on intercepting the day's seeds, or having a spy/double agent leak them which meant cracking Enigma messages was usefully impossible within the timeframe in which military strategies could be formulated and altered.

So Colossus brute-forced every combination of Enigma symbols and seeds until it got something that made sense.

Colossus did this in hours, instead of the weeks waiting for code breakers with brain-power and persistence alone, and to my knowledge this was the first application of computers as we recognise them today.

I find it amazing that Turing sat and thought to himself, in the 1940s, "I bet I can make a machine that does this", and built the thing, and built it so well it deciphered the codes within the day, before the seeds changed. I'm sure a brute force on paper existed before Colossus, but Colossus is a stunning, visceral machine to watch.

Seeing Colossus operating is an absolute experience for computerphiles. There's something more soulful (in the laïc sense) in seeing a big wall of spinning disks and tape and reassuring thuds and whirs than in modern solid- state computers.

<comment><USER3> Small correction, Colossus was designed to break the Lorenz cypher (which was considerably more complex than Enigma). The machine itself was designed by Tommy Flowers (not Turing), who was a post office worker who had previously worked with vacuum tubes and thought it would be possible to build a programmable computer with them. After the war Flowers applied for funding to build a similar machine (Colossus being top secret) and was denied on account of the idea being impractical.

The machine Turing is famous for his work on was Bombe, which was designed to crack Enigma.

<comment><USER2> Can't edit my comment now that it has children (I think that's how the logic works) so upvoting you for visibility.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> That's a fantastic story. At my grandfather's funeral (he was an electronic and medical researcher who developed early foetal pulse monitors as well as the respirators now used to treat sleep apnoea) it gradually became apparent that I was chatting with two of the people who'd installed one of New Zealand's first computer systems. Incredible conversation but it only lasted half an hour and then off they went. I wish I'd had a chance to record some of it.

</comment><comment><USER5> I guess one of my favorite movies took its name from this?

[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064177/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064177/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Damn, high-speed paper-tape! I used an early DNA sequencer controlled by paper tape, and it's touchy to keep the tape from breaking. I think that they migrated the mechanism from looms. The belt drives also remind me of the water- and steam-powered eras.

<comment><USER7> Paper tape is indeed a descendant of the Jacquard Loom.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacquard_loom#Mechanical_Jacqu...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacquard_loom#Mechanical_Jacquard_looms)

<comment><USER8> First thing i think of. In fact the Ibm for quite a while can be considered as a punch paper card company (and their first antitrust is about their use of that to meter the computer use)

<comment><USER6> Paper tape was even more of a pain than cards were. Or at least, in different ways. Cards jammed, it's true. But you could easily replace damaged cards. Repairing damaged tape was iffy. On the other hand, one might drop a stack of cards. So some of us would number the cards in pencil. Carefully, and lightly.

<comment><USER9> Colossus had an endless loop of paper tape zipping by to present patterns for matching. It wasn't a general purpose computer. It was a key-tester, like a Bitcoin miner.

<comment><USER6> Ah. So they could have many copies of those tapes, and quickly replace ones that broke, right?

<comment><USER10> I seem to recall reading in either Kahn's or Sebag-Montefiore's book on Bletchley Park that one early failure mode of the tape was that it was run through the reader at a fast enough pace to occasionally catch fire.

Oops.

<comment><USER9> Basic problem of early computing: no good memory devices. IBM had electronic arithmetic before WWII, as an experimental tube multiplier. But nobody had a memory device that didn't require lots of parts per digit or bit. Hence cards and paper tape.

<comment><USER6> I had an old friend who worked with 60s era mainframes. You had a decent enough CPU, but no memory. And very slow storage.

So you worked out some set of instructions with total execution time comparable to storage I/O. And put that into ~firmware. Then you read data from one device, and wrote data to another device. And kept repeating that, with other instruction sets, until you were done.

That's not very different from current usage. Except that most intermediate results go into various sorts of memory. Or /tmp devices, if there's too much data for memory. And at the CPU level, instruction sets are just about as small.

But the point is that one could process ~huge amounts of data. Many GiB, as I recall. Just very slowly, with lots of thrashing tape.

And now one can use the same approach, except with clusters. And process humongous amounts of data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've seen the Colossus replica running at Bletchley Park. It was quite impressive to see.

</comment><comment> W-Stool Let us also not forget the Forbin Project.

<comment><USER12> I came here for exactly this comment.

Thank you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> If interested in WW2 Allied code breaking you may want to watch the BBC documentary _Station X - The Code Breakers of Bletchley Park_ on _Acorn tv_

<comment><USER14> Simon Singh's "Code" also has an approachable description of the decoding process.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Both museums at Bletchley are just fantastic... can't wait to get back there sometime again in the future!

</comment><comment><USER16> Where's the new photo?

<comment><USER17> It's in the Photo Gallery to the right of the main photo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "D. Well I was quite angry as we had kept it a secret for so long. There is me now in all the books. I didn't like that!" Cannot stop laughing. Rip Dorothy. Uk has a fighting chance with you girls working in that industry. Would have to play a visit.

Guess no one would catch me as a chinese spy to copy that ba.</comment>


Guy solves over 200 CS exam problems in 4 hours - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_ZdcHSFGv0&t=1s <comment><USER2> I stopped watching when he gets question 7 wrong, which should be C...

<comment><USER3> The person's logic is wrong: Clearly

      (0*10*10*)*10*

can generate two ones next to each other (choose * = 0 except for the parenthetical, where you add pairs of 1s).

However the problem also seems completely broken.

      (0*10*10*)*10*

can't generate the string 01, which is clearly in the set of binary strings with an odd number of 1s. It misses the entire set of strings that match 0*1, in fact...

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the correction! Totally my mistake.</comment></comment></comment>


Udacity Connect – Face-to-face learning - <AUTHOR> https://www.udacity.com/uconnect <comment><USER2> Interesting! I presume this has a cost? And how would attendance work? Would I get to go as many times as I want during a given week/month?

Adding a "live" component could be a great addition to nanodegrees. When trying to complete these online courses, self-motivation is often as big a challenge as the content, if not more. A mentor and/or "study buddies" could solve that problem.

(Note: I'm currently enrolled in Udacity's Full Stack Web Dev nanodegree)

<comment><USER3> Re cost, looks like it's an additional $99/month on top of the Nanodegree fee. Although the first month is free for anyone signing up between now and June 30th. Also limited to SF, LA, and NYC.</comment></comment>


Let your loved ones know you're safe with our new personal safety app - <AUTHOR> https://blog.google/products/maps/let-your-loved-ones-know-youre-safe-our-new-personal-safety-app/ <comment><USER2> I'm glad this has finally occurred. Was pushing for Google to do more along this lines for awhile. I know it's never ideal that Google has more information on people but for those of us who work all the time with people at risk (activists, journalists, aid workers etc) this tool will genuinely save lives.</comment>


David Rockefeller has died - happy-go-lucky https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-20/david-rockefeller-banker-philanthropist-heir-dies-at-101 <comment><AUTHOR> "Some even believe we [Rockefeller family] are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as 'internationalists' and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure -- One World, if you will. If that's the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it."

\- David Rockefeller, Memoirs, page 405

<comment><USER2> From the article:

> Rockefeller upheld the family's philanthropic tradition, giving away more > than $900 million during his lifetime. In 1940, he joined the board of the > Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, established in 1901 by his > grandfather, and a decade later succeeded his father as board chairman, > serving for 25 years.

Rich people don't give money away no-strings-attached, they channel it for their purposes. This "institute for medical research" \- now Rockefeller University - was their way of guiding the development of medicine into a profitable industry for "investors".

"The first director of laboratories was Simon Flexner" [1] [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockefeller_University](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockefeller_University)

Simon Flexner's younger brother was Abraham Flexner, who helped the medical guild reduce the number of medical schools [2], thereby making sure that there's always been a shortage of doctors.

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

The Osteopathic profession was the only group that was organized enough to survive the Medical Guild's purge of non-Rockefeller-approved approaches to medicine. Today D.O.s are more likely to take up Primary Care, where doctors take time to get to know their patients and figure out what's actually causing their complaints. See _The Heroism of Incremental Care,_ [3] for example.

[3] [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/23/the-heroism- of-...](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/23/the-heroism-of- incremental-care)

<comment><USER3> > Rockefeller upheld the family's philanthropic tradition, giving away more > than $900 million during his lifetime.

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlodonnell/2014/07/11/the- roc...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlodonnell/2014/07/11/the-rockefellers- the-legacy-of-historys-richest-man/)

"That young man was John Davison Rockefeller in 1855, who in 25 years would become the wealthiest man of his time, and arguably the wealthiest in history, reigning over a monopoly that refined as much as 90 percent of America's oil. His flagship company, Standard Oil, was broken up in 1911 by the Sherman Anti- Trust Act, but Rockefeller's greatest legacy – his family – lives on, spanning more than 200 surviving individuals and possessing a collective net worth of about $10 billion"

$900M out of $10B is 9%.

Myself, living in Europe, I'm quite convinced I have paid a much higher percentage of my income than this towards state-governed philantrophy. Where's my trophy?

<comment><USER4> They're talking about net worth. You're talking about income.

Kind of silly either way though - why don't you just come out and say that you think he should have donated more?

<comment><USER3> No, I prefer just to point out the hypocrisy surrounding getting acclaims for "philantrophy" in the US.

Seems like even those who have the most give out back less to others than they would have done just by the regular taxation laws, living in a typical European country.

<comment><USER5> Depending on tax law throughout his life, and his ability to find loopholes, that $900M was _on top of_ what he paid in tax. So unless you have evidence that he paid no or very low taxes, what you're saying just doesn't hold water.

Not to mention that you're comparing the donations of a single person to the collective net worth of 200 people. More fair would be to compare that $900M to David Rockefeller's net worth, not that and all his very-extended family.

<comment><USER3> Anyone in the US is paying very low taxes compared to what "high-income" tax payers pay in e.g. Scandinavian countries like Sweden. The treshold for "high income" is (simplified) at about $80k per year.

Stock option profits are taxed as income as well. (In Sweden we also have to pay social security fees on our stock option profits - the end result typically being at least a 62% taxation level on that income.).

<comment><USER5> Gotcha. I still don't see any evidence for what you're saying, though. What was David Rockefeller's income during the period he worked and gave money to charitable causes? If you want to look at it mathematically:

income * (tax rate + giving rate) = "total given"

Obviously you have two important variables there that determine what the total percent of income ends up being. I don't see any evidence that the parenthetical totals above are less or greater than each other when you consider your average European vs. Rockefeller, so you can't really say anything about how much he gave out of his income in comparison to your average European. Maybe it's more, maybe it's less, but you automatically assuming it's less is a bit disingenuous.

There's also the question of required vs. optional. If your average European had a tax rate similar to an American, would they then (on average) give the "savings" away as philanthropy? My guess would be it'd end up somewhere in the middle. Philanthropy is only philanthropy if it's voluntary and isn't forced by your government. That's pretty much its definition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I am a bit more on the pro-conspiracy side of the spectrum but good sources are important.

According to the New York Times in 2002, David Rockefeller was the banker of the worst leaders of the world while expanding internationally the Chase Manhattan Bank.

"He spent much of his career at Chase doing business with tyrants -- paying homage to oil-rich dictators, sitting through long meetings with the Chinese perpetrators of the Cultural Revolution (an associate once handed over a suitcase with $50,000 in cash to the Chinese so Rockefeller could have a meeting with their ambassador), holding court with Soviet party bosses. The contacts often led to profitable deals for Chase. They benefited the ruling cliques in those countries. But in ways he is oblivious of even now, Rockefeller was soiled by his close embraces with these thugs. While the forces of democracy squared off with the forces of authoritarianism, Rockefeller was perpetually in the room with whoever happened to be in power."

That's enough for me to think he's a horrible monster, but what do I know, I'm just into conspiracy theories...

Between him and kissinger, it would be tough to figure out who knew more war criminals.

[0] [http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/20/books/review/david- rockefe...](http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/20/books/review/david-rockefellers- memoirs-born-to-be-mild.html)

<comment><USER7> Just wondering if you've read Confessions of an Economic Hitman. You may feel better knowing that not all of these conspiracies are crazy. Though reading about economic hit men may make you more paranoid; it's a dark, ugly world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Obligatory mention of Titan, in mine and many other people's opinion, the best and most comprehensive biography of the original John D. Rockefeller. (The grandfather of the David Rockefeller who passed away today.) An extremely well put together balanced analysis of John D. Rockefeller, Standard Oil and general history of the Gilded Age.

[http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16121.Titan](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16121.Titan)

<comment><USER9> I think the History Channel had a good show about the lives of Rockefeller, Carnegie, et al. and how they intersected

<comment><USER10> Yes, "The Men Who Built America". Great show.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "Their sister, Abby Rockefeller Mauze, known as "Babs," died in 1976." All the brothers have their contributions listed, but she doesn't? According to Wikipedia, Abby Rockefeller Mauze preferred to stay out of the spotlight, but was still a benefactor of the MOMA, YWCA, NY Hospital, NY Zoological Society, and the Asia Society.

<comment><USER12> > All the brothers have their contributions listed, but she doesn't?

Maybe related to this detail (also from Wikipedia)...?

      "Unlike her famous brothers, she always remained out of the public eye"

<comment><USER13> That doesn't mean that she didn't do anything. It doesn't even mean she didn't do anything worthy of note.

<comment><USER14> But it may mean that what she did do isn't well documented enough publicly for inclusion in Wikipedia.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I may be alone on this one, but I'm enchanted by David Rockefeller's long-ago crusade to create an "electronic Rolodex" of the 150,000 people he met in the course of his business career.

The dude nearly invented LinkedIn! Of course, he forgot to allow access to anyone else, which limited the value of his efforts. And boasting about 150,000 isn't quite what it used to be. (More like an Ozymandias claim, in fact.) Anyway, some more thoughts about it are here: [https://www.forbes.com/sites/georgeanders/2017/03/20/he- knew...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/georgeanders/2017/03/20/he- knew-150000-people-the-tycoon-who-predated-social-media/#bf9b95d6fd0d)

<comment><USER16> My father met a top exec (later president) of Toyota in the 80s, he came to my house and met our dog. Some time later we saw him writing on a little black notebook.

A decade later, the exec invited my father, and during the dinner conversation he asked about his children and dog by name... that was pretty impressive, and an example of how to manage relationships.

LinkedIn doesn't (yet) give you that kind of information (I guess some good CRMs do?)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> He probably wasn't too far from the disgusting coup against Salvador Allende on the 9/11/1973, organized by the CIA.

From the guardian :

"But the very name of Allende was anathema to the extreme Right in Chile, to certain powerful corporations (notably ITT, Pepsi Cola and the Chase Manhattan Bank) which did business in Chile and the United States, and to the CIA." [0]

"He [David Rockerfeller] was both chairman and chief executive of Chase Manhattan from 1969 to 1980 and remained chairman until 1981." [1]

[0] [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/feb/24/pinochet.booke...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/feb/24/pinochet.bookextracts) [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Rockefeller](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Rockefeller)

</comment><comment><USER17> Did Rockefeller talk at all about how much his huge income was taxed? While I'm sure his philanthropic giving was researched and generous, I'm wondering what the benefits of those billions would have been if part of the Medicare program. Did he support the rich giving more to the state? It is the institution tasked with looking the citizens, after all.

</comment><comment><USER18> >In 2008 Rockefeller gave $100 million to his alma mater, Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

I have to agree with Malcom Gladwell on this... Of all the ways to donate $100M, OF ALL THE WAYS

<comment><USER19> I have to agree. That amount of money could have greatly helped a majority of the black historic colleges that so badly need the money. Of course if you think that is bad someone recently just gave $400 million (more covered here: [https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/06/05/400-million-g...](https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/06/05/400-million- gift-harvard-sets-debate-about-philanthropy-wealthy-institutions)).

Even Gates gave $15 million circa 1996. This is was of course before he went into full philanthropy mode [1]. I'm sure he wouldn't do that now.

[1]: [http://www.nytimes.com/1996/10/30/us/gates-of-microsoft- give...](http://www.nytimes.com/1996/10/30/us/gates-of-microsoft- gives-15-million-to-harvard.html)

<comment><USER20> I agree that the $400 million seems ridiculous. But it's interesting that you mention black colleges, because David Rockefeller's grandfather started the General Education Board [0] - one of the first and most important factors in developing black education in the United States.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> My family (incl german wirehaired pointer) got to enjoy Little Long Pond in Seal Harbor because of David Rockefeller. The Rockefellers own a tremendous estate in Mount Desert Island.

</comment><comment><USER22> RIP, Condolences to his Family and Friends

</comment><comment><USER23> Congratulations to every one, let's drink to that!

</comment><comment><USER24> The third generation made the biggest impact in public affairs with governors and philanthropists. The first made all the money, the second was too small. Webrarely hear ofblater Rockefellers.

<comment><USER9> Every resident of New York should thank him and Nelson Rockefeller for tag teaming to take down Robert Moses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> > The Osteopathic profession was the only group that was organized enough to > survive the Medical Guild's purge of non-Rockefeller-approved approaches to > medicine.

What? The Medical Guild purged (almost) all of the quacks and snake oil salesman out of medicine, and aimed American medicine to be directed by the scientific method and biology. This was a good thing.

You're right, most of the quacks, snake handlers, anti-vaccine charlatans and witch doctors were purged, thankfully. But the osteopathic so-called "alternative" medicine practitioners were well-organized enough, and legally and politically savvy enough to survive.

People on this web site tend to look favorably upon reason, the scientific method and so forth. Thus, I think they will look favorably upon this work of Rockefeller, and shed few tears for the faith healers, quacks, acupuncturists etc. which people are still free to go to, but which my tax and health plan dollars are (mostly) not going to, thankfully.

Then you mix in that primary care doctors don't spend enough time with their patients nowadays. This may be true, in fact, it probably is. It has absolutely nothing to do however with whether people are getting rational, scientific treatment tested through medical trials, or whether they're going into some voodoo ritual with some quack.

<comment><USER26> It's not that osteopaths were so well organized. It's that John D. was a devoted Osteopath for most of his life.

If you haven't read Titan, it's a fascinating bio.

<comment><USER25> > John D. was a devoted Osteopath for most of his life. If you haven't read > Titan, it's a fascinating bio.

That's interesting, I didn't know that.

More than osteopathy, the similar yet different practice of chiropractic is a better example of a legally and politically well-organized "alternative medicine". Through legal ( [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilk_v._American_Medical_Ass'n](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilk_v._American_Medical_Ass'n) ) and political pressure from the 1970s to the 1990s, they got the American Medical Association to dissolve their committee on quackery, rewrite their medical ethics rules and so forth.

<comment><USER27> I would like to point out that chiropractic medicine is not necessarily quackery. There are certainly some elements that may not always work, but there are also many things that do.

The classes in the schools are certainly not a joke - they take real anatomy and real body mechanics, real radiology and real biochemistry - and the requirements for graduation are not trivial.

Additionally, although scientific method has been successful in medicine, a lot is still not well understood from the bottom up. That's why some alternative medicine solutions sometimes work as well and even better than modern medicine. It was arrived at through centuries of trial and error.

<comment><USER28> Chiropractic largely works because it has purged so much of its foundational ideas and is almost congruous to physiotherapy (albeit with more focus on manipulative therapy than exercise).

>That's why some alternative medicine solutions sometimes work as well and even better than modern medicine.

I can see some forms of alternative medicine being complementary (hence the name), such as meditation or yoga, but better? Could you point to some examples? Genuinely curious about this.

<comment><USER27> Well, the problem is that a lot of times there is no research into them and by the time there is research, the useful properties are extracted so that a better modern solution is available.

Basically, the only way to prove that it works is by showing that modern medicine adopted the approach after systematic evaluation and at that point it is part of modern medicine.

For example, Artemisinin wasn't known to be useful until 1979 but was a traditional Chinese medicine in plant form for a very long time.

Another example that still isn't fully accepted is cupping. Wikipedia page on it suggests that it is not useful beyond placebo. But here [1] is a recent study that says it's effective. Let's imagine that it is very effective for some kinds of pain. A modern medicine alternative might be to take some kind of painkiller that might damage the liver in large doses.

For sore throat, someone might take NiQuil. Some doctors would prescribe antibiotics just in case it's a bacterial or might have a bacterial follow-up. Alternative medicine solution is to grind up garlic and eat cabbage soup. Garlic h as Allicin which kills strep throat. This, I think, is less intrusive. But I don't know if anyone did a large-scale study where they compared the two common solutions head to head.

[1] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4814666/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4814666/)

<comment><USER28> >Basically, the only way to prove that it works is by showing that modern medicine adopted the approach after systematic evaluation and at that point it is part of modern medicine.

I don't think that's true. That study you linked to indicates that it is possible to do clinical research on many alternative modalities. Indeed, I see plenty of papers coming out that make the attempt, and lots of reviews and meta-analyses thereof. They tend to conclude one of two things:

\- the methodology of the stud[y|ies] is poor

\- the research is positive but too small in scale/particular in conditions to base decisions on

\- they don't demonstrate a strong correlation between the application of the treatment and the desired outcome

If some of those studies from the second block were repeated with larger, more diverse samples, I'd be less wary of alt med in general, I think.

>Another example that still isn't fully accepted is cupping. Wikipedia page on it suggests that it is not useful beyond placebo. But here [1] is a recent study that says it's effective.

The Wiki page seems to suggest that cupping, when recommended for chronic neck/shoulder pain, is treated with cautious optimism by most scientists, for the reasons noted above. The study you mentioned is strong methodologically, but the sample size is tiny, and composed primarily of women.

>A modern medicine alternative might be to take some kind of painkiller that might damage the liver in large doses.

I think this is a pretty unfair stereotype; certainly painkillers are over- prescribed, but that doesn't mean that all of modern medicine is wrapped up in the use of pharmaceuticals. Lifestyle changes, physical therapy, massage, etc. are all things that conventional physicians will recommend.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I am, by most metrics, an ardent globalist; I advocate absolute free trade and absolute free movement. However, it's not very hard to recognize that many people's definition of globalism effectively includes such things as forced immigration, cultural erasure, and overburdening of welfare states, which are conducive to increased conflict rather than increased cooperation.

<comment><USER30> >forced immigration, cultural erasure, and overburdening of welfare states, which are conducive to increased conflict rather than increased cooperation.

We have had all of those things for over a century in the US. You don't even have to be a citizen to be able to immigrate to any state in the union from any other state. "Cultural erasure" is even more nonsensical than "cultural appropriation". Overburdening of welfare states has been fine for the entire history of the US. These things _made_ the US the most powerful nation in the world.

The EU is less than half the size of the US. The problems you are describing are ridiculous and irrelevant.

edit: not to mention, the EU takes in even fewer legal immigrants than the US does, per capita. "Cultural erasure" doesn't mean tearing down maypoles and shit, it just means a kebab place opens up down the street. Who could possibly give a shit about that? NOBODY. except racists, obviously.

<comment><USER31> The US has never had a welfare state remotely comparable to that of the western European majors. It's one of the reasons we're able to take in immigrants without caring historically, and the more recent increases in our welfare system, which I think are directionally a good thing, have the unfortunate side effect of making it necessary to be more careful about who you let in and how long before they can become a full citizen, with all the entitlements that come with it. The European countries also have much more uniform cultures than the US has ever had, and a vastly longer history and tradition. It's nowhere near as simple as "Who doesn't want more kebabs? Clearly, racists." Europe is not currently well set up structurally or culturally to take in large numbers of people of different cultures.

<comment><USER30> You're conflating two completely different things with welfare. In the US they are the same- poor states get immense amounts of Federal assistance to help poor citizens. In Europe individual states may have welfare systems, but EU "welfare" is economic assistance to members eg Italy. It has nothing to do with refugees and immigrants and is just a base factor in the difficulty of holding together the difficulty of a state, and in that way the member states of the EU are FAR closer together in economic power than states in the US are. ie the EU would be much, much easier to run, but as it turns out it takes more than 25 years for a country to find its feet.

It is as simple as "who doesn't want kebabs", because the number of immigrants is _stupid_ low. One in 300 does not cultural destruction make, unless your culture is "no brownies". These cultures have coexisted and coimmigrated for the better part of a thousand years. The ottomans aren't new. Europeans are used to muslims. Having a stronger and longer culture makes you MORE resilient to outside change, not less.

Edit: the us has ten times the number of immigrants in Mexicans alone. The effect they have had is well described as adding a few ethnic restaurants. Maybe a few places have chosen to put up bilingual signs. If you consider that "cultural Erasure", the BASE STATE of Europe is to have a half dozen languages being spoken in one place. Muslims are simply "the wrong kind", which is ridiculous as they are just the next country over and always have been. If anything has contributed to "cultural Erasure" it has been the US, which has helped impose a monoculture on every nation in Europe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> [fake news article deleted]

<comment><USER33> There is not a single credible source for these heart transplant stories. In fact, not even 1 transplant is document anywhere except on various fake news outlets.

<comment><USER34> Lol, the linked article above you about the 7th heart transplant claims that Snopes can't be trusted to debunk the story since they aren't 9/11 truthers. Too good.

 _Edit, aww, it 's deleted, but their argument refuting Snopes was that Snopes also doesn't believe the consensus that a missile hit the Pentagon on 9/11 so you shouldn't trust them._</comment></comment></comment>


WordPress and Facebook are finally together, officially - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2012/06/12/wordpress-and-facebook-are-finally-together-officially/

<comment><USER2> They are not "togheter", there is an official FB plugin for WP.</comment>


Twitter Demographics - <AUTHOR> https://blog.hootsuite.com/twitter-demographics/ <comment><AUTHOR> Interesting key points from the blog -

1\. In the United States, 80% of tweets are created by just 10% of users. (33 million total users)

2\. 44% of U.S. adults age 18-24 use Twitter. More teenagers are on Twitter in the U.S. than Whatsapp, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Reddit

3\. Among U.S. adults, the most prolific tweeters are more likely to be women: 65% of Twitter's most active users are women.

4\. Twitter users make 9% more than the average American.

5\. In the United States, 42% of Twitter users have at least a bachelor's degree, compared with 31% of the general public. The majority of U.S. adults on Twitter users describe themselves as high school graduates. But since most are young, many may still have college degrees in their sights.

6\. Americans on Twitter are more likely to identify as Democrats compared with the average American.</comment>


I didn't share. - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/adventures-in-consumer-technology/5c2e14f4fccf

<comment><USER2> I'm reminded of this paper [1].

1: _Envy on Facebook: A Hidden Threat to Users' Life Satisfaction?_ \- [http://warhol.wiwi.hu- berlin.de/~hkrasnova/Ongoing_Research_...](http://warhol.wiwi.hu- berlin.de/~hkrasnova/Ongoing_Research_files/WI%202013%20Final%20Submission%20Krasnova.pdf)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for posting this, looking forward to giving it a look. I haven't read any studies but from speaking with friends it seems some people experience social media-induced depression or that the very least their life satisfaction seems to be reduced.

I think this occurs with Facebook in particular because because we tend to follow many people other than our social connections on platforms like Twitter.</comment></comment>


The Emails Snowden Sent to First Introduce His NSA Leaks - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2014/10/snowdens-first-emails-to-poitras/ <comment><USER2> > Assume your adversary is capable of one trillion guesses per second

Jesus, one trillion passphrase checks a second.

Well I know what I'm changing this afternoon.

> My personal desire is that you paint the target directly on my back. No one, > not even my most trusted confidant, is aware of my intentions and it would > not be fair for them to fall under suspicion for my actions.

Snowden has always had my respect but the more I read the more he has my admiration as a person.

<comment><USER3> You should still assume it's futile in the end, to be honest; the ultimate surveillance system that may be going on right now is that all encrypted communication and data right now is being stored and catalogued, waiting for technology to be able to do even more calculations. It's said that once quantum computers become usable, a lot of encryption of today is pretty much useless. Even without that, computing power will increase exponentially - what's one trillion passphrases now will be a quadrillion passphrases within the next ten years, maybe in less time given certain advancements or discovered weaknesses in encryption technologies.

I personally don't really care if the NSA gets to look at my private documents, communications and photo's (for example), but if you're privacy- conscious, it's something to keep in mind.

<comment><USER4> Every time someone says "I have nothing to hide" the downvotes pour in, and it's unnecessary.

"I have nothing to hide" is a perfectly valid and reasonable response to privacy concerns. A lot of people feel that way, because the a lot of people live very boring lives. They legitimately do not believe that they have any secrets that will warrant the attention of the most powerful intelligence apparatus to ever exist. 99% of Americans will never do anything in their lives that holds the attention of any federal agency of any kind. We're all unique, like snowflakes, but very few of us will ever matter at the national level. The numbers just don't work out.

There's very little evidence that the intelligence community has done anything to harm the average citizen with information gained through any kind of surveillance. Some people are going to feel that they have nothing to hide until the government's actions make them feel otherwise. It's a practical and pragmatic point of view for people who aren't interested in the philosophical or the hypothetical.

Commenters who use the phrase aren't saying anything about what level of privacy is right for you, but stating what they feel is right for them. There's nothing wrong or offensive about that, it's a matter of preference not a matter of fact. There are two sides to this issue, and a one sided discussion isn't going to do anyone any good.

<comment><USER5> _" I have nothing to hide" is a perfectly valid and reasonable response to privacy concerns._

No, it really isn't, because we're discussing government policy, something that impacts "we", not "I".

Saying that "you have nothing to hide" is at the very least tremendously selfish, because it carries the implication that policy should be made based on that stance. We're talking about what the NSA is doing to everyone, in contravention of the supreme law of the land. What one person does or does not want is a red herring and not part of the discussion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Let's also take a moment to remember James Risen who will likely be sent to prison in January for exposing what the NY Times refused to print.

(and of course Manning who will be left to rot for the next 35 years by each president)

<comment><USER7> Manning should never even be brought up in the same context as Snowden.

It's both discrediting and insulting to compare the two of them.

<comment><USER8> Can you clarify? Both of them took a principled stand and leaked a large amount of sensitive information to journalists they trusted at great personal risk. Both of them had a huge influence on public debate. They are at least comparable.

<comment><USER9> The argument that I've commonly heard is twofold. One, Manning was in the Army, so lots of his actions fall under military jurisdiction, where the primary concern is not the rights of the accused.

Secondly, Manning dumped a lot of info without knowing what he dumped. Snowden knew what was in the docs he leaked, and he made sure to protect human lives.

That's what I've heard, at least. It seems to make sense to me, but I'm open to having my mind changed if you have a different perspective.

<comment><USER10> For the life of me, whenever I hear someone call Manning a whistleblower, I cannot ever get the person to articulate exactly what he was blowing the whistle against. It's my understanding that most of what was released was nothing more than embarrassing personal cables that harmed diplomatic relations. Snowden revealed legitimate privacy concerns that the American people had not yet been privy to.

<comment><USER11> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_12,_2007_Baghdad_airstrike](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_12,_2007_Baghdad_airstrike)

<comment><USER10> Which doesn't really justify 99.9% of the other things that were released.

<comment><USER12> But that 99.9% (assuming your figure is accurate - I have no idea the proportion of damning vs. embarrassing vs. irrelevant information that was leaked) doesn't make Manning _not_ a whistle-blower.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Somehow these emails were more powerful, personal, and meaningful than all the previous coverage. It's _you_ they are watching and it's _you_ they are watching all the time. Reading these emails I imagine they were addressed to me and there's no way to avoid feeling like you're under a microscope. Even when you snap out of it and remember the emails aren't addressed to you, you then have to remember they apply to you, they could have been addressed to you, and yes, you really are being watched.

</comment><comment><USER14> I wonder how they "confirm[ed] out of email that the keys we exchanged were not intercepted and replaced by your surveillants." Key exchange is the hardest part.

<comment><USER15> That was my thought as well. Given all communication is considered compromised, I can't think of a simple way to do this that isn't a face to face.

<comment><USER16> Could you explain how exchanging PGP keys over TLS would be compromised or compromisable?

<comment><USER17> Simple. Analog man-in-the-middle; i.e., you're not talking to who you think you're talking to. That's the whole point of key exchange.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Does anyone know if "Citizen Four" (what Snowden signed his first email with) is a reference to anything?

<comment><USER19> Possibly to the Fourth Estate? It would have been clear to Snowden that the clergy and commoners aren't doing enough to control our kings and princes.

<comment><USER20> Fourth Estate seems very plausible. The idea of the 'Fourth Estate' is that the media (the fourth estate) keeps an eye on the government. Whether this is the intention or the 4th Amendment is the intention, the other of the two is a nice coincidence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Chilling, very chilling.</comment>


Ask HN: Anyone else planning on ditching their phone for a apple watch series 3? - <AUTHOR> If so, what is your reason? <comment><USER2> Well, you're going to be in for a bad time, since you need to have an iPhone for the Series 3, even the LTE version, to work.</comment>


Why I don't like the 4 inch iPhone and a brief review of the EarPods - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mugunthkumar.com/tech/why-i-dont-like-the-4-inch-iphone-and-a-brief-review-of-the-earpods/

<comment><USER2> Can noise cancelling headphones really cancel out typing noise? (More than any normal closed earphones anyway) I thought the technology only worked for predictable noise like the background rumble of a plane?</comment>


Ask HN: What should a Harry Potter fan build? *** - <AUTHOR>

Some of you may have heard of Pottermore, which is a site for Harry Potter fans to explore the Harry Potter books, which was released last summer.
In response to the excitement and my interest in HP, I made a forum for Pottermore. It was popular for a while, but the forum has died because Pottermore still hasn't opened the next chapter of the Potter series. I have the forum : forums.pottermorehype.com and the Twitter: @pottermorefans with nearly 10,000 followers.
I really want to build something great that lets me entertain my interest in Harry Potter and Pottermore, and I'd like to Ditch the forums for this new idea.
One thought was to make a Harry Potter trivia site, because my followers enjoy when I host Twitter trivia contests. I'm having a hard time figuring this out. Any suggestions would be great! <comment> shane-armstrong Pottermore hasn't opened the next chapter? Get there first and get your site out. 10,000 followers is more than most startups get.

<comment><AUTHOR> My site is just a forum for fans, but since my followers area all Harry Potter fans, they aren't as responsive b/c Pottermore has been so inactive and the whole Potter community is slow because of waiting for Pottermore. Once Chamber of Secrets is released on Pottermore, my followers will be crazy active my forum will get pretty active, but I feel I'd rather build something more interesting than a forum. Forums are fun to post on, but they are very difficult to monetize. It's also difficult tot compete with other fansites like Mugglenet because Potter fans would rather go there to share and discuss- they simply have more users, so bigger discussions, and they have already perfected the model for Harry Potter forum discussion.

I want to build a tool or relatively simple site to stay in the Potter fandom while making it something that Potter fans will all want to check out.</comment></comment>


Today our PayPal funds would have been unfrozen - <AUTHOR> http://blog.apparentsoft.com/business/221/today-our-paypal-funds-would-have-unfrozen/

<comment><USER2> I can vouch for FastSpring. They are not perfect, but we found them to be a very solid choice.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is off-topic, but Cashculator needs better press / Google-fu.

I was looking for a goal-based Mac personal finance app that let me track my progress with useful graphs, do forecasting, etc.

Searched for ages, didn't find anything, eventually went with an iPhone only app with almost no forecasting (PocketMoney) because of the convenience of data entry.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cashculator indeed needs better press but unfortunately many Mac sites are now instead iPhone/iPad sites almost exclusively. It's like Macs and Mac software are not cool to write about anymore.

<comment><USER4> No design awards this year either. I always look to those guys for design inspiration to bring back to the web app world.

At least Mac sites can (hopefully) transition to a more profitable area, along with Objective-C developers.</comment></comment></comment>


Lego Store Detains Boy, 11, for Being Too Young to Shop Alone - <AUTHOR> http://www.freerangekids.com/lego-store-detains-boy-11-for-being-too-young-to-shop-alone/

<comment><USER2> How times have changed. I was a "free range" kid in Manhattan at age 11. A $0.20 token got you almost anywhere in the NYC area. Another $0.20 token got you back home.</comment>


Iron.io Releases IronCache - <AUTHOR> http://blog.iron.io/2012/05/ironio-releases-ironcache.html

<comment><USER2> Does this compete with things like RedisTogo? (I understand it's just a key/value store and Redis provides a lot more, but many people use Redis for just that)

<comment><USER3> In some ways yes:

\- they are both hosted services \- they both are key/value stores

In other ways no:

\- IronCache has a REST API and supports memcached protocol \- IronCache only supports the basic functions of Redis, redistogo supports all of Redis because it actually is Redis. \- IronCache is elastic and scales with you, without any effort on your part. redistogo requires you to choose how much memory you want up front. \- Pricing is much different due to the point above too: IronCache charges by usage, redistogo charges based on the fixed amount of memory you choose.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: LXDE (Mint) or Xfce (XUbuntu) - <AUTHOR>

1. I have a relatively old laptop (Pentium Dual-Core, T4200); 2. Its memory is OK(-ish): 4GB; 3. I never cared about eye candy and fluff, I always wanted the snappiest response available with zero visual effects; 4. I've narrowed down my choices to Xfce4 or LXDE (Ubuntu, respectively Mint);<p>Has anyone gone from one to the other? Which one has provided you with a better experience overall (meaning here not only the Desktop layer, but also the patches and general stability of the respective distribution)? <comment><USER2> I've tried both and have settled on Xubuntu because it runs faster (particularly on my Netbook) and provides a solid non-Unity experience.

Mint is pretty nice too, but I generally recommend it to people who are new to Linux because it comes with more software out-the-box, looks a bit flashier, and seems to be a bit more familiar to people coming from Windows.

</comment><comment><USER3> I can't comment on XUbuntu, but I went from LXDE to Debian+Xfce and finally settled on Debian+OpenBox.

If you're really only interested in Xfce vs. LXDE, I'd go with Xfce -- but only because it should be less of a memory hog & I doubt you'll miss much from its heavier cousin. Honestly though, either would probably work fine.

Or hey, give OpenBox a crack. :)

(Be warned I'm a keyboard junkie, so my love of OpenBox might be tainted by that :) Between the customizable shortcuts + menu & some of my own stuff [<http://tomlee.co/code/ginvoke>] I rarely have a reason to reach for the mouse outside of the browser.)

<comment><USER4> I have to parrot this suggestion.

Xfce is nicer than LXDE, and OpenBox on it's own is better than both once you pick the apps you want to go with it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> XFCE4 on a netbook.. 2gb RAM, Atom...

Works awesome and really is my run around, using it alot. xfce is a great DE</comment>


Ask YC:  When (if ever) is it better to submit to reddit/digg on a low traffic day? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> You need to ride the train. Submit to news.yc on Sunday afternoon. Assuming your submission hits the top of news.yc, then submit to Reddit on Monday morning. You add a "reddit this" button to your post right before you submit to Reddit so that the people being referred from news.yc on Monday morning vote it up on Reddit. Then once it hits the top ten on Reddit, submit to Digg. You also put the "Digg this" button on your site at this time. Make sure you also have a Del.icio.us and a StumbleUpon button because you'll need the few extra diggs from these two places to hit the front page of Digg.

Now to hit the front page of news.yc, your post needs something to do with either entrepreneurship or Paul Graham. To make the front page of Reddit, your post needs something involving Ron Paul. And to make the front page of Digg, it needs to be a top ten list. So basically if you're serious about "riding the train", the ideal post should be a top ten list about Ron Paul Graham.

<comment><USER3> Do you specialize in SNS optimization?

<comment><USER2> I specialize in awesome.</comment></comment></comment>


Google Says Good-Bye to Black Navigation Bar, Introduces "Google Bar"  - <AUTHOR> http://www.launch.is/blog/google-says-good-bye-to-black-navigation-bar-introduces-goog.html

<comment><USER2> "It takes up precious screen space... so we've replaced it with a fatter bar that takes up even more space."</comment>


UC San Francisco Study Find Masks Do Protect Wearer from Contracting Coronavirus - <AUTHOR> https://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2020/07/14/covid-corona-face-masks-study/ <comment><USER2> Anyone able to find the paper/preprint?

<comment><AUTHOR> The article says "the report will be published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine in July" but the July edition[1] is already available but this study isn't included. I think we have to wait until the end of the month.

[1] [https://link.springer.com/journal/11606/35/7](https://link.springer.com/journal/11606/35/7)</comment></comment>


A third of parasite species could vanish - <AUTHOR> http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/parasites-are-going-extinct-heres-why-thats-a-bad-thing-180964808/?no-ist <comment><USER2> >a tapeworm species foreign to humans was found in a man's brain in China, leading to seizures and inflammation of the brain.

A few more of those things vanishing is fine by me. Maybe they could DNA sequence them first.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah. Additionally:

The article presents this as some weird thing due to it being a species not normal for humans. My college biology professor said that where they end up in the body has to do with how you get exposed. If you are exposed through the usual route, they end up in the usual places. If you get exposed some other way, she told us _it can be worse, they can end up in places like the brain._

I don't know how to google a citation backing that up (I tried). But I remember my professor specifically mentioning they can end up in the brain.

<comment><USER3> Tapeworms are a two stage parasite. The adult phase lives in the intestine of predators (like us). The larval phase stays dormant inside cysts embedded inside the meat of herbivores.

The adult tapeworm leeches nutrients from the intestine and lays tons of eggs, which go into the feces. These eggs then contaminate the environment and end up being eaten by herbivores. The eggs hatch inside their stomach and the larva embed themselves in the meat of the herbivore (and can even get in the brain). Finally, when the predator consumes uncooked meat contaminated with tapeworm larva, these larva further develop into adult tapeworms.

Each species of tapeworm is tuned to a specific species of herbivore. Cow tapeworm eggs often go right past us because they expect a tougher stomach than ours but pig tapeworm eggs can get confused because our stomach is similar to a pig's. Their larva can then embed into our meat, which is terrible for us but a dead end for the tapeworm (because we have no natural predators ourselves)

\-----

To protect against intestinal tapeworms only eat well cooked meat. (For raw meats like sushi, deep freezing is also an option if done right)

Preventing tapeworm cysts is more about sanitation. Have clean water for drinking and irrigation and ensure that fruits and veggies are well cleaned. Good personal hygiene helps, in case you are already infected with an adult tapeworm (and therefore at risk of autoinfection).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm not sure they're parasites but let's get rid of mosquitoes altogether.

As far as I am concerned, they make huge territories in the north virtually unlivable (you could still live there but you no longer want to). That's even before malaria comes into account.

This leads to a proposition to a Realm of Fungi. So you wanted to eat our crops, but I have an interesting replacement for ya...

<comment><USER5> You get used to them, or wear protection. Black flies are my least favorite. I think we may be too far north for malaria to be a real concern. I live just above the 45th, but I go north to play.

<comment><USER4> > You get used to them

No you don't! You get used to limiting your exposure to the nature, which is hardly desirable. Considering that people actually get to enjoy nature in less wet / more sunny regions.

Ditch black flies too, surely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _That kind of mass die-off could spell ecological disaster. "_

I think it more likely to signal said disaster, than be a cause. You can point to almost any massive loss of biodiversity and rightly say that it's a bad sign, and maybe bad in and of itself. That sort of ignores the problem, while diluting it.

</comment><comment><USER7> If anyone is in Tokyo and interested in all things parasite, I can recommend this museum: [http://www.kiseichu.org/e-top](http://www.kiseichu.org/e-top)

</comment><comment><USER8> Why does weakening of a population automatically mean keeping numbers in check?

<comment><USER9> Same as when you remove their predators. Fewer of them die, therefore offsetting the balance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm ok with that. Put blood sucking mosquitoes on the list as well. Oh, and ticks.

</comment><comment><USER11> Perhaps some PETA volunteers will allow themselves to be infected in order to save the parasites?

<comment><USER12> It would come to that, if such an ecological catastrophe wasn't affecting lots of other fuzzier animals for promotion. Some fringers will probably do it "to raise awareness".</comment></comment>


NASA has recovered the Kepler Space Telescope from 'emergency mode' - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/11/11408620/nasa-kepler-telescope-emergency-mode-stable <comment><USER2> I work on software for a few satellites (not Kepler) and they have gone into an emergency or safe mode a couple times over their long lifetime. None of those times ended up being because of a serious problem. While I am interested to hear back on what exactly tripped the emergency mode, I think the main sad news here is the loss of the finite supply of fuel on board, which will ultimately shorten Kepler's operational lifetime.

</comment><comment><USER3> Can someone explain why emergency mode is the most fuel-intensive despite being the lowest powered?

<comment><USER4> Stolen shamelessly from the Ars Technica comment that explained it to me: [http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/04/kepler-exits- emergenc...](http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/04/kepler-exits-emergency- mode-re-establishes-full-communication/?comments=1&post=30987657)

>Normally Kepler (in K2 mode) uses the pressure from sunlight combined with the two remaining reaction wheels to maintain orientation. It still does need periodic thruster usage but the heavy lifting is done by solar pressure and reaction wheels which makes the propellent usage very efficient. However it is a complicated and precarious balancing act. It needs full instrumentation, computer operation, and periodic updates from Earth to work.

>When it goes into emergency mode it falls back on 100% station keeping thrusters because that is simpler although far more expensive in terms of fuel. They don't know exactly why it went into emergency mode but for whatever reason Kepler believed it could not maintain orientation without it.

>In emergency mode it has to expand propellent because without some station keeping it would begin to tumble uncontrollably. If you have a spacecraft millions of kms away from Earth, tumbling out of control with its communication array no longer pointed at Earth you will probably never regain control. So it is a last ditch effort to maintain proper orientation on the hope that command & control update can fix the problem. It begins "looking" for an command & control signal from Earth (using propellent to orient the spacecraft). If/when it finds it, it then tries to keep that orientation using 100% station keeping thrusters regardless of fuel consumption. It will continue to do so until standard operation is restored or it runs out of fuel.

<comment><USER3> Perfect explanation, thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Kepler is definitely one of the most important space telescopes that we have (and will have for the foreseeable future). It has both long and short cadence data for many very interesting targets over 3 month periods. TESS will only give us data for one month on each arc of the sky it is scanning (although, it means we'll get a full picture of the sky) but it won't observe the K2 field (the ecliptic plane). It's such a shame to see it losing so much fuel and energy.

</comment><comment><USER6> Is there a more detailed/technical article available?

<comment><USER7> After a few links in the article pointing to other Verge articles, I found this:

[http://www.nasa.gov/feature/mission-manager-update-kepler- re...](http://www.nasa.gov/feature/mission-manager-update-kepler-recovered- from-emergency-and-stable)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> CTRL-ALT-DELETE?</comment>


Uber meltdown shows its time for Silicon Valley to stop worshipping founders - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/14/uber-meltdown-silicon-valley-founder-worship-must-end.html <comment><USER2> "Silicon Valley worships founders. The conventional wisdom is that companies lose their spirit and competitive edge when they sideline founders and bring in adult supervision."

I don't think this is fair. Silicon Valley worships founders who build insanely useful, helpful, or amazing products. No one is standing up for, now or in the past when Uber has been caught doing sketchy things.</comment>


O'Reilly's "The Ruby Language" for $9.99 (limited time) - <AUTHOR> http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596516178/ I'm not a shill. I promise.
Also has illustrations from _why, so could mean it's got some collectible status?
HatTip: RubyInside via LinkedIn <comment><USER2> I happened upon that PDF yesterday on scribd via google. I was pondering between purchasing the $25 PDF edition of Programming Ruby 1.9 (<http://www.pragprog.com/titles/ruby3/programming-ruby-1-9>) and this one. I was surprised to see this price, which had apparently been adjusted a few hours prior. I purchased it because it was written by the author of Ruby, was twice as affordable, and because the preview on scribd contained a lot more pages for me to help base my decision on. It also covers Ruby 1.8, as well.

The quality of the PDF is immaculate. Only the cover pages are scanned in: the rest of it is glorious vector text and graphics, allowing one to zoom in and out as much as they could want, similar to what I like to do when reading web sites. It's also searchable, which regular books are not.

The fact that it's a digital work forces one to scan the book, skipping past parts one recognizes, putting in practice those they don't.

Finally, a digital edition enables one to easily copy-paste those parts of code he or she doesn't feel like typing out themselves.

</comment><comment><USER3> I can never bring myself to buy ebooks it just isn't worth it to read on a screen I hate it. This is tempting but it still seems like a waste.

Print is always better than digital in my opinion though I haven't tried a kindle yet.

<comment><USER4> It's 11 dollars used on amazon, I'm going to opt for that one instead. I am fully with you on ebooks, reading books on screen isn't pleasurable for me at all.

edit: amazon has it for 8 dollars for the kindle( which can be read on am iphone if you're so inclined)

<comment><USER5> I bought the hard copy on amazon a few weeks ago. Best ruby books I've seen. It ranks high compared to 'best of' books for other langs as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is the best Ruby book out there, in my opinion. Especially for experienced developers, it explains all the language features in simple and straightforward terms.

Ebook is the only way to go for this. I have this book one click away at all times (via launchbar on osx), for quick reference.

</comment><comment><USER7> If you enter the promo code "LREL40", you get further discount to $5.99. Confirmed, I've just bought with that code and it's indeed $5.99.

<comment><USER8> Worked for me too. $6 for a bad ass book. Thanks for posting

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can anyone comment on whether this book would be a better purchase compared to Cooper's Beginning Ruby: From Novice to Professional. [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1430223634/ref=pd_luc_sbs_0...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1430223634/ref=pd_luc_sbs_02_02)

<comment><USER9> This book is really good. I had read the Pickaxe before I picked this one up, so I'm not sure whether it's a good introductory book for Ruby. I haven't read Beginning Ruby either, so I can't compare. Nonetheless, if you're going to be working with Ruby I definitely recommend getting this book at some point. Why not now when it's cheap?

<comment><USER4> True, I was drawn to beginning ruby because it covered web application development and frameworks( both to an extent)

<comment><AUTHOR> While I understand your comment, as someone who's fortunate enough to be paid to program in Ruby, I find it a little sad that Ruby is considered mostly in Rails terms.

While I was unemployed, one of the recruiters I was with mentioned that they referred to me as the "Ruby on Rails" guy. Which kinda sucked because they were only looking at jobs for me with "web" application.

I turned around and wrote a FXRuby wrapper for ai4r that can be run on the desktop sort of as a reaction to show that Ruby can run on the desktop too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I find "The Well-Grounded Rubyist" by David Black to be an excellent intro to Ruby. My only comparison is with the Pickaxe, to which it is superior (clearer, scales to different experience levels, not overloaded as a reference).

</comment><comment><USER11> For that price you can usually just buy the real book brand new from the new & used section of amazon.com. I've been saving some good money with that. If you just be careful with the feedback ratings and not really trust the lowest price you will probably get a real new book as advertised and save some good money.

</comment><comment><USER12> Aww, I was so hoping this was a print edition. That would be a steal. Here's to badly written link titles!

</comment><comment><USER13> It's a PDF, right?

It's an experiment, there are more e-books available for that price, including several Perl books: <http://use.perl.org/~brian_d_foy/journal/39524>

</comment><comment><USER14> Hm. When I cliked on the Ebook "Add to Cart", Opera complained that the encryption key length was too short, and thus that the site was insufficiently secure.

<comment><USER15> Opera is correct. <https://epoch.oreilly.com> is using a 512-bit RSA key.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> HatTip: RubyInside via LinkedIn.</comment>


The Land of the Free and "The Elements of Style" (2010) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/LandOfTheFree.pdf <comment><USER2> Previous discussions of Pullum's critique of Strunk and White:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=557618](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=557618)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=566335](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=566335)

<comment><USER3> the second link is the bestester of the too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looks like a bunch of good points held together by diatribe. S&W is a good book. The list of errata would be more helpful without the ranting.

Example: Prescriptive grammar didn't rely so much on evidence. That's a truism that (a) doesn't tell us much about E.B. White's personal character flaws ("arrogance"), and (b) leaves us awfully starry-eyed and idealistic about the downsides of descriptive grammar. Who knows what they'll say about us in fifty years?

</comment><comment><USER5> Pullum, the author, is a regular contributor to Language Log, which is highly recommended.

[http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/](http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Finally, it is fixed [https://hg.python.org/peps/rev/b93d501ba313](https://hg.python.org/peps/rev/b93d501ba313)

<comment><USER5> Wasn't broken to begin with.

<comment><USER6> Depends on whether you think one should follow Mr Strunk and Mr White (plural) or their book (singular). It always irked me that PEP8 insisted that you become a stalker.</comment></comment></comment>


A West Baltimore nursing home has zero Covid-19 infections - <AUTHOR> https://www.baltimoresun.com/opinion/columnists/dan-rodricks/bs-md-rodricks-0619-20200618-re2obahhbzbddojazrkf65gdoq-story.html <comment><USER2> As if pay walls weren't annoying enough.

> Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European > countries. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options > that support our full range of digital offerings to the EU market. We > continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all > readers with our award-winning journalism.

PS: Why is that special? No infections, thankfully, so far in my mother's home either.

<comment><AUTHOR> From the article:

What was the moment you realized the threat was real and that you had to take action to protect your residents and staff? "Right after President Trump said we had 15 cases and it would soon be down to zero."

I dare not put words in a Baptist minister's mouth, but it sounds like he listened to what the President of the United States had to say, then decided just the opposite would be true. "It does sound like that," Reverend DeWitt agreed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm sure part of this is the precautions they're taking, but part is also survivorship bias. I wish reporters would acknowledge that and maybe even discuss it a bit.

<comment><USER4> Kind of feels like focusing on the well-proven science behind limiting spread of infection is more useful than acknowledging that sometimes you can do nothing and get lucky.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Possible front operation for the Avon Barksdale Organization?

<comment><USER6> Did you read the article? It sounds like a good man doing his job exceptionally well.

And yes I get the reference.</comment></comment>


Watch Twitter users say who they voted for in real time - <AUTHOR> http://twithinks.mit.edu/ivoted

<comment><USER2> The categorization is somewhat...suspect. This is from the latest tweets "for Romney".

\- _hate Americans who are like 'I always vote republican so of course I voted for romney'_

\- _I'm not afraid to say who I voted for. I voted for Obama cause lets face it, Romney's just a dickhead._

\- _Sweet satire. "Why I voted for Mitt Romney"[http://www.salon.com/2012/11/06/why_i_voted_for_mitt_romney/...](http://www.salon.com/2012/11/06/why_i_voted_for_mitt_romney/..). _

That said, from polls we know that the overall vote is going to be very close to 50/50, so the lopsided totals are a sign of skew in Twitter users, not the country.

<comment><USER3> I saw one that said, "I would have voted for Obama if he had accepted my Farmville request", and it ticked up for Obama.

<comment><USER4> I just saw one talking about the website itself. Both sides ticked up one.

So yeah, it's not exactly accurate, but hey - it's fun to watch.

<comment><USER5> I agree but dont you thing that there is value to be extracted from the two phrases "voted for Obama" and "voted for Romney"?

<comment><USER6> No, because those phrases do not appear to be linked to who voted or how they voted in any statistical meaning way. All you can derive from this is that on election day people are talking about the election in high volume. Hardly a revolutionary insight.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> What we used for counting is slightly different from what you see in the Twitter widgets (yeah, those tweets are from Twitter directly). In our backend, we have a pretty conservative filter that matches a bag of phrases, such as "voted for barrack obama", "voted for pres obama", etc. The accuracy is over 95%. Of course, political tweets are full of sarcasm and humor, and Twitter is full of demographic bias. This is just a fun project for us.

<comment><USER7> How many of the votes are from the 25,000+ people that retweeted Michelle Obama saying 'voted for President Obama'?

<https://twitter.com/MichelleObama/status/265906946530496513>

You'd probably clean up a whole lot by ignoring tweets containing "RT". That seems to be much of the stream.

<comment><AUTHOR> We don't remove RT tweets, but instead, we only count each user once. If a user retweeted Michelle, s/he probably will vote for Obama. But if a user have a few tweets in favor of Obama, it's counted once only.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> To me the most interesting thing is that it slightly resembles my gold standard for polls: [http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/2012_...](http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/2012_elections_electoral_college_map.html)

That site, btw, seems to be out of the damned future with their predictions.

</comment><comment><USER9> I saw one saying "I voted Romney because he is white."

My faith in humanity just lost a few more points here.

Watching these is kinda depressing, how is a vote supposed to mean something when so many meaningless people are using it?

</comment><comment><USER10> Of course this is very much subject to selection bias.

</comment><comment><USER11> My favorite one so far under the people who "voted for Obama" is:

I couldn't sleep at night had I voted for Obama or Romney. #IVotedGaryJohnson

</comment><comment><USER12> I wonder if this is skewed at all based on whether more twitter users are Dem. or Repub already.

<comment><USER13> I would say that given Obama is leading in Utah according to this we can safely assume there is some skewing going on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Very interesting. Of course, the map is biased to those who use the internet (which is why it shows Obama winning every state), but I wonder if this could still be used for predictions by normalizing each state to a known percentage for the "safe" states.

<comment><USER15> Fortunately, we'll have the data to compare against actual state or county results, since most of these folks leave their location settings enabled, too.

While it won't predict this location, correlational data could be applied for future elections assuming the primary political leanings of the electorate don't change too much in 4 years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> looks like Romney voters don't use twitter ...

</comment><comment><USER17> Twitter users vote blue 2 to 1. Not surprising, incorrect classification aside.

</comment><comment><USER18> Here's one from Bluefin Labs: [http://thecrowdwire.org/post/35128521367/our- live-social-med...](http://thecrowdwire.org/post/35128521367/our-live-social- media-exit-poll)

</comment><comment><USER19> There seems to be some mistakes in identifying who voted for what...

"I'm not afraid to say who I voted for. I voted for Obama cause lets face it, Romney's just a dickhead"

</comment><comment><USER20> Ha!In the 'I voted for Romney' section:

"Jack kelly @tweeterjak I'm not afraid to say who I voted for. I voted for Obama cause lets face it, Romney's just a dickhead."

<comment><USER15> Looks like they parse for "voted" and the last name mentioned in the tweet. Similar ones show up on both sides.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Seeing tons of these at the moment:

        RT @MichelleObama: RT if youve already voted for President Obama today! #VoteObama

<comment><USER22> Those seem valid though, no? The intent of the RT is to say "I voted for Obama"

<comment><USER23> Well they would be mostly actual votes, but it causes Obama voters on Twitter to be more likely to mention having voted than Romney voters. You'd probably get more accurate results if you eliminated all these.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Do tweets like this scare the s--t out of anyone else?

 _I voted for Obama but if Romney win the election, i would still be happy, because God says He will elect the best..._

<comment><USER25> No. For all you or I know this person is a better, happier, more intelligent person than you or I.

They did their civic duty and will accept the democratic will of the people regardless of the outcome.

<comment><USER24> I personally find it scary when people think that "Gods will" has anything to do with electing the leader of the most powerful country in the world for the next four years.

It starts to sound a lot like fundamentalism, and makes me wonder how different this is than parts of the world in constant violence due to "gods will".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Looks like Obama's going to take every state.</comment>


Knockoff $6.00 version of the Nifty MiniDrive? - <AUTHOR> http://www.theminidrive.com Looks like someone just launched a cheap copy of the nifty minidrive... It was only a matter of time I guess. <comment><AUTHOR> Ethical?</comment>


Facebook forces Timeline onto users by August 8 - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/9446704/Facebook-forces-Timeline-onto-users-by-August-8.html

<comment><AUTHOR> In my account, I am seeing a message that timeline will be auto enabled on Aug 16. Has timeline resulted in an increased user interaction/revenue for Facebook? or it is being pushed because it's challenging to continue supporting 2 types of layouts?</comment>