Prestigious Science Journals Struggle to Reach Even Average Reliability - <AUTHOR> https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2018.00037/full <comment><USER3> Unfortunately, the main reason these journals get used is not because they are better at selecting reliability, but because they provide authors with the credentials needed to advance their careers...

 __Edit: __See also[https://medium.com/flockademic/the-ridiculous-number-that- ca...](https://medium.com/flockademic/the-ridiculous-number-that-can-make-or- break-academic-careers-704e00ae070a)

<comment><USER4> But the reason they are considered qualified to serve as credentialing authorities is, in part, due to their perceived reliability. Of course the significance of published work and its influence on the field is perhaps the primary driver of a journal's reputation for readers, but significant work can only be influential if it is also reliable. Were a journal's readership to realize that its publications could not be trusted, it would lose influence and thus the perception that having work published in it is a meaningful professional achievement.

<comment><USER3> Is it, though? Are researchers even aware when previous research has been retracted? Retracted research often continues to amass new citations (which, of course, need not necessarily be positive).

Although I would certainly not assert that research in the "top" journals is particularly unreliable, it is not unbelievable that, when they tend to publish more extraordinary result, a smaller percentage of that tends to be true. I have not seen any indication that that leads to such journals losing influence, and it certainly doesn't lead to the Impact Factor being lowered - which often influences the "perception that having work published in it is a meaningful professional achievement".

<comment> 2020-3030 The Retraction Watch website [http://retractionwatch.com/](http://retractionwatch.com/) is one good method of highlighting retracted work. For researchers in any given field, keeping current on literature is hard work given the pace of publication but does include seeing retractions.

So, the answer to your question depends on which researchers we mean. Experts in a field have the best chance of noticing relevant retractions in their own field. If you are a researcher in one field who has interests in many other fields, it is probably much less likely that you will be able to follow the retractions in those peripheral fields. That is why Retraction Watch and other mechanisms of highlighting such errors is useful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It looks like the modern scientific framework just doesn't scale well. With paper output so great, it's nearly impossible for a researcher to sift through the haystack. Researchers resort to reading the papers from known groups only, which filters out most of the fluff, but perhaps leaves meaningful works from outsiders unnoticed.

<comment><USER6> > reading the papers from known groups only

 _Known_ groups. Community gossip provides sometimes-essential context. "You can't trust person X on topic Y, because when he does Z, he sees what he wants to see." Not having access to that context, is another challenge faced by folks less connected.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> There are a huge number of bureaucratic hoops to jump through before you can get an article published. The flow chart is huge and gets more elaborate year by year. So if the quality is _still_ poor then I think this simply means that we're doing it wrong. Either science isn't what we think it is or our heart isn't in it (or both).

My 'method' of choosing what to read is simple: I follow people whose work I know and enjoy. I trust them. Actually I think that's pretty standard. For example, Leonardo gets published just by having left stuff lying around the place.

<comment><USER8> I think the expectations for novelty may be to high.

Look at the new drugs list every year and you see a lot of churn with minor variations common, but less novelty than many assume. [https://www.centerwatch.com/drug-information/fda-approved- dr...](https://www.centerwatch.com/drug-information/fda-approved- drugs/year/2017) And this is with 100+ billion in public + private money world wide per year.

Sure, there is plenty of stuff being discovered, but we can't expect a steady or increasing rate of progress across all areas.

<comment><USER9> The relationship between public research funding and drug approvals is actually pretty limited. The bottleneck is actually funding for translational research, i.e. The space after public funding but before the $200B+ in big pharma r&d kicks in. This area is called the "valley of death" and is where most science dies

Venture funding is what gets drugs through the valley of death. There's a pretty good correlation between the types of drugs VC funds, the drugs big pharma companies buy from VC, and the drugs that get approved. The kinds of drugs that get approved are less correlated with areas of focus for public research spending Or diseases with most societal impact

Wrote something on this last week: [http://newbio.tech/blog/vc_basics_1.html](http://newbio.tech/blog/vc_basics_1.html)

<comment><USER8> Pharma research is not limited to the US. FDA will approve drugs developed in other countries though their will be some hoops involved they are tiny relative to finding something useful.

Anyway, as you say: "Randomly picking 24 early-stage drugs to develop is a losing bet." What I think you are missing is VC's can extract money from failed drugs. VC's are playing with other peoples money and they get a larger chunk of upside while limiting their downsides.

This means investing in VC's has poor returns on average which is why the system looks the way it does.

PS: Trying to fit that decreasing curve when the actual trend line is clearly positive is ridiculous.

<comment><USER9> Agreed that pharma research is not limited to the US, but neither is VC investing. US VC firms account for the majority of global biopharma VC investment (though china is catching up). As it stands now most FDA approved drugs are developed by US, European or Japanese firms, and in 5-10 years china will be up there as well. The US is the most profitable drug market, so as a quick and dirty analysis I think using FDA approvals, VC funding and big pharma m&a data makes sense. Not perfect, but it's a decent heuristic

VCs do make money on management fees, and VC returns in biotech from 2000-2012 were poor, but biopharma VC has done insanely well the last five years. Better returns than software VC, more IPOs and big m&a exits than tech despite only accounting for 20% of venture funding

A lot of money is now chasing these high returns, but there are not enough good biopharma entrepreneurs. So there more money but not more good startups.

And yes, that chart about r&d spending is not statistically valid :), but it isn't meant to be. But it illustrates a trend that big pharma is cutting back on r&d, especially early stage research which they outsource to startups. This topic is tangential to the topic of the post, but the article that was the source of that chart has good context around pharma r&d trends

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This must be mistaken?

> While the number of scientists has been growing exponentially over the last > decades, the number of journals with a large audience has not kept up, > neither has the number of articles published per journal. Consequently, > rejection rates at the most prestigious journals has fallen below 10%

Do they mean acceptance rates?

<comment><USER3> Yes, the author says so here: [https://twitter.com/brembs/status/966046745854730241](https://twitter.com/brembs/status/966046745854730241)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> "Struggle" would imply they're actually trying. People do what is incentivized, and as long as reliability is placed towards the bottom of the priority latter, it won't improve.

</comment><comment><USER12> When you read between the lines of these "productivity" academic career policies and measures, you realise that they are aimed squarely at fame rather than quality of science.

I guess the argument goes something like this: when you get fame through your high profile journal publications, we will be able to attract more grants and more fee paying bums on seats.

Who cares about what you have actually written? Under the current model, nobody really.

</comment><comment><USER9> The issue the article doesn't spend too much time on one of the major reasons why reliability is so low: there are too many confounding environmental variables to control for, so work done in one lab often doesn't generalize

One seemingly standard, innocuous piece of equipment can make immune cells "aggressive", while a different brand can make them tolerant. No one knows why. Genetically identical mice ordered from one vendor can consistently have different disease progression compared to mice from another vendor. Background noise in animal facilities can mess with experimental outcomes and even cure disease. Two lots of otherwise identical reagents can act almost like different chemicals

Many findings are the result of some set of confounding variables rather than the independent variable. It is impossible to know these things in advance or control for them. The best tactic is to do the same experiment in a different lab with a different research team to control for all these "other factors". Which is expensive (often six of seven figures) and can take months or even years. It is best practice when startups license tech from a university to ask for an exclusivity period where they reproduce the key experiments before committing to a full license

Imagine that for every open source library you use, all you have is a detailed read me, a set of tests, and some infrequently commented white board code. You reconstruct the code as best you can (which isn't that hard), but for some reason the tests don't check out. The bug isn't with your software. You call the original researchers and find they used a few libraries that you didn't, and these didn't show up in the publication. You have to manually install all these libraries, test them, and integrate them. Still doesn't work. You realize they used a different os and have to account for that. After six months, still nothing. After visiting their office, you realize the computer used to write the software is on the floor on some very fuzzy carpet, and there is some weird electrostatic bug in the hardware that contributed to how their software performed

This is perhaps not the best analogy, and I'm not a scientist myself though have managed scientific teams for years, managed a few tech transfers, and evaluated tons of science as potential investments, but I just wanted to drive home the point of how tough science can be. If others can critique this I would welcome it as it would be great for wet lab scientists and engineers to understand each other's worlds better

Of course there is also fraud, cherry picking of data, and careful manipulation of study design to make externalities work in your favor, but a lot of the reliability / reproducibility crisis comes down to lots of uncontrollable / unknowable variables and expensive and long development cycles

<comment><USER13> >"Many findings are the result of some set of confounding variables rather than the independent variable. It is impossible to know these things in advance or control for them."

It is literally the primary job of the (experimentalist) scientist to figure this stuff out. You are describing people skipping the science and trying to jump directly to the conclusions. This is exactly what Richard Feynman called "cargo cult science":

 _" For example, there have been many experiments running rats through all kinds of mazes, and so on—with little clear result. But in 1937 a man named Young did a very interesting one. He had a long corridor with doors all along one side where the rats came in, and doors along the other side where the food was. He wanted to see if he could train the rats to go in at the third door down from wherever he started them off. No. The rats went immediately to the door where the food had been the time before.

The question was, how did the rats know, because the corridor was so beautifully built and so uniform, that this was the same door as before? Obviously there was something about the door that was different from the other doors. So he painted the doors very carefully, arranging the textures on the faces of the doors exactly the same. Still the rats could tell. Then he thought maybe the rats were smelling the food, so he used chemicals to change the smell after each run. Still the rats could tell. Then he realized the rats might be able to tell by seeing the lights and the arrangement in the laboratory like any commonsense person. So he covered the corridor, and, still the rats could tell.

He finally found that they could tell by the way the floor sounded when they ran over it. And he could only fix that by putting his corridor in sand. So he covered one after another of all possible clues and finally was able to fool the rats so that they had to learn to go in the third door. If he relaxed any of his conditions, the rats could tell.

Now, from a scientific standpoint, that is an A‑Number‑l experiment. That is the experiment that makes rat‑running experiments sensible, because it uncovers the clues that the rat is really using—not what you think it's using. And that is the experiment that tells exactly what conditions you have to use in order to be careful and control everything in an experiment with rat‑running.

I looked into the subsequent history of this research. The subsequent experiment, and the one after that, never referred to Mr. Young. They never used any of his criteria of putting the corridor on sand, or being very careful. They just went right on running rats in the same old way, and paid no attention to the great discoveries of Mr. Young, and his papers are not referred to, because he didn't discover anything about the rats. In fact, he discovered all the things you have to do to discover something about rats. But not paying attention to experiments like that is a characteristic of Cargo Cult Science."_ [http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm](http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm)

<comment><USER9> Do you think that many experimentalists actually are able to / have the luxury of figuring all this stuff out if an experiment works? Of course when stuff goes wrong you investigate all confounding factors until you make it work, but that doesn't mean you've chased down every loose end. And if you are doing industrial drug discovery and development, then validation, documentation and quality are absolute priorities. But from my experience (again, managing tech transfers, not being an experimentalist), people solve for getting something to work with some level of reliability, and you simply cannot test all confounding factors

To use the Feynman example: experimentalists do all of the things the rat researcher did to "debug" an experiment. But you can do the same study in a different lab, and there may be another environmental variable you have to control for that didnt exist in the first lab. Especially when you have experiments that are orders of magnitude more complex than the rat experiment

My perspective is that in theory you can do perfect science and figure out all the variables but in reality you just can't. Again, not a scientist, but I think the reproducibility issues in research and low success rates in drug development support that perspective

If you are a mathematician, there is basically no expected failure rate. You prove it or you don't. If you are an engineer, some stuff just isn't possible, and unpredictable stuff happens, but many times there's a right answer. If you are a psychologist, if you get the treatment right half the time you are good. If you are a drug researcher, even getting one approved drugs is phenomenal. It's by nature a field with low technical success rates

<comment><USER13> > _" Do you think that many experimentalists actually are able to / have the > luxury of figuring all this stuff out if an experiment works?"_

It is a crucial part of science, not a luxury. Failure to do so means you are doing something else (I use the general term "research").

> _" But you can do the same study in a different lab, and there may be > another environmental variable you have to control for that didnt exist in > the first lab."_

Yes, independent replication is required to be sure you understand the experimental conditions.

> _" My perspective is that in theory you can do perfect science and figure > out all the variables but in reality you just can't... It's by nature a > field with low technical success rates"_

Perhaps, or perhaps this is an excuse by people who haven't even tried to actually approach the problem scientifically. They (and/or the funding agencies) just want to jump right to the exciting discoveries and cures instead of doing the science. Since the scientific approach has not been tried, we don't know.

> _" the reproducibility issues in research and low success rates in drug > development support that perspective"_

They also support the perspective that sloppy research wastes insane amounts of time and money. Jumping to the "it is so complicated" excuse without actually trying to do things correctly seems really disingenuous.

Anyway, I left biomed exactly for this reason. There did not seem to be any interest in doing actual science. No one was ever going to try a direct replication of my work, no one cared about developing and testing quantitative models (only coming up with meaningless "significant" p-values), etc.

<comment><USER9> I agree with everything you've said. My experience comes from trying to replicate science that simply isn't reproducible in ways that are not possible to understand from reading a publication. Others I've worked with have similar experiences

These disappointing experiences with imperfect science has led me to acknowledge, as you have, that the system is not ideally set up to facilitate good science. In industrial science (pharma companies) it is better as it is harder to hide from bad science but still not perfect

I don't fault researchers for not doing perfect science. In many cases funding / resources are not sufficient to allow for exploration of all avenues. Pressure to publish is real. And as you say, independent replication seldom happens as people have incentives to spend time on other things. That is what I mean by a "luxury": if you are fighting for scarce grant dollars, or you are fighting for scarcer tenure, you can't always afford to do work like this. So there is a lot of suboptimal science. It is a sad state of affairs, but I can't blame the researchers for how the system works.

If it was as easy as writing robust software tests and having someone else run your code on their computer, there would be little excuse for bad science. But it's harder than that. I see how you can think of that as a cop out, but to me it just seems like the reflection of an imperfect reality

<comment><USER13> > _" My experience comes from trying to replicate science that simply isn't > reproducible in ways that are not possible to understand from reading a > publication."_

Right, this is because no one has done the science. Like Feynman said, someone needs to figure out all the stuff we need to keep track of to be able to do this.

I personally saw no interest in doing that (pretty basic stuff like "rat gets more food when giving this drug, therefore the drug made them smarter/healthier"; why not more hungry/motivated, etc?). It was very far from perfection. It was that someone comes up with an assay and mentions some of the limitations at the end of the paper. Then for the next 40 years no one checks this, everyone just continues to run the unverified assay and assume it measures what they want.

> _" I don't fault researchers for not doing perfect science."_

I just call it science vs not science, with a hard rule that in science people need to be able to independently replicate your work. Otherwise I call it research (a superset of science), and refer to the people doing it as researchers. I think this is neutral enough, while still allowing the distinction between science vs not.

Mainly, if it really is the case, I want it made clear that the current culture/environment/whatever is not allowing a scientific approach to be attempted. Maybe this other method can get somewhere, I dunno. But it does not have a proven history of success like science.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I know this may be perceived as nitpicking, but I am generally annoyed whenever the reproducibility/reliability crisis is referred to as a problem in science, writ large, rather than a specific problem in specific scientific subfields. This seems to be particularly common when the articles are written by practitioners within these subfields, such as neuroscience, biology, or psychology.

There is no reproducibility crisis in my field of science - astrophysics. To back this claim up, I searched at Retraction Watch for any mention of the top tier journals in astronomy & astrophysics - specifically, ApJ [1], MNRAS [2], A&A (none found), Icarus (none found), Nature Astronomy (none found) - <USER2> found exactly one correction and one retraction. Now certainly errata are published constantly, and I would be foolish to assume that just because Retraction Watch didn't catch many instances of scientific fraud or abuse within my field, that it practically doesn't exist. But no evidence for a "crisis" seems to exist, at least in my corner of science. Astrophysical research appears to be quite reliable and reproducible. For similar reasons, I haven't heard of a reproducibility crisis in analytical chemistry, or optical physics, or mathematics, to name a few - or, close to the interests of Hacker News, computer science. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

I'm not saying this to bash non-astronomers, or non-physicists, or specifically life scientists. Biologists, neuroscientists, and psychologists are crucial participants in the greater scientific enterprise and their efforts lead more directly to alleviating human suffering than my work ever will. But when talking about reproducibility and reliability problems we cannot conflate different scientific disciplines with vastly different cultures, practices, and norms - a crisis in biology does not imply that physics has one too. Physics may have its own problems, but they aren't the same as the ones in biology.

Witness the rise of groups such as the Flat Earthers, who are rejecting basic scientific knowledge known for literal millenia.(Eratosthenes, anyone?) Or witness the anti-vaxxers, abandoning modern medicine for charlatanry. Pretending science is a monolithic enterprise and abandoning a fine-grained understanding of the validity and power of different types of scientific evidence just gives these movements strength, feeds their delusions, and weakens the prestige of scientists when we do need to stand together.

[1] [http://retractionwatch.com/category/by- journal/astrophysical...](http://retractionwatch.com/category/by- journal/astrophysical-journal/) [2] [http://retractionwatch.com/category/by- journal/monthly-notic...](http://retractionwatch.com/category/by- journal/monthly-notices-of-roy-astro-soc/)</comment>


Languages you speak affect the way you think and behave - <AUTHOR> http://ideas.ted.com/2013/02/19/5-examples-of-how-the-languages-we-speak-can-affect-the-way-we-think/

<comment><USER2> And this is supposed to be news.

Isn't that like saying that our culture affects the way we think and behave, or that water changes state below a certain temperature...</comment>


Helvetica Monospaced - <AUTHOR> http://www.linotype.com/en/1824-31635/helveticamonospaced.html

<comment><USER2> Pretty awesome! Not something I'd be using in CSS, but certainly cool for an editor.

Time to see how it stacks up against some other Monos for code readability...</comment>


Ask HN: Have you considered writing a book with the aid of AI? - <AUTHOR>

http://singularityhub.com/2012/12/13/patented-book-writing-system-lets-one-professor-create-hundreds-of-thousands-of-amazon-books-and-counting/<p>It really doesn't seem that far-fetched considering this is what is already being done. I can imagine numerous ways an AI would make writing a book less painful. <comment><AUTHOR> This has been on HN btw: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4919729></comment>


Porsche employess are banned from Facebook (German only) - <AUTHOR> http://www.welt.de/wirtschaft/webwelt/article10178014/Facebook-ist-fuer-Porsche-Mitarbeiter-tabu.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Tried to find some English version, but the news is new and has not been picked up yet by the press. Point is that the fear of industrial espionage triggered Prosche management to ban their employees to use Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER2> _During working hours, in the office_.</comment>


Does email address obfuscation actually work? - <AUTHOR> http://superuser.com/q/235937/1548

<comment><USER2> Doesn't it depend on what you mean by "works"?

It probably cuts down on spam, but I'm sure it also counts down on legitimate inquiries that didn't get made because the person who wanted to contact them said "fuck it" rather than typing the e-mail by hand. (You could argue that lack of e-mail from those people isn't a great loss, but whatever.)

Isn't spam detection at this point good enough that this isn't a concern anymore? gmail has let precisely three bits of spam slip through in the past two months.

<comment><USER3> I can't remember getting false negative but I'm started to get more and more false positive for spam with Gmail unfortunately. All emails from LinkedIn, my alumni association and recently Facebook go to spam, even after clicking "Not spam" repeatedly. The annoying thing is that these are emails that I received in my inbox, opened and didn't mark as spam for years, but they are now considered spam with apparently no way for me to get the engine to learn.

<comment><USER4> Gmail lets you use filters to prevent emails that match your rules from being marked as spam.

<comment><USER5> But this is Google. The expectation is that they will watch us online and understand our every desire!

<comment><USER3> I smell sarcasm in your comment. But the point is that yes, I expect Google/Gmail to understand that when I'm marking an email as "Spam" or "Not Spam" by clicking the buttons _they_ put there, similar emails should be flagged (or not) accordingly next time one comes in. If clicking these buttons doesn't do anything, they should just get rid of them.

Sure, I could use epochwolf's suggestion with filters, but filters are for granular sorting and personal preferences: adding labels, skipping inbox, forwarding, etc. that would be pretty much impossible to guess for a "machine". As far as I'm concerned, clicking "Not Spam" should be very similar to creating a filter that says "every email that look like this (same address, same kind of content, etc.), do NOT mark it as spam". If this is not what's happening, these buttons are just useless.

<comment><USER5> Truth told, there is sarcasm and truth.

I _do_ want google to take all of the data they keep on my searches and all the little scribbled notes their furtive servers make on my whereabouts as I stroll around the web and put it to use to make _my_ experience better.

Did google show me an ad at <http://troutpeeler.com>? [1] Did an email come to me from email@example.com 5 minutes later about an order from me? That isn't spam! And now they know I'm interested in at least one sort of fish peeler. Take that into consideration when a commercial mail for fried fish skin enthusiasts shows up at my inbox.

[1] This is meant to be a fictitious instance of a web site and a product. Heaven knows I'm rubbish at making up unused names, so there probably is a Trout Peeler website somewhere and a group of peel that make fried fish skins. I don't want to hear about it. Ick.

[2] I wonder how many people with browser extensions have to click on <http://troutpeeler.com> to trick a name squatting robot into reserving the name.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I use JavaScript obfuscation: a tiny WordPress plugin I wrote that essentially embeds the email address on the web page in scrambled form, and then transforms it to a clickable `mailto:` link client-side in the user's web browser. A message describing how to contact me is seen if the visitor has JavaScript disabled.

In theory an address harvester could easily work around such simple obfuscation, but in practice this seems to raise the bar just enough to make it not worthwhile for them. Email addresses I've posted in plaintext receive much more spam than the one I have obfuscated on my web page. (But greylisting plus SpamAssassin seems to take care of that spam quite well, so it's not as though the obfuscation itself is my only line of defense.)

</comment><comment><USER7> Cory Doctorow wrote about this in a column last year: [http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/dec/21/keeping- ema...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/dec/21/keeping-email- address-secret-spambots)

He's had the same public email address published without obfuscation for more than 10 years. He describes his anti-spam setup which has served him reliably and argues that the nuisance imposed on correspondents by scrambling his address isn't worth it.

</comment><comment><USER8> Here's my technique. I use +folder notation (firstname.lastname@example.com) for my publicly listed email address.

Any spambot that regexps \W or [a-z0-9\\.] will get screwed up by the + that appears in the address. However, it's still a totally legal address, it delivers correctly, is clickable in browsers, etc.

It's not that I get a low level of spam at this public address - I get ZERO spam. Zero in the last 5 years. I get a small amount addressed to the plain firstname.lastname@example.com address, but it seems like spambots just don't pattern match for this. Anyway, it's still a gmail address, and their spam filtering might have something to do with this.

</comment><comment><USER9> I've done my best to _not_ obfuscate my email address. If the situation dictates, I will even post it on Twitter without obfuscating it in any way. I probably do this at least once per week. We have plenty of defined support vehicles, but every so often someone needs extra-special help and I do my best to oblige.

I probably get 30 or so pieces of spam per day, all of which ends up in my Junk folder with no effort on my part. This has remained constant over the years. I get a lot more random cr@p on my personal address ever since I was placed on a list of "people who will blog about your stuff." (which is emphatically not the case).

I also created a personal FAQ (<http://www.jeff-barr.com/?page_id=670>) to cut down on the amount of random stuff that I get.

</comment><comment><USER10> Mine does (see profile).

Gmail does a great job of keeping spam out of my box, but I still have to go through the spam folder occasionally to look for false positives (I get a couple a year), so I'd prefer as little spam in there as possible.

As for obfuscating, I use methods which require the reader to think, not to apply a rule. All the obfuscation methods presented in the superuser answer can be algorithmically beaten. Mine can't. It requires understanding the words I used. That is, unless it gets copied enough times to be recognized as a standard pattern for obfuscation. But if that happens, I can just change it to something else that requires reading and understanding.

<comment><USER11> While your obfuscating method is probably reasonable your email address is probably an issue. It's not hard for a spam company to send email to every basic pattern on 2 letters and a last name. When you can send a thousand messages for a penny it's acceptable for 99% to be sent to the wrong address.

PS: My first Gmail account got spam before I started to use it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I use three methods for protecting my email address:

* Spamgourmet for websites I don't trust. firstname.lastname@example.com will forward six emails to my real address.

* A firstname.lastname@example.com address with a catch-all for mail I really need.

* ReCAPTCHA's mailhide <[http://www.google.com/recaptcha/mailhide/>](http://www.google.com/recaptcha/mailhide/>); for posting my email on the crawlable web.

I have noticed that most spam I do get is not from online businesses, but from businesses I've given my email to in person (e.g. conventions, competitions).

</comment><comment><USER13> I came up with this question when I was reading my RSS feeds when I got to an "Ask Engadget" post that requested users to email questions to "ask [at] engadget [dawt] com". It seemed pretty silly for a popular website to obfuscate their email address in such a weak way, and it got me to thinking whether or not the widely-used technique is effective at all.

Does anyone have spam problem with a published email address? Have you had success reducing spam by obfuscating it?

<comment><USER14> Anecdata: Spam just isn't really a problem. I've been using the address firstname.lastname@example.com very publicly (as in, unobfuscatedly posting to usenet, forums, etc) for about 15 years now. It currently forwards to gmail, where I get roughly 3000 pieces of spam mail each day (yes, that's a new spam every 30 seconds, round the clock). Of those, typically 0 or 1 end up in my inbox. I have, in the past, done spot-checks of my spam folder to check for false- positives, and have never found a single one. Gmail is _really_ good at spam filtering.

<comment><USER15> Anecdata II: I get about 1,500 spams a day to my Google-managed email address, and have found a worrying number of emails in my spam folder. It works _really_ well for you, sadly less well for me :-/

<comment><USER16> > have found a worrying number of emails in my spam folder

Sorry, but just to be sure - am I getting it right, those emails were false- positives?

<comment><USER15> _Sorry, but just to be sure - am I getting it right, those emails were false- positives_

Yup. For the most part, ones that I'm fine with - e.g. order confirmations from stores - but I've found the odd one in there from someone the first time they email me, most frustrating.

On the other hand, I once nearly missed out on a fun blind date after my initial email was helpfully filtered by Hotmail into the girl-in-question's spam folder. And it didn't even mention Viagra!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> A few comments on this down memory lane: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1463579>.

</comment><comment><USER18> The first comment is great:

[http://techblog.tilllate.com/2008/07/20/ten-methods-to- obfus...](http://techblog.tilllate.com/2008/07/20/ten-methods-to-obfuscate-e- mail-addresses-compared/)

Different approaches to obfuscating the email address and comparing spam levels.

<comment><USER19> Back when I saw that I wrote a little js test page to generate a combo of all of them :) The result it pretty nasty.

<http://icefox.github.com/js_email_link_hack/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I don't bother obfuscating. I don't even use spam filtering anymore. I get about 5 spam emails per day max. I think it helps that my address starts with a "j" so most open relays / spam zombie machines have been shut down before they get to my letter of the alphabet in their email lists.

</comment><comment><USER21> Not to self promote, but many years ago my site was the first to generate "email icons." Which are just an image of your email address, which does a good job of fooling most email harvesters. I'm surprised it hasn't caught on more. <http://services.nexodyne.com/email/>

<comment><USER22> \- You can't click on them

\- You can't copy them

\- You can't type them

\- You can't embed them in text

(Though, the latter two problems apply to some of the methods discussed here as well)

If they _did_ catch on widely, it would be trivial for email address harvesters to read them (see: increasingly-complex captchas)

<comment><USER21> True, though you can't click on what people are currently doing either...or copy it (I mean kind of, but not really).

I do agree that eventually email address harvesters could eventually be made to read them though, and that would be a big weak point if they ever did catch on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The CSS-based techniques both work in IE6, which is pretty amazing. And you can combine them.

But don't use inline styling. Bury the rules in the cascade with some parent class so they can't be easily filtered.

</comment><comment><USER24> the most upvoted answer there is what a real answer should be :)

</comment><comment><USER25> Probably about as well as an elephant-repellant

</comment><comment><USER26> I don't understand the point anymore. Spam filters are much much much better than spammers these days.

<comment><USER27> Not thunderbird's filter, unfortunately.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I've had my public email address, with no obfuscation, on quite a few very high traffic pages.

Remarkably little spam gets through to me. I actually see more spam in my non- public gmail account where, I suspect, the spammers are simply name guessing.

Long story made not much shorter -- I would guess that scraping isn't that big of a strategy any more.

<comment><USER29> Yeah, same here. It's not a high-traffic website by any means, but my @lastname.ca email is listed on my lastname.ca trivially encoded with character entities. The volume of spam I get through there is dwarfed by the volume of spam I get from spammers name-guessing emails at my university's email servers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> It always fascinates me that nobody ever brings up regular expression in these kinds of discussions.

Spammers literally sit around all day figuring out ways to deliver more spam, I'm fairly certain they've spent the 30 minutes it takes to craft a regular expression to harvest the easy 80% of these 'obfuscated' e-mails.

<comment><USER31> Sending spam is a means; the goal is to have people click on ads, buy stuff, download malware, etc.

The distribution of the probability that users click an ad is highly skewed. I suspect that it has probabilities close to zero for people who use _"these 'obfuscated' e-mails"_.

If that is the case, spamming those users does not make economical sense.

<comment><USER30> Sure, it's a means.

So is scraping - a means to sell big lists of e-mail addresses to people who buy them for many thousands of dollars, with little regard to where they came from - only that they receive e-mail.</comment></comment></comment>


Hackers are holding San Francisco's light-rail system for ransom - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2016/11/27/13758412/hackers-san-francisco-light-rail-system-ransomware-cybersecurity-muni <comment><USER2> Related to existing post and discussion - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13050262](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13050262)

</comment><comment><USER3> Better photos: [http://www.sfexaminer.com/hacked-appears-muni-stations- fare-...](http://www.sfexaminer.com/hacked-appears-muni-stations-fare-payment- system-crashes/)

Also see the comment linking the existing post.

</comment><comment><USER4> FFS please don't pay the ransom.

<comment><USER5> If they're so incompetent that they're running on a poorly secured Windows 2000 box, they're probably not performing regular backups. Depending on how critical what they lost is, they may have little choice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Hackers"?

From an online tech rag too.

<comment><USER7> It is probably time to give up on that word and learn from what happened for the future. Don't create cool words that the in-group calls themselves.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, there's no good alternative for the general public to use. "Cracking" is still ambiguous and never really caught on. Compare "Mr. Robot is a show about a hacker" to "Mr. Robot is a show about a cracker".</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Can anyone recommend a good security auditor / pen tester? - <AUTHOR>

I'm acting on behalf of a company that believes that they have been infiltrated / hacked. I can't go into much details here.
I need some recommendations on people / companies that can help:
- security audit (company servers / desktops / laptops)
- penetration testing (both network and social engineering)
Company is based in the UK. Discretion is very important to the client. You are likely to be asked for references / work experience. They might also need you to sign an NDA.
My email in profile.
P.S. I'm not sure if this would be better in the "seeking freelancers" section of HN. Please let me know if that is the case, and I'll delete this and move it there. <comment><AUTHOR> I've had some great recommendations from HNers. Thank you for your feedback.

One suggestion was for a forensic analysis of the servers / workstations / laptops. Anyone with those skills I'll also be looking for.

<comment><USER2> Ask in reddit.com/r/netsec also in reddit.com/r/computerforensics

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the tip.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> [https://www.htbridge.com/](https://www.htbridge.com/) Swiss-based, but international operations</comment>


Asteroids played on an Oscilloscope - Tek Contest - <AUTHOR> http://bcove.me/ddch2up0 <comment><USER2> Missleading website if you have NoScript. The video panel collapses completely and it just looks like a link to vote in some pole...

<comment><USER3> Yeah. I usually don't even bother to enable script in cases like that.

My experience is that bad behavior without script is often a good indicator of a lousy website. Even if it isn't, it gives me an excuse to weed out stuff arbitrarily. There's obviously more stuff on the the web than there is time to read it.

<comment><USER4> Why stop with Javascript, though? Why not refuse to render images, or videos, or use any sort of plugin? For that matter, why not use Lynx?

I really do not understand the sort of Luddite motivations that drive someone to disable Javascript. You're drawing an arbitrary line in the sand that cuts you off from a great deal of perfectly legitimate functionality. Could you explain exactly what you're gaining in return? Isn't this just another incarnation of 1990s-era cookie paranoia?

It seems to me that if you use an up-to-date browser and an ounce of common sense when you surf the Web, you have little to fear from Javascript. And if you don't, no technological measures short of total disconnection will save you from yourself.

<comment><USER3> _Why stop with Javascript, though? Why not refuse to render images, or videos, or use any sort of plugin?_

Yes, I normally block videos and all plugins. I don't have to block images by default any more, thankfully the obnoxious animated ones have mostly moved to Flash.

Occasionally I'll switch browsers and permit specific youtube videos.

 _For that matter, why not use Lynx?_

My recollection is that Lynx does not support proportionally-spaced fonts or images. If this is incorrect, I'll consider using it.

In fact, I do know someone who uses exclusively text-based browsers. She's doing research on accessibility issues for the visually impaired.

 _I really do not understand the sort of Luddite motivations that drive someone to disable Javascript._

Maybe if you didn't presume it to be a Luddite motivation, you'd have a chance at understanding it.

 _You're drawing an arbitrary line in the sand that cuts you off from a great deal of perfectly legitimate functionality. Could you explain exactly what you're gaining in return?_

Well I will enable script for specific sites that I want to do business with. But it's done intentionally and limited in scope. If the site requires scripts from a bunch of shady domains and ad networks, I'm much less likely to do business with them.

By aggressively disabling Javascript and not installing Flash I gain:

1\. Security: Less attack surface, less frequent patching, less risk of getting pwned by drive-by malware. Fewer trusted domains in my page origin.

2\. Privacy: A lot of advertiser tracking stuff depends on script running in your browser. Declining to run their script seems to cut down significantly on the amount of personally-identifiable info you're constantly broadcasting as you use the web.

3\. Faster page loading.

4\. Fewer advertisements, pop-overs, and other useless blinking crap in my visual field detracting from the words and occasional image on the page which convey 99% of the meaning.

5\. By avoiding proprietary plug-ins I follow open standard (w3c, IETF) technologies. These are consistently winners in the long run.

6\. I learn a little about the mindset of the developer of the site. Take a look at who's running script in your browser in news.ycombinator.com and compare that to any of the Gawker media sites for example.

 _Isn't this just another incarnation of 1990s-era cookie paranoia?_

Similar in some ways, different in others. Cookies have some very similar security properties to that of scripts WRT same-origin.

 _It seems to me that if you use an up-to-date browser and an ounce of common sense when you surf the Web, you have little to fear from Javascript. And if you don't, no technological measures short of total disconnection will save you from yourself._

That's the "all or nothing, it's hopeless, give up" argument and yeah most people _are_ willing to give up their security and privacy when you throw that in their face.

But not me. I find it more interesting to learn something (e.g., what scripts are being used where and why) than I really care to see yet another video on the web (even if it does involve oscilloscopes).

<comment><USER4> _That's the "all or nothing, it's hopeless, give up" argument and yeah most people are willing to give up their security and privacy when you throw that in their face._

No, it was the "Use sound computing practices and you'll probably be OK, but you could still be hit by a bus if you step outside and an asteroid if you don't" argument. In other words, the same sort of compromise that we all make every day when we interact with the world.

Thanks for the explanation; it does answer my questions. We probably won't be able to find common ground, though -- I actually _prefer_ to see ads for oscilloscopes and hosting services, rather than tampons and farm implements.

<comment><USER3> _No, it was the "Use sound computing practices and you'll probably be OK, but you could still be hit by a bus if you step outside and an asteroid if you don't" argument. In other words, the same sort of compromise that we all make every day when we interact with the world._

What I hear you saying is that we all have to weigh risk vs. benefit as we interact with the world. I certainly agree in principle, but maybe we don't judge the sides the same way.

I saw one study claiming the _majority_ of PCs (59%) are pwned by malware. This seemed to be a bit biased and non-scientific, but we know there are multi-million node botnets so the actual number is quite high. So the comparison isn't with the risk of getting hit by a bus, the baseline expectation from the typical user behavior you advocate is to be compromised periodically.

I work for a data security company by day and research that stuff at night too. So I'm painfully aware that on any given day there are usually multiple not-yet-patched vulnerabilities. Occasionally I have customer info on my computer, info about not-yet-public vulnerabilities, or I just can't afford the energy needed to clean up afterwards if I were to get pwned. I judge the downside risk much higher than the upside.

So I mostly interact with the web with a browser Noscript mode, and even that via a series of virtual machines and remote access that don't allow file or clipboard sharing. It turns out that I liked the web better without the 2.0 anyway.

 _We probably won't be able to find common ground, though -- I actually prefer to see ads for oscilloscopes and hosting services, rather than tampons and farm implements._

Now if there were a way to allow only Oscilloscope Pr0n I'd be all over that. I do in fact have DigiKey and Mouser whitelisted. :-)

<comment><USER4> _I certainly agree in principle, but maybe we don't judge the sides the same way. ... I saw one study claiming the majority of PCs (59%) are pwned by malware._

How many of those attacks came through Javascript, though? It would be interesting if there were a public resource that keeps track of attack vectors, so we could accurately assess the risks.

<comment><USER3> _How many of those attacks came through Javascript, though?_

The majority of the opportunistic drive-by web malware seems to depend on script. Sometimes the vulnerability is in the Javascript interpreter itself, sometimes the attacker wants to lightly obfuscate web sites and payloads from scanners, and sometimes it seems the malware authors are just lousy web designers using script gratuitously.

If you also eliminate Adobe products from your attack surface, you've bypassed a _huge_ percentage of web malware.

Of course if you're the subject of a targeted attack then all bets are off.

 _It would be interesting if there were a public resource that keeps track of attack vectors, so we could accurately assess the risks._

There are many, but for specific bugs they try to agree on at least the central "CVE" number: <http://cve.mitre.org/> [http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/search- results?query=javas...](http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/search- results?query=javascript) <http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/>

For attack vectors in general, see: <http://cwe.mitre.org/data/slices/2000.html> <http://cwe.mitre.org/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's pretty unfortunate that one of the leading videos is by a russian female who doesn't really know what's going on. Asteroids on an oscilloscope is much cooler than her.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I had a lot of fun making this. I think it might work better on an analog scope rather than a digital sampling scope. There are a bunch of other interesting videos on there as well.

<comment><USER6> Tektronix also used to make packaged CRT displays with X Y and Z (intensity) BNC connector inputs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Meta: why is his HN username green? Is it because it's a new account?

<comment><USER8> Yep. I've only seen it on two people so far, both were 1 day (or less) old accounts.

edit: just saw another. 2 days that time.

<comment><USER9> funny though, as that's the only reason I clicked this article. I wonder if the purpose is to encourage new accounts or warn people. Seems like bright highlighting makes them more prominent and thus sends a message that they're more interesting than the boring grey account names...

<comment><USER8> Yeah, I expect more of a "warning" color for new users than for old-timers. New users are more likely to be a problem than older ones, if only because they're more likely to be spambots.

<comment><USER10> Plus maybe people will cut them some slack, write a reply with some helpful guidance instead of just down-voting if a comment seems inappropriate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Well, technically Asteroids was _always_ played on an oscilloscope, of course.

<comment><USER12> Ahem, we prefer _vector monitor_ thankyouverymuch. =)

Actually the architecture of those old Atari vector games is pretty remarkable given the technology at the time. You had a 6502 with the game logic, generating a list of items to be drawn by a _second_ CPU, implemented entirely in TTL with a custom opcode set of it's own. All in under 16K of object code.

<http://www.philpem.me.uk/elec/vecgen.pdf>

<comment><USER13> Was that what was used for the Atari Star Wars arcade games of the mid 80s?

<comment><USER12> Yup. The color vector games had next generation set of hardware, but same idea. The color was a neat hack by varying the intensity of the beam, hitting differently colored phosphors layered on the inside of the glass.

<comment><USER14> The color/3D Atari vector games used the Analog Vector Generator, which used op-amps to trace smooth lines of arbitrary length and angle on the screen. It also seems to fall out of calibration as the years go on, which is why you see a lot of Star Wars and Tempest machines with jittery images.

More information on the Atari vector hardware, written by one of the original engineers, is here: <http://www.jmargolin.com/vgens/vgens.htm>

<comment><USER12> If you _really_ want to get esoteric and hackish, the Cinematronics vector games of the era had NO microprocessors in them at all. It's all bit-sliced TTL gates and EPROMs to hold the object code. Wrap your noggin around that one.

<comment><USER13> About the same time I was playing too much Atari Star Wars I was also using HLH Orions on my CS course - the early models had bitslice based CPUs and had user programmable microcode:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HLH_Orion>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Ah, this brings back memories! Back in... 1990? I was playing with a homebuilt laser show like this, and also used the oscilloscope to test the output without worrying about the resonance behavior of the mirrors. (Our mirrors were connected to slaughtered speaker coils with hinges and had pretty horrific frequency response.) The output was the sound outputs on my Amiga. I never wrote asteroids for it, though... ;-)

<comment><USER3> I do love seeing old games but am not really seeing the vector display usage as a terribly innovative hack.

Even very old scopes were designed with X-Y-Z inputs so they could be used to do exactly this. They're simply being used as intended.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Anyone remember the Vectrex?

<comment><USER3> I remember seeing a Tektronix vector display terminal being used as a front- end to one of their flatbed pen plotters. They spoke the same language, so you could preview your plot before wasting ink and paper on it.

That was cool!</comment></comment>


Show HN: Digital Monument for Operation Market Garden 1944 - <AUTHOR> https://monument.marketgarden.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hi, author here. In light of the oncoming 75th anniversary memorial, we've build this digital monument. Personally, it's one of the hardest projects I've done because of the deep impression it makes. While it's easy to build apps with a modern and vibrant look, to convey the right look, feel and respect is very difficult. Please share what you think.

<comment><USER2> It's indeed a different style from the usual standard web layout, but I think it works very well for an online monument.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Really nice work there Remco! Can't imagine the time you guys put in to this.</comment>


Coinbase halts Bitcoin Cash transactions amidst accusations of insider trading - rising-sky https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/20/16800940/coinbase-bitcoin-cash-fork-insider-trading-probe <comment><AUTHOR> Watching this all go down, I don't see why it would be insider trading. They opened their retail side (Coinbase) at the same time as their exchange (GDAX) and gave _minutes_ notice before going live.

There was about 0% chance there would be enough liquidity on the exchange to support a dual launch, so the price skyrocketed. There wasn't time to deposit enough BCH to give liquidity either. I don't care about traders making bad moves on GDAX, but to screw their retail clients so much is not cool.

</comment><comment><USER2> you're telling me that a group of guys in their 20s early on in their careers working on a product that has anti-establishment flair and is the defacto- currency of all things illegal tried to make some money not so legally? I'm so shocked!</comment>


Bing Digital stole my website - <AUTHOR> https://steverydz.com/2015/07/11/so-someone-stole-my-website/

<comment> mike-cardwell At least rel="nofollow" your link to the site ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point, thanks :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> What a shady company, they probably also get extra traffic from having Bing in the name.

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed. Hoping they do the right thing and take it down quickly. Don't particularly want to go the legal route, but will do so if I have to.</comment></comment>


'Star Wars: The Last Jedi' Was Targeted by Russian Trolls, Study Says - <AUTHOR> https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/star-wars-last-jedi-was-targeted-by-russian-trolls-study-says-1148475 <comment><USER2> Russian trolls ate my breakfast.

</comment><comment><USER3> Every time the Comcast cable box starts glitching out and dropping frames again, a chorus of "The Ruskies are hacking us again" flares up in my fiance's family's living room. It's become a great joke.

</comment><comment><USER4> Sorry, but sometimes movies just really do kind of blow.

When you make a PG-13 movie that barely manages to challenge a thirteen year old's world view, don't ever expect that movie to impress anybody over twelve.

If you market that movie to an older age bracket, go ahead and act surprised when revulsion ensues at transparent themes and pandering group think that alienate any given cross section of bike-sheddable opinions a discriminating nerd can have.

Go ahead and water down everything to please everyone. Flatten characterization, with translatable cookie-cutter dialog that tests well for focus groups across 20 languages.

Movies have been subjected to the equivalent of industrialized agribusiness strategies and tactics since the late 90's and it's a problem that won't go away.

Nerds on the internet are all correct in completely destroying movies that try to please everyone.

It's the only silver lining anyone can find, now that movies are unwatchable.

All of us. Everyone would rather just have movies worth watching, but that simply doesn't take shape. Who's fault is that? The disatisfied viewers? It's our fault that we don't like garbage?</comment>


Megaprocessor – a micro-processor built large (completed) - <AUTHOR> http://megaprocessor.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> The Megaprocessor project has now been completed and moved to its new home - the Centre for Computing History in Cambridge.

Quote from the progress page: "All in all things went very well. Only three solder joints failed. Much more surprising was that I found about ten joints I had not soldered in the first place!"</comment>


Which Text Editors Do Great Hackers/Programmers Use? - <AUTHOR> I heard that Linus Torvalds is using a customized version of MicroEmacs. Richard Stallman is probably using Emacs. Bram Moolenaar must likely uses vim. Rob Pike used acme (https://usesthis.com/interviews/rob.pike/).<p>Are there any reliable studies on that topic? Maybe a survey of Linux kernel hackers? Or maybe interviews with notable hackers/programmers? <comment><USER2> Wordstar clone.

(Frightening, isn't it? That's what happens when key-sequences get imprinted.)

</comment><comment><USER3> I like Text Wrangler, Notepad++ and Visual Studio for text edits.</comment>


Power Company Sends Fire-Spewing Drone to Burn Trash Off High-Voltage Wires - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/power-company-sends-fire-spewing-drone-to-burn-trash-of-1792482517 <comment><USER2> I wonder if these drones would quickly melt ice? In Michigan that is a big problem, couple years back people in Lansing were without power for 8-10 days during a bad ice storm.</comment>


Apple Keynote just started streaming - <AUTHOR> http://events.apple.com.edgesuite.net/1009qpeijrfn/event <comment><USER2> I'm really surprised with how well that worked.

I sat on my couch and watched it on my TV with a coffee. Great fun. Way better than having to endure that idiotic Engadget commentary.

<comment><USER3> The thing is that they had a hard upper limit on how many clients connected and they wouldn't allow any more past that limit. That kinda makes it less impressive, IMO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Live blogging links (both auto refresh with pics, commentary etc.):

Gdgt: [http://live.gdgt.com/2010/09/01/live-apple- fall-2010-event-c...](http://live.gdgt.com/2010/09/01/live-apple- fall-2010-event-coverage/)

Engadget: [http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/01/live-from-apples- fall-201...](http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/01/live-from-apples- fall-2010-event/)

<comment><USER5> I don't know if it's just my browser but gdgt's is better - engadget the ad whores refresh the entire page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Streaming video requires Safari 4 or 5 on Mac OS X Snow Leopard or Safari on iOS 3 or later."

Cheers Apple, I'm running Windows XP !

<comment><USER7> A Couple of URLS to try

<http://qthttp.apple.com.edgesuite.net/1009qpeijrfn/sl.m3u8> (try this in Windows Quicktime?)

and

[http://stream.qtv.apple.com/events/sep/1009qpeijrfn/1009oiub...](http://stream.qtv.apple.com/events/sep/1009qpeijrfn/1009oiubqherbfoteg_hd_ref.mov)

I can't tell if they work or not but those are in the source of the page.

<comment><USER8> Not working on Leopard 10.5 either

<comment><USER7> The m3U8 file is working for me on the newest quicktime (which I think is only Snow Leopard). You need the newest quicktime for HLS Streaming to work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The livestream has only buffered for me once. Other than that it's been flawless. Very impressive.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, I had to restart a couple of times and it stuttered a little, but I'm very impressed because I'm running a 3G (freshly downgraded to iOS3).

I'm also impressed by the battery life. I watched the whole thing over wifi and lost about 1/3 battery.

</comment></comment><comment> mike-cardwell 99USD for an Apple TV. I bet the people launching the Boxee Box in November are currently very nervous.

<comment><USER11> This is another open/closed debate. Boxee is pretty easy to make new channels for. AppleTV will always be more exclusive. And Boxee has a full QWERTY keyboard on the back of the remote :-)

<comment> mike-cardwell I do like Boxee. I use it myself. But the new Boxee Box is going to cost twice as much as a new Apple TV, and I'd bet my right nut the hardware wont look as nice. So it better have some good advantages.

<comment><USER11> The Boxee hardware looks AWESOME!

Box: <http://vimeo.com/13398124>

Remote: [http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xcm95c_ces-2010-handson- wit...](http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xcm95c_ces-2010-handson-with-the- boxee-box_tech)

<comment> mike-cardwell It doesn't look horrible. It looks about 40 to 50 times bigger than the new Apple TV though...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If the new Apple TV is a big success they can integrate it with Ping and we may finally have the Facebook killer we've been waiting for. Monetization would not be an issue since the whole social network is essentially an advert for the iTunes store. I've always found music and screen related discussion much more compelling than personal updates or messages, and I don't think I'm alone, or even in the minority (it's just I have the savvy to find good online communities for such discussion, unlike say my parents).

<comment><USER13> Facebook is about baby pictures, girls/boys night out, kids soccer results, and "how the hell are you". This is no facebook _killer_ , but it may bleed off X% of discussions that deals with media.

<comment><USER12> It's just that like others have said, Ping is so highly monetized. I can imagine Facebook shedding users as they get desperate for cash and introduce annoying adverts or disable useful features, meanwhile Ping will pay for itself and possibly expand to be a complete FB rival. Just wild speculation of course.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Anyone care to take bets on this "Ping" feature? I just can't see it taking off, but it could just be that I hang out in the wrong crowds.

<comment> mike-cardwell I've never known anybody that actually likes iTunes. They use it begrudgingly. I don't see why anyone would want to spend _more_ time in it.

<comment><USER14> Personally I love iTunes, but I have heard it's less impressive on Windows systems. The only other legitimate complaint I know is that it's become bloated with features that not every user needs (if you don't have an iSomething, for example).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Without fail, every time I need to use QuickTime on a Windows box it doesn't work.

</comment><comment><USER16> I was really convinced of the "iTunes Unplugged" thing when a Daring Fireball reader interpreted the invitation that way, and now they're playing the MTV Unplugged version of "Layla."

<comment><USER17> To be fair to them, their easy listening music stream is lovely on the iPad. Watching the theatre fill up isn't really what I was hoping to watch though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Netflix - Good or bad news for them?

They're on the Apple TV, so that's a plus. But Apple are now direct competitors, and they control the platform.

<comment><USER19> no. Apple is a PPV vendor. If they offered a flat-rate subscription they'd be competing with Netflix; they're not.

<comment><USER18> They're both selling content to watch on your TV. Albeit with different business models. They are both after $X a month, just in different ways.

<comment><USER20> Apple will buy Netflix, if they can get it past the feds.

<comment><USER18> I can't see any reason why they would do this now. Apple already have the infrastructure to distribute the content, the user accounts, relationships with studios etc.

Apple could set up Netflix in a couple of months - it's little more than a new pricing structure. Any acquisition would be for existing subscribers only, and would be way below today's NFLX valuation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Working for you? Not working for me yet. Leo 10.5 might be the cause? I'm in Europe, the site seems a bit sluggish to reload. I wonder if they manage to pull it off, Google IO had quite a few drop-outs.

</comment><comment><USER21> is it confirmed that the new ipod touch has a cellphone like microphone?

<comment><USER22> Yes, it's in the specs page that there's a speakerphone and a mike.

Walk around with a wifi hotspot dongle and an ipod touch and seems like you've got an iphone4 and unlimited VOIP calls.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm in seoul and it has not frozen once... and the streaming quality is HD... sadly due to their streaming tech it only works on apple products

</comment><comment><USER18> Steve, no one gives a fuck about photo slideshows.

<comment><USER23> That was actually the most powerful moment in the event for me. I think that people really connect with being able to come home and show their pictures from the day to their girlfriend or family.

<comment> mike-cardwell People use their TVs for watching TV shows and films. I can't imagine many people being excited about a photo slideshow capability.

<comment><USER24> I never use the slideshow feature on my Apple TV now because I'd have to set up photo syncing with my computer, have all my latest photos on it (of course they're by far the most likely to be the ones that I'd want to show and by far the least likely for me to have already synced), etc etc. But if I could just whip out my iPhone and a couple of taps later be showing some photos from it on my TV... well, I might use that. Once or twice, at least. :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are some resources on Distributed Systems for a beginner? - <AUTHOR> I'm looking to learn more about distributed systems. I found some resources in the form of tech podcasts or articles, but they usually assume that the listener/reader already knows the basics. Any resources for a beginner? <comment><USER2> Mikito Takada (AKA mixu) has a free book called _Distributed systems: for fun and profit_ that you can read online or download:

[http://book.mixu.net/distsys/](http://book.mixu.net/distsys/)

From the introduction:

 _In this text I 've tried to provide a more accessible introduction to distributed systems. To me, that means two things: introducing the key concepts that you will need in order to have a good time reading more serious texts, and providing a narrative that covers things in enough detail that you get a gist of what's going on without getting stuck on details._

Also, it covers some relatively recent tools/techniques that are used in the real-world:

 _I wanted a text that would bring together the ideas behind many of the more recent distributed systems - systems such as Amazon 's Dynamo, Google's BigTable and MapReduce, Apache's Hadoop and so on._</comment>


Bash function to Convert Markdown file to HTML file using GitHub API - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/abhishekkr/f3ebf2ce6058c13bf619

<comment><USER2> why would you ever want to do this?</comment>


Ask HN: looking for advice for a children's books online store - <AUTHOR>

Dear HN,
I am settled to help my friend, whose small offline store of children's books is shutting down, and create a small online store for him. I have a clear vision of my "ideal" online store for children's books. One thing that makes me worry is that I haven't seen such "specialized" (or niche) online book stores. It's either Amazon-type or nothing. Have you seen, or shopped in, any book store that concentrates on only one type of books? Or is it completely hopeless? (I'm going to make it anyway though :-)
P.S. We're located in the coldest part of Russia.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> Hey.

A friend of mine did the same four years ago. Well, not exactly the same. He opened (with three friends) a Stephen King store. Only Stephen King's books. We are from Buenos Aires, Argentina, so he sells Spanish and English editions, an also collectors and rare editions.

He didn't get a personalized layout, he just upload PrestaShop and change the logo on the default template. He is doing really well. He invest in ads (Facebooks Ads, mainyl) and now he is selling a lot (I think 1000 USD per week).

I think if people know your website, you can do an specialized online book store. But you need to get known.

<comment><AUTHOR> Only Stephen King's books! That's awesome :-) Thanks!</comment></comment>


LyX 2.1.0 released - <AUTHOR> http://www.lyx.org/News

<comment><USER2> I must be weird, but I liked the pre-1.4 lyx better than the later revisions. Sometime between 1.4.x and 2.0 the previously functional keyboard shortcuts stopped working, and at the same time the same functions became available from menus and toolbar.

But oh my, did their graphical equation editor save me from a lot of headaches at university. I could produce a clean and printable version of absolutely _anything_ , as long as I remembered to set the math mode blocks to be larger than the surrounding text segments.

<comment><USER3> Fluid keyboard-only editing of typeset equations is Lyx's most valuable feature to me. I'm sure Lyx was inspired by some prior art, but I haven't come across another app that allows me to write up lecture notes from a blackboard with the speed of a stenographer.

I would love to see a web app that aims for the same thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> i'm glad to see continued development on LyX - i started with TeXnicCenter, then moved to LyX, and now on TeXworks (primarily for speed), but without LyX i probably would have abandoned Latex. LyX makes a steep learning curve so much simpler - in some sense the pitfalls and lack of features makes it easier to move outside the IDE and become more comfortable with Tex in general. You copy and paste your lyx code to something like TeXworks, and edit small pieces to get the desired effect not achievable in LyX.

</comment><comment><USER5> LyX is not the sexiest app out there, but it's an indispensable tool for me: rock solid, feature-filled, and easy to use - a great example of open source done right.

</comment><comment><USER6> I really liked LyX when I used it back in school for my proof-based class's homework. I even used it for my resume - which I have to say came out looking very neat and professional for not a ton of work!

I don't have much of a reason to use it anymore, but I really appreciated this software. Even though it would occasionally crash on my admittedly unstable laptop Linux install (never tried it on windows)... I guess you could use Emacs or hobble through using a gui in MS word or something (actually there probably are some alternatives, I just never looked into them), but if you do a lot of LaTeX/text work you might want to look into LyX.

</comment><comment><USER7> Simply the best GPL licensed document editor out there!

<comment><USER8> I always wonder why people talk about LyX, TeX, LaTeX and all kinds of TeX IDEs while TeXmacs (WYSIWYG) is mentioned almost never.

[http://texmacs.org/tmweb/home/screenshots.en.html](http://texmacs.org/tmweb/home/screenshots.en.html)

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Saw this HN story yesterday, tried LyX today, and am already fairly comfortable using it for a take-home math quiz. The steepest part of the learning curve was figuring out how to do multiline formulas. Really impressive for a program like this. I will have to look closely at the keyboard shortcuts, though.

</comment><comment><USER10> Is .lyx supported by github? Cf. e.g. [https://github.com/github/markup](https://github.com/github/markup)

</comment><comment><USER11> Can anyone describe the improvements to Beamer support?

<comment><USER12> Enhanced support for LaTeX options: "It is now possible to specify custom delimiters (e.g. for beamer's <overlay> options)."

Layout enhancements: "The beamer layout has undergone a major revision. Some long-standing drawbacks were removed, and some important beamer-specific features (such as overlay options) are now supported natively. Contributed by Jürgen Spitzmüller."</comment></comment>


Rails framework founder likens Java to Cobol: "Still relevant in the sense that languages never die" - <AUTHOR> http://www.thestandard.com/news/2008/02/21/java-increasingly-threatened-new-app-dev-frameworks

<comment><USER2> As Hemingway penned at the end of The Sun Also Rises, "Isn't it pretty to think so?"

I've got no love lost for Java (I use JSF in my day job), but it isn't going the way of Cobol. Java continues to reinvent itself, be it Applets -> J2EE -> Struts -> JSF or it's most recent use for interactive menus in Blu-ray disks ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu- ray_Disc#Java_software_supp...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu- ray_Disc#Java_software_support))

To further the point, here's one guy's list of Ten Amazing Java Applications. <http://java.dzone.com/tips/ten-amazing-java-applications>

Personally, I think JPC is pretty darn cool. I'm lukewarm about others and downright hostile to ThinkFree (uh yeah, if by "free" you mean spending lots of money).

<comment><USER3> At some point we have to stop and consider: what, exactly, is "the way of Cobol"?

Obviously "like Cobol" doesn't mean "useless". A hell of a lot of vital applications are still running in Cobol. Indeed, I'm sure that one way to locate a vital application is to look for one that is still running in Cobol.

And I seriously doubt that "the way of Cobol" really means "completely stagnant". Just because I don't notice the work that the world's Cobol hackers do doesn't mean that it isn't real. If nothing else, you would think that the Cobol folks have had to quietly and heroically build many, many things over the years just to make sure that available modern hardware and infrastructure can support their ancient codebase. For example, we all know that they had to reinvent all the date-formatting code a few years ago, right? That one even I have heard of.

What "the way of Cobol" means is "things happen, but nobody cares". The remaining Cobol code is very important, but folks don't go out of their way to create much more of it. There are people still inventing things in the Cobol universe, but they go quietly about their jobs with a minimum of fuss and marketing and absolutely no mentions in the popular press. It is intensely unfashionable, kids don't learn about it, and language designers make jokes about it.

Java's not there yet, but you can see the handwriting on the wall. It won't last another twenty years as, e.g., the _de facto_ standard language for college students.

<comment><USER2> "The way of Cobol" sounds like a kung-fu style; perhaps something akin to Drunken Master Style. Or some strange Battlestar Galatical ethical mandate ("To behave ethically Captain Apollo, one must conform to The Way Of Cobol").

I take your point tho. However, it seems to me there's something inherently snarky and pejorative about comparing anything to Cobol. I'm a big enough man to admit that those might be my own anti-Cobol biases coming out. You couldn't pay me any amount of money to write Cobol apps. Perhaps my son 20 years from now will be saying the same thing about Java.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> So, question. I often see people claiming that Ruby is replacing Java in some domains, but I don't often see the same thing said of Python.

Is Ruby (the language itself, not the implementation) somehow seen as "ahead" of Python in some way? Why isn't the same thing said about Python?

Or is it all hype and the Python folks are pragmatic enough to stay out of such arguments?

</comment><comment><USER5> Java has become a system language like C. It runs everywhere, on everything, but DHH has a point when he says it's not relevant. Java will proabably be better known as the underlying runtime system for (J)Ruby in a few years time. ;-)

</comment><comment><USER6> Yawn</comment>


Ask HN: A new kind of search engine? - <AUTHOR> If Google would be defeated at some point, why would that be? What kind of search engine would you like to have? <comment><USER2> My wishlist from the top of my head:

\- Google puts me in a bubble. They assume, that I have a single identity, a single set of interests that are related. While I would not always want completely unfiltered results, such as when I want to quickly get to a relevant common result with as few keywords as possible, I would like to be able to effortlessly switch between the bubbles the search engine thinks I belong to, i.e. to switch context, even things such as my language. Along with that I would want easy access to truly unfiltered results.

\- An API.

\- Advanced filters to really dig into the search results. Google is already pretty good at these, but sometimes even the Google Fu isn't strong enough.

\- Some way to get rid of things like when you used to search for something, and the top result was always experts exchange and I would accidentally click on it. Every single time. I'm sure I was not alone, so there must have been some way to get better results.

\- Full control over my search history. Full. Control. Heck, I'm even partially entitled to it by law, but it's still a PITA. I want to view, add, modify and permanently delete records. Or just turn the whole thing off. No, not "turn it off", as in hide it from myself, like I can now. I mean really turn it off.

\- And of course everything Google already has, like (reverse) image search with filters, and the advanced search parameters, such as "site:domain.tld" and the range operator "it costs 100..900".

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd guess they'd have to attack Google's perceived weaknesses, like privacy concerns. If more people decide they want the sort of thing DuckDuckGo is offering, then people might switch.

And definitely, better filtering. Being able to construct more sophisticated and targeted queries would be useful.

A site that did both with sufficient coverage of available websites would be nice.</comment>


The Ketchup Conundrum - <AUTHOR> http://gladwell.com/2004/2004_09_06_a_ketchup.html

<comment><USER2> Curry ketchup is very popular in Germany. The street food of Berlin is currywurst, which is just a sausage with curry powder and curry ketchup. The curry ketchup in Germany is not only curry-flavored but sweeter than American Heinz ketchup. So is it a different kind of ketchup or just "currywurst sauce?" Does it not count because ketchup wasn't already established as a specific taste in Germany?

<comment><USER3> I think it does count as different kind of ketchup - however if you plot the popularity of different ketchup flavors - I am guessing you'll get a pointed peak bell curve - whereas mustard would give you a longer tail curve. My point is that examples exist (I consider BBQ sauce as a variant of ketchup) but the distribution is much skewed in favor of 1 flavor for ketchups.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't see the point of this. Yes, mustard was able to be improved and managed to have multiple flavors.

Ketchup didn't see enough improvement and ended up with still only 1 flavor.

Spaghetti sauce was something that could sell in many flavors and so they do it.

There is no conundrum. People simply don't want ketchup that isn't ketchup.

And for the record, Grey Poupon may technically be mustard, but it's used differently. If you're making a sandwich, GP is a great flavor. If you're making a hamburger or hotdog, GP doesn't taste right and regular mustard is better.

And finally, can we learn anything from this as developers? I propose this:

Listen to the market. If you can't convince people that your product is better in some way, then it probably isn't.

<comment><USER3> >>There is no conundrum. People simply don't want ketchup that isn't ketchup.

That IS the conundrum - why are people fine with mustard that's not mustard. Is there something inherent in the taste ? Can some tastes be universal and some customizable?

<comment><USER5> It's the color. People want to be able to see the difference at the same time they're tasting it. That's easier to do with a base that is bright yellow than dark red.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My local library has an interesting book called "Pure Ketchup" that covers all this and more. Among things that Gladwell didn't talk about is that before tomato ketchup became standard there were dozens of totally different savory sauces called ketchups. From the number of recipes in the list in the back of the book, _anchovy_ ketchup was one of the most popular. One that actually looked good enough that I tried making it was grape ketchup - sort of a runnier, not as sweet grape jam - it is good on turkey instead of cranberry sauce. Judging from the list, our ancestors made ketchup out of nearly anything they could get a hold of.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is the perfect time of year to make your own. All you need is big box of seconds from the farm stand, a big pot, and a food mill. Cook it slow for several hours on one day, then run it through the mill. Next day, cook it down. Spices to taste, a little sugar. A screen over the pot will reduce the amount of cleanup you have to do.</comment>


Ask HN: How to build your own cruise control? - <AUTHOR>

Any suggestions if your car doesn't have cruise control and you might have to drive a long distance?  I was thinking of wedging something under the gas pedal to prevent over acceleration and laying something on top of the pedal for pressure. <comment><USER2> Please don't risk your life stupidly.

In any case, cruise control involves things like accelerating when you're going up hills to maintain an stable speed, not just keeping the gas pedal in the same place.

</comment><comment><USER3> upgrade your car to one that has CC. You can then enable email notifications when there's a bug in the engine, or or the brake fails the unit test suite (hopefully it's not too late then)</comment>


This Water-Balloon Battle Threatens to Soak Everybody - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/battle-of-the-water-balloons-points-up-patent-predicaments-1510750802 <comment><AUTHOR> Outline: [https://outline.com/bguARN](https://outline.com/bguARN)</comment>


Design System Checklist - <AUTHOR> https://designsystemchecklist.com <comment><USER2> The website looks very nice, but I am a bit confused as to the provenance. Why would I trust these(admittedly reasonable looking) guidelines.</comment>


The Same User Interface Mistakes Over and Over - <AUTHOR> http://prog21.dadgum.com/214.html <comment><USER2> I've shipped ui's that popped up unstyled alerts and had just enough CSS to work in perfect conditions on desktop chrome, because those uis, as awful as they were, were light years ahead of existing tools and I wasn't given time to do stuff the right way. My client preferred something that just worked today, to something that was a bit easier to interact with but would've taken twice as long to ship.

Sometimes you have to make sacrifices in the name of progress. Depending on how resource-constrained you are, investing in a sleek and nicely-planned ui could be a mistake.

</comment><comment><USER3> posted 4 times today ( _no irony there!_ )

most comments on this one (not the original): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10823735](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10823735)</comment>


Another Internet Bubble Lesson (Pay Your Crypto Taxes) - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@Wuntusk/another-internet-bubble-lesson-pay-your-crypto-taxes-9b237547b3a8 <comment><USER2> Does this include someone who buys BTC on coinbase but never sells it?

<comment><USER3> If BTC is treated as property (as the IRS says), then no. You'll only owe capital gains tax on it at the point where you sell or exchange it. Your capital gain will be the amount you sold it for minus the amount you bought it for, minus any expenses incurred buying/selling it. (If you sell it for less than you bought it for, you'll have a capital loss.) It's essentially treated like shares of stock.

More details can be found in the IRS guidelines that were linked in the article: [https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs- drop/n-14-21.pdf](https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-drop/n-14-21.pdf) (see questions 1, 6 and 7).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How is this a top post? "Pay your taxes because, um, you should, I mean talk to a lawyer"

<comment><USER5> Probably because a lot of people who've gotten into Bitcoin mining don't have any experience with significant taxable income that isn't a wage.

<comment><USER4> If you make thousands or millions trading an asset and think somehow you don't owe taxes, you've got other problems than just the IRS

<comment><USER6> That's actually not what is being talked about in the article at all. I think anybody would understand that if you make money by selling off your crypto, you would owe taxes on it, that's not what the article is pointing out. The article is pointing out that you may owe taxes on the value of crypto your received at a certain time, or traded for another crypto at a certain valuation, even if you never sold the asset for fiat money at that valuation. Meaning you could owe hundreds of thousands in taxes on an asset that never made you any money at all. That really is worth pointing out to people.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


An introduction to Georg Cantor's transfinite paradise - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/cantors-paradise/the-nature-of-infinity-and-beyond-a05c146df02c <comment><USER2> A very nice article. It covers the connection of Fourier series to the initial attempts in Set Theory, something that is not often mentioned. As far as I know, at least three major notions of "largeness" came out of the attempts to quantify the allowed sets of discontinuities in Fourier (in general, trigonometric) series:

1) uncountability (Cantor)

2) category (Baire)

3) Measure (Jordan/Borel/Lebesgue)

<comment><USER3> Can you please elaborate on the Cantor-Fourier connection more explicitly or provide a helpful URL? Thank you.

<comment><USER2> It is detailed in the article itself. Cantor wanted to say what classes of sets of discontinuities are allowed such that we can still represent a function with a trigonometric series. Cantor's approach immediately led to what are now called Cantor-Bendixson derivatives, and indirectly led to Cantor developing the rudiments of modern (naive) set theory.

<comment><USER3> I see, I missed it while I was looking for Fourier, thanks.

I'm curious how this work is mathematically related to the complex unit circle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This article doesn't talk much about the Cantor set, which is a pity given how amazing it is. Maybe one of the most beautiful objects in all of mathematics:

[http://mathworld.wolfram.com/CantorSet.html](http://mathworld.wolfram.com/CantorSet.html)

A great, rare, example of a set with no length (0 measure) but an uncountable number of points.

<comment><USER5> Another nice example is the _fat_ Cantor set [1] which (like the Cantor set) is nowhere dense but (unlike the Cantor set) has _positive_ measure!

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith%E2%80%93Volterra%E2%80%9...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith%E2%80%93Volterra%E2%80%93Cantor_set)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> " _Proof that |ℝ²| = |ℝ| It suffices to prove that the set of all pairs (x,y), 0 < x,y < 1 can be mapped bijectively onto (0,1]. Consider the pair (x,y) and write x,y in their unique non-terminating decimal expansion as in the following example:..._"

I hadn't seen this proof before. I assume the "unique non-terminating decimal expansion" uses the 0.999... = 1.0... shenanigan due to "Since neither x nor y exhibits only zeroes from a certain point on..."

Further, " _Reportedly, Kronecker disagreed fundamentally with the thrust of Cantor's work on set theory because, among other reasons, it asserted the existence of sets satisfying certain properties without giving examples of specific sets whose members satisfied these properties. Kronecker also only admitted mathematical concepts if they could be constructed in a finite number of steps from the natural numbers, which he took for a given._ " Kronecker was a constructivist?!

<comment><USER7> _...uses the 0.999... = 1.0... shenanigan..._

Why is this a shenanigan? Do you dispute that 0.9999....=1? One easy way to see this is that there are no decimals between 0.9999..... and 1 and thus the two numbers are the same. A property of the real number system is that between any two distinct numbers is another distinct number.

Maybe I'm missing the intent of your statement.

<comment><USER8> The slightly surprising incorrect statement is "each real number has a unique decimal expansion", which is wrong since 1.00000... = 0.99999... — so when using arguments like this, you need to be careful to always only pick one of these.

<comment><USER7> I see now. Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is a terrific vsauce video on transfinite numbers, which assumes almost no background:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrU9YDoXE88](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrU9YDoXE88)

</comment><comment><USER10> Thanks for all the upvotes!

<comment><USER11> Thanks for the article! While I studied set theory, I'd never had a run through of any of the history before. Like a fine constructive proof, your article makes it much clearer how all the parts fit together into a logical whole :-)

It's depressing to hear how it ended for Cantor. Especially given how modest he comes across in his letters.

One thing I'm confused about with the plane to line bijection - how can you be sure you'll eventually hit another 0? What about .11111...? There you can never switch over to the other dimension and the whole of the .11111 line on the plane will have the same representation, no?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> "Transfinite" is a crappy word. It sounds cool, but it means just the same thing as "infinite" (namely "not finite"). Cantor devised it because he wanted a way to say "infinite" without offending certain theological sensibilities.

<comment><USER13> Transfinite does not mean infinite. See: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transfinite_induction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transfinite_induction)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Great read, I enjoyed learning the math and Cantor's eventually sad life story.

</comment><comment><USER15> This is a biographical page about Cantor, rather than an article about the Continuum Hypothesis proper. (Which is explained, as are many of Cantor's results, as narration proceeds along his life and achievements as a mathematician.)

<comment><USER16> The submitted title was 'An Introduction to the Continuum Hypothesis'. We changed it to the article subtitle which seems more informative than the article title.

" _Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don 't editorialize._"

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

<comment><USER17> It's funny because I was just thinking "wow, this is such a great way to do an introduction to the continuum hypothesis". You get the same "introduction" that Cantor did: you walk through his early successes and learning that lead to ask these important questions. I remember wishing math was taught this way more generally (especially in grade school), where these results are often just thrown at you as if they came from the sky, whereas, at least for me, they make so much more sense when you first learn about the failures and _why_ we arrived at these ideas. The only time that really stands out to me where this is done is with integrals and doing rectangles and newton's method first.

Anyways, all this to say, I clicked the link with the original title and was very happy, but I probably would not click the current link since I wouldn't really know what it means or what to expect.

<comment><USER18> Interestingly, physics is taught the opposite way. It is routinely taught in chronological order of discovery, and while I can't exactly fault it, sometimes I wish they would ease off with faithfully relating every false start.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


BillPin buys BillMonk, the US service that inspired it - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/apps/2013/04/03/asian-bill-sharing-startup-billpin-buys-billmonk-the-us-service-that-inspired-it/

<comment><USER2> I used Billmonk for years with my flatmates until, sometime last year, their site became so consistently unreliable -- and often unreachable -- that we moved to a competitor (splitwise).

I heard nothing from Billmonk for months until this odd email, on March 30:

      It's been a while. Our apologies for the long silence.

      We know many of you have complained about the downtime of BillMonk,
      especially over the last 6 months. Well, we heard your call
      and are acting on it now.

      Uptime is coming. We have some exciting news for you lined up next week!

Best of luck to the billmonk team. We've moved on.

</comment><comment><USER3> Let's put this into context. I am from Singapore, and I know the founders who do it. And there is a trend here that we do alot of things, to be what I call a masquerade.

They have launched for approx slighty more than half a year. Their Google Play shows around 1-5k __downloads__. Let's peg the iPhone to be 2x of Google Play. So lets make that a cap of 15k in the best-case scenario. But these are downloads, assuming 50% retention rate (which is really superb, they have 7.5k active users.

50 * 7.5k puts that to be about 375000 users. How many of that are actives? We don't know. So yes, an acqusition for a total of 375000 on a best case scenario?

To put it bluntly, this is a classic case of a masquerade. This is no news, this is just a marketing attempt. The thing is, the Singaporean startup scene DOES THIS ALL THE TIME. In less than 6 months, this is the 2nd time I see an acquisition as marketing piece. And then there are vanity metric bragging, etc.

Oh well. Can we stop celebrating marketing campaigns already?

<comment><USER4> I don't think anyone was celebrating this news, especially given the lack of details. It's clear that something like what you described is what's going on, but the news is still interesting in that a relatively new startup is able to pick up a previous competitor.

I'm interested to see what they do with the new users.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Billmonk seemed to exist mainly to funnel people towards their person-to- person phone-based money transfer system called Obopay. I can't imagine they have many users left after having abysmal uptime for months. I switched our group to SplitWise and haven't looked back.</comment>


Python.org's humor page - cool-RR http://www.python.org/doc/humor/

<comment><AUTHOR> It just occurred to me that "Explicit is better than implicit" has become a part of my deeply-ingrained ethos. It even affects how I communicate with _people_ , not just the Python interpreter. I wonder if that's awesome, or if I should really take a Python break...

<comment><USER2> It just occurred to me that "Thou shalt not kill" has become a part of my deeply-ingrained ethos. I wonder if that's awesome, or if I should really take a theism break ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Perl doesn't have one of these (afaict), perhaps because it would take up too many pages, but if you filter out just the Larry Wall quotes, you might get something close to this: <http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Larry_Wall> (or maybe <http://www.cpan.org/misc/lwall-quotes.txt.gz> ).

</comment><comment><USER4> I looked briefly and didn't find anything humorous, but I'm glad it exists.

<comment><USER5> Are you kidding me? I burst out laughing when I saw this: [http://www.python.org/doc/humor/#python-block-delimited- nota...](http://www.python.org/doc/humor/#python-block-delimited-notation- parsing-explained)

<comment><USER4> I'm glad it exists because I'm sure other people find it humorous :]

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hackernews is no place for jokes!

<comment><USER7> You have no place for jokes, not HN.

</comment></comment><comment> cool-RR I really liked the very last one, the one with Yoda.</comment>