Watch Me Make Mistakes - <AUTHOR> http://paulgraham.com/stypi.html <comment><USER2> Thank you for making your process public. In almost any endeavor where one compares his own process only to the observable outcome of another's process, he can believe erroneously that his (possibly superior) results are the fruit of inefficient labor and near incompetence. While I must edit repeatedly to produce reasonable prose, PG can just dash off a brilliant essay. Few know how may takes were required for a screen actor to nail a particularly difficult scene -- we just see the near-perfect result. Obviously, the same phenomenon occurs in software development. Look at how brilliantly Kevin Bourrillion (et. al., of course) designed the Guava API! [One of my favorite APIs from a design perspective] How many discussions over beverages with Josh Bloch were actually required, and to how many internal iterations at Google were we never privy?

It is only by adjusting our perceptions of the processes by which others produce quality work that we can feel good about our own abilities.

<comment><USER3> I spend a lot of time thinking about stuff like this. Specifically, the difference between creative endeavors (where you iterate on something before releasing it), and performance-based endeavors (where you try to nail a live run-through of what you've practiced).

In either situation, the amount of _work_ that went into things is hidden from the audience. We simply admire (or abhor) the final product or performance. But it's actually much different to be a creator than it is to be a performer. As a performer, there's no guarantee that the extent of your practice will shine through in the end: performance-under-pressure and amount-of-preparation are equally important variables (although the latter can be said to affect the former).

Creators are lucky by comparison. Their only real concern is iteration. You can generally assume that the more time you spend working on something, the better the finished product will be. So iteration is a function of (A) how much time you have before you release, and (B) how efficiently you spend that time. It can be hard to measure B without comparing yourself to others. But I'm often surprised at how much my writing/design/code/etc improves with even minimal increases to A.

<comment><USER4> You may enjoy Matthew Herbert's mistakes manifesto, designed to enhance those little moments you didn't expect.

<http://www.matthewherbert.com/manifesto/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> At first, I enjoyed watching this, it allowed me to see a glimpse of pg writing one of these famous essays.

However, after the initial 'wow' factor, I realized a slight flaw in this idea of learning by solely watching others (in replay). You see, without any context of changes or explanations for the mistakes that have been made and corrected, I as a viewer may as well just wait for the final product - as the learning is limited.

If this was with programming (a potential target use) for example, I may be none the wiser why the person writing the code suddenly deleted a chunk of code and replaced it with something else, unless of course some annotation / narration was provided to accompany the replay.

Don't take this as a negative point, the idea is great, but I think it could be far more useful with this added feature.

<comment><USER6> While I agree that annotations would be awesome, there's a lot of value to be found in what already exists.

Part of the appeal of pg's writing is how ... "tight" it is. The man just plain writes well. It was helpful to see a lot of the weaker bits of sentence structure flagged to be pruned later. I could see the same difficulty I experience in structuring my thoughts expressed through three or four iterations of a sentence being hurriedly typed and just as quickly deleted.

Again, annotations would be wonderful, but I'm not sure they're going to happen. Aside from the feature not even existing yet, that would mean the author would need to both want to and be able to go back through the revision history and describe what they were thinking at the time. I doubt most people would be able to do this well, and have strong doubts that anyone would want to do it regularly.

There's a lot to gain here already. Combining the frequency of edits with what actually is changing can give you a pretty good insight into the author's thought process.

<comment><USER5> I agree, this functionality is not required to make the product succeed. The product is already useful in itself.

I was merely referring to a use case of someone learning to program / think like a programmer by watching replays of real programmers doing their job. e.g. similar to pair programming / training with a mentor, but be distributional across the internet.

As far as 'training' / 'learning':

\- If the student looks at some finished code, they can understand how to do something for a specific use case once, but maybe not know how the original programmer got to that solution.

\- If the student watches someone write that code, they can understand how to write something similar again themselves and know roughly the process of thought that was used.

\- If however, the student can not only watch someone write that code, but also 'understand' why they wrote certain code in places or why they changed the code throughout the process, then they will not only learn how to write for this particular use case, but become a more competent programmer and be able to apply what they learnt to many situations, in context of what is required.

<comment><USER7> that's what screencasts are for - write code and annotate it with with a voiceover as you along. There is big enough niche between plain text code and screencasts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> FWIW[+], two-and-a-half suggestions for playback mode:

\- mark the current edit point more prominently,

\- automatically scroll to where the edits are taking place (obvious if you test this on a small screen),

\- if you implement the former suggestion, signal big jumps prominently in a way that helps viewers keep track of where they are in the overall document.

[+] I know this is an early proof-of-concept for playback mode, and my suggestions are probably obvious, but it can't hurt.

</comment><comment><USER9> For those looking for it, the final essay: <http://www.paulgraham.com/13sentences.html>

<comment><USER10> It is probably the massive cold I have, but does that mean this replay is from a "playback" file of the old etherpad interface since it is dated February 2009?

<comment><USER11> Yes! The Etherpads found an old copy of the underlying file and gave it to the Stypis, who converted it to their representation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> That's a pretty clean writing style: In the first 80% of the edit, pg's re- editing is mostly to find better ways of saying what he just wrote, but -at least compared to mine- pretty light in terms of correcting mechanical issues of text formation: most of his mechanical corrections are deleting the typo- ridden last word and rewriting it.

I note also that pg's rephrasing most often consists of deleting the end of the paragraph back to where he was last happy with it and rewriting (we can call this the clean-slate approach), rather than editing the section to transform just those parts of text that should change (the conservative approach I use). I think the conservative approach is faster, but it introduces more errors. I guess the overall cleanliness of pg's writing style is related to this. I wonder if I should try to change to a more clean-slate writing technique.

<comment><USER13> > I think the conservative approach is faster, but it introduces more errors

interesting. i use 'conservative' and sometimes get surprised how could i write and _send_ such non-corellated or repeated sentences so close to each other.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> <Minor Argh!> I went to bookmark Stypi, and it had commandeered CTRL-D...On the one hand, I get it. But it's still a webpage in _MY_ browser.

<comment><USER15> It's a browser bug. If you don't want a web page to capture a keystroke, tell your browser not to send web pages that keystroke.

<comment><USER14> Are you suggesting that the default behavior for Firefox 8.0 = bug?

<comment><USER16> It's an on-going discussion: <https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=380637>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This gave me a completely new look at pg. It really lets you get inside his head.

What I learned: pg is an extremely literal and logical person by nature but in hindsight will tone down his own literalism in favor of a simple, goal- directed, aesthetic.

</comment><comment><USER18> it would be interesting to use a colour gradient (say from yellow to red) to indicate how long something survived, before it got deleted. so you could see immediately the different kinds of mistake - transitory ones, or stuff that took you a while to realise.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'd love to see the pitch Stypi gave to get accepted into YC. It looks like a great product - but I'd be interested to know what market of users Stypi will be making happy that aren't already serviced by Google Docs, etherpad, Apache Wave etc.

<comment><USER20> It would be awesome if they could incorporate something like this into an IDE, specially Eclipse. I know I would use it.

<comment><USER19> How would you use it in an IDE? For pair programming?

Certainly can't imagine it would replace source control - it would be incredibly frustrating having other devs break your codebase all the time, you'd be debugging all their mistakes as well as yours, and as a team we'd be disincentives from making any big changes since it would halt anyone else's work while the change is being worked on.

There's a reason we create abstractions like commits and branches, and don't all just work from a share drive.

<comment><USER20> I would use it mainly as a historical archive. To "see" a program evolve. I think that is a very interesting use case, even if limited.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Nice features. In what does it make it a "company" rather than a cool side- project? (Don't take it the harsh way, I'm really interested in the answer :)

<comment><USER22> The fact that a lot of people like the feature and want to use it for starters. If they can sell enough ads to make the hosting worthwhile, they have a successful company I'd assume.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Interestingly (refreshingly?) pg's succinctness doesn't come naturally. Early iterations of sentences are riddled with filler words - "that", "immediately", "very" - which are culled. So the trick is to go back and specifically look for words which can be deleted.

It looks like pg tends to refine sentences before moving to the next one. Consider the "I'm not claiming that you only need..." line near the beginning, which went through a ton of revision before being nixed. And at the end of the essay, everything was revised again. This contrasts with how I sometimes wrote essays in school: grid out lots of paragraphs, meet my word length requirement, and then go back and revise. Kinda like a waterfall method.

This would be a neat feature for, say, HN comments. April Fool's day or something. It'd be fun to see the history of a given comment. Or the thought process behind it. It might even yield interesting metrics: maybe a heavily- edited comment would indicate a higher quality than one which was dashed off, regardless of length.

</comment><comment><USER24> Even though it would be extremely frustrating to read everything in this format I feel like I got twice as much value from it. With every sentence I watched him make the same point in 2-3 different ways. So if I didn't quite understand some concept he was trying to convey the first try, by the final edit I had formed a complete picture. Reading comprehension win!

<comment><USER25> Seconded. You get in the head of the author, because intent becomes clear from the different way an argument is phrased. Additionally, the jumps between edits show why one thing leads to another. I enjoyed watching this a lot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> What does the [xfs] placeholder stand for?

<comment><USER27> Same thing that xkcd stands for: nothing.

It's just a series of letters that is unlikely to exist in any normal word, so he can search for it easily later, and replace it with a number. Since you never know what order the footnotes end up being, he starts off with a key in a hash, rather than index in an array.

<comment><USER28> You'd think that this would be automated in modern editors... The only thing I've seen that bothers to do it is LaTeX.

<comment><USER29> Restructured text does this too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Now I want to see how pg wrote arc, from start to what it is today, all in stypi, of course.

Actually I think this is a better way to learn other people's code. Is there any plugin for emacs that can record your editing?

</comment><comment><USER31> For anyone who writes (and these days who doesn't?) I highly recommend the classic "Elements of Style" by William Strunk. If you only read one book about writing this should be it.

<http://www.bartleby.com/141/>

Btw, I think it's more efficent to first write a "braindump" and then start editing, rather than reiterating a sentence a time. You'll remove and rework a lot of what you write but it's easier to get in the flow and just "get things done" before you start rewriting it.

<comment><USER32> re: the braindump on the first draft - Ernest Hemingway said he'd "write drunk, edit sober".

Steven King wrote a rant on the same topic, about throwing away dictionaries and spell checkers while in the zone, otherwise you risk getting sucked into editing too early and derailing the creation process.

<comment><USER31> I've found that it works well even with programming. Braindump code to get things working as quickly as possibly, then refactor mercilessly. Stephen Kings "On Writing" is pretty good read in general and useful not only for fiction but other writing and the creative process as well.

<comment><USER32> A design equivalent for me would be to start with low fidelity mocks (quick paper sketches, gray boxy wireframes, whiteboarding) before going for higher fidelity and adding visual polish.

Like how this: <http://dribbble.com/shots/230767-Stats-Page-For-iOS-App>

Turns into this: [http://dribbble.com/shots/246763-Appstores-Analytics-Main- St...](http://dribbble.com/shots/246763-Appstores-Analytics-Main-Stats-Page)

Often when I find myself running into creative blocks, it's because I started working on the window dressing too early in the process and need to scale it back to rougher designs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> <http://www.stypi.com/fwj80bfo>

</comment><comment><USER34> Imagine if you could see the process of someone writing a HN comment, or see stats such as how long they took to write it or how many edits they made. I made a simple little visualization a while back when I was interested in this: <http://justindonato.com/static/demos/sprezzatura/>

(If its not ok to post self links, let me know and I'll delete)

<comment><USER35> Cool idea. Self links are basically fine as long as they are relevant and you identify them as such.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Stypi looks like a neat tool! Visiting the website it instantly presents a collaborative document with a link such as <http://www.stypi.com/7e4op8ww>

Don't know if I'll ever need the playback feature, and the name feels a bit awkward. Will be interesting to see where they want to take this as a startup.

<comment><USER37> It looks like they are using the public Etherpad code base. Interesting choice to revive a many-years dead company's code as your foundation.

Hopefully they started from a better point than the vanilla code dump: <https://github.com/mattsta/etherpad>

<comment><USER11> Actually I believe they started from scratch. They're pretty good hackers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Don't you dare to take away Cmd+L from me, Stypi. This one is sacred.

<comment><USER39> I didn't know about Cmd+L, thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Much of this playback reminded me of watching my metrical-verse generator run: a backtracking search editing just the end of the text (or the paragraph anyway), getting stuck for a while on a difficult rhyme before backtracking further, etc. Neat. (Of course this human wasn't limited to that one style of composition.)

</comment><comment><USER41> That's awesome to watch. If you start with an outline of statements you want to make, you spend less time picking through little clauses around the things you want to say. You have half an outline there to start with: your list of things to tell startups. There are other things it's clear you want to say: the quote from Paul Buchheit, mentioning this came from a conversation with a reporter, etc.

If you nested the list of things as one bit of the outline and then had the key phrase items of the intro as another, just don't worry about adjectives or adverbs or punctuation or flow or anything for the first pass, you may find you get faster overall, especially for longer pieces.

</comment><comment><USER42> Wow, watching this allowed me to get 3x more value than just reading the article because it allowed me to see PG's thought process more clearly. But it was also 5x more difficult and painful to read than just a regular article.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> It's really fascinating to see the thought process unfold like this. I wonder how much variance there is between writers? No doubt everyone has slightly different style and method, but this gives clear way to visualize it.

<comment><USER14> A relevant quote:

 _Tellers of stories with ink on paper, not that they matter anymore, have been either swoopers or bashers. Swoopers write a story quickly, higgledly- piggledy, crinkum-crankum, any which way. Then they go over it again painstakingly, fixing everything that is just plain awkful or doesn't work. Bashers go one sentence at a time, getting it exactly right before they go on to the next one. When they're done they're done._

 _I am a basher. Most men are bashers, and most women are swoopers...._

 _Writers who are swoopers, it seems to me, find it wonderful that people are funny or tragic or whatever, worth reporting, without wondering why or how people are alive in the first place._

 _Bashers, while ostensibly making sentence after sentence as efficient as possible, may actually be breaking down seeming doors and fences, cutting their ways through seeming barbed-wire entanglements, under fire and in an atmosphere of mustard gas, in search of answers to these eternal questions: "What in heck should we be doing? What in heck is really going on?"_

\-- Kurt Vonnegut. Timequake p.137-138 (1997)

<comment><USER43> "awkful" -- nice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I'd love to have this 'during playback, show me things that survived the editing process' feature to be able to better reflect on my own writing. The feature may convince me to switch from to Stypi from Google Docs.

</comment><comment><USER45> I think it just shows you that everything you ever do is built piece by piece and that never be afraid of changing or swapping any of the pieces. Your only goal is to put the pieces together better.

</comment><comment><USER46> monetization idea -> sell as a background service on say HR application forms (or any text area on a form) so that they can watch back exactly how somebody filled in their application.

<comment><USER47> That would be worth gold the right buyers, assuming legal cleared it. Is there an ethical issue, do you think, with not informing the fillee of that? No current opinion either way.

<comment><USER48> and thus began a new cat and mouse game between the watchers and the paranoid, with browser plugins for blocking the tracking, followed by sneakier tracking, until eventually the trackers are installing rootkits and everyone starts running their browser in 3 layers of virtual machines.

<comment><USER46> The right way to do it is to make it pretty obvious. Kind of like text-area enhancement with a slider and status bar at the bottom at the bottom with the words 'Auto Save: On', that the user can toggle.

The truly paranoid will write stuff in a text editor and paste it in, the less paranoid will turn it off. But I have a feeling most people will leave it on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> What was interesting to me was not the subtraction of mistakes but the addition of tone. You wouldn't mistake PG's writing style for John Gruber's, for example.

PG's essays have always struck me as similar to Ernest Hemingway's, who had a terse minimalist style of writing that dispensed with flowery adjectives. So it was heartening to see that PG's initial writing style was more conversational and seemed like something I might read on a typical blog post, before getting tighter and more formal by the final version.

</comment><comment><USER49> pg,

The last time you did this was using etherpad. It was interesting to see your write up( <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=557191>). It was a learning experience for an amateur like me. I haven't spoken to you, but It felt like I did just that -whilst you were writing.

So, would there be a way to save this write up? Etherpad is dead and so is the link you shared earlier. Is there an archive to dig into to see that version again for comparison?

<comment><USER50> Not dead: Etherpad is easy to install and run for yourself, family, and friends (I did this about a year ago): <http://etherpad.org/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Awesome. Just awesome.

I think writers would find it as an indispensable tool to find out where they make mistakes. It can function as a kind of a feedback loop which helps you refine your skill.

</comment><comment><USER52> Wow it crashes safari on my iPad. Does it happen to anyone else?

<comment><USER53> Yes, for me too. Every time.

Edit: Works in UIWebView though - might be a bug in the nitro JS engine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> It would be awesome if the system gave a rating (read:score) based on how many revisions someone puts into a document, so people have an idea of how hard they worked on it.

</comment><comment><USER55> I like that that the font actually adjusts appropriately when using zoom- in/zoom-out, but it would be nice if the width of the playback div would also narrow to stay within the browser's width zooming in.

I would also appreciate if you used a heavier font weight, or permitted changing the font easily. It's a bit thin-looking and not easily taken in, at least for my eyes.

This could also have applications in tutoring and teaching writing.

</comment><comment><USER56> The Stypi link crashes my Safari, iOS 5 on iPhone 4.

<comment><USER57> Crashes on my iPad 2 too

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> > I asked the founders to make something special for me: a version of playback > that shows text that will ultimately be deleted in yellow.

Now a killer feature would be highlighting text that will be deleted _immediately_ , not just in retrospect. =)

I guess, some super-smart NLP algorithm could be developed to make that possible—once enough data on what gets eventually deleted is collected.

<comment><USER59> I agree this feature would make for an even more enlightening experience. Color/shade the highlighting as a function of its total lifetime on the screen. Words that are typed and deleted immediately after are the darkest yellow, words that live longer (like until the 2nd editing pass) are a lighter yellow, words that survive to the final remain white.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> The potential academic implementations (like in a classroom setting) are promising. Groups of students can collaborate on any projects they want, or even with the teacher present. Commercial implementations could be launched by Stypi to accompany popular academic suites like Blackboard for online assignments.

</comment><comment><USER22> It might be interesting to have different levels of abstraction, especially for code. Many times, I'm more interested in looking at how the overall design/interfaces of a module change rather than the code inside a method. I might think of analogies to text in terms of organizing thoughts as sections.

</comment><comment><USER50> Just great - reading these comments got me to go install etherpad again, I noticed etherpad-lite, paused to install it as a private service on one of my servers, now looking at the client JQuery API for embedding in other web apps. Yes, reading HN can be a time sink!

</comment><comment><USER61> This is extremely cool.

Only one thing I would suggest really - width of linked Stypi page should have some reasonable maximum width, something close to 80 chars. Otherwise, it is really hard to see where all changes are made when browser is maximized.

</comment><comment><USER62> "it's better to make a few people really happy than make a lot of people kind of happy"

that's a gem.

<comment><USER11> Paul Buchheit's gem really.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> I remember the days of using "talk" (ntalk, usually) on local unix systems for character by character online chat, vs. linemode IM like current IM systems and IRC.

Watching someone think character by character is far more illustrative.

</comment><comment><USER64> Would be nice to see where the cursor is. I completely lost track of some edits as 1\. the cursor was not shown 2\. it did not scroll correctly 3\. speed... i am pretty sure you do not type this fast:)

</comment><comment><USER65> I tried to register an account and when I saw the registration box with no openId/oauth login, I stopped and left. They should seriously support login with at least google, twitter, and facebook

</comment><comment><USER66> Watching this gives me much more confidence in my writing abilities. I thought I was the only one who proofreads and changes things again and again until they are perfect :)

</comment><comment><USER67> This is really cool. No Common Lisp love though in the syntax highlighting! /sadface

edit: amusingly, I had to go edit the comment. I find that very reflective of the original article.

</comment><comment><USER68> After watching this, the thing that surprises me the most is the lack of spelling mistakes.

I guess growing up with computers and not being able to spell are not synonymous.

<comment><USER69> Doing a BA in philosophy (read: essays) in an age when checking your spelling meant breaking out the dictionary likely broke him of most of his poor spelling habits. I find my spelling has gotten immeasurably worse since the advent of typing the word I'm trying to spell in the omnibox and seeing if any of the results are bolded.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> This is neat, although reading it in pg's voice in real time is kind of weird. Especially since the sentence structure and tropes are so distinctive.

</comment><comment><USER71> "Writing is very easy. All you do is sit in front of a type-writer keyboard until little drops of blood appear on your forehead"

Walter W "Red" Smith

</comment><comment><USER72> Is this feature available for anyone besides pg?

</comment><comment><USER73> Fascinating. I'd love to see it generate a "brain signature" to identify people with similar writing/creation/deletion styles.

</comment><comment><USER74> Fascinating. Makes me think of the original meaning of the word 'essay' - 'to attempt.'

</comment><comment><USER75> I am trying to think of applications of such a product? Can anybody help me here?

</comment><comment><USER76> "....It's interesting how often the last sentence of a paragraph can simply be deleted."

well done

</comment><comment><USER77> I like the last sentence... It has a very lispy feel to it.

        > And there are awkward or unnecessary words and sentences, most of which I catch in successive passes near the end. It's interesting how often the last sentence of a paragraph can simply be deleted.

</comment><comment><USER78> Stick-slip. Interesting how similar writing process is to video editing.

</comment><comment><USER79> Crashes MobileSafari (iOS5, iPad2) every time.

<comment><USER80> Yes, for me too

</comment></comment><comment><USER81> Writing is work, most often a lot of work.

</comment><comment><USER82> Crashes on Safari on my iPad with iOS5

</comment><comment><USER83> Ooh, watching that caused me too much fremdschämen. Neat concept, though.

<comment><USER69> Thanks for introducing me to a great new word.

</comment></comment><comment><USER84> Thank you for showing us that clarity and brilliance isn't always as easy as the final product makes it appear.

</comment><comment><USER85> Make an option to add sound (select an mp3 or microphone) and you have the most amazing learning tool for programing; it would be like a videotutorial where you can directly copy the code!

edit: redaction

</comment><comment><USER86> This is wonderful -- it should be left running on a large (but cheap) monitor in every small company's breakroom.</comment>


Humour is an act of aggression - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/6078247/Humour-is-an-act-of-aggression.html <comment><USER4> The study seems to say that whether a person uses humor (and what kind) depends on their place in the social hierarchy. But that is a far cry from saying that the purpose of humor is to _define_ the hierarchy.

Similarly, the type of food people eat reflects their social standing, but the purpose of food clearly isn't to define the social hierarchy.

<comment><USER5> >but the purpose of food clearly isn't to define the social hierarchy.

Actually food is used to define social hierarchy in many groups and societies - mainly the order in which it is eaten. The head of the family eats first and gets the largest piece of the chicken.

<comment><USER6> > Actually food is used to define social hierarchy in many groups and > societies - mainly the order in which it is eaten. The head of the family > eats first and gets the largest piece of the chicken.

So you're saying that the hierarchy would not exist except for the food? The OP's post said that humor, like food, _reflects_ an existing hierarchy, and, as far as I can see, this dinner table hierarchy would exist regardless of the food.

<comment><USER5> The hierarchy would exist - yes. But the order in which food is eaten _reinforces_ the hierarchy - no?

<comment><USER7> No.

The order in which the food is eaten is simply a reflection of the hierarchy. One eats first because one is the king. One does not become the king by eating first.

<comment><USER8> You can certainly signal your intent to assume the position by eating ahead of your position. And if you do get away with it, chances are you will be the next king.

Same with humor. Review the material on the use of pornography and humor in the French Revolution.

[edit grammar]

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A British programmer, a French engineer, and a German "pragmatic scientist" are in a bar. The programmer and the engineer are arguing about whose country will be next to put a man on the moon. After a while, they asked the German "pragmatic scientist" why his country wasn't in the race. "We're going to the sun," he said. "The sun?" they asked incredulously, "You'll burn up before you even get close!" "Oh, no," he replied, "We're going at night."

 _That's_ the purpose of humor. When something is so absurd that there's no other way to deal with it, we turn it into the joke that it really is. OP provides perfect fodder.

<comment><USER10> That's a great joke - in fact I've never heard it before. But, at the risk of being a spoilsport, the OP is not completely absurd, and neither is the original version of this joke. Googling, I found two common versions of this joke. The first two in the bar are invariably an American and a Russian (countries with a prestigious history of space exploration). The third person is either:

      1) a blonde
      2) an Irishman

Now it's no longer just absurd, it's making joke at others' expense. Blondes (in the US) and the Irish (in the UK) are _stereotypically_ dumb. (Maybe there's a French version involving a Belgian?) It's still funny for sure, but there's more to it than harmless absurdity.

edit: I found the French version: <http://www.blague.info/blagues/humour/drole-2228.html>

<comment><USER9> _OP is not completely absurd_

When something stupid gets posted to hn, some of the instant responses typically include:

      - <USER2>
      - not hacker news
      - a sample size of one means nothing
      - ameteur ramblings
      - belongs on digg or reddit
      - correlation != causation
      - citings?
      - anecdotal, not scientific
      - <USER3>
      - flagged (not only do they flag, they comment that they have flagged)

I've been reading hn for years, and OP is the most absurb thing I've ever read here. All of the above apply. But since it was about humor, I just turned it into the joke that it already is.

<comment><USER11> I think you're wrong on this one. I think the OP is on target and your joke is an example of its validity. I also think your posting of typical responses is you establishing your position in the HN hierarchy. Since you can list all of those typical responses, obviously you have been here longer and since you've been here longer, you're the man dogg.

You also belittle the OP calling it stupid. It's not stupid. It's the result of perhaps many years of research by people who are patient and observant.

The article echoes the feeling many, including myself, have had when making a joke in front of a superior and gotten that stern look of someone who feels their power being subverted. "I want people to feel my wrath and you are cracking jokes..." It's a subtle show of disrespect of the social order.

It's also poignant because we've probably all been in situations where we were _compelled_ to laugh at a joke that wasn't funny to show our allegiance to the joke teller. This happens a lot when someone is making a joke at another's expense. If everyone laughs, then all is okay, the leader is still in charge. But if someone doesn't laugh, then everyone knows who is really on the side of right. Laughing at bad jokes shows loyalty and disregard for honesty at the gain of social credibility.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Humor at the expense of others CAN be an act of aggression.

Good natured jokes made by a manager to make his or her employees feel at ease is a demonstration of people skills. People use humor in stressful situations not necessarily because they want to be in charge, but to actually lighten the tension. How is that aggression?

There are so many obvious situations of humor being anything BUT aggression. This is a completely ridiculous statement stating the exception to the norm as the general rule.

"Cars are used to kill people" "Food is poison" "Headlines are linkbait"

<comment><USER13> Agreed, from what I've witnessed, humour is usually used in a form of empathising with peers or a form of group-initiation (new people tend to get poked fun of to see if they're good natured vis a vis a good fit in the group). I tell the joke about how I set a boiling pan of water alight (it's true, and I'm not sure how) because I'm a far better cook than most of my friends; I use the joke to actually reduce any social imbalance because I make it at my own expense. I could easily make a joke at my friend's expense, but then we likely wouldn't be friends for very long.

There is a very big difference between being fun and making fun. The OP IMO is way off, perhaps this is the social norm in Germany, but in Anglo-culture most jokes are self-deprecating. It's rare that aggressive (belittling or demeaning) jokes are made and go over well, people in senior positions using this type of humour are at risk, in fact it's one of the main reasons employers get sued because it frequently creates a hostile work environment. If you think your joke is so funny that you want to get sued over it, well I believe it's still a self-depreciating joke, because either way the joke ended up on you, but it depreciated your bank account too.

The few exceptions when aggressive jokes are allowed and found funny is usually between close friends or family and it's usually classed as a roasting joke where the entire point is that they're respected _more_ for showing their good nature.

Comedy on TV is very different from comedy in real life. The reason why most doctors don't crack jokes is because they're insured to work, if they start insulting their subordinates with aggressive jokes, their insurance goes up and the same is with almost any antisocial behaviour, because the insurance company is thinking "How long until this idiot calls an obese patient a tub of lard and we have to fork out a hundred-thousand dollars to shut the patient up".

<comment><USER14> The only place I can realistically see ill-natured joking being accepted is in a school. The social hierarchy in schools is often based on it, in fact.

But in the real world, I agree with you. (What does that say about our education system? Sigh.) (Actually, it probably says more about slowing rates of maturity and development in the general population. I still blame the education system, though. =P)

<comment><USER13> I agree there's probably a lot of blame to bare on the education system. Packing 700+ students into a school with barely 30 adults (including janitors) isn't a realistic representation of society. There's barely 1 child per adult in the western world, but our education system gives 30 or more children to a single adult that hasn't even had a child of their own.

How can you expect to raise 30 kids when you haven't even raised 1. It's ludicrous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> For the love of god, does everything now-a-days have to be about how someone is oppressing someone else, blah, blah, blah.

Being politically correct is like trying to pick up the clean end of a turd.

<comment><USER14> I don't see the social hierarchy as a form of oppression. And I don't see how this says anything about political correctness, either.

I'm not at the top of the ladder. I'm not particularly funny, and I'm not particularly cool. But social domination, on the part of anyone, doesn't really feel like oppression, to me.

Can you explain your POV a little more?

<comment><USER15> While they didn't outright mention oppression or political correctness, those terms often go hand in hand with a term like "aggression".

The author also mentions: "But both sexes use comedy as a means of controlling others".

The authors also imply that men do it to be mean because they make jokes about others, but women are wholly innocent because they only make jokes about themselves.

"Aggression" and "Controlling Others" have negative connotations and to equate them with humor in general is unfortunate. The authors of this study need to lighten up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've evolved a self deprecating style of humor, mostly because I like to make people laugh without unintentionally stepping on anyone's toes.

Does that make me a dissociative schizophrenic in a power struggle with myself? (actually, after typing that out, that kinda describes who I am to some extent. "whoa." -keanu)

</comment><comment><USER17> I've always thought of humor as a way of gaining trust. A joke that succeeds proves that you share a common understanding about some aspect of life. This is why explaining a joke never works (if you have to explain it, it proves you _didn't_ understand each other), and why it's much easier to get a friend to laugh than a stranger; if someone already knows and trusts you, any little thing will remind them of that trust. It's also why insider jokes are only funny to insiders; they are a way of proving shared knowledge and cannot work without it.

It sounds like these researchers showed a special case of this: if you want be the leader in a situation then you need to be able to get people to trust you, so naturally would-be leaders will tell jokes in an attempt to create and reinforce trust. Also, if you're not a leader and you tell a joke then it could be considered a challenge by an insecure leader, so this will be avoided by people who don't want to rock the boat. But to say that jokes are _only_ about aggression is too much. If everyone in the group is comfortable telling jokes then that's a sign that there's a lot of mutual trust.

</comment><comment><USER18> "The research, which was published in the Journal of Pragmatics, suggest that the role of humour is not to make other people laugh as much as it is to make others know who is in charge."

Please, really. So, everytime somebody asks for a joke we are now to interpret this person as being subordinate ?

Humour has since time immemorial been a way for people to relieve tension and to deal with the hardships in life.

To reduce it to 'an act of aggression' suggests the author should take some of their own medicine and laugh a little more at life and take themselves less serious.

The study, which has apparently been conducted in Germany by an 'expert in genderlinguistics' (is there such a thing) according to this page:

[http://www.gender-in-gestufte- studiengaenge.de/expertin_beis...](http://www.gender-in-gestufte- studiengaenge.de/expertin_beispiel.php?print=1&lg=de&expertin=102&gruppe=alle&fach=73)

makes me feel sad for my neighbours to the east. Too many jokes have already been made about the Germans not having a sense of humour (in spite of an enormous body of 'witzen' and the general German traditions), no need to fuel the fires.

<comment><USER19> I did laugh myself when I saw it was a German study.

That said, Germans have a fantastic sense of humor - it's just a bit different than the English-speaking Western humor. It's more dry and more casually draws attention to something that's a bit funny anyways - so you get your attention drawn to it... not sure why for a second... then people start laughing.

The timing/pacing is a bit different too - for me, it seems like the German pacing is frequently either - "ok, I'm telling a joke" (like a traditional standup comedian's pacing). Or it's dropping a joke into the middle of a seemingly serious conversdation without switching tone to convey storytelling - so it kind of sneaks up on you sometimes.

From my limited time in Germany, it seemed to me like there's less sarcasm and irony in German humor, and more highlighting nonsensical or tense situations. I didn't really "get" it at first, but once I did I had a right good time. Very nice and friendly people too, once you acclimate to the cultural differences.

<comment><USER18> At the risk of coming across as agressive:

q: How often does an Englishman laugh at a joke ?

a: Once, he laughs out of politeness, he'll never get it

q: How often does a German laugh at a joke ?

a: Twice. Once when you tell the joke, out of politeness, the second time when he thinks he gets it, but he'll never get it.

q: How often does a Jewish guy laugh at a joke ?

a: Not at all, he already knows the joke ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> From the fact that I laughed out loud at this headline, I conclude that nreece has aggressed against me! I demand restitution!

Or, er, not. :)

</comment><comment><USER21> Seems like very subjective results.

In my experience being a demanding prick is an often successful technique in defining social peking order.

Oddly though, it does seem common for someone with a cutup personality to butt heads with a demanding prick.

Full disclosure: I tell a lot of jokes :( I think the jokes have more to do with not being able to take much seriously though than it is me trying to exert some type of social dominance. If I'm trying to exert anything its something along the line of: "hey lighten up."

</comment><comment><USER22> Some days science just takes the fun out of things.

</comment><comment><USER23> According to this the class clown is at the top of the social hierarchy.

I think humor is a bit more complex then that.

<comment><USER24> A class clown _was_ at the top of the social hierarchy, at least until recently when Americans tired of the joke.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This article didn't make that much sense to me until I read this paragraph at the end:

 _"Nurses and midwives tend to tell jokes about patients but not when the doctor is present. And when someone initiates a joke they tend to be ignored if they are in the presence of someone of a higher status."_

I've seen this played out countless times from both perspectives (not literally in a doctor's office), and it always smacks of a power struggle.

<comment><USER26> This kinda makes sense. Subordinates will often try to inject humour in order to break a the tension in a serious situation. Superiors can't allow their subordinates to control the tone of the conversation like that, though, so they'll ignore it.

The article ignores, however, the fact that an awful lot (the vast majority?) of joking takes place between social equals. Now I come to think of it, jokes between social equals are the only ones which are actually particularly _funny_ \-- jokes told across different social levels tend to elicit a good- natured chuckle, not uncontrollable guffawing.

<comment><USER27> except perhaps in the case of stand up comedy: which for me usually elicits the loudest laughter.

<comment><USER10> There's nothing more tense than a showdown between a stand-up comedian and their heckler. It's like a being in the saloon in one of those Western movies when a some tike speaks out of turn to the local gunslinger.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> What a load of Malarky.

Is the cup half full here or half empty ? It's both for me too, but it's often not aggression.

I think it's pretty normal for a boss to tell a joke as an effort to show calm and relax his/her employees. It's a good leadership attribute. I've seen women bosses do this - often. Most are not trying to assert control, but rather to fullfill the role most employees deserve - a boss whom shows strong leadership yet is approachable/approving/inspires/empowers.

I myself am cautious joking around when the bosses are present - not because of a lack of desiring control, but rather as a sign of respect to others and to myself. I want people to know I take my job seriously and rarely does joking around all the time accomplish this.

Interestingly enough, when I lose respect for the "bosses" I tend to joke with them more, but again not for control or aggression - rather to lighten the weight/mood under the circumstances - the respect for the person is not lost even though respect for the persons role has been.

So is joking or a lack of joking a form of showing aggression/submission or is it showing respect and caring ? I drink the half full glass thank you.

I've been reading these kinds of studies for over a decade and the more your read, the more you live the less you believe BS articles like this.

If your interested in the motive. Money, Name Publishing etc etc. Read John Robins "Diet for a New America", it's interesting how all the facts in life are sold to corporations for a reason.

T.

</comment><comment><USER29> Humour is a fine Old French vocable, and so is its original meaning.

You can pervert anything, and humour (together with real love) is one of the most often perverted (but originally _really_ beautiful) things...

:(

Try to create real humour to tell your own children; it's not that hard -- and it will be _real_ humour.

:)

</comment><comment><USER30> Knock Knock

Go fuck yourself.

<comment><USER31> This is actually a relevant if not explicit point from __Catch Me If You Can __.</comment></comment>


Why I quit playing Foursquare - <AUTHOR> http://www.creative360.com/blog/2009/09/why-i-quit-playing-foursquare/

<comment><USER2> I thought this was about the schoolyard game foursquare.

I am ashamed to admit this, but I played that all the way through 8th grade.

...

Now that I know what Foursquare is, I have to say, foursquare seems preferable.

<comment><USER3> Don't be ashamed. It's an awesome game.

Who knows, maybe there will be adult intramural leagues some day, like there are with kickball and dodgeball.

<comment><USER4> Not only is it an awesome game, it can be a true art. I have seen four-square players who turned the game into a noncompetetive sport, similar to hackeysack, which allowed them to pull tricks you'd never imagine.

Ever seen someone do a flip after deflecting a four-square ball, land in a push up position, and then deflect it again with their head? I'm telling you, these guys were amazing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here's the reply that I tried posting but didn't see show up. It may have gone into moderation for approval.

\--

Bravo. I went through this, too, when I got a surprise message from Foursquare saying, "You've been unseated as the mayor of such-and-such!" Really, who cares? I haven't checked in at all since I realized that Foursquare makes it into a competition.

Don't even get me started on Parallel Kingdom. I nearly lost a friend to that game.

What I liked about Dodgeball was that it gave me a kind of third eye when going to a venue I hadn't been to before. I was able to go to the Dodgeball website with my phone, see the photos of people who had checked in at that particular venue and approach them since they seemed to know more about the venue than I did and they practically invited these kinds of interactions by being users of Dogdeball.

That was in 2000, I think, and I used it until Google bought the site. They were kind enough to give everyone 2 weeks to delete their accounts before transferring everything to Google's servers. I still have privacy concerns with these kinds of sites, but now I have no problem broadcasting my location if I'm at a public event that's been announced somewhere else already.

Would you continue using Foursquare if it didn't have competitive and teritorial gameplay?

</comment><comment><USER6> Can anyone explain what exactly Foursquare is? From what I can gather it is some sort of social-networking mixed with Geocaching, but I seem to be missing something about it.

<comment><USER7> Basically: You go to a spot (eg, restaurant, bar, bookstore) and check in there. It broadcasts your location to your friends. The difference here is that the vast, vast, vast majority of this is all done on the iPhone and your friends get a push notification when you check in.

For me, Foursquare is a way to invite others - it's great to see friends checking in somewhere, ping them and join up with them (or vice-versa). Good nights out. The problems with it (personally) arise when people check in.. everywhere. I don't care if you're at work or at home - checking in carries with it an implicit invitation.

It definitely works best in large urban areas with lots of activities (I use it in Portland, OR).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I feel the urge to correct an underlying misapprehension running through this post. Being competitive is not anti-social. It may not be for you. It may not be for me. But competitive behavior is a staple of human (and other animal) social behavior. Mafiosos bust balls. Jocks kid and taunt each other. Michael Jordan was both extremely competitive and extremely friendly and social. Competitiveness and social-ness aren't antagonists for all people, just some of us.

</comment><comment><USER9> I was a very early user and the initial draw for me was gathering badges as quickly as I could. I gathered them all so badges stopped driving me toward checking in. Then there was mayorship. But, most importantly, it was seeing when/where my friends were checking in. And as long as my friends keep checking in and I keep checking in, why would I quit "playing" Foursquare? The playing bit, in my opinion, is simply the hook.

And let's not forget tips.

</comment><comment><USER10> The coupons / deals for mayors offer a more practical reason to use Foursquare. Judging from Foursquare's funding announcement, more resources will be given to that aspect now.

As an entrepreneur, I see this aspect as very Tom Sawyeresque - I love the idea of getting third parties to pay your users to use your service.

</comment><comment><USER11> This basically explains why I am apathetic about foursquare.

I used to do a lot of stuff with the Fire-eagle team (who still have a really solid geo platform). However the real barrier to this stuff being really useful is the frequency and granularity of updates.

The thing that geo-location brings, the thing that we really want is serendipity. It massively increases the chance of meeting a friend while out because your devices know you are a block (or a foot) away even if you don't. This means that our ability to encounter serendipity is exponentially increased because it's no longer limited by our senses or memories. Dodgeball would introduce friends of friends, for example.

The problem remains, until geo-location is automatic and effortless the cost and frequency of updates belies the effort.

</comment><comment><USER12> Ok. Normally, the articles on HN with similar titles about quitting this or that are an exposition having to do with some technical or moral appraisal of the service; this is just a complaint that he no longer finds himself needing or wanting what the service provides. And that's perfectly fine.</comment>


Show HN: Appelpy – library for easier regression modelling in Python - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mfarragher/appelpy <comment><AUTHOR> Hi there, I'm a data scientist and economist who uses the main Python stats libraries regularly. I was frustrated by how long it takes to fit basic regression models and diagnose models, so I began working on a package called Appelpy (Applied Econometrics Library for Python).

The aim: Make regression modelling as easy as pie.

Now that I've tightened up my code coverage and fleshed out some documentation – ReadTheDocs and notebook tutorials that can be viewed with Binder & Nbviewer – I'm sharing the library more widely!

The library is built upon Statsmodels but I've tried to make a more cohesive interface for regression modelling, with model diagnostics in mind especially. Model diagnostics are the time-consuming and repetitive part of regression modelling in Python, but through Appelpy diagnostics can be done with minimal code.

This is the first project I've released on PyPI and I was working on it to hone my software engineering skills, so I'm interested in tips and feedback.

\- Mark

<comment><USER2> Thanks. The lack of something like this has been keeping me drawn to R for pure statistics work. I'll definitely give this a try.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I know you reference your introductory notebook throughout your docs but I think it would be helpful to include some of the plots inline in your docs.

Seeing that this lib is built on top of statsmodels my first response was that I'll just keep using statsmodels. However the simplicity of the diagnostic plots actually seems really nice value add. Showcasing those plots right in your docs might make it more attractive to people checking out your project for the first time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, that's a good point on the plots. I'll try to make them more prominent in future docs.

These are some things I've included in the library which aren't implemented in Statsmodels:

\- Breusch-Pagan studentized test of heteroskedasticity (available in R)

\- Standardized / beta coefficients (still an open feature request in [https://github.com/statsmodels/statsmodels/issues/3857](https://github.com/statsmodels/statsmodels/issues/3857) )

\- Leverage vs residuals squared plot (there's an influence plot but not something similar to Stata's lvr2plot)

Even the most common metric I use for assessing models – root MSE – isn't stored in the Statsmodels object summary. To assess an OLS model in Statsmodels I'd find I do so much repetitive code, yet in Stata the commands are fairly succinct.

Other things I also added to make encoding of variables easier:

\- InteractionEncoder

\- DummyEncoder (to cover different ways of treating missing values)

The more I thought about these missing features, the more I thought they can be wrapped up in a more coherent way. :-)</comment></comment>


Alfred and OS X 10.10 Yosemite - <AUTHOR> http://blog.alfredapp.com/2014/06/02/alfred-and-os-x-10-10-yosemite/ <comment><USER2> I didn't get the point of Alfred until I tried it out. Now it feels weird to work on a machine that _doesn't_ have it installed. The workflows and the ability to (easily) add your own are what make it so great. I use this workflow dozens of times every day: [https://github.com/2shortplanks/alfred- metacpan](https://github.com/2shortplanks/alfred-metacpan)

<comment><USER3> I've had it installed for a while but never got beyond using it as an application launcher. Do you have any tutorials you'd recommend for getting into the advanced uses?

<comment><USER2> I didn't do too much research to get started, but I did find this page to be a good starting point: [https://github.com/willfarrell/alfred- workflows](https://github.com/willfarrell/alfred-workflows)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Impressive timing for a response. Wonder if they had a little birdy that tipped them off beforehand?

<comment><USER5> Probably just quick typists. Alfred (of which I'm a user) was the first thing that came to my mind when I saw a screenshot of the new Spotlight.

<comment><USER6> From what I can see, it looks like Spotlight is becoming smarter and closer to alfred than ever. It dosen't look like the dumb file finder they seem to present it to be.

<comment><USER7> Only in some ways. I doubt it will be as customisable nor the developers as responsive to feedback.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Great timely response, but unfortunately for Alfred, features in Yosemite are the only ones that I've ever used on Alfred in the first place. I suspect that for everyone with my use case, that's going to be the same. It's been about an hour, I killed Alfred and installed Yosemite. Works well, and I haven't noticed it lacking.

</comment><comment><USER9> If you're new to alfred and are looking for some suggestions on workflows for developers I put together a pretty in-depth blog post on it (and my other developer tools) over on my blog here.

[http://www.webhook.com/blog/making-the-most-of-your- mac/](http://www.webhook.com/blog/making-the-most-of-your-mac/)

<comment><USER10> I'm curious about this, alfred always just seemed like quicksilver ([http://qsapp.com/](http://qsapp.com/)) lite. Can you write alfred plugins?

<comment><USER2> Yes. They're called "workflows". [http://support.alfredapp.com/workflows](http://support.alfredapp.com/workflows)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The moment I saw the screenshots before the Keynote, I was like finally an Alfred replacement. However, while Spotlight now looks beautiful and very fast and still won't be a replacement for Alfred.

Opening apps and searching the file system is doesn't touch the surface of Alfred because what makes it powerful is the workflows. Just like what makes the iPhone great is the app store.

If I want to add an appointment to my calendar (Fantastical) I just type cmd + space "f Go the Movies at AMC tomorrow at 5pm" and it would automatically add it to my calendar with location and times and titles going to the proper fields all immediately without opening any apps. Or update Harvest timing tracking with a few key strokes.

I'm very surprised Apple didn't release a plugin api for Spotlight, but you can be sure they will next year at which time Alfred will slowly fade away eventually. We can all thank Alfred though for inspiring the new spotlight.

</comment><comment><USER12> Surprised they didn't say "this validates what we are doing" like so many before them.

<comment><USER7> They don't need validation. They have a product and paying customers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've been using Alfred for years and I love it, but when Yosemite comes out I think I'll probably switch to Spotlight. The reason why I started using Alfred in the first place was because it was a simple and fast application launcher, and didn't have any of the complexity and bloat that Quicksilver and Launchbar had. Of course, Alfred's added power user features over the years, but I've never really had the need for many of them.

<comment><USER7> As a counterpoint to yours, I'll be sticking with Alfred. I'm sure the devs will be able to enhance Alfred with the improvement made to the underlying bits of Spotlight. I use the custom workflow all the time as well as the ability to customise searches.

In addition, from what I saw in the demo, I don't want suggestions from the iTunes Store popping up at any time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> What really got me hooked on using Alfred was the dash workflow...offline api docs at the touch of a keystroke..

</comment><comment><USER15> Although the new Spotlight looks amazing, Alfred does things it'll never do and until Apple allows custom workflows and that, I'll be and Alfred user for ever.

</comment><comment><USER16> Too bad the new Spotlight doesn't have a clipboard manager as well. That's the main reason I paid for the Alfred powerpack.

</comment><comment><USER17> Nice and quick response to Apple... Hopefully they won't (cough) patent it...

</comment><comment><USER18> Sherlocked again.

</comment><comment><USER19> Glad to hear. Alfred is a lifesaver.

</comment><comment><USER20> There is iSkype, iWhatsApp, iPaint, iChina, iApplause.

</comment><comment><USER21> So is the new naming scheme after national parks, or Warner Brothers cartoon characters? Will the next one be Yellowstone, or Sylvester?

I suppose it would be tacky to name the next release "Bugs".

<comment><USER22> It's California locations. 10.9 Mavericks was the first in the new naming scheme.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mavericks_(location)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mavericks_\(location\))

<comment><USER21> Ah. Shows how much I care.

Sometimes, it's better to be funny than right. Sometimes.

<comment><USER23> Pity you couldn't even do funny right.

<comment><USER21> I do funny just fine. Pity HN has such a lousy sense of humor. Really funny comments get downvoted all the time here for being "unproductive" or some silly crap like that.

But hey, if all you want to do is get karma, just post a bland reinforcement of the conventional wisdom. Works like a charm.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Fifty years of Moog - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/09/50-years-of-moog-the-analog-synth-that-still-beats-1s-and-0s/ <comment><USER2> When I was younger, I always felt like Moogs were expensive, maybe even overpriced. Last year, I was in Asheville, NC for the Mountain Oasis Electronic Music Festival, and took the opportunity to tour their factory, which by no coincidence is in that same town.

It really changed my perspective on things. There are a couple dozen people there who design, assemble, inspect and repair everything right there in that little shop. Sure, you can get a reproduction Korg MS-20 for $600, but there was something charming about seeing exactly who puts together a Moog Voyager or Sub 37 - the latter of which I pre-ordered this year, and I never pre-order anything.

It's well worth seeing if you're ever in Asheville - but the tour is typically only open during the week, during regular business hours.

<comment><USER3> Moog is a little like Apple. Their hardware is more expensive than the competition but the build quality is amazing and their synths are a pleasure to use. They also hold their resale value very well so they're a good investment for the long term.

Moog also happens to do bass sounds better than anybody else. You'll find Moogs in most serious hip hop and dance music studios.

<comment><USER4> Moog having the best sounding bass is absolutely subjective. You can't sum up dozens of analog synthesizers brands by one sentence like this. Some prefer DSI, some prefer Vermona and so on.

Also it's a question of generation. Today's Moog synths sound a little different to the older generations, generally are more precise, cripy compared to warm vintage tones.

Two things concerning Moog:

* It is pronounced /ˈmoʊɡ/ mohg.

* They did monophonic synths only besides the Polymoog.

<comment><USER3> Sure bass sound is subjective. A bunch of other synths also do bass very well. I'm sure a lot of people still keep a Waldorf Pulse around just for its ridiculously fat bass.

Personally I'll go for a Moog if I need a guaranteed huge, warm bass sound though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In high school I decided I was going to build my own analog synthesizer, I spent hours designing various oscillator circuits and patch panels. At school I took an Electronic Music class and got to use the Moog Model 15 to do various compositions. It wasn't until much later on Usenet after a big hoax had gone around about a 'new' Analog synth did I find out that Roger Arrick, I guy I knew from robotics work, was building synthesizers[1]. I got a smaller one from him (22 slots) about 10 years ago and have had so much fun with it.

[1] [http://synthesizers.com](http://synthesizers.com) \-- the plural is important!

</comment><comment><USER6> One of the first popular Moog songs -- the original Gershon Kingsley "Popcorn": [http://youtube.com/watch?v=OSRCemf2JHc](http://youtube.com/watch?v=OSRCemf2JHc)

<comment><USER7> This is predated by Switched-On Bach, one of the most successful classical music albums in history.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6I33iW1kmw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6I33iW1kmw)

<comment><USER8> Popcorn has the distinction of having been composed specifically for the Moog; as far as I know it was the first piece of music composed for a synthesiser, as opposed to a reinterpretation of a piece originally composed for traditional instruments.

<comment><USER9> As a purely electronic piece, it's predated by Silver Apples of the Moon, by Morton Subotnik [1], the first electronic album to be produced in the record industry.

I had the pleasure of taking a class by Mort at NYU and learned a lot from his philosophy of music. He provided the musical philosophy behind the design of Don Buchla's eponymous electronic sound platform [2]. Mort is responsible for the Buchla's lack of a familiar 12-key per octave keyboard. Mort felt that as long as they were synthesizing sound from scratch, there was no reason to box themselves into traditional scales, which result from the harmonic nature of sounds produced by resonant instruments (like winds and strings).

By contrast, Bob Moog created a synthesizer that is very much within the tradition of classical music. I imagine that this continuity, exemplified by Switched On Bach, is probably why the Moog is the far more famous instrument today. It's a much easier on ramp for musicians used to traditional instruments.

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

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buchla_Electronic_Musical_Inst...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buchla_Electronic_Musical_Instruments)

<comment><USER10> Both were predated by music made on the original Columbia-Princeton synthesizer (academic/experimental)

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

And by Raymond Scott, who had been using custom electronic circuitry for ads and commercial music since the 1950s.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dy77ioKI4lQ](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dy77ioKI4lQ)

Scott was a genius because he realised that you could not only make sound electronically, you could build hardware that would _compose_ music. Everyone else is still playing catch-up with that idea.

There was also a fully electronic score by Bebe and Louis Barron for a film called Forbidden Planet.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forbidden_Planet#Soundtrack](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forbidden_Planet#Soundtrack)

Moog basically made the technology self-contained and sort-of affordable. With a Moog you had a complete keyboard synthesizer in a box, and you didn't need a room for it.

My favourite Moog music is the classical albums made by Isao Tomita in the 70s. I don't think anyone else has come close to the inventiveness, poetry, and sheer programming genius in the sound design.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cv97o588sLY](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cv97o588sLY)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If you're interested in modular synths and fancy audio devices generally, the place to check out is [http://www.muffwiggler.com/forum/](http://www.muffwiggler.com/forum/)

Prepare to spend all of your money.

</comment><comment><USER12> A couple of documentaries I would recommend if you're into Moog synths.

Moog: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5HRa9nEVVU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5HRa9nEVVU)

History of the Minimoog: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLx_x5Fuzp4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLx_x5Fuzp4)

My favorite Moog products might just be the whole suite of effects pedals, sold under the Moogerfooger brand ([http://www.moogmusic.com/products/moogerfoogers](http://www.moogmusic.com/products/moogerfoogers)). I have a bunch of them and a CP-251 and it's audio mayhem in the best way.

</comment><comment><USER13> The Moog company also made a great iOS synth app called Animoog. Very fun to play with. Also probably the cheapest way to own a genuine Moog product :-)

</comment><comment><USER14> Anyone seen _I Dream of Wires_ yet? ( [http://www.idreamofwires.org/](http://www.idreamofwires.org/) )

<comment><USER15> I have the Bluray. The voiceovers near the start initially kinda annoyed me, but I got more into it over time! Definitely worth checking out if you're into this kind of stuff.

<comment><USER14> Thanks, saw it last night. Not too bad, but the filmmakers sure missed a lot of low-hanging fruit. They spent a lot of time talking about music and not much time playing it, they overemphasized the Buchla/San Francisco stuff, and they missed the disco era entirely. (Sorry, say what you want about disco, but if you make a movie about electronic music that ignores people like Giorgio Moroder, you're just wasting your own time...)

They also could have done more to make it accessible to people who didn't already know a lot about music synthesis.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Repasting something I coped in previously ( [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7844295](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7844295) ) , an excerpt from Bob Johnstone's /We Were Burning/ [http://www.amazon.com/We-Were-Burning-Entrepreneurs- Electron...](http://www.amazon.com/We-Were-Burning-Entrepreneurs- Electronic/dp/0465091180/) , pp. 230-231 [http://www.amazon.com/We-Were- Burning-Entrepreneurs-Electron...](http://www.amazon.com/We-Were-Burning- Entrepreneurs- Electronic/dp/0465091180/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1401863926&sr=8-1&keywords=we+were+burning) (or Search Inside for "Keith Emerson"):

> For about ten years, from roughly the mid-sixties to the mid-seventies, the > small but rapidly growing market for synthesizers was dominated by tiny U.S. > start-ups, most notably Moog and ARP (a Massachusetts-based firm best > remembered as the maker of the synthesizer used to communicate with the > aliens in the movie /Close Encounters of the Third Kind/). People were going > apeshit over these funny electronic sounds," Moog recalled.

> "I heard Walter Carlos doing /Switched-On Bach/," rock keyboardist Keith > Emerson said, "and on the cover of the album was this thing that looked like > a telephone exchange."[11] Fascinated, Emerson made enquiries, and managed > to borrow a Moog synthesizer for a live rendition of the theme music from > the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey.

> The extraordinary noises the synthesizer made baffled the audience to such > an extent that Emerson decided he had to have a Moog synthesizer of his own > to play on stage. So the rock star called the inventor and told him what he > wanted to do. Moog replied that he would not recommend it—his synthesizers > were only meant to be studio equipment. Nonetheless, Emerson insisted, > eventually shelling out £30,000—a princely sum—for a massive, modular > system. He was very proud of his new acquisition. "Trouble was it arrived > with no instruction book—three oscillators, a reverb unit, trigger controls, > filters, mixers, and a load of strange wires and plugs, and I couldn't even > switch the damn thing on. You needed to be a rocket scientist."

> Such problems were typical of products made by early U.S. synthesiszer > firms, all of which suffered from bad management and chronic underfinancing. > "We were always in the red," Moog lamented, "we had no capital. None. Zero." > They would stumble along from one National Association of Music > Manufacturers show (where instrument dealers gather to place orders) to the > next. If you didn't have a hit at one year's show, then you had better have > one at the next, or you were dead."

> A second problem was quality. According to Moog, "In the late sixties and > early seventies, you could put five pounds of shit in a box, and if it made > a sound you could sell it." In addition to poor manufacturing, another > recurrent vexation was the inherently unstable nature of these early, analog > synthesizers.

> The oscillators that generated the sound were controlled by electrical > voltages. To boost an oscillator's pitch up an octave took a corresponding > increase in voltage. The trouble was that the damn things wouldn't stay in > tune—their pitch was notorious for drifting. A ripple in the power supply, a > change in temperature as the hall heated up or as the components themselves > became warmer, almost anything was enough to set them adrift, necessitating > a retune.

> "The tuning was a nightmare," Emerson recalled, "I had a frequency counter > built into my system which I had to keep an eye on, plus I was playing the > Hammond and two other instruments. When I look back now, I don't know how I > got through it, I really don't."

> An expanding market, undercapitalized firms, poor manufacturing, and > unreliable components—this was a scenario that was virtually tailor-made for > the Japanese, with their deep pockets, superb production skills, and long- > term commitment. Japanese firms began to make their presence felt in the > synthesiser market from the mid-seventies on.

</comment><comment><USER17> Did they seriously write an article about the Moog synth without mentioning Daft Punk ?

<comment><USER18> Sort of. They seriously wrote an article about Bob Moog, the synth pioneer, and his company, which has produced a lot of different synths, without mentioning Daft Punk.

Or Abba, or the Beatles, or Coldplay, or Deadmau5, or Brian Eno, or any of the literally hundreds of other artists here:

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

Daft Punk are important to the history of Moog the way that Daring Fireball is important to the history of Apple. Notable users, worthy in their own right, certainly not entitled to an automatic mention.</comment></comment>


Using Silk Road - <AUTHOR> http://www.gwern.net/Silk%20Road <comment><USER3> I think the easiest attack on SR would not be one of the attacks mentioned in the article (although similar to their second attack, but focused on legal implications instead of fraud), but rather:

a. Law enforcement creates a large number of vendor and customer accounts. Due to the pseudonymity, they can create as many as they like and they can't be linked (they may need to create them over time to avoid making the pattern too obvious).

b. The fake customer accounts buy from the fake vendor accounts and leave positive comments, building up a reputation for the fake vendors. This would give money to the operators of SR for fees, but aside from fees there would be no loss for the operators.

c. Eventually, the number of fake vendors could be sufficient that it makes up most of the volume of SR.

d. The fake customers buy from some real vendors and claim that the goods never arrived or that they got arrested and it looks like the vendor tipped the police off.

e. Any real customer who buys from a fake vendor gets their details sent to their local police.

f. Most vendors, real and fake, accumulate comments saying that they tipped people off to the police, with no way to tell which vendors are real vendors with mostly genuine good feedback and a few forged complaints of being police run, and which have a few real complaints of being police run and mostly forged good feedback.

g. Police forces issue press releases announcing how many people they have caught buying things on SR, and buying becomes a highly risky proposition.

<comment><USER4> It currently costs $505.90 to register an account as a vendor on Silk Road, so I do not think this is a financially feasible strategy.

<comment><USER5> I don't want to know how much money the government is already blasting every day on the "war on drugs". If there is something where the government is willing to waste money on, then it is for things like these.

You can already write the press release "undercover mission", "highly sophisticated system of professional drug dealers", "illegal money laundering", oh and how could I forget "financing terrorism".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here's an academic analysis of Silk Road. After crawling the site for a few months they came up with this:

[http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/nicolasc/publications/TR- CMU-...](http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/nicolasc/publications/TR-CMU- CyLab-12-018.pdf)

"Abstract

We perform a comprehensive measurement analysis of Silk Road, an anonymous, international online marketplace that operates as a Tor hidden service and uses Bitcoin as its exchange currency. We gather and analyze data over eight months between the end of 2011 and 2012, including daily crawls of the marketplace for nearly six months in 2012. We obtain a detailed picture of the type of goods being sold on Silk Road, and of the revenues made both by sellers and Silk Road operators. Through examining over 24,400 separate items sold on the site, we show that Silk Road is overwhelmingly used as a market for controlled substances and narcotics, and that most items sold are available for less than three weeks. The majority of sellers disappears within roughly three months of their arrival, but a core of 112 sellers has been present throughout our measurement interval. We evaluate the total revenue made by all sellers, from public listings, to slightly over USD 1.2 million per month; this corresponds to about USD 92,000 per month in commissions for the Silk Road operators. We further show that the marketplace has been operating steadily, with daily sales and number of sellers overall increasing over our measurement interval. We discuss economic and policy implications of our analysis and results, including ethical considerations for future research in this area."

<comment><USER7> $1.2 million is an infinitesimal slice of the illegal drug market, but if an ordinary startup handled 1.2 million in transactions per month they'd be ecstatic.

Still, it seems like the risk far outweighs the gain here.

<comment><USER8> It's only small because bitcoins are a pain in the ass to get, and haven't spread yet. Once they become mainstream, there's no reason SilkRoad can't be the next huge thing. Think about - there's nothing that stops them from selling pirated books, movies, clothing at a huge discount compared to, let's say, Amazon.

Many things only cost a lot because the manufacturer's profit margin is huge. That's true about anything clothing-related.

<comment><USER9> To me the problem is the delivery system. Everything is completely untraceable up until the very second you enter your home address. Is there really a feasible way to evade this liability? Maybe there is a market for truly anonymous "po boxes" or something? How else do you keep the last step anonymous?

<comment><USER10> I guess you could always enter your address but not your name. In case of trouble you could always argue that it was sent from/to someone else and has no connection to you.

<comment><USER11> I've seen the same tip, with one added step: don't open the package for 24-48 hours. If the package is being tracked and the police is waiting to pounce once delivery has been made, you don't want to be caught with an opened box. If unopened you can fake innocence and say you were meaning to send it back.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Everyone needs to read the _rest_ of the site. It's one of the most interesting domains I've ever come across. Fascinating guy through and through, and his short stories are excellent.

<comment><USER12> I had occasion to correspond with Gwern recently. It is always enlightening to talk to somebody who is smarter than I am.

<comment><USER13> Arrogant much?

<comment> mkr-hn What's arrogant about wanting to talk to people you consider smarter than yourself?

<comment><USER14> Perhaps our anonymous troll was offended at Jacques Chester's implication that talking to people smarter than J.C. is an unusual occasion for J.C.

<comment><USER12> I ... hadn't thought of it that way.

Satori in 3 ... 2 ...

<comment> mkr-hn I learned a new word

<comment><USER15> Just a caveat though, jacques_chester is using the term in a way that's metaphorical, but not correct according to the literal definition. That is, if he now understands someone else's point of view then that implies there's still a 'he' to have understood something, which means that he couldn't actually be in a state of non-dual consciousness by definition.

<comment><USER16> I thought _satori_ was the Japanese Zen term for what is commonly called "enlightenment" or "awakening" in most forms of Buddhism in America. Is it meaningfully distinct besides being primarily used in a Zen context?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> (throwaway account)

I've spent over $50,000 USD on SR in the past year, and I'm happy to answer any questions people have about the site or community.

<comment><USER18> It seems that SR doesn't solve the major problem for buyers: you have to name a postal address and that address will be printed on a package containing illicit goods.

Any bad experiences with customs or have you been using in-country sellers exclusively? Any tricks to obscure your real address?

(Since these have mostly been answered below already: do you stick to a fixed group of sellers or go by price?)

<comment><USER12> In countries where the incrimination standard is reasonable doubt, that you received a package addressed to you is not really a slam dunk proof that you ordered the contents.

Furthermore, in countries where you enjoy a right to refuse to say anything that may incriminate you, you may simply refuse to explain how or why the package was sent to you. The prosecution will need to positively prove that you ordered it, which is a much harder task if the seller doesn't cooperate.

(IANAL, TINLA).

<comment><USER18> Nobody will ever be convicted for some package, so much is clear. But thats not the point. That package is enough to get a judge to sign off on a search warrant. And in my country, there is no "fruit of the poisonous tree" principle - even if the search is found to be unlawful afterwards, the majority of findings are admissible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Silk Road is very interesting from a design perspective, particularly the way it leverages different open source cryptographic tools to satisfy its complex security/privacy/anonymity requirements.

I gave a talk about this at the Oakland Cryptoparty back in October. The slides are a little patchy and based entirely on perusing the site (read: speculation), but it inspired a lively discussion from amongst all the participants. It seems there's nothing like illegal drugs and the black market to get people interested in learning more about crypto!

I'm planning on giving an updated version of this talk at "SF Cryptoparty II" on March 23rd (attend or sign up to talk! <https://cryptopartysf.org/>). I will definitely incorporate ideas from (and link back to) this article. Feedback appreciated!

Slides: [http://garrett.im/static/pdf/silkroad_oakland_cryptoparty_sl...](http://garrett.im/static/pdf/silkroad_oakland_cryptoparty_slides.pdf)

<comment><USER20> I've read your slides.

I think your Farmer's Market summary is outdated: it used Tor hidden service, for a short period only and after the investigation started (reading the indictment), and it's pretty clear now that Hushmail rolled over and then the garnered information was used to extract the Paypal & Western Union financial transactions. See my discussion of Farmer's Market in OP.

Slide 14 should mention the SQL injection attack on SR back in November or December 2012; I also disagree that DDoSes would be ineffective.

Slide 23: IIRC, someone has a verifiable anonymous mixer. I forget its name because it charges more than others.

Slide 27: Mtgox has been hacked and lost bitcoins, but haven't they always made up their users' losses? That's pretty important.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> That was an awesome read. Always fun to read about drugs, but this seems like it was written quite a while ago... wonder if anything has changed since.

<comment><USER22> A lot of the stuff on the cypherpunks was added fairly recently I believe. At least, I don't remember those sections being there the last time I read it.

Gwern has an interesting approach to writing articles where he continually updates and adds to them so that they improve over time. See: <http://www.gwern.net/About#long-content>

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This article was very well written and easy to digest and has some of the most succinct descriptions of the political underpinnings and implications of the cypherpunk movement I've ever seen without the sweeping oratory that tends to go with such things.

That said, this single section;

 _Fortunately, I don't think LE is authorized to engage in cyberwar (#1) or mass entrapment & fraud (#2). And who knows, maybe SR could survive both._

Where he discusses the degree to which the state will restrain itself from "bad behaviour" strikes me as a little naive in light of history. I'd be more concerned about attacks along the lines of the liquor poisoning that the state engaged in during alcohol prohibition.

I imagine if someone wanted to cause serious bodily harm to the potential buyers in this marketplace it wouldn't be too difficult to do, and they've proven historically they're prepared to go to this extent. I also imagine it would have quite a high impact on the risk assessment of silk road buyers if people started ending up dead from their purchases.

</comment><comment><USER24> .

Option #1 : I am aware many exchanges/markets do 'bitcoin mixing' to get around this, but the local authority could just as easily subpoena/force someone like mtgox into giving up the info of where the coins are going. As always, the folks who cant hide behind tor and want to appear legit are going to be weakest. (mtgox/bitpay/coinbase/etc..) - Those are the companies that will be 'compelled' to comply if it gets to that point.

.

Option #2: Inspect the packages you receive for fingerprints. You will likely find a postal workers prints and be able to continually track it back to the sourced post office. Then you just correlate the time the package was likely sent and watch security footage, looking for something that matches the shape/look of your package.

.

Also- Please dont take the above post too seriously. I have mostly no idea what I am talking about when it comes to bitcoin.

<comment><USER25> No, you can't. The coins are mixed before they get to mtgox. Mtgox doesn't know where they came from.

In fact, you don't even need to use mtgox. Mtgox is just where you swap bitcoins for cash. If I sold drugs, it would be smart to just keep the money in bitcoins.

And you can also exchange money for bitcoins with an anonymous physical person in your city. Just go to localbitcoins.com, find someone near you with one or the other, and swap with them.

<comment><USER24> How are the coins mixed before exactly?

Also, I think its extremely impractical to think that a volume drug dealer is going to do physical exchanges. Even if they did opt for that route- Track the guy he did the exchanges with, then beat him with a wrench to find out who he bought from.

<comment><USER26> > How are the coins mixed before exactly?

You can mix them anyhow you want. If you know how bitcoin transactions work, the idea is simply to break the transaction chain. There are simpler or more paranoid ways to do it, and of course in Bitcoin world it is inviduals responsibility to handle his own coins.

Edit: think about how someone would try to connect the transactions: timing, amounts, etc.

I find it pretty annoying that there seems to be lot of people with strong opinions about bitcoins, but who haven't really studied it that much...

<comment><USER27> Where would one start - I would like to buy some and see how it all works, and maybe leave a laptop mining some - but I would prefer to research first - where would I start?

Cheers

<comment><USER26> If you want to test out how it works in practice, try playing with instawallet.org , maybe buying small amount of coins and tracking how it works. There are also free bitcoins sites, I don't have much experience with them or either with mining. You can track transactions on blockchain.info

If you want to learn about technicalities, Satoshi paper would be a good start: <http://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf>

Then bitcoin wiki: <https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Main_Page> I especially like the myths page: <https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Myths>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Interesting video and article here from the point of view of Australian customs

[http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-12-05/dark-internet- linked-t...](http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-12-05/dark-internet-linked-to- drug-seizure-spike/4410872)

<comment><USER12> Slightly OT:

"Computer expert" Chris McDonald is actually Professor Chris McDonald. He holds appointments at the University of Western Australia and at Dartmouth. I was lucky to have him as a lecturer for several course and as my honours supervisor.

<http://www.csse.uwa.edu.au/~chris/>

He's nominated for teaching awards with comical regularity. If you ever get a chance to take one of his courses at UWA or Dartmouth, take it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Talking about Tor; you can built your own Silk Road with <http://osclass.org/> (it's a software for creating your own classified site) and using the Tor plugin [http://blog.osclass.org/2013/01/21/anonymous-with-tor- plugin...](http://blog.osclass.org/2013/01/21/anonymous-with-tor-plugin-for- osclass/).

Disclosure: I participate in Osclass.

<comment><USER30> thanks for the link. Any links on creating a .onion link and the rest of whats needed?

<comment><USER31> <https://www.torproject.org/docs/tor-hidden-service.html.en>

I set up a hidden service once to bypass a university firewall. It's surprisingly easy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I wonder if the current little spike in the bitcoin price (from <https://mtgox.com/>) could be attributed to this article being posted on HN

<comment><USER6> The Bitcoin price has been dramatically spiking for the past two weeks. Very curious as to why.

<comment><USER33> Look at the transaction volume as charted by blockchain.info. You will see a good correlation between that and the price of bitcoins.

A good part of the recent bitcoin transaction volume is due to online gaming startups that use bitcoins, especially to work around US online gambling restrictions.

The bitcoin economy is very rapidly growing from a miniscule base, first in illegal and gray-market trade, and then in international trade where low transaction costs and lack of credit card fraud appeal to global merchants.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> This makes me wonder what other 'interesting' business ideas people can come up with to operate as a hidden service?

Throwing anonymity into your business plans could turn up some interesting ideas....

</comment><comment><USER35> It's very annoying that the back button doesn't work on your site.

<comment><USER20> I didn't do anything to break it, and it seems to work fine in my Debian Iceweasel.

<comment><USER35> Fair enough, I'm using:

Debian GNU/Linux 6.0 \n \l

Google Chrome Version 24.0.1312.57

Not sure why the back button doesn't work. Great site/content though! Just a minor annoyance that I thought was on purpose.

<comment><USER20> Well, if you figure out what was going on (could be Cloudflare doing optimization, or maybe Hacker News inserting a redirect?), please contact me.

Since I'm on Iceweasel I don't always see issues in other browsers - <USER2> example, apparently all my MathML was broken for the longest time in Chromium because they just didn't support it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> What is most interesting about this article is how to set up the Tor browser.

Privacy is very, very, important - especially for those who are oppressed, and even for those living in democracies.

</comment><comment><USER36> Man, SR is one of those things I look at in awe. I'm not sure I'd ever have the cojones to have something shipped to me...

The comments on the blog post are sad in a "Good god people are effing stupid" sort of way.

Also, if you're getting on Tor, I recommend Tails [1]. Most people aren't aware of all of the things they need to be wary of when getting on Tor and not leaking their identity.

[1] Tails: <http://tails.boum.org>

<comment><USER37> A similar linux distribution: Liberté. This one's based off of Gentoo (Tails is based off of Debian)

<http://dee.su/liberte>

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> There is no other place where I can safely buy military grade sniper rifle with delivery to my door, than tor network!

<comment><USER20> Didn't the Armory shut down because it was hard to compete with all the _offline_ sources of military-grade guns...?

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> The first rule of Silk Road is you don't talk about the packaging...or post pictures of it...</comment>


Ask HN: What Coursera/Udacity/edX classes are you taking? - <AUTHOR>

I imagine many of you are actively taking online classes.<p>- Which ones are you taking?<p>- Which ones do you recommend?<p>- Are you taking them for "credit" or for fun?<p>Perhaps people that are taking the same class can share notes, etc... <comment><USER2> I'm taking Coursera's Introduction to Functional Programming with Scala and Machine Learning classes and Udacity's Intro to Parallel Programming class. All out of interest.

I really recommend Machine Learning, this is my second time taking it (taking as a refresh). It really gives a good introduction on how to predict or classify data.

If you want something more practical, Introduction to Functional Programming with Scala is really informative, teaches you Scala and gives you another perspective on how to make functions and classes. It's definitely a great course for recursion lovers.

</comment><comment><USER3> I am taking the following: A Brief History of Humankind Video Games and Learning Model Thinking

I am enjoying every one of those courses. Besides learning something new, they certainly provoke you to think. Model Thinking for example, is kind of refreshingly different from some of the other stuff I do.

I am mostly listening to the video lectures, read notes. Doing it for fun, mostly.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm taking Coursera lectures on A History of the World since 1300! by Jeremy Adelman. Not taking them for any credit, just wanted to understand the world history better.

</comment><comment><USER5> I am in Cousera's Cryptography I course, just out of interest mostly and it doesn't dissappoint so far :)!

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm taking Machine Learning but haven't spent as much time on it as I'd like to.

</comment><comment><USER7> A question to those answering: Are you students or have you already graduated?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I've just started Coursera's ML and Game Theory classes.

</comment><comment><USER8> are you looking for present (taking) or past (taken) classes? :) my answer applies only to the past</comment>


How India Mounted the World's Cheapest Mission to Mars - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2014/09/23/how-india-mounted-the-worlds-cheapest-mission-to-mars/?mod=e2tw <comment><USER2> Hopefully this turns out better for India than their "frugal" Russian aircraft carrier....

</comment><comment><USER3> It would be really something if the craft reaches Mars orbit safely on first attempt</comment>