Salmon is disappearing. - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/09/opinion/09grescoe.html?em&ex=1213243200&en=bcdbd40adbca3a74&ei=5070

<comment><USER2> I've linked to this before and not many people seem to appreciate it, but for what it's worth:

[http://www.edf.org/page.cfm?tagID=1521&redirect=seafood](http://www.edf.org/page.cfm?tagID=1521&redirect=seafood)

</comment><comment><USER3> Is the downvote arrow almost ready to go? This isn't "hacker" news. It isn't even "news" if you keep up with current events or go to the grocery store.

<comment><USER4> It's a bit of a stretch as far as relevance to the hacker/entrepreneur community goes, although this suddenly makes me realize that the same is true for almost all of those astronomy and theoretical physics stories that get submitted here. But they're more traditionally geeky subjects so nobody complains. Go fig.

<comment><USER5> Well, there's democracy and then there's mobocracy.

Democracy says that this place is peopled with hackers and if the hacker citizens upvote a story then it is, ipso facto, of interest to hackers.

Mobocracy says that demi-hackers trickle in and start upvoting stories and posting comments that attract quasi-hackers. The quasi-hackers then attract non-hackers and you eventually no longer have a narrow community. The stories that appeal to the lowest common denominator then rise to the top, due to sheer statistics.

<comment><USER6> This suggests an interesting way of looking at the problem, namely "How do we make the site _less interesting_ for non-hackers?"

<comment><USER7> Perhaps require solving a hacker-related "captcha" for submitting stories or posting until your karma has passed a certain threshold. For example, fix a line of code or enter the order of complexity of an algorithm.

<comment><USER8> Sweet! Then we'd get major practice in for our Google interview as well. Don't forget puzzles involving sparrows, rowboats, candles, and ropes for those of us who might be elsewhere-bound.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "To rid salmon of the lice, fish farmers spike their feed with a strong pesticide called emamectin benzoate, which when administered to rats and dogs causes tremors, spinal deterioration and muscle atrophy ... In other words, the farmed salmon in nearly every American supermarket may contain this pesticide"

</comment><comment><USER10> Salmon is or salmon are? A meese or a mouse?

<comment><USER11> I was actually looking at that myself, and wanted to comment on it (but the recent spree of downmodding folks for semantics kept me from saying anything).

<comment><USER12> Yes, I've noticed that. Seems as if people are feeling more free with the down arrow in general. I'm not sure I like it. I'm no karma whore, but I do like my karma points.

Personally, I reserve a down vote for comments that are particularly stupid of 4chan-y.

I too wanted to comment on the salmon is/are thing. I enjoy the vagaries of all languages, programming or otherwise.

<comment><USER13> i agree with that. i've often curbed my commenting lately, because these days i seem to get downvoted capriciously for any little thing.

i think our original community values are getting diluted.

<comment><USER12> I posted an Ask PG submission about the use of downvote.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=214398>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Damn! That's why I can't get into Twitter again!

</comment><comment><USER14> I vociferously disagree. This is social hacker news. This article talks about the externalized costs of buying salmon that are not represented accurately enough, thus highlighting a huge problem/unmet need.

This is the community, if one exists that has the ability to create the technical hacks necessary to create social change. We can create tools/systems to solve problems like these, e.g., measuring externalized costs that prices do not/cannot account for. Until we more accurately represent costs/effects in our behaviors/purchases, it will be difficult to effectively promote positive behavior, i.e., solving the big problem.

<comment><USER5> Hmm... does ballet count as social hacker news? No? Oh well, I can link to several sci-fi book reviews on Amazon instead.

(Move along. Nothing to see here. All of you redders and diggers can go back home now.)</comment></comment>


Australian scientist admits fabricating research data - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-34275648 <comment><USER2> I'd love to know her justification for doing so — maybe to correct unexpected reactions\outliers that would hurt the study?</comment>


:syntax off - <AUTHOR> http://www.kyleisom.net/blog/2012/10/17/syntax-off/

<comment><USER2> Many of the same arguments would apply equally well to removing whitespace and punctuation from natural language, something that many people today in some (even large) cultures--and certainly those living a thousand years ago who spoke many of the dominant languages at the time--would describe using "don't want". Color is just another axis along which information can be communicated to you, one similar to using bold fonts to indicate "this is a keyword" (which many textbooks do) or italics to mean "this is important" (which many articles do) or different fonts to indicate "this was block quoted from a typed document" (which many books do). It would actually be kind of interesting to set off proper nouns in a special color (and in fact some languages do this, both human and machine, using capitalized first letters), or to highlight pronouns in colors that matched their references (to make random access scanning in fiction books faster and easier). If the colors aren't working for you, you might want to figure out how color could be better applied to your problem, but throwing it out entirely is just having fun accepting and working around the challenge of a handicap: next you might try removing language features such as "classes" or even "functions/procedures" from your experience, as "real programmers" do not need these distractions and without them you will probably spend more time paying close attention to your control flow. (In fact, while that sounds silly, spending a few months coding in nothing but assembly language is actually quite mind-opening.) (Also, FWIW, Rob Pike--the inspiration for this article--actually makes arguments similar to this for why Go is a great language: that by having fewer features, people will make less mistakes... very similar to the reasons why people designed Java as limiting as it is, and why thousands of developers insist on using C instead of C++ or assembly instead of C.) (<\- All of this typed without the usage of paragraph breaks, as I'm certain that without them people just pay more attention to the argument structure ;P.)

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the difference with your example of bold and italic text is different because they are occasional, so they are more signal than noise. They stand out as different because they are.

I see quite a few color themes where everything seems to be a different color -- the signal of color almost gets lost in the noise.

So I think I disagree with the author of the linked article to the extent he takes it. However, the article has made me wonder if a much simpler color scheme that highlighted strings and syntax errors only, would be a bit more straightforward and more signal than noise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm not sure I buy this. Reading a book for example, you always read a book linearly. When I'm reading code I'm looking for different details at different times, I'm doing a lot of scanning. Sometimes it's functions, other times variables, strings etc. but being able to scan only items in a particular colour really speeds up my search. Syntax highlighting really helps with this.

I'm also not sure about the idea of trying to hold more code in your head. Over the last few years I've changed my practices so that I don't have to hold much information in my head. For me this is one of the key benefits of TDD for example. At this point I find context switching easy to do because I've externalised the majority of my process to tools and practices.

If anything, good syntax highlighting makes code a real pleasure to read. Coming from java/eclipse(stock scheme) to ruby/textmate(vibrant ink) I was struck by how much I preferred reading the code in the bold colours of vibrant ink. Going back to java seemed dreary by comparison.</comment>


Should religion become Web 2.0? 10 great examples… - <AUTHOR> http://www.businesshackers.com/2007/02/26/should-religion-become-web-20/ <comment><USER2> Another reason why the term "Web 2.0" makes something out of nothing. Rephrase that as "Should religion be on the web?" and the question becomes ridiculous, but that's what it's essentially asking.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> All the sites listed are web 2.0 sites.

<comment><USER2> Does anyone launch a site today with a decision to, ahem, use Web 1.0?

<comment><USER3> This one is pretty Web 1.0.</comment></comment></comment>


Jesse Jackson: Tech diversity is next civil rights step - <AUTHOR> http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2014/07/28/jesse-jackson-seeks-eeoc-scrutiny-of-tech-industry/13270991/ <comment><USER2> Specifically considering race in hiring decisions, however well-intentioned, is racism. We won't get to where we want to be by skillfully and fairly applying racism -- we'll get there by _not caring about race_.

I grew up in a rural area in the southern US where racism was common and overt. I can very honestly and sincerely say that I find this more insidious form of racism, which is so widely accepted, to be much more disturbing and frightening.

<comment><USER3> Sure, then conduct interviews entirely blindly without mentioning any biographical information that betrays one's gender, race or social background, and that might subconsciously sway an interviewer one way or the other.

Also, be sure to conduct the interviews in a society where the interviewee has been brought up on an entirely level playing field, so they have had exactly the same opportunity to formulate and achieve their goals as others with their same aptitude.

Edit: see this Princeton study: [http://www.princeton.edu/pr/pwb/01/0212/7b.shtml](http://www.princeton.edu/pr/pwb/01/0212/7b.shtml) showing a correlation between blind auditions and a dramatic shift in the gender composition of orchestras in the 70s and 80s.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Talk about fiddling with statistics to make an argument:

"The result is sobering: Men make up 62% to 70% of the staffs of Twitter, Google, Facebook, Yahoo and LinkedIn, _while whites and Asians comprise 88% to 91%_ , according to company data released in the past two months. Their dominance is highest in computer programming and other tech jobs that tend to pay the most."

vs

"Of Twitter's U.S. employees, only 3% are Hispanic and 5% black, but _those groups along with Asian Americans account for 41%_ of its U.S. users."

As Christopher Hitchens said, you can get away with anything if you put a "reverend" in front of your name.

<comment><USER5> I get what you're saying, but my intuition is that the numbers would still be silly-and-wrong if you could omit Asians from the user numbers they're giving. And I say "if you could" because my guess, which may be wrong but given the way these breakdowns usually work I don't think it's a bad one, is that they didn't have Twitter user data available to them in a more granular fashion. So I'm more inclined to let that one go.

<comment><USER4> My intuition is the same .. I totally agree there are underrepresented groups .. but using numbers like that does not inspire confidence.

More interesting numbers would be the % of engineering applicants (which are likely not available) or representation in undergraduate programs vs in industry employment.

That would help isolate where the problem lies, which my intuition tells me is earlier than in industry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> How about making sure Professional Sports (NBA, MLB, NFL etc..) has diversity?

I am not saying we should not strive for diversity but looking for diversity when its convenient for us and ignoring other times would only make one look phony.

<comment><USER7> We already have. At one time pro sports were segregated or whites-only. MLB was effectively segregated until 1947, the NBA was integrated in 1950; football was never formally segregated as far as I am aware. Some argue that hockey is still effectively segregated, though you could equally argue that ice skating is simply more prominent in certain Euro-American demographics.

I presume you're referring to the prevalence of black athletes in some sports, particularly basketball where thy are way over-represented. But that is in fact the result of meritocracy. This is so dreadful to some people that last year there was an attempt to form a whites-only basketball league, although the chances of this going anywhere are negligible.

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

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

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

[http://africanamericanhistorysp2014.voices.wooster.edu/racis...](http://africanamericanhistorysp2014.voices.wooster.edu/racism- in-a-segregated-sport/)

[http://www.thenation.com/article/all-white-basketball- league...](http://www.thenation.com/article/all-white-basketball-league- bringing-segregation-back)

I don't have a firm opinion about diversity in tech companies, but your comment suggests you're unaware of the historical context.

<comment><USER8> > I presume you're referring to the prevalence of black athletes in some > sports, particularly basketball where thy are way over-represented. But that > is in fact the result of meritocracy.

Its largely a result the economic disadvantage of blacks in the broader society. Without strong educational opportunities and other economic opportunities, the expected opportunity cost of a focussing efforts on chasing a professional sports career from a young age is a lot lower, on average, for blacks than whites compared to the other alternatives available to them

<comment><USER9> _the expected opportunity cost of a focussing efforts on chasing a professional sports career from a young age is a lot lower, on average, for blacks than white_

From a slightly different angle: playing basketball at a very high level is like playing a musical instrument at a very high level - you need to start when you are very little, and you need to play with great devotion. In your average suburban paradise you can't even hope to play sufficient b-ball even to untie Lebron's shoes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> When I was around 12 I was at the Bud Billiken parade in Chicago and Jesse Jackson told my dad he should buy me a laptop. My dad has never bought me a laptop :), but even then (1995?) he was promoting diversity in tech in a way.

</comment><comment><USER11> Would you go to a hospital where the doctors are hired based on ethnic diversity and quotas instead of skills?

<comment><USER12> My last three doctors have been minorities, two of them were WoC, and they are all much better than the two white male goofuses I went to before.

<comment><USER13> > two of them were WoC

How do you know? Is it your decision or theirs? If it's yours, would you consider (without looking) people from Kyrgyzstan, Okinawa, or Catalonia to count? Thailand?

Regardless of those answers, what do you think it "means"?

I'm just so curious!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think there is a good argument for diversity in tech. This article is really, really, bad however. Look at one number they mention: > Men make up 62% to 70% of the staffs of Twitter, Google, Facebook, Yahoo and LinkedIn, while whites and Asians comprise 88% to 91%

Then this number: > Of Twitter's U.S. employees, only 3% are Hispanic and 5% black, but those groups along with Asian Americans account for 41% of its U.S. users.

So Asians count against Twitter as employees and against Twitter as audience, that just makes no sense.

</comment><comment><USER15> > "The government has a role to play" in ensuring that women and minorities > are fairly represented in the tech workforce, Jackson told a USA TODAY > editorial board meeting. He said the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity > Commission needs to examine Silicon Valley's employment contracts.

Looks like Jackson is trying to rebrand 'affirmative action'. Doesn't matter, though: it's still a violation of the rights of almost all concerned.

</comment><comment><USER16> While improving diversity in tech is certainly very important, I think there are still a great many needs to be resolved before we can consider it the next step in civil rights. Even if you consider same-sex marriage a done deal as the final pieces start to fall in the place, trans* people often can't even use the bathroom of their gender, for fucks sake. And then also there's voter- restriction laws, trying to revert progress the civil rights movement has made. So yeah, diversity in tech is important, but to call it "the next step in civil rights" seems pretty disingenuous to me.

</comment><comment><USER17> You cant make tech diversity by fiat however - it takes more people from those minorities showing interest an in essence, showing up.

We are well represented by Southeast Asia, Asia, and I'd argue by women too (though probably not enough) - but again, IMO, the limits are a lack of candidates with a tech background or the drive/interest to learn (as well as good training programs for them to build real experience in), not by any inherent racism.

FWIW, I'm in Seattle, and YMMV depending on which region of the world/country you're in.

</comment><comment><USER18> Why are asians put into same group as whites? They are minority and are still badly discriminated, mostly at university acceptance.

<comment><USER19> That's news. At Universities here they make up a disproportionate amount of students (ie. a larger percentage of the student body is Asian than would be expected given their percentage of the overall population)...

<comment><USER20> They would be an even bigger percentage if not for discrimination.

The US used to have quotas for Jews in many universities, as did the Soviet Union. The unofficial quota system for Asians is no different.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I respect Mr. Jackson's earlier work, but he's becoming what he fought against. Nowhere in his article were educational opportunities promoted or discussed. Instead, an industry was shamed simply for the color of their skin.

</comment><comment><USER22> Are tech companies turning people away due to their race? Or are there simply not enough black programmers? If the latter, then diversity for the sake of it is going to be... strange.

<comment><USER23> The National Bureau of Economic Research did an experiment where they sent in the same résumé for the same job under "white-sounding" and "black-sounding names": the "white" names got about 50% more call-backs than the "black" names. [1]

Granted, this wasn't aimed at tech companies.

[1] [http://www.nber.org/digest/sep03/w9873.html](http://www.nber.org/digest/sep03/w9873.html)</comment></comment>


Bill Gates' Hopes For Online Learning - <AUTHOR> http://www.gatesfoundation.org/annual-letter/2010/Pages/education-learning-online.aspx <comment><USER2> If we can handle this perceived need completely within our industry without outside intervention it seems like it will present more of a money making opportunity for a lot more people in our industry. To get this off the ground, I think initially this should be viewed as a new product opportunity for the search providers.

This really might be a case of _"If you build it they will come"_ , and if the framework is put in place intelligently, a lot of money can be made quickly from simple add on products.

From the blog: "There is a lot of online material being developed, but it isn't organized in a way where it is easy to find the best material that fits what you want to do." "We need a simple way of taking all of the education pieces and organizing them and then rating them in context."

I think we are at a point that the internet needs an agreed upon standard specifically for educational material. A standard that developers can use on their finished product to allow it to be considered for special educational indexing.

It seems like this could be most easily accomplished by using a system of appending the file type such as foo.aspe1 for formal educational level 1 material, foo.aspi7 for independent study material level 7, and so forth. The level rating like the e1 and i7 used in the example should be left up to the material developer to decide upon.

By further adding information to the file type, such as foo.aspEGe1, for elementary geometry, the type of material could be easily set forth for indexing. Material such as Cisco Certification Study material or MCSE study material could fall under .aspcee9 for instance, for computer education educational level 9.

It seems like this basic level of information in the file type would be sufficient to handle the gross special indexing of the material, other factors, for instance, Egyptian Prehistory, could be handled through normal search indexing within the special indexing.

A concern with the indexing process will probably be spam and pornography getting into the system. It seems like it would be fairly easy to control the use of the special educational file types by requiring the use of a special educational SSL certificate where the developing/posting party is definitely known to the SSL authority. Rouge SSL authorities (those breaking the indexers rules) could be delisted from the special indexing system. Using a special certificate designation for this purpose, such as SSL2 or SSLE, would probably be the easiest to implement and allow sufficient control by the indexer for delisting purposes.

As far as add on products one thing that comes to mind is profiting from the search providers implementing a system that allows user feedback into the indexing system where searching users can _Blend_ the natural search results with prior user feedback on any number of predefined factors. Users should be able to easily propose new _Blend_ categories into the system for global inclusion.

This _Blend_ in the search results would be to attract users and to allow add on builders to financially capitalize on the fact that there are a number of educational people and parents who have very strong feelings (complaints) one way or the other about the specific content and presentation methods used in the educational material.</comment>


This is Water (2005) - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vET9cvlGJQw I know this is probably posted a lot, but I can never hear it enough. <comment><USER2> I like this speech and just recently discovered it. I intend to read some of David Foster Wallace's writing in the near future too. Sad story about the guy though.</comment>


Visual studio for Linux - <AUTHOR> https://code.visualstudio.com/Download

<comment><USER2> This is "Visual Studio Code", the Atom-like text editor. Visual Studio itself remains unavailable on Linux\OSX.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I never thought I'd see the day. Good stuff Microsoft.</comment>


HN clone with Angular2 - <AUTHOR> http://houssein.me/angular2-hacker-news <comment><USER2> Great tutorial! Thanks a lot!

<comment><AUTHOR> You are welcome!</comment></comment>


DeepTriage: Exploring the Effectiveness of Deep Learning for Bug Triaging - <AUTHOR> http://bugtriage.mybluemix.net/ <comment><USER2> this is not what i thought it was

the term "triage" means to order items (patients, originally) according to urgency

this paper has nothing whatever to do with sorting a bug list according to urgency

the paper describes a model to assign a particular bug to the developer who can resolve it most efficiently

to me this is "assignment" not "triaging"

but at least you can see how a supervised learning technique is a good fit for the problem they actually describe

so one row in the training set is a set of attributes relating to the bug itself--where in the codebase it resides, etc

the class labels are of course the developers assigned to fix the bug

what actually is presented in this paper might be useful--although i have my doubts that the net value of such a model (optimum assignment of devs to bugs). In other words, even if the model can generate assignments better and more efficiently than manual assignment, the developer time required to write the code to convert the raw data to model input (to train/test/validate the model) is not small--for intance, look at how much unstructured text is involved

i doubt i would go to the trouble--mapping devs to bugs is nothing something we do poorly at my shop, and even when i get it wrong, the devs sort it out by swaping out tickets

not nearly as useful as an automated bug triaging sytem--ie, a system that would auto-sort our bug list based on urgency, but again, that's not the subject of this paper, title notwithstanding.

<comment><USER3> In large teams with a large number of microsoervices, triage is about assigning bugs to teams (and therefore devs) because those who file them (and most of the devs) don't know what service is affected by the bug. That and de- duping of course.

<comment><USER4> It's better to just assign it at the closest to user facing level first and then let teams pass it down to their part's dependencies as and when it's required.

There are often bugs which could be fixed in different systems by different teams and by assigning it directly to one team without the communication involved in passing it down it could end up being 'fixed' in an architecturally damaging way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Since there doesn't appear to be a link to the paper: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.01275](https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.01275)

</comment><comment><USER6> I wonder if a system like this were used in the real world, it might simply end up behaving as a hashing algorithm, always assigning the same category of bug to the same developer - who would become skilled in handling this type of bug and provide confirmation that the system was functioning correctly. ( Obviously I appreciate that this isn't how the system is trained initially ).

</comment><comment><USER7> It seems it doesn't take into account developers' commit. I wonder if doing that would help. Right now ~50% accuracy for rank-10 doesn't seem to be too useful in practice.

</comment><comment><USER8> This is really interesting. Given how open most development tools are and the fact that users will constantly generate data makes them a natural environment for deep learning based productivity plugins. But we can't have nice things :( -- also this doesn't sound like a great way to make money.</comment>


Objective-C vs. Swift messages dispatch (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.untitledkingdom.co.uk/obj-c-vs-swift/

<comment><USER2> It's strange. Swift promises so much in terms of performance. But it's still not really clear why it's under-delivering. Better method dispatch is exactly the sort of thing that should move it way beyond Obj-C...</comment>


Flooz CEO's post-mortem: "Market timing matters" - <AUTHOR> http://www.thestandard.com/news/2008/07/21/where-are-they-now-flooz

<comment><USER2> Looks like they were a typical first bubble startup, spending more cash than they really needed to, as opposed to organically building product and acquiring customers, which is what Paypal did and got right (having had to face similar fraud issues)

<comment><AUTHOR> The fraud was significant (19% of USD credit card transactions, at one point!), and ironically, at least one other Web-currency service (e-gold) is still having trouble with this issue today:

[http://www.thestandard.com/news/2008/07/22/internet- currency...](http://www.thestandard.com/news/2008/07/22/internet-currency- firm-pleads-guilty-money-laundering)</comment></comment>


Backwards auctions for older web servers - <AUTHOR> http://www.serverbidding.com/

<comment><USER2> Ah ha! A Dutch auction (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_auction>). This might be a good thing for people who can get away with less-powerful servers (and who can't these days?). I can't find the reference I want to find, but a little ways down in <http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Auctions.html> it says that a Dutch auction does not maximize revenue for the seller. So you have to wonder why the seller is using this auction style.

Dutch auctions are supposed to take place faster than other types, and risk aversion is supposed to make bidders choose a higher price than they would otherwise. Are people bidding on used servers particularly risk averse, or do sellers just want to unload them?</comment>


Y Combinator: Disneyland for Investors? - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-33617_3-57406737-276/y-combinator-disneyland-for-investors/

<comment><USER3> Demo Days really do have this feel.

I was pitching a VC partner before the presentations, and he noticed three people walking towards us: "check that out!"

Me: "Oh, yeah, Ron Conway! He spoke at one of our dinners, and we've talked with him personally a couple times, he's a good guy."

"No. To his left."

Mr. Conway was flanked by Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore. And no, it's not movie magic, they really do look that good in person.

</comment><comment><USER4> " _...and pay irrational amounts of money to experience._ "

" _Investors pay a shockingly high price to get into highly competitive funding rounds, but they're happy that they got in at all._ "

Surely investors are getting a good deal despite these statements? I mean they're going to pay more to invest in a company that's been through YC than if they invested in the exact same founders prior to them being in a YC class, but look at what they're getting in return:

\- Vetting by pg and co.

\- Plugged into an invaluable alumni network

\- Automatic investment from Yuri Milner (in most cases) meaning the company has more runway with which to survive lean times

\- Media coverage

\- Massively reduced risk premium and due diligence due to the above factors

\- Etc.

So surely the higher price is still a price worth paying?

Edit: spacing

<comment><USER5> The Milner point seems backwards: for an existing investor, cash is what they already have, and the presence of an existing investor means that their investment will be pre-diluted. If "runway" is all their startup needs, any investor would be happy to provide it.

The others seem right though, and really they all just come down to "reduced risk". The big problem for investors is that they have a hard time picking winners. YC and its community have a better track record.

<comment><USER6> Investors want you more when you need them less. When you're desperate, you get a bad deal (if any). Hence having cash is always helpful.

<comment><USER5> Helpful to the _startup_ , not to the investor. My reply was to patrickk above who listed Milner's investment as a draw for other investors. From the investor's perspective a hungry startup is preferable. Thus startups that _aren't_ hungry by virtue of someone else's investments are less desirable.

<comment><USER6> The fact that a startup isn't desperate makes it more desirable -> it may get to choose investors -> it ends up with top tier investors -> it is more likely to succeed (good investors are more than a check book) -> hence it's a good investment -> better for any given _investor_ in the round (as well as the startup - it can and _should_ be a win-win)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is completely unscientific, but once something gains this much hype I just get the gut feeling that the value has disappeared for investors. If the likes of Ashton Kutcher are there, the game's up, the secret's out - <USER2> assets are no longer undervalued. If I'm an investor, it's time to pack up and move on to find the next market inefficiency, cause I really doubt it's in YC funded startups anymore.

<comment><USER8> Ashton Kutcher was a biochemical engineering major in college, and has actually gotten fairly heavily into investing. If nothing else, he'd have far more insight into press than most angel investors would.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, I probably shouldn't have mentioned Ashton Kutcher by name. I merely meant to illustrate a type of person. That is, once a thing becomes public, well-known, trendy, etc that the game is up in terms of mining value from an under valued asset.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, I figured that's what you were saying. I think it's probably not the case, since that depends heavily on deal terms, and even the most entrepreneur-friendly terms currently (such as those of Yuri Milner's Start Fund) seem like they'll be strongly net positive in outcome. YC is taking the cream of the crop, and it's probably not a bad bet to bet on the cream, even if it seems relatively expensive, because startup outcomes are _extremely_ unevenly distributed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Might be unrelated but I've noticed an awful lot of YC "hype" (press, news, coverage) since the Sequoia investment.

I hope Sequoia is not being a negative influence to YC by dis-proportionally "banging the drums" and ultimately being a distraction to the goal of building and developing lasting and meaningful companies and businesses.

<comment><USER10> Sequoia certainly hasn't had that effect on YC companies. Nearly every founder I've talked to on the subject has said that when they met with Sequoia, they received good questions and advice about how to build a really big company.

There's a common cause for both the Sequoia LP investment and rising hype about YC: both are because YC companies are doing better and better. It certainly is true that hype, PR, and fundraising can be big distractions for early startups, but all the YC partners go to great lengths to make founders focus on the more important things.

<comment><USER9> It's good to hear from YC founders that they don't see the negative impacts.

I can certainly understand why the hype machine is, at least in the short term, valuable to both Sequoia and YC. It helps raise the profile of YC and causes valuations to rise for all involved companies. Both Sequoia and YC are in the business of making money after all.

But when you have a situation of "frenzied investors" and these "exclusive limited events" designed somewhat to cause a situation of artificial scarcity, the waters get a bit muddy regarding the motivation of connecting companies with investors. It's the difference between having genuinely valuable partnerships, and those quick liquidity events designed to make a quick buck.

The original mission of YC involved developing companies that build things that people want. I hope the Sequoia influence doesn't change that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> That is an unfortunate analogy. I really don't want to see investors riding entrepreneurs.</comment>


Why do I need to quit my job this year?  - <AUTHOR> http://www.jamesaltucher.com/why-do-i-need-to-quit-my-job-this-year/ <comment><USER2> Best part of the article:

"If someone insists they need to be in prison even though the door is unlocked then I am not going to argue. They are free to stay in prison."

</comment><comment><USER3> Thanks for the article. Have laid out my plans to move out of my current job to work in a startup within the next three months.

<comment><USER4> Curious to hear what that 90 day plan looks like. I'm in a similar position.</comment></comment>


Panty by Post founder Natalie answers my questions - <AUTHOR> http://bemmu.posterous.com/panty-by-post-founder-natalie-answers-my-ques

<comment><USER2> If this is anything like Man Packs, I whole-heartedly love this.</comment>


iOS 13 app tracking alert has dramatically cut location data flow to ad industry - <AUTHOR> https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/01/13/app-tracking-alert-in-ios-13-has-dramatically-cut-location-data-flow-to-ad-industry <comment><USER2> I'm probably saying the complete obvious, but Apple can completely crush Google if they execute this angle properly.

Google has no choice but to support ads. They're an ad company. Apple has to keep hammering how bad the ad and privacy experiences are with Android. Make iOS an absolute delight to use in contrast.

I'd pay a premium for that. Android has done a great job making me want an iOS device again, these last ten years.

<comment><USER3> Sure, but Google/Android has added fine grain GPS permissions in Android 10+ so we have the option to say "just track when using app" instead of "no" or "all the time".

The problem, now, is rolling it out due to fragmentation.

<comment><USER4> It is almost irrelevant for existing users what has been added in Android version n + 1, because they will never get updated to n + 1. The joys of the Android vendor ecosystem. Even very expensive phones like Sony get about 1 (mid) or 2 (high-end) major upgrade only, and that's still not guaranteed. Project Treble did nothing to fix this.

<comment><USER5> > The joys of the Android vendor ecosystem.

Even when going with official Google phones: my Nexus 5 is way out of date OS- wise.

<comment><USER6> Your Nexus 5 came out 7 years ago, it's unreasonable to expect that the latest Android would even run properly on it when the rest of the world has moved on.

<comment><USER7> Why? A 7 year old midrange PC or laptop will run latest Windows or Linux just fine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > A drop in advertiser spending is likely to occur from small or medium-sized > advertisers, Kasamias believes, as they are clients "where cost efficiency > is paramount and there is a physical footprint, as targeting the right user > at the right time will become more difficult."

Frankly, what a load of horse shit.

The reason for the drop in spend isn't the lack of targeting potential. Ad companies talk about this, because it sounds less creepy than what's really going on. What marketing departments in companies want from location data, is the ability to attribute sales to campaigns. They carpet bomb everyone they can with ads, and then if someone coincidentally even brushes past a store on their commute, they claim that the customer visited a store.

It's absolute arcane crap. They have no incentive to make targeting better if tracking is pervasive, because they can wildly gesticulate at one datapoint that slimily suggests the customer was effected by the ad. Losing location tracking data reduces the effectiveness of attribution, for huge enterprises, who target everyone.

ed: I wrote a little blog about this in June - [https://lockwood.dev/advertising/2019/06/07/adtech- sucks.htm...](https://lockwood.dev/advertising/2019/06/07/adtech-sucks.html)

<comment><USER9> Interesting idea.

I have noticed that after I buy something I start seeing ads for the exact item, which I have never seen before. These aren't things you buy more than once.

I always thought it was pretty dumb if you are serving ads for something someone just bought... but maybe they do it because some small % of people will click on it and they can claim the ad was associated with the sale in some hand-wavy way. Or maybe people are just more likely to click on these post-sale ads, and that's all that matters.

<comment><USER8> I think you're right.

This is a function of Marketing departments wanting to create large audiences. Large audiences mean more chance to attribute a sale, and also more impressive sounding campaigns.

The technical and time cost of implementing something that removes people who have made purchases from the audience (probably 0.001% of an audience) is much higher than simply adding someone who visited your website (lets say 5% of the audience) to the audience. If your product is reasonably ok, your largest group of customers is often your previous customers, so attributing the ads those previous customers see to their next purchase is logical for marketers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> My favorite thing about these features is the number of apps that it's reminded me to uninstall completely from my devices. The number of apps that I initially installed months ago that didn't have any of this that suddenly developed tracking notifications is staggering. I never would have known either since the updates happen silently in the background.

Great features.

<comment><USER11> where are you seeing the notifications ? I installed the update and just clicked "use location only while using app" for everything

<comment><USER10> They'll usually pop up unexpectedly and say something like "Data Leaking App has used your location while running in the background 3 times in the last 24 hours. Do you want to continue allowing this?" and it'll give me a prompt to disable location services for that app completely, allow while the app is in the background, while it's in focus, or allow always. Depending on what permissions the app actually needs, the prompt is slightly different each time.

It's a new feature due to the more fine-grained permissions that are allowed now on iOS. It prevents apps that you may have previously allowed location access to (when it was just binary) from adding all these new "features" to use your location in ways that weren't disclosed that way initially.

<comment><USER11> interesting - i have not seen that yet, but maybe i dont have apps doing that. i dont have uber on my phone but I have lyft, Im surprised I have not seen it from them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> And it's not just location data. I am amazed at how many apps want Bluetooth, too. Umm, there isn't a single listed feature that indicates a need for BT, why are you asking? Oh, so you can use that as a tracking vector, too. Well, not only do you not get BT, you don't get to live on my phone anymore, either.

As for the advertisers, boo-hoo. You raised a finger (or two, depending on locale) to "do not track", you think there wasn't a hammer that was going to fall after you were asked politely?

<comment><USER13> Would the situation be different if Apple's biggest rival wasn't basically an advertising and data mining company?

I wouldn't put it below Apple to profit from advertising control if Google didn't have an iron grip on it.

<comment><USER12> And if a frog had wings it wouldn't bump its ass when it hops. But in our world of ass-bumping frogs, that _is_ our current situation. Beyond that, we're guessing at motives from Column A, and hypotheticals from Column B.

<comment><USER14> Heh! :D I never heard frog/wings phrase before, made me laugh.

This frog probably did though, saw bit on tv last week, and thanks to the old data miner (google searched it).

[https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/amphibians/w/wall...](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/amphibians/w/wallaces- flying-frog/)

I prematurely agree, it's not real wings, but bumps its ass a lot less compared to other frogs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> On the other hand Apple has forced apps to use location data for purposes it should not be used for. Termius, for example, is my favorite iOS SSH app. But according to them, they can't keep an SSH session running in the background unless they're constantly tracking your location data. And somehow Apple approved this usage of location data.

I don't want to give Termius my location. I don't want them tracking me everywhere I go. But apparently that's the only way they can keep my SSH session alive when I need to switch to Safari for a few minutes?

<comment><USER16> Absent memory pressure, apps can stay open for up to 10 minutes in the background.

The correct solution here is for the app to request background processing and to schedule a local notification in 9 minutes saying that the app is about to run out of background time and pause (and then clean up the notification if the user returns to the app before it fires). This means you're not abusing anything, and it lets the user return before the connection is killed in order to keep it alive.

This also means if the user never returns, the app will naturally shut down the connection after 10 minutes instead of keeping it open indefinitely.

<comment><USER17> Are you sure about that? Especially in iOS 13, killing apps seems to have gotten a bit more agressive.

<comment><USER15> Yeah on iOS 13 I get Safari tabs reloading if I toggle between them. Just switching to one tab and back to the other will sometimes completely reload the page.

iPadOS was such a major leap forward for the iPad and there's not many features left I _need_ to use it as a laptop replacement... but the aggressive app and tab killing ruins everything. I've never said this about iOS devices before, but it's time to start putting more RAM in these machines.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The alert is annoying although for apps you want to have always on location tracking although, like some life logging apps. (Arc, etc)

It's like OS doesn't want to accept there are apps you want always on location tracking on and for it to stop annoying you about it.

<comment><USER19> Yeah, I'm a little annoyed that there isn't an option for "no really, always allow". I understand that there's good privacy reasons to keep asking -- but I'm quite aware that a weather app will need access to my location, and I'm okay with that.

<comment><USER20> You can choose the weather location manually. I have a list of cities and default to the one I live in. There's absolutely no reason for the weather app to know my location down to the square metre.

<comment><USER21> When you choose a weather location manually, you actually get a less fine- grained report than the one you get from a GPS-resolved location. Basically, you get weather for "the closest weather station to the geographic centre of the named city" rather than "the closest weather station to you."

This can be a big deal if your city has a large altitude range, such that going a few miles east means the difference between clouds vs. fog, or rain vs. snow; or if your city is coastal, such that going a few miles inland can mean rain vs. sun, and can make a dozen degrees' difference in temperature. (And, in some cities, you have _both_ problems. Yay Vancouver!)

<comment><USER22> Why not use a ZIP/postal code?

<comment><USER23> My ZIP code has a 4,000ft altitude change. Weather at the top is very different from the bottom.

<comment><USER20> you sir are a corner case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Over the years I've considered switching to Android a few times but Apple's really locking in as my preferred device from their privacy work.

Not sure this moves the needle with consumers but it does for me.

<comment><USER25> The article is from Apple Insider, so I guess it's no surprise they don't mention it, but Android 10 has the same functionality, including reminders and per-app 3-way location tracking settings (always on, on with app open, off).

<comment><USER26> Granted it's been quite some time, but one of the reasons I switched to iOS from Android was Facebook kept "accidentally" exploiting bugs in Android and Google never did anything about it. At the time Facebook wasn't even one of the apps you could delete from your phone. Hopefully Android is better now.

<comment><USER27> > one of the reasons I switched to iOS from Android was Facebook kept > "accidentally" exploiting bugs in Android and Google never did anything > about it. At the time Facebook wasn't even one of the apps you could delete > from your phone. Hopefully Android is better now

Um? What?

None of my Android phones, going back a great many years, had Facebook. So sure, I couldn't delete it - because it wasn't there.

<comment><USER28> My guess is you buy expensive/vanilla-OS Android phones. Lots of other Android phones have Facebook apps that can't be deleted.

<comment><USER29> The cheapest western Android phones like by Motorola, Nokia or Xiaomi (the around 150€ models) don't have this and you can uninstall everything that IS on there.

Actually the expansive ones like Samsung are the really bloated ones.

<comment><USER28> Maybe I should have said non-mainstream ones. I never saw an Android One phone unless it was specifically bought for pure Android.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> If you're running Android, I suggest you install one of the open source "firewall"s available on FDroid.

Even if you don't plan on using it, make yourself aware of the sheer number of requests being sent _constantly_ from not only your applications, but by Android system services themselves.

I'm not saying these requests are always related to ad tracking, but you can't argue there's a lot of information constantly being sent back an forth.

Pro-tip: Your battery life will possibly double running a software firewall on Android...

<comment><USER31> Any app you've got in mind? The only one on [https://search.f-droid.org/?q=firewall](https://search.f-droid.org/?q=firewall) doesn't seem to be of interest for that purpose.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Next step is to download Lockdown, open source and on device firewall. It also offers a VPN with an in-app purchase (kinda confusing when you are setting it up), but for free you get the firewall only. Easy to enable and block known ad-trackers (including FB sdk and Google Ads). Highly recommend. It's also made by ex Apple engineers, in case that helps for building trustworthiness.

[https://apps.apple.com/us/app/lockdown- apps/id1469783711](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/lockdown-apps/id1469783711)

[https://github.com/confirmedcode/lockdown- ios](https://github.com/confirmedcode/lockdown-ios)

<comment><USER33> Maybe I'm just skeptical and a cynic, but...

> VPN with an in-app purchase

Lets pay for a product, and they have the ability to sell that data.

I get, acting like a pi-hole and what-not but, a VPN for that task seems overkill.

<comment><USER34> iOS requires a VPN profile (even a local VPN) for ruled-based adblocking. This is what AdGuard Pro [0] does for adblocking.

This does not mean that your data goes through a VPN server.

[0] [https://adguard.com/en/adguard-ios- pro/overview.html](https://adguard.com/en/adguard-ios-pro/overview.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Here's the thing: before all this privacy invading tracking nonsense advertising was a perfectly healthy business. Yes, it's harder to know if your campaign worked but that didn't stop people from advertising. I have zero sympathy for the ad industry complaining because of this.

</comment><comment><USER36> On the other hand recently I restored my iPhone as new. The default settings may give users prompts to disable tracking but Siri is now a big tracker itself. Siri now learns from apps how you use them by default. While this may not be advertising and data may be on your device or with a trusted company like Apple, the idea of privacy should be that by default everything is opt in only. Who's to say Apple is tailoring your iPhone behaviour 'to your needs' when in reality they are just trying to make you invest more into their ecosystem by learning from you ? That might sound like that's helpful and might make the experience better but the main idea of tracking is still the same.

</comment><comment><USER37> > ...forcing advertisers to use inefficient data sources to pinpoint users.

They should have said, "to pinpoint users against their will". If the user wanted to be pinpointed, they would allow location tracking in that app.

</comment><comment><USER38> The thing is... we still do adaptations of Shakespeare, because human behavior hasn't changed all that profoundly in 600 years.

By the time we actually have privacy again, there will be enough information out there to mine about how people reacted five, ten years ago for the old data to continue to retain value. It'll just be repackaged and re-interpreted over and over again.

The coffee shop may no longer know that you also like kayaks, or bulldogs, but they might not need information like that to peg your preferences based on what stereotypes you fit with the information they do have.

</comment><comment><USER39> One thing I wish iOS supported is allowing apps to access approximate location data. There's a lot of apps that bring value based on location, but I don't want to give them precise GPS data.

</comment><comment><USER40> This feature sounds great on paper, but what's always bugged me is that this only applies to third-party apps. Apple's own location tracking apps (Maps, Find My) aren't subjected to never-ending scary pop-up messages like their competitors.

</comment><comment><USER41> That's swell. It would also be great if there was a single button on the Control Center that would allow me to toggle global location on/off instead of how it is which is multiple clicks, scroll and confirmation.

</comment><comment><USER42> Although it doesn't stop DNS over HTTPS, I use a DNS sinkhole on my home network and then I use wireguard to VPN into home when I'm not connected to my home WiFi.

The Wireguard iOS app allows you to automatically connect to your configured interfaces based on whether you're using cellular data, connected to specific SSIDs, or disconnected from specific SSIDs.

The only downside I have found to this approach so far is that it can break captive portals on public WiFi networks, which I will just disconnect from if I have a reasonable 4G signal.

</comment><comment><USER43> That's great. Android also has this feature for couple of months now.

What's great it shows list of apps that use location in background so that you can disable all permissions in go.

</comment><comment><USER44> Apple is clearly taking a position that some of the other big players can't, and all indications are that they will squeeze this play very hard.

The likes of Google have rough waters ahead. Advertising on the internet is obviously here to say but the future of targeted ads based on all this tracking data is clearly looking very shaky.

Google and other companies have likely not done enough to diversify their business models to weather the coming storm without a lot of hurt.

</comment><comment><USER45> Great step in the right direction.

</comment><comment><USER46> TL;DR:

\- 80% of iOS 13 users disabled background location tracking \- vendors still report having collected more location-based data than a year before, but \- the quality of data has decreased (vendors are ofsetting GPS data with geo ip lookups)

I didn't find the UX and the initial permission/notification spam that annoying, as I've learned more about what's happening on my phone. Wondering if this is a shared sentiment or just my bias.

</comment><comment><USER47> My Android phone started telling me about background location requests about 2 weeks ago as well with the option to block. It is a great feature.

</comment><comment><USER48> > The quality of that data is still a problem, as ad buyers notice it is of a > lower quality than data that was previously available

Not a problem at all.

</comment><comment><USER49> To be fair I get a very similar notification when an app requests location data in the background in Android 10 too.

</comment><comment><USER50> What sort of privacy protections does purism offer when you use librem apps? Anyone experiment with this so far?

</comment><comment><USER51> Replace each occurrence of "location data" with, say, "cocain".

> Despite the reduced amount of cocain available, the amount that is still > available to use is more valuable, while the market for cocain continues to > thrive.

I mean it's disturbing.

<comment><USER52> Hey, good one, mate. Now let's try the First Amendment. I'm going to try replacing "speech" with "cocaine".

> _Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or > prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of cocaine, > or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to > petition the Government for a redress of grievances._

Good god. This is immeasurably disturbing. Forsooth, we must ban the freedom of speech!

<comment><USER51> Are you somehow trying to equate ad companies hoovering up our location data with the first amendment?

I was simply trying to convey how addicted they are to that data.

<comment><USER52> You can make everyone look addicted to something by replacing something with cocaine. It's because all the bad parts come from the fact that you're replacing something with cocaine

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Excellent work, Apple! Keep it up!

</comment><comment><USER54> Apple already collects all the data of their users heavily and moves like these are simply meant to annoy their competitors (mostly Google) and keep the data to themselves while looking like a good kid in the valley.

The number of gullible people aka Apple fanboys is staggering here who actually think Apple is trying to _save_ their privacy from advertisers after reading this highly biased article. Hah.

<comment><USER17> What makes you so sure about that?

<comment><USER54> Consider [1] and [2] but you can find plenty more.

[1] [https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/01/apple...](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/01/apples- hypocritical-defense-data-privacy/581680/) [2] [https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2019/12/04/appl...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2019/12/04/apple- iphone-11-iphone-11-pro-location-privacy-issue)

<comment><USER17> I just read the first article, but I find the problem quite hard, actually.

The Atlantic article seems to say that Apple can do more, because: Safari defaults to Google (Tim Cook claims because it's the best search engine), plus they allow Google and Facebook apps, especially Google Maps. You'd rather they didn't?

The second article, from Krebs on Security, says that the location is collected by Apple for "a new short-range technology that lets iPhone 11 users share files locally with other nearby phones that support this feature, and that a future version of its mobile operating system will allow users to disable it".

I think it's far more nuanced than you state. However, I do agree with you that Safari should not default to Google.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> As someone who works in this space I see this from an alternative angle. Yes we use data like this in order to advertise to you, No Apple is no better than Google at how they approach this - they are just walling you further into their walled garden.

Google uses your location information to track your locations in order to provide better (more relevant) advertisements through their own ad platform.

Apple does exactly the same but because it doesn't have it's own ad platform this gets sent to their "Approved Partners" who do it on their behalf.

Stopping 3rd parties from being able to use this data simply tightens the circle, the data is anonymous (for the most part) and while there are companies that exist out there to tie this data to an actual person most companies like ours have no need to do so.

Likewise what you will start seeing off the back of this is a decrease in advert quality.

Like anyone - I despise adverts, but if I HAVE to see them I at least want them to be relevant products that I am interested in. Soon the only people who will be able to provide those insights will be Apple Partners or Google.

<comment><USER56> > Apple does exactly the same but because it doesn't have it's own ad platform > this gets sent to their "Approved Partners" who do it on their behalf.

Apple sends my location information to third parties? Citation needed.

<comment><USER57> I just looked. They do, but they share it anonymously unless you consent otherwise.

[https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/en- ww/](https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/en-ww/)

See "Location-Based Services" near the bottom.

<comment><USER58> I'm assuming this is for Maps/address resolution data and such, and not real time location information that can be used to identify a single user.

<comment><USER55> No one identifies a "User" (in a personal sense), everything goes via the IDFA or AAID, this is a unique identifier that represents your device. Real time location is used - it specifies it there, I am really not sure why people think Apple is more altruistic with this data than Google.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


5 Mac OS X Shortcuts You Need to Know - <AUTHOR> https://blog.mariusschulz.com/2015/03/04/5-mac-os-x-shortcuts-you-need-to-know

<comment><USER2> Top left corner of the website redirects to [https://blog.mariusschulz.com/admin/login](https://blog.mariusschulz.com/admin/login). Maybe you should not expose your login url like that.

<comment><USER3> It's also the first item tabbed to :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> what is up with cmd+shift+3 and cmd+shift+4 being screenshot, while cmd+shift+1 and cmd+shift+2 don't do anything?

<comment><USER5> OS X reused the screenshot shortcut keys from the Classic Mac OS (System [n]) days. And back then, I think Cmd-Shift-1 and Cmd-Shift-2 ejected floppy disks, when there were such things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> great stuff! I feel silly not knowing these after using Mac for 4 years now :/</comment>


Current state of the art in objects classification - <AUTHOR> http://rodrigob.github.io/are_we_there_yet/build/classification_datasets_results.html <comment><USER2> I see object detection systems often compared by accuracy percentages but rarely by speed.

I ask because I'm building a surveillance system that uses object detection to answer simple questions, like: "Is there a squirrel on my bird feeder?", "Is my car in the garage?", "Is there a package on my front step?".

Right now I'm playing with Darknet and yolo from pjreddie because he emphasized performance and I'm getting about 69fps on my 1080ti.

Is speed not considered important by researchers at this time?

Is there any system that provides decent performance on CPUs? Dedicating $700 gpus to detect squirrels on the bird feeder is fine for crazy people like me but others may find that excessive.

<comment><USER3> BTW, try SSD, it was even a bit faster than YOLO2.

<comment><USER4> Is there a Docker makefile available for playing with SSD if you're not working in the domain?

I have some 100Ks of pix I'd like to put through classifiers but could never get YOLO2 properly working in a container, in part because even reading the code I couldn't figure out how to simply point a trained model at a directory of images and get classification out... :/

Definitely PEBKAC but if there are any dead-simple tutorials available I'd love a pointer–classification speed not a factor, it would all be CPU non- real-time and could be leisurely. Just interested in seeing what the state of the art is in classifying a personal image set without training against it..

<comment><USER5> There are some wrappers around YOLO3 in Python which may help: [https://github.com/qqwweee/keras-yolo3](https://github.com/qqwweee/keras- yolo3)

It's not Dockerised though, but you could grab a container with the usual machine learning packages and install that on top.

Also look at NVIDIA Digits ([https://github.com/NVIDIA/DIGITS](https://github.com/NVIDIA/DIGITS)) which has Docker images.

<comment><USER4> Thanks Josh!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Last updated on 2016-02-22.

Given the speed of development in machine learning, the numbers are probably outdated.

</comment><comment><USER7> Many years of "human optimization" on the same old datasets must lead to severe overfitting, so these results should be taken with a grain of salt. Related research:

[https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.00451](https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.00451)

<comment><USER8> Have you read the linked paper? It finds no evidence of such overfitting happening, despite common fears of this phenomenon.

Quote: "This shows that the current research methodology of "attacking" a test set for an extended period of time is surprisingly resilient to overfitting."

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is two years out of date. Current state of the art for CIFAR has about 1/4th of the errors

[https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.09501](https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.09501)

</comment><comment><USER10> Similar data (but for a wider range of problems - not just object classification) was tabulated by the EFF's AI Progress Measurement project [1]; I made an alternative interface to visualise it [2].

[1]: [https://www.eff.org/ai/metrics](https://www.eff.org/ai/metrics)

[2]: [https://jamesscottbrown.github.io/ai-progress- vis/index.html](https://jamesscottbrown.github.io/ai-progress-vis/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER11> Anyone know of something like this for face recognition?

</comment><comment><USER3> Must be very old, DenseNet-BC is nowhere mentioned...</comment>


The Afterlives and Second Acts of America's Movie Palaces - <AUTHOR> https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/abandoned-movie-theaters <comment><USER2> My hometown is where the Ringling Bros. Circus started. One of the brothers used some of his circus fortune to build a theatre[0] in 1915. It fell in disrepair, and they only did bits and pieces of restoration while I was growing up. Then a few years ago they got enough funding to do a ton of restoration, and it is beautiful. Thankfully, the people in charge of it decided to stop trying to compete with the modern cinemas of neighboring towns by showing new movies on the old screen and projector, and now they do classic movie nights alongside various live performances.

[0][http://www.alringling.org/](http://www.alringling.org/)

</comment><comment><USER3> More than completely abandoned ones, I love new spaces that preserve the nature of the theaters they used to be while becoming something else, like [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alabama_Theatre_(Houston)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alabama_Theatre_\(Houston\))

</comment><comment><USER4> We have a similar (though _much_ smaller) theater in my small town. It was built in 1929, and was in disuse and disrepair until fairly recently.

It's been renovated now, and feels pretty true to its roots. I've attended a few plays and such there, and it really feels like stepping back to the 1950s or so:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyric_Theatre_(Harrison,_Arkan...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyric_Theatre_\(Harrison,_Arkansas\))

</comment><comment><USER5> A wonderful single screen space in my home town was converted into a pool hall. You picked up the balls and paid for the table at the ticket booth and they reused the theater seats on a raised platform along the tables for viewing. It was really something.</comment>


MPAA attacks Ars for "challenging efforts to curb content theft" - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/01/mpaa-attacks-ars-for-challenging-efforts-to-curb-content-theft.ars

<comment><USER2> I love Ars Technica. They fairly consistently have the best journalism of any mainstream-oriented tech news site, work hard to stay unbiased (though don't always achieve that 100%), and hire quality writers.

That being said, I don't like this piece. It's emotional, and even as they admit, hyperbolic. Unless "crazy freetards" is a word the MPAA used in their posting, I don't see a legitimate reason for Ars to use it. The bill might be _absolutely freaking insane_ , but I don't read Ars to be told that, I read Ars to be informed about the issue.

I understand their passion, their disgust, and their defensiveness. I share their sentiments exactly. I just don't understand why that should undermine their professionalism.

<comment><USER3> I disagree. This comes across as a fantastic editorial, with just the right amount of frankness ("The thing is, we're really on the MPAA's side; they just don't realize it.") to make me sit up and take them seriously.

My only quibble is that it's filed as a news piece, rather than the editorial it so clearly is. This isn't news; it's meta-news.

<comment><USER4> But they might better have first ribbonized the complaining article:

MPAA: "Sanchez's main argument is that theft has a negligible economic impact – only some inefficiency – because theft is beneficial"

Sanchez ([http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/how-copyright-industries- con-...](http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/how-copyright-industries-con- congress/)):

"Does that mean online piracy is harmless? Of course not. But the harm is a dynamic loss in allocative efficiency, which is much harder to quantify. That is, in the cases where a consumer would have been willing to buy an illicitly downloaded movie, album, or software program, we want the market to be accurately signalling demand for the products people value, rather than whatever less-valued use that money gets spent on instead."

MPAA:

"Extending this argument, shoplifting has no economic impact since shoplifters can spend the money they "saved" on other products . . ."

Sanchez:

"In many cases—I've seen research suggesting it's about 80 percent for music—a U.S. consumer would not have otherwise purchased an illicitly downloaded song or movie if piracy were not an option. Here, the result is actually pure consumer surplus: The downloader enjoys the benefit, and the producer loses nothing."

(The problem with the shoplifting analogy: those pinched Mach 3 razor blades are gone, and must be restocked at some cost. And whomever uses the pinched razors, needs razors of some kind, so the theft does diminish revenue. Theft of copyright doesn't force restocking to enable a legit sale, and Sanchez is suggesting that the thief wouldn't have been a legit sale in the first place.)

MPAA: "Sanchez argued against Congressional passage of the Stop Online Piracy Act, basing his reasoning on his own faulty logic that content theft and counterfeiting don't cause widespread economic pain"

Sanchez:

"I've yet to encounter a technically clueful person who believes the Stop Online Piracy Act will actually do anything to meaningfully reduce—let alone "stop"—online piracy, and so I haven't bothered writing much about the absurd numbers . . . . If the proposed solution just won't work, after all, why bother quibbling about the magnitude of the problem? But . . . . I'm offended to see bad data invoked so routinely and brazenly, on general principle"

MPAA:

"Ars Technica, a tech blog with a long history of challenging efforts to curb content theft. . . . "

In light of the above, we're content to let the reader consider the source. We do thank the MPAA for correcting their spelling of our name (see screenshot w/ 'Arts Technica'), and suggest their analysis is every bit as good as their proof reading.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's like McCarthyism only it's not about Communism it's about piracy and copyright.

</comment><comment><USER6> MPAA forgot the other half of the gun argument. Guns can kill people but we don't prevent law enforcement from having guns? OK, but U.S. citizens have the right to own guns also, kind of a balance of power so to speak.

So where is my balance of power with respect to SOPA/PIPA? When someone improperly targets my website (intentionally or not) and it's offline due to a simple accusation, what's my recourse?

<comment><USER7> If a company abuses DMCA, they are liable for perjury. The police prosecutor is meant to charge them. However, that hasn't happened.

Alternatively, if a person suffered monetary damages (current and future), they can sue the abuser for damages. This is what protects big companies from potential DMCA abusers because they have a lot to lose.

Since free content creators can't sue for damages but only counternotice and accept liability if they're not scared from the notice; but people sharing the content will be more afraid of the legalese in counternotices. The bill's intent was to stop freely infringing copyright content, it also consequently kills free content sharing due to the unchecked abuse. It's brilliant bill for the anti-Internet activists.

MPAA are anti-Internet activists by the way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I like Ars Technica so much, I bought a premium membership to show my support. I will never buy a premium membership at mpaa.org.

<comment><USER9> Ironically, I pirate Ars Technica.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Now that's how you write policy pieces - short, cutting, funny, and informative.

</comment><comment><USER9> When some random person on the Internet trolls, they are ignored. So why don't we ignore the copyright trolls? "A piece of literature is arguing against our policies." Well... yeah, welcome to society!

<comment><USER11> > So why don't we ignore the copyright trolls?

Because they're modifying our copyright laws.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> theft ≠ infringement

</comment><comment><USER13> MPAA wants censorship rights without due process on bytes traveling between any device. If you resist then you are labeled as petty thieves who want paid content for free.

MPAA wants to preserve a 18th century business model against a modern infrastructure where thought, matter, data, energy, directives and commerse exist as one and can be freely transmitted between minds (the future devices they want to censor... You and I, our sensors and transmission devices)

our minds will eventually join this symphony of communication called the internet. We better cook freedom right into it or you'll find penalties for thinking and communicating unauthorized information.</comment>


Microsoft's $200m Wunderlist is down - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/09/22/wunderlist_down_outage/ <comment><USER2> > Mobile to-do list Wunderlist, bought by Microsoft for a reported > $100m-$200m, is down with no immediate prospect of recovery.

Maybe they _just_ realized they already have OneNote and don't really need this...</comment>


Plain Text Accounting, a Guide to Ledger and Friends - <AUTHOR> http://plaintextaccounting.org/ <comment><USER3> For displaying the results/reports generated by Beancount [1] I created fava [2], a web-based interface with charts, tree-tables and tree-maps, including reports like Balance Sheet and Income/Expenses.

It supports filters (time, tags, account and payee) and you can find a demo here: [http://fava.pythonanywhere.com](http://fava.pythonanywhere.com)

[1] [http://furius.ca/beancount/](http://furius.ca/beancount/) [2] [https://github.com/aumayr/fava](https://github.com/aumayr/fava)

</comment><comment><USER4> Anyone who is into Ledger-like double-entry accounting and looking for a project to hack on, check out my very-early-and-rough project "DoubleBook": [https://github.com/haberman/dblbook](https://github.com/haberman/dblbook)

The idea is to run the app in a web browser using IndexedDB. It's written in React and all client-side, so I'm hoping this could run in a web browser or as a native app. It could also run purely client-side as a Chrome App so you don't have to trust a server.

I've put a ton of work into the data layer, which is pretty functional, but I'm a backend guy and not very fast at writing UI's. If anyone is interested in helping me on the UI I'd love that. (Fair warning: since I'm a Googler by day I released this as a Google Open Source project, and to contribute to it you'd have to sign the Google CLA. I understand if some people might not be into that).

It even has a (very rough) importer from Ledger format.

</comment><comment><USER5> Does anybody have a suggestion for an Android/Sailfish OS app which supports this? Ideally I'd like to run something like hledger-web on my home server and have a little app on my phone which lets me do data entry during the day, either directly talking to the server and/or caching the results until a connection can be made again.

<comment><USER6> There's no "nice" app where you click on drop downs or type in amounts and then it appends it to your ledger file.

Generally, and it's been discussed a lot on the mailing list/irc, people end up finding just writing down transactions in a text file works best. e.g. google keep, or simplenote, or Notes app etc.

I keep my ledger file on dropbox, so I can edit it directly.

I've not tried hledger-web on my phone to see what it looks like, but that has an add transaction function. So you could just go to your site and edit it. Obviously want some security to prevent others accessing it, e.g. VPN to home network.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is an incredible resource, +1. I started using ledger heavily about a year ago and it's been a game changer.

Personal accounting is about data capture; if you don't gather good data, you end up with garbage in garbage out analysis. Having a simple, non-propretary file format enables so many things. The data capture side (OFX/QIF/CSV files, bank websites, etc. etc.) is still clunky and painful but that's a hard problem to solve.

<comment><USER8> Data capture is the issue. I have tried ledger but always go back to other apps because they can automatically capture all the data from my credit card, brokerage, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> i find these plain text accounting projects very interesting but what i need is something more akin to what YNAB provides, which is budgeting.

<comment><USER10> It's very much a "what works for me", but any accounting system that supports an account hierarchy (which ledger seems to) can have some form of budgeting "bolted on".

At my bank, I have a "Chequing" and "Savings" account (that's their use, anyway). I use GnuCash for Android as kind of an additional data layer on top of my bank accounts.

In GnuCash I have a Savings and Chequing account I manage, but I've got a whole separate hierarchy of "bank accounts" called "Budget". Under that I build a whole tree of "Bills", "Planned Purchases", "Car", "Credit Card Payment", etc. When I get paid I transfer the appropriate amounts into the various "budget" accounts to plan for my bills and such. The displayed amount for my "Savings" account is actually "money that is not allocated to anything right now". (The true total is Savings+Budget.)

If I pick something up on my credit card (e.g., buying something online), that expense gets logged against my credit card right away and I can just transfer some money from Savings/Chequing/Budget into my "Credit Card Payment" budget item.

It doesn't really provide me any forecasting, and I can't really set up "future bills", but once I move the money into the budget accounts it's essentially "spent", so it serves the purpose just as well.

(As an added benefit, I've set up the expense accounts to more or less mirror my budget accounts, with some additional ones for the unbudgetted day-to-day. I can always get an accurate picture of "how much have I spent on <x> since I started tracking", which is interesting.)

<comment><USER11> Here's how I do YNAB-ish budgeting, I think it's similar to what you said except using virtual subaccounts instead of a parallel hierarchy: [https://gist.github.com/simonmichael/a1addcb652da4e78b183](https://gist.github.com/simonmichael/a1addcb652da4e78b183)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've just started to take a look at LedgerSMB (perl), ERPNext (python), and Odoo (python). These are backed by Postgresql or MariaDb. Anyone have any experience with these for a small business?

For personal finance or very small businesses there is GnuCash.

<comment><USER13> I like Odoo, but, there doesn't seem to be enough glue in the Open Source release to do things like billing for services in a sane and coherent manner.

The UI for LedgerSMB is just horrible. I don't think it's really been updated since 1999.

I really haven't messed with ERPNext, mainly because I can't get it to install correctly.

It's my opinion that there really are not a lot of good, truly open source ERP/Accounting systems for businesses out there.

<comment><USER14> > I really haven't messed with ERPNext, mainly because I can't get it to > install correctly.

Please post any issues, tracebacks on the forum. Install is pretty straightforward and works well for most people [https://github.com/frappe/bench](https://github.com/frappe/bench)

Edit: You can also use the VM [https://erpnext.com/download](https://erpnext.com/download)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Great resource, thanks for sharing. My business accounts aren't _too_ complicated but there are a few quirks which seem to stop me from migrating over from Freeagent, namely:

. Client + invoice integration

. Invoice preparation, with translated templates

. Multiple currency invoicing, with auto-calculated gain/loss

. Cashflow reports

. P+L, balance sheet

. UK tax calculations for self-assessment and for corporation tax

There's a chance I could replicate some of this in Ledger, but that's got time, energy and potential mistakes written all over it.

The accountant I work with charges more than average (from what I can tell - <USER2> pay £1k per year all-in, more or less, rarely have to lift a finger) but a) includes me on their own Freeagent [0] license ('saving' £300 pa) and b) is very tax efficient.

Knowing what I now know after years of working with accountants, however, there's an outside chance I could be as efficient without the associated costs. But then a contact of mine pays £500 a year for their accountant to submit official accounts and has to do his book-keeping manually, with no real cashflow oversight. Plus with ever-changing regulations and the ability to more easily sell or obtain credit for the business, it really makes sense to work with an accountant, as far as I can tell.

Anyone else wrestled with this before? I take it some of you might have, as this CLI accounting approach seems to appeal to us DIY'ers.

This year I do intend to get serious about accounting and my approach to finances. First I'm going to read _Financial Intelligence for Entrepreneurs_ [1], as previously recommended on HN and elsewhere, to get a handle on what I _ought_ to be looking at on a regular basis. Then I'm going to start to follow my new YNAB [2] account closely, although the use of that is unfortunately complicated by one of my accounts not importing statements automatically (the import option in the web application is not visible, despite the docs mentioning one) and so I may have to manually add all transactions which... I'm not keen on doing.

I found a spreadsheet that does what YNAB does, but without the bells and whistles, and with manual data-entry, I'll pay for the modestly priced online offer if it turns out to be simple enough to use.

Overall, it's not that things are in bad shape, but they could be better and I'd like to know what to focus on to ensure stability and growth.

So yes, interested in DIY accounts, but not able/willing to contribute to improving them just yet.

\--

[0] - [https://lukespear.co.uk/2011/07/online-accounting-for- freela...](https://lukespear.co.uk/2011/07/online-accounting-for-freelancers- and-small-businesses)

[1] - [http://www.amazon.com/dp/1422119157/](http://www.amazon.com/dp/1422119157/)

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

<comment><USER16> I am wrestling with it now, because I cant justify spending 150EUR/month _and_ 1500EUR at year end to keep books and file returns. I have but six to ten invoices a year, and only myself as an employee; but such an animal doesn't seem very interesting to every relevant tax and accounting professional I've inquired with in Berlin. Perhaps it is the "English" premium, but at those costs I'm stuck spending more time than I care, at possibly greater risk than I am aware of, trying to do my own paperwork and books. In a system I mostly grok from (translated!) blog posts!

<comment><USER17> I have British friends in Berlin who run a bar and they pay around 800€/year. I don't know what your business is like, but I'd imagine a Bar is on the complicated side of things (lots of small transactions, changing personell etc).

You probably don't even need to do double-entry bookkeeping. If you look at your files from the last years, it should be pretty easy to figure out how to handle the different transactions. It only gets complicated when you start hiring people (as employees, not contractors) or have debt/investments.

Your accountant should at least let you do the monthly stuff yourself (usually very easy: just add the VAT you charged) and then do the yearly accounting for much cheaper, as long as you can get him/her the data in an easy=to-process format.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Another shameless plug: easy web-based accounting that is free to install locally, or pay someone to host it for you. [https://beansbooks.com/](https://beansbooks.com/)

</comment><comment><USER19> Shameless plug: if you do prefer something that the rest of your family can use try my app: Family Fortune [https://family- fortune.ridgebit.com](https://family-fortune.ridgebit.com)

</comment><comment><USER20> Sorry, but personal accounting shouldn't need a guide. Everyone writing personal accounting software seems to nerd off on accounting stuff making it unusable. You should nerd off on other stuff instead: photographing receipts would be an awesome way to data entry for instance.

<comment><USER21> You've got a great idea for your next project. These folks will continue to spend their free time as they wish.</comment></comment>


The structure of the Milky Way - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2018-07-milky.html <comment><USER2> Is the text in the pictures German? Or do they localize the pictures?

Either way, one thing about astronomy I find really fascinating is how people are able to figure out so much from so little data[0]. The amount of head scratching and the number of sleepless nights spent trying to make sense of what little data is available must be almost as mind-bending as the stellar bodies astronomers study.

[0] "little" compared to what we could gather if we could just hop aboard the good old Enterprise and jet over to a couple of nearby stars, or at least take a quick field trip to Neptune...

<comment><USER3> Well, we _have_ taken a couple of field trips to Neptune (and a bit beyond), but your point is well taken. It really is extraordinary how much the human mind can encompass.

[https://futurism.com/earth-compared-to-the- universe/](https://futurism.com/earth-compared-to-the-universe/)

[http://thirdmonk.net/lifestyle/our-sun-compared-to-the- large...](http://thirdmonk.net/lifestyle/our-sun-compared-to-the-largest-star- ever-discovered-video.html)

<comment><USER2> Well, yes, but we sent probes to Jupiter and Saturn that spent years exploring them and their moons.

And I would really like to know why Uranus' axis of rotation and its magnetic field are so weird. Wouldn't you?

<comment><USER3> Oh, I see, you want Neptune and Uranus orbiters. That's not what I thought you meant when you said "quick field trip to Neptune."

Yeah, I'd love to have those orbiters. And a Europa lander. And a pony.

But I'll settle for getting the damn Webb launched.

<comment><USER2> Well, if we could board a shuttle and arrive at a stable orbit around Uranus or Neptuine in less than 12 hours, we would not _need_ an orbiter, would we?

In the short term, if Webb got launched, that would be awesome. But in the slightly-longer term, there is so much about Uranus and Neptune to discover, and we haven't done _anything_ on that front.

Just consider how much we discovered by sending probes to Jupiter and Saturn. Consider, how there is still to discover on Uranus and Neptune. And tell me you don't want to go there really badly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> As usual, phys.org takes over your CPU.

Why is this even permitted? It should be blackholed

<comment><USER5> To their credit, site runs fine with javascript disabled.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This article reminds me a lot of the book "A Fire upon the Deep" by Vernor Vinge.

While reading this article and viewing the diagram of the Milky Way, I wondered, does time pass more slowly from the point of view of those bodies near the center of the galaxy, which are moving more quickly?

<comment><USER7> Of course the faster you go the slower time passes but you have to travel at least 30% the speed of light to make a dramatic difference. See the table here:

[http://www.emc2-explained.info/Time-Dilation-at-Low- Speeds/](http://www.emc2-explained.info/Time-Dilation-at-Low-Speeds/)

<comment><USER7> Also: the star with the shortest known period orbiting our central black hole travels no faster than 1% the speed of light.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S0%E2%80%93102](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S0%E2%80%93102)

<comment><USER8> Peak stellar speed observed as "nearly 3% the speed of light":

[https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05825-3](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05825-3)

which appears to be rounded up from actual 2.55% value:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S2_(star)#May_2018_pericentre_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S2_\(star\)#May_2018_pericentre_passage)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


If Google buys Groupon: A massive culture clash - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/google-groupon-culture-clash-2010-11

<comment><USER2> _"In Groupon's bustling 1,000-person Chicago headquarters, heroes include comedy writers, improv actors, and buzzing rooms of salespeople. There is an office elaborately decorated as a bedroom for an imaginary, deranged tenant. It's hilarious, but also the kind of thing that the brains at Google probably wouldn't find funny, or support."_

Has the author ever been to the Google offices? From what I read here Groupon would fit right in. Both companies seem to be extremely bottom-up, embracing chaos and weirdness. Technical vs non-technical seems like a detail. (And Google employs a _lot_ of non-technical folks.)

Disclaimer: I now work at Google. When I interviewed there I saw a newsletter in the _urinals_. Do you think an algorithm thought of that?</comment>


When You Lose Weight, Where Does It Go? The Answer May Surprise You - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/team-transparentcareer/when-you-lose-weight-where-does-it-go-the-answer-may-surprise-you-adf440568ced#.nmg3h3wmf <comment><USER2> Curse your lack of downvote buttons, HN.

</comment><comment><USER3> What a terrible article. Clickbait title, super obvious answer that everybody should've learned in middle school, some nontruths (some mass _does_ get converted to energy. It's a negligible amount (as E=mc^2 and c is big) but it's definitely not "so wrong")

</comment><comment><USER4> TL;DR your body produces energy by converting the "weight" to CO2 and you breath it out.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is funny: "It Gets Converted to Energy (So wrong. Law of Conservation of Mass)"

Anyone other physicists around? =)

<comment><USER6> It's correct, mass is conserved in chemical reactions. The energy doesn't come from converting mass, it comes from rearranging atoms in molecules (which releases chemical energy).

<comment><USER7> well, to be very technical about it, when you release energy in a chemical reaction, you DO lose a tiny amount of mass, according to E=mc^2. However, the change in mass is very small in a chemical reaction, as the energy released is very small in comparison to the total energy of the system (given by E=mc^2).

<comment><USER6> Ok, I should have said that matter is conserved, because that's what the author is really talking about (even though he also calls it mass).

In any case, mass can't be converted to energy either because mass already is energy (that's what e = mc^2 means).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you don't poop it out, why were my poops 2-3x as voluminous when I was on a weight loss regime?</comment>


Having fun with Emacs in Haskell - <AUTHOR> http://www.stackbuilders.com/news/having-fun-with-emacs-in-haskell

<comment><USER2> This is awesome and gives me a chance to extend an editor in Haskell. I'll have to retry extending Yi again and see if they've made it easier than in the past.</comment>


Githits - <AUTHOR> http://githits.me

<comment><USER2> I think I'm blind now...

(Sorry to be snarky, but my god man, change that color scheme...)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the feedback. Glad I'm not a designer :) Will update it soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice, I have the most repositories of anyone in Chicago, and am only 6 positions less popular than dhh.

I am not sure what this means, but I'm OK with it.

</comment><comment><USER5> Nice. For anyone interested, here's how to do location-based user searching in github: [https://github.com/search?type=Users&language=&q=loc...](https://github.com/search?type=Users&language=&q=location%3Aboston)

</comment><comment><USER6> Question: How are you picking the cities? Is it just cities that you know of, or are they the top github using cities, or arbitrary?

<comment><USER3> Arbitrary + github cities with sufficient data. I have a lot more cities that I'm not showing because there isn't enough data.

<comment><USER7> Could you possibly add Montreal Canada? :)

<comment><USER3> Montreal is up now.

<comment><USER7> Thank you

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Kindly requesting Australia. :)

(Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide... Take your pick.)

<comment><USER3> Sounds good, added to my list. If anyone else interested in a particular city, just let me know.

<comment><USER9> Montreal, please.

<comment><USER3> I already have Montreal as of last week. Will put it up soon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Any particular reason the main site defaults to Philly? Also, what is the utility of grouping users by physical location? Novelty?

<comment><USER11> Looking to hire a local programmer would be one use.

<comment><USER10> Ah, this makes sense. However I'd echo the question above about how the cities were chosen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Seems that the majority of people I follow do not list their location, so view these lists with that in mind.

<comment><USER3> That is correct. I actually like this because it allows people to opt-out. If they want to be shown, they will have to set their location correctly :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It'll never stop being weird to pull up something like this and see myself :/

</comment><comment><USER14> It would be nice if I could click on a state on not just pre-selected towns or could put in the url such as my town WalthamMA and show those in Waltham MA (two towns over from cambridge).

</comment><comment><USER15> Portland is part of Washington? No.

</comment><comment><USER16> Cool, it's also a nice way to discover repos and projects

</comment><comment><USER17> Nice idea and implementation. I would love to see Europe and all the countries in the EU. By the way, is the software for Githits on GitHub?

<comment><USER18> Would love to see the ability to type in any city/country and see the stats.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> nodejitsu, coffeescript, lithium, etc. nyc rules.

</comment><comment><USER20> Vancouver includes Vancouver, WA and Vancouver, Canada. Otherwise nice little mashup.

<comment><USER3> Thanks, and good catch, this is being updated right now including historical data.

</comment></comment><comment> s-phi-nl I am a little curious how you detect where I am. For me it shows "Philadelphia", which is indeed the city nearest my hometown, but I am currently at my college in Minnesota, so my IP address would show that I am there.

<comment><USER3> I don't. It defaults to Philly because that's where I'm from and I didn't have time to add a landing page before someone submitted this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Looks like it doesn't pick up repos owned by organizations that have their location listed. That would be nice.

<comment><USER3> it should, if I'm understanding you correctly. which org and repo are you looking at?

<comment><USER21> <https://github.com/documentcloud>

<comment><USER3> for example, underscore is on the list: <http://www.githits.me/NewYorkCity>

Is that what you mean?

<comment><USER21> Oops. I entirely missed the "By Organizations" bit down the scroll. My apologies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> May we have Indianapolis, Indiana please? :)

<comment><USER3> I already have most of Indianapolis, I will put it up soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Damn, the color scheme looks terrible!</comment>