Pronunciation errors that made the English language - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/11/pronunciation-errors-english-language <comment><USER3> Very interesting article with cool examples. Here are a few more:

* In the "words that begin with an n" category he didn't include the most famous example: _orange_ , the fruit, which has an _n_ in Persian and Arabic from which it was borrowed but lost it ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_(fruit)#Etymology](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_\(fruit\)#Etymology))

* I used to think that _baby_ was the actual word and _babe_ was a corruption, turns out most probably it was just the reverse (baby < babe + y) ([http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/44883/was-baby-or...](http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/44883/was-baby-originally-baby-talk))

* Somewhat related to the last category: Have you ever wondered why the initial sound in _chair_ and _chandelier_ are pronounced differently in English? There was a sound change in French, _chair_ was borrowed before that change and _chandelier_ , like many other French word that start with ch, after that change.

* According to OED the reason that some animal names have the same singular and plural was that they originally contained a long vowel, e.g. _deer_ , _sheep_ , _fish_. Turns out, _horse_ was also in this group but after a sound change its vowel shortened, hence the -s plural now.

<comment><USER4> Interesting. In spanish, "orange" still has the n: "naranja".

<comment><USER5> It makes more sense in english where you can't hear the difference between "An orange" or "A norange".

<comment><USER6> This is a common phenomenon in English. The "Adder" (type of snake native to Britain) was originally "Nadder". In old/middle English, it was "a/an", "my/mine", so "mine Edward" and "my Nedward" sounded the same, hence a nickname (ironically originally "ekename", so another case) for Edward is "Ned".

<comment><USER7> Indeed, from the OP:

 _Adder, apron and umpire all used to start with an "n". Constructions like "A nadder" or "Mine napron" were so common the first letter was assumed to be part of the preceding word. Linguists call this kind of thing reanalysis or rebracketing._

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The latest iteration of the language, yes. Fifty or a hundred years from now, we'll see. I think (hope) that we'll see a backlash against merging and simplification. Perhaps leetspeak will be the new Esperanto.

Since we're trading anectotes, I'll share mine here:

When taking words from another language, the process often falls under one of two types: loanwords, which are taken intact from their native language (e.g. doppelganger), and calques, which are literally translated as idiom (e.g. flea market).

What's the anecdote? Loanword is a calque of the German lehnwort, and _calque_ is a French loanword.

<comment><USER9> Since this is a language thread, worth pointing out that an anecdote is a story _about an event, place or person_. What you've shared is in entertaining fact, not an anecdote.

<comment><USER10> It was a calque of the Greek ανέκδοτο, which means "short, amusing story", or "joke".

<comment><USER8> Yes, this was the meaning I had in mind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Many years ago I had a friend apologise verbally for her "forx pass". Turns out she'd only ever read the phrase _faux pas_.

Then just last month a colleague of mine created the reverse in a group email, acknowledging a "fow par". It was a phrase she'd only ever heard and used, never (knowingly) seen spelled.

<comment><USER12> Took me just a moment to realise you're from a non-rhotic area. I thought those mispronunciations were _really_ far off.

<comment><USER11> Ha! Yes, Australian accent may be required.

<comment><USER13> Exactly! There's a Frazz cartoon about how you can tell if a person reads a lot (mispronounces) or watches TV a lot (misspells). I know which category I'd rather be in.

<comment><USER14> Yep. I used to feel embarrassed about my mispronunciation fax passes, until I realized they mostly came from reading beyond my immediate opportunity to apply.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Though not related specifically to pronunciation, a fun fact is that a lot of English words for meat and livestock are borrowed from Anglo-Saxon and French words respectively. This apparently comes from the Norman conquest: the French nobility dealt more with prepared meat while Anglo-Saxon peasants dealt more with livestock.

"Beef" comes from Old French "boef" (meaning ox), while "cow" comes from Old English "cu."

Same goes for sheep/mutton, pork/pig, and poultry/chicken.

<comment><USER16> And there's doubling in the law. Cease and desist, plus a few others I can't remember.

<comment><USER17> "Cease and desist" is a different, and also interesting, case from the field/table distinction baddox referred to. According to Jespersen ( [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Jespersen](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Jespersen) ) phrases like "kith and kin" or "cattle and kine" are very old in English and far predate the Norman invasion.

My kid was learning English around the time the brand "Da Kine" became popular. In his second grade way he looked it up in the dictionary and decided it was a farm brand.

Jesperson's "Growth and Structure of the English Language" is a fantastic book by the way.

<comment><USER18> But wait... cattle and kine are the same thing, much like cease and desist. Kith and kin aren't the same. Do you also think it's strange to say "friends and family"?

<comment><USER13> 'kin' comes from 'ken', so 'kinfolk' are folks that think like you. What does 'kith' mean?

<comment><USER18> So, nothing you said is correct. Ken [know] < OE cennan "make known; declare". Kin [family] < OE cynn "family" (among other meanings, but that one seems apt).

[http://etymonline.com/index.php?term=kin](http://etymonline.com/index.php?term=kin)

Kith [] < OE cyðð also meaning family, but alternatively neighbors, countrymen, or acquaintances. Obsolete and only extant today in the fixed phrase "kith and kin", but originally meaning [countrymen] and later [friends]. Your kith and kin are all your relationships, blood or otherwise. Your kin are the blood and marriage relationships.

<comment><USER13> Thanks for being so kind. One thing I said isn't correct. That definition of 'kinfolk' came from a writer, Forrest Carter, so I blame them.

<comment><USER18> There are two noticeable mistakes is your prior comment. One is a simple mistake of fact; kin is not related to ken. The other is the etymological fallacy, which says that the meaning of a word is or should be controlled by what it meant in the past.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymological_fallacy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymological_fallacy)

<comment><USER13> Cute. If a word is out of usage almost completely, I don't see how that fallacy can be brought into play.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Honestly, I wouldn't mind if we could get rid on the English language as the world's dominant language altogether. The pronunciation rules are completely crazy.

I recently visited Indonesia, and people who spoke Indonesian were surprised how good my Indonesian pronunciation was. Apart from some food, I didn't understand a word of Indonesian, but in Indonesian, pronunciation is pretty much phonetic. Just say what it says, and you can't go wrong. Unless you're a native English speaker, in which case all the crazy mangled pronunciation you've grown up with gets in the way.

A lot of languages from totally different corners of the world have agree on pronunciation, and have practically identical rules for it. A few exceptions, like English and French, seem to require mangling it beyond all recognition.

<comment><USER20> Or wi kud jast meyk Inglish speling ruls mor sensibl.

<comment><USER21> That requires that each sound is replaced with a letter.

There are more sounds than letters AFAIK. [http://w3.inf.fu- berlin.de/lehre/SS05/efs/materials/PhonSymb...](http://w3.inf.fu- berlin.de/lehre/SS05/efs/materials/PhonSymb.jpg)

<comment><USER20> You're only interested in phonemes ("The smallest contrastive linguistic unit which may bring about a change of meaning" \- [1]), not sounds. For example, the "th" in "thin" and "this" or "i" in "see" and "sit" and "happy" etc., even though they are different sounds, they are the same phonemes - <USER2> one for the other will not change the meaning of the word, it will just make other people think you have a strange accent.

Also, you can combine letters - e.g. keep "naive" the same, but write "fayv" instead of "faiv" for "five" to indicate a diphthong. And keep "ship" the same, but write "shiip" for "sheep" to indicate a long "i" sound.

[1]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoneme](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoneme)

<comment><USER22> Sorry but I don't think you're right about [ð] (this) and [θ] (thin) being a phoneme. For one, most native English speakers hear a difference if you ask them, and it does seem possible to find a minimal pair, that is, two words that mean different things in English but differ only in those two sounds. (e.g. thigh vs. thy)

A better example of a phoneme in English is the aspirated and non-aspirated [p] sound (transcribed as [pʰ] for aspirated). It's just the difference between holding in a bunch of air and pushing it out, and most English people can't hear a difference.

Edit: I may have been confused, were you just pointing these out as being all different phonemes?

<comment><USER20> You're right, there might be minimal pairs, but for most words the exact pronunciation doesn't matter - like there is a minimal pair for [i] and [i:] (ship/sheep, beach/bitch), but (1) not everyone can pronounce it, so often you must be able to infer the meaning from the context, and (2) for most words it doesn't matter (see, thin, happy, ...)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I have heard native English speakers in the U.S. with a habit of attempting to pronounce the "h" in words that start with "wh". "white" being a notable example. Furthermore, in their efforts they transpose the two letters, so "white" comes out as "hwight" rather than "wite". I've always thought this to be some sort of affectation intended to elevate themselves above the hoi polloi, but maybe there's some historical basis for it.

<comment><USER24> Tourists from the USA in the UK always sounds funny when pronouncing place names that have "ham" in them. The UK English way of saying these place names is Buckingum and Birmingum, not BuckingHam and BirmingHam.

<comment><USER23> I would have said BuckingAm myself. Speaking of the UK, how on earth did Worcester come to be pronounced "Wister". At least that's the way it's pronounced in the U.S. northeast, when referring to the city in central Massachusetts. The Brits threw New England a whole bunch of curveballs.

<comment><USER24> I'd pronounce that Wooster

<comment><USER14> Actually I always hear it pronounced Wuhster. Although maybe you did mean "oo" as in "wood" (the sound I hear around here) rather than "root".

<comment><USER25> Yeah it's a schwa, rather than an oo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Surprising that the "words that begin with n" section didn't discuss how the process works both ways. For example the word newt (as in the aquatic amphibian) used to be ewt, but because it was so often prefaced by "an" eventually the n was attached to the ewt. Wikipedia's definition for this process is juncture loss.

Source: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_articles#Juncture_loss](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_articles#Juncture_loss)

</comment><comment><USER27> If you like this sort of stuff you should definitely check out Slate's Lexicon Valley podcast [1]. Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo have great chemistry and the content is always interesting. [1] [http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/lexicon_valley.html](http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/lexicon_valley.html)

<comment><USER28> Thanks for the link, but holy buckets that's one of the worst pieces of web design I've ever seen. Leave it to web designers to screw up displaying an ordered list.

Sanely presented list of podcasts in the form of an RSS feed at <[http://feeds.feedburner.com/SlateLexiconValley?format=xml>](http://feeds.feedburner.com/SlateLexiconValley?format=xml>).

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> On a related note, if you haven't seen these yet, these series of videos is awesome:

"A history of the english language in ten minutes"

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3r9bOkYW9s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3r9bOkYW9s)

</comment><comment><USER30> I come from the same area as the bithplace of william the conqueror and, to my surprise, as I was learning English, I realized that some words sounded the same as the local dialect my grandparents were speaking; such as 'pear' and 'chair', etc...

</comment><comment><USER31> When I was in school we were reading 'The Crucible'. One lesson we all took turns to read out loud. One of my peers read the word 'whore' as 'war'. Some of the boys sniggered.

The teacher then needed to describe what a whore was.

I think she handled it quite well in hindsight considering she had a bunch if immature teenagers to deal with.

<comment><USER32> We had a teacher named Mrs Hoare, pronounced "whore". She was lovely. She eventually left to be replaced by Mrs Robinson, so handing in homework involved "Here's to you Mrs Robinson!"

but nobody got as far as asking "Are you trying to seduce me Mrs Robinson?"

chortle chortle guffaw teenage idiots

<comment><USER33> I've often imagined what an awkward look I would get mentioning Hoare logic [1] to someone who hadn't seen it written.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoare_logic](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoare_logic)

</comment></comment></comment><comment> jack-r-abbit Recently I've heard several people pronounce the "l" in "salmon" and it actually made me pause to see if I had been saying it wrong all along. General consensus with my Facebook friends was that the "l" should not be pronounced. But now I wonder if it used to be but was lost.

<comment><USER34> It definitely used to be pronounced. I've never heard of a word that started out with a silent letter. All silent letters I've come across in my studies have been pronounced in the past. I could be wrong and if so, that would be very interesting.

<comment> jack-r-abbit I didn't realize that the silent "k" in knife and knight were ever pronounced. Or the "p" in pterodactyl. I'm glad those three aren't making a comeback. :)

<comment><USER18> knife and knight will have been pronounced with the 'k' originally in english; you can see this in Chaucer. Pterodactyl, being essentially coined by english speakers from classical greek roots, probably never had the 'p' pronounced in english, but it was certainly pronounced in greek.

However, the closest thing I'm aware of to a word "starting out with a silent letter" is debt, which was originally spelled (and pronounced) without the 'b'. The 'b' was added by someone who felt the word should better reflect the latin 'debeo', and was never pronounced at any point.

<comment><USER35> "Doubt" is another one; borrowed from old French doute in the 13th century, with the "b" added by scribes in the 14th century.

There's a bit in Shakespeare's _Love's Labour's Lost_ where the pedant Holofernes is ranting about how the "b" should be pronounced in those two words, but as you say, it was always silent.

EDIT: Turns out "salmon" and "solder" were originally "saumon" and "soudor", with the "l" added in the 18th century (agsin to reflect the Latin spelling)

<comment><USER36> I very much enjoyed this quick introduction to Shakespeare in Original Pronunciation (the sound of speech at the time) and how many puns and much interpretation is lost in modern accents. From the Open University: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPlpphT7n9s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPlpphT7n9s)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Are the L's in balm and psalm really silent in British English? I have always pronounced the L, and can't imagine applying a bahm or reading psahm 23.

<comment><USER38> Yes, at least for this Scot, "balm" is the same as the first part of "bampot" and psalm is the same as "Sam".

<comment><USER39> Interesting, I always thought bampot had a first syllable rhyming with "lamp", but would pronounce balm to rhyme with calm. But then I'm from the south of England so bampot isn't a word I'd normally outside of reading Trainspotting...

<comment><USER38> I think Scots tend to shorten sounds - consider Edinburgh, which locals pronounce "Embra". Only having been here for about 30 years I've only got to the point of referring to it as "Edinbra".

Referring to it as "Eedeeenboooroooo" causes hilarity in local of all levels of seniority.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> grey-area It's not in the article, but loose and lose are another two words in the process of merging, because they are almost homophones. These two are often confused and lose seems to be losing the battle.

<comment><USER40> In a somewhat similar process, 'lead' (pronounced like the element) seems to have replaced 'led' (the participle or the preterite): "She lead the team."

<comment><USER41> I've not seen this before. To me that reads like mixed tense, where lead (rhyming with steed) is the present tense of led

<comment><USER18> If "she lead the team" were in the present tense, it would be a gross foreign- speaker error; no native speaker is going to mess up our vestigial 3sg verb rule.

But as with lose/"loose", I don't think this is a pronunciation change in progress; I think it's just a spelling mistake, by analogy to read/read.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I've often heard people use the term "mute point" instead of "moot point". That seems fairly similar to the borrowing similar words from other languages.

<comment><USER43> Is that in the US? It would make some sort of sense since 'moot point' has effectively reversed its meaning in US english ('something _not_ for discussion' there). 'Mute' seems to to agree with that sense.

(See also the US meaning of 'table' as in 'postpone for discussion' which has also reversed)

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I observe that the linguistic sophistication here is significantly in excess of that of an ordinary HN comment thread.

</comment><comment><USER22> This is basically an overview of what you would learn in a Historical Linguistics course. The reason they focus so much on sounds is because the changes are much more obvious than say, syntactic changes in the language (which can be very subtle).

</comment><comment><USER45> I've often wondered if nursery rhymes indicate words that used to rhyme?

For example did "rain" and "again" rhyme when the itsy bitsy spider was written?

Did "bone" and "none" rhyme when old mother hubbard was written?

<comment><USER46> Rain and again still rhyme for me.

<comment><USER47> We must have different accents. I say r-AIN and uh-GIN, with the 'g' sounding like the 'g' in 'golf'.

That song doesn't rhyme for me either. :(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Around the age of 11 or so, I heard my daughter, a voracious reader, mispronounce colonel the way it is spelled. When I corrected her she was very upset to the point of arguing with me that I must be wrong.

So we went to the dictionary where we both learned the source of the confusion:

[http://teachinghistory.org/history-content/ask-a- historian/2...](http://teachinghistory.org/history-content/ask-a- historian/22270)

Borrowed from French but altered to an Italian prononciation. There are other such words in English, but I can't think what they are at the moment.

</comment><comment><USER49> I think that the king of miss-pronunciation is prof. Joseph Stiglitz. The guy is genius but the way he pronounces the words 'state', 'etcetera' and many others is hilarious.

</comment><comment><USER50> Seeing an article that gives Latin words as an example of English language pronunciation errors makes me shake my head. Seeing that the example given contains an error itself (his "correct" version of "ex-cetera" is "etcetera," where it is supposed to be written as two words, "et cetera") makes me bang my head into my desk—twice.

<comment><USER51> Words (or phrases) like "et cetera" are so commonly in use that they are effectively English, despite their origins. Otherwise, what's left of English?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> My favorite is cleave/cleave one of which means to separate and the other to join together.

<comment><USER11> It took daddy 10 months to raise the barn, and junior with his matches just 10 minutes to raze the barn.

<comment><USER13> Actually barn-raisings took just a couple of days, if the neighbors were helping :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> I wonder, will we eventually start spelling "both" as "bolth"?

</comment><comment><USER53> Pretty funny! This would have been a perfect story using Soundcite- inline audio embedding: [http://soundcite.knightlab.com/](http://soundcite.knightlab.com/)

</comment><comment><USER54> Many people say _in-ter-sting_ rather than _in-ter-est-ing_.

<comment><USER55> I think the most common three-syllable pronunciation I hear is _in-tra-sting_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> My English teacher told me that "You" is now pronounced like that because the "th" in "Thou" used to have its own character, which looked a lot like the Y.

<comment><USER57> That would be pretty astonishing given that the thou/you distinction fairly obviously comes from Latin tu/vos via French tu/vous.

<comment><USER58> Merriam Webster differs: You -- Middle English, from Old English ēow, dative & accusative of gē you; akin to Old High German iu, dative of ir you, Sanskrit yūyam you First Known Use: before 12th century

Thou -- Middle English, from Old English thū; akin to Old High German dū thou, Latin tu, Greek sy First Known Use: before 12th century

So "thou" is cognate with German "du", and "you" is related to German "ihr", the plural of "sie", if I'm understanding this correctly.

<comment><USER57> Yup, you're right and I was, let's say, 99% wrong. (The 1% comes from the fact that "you" and "vos" and "vous" are all related -- but "you" is a cousin of both, not a descendant.)

Still no way it's got anything to do with writing "thou" with a thorn at the front and misreading it as a "y", though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Just remembered - this is actually fairly new. May used to be spelled "may", now it's "maj". I don't think the pronunciation changed though.

<comment><USER51> Huh?

<comment><USER59> It should've been a child of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7385520](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7385520) \- the hacker news 2 app failed to put it in the right place :(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> This is a whopper: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift)

</comment><comment><USER61> I have only met a small handful of people who can pronounce "kilometre" correctly. I don't think this made the language though ...

KILL-o-metre

</comment><comment><USER62> I'm actually surprised their survey found more people using "excetera" than "expresso."

<comment><USER63> Fun fact: An acceptable, albeit dated, spelling of "et cetera" is "&c". Since et cetera literally means "and so forth," you can contract it into "& cetera," or "&c".

<comment><USER64> "&" is actually a stylised way of writing "et" (as in literally writing the letters "e" and "t" together).</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What Is Your Favorite Quote? - <AUTHOR> One quote that you think is better than any other quote. <comment><USER2> _" When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time."_

-Maya Angelou

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> _" Never accept a no from someone who doesn't have the power to say yes"_ — Eleanor Roosevelt

</comment><comment><USER3> "Any time you have an opportunity to make a difference in this world and you don't, then you are wasting your time on Earth." -Roberto Clemente</comment>


The Power of Negative Thinking - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/05/opinion/sunday/the-positive-power-of-negative-thinking.html?_r=1&emc=eta1 <comment><USER2> We had an interesting experience at the start of the year where people were being "encouraged" by the project managers not to be negative on the project. It felt like being part of the Chinese Cultural Revolution where everyone was getting over excited but with a foreboding sense of dread hanging in the background. Myself and a few others continued to list cautions (normally I'm the optimistic one - but this had gone past my limit) but were ignored and treated as naysayers. It resulted in us putting a country live on a production system without having completed regression testing for existing countries, done any negative testing, or having done any testing with security and workflow configured in a production like way. The next couple of months were absolute hell, and only now are we beginning to recover from it. That said, to get the system stable everyone went out of their way, working overtime/weekends without break or compensation to keep the project on track (and losing one of the team from the project due to stress), which allowed the project managers to say "see, putting you under pressure meant you got it to work", without seeing the chaos they'd caused. People should be encouraged to do realistic thinking - aim for the optimistic, don't say no before you try something (so long as it's not clearly suicidal), but when you know things are going wrong take time to reflect and reassess your situation.

</comment><comment><USER3> What the article unfortunately missed is in-depth explanation of why firewalking works in most cases: <http://www.skepdic.com/firewalk.html>

Tony Robbins may be using it for psychological conditioning, but it can be explained from the purely rational / scientific perspective.

<comment><USER4> What I find wonderfully ironic is that the "positive thinking" that was supposed to protect them from the fire probably increased the harm. As your link points out, the sweat on the bottom of the feet protects the firewalker from the hot coals. But, where does that sweat come from? In large part, it comes from being nervous. The positive thinking that Mr. Robbins encouraged could very well have reduced that nervousness, eroding the protection that his students had on their feet.

<comment><USER5> Theres an even more ironic possibility - similar to what the article mentions about positive affirmations, the positive thinking served only to remind them of their fears rather than alleviate them in any way, making them even more nervous than they would have been otherwise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There's a lot of truth in this article, and it reminds me on what Tom DeMarco writes in this book "Waltzing With Bears" (ISBN 9780932633606):

DeMarco argues that having detailed, quantified information about your risks enables you to make more courageous decisions. But in order to be able to quantify your risks, your company's culture must allow for critical and "negative" thinking.

Otherwise, you won't be able to perform even the first basic step: identifying your risks. Without having properly identified _all_ your risks, quantifying those becomes a farce, and essentially boils down to missing one or two elephants in the room.

</comment><comment><USER7> How is it possible that there are people with enough money to afford a Tony Robins seminary and yet they don't know that firewalking is a "trick" and has barely anything to do with "motivation/self-awareness/whatevertheyareselling" ? It puzzles me.

<comment><USER8> You assume wealth is correlated with intelligence (it's actually like 0.03).

You're applying the "halo effect" to these unfortunately delusional people - just because you are rich doesn't really imply anything else about you. It merely indicates that you are, well, rich.

End of attributes.

<comment><USER7> Ah, right. I tend to forget those psychological shortcomings :(

This one is rather strong and I easily fall for it, thank you for reminding me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Negative thinking prevents you from doing stupid things. Overly optimistic people might create more problems for them, thinking they would succeed, rather than go back and think about their real possibilities at the moment.

</comment><comment><USER10> I hate to talk about this but it might be worthwhile... avoiding negative emotions led me to depression and anxiety.

About a year ago I started noticing that my life, while looking wonderful from the outside, was anything but. It was the subtle things -- eating pizza every night for a month, playing video games to pass the time, looking for excuses to avoid "living." Summer was just finishing up and one of my favorite pastimes - swimming, was only sought out 2, maybe 3 times that year. Far from par.

Emotions seemed mundane, thoughts were rarely provoking, and my opinions of the world became overly moot. I was getting stuck in the drudgery and monotony. Movies blended together. My driving habits were developing patterns. Green light, green light, red. Yield. Lather, rinse, repeat...

I was becoming more distant with my wife. Her presence was something I rarely cared for. Trying to connect on an emotional level was becoming increasingly difficult. When her days would usually be interesting and we could talk for hours about something as basic as an inkpen, it was difficult to stay focus for more than 5 minutes on largest of issues. I was frustrating with myself, my brain and especially my actions. While I was never abusive, I was distant, and I was distancing myself from her. She could be traumatized and I wouldn't be there. Her life became hard to understand, hard to relate to. And I was clueless.

Once I started picking up that life wasn't the same, my instincts started kicking in. It was fight or flight with my mind. This isn't something easily overcomed. For the longest time my only logical approach to alleviation was a frontal lobotomy. But that's not really practical. Or realistic. So there has to be something else, right?

A lot of us have an inner desires to "fix things." Pipes leak and we replace 'em. A/C goes out and recharge it. Pants get ripped? Patch it. But what do we do when WE are the problem? When our minds are the problem. And what do we do when we can't be "fixed?"

Negative emotions are healthy. Sadness, fear, hate, anger -- they're all emotions we tend to label as negative. It's society that associates negative == bad. But instead of fighting everything, we should learn to accept that these exist. They have always existed and will always exist. We can't flip a switch and all the hate in the world will be gone. Instead we should appreciate the Eastern (religion) approach to it -- keep everything in moderation. Happiness, sadness, everything. Keep it equal and don't try to fight it.

We also shouldn't go out looking for specific emotions. That'll only upset us when it doesn't reach our expectations. Instead we should put ourselves into situations where certain emotions naturally occur. Then we can observe them at face value and embrace them with our true self.

<comment><USER11> >But what do we do when WE are the problem?

Find something outside yourself to focus on. Some quotes:

>The more I reflect on this question, the more convinced I am that man's fundamental purpose is to achieve; in other words, the striving toward goals is an end in itself. ... Viewed in that light, it would seem that striving itself - the constant working toward goals - is man's real purpose.

\- - Robert J Ringer, _How You Can Find Happiness During the Collapse of Western Civilization_

>In order to live free and happily, you must sacrifice boredom. It is not always an easy sacrifice.

\- - fortune-cookie, no attribution

>The only true happiness comes from squandering ourselves for a purpose.

\- - William Cowper

>To be of use in the world is the only way to be happy.

\- - Hans Christian Anderson

>We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about.

\- - Charles Kingsley

And Eliezer's post on how having "Something to Protect" gives meaning to life, <http://lesswrong.com/lw/nb/something_to_protect/>

Something to protect is the most significant from your comment's view, fear of risk to your "something" is the strongest driver around.

<comment><USER12> > In order to live free and happily, you must sacrifice boredom. It is not > always an easy sacrifice.

According to the internet, this is from "Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah" by Richard Bach

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Like with most things, anything to an extreme is dangerous -including possibly positive thinking. People just need to learn moderation.

<comment><USER8> Even moderation is dangerous if the moderates let the extremists take over society (rise of Nazi Germany). The converse is also true (inaction of France/England on the rise of Nazi Germany).

Everything is dangerous.

<comment><USER13> That was extreme moderation.. also bad. :p

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Positive affirmations can be detrimental if they're not realistic. You can't say "I'm the best ever at golf" if you don't truly believe it. That's when you will feel bad after using an affirmation.

You have to truly believe affirmations for them to expand positivity in your life. "I did a good job taking out the trash, I didn't tear the bag." It's rather boring, but saying something positive about something you know to be true brings positivity into your life. It builds on your positive self image and makes you better in all areas of your life.

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm not seeing how the understanding of science behind firewalking and feeling good about accomplishing something scary (i.e., actually firewalking) need to be mutually exclusive.

</comment><comment><USER9> Search google for nestinari - and you would find an old bulgarian tradition of fire-walking. How they do it? I guess there is some trick - maybe not allowing any air between the leg and the fire, or quickly walking - or the feet have something on them... I dunno.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestinarstvo>

</comment><comment><USER16> The trick of thinking about the worst possible scenario worked for me, when I had problems with social anxiety in high school.

<comment><USER17> If you expect the worst everything will turn out better than expected.

<comment><USER16> Or exactly what you expected, and at least you can say "told you so" :)

But I've meant that the worst I could imagine when I had tried was't really that bad to be so scared of it. So I realized I'm scared without sufficient reasons, and that I have much more to win, than to lose, so I just went for it. YMMV.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Negative thinking is okay (I do it all the time LoL) but negative thinking that's charged with emotion, especially about someone else, is not okay.

Emotion is what embeds thoughts into the mind. Emotion creates physical grooves in the brain. If your going to be negative, be careful not to charge it with emotional energy. Charge positive thoughts with happy emotions.</comment>


Ask HN - I need a greybeard mentor - <AUTHOR>

I've done plenty of web and enterprise app development. Occasional stints with mobile and desktop apps as well.
I am getting bored.
I need a greybeard to help me keeping my programming career rewarding. <comment><USER2> As a start, read and understand [http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Linux- Kernel-Third-Editi...](http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Linux-Kernel-Third- Edition/dp/0596005652) (that's a very technical and in-depth book) and [http://www.amazon.com/Linux-Kernel-Development-3rd- Edition/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Linux-Kernel-Development-3rd- Edition/dp/0672329468/) (that's a more gentle overview book) then dive in with [http://www.amazon.com/UNIX-Filesystems-Evolution-Design- Impl...](http://www.amazon.com/UNIX-Filesystems-Evolution-Design- Implementation/dp/0471164836) and write a very simple file system.

Learn C as necessary.

The FreeBSD kernel book is worth a look too: [http://www.amazon.com/Design- Implementation-FreeBSD-Operatin...](http://www.amazon.com/Design- Implementation-FreeBSD-Operating-System/dp/0201702452)

</comment><comment><USER3> Were you looking for something more in terms of systems programming?

<comment><AUTHOR> Perhaps. I'm not sure, I'm open to it.</comment></comment>


There's no such thing as a query timeout (2005) - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/khen1234/2005/10/20/theres-no-such-thing-as-a-query-timeout/ <comment><USER2> Compare this to Postgres where the timeouts are implemented on the server- side. Eg. statement_timeout.

[https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/runtime-config- clien...](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/runtime-config-client.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> With more modern databases, there are server-side resource constraints per bucket (query, connection, etc..). One of the resources is execution time that can be constrained. Sometimes it can even accept a hint, from the client, regarding the maximum runtime to enforce server-side.

</comment><comment><USER4> I always understood timeout is a resiliency measure implemented by the engineer - doesn't matter whether it is client or server side. Also, client & server/service concepts are relative to what we are talking about.</comment>


Show HN: Ztory, Netflix for magazines - <AUTHOR> https://www.ztory.com/en

<comment><USER2> It would be great to at least list some magazine names that are available without signing up. I'm not going to sign up just to see what's available.

<comment><AUTHOR> We're actually A/B testing that ;)

<comment><USER3> Why are you winking?

<comment><AUTHOR> Either I didn't get the joke or you're taking emoji a bit too seriously :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wait, people care about magazines still?</comment>


Ask HN: Do You Share Podcasts? - <AUTHOR> If you do, do you share entire episodes, links to the show, or certain pieces of an episode? What is your go to way to share them?<p>I'm a big fan of sharing using the Overcast app with timestamp feature, I have tried using clips but it takes a while to clip and then export. <comment><USER2> I created my own App for managing and sharing recommendations to specific friends: [https://listo.unote.io](https://listo.unote.io) It allows to search and send entire podcasts (listennotes api) and individual episodes.

</comment><comment><USER3> I link to episodes or specific things they said I found interesting as a note or link in my wiki.

[https://wiki.nikitavoloboev.xyz/podcasts](https://wiki.nikitavoloboev.xyz/podcasts)</comment>


Facebook apologizes to users for Apple's monstrous efforts to protect privacy - <AUTHOR> https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/27/facebook_ios_ads/ <comment><USER2> previously: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24284613](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24284613)

<comment><USER3> Also [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24284046](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24284046)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just a friendly reminder of the facts on the ground that the change that great folks at El Reg are reporting on and the folks at Facebook in their blog post are posting about is a toggle in iOS 14, which while there in previous operating system releases as an opt-out toggle, will be an opt-in sort of toggle. iOS will now ask for explicit permission on behalf of Apps to let them track you using an identifier Apple made available to developers like Facebook ("IDFA" aka "Identifier for Advertisers") rather than relying on the implicit permission of an opt-out toggle.

This does not kill all forms of tracking, nor does it eliminate IDFA as an an option, but it does make it more obvious to iPhone/iPad users what exactly is going on behind the curtains with _this_ tracking tool and let them make an informed and explicit choice about whether they want any part of that.

<comment><USER5> I was going to protest what sounded like a silly taunt of "great folks at El Reg". Then I went and read the article.

Holy mackerel, compared to this, the folks at Fox and MSNBC are paragons of neutrality. This may be the worst example of journalism I've ever seen. I'm looking all over for something that says "opinion" or "editorial", but no...

<comment><USER6> Have you ever read The Register? Its been this way as long as I can remember (1999?). I consider it more of a cheeky, poking-fun style rather than it being inflammatory. They've always created an air of not taking IT/Technology too seriously.

Take this job listing for example: [https://www.theregister.com/Page/devoops.html](https://www.theregister.com/Page/devoops.html)

1\. DevOops.html

2\. Titled: "Vultures seeking penguin-tamer"

<comment><USER7> I feel like the fact that The Register has been the Internet home of the Bastard Operator From Hell stories ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bastard_Operator_From_Hell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bastard_Operator_From_Hell)) since 2000 really sums up its attitude. It is tech news by and for BOFHs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "We're encouraged by conversations and efforts already taking place in the industry - including within the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the recently announced Partnership for Responsible Addressable Media (PRAM). We look forward to continuing to engage with these industry groups to get this right for people and small businesses."

Translation: "At least we have these guys house trained, so it's not a total loss."

<comment><USER9> A comment from yesterday -

To be fair though, don't you remember how the DNT header worked really well for everybody involved, and how all these advertisers today universally respect it, and how they totally didn't abandon the entire concept as soon as it started seeing mainstream use and platforms started turning it on by default?

What could go wrong if we give them another spot at the table?

I mean, PRAM has already released so many good plans, like... a mission statement. But that counts! I mean, come on, it has 'Responsible' right in its name!

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24286463](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24286463)

<comment><USER10> I worked for an advertiser a while ago - they were totally respecting DNT header, _except_ on the browsers that had it on by default. The business argument was that "it's bogus/meaningless if the user didn't set it explicitly" \- industry wanted that to be "opt-out-of-tracking" not "opt-in- to-tracking".

<comment><USER11> There is something to be said about that tbh, the do-not-track option should be an option on first launch.

Then again, I'm sure very few people are like "Sure do track me pls". I know Microsoft tries to package and word it nicely in their Windows setup (then ignores it at a next update).

<comment><USER12> No. Privacy is generally considered a right. Opt-in/off-by-default is the correct position.

<comment><USER13> I'd be happy to compromise on a single question, asked once per device:

Would you like advertisers to be able to track you (Yes) (No)

Of course advertisers know full well people will press No, and that will harm their income.

<comment><USER14> Exactly, although I would never hit yes I think it is important to give customers the opportunity to make their own, educated choice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Parts of this fall flat as the author doesn't grasp what they're satirizing.

>Facebook actually gave some of the money it made from running those ads through its system to the business that paid for those ads. Which doesn't make any sense but shut up, Facebook is the good guy, ok? And Apple is wrong to be doing this.

Facebook Audience Network, affected by these changes, includes display ads running in 3rd-party (read: not Facebook) apps. App makers showing ads receive a split of the ad revenue in those cases.

<comment><USER16> So, by this logic Facebook is the good guy, because it is receiving less money by helping 3rd parties without its capabilities also invade users privacy, while taking a cut of the profits?

<comment><USER17> The argument made by advertisers and Facebook is that this is anonymized data which helps in making advertisements more relevant to people.

<comment><USER18> What's wrong with showing ads simply based on content a person is looking at?

<comment><USER19> That's called contextual targeting: " If iOS 14 users opt out, they will still be shown ads, but they'll be based on other methods like contextual targeting rather than based on their IDFA. " [https://clearcode.cc/blog/apple- idfa/#apple-skadnetwork](https://clearcode.cc/blog/apple-idfa/#apple- skadnetwork)

That works so poorly Facebook doesn't even bid on showing ads for those users currently: " And Facebook doesn't even bid on iOS users that have Limit Ad Tracking (LAT) enabled " [https://www.adexchanger.com/data-exchanges/what-do- apples-pr...](https://www.adexchanger.com/data-exchanges/what-do-apples- privacy-focused-idfa-changes-mean-for-facebook/)

<comment><USER20> Does it work too poorly on its own, or too poorly compared to tracking ads? Perhaps their value will go up with less presence of the latter.

<comment><USER17> The issue is not effectiveness as much as measurement. Advertisers value the insight obtained by tracking user response to ads. That is something they are willing to pay premium for. Without the ability to do measurements, Facebook does not provide as much value.

<comment><USER21> Ad with id X was shown, Ad with id X was clicked, Ad with id X led to a purchase. Is it that important to know more than that?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This isn't necessarily a principled campaign from Apple.

Apple no longer has an ad network which means it can't take it's cut from ad revenue. By reducing the effectiveness of ads on the platform it pushes more people to in app purchases which it receives a heft chunk of.

<comment><USER23> I'm cautiously optimistic about this, even if it is self-interested. Ads are very much a necessary evil rather than something desirable in society I think, and providing developers with an alternative business model isn't a bad thing.

<comment><USER24> > Ads are very much a necessary evil rather than something desirable in > society I think

You think advertising is 'evil'?

How far do you take that? For example does a listing in a local newspaper advertising a law cutting service count as evil? Is any form of telling people that you off a product or service really an act of evil?

<comment><USER25> Letting people know your product exists is fine. State of the art advertising, that is, propaganda aimed at maximizing sales, seems to have forgotten about ethics. I'd argue that advertising as a practice today is more evil than neutral or good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The title should be that Facebook apologizes to its _customers_, not its _users_. Its customers are people buying ads, not the users using the social network. As the saying goes, if you're not paying, you're the product.

<comment><USER27> So the I'm a "product" of Wikipedia? WordPress? Blender? Linux? mySQL?

<comment><USER26> I guess the saying could have appended "when dealing with for-profit businesses" but that loses a bit of catchiness and brevity.

<comment><USER27> Or maybe it's just a cynical oversimplification?

Am I a product of the Oracle DBs behind the websites I use for free?

How about credit cards? Isn't the merchant and issuing bank the customer there? As long as I pay off my monthly balance, it's free for me.

My Facebook data is worthless. ONLY in aggregate is FB data valuable, and only if it is kept mostly secret from their customers (advertisers).

The more FB data you're using, the less you know about me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> > "That's right, Facebook actually gave some of the money it made from running > those ads through its system to the business that paid for those ads. Which > doesn't make any sense but shut up, Facebook is the good guy, ok? And Apple > is wrong to be doing this."

So it appears the author has no idea what a mobile advertising network is/does...

FB aren't wrong to highlight that this will have a detrimental impact for many thousands of publishers who offer content for free, due to the fact they run an ad supported model.

Let's see how it plays out...

<comment><USER29> _FB aren't wrong to highlight that this will have a detrimental impact for many thousands of publishers who offer content for free, due to the fact they run an ad supported model._

Those apps will still show adverts, publishers will still get paid, and advertisers will still pay to show ads. The only thing that needs to change is the way Facebook choose which adverts to show. Instead of an algorithm based on huge swathes of personal data that they've tracked it'll need to be a simpler "what categories of ads should we show in this app?" form. Adverts will be a bit less effective, which could drive revenues down a bit, but the sky is not falling on the ad model.

The real thing that Facebook are sad about is the fact that they will no longer be able to sell access to the tracking data. That's a lucrative business, and it's one that only really benefits Facebook and data brokers. Cutting off their supply of tracking data isn't a bad thing.

<comment><USER30> Facebook's and Google's first-party businesses will be totally fine. It's the marketplaces (ad sense, audience network) along with all the smaller players in mobile measurement/attribution/advertising that are going to be harmed by this.

File this under actions by a megacorp that increase the power of them and other megacorps.

<comment><USER31> +1 on this. I expect Mobile Attribution Companies (like branch.io etc.) to die a slow death because of this.

In the short term I expect companies like Liveramp (which acts as DMP (Data Management Platform)) to get more business because one theory here is all free apps will start to force users to login (using email/mobile number) which effectively becomes another ID you can track folks with across-apps over time.

<comment><USER32> I'm absolutely fine with this though.

I don't want to be stalked online, and I'll raise a glass over their bankruptcy notices.

Also, forcing users to login may also be in breach of GDPR, if you don't have a good reason to need a login, you're unnecessarily collecting personal information.

One obvious example of this is NVidia, you've paid for the card, yet they force you to login to use their apps.

<comment><USER31> I also game for this. Let's see how this evolves.

One thing I am curious to see (how it pans out) is if device fingerprinting (IP + Device+ Some other attributes etc. to map you) evolves to solve this problem.

In my experience, it is pretty bad (at best 30% compared to IDFA/Device Id solutions) but I see few companies pitching this as an alternative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> To play devils advocate, App developers will loose revenue from ads as they're not as efficient at showing ads users are likely to click on. Those developers may change their business model from 'free - ad supported' to 'features locked behind an in-app purchase' which Apple receive around a 30% cut of. I personally don't feel strongly one way or the other, both contain shady practices.

<comment><USER34> There's three independent issues here affecting users and developers:

1\. People are tracked in ways they don't understand without their knowledge or consent.

2\. Apple requires that in-app purchases go through the App Store.

3\. Apple does not allow 3rd-party app stores.

These can all be independently tackled and it would be a shame to gate solutions for one problem on solving the others first or at the same time. For now, apps can change their business models to ensure profits. Later, when the other issues are taken care of, they can take advantage of that as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I've honestly been surprised at how much traffic Facebook has in my household [1]. I use a Ubiquiti UniFi system at home and have the UniFi controller installed which gives stats on traffic. It's just two people at home.

Facebook's traffic clocks in at 5.22GB on the network (from the beginning of time for the controller). To give context, my wife and I don't use our Facebook accounts at all. She hasn't logged in in 3 years and I log in maybe once a month to once every two months. Surprised by how many apps in our household use the Facebook SDK and pipe data to them.

Additional context, I don't even have "fun" apps. Just food delivery, Office suite (outlook, word, etc), streaming services, etc.

LinkedIn makes sense, we've both been looking for jobs and use it on a daily (if not hourly) basis but seeing Facebook APIs on the same level as LinkedIn is astonishing.

[1] [https://imgur.com/HGwAXFK](https://imgur.com/HGwAXFK)

<comment><USER36> I haven't seen this, but I do run a PiHole along with uBlock Origin and rarely visit Facebook's site directly.

Can I assume you aren't using either of these tools?

<comment><USER35> Yea, you can. I don't use anything like that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Good. Let Facebook's app die in a fire. Their propensity for user data is second maybe only to Google. It's creepy. And doesn't really do much in the way of good. I laud Apple for their move here.

</comment><comment><USER38> > Facebook has apologized ... and promised it will do its best to invade their > privacy on other platforms.

Fantastic irony. As much as I dislike The Register, this sentence made me smile.

</comment><comment><USER39> Very nice writing. The Register is always good for a laugh, but this one stands out.

<comment><USER40> Interesting that you say that. Personally, I thought the article's use of sarcasm was unprofessional. It is not at all objective, a core tenet of journalism.

As a result, I noticed errors like the statements that Facebook can no longer sell user data. Actually, FB does not sell data. FB sells ad placement based on user data. Still bad, but much less so.

If the Reg got that fundamental fact wrong, what else did they get wrong?

<comment><USER41> > much

Citation badly needed, especially considering microtargeting.

<comment><USER42> Not GP, but: Micro-targeted ad placement affects me today. Selling my underlying data affects me tomorrow and forevermore.

<comment><USER41> Not if the entity selling the ad takes notes.

<comment><USER42> "Dylan might want to buy this jacket" transmits a lot less information than "Dylan skis, Dylan lives in zip code XYZ where he might not own a jacket naturally, Dylan's household income range is M, and Dylan was looking at ski vacation packages".

<comment><USER41> What do you think micro targeting means, then? Because I think it means there is a different version of the ski jacket ad for each zip code and income range and for whether someone is a skier. And they're probably only showing it to people that have expressed a relevant interest. So effectively that's the same information.

<comment><USER42> Giving an advertiser the somewhat opaque output of a totally opaque black box transfer function conveys less reusable information than giving the advertiser all the personalized inputs to that black box.

In my view, it's in no way the same information.

<comment><USER41> It's not exactly the same, but the claim was that it's " _much_ " less bad, and in the presence of microtargeting I don't think that holds up. It's not all the information but it's a lot of important parts. Combine several ad outputs and it's way too much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I know Apple does somethings wrong (App Store) but they're one of few manufactures keeping the big ad-driven tech companies in check.

</comment><comment><USER44> Slightly opinionated, but very funny and scary at the same time. I guess you could say I'm emotionally confused

</comment><comment><USER45> To monopolize breach of privacy*

It's laughable at best that anyone would believe Apple isn't continuing to make use of their massive personal information collection to appease their partners, "official" and "unofficial".

<comment><USER46> They have a ton of data, and they certainly get some value from it. But unlike Facebook, profiting from the collection of data isn't an existential issue for Apple. They could lose all of the data tomorrow and still be an extremely profitable business. That's not true for a company like Facebook.

I'm not saying that Apple occupies any kind of absolute moral high-ground, but their business model lets them safely and publicly take this kind of posture on privacy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> This reminds to that brilliant ad in 80's I want my MTV [1] where people are used to put pressure to networks in order to get MTV on

Some numbers: Estimated revenue loss of 50% from audience networks [2]

[1] [https://totally80s.com/article/march-1982-i-want-my-mtv- camp...](https://totally80s.com/article/march-1982-i-want-my-mtv-campaign- launched)

[2] [https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/26/facebook-apple- ios-14-could-...](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/26/facebook-apple-ios-14-could- cut-audience-network-revenue-in-half.html)

<comment><USER48> I can't resist posting this in response to "I want my MTV":

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTP2RUD_cL0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTP2RUD_cL0)

<comment><USER47> Yep. That was intentionally put at song start :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> > While it's difficult to quantify the impact to publishers and developers at > this point with so many unknowns, in testing we've seen more than a 50 per > cent drop in Audience Network publisher revenue when personalization was > removed from mobile app ad install campaigns

Yessss. Hopefully this is just step one in the collapse of Facebook but I'm not that hopeful yet.

<comment><USER50> My impression is that this might make it more difficult for facebook to track people in the short term only. Surely facebook can and will find other ways to achieve the same result through device fingerprinting, etc. It probably won't be as simple and easy as the IDFA but I don't imagine it will be particularly difficult for facebook either. And considering how much revenue they claim they'll lose it seems it would be a worthwhile use of resources. I'm not really familiar with how facebook advertising works and I hope I'm wrong but it doesn't seem like an impossible ask to me and I'm guessing most of the engineers at facebook are far more skilled developers and data harvesters than I.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> I think Apple made this move to increase their Search Ads business. Now that those app install ads on Facebook and such are going to be a lot less effective, iOS app developers and publishers will flock to Apple's Search Ads. I see this as a double win for Apple - free publicity, and more revenue.

</comment><comment><USER52> Im seriously pissed that Garmin Connect iOS app has Facebook SDK in it. I found it googling what apps were crashing because of recent few FB SDK bugs. My Garmin watch has most sensitive data ever, health data like exercise, sleep and heart rate, and location from GPS.

<comment><USER53> I recently started using garmin products, is there a way to opt out?

<comment><USER52> Its in the app code, runs when you launch the app. I'm still not sure how this compromises me, but it does not feel right.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm whitelisting this site on my adblock just because of this article. They earned it.

</comment><comment><USER54> So Facebook users are not the people using its service, but the advertisers that pay to collect data from them. Glad they made this abundantly clear. Facebook users are the product they're selling.

</comment><comment><USER55> One of the comments said it best:

"Bad guy vs bad guy Privacy-invading ad giant flummoxed by developer-gouging overpriced hardware slinger.

A plague on both their houses."

I don't use either one, & never will.

<comment><USER55> another comment suggested Apple may really be doing this because they aren't getting their 30% cut of the money going between facebook & these add providers. Honestly it wouldn't surprise me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Will it affect other networks like Doubleclick/Google and more important, Apple equally or is it something specific to do with the way FB works?

<comment><USER57> They split the setting in two and the 3rd party tracking setting is off by default, Apple's tracking setting is on by default.

So it won't affect all networks equally - it continues tracking users for Apple's own network and other uses.

<comment><USER58> iOS 14 has a prompt for third party tracking.[1] It isn't off by default.

[1] [https://techcrunch.com/2020/06/22/apple-ios-14-ad- tracking/](https://techcrunch.com/2020/06/22/apple-ios-14-ad-tracking/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> I think Facebook should blame itself and other ad-networks for opening their platform to all kind of abuses like fake information and political campaigns with nasty agendas.

They made tracking so harmful with no respect to users privacy that everyone hates it now. It used to be that at least half of the users would prefer to see relevant ads until tracking become the evil thing that is right now.

</comment><comment><USER60> The interesting aspect is that advertisers can measure the impact of FB- targeting in ads to see whether facebook's promises were true

<comment><USER61> Advertisers could already measure the effect of targeting: run two groups of ads, one targeted and one not, and compare their impact.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> To limit ad tracking (LAT) on Android, go to Settings > Privacy > Advanced > Ads and toggle on Opt out of Ads Personalization.

</comment><comment><USER63> I also hope these changes disincentivize the use of FB sdk (which I think benefits greatly from the current cross app tracking system) for other app developers. I am not sure how much value log in with FB adds to an app anymore.

</comment><comment><USER64> And now FB discovers the downsides of low credibility; even if they had a good faith argument to make, few will trust them as the messenger.

</comment><comment><USER65> No, they are apologetic towards their _customers_.

</comment><comment><USER66> The FB apologies are starting to become sarcastic

<comment><USER67> probably what happens when everyone codes using the 'Don't ask for permission, ask for forgiveness later' principle when handling errors

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> Won't someone please think of advertisers!

</comment><comment><USER52> This is going to be epic (accidental pun). A vs FANG gang[0].

Follow the money. Apple gets its money from consumers buying devices. Amazon from selling stuff to consumers. FB and Google just feed on people's data.

[0] FAANG = Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix (big tobacco)[1] and Alphabet (Google)

[1] [https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-48864769](https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-48864769)

</comment><comment><USER69> Wondering what other big ad-companies are going to be hurt by this the most?

</comment><comment><USER70> I had to double check that I am not reading the onion!

</comment><comment><USER71> What an obnoxiously written article.

</comment><comment><USER72> I appreciate HN generally for its measured, evidence-based and logical approach to most things.

But I can't help but feel that the anti-FB sentiment on HN goes too far when parody articles with no substantial points made shoot to the top of HN within minutes.

<comment><USER19> > parody articles with no substantial points

Personally, I found this article super useful. We've had long discussions at my company about what Facebook's announcement about not supporting IDFA opt-in means: [https://twitter.com/rjonesy/status/1298662658934222848](https://twitter.com/rjonesy/status/1298662658934222848)

This article made it much more clear. It's one of the only ones that addressed why Facebook says advertisers have to create a separate advertising account for iOS 14 ads, for example.

What Facebook tells you: " To help preserve the fidelity of app install campaign measurement, we will require the creation and usage of a dedicated iOS 14 ad account "

What the article explains: " Unfortunately, however, it will require them to set up a completely new advertising account to run campaigns for iOS users, because it's not going to apply Apple's new privacy protection measures any further than it has to "

Makes sense. Facebook's recommendation to apps showing ads is to implement Facebook login or uploading hashed user information (Advanced Matching). Apple is already cracking down on those approaches, like saying any app that has social login must also support Apple login.

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> In case some users miss the context, The Register is kind of like The Onion but for IT news, just with a bit less fiction and a bit more bite :-)

<comment><USER29> That's really not what they are. The Onion is fictional news that parodies politics. The Reg reports real stuff but with a sarcastic tone.

<comment><USER74> The Register has _really_ sharp writers. They are serious journalism; not satire.

That said, they deliberately take the role of British "Red Top" tabloids, which are known to be quite "cheeky."</comment></comment></comment>


Mahout, There It Is Open Source Algorithms Remake Overstock.com - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/12/mahout/ <comment><USER2> Mahout is still very nascent and I am not sure how many companies are using it in production. Recommendations impact is something very difficult to measure and hence no benchmarking can be made in this respect. Unlike Overstock, I don't expect many ecommerce companies putting their own development effort into building a solution from Mahout. They'd rather purchase a solution where they can rely on support for a fragile open source project</comment>


Show HN: Zigg.be – A link shortener that creates short speakable links - <AUTHOR> http://zigg.be/ I created this a year or so ago but recently made updates and I thought people might like to know that it exists.<p>I made this to easily send links or text to someone else verbally, like over the phone or over voice chat (which is what I made it for). The goal is to be able to tell the link to someone else without being ambiguous or needing to spell it out, so I grabbed the words off a Grade 5 level dictionary. I understand that the domain itself doesn't qualify but I'm trying to get a better domain. <comment><USER2> Now you just have to spell zigg.be to the person over the phone

<comment><USER3> "z" are also pronounced "zed" outside USA. Actually that's how I learned to pronounce it first.

<comment><USER4> I thing everyone still says Zig with an American Z

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What about a trade-off between compound-ness and duration? If you want a 10-minute link, you really probably want something that's dead-simple to say like "zigg.be/fit". If its a 30-day lease, you might be willing to go for "zigg.be/greencatjumps" This allows shorter URLs to stay in a faster reuse pool.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oooh, I like this idea a lot! Mind if I use it? I'll have a go at next time I get time to work on it.

<comment><USER5> Go for it!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why are short links being regenerated when the source link is the same? For example, when I try to shorten <http://google.com/> the short link comes out different each time. You would save _a lot_ of words by re-using them.

<comment><USER7> Its already saving a ton of links by expiring them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I would like an option that resets the counter on each access, so urls are always valid for a timeframe from the last access.

what about self destructing links - as an option - it goes away upon being accessed - could be fun for text, although, entirely useless :))

</comment><comment><USER9> Expiration on a url shortener means linkrot, which is the #1 problem with such services, so seeing this as a feature is a bit strange to say the least.

<comment><AUTHOR> Zigg.be links (at least they way they are now) are not meant to be published. How do you propose I implement this with permanent links?

<comment><USER9> They are links, meant to be shared, maybe published, it depends on your users behavior, not what you want them to do.

Even if they were only supposed to be private, what if my dad wants to find that Steve Jobs Bio again 1 month from now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I created this a year or so ago but recently made updates and I thought people might like to know that it exists.

I made this to easily send links or text to someone else verbally, like over the phone or over voice chat (which is what I made it for). The goal is to be able to tell the link to someone else without being ambiguous or needing to spell it out, so I grabbed the words off a Grade 5 level dictionary. I understand that the domain itself doesn't qualify but I'm trying to get a better domain.

I hope others find it useful!

<comment><USER10> You have an API for this?

I imagine this could be of use to "the other link shorteners".

It's a great idea, and with reference to scaling, perhaps short well know quotes / sentences could work.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not just yet, need to do more thinking about how I'd like it to work with regards to preventing abuse etc.

I'd like to keep the link size down because one of the use cases is for say a lecturer giving a link to class. Keeping it short lets the lecturer easily write it on the board, and also faster to type.

<comment><USER11> Is there a github repo or source available for this?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> jazzychad made something similar a year or so ago <http://shoutkey.com/>

</comment><comment><USER13> not overally consistent... links are speakble - try to make domain speakable like short.be, better yet short.com (as everyone knows .com)

how one's supposed to know how many 'g' is there ;]

</comment><comment><USER14> Worked fine when I just tried it.

Question is, what happens to those snappy URLs when more than a few (thousand, million, billion) folks discover it?

<comment><USER15> Numbers or compound words?

/bananastand

/potato9

<comment><USER16> if you say "potato9" you won't know if it's maybe spelled "potatonine"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> You could increase availability by deduping (typing twice the same target gives you different shortenings)

</comment><comment><USER18> It may be coincidence but are you choosing from a dictionary of real words or doing some clever Markova chaining? I am guessing the former - if so is there not an upper limit to total active links ?

<comment><USER19> > some clever Markova chaining

I've attempted this in the past with bizarre results. If you're going to do it on a public site, make sure there's a blacklist of profanity. People generally get upset when sent a link containing a racial slur.

<comment><USER20> I remember a story regarding this, where even with a filter they noticed that some words could still be read like cursing so they decided to go with a Japanese dictionary... that produced words like fukushita.

(edit) Ha, found the link [http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/The-Automated- Curse-Generato...](http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/The-Automated-Curse- Generator.aspx) , how could I forget it was on thedailywtf.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This was also done some years back as <http://linkpot.net/> so podcasters could read out URLs on their show more easily.

However by just testing it I think I broke it..

</comment><comment><USER22> Is there any way to tell if the link I have is expired, or show what the long version of the link is before I visit it or am I likely to get goatse'd if I'm a minute too late clicking the link?

</comment><comment><USER23> Its a nice feature you got there. Have you thought about creating permanent links? Are you going to blog on how you made it?

<comment><USER24> I do not think permament links on this would be a good idea simply because of the far smaller number of combinations.

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed, although namespacing permanent links would be doable, it wouldn't make much sense and other URL shorteners would do the job.

<comment><USER25> Permanent links for paying accounts perhaps?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's one of the ideas :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Great idea. I always hated trying to remember tiny urls seen in print, as well.

</comment><comment><USER27> People could find this useful, also I love the subtle amazon referral.

</comment><comment><USER28> How's the choice of new words from the dictionary complexity- wise?

<comment><AUTHOR> All meant to be pretty simple to type and spell. Let me know if spot any that should be removed. I know 'eye' should be removed, etc

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I laughed for a really long time about the silent second g.

</comment><comment><USER30> Fracking. Awesome. Good job.

</comment><comment><USER31> This is awesome, thanks :-)

</comment><comment><USER4> This is actually smart!</comment>


Face Detection in images using OpenCV and Python - <AUTHOR> http://spottedsun.com/face-detection-in-images-using-opencv-and-python/

<comment><USER2> Sometime back I had to get passport photos and was very pissed that Walgreens and CVS charge about $10 for 2 photos. This seemed inexplicable as the cost of a typical 4x6 print is about 10c at Snapfish (or 19c at Walgreens). Realizing that they were exploiting the fact that most people didn't know how to format passport photos themselves, I decided to create a webapp that does the required formatting automatically. OpenCV's fast face detector (it uses the current best Viola-Jones algorithm <http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/people/viola/>) proved invaluable for this. You can check out the results at: <http://freepassportphoto.dyndns.org/>

Any suggestions for improvement from you guys would be greatly appreciated.

<comment><USER3> I implemented this in Picasa too! Tools->Experimental->Passport Photo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As an experiment, several years ago I released a few "fun" iPhone apps that leveraged OpenCV to do face detection and image replacement using the iPhone camera. I did dozens of successful tests before launch, and the apps have collectively been downloaded hundreds of thousands of times. I'd say overall effectiveness in the wild is pretty high, but it depends on the filter used. If anyone is interested I can send a link, but don't want to spam this audience with it.

<comment><USER5> I'm very interested

<comment><USER6> I've put together some basic computer vision tutorials over here - <http://www.aishack.in/> Most of them use OpenCV.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a great tutorial. I have been working on an open source python library called SimpleCV that makes this trivially easy. Grabbing an image from a camera is one line of code. Applying the face detector in also a single line of code. Check it out here: <http://simplecv.org/>

<comment><USER7> This thread just gave me a great idea. I am going to add inline image download and upload to SimpleCV. E.g. img = Image("<http://foo.com/stuff.jpg>) img = img.dosomething() img.upload(src="imgur" apikey="ASDFASDFASDF") This will be fun. I just ticketed it up. Hopefully I will have it pushed to the repo this week.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Nice. The same can be done wit hthis jQuery plugin: <http://facedetection.jaysalvat.com/>

It is based on this computer vision library: <https://github.com/liuliu/ccv>

</comment><comment><USER9> I wrote a smaller version a few months ago with the same modules at gaweda.tumblr.com. I sent the writer some questions about his purpose as well.

I'm attempting to re-implement Viola Jones without OpenCV as a way to really understand what is going on in the algorithm (a little more difficult than I imagined). Eventually developing a feature extractor.

One of the bigger issues I find myself asking is how can I turn face detection into a business model? Everything I imagine only seems to point to mobile apps, but I can't imagine that can replace a full-time job.

I could branch into recognition, but there a plenty of companies that already have that developed.

</comment><comment><USER10> I've had this demo up for a while: <http://www.wefoundland.com/face_detection>

Test OpenCV's face detection algorithm.</comment>


Ask HN: Developer Happiness Survey - <AUTHOR> Those that know me here probably know that I mostly write about tech career, recruiting and hiring topics, mostly tied to software developers. I'm currently conducting some research for an article I'm hoping to write about developer happiness (career/job satisfaction), and I've developed a short survey of 21 multiple choice and true/false questions to test some of my theories. Only takes a couple minutes.
I'd appreciate any developers willing to answer the questions, and I'll post the article and results when completed. Thanks to anyone open to helping.
http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/2567906/Developer-Happiness-Survey <comment><USER2> Done</comment>


Simple Non-Electron Native GUI Development (Cljfx / Clojure) - <AUTHOR> http://ahungry.com/blog/2019-07-22-Simple-non-Electron-Native-GUI-Development.html <comment><USER2> Thanks for writing and posting this! I've been wanting to dive more into native gui development with clojure so this is right up my alley. Clojureverse and the Clojurians slack channel are great communities to post this work to as well if you haven't already.</comment>


Octobox helps manage GitHub notifications - <AUTHOR> https://octobox.io/ <comment><USER2> I'm confused about pricing. The main page doesn't mention any limitations, but I stumbled across [https://octobox.io/pricing](https://octobox.io/pricing) which implies $100/month for use with private repos.

<comment><USER3> We're slowly rolling out extra features that are enabled by installing the GitHub App (syncing state, CI status, author, assignee, labels) without needing repo scope, that'll be free for open source repos and paid for private.

Didn't expect to see this on HN news today, the homepage will be updated within the next day or two to explain the paid feature.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I can't find a privacy policy. How is privacy handled by this shared instance?

Also odd how this page overrides the scrolling mechanism of mobile Safari. No swipe-and-scroll.

<comment><USER3> Agreed scrolling on mobile safari is borked, will definitely get that fixed up!

Privacy policy is at [https://octobox.io/privacy](https://octobox.io/privacy)

<comment><USER5> Presumably this somehow accesses Github and talks to it, shouldn't that data be mentioned in your Privacy Policy?

<comment><USER3> Oh yeah good catch, we'll get that added

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Github notifications are definitely problematic. I hope this business gets acquired by instead of copied by Github.

</comment><comment><USER7> Can anyone here comment on using Octobox at scale or with success?

I currently have over 10000+ unread Github notifications and would like a better solution for managing these notifications.

Is Octobox designed to still work reliably when handling this amount of data?

<comment><USER3> Octobox maintainer here, we've done a lot of work recently to make Octobox work better and fast for power users. I've heard that Shopify is using it to handle very high volumes of notifications and seem to be happy users.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I really, really like this. Instant user.

</comment><comment><USER9> What is with this trend of super niche, esoteric startups?</comment>


Quality Extracts from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance [PPT] - <AUTHOR> http://www.bill.tubbs.name/qualityideas.ppt

<comment><USER2> The irony of this being a PowerPoint file is overwhelming.</comment>


Github has won - <AUTHOR> http://jmoiron.net/blog/github-has-won/

<comment><USER2> "[..]but just as distributed vcs' had won over svn a few years ago,"

This is an odd statement, which deserves more explanation. DVCSs have won in the arena of early-adopter programmers who actually care about these things enough to read them, but I'd guess that the number of SVN users still trumps the number of git/hg users by several orders of magnitude. Moreover, I'd guess that the number of programmer who have _heard_ about git/hg is incredibly small as well (compared to SVN or other systems.)

By the way, hg has definitely won _me_. I use it with an online project management and hosting service called Codebasehq.com, which I recommend any time this comes up - I really love their interface, and their pricing options (you pay per project, which can have several repositories tied to it; you can even have several hg repos and several SVN repos tied to the same project, which is what I do.)

<comment><USER3> I know several people who still have to struggle with CVS on a daily basis. Git/Hg are going to take a long time to get entrenched into enterprise.

<comment><USER4> Anecdote is not the singular of data and all that, but at the major game development studio I work at, no-one at my team has even /heard/ of git, and when I try to explain what a distributed version control system is I get blank stares.

<comment><USER5> Do they use perforce? It seems to be rather popular in the game industry, in part because its model suits projects that have a lot of large binaries in their repository.

<comment><USER6> Of course -- everyone in games seems to use Perforce. There are no better alternatives, including p4-git, and believe me, I've looked. Subversion is passable but slow.

Even though I use git for all my personal stuff, if I started a console or PC studio, I too would be setting up a P4 server the first week rather than even experimenting with git.

As you say, it seems to be the only code-oriented VCS that also comfortably handles large files (especially larger than available memory) with reasonable speed.

Traditional version control systems consider giant files a user smell.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've actually found bitbucket slowly becoming a good competitor to github.

From a sales point of view, bitbucket's offering of 5 free private repos might actually help them attract more developers who are making proprietary apps and making money, and then more willing to pay for more repos in the future. I personally have quite a few repos there partly because I don't want the publicity of github (and partly because hg was quicker to learn than git :P). I also know a friend who switched to bitbucket simply due to the private repo offerings.

For open source though, github is probably the way to go.

This is all just anecdotal though, I'd love to hear some solid evidence if anyone has some.

<comment><USER8> Note that it's not 5 free private repos, but 5 private users. You can have unlimited private repos. So, in a small team you'd probably never have to pay. I wonder what has led them to this decision business-wise. Was the competition from github so overwhelming that they decided to counter it with with relatively drastic measures (giving up lots of $$$)?

<comment><USER9> Note that BitBucket was recently acquired by Atlassian: <http://www.atlassian.com/hosted/bitbucket/faq.jsp>

I think this had an effect on the offers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Github has "won" in that it's the current darling child of the code-hosting industry. It's done this for two reasons:

1\. Git is superior to its competitors as a technology for use by developers. It isn't very much superior these days, but it is enough to be noticeable and preferred. This is a superiority in _use_ and _performance_ , which are enough of an edge to offset its architectural failings.

2\. Github has better UX than the competition: I've been referring to code hosted in bitbucket frequently, and I often sigh at what they're doing. Getting to any given piece of code takes longer and requires more clicks than on Github. Github also has great features for understanding how code is moving within a project, and I find them more comprehensible and useful than the competition's.

It doesn't hurt that Github is a small self-started company with a staff full of brilliant people and a talented support staff. They certainly win the _personality_ part of the competition thoroughly.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm not sure I'd say it has "won" - such a phrase implies a long-term positioning at the front of the pack, and those that came before it for code hosting (SourceForge, Google Code) enjoyed their time in the spotlight before having something new come along.

BitBucket in particular have made a good attempt after the Atlassian takeover, with the infinite free private repos being the most interesting part - I use it a lot, but mostly because I do a lot of small personal projects, and so the "social" features of GitHub - those which benefit most from its prominence - are mostly meaningless to me.

</comment><comment><USER12> I don't believe there will ever be a clear "winner" because the landscape is constantly changing. Sourceforge was THE place to store your OSS code and provide downloads and there was a really great broad selection of code and a way to discover it. But they didn't build good ways of managing it and the whole experience became cluttered and confusing. I saw many projects move to Google Code who provided a clean interface.

And now I see many of those projects move to github and everyone I know is a big fan of the forking and pull requests.

But the landscape will change again and github keeps needing to iterate and innovate on their product. Just about every time I use github, I curse their disastrous search. There is just so much innovation they could develop around code management which they don't have, a competitor could jump in and they too could become the darling of the development world. They too will have "won".

<comment><USER13> When I started developing my product two years ago, I seriously thought about throwing my product into the source code hosting ring. I knew I had a product that could compete but as you pointed out, the landscape is constantly changing and it is also one of the places where you have compete by price.

Look at the recent shift by Bitbucket after being purchased by Atlassian. Bitbucket can now afford to be a money pit so that Mercurial can gain further adoption. Atlassian is really trying to build an enterprise solution around Mercurial (they've said this publicly) so they don't care if they lose money with Bitbucket. And this is going to affect Github. Only time will tell how much of an impact this is going to have.

So yeah I'm glad I decided I didn't want to get into this market space. I decided I was better off focusing on developing the innovations and be a complimentary asset for sites like Github, Bitbucket, and other hosting sites instead. My product certainly has overlap with some of the things that Github and Bitbucket has, but it's not designed to be a hosting solution. It's more of a competitor for Atlassians Fisheye and Fogcreeks kiln.

If you are curious you can see a bit of my tool in action at <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfEDwirFO1s>

Sorry it has no sound so it might not make any sense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It occurs to me just now that it's kinda weird that subversion repositories are pretty much distributed everywhere; git repositories generally end up on github.

<comment><USER15> That's probably because with a distributed system, there isn't too much downside to everyone relying on a central service. If Github goes down, you can be up and running at a new host in 5 minutes.

<comment><USER14> My comment was more of an observation rather than a telling point for or against git, but I don't think it's a huge advantage of git that everyone has a backup copy of the repo that can be used for failover. github is essentially a central point of failure for many teams. You're going to change the location your CI checks out from if github goes down? Are you using github for issue tracking? Code reviews? What's more likely, I think, is that you just wait for a few minutes or hours until it comes up again, which is what you'd do with svn.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I started using bitbucket a month ago and everything went fine. I'm new to version control and selected mercurial as my VCS, so I was happy by finding a github counterpart.

I think it's wrong to compare bitbucket to github. You won't move to github because github is superior, but if you want to move to git, you'll probably do.

Bitbucket has all I need. I don't think I need any other fancy features, I already get things done the right way. I'm using the free version, but would upgrade if needed.

Also, make sure you read the down times before you argue about it:

"Bitbucket will be unavailable for approximately two hours starting Monday, Nov 1st, 01:00 GMT for a kernel upgrade."

</comment><comment><USER17> I normally shy away from writing provocative information-light rants. The important parts (for me):

1\. github is a social service, or perhaps best used as a social service

2\. it has "the momentum", which is paramount for social services

3\. git has "the momentum" wrt adoption of dvcs

There are assumptions implicit within these arguments that I've accepted, based largely on the summation of 'soft' and anecdotal evidence that has built up over the last couple years. People are right to challenge them, and right in their criticism that I take them at face value.

</comment><comment><USER18> Disclaimer: I've only used Github for projects where either I'm the only coder, or where someone else was the only coder and I was just handling some release management stuff. So I've not experienced the full glory of collaboration via Github.

Am I the only one who is not particular impressed with Github? It seems OK, but not in a different league from other code hosting places the way many make it out to be.

<comment><USER19> I think it's main neat feature is to be able to click a button to fork. Many others have this now but, iirc (and my memory my be faulty), github was the first. At least the first I saw. That alone makes it easy to fork, fix, pull request. I'm a bit of a github fanboi.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Has Linus ever mentioned Github?

<comment><USER21> The Linux kernel has its own fairly elaborate and entrenched system for handling their source; Github, as lovely as it is, just wouldn't be a good fit for them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> As others here and in the blog comments have pointed out, this post is semantically incoherent. But it was worth reading for the reference to hg-git alone. Cool stuff!

</comment><comment><USER23> I've said it multiple times but github won because of what they focused on - code:

<http://goo.gl/XfvG> ([http://lusislog.blogspot.com/2010/10/designed-for- developers...](http://lusislog.blogspot.com/2010/10/designed-for-developers- why-people-keep.html) for the paranoid)

<comment><USER24> Why shorten a link if you're putting the real one there anyways?

<comment><USER25> He wants to track how many clicks it gets.

Take a look at <http://goo.gl/> and note the stats on urls you've previously shortened.

<comment><USER23> Yep. It's just to track interest. Blogger does crap for stats and logging.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> For some reason this page immediately crashes Safari on my iPad. Can see it for an instant then window closes and back to iike screen.

</comment><comment><USER27> Come on. Saying "yay Github" does not mean that Git/Github have 'won'. What does it even mean to say that, anyway?

"Yay Mercurial!" there we are, hg wins!! Whoo!!

Who the hell thought this counted as news? Even as opinion, it's wishy washy.</comment>