Social media bubbles may threaten democracy - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-06-08/democracy-never-faced-a-threat-like-facebook <comment><USER2> The problem with these filter bubbles is the fact that entities like Facebook encourage them and they are fundamental to their platform. To increase engagement in these platorms makes it really easy to just create a filter bubble. When Facebook becomes your primary information source you begin to unfollow or shut off topics. Since you seek social approval from your friends it makes you want to argue less with others. Also, gaining likes encourages you to perpetuate the filter bubble with a narrative that your friends approve. In contrast when you consume news from news outlets although you may have a bias on which news outlet you read its quite different in the fact that they may publish things that aren't necessarily found in your filter bubble. On the other hand most people don't like having their core beliefs challenged in any way. If you present them that information they are more likely to just not listen. This is what fake news targets because no one in your filter bubble will challenge your beliefs and they can tell you whatever you want to hear.

<comment><USER3> > Since you seek social approval from your friends it makes you want to argue > less with others.

Since gaining entry into the US middle/professional class I have been informed numerous times that disagreeing with one's friends is impolite.

I miss the times when I could say things like "No, what you're saying is dumb" without drawing shocked stares. It was a simpler often better time.

I'm told it is particularly inappropriate to disagree with your girlfriend's mum and tell her she's spouting rubbish. Especially at a cordial thanksgiving dinner.

But if you can't argue with people and test each other's ideas, then what's the point of keeping them around?

<comment><USER4> > Since gaining entry into the US middle/professional class I have been > informed numerous times that disagreeing with one's friends is impolite.

> I miss the times when I could say things like "No, what you're saying is > dumb" without drawing shocked stares.

I think you may be mistaking cultural norms about the _manner of expression_ of disagreement with a cultural norms against disagreement generally.

"I think, if you consider X, Y, and Z, that you would find that it's more case A than case B" may get a different reaction than "No, B is dumb."

<comment><USER3> > "I think, if you consider X, Y, and Z, that you would find that it's more > case A than case B" may get a different reaction than "No, B is dumb."

I have been told that this also is impolite in many situations. My usual approach is asking questions. People get upset when they don't have answers because they aren't used to having their beliefs questioned and don't think defending them should be necessary.

<comment><USER5> In general, people don't like to be questioned even when they have answers. Sometimes people just want to have thanksgiving dinner without being put into defensive and having to argue every minor point.

When to argue and when not to is as important as knowing how.

<comment><USER3> It's more like "No girlfriend's mum, I will not buy into your essential oils pyramid scheme. No I promise you a homeopathic medicine cannot treat both cancer and the common cold. Yes even if it did help your friend's friend of a friend's sister's dog walker. But thank you for telepathically healing my parrot. He was in good health both before and after"

Ya know?

Do I get to vocally disagree with stuff like that even though it's thanksgiving?

<comment><USER6> Depends. Is their enjoyment of the meal more important at that moment, to you, than you vocally expressing your view?

Write them a letter the next day. Ring them, meet up?

Sometimes we need to celebrate our commonalities, our shared humanity regardless of deep differences.

Perhaps demonstrate your dissent softly and postpone your opposition.

<comment><USER3> Is my enjoyment of the meal more important at that moment, to me, than their vocally expressing their views?

Maybe. Perhaps it's best we all just keep quiet and don't say anything for fear of opposing each other.

Or maybe the whole point of having meals together is having interesting conversations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Social networks are just a mechanism for sharing stuff. Fake news could spread any which way, and has even in the pre-social-network-era. Remember when "fake news" was spread in email chains? Or...you know...propaganda in general?

Edit: that said, I think there exists a big problem in attempting to filter these items. How do we determine what is fake vs what simply goes against our preexisting (mis)conceptions?

Edit 2: best course of action might be that a wide diversity of ideas gets a chance to be seen (i.e. show stuff outside of your bubble), rather than trying to artificially manipulate proliferation.

<comment><USER8> The real problem is that Facebook is controlled by a single person, who is planning to use it for their own political goals.

<comment><USER9> Ehh, acting like these companies need to actively filter isn't a great scenario either. I think we need more visibility into what our neighbors are discussing so we can't echo chamber quite as easily.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> throwaway-1209 Bloomberg and friends are just panicked over the fact that they're losing control of the narrative, which is really their main product.

<comment><USER10> Yep, they are panicked by a single giant corporation with billions of users that earns money collecting data from everyone.

Me too.

<comment> throwaway-1209 6 people controlling your bubble is still better than 5. Especially if the new guy is at war with the old guys.

<comment><USER11> Not when the 6th guy controls more bubbles than the other 5 combined, and more than any government in history.. and also happens to have direct access to most of the private communications of the people on that platform.

Bloomberg doesn't know what you said to your mother earlier today, probably doesn't have a list of everyone you know, and doesn't know where you went for lunch today.

<comment> throwaway-1209 Bloomberg has something better, as far as narrative peddling is concerned: it is perceived as reputable.

<comment><USER11> The vast majority of Facebook users accept the things Facebook presents to them as fact.

Very few of them would ever see a Bloomberg article unless it showed up in their feed (which is something Facebook's black box has final say over).

<comment> throwaway-1209 >> The vast majority of Facebook users accept

And 86% of all statistics are made up on the spot. Do you have any data to support your claim?

<comment><USER12> If you're going to ask for data, you should have offered some first yourself, upthread, where you made a claim or two.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think it's already too late for the USA. You have three main groups, and all have achieved near total epistemological closure: \- Conservatives: Liberals are evil \- Liberals: Conservatives are evil. And morons. \- Apathetic Middle (everyone else): Politics are stupid and we don't give a fuck.

Don't really see a solution for any of this. It's like we're three different tribes doing our best to coexist. And it's not really working very well.

</comment><comment><USER14> I found that, at least in my experience, social media feeds do indeed become echo chambers easily. It's almost an impulse to unfollow someone in twitter or unfriend someone in facebook when they post something one doesn't like. I had to start consciously reminding myself that I should want to hear every point of view so I can make more informed decisions.

Maybe, as with everything, the solution is more education. In this case: "yes, that person posted something you don't like. You should still read it, else you might risk becoming unaware that people who disagree with you exist, which could distort your view of the world, at least a bit."

</comment><comment><USER15> ...and Capitalism never faced a threat like the Bloomberg Terminal, but here we are.

</comment><comment><USER16> I think Facebook could actually be really great for democracy, but for a couple of huge flaws:

First, the lack of a real threaded comment system. When replies below the first level all appear at the same depth, it becomes extremely difficult to have a real back-and-forth debate and nigh impossible to read/participate in someone else's discussion. It is not conducive to substantive dialogue.

Second, the lack of a dislike/downvote, particularly an anonymous one. When one shares something they agree with and only see that some (if any) of their friends like it, they might figure that the rest just didn't see it. Very rarely will someone register their disagreement with a comment because, even when you're receptive to discussion, a real discussion cannot be had because of the aforementioned shitty comment system. Worst of all, when you disagree with most of what a friend posts (and aren't the type to carry on pointless arguments all the time, or don't feel comfortable sharing your disagreement), having no way to easily register your disapproval, you quickly tire of seeing their stupid posts in your feed and the temptation is to unfollow them, further insulating them from dissent.

If people who post crap saw that many of their friends gave it a thumbs down, they might not think themselves right all the time. If you could hold a real back-and-forth discussion with someone and have it be readable by others, and see everyone's approval/disapproval of those comments, you might feel more inclined to participate. The conversations would better reflect the opinions of one's social group. There would still be some bubble effect, but it would be greatly moderated because hardly anyone has only friends who agree with them about everything and their friends who disagree would have a way to make their disagreement known by engaging in a substantive conversation or at the very least in the form of adding a dislike to their post.

<comment><USER17> > First, the lack of a real threaded comment system.

> Second, the lack of a dislike/downvote, particularly an anonymous one.

I don't know. I agree that Facebook's commenting mechanism is ill-suited to deep discussion, but isn't the mechanism you're describing more-or-less exactly what exists on Reddit? And people are certainly able to self-segregate into bubbles on Reddit.

And for that matter, at least anecdotally I'd say that most of the political "discussion" that occurs on Reddit is low-quality, in that it tends to devolve into users shouting "fascist" or "cuck" at each other. (Some subreddits are better than others, admittedly.)

I suppose that Reddit users typically don't know each other in meatspace, though, and that Facebook is (mostly) different in that regard. Maybe that would make a difference. I don't know.

<comment><USER16> Yes, the anonymity (most) users enjoy on Reddit is interpreted by some as freedom to be assholes or trolls. Even then, especially in the more heavily moderated or off-the-beaten-path subreddits, you get some very high quality conversations. It's not uncommon to see threads of multi-paragraph comments going back and forth many comments deep. I think Facebook's lack of anonymity already goes a long way toward keeping things civil there, and what little shitposting does happen there would probably get downvoted and possibly hidden by default when below a certain threshold if FB had that capability.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The book Everybody Lies gets into actually looking at the data on this and comes to a different conclusion:

[https://www.wired.com/2017/05/maybe-internet-isnt-tearing- us...](https://www.wired.com/2017/05/maybe-internet-isnt-tearing-us-apart/)

What data tell us:

"In the United States, according to Gentzkow and Shapiro, the chances that two people visiting the same news site have different political views is about 45 percent. In other words, the internet is far closer to perfect desegregation than perfect segregation."

and more:

"PROBABILITY THAT SOMEONE YOU MEET HAS OPPOSING POLITICAL VIEWS On a News Website 45.2%

Coworker 41.6%

Offline Neighbor 40.3%

Family Member 37%

Friend 34.7%"

</comment><comment><USER19> The fundamental problem with the idea that microtargetting people with different promises is an existential threat to democracy, I think, is that people tend to compare with their friends and notice this and that it makes for a really juicy viral news story when they do because people do not like finding out they've been tricked. Also, as far as anyone can tell Trump's campaign didn't actually do it - they tuned their message based on feedback from monitoring the response to it and carefully targetted who they paid money to promote it to, but everyone got the same message.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm not so worried about all this filter bubble and fake news panic. People have always filtered themselves from other opinions anyway. It's just a fundamental flaw in humans.

<comment><USER21> It's never been this easy, or arguably this necessary to filter information given the information overload necessitating it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> "threaten democracy" as in "people may vote for somebody I don't like".

<comment><USER23> This comment seems flippant, but it's right. I'm mean, you could say it subverts logic, or threatens minorities, but IT DOES NOT threaten the existence of democracy.

Remember even the proponents of democracy (e.g. American Founding Fathers) were also rightfully fearful of it.

This IS democracy. It just might not be democracy that generates informed decisions.

<comment><USER22> In my country (Germany) I don't get the impression that the official news sources (state sponsored media and established newspapers) are impartial. At the same time massive efforts to censor social networks are underway, camouflaged as "fighting hate speech". Hate speech is conveniently vague and boils down to "disagreeing with the official party line". There are no courses to appeal against this censorship, in fact, no real accountability for the people doing the censoring.

To me therefore such articles are merely a smear campaign in support of impeding censorship.

I really don't see how the public is supposed to be better informed without social media. In some countries it is even worse, when the people who get elected for government also happen to be the owners of the major media outlets (like Berlusconi in Italy).

I think I also saw a paper debunking the filter bubble thesis (as in people still get so see other viewpoints), but I am too lazy to Google it.

Even without social media, people create their own filter bubbles by only consuming media that aligns with their views. I suspect in the US, Democrats rarely watch Fox News?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Nonsense. Scurrilous newsletters are older than the republic and were once the primary way people got their news. The "fake news" story has been way overblown.

<comment><USER25> Did you actually read the article? They aren't worried about fake news; they're worried about ads that the other side can't respond to because they can't even see them.

<comment><USER24> Scurrilous and nakedly partisan, then.

<comment><USER25> That doesn't matter in the slightest. Democrats can still turn on Fox News and see what the pundits are saying (I assume they have multiple people watching 24/7, actually). They can't do that with Facebook - they're guessing at what a profile needs to be to get ads/stories, and they're guessing at when they're done.

<comment><USER24> They can, but how many people do that anyway?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Well, it's not a problem with Facebook, it's a problem with people and our society, Facebook is just serving their customers' needs. If you tolerate only one point of view, if you accept and get engaged in only one line of political discussions, and actively avoid and try to shut down anything and anyone with a different point of view, entirely detached of any self-criticism, then of course that it's exploitable to serve you false news (and much more BS than just news). People deliberately choose to live in these info bubbles because it's easier on them emotionally. When nobody questions your views you are always right.

Also, it's quite easy to avoid this trap by listening and reading what other people are saying and writing, trying to understand them, and by always fact checking their claims, but also your own beliefs. But it takes some mental effort to do this. Therefore, most of people are not ready to do this, they don't care. You can't fix this without fixing the society first, and not Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER27> Facebook is worse than Fascism and Communism? Seriously?

<comment><USER28> You might care to look into the history of mass communications and the demagogic, fascist, Communist, and anti-communist political movements of the past century or two.

Fascism is very closely aligned with the rise of radio, cinema, and phonographs, as well as public address systems in which many thousands of people could hear a single speaker.

Communism much the same, as well as very cheap publishing -- Chairman Mao's Little Red Book (official title, _Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung_ , is one of the two most widely reproduced books in all history (the other is the Bible, and it's not clear which is the more published).

Father Coughlin and Joseph McCarthy were both tremendously boosted by radio. Rush Limbaugh has the largest radio audience in the United States, at about 26 million weekly listeners (NPR's Morning Edition and All Things Considered come in second and third at about 14.5 million apiece).

The history of dramatic changes to social structures and systems due to changes in media and epistemic is _older_ than history itself -- it was one of those changes (writing) which _started_ history.

Elisabeth Eisenstein, _The Printing Press as an Agent of Change_ , and Marshall McLuhan, _The Gutenberg Galaxy_ , particularly address this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> From the article:

> In the run-up to Thursday's U.K. election, a group called Who Targets Me > recruited 10,000 volunteers to install a browser extension that registers > targeted messages, ranging from Facebook videos to Google search ads. The > group calls them "dark ads" because they are so hard to monitor: They've > been targeted to specific local constituencies, gender and age groups.

Has anyone gone the other direction with either a browser extension or app to essentially give permission to MITM the content and metadata input into, say, Facebook and Twitter? In other words, get the data for 10,000 users input and then test what inferences can be made based on metadata, content, and a combination of the two.

</comment><comment><USER30> I would consider yn it's own bubble.

This is mostly because of the flagging system and mods like dang removing or censoring comments and submissions that don't agree with their silicon Valley based belief system (possibly the location of the most liberal/progressive beliefs in the world today).

They use the excuse that the offending items are written in an abusive or hateful manner or they "don't contribute to the discussion", but the truth is that different regions of the world and different cultures have different standards for politeness, so it just ends up filtering out different opinions.

<comment><USER28> HN's not perfect, and tends to favour certain views, but it's got a fairly high S/N, and the moderation in particular is IMO very well-placed.

In the past week or two, I've placed a front-page article (which drew the criticism that other significant stories are being ignored), and an admonition from @dang for a comment on another story. I've also had numerous submissions go nowhere (everything can't be first).

Additionally, if you think there's a particularly good or bad post or comment not being appropriately addressed, emailing HN directly (firstname.lastname@example.com) typically generates a quick response.

You're part of the voice here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I've just read this article:

[http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/in- seattle...](http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/in-seattle-is- it-now-taboo-to-be-friends-with-a-republican/)

titled "In Seattle, is it now taboo to be friends with a Republican?". Somehow, I don't think Facebook is to blame for this. Rather Facebook just provides tools to ensure the bubble.

</comment><comment><USER32> Is the threat really facebook or an uninformed therefore easily misled electorate?

What I can't believe is that people actually believe some of the stuff on social media.

<comment><USER4> > Is the threat really facebook or an uninformed therefore easily misled > electorate?

They are two mutually reinforcing threats, not mutually exclusive alternative threats.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Ah, so the _real_ problem is that pesky free speech is _too_ free.

The proper response to social ills is almost never to add rules about what people may or may not say to each other.

<comment><USER34> Facebook has already added those rules. The discussion now is whether to force them to reveal what the rules are, and maybe dial them back a bit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I don't understand the whole isolation argument. Facebook connects people like never before. People will always be involved or connected to their community but FB gives people much insight to global trends. What's really dying is a monopoly by elites, Zuckerberg has too much power and is rumored to start a political career so I expect this is a preemptive strike.

<comment><USER36> Can you remind us what the value of "insight to global trends" is for a typical FB user?

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Doesn't matter. People are addicted to social media like people in the 60's with cigarettes.

</comment><comment><USER38> Given that Mike Bloomberg will likely be running against Mark Zuckerberg to be the next president, this seems a little self serving.

<comment><USER24> A future in which I'm choosing between Bloomberg, Zuckerberg, and Trump doesn't sound very inspiring.

<comment><USER39> A reality in which the mention of Zuckerberg as president doesn't get you laughed out of the room doesn't sound very inspiring.

<comment><USER28> Given the present reality, I'd be concerned about the last laugh here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I don't agree that "politics is different from business, so rules for targeted messaging should be different to protect democracy". I don't agree at all.

If targeted messaging can enable fraud on the democratic process, it can just as easily enable fraud on economical processes. All the issues pointed at the article apply just as well to a seller/buyer relationship.

Maybe we should work into regulating those opaque robots.

</comment><comment><USER41> May threaten democracy

May threaten democracy

May threaten democracy

May threaten democracy

This way, repeated, sounds _weird_ , not just _dumb_ as it was at first...

</comment><comment><USER42> Nazi schmazi ... Facebook is the real problem say Wernher von Braun.

</comment><comment><USER43> Welcome to the Hacker News Daily FB Bashing Thread Bingo

[x] I deleted my FB account 5 years ago and couldn't be happier

[x] FB is literally cancer

[x] Zuck called his users dumbfucks

[x] I haven't been to FB in months but I miss out on being invited to Events by my friends

[x] Zuck called his users dumbfucks

[x] Zuck let his news editors be biased against the right

[x] After news editors being fired, FB's news AI picks up news based on numbers instead of what I want to see

[x] FB invades your privacy to show you relevant ads

[x] FB doesn't show me relevant ads

[x] FB is for high-school drama

[x] Zuck wants to be the President. All this is just theatre.

[x] FB makes ghosts profiles of people not on the platform. This makes me feel like punching Zuck

[x] FB makes ghosts profiles of people not on the platform. This makes me realize the futility of avoiding FB, so I joined it

[x] Remember, Zuck called his users dumbfucks

<comment><USER44> Welcome to the argument-by-way-of-bingo-card bingo

[x] Disparages arguments without actually addressing them

[x] Adds nothing to the discussion

<comment><USER45> I think the point is that the "discussion" around the above points specifically is nearly identical every time it happens, and usually involves the same people. Almost everyone benefits when we just ignore the above points.

<comment><USER46> I would read the fuck out of a comprehensive blog post neutralizing the above posts.

<comment><USER45> There's no neutralizing "I deleted Facebook 5 years ago and never felt better!" posts. You either like FB or you don't. You want it, or you don't. The comments like that provide as little value as the check list above. I would argue they provide _less_ because all they do is kick off an anti-FB circle jerk in the subthread, which kicks off the pro-FB responses, and so on. That's what I meant by the fact that they're the same arguments every time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Nobody writes hyperbolic headlines like Bloomberg.

P.S. For all those taking this seriously, I deliberately wrote it as a hyperbolic phrase. I am fully aware that other organizations do hyperbole better than Bloomberg.

Original title: _Democracy Never Faced a Threat Like Facebook_

<comment><USER9> Here is a small sampling of new york times articles on democracy:

1861: Is Democracy a Failure? [http://www.nytimes.com/1861/03/14/news/is- democracy-a-failur...](http://www.nytimes.com/1861/03/14/news/is-democracy-a- failure.html)

2014: Why Democracy is Failing [https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/27/opinion/why-democracy- is-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/27/opinion/why-democracy-is- failing.html)

2016: Is Donald Trump a Threat to Democracy? [https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/16/opinion/sunday/is- donald-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/16/opinion/sunday/is-donald-trump- a-threat-to-democracy.html)

2017: Democracy in America: How is it Doing? [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/23/upshot/democracy-in- ameri...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/23/upshot/democracy-in-america-how- is-it-doing.html)

2017: Checking Democracy's Pulse: [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/25/upshot/checking- democracy...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/25/upshot/checking-democracys- pulse.html)

2016: How Stable Are Democracies? 'Warning Signs Are Flashing Red' [https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/29/world/americas/western- li...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/29/world/americas/western-liberal- democracy.html)

2016: How Republics End [https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/19/opinion/how- republics-end...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/19/opinion/how-republics- end.html)

<comment><USER48> Thanks for putting that list together.

The article from 1861 is fascinating.

<comment><USER9> There was discussion on HN about it here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12878337](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12878337)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Need some advice to sharpen distributed-systems design skills - <AUTHOR> I am a developer in the bay area, who has worked on distributed systems (ad-tech). Most of the skills have been gained through real-life experience. I want to use the christmas vacation to learn distributed systems from ground up, especially system-design. Any pointers, advice would be helpful. <comment><USER2> Web based? Some things to read about:

Web - Rest services and token based authentication. Spa frontend driven by JSON APIs seems to be the most popular way to go.

Database - Cassandra is probably the closest to industry standard

Scaling servers - docker, kubernetes. I'm honestly not that familiar with this topic.

"Big data" processing - Apache zookeeper, hadoop, Apache spark and storm.

Data brokers - Kafka, rabbitmq

Document storage - ceph, lucune based solutions like some/elastic

I would also read about non-http messaging protocols like Google's protobufs, Apache arvo and the like. These protocols are preferable over http based protocol for exchanging data at scale because more efficient, simpler, and less processing overhead.

</comment><comment><USER3> The most useful thing I've found is to find something that you've used like Cassandra or Redis ... Read some tutorial on how it's supposed to be used... Question every single aspect that you aren't 100% clear about</comment>


Want a Better Pitch? Master the "Move" - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/firm-narrative/want-a-better-pitch-master-the-move-5fbee071ca7f <comment><USER2> Though I agree with the analysis of Elon Musk presenting the Powerwall, I'm not sure I agree that the same theory of 'The Move' applies to Jobs presentation of the iPhone.

If I understand correctly, Musk presented the Powerwall not how it compared to other batteries, but rather, ignored the battery market all together and presented it as improving the world on a global scale.

Jobs clearly presented the iPhone as a comparison to other devices, so why is 'The Move' now that he has us imagining a phone that is both smart and easy to use? If Jobs was using 'The Move', I suspect it would be more along the lines of discussing the impact that computers had on the world, and how they had continued to become easier and easier to use, and now anybody could use one, now, here's a computer that does all the things your other computer does, but it fits in your pocket".

I don't understand enough about MatterMark to comment on that slide.

Thoughts?</comment>


A CT scan costs $1,100 in the US – and $140 in Holland - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/12/17/21024614/us-health-care-costs-medical-prices <comment><USER2> Wife recently needed a CT scan of the chest. It was the correct imaging modality for the potential DX in question. An X-ray would be useless as it wouldn't show the suspected issue. First insurance denied saying we had to have an X-ray first and that X-ray needed to be abnormal in order to justify the CT. But this would just be a waste of time and money since the X-ray is useless for the suspected issue in question, and then it would also undoubtedly caused problems because they would deny the CT when the X-ray wasn't abnormal.

It took 3 hours of my time. About 3 hours of medical assistant time and about an hour of two different doctors time to get this simple 5 minute CT approved. This is all on top of the time of admins at the insurance company.

The CT was done and low and behold did show an abnormality.

The charge was around $2000 to insurance which was lowered to about $1150 by the negotiated rates. Of which we paid the $115 coinsurance (10%). We asked what the cash price would've been to avoid all this, $450.

So our 10% coinsurance is actually more like 25% of the real price. And the insurance companies denial and absurd process could only possibly make sense over just always unquestionably paying the cash price if 1 in 3 CTs ordered by doctors in such a scheme was fraudulent. I seriously doubt that would ever be the case. And that's still ignoring the personnel cost in this example. And the opportunity cost of those personnel not being able to spend that time on actual medical needs of other patients.

The system is disgustingly broken in this country, we need to move to a single payer system and get these insurance companies out of the way.

<comment><USER3> No we do not. The government has screwed the system up enough, giving this government even more control is a terrible idea. Just stop enforcing monopolies, Force providers to have a clear pricing structure and let market forces deal with it.

<comment><USER4> From my Non-American view, this is a classic case for the need of regulation. The government define a set of medical treatments that were scientifically proved, don't allow the insurance companies to deny the request of medical treatments from the doctor.

The only problems we face is some malicious doctors requests unnecessary treatments, or malicious doctor and patient working together to request the money for treatments that didn't happen. But these are trivial fraud techniques and it happens anyway regardless of context so it can be dealt with usual criminal law system.

<comment><USER5> The Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) included mandatory insurance funding for homeopathy, chiropractors, acupuncture, and naturopaths. My wife worked at a chiropractors office who got paid by Medicare to shock elderly diabetics legs while they chowed down on candy bars. Homeopathy is one of the dumbest scams known to man, and I don't really know about the other two but I wouldn't call them "medicine". The more government there is around to fund things, the more dumb bloat there is and we'll get more glorified massage therapists cutting children's "tongue ties" and selling amber teething necklaces for $40. Let people waste their own money on this stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Let's call it health industrial complex.

If you have a white collar job at any one of health care companies in the u.s. (medical health insurance, hospital, pharma, device makers, pharmacy benefits, retail pharmacies, doctors office) you know why healthcare is really expensive in the U.S.

There are lots and lots of white collar jobs that are extremely handsomely paid. So many duplication of functions across competing private companies. No good standardization. Surgeons that make well into 7 figures. Thousands of executives making tens of millions of dollars in total comps. Thousands of highly paid IT professionals just at one large healthcare companies. Pharmacists raking in $130-150k. Lawyers and malpractice suits. All #1 in the world.

Somebody has to pay for all these rackets.(of which I'm also part of)

</comment><comment><USER7> Oh please, cherry pick all you want. Healthcare is expensive in the US because of government, not just the industry. From certificate of need rules to conflicting regulation at nearly all levels and unreasonable coverage requirements that do not take the patient into account.

throw in the simple fact the US Congress cannot even be shamed into fixing the Veteran Affairs health system nor the Bureau of Indian Services and people dare suggest we let take more control?

fixing US health care will require a lot of work but the first step in fixing it is realizing all the bad players involved and that simply comparing to other systems isn't helping anyone.

<comment><USER8> The fact that other countries have effective health care systems run by the government suggests that the conclusion we should draw from the VA fiasco is that either the U.S. government is particularly incompetent or the incompetence is local and limited to a specific department(s). I'm inclined to believe the latter.

That being the case, a further conclusion I would end up drawing is that both largely private and largely public health care systems work well, but that the U.S. suffers from running a health care system that takes no opinion as to which form it should take.

<comment><USER9> Seems obviously a problem of size. Can you point to a working healthcare system in any other country that has a population anywhere close to the US?

Comparing us to countries that are hardly as populous as one US state is not a fair comparison.

As anyone in the tech industry should know, there are a lot of unforeseen issues that popup when scaling something. It's rarely as easy as adding more CPUs or more people for that matter.

<comment><USER10> If that were true, then solve the problem state by state.

<comment><USER9> That is what should likely happen and is already the case to a point. Much of the existing programs are funded at the state level. But the federal government is already meddling so you can't exactly do what works best for you. You have to follow the federal ACA rules no matter what you implement at this point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> A drug for my kid's IBS costs $1400 in the US and $30 in Russia (and moreover, it's available over the counter there). Same exact drug. Made in Italy, so it's probably cheaper still in Italy. It's not genetic or anything else that would justify a high price - it's a simple antibiotic. Probably costs a dollar a gallon to make.

I'm seriously considering finding a good clinic in e.g. Israel where I could pay cash for treatment, and giving up US medical insurance entirely. Thankfully now I can do that without paying a penalty. $15K/yr for a family of 3, with crazy deductibles is kooky. If I get cancer or something, getting treatment in the US would be an insane proposition.

</comment><comment><USER12> What is the point of the US having the worlds largest GDP when even basic health and education is denied or difficult for large groups of its citizens?

<comment><USER5> I mean it seems bad on paper but my uncle just recently got cancer and despite having no money is now cured. He ended up on disability, but he received prompt treatment. It just sort of works out. My daughter was born when I was unemployed and this actually ended up being better for us, as the private insurance would have had a copay but instead Medicaid applied retroactively and then covered her 8 month NICU stay. Thank you, taxpayers, for supporting my daughters $300,000 a month hospital stay.

Maybe some people's lives get ruined by medical debt but I've never met them. People just don't pay and even mortgage companies just sort of shrug and barely care when you're getting a loan.

<comment><USER13> Do you realize how many complicated terms are in your first paragraph? Assuming that everybody can figure out how all those mechanisms work, which is a big stretch, it is terribly stressing to have a medical need of any sort. And I know that because I have family there.

Compare it with the single-payer system where I live: it works really well, and I don't need to add financial stress to any doctor visit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> My wife had a series of CT scans in the ER after a car accident. I noticed that most of them were only paid out at 1/20th of the billed rate. I wonder if the pricing is gaming the accounting, since most people either have some sort of coverage, or can't realistically pay (so the hospital doesn't get the full amount either way)?

</comment><comment><USER15> One reason also is that the workers in healthcare in the Netherlands are not paid much. As an IT person (clinical programmer, bioinformatician, application specialist,...) there is no way to get above scale 60 in this table [https://cao-ziekenhuizen.nl/media/45/download](https://cao- ziekenhuizen.nl/media/45/download) Most get ~3k some with insane amount of experience get ~4k brutto a month

<comment><USER16> It's the same reason the median radiologist in France will earn $150,000 while radiologists in the US can easily earn four to six times that depending on location. I know a radiologist in the middle of nowhere - one of the poorest states in the US, small city - earning over half a million per year, or roughly 15 times the median full-time income there. In major cities they can get up around a million dollars per year.

The healthcare industrial complex racket is a wealth transfer from everybody else to a million people working overly compensated jobs in the healthcare sector, from admin to doctors to nurses to IT workers to insurance salespersons.

Everyone complains about the wasted money in the military industrial complex. The healthcare industrial complex is 5x worse when it comes to that, or roughly a minimum of $1 trillion in overspending. The reason there are so few suggesting spending cuts in healthcare, is because there would be a never- ending line of strikes if you attempt to slash pay. The Democrat candidates for President for example all know we have a vast overspending problem in healthcare, they know taxes on the middle class have to go up to match Europe (for the same reason their taxes are so high), and salaries have to go way down in the healthcare field to similarly match Europe, and yet none of them dare say it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Health care in the Netherlands is mostly financed via an income dependent fee collected by the tax authority, supplemented with a fairly minimal mandatory insurance. Assistance for "low" income families is available to help pay this insurance.

The per treatment budgets do sometimes cause issues where budget for certain treatments is consumed and patients have to wait to receive treatment.

<comment><USER18> Yes, it's 6,9% over the total gross of all salaries, paid by the employer. See also: [https://www.belastingdienst.nl/wps/wcm/connect/bldcontentnl/...](https://www.belastingdienst.nl/wps/wcm/connect/bldcontentnl/belastingdienst/prive/werk_en_inkomen/zorgverzekeringswet/veranderingen- bijdrage-zvw/percentages-zvw) (Dutch)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Depends where you shop

[https://surgerycenterok.com/blog-category/veterinarian- cat-s...](https://surgerycenterok.com/blog-category/veterinarian-cat-scan- prices/)

</comment><comment><USER20> "but the US system has to actually pay for the R&D the rest of the world piggybacks on", goes the standard counter.

</comment><comment><USER3> I am in the US and my Ct cost $180, because i bothered to shop around, even a little.

<comment><USER21> Coming from a country with excellent universal healthcare, I find it absurd that you should need to "shop around" for any procedure.

<comment><USER22> For this case, it is silly for a CT. However, for procedures and surgeries, not all doctors are equal. Do you have any choice in your country?

<comment><USER21> Yes, you can absolutely choose. There's a web site for finding hospitals/clinics for your particular procedure, although your doctor can also refer you directly. The web site tracks the wait time and (often) publicly available quality metrics collected by the health authorities. Travel expenses are covered to some extent if you don't want to use your local options.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Next on Vox: "Magic mushrooms are illegal in the US — but they're legal in Holland".

<comment><USER24> Actually, Colorado legalized magic mushrooms earlier this year. Go figure...

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> It's pretty disingenuous when articles are written about the US healthcare system and they don't talk about methodology for how they determined the price. It's absurd that a methodology is needed, but it is. Is it the average price of the item on the chargemaster? Is it the average price billed to the insurance company? Or is is the average price billed to the patient? Is it the average price for those with insurance, those without, or both? If it's the average price billed between insured and uninsured, is it weighted? And if we are talking about uninsured, is it the average price billed or paid?

US healthcare is a disaster, but these kinds of articles are just promo pieces for universal healthcare. Which I guess is the point, but I still find it extremely misleading. I suppose this is what passes for journalism these days though.

The only major healthcare provider I know of that posts prices actually charged for most items, publically, is Kaiser. Even then you'd need to know the relative breakdown of plans to determine the average cost paid by the patient. That information may be available, I don't know.

<comment><USER26> Normally I think we wouldn't really need 'promo' pieces for universal healthcare, since it's been proven to work literally everywhere (except the US). Hell, even China has some form of universal healthcare.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> My CT cost $180 in the US because i bothered to shop around.. I see these articles all the time cherry-picking The only reason healthcare in the US is high is government enforcing monopolies, Giving them more power over healthcare is foolish. If you are the least bit smart you call around, that is the nature of a market.

<comment><USER26> When my health is on the line, I do not want to do _anything_ like shopping around. I want the hospital I'm currently at to do the thing for a reasonable rate. Preferably the same rate as every other hospital in the country charges for the same scan.

<comment><USER27> The US is too large to have the same uniform price. The cost of materials, rent, and labor vary radically across state lines. Second, for things like CT, they might now be immediate. Therefore you can shop around. For example I had an MRI. $200 after shopping around. Now it wasn't an emergency, just a check for cancer. Don't let the assumed to be perfect be the enemy of the good.

<comment><USER28> The US is too corrupted with evil politicians to have adequate health care, because you need adequate, healthy people to implement that and we have Donald Trump and his kindred spirits. It's not rocket science, you have to care to make changes, and they simply don't care. Melania said it best.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_quick_brown_fox_jumps_over_the_lazy_dog

<comment><USER2> If you have downloaded a font in the last ten years you probably have seen this.

</comment><comment><USER3> I remember when I first learned about this sentence. I was in my grammar school's computer lab playing a typing tutor game (probably from MECC), and it had me type this phrase repeatedly. After the first dozen times, I asked the computer teacher what was up.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think more interesting than this article are the self-enumerating pangrams described in the one linked to it.

<comment><USER5> Yes. They're like quines.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pangram#Self- enumerating_pangra...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pangram#Self- enumerating_pangrams)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is another of those things that my dad taught me while growing up.</comment>


Yes, Google Uses Its Power to Quash Ideas It Doesn't Like - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/yes-google-uses-its-power-to-quash-ideas-it-doesn-t-li-1798646437 <comment><USER3> Controlling the information that we're exposed to is incredibly powerful. If you tweak the results - positively or negatively - it's easy to nudge, influence, and eventually convince people of what you want.

As I've cited often:

> _" We predicted that our manipulation would produce a very small effect, if > any, but that's not what we found. On average, we were able to shift the > proportion of people favouring any given candidate by more than 20 per cent > overall and more than 60 per cent in some demographic groups. Even more > disturbing, 99.5 per cent of our participants showed no awareness that they > were viewing biased search rankings – in other words, that they were being > manipulated."_

Ref: [https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-internet-flips-elections- and-...](https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-internet-flips-elections-and-alters- our-thoughts)

<comment><USER4> _Looking ahead to the November 2016 US presidential election, I see clear signs that Google is backing Hillary Clinton._

Disclaimer, as a European I only loosely followed the election and our local media was very much pro Hillary. I had the image everyone concluded her presidency was in the bag and the election was a mere formality, in fact Trump's campaign was described as an elaborate trolling attempt until winning the republican nomination.

However the results (with a good deal of hindsight) seems to show the internet/media's ability to influence opinions is much smaller then they predict.

<comment><USER5> _seems to show the internet /media's ability to influence opinions is much smaller then they predict._

They were wildly successful at influencing opinion, just not in the directions assumed. The media narrative doesn't attempt (or refuses) to acknowledge the non-reductive motivation and positions of people that disagree with the implied national status quo of their coverage.

I still maintain that the major news organs would have stopped Trump's candidacy in it's tracks if they had focused campaign coverage around concepts of governance, civics and leadership instead of the horse race and clickbait hot topics.

<comment><USER6> They should have stopped his candidacy in its tracks back in 2012 when he started [his involvement with] the Birther bullshit rather than giving him credulous coverage.

Or any of the many times he stiffed his suppliers. Or when he defrauded hundreds of people with Trump University.

Or, y'know, any one of a hundred times they should have reported on him properly rather than ruffling his hair and calling him a playful scamp.

[Edited to clarify that Trump didn't start the Birther bullshit since that was 2008-09 and he didn't get involved until 2011-12]

<comment><USER7> I thought the "birther" rumor about Obama started around the time of the 2008 Primaries, not 2012.

<comment><USER6> You're entirely correct, my mistake. Trump's involvement started around 2011-12 but he didn't start the whole thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If this account is even remotely accurate, this goes well beyond "quashing ideas it doesn't like" and into chilling effects on reporting public-interest information. The New America affair was ostensibly about Lynn's opinion of an event that was already public knowledge (and, by extension, the opinionated policy stance of the organization). In this case Google was seemingly trying to keep questionable marketing tactics out of the public eye altogether.

<comment><USER9> I don't get it. Google is under no "obligation" to fund something. Sure, using funding a way to convince people to do things is shitty, but at the same time, you can't really make someone fund something they don't want to. It's not like it's their duty to keep funding New America.

And honestly, we should not trust something funded by X to be unbiased towards X anyway, that's just common sense.

<comment><USER10> The issue is that they try to use convince people that monopolies are bad except when they are doing it.

It's generally considered bad taste and hypocritical to preach something and not abide to what you preach yourself. In my country a lot of media people are for example writing about embracing immigration and slander anyone who disagrees but studies have shown that the people who work in these media outlets does not live in areas affected negatively by increased immigration to a large extent.

There is a reason why people hate that kind of shit and that's because it stinks and is used by people in power to shit on people without power.

<comment><USER11> > studies have shown that the people who work in these media outlets does not > live in areas affected negatively by increased immigration to a large > extent.

Lots of people who dislike immigration also do not live in areas affected negatively by it. This doesn't mean that we shouldn't consider their views, although it may influence how much weight we want to put towards them when making policy.

<comment><USER10> Sure but these people have often times no real power or cannot share their experiences with a massive amount of people like many media outlets easily can do.

Unless, they of course, create their own media organisations which is happening in every western country and is the core reason for all this "fake news" which is a term ironically often most used by old mass-media that themselves heavily rely on half-truths at best.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Wasn't gizmodo the same site that published the modified Google Manifesto?

I'm glad that gizmodo is covering free speech (I believe they're left leaning in general). Just make sure to verify all the claims made in any politically biased publication.

<comment> at-fates-hands Yeap - they removed all the citations and several graphs that supported what he was saying. If you didn't know that, you would read it thinking this was completely his own opinion.

<comment><USER13> I seem to recall the story being that they published a version of the memo that they received without citations or graphs. Do you have a source that they had the full memo and edited it?

<comment><USER14> From the Gizmodo article

> The text of the post is reproduced in full below, with some minor formatting > modifications. Two charts and several hyperlinks are also omitted.

<comment><USER13> Sure, and that can be read to mean either that they knew graphs and links were missing (e.g. because they received the memo as plaintext) or that they purposely removed them out of political or whatever motives. Isn't the former the more parsimonious assumption?

Now that I check back, I notice that the gizmodo version also changed all of Damore's bullet-point list items to be singly-indented, where in the original many of them were doubly-indented. It's hard to imagine any motive for doing that intentionally, but it's what one would expect if Gizmodo got the text without its original formatting.

<comment><USER15> > Sure, and that can be read to mean either that they knew graphs and links > were missing (e.g. because they received the memo as plaintext) or that they > purposely removed them out of political or whatever motives. Isn't the > former the more parsimonious assumption?

Dude... no. The "most parsimonious assumption" when someone says they are reproducing something "with modifications" is that _they are perfectly well aware what modifications were made_ , and they most likely made it themselves.

Like when someone tells you "don't open that box", a sane person doesn't conclude "ah, chances are good he has no idea what's in the box".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > Somehow, very quickly, search results stopped showing the original story at > all.

I strongly suspect I saw this happen _in realtime_ in late 2013 and early 2014 when Snowden's documents were being disclosed every few weeks by The Guardian, The Washington Post, Der Spiegel, _etc_.

I was curious how the story was being reported on and interpreted by the traditional (non-technical) media. I wanted a general sense of how well the "slow drip" strategy was working, if the original disclosures were being reported on with a reasonable accuracy, or even if anybody even cared at all. For about 8-10-ish months I made a habit of spending a few minutes each morning skimming the results of basic searches for "nsa", "snowden", _etc_ on Google's main search as a simple /search?q=$term request, and again with the "Past 24 hours" and "Past week" features. I would also check the same search terms on Google News.

Most of the time it there were no surprises: e.g. The Post publishes an important document from Snowden's archive in a detailed article that attempts to explain the underlying tech to a general audience. The other large players in the traditional media quickly followup with articles that add a layer of indirection, cut out all the technical explanations that don't fit into a sound byte. It didn't take long for that process to devolve into lots of clickbait headlines for articles that generally lacked technical - or legal - details. My point here is that this process generally followed a fairly consistent process as the original disclosure diffused into clickbait.

However, on two (perhaps three?) occasions, I noticed a story still early in that process. I know at least one of those involved Google specifically. While chasing pointers back to the original disclosure article and opening a new browser window for for the usual test searches, I noticed Firefox was becoming annoyingly slow and leaking memory like it always did. After restarting the browser and reloading the test searches... every trace of the story was gone. The articles themselves became 404s a few minutes/hours later.

Unfortunately, I have no useful _evidence_. I was "just" informally skimming headlines to get a general sense of the reporting, so by the time I finally realized I should have been _recording_ everything I had already missed the interesting stuff. It's hearsay, but I am _very certain_ I saw articles suddenly vanish from Google search and Google news after restarting Firefox and pressing F5 on several tabs.

<comment><USER17> This is an accurate example of today's internet news machine. Very few highly investigated sourced articles compared to the extremely high volume, low pay, click bait titles. The media is strangled by their diminished role and costs, most outlets have gone for the low hanging fruit for the clickbait generation.

The good news is that strong brands are now dumping google Ads for more trustworthy sources, if Google's trust continues to erode they will eventually turn into a flea market for advertisement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Years ago when Matt Drudge used to have his radio show on Sundays (ah, the good old days!) he used to say that Google is fascism. He didn't mince his words, it was pretty much a constant topic for him. And that was 10 years ago. Since then, Google has grown, extended itself in all kinds of ways, including its Washington lobbying. People are always concerned about big pharma, or big agra, or big Monsanto, or big banks. What about Google, a multi national company that knows no limits? It follows you, it knows where you've been, it knows your sexual preferences, it knows what you eat, your hobbies, your contacts. Everything, just to show you an ad! It also decides on what speech is acceptable, what website is eligible to exist. Where is outrage? Where is the left fighting against the multinational behemoth, the big corporate brother?

<comment><USER19> "Big tech".

You heard it here first folks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Years ago, I worked at a startup that put business listings online. We were trying to create a community, similar to Yelp, but for small businesses.

We actually had quite a nice thing going, and were indexed well in Google and other search engines. The community was growing and becoming vibrant.

Then, Google Places came out. Not only did they put their places listings at the top of all organic search results, they removed all traces of our site from their index. We couldn't even find our homepage by searching for it! Not even our company name --- it would literally come up no results, even news articles and content not hosted on our site was removed from the index if it had our name in it.

What really put salt in the wound, though, was the fact that it appeared Google had stolen our user data for their own places product. That's right, they actually took our information that we had painstakingly collected, cleaned, and verified (we had our own call center and would take updates from customers) and passed it off as their own.

How did I know this? Well, I had a few test accounts that were of completely fake businesses that accidentally made it to prod. They had funny names that would be impossible to exist in the real world. _These businesses showed up in Google Places_. I checked a few other listings that I knew had been updated by customers, one with a typo, and sure enough they were in places too.

Before this we had a good relationship with our Google rep because we used adwords on our site, and Google Analytics. Literally, over night they just stopped responding to us by e-mail and phone. We were cut off, and e-mails and requests to the company went to some robot customer service queue and were closed without being able to speak to anyone.

Our search referrer traffic was reduced to almost nothing, our Adsense account was closed, and the business eventually had to close. We considered trying to fight it legally, but after meeting with a lawyer and realizing the reality of the situation I left feeling completely defeated and jaded.

How many of these stories are out there? How many people have been silenced by Google, and won't or don't talk about it? You only hear about big time scandals in the news, but I can guarantee there's a huge long tail of destruction in their monopolistic wake.

The sad part is I'm forced to use Google products because they are just so big there aren't good alternatives. They are so far ahead. But whenever I do see some Google ad, or post by Larry or Eric about how they are doing god's work over there, curing cancer, working on self driving cars, guarding the world's information or resisting authoritarian, communist governments, I ask myself: are they really that different? Who are they kidding? Maybe they are just so out of touch with the realities of what really made their company successful they can afford to live in such a fantasy land...

Is Google evil? Yes, indeed.

<comment><USER21> If everything you say is true, it sounds like an easy situation to solve via a lawsuit.

<comment><USER22> Him: spare change he can find in the couch.

Google: Billions of dollars to piss away on stupid ideas.

Yeah... he's not going to win.

See Microsoft versus the poor sap who trademarked "Internet Explorer". He had a _black and white_ ownership of the trademark. He sued MS, and we all know what the result was: they're still using the name "Internet Explorer"

Why? They buried him with lawyers. Then, offered to pay his legal expenses if he stopped the lawsuit, and turned over the trademark to them.

[http://www.nytimes.com/1998/07/02/business/microsoft- settles...](http://www.nytimes.com/1998/07/02/business/microsoft-settles- lawsuit-over-trademark.html?mcubz=0)

If anyone thinks the justice system is about justice, you're deluded.

<comment><USER23> Him: An anonymous person with a story and no evidence

Us: Gullible

Edit: Downvotes please explain why I should believe everything I read on the internet.

<comment><USER24> I'm not going to tell you that you should believe everything you read on the internet, but when it comes to lawsuits there are absolutely "weight classes" involved. Multiple attorneys have talked to me about this.

What it boils down to is that when an attorney sends an accusation to your legal team, your legal team has to respond. The bigger the company, the more nonsense requests they can afford to send to your team which drives up your legal expenses in terms of billable hours. They can't not-respond.

The old "get 50 boxes of files" when requesting an single paper trope is a thing that actually does happen.

The bigger the opposition, the more of those requests will come across and the more things your team will have to respond to. If you had a $2000 dispute with a huge company, if they wanted to they could ensure that your legal bill was hundreds of thousands of dollars, which increases your personal level of risk if you lose the case. If you lose, you're bankrupt.

The only way you can afford to get in a court battle like that is if you have that type of money to risk.

Source: Friends with a lot of lawyers for some reason

<comment><USER23> > when it comes to lawsuits there are absolutely "weight classes" involved

I don't dispute that. I think it's common knowledge, particularly among techies who are all too familiar with patent trolls.

Lawsuits aren't the only option. He could also go to the press. Unless this guy settled a suit, he's not legally bound to be vague. As it is, it's another unverifiable claim on the internet from an anonymous source. Too many to count.

<comment><USER25> I am a little confused. by "he" are you talking about the commenter in this thread or the person who is said to have had a trademark for "Internet Explorer" ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Well, the top result for this search ...

[https://www.google.com/search?q=Stick+Google+Plus+Buttons+On...](https://www.google.com/search?q=Stick+Google+Plus+Buttons+On+Your+Pages%2C+Or+Your+Search+Traffic+Suffers&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8)

... is just now this 2011 article ...

[https://raventools.com/blog/forbes-reports-that-google- plus-...](https://raventools.com/blog/forbes-reports-that-google-plus-will-be- universal-ranking-signal-then-pulls-the-article/)

... so Google hasn't done a very effective job of quashing.

</comment><comment><USER27> So this all hinges on a deleted story being removed from search results too quickly? Google crawls some sites (especially high-traffic news sites like Forbes) more frequently than others. And why should a deleted article still show up in search results? It's entirely plausible to me that there was no manual intervention.

Perhaps it's questionable that Google wanted the article taken down in the first place. It's hard to know the legitimacy of that request without knowing the specifics of any NDAs applicable to the meeting. But at the least, the article would damage the relationship between those two groups at those two companies.

<comment><USER28> > It's entirely plausible to me that there was no manual intervention.

No manual intervention doesn't mean that the algorithm was not planned to work in a criminal way.

<comment><USER29> Right. It is well established that turning over decision making to an algo _that you wrote_ doesn't absolve you of responsibility for those decisions.

<comment><USER28> I don't know if I'm being downvoted by the ones who think like you or the ones who agree with OP.

<comment><USER29> I didn't downvote you, unless I fatfingered it on my phone!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I like this story, because the author (Kashmir Hill) seems to be a pragmatic (or even cynical) journalist: she did not fight against the interests of her employer (Forbes) and saved her story until the moment when it is safe and effective to use.

</comment><comment><USER31> Strangely, I submitted a project ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15106959](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15106959)) I'm working on here on Show HN and few hours after the show hn link was the second result in Google search when I search "RESTfender", but a day later I can't find it again...it's a project on IoT and Google's IoT platform is in beta...

I doubt my little project is a threat to Google, but this seems strange?

<comment><USER32> I just did a Google search for "restfender". The Show HN link is the 4th highest. The top 3 links go to the actual app you linked to and the LinkedIn page you created for it. You'd prefer Google return results to a forum post rather than the actual site named?

<comment><USER31> Interesting...My 4th result is twitter. I'm wondering now why it's so different...first link is LinkedIn

<comment><USER33> Google customizes search results to what you want to see, at your IP level, even if you aren't logged in, from what I've observed. You'll need to mask all your traditional online traits that Google is mining and you're search results will/should change

<comment><USER34> >>Google customizes search results to what you want to see

That doesn't appear to be the case with OP's original complaint about not seeing their own company in their searches.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I'm so glad we're handing out the responsibility to establishing what's true and what's moral to megacorporations. Absolutely nothing can go wrong this way, after all they told us that "they care" and they are "not evil".

</comment><comment><USER36> Early on we had real organic traffic. Reasons aside, people stopped making websites and (specially those who didn't) started to act hysterical when one dared to share a link to theirs. It was just better not to promote your website (and give up on it)

Without organic traffic the right to be seen shifts to an increasingly small number of judges/players.

It use to be that if you knew your topic and put a lot of effort into writing an article you could post it any place, even on your own website. Its audience would take notice of it then at the very least tell you they didn't like it.

I'm not trying to complaint or express a desire to get back to the good old times. You could argue there was no money in freedom. Digital slavery was just more profitable and those who could/should have defended the freedom sold us out in stead. (made a handsome profit at that) It is a kind of _" you don't know what you have until it is gone"_ type of situation.

While I don't want to promote the 99% meme either, the thing is, if you exclude 99% from "collective" opinion making you will have the 1% doing it. Thats just how basic logic works.

What kind of shape or form this takes is not very interesting imho.

What is interesting is the growing opportunity it represents.

You could say the proverbial Google has a million points of trustworthiness left. At some point they will find ways to sell it for a price that is right to them. When enough of these entities sell enough of their trust there will be room for new innovations.

</comment><comment><USER37> Boy, "Do no evil" has really gone out the window hasn't it?

<comment><USER38> That was never the slogan. If it was, maybe the good times would have lasted longer, but as it was "don't be evil", a lot of evil actions can be self- justified as long as you still think of yourself as being good.

<comment><USER39> What do you mean it was never the slogan? It's in the Code of Conduct still: [https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of- conduct.html](https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct.html)

<comment><USER38> Parent used the phrase "do no evil" which it never was but sometimes gets misinterpreted as. As you show, the actual phrase is "don't be evil." The two phrases mean quite different things.

<comment><USER40> Some of us may have the opinion that you are _what you do_ , and not _what you believe_.

If Google _does_ evil, it _is_ evil. So if the slogan is "don't be evil", then "do no evil" is a natural, logical consequence of that. I don't care what your personal religion says, I don't think you can be a good person if you do bad things, and I don't think you can say your organization is not evil when it can crush individuals and small businesses, such that they have no realistic recourse or means of redress.

Google is using its temporary position of power as strength to be wielded against the weak. While it is debatable whether that qualifies as "evil", it is certainly predatory behavior. Google's size would make it a top predator, and anyone smaller should be extremely wary. When swimming with an orca, one never knows if it will play with you, or whether it will drag you under until you drown.

But since we are looking as deeds rather than words, it doesn't really matter what Google's motto is or was. All that can tell us is how hypocritical they are. Just look at what Google _does_ , and ask yourself whether you would feel comfortable actively supporting that activity. If the answer is "no", then you probably shouldn't be passively supporting it, either.

I have already switched my primary search to DuckDuckGo. HN will never be my only aggregator, because I know it censors certain topics. I never took Slashdot off my launch page, even after Dice took over. You really have to spread your sources out, and not give any one person or organization enough editorial power to sway you by _controlling the information you see_ , and that includes yourself. Get someone else to recommend a news site to you, and force yourself to use it sometimes.

The only way to counter centralization on the network is intentional decentralization. What Google is doing is the equivalent of a 51% mining pool attack on Bitcoin. And the solution is the same. If you are part of the pool, leave it. If you are dependent on Google, diversify as quickly as you are able. If you are not dependent, you might want to just suspend using any Google-branded service for a while.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> If true, this also makes Forbes look rather bad, yes?

<comment><AUTHOR> She says it was her own decision to pull the story down. But yes, clearly they were leaning on her.

[https://twitter.com/kashhill/status/903405823769980928](https://twitter.com/kashhill/status/903405823769980928)

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Another data point that Google might be in need for heavy regulation.

</comment><comment> at-fates-hands the manipulation of political data is really obvious if you're looking for it.

I see this time again when I'm searching for politically hot topics like Charlottesville, both of the riots in Berkely, BLM protests, ANTIFA activities, etc.

I started doing multiple searches when I googled, "ANTIFA is a hate group". On the first page of Google were several articles and blog posts titles, "Why ANTIFA is NOT a hate group."

Doing the same search on Bing, Yahoo or DuckDuckGo returned a combination of articles, with several at the top talking about why ANTIFA should be labeled a hate group and a few other blog posts about why it shouldn't. The interesting part was all the pro-ANTIFA blost posts on other search engines weren't in the top ten results on Google. There were very specific authors in the top results in Google that didn't show up in other SE's. It was obvious to me the Google results were being manipulated to push a different narrative on the notion ANTIFA should be labeled a hate group. It was a real eye opener that I've been able to repeat with some success for other political topics when I'm searching.

Bottom line is that I can't trust them anymore; for either political or non- political searches. It makes me wonder what else they're manipulating to push a certain narrative that if I don't actively compare with other SE's, I won't know is happening.

<comment><USER43> When I read this (and many other people commenting about how they find certain search results biased) I always wonder how much search personalisation is at play. Google records everything you do that can be connected with their services and creates your profile based on that. Now, if you receive seemingly biased search results, are those Google's 'raw' results or results that Google thinks you'd prefer based on your profile?

<comment> at-fates-hands I was thinking about this after I made the comment and should've clarified whether I was logged in or not, since you're right, you will get different results if you're logged in or not.

For the record, I wasn't logged into my gmail account when I made the searches.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> It all began like this for Uber, bad stories here and there. Do we already prepare the ousting of some of the top Google executives ?

<comment><USER34> You're saying that all the scandals Uber has been involved in were the result of Google's manipulation of search results?

What about the Uber scandals that predate Waymo's existence?

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> And there are many sites out there using google for in-site search - <USER2> customised google search results, like [https://www.notebookcheck.net/](https://www.notebookcheck.net/) does.

I'm guessing it's possible to hide our own data from ourselves as well.

</comment><comment><USER46> Here's the article Google suppressed.[1]

[1] [https://raventools.com/blog/forbes-reports-that-google- plus-...](https://raventools.com/blog/forbes-reports-that-google-plus-will-be- universal-ranking-signal-then-pulls-the-article/)

</comment><comment><USER47> Google is using threats of lose of adsense revenue to accomplish the same. the trouble with any control of speech on the internet is that that control can eventually be manipulated to serve the purpose of those who are not allowed to suppress speech; government

</comment><comment><USER48> why do we have to use google? there are other search engines. I just started using bing only because I just started using Windows 10 for the first time and it comes preloaded with edge which defaults to bing. I've hardly noticed a difference. actually, in some ways I prefer the way it organizes images and video results. I think people just default to google because, well, I'm not sure.

</comment><comment><USER49> I fail to see how a NDA could protect a company from the press reporting on abusing of a dominant position.

</comment><comment><USER50> "Nucleus os vxp" has very less results in google. There are more results in bing.

</comment><comment><USER51> redefine evil, do no evil

</comment><comment><USER52> It looks like Google is taking cues from Apple for how to treat the press. I hope this does not become the new normal: threatening to retaliate against the press is one thing that nobody should copy from Apple.

<comment><USER53> I'm generally skeptical of unsubstantiated Apple-bashing. Tell us a little more about your bold claim. Do you have any evidence that Apple has threatened anyone in the press with retaliation?

<comment><USER52> There's nothing bold about the claim. Apple is well known for retaliating against the press, and all reviews of Apple products should be taken with the appropriate heaping of salt.

[http://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-prs-dirty-little- secret/](http://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-prs-dirty-little-secret/)

[https://www.cultofmac.com/255618/how-apples-blacklist- manipu...](https://www.cultofmac.com/255618/how-apples-blacklist-manipulates- the-press/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> The tile of this post seems like a non-sequiter. Why would a company not do that? If you trying to project your own ideas, a part of that process is killing competing ideas

</comment><comment><USER55> > Yes, Google Uses Its Power to Quash Ideas It Doesn't Like—I Know Because It > Happened to Me

> I don't have any hard evidence to prove that that's what Google did in this > instance

Okay

</comment><comment><USER56> Duplicate of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15142853](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15142853)

<comment><USER57> It's definitely related, but it's not a duplicate.

This article is written by Kashmir Hill, describing how a story she wrote in Forbes six years ago that was unfavorable to Google was suppressed.

The article you linked to is by Barry Lynn writing in the Washington Post about how he was forced out of the New America think tank in June of this year for writing in support of the European Union fining Google for antitrust violations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> The bigger issue is that people have this mistaken impression that think-tanks are independent academic institutions.

They're not.

They're private organizations that corporations go to and pay them to write a research paper that aligns with their corporate interests. That's what think- tanks are. That's their business model. They're not academia.

Google is this think-tank's customer. And when it fired the guy, the think- tank is basically making themselves more customer-friendly. Calling them "evil" is like calling a customer "evil".

<comment><USER59> The linked article is about a reporter for Forbes who was pressured to take down an article about Google. Forbes isn't a think tank and doesn't work for Google.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> If these articles were truly concerned about tech monopolies, they would mention ISP's broadband monopolies and net neutrality. Curiously, they never do.

Platforms come and go. Google couldn't even get a decent social network off the ground and has had too many failed projects to count.

Monopolies built on infrastructure, like ISPs, are the ones that stick around without intervention.

I suspect all this news about Google and Facebook being the big bad wolves are meant to distract from net neutrality and ISP monopolies.

<comment><USER60> > If these articles were truly concerned about tech monopolies, they would > mention ISP's broadband monopolies and net neutrality. Curiously, they never > do.

I've seen plenty of articles talk about ISP monopolies and net neutrality. In fact several of the articles around these recent events have tied things to net neutrality as well.

<comment><USER23> Where? Can you cite one that argues Google is a monopoly and also argues against ISP broadband monopolies?

All the ones I see are slanted, for example [1],

> "In their net neutrality fairy tale, internet service providers (ISPs) are > the 'big bad wolf,' bent on creating paid 'fast lanes' and blocking the > websites of entrepreneurs (who invariably work out of their garages). It > sounds like a frightful tale, except that ISPs have never offered paid fast > lanes or blocked small business owners' web sites (run out of garages or > otherwise). Meanwhile, the biggest baddest wolf the world has ever known — > Google — swallowed the internet ecosystem whole and spit out its bones."

[1] [https://www.forbes.com/sites/fredcampbell/2017/05/03/the- tru...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/fredcampbell/2017/05/03/the-truth-about- net-neutrality-the-left-and-google/)

Edit: Please explain your downvotes, thanks!

<comment><USER60> You asked for something more specific now than you asked for earlier.

But here's an article that mentions Google is a monopoly and also mentions net neutrality: [https://www.vox.com/policy-and- politics/2017/8/30/16226616/b...](https://www.vox.com/policy-and- politics/2017/8/30/16226616/barry-lynn-google-new-america)

> New America eventually emerged as one of the most forceful voices in favor > of "net neutrality" — a key progressive advocacy goal that also aligned with > Google's corporate objectives.

It's not surprising it mentions net neutrality because New America was focused on it (as was Google).

The article is also critical of telcoms,

> And, indeed, for years it was common to hear telecom industry lobbyists > complain that it was inappropriate for journalists to take New America's > policy expertise on these subjects at face value — arguing that the think > tank was basically just a cut-out for Google. Telecom companies, too, have > their own favorite think tanks.

It's not rare to see think pieces that support net neutrality and/or oppose telcom dominance, so it's not surprising there are articles talking about Google's dominance that also mention those.

<comment><USER23> > You asked for something more specific now than you asked for earlier.

Nope, not at all. I said articles that mention Google/Facebook monopolies never mention ISP monopolies. That's true, they don't, including the vox article you link.

> The article is also critical of telcoms

Perhaps you misread the quote. That is reporting, not criticism. From the same article, _this_ is criticism,

<< Google, like any other giant company, is going to sometimes find itself in the regulatory crosshairs, throwing its weight around to try to get away with things that maybe shouldn't be allowed. "Don't be evil" was a nice idea while it lasted, but business is business and politics is politics — no exceptions. >>

<comment><USER60> I may have misunderstood you. When you wrote

> they would mention ISP's broadband monopolies and net neutrality

I thought you meant they never mention either. Now it sounds like you meant they never mention them both together.

It seems odd to expect an article focused on criticizing Google to also criticize a bunch of other things at the same time. I don't think the lack of that proves anything.

<comment><USER23> > It seems odd to expect an article focused on criticizing Google to also > criticize a bunch of other things at the same time

It's not just about this one article. It's that none of those critiquing Google mention the ISP monopolies that everyone knows are there.

If I were going to rage about tech monopolies as a journalist, and I believed both of these were monopolies, I'd mention both.

> I don't think the lack of that proves anything.

No sweat, I don't expect everyone to agree with me. I often see Google critiqued as left-leaning, and NN critiqued as leftist policy. I noticed a pattern in recent news. It's fine if you don't see it the way I do.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


PIRE – really fast single-pass regex matching - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dprokoptsev/pire

<comment><AUTHOR> Here are the results of some sample benchmarks. These are the same as those used in the paper "Regular Expression Matching in the Wild" by Russ Cox [1].

      500 MB file, regex: .*$
      pcre     31.67 MB/s
      re2     242.28 MB/s
      pire    756.32 MB/s

      500 MB file, regex: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ$
      pcre    153.67 MB/s
      re2     653.76 MB/s
      pire    755.98 MB/s

      2 MB file, regex: (\d{3}-|\(\d{3}\)\s+)(\d{3}-\d{4})$
      re2     423,76 MB/s
      pire    775,89 MB/s

Source: Yandex, the company where PIRE originated. [2] (Russian)

[1] <http://swtch.com/~rsc/regexp/regexp3.html>

[2] <http://clubs.ya.ru/company/replies.xml?item_no=30753>

<comment><USER2> There're two more interesting things mentioned in the article which originated in yandex:

<https://github.com/highpower/xiva> \-- asynchronous web-server for server- side part of html5 websockets

<https://github.com/khanton/NwSMTP> \-- they say it's a "nginx for SMTP", a proxy server they use for providing ssl, rbl, antispam and antivirus checks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> "Pire does not have any Perlish conditional regexps, lookaheads & backtrackings, greedy/nongreedy matches; neither has it any capturing facilities."

Well that rules out nearly every use case I have for needing a regex in the first place.

<comment><USER4> Greedy / non-greedy is one of the main things I use in regexes (well, second to capturing). That sucks. Though if it's non-capturing, I guess it makes sense.

How many people _do_ use regexes for boolean operations? I can only think of an instance or two where I have, aside from regular input validation.

<comment><USER5> Most uses of non-greedy matching can be replaced with faster, clearer, and more precise inverted character classes, in my experience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Cool. A very similar (concept-wise, not yet sure about implementation-wise) DFA/NFA library in Java, developed by Anders Møller at Aarhus University:

<http://www.brics.dk/automaton/>

I use this on Android and it performs substantially faster than java.util.regex, of course working within the constraints of DFA/NFA as opposed to the "Perlish" regular expressions.

Edit: And dk.brics.automaton has its own C reimplementation. I wonder how the speed and functionality compare to PIRE?

<http://augeas.net/libfa/>

</comment><comment><USER7> The joys of naming: "pire" in french means "worst".

<comment><USER8> Maybe it is an appropriate term here? Pire throws out the advanced/complex features of Perl compatible regular expressions, so the authors are arguably following the "Worse is Better"[1] paradigm.

*Simplicity The design must be simple, both in implementation and interface. It is more important for the implementation to be simple than the interface. Simplicity is the most important consideration in a design.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worse_is_better></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Favorite Real-Time Economic Indicators? - <AUTHOR> With some places starting to leave quarantine in various forms, I'm looking for indicators to get a sense of when the economy is starting to recover.
Does anyone have any favorite real-time (or near real-time) economic indicators?  One example is opentable's "State of the Restaurant Industry" (https://www.opentable.com/state-of-industry), which shows the previous day's bookings rate.  I'm not looking for ones global in scope, just ones that are short-term and not obvious (such as stock market indices, oil prices).  Other examples could be traffic, electricity loadings, etc.
Many indicators published by governments are lagging indicators (e.g., unemployment numbers, WARN notices).  I'm curious to get a sense if people are starting to return to normal life. <comment><USER2> For the global economy, the Baltic Dry Index. It's a benchmark for the price of moving major raw materials by sea. Surprisingly, it's at about the same value as last year at this time - so not horrible - and seems to have bottomed out last month. Good news overall.

[https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/baltic](https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/baltic)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a nice one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Best indicator is energy consumption of businesses and industry.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good suggestion. Do you have any publicly accessible links?

Previously, I looked at Texas grid which publishes data hourly([http://www.ercot.com/gridinfo/load/load_hist/](http://www.ercot.com/gridinfo/load/load_hist/)), but I didn't really understand what I was looking at nor what a good baseline is.</comment></comment>


Agtech - <AUTHOR> How is the agtech innovation going on around the US and globe?I noticed there are bunch of startups doing great work and making the planet great by removing the carbon from the soil. How do they apply the ML/DS technique? What sort of the challenging problem their engineering team is solving or intend to solve? Reference: www.indigoag.com <comment><USER2> Take a look at the comments in [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20910845](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20910845) (36 points, 52 days ago, 19 comments), the comments may be relevant.

> _making the planet great by removing the carbon from the soil._

This is a typo or a very bad idea? It's better to add carbon to the soil so it is not in the air.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for the url, I meant to say Co2 may be.</comment></comment>


Snowden Debates CNN's Fareed Zakaria on Encryption - <AUTHOR> https://theintercept.com/2016/04/26/snowden-debates-cnns-fareed-zakaria-on-encryption/ <comment><USER2> Does anyone have a link for the video?

<comment><USER3> The hosting org' website said it would be coming "shortly".</comment></comment>


The meaning of life in a world without work - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/08/virtual-reality-religion-robots-sapiens-book <comment><USER2> The author is Yuval Noah Harari who also wrote _Homo Deus_ , which is a much much more in-depth treatment of this very topic. I highly recommend it along with his previous book _Sapiens_.</comment>


Faster Python calls in Cython 0.21 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.behnel.de/posts/faster-python-calls-in-cython-021.html

<comment><USER2> Nice work Stefan :-)

For people who care about performance, Cython Numba and PyPy are a vital part of the Python ecosystem. They let you create highly performant code while retaining Python's clarity, learnability, and rapid development capabilities.

These gains don't come easily; instead, they are the result of years of thinking carefully about what the machine actually does internally and coming up with more direct paths to accomplish the same goal.

Thank you for your work.

<comment><USER3> Seconded. I was really surprised to see that his proposed Cython talk didn't make it into PyCon. Maybe SciPy would be more receptive?

<comment><USER2> This has been an issue in Python talk selection for several years. One year the PyPy folks didn't have a single accepted talk despite having heroic accomplishments that will greatly affect Python's future. And last year, scientific and numeric talks almost non-existent despite the booming growth of PyData community and the wide adoption of Pandas.

See [https://twitter.com/dabeaz/status/413287588426809344](https://twitter.com/dabeaz/status/413287588426809344)

Part of the reason is that there has been an effort to get new people on stage regardless of experience level and to get substantially more women on-stage as well.

See [https://us.pycon.org/2015/speaking/cfp/](https://us.pycon.org/2015/speaking/cfp/) and [https://twitter.com/tarek_ziade/status/455409302912921600](https://twitter.com/tarek_ziade/status/455409302912921600)

The overall net effect has been positive, making the community more inclusive and giving more stage time to new, fresh talent. The downside is that there is less room for other players (for example, none of the proposed talks from Continuum were accepted).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I was actually considering the other day that I was surprised Cython (and numba?) don't do something where they use a copy of the libpython source to allow them to inline calls back into python-land. Yes, fraught with packaging/distribution difficulties, but possibly worth it for situations where the speedup is needed.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is cool, how hard would it be for the cpython core to implement similar optimisations ?

<comment><USER4> Er. Essentially impossible because the inlining only works at situations where you know a whole bunch of things at compile-time. CPython knows essentially _nothing_ at compile-time.

<comment><USER6> It's not _impossible_. It's "easily" done if you have a JIT, but even without a JIT, you can inline the call on the bytecode level using similar techniques - you have to be able to rebuild the chain if someone asks for it. One can (easily) argue that the complexity is unnecessary and the speedups are unclear. It really depends how hard you try :-)

PyPy is generally achieving speedups mostly by:

* avoiding allocations by escape analysis

* avoiding escape through frames by removing frames

* avoiding another level of allocations by inlining calls (and avoiding frames)</comment></comment></comment>


Getting into the machine learning/NLP business - <AUTHOR>

I'm working as a web software developer but I'm really interested in the Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing fields. I've begun self studying(I took the ML class from Stanford) and I'm playing with the idea to start a business using this technologies.
The point is that I don't know how to start, what could be the potential clients and market, how much knowledge would be necessary to get clients...
There are a lot of stories in HN about web applications, but I didn't read anything about this kind of companies/startups, maybe because this technologies require building personalized solutions instead of the one to many from most startups.
I think that the path will get clearer as I keep reading and getting practice, but I'd nice to know some experiences from another people with similar interests. <comment><USER2> Potential market? <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4183362></comment>