'What Do You Think Is the Most Important Problem Facing This Country Today?' - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/02/27/us/politics/most-important-problem-gallup-polling-question.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fus&action=click&contentCollection=us&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront <comment><USER2> Seems to me that it is none of the things in that diagram, and there is a sort of supraproblem above all of those, which is the ongoing and increasing societal rejection of knowledge and facts.

It's not just anti-intellectualism, it is more like "anti-realityism", in which simple things aren't knowable, in which facts and opinions aren't different.

We've gone from corporate propaganda like "global warming isn't real", which is a lie but an understandable one, to this incomprehensible new state of "What is the murder rate? How high is unemployment? What is the purity of the drinking water? THESE THINGS ARE NOT KNOWABLE!!! ANY VALUE MAY BE ADVOCATED!!"

And literally not one problem on that list can be solved in such an environment...

<comment><USER3> What I've noticed is that folks are taking a pretty healthy mistrust of the establishment and turning it into the opposite extreme without realizing what they're doing. Instead of maintaining skepticism towards both the establishment and anti-establishment (of which Trump was a part), they do two things:

(1) elevate their moderate mistrust of the establishment into total, exhaustive mistrust (i.e., they assume everything from the establishment is a lie with a malicious motive).

(2) place total, exhaustive trust into the anti-establishment (i.e., Trump is perfect, every cabinet pick is perfect, every EO is perfect, everything Spicer says is completely true, everything Trump says is completely true, etc.).

It's this extreme warping of trust which causes people to be so incredibly susceptible to genuine fake news.

When you combine (1) and (2), you end up with conspiracy theories and lots of people who sincerely believe them with no evidence. The idea that Clinton is/was running pedophilia and child sex trafficking rings out of pizza shops is a great example.

<comment><USER4> I've seen the same. There's a stunning lack of nuance in public thought. Thinking in degrees is difficult, so things get reduced to good vs evil, black vs white, all or nothing. Even amongst friends I respect, I have a hard time getting people to do the hard work of looking past high level simplifications and enumerating specific costs and benefits of any decision or proposal.

<comment><USER5> I know it's not popular to say but I blame the Internet. When people start getting their news from social media and the so often heard "I go straight to the comments because that's where the article is always corrected" then authority flies out of the window. It has caused a distrust in science and the media and the government.

The last generation had news pundits and we have social media stars. Journalism used to have a self-regulated code of ethics but that's gone now. I don't know what the solution is other than to regulate news on the Internet.

<comment><USER6> There's blame to go around. First, certain people, predominantly conservative, realized they could monetize stupidity. That saying outrageous lies would create great wealth for them, and they gleefully jumped in. Look how wealthy Rush Limbaugh became, or how Michael Flynn, an advisor to the president, was involved in pushing Pizzagate, a theory that Hillary Clinton was running a child sex ring from a pizza shop [0]. This man was briefly our national security advisor.

       Six days before the election, for instance, Mr. Flynn posted on Twitter a
       fake news story that claimed the police and prosecutors in New York had
       found evidence linking Mrs. Clinton and much of her senior campaign staff to
       pedophilia, money laundering, perjury and other felonies.

I also blame the institutions themselves.

The Catholic church turns out to have been, if not an organized rape group, then certainly one that openly tolerated such. The church went to extraordinary lengths to (1) preserve access to victims for priests, and (2) hide from culpability. See eg hiding records and witnesses in Rome, or a priest in WI who raped _200 deaf students_ [1] while Cardinal Ratzinger -- who became Pope -- personally shielded him from consequences. An excerpt from [1]:

       Three successive archbishops in Wisconsin were told that Father Murphy was
       sexually abusing children, the documents show, but never reported it to
       criminal or civil authorities.

Or remember when George Bush promised there were WMD in Iraq, and fired Larry Lindsey for saying the costs of the Iraq war might reach $100B [2], and fired General Shinseki for correctly estimating how many troops would be required [3]? Right before we proceeded to kill a half million Iraqis and 5k+ Americans for what?

Remember when we were assured by all and sundry that there certainly was no real-estate bubble circa 2007? That real estate was an investment that only went up?

Remember Katrina, when George Bush decided to hang out and watch 1800 Americans die on our own soil, while his pet horse judge mismanaged the federal disaster relief agency?

Or Enron, or Bernie Madoff, or law school is a good investment, or ...

Our institutions themselves have given us myriad reasons to distrust them.

[0] [https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/05/us/politics/-michael- flyn...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/05/us/politics/-michael-flynn-trump- fake-news-clinton.html?_r=0)

[1] [http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2010/03/26/wisconsin- prie...](http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2010/03/26/wisconsin-priest- molests-200-d/)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_B._Lindsey](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_B._Lindsey)

[3] [http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/20/opinion/mills-truth-teller- ira...](http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/20/opinion/mills-truth-teller-iraq/)

<comment><USER2> I upvoted you because it's disheartening, especially in the context of this thread, to see your mini-rant downvoted when it's mostly just a bunch of easily-verifiable facts that may make some people uncomfortable.

One quibble: are those people really "conservative"? Even if so, is that the attribute that is most relevant to this discussion?

Flynn is a perfect example: he's ostensibly "conservative" but he's also a pretty twisted combination of a gullible rube, a liar, and a batshit-crazy whack job.

I don't quite have a word for that combinational trait, but I think that's the key attribute.

There are quite a few people who self-identify as "conservative" but don't fall into this additional category of truth-impervious objective-reality- deniers.

<comment><USER6> I assume you believe Republicans are conservative? Trump is a Republican, as is Flynn. Senate Majority Leader McConnell: "[...] proceeding with [the Republican] agenda which is exactly the same as the Trump agenda" [1].

I challenge you to find _anything_ similar to Pizzagate, or Obama is a gay Kenyan, or denial of anthropogenic global warming, or similar that is widely believed and publicly supported by Democrats elected to national office. I'll admit some wackos on the left are vaccine truthers, but again: they do not hold national elective office. It's really all conservatives, and there aren't Democrats in national office speaking in glossolalia.

[1] [http://www.voanews.com/a/trump-budget-priorities-speech- cong...](http://www.voanews.com/a/trump-budget-priorities-speech- congress/3743095.html)

<comment><USER2> Yes, but most Republicans I actually know (granted, definitely not a representative sample) were aghast that Trump won their party's nomination, and didn't vote for him (thought most made it a protest vote of some kind, not voting for Clinton either).

They are "conservative" but they assumed that Trump's continuous barrage of easily-debunked lies and blatant disrespect for the intelligence of his audience would prevent his victory.

Still, I will concede your point that the "conservative" population in the USA seems to be more greatly affected by this kind of "reality rejection syndrome". I don't think Trump really has any coherent political ideology; I think he just chose to pwn the Republican party because they had the most rubes susceptible to his brand of snake oil.

(I feel like that might just be because a big segment of that population is _angrier_ than most people, but who knows.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting pattern in these:

In times when we're clearly in crisis (financial crisis of 2009, stagflation in the 70s, Vietnam & the Civil Rights movement of the 60s, and WW2 in 1941), the graph is dominated by a single issue that takes up greater than half the plot. In times when things are basically humming along smoothly, everybody complains about everything, and the poll reflects a huge variety of problems.

This would tend to suggest that objectively, we're actually in pretty good times right now. This doesn't preclude us facing a crisis in the near future - notice how "Keeping out of war" was a relatively small but noticeable box in 1935, but absolutely huge in 1941 - but it _is_ fairly likely that if a crisis does occur, it'll come from a box that isn't a huge problem right now. It's unlikely that "immigration" or "dissatisfaction with government" will be a massive crisis in 2021, but we could easily see "unifying the country", "environment", "unemployment", or "civil rights & race relations" become a huge issue in the next election.

<comment><USER8> I found an interesting distinction between the two candidates was this is a disaster needing fixing versus things are pretty good and let's do better. That seemed to be the gist of their messages.

I'd be interested to see the change from 2013-2016 for example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> There are multiple ways to look at this depending how you view people in your country

People's opinions are manipulated by either media (i.e. corporations) or government and they are told what to worry about. Just because economy seems to be doing well in this poll, it could be because people are told it is doing well. Now I haven't looked at any indicators, so maybe it is actually doing well, but I am using it as an example here.

Unemployment could be an exception here. People do feel that personally, it is a lot less abstract. So maybe that is closer to reality.

But even healthcare, so many think it is now "being fixed" so they stop worrying about it.

During Bush's time we see worrying about a moral decline, It is likely not because people were particularly immoral then but his rhetoric focused on religious groups (Evangelicals) and he used them as a block pretty much to vote for him.

Then guns. Look at that, in 2013 people were so worried about them. Why? Almost just as worried as the "Lack of money". It is probably not because people were shot left and right, but because the administration, the media, and various gun groups (NRA) picked that as a talking between them.

So this is just as much about what is really wrong with the country vs what people believe is wrong with the country and the two things don't have to be the same. It also shows how easy it is to manipulate people and changing their political agenda.

</comment><comment><USER10> I am disappointed that "The Constitution" doesn't get mentioned by more people. Clearly, the USA has a terrible Constitution and it needs a new one. What might have seemed sensible 1787 certainly does not make sense in 2017. And many of the items that people do list are merely symptoms of the sickness of the Constitution. Among its many flaws, perhaps the most obvious is the "Rotten Borough" problem of the less populated states. Britain faced this problem in the early 1800s and resolved it with the reforms of 1832:

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

I have a personal list of things I'd like to see in a new Constitution, but what I personally want is not very important. What is important is that the citizens of the USA realize what is the root cause of the many ills they complain of: the Constitution.

<comment><USER11> In the same kind of issue (IMO): voting on weekdays.

I don't know if that's in the US constitution (I'm French), but really, who thought that was a good idea.

It seems like a systemic issue easier to address than the whole constitution and electoral college system.

<comment><USER12> > I don't know if that's in the US constitution (I'm French), but really, who > thought that was a good idea.

FYI: it's not, but it's been set by statute since 1845.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Question: Why do you think Peter feels sick?

100 people surveyed. 80% of respondents think he has food poisoning.

Peter accepts this and endures several additional weeks of pain.

Peter finally goes to a hospital to get checked out.

He has colon cancer.

Peter dies three weeks later.

What people think has nothing whatsoever to do with reality.

That's what this article is about, what people think, not reality.

<comment><USER14> Fair point, though what public perception polling _does_ tell you is _what the public is thinking_.

That itself might reflect on a state of ignorance or knowledge, or on how well your Weapons of Mass Distraction campaigns are working.

<comment><USER13> What the public is thinking is useful for politicians who need to choose which lies to tell during a campaign in order to gather the most votes. Or for a marketing person in need to alter their approach for maximum ROI. That's about it.

If we switch to entrepreneurship for a moment, here's another case where public opinion is of little use: The crowds don't know what they want next. How many people wanted Instagram before it existed? Or Facebook? Amazon? eBay? How many people know that it is critical we switch to streamlined digital medical records?

People know and form opinions based on past events. As a mass they rarely know where to go in order to solve real rather than imagined problems. This is particularly true of uncomfortable long-term planning.

Take the situation we have in the US with Welfare and Social Security. By some accounts these programs might implode in as little as 10 to 20 years. They are the elephants in the room. The federal budget reveals this fact. Yet people are focusing on nonsense every day.

The masses are not talking about this. The surveys indicate nobody thought these issues were important for decades, even today. Yet, reality, if I were a parent guiding my kids, is that this is one of the most important issues. One requiring immediate attention. It is not a matter of opinion, it's a matter of mathematical certainty.

<comment><USER14> While I agree that those are some of the uses, they're not _all_ of them.

Monitoring public opinion is also quite useful if your interest is in actually _effectively delivering truthful infomration to the public._ It allows testing and developing methods (or defenses, as necessary).

What's key is not confusing _what the public believes_ with _what is actually true_.

The dynamics of _why_ the public believes what it does, for both extrinsic (media, propaganda, manipulation) and intrinsic (educational levels, cognitive limits, messaging complexity) is hugely useful to understand. Actually, if you're looking for lower-level problems of governance, generally, I'd spend a considerable amount of time in that corner.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Seems like a lot of the problems for Feb. 2017 are a lot more varied and existential ("Dissatisfaction with government", "Immigration") versus Feb. 2009, where "Economy in general" and "Unemployment" and other material economic metrics are by far the main worries of America.

As ugly as politics have gotten today, at least the presiding concern for most Americans isn't "can I afford my mortgage/rent next month?".

<comment><USER9> Quite the opposite, I would think. Not having employment, seeing economy going down the drain is a lot more and immediately existential to people than not liking the people in Washington, or disagreeing with how they tweet and so on.

One can argue that government is eventually to blame for employment anyway, but is one step removed from "I might not be able to pay my bills in a month or two".

In a way I am happy to see "Dissatisfaction with the government" be the top worry pushing economy to the side.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's amusing how much "Civil Rights and Race Relations" ballooned after Obama took office.

<comment><USER15> Make sense. For starters, the economy was in such a crisis that economic concerns took priority over everything else when Obama entered office. Second, his office made dealing with civil rights a priority, which meant that the costs of prioritizing civil rights suddenly drew more attention than when it was a backburner issue.

<comment><USER9> > his office made dealing with civil rights a priority, which meant that the > costs of prioritizing civil rights suddenly drew more attention than when it > was a backburner issue.

I've been wondering about that. What did he do specifically for the Black community who pretty much voted as a block for him. Are they able to get access to jobs, housing, education because of him. Do kids feels safer walking home from school? I don't really now, I am not asking because I know it is not, just curious if anyone has a better idea.

<comment><USER15> Administrations may not necessarily make new laws/regulations, but they are able to make priorities. For example, the Bush Administration had a bigger focus on stopping illegal immigration and enforcing the Patriot Act:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/01/politics/gonzales-lays- out...](http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/01/politics/gonzales-lays-out-his- priorities-at-justice-dept.html?_r=0)

In contrast, the Obama administration was seen to have "rebuilt" the civil rights arm of the Justice dept into its "crown jewel": [http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-justice-department- tru...](http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-justice-department- trump-20161117-story.html)

One of the more well-known initiatives of the Justice Dept. under Obama's administration is the police data initiative, something that was sparked after officer-involved shootings (Ferguson, etc.) revealed that the FBI was doing a shoddy job of tracking these incidents nationwide:

[https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press- office/2016/0...](https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press- office/2016/04/22/fact-sheet-white-house-police-data-initiative-highlights- new-commitments)

A non-justice example: the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's work in looking at fairness in lending and housing:

\- [https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about- us/newsroom/consumer-f...](https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about- us/newsroom/consumer-financial-protection-bureau-and-department-justice- action-requires-bancorpsouth-pay-106-million-address-discriminatory-mortgage- lending-practices/)

Incidentally, this initiative has led to one of the best government datasets: 9.2 GB of mortgage data: [https://www.consumerfinance.gov/data- research/hmda/](https://www.consumerfinance.gov/data-research/hmda/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> We form opinions far too fast and blithely assume that the only possible viewpoints are those that occur to us after 30 seconds of thought (plus the one or two viewpoints fed to us in the first article).

Once a person publicly expresses an opinion, it is very hard to change. We just fight and rationalize from that point on, digging in deeper.

And no, we bay area NPR-listening NYT-reading folks are far from immune.

</comment><comment><USER18> These all point to one basic problem, overconfidence. Half of our country has replaced logic with confidence. Its roots, i speculate, are in mob reinforcement (religion and tv and talk radio), and our sports and entertainment centered yardstick for achievement. Any common person can now stare into the eyes of a scientist and say they disagree and have a mob of people cheer.

</comment><comment><USER19> It's remarkable that "global warming" didn't make the list given its potential for $trillions in damages and vast loss of life if left unchecked. In terms of severity, there is no second place.

<comment><USER20> I think a question like this is so nebulous that people can answer it in a multitude of ways, none more or less valid.

Global warming doesn't really affect the USA specifically and/or uniquely, so maybe that biases the answer? Also, dying of smoking is less a worry when you see a truck about to run you over. Maybe people preference immediate danger over longer term danger?

The issue of "country" is an interesting one in the other direction as well. If a state/city/county has 16% unemployment, but the country has low unemployment, some people may think it is a country-wide issue, and preference that. Ditto other issues that are state or local level issues.

In any case, I can see why almost any answer is valid, which kinda makes the whole question an odd one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> President Trump and his administration, we can all debate till we are blue in the face why he was elected but he was in a, what's a good word for a reverse miracle? a disaster maybe?

His administration seems likely to kill constructive politics, increase distrust & conspiracy theories and spread racism.

</comment><comment><USER22> How about dysgenic fertility?

> Meisenberg (2010) found that intelligence in the US was negatively related > to the number of children, with age-controlled correlations of −.156, −.069, > −.235 and −.028 for White females, White males, Black females and Black > males. This effect was related mainly to the general intelligence factor and > was caused in part by education and income, and to a lesser extent by the > more "liberal" gender attitudes of those with higher intelligence. Without > migration the average IQ of the US population will decline by about 0.8 > points per generation.

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

<comment><USER23> meh, that's probably swamped by the effects of reducing lead poisoning in children. The younger generations today are probably the smartest in human history with the added benefit of being the best educated and having access to the best information.

<comment><USER22> _Not_ poisoning ourselves with lead is great, but I'm not sure that the younger generations today are the smartest in human history - [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289613...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289613000470)

<comment><USER24> I personally find those results really dubious. How accurate were the measurements from the mid 19th century? And even then, the leverage on those scatter plots is huge. (eg: [http://cs.wellesley.edu/~cs199/lectures/one- outlier.png](http://cs.wellesley.edu/~cs199/lectures/one-outlier.png))

Additionally, because of a lack of a data, they used means instead of medians on highly skewed data. A few individuals could have a much larger effect on results this way.

Finally, just because we measure good correlations between IQ and RT in modern times doesn't justify extrapolating these conclusions to the 19th century.

P.S. I find this a little dubious "The Victorian era was characterized by great accomplishments. As great accomplishment is generally a product of high intelligence. . ." Sure the 19th century had better innovation than came before, but so did the 20th and 21st century. This doesn't have much impact on the findings, but it still bugs me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> It's hard for me to interpret this outside the 2017 pressure chamber of headlines/advertising. It's remarkable similar to a top of mind recall of "what last 10 news articles have you seen published recently?"

There are many good and important issues that didn't make the list, and I wonder if prompting or discussion would increase the breadth.

This seems to be the list of issues that many articles have been talking about for the last month. Things we're supposed to care about, because, social proof.

One can either believe news articles are crafted to deliver what we want to hear (appeal to our beliefs) or that we are remarkably adept consumers, champions and descerners of (unbiased!) truth.

9 out of 10 doctors agree!

</comment><comment><USER26> Corruption. It's always been one of the greatest problems facing humanity, and seemingly impossible to effectively combat.

</comment><comment><USER27> I can't believe that the environment isn't on a single one of these lists.

<comment><USER28> I agree with the sentiment, but it is there.

It's depressing, but my experience was that most people simply do. not. care. about the environment, unless it's literally something they can see _in their front yard_. Hot this year? Turn up the AC! Even when it _is_ in their front yard, if they can't see it they don't care. Worrying about the health effects of pesticides and then going for a jog and inhaling auto exhaust is inconsistent, but not a rare behaviour.

<comment><USER27> You're right; I missed that. IMHO it should be much bigger, but I'm not sure there's a good way to raise awareness and start change.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> It's interesting to see this. If you asked me Americas biggest problems it would be that we spend an incredible amount of money in foreign wars, have mass incarceration, a healthcare system that is difficult to use and expensive, and that our education system is quickly falling being other countries.

The further back you go in this list you see things that we just accept as reality now.

</comment><comment><USER30> The flaw in this whole analysis is that we are looking at the problems in relation to one another instead of in an absolute measure. I don't even think the question is that relevant in this administration. Why? Because there a lot of really big problems right now of really high magnitude. Race inequality, income inequality, healthcare, global warming, etc these are all huge problems and it is likely they will grow worse in magnitude, it's less relevant what the most important problem is, the real observation is that there are big problems and they ain't going away anytime soon.

What I mean to say is the boxes under the trump administration should be really huge in certain areas compared to other administrations

</comment><comment><USER31> CTRL-F "debt": 0 of 0 (on these HN comments)

That's a problem in and of itself.

And the only reference to "environment" was someone asking why environment hadn't been mentioned, as of the time I started writing this.

<comment><AUTHOR> The national debt? My understanding was that most economists don't rate that as a very significant issue. But I'd love to be linked to something proving me wrong.

<comment><USER31> All kinds of debt, but government sponsored/owned debt in particular. It's a significant problem in our country when the economists in power do not consider (or pretend to not consider) the debt or the deficit trajectory, let alone unfunded liabilities, to be the serious problem that they are. Something has to give, whether it's a debilitating depression brought on by balancing the spreadsheet or significant devaluation of the US dollar to fraudulently meet obligations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> It's interesting to see the degree that opinions have changed in time, the contrarian relationship between economic expectations and economic performance, and other fear mongering issues that don't tangibly affect people's quality of life. For the latter, these include National Security, Terrorism, Immigration, Government Satisfaction, Budget, ... really most of this stuff.

I wonder how the graph would look if the same question was posed to a set of 'experts'. Say a set of economists at top business schools, or really a spattering of economists from reputable universities.

My suspicion is the issues would suddenly become much more consistent. Especially with a focus on institutions, economic growth, tangible quality of life metrics, and efficacy of government redistribution programs among others 'real' measures.

It's not to say that fears over government functioning, or the economy, or morals are irrelevant - these factors shape how we perceive the world and subsequently how we feel. This graph displays how resilient we are to these emotionally charged 'issues'. The average poll respondent will likely continue following the general sentiment from media, conversations, etc. Meanwhile, tangible issues will continue to be acknowledged by a very small sliver of the population.

These sorts of results make me cynical of voting in general. Our current system with the electoral college, special interests, lobbying, advertisements etc. is already a clusterfuck. Ignoring experts opinions and focusing on emotionally charged issues is probably worse off for the country as a whole.

I, for one, am glad that voter preferences currently represent the preferences of elites when it comes to contentious issues. (see Martin Giles' Affluence and Influence). Our 'every person gets an equivalent vote regardless of education for the minority that actually votes across varying demographics with messed up electoral colleges and voting districts and advertising influences' ... system seems inefficient to me. While a dystopian future of 'educated elites' controlling voting isn't the answer, neither is an equivalent, electoral college based system. It encourages appealing to the lowest common denominator, and a whole lot of people are unintentionally voting against their own interests.

</comment><comment><USER33> My biggest concern is highschools. They mould the citizens of this country and they are broken. Bullying is rampant and terrible and overall the conditions in american highschools seem to produce more school shooters than any other country. This is not a coincidence. But nothing ever changes because if youre smart the bullies leave you alone. If youre a bit slow in any way you get eaten alive. It has to change

</comment><comment><USER34> [http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2016/11/daily-c...](http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2016/11/daily- chart-17) looks much better article

<comment><USER14> Informationally, it's talking about something quite different. The NY Times piece looks at _what specific issues_ are front-of-mind. The Economist, whether or not things are "on track". And at a single point in time rather than over 70 years, as with the Times.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Dysgenic trends in demographics.

</comment><comment><USER36> Authoritarianism.

</comment><comment><USER37> Trump

</comment><comment><USER38> "Narcissistic Crazy person who might end civilization due to something he just saw on Fox news or because someone dissed him on Twitter" seems to be missing from the latest set of boxes.</comment>


The web is not bloated - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/dmitriid/status/1187620749386899456 <comment><USER2> These tech companies are pushing bi-weekly updates of their 100+ MB apps just ... because that's how it's done.

Meanwhile I'm here having literally never updated a single app on my phone after installing them.</comment>


Ask HN: Finding a designer for a side project - <AUTHOR> Hello,
My side project is now at the stage where I would benefit from the influence of a good designer (both visual and interaction).
The project is TwLng.com which I'm currently spinning as a Buffer for Content.
There are three main areas that need work: 1. The landing page 2. The dashboard and setup 3. The content that is viewed by users.
What is a good approach for finding a designer for side projects in 2015? <comment><USER2> The answer can vary a lot depending on what are you offering to the designer.

As a co-founder? Employed with salary, full time/part time? Contractor?

You can check out monthly freelancer/who wants to be hired threads on HN. You can check out designer news[1] (HN for designers). You can hunt on dribble. You can put an ad on your local job board.

[1]: [https://www.designernews.co/](https://www.designernews.co/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Off topic, but what makes your site different from the other identical sites?

This one, for example, even looks "identical". [http://www.twenth.com/](http://www.twenth.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> The main difference between Twenth (which was recently sold on Flippa) and [http://www.TwLng.com](http://www.TwLng.com), is the content scheduling via a Calendar, the queue & circle data structures and the Twitter marketing tools.

Having reviewed Twenth, its acknowledged that the design is similar, but the request for design assistance will take this in a difference direction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I found an awesome designer by searching LinkedIn for professional local designers, checking out the portfolio he had listed, and sending him an InMail asking if he was open to freelance. Just something that worked for me.

</comment><comment><USER5> If your project does not generate any (or enough revenue), then it might make sense to purchase a $20 theme from websites like themeforest.net or wrapbootstrap.com.

These look polished enough that your customers won't know that you purchased a theme v/s hired a designer (they don't care anyways)

Once you have enough revenue coming in, you could then hire a designer to create a custom website for you (if you still really want to).

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm a web designer, and i can probably help out, leave an email and we'll talk

</comment><comment><USER7> The click through, and even view rates for such tweets will be abismal.</comment>


What A Job Offer From Apple Looks Like - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/what-a-job-offer-from-apple-looks-like-2009-10

<comment><USER2> It's very difficult for to understand the mindset of someone who admires a computer company so much that they'd read blog articles about its stationary.

</comment><comment><USER3> Original link: [http://glyph.twistedmatrix.com/2009/10/unboxing-you-won- see-...](http://glyph.twistedmatrix.com/2009/10/unboxing-you-won-see-on- gizmodo-or.html)</comment>


Dilbert: A Reckoning - <AUTHOR> https://www.theawl.com/2017/12/dilbert-a-reckoning/ <comment><USER2> I don't know about the 'racist' jab, but I have seen the artistic shift being discussed here. Over time, the most ridiculous elements in the office have shifted from the PHB's demands to the employees' rebuttals. I don't mind the shift in terms of the PHB's physique (he resembles his portrayal in the series more now; and each character takes up less of the frame, allowing more interaction), but I can understand how the article's author sees it as a telling warning of who the artist is sympathetic to.

The fact that Adams supports, and is actively a part of, the alt-right bothers me. The fact that his comic has gone downhill over the years and should have ended sometime in the last 5 years or so bothers me even more. His politics have become more evident over social media; as we've become increasingly polarized and at the same time more vocal, Adams has made strong moves to the Right. At what point will his Left-skewing audience start demanding the removal of his work from their newspapers and contacting said papers' advertisers to get that done?

Consider this: The Peter Principle says that every person will be promoted to the level of their incompetence. The Dilbert Principle (by Adams himself) says that incompetent people continue to get promoted until they can't do more damage. Adams has been effectively promoted from a solo operator to the leader and face of a significant media brand. Think about that for a moment. Has Adams promoted himself to a position he is incompetent to fill whether he ever recognized that fact or not?

<comment><USER3> Seeking senior developer with two years experience. Climbing walls. Switching jobs to work with the latest Javascript framework. New Macbook Pro. Free lunch...

TANSTAAFL. Programmer workplace dynamics have changed since _Office Space_. The boss's Porsche isn't the only one in the lot. TPS reports still exist, but "I'm not missing it" is not a rare response. The guy in the basement never got hired because of culture fit.

In popular culture, programmers aren't beleaguered. They get nap time. They don't wear ties.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The article is just: Trump is evil. The creator of Dilbert supports Trump and by proxy must be an evil racist. Also Adams has opened a dialog to the ALT Right so he must be an evil racist. Adams changes his comics overtime so you stop reading everything he's ever done.

Addendum: I must have touch a nerve. Instead of flagging my comment why not reply with a well thought out response?

</comment><comment><USER5> Scott Adams is a pathological wannabe genius, not a racist.</comment>


The sudden death and eternal life of Solaris (2017) - <AUTHOR> http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/2017/09/04/the-sudden-death-and-eternal-life-of-solaris/ <comment><USER2> I still kind of wish SunOS (the BSD-based version, before AT&T made them switch over to System V) had made it out of Sun as an open source version.

Sources for 4.1.4 leaked, but of course that's without official blessing... And Oracle's lawyers probably make up more than half the company.

<comment><USER3> The loss of Solaris is a tremendous tragedy to the technology world. I once welcomed it's demise. But the lack of any and all competing platforms for Linux has lead Linux down a not entirely happy road

<comment><USER4> Only if you assume OSX or FreeBSD don't exist.

<comment><USER5> OS X was never a great Unix (other than paying to get the official trademark that one time), and it's becoming even less of a Unix over time.

FreeBSD is OK, but very lacking in manpower. Every time I install a desktop package these days, I see multiple warnings about how this or that dependency has no maintainer.

With so much attention these days on Docker and other halfway measures involving namespaces, it's not really Unix that's the platform anymore. Linux is the platform for a variety of network and desktop applications.

<comment><USER4> OSX is the only Unix system actually used in non-microscopic quantities on desktops.

Regarding Docker - it's like saying it's not Linux that's the platform anymore, it's the hypervisor. Linux is just one of the layers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Yep, old news 2017. But everybody seems to kinda see about the same thing. Although I'd say it really died when Oracle bought what was left of Sun. And so then died java (meh), and everything else, btw.

Kinda sad, I think Sun was a fairly innocent victim of the dot-com bubble bust.

So f _ck larry f_ cking ellison, and I hope the horse he rode in on throws him and then kicks him square in the nuts (I have nothing against the horse).

<comment><USER7> Sun and SGI both died not because of the dot-com bubble bursting, they died because commodity PCs became competitive with their extremely overpriced offerings, then GNU/Linux enabled the PCs to do all the UNIXy things too.

They should have seen the writing on the wall and done something to differentiate themselves meaningfully before the PC wave washed over them. They failed to do so, and could barely afford to keep the lights on at the scale they operated afterwards.

<comment><USER6> Well the other thing was that the surplus market for 6 month old machines undercut their sales.

It's true that PC's (amd64) became capable workstations around the same time, or shortly after. And that didn't help.

But for the time, the RISC UNIX Workstation was NOT overpriced. If you compare your $1500 core-i7 machine of today to a $30,000 RISC machine of 2001, the later would seem overpriced. But not at all if compared to the $1500 Dell of 2001 running Windows NT 4.0. Remember, things changed very rapidly. And the dot-com burst before Linux and amd64 really happened.

In a way, both Linux and x86/amd64 have turned the PC into the UNIX workstation of the 90's and 2000's. And with ONE dominant, excellent, kinda- sorta SVR4 OS too (Linux).

<comment><USER8> No, they were already way overpriced. The Unix workstations were nice, and had good tools. But you could buy dual cpu intel machines of very roughly equivalent performance (excepting some specific tasks) for about 1/4 the cost (or less), and put Linux or BSD on them.

The writing was on the wall you at least 97 , and the Unix vendors looked at it and just kept doing the same thing. They were already dead, but the dot.com collapse finished them a little faster I suppose.

<comment><USER9> For reference, I purchased a Micron system with a dual Pentium Pro slot W6-Li motherboard (but -- and this is crucial -- _only one 180MHz PPro chip_ ), SCSI internals, 64MB of RAM and a CD writer, for $5200. This was in 1996.

If I recall correctly, adding the second PPro 180MHz chip added around $2k to the price. Call it $7-8k all in.

The 200MHz PPro had a SPECInt92 value of 366[0]. You can find a list of other SPECInt92 values here[1]. So it was, indeed, faster than many systems, but not the fastest. Value for money? Yeah, it had it.

There were x86 versions of SVR4 UNIX available commercially, so it's quite plausible that you could do an apples-to-apples comparison. I'm sure one is out there, but I don't have the time to find one.

It's worth noting that in 1994, Eric S. Raymond discontinued his "PC-clone UNIX buyers guide" because he had switched to Linux, and didn't think that UNIX had a future. [2]

I think it's still fair to say that the dedicated UNIX workstations had a certain panache that made "real" engineers want them, badly.

[0] [https://www.hpcwire.com/1995/11/03/200-mhz-intel-pentium- pro...](https://www.hpcwire.com/1995/11/03/200-mhz-intel-pentium-pro- benchmarks-at-366-specint92/)

[1] [http://performance.netlib.org/performance/html/new.spec.cint...](http://performance.netlib.org/performance/html/new.spec.cint92.col0.html)

[2] [http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/clone-unix- guide.txt](http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/clone-unix-guide.txt)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> One of the major aspects of Solaris demise was that it fell victim to the anti-cannibalization efforts by the extremely politically strong SPARC division inside Sun. That bound the Solaris fate to the [rapidly falling] fate of the Sun SPARC and prevented any serious investment into the development of the x86 version. As Solaris was falling more and more painfully behind in support of popular x86 hardware a running joke ca. 2002-4 from the Solaris dev guys was - to have an instance of Linux kernel with its drivers running inside the Solaris instance and use that Linux instance to proxy requests to the various otherwise unsupported by Solaris hardware.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is from 2017 and I hope the title can be adjusted to reflect as much. Its still a great article.

<comment><USER12> That would explain why I couldn't find in Google News.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> That's okay, Solaris lives on as the free, open source software that is the illumos source code, from which distributions like Tribblix and SmartOS are made. illumos is being actively developed and it's very lively.

</comment><comment><USER14> I used SunOS and Solaris in 1995-1996 as a federal contractor for the US Military. It seemed to work well for a Unix OS. We used many different types of Unix.

GNU/Linux, BSD Unix, and MacOSX slowly took marketshare away from Sun/Oracle. Expensive SPARCStations no longer were affordable.

</comment><comment><USER15> Discussed at the time: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15170378](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15170378)

</comment><comment><USER16> As a homage, I use this wallpaper for my iPhone.

[http://www.w6rz.net/solaris_iphone.png](http://www.w6rz.net/solaris_iphone.png)

</comment><comment><USER17> It is worth noting how much has changed since this blog post.

ZFS on Linux, the dubiously licensed mess that it is, now drives most of the bug tracking and patches.

Joyent, once deeply committed to illumos, is now primarily a Linux company, because Samsung has no particular need to hold onto Solaris.

Solaris is even sadder and deader today than the author foresaw :(

</comment><comment><USER18> It's fascinating to me that a company like Oracle that I only ever see ridiculed and despised for its products and business practices, is also so profitable. I hear so many tales of companies that decline and eventually become irrelevant when they start being run by MBAs with no product vision, but it seems that once a company reaches a certain size, it's just par for the course, and they seem to do fine anyway. Is it just inertia and brand value at that point?

<comment><USER19> As someone who has worked in corporate companies, here is a list of reasons why Oracle, IBM, Microsoft, Google, VMWare, Deloitte etc. are "par for the course"

* If you are upper level management at Blue Chip company "Initech", the last thing you want to be dealing with is a smaller B2B provider, with a hipster name like "Data Badger". Being smaller means more risk (not necessarily but thats the culture). You want the big safe boring companies.

* Big corporates are still wined and dined by Oracle's sales teams etc. Yes you might have to do your mandatory HR training about bribes and corporate gifts, but this stuff still happens under the table. Its business, it might not be ethical, but its business.

* Cronyism etc. management tends to circulate around companies closely connected with each other. A Microsoft manager might float to Vodafone or JP Morgan. When they get there, they are more likely to throw any of their old MS colleagues a bone when it comes to service contracts etc. This is why networking is so important in LinkedIn for corporate careerism.

* Did I mention sales already, yes, but these big companies have large sales and marketing budgets. Those buzzwords are expensive you know!

* Those sales and marketers target managers and people with a high influence / low technical understand co-efficient. Don't get me wrong there are smart managers out there that know their stuff however they are generally a rareity. So they tend to drink the kool-aid from the big tech corporates e.g. "Hey Bob, I think Microsoft's Foobar Cloud Hypervisor, can streamline our data acquisition and increase synergy in the business".

* When you take your first hit of Oracle's software or services, you are effectively tied into service contracts which make it painful to leave but easy to extend. You might spend £200million for a 5 year contract, then three years in you see a new technology offering for an extra £4million etc. That's relatively pennies to what you've already sunk into the service contract.

* Marketing and branding which you picked up on in your post. There is a reason you see IBM or Oracle advertised a lot in the Financial Times, Economist, New Scientist etc.

Hope this explains why Oracle et al. are dominent in the industry.

<comment><USER20> > hipster name like "Data Badger"

hahaha! Thats a great name for a company :-)

<comment><USER21> [https://www.databadger.net/](https://www.databadger.net/)

:-)

Also, there is the similarly themed [https://dbeaver.io/](https://dbeaver.io/)

A great, open source tool btw.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> What did Solaris do that made it a good choice?

<comment><USER23> Hot swapping CPU and memory boards was pretty dope in 2000. Can't do that in equivalently priced hardware and servers as easily today.

<comment><USER24> Because the unit of swappability changed to a VM or server... for good reasons.

<comment><USER23> If that's the case, why do my VMs in public clouds constantly go down for hardware maintenance?

We've definitely regressed despite the buzzwords and hype.

<comment><USER25> Most of the "hardware maintainance" is defragmenting the workload so that the VMs run in fewer physical machines to retire racks of old hardware. Some load balancing too.

<comment><USER26> Or an endless line of Spectre/Meltdown patches needing the hosts to reboot in order to get this weeks firmware into the intel CPUs.

<comment><USER23> This is what I was getting at. When Sun had issues with CPUs, they sent you new CPU boards and you could hot swap them live without downtime

<comment><USER25> That was indeed cool, but it also belongs to the "pet" phase of computing and this is the "cattle" age.

<comment><USER23> Not really. It was done at scale, too. Hotmail replaced all of the faulty CPUs live.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


What is your idea filter? How can you tell if one of your ideas is worth pursuing? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> I actually write ALL my ideas down! I probably have a hundred by now. But you are right, there's always one or two ideas that keep nagging at me, and right now I'm pursuing an idea that although it wasn't mine, right now I simply cannot not put it aside.

My filter for writing it down is simply if an idea represents an actual problem that a real person is facing. In other words, I don't write down an idea that I simply think it's cool, but when I hear about someone facing a real problem.

</comment><comment><USER2> \- Start with more than one business idea

\- Identify an unmet business, social or consumer need

\- Why the need was not already being met?

\- Can you assemble the competencies to solve the need?

\- Can you get the resources to bring the product/service to the market?

Disclaimer: Those are my notes from a great presentation by Antony Awaida: <http://www.startleap.com/>

</comment><comment><USER3> 1) Collect your ideas.

2) Ask: "which one addresses the most user pain?"

3) Do that one.

4) Put the leftover ideas in a "maybe later" pile.

5) To maintain focus, any new ideas that come along should also go into the "maybe later" pile.

6) Profit! ;)

</comment><comment><USER4> Never write an idea down. The ones that are worth pursuing are the ones that _keep_ nagging at you long after you've moved on to other things.

<comment><USER5> Writing my ideas down helps them stop nagging me, allowing me to focus on what I rationally think is the most viable.

You don't think this is the right approach?

<comment><USER6> I write them down and only a few keep nagging me. The others are frequently good ideas I'm just not excited enough about.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't think you can tell for sure until it succeeds. It's like the halting problem.</comment>


Primer: A chatbot to teach you entire CS by the end of the year - <AUTHOR> http://www.primerlabs.io <comment><AUTHOR> Hi, Everyone. I am creating Primer. A dialog based intelligent tutor that helps you learn, retain and understand Computer Science.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask.

<comment><USER2> How do you plan to scale content creation? Writing a book on any of the topics you plan to cover would require a lot of time, and I doubt that creating a script for a conversational agent is any easier.

Also, I'm not sure about your claim that natural language processing isn't necessary, since the dialog examples show the bot replying "correct" to a free-form answer. Or do you rely completely on the ELIZA effect making the user feel like their mistakes are being corrected when their answer differs from the explanation given by the bot?

<comment><AUTHOR> > How do you plan to scale content creation? Writing a book on any of the > topics you plan to cover would require a lot of time,

TextBooks are usually designed to serve as a reference. They tend to cover everything and has to go under a lot of scrutiny and proofreading before they can be published.

The conversational scripts can be better thought as blog posts which explains topic well but don't go into detail. You might see that the all the initial tracks are in Beta. Initially, the tracks and course content will be minimal and gradually will build up. Course Content will continuously be versioned.

> I'm not sure about your claim that natural language processing isn't > necessary, > Bot replying "correct" to a free-form answer. That's actually > is a response to multiple choice question where the user can select > predefined answers.

The chatbot doesn't reply to free form answers in Boolean. To free form answers, it replys with accepted answer.

The free form answers serve two purposes: 1\. To provide the user time to infer the result before Primer giving the correct answer 2\. To provide the user the opportunity to verbalise his/her understanding in written form so that he/she can find out gaps between his/her knowledge and the accepted answer.

I have detailed in the whitepaper how it is possible. I can show it to with a live application.</comment></comment></comment>


North American Regional Dialects and Accents (2016) - <AUTHOR> http://aschmann.net/AmEng/#SmallMap <comment><USER2> Reddit[1] made me aware of 2 specific examples:

"pin" == "pen" : [http://allthingslinguistic.com/post/81929757765/cather- wren-...](http://allthingslinguistic.com/post/81929757765/cather-wren- catherine-fangirl-and-the-pinpen)

"soda" vs "pop" vs "coke": [http://popvssoda.com/](http://popvssoda.com/)

All the examples I've seen overlap closely with the Southern belt of states.

For a more HN-flavored survey, I wonder if there's a clear regional boundary for _" tuple"_. I've heard it pronounced "too-pull" (sorta like "pupil") and "tuppel" (like "couple"). Don't know if that's an East vs West coast thing or a Cambridge/Oxford/England vs MIT/Stanford/USA thing. Maybe it's just random based on who you heard it from first.

(But let us stay away from discussing "gif". There are standards of civility here.)

[1] [https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/14y6tc/til_m...](https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/14y6tc/til_most_southern_us_english_speakers_make_no/)

<comment><USER3> On the "soda vs pop vs coke" question, as a child I would have never used any of those words. Here in Western NC, we said "soft drink" for sweet carbonated beverages. People my age (late 30s) and older still do, but the younger generation has picked up "soda."

<comment><USER4> In the Piedmont, we said "drink." Growing up, I knew what "soft drink" meant and understood the distinction, but nobody among my family & friends used that phrase.

Also never heard anyone call anything but a Coke a Coke, which is a really common stereotype of Southern English.

<comment><USER3> I'm from the Piedmont too, Gaston County to be specific. I know what you mean. Most of the time you'd just ask if they wanted a drink, and by context they knew what you meant. I'd say "soft drink" only if I needed to narrow it down.

"Do you want something to drink?"

"Tea or a soft drink if you have it."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think it's interesting that this is a map of almost exclusively caucasian accents (as the note on the left explains, information on the distinct African American Vernacular English dialect is not included, partly because the geographical variations of AAVE are largely independent of 'white' dialects).

Googling around, there doesn't seem to be an equivalent map out there for AAVE.

<comment><USER6> Actually I think the map shows the dominant dialect/accent, it doesn't deny the existence of others. The entire west half of the continent is one color, but off the top of my head I know at least five distinct accents you can find among white people here. My grandmothers we're both born and raised in Washington state and had distinctly different speech patterns. My father's mother's accent was almost British, but I can clearly remember my mother's mother talking about "worshing" up or going down to the "crick".

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> My favorite is the Californian use of the definite article when identifying numbered roadways, e.g. "I took the 5.".

Here in Oregon, a general (and I must say unfair) disapproval of transplanted Californians exists, and that use of the definite article is a "tell" that the natives have learned to look for.

<comment><USER8> As a non-native speaker, that's how I would say it because that's how it would be said in my native language.

If someone told me "I took 5" I'd expect them to be talking about some kind of quantity and wait for them to finish the sentence.

Can a non-American native speaker maybe chime in how this works in other dialects? I'm wondering whether it's Californians who are the odd ones out or whether it's just uncommon in the US.

<comment><USER9> From other parts of the country you might say things like "I took I-5" or "Interstate Five", "Route Five", "Highway Five", "US 5" etc.

"I-5" to me sounds a little harsh and hard to say to my ears vs. "I-95" or "I-80" which have a nicer ring to them, so maybe that's how this sort of thing could develop if that's just how the major highways ended up being numbered in different parts of the country.

<comment><USER10> We don't preface highways with I in Chicago. We either just use the number (I took 290 to 294 to 88), or we use their name. Sometimes we use a combination (I took the Eisenhower out to the Tri-State and then to 88).

<comment><USER11> That works because Chicago is in the north central part of the country, where highway numbers are firmly in the double digits. In the southwest the numbers are often single digit, so it's awkward and confusing to use without a preprended "I-" or "the".

<comment><USER9> I think it's triple digits that become a mouthful with the "I-" prefix. Double digits sounds best with the "I-", I think.

Triple digits come from being a spur of a two-digit highway incidentally, not to do with region. I-385 is a spur of I-85, etc.

<comment><USER12> To ultra-pedant it up, generally only odd prefix digits indicate a spur (only connects to the prefixed highway in one spot), where even numbers indicate a bypass or beltway (which intersect the main highway multiple times).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Had a professor in college from the UK. I was completely confused listening to his accent all semester, as I could never place it. I'd worked with a group of people from all over -- Southhampton, Liverpool, London, etc -- so I knew the different accents. Finally one day I broke down and asked him about it. Turned out his dad had been in the military and he'd never lived in any one place for very long, so his accent was a jumble.

I am a born and raised Cascadian. That said, years ago I heard Californians call it "the 5" and thought it was brilliant, so I started using it. Friends in both Oregon and Washington give me the stink eye for adopting this foreign style of speech, but it's all in good humor.

Just to really mess with people, I really like to say "cheers" in place of "thank you" too. Adds some international charm to their day.

<comment><USER14> "Cascadian"

Of the Republic of Cascadia?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascadia_(independence_movemen...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascadia_\(independence_movement\))

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I will be curious to see if people belonging to different internet subcultures develop their own accents.

Already different groups of people are quite isolated in terms of the video and audio they consume everyday (vloggers and podcasters).

<comment><USER16> The "Youtube Voice"

[https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/12/the-l...](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/12/the- linguistics-of-youtube-voice/418962/)

[https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/aepn94/the-rise-of- youtub...](https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/aepn94/the-rise-of-youtube- voice-and-why-vloggers-want-it-to-stop)

However, much of the internet is written and not spoken. So we gets new ways to write (doge, memes, 4chan green text, etc.) but not really new accents.

<comment><USER17> > Hey guys! What's up? It's Julie.

I've really grown to hate this intro, plus the whole "bouncy" style of pronunciation. To me, it sounds a lot like "I'm trying too hard to get attention", like that of a 2 year old repeating "dad. _dad_. DAD."

<comment><USER18> Remember to end the video with: "Leave your comments down below, and don't forget to like and subscribe!"

<comment><USER19> "AND smash that bell icon!"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I am surprised that the Canadian English block is so large. Having lived in both places, there is a definite difference in accent between Western Canada and Southern Ontario.

EDIT: The stereotypical "out" and "about" pronunciation is much more prominent in Southern Ontario.

<comment><USER21> Actually the 'aboot' thing that people stereotype about Canadians is more prominent in the upper midwest US than it is in most parts of Canada.

I do hear a difference between western Canada and Ontario (I'm from the former and live in the latter.) But there's also a known dialect difference between central and southern Alberta (former settled by English/Ukrainian/Germans the other by American immigrants).

Rural Ontario, well, that's another story.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Also of interest is the "Harvard Dialect Survey" [1], which gives direct questions and highlights the regional variances. My favorite is "standing on line" vs "standing in line" \-- I had never even heard the "on line" variant until I moved to NYC, where it is ubiquitous.

Apparently now there's the "THE CAMBRIDGE ONLINE SURVEY OF WORLD ENGLISHES" [2], apparently by the same individual, but I've only just started looking at it.

[1] [http://dialect.redlog.net/maps.html](http://dialect.redlog.net/maps.html)

[2] [http://www.tekstlab.uio.no/cambridge_survey/](http://www.tekstlab.uio.no/cambridge_survey/)

<comment><USER23> "Do you say pop or soda?"

There is no option for "ginger".... not impressed ;-)

<comment><USER24> Where uses "ginger"? That's a new one for me.

<comment><USER25> In Scotland. Where the most popular soft drink, Irn Bru, is a bright orange colour.

We also use the word "juice", which I feel reflects badly on our diet.

<comment><USER24> I've had it. You can usually get it in the US in the "Ethnic Food" aisles at reasonably-sized grocery stores.

Aside from being orange, I don't have recollections of a very gingery flavor tho...

<comment><USER26> Normal Irn Bru is just made from sugar and rust (OK, ammonium ferric citrate if you're being picky) so it doesn't taste like ginger.

I do recall there being a "spicy" variant a few years ago that did taste a bit like ginger but, as I can't stand Irn Bru at the best of times, I don't recall the details.

Source: married to a Scot that basically lives off the stuff. Bit surprised she isn't magnetic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The Ocracoke Brogue has always fascinated me. A tiny, dying dialect that sounds nothing like the rest of the American South. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7MvtQp2-UA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7MvtQp2-UA)

<comment><USER27> Tangier cannot go w/o mention - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIZgw09CG9E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIZgw09CG9E)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I was raised in Miami, parents from New Jersey. I don't have an accent. (edit: I mean "General American with no obvious southern, northern, eastern, or western features.")

But there's still some tells like "soda" vs "pop" and you can pry "y'all" out of my cold dead hands. My wife and I had been living in Atlanta a couple years when I was speaking over the phone to a coworker in Syracuse, NY. Toward the end of the call she told me I had a lovely southern accent. Hung up the phone, called my wife, "Honey, it's time to move." :-)

Fun fact: I'm told that in Dallas, TX "y'all" is singular, the plural of which is "all y'all."

<comment><USER3> Of course you have an accent, everyone does. What you mean is you have an generic American "TV accent."

<comment><USER23> To be fair, it's very easy to forget that you have an accent.

I remember talking on a conference call many years ago with people from (I think) Intel and after I'd been speaking for a bit someone announced "Who is that on the call with the really thick Scottish accent - I can't understand a word he is saying".

My difficulties with Siri (and I tried _really_ hard to get it to recognise 'Hey Siri' and only got slightly angry) leads me to suspect that my accent may still be there.

<comment><USER3> Very true. Honestly, unless I really listen for it, I don't notice when someone has my own area's accent vs a "generic TV" accent. And they're pretty different! I do notice if it's _not_ mine, though. I'm from North Carolina, and the "Deep South" accent sounds as weird to me as it does to anyone else, although I'm sure someone else might think we sound similar.

It's the entire reason I can't get into House of Cards. Frank Underwood is supposed to be from my area of the country, and speaks with some kind of Charleston-ish non-rhotic accent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The ones I find fascinating are those of Chinese ancestry in the deep south, like so:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypj7J2y-bPQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypj7J2y-bPQ)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NMrqGHr5zE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NMrqGHr5zE)

</comment><comment><USER29> Super cool -- I don't think I've ever heard caught != cot or dawn != don.

This map seems to depict the west as much more homogenous than it actually is. Angelenos sound very different than Portlanders, for instance (moving south along the west coast seems to correlate with more modulation of pitch and more vocal fry).

<comment><USER30> Where do you live?

I grew up in Eastern CT and the only people I've met for whom "caught" == "cot" or "dawn" == "don" are from working class families in Boston.

<comment><USER24> It's different in eastern VA (where I get most of my accent from), but I have heard them equate out in more rural GA.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> 52-6F-62 My god. Of all places to include on there my hometown is on that map. See: south of Toronto and south of Guelph.

Number 683.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Dover,_Ontario](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Dover,_Ontario)

\--- Great share! Thank you!

<comment><USER31> See ya on the 13th

<comment> 52-6F-62 Maybe so. But I've been transplanted to Toronto the past number of years.

Off topic: if you haven't seen Letterkenny yet, please watch. It _is_ rural Southern Ontario. [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4647692/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4647692/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I'm surprised they lump most of English speaking Canada together. Vancouver, Calgary/Edmonton and Toronto (Torono) have, IMO, pretty distinct accents.

<comment><USER21> Not only that but there's a pretty clear continuity of dialect _over_ the US Canada border in many places. Drive into upstate NY from Ontario and there's a pretty clear cultural and linguistic continuity in many respects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> If you listen closely to older people in San Francisco, the accent situation is a lot more complex than I've heard anyone acknowledge.

\- There's what I've sometimes heard called the "Mission accent", which can easily be mistaken for New York or Boston if you're unfamiliar with it. Rs get soft or disappear and vowels get very east coasty. I heard the origin of this is from decades ago when the Mission was an Irish neighborhood.

\- There's an accent which to my DC area ears sounds kind of southern, almost like the Ozarks. Maybe that has similar roots to the one described here as pin=pen in the San Joaquin Valley, but I'm not too familiar with those parts.

\- Nancy Pelosi came from Baltimore and has the accent to boot (I heard a lot of people talking like her in my DC area childhood), but her speech patterns don't sound too far off compared to older San Franciscans. I presume that's a phenomenon from the "pocket of Midland accent" that I've seen on this and other maps.

I think most of this is probably dying out in younger people. (And of course most 20s-30s types you meet in SF are from somewhere else.)

<comment><USER34> Many of my in-laws are from the East Bay, so I have something of a window into these issues. The 'southern' accent of the Valley towns is from their Okie migrant ancestors. As many fled the Dust Bowl, they carried their accents into the San Joaquin Valley and the Salinas Valley too. I've spent a bit of time out there in construction (SJ and Salinas Valleys) and most of the time those guys have little discernible accent. However, if you get them _very_ angry or _very_ drunk, it's nearly a southern accent. I've no idea where they get it from, as I've had a fair few glasses of wine at the holidays and can't recall hearing the southern brogue, but they all seem to slip into it when they get rear-ended on 5.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I think accents themselves will become a relic of the past, given the prevalence of mass media and the internet. Millennials will probably be the last broad generation to have any hint of an accent.

<comment><USER36> Ever been to the UK? There are some accents that for many American English speakers wouldn't be intelligible. I doubt those will disappear within a generation.

There's a general tendency of accents merging or becoming more similar but new accents develop out of that as well. I think you underestimate the effect everyday speech has on people. Take the Dutch for instance. They're famous for almost universally speaking English very well. The main reason for this is that in the Netherlands foreign language films, TV series etc. come with subtitles instead of a dubbed version. Still many still have a recognisably Dutch accent.

Then there's another phenomenon that in language history so far has only happened to English: There are more non-native speakers than native speakers. So we might very well end up with something like a universal, worldwide English accent. It might just not sound like any of the native English accents at all.

<comment><USER37> > There are more non-native speakers than native speakers

That is a wonderful point that I've never thought of before.

You can really envision a lingua franca that is English but not American English or British English but Global English.

Second and third generation English speakers who live in a non-English speaking country as a majority of English speakers - will they be like how English is used in India or something completely different?

Fascinating.

<comment><USER38> Global English ("Globish") as a simplified subset of English already exists: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globish_(Nerriere)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globish_\(Nerriere\)) also in general: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_English](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_English)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Interesting map, it makes me want to make a poster out of it.

Since the map is (as far as I could see) a raster, does anyone have any recommendations on engines that can overlay information on maps (preferably open, ranging from svg + inkscape to a custom osm visualizer). I am just asking for curiosity's sake, nothing professional in mind here.

<comment><USER40> Probably QGIS if you are doing something data driven and want a big image as output (especially if the source data has geographic coordinates associated with it).

There are a few open map engines, I guess mapserver and mapnik are 2 of the more prominent ones, and now there are several implementations using OpenGL (aimed at tiled vector maps in browsers). But that is all more at the toolkit level rather than the application level.

For simple stuff, using leaflet to draw on top of OSM tiles is a nice solution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I was an english major and took an intro to linguistics class. On the first day the prof had us introduce ourselves and based on the accent he guessed where we were from down to a part of the state. I don't remember much of anything from that class but that was pretty cool.

</comment><comment><USER42> I call BS on the "don"/"dawn" isogloss on the SF peninsula. If it ever did exist, it certainly doesn't anymore. There are no cultural or social groupings along that isoglass that would justify how that line is shaped. Where your parents are from and your socioeconomic status to have way more influence on whether or not you have a "don"/"dawn" distinction than whether you are from San Mateo or San Carlos.

</comment><comment><USER43> There's a good radiolab episode about American dialects [http://www.radiolab.org/story/yall-youse- yinz/](http://www.radiolab.org/story/yall-youse-yinz/)

</comment><comment><USER44> This is more interesting and readable to me:

[http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/12/20/sunday- review/...](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/12/20/sunday- review/dialect-quiz-map.html?_r=1&)

also

[http://discovermagazine.com/galleries/2013/june/regional- us-...](http://discovermagazine.com/galleries/2013/june/regional-us-language- dialect)

</comment><comment><USER45> Would love to see an attempt at one of these for the British Isles.

<comment><USER23> That might be quite tricky - I suspect the regional variations aren't quite as strong as they used to be but where I grew up (a small fishing village in North East Scotland) it was possible to identify people from a farming rather than a fishing background due to them having a different accent even though they lived perhaps 1km away...

<comment><USER46> Agree with you there - drive an hour in the UK and the accent and slang could be completely different (e.g. Manchester to Liverpool), whereas in the US you could easily still be in the same state.

<comment><USER37> Jeez, Liverpool itself has several distinct accents, so does Manchester or at least Greater Manchester.

You can't drive 10 miles without new accents in populated areas more like!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Next up - an AI that can pinpoint the region where you were raised.

<comment><USER48> There was a quiz in the NYT a year or two ago that did an astounding job of this without any AI -- it suggested two places for my upbringing based on what words I used "pop" vs "soda", whether I pronounced "pin" and "pen" the same or not, etc -- and the two suggested places happened to be where I grew up and where my parents grew up (which probably influenced my speaking by copying them as well as my peers).

<comment><USER49> Well, that's a decision tree! An algo that arguably falls under ML :)

<comment><USER9> Seemed to me like it was some sort of bayes classifier. Either way, clearly classic ML.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> A bit misleading for the region sizes though, the map's projection doesn't preserve area very well... Canada is much more huge than in reality on it!

</comment><comment><USER51> There was a more general 2005 documentary with interviews by Robert MacNeil of the NewsHour called _Do You Speak American?_

[http://www.pbs.org/speak/](http://www.pbs.org/speak/)

Also, I have serious doubts about the "differences" in SF Bay Area upper and lower peninsula pronouncing "on." Source: 40 year resident.

</comment><comment><USER52> The level of detail on this is astonishing. Great job!

</comment><comment><USER53> If you're intonthis stuff, the Dictionary of Regional American English[0] is pretty great.

[0][https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_American_Regio...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_American_Regional_English)

</comment><comment><USER14> This doesn't strike me as "dialect" so much as "accent". There seems to be nothing lexical (nothing about the words you use) and only matters of pronunciation are covered.

But it's a great map, and I'd love to work on this type of thing somehow!

</comment><comment><USER54> First audio sample is of a woman in Alabama describing a tornado. I know HN hates humor but I couldn't help but laugh at the irony.

<comment><USER55> Why is it ironic? Alabama gets many tornadoes, so it makes sense that an audio clip describing a tornado is from a place that receives tornadoes. It's like saying it's ironic that someone from Buffalo NY is describing snow... they get it quite often.

It might be ironic if someone from Alabama was describing snow, though.</comment></comment>


Dear Twitter - <AUTHOR> http://helloform.com/blog/2011/03/dear-twitter/ <comment><USER2> I was reading through the Twitter dev mailing list, and found this poignant observation from a poster:

        The most telling change in the Terms of Service occurred in sentence
        #2 or paragraph #1 under section Rules of the Road.

        It used to read: "We want to empower our ecosystem partners to build
        valuable BUSINESSES around the information flowing through Twitter."

        It now (since March 11, 2011) reads: "We want to empower our ecosystem
        partners to build valuable TOOLS around the information flowing
        through Twitter."

\- [https://groups.google.com/d/msg/twitter-development- talk/yCz...](https://groups.google.com/d/msg/twitter-development- talk/yCzVnHqHIWo/RrUkLf2a-RcJ)

<comment><USER3> It's not so much poignant (or any such emotional response) as it is interesting. And it doesn't really strike me as interesting either. It just seems like a rewording to be more inclusive.

To me, "businesses" imply "people that make money", "tools" implies "people that make money, produce public services, etc".

<comment><USER4> 'Businesses' make money for the business owners, 'tools' make money for Twitter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> How anyone can be surprised by this is beyond me.

If your business is built _entirely_ on someone else's ecosystem there are two possible outcomes:

1\. You fail or have meager success;

2\. You're very successful at which point the ecosystem provider will probably judge what you do important enough to acquire you (or one of your competitors!) or compete with you and have the home advantage.

The fact that some convinced themselves that Twitter was "different" might want to refer to the Peanuts theme of Lucy and the football.

<comment><USER6> > If your business is built entirely on someone else's ecosystem there are two > possible outcomes:

> 1\. You fail or have meager success;

I don't know why people keep repeating this fallacy. There is no shortage of counter-examples, the most obvious being Zynga (hell, the homepage has a story about Angry Birds' massive success _right now_, which is another example).

<comment><USER5> > There is no shortage of counter-examples, the most obvious being Zynga

And if you don't think Zynga is at risk from a change of policy by Facebook you're kidding yourself.

It's a gamble. A _huge_ gamble. Zynga may in fact be large enough now to survive war with Facebook but they'd be savaged and greatly diminished by it (IMHO).

Look no further than the move to Facebook Credits [1] to see who really wields the power in this relationship. Facebook has exacted a 30% cut, forced on app developers (interestingly I haven't seen quite the same outrage at this as I have about iOS subscription changes).

[1]: <http://www.allfacebook.com/zynga-facebook-credit-2010-09>

<comment><USER6> Of course there's a risk, but that doesn't mean its a bad idea.

I would say a great deal of the companies in the world are somehow at the mercy of the fates, in a way similar to Zynga. A bus stop moves, and your convenience store no longer gets traffic for example. Lockheed Martin has one major customer - what would happen if the DoD arbitrarily changed the rules for them? Every tech company relies on Google and Twitter for marketing and traffic, what if they got caught it some algorithmic change and stopped getting search traffic?

And so what - there's risk everywhere, but there's opportunity too. At the risk of getting screwed, Zynga carved a $200m a year business. And now what? They get 30% less? A nice problem to have.

<comment><USER7> _And now what? They get 30% less? A nice problem to have._

No, it's not. Ever.

<comment><USER6> I think you misunderstand the meaning of "A nice problem to have". It's like when you have so many users that things start to fall over. Basically that millions of people want to have the same problem you have.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So twitter used developers to boost adoption (covering a UX deficiency) and market penetration, then when they got universally known (and powerful enough to build their own stuff now) they kicked devs in the ass?

Classy move, twitter.

<comment><USER2> More like when third-party apps get good enough, Twitter acquires one and boots the rest.

<comment><USER9> Ironic, the only official client developed by Twitter is the web, all the other clients were bought or contracted out.

<comment><USER10> Not surprisingly, the web version sucks.

<comment><USER11> How so? I've found it to be a very nice experience.

Additionally, it troubles me greatly that this uninformative and borderline trollish comment has so many upvotes.

<comment><USER12> Maybe it's just me but I find the browser experience to be completely non real-time centric.

So perhaps you have different standards than me, but I fail to see how it's better than something like TweetDeck.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The past year and half, Twitter has given me the distinct impression of being the dog that chased a car and actually got the car, now it does not know what to do with the car.

For a more reasonable analogy, Twitter is the equivalent of a telco. They are the plumbing and the dumb pipe of the 140 character web at the moment. That alone does not guarantee enough returns to justify the billion-plus dollar valuation. Sadly, they don't have any other choice than to stifle the same community that built the tooling which led them to be the success story they are today.

<comment><USER14> The telco analogy is gold. Hopefully twitter and telcos have the same dead future in store.

<comment><USER13> Thanks :)

I am a convert - from an eternal pessimist to a nouveau-optimist. But, even that does not spare me from being very pessimistic about the eventual fate of Twitter.

The company, apparently ([http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-api- announce/browse_t...](http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-api- announce/browse_thread/thread/c82cd59c7a87216a?hl=en_US)), grew 3x in terms of volume of messaging in the past 12-months, but it is very unlikely that their revenue has grown 3x.

If that assumption is right, they are on a limited timeframe where their burn rate will eclipse their average possible spends (funds brought in via investments + revenue).

In effect, they have a very short time frame to get this story right - irrespective of whether they piss off the developer ecosystem or not.

I don't like "dead future" stories, but I don't think this is going to wind up with a different fate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> For me, it's not only the fact they're just dismissing the community which got them to where they are today, but that the statement just felt _wrong_.

It's contradictory - they want UI/UX consistency, but are encouraging non- core-client diversity, and they're complaining about user confusion when they're bragging about holding 90% client share. Plus the timing could have been better. Releasing the statement yesterday when there was nothing time sensitive to it probably wasn't the best approach for them (seen to be burying bad news).

Building your entire business on someone else's ecosystem is always a risky strategy, but when a company who has reached critical mass pretty much _solely_ because of that ecosystem, to turn around and tell them they're no longer required is poor form.

</comment><comment><USER16> Twitter is really concerned about monetizing the 10% that don't use the official Twitter clients? That seems very corporate. I was happy when Twitter broke into the mainstream (Tweets from celebrities and/or Tweets quoted/shown on major news networks), and this latest development seems to show that they effectively want a scrolling CNN News type ticker (eventually) in their UI of promoted "trends" (how can it be a trend if it is promoted)?

Are they going to block anonymous API usage as well? I would be really annoyed as I don't like morassing through OAuth to get a Tweet.

e.g.

[http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.json?user_id...](http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.json?user_id=428333&count=1)

(428333=Cnn Breaking News)

<comment><USER17> I would speculate what they're really doing is making sure that 10% doesn't jump to, say, 90% after they start jamming their own client full of ads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> And just because it needs saying somewhere, and is also symptomatic of corporate ego problems:

Dear Twitter, if I follow a link to your one of your feeds, then hit the back button, I expect to be back where I started, not at some portal function for further twittiness.

</comment><comment><USER19> Is there some mechanism where by a startup, or any company for that matter, might provide some guarantee with their API that they will not change it? Some kind of legal contract that isn't so onerous that it must involve expensive lawyers for every single developer sign up? What amount of time for API support would be satisfactory?

Seems to me that Twitter sort of did this via a simple terms of use and that now they are making changes for new developers not existing ones. APIs are never going to last forever. I agree Twitter's new stance is bad for developers and users but the way they went about it seems reasonable to me. The why doesn't seem reasonable but it doesn't really matter. This isn't the great API apocalypse of 2011 though. I do not feel less discouraged to make use of APIs today than I did yesterday.

<comment><USER20> _Some kind of legal contract..._

Well, yes, it's called.. a contract. An API provider could put their obligations in writing, though they would probably have to charge at least a small fee to make the contract stand.

But providers are not going to do that unless developers make it worth their while, and vice-versa. The economics of open APIs just don't support that kind of commitment on either end.

If you want to build a business around someone's free API, you better have a quick exit planned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Their move motivates the discussion of the merits of the premise that developers really are a commodity, and what is important and fundamental is the ecosystem. Developing facebook apps is a nightmare of constantly having to hit a moving target, and constantly updating and maintaining old code. I've left and abandoned that area, but companies like zynga clearly have stayed and have even begun breaking out of that ecosystem. This is not just an online or social media phenomenon but also extends to brick and mortar stores, malls, mail order catalogs, etc.

I feel like there are three groups of people, the people that have always realized that it's twitter's prerogative to act in it's own economic best interest and never trusted the idea of building a business on that, the second group that knows that to be true, but thought 'oh twitter is an exception' and the third that simply heard twitter's initial press releases that 'we don't care about monetization' and we're different.

Premise: Everyone's going to target the ecosystem that has people on it, before it was search and look at all of the SEO spam, currently it's twitter and facebook, and the goal is to engage users via that customer acquisition platform, and eventually build your own community and continue the cycle.

</comment><comment><USER22> _In those days, and I hope my memory isn't failing me, the number of tweets from third party clients was dramatically higher than those "from the web"._

That hasn't been my experience (in seeing what people I follow use since Dec 2006) and I've seen a few surveys over the years which, to my memory, showed the Web client as being the most popular (even taking the majority, usually). One I just dug up: [http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/top_twitter_clients_def...](http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/top_twitter_clients_definitive_list.php)

It's not exactly the point, though, and it doesn't make Twitter's new stance any less ridiculous, but the Web client is certainly popular. I'm biased though, been using it since 2006 and 25,000 tweets..

</comment><comment><USER23> The implicit nature of an open client ecosystem fuels innovation. Has twitter, decided they will control innovation on the platform going forward? An Apple HIG-like policy should be seriously considered before this drastic cutoff.</comment>