Google Code Now Supports User Clones for Mercurial - <AUTHOR> http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2009/10/mercurial-server-side-clone-support-for.html

<comment><USER2> I very much appreciate their use of the word 'clone' instead of 'fork', and the focus on maintaining the idea of canonical repository and project:

      User clones aren't forks, in the traditional sense,
      where a fork has little intention to contribute back
      to the original project. Rather, the entire purpose
      of a user clone is to allow users to contribute to
      projects without requiring official commit access
      permissions.

I was thinking of migrating some projects to github for this feature, but instead I think I'll just switch to Mercurial on Google Code.

<comment><USER3> Yes, this is a really important point. A lot of the "OMG git is so cool" early adopters seemed to go off on how great forking things is without making this critical distinction between a 'code' fork' and a 'project' fork. The first is simply a technical thing - the latter is a human thing.

Indiscriminately creating random project forks without contributing back is "bad open source citizenship".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> github killer?

<comment><USER5> Given that GitHub goes after Git users, and Google Code supports only Mercurial, I somewhat doubt it. I'd be more concerned for Bitbucket--and even there, even after the outages, Bitbucket is simply a _vastly_ superior product to Google Code for 99% of users, in my opinion.</comment></comment>


Facebook Acquires Branch - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/13/facebook-acquires-branch/

<comment><USER2> This is why I could never be a tech start up investor. Every new app like this that I see, I dismiss as useless/nothing new/why would anyone use that. Then it gets bought by one of the big guys for millions a year later.

<comment><USER3>
      > This is why I could never be a tech start up investor.
      > Every new app like this that I see, I dismiss as
      > useless/nothing new/why would anyone use that.

Seasoned investors don't even try to decide whether the app is good or not. After all, who cares what the investor thinks? The only thing that matters is what the market thinks. Instead, they "place many small bets", and hope that one of them pays off big.

(edit: This is why there seem to be so many "bad ideas" that get funded.)

<comment><USER4> But by that logic every startup has an equal chance of investments, so the optimal tactic is to pump out nonsensical bad apps until somebody funds one.

<comment><USER5> That assumes your end-goal is to get an app funded. It's my understanding that funding is really just the start of the journey to having something that is successful and will make you rich (if that's your goal).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I always got the impression that Branch had a very talented team, but that the products were very over-engineered. By that, I mean that the interface was very polished, but also very confusing. So I'm sure it's a good deal for Facebook to add this very focused talent to their stable.

</comment><comment><USER7> Makes sense, I love the Branch product but seems they never really got enough traction to make it a buzzing place of conversation & interaction. Will be interesting to see what happens with the product within FB.. will it be largely a talent acquisition or does FB really believe in what Josh and the team were building.

</comment><comment><USER8> The Verge reports an acquisition price of around $15mm.

[http://mobile.theverge.com/2014/1/13/5303702/facebook- acquir...](http://mobile.theverge.com/2014/1/13/5303702/facebook-acquires- link-sharing-app-branch-for-15-million)

<comment><USER9> My goal in life is to get bought out of acquihired.

<comment><USER10> Thats silly. You never start out trying to get acquihired unless you know exactly what the company you want to get acquihired by, wants. You aim super high for an ipo but if stuff goes south, you can always get acquihired.

<comment><USER9> My goal priority:

2) Start profiting enough to quit my job

3) Hire people + have office

4) Either get bought out or acquihired

5) Retire

If #2 at least doesn't take off by the time I'm 35 at the latest I'm killing myself.

<comment><USER11> At the risk of being the guy who doesn't get the joke, I suggest a better failure mode for your life. Unless you're 34 at the moment, you probably have enough time to reconsider so I hope you do.

I believe it's an inferior mode of operation, besides. Having the "at least I can do X if this fails" option lowers cognitive load caused by worrying about the consequences of failure. I don't remember where I saw this, but I believe you are actually harming your chances by setting too harsh an alternative. Then again, you may be different.

<comment><USER9> The wager is the lasting long term motivator.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I just discovered Branch today, and I think the problem it tries to solve is one that hits me quite frequently. I consume content nonstop online, but I'm lacking a good medium to share content I like with friends _and_ have semi- private conversations around it.

I like Pocket a lot for the first piece of that puzzle, but it lacks discussion capabilities. Facebook is my de facto solution for the second part, but it's not good for letting people bring in their friends who aren't my friends. So I suppose my dreams may come true if Facebook really is interested in letting the Branch team continue to pursue the problem.

<comment><USER13> > Facebook is my de facto solution for the second part, but it's not good for > letting people bring in their friends who aren't my friends.

Reddit?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The analogy Branch used in the earlier days of its launch (which isn't too long ago) was, in my words: consider Branch as a high school cafeteria, where each table has people of different taste and stripe discussing things.

So I guess the school was private after all and it got bought out by another private school.

You know, those students are eventually going to grow up and they're going to realize that private corporations are using (abusing?) their time and conversations to their own advantage.

</comment><comment><USER15> Branch looks like a good app. In some way it is kind of similar to Pinterest. Would be interesting to find out why they didn't gain enough traction? Could it be because they weren't targeting a niche audience compared to Pinterest targeting niche users at the initial stages.

</comment><comment><USER16> Welp, glad I didn't invest too much time or interest in Branch or Potluck.

<comment><USER17> I liked Potluck a lot before the pivot into bite-sized news discussions.

For those who don't know, it used to be a place to share links and discuss them with friends.

<comment><USER18> Agreed. It was a daily go-to until they totally redesigned the thing around those cards. I never got the UI so I gave up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Congrats to everyone at Branch. Can't wait to see what's to come from them over at FB!

</comment><comment><USER20> Congrats to the whole team!

</comment><comment><USER21> Even I felt the same while using it!!

#Irritated

</comment><comment><USER22> Needs an active FB session to read.

<comment><USER23> "After two years building Branch and Potluck, I am thrilled to announce that we will be continuing our mission at Facebook!

We will be forming Facebook's Conversations group, based in New York City, with the goal of helping people connect with others around their interests. Their pitch to us was: "Build Branch at Facebook scale!"

Although the products we build will be reminiscent of Branch and Potluck, those services will live on outside of Facebook. A more thoughtful note and details to come soon but I am writing this haphazardly from a mountain in Japan (I was tipped that the story was going to leak while on vacation).

In the meantime, a huge "thank you" to our investors. Especially, Jason Goldman, Evan Williams, Biz Stone, Ryan Freitas, John Borthwick, and Jonah Peretti, who all spent an extraordinary amount of time with us.

Most importantly though, a big congrats to my eight teammates who have worked tirelessly, often behind the scenes. So much and admiration: [http://branch.com/company#team](http://branch.com/company#team) \- on we go!"

<comment><USER24> > Their pitch to us was: "Build Branch at Facebook scale!"

Or was it closer to: "Want $15M?"

<comment><USER25> "Keep your startup culture inside of Facebook!"</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Revisiting JavaScript Objects - <AUTHOR> http://www.laktek.com/2012/12/29/revisiting-javascript-objects

<comment><USER2> It's a bit sad that one of the most useful cases for `Object.create` was not covered: it is the _only_ way to create an object without a prototype. Using constructor functions, even if you explicitly set the ``prototype`` to ``null``, instances's ``__proto__`` remains ``Object.prototype``:

        > var F = function () {};
        > F.prototype = null;
        null
        > (new F).__proto__ === Object.prototype;
        true

This means all the "default" object methods are there (e.g. #hasOwnProperty) and ready to get clobbered with all the risk it entails[0].

With ``Object.create(null)``, however, the __proto__ of the created object is _effectively_ ``null``:

        > Object.create(null).__proto__
        null

and such pesky methods as #hasOwnProperty or #toString are not there for clobbering.

And an issue of Object.create failed to be mentioned as well: you can't use ``instanceof`` directly, you have to create one-off "constructor functions" to call ``instanceof`` on them.

[0] [http://www.devthought.com/2012/01/18/an-object-is-not-a- hash...](http://www.devthought.com/2012/01/18/an-object-is-not-a-hash/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I appreciate the post, but the typical reaction to these articles seems to be:

\- JavaScript looks a bit like (Java/Ruby/other language)

\- JavaScript does not work like (said language)

\- JavaScript sucks

Granted, I appreciate folks pointing out the "bad parts" of the language and the strange gotchas. And JavaScript has more than its share of bad parts. But it also requires a change in mindset. At minimum, expect

\- a priority of first-class functions,

\- Prototypal rather than classical inheritance,

\- time spent learning JavaScript syntax itself instead of constructs from other languages (which often will work, but not in the way expected).

Books that have given me a renewed appreciation are Douglas Crockford's book (JavaScript the Good Parts) and John Resig's "Secrets of the JavaScript Ninja."

<comment><USER2> > \- Prototypal rather than classical inheritance,

Meh. Javascript looks, feels and behaves much more like a single-inheritance class-based language (without the class sugar) than like a prototype-based one (Io and even more so Self). Especially if you stick to the standard.

A small concession was made towards prototypal use in ES5 with Object.create (which remains little used and slow as molasses) but it's looking to snap back to classes with ES6

<comment> jarek-foksa ES6 will introduce class syntax, but it's also going to standardise __proto__ property [1] making it easier to write both classical and prototypical code.

[1] [http://javascript.spec.whatwg.org/#object.prototype.__proto_...](http://javascript.spec.whatwg.org/#object.prototype.__proto__)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I just can't like javascript, and it's the design idea behind stuff like this that causes it:

      > Object.freeze(square);
      > square.length = 20
        20
      > square.length
        10

square.length = 20 should be throwing an error. No excuses, sane defaults.

<comment><USER5> It throws an error in strict mode.

        "use strict";

        var square = {length:10};
        Object.freeze(square);
        square.length = 20;

        C:\Users\Matt\Code\seal.js:5
        square.length = 20;
                      ^
        TypeError: Cannot assign to read only property 'length' of #<Object>
            at Object.<anonymous> (C:\Users\Matt\Code\seal.js:5:15)
            at Module._compile (module.js:449:26)
            at Object.Module._extensions..js (module.js:467:10)
            at Module.load (module.js:356:32)
            at Function.Module._load (module.js:312:12)
            at Module.runMain (module.js:492:10)
            at process.startup.processNextTick.process._tickCallback (node.js:244:9)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I haven't found a use for a lot of these features, a lot of them just seem very ad-hoc additions to the language. A class based object oriented model would have solved a lot of issues relating to the myriad ways to implement object orientation in javascript. The schizophrenic like approach we have right now isn't being helped by incremental changes driven by the lowest common denominator of what can be implemented in a web browser development cycle.

Knowing the [Good Parts]([http://www.amazon.com/JavaScript-Good-Parts-Douglas- Crockfor...](http://www.amazon.com/JavaScript-Good-Parts-Douglas- Crockford/dp/0596517742)) helps but you just can't keep adding parts that you think may be good.

<comment><USER7> Here is the context that makes these features not seem ad hoc:

[http://www.infoq.com/interviews/ecmascript-5-caja- retrofitti...](http://www.infoq.com/interviews/ecmascript-5-caja-retrofitting- security)

Many of the additions (including object.freeze) and changes were made for the purpose of making JavaScript usable as an object capability language. Mark Miller explains the background and some of the changes in the video linked above.

</comment></comment><comment> jarek-foksa When you do "var B = Object.create(A);", should B be called a clone of A or a copy of A?

I have seen various definitions of the term "clone", e.g. Io language documentation says that "a clone is an empty object that has the parent in its list of protos", this article defines clone as an exact shallow copy of another object.

<comment><USER2> > When you do "var B = Object.create(A);", should B be called a clone of A or > a copy of A?

Neither. In Self lingo, A is a mixin of B. The least bad wording would be centered around composition, but I guess it could also be understood that B is an extension of A.

It can't be a clone or a copy, because changing A will still impact B, they don't become independent objects.</comment></comment>


Onboarding Automation Case Study: Winning Back 80% of Our Time - <AUTHOR> https://outfunnel.com/onboarding-automation/ <comment><USER2> I have read the article, looked at their site and I still don't get it. I _think_ the article is about how a company that sends out automated emails, learnt how to send out automated emails.

But ... nothing is clear - there is a lot of vagueness here - this seems to me to be a very small part of a sales funnel.

<comment><USER3> Anything particular you were missing from the post? I'm the author and did my best to share everything that's relevant, but may have missed some parts.

<comment><USER2> sorry, long day.

I think it's more I was missing concrete examples - describe the sales team that is having a problem, why can't they send emails on certain events themselves, what was preventing this? Why can't the CRM they have help them? Why can't they use some API to join this up?

I also (and this is from memory) did not quite get why your company (a email sending company) was having its own problems sending emails on certain CRM events? I may have misunderstood that part.

But it does raise an interesting question of "business events" \- I feel a central ledger of events in every business would make so many things simpler - an eBPF for business</comment></comment></comment>


The Curse of the Pixar Universe - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/the-curse-of-the-pixar-universe

<comment><USER2> I bet he's a real hoot at parties...

"Hi, Richard."

"Hello, how are things?"

"Great! I'm pretty happy that..."

"Oh, you're not actually happy. You've been indoctrinated to think you need to obtain an artificial mental state labeled 'happiness' by others. What you are really experiencing is resentment for others success and you are projecting your mediocrity as positive achievements."

I found Inside Out wildly entertaining. As did my children and parents. Pixar's storytelling and record of engaging multiple generations is unmatched. They are altogether tragic, dramatic, funny, personal, and universal.

I find nothing wrong with simplifying the rules of a film's universe and requiring filmgoers to suspend disbelief in order to tell a story. Why? Because good films are a catalyst for discussion. As a result, whereas the author is critical of the film itself as damaging for being simplistic, rather, it can be the very context to launch the necessary discussions with children to navigate their myriad of emotions.

Ironically, Pixar's very own Anton Ego of Ratatouille critiques the critics... "In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little, yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so."

<comment><USER3> _Ironically, Pixar 's very own Anton Ego of Ratatouille critiques the critics_

Ironic? While I enjoyed Ratatouille, that dialogue just seemed self-serving to me.

<comment><USER4> Pixar kind of had a chip on their shoulder during that era, they seemed especially mad at Hollywood and the critics. There's a dig at the end of _Ratatouille_ pointed at _Happy Feet_ , which won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature over _Cars_ :

[https://reddit.com/r/movies/comments/35ezkp/til_after_cars_l...](https://reddit.com/r/movies/comments/35ezkp/til_after_cars_lost_out_on_the_oscar_for_best/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Inside Out was inspired by the psychological concept of basic emotions, which boil down to joy, sadness, fear, anger, disgust, and surprise. They just conflated fear and surprise into one character.

What I think is interesting is that these emotional characters have different aspects and complexities of their own. Pay close attention to the scenes where we see Riley's parents' emotions. For her mom, Sadness is in control; for her dad, Anger is the leader. Yet they are not predominantly sad or angry people. In the movie universe, Sadness is responsible for compassion and Anger for our sense of right and wrong. If Riley's emotions seem underdeveloped in regard to these complexities, it's because... well, she's a kid.

</comment><comment><USER6> Maybe the critic is too cerebral for me [mentioning Malick etc], but I think I missed the point.

<comment><USER7> I got the same feeling; I'm not sure what movie the reviewer thought he was going into, but it feels like he was expecting a David Lynch film or something similar, not a simple kid's movie.

<comment><USER8> I think it's especially important to analyze kids' movies because of their significant ideological impact. You cant ell effective kids; stories without dumbing things down. I found it a very interesting analysis.

<comment><USER3> _You can 't tell effective kids' stories without dumbing things down._

Isn't that exactly what he disagrees with, though? I think he's looking for a director that _can_ tell a kids' story, and show the shape of the inner mind, without having to dumb things down.

It's a tall order - he says it would require a director of genius - but I think his point is that if a director needs to dumb things down to make a film for kids, (s)he's better off not doing it at all.

<comment><USER9> I believe "You cant ell" was meant to be "You can tell", not "You can't tell", and that you agree with each other.

<comment><USER8> Yes, I didn't have time to proofread and missed the mistake. Sorry for the confusion!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This charming film is appealing and enjoyable to all ages while gently reminding us to attend to our emotions -- just as the main character learns that sadness has its place.

All dramatic performances are simplifications, from scenery to the focus of the content. Usefully simple that is; like any map for instance, which would be unwieldy (at best) if at full scale and containing every detail. Clarity is found by stripping out superfluous details.

To my ear, the author of the article had to really stretch to find a way to complain about this flick.

<comment><USER11> The author sounds like a pretentious douche. The author has obviously never made or written a feature length film designed to entertain an audience. I bet the author spends Saturday mornings watching Wim Wenders films lamenting why Tom Waits doesn't release a new album already.

Blah.

Pixar writing once again hits it out of the park, creating a unique film that helps kids (and adults) think about how emotions affect us. Self-important gluten-free PBR drinkers notwithstanding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is almost as bad as the same reviewer's brutal takedown of Steamboat Willie.

<comment><USER13> Ah, I needed that

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> If only there were 800 characters representing all of Riley's emotions and the parents were meaner the movie would have been much better...

</comment><comment><USER15> I got about halfway through the second paragraph before backing out of the article slowly with my hands up.

</comment><comment><USER16> Maybe Brody will enjoy Michael Haneke's upcoming foray into children's films: Funny Games Too

</comment><comment><USER17> Isn't the New Yorker satirical? One of their headlines is "Scalia Arrested for trying to Burn Down Supreme Court"...

<comment><USER18> Note the URL for that headline: [http://www.newyorker.com/***humor***/borowitz- report/scalia-...](http://www.newyorker.com/***humor***/borowitz- report/scalia-arrested-trying-to-burn-down-supreme-court?intcid=mod-most- popular)

Although it is saying something that the top 3 most popular stories are from the humor section.

<comment><USER19> how does that url work with asterisks?

<comment><USER3> It seems the routing engine just ignores everything between the first and the last slashes.

[http://www.newyorker.com/IRRELEVANT-CRAP/scalia-arrested- try...](http://www.newyorker.com/IRRELEVANT-CRAP/scalia-arrested-trying-to- burn-down-supreme-court?intcid=mod-most-popular)

<comment><USER20> That doesn't seem like a very good feature for a reputable news site.

[http://www.newyorker.com/breaking-news/scalia-arrested- tryin...](http://www.newyorker.com/breaking-news/scalia-arrested-trying-to- burn-down-supreme-court)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to Implement Deutsch's Algorithm in Haskell - <AUTHOR> http://kukuruku.co/hub/haskell/how-to-implement-deutschs-algorithm-in-haskell

<comment><USER2> /me ponders what Duff's Device would look like in Haskell.

</comment><comment><USER3> So... how do you test it for correctness???</comment>


Four Banks, Including JPMorgan, Fined in Europe Over 'Cartel' Behavior - <AUTHOR> http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/10/21/4-banks-including-jpmorgan-fined-in-europe-over-cartel-behavior/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0 <comment><USER2> There are a lot of comments along the lines of "why are the fines so low" or "why is nobody doing jail time?" And the answer to both those questions is: stiffer punishment would require stronger proof. Cartel activity, like much white collar crime in general, is extremely difficult to prosecute, because the difference between totally legal conduct and illegal conduct comes down to what people are thinking. Instead of being able to point to a huge stash of drugs, cases come down to the fine points of "who knew what when" and "who talked to who and about what."

To impose punitive fines or jail time, you need to bring criminal actions where you need to prove beyond reasonable doubt cases where the proof is in peoples' heads. Civil fines, on the other hand, have a much lower burden of proof: more likely than not.[1] That's why civil penalties and deferred prosecution agreements,[2] have become the tool of choice for regulators.

Frankly, you don't really want to live in a world where the government can impose criminal penalties on businesses for such loose facts as these. Understandably, banks aren't the most sympathetic defendants, but extrapolate this reasoning to the tech industry. Should Bill Gates be in jail for his role in the Microsoft antitrust activity? Should Eric Schmidt be in jail for his role in the employee wage suppression collusion?

[1] This description is America centric but the operative law is roughly similar in Europe.

[2] A deferred prosecution agreement is a settlement where a company pays a fine, agrees not to do whatever bad thing it did, usually agrees to some number of years of monitoring, in return for which the government defers charges and eventually drops them if the monitoring period ends without incident.

<comment><USER3> > Should Eric Schmidt be in jail for his role in the employee wage suppression > collusion?

Er, why shouldn't he be? I can think of three main likely arguments why he shouldn't:

i) what he did breached civil but not criminal law: if so then obviously he shouldn't be in jail. I don't know whether that's the case though. I also don't know if he is personally liable for civil damages, and if so why he hasn't been chased for those. (And that's not going into the question of whether his actions _should_ have been made criminal offences by law, and why they haven't been.)

ii) the higher standard of evidence in criminal prosecutions, the first issue you raised. This is of course a real issue in criminal cases, but—speaking as a non-lawyer, non-expert who hasn't been following the story very closely—the evidence on this matter doesn't look at all lacking to me. AFAICS, if Eric Schmidt had been discussing a murder rather than salary collusion in the communications discussed by [http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-google- recruitment-emai...](http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-google-recruitment- emails-lawsuit-2014-1) no-one would be likely to suggest that the evidence was too weak for a criminal prosecution.

iii) Eric Schmidt is a nice person like us, and jail isn't _really_ for nice people like us. I hope the egregiousness and total unacceptability of this argument is clear to everyone without any need for explanation.

So, yes, why shouldn't Eric Schmidt be in jail?

As to the financial sector, while it is obviously difficult to prosecute many financial crimes, I am not convinced that this is the primary explanation for the shortage of convictions lately. I am reasonably convinced by the argument [http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2014/10/liars-loans- aint-...](http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2014/10/liars-loans-aint-rocket- science.html) that similarly complex cases were successfully prosecuted in the S&L scandal in the '80s, and that the primary difference between then and now is lack of resources and political will.

<comment><USER4> > As to the financial sector, while it is obviously difficult to prosecute > many financial crimes, I am not convinced that this is the primary > explanation for the shortage of convictions lately.

One of the primary explanations is that banks have become "too big to fail", and if you criminally charge a bank, you effectively make it fail. Basically, banks are powerful enough to get away with murder.

[http://www.theguardian.com/business/2012/dec/11/hsbc-fine- pr...](http://www.theguardian.com/business/2012/dec/11/hsbc-fine-prosecution- money-laundering)

"Had the US authorities decided to press criminal charges, HSBC would almost certainly have lost its banking licence in the US [...] The bank processed cash for Mexico's Sinaloa cartel, regarded as the most powerful and deadly drug gang in the world, among others."

<comment><USER5> > One of the primary explanations is that banks have become "too big to fail", > and if you criminally charge a bank, you effectively make it fail. > Basically, banks are powerful enough to get away with murder.

So give the FDIC more power and a larger fund to draw on for bank failures. They already handle bank failures very very well, they'd be fantastic at spinning down banks accused and convicted of criminal activities.

We dismantled Arthur Anderson for their complacency in the Enron criminial enterprise. Why not banks?

<comment><USER2> > We dismantled Arthur Anderson for their complacency in the Enron criminial > enterprise. Why not banks?

And that was a terrible outcome. A huge, $10 billion a year corporation came crashing down, with tons of people losing their jobs, all because of the conduct of one team within the company that the rest of the enterprise had no knowledge of or control over. For a conviction that was overturned on appeal!

<comment><USER5> If dismantling the organization isn't an option, and punishing individuals isn't an option due to corporate liability limitations, where does that leave us?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wish -- just once -- there would be a story where a bank is actually punished in a meaningful way.

Look at this way: A bank is fined $x for doing an action which generated $y. If x < y, there is no incentive to stop any behavior. Further, it seems to be the trend that y is far larger than x and this case proves it out.

The libor scandal cost the U.S. at least $6 billion in interest charges (y) and another $4 billion just to unwind their positions. Whereas the banks have only been fined $2.1 billion to date (x). When you take inflation into account and the fact that this is a world wide financial scandal (libor influences a $350 trillion derivatives market), the math is skewed even heavier in the direction of banks having had a sizable revenue stream after the fines.

<comment><USER7> > The libor scandal cost the U.S. at least $6 billion in interest charges (y) > and another $4 billion just to unwind their positions.

Got a reference for that? Not being a dick just interested to read more. For that amount of damage to have occured in < 10 years it would require borrowingin the hundreds of billions wouldn't it?

Libor is an interesting and important concept. An open way to show its calculation should exist.

<comment><USER6> No problem, I got it from Wikipedia which in return cites a bloomberg article. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libor#Aftermath](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libor#Aftermath)

Finding actual damages proved really difficult on this subject.

<comment><USER7> Yea their citations are to paywalls RE the costs to US. But well written wikipedia page nonetheless. Prob the most accessible journalism I've read on the matter.

Definitely worth more investigation. Definitely a part of our world that needs more light shed on it. Got to be some interesting angles there too ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There's no point whatsoever to fine banks, its stupid beyond belief. First, its like issuing a speeding ticket to a billionaire, second, the money does not come from the pocket of the offender, and third, if the unimaginable happens and some bank goes belly up because of this, then we, the taxpayers will bail it out. Again.

<comment><USER9> Having a record of past misbehaviour may be useful in a future fight. Even a billionaire has his driving license revoked if he's repeatedly caught speeding.

Sums that are pocket change to JPMorgan are still usefully spent in the public interest. I don't know if 60 million Euros are, in fact, pocket change for JPMorgan. I cynically assume that they budgeted in an accurate amount for fines and other regulatory hiccups when they start on these endeavours.

Assuming you mean the offender is a group of executives that aren't personally liable for these sorts of fines, well, yeah, that's par for the course. IANAL.

Having a bank go belly up because of these fines seems exceedingly unlikely. Regulatory oversight is (on the face of it and among other things) intended to ensure that the system is less likely to fail catastrophically, and fining banks for failing to observe regulation seems like a necessary part of this.

Whether or not the regulatory oversight has the means or even the willingness to implement the mission they present to the public is another debate. I agree that scepticism is warranted.

From that point of view, these kinds of fine may be characterised as something that doesn't materially affect the bank's profits and hence doesn't deter repeat misbehaviour but serves to establish a facade of regulatory action to appease the public.

<comment><USER10> > Even a billionaire has his driving license revoked if he's repeatedly caught > speeding.

More likely his driver. The billionaire can just hire another one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> One point the article does not touch upon is how much the banks profited from this cartel, and by extension, whether or not the fines were large enough to deter this kind of behaviour in the future.

<comment><USER12> Honestly, is the answer to this question ever not "no, not even close to big enough"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Why is it always fines? Shouldn't this type of stuff result in jail time?

The people who organised the cartel have likely already got their bonuses and couldn't care less if the bank is fined

<comment><USER14> "JPMorgan received a 40 percent reduction in its fine for cooperating with the investigation, as well as a 10 percent reduction for agreeing to settle the case."

Not only is it only fines but now we are discounting the fines for cooperating.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The fact that LIBOR is used in other countries as input for interest rates of existing credits is completely ignored, ripple effect of this wrongdoing caused significant drop of life standard and some serious problems to "small" people.

</comment><comment><USER16> If anyone is interested in learning more about why no one goes to jail, and banks dont even have to admit they did anything wrong, etc., I recommend you go pick up a copy of Matt Taibbi's new book "The Divide"

He goes into great deal regarding why the most egregious white collar crimes such as HSBC laundering money for the Mexican cartels / terrorist organizations ended with a simple 1.9 billion dollar fine ([http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/12/11/us-hsbc-probe- idUS...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/12/11/us-hsbc-probe- idUSBRE8BA05M20121211)), no one going to jail, and the bank not even having to admit they did anything wrong.

There are many reasons why (after all, he wrote a whole book about it) but to list a few

1\. The Justice Department does not want to risk losing a case (for political reasons)

2.The unit in charge of investigating this type of crime within the justice department is staffed with defense lawyers who dont think out of the box (thanks to obama)

3.the banks committing these crimes are large, multinational institutions so there are complexities around the fact of who committed the crimes, what jurisdiction they were committed in, etc. the most disturbing chapter in the book was a about a hedge funds harassing (literally harassing) a Canadian insurance firm Fairfax financial. The judge ended up throwing out that case because it took place in NJ but the crimes took place in NYC: [http://www.swtriallaw.com/press-releases/new-jersey-court- cl...](http://www.swtriallaw.com/press-releases/new-jersey-court-clears-exis- capital-in-fairfax-financial-hedge-fund-lawsuit/)

4.the banks have a lot of money to spend on lawyers

5.the same lawyers that are defending the banks create the laws and regulations they live by (Eric Holder and a few others)

6.this memo: [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/04/eric- holder-1999-me...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/04/eric- holder-1999-memo_n_3384980.html) \- that is, anything that might hurt innocent bystanders—when deciding whether to bring a case against a corporation. "Prosecutors may take into account the possibly substantial consequences to a corporation's officers, directors, employees, and shareholders,"

7\. That banks argue that a prosecution could be economically disruptive because they are "too big to fail" so basically if you hurt them, you are hurting everyone else also.

It is really a fascinating, and in some ways depressing, read. Honestly, this is nothing compared to the banks getting caught fixing the LIBOR rate a few years back, and no one went to jail for that anyways.

<comment><USER17> > this is nothing compared to the banks getting caught fixing the LIBOR rate a > few years back

It's really nothing compared to the fact that banks can print trillions of dollars of credit out of thin air - and not go to jail for counterfeiting. Heck, counterfeiting used to be a capital offense in this country.

So the lesson is always: rules don't apply to rich people.

<comment><USER16> agreed - but a small point - the banks printing money are really basically government entities (the federal reserve, ECB, etc). the banks the article + book are talking about are private entities committing serious fraud and not getting being prosecuted for it.

<comment><USER17> I disagree about the federal reserve being a government entity. It's owned by banks - a "self regulating" private cartel by charter. Even congress can't "audit" the fed. The fed controls the government much more than vice versa.

Sure they will spin some line like 'profits' from the fed go to the government (profits above which are distributed to the private bank shareholders, of course!) but that's like saying I get reward points for every dollar I charge on a credit card. If you really think banks are "giving up" a lot of profits, you might want to check the total % of profits that go to the financial sector in the US economy. What are "profits" anyway when you can just print money - what is profit measured by?

Furthermore, even your 'small banks' that "loan" money under fractional reserve rules are, if you squint, awfully close to counterfeiting as that can raise the money supply 9 fold.

So I recommend you keep digging and follow the money.

<comment><USER18> Banks are complicated shell structures for sure, just look into BIS, a 'central bank' for central banks. However the federal chair is appointed by the white house.

<comment><USER17> One puppet (WH) appointing another puppet (fed chair) IMHO. We all know it.

Re: BIS, I haven't looked into that much; I'm afraid I'm depressed enough already :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The reason we have low interest rates are that these banks who commit crime after crime own the Federal reserve. The same banks has also put ex Goldman sachs president as head of the european central bank. People have to understand how the monetary system works or we will all end up as debt slaves to unafforadable housing that banks with zero interest create from thin air.

</comment><comment><USER17> I would like to offer a small historical perspective on the power of banks:

Legal Tender Act, 1862 [1]:

"Thaddeus Stevens, the Chairman of the House of Representatives Committee of Ways and Means, ... denounced the exceptions, calling the new bill "mischievous" because it made United States Notes an intentionally depreciated currency for the masses, while the banks who loaned to the government got "sound money" in gold."

Banks _always_ get the first class life boats, and set their own rules (think about it, they buy influence, it's not that hard when you're a bank). I think Europe just missed some kickbacks the old fashioned way.

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

</comment><comment><USER20> Does anyone have any idea what happens to the money gathered from these fines?

<comment><USER21> Gets reinjected in a special fund that the EU can then use where they want. It's usually just injected in the central budget, to reduce the contribution each member country has to pay.

<comment><USER22> And contrary to popular opinion this fund is on the order of 0.1 percent of the EU budget. I've heard the "omg, the EU runs on American corporations' money" thing a little too often.

<comment><USER23> And indeed the converse happens often enough; Credit Suisse, RBS, Barclays and UBS have paid large fines (multi billion) to the US over the last few years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Still, they are a few who can pay competitive money to developers in UK.</comment>


Disneyland raised prices to shorten waits - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-disneyland-wait-times-20170712-htmlstory.html <comment><USER2> I don't go to Disney parks very often but the "expanded ride reservation system" mentioned in this article has actually gone from good to terrible, and I think it has contributed to longer waits.

The old Fastpass system required you to go visit a kiosk near the ride itself, and acquire a ticket for a specific time window later in the day, at which point you could go in via a shorter priority line. It worked great and was actually kind of fun.

I understand they would want to get rid of the physical passes the machine printed out as the machines were probably maintenance nightmares, but they did more than that. They changed the system entirely to an app, which is fine in itself, but they eliminated the need to visit the ride area to get the pass, which is part of what made the system fair. Instead, you can schedule the passes ahead of time, even for future days, and of course passholders and people staying at the park get priority, so all the popular rides' Fastpasses are already gone by the time the typical visitor is even able to attempt to schedule anything, which means they will just have to wait in the regular long line because there's no way smooth out the demand across the day anymore, since all the scheduling happens for a select group ahead of time without requiring any physical commitment.

In short, they sabotaged themselves, at least from this visitor's POV. Fastpass was one of my favorite bits of visiting Disney parks, but the new system is one of my LEAST favorite bits. Ah well.

<comment><USER3> >they eliminated the need to visit the ride area to get the pass, which is part of what made the system fair

The time spent walking to the ride can be considered part of the time you spend in line. So they shortened that.

That's something my dad taught me once, by putting popular rides far from each other in a park, you should realize your "time spent waiting for the ride" is not just time in the line, but the time it takes for you to get to the line also.

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure if it's a fair comparison. Walking to the line is far more pleasant than waiting in the line.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I always wondered why Disney doesn't open a third park somewhere square in the middle of the U.S. There's literally no competition with Disney parks as they're one-of-a-kind and it would both open more space at their other parks and bring in a huge segment of the population that doesn't go to their parks simply because of travel costs. Disneyland and Disney World are _always_ busy. Look at the data. It might be time.

<comment><USER6> Disclaimer - Disney annual passholder here.

In terms of where to locate the park, Disney was a big early believer in a analytical approach. They hired SRI to determine the best location for Disneyland back in the 1950s. They came up with a amazing amount of operational and systems research that we use now. The big factors where climate, access to a huge population base, and multiple access to freeways.

When it came to Disney World, the factor where those, plus the ability to buy large amount of land before anyone was aware of it, and could drive up prices with speculation.

Disney has tried a number of different strategies in the past to make parks more accessible - including the idea of building a Disneyland on a boat, that would travel the world, and stop in various ports for months, before packing up and sailing to the next trip.

Most of the demand for Disney growth wise is international, with Brazil probably next to get a park.

In terms of line waits, there are two things at play - one Disney has realized that they have been leaving money at the table. Contrary to this article, the vast majortity of the excess demand is not single day visitors at Disneyland, but rather season pass holders in California. This is why they have jacked up the cost for annual passes a ton. I was listening to a podcast recently that postulated that as much as 45% of the daily visitors to Disneyland might be annual pass holders. Expect the cost to go way up - it's getting close to double the cost of a Disneyland pass compared to a Disney World pass.

The other thing is that Disney is putting massive capital into the parks, to grow them. They just opened Avatar land in Animal kingdom, but the most exciting are the new STar Wars Land, Toy Story Land, Epcot overhaul, and marvel land in California. Disney will be adding a ton of capacity, but they are trying to raise ticket prices to offset.

<comment><USER7> Can you explain reason behind annual pass? I've seen it once. Enough for 10yrs, maybe a lifetime.

P.S. I do understand hobbies ;)

<comment><USER8> My wife and I, and her family, have been Walt Disney World (Florida) passholders for years. My dad was a passholder for years until he moved another 45 minutes away from Disney.

It's a little expensive, but there's always something fun to do. Most of us go to re-ride some of our favorite rides. My dad went to just walk around and get exercise and look at things.

Epcot center also has a ton of live entertainment including live bands and performers. They also have events with foods from around the world, flower or butterfly festivals, and more.

For what it's worth, my impression of Disneyland (California and Tokyo) wasn't nearly as good. They were fun, but they didn't have enough stuff to keep me coming back. But then, I don't live there, so maybe there's more to it. Those parks did have one thing that I wish Florida had: They change some of the rides once in a while to match another theme, such as Nightmare Before Christmas on the Haunted Mansion or "Hyperspace Mountain" (Star Wars) on Space Mountain.

I have to say... You're the only person I've ever heard say they went to Disney once and have no interest in going back.

<comment><USER9> You can add me to the list of people never wanting to go back.

I was fairly excited to take my kids to Disney as I had never been there myself as a kid for unknown reasons. And while I had good time, once is certainly enough. I'd rather travel and see different places as opposed to going the same place year after year.

<comment><USER10> I think I have had my fill of Magic Kingdom in Orlando. Last time I was there, I hated just about every minute of it. Every square inch of the park seemed to have been redesigned to suck more money out of my pockets rather than to ensure I was having an enjoyable experience.

Every last one of the rides seemed dated and lame, even if they had been recently renovated. Wait. Scratch that. The _Finding Nemo_ one was okay. And that was back when they were using Fastpass instead of this wristband/app system they apparently have now.

I'll actually be in Orlando again a week from now, and we didn't even consider planning anything Disney. The entertainment value divided by the total daily cost of visiting a park is simply too low now. It isn't just the high ticket prices. They unabashedly overcharge for meals and food, and the nearby lodgings nickel and dime you on everything. And the _time cost_ for everything is ridiculous.

The only reason it is so popular is that Disney cross-promotes _everything_ in its media empire. If you let your kids watch enough Disney Channel on television, they will eventually want to visit a Disney theme park or cruise ship.

<comment><USER8> FWIW, they're still doing fastpass... It's just that the bands are another way to get a fastpass, as is the smartphone app. You can still just get one the old way, though.

I can't argue about the nickel-and-diming, though. It's getting ridiculous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If the strategy of avoiding long lines captures your interest, you'll probably enjoy the El Farol Bar problem ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Farol_Bar_problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Farol_Bar_problem)) and more general minority games.

</comment><comment><USER12> Former Disneyland CM (Cast Member) here.

Burgeoning wait times, and park overcrowding is (in my opinion) largely a result of Annual Pass sales. The AP's come out, clog up the park and make it less hospitable to non-AP guests.

<comment><USER13> "clog up" seems a bit strong given that they actually paid for the entrance and are just using a service they paid for.

<comment><USER12> Yes, they did - but...

They don't buy (lots of) stuff - AP's often will drop by for half a day and eat off property, but yet will still plop down in a restaurant and take up table space. They also don't purchase much merch either.

They travel inefficiently - AP's often will come to meet up with friends, and like most southern californians, they don't usually carpool - to the point that in 2015, Disney almost stopped selling parking with the AP because of capacity reasons.

So I think clog up is accurate here. AP's in general use the park in very different ways then the people who are vacationing at the park - Disney has made it clear that its primary market is the vacationer - but they cant drop the AP system without alienating a bunch of folks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > _During the first month after it opened, the new Guardians attraction had an > average wait time of 93 minutes, with the maximum wait time climbing to five > hours, according to the data._

Words escape me.

<comment><USER15> One thing I didn't see mentioned in the article are demographics for visitors. Disneyland has always had a very local crowd, which is why they do things differently from Walt Disney World in Florida. By "local crowd", I mean you get a lot more people with season passes who go just for dinner in the park and then leave. Waiting up to 5 hours for the Guardians attraction would be a novelty to them since they've literally done everything else in the park many times over.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Back in '92, right after my discharge from the Air Force, I went to work for a copier company, who sent me to LA for training on how to repair copiers. It happened to be during the week of the LA Riots!

My instructors told us to take the day off and they stayed home to protect their homes. I hopped the bus to Disneyland.

There were no lines there that day. I rode Space Mountain about 12 times!

<comment><USER17> This comment seems a bit white to me. Just guessing.

<comment><USER16> What do you mean by 'a bit white'?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It looks like by the article raising ticket prices did not reduce the number of people into the park. I think they should have just capped the number of people in the park at one time, in addition to the increased ticket prices. I feel like Disney is a melting pot. It's affordable at some time interval for just about every family. If the prices keep going up it could risk being less of that melting pot, and more of just the pot with more money.

<comment><USER19> They already do limit the number of people in the park, it just only tends to get hit a handful of times a year.

And for good reason IMO. I don't know about you, but if I planned a vacation and then wasn't allowed in the park during that time I'd be pissed, even more if the reason was so that those who did get in could have less wait times and I couldn't even get into the park to experience it.

<comment><USER20> It would be pretty straight forward to buy tickets in advance for a specific day.

<comment><USER19> But now you are just making it so only people that plan it many many months out can get in.

And it comes with it's own slew of problems. Like you'd need to either have hourly booking, or you'd need to assume when people are going to be going for the day, and you could still just end up with an empty park at some times, and crazy long lines at others.

Combined with the fact that "park hopping" is really common, especially when you don't have a huge amount of days in a vacation there (or don't want to blow a whole day on one of the smaller parks).

I'm not convinced it's as straightforward as you'd think.

Their solution of the "fast pass" system they have in florida is I think the best of both worlds. You can "schedule" time for a ride months out, but they still let as many people as they safely can in the park.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> In Tokyo they just built a second park right next to the first one [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_DisneySea](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_DisneySea)

<comment><USER22> Disney world has several parks

<comment><USER21> I wonder if it's like roads - build more of them and you just get more visitors, not less congestion.

<comment><USER23> It doesn't seem surprising to me that if there is demand, but supply is capacity limited, it's hard to determine the full extent of the demand, and that when more capacity becomes available, the demand may exceed that as well.

If you build more lanes where the roads are generally uncongested, you won't see much 'induced demand', because the there wasn't much demand for travel that was waiting for less congestion.

If you build more lanes where the roads are generally congested, you will see the amount of time the roads are congested decrease when construction is done. However, most additional lanes are built in areas where there is strong population growth, leading to increased demand overtime anyway. For example, in southern california there was a project to add another lane to the I-405; when completed, the average duration of heavy congestion (rush hour) was reduced by several hours; but it's reasonable to expect that over time the congestion will increase again, just as it was before construction.

It's reasonable to expect the same to happen for theme parks. There are a lot of capacity constraints preventing people from attending a Disney park, and you see that in the high attendance. It's probably difficult to predict how many additional parks you could build and still have good attendance, but building one at a time seems reasonable; being a bit hard to get in isn't terrible for Disney's brand perception.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> If only customers were so forgiving if their webpage didn't load within 500 milliseconds.

<comment><USER25> If only our webpages were as awesome as Disneyland :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> IF this were Uber Disney ..they would do surge pricing, and although the media would get mad but at least the lines would be shorter for those willing to pay

<comment><USER27> Disney does offer a VIP service. It's $400-600 an hour though. I'm not certain what the maximum group size is, I think 6-8: [https://disneyworld.disney.go.com/events-tours/vip-tour- serv...](https://disneyworld.disney.go.com/events-tours/vip-tour-services/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'd like to take my little girl there but after hearing wait time I am kind of withdraw to the idea. Does someone have any tip to visiting DL to minimize the suffering for us adults (i.e time of year, what ride/fun things are worth the wait, etc..)

<comment><USER29> Get the speed pass band thingy. Totally worth it and it pretty much kills the wait times. At least it was that way when I had gone.

<comment><USER15> The Disney MagicBands? Those are only available in Walt Disney World in Florida, not Disneyland in Anaheim.

Anaheim only has paper FastPasses, which are the same concept, but a little more difficult to manage since you need to run around the park getting them. MaxPass for $10 extra per person per day is coming soon, however, and will let you book FastPasses via their app, but it's a shame it's an additional cost.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Growing up somewhat near Cedar Point I'm actually surprised at Disneyland's wait times aren't longer.

These are from 2013, but wait times at Cedar Point are much worse! [http://www.fodors.com/community/united-states/cedar-point- wa...](http://www.fodors.com/community/united-states/cedar-point-wait- times.cfm#comment-8222807)

<comment><USER31> The total ride capacity of Disneyland is staggering. I'm not sure what Cedar Point's is, but I'd be surprised if it exceeded Disneyland's.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Do they do staggered ticket pricing based on what attractions are accessible? Last time my family was passing through LA, I looked into taking my 3 and 7 year olds. We could only see the one ticket price. Thought it was just too expensive considering the younger kid wouldn't have been able to nor would have wanted to ride most of the attractions. It would have been nice to bring them just to poke around...

<comment><USER15> Kids 2 and under go in for free, but that's about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> They probably need to create a phone app that tracks guests, and then offer a discount for people to install it on their phones. It might be the best way to divide the customer base into various profiles that could later serve for computer simulations & models for when different events happen: ticket price changes, rides opened & closed, etc.

</comment><comment><USER33> "passholders and people staying at the park get priority"

They didn't trade a faster system for a slower system, they started price descriminating to further maximize their profits. You just happen to be in the group that gets a slower experience.

</comment><comment><USER34> > Average wait times at the Disneyland Resort have been on the rise over the > past few years, despite efforts by the park to ease crowding by raising > ticket prices on peak demand days

They raised prices because there was more demand, so they could make more money.

<comment><USER22> Yes and no. They haven't maxed capacity, they get paid if people wait in line in the park. Selling fewer paak day tickets at higher prices is better experience for customers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> When going, I try to remind myself that Disney parks are not designed to be seen in one day.

</comment><comment><USER36> Does anyone know if Disney publishes any of their operations materials or data, a la Toyota? I didn't find any on a quick search; it'd be fascinating to dig into materials on how they do planning, capacity, traffic flows, etc.

<comment><USER31> They publish almost nothing publicly. Certainly nothing useful that I'm aware of.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Or do like Burning Man, Yosemite, Hamilton, etc... schedule sale of limited tickets well in advance. This has the added benefit of not taxing lower-income people and makes the experience much more scarce and something to look forward to.

</comment><comment><USER38> Clickbait-title but actually great content. Never seen this before.

</comment><comment><USER39> They have already capped the people going into the park. People with single- day passes can be turned away at the gate if the park is full. Two-day or multi-day pass got priority.

<comment><USER40> Link? I can't believe if you have a one-day trip you can really get turned away at the gate.

<comment><USER8> [http://www.disneydining.com/happens-disney-park-closed- due-r...](http://www.disneydining.com/happens-disney-park-closed-due-reaching- capacity/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Disney, instead of using fancy "wait in line" tech just stop shoving so many people into the park. Problem solved.

<comment><USER42> This could definitely work if they changed how their annual passes worked. Right now, pass holders can come in whenever there is not a black out date, but Disney needs to first implement a system where days have to be booked in advance. Otherwise, first come first serve would unfairly block those traveling from out of town.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Please bring back the E-Ticket

</comment><comment><USER44> sounds like basic economics

</comment><comment><USER45> Please, what are the results? There's too much useless text behind that clickbait headline.

<comment><USER46> How can you tell it's useless if you didn't read it?!</comment></comment>


Request for Technically Risky Projects - astro-codes What technical projects do you think should exist in the world? What hard problems exist in your field? Where do you think the frontiers of science/technology lie?<p>I'm interested in learning about hard technical problems you think are worth solving. <comment><AUTHOR> Creating a "Wikipedia of Arguments", one can refer to in public discussions.

It turns out that this is a way harder problem than I thought. I'm in this space for some time now and am happy to talk about it.

Relevant links: [https://github.com/canonical-debate- lab/paper/blob/master/RE...](https://github.com/canonical-debate- lab/paper/blob/master/README.mediawiki)

[https://www.societylibrary.org/](https://www.societylibrary.org/)

<comment><USER2> Let's hope that a well-constructed, well-behaved and well-participated argument forum maintained over long enough timescales can lead towards better outcomes for everyone. Best of luck with the project.

You might be aware of it already, but just in case, the most progress I've seen in the area of web-based argument mapping has been Arguman ( [https://github.com/arguman/arguman.org](https://github.com/arguman/arguman.org) ). They're also following an open source model and there could be opportunities to co-operate and/or share ideas.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I'm aware of it. There are quite a lot of tools in this space already. Unfortunately, many are unaware of each-other and therefore making the same mistakes and learnings over and over again.

Looking at all these tools makes it clear how difficult it is to create one that actually "works".

Most of the researchers at the canonical debate lab created their own tool in the past and are now discussing how a next-generation tool should look like.

<comment><USER2> Cool. In some ways, that sounds like the software industry in a nutshell, to be honest :)

Can you share a sense for what any of the core unsolved problems are? (I'd be happy to read a mailing list / previous discussions if there's too much background to be worth communicating in a comment here)

I've noticed that Arguman seemed to run into community management and spam issues. More broadly speaking there seems to be a societal challenge in getting people to trust and feel invested in honest debating and to accept best-known truths.

<comment><AUTHOR> The core unsolved problems in my opinion are:

\- The argumentation data model

\- An attack/manipulation-proof community curation system (maybe similar to StackOverflow)

\- A user-interface that can be used by anyone who is interested to contribute, but powerful enough to work with the argumentation structure

There is a weekly zoom meeting every monday that is recorded and uploaded to youtube: [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwMyf- sRX2_Hqw-h9ba_S...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwMyf- sRX2_Hqw-h9ba_StFt5jOKlpBcF)

<comment><USER2> Late reply here, but thank you - I'll try to catch up on a few of those recordings.

Edit: small clarification

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Way outside my field, but a platform for global climate management that links current actions to future outcomes and accountability to nations and companies would be very cool, assuming it is taken seriously by parties involved (which is an even harder challenge). This is technically hard, but harder still from a people perspective.

</comment><comment><USER4> A Laser Mosquito Turret for homes, that uses a directional microphone to home in on the target.I don't believe that it would be difficult to build the laser part, but the difficulty would be in making it safe for home use.

<comment><USER5> [https://photonicsentry.com/](https://photonicsentry.com/)

<comment><USER6> Isn't that a safety-hazard. The laser is probably strong enough to make you blind if it hits you wrongly in the eye.

<comment><USER7> It's for industrial uses. There are more dangerous things, like chainsaws and microwaves. You either design it to be safer (microwave) or keep humans out of the way (chainsaw).

It sounds like parent commenter is working on the former.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> An alternative to the html model for building websites. The html model is antiquated for building web apps, and inconsistent across various browsers x platforms. The direction of the spec imo is becoming an overengineered mess that is increasingly controlled by the Google (see portals and web packages).

With the arrival of webgpu, I predict we'll begin to see end to end frameworks for building web apps that own the entire pipeline of application state management to drawing pixels on the screen.

</comment><comment><USER9> I have two regarding embedded software stack,

1\. Memory Safety C-language literally dominates embedded software stack, while every on knows it is not memory safe and terrible memory bugs will be found but not yet discovered.

2\. Compile time The whole GNU toolchain take minutes if not hours to make, which makes CI/CD painfully long.

</comment><comment><USER10> No one seems to trust vpns. I wonder if a VPN company almost needs to be law technology. All of our attempts at privacy is technically sound but lacks the backing of solid lawyers ready to hold it down. That's got to be worth something.

<comment><USER11> So the implied trust due to legal backing through same ownership as a law firm?

Interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Making large transformer based models like Jukebox [1] efficient enough so that they can be trained on a single 8x GPU machine to the same level of quality as the original model, in the same amount of time.

[1] [https://openai.com/blog/jukebox/](https://openai.com/blog/jukebox/)

</comment><comment><USER13> Decentralized search in p2p / federated networks.

Privacy-respecting decentralized online identity.

<comment><USER14> I am sure you know about Solid.

Just in case: [https://solidproject.org/](https://solidproject.org/)

<comment><USER13> Thanks. Yes, I do. There is a lot of work in the field of decentralized identity, but status is still far from a 'solved problem'. Work being done by Rebooting the Web of Trust [0] (see their github repo's) and Identity Foundation [1]. Besides Solid there's a bunch of interesting, related specs evolving like Verifiable Credentials [2], Self Sovereign Identity (I hope for impls without the blockchain).

[0] [http://www.weboftrust.info/](http://www.weboftrust.info/)

[1] [https://identity.foundation/](https://identity.foundation/)

[2] [https://www.w3.org/TR/vc-data-model/](https://www.w3.org/TR/vc-data- model/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Typed language with extremely fast compile times suitable for use by neural nets.

</comment><comment><USER16> Spectacles that run 24/7

</comment><comment><USER17> The "cold-start" problem of new social network sites

<comment><USER3> Apologies for the condescension, and with all due respect, building a social network is a bit neo Silicon valley frothy.

<comment><USER18> the idea of building another facebook is just...ugh.

however, a friend of mine has been working on a community site for fishing enthusiasts for years. it's _extremely hard_ to bootstrap a community site of any kind, even if it's not "social networking" per se.

<comment><USER7> I think the idea is to build a not-facebook. I'm working in social media too, and there's a lot of things that FB does poorly.

The goal is usually media, centered around yourself. For some people, it could be their line of work, or happenings in their neighbourhood. FB, prioritizing growth, is like the BuzzFeed of social media, but we're starting to see why that doesn't work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Fusion</comment>


Android Candy Crush solver - <AUTHOR> https://applidium.com/en/news/candy_crush_solver/ <comment><USER2> Nice work. :)

In 2009 I wrote something like this while interning at a big company where I had nothing interesting to do for "Bejewled Blitz" (a popular FB-game of that time).</comment>


False information on the internet is hiding the truth about onions - <AUTHOR> http://www.marketplace.org/2017/03/14/tech/internet-falsehoods-are-hiding-truth-about-onions <comment><USER2> I recently created a web page that provides - in my biased opinion - unique, relevant information on a niche topic that I'm interested in. It's been impossible for me to crack the top search results on this topic. Instead, the top 20+ results are all news articles repeating the same thing.

I never had reason to complain about Google's algorithm until I became a content creator. Now, I wonder what other great web pages I'm missing out on.

<comment><USER3> _Instead, the top 20+ results are all news articles repeating the same thing._

I encounter this several times a week it seems (google, ddg, doesn't seem to matter). Usually when trying to find the actual source of something, like a scientific study, the top hits are all news sites, often whith articles which look like copies of each other. I'm assuming they're ranked by number of visits and popularity in general of the site, but it makes it really hard to drill down to the source of something. To the point I usually give up. I am going to try the '-news' thing mentioned by another commenter though, hope that helps. Or are there any other tips?

<comment><USER4> Perfect example of this is trying to google for mailing list posts.

All sorts of maximum ad-cram crappy sites (including ones that try to pretend to be a forum, with mailing list posts as "users") that maximize SEO gaming techniques dominate the results for 20+ pages.

[http://marc.info](http://marc.info), which is the best archive avalible atm, plain, simple no bullshit layout and is linked everywhere anytime somebody wants to reference a mailing list archive, nowhere to be found.

<comment><USER5> I am sure they all have Google's ads on them, too. Only slightly suspicious.

<comment><USER6> I can assure you adsense has no connection to crawl or rankings.

<comment><USER7> How much connection does it have to making the removal of adsense spam pages from Google's index a priority? I have a feeling it lowers that priority significantly, and if those pages were hurting Google's bottom line, it would be priority #1 for the company to remove them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is about way more than onions. We are always in the danger of decline and regression to the dark ages. The world of rumors, beliefs, marketing and magical thinking is always there, biding its time.

<comment><USER9> It seems like Trump is a sign that what you fear is already happening. Look at the media his supporters consume. Listen to AM talk radio if you want to know how much the world is still controlled by "rumors, beliefs, marketing and magical thinking."

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> There is well worded keyword dense _quotation_ in the beginning of the article in question [1] that the rest of the article proves wrong, as latter [2] article analyses. But how is poor machine supposed to understand this?

Ah, those semantic web utopian visions, with humans producing content gently semantically marked for machines to "see" all those negatively ironic peculiar ambiguities and relations.

Now, that problematic "quotation" in [1] is in fact:

"[…]"

i.e. not even marked as quotation (eg `<q cite="[…]">[…]</q>`). Sigh.

[1] [http://www.slate.com/articles/life/scocca/2012/05/how_to_coo...](http://www.slate.com/articles/life/scocca/2012/05/how_to_cook_onions_why_recipe_writers_lie_and_lie_about_how_long_they_take_to_caramelize_.html) [2] [http://gizmodo.com/googles-algorithm-is-lying-to-you- about-o...](http://gizmodo.com/googles-algorithm-is-lying-to-you-about-onions- and-blam-1793057789)

<comment><USER11> This is why the semantic web lets you clearly mark up wrong information being cited, which, in the words of the Wikipedia "is primarily used to mark text that is mistaken".

[https://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_strike.asp](https://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_strike.asp)

Haha, just kidding. Just reminding you that there's nothing semantic about HTML :) The strikethrough is kind of deprecated, but there's no good semantic replacement, because the semantic web is actually a complete joke.

Source on my Wikipedia quote: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strikethrough](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strikethrough)

<comment><USER12> Sounds like a good place for a microformat [1] that lets search engines know that they shouldn't take a sentence as true e.g.
takes 5 minutes

[1] [http://microformats.org/wiki/Main_Page](http://microformats.org/wiki/Main_Page)

<comment><USER13> Ooh, awesome - then we can persuade all those sites we keep hearing about to mark up their fake news using these microformats, and the world's information problems will be solved!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The problem, IMO, is introduced when Google tries to provide definitive answers for questions that don't have definitive answers. To be sure, there are lots of questions that have definitive answers that would correctly satisfy 99% of searchers (what is the speed of sound, what is the height of the Empire State Building, etc.).

Then there are questions that require explanation and don't have a binary correct/incorrect answer. Even with the question serving as the example for this article: "How long does it take to caramalize onions?" Well sure, the author cited in this article adamantly claims it takes much more than ten minutes. But does it? Maybe there are equally or more qualified people who say that under normal circumstances and a certain heat level it doesn't take more than ten minutes to caramalize an onion. Who is right? I don't think Google can parse the available information to provide a "correct" response, and shouldn't try to.

So to me a better solution would be to categorize queries based on whether they can be answered definitively and, if they cannot, don't attempt to.

<comment><USER15> The speed of sound is probably more in the latter category as it is dependent on altitude and temperature, and even then only after assuming that someone really meant the speed of sound in air. If I search for "speed of sound" Google's info box will give me an answer labeled as "speed of sound at sea level" which should probably instead say "speed of sound in the atmosphere at sea level at 20 degrees celsius". It's an ill-defined question when asked so vaguely, and if you're going to pretend to give a definite answer by making a bunch of assumptions, they should be clearly presented.

<comment><USER16> If the difference in the speed of sound because of altitude and temperature makes a difference for you, you should probably research a bit farther than the Google's info box. I just see that as useful as answering trivia quiz questions.

<comment><USER17> I sort of agree. On the one hand, an approximate answer is fine for this use- case (especially when you can look down 2 inches and see the full context in the Wikipedia result without looking through) but perhaps it would be worthwhile on answers like that to say "Approximately" at the front just to be clear.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> _Because bad information that people passionately believe has a way of rising to the top._

Given that information is a sort of currency (which is exchanged for your attention while an advertisement is displayed in close proximity), perhaps we should have expected that something like Gresham's Law - that 'bad money drives out good' when competing currencies exist - would hold true on the web too.

Popularity is only a good proxy for quality when the population is rational. given the abundant evidence of even smart people often suffering from large cognitive biases, weak educational standards, and an economic system where consumption and waste are more profitable to supply than more sustainable solutions, it's not surprising that search quality could decline even as raw performance improves.

Google and the existing web will be disrupted by the advent of contextual search, which retrieves the graph of a specific information frame.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gresham's_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gresham's_law)

</comment><comment><USER19> Heh, I just typed "how long does it take to caramelize onions?" into Google and got this answer:

about 5 minutes

With a link to his article. So, the news that this was fixed is premature.

p.s. he is absolutely right that caramelizing onions takes 35-45 minutes, most people have no idea what a caramelized onion really looks like.

</comment><comment><USER20> > _Ryssdal: Now, we should say, that in the days, what, week or so since this > post was published, Google has in fact changed the search results, right? > So, you 've changed two things: You've changed the New York Times and you've > changed Google._

This is still a problem with this specific example today.[0]

[0] - [http://imgur.com/a/2R5k5](http://imgur.com/a/2R5k5)

<comment><USER21> It seems it's more nuanced. Try the following searches:

      how long does it take to caramelize onions
      how long does it take to caramelise onions (note the typo)
      how long to caramelize an onion (not a typo but still wrong)
      how long to caramelize onions

<comment><USER22> Replacing the 'z' with 's' is not a typo, though.

<comment><USER23> Several years ago, a coworker pointed out that an article spelled "organization" with an "s" instead of a "z" and wondered why such an obvious mistake would pass an editor.

I pointed out that that's just the British spelling. Everyone in my group was amazed that I would know such a thing. It was an eye-opening moment... for me.

<comment><USER24> There's a very old and very well established anecdote of this. It's the difference between the words "color" and colour".

\- You show an American the word "colour" and they go: aha, a typo!

\- You show a Brit the word "color" and they go aha, an American!

<comment><USER25> Yes Australian here. I run into this problem with programming languages all the time. Because of things like "colour" vs "color" or "centre" vs "center". "Maximise" "minimise" etc are good examples as well

My coworkers and I call it the 'American API' problem.

<comment><USER26> Places I've worked - in Australia and NZ - have adopted American spelling throughout the code in an effort to standardise with tools, APIs, etc.

That is, "Use American spelling wherever possible in the code" is part of the coding standard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> For great onion techniques see "Ruhlman's Twenty: 20 Techniques, 100 Recipes, A Cook's Manifesto" by Michael Ruhlman. Before this book I didn't know there was a difference between sweating them and caramelizing them.

<comment><USER28> A decade ago took a cooking class that an amazing chef offered to a bunch of us regulars.

One of the things he showed us was how to properly chop and sweat onions to sweeten them, including how to use smell to tell when they were done. Somebody said "Oh, we're going to caramelize them." and the chef replied, quite matter of factly, "Oh, no, we'll be here all night if we caramelize them."

And that's when I learned there was a difference.

<comment><USER29> He was not kidding. Full and careful caramelization for french onion soup, say, takes 3 hours or more (and you have to cut them with the grain or it won't work nearly as well).

If you ever wondered why it's really hard to find great french onion soup (assuming you've had it once!) - that's why.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> i'm new here and have no idea how long comments are allowed to be. there's a lot to say, but i'll try to be succinct. (and probably fail.)

1) the quickest way to make bad AI is to train it on bad data. and the internet is the king of bad data. if the New York Times is putting out bad recipes and if other humans are regularly buying into fake news articles, blaming the google algorithm seems like shooting the messenger for echoing the low standards of society.

2) many (though not all) of these questions are injecting presuppositions. when you ask google "how long does it take to caramelize onions," you're implying that such a thing can be quantified. you'll get answers which try to tell you how long it takes because semantically that's what fits. but in reality, a lot of things are done when they look done. or done when they smell done. or done when they're thick enough to form peaks.

so i really think this is a human problem. as much as we want to error-proof all our software, in the world of general AI, we will need people to interact responsibly.

<comment><USER31> 1) It really depends on your AI and its goal. If the goal of the AI was to summarize human opinions, then the current approach is fine. What isn't working is that it's doing one thing (here is the answer of some people on the internet) and presenting it as something else (here is the answer). Plus, there are ways to put some bounds of confidence on an algorithmic prediction, and I don't see why they are not displayed along with the answer that was generated.

2) It relates to point 1, but the real solution would be that Google admits "I don't know/it depends" when the confidence is under some threshold.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> > Because bad information that people passionately believe has a way of rising > to the top.

Great single line summation of the whole problem.

</comment><comment><USER33> So, it isn't very different from the Big Lie idea[0]: if you repeat a lie long enough it becomes truth.

It works for humans, it works for algorithms.

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

</comment><comment> nommm-nommm The onions thing really bothers me too.

I mean, it takes 45+ minutes to caramelize onions. You can fry them for 10-20 minutes or so and get a pretty tasty result, but they aren't caramelized onions.

I have no idea why people say otherwise!

I watch a lot of cooking shows and the contestants (supposed to be professional chefs) will have 30 minutes to make a dish and they'll say "I will start out by caramelizing the onions." No you won't! You'd need more than your 30 minute cooking time to caramelize onions!

Onions can be caramelized in a slow cooker, as mentioned. They aren't as good as doing it on the stove properly but are good enough for the labor you save.

/rant

I do proper caramelized onions only about once a year because they are so tedious.

<comment><USER34> A trick I learned from Seriouseats is that you can use a pressure cooker to carmelize onions in about half an hour. The normal stage of onion cooking where the liquid is still coming out of the onion limits the cooking temperature to about the boiling point of water; by using a pressure cooker, the boiling point of water is raised to the point where browning happens even before the water is gone. See: [http://www.seriouseats.com/2016/01/the-food- lab-pressure-coo...](http://www.seriouseats.com/2016/01/the-food-lab-pressure- cooker-caramelized-onions-onion-soup.html)

<comment><USER35> I've done this and the results product tastes great in dips/soups but for me (and it seems many commentors) the onions turn to complete mush (almost like a jam texture). Were you able to get your onions to maintain some texture?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> So am I the only person who thought that this would cover Tor vulnerabilities?

<comment><USER37> Not at all. I must admit I found the actual topic pleasantly humorous after expecting to read about Tor exploits/bugs.

<comment><USER36> Yes, me too.

But seriously, that is a worrisome bug in all single-answer search solutions. Search automation doesn't seem to handle sarcasm and irony very well. Maybe website coding needs an "ignore this block when parsing page meaning" property.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Onions have layers and so does the truth apparently. Determining actual truth from a lot of vaguely related information is quite difficult. I've always found that there are things you can enter a search string for but you can't describe it sufficiently to find the actual result, just things that appear related somehow.

</comment><comment><USER39> And I'd like a step-by-step recipe on how to caramelize onions, which ingredients to use, etc... Like "the final recipe".

<comment><USER40> Scocca provides a good method at the end of the article:

Scocca: I throw them in the Crock-Pot overnight.

Ryssdal: Oh, that's so smart.

Scocca: They become a little juicy, and you might need to dry them out in the pan a bit before you actually use them, but it's a lot faster.

<comment><USER41> I did this the first time (based on a post at Metafilter derived from the original article mentioned in this piece - [https://www.metafilter.com/115702/Oniongate](https://www.metafilter.com/115702/Oniongate)) and that was a good approach because it took me out of the process which meant I didn't touch the onions or fiddle with the temperature or anything and 8 hours later I finally got the difference.

Now I cook them in a pan while doing something else. Takes an hour or so but it beats running the crockpot all day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> My anecdotal experience is that internet recipes are always wrong about cook time. Usually they skew short. I will take this as personal vindication.

<comment><USER43> i usually find that internet recipes on aggregators are only good for theme and approach. like, what spices to use for a dish, and whether to braise or saute. the recipe tends to suck in proportion to how specific you read it to be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> DISCLAIMER: I'm an amateur when it comes to the philosophy and science of search engines.

I think a core problem is that what we determine to be "fact" [1] changes over time (as it rightly should). As such, no deterministic function can adequately represent fact, without having a bias.

Something that is "fact" today can be made invalidated tomorrow through many methods, scientific and otherwise. Of course, that does not change the importance of "fact" over time (i.e. at one time it was "fact" but it may no longer be).

I don't know how Google search algorithms inject randomness into search, but I believe that without enough randomness (and subsequent feedback) and testing, any such algorithm would be deficient. It's almost like you have to A/B test the "facts", in a way. And take into account time. And give each and every fact due consideration.

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

</comment><comment><USER45> It's interesting that PageRank was originally envisioned as a way to rank academic papers. Now it's failing on caramelizing onions, which doesn't seem like a subject anybody profits by spreading misinformation about. What does this say about how we use citation metrics in academia?

</comment><comment><USER46> And he ends the article with a falsehood! (Unintentionally I presume)

*>I throw them in the Crock-Pot overnight. They become a little juicy...but it's a lot faster

Is NOT true. Prep time might be shorter but cooking time 'overnight' is not any faster than 45min on the stove top.

<comment><USER47> I think his point is that "drying them out in a pan" before using them is a lot faster than caramelising them from scratch. It's true--it takes maybe 2 minutes to get the crockpot-onions to the same consistency as regular caramelised ones.

Also, while the prep is the same, crockpot onions require literally no work during the cooking. On the stovetop, you do have to watch and stir them, which requires a little bit of attention. Since the crockpot version takes so long, the prep is also pretty far away from the rest of the cooking, which makes it "faster" if you have other stuff to do an hour before dinner.

Edit: If you haven't tried this, give it a go--it works well and you can put them on everything for a few days! Yum

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> What I've been noting in Web searches (Google and other providers) is that _they 're becoming less useful_.

I'm not sure if this is a result of poorer relevance, gaming, my own changing interests, or increased access to more authoritiative sources. I'm suspecting all of the above.

As two Stanford University researchers noted in the 1990s, online epistemic services are highly prone to skewing information to favour interests of advertisers and business partners, rather than users. They proposed an approach which would avoid this problem, results suggest they've fallen short.

There's a tremendous industry that's emerged to game and skew search engine results. It's proved quite effective in its ends.

I've been shifting my explorations from programming and technical subjects to economics, history, and philosophy. Where the former are well-represented online and come from recent sources, the better sources for the latter are often at best nearline, and authoritative sources range from decades to centuries old, occasionally millennia. (Fortunately, the Data Explosion works to advantage, as the search space for older works is far smaller.)

I've also been rediscovering libraries and library cataloguing systems, including periodicals and scholarly indices (though far too few of these are available online). Google's Scholar is useful, as is Books, though both remain highly deficient. Samizdat and underground sources such as Sci-Hub, LibGen, and BookZZ provide ready access to material. I can turn up a reference, and in a few minutes, be reading it, from the original, unmediated by others' interpretations or editorialising. That is a refreshing change from online sources which skew to magazine articles, blogs, social media posts, and tweets.

Given all this, I'm finding DDG to be a more useful search engine in that from it, using bang syntax, I can hit specific sources (often from much better search dialogs than their own native facilities). From Firefox, bang searches work within the navbar. From Chrome/Android, "Home" => search. This is faster than going to or typing in individual domains.

The ability to permanently blacklist domains from search results, shifting more of the search filtering to client side, would be useful.

</comment><comment><USER13> I searched for "How long does it take to caramelize onions?", and Google returned an infobox with "35 to 40 minutes" highlighted (from this article) along with three other results in the top ten explaining how most articles about caramelising onions are wrong, from 2012 and 2014. So this particular problem seems not to exist? Although, it could have been fixed in the last week, I admit...

</comment><comment><USER49> I think the confusion might come in from the fact that many recipes refer to the process of onions starting to brown as "beginning to caramelize" simply meaning that they start to turn brown and sweeten. This does in fact happen in five to ten minutes. "Caramelized Onions" might be an entirely different proper noun than the concept "Onions which have begun to caramelize".

<comment><USER50> After thinking about this, I think you're probably right, along with a gradual declining of standards about caramelization.

I've made caramelized onions multiple times, watching over them for long periods of time. At some point several years ago I became confused by the issue referred to in the article, and thought that I was mistaken about what caramelizing onions was. I've come to realize that I was not.

However, caramelizing onions is a gradual process, and so I could see how what one calls "caramelized onions" could be seen as a matter of degree. With candy making, as a parallel, there are degrees of hardness; with roux there's different degrees of browning, etc. etc. etc.

You're probably right, because at some point early on something very very roughly resembling "caramelized onions" is achieved, which is basically the same as "fried onions." People assumed because the onions resembled what they were familiar with in fried onions, they must be the same, even though they're not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> If you try to search google for technical information or product information you can often end up with bad answers because it typically prioritizes older, longer lived results. So instead of getting a result that's relevant to the here and now you get one that was true for whatever version of a thing existed 5 or 10 years ago.

Even worse, google still hasn't banned pinterest from results.

</comment><comment><USER52> > bad information that people passionately believe has a way of rising to the > top

That's the money quote for me. Certainly relevant to contemporary politics... but I bet most of us can also think of cases where this happens in the workplace, trendy frameworks, etc.

</comment><comment><USER53> I know this isn't really the point of the story, but if you add a pinch of baking soda to onions you can turn them into something that's pretty similar to caramelised in a few minutes. Add a little sugar to help them along.

</comment><comment><USER54> Sadly, if you ask how to caramelise onions, Google still says to minutes. Ask it how to caramelize onions, and it'll correctly say 45. I guess those of us outside America will have to figure it out ourselves.

</comment><comment><USER55> One could even go as far as saying that "Google is fake news."

Now, I wouldn't say that myself, but Google brought this upon themselves. I've criticized them in the past about their "top answer" solution, as well about the AMP-powered carousel with (corporate-owned) "media partners".

They're setting up a system where there's a _high chance_ that the top answer is indeed false, but _Google acts as if it isn 't_ \- and that's the real issue here. Google envisions a future where its AI assistant will soon _only_ give you that "top answer" as the "right answer".

I think it's wrong of Google to do that, at least until our AIs become smarter than humans, and can actually discern the truth way better than humans can from "reading" thousands of related articles/papers.

</comment><comment><USER56> The page seems slow/dead, so here's a mirror: [http://archive.is/0Jc7G](http://archive.is/0Jc7G)

</comment><comment><USER57> Is nobody else disturbed by the fact that nowhere is anyone specifying what kind of onions to use? Vidalia, Texas, Walla Walla? Bermuda? _Cévennes??_

<comment><USER58> I just assume 'onion' means the bog-standard (and comparatively cheap) brown onion unless a more specific term is used.

<comment><USER59> Interesting, I've never even heard of a brown onion. I thought the cheap standard onions were white, and I always buy yellow.

I'm even a gardener! (But I just buy whatever sets they have locally)

<comment><USER58> Brown onions are also known as yellow onions; depends on your locale. I guess the locale of the recipe's author matters as well (although it usually doesn't matter too much if you use a white or brown onion).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> This article would get even more traffic if it were titled: " _7 falsehoods programmers believe about onions_ "

</comment><comment><USER61> The article and the comments are great, but where is that recipe? (seriously)

</comment><comment><USER62> lol I thought this article is about .onion

</comment><comment><USER63> The grand irony is that this guy is absolutely wrong about caramelizing onions. It simply does not have to take 45 minutes to caremelize onions. Sure, you can do it in that amount of time, but he's wrong. His "crusade" is based on incorrect information.

One of the best tricks I've learned for quickly caramelizing onions is to not use any oil in the pan; the oil is more likely to cause it to burn. No oil; slightly over medium heat; a thick pan; barely any stirring; slices evenly cut; that's all you need.

<comment><USER64> > this guy is absolutely wrong

> but he's not wrong

I think you either contradicted yourself there or it isn't clear from the way you've written it that you're talking about different things.

<comment><USER63> gah, I typed it in a hurry; that "not" was NOT supposed to be there.</comment></comment></comment>


Kouio RSS: A Progress Update - <AUTHOR> https://kouio.com/blog/a-progress-update

<comment><USER2> Although I'm pretty satisfied with my current reader, and wasn't looking for a replacement, this looks really nice. It didn't require linking my Google account, OPML import worked instantly unlike on some other readers, the interface is nice, editing folders and feeds works through the main interface (rather than requiring a special menu)

<comment><AUTHOR> What's your current reader?

<comment><USER2> The rather little-known SilverReader

[http://silverreader.com/](http://silverreader.com/)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Hitting Restart at 40 - <AUTHOR> TL;DR: How can one restart a career and move to research (or any other area for that matter) at 40?
Hi HN crowd!
I've been climbing the corporate ladder for most of my career, with some degree of success, mostly in big consultancy, currently leading a team of around 140 consultants. My background is in software engineering, and corporate ladders are mostly incompatible with sticking with the engineering side of things (I usually put it as evolving from engineer to manager to salesman).
I'm at a point in my career where I feel a change is needed, and research has always been something I'd love to do, and where I feel I could contribute with actual value to actual people.
The thing is, I'm about to turn 41, never worked in research, and wouldn't know the first thing about starting a career in that space.
Any tips on how to do it? If it helps, and in the current economic context, how would you advise someone on how to restart a career at 40? <comment><USER2> Are you financially independent? Then stop working, get into a PhD programm this is usually training for research.</comment>