U.S. Government Compels Google To Hand Over Wikileaks Volunteer's Gmail Data - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_hands_wikileaks_volunteers_gmail_data_to_us.php <comment><USER2> I know Jake. I had the proud privilege of employing Jake. This is a fishing expedition, and an absolute abuse of the EPIC and PATRIOT acts.

The NYT filed a lawsuit yesterday to try to start getting some transparency into these matters -- even Congress is urging people to find out the truth: [http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111010/04043716279/nytime...](http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111010/04043716279/nytimes- sues-federal-government-refusing-to-reveal-its-secret-interpretation-patriot- act.shtml)

People can dislike Wikileaks all they want, but this is exactly why they exist. The raw information is not being released and they see fit to do so. When the USG has a law on the books that congress passed but the DoJ won't share their interpretation of what the law means, you know something is very very wrong. (see: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trial> )

</comment><comment><USER3> The headline is a little disingenuous (technically correct, yes...) - especially if thats all anyone ever reads. Google didn't hand this over on a whim, rather:

      The contacts list and IP address data of Jacob
      Appelbaum, a WikiLeaks volunteer and developer
      for Tor was given to the U.S. government after
      they requested it using a secret court order
      enabled by a controversial 1986 law called the
      Electronic Communications Privacy Act, according
      to the Wall Street Journal. The law allows the
      government to demand information from ISPs not
      only without a warrant, but without ever
      notifying the user.

The problem/fault/remedy lies with the US gov, not so much the compelled company in this case.

<comment><USER4> You wanted them to put that in the headline?

<comment><USER5> It would have been easy to write a less disingenuous headline. For example, "U.S. Compelled Google To Hand Over Wikileaks Volunteer's Gmail Data."

<comment><USER6> That's what the headline reads now - what was it before?

<comment><USER7> Title on the article:

> Google Hands Wikileaks Volunteer's Gmail Data to U.S. Government

Implies that Google did so out of free will rather then being legally compelled to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Applebaum, a tor developer, is i am sure astute enough not to leave unencrypted mails on gmail. he is used to governmental abuse at airpoets etc., so i am sure he saw this coming.

<comment><USER9> He can't prevent people from sending him unencrypted emails on Gmail, except by not using Gmail, nor can he force Google to delete them.

<comment><USER8> If he's receiving random emails they are probably not important or sensitive enough to be valuable to the government. If he's receiving non-random emails that contain sensitive data, it should all be encrypted.

If you do get something important that is not encrypted, you can forward the mail to yourself as ciphertext.

You're correct that Appelbaum has no control over Google's retention procedures.

<comment><USER9> The government did not request the contents of the mails in any case, but the header information: who Jake was communicating with, and when.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It fairness to Google, they fought this, and they are part of Digital Due Process, a group that is trying to get this law changed.

<http://www.digitaldueprocess.org/>

</comment><comment><USER11> From comments here, it looks like there aren't good options for secure email outside of the jurisdiction of the US government.

I've been interested in setting this up for myself. If you're interested, let me know on this form, and I'll begin looking into the issues of where to host, and what legal structures I'd need to set up.

[https://ianap.wufoo.com/forms/do-you-want-secure-private- ema...](https://ianap.wufoo.com/forms/do-you-want-secure-private-email/)

<comment><USER8> If the US decides it wants access to your accounts, I don't think putting a server in another country will be enough to stop them.

The real answer to this and all other serious privacy issues is to use strong cryptography properly. There's no two ways about it. Anything that isn't encrypted before it sees a NIC should essentially be considered a public broadcast.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Dear Google,

There must be ways to protect user privacy that are better than collecting everything in a form that can just be handed over. Example: encrypt on the client side, with user-supplied, large, non-compromised keys, and don't ever inspect the data on the server. If you need to inspect data in order to serve relevant ads, do it on the client, and only send back enough information to tailor whatever ads are currently available. Maybe do the ad selection on the client too. If this doesn't work for one of your services, consider it for other services where it would work. Laws prevent you from providing service X without providing such-and-such a hook? Then don't provide service X. Provide a plugin framework instead, and let users bring their own service. Use your heads. Maybe use a bit of the compute power the client has available. You spun down a lot of your China presence because of stuff like this, supposedly. You should be able to take big steps anywhere, not just in China. You are smart. Figure. It. Out.

</comment><comment><USER13> Would someone please remind me when Wikileaks was convicted or even accused of a crime?

That's right: Neither ever happened.

What is going on in this country? Is the desire to operate in the dark, to work behind the backs of the very people that this government represents so strong, that any organization shining light on this must be squashed?

</comment><comment><USER14> Now the question is: What major options do privacy advocates have apart from hosting their own mailservers?

<comment><USER15> Even if you host it yourself but at a regular hosting provider "they" might just confiscate your servers. Increasing email encryption usability might be the road out of this dilemma. Otherwise email encryption is going to stay within a very small circle of users.

<comment><USER14> When I said "Host your own" I meant on a physically secure box using full disk encryption.

But I do like the idea of encryption, GPG does this really well already but key distribution is still a problem.

Just an idea for a secure physical box: Throw in a external "always on" GPS receiver on the box and have it physically destroy the hard drive if it is outside of a certain area or if it detects a certain amount of movement (think someone removing it from a rack without disabling the service first). If your server was moved/confiscated it would ensure some safety. Just a tinfoil thought.

<comment><USER16> When you say "physically destroy" do not use any form or anything that could be spun as a incinderary, explosive, or projectile device. The laws on those type of things will put you in prison for a long time.

<comment><USER14> How would one go about safely destroying multiple hard-disks anyway. Closest thing I can think of is a small compactor with the disks inside of it.

<comment><USER17> You're much better off just using full-disk encryption; throwing away the key effectively destroys all the data. You do need to make sure you actually erase all traces of the key ([https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Cold_boot_att...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Cold_boot_attack)), but you need not worry about physically destroying the disks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Maybe Americans should use European hosts and Europeans can use American ones. Does anyone know of any good international webmail providers, with SSL?

<comment><USER8> My understanding is that using a non-domestic service would actually make it much easier to retain data under traditional espionage procedures. Perhaps this is incorrect. Clarifications welcome.

<comment><USER18> it doesn't make any difference. you us citizens are being tapped just the same as all us evil foreign terrorists these days. <https://www.eff.org/issues/nsa- spying>

<comment><USER8> I'm aware of the illegal NSA spying, but surely they're still somewhat more cautious about deploying domestic surveillance. Going overseas makes it all legal and OK, here they at least theoretically are not supposed to be doing things, and that's better than nothing, right?

<comment><USER18> so you're arguing that despite doing massive domestic surveillance, solidly supported by the government, they're not going to use the data because of their good moral standing.

or are you being sarcastic?

<comment><USER8> I suggest that there are legal implications that make it more difficult to use that information on cases that are not "high value".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Interestingly www.torproject.org is currently down... I don't know if this is related.

<comment><USER19> As is <http://www.appelbaum.net/> (his website)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> A good (but already known) reason to leave gmail.

<comment><USER21> How is it a gmail only problem? The government got a court order to force them, Google didn't hand it over willingly. It's the government who is at fault here and the shitty laws that enable it.

<comment><USER22> The article states that the government had a court order but didn't have a search warrant. It seems there is a loop in the system with the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. My questions is, did Google 'have' to give over his Gmail account information? Or do they just comply to make their lives easier?

<comment><USER23> In today's society 'having to' and making your life easier is just about the same thing. Don't want to comply citizen? We do have those antitrust hearings scheduled in a few weeks, would be a shame if we found out you were running a monopoly and had to break up your company.

When US citizens are assassinated by presidential order rather than being brought to trial it's probably time to 'make your life easier' rather than wait around for the ICC.

<comment><USER24> Interesting point. It's not unlikely that played a role in their decision not to fight it (too much).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> tor developer didnt use tor ? odd.

<comment><USER26> Using tor wouldn't have helped anonymize his contact list.</comment></comment>


Touchless PPE Vending Machines - <AUTHOR> http://WWW.BEHEALTHYSERVICES.COM <comment><AUTHOR> Be Healthy Services is an award-winning technology company. Our full-service programs help the seasoned vendor-operator or the first time owner who is just getting started in the vending business looking to expand a growing business. We've leveraged our technology to offer an innovative solution for automated retail in a world paralyzed by COVID19. Call us today to find out how we can aid you to achieve your vending business goals.

As Co-Founder and CEO I am also a frontline essential healthcare, COVID-19 Survivor and single Mom. The need for this is very personal with me and I would love to share my perspective of this subject matter.</comment>


Ask HN: Just received Google verification code on phone but I didn't ask for it - <AUTHOR>

Hi all Just wondering if you have received this before. I just got a text message on my phone from a number 657-201-6208 saying "your google verification code is xxxxx". I am concerned if someone is trying to access my google/gmail ? trying to check with wife if she is the culprit but in the meanwhile, i just wanted to hear your views. <comment><USER2> If you have this phone number set up with Google, and if you have 2-factor auth set up, they will do this every time you login from a previous unauthorized machine. Wherever they're trying to log in, there will be a gate where they have to enter teh 6-digit PIN sent to your phone.

If you don't have 2-factor auth set up, I think they will still sometimes do it with new machines or login attempts that may look suspicious (e.g. brute force password attempts).

Thus, if google does have this number for you, it's very likely that someone is trying to log into your account (it sounds like, possibly your wife). The bad news is, they got your password entered correctly (or it was cached somewhere). The good news is, it's very UN-likely that that person will be able to get the PIN and proceed beyond the gate.

If google doesn't have this number for you, it's possible someone else provided it to them, accidentally or otherwise.

If you don't have 2-factor auth set up, go here and do it. <https://www.google.com/settings/u/1/security?hl=en>

<comment><AUTHOR> thx. i m resetting pwd anyway to be safe and will get on to 2 factor authentication now. I was just lazy before.

<comment><USER2> good idea. it's kind of a pain in the ass (esp if you turn off or frequently clear cookies like I do), but it seems ways more secure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Well, someone definitely knows your number and did this to have fun.Unless someone has a masterplan to steal your phone also hehe.Or perhaps it is just spam...

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I guess it is spam. Just found this:

<http://www.reversenumberdatabase.com/657-201-6xxx>

<comment><USER2> probably not actually SPAM - see my comment above.</comment></comment>


Do you carry a phone and a tablet with you? - <AUTHOR>

How many of you must carry both with you everywhere?
What is the optimal screen size of tablet for you all? 7"? 10"? Do you wish to have a phone with a bigger screen size? <comment><USER2> Since I don't make a lot of calls, I have a cheap, non-smart, pre-paid cellphone, primarily for emergencies, and so that my wife can get in touch with me when I'm out. I have an inexpensive 7" Android tablet that I use primarily as an ebook. I have a netbook that I use when travelling, and a PC with a pair of big displays as my primary work machine at home. In my opinion, a 10" tablet is too large to conveniently carry everywhere, and a phone's display is too small for reading on (for me at least.)

</comment><comment><USER3> Optimal screen size of tablet? N/A - I have no use for one. Between a smartphone, a netbook, and a largish laptop, I don't need another gadget. (Recently, I've seen those "keyboard stands" for the iPad, and guess what: the contraption looks _just like_ a netbook, while costing 5 times more; what's not to like?)

</comment><comment><USER4> My wife has a Samsung Galaxy Note (5.2") as her primary phone, a G-Slate (7") and an Asus Transformer (10") with keyboard dock. The Galaxy note is the winner for her, as it is the only one she carries nowadays. It used to be both an HTC Amaze (4.2") and a 7" tablet.

</comment><comment><USER5> I just carry an iphone, and I got all that I need there.</comment>


Direct to PCB InkJet Resist Printing (2006) - <AUTHOR> http://techref.massmind.org/techref/pcb/etch/directinkjetresist.htm <comment><USER2> I'm surprised I've never heard of this before. Toner transfer was always kind of a pain. Now I just prefer milling because it avoids all the nasty acid and lets you accurately drill holes and cut the PCB to size/shape at the same time. Small CNC machines are pretty cheap these days, the one I use cost $130.

PCB houses are amazingly cheap and fast compared to just a few years ago but if you don't need multiple layers nothing beats having it done in a few minutes for ~$0.10 per square inch for prototyping.

<comment><USER3> Out of curiosity, what cnc machine are you using?

<comment><USER2> I have the Linksprite engraving machine[1], there are a bunch of companies selling the same design if you search for "CNC 1610" on any of the major e-tailer sites. It's called 1610 because the build area is 16x10cm, there are larger versions called 2418 and 3018.

At the price point it's obviously the bargain basement model of the CNC world and the quality is not great. But it works fine for PCBs as long as you don't need super narrow traces, the backlash is surprisingly not terrible thanks to the preloaded nuts.

[1] [http://store.linksprite.com/diy-cnc-3-axis-engraver- machine-...](http://store.linksprite.com/diy-cnc-3-axis-engraver-machine-pcb- milling-wood-carving-router-kit-arduino-grbl-assembled-version/)

<comment><USER4> how do you use a CNC to mill traces?

<comment><USER2> I use FlatCAM to generate gcode from the PCB gerber files. Then just load up a copper clad board on the machine and let it cut away the copper until only your traces are left.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Genuine question: with all the great quality, super fast, and incredibly cheap PCB fab options available now - what motivates making PCBs at home?

I totally get that it's a fun process (and back in the day made plenty of boards with toner transfer + sharpie cleanup + ferric chloride), but if there's an interest in better quality product, the commercial solutions are going to be lightyears better and designs meant for them are far easier for others to replicate.

<comment><USER6> I know of no super-fast cheap fabrication option. Turn-around for any of the low-cost/two layer fabs is >2 weeks.

That's significant if it's a hobby and you want to do a project in a weekend, or iterate over a design quickly.

<comment><USER7> I've never used JLCPCB for anything too intense, but turnaround has always been 5 days on the high end in my experience. Is it different if you require more layers or more sophistication?

<comment><USER8> JLCPCB always requires atleast two weeks for shipping in my experience. And I'd rather test out 2-3 designs on a single day if possible, especially iterative designs. That isn't possible without DIY PCB etching.

<comment><USER9> I typically get orders from JLCPCB in 6 or 7 _calendar_ days from the time of submission, using DHL for shipping to the east coast of the US.

<comment><USER8> yeah, but i'm not on the east coast of the US but in Europe.

Either way, even a 2 day turnaround would be too much for iterative prototyping or even testing out some ideas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I used a method somewhat similar to this as an undergraduate researcher to cheaply develop patterns on copper-clad kapton for flexible circuits.

I used a solid ink printer, which I found by crawling the university network for printers and querying them for their model number until I found one. Then a very nice sysadmin let me use it on a thick sheet of copper clad kapton and it luckily did not jam! One of my few research success stories.

</comment><comment><USER11> I used to make my own PCBs at home, and I still really enjoy the technologies that allow making high quality boards from home. I've found for my personal stuff that going through a low-cost fab house is just so economical, and the quality is so good that I usually can't be bothered to do it myself anymore. Still great if you want the learning experience, or if you really need it _now_.

</comment><comment><USER12> This site is ancient (the printer used is from mid 2000s,) which makes this all the more impressive. PCBs with 1 mil traces are still quite expensive to prototype. OTOH, if you need such thin traces, you also probably need multi- layer PCBs.

<comment><USER13> Not always. Sometimes you just need a breakout board for a really fine-pitch IC or connector.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Volkan Sahin, as far as I can tell, is one of the few people to truly master printing from a high end inkjet cartridge as a hobbyist. Really really impressive work.</comment>


Show HN: Meson, a C build system - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mesonbuild/meson <comment><USER2> So... what does it do better than CMake and autotools?

Looks like the answers can be found here, which would be a more pertinent link. Can we change the original github link to this?

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

At a glance, I don't see how it solves the problem that autotools solves: test for features, not for versions. Not sure if that's a problem people are trying to solve anymore. Instead, everyone is required to have the latest version of everything at all times to build, I suppose, and building older versions is never supported.

</comment><comment><USER3> Once in my careerer I was already tasked with stripping a C project from a Python based building system (SCons, IIRC) because it was damn slow, buggy, and problems with Python and SCons were more severe than with a C codebase itself. I replaced it with kbuild, and it still works nicely in production even today.

I'm hesitant getting anything Python-related next to my C codebase, and IMO, C-people are generally not very enthusiastic about Python. Once the time comes, that something custom needs to be done in the building system, dealing with Python syntax, completely new abstractions, etc. is just more pain than using established solutions that everyone are familiar with (make, autotools, CMake).

Maybe Python 3 ecosystem (things like packaging etc.) does not suck as much as Python 2 (though I'd bet it still does), and maybe Meson is really great, but on top of my Python-implementation reservations, I also don't see much of a point: the billions of C legacy code will not be ported to a new building system, a there should be not that much new projects in raw C anyway, with languages like Go, Rust, D showing clear road ahead, baking their own solutions for common building system issues. Projects like "tup" have much more appeal to my C-developer nature, but then again, I didn't have opportunity to employ tup anywhere, as nowadays I write every new project in Rust.

Than again, it's just my personal opinion, and I guess somewhere, some people could find it really fitting their needs.

<comment><AUTHOR> The tool might built in Python, but it doesn't really expose the python api to the user, which (among other things) makes for super clean build files.

It's also very fast since it uses Ninja for the actual build phase.

<comment><USER3> Ah, Ok. Thanks for clarification.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, no problem. Here's a great video that gives an overview of the tool: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPi0AuVpxLI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPi0AuVpxLI).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Am I the only one who thinks make is fine for 80% of the things that these new build systems popping out every day are trying to solve?

<comment><USER5> By the time you are reaching for recursive make, if you can't just get rid of the complexity with a rethink, it's probably better to use something different.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I personally prefer auto tools because learning it has value. Learning auto tools has value because a lot of C projects use auto tools, so contributing to C projects is easier if you know the de facto standard build system for GNU/Linux based C projects.

</comment><comment><USER7> I watched the Linux.conf.au 2015 video to get a more detailed overview of meson. I think the most interesting feature is that it at least partially tries to address the problem of building library dependencies, although I don't get the impression that was an emphasis.

In particular, the tup build system didn't get mentioned at all, which I find surprising, since IMHO it has broken new ground in build speed, correctness, and ergonomics. I think it hasn't gone viral because it doesn't try to solve most of the language specific problems people are starting to expect build systems to solve. It also doesn't have a very good story for the build specification language, IMHO.

I think a bigger issue in build systems is that the open source ecosystem does NOT have a tree structure; you have a big rats nest of dependencies on specific versions because everything is constantly changing. I think we need something like nix, but that is fully distributed, and perhaps piggybacking on git databases (and ssh trust networks) to distribute binary dependencies along with the source.

</comment><comment><USER8> From my perspective, CMake has pretty much become the standard build system for C/C++ projects that need to be compiled on more than one platform. That was not the case a few years ago, but I'm seeing it more and more often. Maybe people realized that while it's not perfect and has some weird behaviors, it's the most practical tool to do the job right now.

</comment><comment><USER9> A build system for C. The build system isn't the problematic part, it's the C part. I'm sure we can figure out how to compile code faster than it is currently, but without a comprehensive module and ABI versioning standard we won't make building large systems easier.</comment>


Why My Mom Gets Path Over Founders and VC's - <AUTHOR> http://blog.ryanshea.org/post/19000605105/why-my-mom-gets-path-over-founders-and-vcs

<comment><USER2> Yeah, my parents bought an iPad just to talk to me over Skype (I still need to take out time and get on Skype for that though). I do think parents will do anything to better stay in touch with their kids. If Path or any other service can solve that problem for them, it can be a winner in the long run.

</comment><comment><USER3> Well put, Ryan! Path is about intimacy & great for family. p/s: my dad actually also uses Twitter just to see what I'm up to :)</comment>


After Cyclist Deaths, NYC Adjusts Traffic Lights to Aid Cyclists and Scooters - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/23/nyregion/nyc-bike-commute-green-lights.html <comment><USER2> This is so overdue. NYC (along with S.F.) are so ridiculously dangerous for bikers.</comment>


How Eventual is Eventual Consistency?  - <AUTHOR> http://basho.com/blog/technical/2012/03/02/Eventual-Consistency-and-PBS/

<comment><USER2> Shameless plug:

Interactive Demo: <http://bailis.org/projects/pbs/#demo>

PBS for Cassandra: <https://github.com/pbailis/cassandra-pbs>

<comment><USER3> And an explanation of the PBS paper as applied to Cassandra: [http://www.datastax.com/dev/blog/your-ideal-performance- cons...](http://www.datastax.com/dev/blog/your-ideal-performance-consistency- tradeoff)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Good talk, but disappointing that he doesn't mention the issue of node failures: With W=1 and a single node failure at the wrong time, you don't have eventual consistency any more... you have data loss.

<comment><USER2> This depends. Even with W=R=1, you still send each read/write to every replica. If the replica that acknowledged the write fails, the other two replicas should eventually receive the write.

But--what happens if the write messages to the other two replicas drop? Well, typically the coordinator will hand the write off to replacement replicas (hinted handoff/sloppy quorums). Alternatively, when you detect the message loss via a timeout you could retry. But what happens if the coordinator dies and can't retry? Then you'd better replicate your coordinator. That gets hairy, so hinted handoff and sloppy quorums are easier. However, whichever way you go, it's definitely possible to handle an arbitrary (still fixed) number of node failures without data loss.

In general, though, sloppy quorums/hinted handoff solve this problem. I haven't heard any data loss complaints with Riak/Cassandra/Voldemort due to replication, but I'm very interested to hear if you have.

You can definitely extend PBS to node failure cases/sloppy quorums/hinted handoff. The main reason we didn't was because we don't have good failure data. There's nothing stopping you, and, as we point out in the paper/backup slides, you can potentially hide this in the tail (e.g. the .01% of stale cases) provided your DB "does the right thing".

<comment><USER4> Indeed, if your coordinator isn't a replica you obviously need it to fail as well in order to get data loss -- I was thinking of the symmetric case where every replica is a coordinator and W=1 reduces to "store locally, broadcast, and send an ACK".

And yes, of course there are hairy ways to solve the problem; I just would have liked to see it mentioned so that people realize that it exists.

<comment><USER2> You make a good point. Without additional safeguards/depending on implementation, W=1 can indeed mean "durability of one".

This also depends on your failure model. If your node crashed (RAM cleared) and your durable storage broke, you're in trouble. If the data was durably persisted and you just have to restart the node, it's a better situation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great presentation Mark! This is what I LOVE about Basho - use science and metrics to show how their Riak compares to other NoSQL stores rather than marketing.

TL;DR version: In all databases, you have to choose which 2 parts of CAP you want: Consistency, Availability, Partition tolerance. If you choose Availability- just HOW Consistent is my data? If I want my data to be more consistent, then how does this affect my availability? This gives an actual formula to calculate the best design that meets your applications goals.

</comment><comment><USER6> I can't see the talk at the moment but here is my 5 cents on the subject:

The main problem of eventual consistency is not how often that happens, it is: What damage will it do WHEN it happens?

Imagine you're a bank, you handle big clients you lose track of a write of 50+ million dollars. Where did the money go ? How to differentiate that from a fraud attempt ?

If you have customers how will you tell them that you just lose, probabilistically speaking "one in 10 million packages ?"

But that's a very interesting question that also has philosophical repercussions: How come that we are in a society that did not build system that accept a certain degree of failure?

<comment><USER2> Eventual consistency isn't about "losing writes". It's about how long it will take for all of your replicas to agree on/observe the last written versions and, in the meantime, you'll read potentially stale data.

Certain data structures inherently tolerate staleness or message reordering: look at your Twitter feed, any kind of log, or other "commutative data structures". If you can't handle staleness, you should probably use stronger consistency.

However, if you can find out about staleness after the fact (an asynchronous callback, for instance), you can run some sort of compensatory routine (e.g., overdraft charges for your bank). Then you have an optimization problem: (cost of compensation)*(number of times you have to run compensation) vs. the benefit you get from weak consistency (latency, availability, whatever).

There's an awesome paper by Pat Helland about the problem you mention regarding building real-world systems on top of inherently unreliable components. It's called "Building on Quicksand": <http://arxiv.org/pdf/0909.1788.pdf>

<comment><USER6> hmm I have been downvoted but I deserve it. So to rephrase what I do the problem is a you say not losing data that is going to be inserted but performing operations with the wrong type of data which mean errors.

Let's say I have 3 pieces of data required by a function to compute the outcome of a certain operation (withdraw 10 billion dollars): A B C. We change the data in that fashion: A -> A' B -> B' C -> C' -> C"

When I query, because of eventual consistency the f(A,B,C) may very well be:

f(A,B,C), f(A,B',C), f(A,B,C'), f(A,B,C"), ... so on. It is simple when you have 3 sources, but when you have 50, and then when the operation use 50 or those f, depending on 50 other pieces of data ?

Anyway, again sorry for my poor explanation of the issue!</comment></comment></comment>


Thanks for ruining Christmas, hoverboards - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2015/12/27/thanks-for-ruining-christmas-hoverboards/ <comment><USER2> The year after Tony Hawk did the 900 and came out with Tony Hawk Pro Skater on the playstation and n64 was a rough Christmas too, I bet.</comment>


My intern's first blog: What its like to be a young entrepreneur - <AUTHOR> http://paytonlacivita.wordpress.com/2011/02/03/sometimes-i-forget-i-am-a-young-entrepreneur-why-are-the-cops-always-involved/

<comment><USER2> Dude keeps forgetting stuff, he must have early onset of Alzheimer's.

<comment><USER3> Haha I blame my three concussions senior year.</comment></comment>


Japan's labor market is tight, and higher wages may be needed to retain workers - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-08-02/japan-inc-may-finally-have-to-fatten-paychecks <comment><USER2> Partly this is a recognition that Japan Inc. has historically awarded a blended compensation package which includes salary, benefits similar to most first-world countries, and a host of non-pecuniary terms which are not broadly enjoyed across all W-2 employees in the US. ("Expectation of lifetime employment" is a biggie; there are substantially more subtle terms, too, like "We're going to _take care of you_ , and we sincerely mean that, and you trust us to sincerely mean that. This will manifest itself in behaviors which American companies would describe as quixotic to irrational to outright disturbing[+].")

The non-pecuniary terms have been weakening in recent years but salaries have not been increasing at anything approaching parity. The non-pecuniary terms _are not small_ relative to the total notional compensation package.

One reason that Japanese companies are having difficulty hiring folks is that their candidates have marked-to-market the non-pecuniary terms. There is a totally defensible reason to value Toyota's standard offer as of 1975 at being worth an integer multiple of the salary part of the package. It is very, very difficult to make the case that a traditionally managed Japanese company's non-pecuniary terms are presently worth $50~$100k per year given that one will be taking advantage of them in 2017 to 2062 as opposed to 1975 to 2020.

[+] One of my first conversations with a boss at a traditionally managed Japanese company involved my expected timeline to get married and what the company's role in that process would be; my boss assumed that it would be sourcing the bride.

<comment><USER3> I actually know several instances of how company expects employees to sacrifice everything for the wellbeing of company and how company takes care of employees for life.

One example, during 2008 crisis, the company my friend was working for 20+ years already, was in trouble and didn't pay employees for almost a year. My friend continued to work for the company despite it being bankrupt and him not getting paid for so long.

Once company turnaround completed and came out of bankruptcy, owners not only made unpaid employees whole but has done much more for the employees that stuck around during bad times.

The loyalty runs both ways.

<comment><USER4> Nice anecdote, and I'm glad your friend was made whole (and then some), but this is crazy. I wonder how many times the same scenario has played out, and the company continued to spiral into bankruptcy. Separating emotion from $$$ is important for this exact reason. He owes the company nothing. Maybe I'm being overly cynical though...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The problem is Japan has been in a deflationary environment for so long that they've forgotten how to bump up a price and turned into a nation of misers.

I've witnessed first hand the collective hysteria when an ice cream company raised their prices by 10 yen[0] and also had to put up with coworkers banging on in excitement whenever 7-11 has an Onigiri sale dropping from 110 to 100 yen. Not to mention the queues stretching around the block when Yoshinoya cuts a buck and a half off their beef bowls.

My anecdotal evidence, based on looking in shop windows, is there's plenty of part time (arubaito) jobs on offer; the problem is young people are too smart to take them up on their pitiful 700 yen per hour offers, which in Tokyo barely cover your transport and lunch costs. And yet the businesses will continue to weep and wail and gnash their teeth because they can't find anyone. It's not rocket science.

[0] [https://qz.com/656080/a-japanese-ice-cream-maker-deeply- apol...](https://qz.com/656080/a-japanese-ice-cream-maker-deeply-apologizes- for-raising-prices-by-9-cents/)

<comment><USER6> >coworkers banging on in excitement whenever 7-11 has an Onigiri sale dropping from 110 to 100 yen

Usually it's an up to 150 yen onigiri for 100 yen, so of course they're going to get excited.

Edit: It looks like it is/was an up to 160 yen onigiri for 100 yen! That's a 37.5% discount! [1]

[1] [http://seven-eleven-mania-blog.jp/gohankei/5617/](http://seven-eleven- mania-blog.jp/gohankei/5617/)

<comment><USER7> It's still pretty silly, considering the absolute value of the savings.

My personal favorite along these lines is the way that a single building might have 2-3 floors of the same kind of restaurant (say, yakitori), but the one place that is 5 yen cheaper per item will have a line out the door, while the others are half-empty.

<comment><USER8> Is this a cultural thing? I've never been to Japan so I'm kind of flying blind here but I'd assign that 5 yen as a convenience cost and happily pay that price to avoid the long line. I have a hard time thinking the Japanese people place no value on their time whatsoever...

<comment><USER9> walmart(lines to get in line) vs. Kroger(generally pretty fast) vs. giant eagle(empty walk right up and pay).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Japan's primary problem on income is that the economic ground they've lost in the last 20 years is vast. In the late 1980s, their GDP per capita was beyond that of the US. Now it needs to climb 50% to catch up. The last 20 years has taken them back to #16 among major economies in terms of GDP per capita. That gives you an idea of how difficult it's going to be for Japan to bring their incomes back in line with high per capita output economies like the US (or Australia, Denmark, Sweden, etc).

They need very substantial, sustained economic growth for a decade or more to start regaining lost ground. Their debt problems will continue to put pressure on the Yen, the debasement of which is a big culprit in the sizable drop in their standard of living over the last decade. While their interest costs are eating up such a large portion of their budget, their ability to properly invest into growth is heavily restricted. They're stuck between a rock and a hard place. I've yet to see a plan for how they're going to deal with that. To make matters worse, their savings rate has dropped to low single digits, as their standard of living has dropped they've been forced to reduce savings to try to maintain (which has further pressured the government's ability to properly fund itself, as they can no longer count on tapping into large new pools of savings via debt issuance, leading to abusing the Yen as a last resort).

<comment><USER11> Lots of childless old-timers are sitting on hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars in liquid assets that presumably will revert to the state. Household savings in the 60+ demographic are exemplary. Of course, that's part of the reason the economy is stagnant.

<comment><USER12> Keynes vs. Hayek in a nutshell.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Running out of people? Most large corporations in Japan have WAY too much staff doing about nothing productive all day long. This is due to the long standing tradition that started in the 70s to keep hiring most university graduates well before they graduate in April every single year, even though there is no such need for hiring (kind of social contract between the Japanese government and the large corporations). If anything less workforce will be a blessing, they will have to finally focus on what REALLY matters.

<comment><USER14> This makes no sense to me. Why wouldn't the companies expand their output if they have idle workers? I feel like you described 1/10th of the issue and it's up to the reader to fill in the rest?

<comment><USER15> You still have to sell that output. And until you do, you have to store that output. And if you can't sell that output, then you have to get rid of it in a fire sale.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Yeah, I do get contacted by Japanese recruiters, and their comp in my field is pretty laughable by US standards. That said, the same applies to all of Europe as well. People literally seem to be making one third of what they'd be making in the US if they were any good.

<comment><USER17> The metric that you have to consider is

salary - taxes - costs of living [including health insurance] + expected future revenues [in particular pensions]

Can you provide me evidence that, say, Germany, is so much worse than the USA with respect to this metric?

<comment><USER18> Germany is much worse in this metric compared to UK. I am specifically talking about London.

I get contacted by recruiters from Germany (and other EU countries) quite often and they could never match London contractor pay even remotely.

Germany also has higher taxes and health care coverage is comparable in UK and Germany (both have national healthcare).

I think that's a microcosm of US vs EU salary situation in software engineering. IT job market in London is very different from any place in Europe, I'm not sure why that is.

<comment><USER17> > I am specifically talking about London.

The living costs in London are enormous. A fellow student has a highly payed analyst job at Goldman Sachs in London, but still does room sharing in a flat somewhere in London.

<comment><USER18> I know living costs are "enormous". But if you make 3 times more money as you'd do in Berlin, it's still a much better deal.

The point I was making even in top cities in Germany (Munich for example) where living costs are also enormous, salaries are not very competitive compared to SF/NY or London (this only applies to contracting, permanent salaries are low in London).

<comment><USER19> So be fair and compare to the contractor salary in Tokyo as well. I can assure you that, despite being lower, salaries are quite close to London ones. A 3 time difference is a myth. Unless you are going to compare London engineers to Tokyo combini part time worker.

<comment><USER18> Yes I meant contractor salary is 3x more than permanent salary for a very senior software engineer in Germany for example. The idea behind this comparison is that you don't really have contractor market in Germany being so active as in London.

In London contractor market is very active and large so you can go from contract to contract basically without gaps and function basically as if you had a perm job but with much higher salary.

In Germany contracts are more sparse and I don't think it's easy to pull off a full time contracting there. The rates are also quite a bit lower (at least from emails I get from time to time about contracts in Netherlands & Germany) so there's that as well.

And of course, Tokyo is much much worse in this respect. I know some people who live in Tokyo so I know that being a programmer there is pretty bad.

<comment><USER17> > In Germany contracts are more sparse and I don't think it's easy to pull off > a full time contracting there. The rates are also quite a bit lower (at > least from emails I get from time to time about contracts in Netherlands & > Germany) so there's that as well.

A rule of thumb in Germany: If you earn double the amount as a contractor as you would as an employee this is about the same standard of living. In other words: If you don't really earn _a lot more_ as a contractor than as an employee, it is not worth the hazzle.

Another problem for contracting are the laws concerning Scheinselbständigkeit (fictitious self-employment) - cf. [https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scheinselbst%C3%A4ndigkeit](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scheinselbst%C3%A4ndigkeit) \- which make it really difficult for companies to contract someone for a longer time.

<comment><USER18> Yes there have been changes like that in UK as well (IR35) aimed at making it difficult for companies to keep hiring contractors for a longer time.

First problem with that was that public sector IT in the UK depends on contractors so they have shot themselves in the foot (already many public agencies started relaxing the rules and working around IR35 to be able to hire anybody).

Also most contractors usually change contract every 6-12 months so it's not a problem. You don't work at a single company for longer than that (1 year 11 months is maximum, after that you get in trouble because of IR35).

> A rule of thumb in Germany: If you earn double the amount as a contractor as > you would as an employee this is about the same standard of living

Well what if it is 3 or 4 or even 5 times more. With top market contracts the rates can be really good. If a company urgently needs to hire somebody skilled to come in and do some firefighting you can negotiate a very high daily rate for 6 months contract.

Also keep in mind you pay lower taxes as contractor as most of your income is via dividends. And you can also expense a lot of things you buy if it can be justified as cost of running business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> True that Japanese companies should pay more. For what it's worth, it doesn't appear to have started. Nikkei ran a story today noting that summer bonuses (which are a thing) are down for the time in five years.

</comment><comment><USER21> Fun fact, the Phillips curve for Japan sure looks a lot like Japan: [http://qed.econ.queensu.ca/working_papers/papers/qed_wp_1083...](http://qed.econ.queensu.ca/working_papers/papers/qed_wp_1083.pdf)

See also the wage inflation/unemployment relationship. [https://www.boj.or.jp/en/research/wps_rev/lab/lab14e02.htm/](https://www.boj.or.jp/en/research/wps_rev/lab/lab14e02.htm/)

</comment><comment><USER22> > _At the same time, baby boomers are approaching retirement_

It wouldn't have occurred to me that Japan had a baby boom. I suppose soldiers returning home in despair or in triumph are all looking for comfort and stability.

<comment><USER23> The last century of Japanese history looks a lot like that of the Western developed nations. (Probably because Japan made itself into a Western-style empire, then got involved in WW2 big time with the Western powers, then got a Western-style American occupation, so…)

<comment><USER22> I guess I'd always assumed that the Baby Boom was the result of a _victorious_ end to war, but the other makes sense too.

Was there a baby boom after WWI, or the American Civil War, or other wars that siphoned off a major part of a country's young men?

<comment><USER24> Japan may have been the loser, but it also had a big postwar economic boom. To me this seems like the more obvious cause.

<comment><USER23> The Allied Powers had seemingly learned the lessons of Versailles and didn't try to punish the losers (well, not as much), instead letting them grow. Thus why them not being victorious didn't matter, I guess.

<comment><USER25> America did try to punish the Germans. Millions starved as a result of deliberate Allied policy. It wasn't until the schism with the USSR that policies shifted. Eisenhower in particular wanted Germany to be an agrarian society.

<comment><USER26> Wait, i'm confused. I've always been told America poured tons of money into Germany via the Marshall Plan [0], which resulted in the "Wirtschaftswunder"[+] of the 50s and 60s. Former president Hoover went over and surveyed Germany almost directly after the war, in 1947.

[0]:[https://web.archive.org/web/20090419195002/http://www.un.org...](https://web.archive.org/web/20090419195002/http://www.un.org/Pubs/chronicle/2008/webarticles/080103_marshallplan.html)

[+]: Literally "economic miracle"

<comment><USER27> Long story short: This wasn't the original plan. The original plan, which was in effect for a while, was a variant of the "Morgenthau plan" ( [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgenthau_Plan#JCS_1067](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgenthau_Plan#JCS_1067) ). It took two years for them to realize that not only would they be starving Germans (intention), but also the rest of Europe (unintended), and more or less block any economic growth in Europe (+risk Europe falling under the sway of the Soviet Union). So, they reversed their plans and the rest is history (that history includes the Marshall plan).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Who'd have thought limiting the labour pool would drive up wages?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just remember in the end of the 80s and the begging of the 90s, Japan was on the verge to become the world most powerful economy and market crash after that... 25+ years later the market is still almost in half - so many retirement money lost and a great example why buy and hold for a long time is actually not a good retirement strategy...

<comment><USER29> What does that mean for things like Vanguard's retirement fund strategy? Isn't that based entirely on long-term improvement in the market?

<comment><AUTHOR> It means that all those robo fintech companies and the Vanguards of the world are making a lot of money, but "buy and hope" is not a good retirement strategy for the little guy, especially if you are close to retirement and you have some money set aside and count on them to live off...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Japan has one of the lowest birthrates in the world. This is inevitable as demand from the elderly outpaces young people to fulfill it.

<comment><USER31> Presumably though, as tax revenue falls due to citizens retiring, that will lead to more privatization of services as the government won't have the money to buy them, and a consequential push towards automation as service providers try to lower costs. If automation happens quickly enough it's not outside the realms of possibility that Japan's aging population could lead to _fewer_ jobs in some sectors.

<comment><USER30> This is a lot of automation. :-) When you have 1.46 births per Mom [0] you are effectively automating a quarter of the jobs. On the surface this seems achievable, but generally automation winds up creating new needs. (The advent of tractors meant farmers were more productive, and other jobs wound up absorbing hte workers)

[0] [https://www.google.com/search?q=japanese+birth+rate&rlz=1C5C...](https://www.google.com/search?q=japanese+birth+rate&rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS568US569&oq=japanese+birth+rate&aqs=chrome.0.0l6.2328j0j1&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> The fundamental problem is that the Japanese population is shrinking. The only real solution is more babies or at least really good robots.</comment>


Too Good to Be True: How More Evidence Can Decrease Confidence - <AUTHOR> http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/01/too-good-to-be-true.html#comments <comment><USER2> There is a similarly interesting result in ET Jaynes "Probability The Logic of Science" (chapter 5). Where Jaynes demonstrates that increased evidence actually decreases your belief in a hypothesis.

Jaynes gives an example of an experiment in which a psychic predicts cards, getting n out of m correct. In classical hypothesis testing H0 would be "the psychic got lucky" and H1 is "the psychic has mystic powers". Jaynes first attempts to use Bayesian reasoning to work backward to determine your prior belief in psychics. That is, how much evidence would it take to convince you, compare that to the raw likelihood and what you have is your prior beliefs quantified.

He then points out that he personally would never believe the subject was psychic, this is because there are not just H0 and H1, but H2 "the psychic is deceiving the experimenters", H3 "the experimenters are making an error" , H4 "the experiments are fudging the results", H5 ... Each of these has their own prior.

If your prior for believing in psychics is low enough and your prior for "the experimenters are fraud" is high enough, the more extreme the evidence the more you will be convinced that the experimenters are disreputable con artists, and subsequently the less you will believe the subject is psychic.

This is actually Jaynes' solution to a huge problem with Bayesian reasoning as a form of human reasoning: "If more data should override a bad prior, then why in the 'age of information' does nobody argee on anything!" This example shows, according to Jaynes, that while we can certainly have irrational priors we can still explain human reason in Bayesian terms and still get a situation where two people faced with plentiful information will arrive at contradictory conclusions.

<comment><USER3> I don't like wording "arrive at contradictory conclusions", because it implies the creation of differences in beliefs.

I'd rather frame it as "maintain contradictory preconceptions". And the cause of this I would say is a _lack_ of information: Information capable of distinguishing between H1-H5

<comment><USER3> Or... now I am not that sure anymore. What if Person A believe in H0:97%, H1: 2%, H2: 1%, and Person B believe in H0:97%, H1: 1%, H2: 2%. They have quite similar beliefs, at least by some measures. But if H0 is ruled out, then suddenly their beliefs will be very different.

<comment><USER4> How does this contradict your earlier comment? I think it's still valid: Person A believes H1 (real psychic), Person B believes H2 (talented fraud). The question now is how to get them to agree. And the answer is: design a better experiment, such that fraud is not practical, and see what happens.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> >>What Gunn et al. show is that the accumulation of consistent (non-noisy) evidence can reverse one's confidence surprisingly quickly.

I know this comment won't be accepted very well here on HN, but I think this is one of the reasons most people who don't believe in climate change don't. Science, and the subsequent reporting on it, has been consistently reporting for the past 20 years that climate change is real, and it's worse than we thought. Every few months, there is a new study being widely reported saying that X new evidence is proving that things will be much worse than we thought. If there was a study every once in a while that said X study about climate change was wrong, and we didn't consider Y factor, but climate change still seems to be headed in a dangerous direction, then I think people might be more willing to accept the thesis.

Of course, the paper doesn't suggest that we are wrong when we suspect systemic error, and skeptics of climate change may very well be wrong, but maybe this will help others understand their skepticism.

<comment><USER6> I think you're mixing up the science itself and the reporting on it. If a paper was published saying that sea level rises were going to be 20% lower than expected I wouldn't expect most people would ever hear about it. Or if they did it would be reported as showing that sea level rise was even more of a threat than we had believed.

If you want the truth the IPCC reports area great for providing the scientific consensus along with the (large) uncertainty we have about exactly what climate change will look like.

<comment><USER5> That's a fair point, although my point was more about the general population's perception of climate change and how it is shaped. That perception is most definitely shaped by the consistent reporting the general media does on climate change, which filters out the messy noise found in the actual hard science.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm running into this problem on my startup website ([http://muxme.com](http://muxme.com)). I've found that the more evidence I provide that the site is real, the more people start to question it. I.e. I post pictures of the receipt of purchase, open source the raffle code script, have a live drawing, post the winner's usernames (which reveal quite a bit about them if you google them, I encourage them to change their usernames), post USPS tracking numbers, post my phone number and address, and everyone still thinks the site is a scam. Out of every company / website I've worked on, I've never had people so skeptical of giving a name, email address and phone number. I've made websites where I charged money and had better growth!

This is some real feedback I've received:

 _" It sounds like a scam to me. If you want to try to scam people by getting them to click on your fake website, you should have enough common sense not to use the website as your username. Better luck next time!!!!"_

 _" Scamming people on Christmas Eve using someone's else's platform. Tacky."_

But yeah... this site isn't working. I'm thinking of scrapping it and writing an app/browser extension that automatically enters you into sweepstakes. Let's say Person A enters 10 sweepstakes on different websites. Person B enters 5 sweepstakes on different websites. When person C downloads the app, he will automatically be entered into the sweepstakes that Person A and Person B entered (via my magic backend system that I have yet to create). The more people that download the app and enter sweepstakes, the more sweepstakes everyone with the app will automatically be entered into. Now people will start winning prizes for literally doing nothing but downloading the app.

<comment><USER8> I can't quite put my finger on the reason, but I can see why people are sceptical. Few possible reasons, which may or may not be large factors:

\- Non-obvious business model - It's not obvious how you profit from the raffles, whereas charging money is generally easier/quicker to understand

\- Use of memes (e.g. [http://muxme.com/giveaways/56-25-toys-r-us-gift- card](http://muxme.com/giveaways/56-25-toys-r-us-gift-card) ) doesn't inspire confidence (may be a personal quirk of mine)

\- Layout/design - My initial reaction when the page loaded was "Oh, it's a penny auction site", which are known for being borderline scams. Obviously it isn't, but that gut reaction is difficult for you to overcome (I'm thinking of sites like swoggi.co.uk when I say penny auctions)

<comment><USER7> Only problem is charging money is illegal. I was thinking of "implying" that you may have to pay one day, and having the register button say "Sign up for your free trial", which will be an infinitely long free trial. But then again, the site is all about trust, and you've already tricked them from the start with this method.

Yeah I tried the approach of a quirky, 1 owner website, and it didn't work. I'm still trying to clean up all the jokes, memes, etc.

Hmmmm, yeah I can see how a first impression is that the site is a penny auction site. I definitely need to rethink the front end design and UX flow. Maybe don't even show the prizes until they've registered.

<comment><USER9> Yeah the giant table of "win this! win that!" seems enormously scammy. Maybe because scam ads just display something so similar. And, key thing with yours and theirs, no context and leaves me wondering "what's the catch?".

Even if you just added a short paragraph explaining the concept (since otherwise when I get to your site I look around to see what it does, and see nothing but scam ads all over = scam site; if you actually say what the site's for the prizes have context) and how it works (otherwise I'm like, "sure, effectively free cash, yeah right" = scam site), and then have the prize list, it would make a big difference in first impressions. Maybe have any list of prizes on the front page not be a countdown of upcoming prizes, but a list of selected featured prizes ("including these brands!").

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Another way of thinking about it is if your performance metrics, error logs, or unit tests are _always_ 100% green/perfect with no failures or spikes or anything, then it's probably a pretty good sign that your metrics/logs/tests are broken.

</comment><comment><USER11> One of the ways in which I can spot a scam is to look it up online. If _all_ of the reviews of the product are glowingly positive (and use similar language), then I start looking for a pyramid scheme or something driving sales.

<comment><USER12> The error there is that people assume that online reviews are by real, independent reviewers that have bought the product with their own money.

Sampling online reviews does not at all have the same kind of confidence levels as independently interviewing actual users of a product.

<comment><USER11> Here's the thing: In a multilevel marketing scheme, _even the word of the product users_ is unreliable. This is because MLMs recruit their end users as a sales and marketing force that works, essentially, for free -- with the promise if big riches if you sell enough in the program.

You know "The Secret" and all that positive thinking Aladdin's genie hogwash? That's actually the public facing side of MLM propaganda. Internally, MLMs pump their customer base up with big promises about how if you think happy thoughts you are guaranteed to fly with the hidden (or even explicit!) threat that even the tiniest sad thought will send you crashing to the ground.

And this extends to what people are allowed to say. The key word is "edify". You're supposed to "edify the product" (talk about how great it is) and "edify your upline" (talk about what a great guy/gal the person who introduced you into the program is). This is often backed up with threats and verbal intimidation and abuse. (e.g., "Only losers say things like that. Losers and quitters. You're not a loser, are you?" and it gets worse from there.)

So for some of the most prevalent scams, objectivity can't even be expected from the end purchasers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Mo' Data, Mo' Problems.

The New Coke flop is a perfect example of this.

New Coke was the result of the largest marketing / consumer research project ever. The conclusion of this research was to change Coke's formula. Coca-Cola Chairman Roberto Goizueta claimed that the decision was "one of the easiest we have ever made". Coca-Cola thought this way for two reasons:

#1 Research was done with a sample of over 200,000 customers.

#2 Coca-Cola's researchers triangulated the validity of their data with a mixed-method approach. They used focus groups, various surveys, and individual interviews.

All these data & research did the opposite of what they were supposed to. Their large sample size gave them lots of useless data. Data triangulation—which was supposed to safe guard them—did the opposite: it convinced them that their useless data, were useful.

Why does this happen?

In an unnatural system, variance is unbounded. As your data set grows, the unbounded variance grows nonlinearly compared to the valid data. As variance increases, deviations grow larger, and happen more frequently. Spurious relationships grow much faster than authentic ones. The noise becomes the signal.

<comment><USER13> Downvoted? I gave a perfect real world example that happens in product development and marketing research.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Also see the publications of Dr. Gerd Gigerenzer about this topic, e.g. in his book 'Gut Feelings Intelligence'.

</comment><comment><USER15> It's called equivocal data. It is known to management circles, it's the part of management that requires experience and judgement rather than facts. Computers can replace decisions based on unequivocal data.

</comment><comment><USER16> Maybe later in this century we'll have the alternative of objective Trial By A.I. instead of by peers. Lawyers wont like this because they win by manipulating humans.

<comment><USER17> I suspect hackers will be more supportive of this reform.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Sigh. This article describes a mathematical analysis that is more an artifact of the problem setup than a proof that more evidence decreases confidence. In particular, what's going on is that it assumes that while actual witnesses have a probability of e.g. 50% of convicting, biased witnesses have a probability of 100% of convicting(!), which is an incredibly strong assumption (and in particular, if you changed 100% to anything else, one of the headline results they advertise of unanimity being suspicious and near-unanimity not being suspicious disappears).

Those values of the parameters don't make sense for many real-world scenarios like picking a subject out of a lineup (you'd have to have a really really bad lineup to have witnesses be guaranteed to pick the same wrong person!) or to the output of a panel of judges or jurors.

However, the result is relevant in scenarios where it's very likely that you'd have a 100% likely error, e.g. you're doing an experiment and your apparatus isn't functioning properly or you have a bug in your computer program doing the data analysis. So it's relevant for physicists and computer programmers, but probably not to the criminal justice system.

For those curious, the math is quite simple. They model a world where one of the following happens: * probability p: compromised experiment, in which case fraction y (y=1 in the paper) of witnesses report guilty * probably 1-p: normal experiment, in which case fraction x of witnesses report guilty

Given that, the probability that 100% of N witnesses agree the person is guilty in each case is:

prob(unanimous and compromised) = p * y^N prob(unanimous and not compromised) = (1-p) x^N ~= x^N (since p is assumed small)

So the probability that the experiment is compromised, given a unanimous outcome, scales with their ratio, p y^N / x^N = p * (y/x)^N. A few things you notice: * If y <= x (as you'd hope to be the case in a lineup where the bias is less convincing than having actually seen the criminal!), unanimity is never suspicious. This is the usual world where more evidence should increase your belief in a hypothesis! * If y > x, you have exponential growth and so with sufficiently large N you'll see unanimous results are almost always the result of a compromised scenario. However, unless y/x is large and y is close to 1, the actual probability of unanimity is basically 0 so this will essentially never happen. * If y=1 and x << 1 (the case they analyze), with large N, unanimity is suspicious (but if you change y to 0.95, near-unanimity is, too, so ). This is a case very relevant in software, but less relevant in the criminal justice system.

They picked y=1 and x=0.5, which means roughly you start to see a big effect of this form when N > log_2(1/p), which for their ranges of p from 0.01 to 0.0001 means N ~ 15-30 range.

Unfortunately this is part of a much broader trend of people making bold claims about society based on the results of either a study with a sample a freshman psychology class that achieved 95% confidence (just like ~5% of the thousands of other studies done on psychology classes!) or a mathematical analysis of a confusingly designed problem that doesn't reflect well the broad swath of reality its authors (or the people reporting on it to a wide audience!) are claiming it describes.

<comment><USER13> You're correct in attacking the math the authors use. It's clear they are bending the math to fit the phenomena. However, that doesn't invalidate the hypothesis.

This paper appears heavily influenced by Nassim Nicholas Taleb: systematic failure, bounded vs unbounded variance, (more data) => (more noise) => (more spurious relationships), natural vs artificial systems, and even the reference to the heuristics of ancient cultures.

It looks like the authors were trying to apply math to observed phenomena. They may not have the right math to make it work-so they fudged it a bit.

Nassim talks about similar phenomena here:

[http://arxiv.org/a/taleb_n_1.html](http://arxiv.org/a/taleb_n_1.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I ran across a very interesting example of this recently. In a new tab take some time to analyze this chart for yourself and what you think about it.

[http://geekologie.com/2009/03/percent-of-student-virgins- per...](http://geekologie.com/2009/03/percent-of-student-virgins-per.php)

... done yet?

So, firstly I see that as you go toward more rigor, overall the rate goes up, with studio art (no rigor, it's just a humanities field) at the left and mathematics (full rigor, fully abstract) at the right. Like this - [https://xkcd.com/435/](https://xkcd.com/435/)

Interestingly, computer science (of interest to people here) actually isn't as far right as you'd think.

But what pops out to everyone!! There is obviously one MOST interesting fact in the whole figure, the 0 for studio art. That really got me thinking.

Granted, this isn't the perfect example because it's not just 0 as opposed to 5-7 - the next higher one is 20%.

But what you really start thinking is stuff like - "Is it that they didn't really have many subjects, just 2 or 3? what is n? Is it that these people are lying? Is it a real fact?" and so forth.

The fact that it's 0 instead of a few percent immediately raises some questions.</comment>


FUTURE GENERATIONS:What We're All About - <AUTHOR> http://www.eugenics.net/papers/mission.html#

<comment><USER2> They are misleading by showing only part of the truth.

Yes, IQ contributes to the successful civilization, but it is not the only factor.

There's also good heart, self-discipline, empathy, sympathy, and lots more that high IQ will not guarantee and is essential for happy civilization.

People with high IQ very well might be ignorant, self-focused, narcissistic, etc., and people with lesser IQ will be more good hearted, compationed, altruistic, and this might contribute more to civilization than high IQ.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's important to know that people think these things.

It's also important to know just how fucking wrong they are.

</comment><comment><USER4> Looking at the user, I think it's fair to say that this is a (fairly well- executed) troll. One post since registration, and all you'd need is two sock- puppets in rapid succession to push it onto the front page.

I have to say, I've been wondering why this hasn't happened sooner. It's worked for spam, with only a couple of upvotes per article. Why not trolling?

Incidentally - and I want to say this very carefully - I believe it should not be out of bounds to examine, for example, the influence of genetic heredity as opposed to environment upon various societal issues. I'm largely discounting this article as a troll based on wild-eyed paranoid claims and red-baiting, rather than claiming enough of a knowledge of the subject to rebut every single one of its claims. (Although if there is, say, an equivalent to talk.origins on this subject, I'd be interested to see it.)

 _EDIT_ : Okay, make that "paranoid claims, red-baiting and rejecting 'mainstream science' as conspiracy". Yeah, I'd call that a troll.

<comment><USER5> > Incidentally - and I want to say this very carefully - I believe

You'd better be careful, look a happened to Watson. God I hate taboo subjects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> tl; dr <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect>

LE: Ok, read the conclusion. It's more out of fasion then sick. Wonder how it got on the first page...

</comment><comment><USER6> Wow this is pure grossness. Crawl back under your rock nazi.

</comment><comment><USER7> The low average DH# of the comments only strengthens the OP's claims of people being unreasonable about it.

</comment><comment><USER8> All that just to say "I want to forcibly sterilize the retards and the blacks"

This is not the sort of thing we need here, really.

Fazil: I think you should probably fuck off and die if you don't mind.

</comment><comment><USER9> OK HN, its time to get off the pot and give us(community) the ability to bury stories. But do it better than digg and put buried stories into a different category that we can look through.</comment>


Show HN: Hack:now – global online Covid-19 hackathon partnered with YC - <AUTHOR> https://hacknow.calhacks.io/ <comment><USER2> we definitely need to do what we can. Having a hard time finding ways to contribute bc I feel like there's not much I can do to partner my FE skills w/ good data sources. Seems like you need to be either well-known enough or have other forms of leverage to connect w/ reliable data/institutions AND probs have some kind of oversight</comment>


"42% of Node.js users use Windows as their desktop env." - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/izs/status/661597221763203072 <comment><USER2> > Aspiring empath

> Gives us his pronouns on his description, as if we couldn't tell that he's > male

> Vast majority of his posts are about "diversity" and not actual technology

I stopped caring about what he said as soon as I read his Twitter bio.

<comment><USER3> Congrats on the cliche HN post. Stopped caring about what you said after reading your post.

He also runs NPM, btw.

<comment><USER2> I didn't think that my post was cliche at all. In fact, the more I lurk, the more I realize that Hacker News has a lot of people that care more about social change than the technology, or "hacking", that originally brought the community together.

It's fine to want to affect social change, but I'm honestly sick of prominent figures in technology today constantly complaining about misogyny or stereotypes, while at the same time creating stereotypes about people in technology, and sometimes males in general. I don't want to read about anthropology; I want to read about technology.

Also, I know that he runs NPM. It's in his Twitter bio. That makes the focus of his Twitter posts even worse.

<comment><USER3> But you literally discounted his post about NPM because of his other posts and what he has in his bio.

The other stuff might annoy you, but it doesn't take away from the fact that he is a thought leader on NPM. When he says something about NPM desktop usage, it is probably worth listening to, even if he happens to put his preferred pronoun in his bio.

You can have other opinions and still be a thought leader in tech. The HN cliche I was referring to is: All that matters is the code, all we should care or talk about is compilers and startups, and we should ignore anything else involving society (but at the same time preach about "DISRUPTING EVERYTHING.")

That's what you did. Hence, cliche.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


When will Las Vegas run out of water? - <AUTHOR> http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/topics/water/

<comment><USER2> Las Vegas has already run out of water.

(Fact: the family business I grew up in was drilling water wells ... in Las Vegas (and elsewhere, mostly in Nevada, but I was born and raised in Las Vegas.)</comment>


Show HN: Business Collaboration Made Easy with B2bsphere.com - <AUTHOR>

Connect with Buyers-sellers, share documents, files, folders (2 GB to Unlimited) with your connections using our file storage system (Powered by Amazon AWS Cloud). We will be adding voice calls, chat, video conferencing etc in the next few days. Appreciate any feedback/comments. It is absolutely free to sign up. <comment><USER2> clickable [https://b2bsphere.com/](https://b2bsphere.com/)</comment>


The truth behind Hola Unblocker - <AUTHOR> http://milankragujevic.com/post.php?id=72 <comment><USER2> This is no secret, take a moment to look at Hola's own website.

[http://hola.org/faq#in_whatis](http://hola.org/faq#in_whatis)

"Hola is a collaborative internet -- it works by sharing the idle resources of its users for the benefit of all."

"Hola built a peer to peer overlay network for HTTP, which securely routes the sites you choose through other Hola users' devices and not through expensive servers."

This is just another reason why you should always be aware of the services that you're using, especially when it could concern your security and privacy.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have updated the blog post to reflect this. Thank you and sorry for the confusion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> [https://hola.org/faq#index_intro](https://hola.org/faq#index_intro)

"Hola is a collaborative internet -- it works by sharing the idle resources of its users for the benefit of all."

</comment><comment><USER4> It seems like the auth information has changed

I'm getting a ERROR 403: Auth Failed.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, that's to be expected.</comment></comment>


Alfred3 Workflow for Microsoft Todo - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/johandebeurs/alfred-mstodo-workflow <comment><AUTHOR> Sharing a basic Alfred3 workflow for Microsoft Todo for anyone migrating over to ToDo as of Wunderlist's shutdown tomorrow. Alfred is my go-to for controlling Mac and the efficiency of adding and searching tasks via the workflow is something that I was going to miss with a move to another to-do list, so I decided to make a fork of prior work here. PRs welcome!</comment>


Ask HN: What is going on with Tesla's website? - <AUTHOR> First I was getting an "Access Denied" HTTP 403 error page when trying to view vehicles, which I managed to work around by changing '?redirect=yes' to '?redirect=no', and now I am getting the same Access Denied blank page for the 'https://www.tesla.com/' homepage.<p>What's up with the jankiness today? <comment><USER2> Cybertruck release?</comment>


"Facebook has destroyed the open web" - <AUTHOR> http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/mark-zuckerberg-hypocrite-facebook-has-destroyed-open-web-1559298 <comment><USER2> Facebook hasn't destroyed the web - it's still there and functioning fine. Hyperlinks still work.

What FB has done is made it easier for the lazy to connect with and stay within their own interest groups. FB has made it easy for people to ignore negative information with tons of cat pictures (I am as guilty as anyone for that) and cheerful little meaningless quotes. It's made it easier to post misinformation and spread it quickly.

But none of that has destroyed the internet. The internet (or more specifically, information) was going to get harder to find and navigate anyway, once you turn it loose on a few billion people.

Sure, in the early days, you could encapsulate 75% of existing websites in one directory, but thanks to the efforts of spammers, link farmers, and other lowlife, in addition to the efforts of well-meaning people, and faulty and well-working search algorithms, it's a mess.

But it was going to happen and FB is not to blame for it. If they are to blame for it, we all equally share the guilt.

<comment><USER3> "Hyperlinks still work."

I observe that this is increasingly no longer true. Links no longer show you when you have visited them. Chains of 301s are common. Tracking links are now the norm. The link text almost never is where you are actually going. Pages automatically redirect you based on a ton of probed information (mobile, desktop, tablet, logged in to G+, logged into facebook, etc), and even normal browser shortcuts to interact with them are no longer working correctly with so many weird effing span and divs being recast into "links" that never work right, in css of all things.

No no. The modern hyperlink is totally busted. I blame the framework hockers and the halfass web"app" community.

<comment><USER4> I must use 100+ links a day with 99% success rate.

<comment><USER5> If you use the web on the terms of content publishers, being flooded with ads, tracked everywhere, getting hit by malware every now and then, you will have a good success rate at "opening links".

Congratulations for that phyrric victory.

If one however desires even a little bit of control of their browsing experience, the hyperlink and the modern web are broken. It seems to be impossible to click a link and display a simple text with some images nowadays on the web, even if that's the great majority of the available content. Something will break - one will be treated either with an empty white page, missing menus, missing styles, etc.

<comment><USER6> I've been using Little Snitch (OSX) for a while now, and more recently set up a 'restricted' profile because I'm on a bad internet connection. It's shocking to notice how bloated almost all url endpoints are! It's a rare site that only produces one 'access' popup, and a large number of sites, in particular Big Media, make requests all over the place, most of them involving tracking, ads, or advertorials.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It is ironic considering there is a popup when you scroll down to the end of the article that asks you to share it on Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER8> Totally agree. Facebook is dotcom equivalent of AOL. Hopefully it goes away.

<comment><USER9> Free/open markets create powerful incumbents that eventually become big enough to turn themselves into a monopoly. There's no reason that the web wouldn't work the same way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> And I remember the net before the web. FTP, Gopher, and lynx. So why did a 'web browser' succeed? Because you could integrate bandwidth hogging graphics?? or was it to mimic the gui interfaces of mac OS, windows, BEos, etc? I still mourn the loss of the newsgroups and usenet. Well, Usenet is still around, but in name only. So what's next-VR interfaces?

The web and FB has made us dumber- we point and click and no longer have to search and think.

<comment><USER3> I am very interested in seeing in the post-web internet.

<comment><USER11> I'm not sure you will be happy when we get there. I'm fairly certain that it's already here - phone apps are pretty much on their way to being post-web.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've read the "blogs were great, FB is bad" article a few times in recent years and put it off as whining. I was a whiner myself when Usenet gave way to blogs but got over it.

However, it might be different in emerging markets where phones are the primary platform and FB may be dominating, not really sure if that's true but certainly different from the US.

<comment><USER5> I've heard a story from an acquaintance from Germany: their kids were ostracised in school by the others until they had a smartphone _and_ started using WhatsApp.

Whenever WhatsApp is shut down in Brazil, a local chimes that it's used everywhere, even by emergency medical service personnel.

That should cause one some uneasy feelings...

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The article is as stupid as the website it's on is. Value-added sharing mechanisms that take the expertise out of creating useful Internet content does not de-democratize the Internet. You are still as free as before to make your own websites and share your content the way it was done before Facebook. Facebook is popular but that can't be held against it.

More generally, populism by itself does not threaten democracy. It's when the people that elect demagogues let those demagogues destroy public institutions that democracy is undermined. But it's the people that are at fault here, they are the ones that let themselves get hoodwinked.

Napoleon destroyed the French Republic. But the French were absolutely complicit and just let him do it because they were hungry for empire. All of Europe was like that back then and she wasn't cured of that disease until WW2 showed them how utterly stupid warmongering in the Industrial age was.

<comment><USER14> > You are still as free as before to make your own websites and share your > content the way it was done before Facebook.

And nobody will read them if you don't integrate with Facebook and other social media--where you will be censored.

> But it's the people that are at fault here, they are the ones that let > themselves get hoodwinked.

Did you really claim that scam victims are to blame when they get scammed, and not the scammers? I'm all for avoiding naiveté, but that doesn't excuse the actions of manipulative people and organizations.

<comment><USER13> > And nobody will read them if you don't integrate with Facebook and other > social media--where you will be censored.

That's not an issue with Facebook, it's the natural consequence of being popular. Things are popular because the public likes them. You can't say that something being powerful because the public made them powerful is undemocratic. Either you're giving the public what they want or you're not. Dethroning Facebook would be profoundly _un_ democratic. Facebook is a public institution, albeit under private management.

> Did you really claim that scam victims are to blame when they get scammed, > and not the scammers?

The people are bigger than the politicians. Politicians have to, at some point, give the people what they want. The days where you can brutally put down rebellions is over. Not even CCP can get away with it. Napoleon could not have given Europe war if the French truly didn't want war.

Napoleon did not have to scam the French, they went into it willingly.

Democracy is the progressive march of what most people want over what a few people want. If what most people want is stupid, democracy will not save you from that.

<comment><USER5> There is no such thing as a public institution under private management. Facebook is a corporate entity with control over a large part of the internet and no accountability towards their user base.

When a private institution has so much power there need to be rules put in place that make sure they won't abuse that power to the detriment of everyone else. Democracy is about people, not the rights of corporations.

Your claims about the power of the people are amusingly misguided as reading a little bit about history will tell you. Pointers: propaganda, public opinion manipulation.

<comment><USER13> If you'd read more than "a little bit" of history, you'd be able to see these things in proper perspective.

Multinational corporations are inherently more democratic, more public, than governments. A government derives its capacity to operate from violence, you are forced to pay taxes.

A corporation has to be accountable to a marketplace, and must operate within the law of countries it operates in. Markets are ultimately more powerful than governments, that's why authoritarians want to tell people what they can sell to whom and how. Markets provide the people with ways to get things that don't come from the government, that's how they undermine authority.

I stand by my statement that Facebook is a public institution. It's publicly traded, you can buy voting shares and get a say in how the company is run. Of course Facebook is accountable to its user base, that's ultimately where they get all their revenue from. Facebook is more accountable than democratic governments are, you can't choose to not pay your taxes. Also, what is the practical difference between public and private management?

Manipulating public opinion is ridiculously hard and only the most hardcore authoritarian states are capable of doing so effectively. Even then it's a cat and mouse game, the truth has ways of getting out.

<comment><USER14> > Multinational corporations are inherently more democratic, more public, than > governments.

You have drunk so much of the capitalist Kool-aid that your brain is no longer receiving oxygen.

> A corporation has to be accountable to a marketplace

This is not democracy, it's plutocracy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I feel "everyone" being afraid of words has destroyed the open web. Edit this, censor that, surpress this, etc etc.

Complacency and intolerance of other ideas is and always will be the issue.

</comment><comment><USER16> To echo what everyone else has said, my feed is utter garbage and a lot of friends post stuff that makes me cringe. I've unsubscribed from the majority of my friends so now all I see are ads and sponsored posts.

Here's the thing, I get to see what events my friends are going to, which usually end up being really fun and not something I would have found out about otherwise. So nowadays I only use facebook to find and management events to attend.

</comment><comment><USER17> The vast majority of those on Facebook were not the ones participating in the open web.

</comment><comment><USER18> Open web sucked before Facebook. Facebook has created a nice safe sandbox for most people.

</comment><comment><USER19> why couldn't we create a decentralized social network. could such a thing exist?

<comment><USER3> [https://diasporafoundation.org/](https://diasporafoundation.org/) and [http://pump.io/](http://pump.io/) are attempts at that.

<comment><USER20> Have to second diaspora,Diaspora is a vestige of intellectual content and quality discussion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Just like AOL, many facebook users think facebook is the internet.

</comment><comment><USER22> Only fools believe (listen) a thief. As much as any PR guy.

</comment><comment><USER23> "Against this global community" "Going against progress" Sorry Zuck, but shut the fuck up. All you want is more money and power. A great example is the free "internet" initiative he's pushing; all to lock people in Facebook.

This guy truly is, the world's biggest hypocrite. </rant>

<comment><USER24> Please don't do this here. If you have a substantive critique to make, you're more than welcome to, but "shut the fuck up, "all you want is money and power", and "world's biggest hypocrite" is the opposite of that, and predictably degraded the thread.

<comment><USER23> Excuse my misbehavior, I became angry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Facebook is a fad. A damn big one I'll grant you but it's already losing it's grip on the next generation of users. It's huge now but I feel it's already lost it's luster, I mean come on, I'm a huge user (keeping up with friends across states is damn hard otherwise) and I can't stand being on it, and I know a lot of friends who feel the same.

It will have it's time, in due time. Hyperlinks are not dead.

<comment><USER26> Agreed. Facebook is pretty irrelevant with the High School crowd. Every has smart phones with apps that offer far less friction for communicating.

<comment><USER27> High school students will start using Facebook once they realize they can't keep "connected" with their high school friends that are studying in a bunch of different universities.

<comment><USER3> Don't they seem to have moved past serving that core audience?

<comment><USER26> The problem is, as those kids grow up and into the demo that is there core audience, I doubt very much they will move to facebook, and more than 40-somethings suddenly start using myspace.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>