Rate My App: Build Time = 342 Minutes - <AUTHOR>

It was a weekend project.
How's it feel, what's it missing?<p>http://qzip.in <comment><USER2> How about every second year CS student write a URL shortening service on the web. Then we should have lots of them.

Then, how about every third year CS student write a paper discussing why URL shortening services are a bad thing.

Maybe fourth year CS students could write a program to spider the web looking for broken web links that depended on the (now-defunct) URL shortening services they set up in second year.

Ok, ... sorry to be so snarky.

342 minutes. Nice job.

You "shortened" the time to build a URL shortening service.

<comment><USER3> I'd say URL shorteners belong in the realm of the "information technology program" department, as my school called it, not CS... but otherwise I agree with you.

<comment><USER4> You're lucky. My company used to name it "CPU" department.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you're asking for an opinion from the entrepreneur in me, I'd tell you to go get a job at Starbucks and stay as far away from the Web as possible.

If you're asking for an opinion from the programmer in me, I'd give you a pat on the back and buy you lunch.

<comment><USER6> Really? I've made a lot more from URL shorteners than someone makes at Starbucks.

<comment><USER7> I tried to figure out how linkrap.com makes money. At least it doesn't seem to replace Amazon links with affiliate ones, so will you reveal the trick?

<comment><USER6> A lot of sites use the code behind linkrap(the linkrap.com site itself hasn't been touched in months).

There are a few different business models at work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Man whoa, where is all this hate coming from? Good job, under 6 hours isn't bad at all. I think it looks great to have launched projects up on the web as part of a resume.

If I had a suggestion it would be to automatically show me the "tracking" stats.

</comment><comment><USER9> Just what we needed. Another URL shortener.

What's the point?

<comment><USER10> Why is it a bad thing? It's better to have tons of shortening services, than a few big ones. Just to spread the risk incase one goes down.

If tinyurl.com or bit.ly went down right now, half of the links on Twitter would go dead...

<comment><USER11> If I'm using a url shortener and worried about my links dying, I'm pretty sure that I trust tinyurl or bit.ly to be around longer than 99% of the url shorteners that have popped up in the last two weeks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Well, your call on how to spend your time, but if you were willing to bump that up to about 2342 minutes you could have written something people would actually pay for, and you'd get a bit of experience on the non-programming parts of running a business in the bargain.

As to what's it is missing: I'm guessing the anti-spam measures in place are kind of lacking, but I'm not going to exploit it to test.

</comment><comment><USER13> At first I was not amused by another URL shortener.

Now I respect you for having the guts to post it here. Props to you.

The only thing that you should add is an optional email address input. Now you can contact the people that are using your app. For instance, if you wanted to email everyone after you rolled out a new feature. Like a new feature that enables your app to email the link you just created to yourself. Maybe is sends another email after 10,25,50,100 visits to let you know.

</comment><comment><USER14> Perhaps it could check if a link has already been added. Also return any qzip URL as itself.

These don't matter a whole lot for a weekend project though.

<comment><AUTHOR> nice idea... might add that

<comment><USER15> I would like it to, 1.copy the short-url to clipboard directly. 2.provide a firefox addon to make short urls directly without visitng website.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> hey, this one makes it easier to see how many clicks your links is getting. does that count for anything?

<comment><USER16> Counts that you finished and launched a project. Keep using it, post it anywhere you need to and maybe you get enough users to sell it.

Or, go ahead and try to sell it over and over again to anyone who wants to start a URL service.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> While there are a lot of these services out there already, I think it looks and works great. Especially for doing it in 342 minutes.

</comment><comment><USER18> Nice job. Simple and functional. Just as good as any of the other shortening services.

Couple points. Bad domain name (IMO) and I'm not entirely sure it'll stay around. Do you plan on keeping it hosted? Someone would need to know you plan on staying online and operational if they were going to post something using it.

Want to post the source?

</comment><comment><USER19> Great work considering the time. (just judging the website, not whether the need exists for another URL shortner cause the title says "Rate my App", not "Give me your opinion on URL Shortners"). Anyways, can you tell me where you got your .in domain from, I'm looking for a good registrar? Thanks.

<comment><AUTHOR> godaddy has them available now ($6)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I tried to "shorten" <http://qzip.in/> and got <http://qzip.in/h4>. ;)

<comment><USER21> I think he has fixed it now. I tried it and it did nothing.

<comment><USER20> Oh they joy of edge cases... try <http://www.com> (that is a valid url by the way... points to some crappy parked page so don't bother visiting it).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It was a refreshing sight after going through so many URL shortening websites to find www.aafter.com. The website is the first of its kind in the entire web shortening websites to generate two smaller URLs as you type one lengthy URL in the search box. Either of the smaller URLs could be used to access the website instead of writing the lengthy URL and are quite easy to remember.

Tony Smith

</comment><comment><USER23> why'd it take you so long? :)

Seriously though, good job, nice clean design, fast performing and seems to work (always important). As for usefulness in a world full of url shortening services I'm more skeptical about, but as a fun/school project its a good job.

</comment><comment><USER24> heh, I thought you meant compile time.

</comment><comment><USER25> is a url shortening service the newest "hello wrold i cna rite programm"? sure feels like it.

</comment><comment><USER26> By the way, what framework/language did you use to develop it ?

</comment><comment><USER27> Pretty good. The favicon is xampp icon.

</comment><comment><USER28> 342 should have been 60</comment>


It's pointless to work long hours so why do it? - <AUTHOR> https://www.ft.com/content/014b7266-c9a8-11e9-af46-b09e8bfe60c0 <comment><AUTHOR> The difference between bids and projects:

 _The good thing about a death march, is that the survivors get to die building a railway._</comment>


24/192 Music Downloads are Very Silly Indeed - <AUTHOR> https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html <comment><USER2> Wow this is such bullshit. The sample graph he shows where he (correctly) debunks the stairstep theory gives no acknowledgement of the real-life situation, which is that many waves are interacting with each other in a signal, and it's not the stairstepping of the pure simple waves he showed that is the problem, it's the stairstepping of the _interacting_ waves, which are complex enough that a low sampling rate can throw things way off (meaning off far enough to cause artifacts at audible frequencies) when rounding errors come down on the wrong side.

<comment><AUTHOR> No, even if you sum any number of signals, as long as each component signal is bandlimited then the resulting signal is also bandlimited and can be reconstructed perfectly according to the Sampling Theorem. This may be counterintuitive, but it's provable. (I could prove it using just what I remember from a couple of semesters of undergrad signal processing courses.)

Of course a _low_ sampling rate can result in errors, but what the sampling theorem says is that we can calculate exactly how high a rate we need to always perfectly reconstruct signals in a given band. This doesn't change just because your signal is constructed from many component signals.

Of course, if you think the math is wrong, then you have an easy way to disprove it: Construct a counterexample out of "many waves interacting" and show that the resulting signal isn't perfectly reconstructed as the Sampling Theorem claims. (Or perform a double-blind test that shows any human can detect the difference between a 192 kHz recording and the same recording downsampled to 48 kHz.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I appreciate the lengthy exposition; however, I've found that 320 kbs with cross channel bit sharing (or whatever it's called) is where I'm finally reasonably happy, at least with rock/pop.

Perhaps as with eyesight and the "fourth type of cone", we'll eventually measure/document that not all listeners are equal.

P.S. Also, pay attention to the subsequent analogue amplification stages, not to mention speakers. Your digital metrics will prove less important when your analogue pathway suffers.

</comment><comment><USER4> Many years ago my audiophile friend said amplifier should not have remote for volume control, it reduced the sound quality. So I asked him 50-100 years down the road, does human being still need to manually walk to their amp to adjust the volume.

It's true that most people can not tell the difference between a 320bps mp3 vs 24bit lossless audio. But 50-100 years later, will we still be listening to 320bps lossy quality audio? That will sound really silly.</comment>


Startup Quote: Esther Dyson, investor - <AUTHOR> http://startupquote.com/post/5397365590

<comment><AUTHOR> Don't leave hold of your common sense. Think about what you're doing and how the technology can enhance it. Don't think about technology first.

\- Esther Dyson (@edyson)

<http://startupquote.com/post/5397365590></comment>


Software is eating the world (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424053111903480904576512250915629460

<comment><USER2> _" Meanwhile, the two biggest telecom companies, AT&T and Verizon, have survived by transforming themselves into software companies, partnering with Apple and other smartphone makers."_

It's quite a stretch to call AT&T and Verizon's dominance based on "software". It's actually more than a stretch, it's simply wrong. Those two companies are dominant (to this day, 4 years later) not _because_ of software but despite their desperate and failing attempts to be relevant in the software world. The dominance is quite simply the result of a monopoly on physical resources, in this case, frequencies and large-scale cell tower infrastructure that's hard to copy without huge new investments in ... ahem... hardware.

</comment><comment><USER3> Note: This is Andreessen's article From 2011.

Original HN discussion from 2011: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2905410](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2905410)

And an interesting follow-up discussion from a few days later:

"If Software Is Eating The World, Why Don't Coders Get Any Respect?"

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2919708](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2919708)

<comment><USER4> [http://news-cdn.efinancialcareers.com/wp-content/uploads/201...](http://news- cdn.efinancialcareers.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Total-compensation-by- age.jpg)

That explains the bulk of the discussion

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Subscribe or Login to read?

"ain't nobody got time for that!"

<comment><USER6> [https://www.google.com/search?q=Why+Software+Is+Eating+The+W...](https://www.google.com/search?q=Why+Software+Is+Eating+The+World)

click on the top result and enjoy.

<comment><USER7> i wonder if they do this so their content can still get indexed by google

<comment><USER6> Yes, you must show a Google user the same page that the Googlebot sees or you risk being de-indexed altogether (they've done it, with some pretty major sites, to send a message). That's why if the click doesn't come from Google it's paywalled, but if it is from Google it isn't paywalled. The practice of showing a different page to users than to the Googlebot is called _cloaking_ and Google hates it.

<comment><USER8> Google's business strategy you see is to put _their_ ads on other people's content.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Anyone have a link without the paywall?

<comment><USER10> [http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240531119034809045765122...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424053111903480904576512250915629460)</comment></comment>


A Major Industry-Funded Alcohol Study Was Compromised - <AUTHOR> https://undark.org/article/mach15-alcohol-nih-industry-funding/ <comment><USER2> This article from 2017 appears to be the New York Times reporting (mentioned in the article but not linked directly) that brought down this trial: [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/03/well/eat/alcohol- national...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/03/well/eat/alcohol-national- institutes-of-health-clinical-trial.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> _> patients are known to be highly inconsistent when reporting their own alcohol consumption. Answers patients provide depend on many factors, including the doctor-patient relationship. And patients' spouses often disagree with their partners' assessment of their drinking. The MACH15 trial had some sophistication built in to it, including the use of random smartphone-based check-ins for patients. But while some evidence suggests that smartphone-based self-reporting on alcohol consumption often contradicts patients hindsight reports, MACH15 had no ability to tease out which patients would adhere to the smartphone check-ins, and which were providing accurate accounts of their consumption. In essence, the NIH was making a $100 million gamble that volunteers would portray their alcohol consumption accurately._

This doesn't seem like a problem with the study design to me. You're effectively assessing the effect of _telling_ people to drink "zero" vs "moderate" alcohol as opposed to the the effect of _actually drinking_ those quantities, but since one major use for a study like this is to figure out what doctors should be telling people this still seems valuable.

<comment><USER4> There's too much judgement in the standards. If you admit to very moderate social alcohol consumption, you'll get tagged as an abuser. Risky move these days.

<comment><USER5> While I disagree and think your assessment is a bit hyperbolic, I do see that there may be some stigma in whether patients admit to their doctor that they drink. My dad apparently lied to his doctor quite a bit about his junk food consumption prior to his double bypass. Patients feel guilty about things they know or think to be unhealthy and for some reason think that lying will help them in any way. It's weird. Like, why are people more afraid of what some random person thinks than they are of seriously fucking up their doctor's ability to treat them?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> We are all told that red wine if consumed in limited amounts every day is very beneficial for health in the long term. Of late, I heard that this scientific marketing was also sponsored by the alcohol industry and high chances that this notion is fake and preposterous.

<comment><USER7> There seems to be no safe dose for alcohol.

[https://nutritionfacts.org/video/is-it-better-to-drink- littl...](https://nutritionfacts.org/video/is-it-better-to-drink-little- alcohol-than-none-at-all/)

<comment><USER8> The statement is probably true, but the provided source is one you should be skeptical of. The author is somewhat of a vegan quack.

[https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/death-as-a-foodborne- illnes...](https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/death-as-a-foodborne-illness- curable-by-veganism/)

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

<comment><USER9> Which part of this was quackery?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> How about a requirement that all participating researchers provide the relevant financial disclosures as part of the published research?

</comment><comment><USER11> Study 329 anyone?

[https://study329.org](https://study329.org)

</comment><comment><USER12> Could blockchains help detailed tracking in studies somehow? Maybe tie RFID in the products into a blockchain tracker. The blockchain could anonymize the data, but provide quantitative tracking.

I'd also wish for some way to provide funding to studies but obscure the direct pay. So they pay into a funding that gets anonymously distributed to coinholders.

Eh, these are all pretty far fetched.

</comment><comment><USER13> Of course there are, this is pervasive. This has been done for decades by the tobacco industry, by the meat, dairy and eggs industry and others that try to buy scientific studies that favor their product.

<comment><USER14> You lump them all together as if they are the same (tobacco, meat, dairy, eggs) yet you conveniently left out the Grain farming industry and Vegetarian/Vegan food industry, these industries buy scientific studies and food & nutrition organizations too.

<comment><USER15> There's an order of magnitude difference between the marketing and lobbying budgets of the animal agriculture industry and the others you mentioned. There is no "big broccoli" funding dodgy nutrition studies.

<comment><USER14> There is however plenty of "Anti-meat/Meat Causes Cancer" dodgy nutrition studies pushed by the World Health Organization (WHO) and Vegetarian/Vegan agenda by The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics

indeed, an order of magnitude difference.

<comment><USER7> Can you post some of your sources please?

<comment><USER14> Carcinogenicity of Consumption of Red and Processed Meat report by WHO

Position of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics: Vegetarian Diets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> An "industry-funded study" is an oxymoron. That's about as compelling as sports players also being the referee. All the studies that have shown that alcohol is not negative to health have been funded by the industry. To continue my analogy, the player/referee signaled for a touchdown when he wasn't even on the field. This is all propaganda bullshit pushed by alcohol companies to sell more shit. And really, anyone who stops to think about such ideas that a glass of wine a day--in other words a small addiction to alcohol, the most devastating commonly used drug in the world--could be beneficial, and doesn't question the validity by using his common sense is a fool who believes what he wants to believe. To sell addiction to the masses through manipulated studies is both genius on the part of alcohol companies and something that should be punished severely, as in disbanding the company. Except that nih and other federal departments are too dumb/corrupt themselves to not take the money. In the meantime, millions of people are and have died, gotten cancer, cirrhosis, and other problems because of their incompetence and willingness to sell the alcohol companies' take that a little alcohol addiction is not bad. Of course, for people that trust such government institutions, there is no hope and their trust, as we can see, has been the downfall of millions. But that's another issue altogether.

</comment><comment><USER17> I picked up the book _Food Politics_ by Marion Nestle, mentioned in the article, on a whim several years ago and could not recommend it more highly for anyone interested in... well, the politics of food.

</comment><comment><USER18> Ooh, an exception to Betteridge's Law of Headlines!

<comment><USER19> Betteridges 'law' is a rule of thumb.

A rule of thumb needs to give you approximately the right answer more than 50% of the time without spending any effort to examine the particular problem in order to be useful.

So it really does not need to be pointed out every time this 'law' is broken.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> My grandpa is into his 80s without many health issues while drinking occasionally but not everyday or anything. His brothers all loved drinking more and died earlier in much worse condition. Hence I will just drink smaller amounts of alcohol and not obsess over such issues

<comment><USER21> Don't drink every day/regularly, and only drink 2-3 units when you do drink, seems to be reasonable advice.

<comment><USER13> There doesn't seem to be a safe lower limit for alcohol, its a well-known very potent carcinogen.

Its not obsessive at all to completely avoid such a cancer inducing substance, especially if there is a family history of problems linked to it.

<comment><USER21> "Very potent carcinogen" is scaremongering and alarmist.

Don't drink if you don't want to, but tone down the retoric a bit.

Generations upon generations of Germans have enjoyed beer in moderation, and they don't seem to have higher cancer rates than other western countries.

<comment><USER13> Its not a retoric, its according to the latest science. There is this social perception that drinking in moderation is ok for human health and even beneficial, when in reality alchool is a toxic substance with no known safe usage limit.

Cancer in western countries are in general the highest compared to other cultures, so having an average rate among the highest in the world is not saying much.

<comment><USER21> No. Alcohol is a "known carcinogen", and there seems to be no minimum dose below which it does not affect cancer risk.

That says _nothing_ about the potency. Just like nitrates and cured meat products in general. We know that they _do_ affect the risk of contracting cancer, but the potency is quite low, compared to something like tobacco smoke or radiation exposure.

A lot of the things people consume everyday are "toxic substances", depending on the dose. Almonds can kill you, so can apple cores.

Is alcohol to blame for higher rates of cancer in western countries? Probably not, as people in other parts of the world also consume a lot of alcohol, it's a human constant and not unique to the western world.

Moderate and responsible consumption of alcohol has extremely minor effects on physical health, but the social and relaxation benefits are immense. If having a cold beer after work helps you to de-stress and relax more for the rest of the day, that's a net positive. I would posit that stress is a lot more dangerous than occasional consumption of alcohol. I am absolutely not defending binge drinking and abuse.

There is a lot of modern-day puritanism and outright shaming going on lately, of everything that is deemed to be "unclean" or "unhealthy". It's not a good state of mind to be so judgmental of other people.

<comment><USER13> In the end people can do wathever they want, its their live after all.

There are other ways to reduce stress, like finding remote work or changing jobs.

The problem is that one beer quickly becomes two, 3 and 4 and there are a lot of people that just cant control it, its almost never just one beer.

I wish alchool would become like cigarretes: at least everyone knows it causes cancer, some people still use it and thats up to them.

But with alchool we are not there yet, a lot of people still dont know it causes cancer and there is no safe usage limit, they even think that it has some beneficial health properties, everything in moderation.

I wish it would be so socially acceptable not to drink, as it is to drink. In a lot of places, you are actually socially expected to consume alcohol, still today, which is insane given what we know about the link between alchool and cancer.

<comment><USER21> Don't blame poor self control on the drink/cigarette/junk food, it's a personal choice to indulge. Obviously if you can't control it, stay away. But please don't start any legal changes or persecution that affects the large majority that have absolutely no issues managing their intake.

If you find that the company you keep consider it unacceptable to not drink alcohol, you really should find other people to hang out with. Seriously, they're a bad influence.

I'm glad that everyone I hang out with don't give a shit if you drink alcoholic or non-alcoholic beverages, as long as you're a nice person to hang out with. If there are people whose company you can only stand when one or both of you are drunk, something's seriously wrong.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask PG: Will HN ever get a search (& memory) friendly url structure? - <AUTHOR>

I think personally, the main advantage of this would be that HN urls that I have saved or that I share with others are immediately clear as to what their content is. What do you guys think? <comment><USER2> How much advantage does that really provide?

If I share an HN link among my Facebook friends, as I sometimes do, a snippet of the discussion is shown, and that (besides my tagline to the submitted link) lets people know what to expect. If I share a link in an email, I generally introduce it to the recipients. What is the use case for changing the link structure of Hacker News? I'm not sure that "immediately clear" is guaranteed by all of the user-submitted titles here, for example.

<comment><AUTHOR> I thought about it today while writing a google doc where I was adding HN links - I believe having this would make all those clearer. Though I understand that adding commentary for all links is a solution there.

Also, this would make it much easier to decipher the links I have sprinkled through various notes in Evernote.

<comment><USER3> You can give human-readable text to links in a Google Doc - that lets you choose your own title, which would undoubtedly be more readable than a url- safe string.

Ironically, I find this would be most useful when including links to previous HN discussions on Hacker News itself, because this is one of the few sites that doesn't let you put in human-readable text for the links you include.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5464028&title=testi...](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5464028&title=testing) \- you can just hack it in. maybe someone could put together a simple bookmarklet to get the title appended to the url

<comment><USER5> Oh well… Here is a simple bookmarklet that will append a slug to the url:

        javascript:history.pushState({}, document.title, document.URL + "&title=" + document.querySelector('.title a').innerText.toLowerCase().replace(/[^\w ]+/g,'').replace(/ +/g,'-'))

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think this is done deliberately -- as to not show up on as many google searches as the site would be showing up otherwise.</comment>


Big Data App Deployment Demo - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=O3Z2R8Xvixo

<comment><USER2> So I went to the Appcara website to have a look at the product, especially pricing information, and I couldn't find anything. My best guess is that if I download the trial (after filling in the lengthy form), a sales rep will call me. No thanks, tab closed.

Ok, so yes, I'm one of the people who hate talking to sales reps - just show me the price I'm going to pay and I'll make a decision. If I have to talk to a sales rep, I feel I'm being cheated because I don't know what discounts other people got and I feel like the rep is only trying to get the most they can out of me. The thing is, though, that these things are usually complex software solutions and I'll need to trial them to determine if they will even work for me and the trial itself will take a significant time investment. If I don't know the price up front, how do I know that I even have the budget for this? If I trial before I know the price, then there's a chance that my time is wasted, regardless of the outcome of the trial. So I avoid such companies like the plague.

While this is the case here, that isn't the reason I closed the tab though. The reason I closed the tab is that nowhere did it tell me this. I didn't see a pricing page that tells me to contact sales, or a _buy now_ button that tells me to contact sales, or an _Are you interested? Contact sales!_ notice. Nothing. I am left guessing and I suppose that if I download the trial I'll get a sales call.

I understand that they are trying to filter the hot leads out (if I download the trial and filled out the lengthy form, surely I'm a pretty hot lead), but this is getting ridiculous. There are a few products like this one that I've come across recently where I would happily pay tens of thousands a year, but don't want to jump through these hoops. So they lose out and companies with more transparent pricing get my business.

\---

As an aside, while I'm not yet convinced about Datomic (I've had no need for it) and therefore the price seems a little high (I expect I'd quickly change my mind if I did have a need for it), I love their attitude to pricing: [http://www.datomic.com/pricing.html](http://www.datomic.com/pricing.html) and [http://www.datomic.com/faq.html#pricing](http://www.datomic.com/faq.html#pricing) I love how transparent and to the point they are and I love how everybody gets the same price for the same thing. I wish more enterprise software were like this.</comment>


What do you wish you had done the summer after graduation? - <AUTHOR>

I am very passionate about tech and will be joining the valley in late August, but how should I spend my summer? A couple thoughts 1) join an intensive code school 2) travel asia 3) work for a startup in India. Any insight would be greatly appreciated <comment><USER2> Everything you've done until this moment has defined beginnings and endings. Even when you can barely stand to sit in class another day, you can always tell yourself that it'll all be over in a year or two years or whatever.

Once you start working, you're expected to do that _for the rest of your life_. So don't be too eager to jump into a career as soon as you can.

Also, you can only desire based on what you know. Most people graduate from school having gone through one giant funnel that took them to that point, so the direction you're facing now might be more a reflection of that framework than yourself. Take some time to step outside traditionally supported structures and do something completely different.

Hitchhike to Alaska, start a band and go on tour, ride a bicycle as far as you can, start a traveling puppet show. Do whatever — but make it really uncomfortable, and make it count.

My canonical advice: [http://www.thoughtcrime.org/blog/career- advice/](http://www.thoughtcrime.org/blog/career-advice/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Travel. That's what I wish I had done. I'm going back to school for my masters soon, and when I get done I'll be traveling for a while. Don't waste your youth sitting around, there's a lot of world out there.

</comment><comment><USER4> If you travel, you should go by yourself. I went to New Zealand for 6 weeks by myself, and it was a formative experience for me: Meet new people, live in the moment, and don't say no to any experience! This attitude led me to doing so many things I never could have imagined doing before. Best of luck to you in the beginning of your career!

edit:spelling

</comment><comment><USER5> Lots of suggestions to travel. If you choose to do so, I'd recommend traveling cheaply and openly. Its an incredible feeling to travel with no defined end date or destination. Try long distance hiking, or a one way ticket to a cheap area of the world. WWOOFing if you're into farming/sustainability. The style of not having an end date allows you to take your time in an unstressfull situation to ponder the world and where you want to take your career, then when something motivates you enough, you can immediately stop and pour all of your energy into it.

</comment><comment><USER6> Buy a cheap motorcycle and head in no particular direction.

</comment><comment><USER7> easy question, easy answer. travel asia.

better yet, visit europe and south america also.

</comment><comment><USER8> \- I wish I had launched a startup.</comment>


College the Easy Way - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/05/opinion/05herbert.html

<comment><USER2> "But a lack of academic focus has not had much of an effect on grade point averages or the ability of the undergraduates to obtain their degrees."

Yes, college grade averages have been rising at quite a few colleges around the United States.

<http://gradeinflation.com/>

</comment><comment><USER3> I can collaborate what the article is asserting about many students "skating by" with five or so hours a week of study. This is more prominent in the social sciences than, say, engineering, where I am. I frequently notice students drinking in the middle of the day or goofing off all day when others spend the recommended 40+ hours outside of class in the library.

I guess this shows how a college degree no longer means much on its own, and students need to make sure they are leaving with marketable skills that employers demand. Some programs, CS for example, arguably allow students to move directly into a productive position out of university, while others seem to lack in this aspect.

<comment><USER4> I will second this in the social sciences, I went to a top rated public liberal arts school and I studied at most an average of probably 1 - 2 hours per class per week. So that's 5 hours per week for a typical semester.

<comment><USER5> on my literature course, in the finaly year, more than once somebody read a 'presentation' that was copied straight from wikipedia, indicating they couldn't even put in more than 5 mins effort when they had an actual assignment. add to this that the majority of people never say a fucking thing in seminars, and the 5 hour per week figure sounds about right.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Perhaps more now than ever, the point of the college experience is to have a good time and walk away with a valuable credential after putting in the least effort possible."

And then they wonder why a college degree is not a ticket to a good job.

<comment><USER7> In the U.S. at least, graduates do still seem to do pretty well at getting _some_ kind of job, whether good / relevant to the degree or otherwise. Unemployment is only 4-5% for people with a 4-year college degree, considerably less than for other categories: <http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t04.htm>

Of course, just those numbers don't say what the cause and effect are. It's possible the graduates getting jobs could also have gotten jobs without a degree. But I suspect having a degree still boosts employment odds.

<comment><USER8> Do we have statistics on how many people with 4-year degrees transition from "unemployed" to "not in work force?"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The unstated assumption here is that working hard in college actually pays off for a student later in life. Many college graduates end up doing work unrelated to their majors. Even those who do work related to their majors are required to take classes in things they don't need to know. And many college professors give assignments that take a lot of time without providing students much benefit.

</comment><comment><USER10> Ah, the kids these days...</comment>


Microsoft Is Said to Announce Version of Windows for ARM Chips - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-12-21/microsoft-is-said-to-announce-version-of-windows-for-arm-chips-at-ces-show.html <comment><USER2> Interesting, I wonder what its roots will be. Windows 7's progenitor, NT, long ago was incredibly cross platform, supporting MIPS, PowerPC, and Alpha, though never ARM. The article mentions that the platform may support x86 as well, and I believe Windows CE once supported x86, too.</comment>


An Amaz-ing Resume - <AUTHOR> http://phildub.com

<comment><USER2> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5108820>

</comment><comment><USER3> great idea; I wonder if this might cause some trouble with Amazon, though. Is it ok to "rip" their design? Any web-store interface would have done I suppose.

anyhow, he's certainly getting a ton of attention this way.

</comment><comment><USER4> nicely done!</comment>


Encrypted P2P Traffic No Longer Safe From Throttling - <AUTHOR> http://coderrr.wordpress.com/2008/06/28/detecting-ssh-tunnels/

<comment><USER2> "Although their research is quite interesting there are a few things which limit its practicality. They can only detect tunnels going through ssh servers which they control."

and only I control my server, so I'm good to go.

<comment><USER3> "They also require the ssh server _and_ client to disable compression."

That's pretty far from actually allowing ISPs to identify encrypted P2P traffic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's time for the camouflage to get updated.

<comment><USER5> Yeah. In the end, P2P protocols will just end up looking like HTTP requests and responses, with encrypted data steganographically encoded in what looks like your online bank. (Maybe incoming HTTP requests to a home DSL line would look suspicious, so let's make it XMPP or something.)

You can't filter the Internet. You can't break encryption. These are the realities of the Internet, so the ISPs had better start turning on their dark fiber. Sparing a nuclear war, Internet use is never going to decrease. Stop fighting entropy and "roll with it."

<comment><USER6> Sorry to burst your delusional bubble, but you don't need to break encryption in this case. The term to describe this particular "attack" is traffic analysis, and it is a real bitch to get around. P2P protocols will not end up looking like HTTP requests and responses because the nature of the information flow is nothing like a standard HTTP exchange; you do not send a small packet, get back a large chunk, and then exchange small updates -- when P2P traffic flows it is large chunks and its bidirectional nature is a dead giveaway.

The application of a simple Bayesian recognizer to categorize traffic flows might be new to the academic community, but among people developing large- scale traffic management and security monitors this is really old stuff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> this story has absolutely nothing to do with ISP throttling. If people continue using subjects that are just trying to be attention grabbers, HN will end up like digg.

To sum up the _actual_ story, researchers used Bayesian learning filters to identify the type of encrypted tunnels that are going through your ssh server within 90-99% accuracy. Has absolutely nothing to do with ISP throttling p2p.</comment>


Why Do Neural Networks Need an Activation Function? - <AUTHOR> http://www.datastuff.tech/machine-learning/why-do-neural-networks-need-an-activation-function/ <comment><USER2> The posted article isn't particularly fascinating, but for a bit of fun, there's an OpenAI project where they demonstrate that due to the non-linear rounding of Float32 values you can actually train "non-linear" linear networks: [https://openai.com/blog/nonlinear-computation-in-linear- netw...](https://openai.com/blog/nonlinear-computation-in-linear-networks/)

<comment><USER3> Or any binarized or ternarized network.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You don't need advanced math to answer this question. If there's no activation function then all the weights in each layer can be multiplied together and the whole network is just a linear classifier.

<comment><USER5> Of course you're right. There is linearity inherent to most neural networks design that many people overlook - backpropagation is entirely linear.

<comment><USER3> _backpropagation is entirely linear._

Huh?

<comment><USER5> I mean in th sense of the sensitivity of the backpropagation updates to the loss function value.

Backpropagation is essentially a big chain rule application. If you order the layers into a list (with identity transformations to pipe the values that do not change in the particular layer) then the whole process is just multiplying the derivative matrices, starting with the loss function and then the bottom- most layer. That's why it's difficult to train long unrolled sequences of RNNs - the many matrices that you have to multiply on the way back are either contracting (in which case the signal dies out) or expanding (in which case you get NaNs). That's also why people "cheat" backpropagation by using things like gradient clipping.

[https://medium.com/@karpathy/yes-you-should-understand- backp...](https://medium.com/@karpathy/yes-you-should-understand- backprop-e2f06eab496b)

<comment><USER3> I think you might be confused: if there are activation functions then backward pass is also non-linear. Try to derive backprop equations by hand and you will see that.

<comment><USER5> I am quite sure that it is linear in terms of sensitivity to loss function changes. It's a simple derivative. For example - if you multiply the loss function by 2 all the weight updates will also multiply by 2.

<comment><USER3> _Any_ function is linear in terms of linear transformation of that function. If y = f(x), then multiplying f(x) by 2 will result in 2y. Here we are talking about linearity or non-linearity of f(x), so using your example, if we multiply x by 2, which in this context would be the error signal in the output layer, do we get weight updates times 2? No, because f = dL(error)/dW is not a linear transformation of error (in general).

Here's an attempt to make the backprop linear: [https://openreview.net/forum?id=ByfPDyrYim](https://openreview.net/forum?id=ByfPDyrYim)

<comment><USER5> Yeah but not for any function, given that f(x)=y, f(2x)=2y. Which is what backpropagation tries to do (find x such that f(x) is something).

Anyhow we're talking past each other. I mean that it's linear in a very strict/specific sense. Take a fixed newtork with a fixed loss function, for a particular set of inputs and particular target outputs (think 1 batch, or even just one example). Now as you backprop you continuously compute derivatives of what's currently on the layer with respect to the loss value, starting from the loss function, then the bottom most layer, then the previous layer and so on.

Now this can be decomposed into a series of matrix multiplication (chain rule), where yes, in any particular run the matrices depend on the weights, inputs and outputs in a nonlinear fashion. But the overall effect is just a composition of linear operators (matrix multiplication). That's why things go to shit when the network is deep and the derivative matrices are all contracting or all expanding.

And just to connect with your example: if f=d(error)/dW then yes d(2error)/dW=2f.

<comment><USER3> Ok, I see what you mean, and you're right. However, I'm not sure I see any usefulness of this property.

<comment><USER5> It helps understand why NaNs or close to zero training speed happens. For example - say you have an LSTM. The more you unroll it the more matrices get multiplied on the way back, and the backprop signal can get amplified/muted in an exponential fashion (as a function of the number of unrolled cells).

<comment><USER3> I was talking about the property that gradients are linearly proportional to loss value. I don't see whether this property helps or hurts vanishing gradients problem (e.g. if it was not linear, maybe it would be worse).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Malicious apps can hose Android phones, erase data - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/security/2014/03/malicious-apps-can-brick-android-phones-erase-data-researchers-warn/

<comment><USER2> Well, current Android versions support starting the device in safe mode, not executing any third-party apps then, so that you can remove misbehaving apps. Looks like this is made exactly for such situations. Though I'm not sure if that mode is available on all devices, might depend on OS and boot loader.

That attack is then annoying and might cause device wipes due to not knowing that option, but looks not that blocking then. Google might also filter that attack by looking for that in their Google Play app check routine.

<comment><USER3> I don't think 'safe mode' is an Android thing. Are you referring to a Sony device? They seem to have some sort of safe mode.

<comment><USER2> It's definitely not vendor specific since I've seen manuals for various devices.

When successfully started Android, you should be able to access it by long- pressing the power button to get into a popup menu, then long-tapping on the power off text button there. Also different hardware key combinations might work while booting.

Also, just speculative, Android itself might detect a boot loop or crashes while booting and then automatically restart into safe mode.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Online Learning Resources for Homeschooling - <AUTHOR> https://withprimer.com/library <comment><USER2> Love the age + free filters. First I'd heard of Swift Playgrounds! I wonder how they decided which ones to include. Also, first time I've seen learning resources broken down by apps, games, videos, etc. To be honest, it makes a lot of sense.

</comment><comment><USER3> This seems like really good list. Any idea about the methodilogy used?

P.S. I wish there was a list like this for adults given the current situation.

<comment><AUTHOR> great idea to have a list for adults! we mostly focused on school-aged kids, but there are some resources there that most adults will enjoy too.

we compiled a list of our own favorite links to start with, but anyone can now submit a suggestion [https://withprimer.com/submit](https://withprimer.com/submit)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is great. Perfect timing now that parents are adapting to work from home culture. Need more resources now than ever before

</comment><comment><USER5> Honestly, I think it's an amazing list of educational resources for curious adults too.</comment>


Technical interview question: "What do you think of this tutorial?" - <AUTHOR> http://www.functionx.com/cpp/examples/returnpointer.htm

<comment><USER2> I suppose you want the candidate to point out that returning pointers to local variables of a function is a bad idea? (and tell you to either declare the variable in a bigger scope or allocate it on the heap). Seems like a really easy question, so I guess it could be a good question to quickly weed out bad candidates.

<comment><AUTHOR> I wasn't particularly serious about actually using it in an interview. If I did, I'd be sure to soften the question:

"Hey, I have something here, it's more of a conversation starter than a hard question. This is a C++ tutorial taken off the Internet. We all know that programming examples aren't best practices, but let's discuss these code examples as if they were serious proposals."

"It's not necessary that you try to guess all of the things I might dislike about this code, I'm just looking to have a conversation about whatever you feel like discussing."

I think the second sentence is important. I find "spot all the errors" to be very stressful, so when I do ask questions like that I try to make sure the candidate knows that I'm not grading the question by how many WTFs he or she finds.</comment></comment>


Looking for a speaker to ICO community interview - <AUTHOR> Hey, guys. We have made several interviews with founders who are in process of preparing ICO. We are looking for the next interesting speaker for our next interview.<p>Would be really appreciated for recommendations here or in our telegram group: https://t.me/icotalkgroup <comment><USER2> Stewart Macgregor Dennis, he's just launched an ICO for a coin called Credo. Tim Draper is backing him. Feel free to mention Mark Whelan recommended him. Hope that helps</comment>


The Narrative Fallacy: Why No Startup Success is Inevitable - <AUTHOR> http://technori.com/2012/11/2679-the-narrative-fallacy/

<comment><USER2> True one shouldn't get too caught up in the narrative - past, current, or future. But. A good founder story will work wonders. It can be the key differentiator between you and the 12 other hyper local mobile social app out there. It's stuff that press and connectors can run with. But yes, the predictability of that marketing formula is also annoying. The tech startup industry has a reputation valuing the "brainy", but it's also susceptible to typical marketing tactics.</comment>


Ask HN: Any way to do anonymous pair programming? - <AUTHOR>

I have started to really enjoy learning new things and i am the kind of person who learns by someone teaching. One of the more interesting ways i have learnt things is by pair programming. Is there any system that lets developers join up to discuss and learn new things through the principle of pair programming? <comment><USER2> I'd totally love to use this!

It would be great if you had an anonymous tutor who'd help you out with a problem, kinda like a more real time StackOverflow. It would be fun if there were some features from Github too.

</comment><comment> benji-york It's not anonymous by any means, but I have a little (open source) project that is all about pair programming over the Internet. It is called "termbeamer" and it lets one person host a Linux terminal session and one or more people view the session. Coupled with a voice or video communication channel it makes for pretty good remote pair programming. See termbeamer.com for more details.

</comment><comment><USER3> What do you mean by "anonymous" exactly? Trying to parse what you're looking for...</comment>


The Origins of the Linguistic Conception of Programming (2014) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://pure.uva.nl/ws/files/2419813/154677_Alberts_Nofre_Priestly_Technol_Culture_55_1_2014.pdf <comment><USER2> In 1947, Alan Turing said the following in a lecture to the London Mathematical Society[1]

> I expect that digital computing machines will eventually stimulate a > considerable interest in symbolic logic and mathematical philosophy. The > language in which one communicates with these machines, i.e. the language of > instruction tables, forms a sort of symbolic logic. The machine interprets > whatever it is told in a quite definite manner without any sense of humour > or sense of proportion. Unless in communicating with it one says exactly > what one means, trouble is bound to result. Actually one could communicate > with these machines in any language provided it was an exact language, i.e. > in principle one should be able to communicate in any symbolic logic, > provided that the machine were given instruction tables which would enable > it to interpret that logical system. This would mean that there will be much > more practical scope for logical systems than there has been in the past. > Some attempts will probably be made to get the machine to do actual > manipulations of mathematical formulae. To do so will require the > development of a special logical system for the purpose. This system should > resemble normal mathematical procedure closely, but at the same time should > be as unambiguous as possible. As regards mathematical philosophy, since the > machines will be doing more and more mathematics themselves, the centre of > gravity of the human interest will be driven further and further into > philosophical questions of what can in principle be done etc.

He added (not related to the topic of language per se, but still amusing):

> It will be seen that the possibilities as to what one may do are immense. > One of our difficulties will be the maintainence of an appropriate > discipline, so that we do not lose track of what we are doing. We shall need > a number of efficient librarian types to keep us in order.

[1]: [http://www.vordenker.de/downloads/turing- vorlesung.pdf](http://www.vordenker.de/downloads/turing-vorlesung.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> Extremely interesting. I really dislike writing code because you can't get any sense of the structure by looking at it - it's like reading a description of a painting in book form. It's fascinating tos ee the historical context that led to that becoming a dominant paradigm.

<comment><USER4> How would you prefer to see computers programmed, besides code?

<comment><USER3> Personally I like diagrammatic programming, most often seen for signal processing workflows in VFX or audio synthesis. My favorite platform from a design pov is a robotics IDE now called Flowstone. It's based around ruby iirc; in an earlier version you could also write modules in C or assembler. [http://www.dsprobotics.com/flowstone.html](http://www.dsprobotics.com/flowstone.html)

There are upsides an downsides to this paradigm of course; one downside is that it's not obvious how to read control flows at first. On the upside, having all your functions available in modular form makes if far easier to explore and program using high-level concepts. What I hate about conventional programming is all the _typing_ and having to remember all the function parameters, calling conventions etc., I want the computer to do that for me. Writing code in an IDE is about as enticing as making my own Lego bricks from scratch.

<comment><USER5> Yeah,

I would agree that diagrammatic programming is a process that inherently _seems_ like it would solve the opaqueness of programming.

But I'd say this paradigm is just as much inherently limited and not useful for "serious" work. This is because the multitude of "parts" that a computer program has exist in too large a space to be visually represented and because the details don't really follow our intuits for two or three dimensional objects.

<comment><USER6> I wouldn't know if URI diagrams are (still?) used heavily in industry, but they are taught. Those work architectural, or generative but limited.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This looks like a marvelous inquiry with a lot of "big picture" implications.

"All of these approaches, however, take the linguistic nature of computer programming for granted. Indeed, it is surprising how rarely language appears in the list of relevant programming metaphors, despite periodic attempts to envisage program code as a form of literary expression. It is as if we have become so accustomed to think of programming languages as languages that we forget that this analogy has its own history."

And let's not forget that the idea of "a language" also has it's history, with Chomsky shaping the concepts of linguistics using various mathematical tools during the period that the idea of "a computer language" arose. A given computer language can more easily be located on the Chomsky hierarchy than a human-spoken-language, just for example.</comment>


The Long-Term Jobs Killer Is Not China, It's Automation - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/21/upshot/the-long-term-jobs-killer-is-not-china-its-automation.html <comment><USER3> I think we are destined for a future of political and social instability in the world if we continue to define labor and its compensation as we do now.

We currently don't have a social understanding for navigating a world where little human labor is required. The resentment of the winners (capital owners) by the losers (jobless masses) may lead to great upheaval, to be harnessed by willing politicians of short-sighted vision.

What will it mean to work and contribute to society in the future of machines?

<comment><USER4> "We currently don't have a social understanding for navigating a world where little human labor is required"

Yes we do.

The industrial revolution had far greater impact on labour than any of this mysterious AI will ever have.

The first 'machines' powered by coal etc. instantly 'unemployed' hundreds of people per unit.

Go ahead and look at the productivity/capita charts for the early 19th century - UK citizens were _multiple_ times more productive than citizens of any other nation. It was an astonishing explosion.

Imagine how many people a single train unemployed?

Or the weaving machines that did the work of hundreds.

The impact on labour was definite, direct and measurable - unlike a lot of the 'soft' impact that today's technology has (did MS Word really unemploy 'secretaries' \- or was it a host of factors?)

But what happened during the industrial revolution?

Unemployment went down, wages went up. In fact the cost of human labour rose dramatically.

The surpluses from the machines went into the economy, basically providing the foundation for the modern consumer economy.

95% of folks back then worked on farms, mines - or did manual labour/service.

The industrial revolution created the middle class: lawyers, entertainers, restaurants, mass market clothing, design etc.. Electricity created massive new industries (think of what you could not do without electricity!).

The economy has been diversifying rapidly since the start of the 19th century in the UK, and everywhere else about 50 years later.

We will continue to do this.

In 1960 there were 3 channels. In the 1990's 50. Now it's 100's + online offerings.

There were no 'pro athletes' in 1930. Now we have massive industries around pro sports.

Working/middle class people did not travel much back in the day. Now they can travel around the world.

There were no consumer electronics past the radio in 1940. Now the are zillions of devices.

In the 1920's cars were made by people - now automated assembly lines.

And FYI - for the last 25 years and for at least the next little while - <USER2> (or rather, Mexico, China, India and other low-cost places) are by far and away bigger job killers than automation.

'Automation' as we understand it is not as fast a process as we think it is and the days of 'robot replaces x people' are long gone, it's a more complex and nuanced equation.

Try this one: tell me which people you know, in which industries, have outright 'lost their jobs' due to some AI or machine? Not so many. Customer service? Possibly. Some banker analysts? Possibly. But even in the later, there are other things for them to do, and the bulk of the staff on both sides have more to fear form India than Microsoft. In fact, this is happening right now all over North America: people training dudes in India to do their jobs, after they've been told they've been outsourced ... (train your replacement if you want your severance!) ...

Also - since 1900 - the size of government has expanded dramatically. I'm not 'against government' or anything, but many gov. agencies are abhorrently inefficient. I have a distant family member who's friend, a low-level thug dealer who was recently arrested. The RCMP (Can. police) spent zillions tracking, investigating this guy. Two years of surveillance, bureaucratic justice issues, lawyers - yada yada. So it's not so nice, but we find ways to 'distribute the surpluses' of the new economy in ways, even if they are not very efficient.

The trick is to 'find things for people to do' in a manner that is reasonably efficient and fair.

Check out GDP/capita during 19th century:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Divergence#/media/File:B...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Divergence#/media/File:Biaroch_European_GDP_per_capita_1830-1890.svg)

Were there was more automation, wealth exploded. (This chart does not address wages, but there are others that do :) )

<comment><USER5> > tell me which people you know, in which industries, have outright 'lost > their jobs' due to some AI or machine?

As software developers, it's literally our jobs to put people out of work. My software is specifically designed reduce the need for increased labor as the company crows. In my industry, legal, entire departments (like night word processing) no longer exist.

The fact is you cannot extrapolate from 100 years of human history and say everything will continue on. People just a few hundred years before that could not have predicted anything about modern employment.

<comment><USER6> It is your work to increase productivity. As tedious tasks are automated, you can deploy people doing new things. As you lower the cost of the product you manufacture or service you provide, you enable more people to afford it. That's how new industries are created. I am not to worried about the amount of work available as a whole. I am more worried about the nature of the work available, which will be increasingly skilled.

<comment><USER7> Even better, as you have automated tools available, no one needs you any more. 'You' being the company, that is. As factories replaced craftsmen, and distribution chains replaced individual travelling merchants, I think there is a very good chance that the very structure of centralized companies with offices and on-staff employees will dissolve. You were replying to someone working in the legal field, for example. Why does the person putting together my will or litigating a suit for me need to be backed by an organization with an office building, expensive executives, etc? An individual with the right knowledge and tools, that's all that's actually NEEDED. Much of economics centers around assuming that the market will eventually pare away inefficiencies and competition will strip away all but what is actually needed.

<comment><USER5> There is a plan to start deploying Watson-like AIs in the legal field to automatically data mine for precedents and other legal resources.

> Why does the person putting together my will or litigating a suit for me > need to be backed by an organization with an office building, expensive > executives, etc?

These exists because they are currently necessary (they are the "tools" you speak of) but they're a pure business cost and constantly under pressure to not exist. Computers have already reduced this back-end cost immensely. For example, lawyers these days all use dictation software rather than having a secretary write out shorthand. If all the tools can be automated, they eventually will.

<comment><USER7> The legal field in particular is an interesting one as far as automation is concerned. Several states have passed laws which make illegal the creation of software systems that do simple easily-automatable tasks like generating boilerplate documents and filling in legal forms. They have variously considered either the creation or use of such software "practicing law without a license." Lawyers see the writing on the wall and are in the perfect position to do the most terrible thing possible - invent an artificial marketplace for services which should be being done by a machine.

This isn't a terribly novel idea. Companies which produce phonebooks have been suing the hell out of municipalities which wish to discontinue the practice of automatically giving a phonebook to their residents for years now. And, by the way, they win those cases. Even in municipalities where they simply want to change receiving a phonebook into an opt-in service, they're suing. That their product actually now goes beyond being worthless directly into the territory of actively destroying value, requiring the munis to put out special dumpsters so that the residents can immediately throw away the useless things, doesn't seem to bother them. They want their money and they don't care how or why they get it.

There was an article about the issue with writing software which does legal things in the Communications of the ACM a year or so ago. I haven't kept up with the topic, but at that time several states had adopted the laws and they were being considered in others. Having lawyers pushing new laws is a pretty easy sell, though, as most legislators come from law in the first place. Some of the states have a nice exemption that just really hammers the intent home - you can run a software service that lets people fill forms, get generated documents, etc... if you pay a lawyer for each thing it does. They don't have to be involved in any way. They don't have to review the documents and put their name on them or anything like that. They just have to get a check. Honestly though, I think that is better than only making it legal for lawyers to use the software. I fear a future where everyone is yolked and herded into a cubicle to sit there and push a single button mindlessly, prodding the automated system to do its thing simply because society and management want people to have to do a job.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is exactly wrong. Automation happened already, 200 years ago. It upended society. It was called the Industrial Revolution. Things changed dramatically, and nothing remotely of that scale is occurring now.

We are suffering today not because of technological progress, but rather the contrary: the rapid technological progress of the 20th century that brought tremendous economic prosperity to humanity has finally come to a grinding halt. Let's stop denying this. The stream of lifechanging breakthrough inventions of the 20th century, from A (antibiotics) to Z (zippers), have ended. As a result, we now suffer from secular stagnation. [1]

This is why people can't get jobs. The answer is Keynesian spending, and the most fair kind of Keynesian spending is basic income. Call it a "Keynesian dividend".

[1] [http://larrysummers.com/2016/02/17/the-age-of-secular- stagna...](http://larrysummers.com/2016/02/17/the-age-of-secular-stagnation/)

<comment><USER9> I disagree that it's "exactly wrong", though I at the same time agree with the secular stagnation concept. It's important to remember that past revolutions in automation have destroyed one field of labor while creating another. For example, the industrial revolution destroyed hand and muscle-driven labor and replaced it with factory labor. In the US we then went from an industrial economy driven by factory jobs to a service economy driven by knowledge-based labor.

Automation today is now destroying service economy jobs, but it's not clear, at least to me, what new sector is ramping up to pick up the displacement slack. The tech sector isn't going to have enough jobs for everyone getting automated away, and this time around automation is unique in that it's attacking pretty much everything all at once. Human drivers are going to be displaced by autonomous vehicles at the same time as financial advisers are being displaced by wealth allocation algorithms at the same time as warehouse workers are being displaced by picker robots, etc.

<comment><USER10> Even jobs in the tech sector are likely under threat. Remember that guy a few weeks ago showing an AI platform be built to design logos for customers? We're not far from having AI build our web pages, and then simple web apps, and then probably native apps, and before long, finding and patching bugs in software, and eventually writing the software itself

<comment><USER11> We already are automated. It's called C. Python. Java. Go.

How many programmers would it take to write Windows in Assembly?

<comment><USER10> It's automated to a certain level, sure - but it's silly to assume we've reached maximum amount of automation possible in the space.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> One upside to automation is that comparative advantage with regard to labour costs becomes much less important. This means that manufacturers can more easily afford to keep production in high wage economies.

There are other considerations of course, such as proximity to resources, transport hubs, and markets.

Ultimately though, this doesn't change the fact that automation is mostly beneficial to capital owners and not the wider workforce, so capitalism's tendency toward inequality (as described by Piketty) still applies.

<comment><USER13> > This means that manufacturers can more easily afford to keep production in > high wage economies.

But this doesn't really bring jobs back, since they'll just be automated.

That's not to say there aren't other benefits aside from job creation, though.

<comment><USER14> Someone has to service the machines. Also, big machines are expensive to transport, so it makes sense to make them closer to where they will be used, leading to more service jobs.

There are also a lot of engineering jobs designing the hardware and software of these automated factories.

<comment><USER15> The whole point of automation is to increase benefit by increasing productivity, i.e. by either increasing the production output for the same amount of jobs, or decreasing the amount of jobs needed for the same production.

Since we already produce about everything in the amount we need (and sometimes much more than we need), there is no point in increasing production (it would not be sold, consumed), so productivity gains will translate into cost reduction, i.e. less jobs.

<comment><USER14> No one is arguing that. The argument is if we should have automated factories in high paying regions (like the US). I'm arguing that having automated factories here is better than no factories here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This was one of the more frustrating parts of this past election cycle:

 _" No candidate talked much about automation on the campaign trail. Technology is not as convenient a villain as China or Mexico, there is no clear way to stop it, and many of the technology companies are in the United States and benefit the country in many ways."_

A lot of US jobs have been lost to globalization, but in the long-term that won't compare to the jobs lost to automation. As a software developer this seems painfully obvious to me, and I would hope most politicians are intelligent enough to see it as well. Unfortunately none of them have even talked about it, much less proposed solutions to help displaced workers.

<comment><USER17> >Technology is not as convenient a villain as China or Mexico

Technology is a MUCH more convenient villain. You can roll back 1% friendly trade agreements with China and Mexico. You can point pitchforks at the 1%. You can't roll back technological advancement and it's pointless to try.

You achieve nothing by being against technology except looking like an idiot, which is _precisely_ why articles like this are trying to convince everybody that technology _is_ the "villain".

Because god forbid Lloyd Blankfein and _his_ cronies start being seen as villains.

>A lot of US jobs have been lost to globalization, but in the long-term that won't compare to the jobs lost to automation. As a software developer this seems painfully obvious to me,

Funny. As a software developer it seems painfully obvious to me just how far off we are from this supposed goal. All around me I see developers who shirk at even automating their own tests while getting excited over vaporware.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Its not just automation. There have been many more applications of optimization to reducing operating margins. At my company, there was, for example, a project aimed at identifying the optimal service intervals for heavy mining equipment. As a result of this work, it was possible to substantially reduce the amount of preventative maintenance that was being done on the machinery. It was found that not all of the preventive maintenance was cost effective.

<comment><USER19> This is a missing part of long stories about AI and automation. I too work in servicing of industrial equipment that is now being connected. The algorithms can be simple - after _n_ running hours a component needs servicing. No fancy AI or automation, no over-hyped 'predictive maintenance' machine learning, just a 'connected machine'. As a result, the number of service engineers can be reduced significantly because they no longer over-service. This is not a robot taking someone's job, but a 10% efficiency gain in servicing equipment is a lot of people. It's across a skills range too - we have customers that range from minimum wage floor cleaners to PhD-level scientific equipment engineers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's interesting that many politicians, including Trump and Sanders, want policies to prevent jobs from leaving the US, but have no policy proposals around automation.

If you want manufacturing jobs to stay in the US, regulating automation would be far more effective than trying to prevent companies from outsourcing jobs. (Incidentally, a lot of jobs that have been outsourced probably would have been automated if outsourcing had not been possible, and that's what opponents of outsourcing are missing.)

I'm very much against a policy to restrict automation, but it's worth pointing out.

<comment><USER21> You know what else is interesting? The same part of the political spectrum that cites automation as the real cause of working class decline does not hesitate to rationalize mass immigration as necessary to fill the demand for labor. If automation is the problem then what are all the unskilled immigrants for?

<comment><USER20> What part of the political spectrum are you referring to? It certainly isn't part of the mainstream.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It's about time for fruit picking to be automated. There are prototype systems, but they come from SRI International, not John Deere, and they're too fragile and too complicated mechanically. The vision system isn't the problem any more; that's simpler than a smartphone.

Once that works, California loses jobs about 2.1 million illegal immigrants.

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm not sure what everyone is so afraid of? There will be tensions and a political problem about redistribution if "simple" jobs dry up, sure, but isn't automation a good thing regardless? It means we make more stuff withuot putting in more effort.

Automation and industrialization over the last 150 years already meant we went from 120h weeks on farms to 40h weeks in offices and factories, while living standards increased. Measured in 40h/week jobs per person that means we lost 2 of 3 jobs in the industrialization! The world didn't end. And now everyone is worried that if we go from 40 to 30h or 20h weeks that will be a disaster?

We can't afford to have a large fraction of the people unemployed and the rest still working 40h weeks in ever fewer jobs of course, but that's a problem societies will hopefully solve.

<comment><USER24> Four years ago, I was working full time. That job was automated away, but I found another part-time job that paid minimum wage for fewer hours, so my income dropped dramatically. That job was automated away, and I was very lucky to find a job (that ended up being around double full-time hours, but only paid for half of them, so legally I was paid about half of minimum wage), which went away. Now, I'm working one third of a full time job, for minimum wage. That doesn't even cover living costs, and it's looking like it'll be automated away in the next few months.

As working hours drop and wages tend toward minimum, we do indeed end up in a bad situation.

<comment><USER25> Sorry to hear about your job troubles. Can you share what you do that has been automated away? Were all these jobs in the same industry? If so, what are your plans to shift to jobs that are less prone to automation (if you don't mind my asking)?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I can recommend the book The Second Machine Age that discuss this topic thoroughly: [https://www.amazon.com/Second-Machine-Age-Prosperity- Technol...](https://www.amazon.com/Second-Machine-Age-Prosperity- Technologies/dp/0393350649)

There is also a (imho) great SF short story by Marshall Brain about this: [http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm](http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm)

</comment><comment><USER27> I guess we in tech have seen this coming for the past oh.. 25 years? Now it is really starting to hit home.

Another big thing that drives automation is the stock market. The stock market provides a bunch of money to companies that can show earnings growth. Used to be you could just expand globally. Well, all the big brands have done that now. So the next step is to cut costs. How?

Automate.

Without the stock market this might also happen but at a slower pace.

</comment><comment><USER28> We have finally reached the age where humans can only do creative jobs. Humans are not good enough in doing heavy and repeating stuff. Robots on the other side are perfect for that. So the problem imho is not technology but lack of education.

</comment><comment><USER29> Surprised I haven't seen CGP Grey's Humans Need Not Apply[1] video posted up in any of these automation discussions.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU)

Anyone who thinks that automation isn't a big deal want to respond?

I'm also curious how we assume with such confidence that everything will be fine since we survived the Industrial Revolution when there was an order of magnitude less people on the planet in the 19th century?

</comment><comment><USER30> Whatever.

In the meantime, let's bring the manufacturing chain back here so we can build up the automation expertise ourselves, and, while we wait for the End of Work, stop making the middle of our IQ bell curve compete with countries that don't give a shit about their environment, the concept of intellectual property or the safety of their workers.

We can figure the automation problem out later.

<comment><USER31> > In the meantime, let's bring the manufacturing chain back here so we can > build up the automation expertise ourselves

How? There's obvious long term financial value in having local supply chains and manufacturing expertise. Therefore state capitalist systems will subsidize local manufacturing in the short term, while anarcho-capitalist systems will flock to set up shop there to capture convert those short-term subsidies into short-term profit.

Do you have a solution that will work to build high-tech manufacturing infrastructure in the United States with no corporate incentives and no US government intervention? (I mean besides tweeting brags about job creation)

<comment><USER32> Sure, dramatically lower the corporate income tax rate and substantially reduce the massive over-regulation in the US economy. Check out the various regulation registries at the Federal level, the US is choking to death on thousands of unnecessary regulations (growing rapidly for decades) that are almost always written solely for the benefit of protectionism or for fake the- government-is-doing-something purposes (which happens at all levels).

The US corporate income tax rate has been a bad joke for a long time. Countries like Sweden at 22%, understood decades ago that it was bad economic policy to have a high rate. You tax the income of the wealthy as the offset. The US for example already has an extremely progressive personal income tax rate. For several decades the corporate income tax rate has been falling around the world; the world's average rate has fallen from near 30% to 22% in the last 12 years. The US isn't competitive, you see that in how we've been bleeding pharma & biotech companies off to Ireland. Over time, you start seeing R&D & operations offshoring because of that. Give it time and you've artificially created a lot more global competition through bad policy.

If you're a small to mid size manufacturer in the US, paying a 30% effective income tax rate is brutal if you want to compete globally while everyone else is paying far lower rates. Germany for example lowered their top rate by about 9 points a decade ago. Finland and Iceland have a 20% rate. Korea is at 24% and China at 25%. The European average is about 20%.

<comment><USER33> The US effective tax rate for corporations is pretty much comparable to other developed countries' effective rates [1], because the US has more deductions, write-offs, and tax holidays.

If you're talking about cutting the statutory rate while also eliminating deductions and simplifying the code, I'm all for that (ditto for personal income taxes). A huge complicated tax code benefits big corporations more than your small business owner, because tax lawyers and accountants are largely a fixed cost.

But let's not keep repeating the misguided fact that US corporations pay unusually high taxes -- they simply don't.

[1] [http://www.forbes.com/sites/taxanalysts/2015/03/25/the- truth...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/taxanalysts/2015/03/25/the-truth-about- corporate-tax-rates/#f29735920a54)

<comment><USER34> When looking at effective tax rates, one might want to include the cost for all the experts employed to get to the difference between nominal and effective tax rate, and the brain drain these careers impose on more productive disciplines. But you will have a hard time finding a country where people are not convinced that their tax system is the worst, so maybe the US is not particularly bad in that way either.

The observation that a complicated makes the big guy part a lower effective rate than the small guy should be much more popular, I wish someone established a good name for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> The global market was still expanding so all efficiency gains from industrial revolution and the internet revolution were absorbed. Where as today the global economy is stagnating. The efficiency gains in the next decade are expected to be a few times the rate of market growth which would put many people out of work making the global market contract further. This cycle could accelerate very quickly.

</comment><comment><USER36> I think we have to deal with reality first, rather than delving into hypothetical situations where robots control the world. Currently, many countries are growing their population despite the reduction in jobs. Secondly, corruption in the government, and businesses that manipulate the government, is funneling money into a small group of people.

These are two issues that will actually help with both creating jobs and ensuring decent pay. Nobody really knows what will happen in the future. If there are robots that can do all of our work, who says that only extremely rich people will be able to afford them? Which technologies have stayed permanently unaffordable where there is consumer demand? Not that many.

</comment><comment><USER37> (I posted this on another thread this week where it was less relevant, so I'll just repost it here and see if anybody notices.)

Mass automation is undermining our democracy in a very specific way: it's acting as the ultimate "resource curse." [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse)

"Countries with an abundance of natural resources, specifically non-renewable resources like minerals and fuels, tend to have less economic growth, less democracy, and worse development outcomes than countries with fewer natural resources."

Scholars debate the causes of the resource curse, but one popular theory has to do with the way autocrats fund themselves relative to democracies.

Autocrats, it turns out, need a lot of wealth to pay their cronies. No dictator rules alone; they need someone to run the military, someone to collect the taxes, and someone to enforce the laws. Those people have to be paid, and handsomely, or they'll overthrow the dictator (or just allow the dictator to be overthrown). This is called "selectorate theory" and this video is a great introduction. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs)

Oil wealth, specifically, undermines democracy because when autocrats have access to oil wealth, they don't need to depend on their citizens very much. (Indeed, many oil-rich autocratic countries just allow other countries to come in and drill it, keeping local labor entirely out of the loop.)

Resource-cursed autocracies tend to democratize when the oil wealth runs out and they need to rely on the people's productivity to deliver wealth to cronies. When autocrats are forced to allow people to educate themselves and communicate with one another, democracy ensues.

It can work the other way, too. In every democracy, there's a group of folks asking themselves a question: is now the time to try a coup, to replace democracy with an autocracy? As the value of capital increases and the value of human labor decreases, the advantages of staging a coup become more and more enticing.

For years we've thought of human labor as the "ultimate resource." But it turns out that human labor isn't the ultimate resource. Robot labor that's just as good if not better than human labor is a resource beyond any we've ever seen.

But that means that we're discovering/inventing the ultimate resource curse.

We _might_ use automation to fund universal basic income, or a class of elites could use it to undermine "unnecessary" citizens (the "unnecessariat"), establishing a corporate fascism.

When the government depends on human productivity for our tax base, the government needs to keep us all well-educated and healthy. But soon, government won't depend on human labor.

"Is now the time?" they're asking. And, increasingly, the answer is "yes."

<comment><USER38> Interesting perspective!

The biggest worry here is the automation of law enforcement. Once we're policed by robots, there's nobody to rise up against the dictators.

Maybe we should ensure that every person has one robot to do their work for them, and that's it. No robots for governments and corporations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Self-driving cars and robots replacing factory workers are obviously just the beginning. How about computers that can program themselves? How about machines that can _think_ and create like we do (and better)?

We approach 2017, we know climate change is a real threat, we know automation is going to be a big problem, we know we're consuming the world's resources at an alarming rate and there's 7.5 billion people on this rock...

I get the feeling the future won't be this Utopian scenario that some people are dreaming of.

<comment><USER40> >How about computers that can program themselves

We've done that. Starting with the first language after Assembly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Automation, which is rooted in all of our brains.

We'll have to solve that paradox and change our mindset on life. Philosophy time.

</comment><comment><USER42> Bertrand Russell's "In Praise of Idleness" is relevant here.

[http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html](http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html)

</comment><comment><USER43> No kidding! Based on early nineteenth century trends, automation will result in most people being completely unable to do work of any kind by the middle of the twentieth century :( :(

</comment><comment><USER44> Once productivity increases through bio hacking becomes possible, we may see the day when hacking yourself to be competitive for employment becomes an ethical problem.

<comment><USER34> Ever heard of a guy called Lance Armstrong? How many people routinely mess with their brain chemistry to fulfill self-imposed (via career expectation) performance expectations?

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> The long term job killer is UNFAIR access to automation decided by the costs of automation or political decision.

The revolt in late XIXth century in Europe were based on the generalisation of the steam engine that were favoring without any other merits than birth the wealthy and ripping the craftsmen of their jobs.

Diesel made an engine so craftsman could compete vs steam engine. The german government pre-empted his invention so that it would not disrupt the dominant position of big corporations...

Automation is not the problem, it is unfair access to automation decided by capital.

</comment><comment><USER46> The final stage are fully automated factory's on ships, going to where the resources are the cheapest. Receiving machinery from other ships, selling Kalashnikov and cellphones, to a mankind at war over boredom.

Good thing is though, machines dont need CEOs - so the last rat on the ship, might have the flagpoles cotton as towel.

That is unless they can invent so many boolshit jobs, that the hamster wheel keeps on churning.

</comment><comment><USER47> we not only need accelerated minimum wages consensus and field trials, but also defined way to remove wealth from the top few using such creative ways, that wealth still become desirable pursuit.

</comment><comment><USER48> Does automation kill jobs in China?

<comment><USER49> Yes. [http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-36376966](http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-36376966)

<comment><USER22> That's Foxconn, and they're just getting started with replacing workers. Foxconn has 1.3 million employees. Hon Hai CEO Terry Gou: "Hon Hai has a workforce of over one million worldwide and as human beings are also animals, to manage one million animals gives me a headache."

He means it. He brought in the director of the Tapei Zoo for advice on how to manage animals with different temperaments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I think it's likely that automation will be a huge creator of jobs. And I'm not talking about creation of high skill jobs at the expense of destruction of low skill jobs. I'm talking about a net creation of both low and high skill jobs.

Allow me to explain. Here's a youtube movie of some robots in a Mercedes factory

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VreG1iC65Lc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VreG1iC65Lc)

There are thousands of movies like that. Lots of robots doing a lot of work, and apparently displacing lots of jobs. But there are some jobs in the background. Someone has programmed those robots. But aren't those programmers (super-)highly skilled?

I don't know for sure, but it feels to me a robot is programed like an Excel macro: you record the moves, and then edit what you recorded. For an Excel macro, both parts are done (generally) by the same person, but for industrial robots, they are probably done by different people. The person who is being recorded needs only know how to manipulate a mechanical arm with a controller, that is probably not very different from a PS4 controller. The person who edits the macros, creates procedures, then combines them, optimizes them, creates tests, etc, etc, that person is a highly skilled individual. The other one not so much. The difference here is the capacity for abstraction.

Now, one could say that both these jobs happen only once, and then the robot performs the jobs thousands of times, so you have 2 new jobs (one high skill, one low skill) displacing thousands others. Alas, the programming, maintenance, re-programming, upgrading, not to mention construction of the robots still needs a small army of people. But overall, I agree that it's possible that introducing these robots resulted in a net job destruction for Mercedes and its suppliers (but not entirely sure; Mercedes was most likely more concerned with the quality of their cars rather than their cost of production).

However, not every manufacturer is similar to Mercedes. A lot of manufacturers produce things in smaller batches for example. And now you start to look at the trade-off of putting the automation in place:

[https://xkcd.com/1205/](https://xkcd.com/1205/)

If a batch is small enough, the initial investment in automation is not recouped. If the batch is huge, the automation is a no-brainer. But there's a huge middle ground where only some partial automation makes sense. And part of that automation that makes sense is to do things using some mechanical arms moved by some PS4-type controller.

I think in the near future, a lot of the "mechanical" type of work (welding, cutting, soldering, hammering) will become remote-controlled. It might look like high-skilled now, but the job of a machinist was considered high-skilled 50 years ago, and essentially they are the same.

Now, the farther you are from the moving or hot or electricity-conducting parts, the farther you are from danger, and the more people can try something as a hobby. More importantly, the barrier of entry for a given (low-skilled) trade goes down, so people will be able to retrain themselves more quickly. And these people will be able to create more quickly.

Just like blogging has created millions of (unofficial, but money making) jobs, the advent of remote-controlled machines will create millions of new (low-skilled) jobs. And these remote-controlled machine will show up exactly because of the need for automation.

<comment><USER5> > Alas, the programming, maintenance, re-programming, upgrading, not to > mention construction of the robots still needs a small army of people.

If automation doesn't result in absolutely _massive_ savings on employment, it just won't happen. You're army of people is more like a small platoon -- the army being entirely displaced.

But I think there is something to be said about automation allowing for creation to become more accessible. It might make entire categories of small- scale products designed by small teams possible in ways that were not possible before.

<comment><USER22> Right. Kiva warehouse robots are a particularly striking example. Before Amazon bought Kiva, they gave out info about operating costs. All the little mobile robots are interchangeable, so if one fails, it's just sidelined. You have somebody on site to replace batteries and wheels; anything non-trivial goes back to the factory. The entire Kiva company, which was servicing about a dozen big Internet retailers before Amazon bought them, was 600 people. A single warehouse automated with Kiva loses at least half its staff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Idle hands are the Devil's workshop.

We're going to have to find ways to help people stay busy/occupied. Otherwise, society will just turn nasty.</comment>


Show HN: Tracking HN rankings over time - <AUTHOR> http://hnrankings.info/

<comment><AUTHOR> I built this site as a weekend project to teach myself Django. It turned out to be a pretty interesting way to visually view how stories rise and fall on HN over the course of the day.

I am planning to do some more analysis of the data soon and add more features to the site. Any suggestions of useful metrics would be helpful.

</comment><comment><USER2> very cool! i like the way to navigate and browse stories.

thanks for making and showing!</comment>