Never Put Two Spaces After a Period - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/never-put-two-spaces-after-a-period-2014-1 <comment><USER2> >When I pointed out that they were doing it wrong-that, in fact, the correct way to end a sentence is with a period followed by a single, proud, beautiful space-the table balked. "Who says two spaces is wrong?" they wanted to know.

Pretty rich talk from someone who used a hyphen in place of an em dash.

<comment><USER3> Do you put spaces around em dashes—those of this kind?

edit: Ah, in german we use a shorter one with spaces – like this. Still longer than a minus: -

<comment><USER2> I usually do put spaces around them, but that is a style choice I consider less important than the length of the dash itself. The style the author uses is indistinguishable from a hyphenated noun, like "hurdy-gurdy."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I personally have no idea about typography, but I use double space after a period for semantics --- as a sentence terminator. because, you know, there are languages where periods are used not only for terminating sentences.

as a side note --- capitalising the first letter of a sentence is a convention similar to putting two spaces between sentences. why does the author do this?

</comment><comment><USER5> The double-space just says "I was raised in the jungle by wild typists, and did not lay my eyes upon a printed book until the age of 25".

</comment><comment><USER6> ...or not.

I do it, likely will continue, and still do use monospace fonts.

What will happen is people will largely center on one or another, have their reasons, with a majority doing single space.

As for caps lock, clearly the author has not dirtied their refined hands on many numerical control systems. Oh, the shame and horror!

Sans the ongoing lectures about what "we want" as writers, one space would probably be adopted far more rapidly. Sometimes we want flow, sometimes we want a pause, and we may want a lot of things not necessarily in line with style purists best efforts.

TL;DR (complete with pretentious semicolon) I'm so sorry this trivia is elevated to such a point of concern. I feel you. Really. Ahem. (Pause intended, made explicit as HN renders with one space -a fine solution.)

</comment><comment><USER7> I have had numerous occasions discussing this topics b with my peers before and concluded this is really like a religion and will be very difficult to convince anyone to change to another. (I use one space myself.)

It causes bit of side effects to have two spaces after period, like if one of them rolling into beginning of a new line and what they ought to do is to define those spaces as a non-breakable spaces, to indicate they shouldn't be separated, but I don't see this praciticed too often.

</comment><comment><USER8> ha, Even with this article being from 2014, I find it funny to see that the author continued to pen jeremiads on the epidemic of two spaces in modern society for years[1]. Sort of an unusual (and in my mind, pretentious) cause to take up.

In any case, it's not true. If you want to use two spaces after a period, continue to do so--I do. Here's a long rebuttal on why two spaces after a period doesn't really matter[2] and the corresponding HN discussion from four years ago[3].

[1] [http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2011/01/...](http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2011/01/space_invaders.html)

[2] [http://www.heracliteanriver.com/?p=324](http://www.heracliteanriver.com/?p=324)

[3] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6385448](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6385448)

Edit: I typed this comment with two spaces after each period. Try it yourself, you'll see the rendered HTML only has one space. This is a solved problem folks, just do it however you like!

Edit2: Just realized that even though this Business Insider article is dated 2014, the article is the same one the author wrote in 2011.

<comment><USER9> You can continue to do so. But your readers will hate you if you go to the extra effort of adding non-breaking spaces, because many people find two spaces in electronic text painfully distracting.

The "rule" is literally a waste of space. It's like playing an annoying harpsichord accompaniment in the background to all your voice and video calls.

The history is beside the point. The reality is the web has its own de facto standards enforced in HTML, as does modern typography, as does email.

Obscure forgotten metal print layout traditions from the 18th and 19th centuries are a historical footnote now, and not relevant to any of the above.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Emacs puts two spaces after a period when reflowing paragraphs. So I've been going with that default for years as the path of least resistance. Since it makes monospaced text slightly more readable and most rendered text output (TeX, Sphinx, Markdown etc.) ignore the additional space and omit it from their output, it doesn't have any significant detraction to me as an author, so I'll continue to live in the two space camp.

<comment><USER11> In Emacs there's an option to change that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> TIL a lot of people use two spaces and are very passionate about it. I've never heard of this in my life.

<comment><USER13> I was told to do it as a child, I've never thought about it since. When I wrote letters, incidentally, I would also probably leave more space between full stops and new sentences than I would between words?

Since his main argument is "nobody uses monospaced fonts" but my first action upon starting a new job is to change all the text defaults to be consolas I feel fine about my behaviour.

<comment><USER12> Is it an american thing? Or maybe an age thing? As I was going through school a lot of this stuff (any right alignment, commas after dear sir, etc) were being dropped. The only one that sunk it was typing out full names for numbers, one and twenty-two instead of 1 and 22, but I only stick to that up to ten, not 1000 like I was taught.

<comment><USER13> Dunno, I'm English so it's not an American thing. I don't even ever remember being taught it specifically but obviously I was because I sure as hell didn't make it up myself :p

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> In the days of ink and paper the extra space had a measurable cost that accountants considered unconscionable. Those days are gone but the sentiment continues as a ghost of past technologies in the minds of those who can't move on.

</comment><comment><USER15> I think it is far easier to read with two spaces, even in proportional fonts; on web pages I even add a Unicode non-breaking space after the period so that the browser will not absorb it.

<comment><USER16> What you should do instead is use an en or em space.

Some people put a regular space and then a non-breaking space after the period. But this is a really bad idea, because if the line is broken after the sentence, the non-breaking space is attached to the start of the next sentence, so it gets indented.

<comment><USER17> No, what you should do is just put a space or two spaces. You should not try to reinvent typography. Two spaces means that if software wants to try to find sentences, it can easily do so, but will still render properly (as a single space) if not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Well, now that browsers and everything else will ignore the second space we can focus on more important things, like which one computers prefer. And computers probably prefer two spaces so they can tell acronyms and abbreviations from the ends of sentences.

I'll never get used to typing that second space, but it beats a single newline or bad kerning or whatever the alternative is.

</comment><comment><USER19> Steve Losh has some arguments for putting two: [http://stevelosh.com/blog/2012/10/why-i-two- space/](http://stevelosh.com/blog/2012/10/why-i-two-space/)

</comment><comment><USER20> Weird.

Never heard of this two-space thing before, at least not growing up and working in the UK.

</comment><comment><USER21> "Monospaced fonts went out in the 1970s."

</comment><comment><USER22> ""Who says two spaces is wrong?" they wanted to know.

Typographers, that's who. The people who study and design the typewritten word decided long ago that we should use one space, not two, between sentences. "

I really think this guy Farhad Manjoo is trying to buy an argument where one doesn't exist. Perhaps he's practicing for April Fools' Day which isn't far off!

In his aforementioned quote, either he fails to justify his statements/claims or he covers a lot of mileage to prove minor points, same goes for the rest of his post. Sure, he has links to references and that fine (and the ones I looked at I didn't dispute,)—however that's not the most significant point.

Just because someone or authority dictates or pontificates from upon high that something is this or that, or is supposed to be a certain way etc. doesn't give that person or anything he says higher authority or even any credibility whatsoever. Moreover, often so-called 'orthodoxy' can actually be wrong or misinterpreted.

That said, professional standards are very important, so is the craft and experience of the artisan. However, 'double spacing after a stop between sentences' simply doesn't drop into this category, it's a lower-order exercise. It is not as if the typist who puts in a 'double-stop' is 'performing' at the level of a Graphic artists or typesetter does when he/she say typesets a novel in Palatino for general market release.

If the typist does worry thus, then I'd humbly suggest that he/she is overly obsessed about the matter or has some kind of fetish about it.

(No, I'm not being derogatory here as I actually understand the issue. Let me give you an example. When, say, I'm in a supermarket checkout aisle that has a checkout sign to the effect "People with less than 12 items" then I have a strong urge to cross out 'less' and replace it with the correct word 'fewer' but I never act upon it.)

It boils down to this, I am a very fussy person but nowhere as fussy as Farhad Manjoo, he strikes me as bordering on the obsessive.

The Issues as I perceive them: \</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>---

1\. I use 'double spacing after a stop between sentences' and a colon because it emphases the stop or colon itself. That's to say, it strengthens the action of the punctuation and makes the page more readable. Moreover, I have done so for years, and I have no intention of stopping.

1.1 Often seriffed fonts with various degrees of kerning etc. one often sees in books makes the punctuation almost illegible—concomitantly, thus so the text. There are many, many examples of this done by so-called professionals!

1.2 THE FACT THAT THE FONT/LAYOUT METRICS FOR THOSE TYPEFACES IS PRECISELY CORRECT AS SPECIFIED FOR THE TYPEFACE/FONT COMBINATION DOES NOT NECESSARILY ENSURE GOOD READABILITY. THESE BOOKS WOULD BE BETTER OFF BY INCREASING INTER- SENTENCE SPACING [ALBEIT NOT NECESSARILY TWO FULL SPACES]. SAME ALSO APPLIES TO THE INAPPROPRIATELY SMALL INTER-PARAGRAPH SPACING.

2\. Many others who I have observed over the years and who use two spaces after a stop also consider the matter a readability issue—double spacing often makes text more readable/understandable! Fact!

2.1 If I type a large document with _single_ spacing after the stop and then I read it back some weeks afterwards (after I've forgotten the fine detail of what I typed), then do the same with identical text but with _double_ spacing, then I find the _double spacing_ considerably easier to read. In my case, it's a fact (perhaps for Farhad Manjoo there's no difference but he shouldn't criticise those who do find the increased spacing better).

2.2 You might say the 'test' in 2.1 is fanciful and that I'm lying about it, as who would ever bother doing a comparison like that in the first place? However, I can assure you that such comparisons do happen. Often, I can have two identical documents even down to the font and almost to the layout. It mostly occurs when 'copy' goes into web pages or HTML editors that are set to automatically convert double spacing to single [i.e.: the page defaults to single spacing]. In fact, such comparisons happen quite regularly.

2.3 By insisting that I read 'single-spaced' documents then Farhad Manjoo would effectively disadvantage me because of my 'handicap'. There are many other typists out there who expedience reading text the same way I do. So what to do with us all? Perhaps shoot us, or put us all down like a sick dog?

2.4 In my case, the _double_ spacing after a stop/colon is so ingrained that I can get rather annoyed and irritated when posting to web sites that automatically convert from 'double' to 'single' space when posted. Sometimes there is no way around the problem but often there is. use ALT-255 or another Unicode blank symbol to insert the extra blank. If enough of us did that then the nastily little authoritarian people who write code for such pages might eventually get the message!

3\. Farhad Manjoo seems to spend precious little time discussing the very real effect 'double spacing after a stop' has when the typeface and its fonts are changed. Sometimes double spacing look awkward and often it does not depending on which typeface is used. Use a modern typing font such as Calibri and it hardly matters. This is a far too detailed a subjects cover here, suffice to say, different typefaces and different weights have a psycho-visual impact on the reader—that's why we use different typefaces with various font weights, etc.

3.1 The fact, that Farhad Manjoo is 'blinded' by a page of 'spaces' between sentences when 'double-space after stop' is used means that he actually perceives the page in a different visual way as do many others do. If so, I can actually understand his problem. Like many, I DO NOT notice these 'spaces', for me the effect is the 'area-under-a-curve' stuff—the integrand if you like—which, overall, makes the page have better readability performance when double space is used. No more, no less!

3.2 If disturbing 'double-space after stop' 'spaces' on a page cause Farhad Manjoo so much bother, then what does he do when the line spacing/line height is changed to double or even triple height. What does he do when the character spacing is adjusted or the kerning not set to his liking? It must be a nightmare for him—he must go around examining pages for "correctness"—and if they're "wrong" his distraction must make it difficult for him to comprehend the page.

[Actually, I can understand typeface/layout distraction. I'll often not buy a book if the typeface / fonts etc. are very poorly executed (but it does have to be bad, usually the content is more important and overrules my resistance).

3.3 Can Farhad Manjoo tell me how he copes with automatically justified text [i.e.: text with no ragged right]? Often such text can look truly horrible, nevertheless, it is a standard layout methodology used and accepted by Graphic artists and fontographers. Does this mean that because it's "officially" part of the layout 'canon' then Farhad Manjoo will fully accept it even though it is distractingly ugly?

3.4 Graphic artists and fontographers, etc. aren't the right people to judge the single/double spacing after stop rule/issue. These people are trained to notice the finest details with respect to the printed page and thus have a far too critical an eye.

3.4.1 The average user rarely notices 'typeface issues' at the 'minutiae' level, in fact I'm often horrified by the typeface/font 'sins' that so many are actually capable of committing.

3.4.2 I know, I am very fussy (in fact pedantic) about the typefaces and font weights that I use. I select them very carefully. Nevertheless, I'm not as fixed in my views as some professionals who work with type on a daily basis are. I am currently working on a long report. Considerable effort went into selecting the margins, footnote size, main heading (Aharoni 13pt), sub- headings (Aharoni, 10pt), main text (Calibri 10.5pt) block-text quotes (Rockwell 9 & 9.5), footers (Calibri 9). This attention to detail shows that I am sensitive to the issues of typefaces and layout, and it's why I reckon people who whinge and complain about the 'double spacing after stop' matter are just overly obsessive.

3.4.3 Why would I take the time to respond in so much detail to Farhad Manjoo post unless I was reasonably obsessive? Well, even though I accept and understand the purity—or should I sanctity—of the fontographer's typeface metrics, and, ipso facto, that I also understand that 'double spaces after stop' technically violates the aesthetics of these metrics, that it is such a small and trivial (but often useful) matter in the greater scheme of things that I consider it almost unworthy of discussion.

Simply, if I'm obsessed with such trivial details and it doesn't worry me one iota, then that Farhad Manjoo and his ilk in a special class of their own. QED.

4\. Microsoft Word has a setup setting which automatically enforces 'double spaces between sentences'—when set, put in a single space or three spaces and the grammar checker kicks in with a wiggly underline! If Microsoft took the trouble to provide the option in Word then clearly many use it and find it acceptable!

4.1 One of the reasons I do not use OpenOffice/LibreOffice very often is that it DOES NOT ENFORCE the 'double space after a stop between sentences'!

LibreOffice developers take note! Stop shooting yourselves in the collective foot and give users the options they want!

</comment><comment><USER23> Obligatory xkcd on kerning :)

[https://xkcd.com/1015/](https://xkcd.com/1015/)</comment>


Introducing PlexConnect, an AppleTV client which thinks different - <AUTHOR> http://elan.plexapp.com/2013/06/04/introducing-plexconnect-an-appletv-client-which-thinks-different/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is crazy ingenious. By using your computer as the Apple TV's DNS server, you can essentially replace the Trailers app with a Plex client.

More details here: [http://forums.plexapp.com/index.php/topic/69410-please- read-...](http://forums.plexapp.com/index.php/topic/69410-please-read-before- posting/)

I've been using the iPhone Plex app and sending the video to my Apple TV via AirPlay so far, but I'm really looking forward to trying this.

If enough people start using this, I wonder if Plex will just integrate it into the main Plex Server software?</comment>


Ask HN: I built stackbugs.com, will you use or recommend? Will love feedback. - <AUTHOR> stackbugs.com is a platform for on-demand coding help. There are a lot of questions and tutorials asked online regarding challenges new developers, solo developers, busy software engineers face to accomplish certain tasks that goes unanswered. Save time dealing with annoying/painful/exhausting bugs and coding issues.
Will you recommend, use and pay for stackbugs service where you get to talk to an expert in your field that points you in the right direction for instantly?
Target audience
1. Freelancers - Needing expertise or more hands on a project
2. Entrepreneurs - left with unfinished software projects
3. Software Developers - unreachable sub-contractors or facing project deadlines
4. Hobbyist and professionals - project polishing <comment><USER2> How is it different from:-

1\. StackOverflow

2\. Upwork

3\. UserCV

4\. Fiverr

??

<comment><AUTHOR> It free for trivial tasks with the added benefit of getting instant feedback as opposed to spending time googling for solutions that might not be tailored to specific needs.</comment></comment>


YouTube says it will crack down on bizarre videos targeting children - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/9/16629788/youtube-kids-distrubing-inappropriate-flag-age-restrict <comment><USER2> We used to let our 3 y/o watch youtube. She learned lots of things from there which was amazing. Colors, Numbers, the alphabet; all by the time she was 2. I'm not a teacher by any means so it was awesome to see this happen.

Then these weird videos started showing up. We took youtube away for exactly these videos that are mentioned in this link.

These are targeting children and it's sick.

<comment><USER3> > We used to let our 3 y/o watch youtube. She learned lots of things from > there which was amazing. Colors, Numbers, the alphabet; all by the time she > was 2. I'm not a teacher by any means so it was awesome to see this happen.

It's entirely possible the videos made this happen, or at least helped, but some kids just develop that stuff crazy-early. My daughter saw little video content before age two, and very little Youtube, but achieved all the same in the same timeframe with only basic work on our part. It was natural for her—she broke a 200-word working vocabulary by 14 months, could already count sets of things under ten, could name most letters of the alphabet, and so on. By age 2 she sounded like your average 4-year-old. Youtube had nothing to do with it, and we _barely_ had anything to do with it. That was just her.

My son, on the other hand...

<comment><USER4> I recall some research that showed that very young children did not pick up language from watching TV. It required an adult to closely interact with the child to learn language.

<comment><USER5> That's complete bunk. I was fluent in English by the age of 7-8 entirely from having watched a ton of TCC (a British kids channel) on my own. I'm sure adult aid helps, but it is in no way necessary.

I'm from Sweden btw

<comment><USER6> I think the original comment applies to one's first language, as opposed to later languages

<comment><USER4> That's right, and also to very young children, like 2-4. 7-8 year olds are very different.

Many Europeans told me they learned English from watching TV as children.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There's a subreddit about this called /r/ElsaGate. Some of them feel there's a more sinister meaning to some of the content of these strange videos, like here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/ElsaGate/comments/6t754b/thank_you/](https://www.reddit.com/r/ElsaGate/comments/6t754b/thank_you/)

<comment><USER8> Wow, sheesh. That's terrifying, but it makes a whole lot more sense than my pet theory, was that the videos were screening tools for state actors. They would seed YouTube with videos of beloved characters undergoing suffering and violence, and then use analytics to determine who kept watching. The kids who got squicked out would be collateral damage, but the ones who kept watching would be identified as potentially useful psychopaths, and approached to be recruited into black-ops assassination programs from an early age.

To be honest I'm not sure what's worse -- that or the child molester angle.

<comment><USER9> It sounds to me like your perspective may be skewed by having watched too many Hollywood action movies.

<comment><USER8> Or read too many HN stories about Russian agents of influence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What I find interesting is when you have parental controls on, and your playing a kids video, the advertisements are not something a kid should be shown.

<comment><USER11> It reminds me of the surprisingly-high proportion of content available without subtitles/captions. It's 2017 and plenty of people are deaf, and yet the BBC, Netflix, Amazon, etc. regularly pretend this section of their audience doesn't exist.

My guess is that is an instance of poor diversity within the team that set the early direction for YouTube. Maybe a team with a higher proportion of parents respresented might have made different decisions.

<comment><USER12> I'm not sure what you mean? Netflix got sued for not following the ADA over that exact issue, and it looks like they came into compliance years ago after settling and landing on a captioning framework with the National Association for the Deaf.

[http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/11/tech/web/netflix-subtitles- set...](http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/11/tech/web/netflix-subtitles- settlement/index.html)

<comment><USER13> I regularly find stuff on Netflix that is only subtitled in a language not spoken in the movie. It's very frustrating. Combined with Netflix's increasingly shitty catalog and I'm sure I should cancel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Also, in case you glazed over the link to the recent Medium article, here it is:

[https://medium.com/@jamesbridle/something-is-wrong-on-the- in...](https://medium.com/@jamesbridle/something-is-wrong-on-the- internet-c39c471271d2)

I read it last night after the wife recommended it ... and wow.

<comment><USER15> The article seems to never get to the point. What was the disturbing thing?

<comment> crooked-v Three main things:

\- Surrealist gibberish videos made with cheap render assets that feature whatever will show up in kids' content search (thus a predominance of Marvel and Disney characters)

\- Gross-out and violent troll videos that imitate the surrealist gibberish videos well enough for the algorithms to think they're kids' content

\- Live-action content that tends to include borderline child abuse in the name of "funny" content (for example, children vomiting or visibly in pain)

<comment><USER16> I work for an online reading platform. Our number one kids books are mostly about bugs, poop, and bugs that eat poop, followed closely by murder investigation.

Kids love things that make them slightly uncomfortable. A feeling they get a lot more often than adults. A feeling most adults avoid.

<comment><USER17> These videos are not that. Some quotes from [https://www.reddit.com/r/ElsaGate/](https://www.reddit.com/r/ElsaGate/) which fit what I saw so far:

> _Adult themes repeat themselves throughout these videos. They 're subtle, > and require interpretation which makes our analysis vague, but they are too > pervasive amongst videos of different channels, countries of origin, and > even advertised content that I cannot help but suspect a correlation. > :Imagery of fear and life-threatening circumstances. :Medical play, roleplay > or real, involving pregnancy and needles. :Ideas of dominance and power, > submission. :Magic, wands, spells being used negatively on others. :Acting > on an unconscious party, non-consent. :Visual innuendos and gags and even > inappropriate touching. :Naughtiness and misbehavior conducted in secret. > :Showers and bathroom imagery. :Colored plastic balls! In every video, > regardless of content. :Kids eating inordinate amounts of things for no > reason._

and

> _I am 20 with no children but am definitely a scared soccer mom at this > point. Having first hand experience with being a Kid On Youtube and now > being an Adult With Trauma, I think a lot of people aren 't thinking about > the severity of the effects of these videos on children, and I'm thinking > that's probably because a lot of people in this sub are older and didn't get > to experience being a kid on youtube w little/no parental supervision._

> _Tons of people are saying "well, I saw porn as a kid, and im fine." That > isn't the point! The point is /all of this is already kid targeted/. Seeing > porn as a kid on my own accord/exploration did nothing bad to me for the > most part. Seeing screamers on kids videos, as a kid? Totally fucked me up. > Seeing early-stage elsagate-esque videos as a kid? Not so much, but that's > only my experience, and the technology to make videos like this wasn't > really available yet. The long term effects are serious and traumatizing and > there's more to do w the issue than just "well, its BAD PARENTING" (or, > alternatively, people saying the kids watching these videos are "just bad > kids". also, not all parents care about being bad parents. just throwing > that out there.) Youtube provides a direct service of "you want to hurt > kids? well, heres your platform." and it's always been like that. even when > youtube wasnt that big. people have been reporting kid-targeted screamers > for yearssssssssss and nothing gets taken down. and there are people that > want to make this content. that is /incredibly scary/ and exploitable, even > if these videos are just a case of "AI gone rogue"._

and

> _I watched those Elsa, Spider-Man, The Joker and Maleficent videos for over > 4 hours and I lost count how many had steady themes of kidnapping there > were, normalizing being tied up and injected with REAL SYRINGES. One > especially disturbing video showed a live girl no older than 6 being held > down against physical discomfort while a blurred out syringe seemingly > penetrated her butt while she lay on her stomach. Mind you all of this is > taking place while cheery music is being played couple with laughter and the > actual live screaming of the child present in many of the videos._

Spend one hour watching skipping around in videos (it's not like you would be able to refrain from skipping anyway, and if you can go one hour you can stomach a lot more than I can, and that's from someone who saw people getting sliced up on stileproject in 2000). Then do some very superficial math. _Then_ see if you just want to shrug it off.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> What I found especially interesting in the Medium post that (it seems) spurred this is the suggestion that algorithmically-generated content seems very easily to become nightmarish without any malicious intent.

It makes sense to me that systems which randomly throw things out and react to clicks of kids with not much superego quickly fall into dream-logic. Isn't this roughly the canonical explanation for how dreams work anyway?

<comment><USER19> I did this intentionally recently by only listening to spotify's discovery playlist for a few weeks in a row. I started out with some r&b and electronic music, and ended up weeks later with a playlist of bland, uninspired rock music, apparently the fixed point of my discover playlist adventures.

I wonder if the result would be different had I started out with different preferences, or if The Algorithm pushes everyone to the same place (cheap music for Spotify)

<comment><USER20> It would be different if you started out with different preferences (note: all new rock music is uninspired rock music, and Discover Weekly pushes newer music).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I don't believe in this kind of censorship and that medium article just reads like a bunch of alarmist nonsense to me.

I was exposed to tons of super-weird stuff on TV an the internet (adult swim, fat-pie, etc) and so were most of my friends growing up. I don't think it was problematic for any of us.

When you're a kid and something feels disturbing, you turn it off. Our society really doesn't give kids any credit for being autonomous and resilient.

Most of all, I don't like that one corporation has the power to "crack down" on a whim about what's appropriate for kids to watch on a global scale.

<comment><USER22> It's one thing when you discovered porn in the 90's at the age of 12, versus being 5 years old and watching Spiderman rape & murder Elsa.

<comment><USER23> I'm sorry, but how is that difference?

Unless I take you wrong, do you claim that a child that watch cartonish spiderman forcing himself on Elsa, will end up child molesters or murderers themselves, then I would love to see some statistics, other that the fact your argument sounds reasonable on its face.

<comment><USER24> I don't know about rapists and murderers, but very young kids have started to rub against each other and according to my kindergarten teacher, it has exploded and happens a lot more than before. Anecdotal evidence, but if you believe her it doesn't only happen in that specific place. Spiderman shagging Elsa or playing with her tits certainly doesn't make the problem letter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> >After that, there is a team of humans that review videos which have been flagged.

The last line of defence is depending on toddlers flagging their videos? Here's your golf clap, YouTube.

</comment><comment><USER26> Those are very annoying and dangerous. Glad Youtube is doing something.

If you have young kids, be careful on what you allow on their devices (ipads, xbox, iphones, etc).

Just the other day, I noticed a young kid (~9yo) watching some type of porn on an iPad, while the parents were paying attention the other kid play softball. I told the mom and she freaked out.

What I am doing for my own kids lately:

-Enable Parental control on their devices, so they can't install, delete or modify any the apps.

-Force a Family Filter through DNS: OpenDNS, Norton, CleanBrowsing ( Lately I have been using CleanBrowsing - [https://cleanbrowsing.org](https://cleanbrowsing.org) \- as it enforces SafeSearch + Safe Youtube by default.

-Disable Flash & Java.

-Install an adblocker.

-Check their browser histories from time to time to see whats up. They are all pretty young (under 10), so didn't learn how to clear history yet. I wish there was a way to prevent cleaning up history on the ipad.

Any other things I might be missing?

<comment><USER27> I would rather give them something else to do instead of going through so many control measures for internet access (Not saying it should be banned). There are so many things they can learn without internet and so many things they can learn with just computer and no internet too.

<comment><USER28> I don't have kids yet (on the horizon) but my plan is to do what my father did to me: make me play outdoors as much as possible. They will learn programming, but on a machine I set up and control. Hopefully Boy Scouts can Bridge the gap.

<comment><USER29> Please do that. And _do_ , i.e. don't just have that ambition now, which will easily whither in the wee hours of the night. Prepare beforehand so you are equipped to execute your plan when the day comes. Plan days off or whatever it takes to make your plan a reality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> It's (un)surprising how fast YouTube responds to this somewhat mild criticism, while holding steady on their radio silence regarding the large amounts of huge creators who are getting demonetized and community strikes against their accounts. Nearly every big channel I watch has posted a video complaining about it in the past 2 months, with many just this week.

Gives you some good insight on where their priorities are.

<comment><USER31> What communities are you seeing this in?

In the firearms/gun rights communities, it seems like the prevailing opinion is that YouTube is specifically targeting them based on political bias.

I've not really considering it much, but your comment makes me wonder if their issues are part of a much larger pattern.

<comment><USER32> The persecution complex comes directly from the NRA's uncompromising lobbying and ad strategies, and the perception of threats is based on received wisdom formulated entirely through the gun industry's profit motive.

<comment><USER13> What? You sure it doesn't come from the steady erosion of gun rights? Calls from all sorts of shifty politicians to restrict things, even when it makes no sense. Like after the LV shooting, when there is still no explanation available, just lies, yet people still use it to justify taking away more rights?

I used to think the NRA was nuts, then I saw that there's no negotiating with the other side. Gun owners only stand to lose, and have consistently had their rights destroyed. If they didn't have a persecution complex, they wouldn't be paying attention.

<comment><USER32> _have consistently had their rights destroyed._

They absolutely have not, and this formulation illustrates the extreme positioning that the NRA has fostered for you to adopt.

If you think the NRA stands for gun owners' rights more than the profits of the manufacturers, explain their response to the Philando Castile murder.

<comment><USER13> Really? California lawmakers that literally invent terms write anti gun laws. Hell in Canada we had people flip through a magazine and cross out scary guns. There's even non existent guns banned by name.

The only NRA response I found echos what I first thought. Gun pointed at you? Don't move a single bit unless exactly directed. I figured that out in real- time, because I'm not going to trust some stressed out cop to stay chill. Particularly more if I appeared to be part of the highest crime demographic. It's still unfortunate and the cop should have had more training perhaps. But I guess I'm falling for propaganda.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> With all the child-friendly content available on Netflix, Hulu, and HBO (the home of Seaseme Street), I think I'm going to skip youtube until my son is older.

<comment><USER34> Youtube should really offer a mode where the parent gets the whitelist specific channels. There are plenty of channels full of amazing educational content, and with a whitelist, there's a near zero chance that these channels would suddenly start uploading bad content.

<comment><USER35> This. My 7 year old watches some awesome Lego building channels and some gamers that I've checked to be OK.

For at least 6 months we have forbidden our 3 year old to watch YouTube because he ended up at some (harmless, but totally braindead) Spiderman nursery rhyme video and I figured he would be caught by bad algorithms.

Sometimes the 7 year old wants to be nice to his brother and searches for spiderman. He knows they shouldn't watch violent stuff, but it feels like a drug somehow to watch autogenerated content at all.

<comment><USER33> > it feels like a drug somehow to watch autogenerated content at all.

I'm a child of the 80's, and many of the cartoons I watched still hadn't been censored of their racist imagery.

I don't believe it harmed me, though oddly enough when I play Cuphead, I do occasionally expect a caricature of someone in blackface or stereotypical japanese to show up, simply because the game shares it's art style with Max Fleischer era cartoons.

<comment><USER35> > I don't believe it harmed me

That's very hard to know though. We all have unconscious stereotypes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> j-c-hewitt Youtube went the wrong direction with ad targeting. It chased after huge brand advertising budgets while essentially trying to portray Youtube as equivalent to TV.

If they had instead aimed to make Youtube more similar to Adwords in terms of trying to show content-relevent ads on the right content, much of this wouldn't have become an issue later on with people basically spamming Google and the wrong ads showing up on irrelevant content.

</comment><comment><USER36> I must confess my 7 year-old saw one of these Peppa Pig videos and I haven't seen him laugh so hard in his life. I think he is of an age where he realises this is something someone has created as a joke, I can see how a younger child would be upset.

<comment><USER37> It's weird. Some people get it, and some people don't. My dad is pretty tech- illiterate but he understands trolls perfectly and has an understanding of Poe's Law that predates the internet. My mom is the one who helps him use the computer, and she just doesn't get the combination of humor and malice. Are they being mean, or are they laughing? Which is it? She can't imagine it being both at the same time. And she totally gets all the other forms of pleasure that go along with malice. She doesn't have a problem watching a crime movie (or the news) and understanding that the bad guy was killing people for sexual gratification or the pleasure of revenge or the pleasure of humiliating another person. She totally gets it that doing bad things to other people can feel good. It's humor, specifically, that she can't recognize as a motive, and it makes her vulnerable because she can't spot trollish intentions and can't really process them after the fact either, which makes trolling doubly hurtful.

For example, you probably have a friend that you would trip to create a hilarious pratfall, knowing that he won't feel deeply hurt by it, because he understands your intention and might have done the same thing given the opportunity even though you both really like each other. My mom is the other kind of friend who you would never ever do that to, because she could only imagine that your intention was to hurt her and make her feel bad. Trolls feast on that kind of blindness. My mom is old enough that she's beyond being able to be hurt by the internet, but now I have a couple of nieces under three, and I can't imagine what the internet will be like for them if they take after her.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> The attention being brought to this by journalists wouldnt be happening if Youtube were being more accountable.

Its fine if they do not want to offer a product for children, but when you do offer something for children you take on a massive responsibility.

Youtube admitting the mistake and fixing it is the only answer they can give of course. But it is a major point that they should responsible in the first place, so responsible that a journalist isn't needing to write a story on this.

<comment><USER39> > you take on a massive responsibility.

The problem is centralization. There is only one YouTube, and therefore YouTube is responsible for _way_ too much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Unrelated to the news article, but I'm alarmed that the usual HN balanced- skepticism is largely buried in this thread:

Almost no-one has questioned whether these videos are indeed harmful to children.

The top comment is a Medium article that sensationalizes these videos to the point where I was afraid the video would destroy my brain a-la Snow Crash.

I'm picking up a lot of "please think of the children" and "you would understand if you had children," and comments that read like a call-to-arms for a moral outcry.

On the other hand, there's almost no introspection about what OTHER things (that don't make adults strangely uneasy) might still be detrimental to children. if I'm being uncharitable, I might quote Neil Postman's view of Sesame Street: "Parents embraced "Sesame Street" for several reasons, among them that it assuaged their guilt over the fact that they could not or would not restrict their children's access to television.

<comment><USER39> I didn't see any discussion by the article or comments about censorship.

I think you are sensationalizing the article. What exactly is there to be skeptical about? The article simply brought up a point that many of us are unaware of.

The problem is that YouTube is something of a monopoly, and that what is explicitly made for _very_ young children is not what any of us would expect. It's simply important to be aware of that fact.

<comment><USER40> I might not have been clear enough, sorry, but my very first sentence was 'Unrelated to the news article.' I make no comment to the article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Google "elsagate" for the full backstory here. Most of these videos are essentially grooming tools for pedophiles, and the creators make substantial amounts of money on YouTube monetization. It's absolutely sickening.

</comment><comment><USER42> I blocked youtube in my house with dd-wrt on my router because I saw some of the bizarre videos my children were watching. There is too much NSFC (Not Safe For Children) crap floating around.

<comment><USER26> Yep, those are annoying. What I found useful is to force Safe Search + Youtube Kids across our house via DNS.

Similar to this: [https://cleanbrowsing.org/articles/configuring-google- safe-s...](https://cleanbrowsing.org/articles/configuring-google-safe-search- vip)

But for www.youtube.com and m.youtube.com (it is actually the same IP).

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> There are so many bad kid's videos on YouTube, and I'm not even talking about the algorithmically created or "Peppa drinks bleach" kinds.

For example, while there are a ton of real Fireman Sam videos, there are also many that are just an endless concatenation of action scenes from different episodes. It goes on for about an hour, instead of the ten minutes of a regular episode. If you take it away from my kid he gets angry, if you don't he'll probably fall over from exhaustion after a while. And in any case I don't want him to vegitate in front of a nonsensical video for so long.

There are also tons of unboxing videos of toys. There are videos where some guy plays with toys and acts out new episodes with his weird voice. You never know if it is for children, or a satire/joke video for adults.

Then there are just videos that are buggy, stop early, have random parts cropped... etc. and are just frustrating.

It would be trivial to hire a couple of students and find and flag all of these videos (though not all mentioned in the posted link). DMCA and copyright would provide an easy mechanism to remove this content. Adult TV shows that are uploaded are removed immediately.

I have a sinister theory about this: This is tolerated by the copyright owners, or at least someone in the content distribution chain. The goal is to frustrate people enough that they will ditch YouTube and buy the DVDs.

I have since started to create a curated list of the good videos, and also moved to a Kodi setup where I can put known good episodes - it helps a lot to control the quantity and increase the quality of what the kid is watching.

<comment><USER44> >just an endless concatenation of action scenes from different episodes

These videos are basically electronic drug trips for 3 year olds.

There is no teaching going on, just attention and reward psychology. Any form of structure or coherence is removed, leaving just reward-inducing bright colours and fast movement. I really do wonder what affect this has on the human brain when consumed for hours every day.

Don't let an algorithm-controlled, attention hyper optimised marketplace control what your children see.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Am I the only person who's thoroughly tired of YouTube attempting to be family friendly? I'm not defending the videos with the kids characters doing sick things, that's NSFL stuff, but the constant focus on family friendly content is killing basically all of the channels I really enjoy watching.

I thought YouTube was supposed to be for everyone, not just the same lowest- common-denominator mashed potatoes content you can get from daytime television.

<comment><USER46> > the constant focus on family friendly content is killing basically all of > the channels I really enjoy watching

If you're not paying for YouTube, they have to get money from somewhere and if those somewheres don't want to advertise on non-family friendly content, what are YouTube supposed to do? Go bankrupt on principle?

<comment><USER47> Something like Patreon where people pay for premium content would work.

They could set something up so creators could mark videos as premium, and then people have to pay a certain amount to watch.

Google already has the payments side of things covered from their other services, it really wouldn't be a stretch to add something like this.

Creators are basically having to do this anyway using a different site (Patreon) so Google should look at how to bring that internal to them.

That also neatly sidesteps the whole demonitized for being advertiser unfriendly issue, because the only people paying for various content are people who want to watch and support such content.

<comment><USER48> Alternate take: video creators can already use Patreon; Google adding an equivalent feature doesn't help them. It would actually be harmful if Google decides to pressure creators to move off Patreon onto their own system, since the creators would need to rebuild their paying subscriber base from zero. The only party that would benefit from Google adding that feature would be Google.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> > The company also says the reports that inappropriate videos racked up > millions of views on YouTube Kids without being vetted are false, because > those views came from activity on YouTube proper, which makes clear in its > terms of service that it's aimed at user 13 years and older.

They need to take responsibility for YouTube proper as well, and not hide behind a ToS. Kids is not even available on the Web as far as I can tell.

</comment><comment><USER49> > that the issue is relatively minor. It says that the fraction of videos on > YouTube Kids that were missed by its algorithmic filters and then flagged by > users during the last 30 days amounted to just 0.005 percent of videos on > the service

Any parent will tell you that you can read your child 199 good stories and 1 bad/scary one, and it's that 1 bad one that gives them recurrent nightmares.

</comment><comment><USER50> I remember reading and seeing a demonstration of how the youtube recommended videos had significant tendencies to tend toward the worst, were it be fake news, click bait, dumb stuff, mindless conspiracies or else.

IIRC it was linked to the business model of youtube and that it was an effective way to keep the audience captivated longer hence shown more ads.

</comment><comment><USER51> This is just a bizarre level of incompetence on Alphabet's part. I can understand being an open platform and allowing people to post content without moderation, but don't sell a curated subsection without a human gatekeeper - especially not one geared towards infants.

This could have been an ideal add-on to the YouTube Red brand. I hope instead their reputation takes a hit from this oversight.

<comment><USER52> For a company that has its roots in search, youtube is soooo easily taken advantage of by keyword stuffing it's incredible. You'd think that'd be the first thing they fixed when they purchased the site.

If they just fixed that a lot of the related video spam would go away. Ideally, related videos should come from the channel you're watching the video from. Really frustrating to be watching one video and find out you're not watching a clone account.

Example, Good account: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7wAJTGl2gc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7wAJTGl2gc)

What shows on related looks like content from the same guy: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwGnpaiepCM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwGnpaiepCM)

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> I suggest that kids use sites such as Starfall.com. They do not track kids or apply any algos. They simply let kids explore at their own pace.

</comment><comment><USER54> 0-7 years is critical. Most of us were exposed to controlled media. This is not the case anymore.

Some of this imagery and content can have lasting and damaging impact. Parents should absolutely watch this period carefully and either supervise consumption or have controlled environments.

</comment><comment><USER55> It's depressing that popular sentiment on HN is generally in agreement with "X should be banned in case it corrupts the minds of gullible people". Whether X is fake news, political speech they don't agree with, computer generated animations, advertisements, or whatever.

Why not treat other people with respect and leave them to manage what they do with their own lives themselves instead of trying to force them to do what's best according to an arbitrarily chosen American-left-wing-parent-friendly culture?

Yes, this is children, but parents can manage what media their children consume. Let them make their own choices.

<comment><USER17> That's a pretty strong up thing to say in light of child abuse grooming videos. Which is why I assume you say it ignorantly since you are nowhere near up to speed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> I happened to watch a couple YouTube Kids videos with my nephew and they were horrifying. Immediately switched over to PBS and let my sister in law know that she should remove YT kids.

</comment><comment><USER57> The most interesting bit, for me:

>YouTube says it has thousands of people working around the clock in different time zones to review flagged content.

That's a lot of work, I imagine.

</comment><comment> kyle-rb I first heard about this over a year ago from the YouTuber Cr1TiKaL. This has been going on for a while now. I'm amazed that YouTube didn't address this sooner.

[https://youtu.be/3iq1TK3I2vc](https://youtu.be/3iq1TK3I2vc) (explicit language)

</comment><comment><USER58> It was kind of disturbing to see my young infant cousin watching stuff like this without his parents noticing how bizarre these videos are. A kid's youtube browsing can start with a normal kid-friendly video, and then end up with this garbage.

</comment><comment><USER59> Finally! I'm usually against Youtube's heavyhanded censoring, but these videos are sick and disgusting. I'm removing Youtube for my kids until this is satisfactorily fixed.

</comment><comment><USER60> Finally! My 2 and 3 year old girls stumble on these when watching baby videos.

</comment><comment><USER61> Is this about that "Spiderman & Elsa have a baby" videos?

<comment><USER62> Don't these people do any market research? They would do a lot better having Elsa's baby be fathered by Jack Frost, Hiccup, Harry Potter, or Thor.

I base this on the relatively popularity of crossover fan fiction involving Frozen. Frozen/ROTG is about 500 times as common as Frozen/Spiderman, Frozen/HTTYD about 40 times as common, Frozen/HP about 18 times as common, and Frozen/Thor about 12 times as common.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> I warned a friend about these weird videos maybe 2 months ago, since he has a 2.5yo who watches a lot of YouTube Kids.

This is a speedy response?

</comment><comment><USER64> the content in question drives a large portion of Youtube's traffic from what I understand. are they sure its a good idea?

</comment><comment><USER65> honest question: why is it OK if it's adult that's targeted but not OK if it's children? Literally any argument you apply to the latter applies to the former:

1\. still developing -> adults technically are, too.

2\. more naive -> naivete is a function of life experience. there are plenty of naive adults.

etc.

how about we just not advertise, at all. this is virtue signaling at its finest. as long as advertising is targeted, children will be targeted. marketers will just make their efforts more opaque.

<comment><USER66> Because children are dependent, but an adult, presumably, has the capacity and capabilities to make their own informed and mature decisions. It's often not true, since emotionally and spiritually many adults are still kids, but that's not the point.

<comment><USER65> What is the point then? Why not just stop targeting people in general?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> Police your children properly.

Youtube is a place where you can monentize content or you have to censor heavily. Pick one.

</comment><comment><USER68> Need better categories:

under 5

5-7

8-12

13 to 18

over 18

questionable

<comment><USER68> It's ok for video games, movies, TV but YouTube kids shouldn't categorize better?

give authors a chance to categorize their own content.

<comment><USER48> That doesn't remotely address the problem we're talking about, which is videos that are wildly inappropriate for the age groups they target.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> I find most tv shows targetted at children to be weird and bad for children, they show adults behaving in an infantized way. This subliminally teaches children that this kind of childish behavior is appropiate even as an adult. It shows that caring about whatever papa baba bear on his little adventure circus is still something you could concievably care about as an adult. You may think children dont make that connection but brains are specifically wired to understand what is and isnt okay to do and to mimick adults.

<comment><USER13> By that logic, kids have been taught that adults are out to kidnap, kill, and otherwise cause mayhem and the only way to stop them is fearless children, preferably one that talks to animals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> If you think this is an issue you are a bad parent. Or a bad parent in the making.

I guess since most people don't get training in parenting it make sense most people are bad. Shrug.

Try to articulate in you mind why this is bad (looking at evedence). I think you'll find it hard.

</comment><comment><USER71> This stuff needs to go too

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhNbGTnA53s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhNbGTnA53s)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAedktI1nyc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAedktI1nyc)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIsVGDq8nd8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIsVGDq8nd8)

<comment><USER72> Hacker News is not a battleground for tediously dumb ideological skirmishes, so please stop commenting as though it is or we'll ban the account.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> Once again us crazy conspiracy theorists aren't so crazy.

</comment><comment><USER74> I'm sure this will be done with the sensitivity, professionalism, and human touch which has characterized all of Google's attempts to filter content, and in the end be met with nothing, but success.

 _/ s_

</comment><comment><USER75> So, when tech giants fire employees en masse and talk about Basic Income as the answer because they don't want to be held responsible, you get people churning out this kind of shit to make a few bucks because you can no longer get an honest wage for honest work.

Yay.

<comment> crooked-v A business owner who supports a basic income is also implicitly supporting the greater taxes that would need to be levied on them to pay for that basic income. I'd call that being responsible, in the general sense.

<comment><USER75> They also implicitly support their "right" to fire people at will and say "not my problem because you have your UBI" even though the proposed amounts for it are far below wages of jobs that are being eliminated.

It is a known fact that countries with insufficient opportunities to sell legitimate exports are the highest exporters of illicit items. When people are desperate for money and lack respectable opportunities, they lower their standards or they starve.

Edit: In response to your added sentence, so many rich people do all they can to find tax loopholes, I am not convinced that your assertion holds any water at all.

<comment><USER76> They already have the right to fire people at will, and it already isn't their problem. Now those people have some income instead of none.

<comment><USER75> Currently, UBI does not exist. So, no, they do not "now" have some income.

Additionally, I am aware they can fire people at will. But how laws and social contracts get interpreted changes when policies change. Welfare made it vastly more acceptable for women to have babies out of wedlock. It was intended for "the deserving poor" and designed to help _poor single mothers_ at a time when most single moms were widows. The language did not specify widows. It changed the de facto social contract and altered social behavior.

The net result was an increase in poor single moms and an increase in the number of American children growing up in poverty.

Most pro UBI articles are pretty disingenuous. They say up front that UBI is intended to compensate for a permanent lack of jobs. Then they tell glowing tales of how wonderful it will be to have UBI to supplement your underpaid job. They don't actually explore the horror of living in a world with little to no hope of getting a job while inflation erodes the value of UBI.

I don't get it, honestly. The casually dismissive rebuttals here seem to be blithely oblivious to the dynamics I am commenting on and not genuinely engaging those things.

<comment><USER77> > They don't actually explore the horror of living in a world with little to > no hope of getting a job while inflation erodes the value of UBI.

Better than the horror of living in a world with little to no hope of getting a job while also having no income at all.

<comment><USER75> What I am suggesting is that we could focus on redistributing work. It isn't inevitable that jobs should simply go away.

But I think I am going to throw in the towel on this discussion. It seems pointless. Folks are pro UBI, and let's not let any facts get in the way.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


YC Company stealing code from another YC Company - <AUTHOR> http://i.imgur.com/qQk2n.jpg

<comment><USER2> If you've been around the internet for more than 3 months, you'll realize that this is nothing more than a compliment to the designer.

The net is collaborative. And using a popular, common layout is a way to de- risk an important part of your business, the customer facing part. Also, the more familiar a page is to the user, the better. Both pages are very common, popular grid layout that are clean and relatively easy to create, using any number of libraries.

If Dieter Rams can take what apple did as a complement, so you everyone else.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is actually been posted by the founder of Politify. He's impersonating me, Patrick Riley. Grow up, dude. Impersonation in the state of California is illegal.

<comment><USER4> First of all, this account isn't me. Second, you're not allowed to post my name like this. Patrick are you losing your mind?

<comment><USER5> It's kind of odd that you would randomly happen upon this thread otherwise. And within 40 minutes of Patrick's post?

<comment><USER3> Agreed. What's odd is how the Politify founder (who applied to YC as WellFrankly) posted the same posting and image at exactly the same time as the fake account that he used my name for (which he is now denying.)

This is the same Politify guy who posted fake images on Reddit, and upvoted it using fake accounts. Sigh.

<https://www.google.com/search?q=reddit+politify+downvote> <http://www.flipmeme.com/image/pS4gZ>

<comment><USER4> Patrick, I encourage you to look up the terms non sequitur and ad hominem. Good thing you didn't go to law school because you're not very good at making sense. I'd like you to remove my name from your posts.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Do people really pay for news? - <AUTHOR> Is there a revenue modal for news that appeals to users? I hear a lot of complaints, including from PG, that subscriptions are a pain to manage, yet it is the most widely used.<p>Would a pay-per-article work better or would it repel users? <comment><USER2> People are paying for news - less and less - every year.

I think a "pay-per-article" may have worked better 10 years ago, I can't even justify paying for great newspapers anymore..

It's a race to the bottom, where the only real money will come from advertisers.

<comment><USER3> > _People are paying for news - less and less - every year._

This is only true of print. Digital subscriptions are growing[1], and the national newspapers in the US (WaPo, NYT, LAT) are doing well financially. They're growing and hiring. Digital subscriptions exploded after Trump was elected.

1\. [http://www.pewresearch.org/fact- tank/2017/06/01/circulation-...](http://www.pewresearch.org/fact- tank/2017/06/01/circulation-and-revenue-fall-for-newspaper-industry/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> News? No. Journalism? Yes.

</comment><comment><USER5> stock market traders pay thousands for services like Bloomberg</comment>


How I stopped being awful at managing: Leadership lessons from a Dev - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/how-i-stopped-being-awful-at-managing-leadership-lessons-from-a-dev-d1bfebcb3a21 <comment><USER2> The topic is interesting, but the story didn't contain what I was looking for. It doesn't describe how the manager was awful and how it was improved, nor how it was measured that things improved.

Actually, the rather non-connected tips don't really resonate with me. I am also a dev who became manager. I don't even involve myself with sprint planning and day-to-day monitoring of small tasks. I have enough devs that are capable of doing that, so I delegated those tasks. I trust them.

I mostly try to provide structure where needed, help my teams with escalation and solving of problems. Content wise I try to set out the grander vision about in which direction we move (of course with input from the teams) and have content wise discussion with my teams every few weeks. For the rest it is mostly developing your people and making sure they love their work, they have everything they need, listen to them when they need that and help them where possible.

<comment><AUTHOR> Makes sense. 1\. The manager (me) was awful at all the three things mentioned in varying degree, and what is written is what I learnt from my experience.

2\. Yes, could have mentioned the measuring part. Thank you for the feedback

3\. The tips weren't supposed to be connected. They are just a collection of unconnected learnings.

4\. Well there are different kinds of teams, and each one needs looking after differently. In our case, these teams are very small, and in some of them I was the only dev (not counting the Machine Learning Engineers). So for some teams day-to-day monitoring makes sense, while for some it won't.

5\. What you described as your job is more or less what I do as well, I think it didn't come out like that in the article maybe? Except that it is not "every few weeks" in my case, but twice-thrice every week.

Feedback noted :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've personally experienced the "effective pause" and strongly feel against it. This assumes that software engineers always have ideas on how to fix things and are not autonomous.

In my opinion, it's helps much more to break down/simplify the engineer's thought and the problem they are trying to solve. And then, try to solve it together...

<comment><AUTHOR> 1\. I do think that the kind of people we have on our team will almost always have some ideas to fix things.

2\. The break-down and simplifying happens, of course. But the dev leads the breaking down, with careful guidance by the lead. And it is being solved together, don't you think? The example didn't describe the full end to end design process, but just a part of it which was relevant to explain the point. I think I could have made it more clearer. Thank you for the feedback, noted :)</comment></comment>


Poker pros turn to BTC gaming platforms - <AUTHOR> https://www.pokertube.com/article/poker-pros-turn-to-btc-gaming-platforms <comment><USER2> This article is just an ad of a btc casino than doesn't even offer poker yet.</comment>


Ask HN: What are some opportunities that will cause a step change in my career? - <AUTHOR> I recently read this amazing post by Sam Altman titled "How to be Successful - https://blog.samaltman.com/how-to-be-successful". He speaks about moving towards a career that has a compounding effect. Its something that I have read about before as well and I find it super motivating   but I am not sure how and where I can apply this.
To give you some more context, I am an experienced mobile developer working in a fairly popular mobile-first company but when I think about what my next career move should be, none of the opportunities around me excite me. Even though I have built a fair amount of expertise in mobile development, I feel that going to a different FAANG company and adding another screen to their app is not making any difference to the world or my career.
I would love to know how others think about this. What are some opportunities and domains that truly are capable of causing a step change in my career. What are some concrete steps I should be taking ? Can someone give me an example of this in practice ? Is starting my own company the only way to accomplish this ? <comment><USER2> I found that moving away from a big Corp to a start up really increased what I produced. It varies from company to company but some move much faster than others. I managed to join a complete green field start up and had a great time implementing and delivering results at a much faster rate. This helped create a compounding effect on my career. I also found that once I get to a point where I pretty much had grasp of most things to the point I was "comfortable", was the time to move onto unknown territory and learn something new. This way I keep learning, when I stop is when it gets boring (same day in and out).

</comment><comment><USER3> > when I think about what my next career move should be, none of the > opportunities around me excite me.

Look for problems to solve; problems are Goldmines.

On this subject, Peter Diamandis is brilliant > [https://www.diamandis.com/blog/problems-are- goldmines](https://www.diamandis.com/blog/problems-are-goldmines)</comment>


Show HN: Analyzed 30k images from 300 art blogs to find the most popular art - <AUTHOR> http://www.arthunted.com

<comment><USER2> You describe your site as "Every day we analyze over 30,000 images from over 300 blogs to surface trending artwork, photography, and design.", but you've gone some way to show that there's no such thing as "trending artwork". Analysing 300 blogs and finding that the most popular images are only featured on 9 of them demonstrates that there _isn 't_ a trend that sites follow, or if there is it's indistinguishable from randomness.

<comment><AUTHOR> It crawls 300 sites and scans the images from just the front page, and it does this daily. 30k images includes a bit of fluff, which is trimmed down, so the actual real images from articles is a bit smaller. This was also from the initial scan, so a daily yield of only the newly discovered images is probably only around 5k.

The crossover would be a lot larger if I ran this from say a week of submitted articles (whereas right now it's a crossover of basically front page articles from 1-2 days).

If you compare this to hypem.com, the collisions are actually as frequent if not more, considering hypem.com gets updated about once a week.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Brief summary: Did a shallow scan of just the front pages of 300 art blogs. Initially pulled in about 30k images, with a daily additions being about 5000.

I used pHash to dedupe images and tally votes for every unique "art" piece.</comment>


New species of ancient human discovered in the Philippines: Homo luzonensis - <AUTHOR> https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/04/new-species-ancient-human-discovered-luzon-philippines-homo-luzonensis/ <comment><USER2> I watched a documentary on an Amazonian tribe that had just initiated contact with the outside world. accepted help from the government. It was endearing to see how much they appreciated things like flip flops and a cooking pan. From the "noble savage," I thought pre-modern people understood and lived in harmony with nature.

Now I see they live a hella hard life. They are often hungry. They sleep fitfully in fear of being eaten. One guys told of his grandmother being dragged away from dinner by a panther.

Their sustainable rate of consumption aside, they don't really live in harmony with nature any more than I do with city when I cross a busy intersection or operate an elevator.

Then I think about what future humans will think of my primitive ass. Which is why I hide photocopies of it in the stacks of libraries I visit. To help the future researchers.

<comment><USER3> For some thought-provoking insights into the scale of the changes ancient American civilizations brought on the landscape, see the book _1491_ by Charles Mann.

Maybe the most intriguing idea in the entire book is that the Americas were ten times more populated at the time of European contact than they ended up becoming in the 1500's (when most eye-witness accounts were written).

The "noble savages" we think of were remnants of a disease holocaust that wiped out 90% of the population. It's almost as if we're trying to understand European civilization by observing concentration camp survivors.

The recurring pattern: small group of Europeans makes contact with a native group. They report a land teeming with people and trade. A hundred years go by, and almost nobody is left. Those remaining live in small bands eeking out a subsistence living.

The culprit: smallpox and a host of other diseases that jumped species in Europe due to co-habitation with animals. The lack of such practices (or animal domestication in general) in the Americas meant that the disease transfer was destined to be one-way.

This dynamic may explain why there's only one genus of Homo left alive today. Whenever two groups contacted each other, one inevitably succumbs to the diseases carried by the other.

<comment><USER4> The craziest thing is that this disease holocaust was entirely accidental. The Europeans had as little clue as the Americans what happened, 300 years before germ theory. I imagine both sides saw it as acts of God(s).

I count it as the biggest "random" event in all of world history. Had the immunology lottery turned out otherwise, the world would be a _completely_ different place.

<comment><USER5> >The craziest thing is that this disease holocaust was entirely accidental.

Why is that crazy? I've never thought myself, or heard anyone imply, that the "disease holocaust" was intentional. As neither nation had the knowledge/science to understand diseases/germs at that time it seems straightforward to assume it was accidental

<comment><USER6> I've heard stories of smallpox riddled blankets being gifted on purpose. But I suspect if there's something to that, it came later when we had a better idea of how disease spread.

<comment><USER7> While the small pox/disease ridden blankets may or may not be factual, there is plenty of historical records predating Europeans landing in the Americas of using disease in warfare.

When sieging cities in antiquity water supplies would be contaminated. Arrow heads be smeared with poison and otherwise feces to cause infections. In Europe during Middle Ages corpses and feces of diseased would be catipulted into cities to cause infection, notably this this even happened with corpses that died of the bubonic plague.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I sometimes wonder what it would be like if another species had survived and developed alongside us. They would be humans but....not quite what we conceive of as human(basically our species). What would their culture have been like? Music, art, language, etc.

As tribal as our own species is I imagine we would have gone to war eventually and one exterminated the other (assuming no large difference in population, technology, etc.). I think that might have been what happened to Neanderthals?

But still, the thought of going about day-to-day business alongside, let's say homo floresiensis, has something intriguing to it. Perhaps it's the same reason we imagine interaction with extraterrestrial life - it's really just a reflection on us and our own humanity.

<comment><USER9> There are still a few uncontacted tribes left. I remember reading about the Sentinelese[1] last year when some guy snuck onto their island to try to convert them to christianity and died.

I forgot where I read this but apparently they don't have a concept of gift- giving as a sign of goodwill. I had a really hard time wrapping my head around that!

Like how else could gifts be interpreted? Maybe as a sign of submission, like cats who think it must be a god to people who feed it? But can it even be possible for biological humans to not have a concept of reciprocal altruism? Or did their culture evolve to a different point where they can get (homicidally) mad at people for being too nice?

The fact that this simple gesture wasn't as universal as I thought really got me thinking about how much of our actions only make sense within a narrow shared context.

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

<comment><USER10> Not sure if I am understanding you correctly but they didn't kill him because he brought them gifts, they killed him because previous outsiders brought disease and death, so they are rightly xenophobic.

<comment><USER11> ISTM we don't have the faintest clue as to why they killed him. That's kind of the point. One doubts that any of them have studied public health.

<comment><USER12> What does ISTM mean?

<comment><USER13> It seems to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> What's fascinating about the discovery of Homo luzonesis is that they're from a location which wasn't known to be connected by land for past 2.5 Million years.

Considering boat travel wasn't a possibility, their origins might shed us new light on how early hominids migrated and even tell us about human settlements in places like Andaman Islands, Sentinel Islands.

<comment><USER15> > The small-bodied hominin, named Homo luzonensis, lived on the island of > Luzon at least 50,000 to 67,000 years ago.

That's pretty much when modern humans made it to Australia, boats definitely existed by then. I'm not sure where the idea that pre-agricultural humans didn't have boats comes from but it seems to be rooted in debates about when migrations into North America happened. Rudimentary rafts aren't that big a leap for anyone that's seen a tree trunk float down a river, from there you can iterate pretty rapidly to something ocean going.

<comment><USER16> And if the biological _Homo sapiens_ is 250,000 years old or even older that leaves at least another 200,000 years for _sapiens_ or other _Homo x_ species to have built a boat.

Just because the fossil record lacks evidence we are pretending that modern humans weren't just as smart for 94% of their existence as a species (since animal husbandry, writing etc. seemingly only developed in the past 15,000 years).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> None of these species are really extinct.

Homo sapiens interbred with them and their genetics still live on in the local populations. In fact this is a major reason how different human populations around the world became so different looking in such a short time.

<comment><USER18> > a major reason how different human populations around the world became so > different looking in such a short time.

Is it true? Any link for this?

<comment><USER17> Yes, e.g light eyes and light hair in Europeans comes from the neanderthals.

[https://www.eupedia.com/europe/neanderthal_facts_and_myths.s...](https://www.eupedia.com/europe/neanderthal_facts_and_myths.shtml#genes)

"According to the Canadian anthropologist Peter Frost, the current level of hair colour diversity in Europe would have taken 850,000 years to develop, while Homo sapiens has been in Europe no longer than 45,000 years. This is evidence enough that genes for fair hair were inherited from interbreeding with Neanderthals."

<comment><USER19> Genes from Dennisovans, which had been living in Tibet for a very long time, are also why modern Tibetans are better adapted to high altitudes than other homo sapiens groups living in similar conditions.

[https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/07/tibetans- inherited-h...](https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/07/tibetans-inherited- high-altitude-gene-ancient-human)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > The hominin—identified from a total of seven teeth and six small bones

Whenever I read such things, I'm amazed at how much knowledge you can get out of three handful of bones -- and on the hand I wonder if that's maybe still too little to declare the discovery of a whole species of hominin.

</comment><comment><USER21> This is awesome. Makes you wonder what else we haven't discovered yet.

</comment><comment><USER22> How would one go about making an educated guess as to how many species of human in total existed, given what we know about the probabilities of discovering evidence of one?

<comment><USER23> You'd have to very closely define what precisely you meant by the word 'species', and go from there. It's a surprisingly slippery thing to do.

Even the commonly-accepted 'can have viable offspring together' isn't as cut- and-dried as you might think: [https://www.sciencealert.com/darwin-s-finches- evolve-into-ne...](https://www.sciencealert.com/darwin-s-finches-evolve-into- new-species-in-real-time-two-generations-galapagos)

More looking at edge-case compatibility between germlines, in this case modern human vs. neanderthal: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interbreeding_between_archaic_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interbreeding_between_archaic_and_modern_humans#Neanderthals)

<comment><USER24> Ring species ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_species](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_species)) also throw an interesting wrench into the "viable offspring" definition.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Nice, makro-history is interesting. Most of you probably know it, but regarding ancient history Noah Yuval Harari is a master writer, apiens: A Brief History of Humankind is a great book on this topic.

<comment><USER26> I read it recently and have mixed feelings about it. I'd recommend it to anyone, especially if you haven't read much on the topic and want an overview.

I think it does an excellent job of ancient, pre-historical humans -- the various branches of _Homo_ and how they interrelate. He makes it clear that 'human' and 'Homo Sapien' and not absolute synonyms: _Homo Sapiens_ are _one kind_ of humans, the last surviving, but humans encompass all of the _Homo_ genus that came before too. I liked that distinction and it changed the way I thought about humanity as a whole.

I think it gets significantly weaker once it moves past the pre-historical hunter-gatherer stage. Part of that is that the staggering complexity and variety of human civilisation post-agriculture means he has to condense, but I also feel like his real interest lies in pre-agricultural humans of all kinds.</comment></comment>