Still surprised by Trump? Then you're not reading Scott Adams - <AUTHOR> http://abovethelaw.com/2016/03/still-surprised-by-trump-then-youre-not-reading-scott-adams/ <comment><USER2> "Not reading Scott Adams" is generally the path of wisdom.

<comment><AUTHOR> Why's that?

<comment><USER3> Scott Adams has a number of opinions that some parts of the internet find unreasonable. I have read a number of his blogs and he makes good and bad points, just like everyone else.

Here's one of his "controversial" posts: [http://blog.dilbert.com/post/133406477506/global-gender- war](http://blog.dilbert.com/post/133406477506/global-gender-war)

<comment><AUTHOR> What made that controversial?

<comment><USER3> Some reactions of that specific post:

Dilbert creator claims there's a "global gender war" and he'd become a suicide bomber if he couldn't get laid

Scott Adams: We live in a matriarchy because men have to get permission for sex

Dilbert author goes on crazy rant about Middle Easterns and women.

 _Scott Adams is also the dude who is only prevented from going on a murder spree by a regular hugging schedule. (This one is a direct quote from a HN user.)_

Scott Adams: without access to sex, men can become killers

<comment><AUTHOR> Those observations are inconvenient, I'm not sure they're controversial.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Head Tracking Allows Glasses Free 3D on iPad - <AUTHOR> http://www.macrumors.com/2011/04/11/head-tracking-allows-glasses-free-3d-on-ipad/

<comment><USER2> 3d is over-rated. agree or disagree?</comment>


Ask HN: How do you stay motivated at your startup? - <AUTHOR>

I always knew I wanted to work at a startup and the ideation and execution of the product was the easy part (I am a developer). But everyday I face small obstacles that bit by bit eats me away inside. And I have to buckle up and remind myself why I am doing this. It doesn't help that I am in this alone, and having a remarkably hard time finding talented individuals who would complement in what I lack, and am down to my last month in savings. And have begun seeking seed/angel funding.
I am going all out this last month to try to secure myself a certain posterity in my startup. This really mean making public pitches to various relevant user groups in my varsity. And cold emailing angel investors with my pitch.
How do/did you stay motivated? How can I go about convincing other people of my idea? I am not particularly good at that. <comment><USER2> Nubela,

Since I'm working on my startup too and Asian, I understand your frustration and what you're going through. Since you're a programmer, my advice would be to secure a business/marketing person ASAP because generally technical people aren't that great at pitches and meeting people. Also, when you have a team it helps you stay on track and you get great feedback, encouragement, support, and everyone helps out. I got a great team currently and I didn't have them a few weeks ago. It's a matter of winning them over slowly, building trust, good/honest communication, getting them to know you and your project/idea and making them believe that you really care about your project and that you're passionate about it.

That's how I won over my 2 mentors/advisors, the best corporate attorney in the state, and my programmer co-founder.

2nd thing I'd do in your situation is what I call back against the wall, what can I do to make some quick cash and that I can do with small short term projects? Since I'm the marketing type, my list of ideas will generately be ebay, sell stuff, affiliate marketing, promote something, do a workshop locally, or whatever I can come up with. Brainstorm a list that works for you. But avoid getting a job until it's the absolute last resort.

3rd thing I do is go to networking events to meet more people and possibly find your team. I met mine at a Startup Weekend and business functions. You just need to get out there, seriously, just do it.

To stay motivated, I remind myself why I'm doing this. I think about what my vision is and how many millions of people I can help and the impact it will have. I also think about what I hate about the whole industry and why I'm trying to change/revamp it, that drives me. You have to find out what motivates you internally. If it's just money and fame, that's too easy because you can do that with other things so why your particular project? So for me, it's become a cause and a mission that I really believe in so it's been easy convincing people to help me and getting them to see the cause/mission and how it will help others.

I wish you luck in your project and don't give up. Take care!

</comment><comment><USER3> [http://www.ted.com/talks/derek_sivers_keep_your_goals_to_you...](http://www.ted.com/talks/derek_sivers_keep_your_goals_to_yourself.html)

Try your best to keep your goals to yourself. When you start explaining your idea to someone else, the thought is that you receive a dopamine reward associated with completing that goal. Common wisdom suggests that if one tells all their friends about their awesome idea, they'll be more motivated to finish it, but this just isn't true. Individuals who explain and take credit for their idea are more likely to feel more accomplished than those who keep it to themselves.

This was one of the biggest things for me. Be humble. Keep ideas to yourself and reward yourself on results, not just ideas.

<comment><USER4> With all respect to Derek, I suspect this advice depends on personality type. For me, common wisdom is 100% correct.

A goal no one knows about is easy to quit without loss of face. But if all my friends know I'm doing something, I'm bloody well going to do it.

I _always_ tell my friends I'm going to do something when it's something that really needs to get done. So far, whatever dopamine reward I get from talking about it has overpowered by the knowledge that I said I'd do it and it's not done yet.

As always, your experience may vary.

<comment><USER5> I suspect that most advice like this DOES depend on personality type, but with enough different people offering their insights, presumably the majority of personality types are covered, if one chooses to read enough motivational literature.

My motivation is progress, most of the time. If I'm not making progress, I'll often switch to some easier task that I know I can get done quickly to get my brain in the right space and make 'getting into the zone' a downhill process.

Sometimes, switching back to whatever task was slowing me down is like going back uphill again, but I often find that I'll usually abandon the easy task because, while doing that, the harder task has been mentally solved (once you stop thinking about a problem, yadda yadda).

Of course, where I generally suffer is in getting all the easy tasks done. Solving a problem is fun. Writing a login page isn't, generally speaking. Making a 'reset your password' form isn't. So all those things often get left by the wayside, and I end up with an awesome project that is completely unsellable because the last 10% goes untouched while I work on something else.

<comment> no-go-mojo I work that way too, which leaves a lot of unfinished projects, because I do the hard/interesting stuff, and think "oh this is done, I just gotta do x, y and z which I'll wrap up later." Now I've started to set a check point before I start which must be crossed in order of my project to be finished.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I build a startup alone in the same country and thus same environment as you (Singapore), and I know how it can feel running a startup and not having anyone understanding what you do. Sometimes it even feels like you get less credit than you really deserve for getting this far by yourself, while some so-called fresh university graduate gets a job at, say, GIC or Intel and receives congratulatory praises from everyone he meets (even though it's barely a feat).

The good thing about such external pressure is that it keeps you in track -- they will not respect you until you have something real to show. Use that as your motivation. Get your first revenue ASAP; that in itself produces an awesome feeling and would probably keep you going for some time.

Figure out how you checkpoint app is going to make money. Work part-time at the moment to pay the bills (this is Singapore, go teach tuition at $30-40/hour). But keep focusing on making your app a revenue-generating machine. Start charging very early.

Your parents, friends, and society in general will not get off your back unless you produce real results, and rightfully so. Go make money, that's all I can say!

</comment><comment> no-go-mojo Wish I could say something like inspiration, grand visions, or something someone a lot cooler would say, but it's my shitty day job. The shitter the day goes at work, the more I am motivated. The more I realize I am smarter than my boss' boss, that most of these people are sheep and I have nothing to show for it, the more I'm driven.

It has gotten so bad that I often look forward to meetings that will make me feel insignificant among a lot more significant yet stupid people who are brown nosing each other to death (corp America). I have on occasion thanked the almighty for putting me in such a shit hole and thus giving me the desire to improve my situation. Satisfaction must be the death of all motivation, because the dissatisfied me is the driven me.

<comment><USER5> All due respect, you need to find a way to self-motivate fast, or your future projects are destined to fail, if what you say is true.

<comment> no-go-mojo I fall in love with problems, my own, others', or whomever's, and try to find a way to solve it. I know most builders of software fall in love with a solution first/and idea or a grand vision - but little ol' me don't think like that, but thanks, you make a good point for someone who is a builder.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Although I accept that there's going to be rejections, I need to keep up the optimism. So I play games, code, or whatever I can do to lose myself. Sometimes I have a whole stack of movies that I've been considering to watch for something non-interactive.

If I was going to be with people I know; spouse, partner, etc, I'd talk to them about exchanging motivations and staying strong (movies, coop games, etc). And to be someone I can get off my chest.

To add, I would print out a sheet along the lines of "You're going to enter a period of many rejections. Stick to the plan. I even added predicted breaks. Don't give up until the same duration of rejection afterwards has passed."

</comment><comment><USER8> I enjoy listening to motivating talks for at least a little bit each day. Seth Godin has a few on doing great work and I'll listen to Zig Ziglar for about 20-30 minutes a day. A month of this has had a significant impact on my thinking.

Just curious, what's your startup?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I will definitely check out some the motivating talks before I retire to bed later. (Its 2.14am in Singapore now) My problem has been really amplfied a big deal because of the asian culture here. The talented developers already secured great job offers from banks, or Facebook, or Microsoft. In fact, the asian concept has had many great people conform to "find a great job and your future is secured". Which is really annoying because it is so hard to convince people based on the prospects of probable success! Then there is the funding part, I am working my ass off and I refuse to talk to anyone until I know exactly what I am going to do and something to show first. I'm getting there. But money is getting really tight now.

As for my startup, I am working on a platform that allows users to save and share worthy experiences one encounters everyday which I'd like to call them Checkpoints. I have some pixel mockups here that I am using as a wireframe for my development process. <http://imgur.com/LGDtO>

I am going to do something crazy soon and start doing things no entrepreneurs have done before here just so I can get my word out that I am looking for great people! Until then, I have to fantasize a little bit about success just so I can chirp along the next day :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Sometimes I think about having a terrible boss working in some huge company where I am told what to do and go into work 8-5 every day.

...then I realize I need to get my butt in gear and make the startup work, because I can't handle that!

</comment><comment><USER10> What I do is go look at the other products which sucked, which originally motivated me to make a better mousetrap.

Then I get back to doing it.</comment>


Show HN: MetaList – Machine learning-assisted market research - <AUTHOR> https://www.meta.re/market-research <comment><AUTHOR> Hey guys, this is a follow up project to www.gitlogs.com Gitlogs only focuses on curating Github repos but I always wanted to do the same thing for all other types of resources. Hope you guys like it. If you have any suggestions / ideas I'd love to hear it.</comment>


Here's how you can opt out from 100 different online ad networks in one go - <AUTHOR> http://www.networkadvertising.org/managing/opt_out.asp

<comment><USER2> What black magic does this website perform to read and modify cookies from other domains? I thought this mass reading and editing of cookies was explicitly not possible.

<comment><USER3> Looks like they don't delete any cookies. They set a bunch of new cookies in your browser to indicate you want to opt-out.

From the FAQ: <http://www.networkadvertising.org/managing/faqs.asp>

9\. How does the NAI Opt-out Tool work? The NAI Opt-out Tool replaces a network advertiser's unique online preference marketing cookie on your browser with a general opt-out cookie. It does not delete individual cookies nor does it necessarily replace other cookies delivered by network advertisers, such as those that are used for aggregate ad reporting or mere ad serving purposes. Such cookies allow network advertisers to change the sequence of ad banners, as well as track the aggregate number of ads delivered (impressions).

...

13\. Can my browser settings interfere with the use of the NAI "Opt-out" Tool? Yes. Your browser must be set to accept 3rd party cookies in order for the NAI "Opt-out" tool to work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you are a Firefox user, give Beef Taco a shot. Set's them and keeps them loaded: <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/180650/>

</comment><comment><USER5> This doesn't stop the ads. It just stops the targeting system inputs based on your past actions. The present is still fair game.

<comment><USER6> I'm all down for that though. Targetting me on past actions have been a huge fail for the ad servers so far. One example, my wife was thinking about applying for a job at Tom's shoes. I checked out the site to read about their company. Ever since, their banner ads have been following me all over the place, with no interest on my part to ever wear or purchase them. Example two, I was watching a podcast interviewing the CEO of a wine making company. I checked out their site, and again I got followed absolutely everywhere with their banner ads. The problem with their targeting as far as I've experienced is that they have no ability whatsoever to understand the context of my actions, and context is the most valuable part of understanding what would be relevant to me. Without that, all they can do is see that i visited X site, so let's hammer X site's banner at me to perpetuity until I visit Y site, and the cycle continues.

<comment><USER7> I don't get why this is so annoying. Would you prefer to get random, untargeted banners for home mortgage refinancing or mesothelioma lawsuits?

At least if you allow them to target you, there's an outside chance that once in a while an ad is exactly what you're looking for.

<comment><USER6> As a matter of fact, yes, I would. I do get tired of seeing the same ad over and over again. I don't use ad block, as I do want to give website owners their rightful due, and I would rather see a variety of ads than one single one over and over again.

Imagine watching television, and in each commercial slot, it's the same commercial, all day, all week. I think you would get sick of that commercial very quickly, and after a while, you would begin to have negative thoughts about the company in the commercial.

The same thing happens when my wife watches her Korean dramas online. There was a week or so, that there was this one single Virgin Mobile ad that played before and during every episode, the one that has that scene of the woman giving birth while screaming at her mobile phone. Even though I wasn't watching the dramas, I was close enough to have to hear that ad 25 times over the course of a night, and I began to harbor extremely violent thoughts against Virgin Mobile.

Edit: not sure that answers your question directly actually, but what I really mean is that I would like to see a variety of ads rather than the one or two that seem to be stalking me everywhere and of which I have no interest. I'd certainly rather see ads from more companies of higher quality than mesotheleomia or mortagage financing, but in all honesty, having one or two of those sprinkled in would at least lessen the badgering I get from the few ads I constantly see.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The whole point of this is to self regulate. If they don't put forms of regulation like this out on the internet then their will be many people who are very angry with them for not making this available so they are jumping the gun and trying to regulate themselves.

But really the people who will opt out are going to be a drop in the bucket compared to the masses that have no clue that this is even there.

(EDIT)If you want to see what data they actually know about you visit this site. <http://tags.bluekai.com/registry>

</comment><comment><USER9> How is it better than using a hosts file like this one? <http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm>

<comment><USER10> It's better in the sense that it takes 10 seconds from start to finish.

If your goal is instead to block the ads completely, I still prefer to use AdBlock Pro and let them manage the block list, rather than clutter up my hosts file.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Given I cleared cookies a couple of days ago amazing how many on the list it's telling me I have active cookies for.

</comment><comment><USER12> For a more complete opt-out than the NAI tool (and a bookmark to remember and update them) try <http://www.privacychoice.org>

</comment><comment><USER13> You'll need to disable adblock to make this work properly, otherwise about half of them fail.

<comment><USER14> And they all fail in Safari, because Safari blocks cookies from 3rd party domains.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The next time you clear your cookies, you have to go back to this site and opt-out again.

</comment><comment><USER16> very useful, although the report after says it only worked on about half of them.

</comment><comment><USER17> Yeah sure, just drop me a line.

"('--`good !$#&/?^ luck with your spam {$database}|)"@example.com

<http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5322>

</comment><comment><USER18> I was expecting this to be about editing your hosts file or subscribing to an alt dns service. Fail.</comment>


Key set available for $150 on eBay provides an all-access pass to NYC - <AUTHOR> http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/open_door_to_terrorism_skC6uYlsymrLMKsXh4s2GM <comment><USER2> Too much hyperbole, especially regarding what "could" happen. Isn't the local pizzeria a dream for a terrorist, since he could feed all his men for a buck a slice? Let's get angry and shut those terrorist-lovers down! (Roll eyes.)

(Anyone wanting to get into these locks could pick them in 30 seconds. Locks are for keeping honest people out, not for defending against terrorists. Terrorists with 767s don't need keys to anything. Occupy Wall Street protesters that want to shut down a bank's elevator system will still have to get past security to get to the elevator control panel.)

Ironically, the so-called master key only appears to have four pins, two fewer than my apartment. The locks these keys unlock are designed to be secured by other means.

</comment><comment><USER3> And, by posting high resolution photos, the NY Post has ensured that anyone with access to a 3D printer can easily replicate them for free :P.

Not that it really matters since keys have been and pretty much always were security theatre from the very beginning.

<comment><USER4> The NY Post is trying to generate controversy and sell papers, not perform real journalism or prevent catastrophes.

<comment><USER5> but terrorists!

<comment><USER4> exactly!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In a fluff piece today on Gramercy Park the NY Times published this image: [http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2012/09/30/realestate/30JU...](http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2012/09/30/realestate/30JUMP1_SPAN.html)

I suspect they'll be seeing a bit more foot traffic in the future.

</comment><comment><USER7> The really funny part is that the NYPOST has done far more of a disservice than the guy on eBay.

Now the entire internet has pictures of the profile of the key, simply buy some blanks, enlarge the photo til it prints the same size as the blank, and then file the blank to match the profile of the key.

</comment><comment><USER8> Why buy the key set when you can make dupes from the high-resolution picture in the article?

<comment><USER9> You don't even need the hi-res images -- keys can be copied from afar using telephoto lenses and the like: [http://www.jacobsschool.ucsd.edu/news/news_releases/release....](http://www.jacobsschool.ucsd.edu/news/news_releases/release.sfe?id=791)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The key set isn't the problem, that apparently you only need five keys is. Having secure keys is at least as important as the security of the lock, and a single key shared for the entire city isn't that.

<comment><USER11> How would you propose firemen accesing the elevators of any building of the city, or city lighting engineers accessing power panels? Every team can't lug around 10.000 physical keys.

There is always a compromise between security and usability. And for almost all systems, practical usability is mandatory, but security is nice-to-have - it's completely enough to deter nonserious attackers such as the majority of drunken vandals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> In college, my friend (who was by no means an expert) picked the lock on the elevator with a paperclip and a shim. These "locks" are only designed to keep out the honest people.

<comment><USER13> I remember in my teens picking old locks simply with two paperclips. All locks sold in normal stores can be picked with very basic tools. Any house lock can be very quickly unlocked by a professional. There are plenty of videos on YouTube showing just how much of a joke most all locks are. Deadbolts can be picked with household items. Those sliding locks with chains can be defeated with just a rubber band.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I was amazed when I learned how many people in Germany have all-access keys to apartment buildings (learned this when my bike was stolen).</comment>


3D mapping and accelerated super-res imaging of human genome w insitu sequencing - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/s41592-020-0890-0 <comment><AUTHOR> >New genome mapper is like 'upgrading from dial-up to fibre-optic'

[https://phys.org/news/2020-07-genome-mapper-dial-up-fibre- op...](https://phys.org/news/2020-07-genome-mapper-dial-up-fibre-optic.html)</comment>


Unrest in Gabon leads to Internet shutdown - <AUTHOR> https://blog.cloudflare.com/unrest-in-gabon-leads-to-internet-shutdown/ <comment><AUTHOR> > Update: September 2, 0945 UTC: the Internet remains disconnected in Gabon.

"Statement by the Secretary-General (UN) on the situation in the Gabonese Republic" (from yesterday)

[https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/sg/statement/2016-09-01/sta...](https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/sg/statement/2016-09-01/statement- secretary-general-situation-gabonese-republic-scroll-down)

      I call on the government to immediately restore
      communications, especially the Internet, SMS and the
      independent radio and television.

"Gabon is the latest African country to shut down its internet as election protests grow" (~2h ago)

[http://qz.com/771996/gabon-is-the-latest-african-country- to-...](http://qz.com/771996/gabon-is-the-latest-african-country-to-shut-down- its-internet-as-election-protests-grow/)

      The government of Gabon shut down the internet on Wednesday
      (Aug. 31) following the announcement president Ali Bongo
      was re-elected by a slim margin for a second seven-year
      term in office.

<comment><USER2> _...a second seven-year term in office._

Wow those are long terms. As obnoxious as a president is after eight years, after fourteen he must be pretty much intolerable.

<comment><USER3> I think that's understating things. This guy is the son of the previous President, who was in office for 42 years. Seems like more of a dynastic system with a veneer of democracy.

<comment><USER4> Yep. And the results from the last region were delayed for like 3 days, turned out to have a 99% participation rate and 99.5% voted for the guy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What options are available to connect to the internet, if your ISP is forced to shutdown in circumstances like this?

Some years ago, one could use phone lines and dial up modems. Are these still viable? What about Ham radio?

<comment><USER6> Sat internet, which is pretty common in Africa from my experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Unrest in Gabon...

And less than a month ago, I was thinking that Gabon is probably the most stable country in Africa. Now this.

<comment><USER8> What about others with a "real" democracy, like Benin, Botswana, Ghana?

<comment><USER7> Ghana has had some issues recently related to electricity, but you have a point with Benin, Botswana, especially, the latter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> So how does a country technically shuts down the entire internet? Like this or what Turkey sometimes does?

<comment><USER10> The government orders the ISPs to cut the connections - how they ISPs actually do it is up to them - whether they power down the routers or simply enable firewall rules.

EDIT: Here's a relevant article by Cloudflare about the Syrian shut-off: [https://blog.cloudflare.com/how-syria-turned-off-the- interne...](https://blog.cloudflare.com/how-syria-turned-off-the-internet/)</comment></comment>


Introducing Amazon Corretto, a No-Cost Distribution of OpenJDK with LTS - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/opensource/amazon-corretto-no-cost-distribution-openjdk-long-term-support/ <comment><USER2> Previous discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18449506](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18449506)</comment>


Sync Google Chrome Settings Across Multiple Devices with Latest Stable Release - <AUTHOR> http://www.launch.is/blog/sync-google-chrome-settings-across-multiple-devices-with-lat.html

<comment><USER2> This would be a lot more useful if my Google-branded Android phone ran a Google Chrome browser.

 _Is_ there a mobile version of Chrome? As best I can tell there isn't.</comment>


Xcode 9 - <AUTHOR> https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/DeveloperTools/Conceptual/WhatsNewXcode/xcode_9/xcode_9.html <comment><USER2> Just installed the beta and I'm really impressed. Opening and moving between source files is pretty instant on my 2014 13" rMBP. The new editor feels like Sublime Text 3, which is what I've been waiting for. Even opening Storyboard files feels at least 2x faster. Keyboard input also feels much better.

Sourcekit/completions still seem to slow things down when typing for me. Hopefully that will get better soon too, but I'm really happy with the improvements.

I'm curious what the editor rewrite means for XVim and other plugins. I really hope either XVim will work, or they added more functionality to the new extensions/plugin system so a new Vim plugin is possible.

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-

I tried using the new Asset Catalog color feature but I'm not sure how to include the color in code? I expected something like using image literals added in Xcode 8 - but it doesn't appear to be how they work. In interface builder however, they're really nice. A new section under "Recently Used Colors" is added for your named colors :).

<comment><AUTHOR> Have you tried compiling? I was wondering if there was any performance improvements on that portion.

<comment><USER2> Sorry, no I haven't.

There is a new build system though, and they say it's a little faster: [https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/De...](https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/DeveloperTools/Conceptual/WhatsNewXcode/xcode_9/xcode_9.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Wow, nobody? Well, I didn't download it yet, but I am certainly looking forward to not seeing this anymore: [https://www.dropbox.com/s/qmm75ycej20h0d2/Screenshot%202017-...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/qmm75ycej20h0d2/Screenshot%202017-06-06%2018.15.56.png?dl=0)

But I came here to hear all about how buggy it is and why I shouldn't download it yet... where my complainers at??

<comment><USER4> Asleep I guess.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I can't help but notice that excellent pieces of software (and hardware) seem to be invariably created using development tools that are extremely complicated, bloated, slow, and buggy. I do not know why this should be the case, but XCode, as a tool, is no exception.

<comment><USER4> Is that a comment on Xcode 9 or Xcode in general?</comment></comment>


In 1979, a chain email about science fiction spawned the modern internet? - <AUTHOR> https://slate.com/technology/2018/10/internet-social-media-sf-lovers-arpanet.html <comment><USER2> If you're going to talk about the historical significance of social computing, I would imagine that Usenet would figure in the story somewhere. To jump from email threads (that the authors incorrectly call forums) to modern social networks leaves out quite a bit of the story! Usenet was a remarkable tool for communication and community-building, as was Compuserve (already mentioned by skookumchuck).

Usenet was deployed in 1980, only a year after the SF-LOVERS email chain started.

</comment><comment><USER3> Pretty much every sentence in this article that uses the world "first" is wrong. Community Memory[0] is arguably the first social network and it was launched in 1973. For more information and depth on the origins of tcp/ip and email, I suggest the book Where Wizards Stay Up Late[1].

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

1\. [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/281818.Where_Wizards_Sta...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/281818.Where_Wizards_Stay_Up_Late)

<comment><USER4> Not to say you are wrong, but why do you claim that your one source is more right than the one source that is the article? Just saying that there's a book that says otherwise shouldn't be proof. E.g., I bet I can even find a book that says Trump is our savior, Jesus 2.0.

*edit: I knew this would get downvoted. Why discuss logically when you can downvote, right?

<comment><USER5> I have that book, too. I'd trust it more too. Not saying untruths couldn't make it into the published works of yesteryear but there was a higher hurdle to publishing physical books than publishing this online article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The article reads like it's the only network that existed. BBS software also got its start in 1979. CompuServe also got started in 1979.

<comment><USER7> Not to mention PLATO ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLATO_(computer_system)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLATO_\(computer_system\))), which by the mid 70's had multiplayer games, emoticons, chatrooms, and more.

<comment><USER8> Just to add - the book "The Friendly Orange Glow" is an excellent, readable history of PLATO. Absolutely fascinating, and one the other of this article probably hasn't see, or else they wouldn't be putting so much stock in this one email chain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This article is not correct. I was using email in 1974 and experienced similar issues.

</comment><comment><USER10> >> After an unsuccessful attempt to sell ARPANET to a commercial buyer (AT&T could have literally owned the internet, but said No thanks), the government split the system in two

Can you imagine what it would be like if AT&T bought the internet?

</comment><comment><USER11> Failure to mention NJIT's EIES or The Source for that matter renders this article's origin claims kinda questionable. Push reset, try again.

</comment><comment><USER12> wow. that last paragraph was a little heavy handed on forcing a completely new topic and new facts wasn't it?

</comment><comment><USER13> Link without (illegal) GDPR noise: [https://web.archive.org/web/20181005074604/https://slate.com...](https://web.archive.org/web/20181005074604/https://slate.com/technology/2018/10/internet- social-media-sf-lovers-arpanet.html)

<comment> fake-name Or just use a plugin that blocks jerberscript, and you can read it fine. So does uMatrix (apparently the GDPR shit is an external JS resource!).

<comment><USER14> In 2018, you need a web browser to view the web. Plus uBlock Origin. Plus I don't care about cookies. A mere web browser respecting web standards to the letter would not suffice.

To publishers: I'm not interested in you tracking me just for reading one text article from your website. Asking me is non-sense. Who the hell wants to customize their "tracking experience". I just want to access the content.

I'm fine if you don't want me to read the article without your tracking stuff. Please block me. But don't ask me. This is creepy and this wastes everyone's time and bandwidth. Go to a street and ask people if they would like to be followed and if they would like to customize this experience. Hell no. I don't want to. Leave me alone.

You may not care about me, but I'm sure I'm not alone. Many people are actually confused and afraid of these questions and run away. I've heard that from several people these last weeks.

<comment><USER15> Don't complain to publishers. Complain to EU lawmakers who make this cookie acknowledge silliness mandatory.

<comment><USER16> That's analogous to saying "don't complain about the stalkers, complain about the police for requiring stalkers to tell you they're stalkers".

<comment><USER15> Not really. We all know that sites give us cookies, it's the standard behaviour in the net, and the constant nagging by all web sites "accept this" and "accept that" and "continue as usual" has led to a situation where each and every site gives a different warning, which we all then blindly accept, because it is way too cumbersome to actually read pages of legalese when you are arriving on a Web page that has some information you googled for.

I claim that the cookie-acknowledgement legislation does not add value and is clearly counterproductive. We are taught to accept that "everyone is a stalker" and "it's okay we do it, because you accepted it, didn't you read that legal disclaimer, possibly in a language you do not understand".

<comment><USER16> To my understanding, the legislation requires _informed_ consent not _mere_ assent.

So this would be like, what, pretending you're a fan to get an autograph and then revealing that the celebrity has just signed away all their rights? And then asserting that that's legally binding?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> [https://outline.com/xk5MMp](https://outline.com/xk5MMp)</comment>


On the moral decay of the Dutch hacker scene - <AUTHOR> http://www.puscii.nl/blog/content/whats-wrong-kids-these-days

<comment><USER2> Insightfull comments on the LiberationTech mailing list: [https://mailman.stanford.edu/pipermail/liberationtech/2013-M...](https://mailman.stanford.edu/pipermail/liberationtech/2013-March/007951.html)</comment>


What goes wrong in the brain chemistry of a gambling addict? - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/40/learning/addicted-to-anticipation <comment><USER2> I hate gambling but observing some recent changes in my behaviour this sentence strike a chord:

> The high is in expecting an outcome, desiring it, imagining it, not in its > fulfillment.

I am staring at unfinished side projects of mine and they are staring back at me.

<comment><USER3> Jared Tendler[1] is a poker coach and has a great line that stuck with me, beyond my poker playing. It goes something like this

Visualizing your win is important to help you stay focused on a goal but equality important is not to get carried away with the visualization. If you imagine yourself winning too often, you'll feel like you _already achieved_ that goal and won't be as motivated to follow through. After-all, what's the point in doing the extra work, if you already think you've won?

He's got a lot of other really good insights. If you're a poker player, I highly recommend his audio books which are available on audible.

[1] [http://jaredtendlerpoker.com/tmgp1and2/](http://jaredtendlerpoker.com/tmgp1and2/)

<comment><USER4> Reminds me of that bit about people being less likely to actually follow through with their plans if they've already told people about what they're going to do, versus keeping it silent.

<comment><USER5> Wait what?! I've heard literally the opposite advice - the idea being people don't like to be made a liar of, so publicly promising you will do something makes you more inclined to do it

<comment><USER6> There's a difference between making someone a promise, and just talking about something you intend to do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "But since addiction is defined as compulsive behavior that continues in the face of punishment, punishment is clearly not the best way to deal with it. Dozens of studies show that shame, confrontation, and humiliation are ineffective and can backfire when used in addiction treatment."

I suspect this is case with many things, that punishment is ineffective. Punishment ultimately assumes people are acting rationally, and they often do not.

<comment><USER8> Whenever I talk to people about the death penalty and harsh punishments such as torture, I like to point out just how irrational criminals often are. People do not commit a crime (most times) expecting to be caught, and so the penalty phase isn't a factor. There are many reasons why people act that way, but the bottom line is that they do.

The result is that the only way to impress upon people that crime "doesn't pay", is to make the rate of solving crimes in general much higher. That's... REALLY hard, expensive, it's nuanced and it takes time. Making punishments more draconian is easy, stroke of the pen easy, and it makes angry people feel good. They can't imagine that harsh punishments don't send some kind of message, because to them it does.

Sadly...

<comment><USER9> > _The result is that the only way to impress upon people that crime "doesn't > pay", is to make the rate of solving crimes in general much higher._

There's actually two sides to it: you can lower the upside to crime, or raise the upside to non-crime. Things like better education, job creation, better social security benefits, etc. all contribute to lowering people's need/desire to commit crimes.

<comment><USER10> Exactly. The criminal justice system is designed to control people _who have something to lose_. The penalties they can apply have far less impact on people with very little to lose. For some reason, not much airtime is devoted to discussing how we could motivate people to obey the law by _giving them_ something to lose.

<comment><USER8> That's not hard to understand for a few reasons. First, it's not a simple 10 second sound bite, it doesn't get ratings. Second, a _lot_ of people don't want to hear it, they're still into the fantasy of "bootstraps" for everyone. Finally, the vast majority of media is owned by large companies who want no part in spreading such a message even if it did get ratings and appealed to their audience.

Which it doesn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I heard a lecture from a guy who'd made a fortune on a trading desk then got a Ph.D in psychology. Many of the same characteristics are going on with traders. But there's a twist. Since there's an arguable logic to trading, once a trader makes a good trade and experiences that high, in order to achieve a similar high the next time, the trade has to be more extreme. Each time he/she is convinced in their own intelligence. This pattern continues unabated (in the absence of meaningful oversight which is rarely given when someone's on a roll) until the trader blows up completely.

His further commentary was that while the trader is going strong, huge rewards accrue to the trader and management. When it blows up, often, instead of instituting any meaningful oversight, the trader and management are fired, new people hired who have no institutional memory of the previous problem.

<comment><USER12> Yeah, the incentives on wall street hugely promote risks. You'll get paid a huge bonus if your bet pays off. And then downsides are limited to just losing your job, in which case you just go get a new one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Walking past senior citizens whiling away hours at Vegas slot machines, I've often wondered how things would be different if they'd grown up in a time of ubiquitous video games.

Will today's generation, who spends time playing free mobile games, been as keen to spend money for slots when they get older?

<comment><USER14> I'm not quite a senior citizen so this is purely anecdotal. (I also have no desire to gamble whatsoever, so this probably makes it even more anecdotal) I grew up with video games - modern slots and "video poker" hold absolutely zero appeal to me. They are worse than the most horrible 2600 games from my youth. They simply aren't "fun" and a casino owner would get way more money from me with a Galaga or Pac-man arcade machine (not my favorite games by far) than any fancy "video slot machine".

<comment><USER15> I was inclined to agree, until I found the gloriously cheesy Centerfold slot arcade and a few others that are pretty fun rides when they choose to take you on one.

My first time trying out the actual "pull down the slot handle" machine was mindnumbingly boring.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've gambled a lot with poker and sports betting (where you're against other people), but always felt like a dumb ass when I played those casino games (blackjack, craps). Such a strong negative feedback loop to me. I never understood how people could get addicted to gambling.

I can imagine drug addiction, you get that high right away - positive feedback loop.

Interesting that just expecting the outcome in gambling can cause addiction. For the serious poker players, they train themselves to ignore the results. Being results-oriented is a bad thing. Making the correct decision before the result is the focus. Educational article for me.

<comment><USER16> Dunno, for me, blackjack was great for meeting others - I was always having interesting side discussions with people I was with, or I wanted to get with. The gambling and drinks were just social lubricants.

Of course, I always limit myself with a set amount of cash, and leave the cards in the room... if I win, great. If I don't that's my price for the time spent (at the lowest buy-in tables).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This was an entertaining read, but it seems like fairly old information in regards the role of the dopamine reward system in addiction in general. We already know with a pretty high degree of confidence, that chemicals and behaviors which act to "hijack" that system are almost inevitably addictive.

What isn't so well understood is why some people are so much more vulnerable to that process, and others so resistant, not to mention the continuum between them. Unfortunately as far as I can read, this article doesn't offer any new information on that critical issue.

<comment><USER17> As far as I could observe, on myself and others alike, it's about wether the transition happens under the radar or not. Being warned at the right time, forced to look at one's own condition and admit the degree of danger it carries if left as is, is usually enough to save the victim. There is more than that, of course. It all boils down to the amount of available willpower, which can be affected by a lot of factors. That willpower is also what prevents one's relapse, which an obvious fact for everyone, I suppose. What I'm not sure everyone is aware of is that willpower can be trained, the best starting from an early age. (Also, the willpower is not the same as discipline. Discipline is taken care of in schools, willpower training not so much.)

<comment><USER18> On the other hand, this doesn't align with my experiences or what I read at all. Alcohol seems to be extremely dangerous for certain groups of people, which is why they often choose not to drink at all, ever. While many other people can have the occasional drink and it doesn't go beyond that.

In fact, that's a pattern I've noticed: there are people who will often not touch certain substances, activities, etc., for fear that they will get addicted to it. It seems to take less willpower to just not do it compared to doing a moderate amount of it.

Meanwhile, I don't seem to get addicted to anything whatsoever and I don't think awareness or willpower has anything to do with it. The key thing is just that I don't develop much of reaction and I can easily forget about the substance/activity. It just doesn't stick. It's not that I'm actively resisting a desire, /I just don't have one/. Another thing that doesn't stick for me? Habits. I wonder if these two are related. Most people seem to develop habits much faster and better than I do.

> What I'm not sure everyone is aware of is that willpower can be trained, the > best starting from an early age.

I'm very curious what you're basing this on. I would say that is quite a claim to make. And how far? For whom? Is there a cap? Does it depends? Last time I tried to look up willpower trainability, hoping for some solid resources, I came up short.

I haven't observed that my willpower ever increased. If anything, it decreases over time if I try to apply it to the same thing. If I went to do something for a month, it's harder to do it next month. I can make a given activity take less willpower. I can become more efficient at it. I can apply motivational tricks. But the amount of actual willpower seems to stay roughly the same and relying on it is a recipe for disaster in my case.

Willpower trainability is in the same bucket as things like ego depletion and stereotype threat and smiling causes happiness and all those other things that I would take with a pound of salt due to the complexities of studying such things.

<comment><USER17> _" The key thing is just that I don't develop much of reaction and I can easily forget about the substance/activity. It just doesn't stick. It's not that I'm actively resisting a desire, /I just don't have one/."_

That's exactly the end result of the actively trained willpower for me.

 _" I'm very curious what you're basing this on. I would say that is quite a claim to make. And how far? For whom? Is there a cap? Does it depends?"_

All I can give you for sure are my own experiences and the methods my parents used in this regard. However, these are close to what I've seen in martial arts training and other domains. Since my childhood years my parents were very watchful for my instincts and urges and intervened most of the time. They made me aware of my impulses and what triggers them and when I failed to control myself they actively pushed me to slip into a harsh or painful lesson. I remember one of them when I had a definite plan for my hard raised money and they exposed me to a good salesman. I knew what salesmen do and they warned me that that one was better than the others and I had to resist or risk my money on some overpriced unimportant thing for me. I lost, but the lesson stood and now I'd say it worth both the money and the bad feeling that came after. I had many lessons, starting from addressing the appetites for sweets (like any kid) to resisting the provocations for violence (where I had to consciously know when it is or isn't necessary), but usually it didn't come to the hard part.

I think the most important bit was that I developed a sense of my own willpower resistance and its limits. Of course there is a cap, but I kind of sense when I'm about to slip, and I routinely test those limits in a controlled environment. The willpower is not there to be abused, it's there to buy you some time to change course when you realize you're going to be trapped. And yeah, it depends on a lot of things.

 _" I haven't observed that my willpower ever increased. If anything, it decreases over time if I try to apply it to the same thing. If I went to do something for a month, it's harder to do it next month. I can make a given activity take less willpower. I can become more efficient at it. I can apply motivational tricks."_

I think here you confuse willpower with motivation. Willpower is the ability to exert self control regarding your urges, when you have them. What you describe here is a case where you don't have any urges at all. It may involve willpower if you abstain from something when you push yourself to do something else, but it's not used directly. Motivation is another thing that it's addressed enough in our society.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I wonder what evolutionary pressures caused humans to have these qualities? Surely the dopamine response in a crude way - but can we link the actual 'gambling-like' elements to human behaviours that might have been beneficial?

'Fear' keeps us away from Bears and cliffs ... but risk and gambling? Tricky one.

<comment><USER20> In most forms of organized gambling, the odds are against you, so the behavior only has negative outcomes. In real life, this is not always the case. Lots of the most successful people you're aware of (CEOs, VCs, actors, musicians, politicians, etc) probably took a series of pretty insane risks at some point in their life. If they had not, they would just be normal people. But they did, and they got a huge payoff. That's why risk taking is wired into many of us.

<comment><USER21> > In most forms of organized gambling, the odds are against you, so the > behavior only has negative outcomes.

I think lottery jackpot winners would disagree with that. You're only guaranteed a negative outcome in these types of games when you've iterated enough times to reach a statistical conclusion. In the meantime, short-term luck in the game's variance could earn you a lot of money or lose you far more than you'd expect. If the expected value of $1 bet in blackjack is $0.99, the return of a single hand will never be that; it would be -$1, $0, $1, $1.50, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> not sure why, but the use of the word "wrong" just bothers me. why can't a gambling addict be an experimental variation that MAY result in something game-changing (i'd bet a lot of the greatest entrepreneurs are basically risk addicted gamblers).

<comment><USER23> Maybe, with relation to entrepeneurs, but I think there are fundamental differences between business (and sports betting or poker) compared to casino games like slots and roulette.

Regarding the former, hard work and study can affect the outcome. The latter are machine programmed and can't be beaten.

I don't know, but wouldn't be surprised if these two types of gambling attracted different types of people.

<comment><USER24> Math is the difference. Casino games are a tax on people who can't do math.

<comment><USER23> Perhaps that is true for poker and sports betting (although I don't believe tertiary level mathematics is a pre-requisite), but you don't necessarily need to be good at maths to be successful in business.

Dedication, vision, relationships and a whole host of other factors combine in successful business management, which can go a long way towards mitigating risk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> For those in the UK or with access to BBC iPlayer, Panorama just broadcast this reportage programme on fixed odds betting terminals which briefly mentions how they exploit brain chemistry in gambling addicts.

[http://bbc.in/2cRJ9j0](http://bbc.in/2cRJ9j0)

It also speculates why there are suddenly so many betting shops clustering in UK high streets.

Spoiler: it's because the number of terminals per shop is legally limited and the bookies want to get a large number in a small area.

</comment><comment><USER26> When I didn't have much else going on with my life, the excitement of getting a high score on a video game made me feel better and gave a sense of accomplishment.

</comment><comment><USER27> How about the brain chemistry of asian compulsive gamblers? You can be in the middle of Ohio where it's 99% white people, step into a casino and it's chinatown.

<comment><USER28> That probably has to do with cultural preferences for the type of gambling that's happening in the casino. I'd suspect pretty strongly that if you looked at other forms of gambling (lottery tickets, scratchers, bingo halls, etc.) you'd see a more representative cross-section of the population.</comment></comment>


Amazon Wants to Ship Your Package Before You Buy It - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/01/17/amazon-wants-to-ship-your-package-before-you-buy-it/ <comment><USER2> A friend of mine works for a large battery company. The moment the hurricane forecast shows one headed for a populated area they start packing and dispatching semis of AA/C/D/9V batteries to all the Walmarts, Targets, Grocery Stores, etc in that area. I'm sure the bottled water and plywood manufacturers do the same. How does this differ?

<comment><USER3> I will go on record as saying that this is similar to Amazon announcing drones. It's part PR move but true there is an obvious connection to reality.

Hard to believe that Amazon is going to move the needle much with something like this. Shipping is already fast. Getting it where it needs to be is obvious. As you have noted there are many examples of manufacturers anticipating demand and doing something similar. But they don't have or file for patents. What about a patent for anticipating that your chain restaurant will need less help on certain days of the year or when it rains? Most business would not waste time on this thing (patents) although they do these things if they can. They don't crow about it though (unless they are doing a dog and pony show).

This is the type of thing that most companies would do in many cases and never talk about. Because they aren't as obsessed with creating an image of invincibility which Amazon spends so much time with. [1] It's kind of like the shock and awe of US Military propaganda (where they show the well oiled military machine.) People eat this type of thing up. "Oh look how special Amazon is".

[1] To scare off competition. Look how mighty we are. Look at the barriers to competing with us!

<comment><USER4> I don't think they are improving shipping speed to compete with online stores, as much as to compete with stores in your community. I think the goal is to make ordering from Amazon almost as quick as getting in your car and going to a local store.

<comment><USER5> There are any number of things you might buy from Amazon instead of a local store if you got same day delivery rather than even 2 day Prime.

It's fairly clear Amazon sees that as a key source of future growth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Walmart already does this.

They keep everything on shelves at the local fulfillment center. I go there maybe once every two weeks and pickup my stuff.

It's a pretty neat concept called retail.

<comment><USER7> Do Walmart items ship out of your local superstore or do they ship from the regional hub? Assuming you buy from Walmart.com and don't wander the miles of aisles in the store.

<comment><USER8> Using the stores themselves as shipping hubs is still a limited pilot program at Wal-Mart.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/10/business/wal-mart-tests- sa...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/10/business/wal-mart-tests-same-day- delivery.html)

[http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/28/us-retail- walmart-...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/28/us-retail-walmart- delivery-idUSBRE92R03820130328)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is a patent for turning UPS and Fedex distribution centers into warehouses. They're preloading the distribution system so that the only latency is the last tens of miles, rather than hundreds or thousands. It could be same day assuming you got your order in before 4am or whenever the trucks roll. Or even later if they have a more courrier oriented partner.

<comment><USER10> Dell currently does something very similar. If you have "same day 4-hour enterprise support", then the replacement part will most likely come from a distribution center collocated with your local courier company.

<comment><USER11> UPS "Sonic Air" IIRC

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> We could call these local hubs "shops"

<comment><USER13> Yeah, and perhaps Amazon could let customers browse the available inventory by visiting this "shop" in person, if no one's made a purchase yet.

<comment><USER14> Ah, similar to Amazon's "shopping cart," the shop could provide a physical cart (imagine a cross between a baby stroller and a faraday cage) to help customers carry inventory to the exit of the store.

<comment><USER15> And if the customer is too busy to visit the physical store, or just doesn't feel like it, Amazon could put the pictures of all of the products they have on a web site, and simply mail the customers their selections.

<comment><USER14> That's a pretty good idea, but don't you think it would take too long for the shipments to get there?

They should come up with a way of tracking what pictures people look at and then shipping the stuff in the pictures to the warehouses near those people. I bet you could do the picture tracking thing with an ActiveX control. That wouldn't work in Navigator, of course.

<comment><USER15> We could get around that issue by having a dedicated program for looking at the pictures. We will develop a networked software delivery system that people will use to install this program quickly and easily.

<comment><USER14> I see where you're going with that, but I don't think delivery of software over a so-called "network" will ever be feasible. Even with a 1200 baud modem, transferring a multi-kilobyte .exe would take hours, and that's assuming the BBS doesn't drop the connection partway through!

It seems more realistic to transmit the pictures using CD-ROM technology: it's like Netflix, but for CD-ROMs. Amazon would mail you their catalog CD-ROM, and you look at a slideshow of all the products they sell. Then, when you decide what you want, simply fax your order to Amazon, and they tell you which "shop" to drive to in order to pickup your merchandise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Uhm, operations research is what, at least 75 years old now? And this is exactly classical operations research stuff, at least the idea is nothing new:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operations_research#History](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operations_research#History)

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

I guess they just patented a particular way of doing this.

</comment><comment><USER17> Satire becomes reality.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HA_gwzx39LQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HA_gwzx39LQ)

</comment><comment><USER18> It's almost like Amazon is recreating the local retail experience, except that all the mom and pops are owned a monolithic entity with no ties to your community and you can't actually check out the products before you buy.

I'm heavily opposed to winner-take-all and so my boycott of Amazon books must continue. I don't really buy anything other than physical books off of Amazon, so it's not a huge sacrifice.

</comment><comment><USER19> Kinda cool. I can imagine a day when, due to "pre-shipping," one could look at their wishlist and see an alert: "Receive this product today!"

<comment><USER20> "There's a man outside your building, right now, with this item. Order it within the next 12 minutes, and have it within two."

<comment><USER21> What if everything you bought from Amazon was automatically available for resale used after a certain period of time? You're thinking of buying the $79 textbook, but Bob who lives across the street will sell it to you for just $39 (Amazon gets $10 for facilitating the transaction, but will take the risk) and Amazon knows he's home right now.

Or you borrow it from him for a week for $19, he'll also lend you his blender for another $19.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I imagine transportation costs could quickly spiral out of control if you didn't have the analytics tuned correctly. But one particular use case comes to mind: you look at a couple items, maybe even add them to you cart, then walk away. A lot of retailers now will send you an email for "abandoned carts"—imagine if that email also included a line that said, "Oh, and if you finish your order, we'll have it on your doorstep tomorrow." Pretty compelling.

<comment><USER23> Except as an amazon prime customer. I already know it'll be there on my doorstep tomorrow, or at most the day after tomorrow.

Of course, this would probably make shipping to me a lot cheaper.

<comment><USER24> _I already know it 'll be there on my doorstep tomorrow_

But what if it was on your doorstep at 5PM when you get home, and it didn't cost you a dime extra?

It's also pretty clear why Amazon would love this; they could give you Prime 2-day delivery times with Super-Saver 2-week postage rates.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Patents != products. Just look at the countless patents Apple has filed over the years. Many never see the light of day.

Though I suspect Amazon isn't filing this patent as a means to control the concept (isn't it even that revolutionary that it needs protecting?).

</comment><comment><USER26> They got a patent for this? "People in this city order this book more often than other cities. Okay, let's make a deal with our shipper there to stock some onsite."

Totally obvious.

<comment><USER27> I'm not sure if you're being deliberately hyperbolic, but I think your example is an extreme oversimplification.

More like "Joe Bob in Nowhereville, KY has this item in his wishlist. He looked at it three times in the past three days, and twice today. The last time he exhibited this pattern he bought it within two days, as have 78% of the people in this geographical region who have exhibited similar patterns. Let's ship to a local transit in prep for his order."

Actually really cool - and at least based on the summary (can't view the linked doc b/c of missing plugin of some kind) it's a business method patent as opposed to a software patent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Amazon Wants to Suck Money Out Of Your Pocket Through a Hose (wsj.com)

</comment><comment><USER29> "anticipatory shipping", this is pretty much just saying that local warehouses/stores should anticipate demand by using as much data as possible. For Amazon that means wishlists, viewing history, shopping carts, emails etc. This is good Jeff Bezos, but not good enough. I could do this better.

In order to best anticipate demand, they should be trying to make deals with manufactures instead. This system would initially work best with subscription based products. And then we could figure out how to turn everything into a type of subscription.

Manufactures have a release cycle that is important to them staying 'competitive'. So they have to constantly make new models and 'retire' the old ones by planned obsolescence forcing us to buy the new slightly improved model that has a time bomb built in it to go off when the next model comes out.

So basically Amazon needs to place their customers in a 'release preference' category. With names like, 'bleeding-edge','beta','stable','2 generations back', or 'annually/biannually'. This could make manufactures more responsible and get the latest designs out of secret labs and into consumers hands quicker.

Customers can choose which category they want to be included in for different product families. So for example, I might choose the 'bleeding-edge' release cycle for my phone, but prefer a biannual subscription for a refrigerator or car.

And unless someone has a brand preference, the best products can be automatically chosen based on reviews from amazon and social networks and blogs and benchmarks on hardware/battery life/speed/etc

Discounts will be given for recycling your previous models, and as our 3d printing becomes better and closer to home, eventually we might just get 'ink' credits to print out phones, computers, cars, furniture, TV's etc.

On a side note, this kind of system would be the system of all systems and it would be hard for competitors to start (without the data owned by Amazon). So I don't think 'Amazon' should get to boast and claim this system as their own and keep the profits. I would like to see this type of system organized at the national level at first (until we fully embrace globalization) and we could vote on an open source 'shopping and distribution' system whose profits go back directly to the people in the countries they operate. Then people could join and accept a national system to be proud of, one whose contributors, ideas,transactions,money,etc are all open and viewable by anyone to encourage accountability.

</comment><comment><USER30> Wait, this is just a patent, and Amazon didn't even respond when asked for comments. This is a junk invented story. Bravo WSJ.

</comment><comment><USER31> >> The patent exemplifies a growing trend among technology and consumer firms to anticipate consumers' needs, even before consumers do.

Wrong. The patent exemplifies a growing trend among technology and consumer firms to think their business processes ought to be protected by patents when in fact, no such need exists. Certainly there is no wider (public, society, industry) good from allowing rich companies to patent something many others may have easily figured out independently.

<comment><USER32> But there is absolutely a need for these companies to assemble patent war chests; otherwise they are vulnerable to other people who have them.

Or even other people who just have 1 single patent for something they want to do.

So don't blame the companies, they are acting rationally; blame the system.

<comment><USER31> Do you have any evidence that Amazon intends to use this patent purely for defensive reasons only? If not, we're just speculating. Worse, we're giving them the benefit of doubt.

<comment><USER32> Offense is the best defense, so this is a red herring.

The fact is, voters have set up a dog-eat-dog system. Now you complain because the dogs eat or get eaten.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Here's the abstract:

 _A method and system for anticipatory package shipping are disclosed. According to one embodiment, a method may include packaging one or more items as a package for eventual shipment to a delivery address, selecting a destination geographical area to which to ship the package, shipping the package to the destination geographical area without completely specifying the delivery address at time of shipment, and while the package is in transit, completely specifying the delivery address for the package._

As long as you consider being at the store "in transit" they've effectively "invented" physical stores with a digital only interface. The patent even describes a method of giving customers in the region discounts on products that don't sell and are sitting in the "store".

There is nothing novel or new about this and the patent system is broken for more than just software. The entire rest of the patent is a bunch of filler to make it seem like there's something important going on when there in fact is not.

</comment><comment><USER34> Building warehouses closer to customers isn't that far off "anticipatory shipping." Could "anticipatory shipping" be a clever scheme to reduce shipping times while also avoiding establishing tax nexuses (and therefore avoiding the requirement to collect sales taxes) in additional states?

</comment><comment><USER35> This is effectively a CDN for real physical products. Push the product to the edge nodes for shorter delivery time.

<comment><USER36> Yeah, but that isn't exactly news. Or patentable. (The details of having the analytics fine-tune how much of what to push to which edge node may be patentable under current law, though...)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Perhaps I'm wrong, but I thought Netflix already did this with their DVDs. They would see that certain DVDs were near the top of the queue in certain areas and move the DVDs closer. Works especially well with more rare items.

</comment><comment><USER38> It may pressure consumers to decide to buy now, if they get visibility on a desirable product approaching closer to them in delivery time. Especially if they are also aware that the approaching product may be snapped up by a rival local consumer with similar tastes. Game theory applies. And this will also be gamed by customers who understand Amazon's cost and incentive economics. Smart move though, as it can focus customer awareness into their distribution chain which is locked-in. Attention shifts from logical: ProductX() to instantiated: new ProductX(Amazon_supply_chain).

</comment><comment><USER11> This will work great for things that people "subscribe" to like toilet paper and dog food, which, I kid you not, is cheaper via Amazon than locally, and, someone else lugs it to my house for me.

</comment><comment><USER39> "So Amazon says it may box and ship products it expects customers in a specific area will want – based on previous orders and other factors — but haven't yet ordered. According to the patent, the packages could wait at the shippers' hubs or on trucks until an order arrives."

Here's an idea. Pre-ship merchandise to local independent retail locations, waive the shipping fee but let the retailer mark it up a bit, and offer in- store pickup.

It's a proven business model, since that's how people bought stuff before catalogs and the internet.

</comment><comment> alok-g This is not shipping before you buy. This is online interface for a brick-and- mortar store (such that many overheads of traditional stores are gone). Call it a distributed warehouse if you like.

Patents Office got fooled into seeing this as an invention. The violation could happen only if they could predict what I specifically want to buy and ship it for me specifically. If all they do is optimise distribution, well that's happening since the dawn of trade may I guess.

</comment><comment><USER40> Why do they need a patent for this?

<comment><USER41> To make more money? That seems like an obvious answer. They don't need a patent to start doing it, they are probably already going to do it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> So does that mean someday I will be able to call in a same-day airdrop of semi-uncommon product x that has been sitting in my amazon shopping cart or wishlist?

<comment><USER43> An interesting tactic. If you know you're going to want something but don't want to pay for it just yet, add it to your cart a week or two in advance to let it "preload". Real-world precaching.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> '"It appears Amazon is taking advantage of their copious data," said Sucharita Mulpuru, a Forrester Research [FORR -2.03%] analyst. "Based on all the things they know about their customers they could predict demand based on a variety of factors."'

Something about seeing a big red box next to the analyst highlighting their company's negative stock performance makes me a wee bit less confident in their analysis.

</comment><comment><USER45> This definitely makes sense for their subscribe and save items. If they're not doing it already for them. But I don't think they are. I've got quite a few things on subscribe and save, I get charged the last day of the month and it still takes about a week to get my items.

</comment><comment><USER46> This makes sense, especially if combined with a local retail channel. It would be neat to be able to travel somewhere and get hooked on some obscure local food/drink and come back home to find that you're local shop now has it in stock automatically.

</comment><comment><USER47> I could see this working.

For example, the 7th Harry Potter book, especially if you ordered previous books with Amazon.

Or some videogame series, or something similar. Still, for these there's a "pre-order" period, so preshiping without a preorder is kind of moot

</comment><comment><USER48> So Amazon would basically fill an actual shopping cart with your current order at a hub close to you, and when you're done paying, would just come out of the neighbour's driveway and wheel the cart to your door...

</comment><comment><USER49> Think of the millions who will succumb to akinetic mutism[1]. Oh the humanity.

1\. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7067573](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7067573)

</comment><comment><USER50> I actually find this clever and patentable. It's machine learning assisted caching for physical packages. Now it all comes down to the predictive performance of their algorithms.

</comment><comment><USER51> So if you ship something you thought I was going to buy but don't, do I still have to pay for it when it arrives? Because I'm fucking keeping it.

<comment><USER52> In the UK at least, no - they would be unsolicited goods and you have no obligation to send them back or pay for them.

[http://www.adviceguide.org.uk/england/consumer_e/consumer_co...](http://www.adviceguide.org.uk/england/consumer_e/consumer_common_problems_with_products_e/consumer_problems_with_delivery_e/consumer_unsolicited_goods_e/youve_received_goods_or_services_you_didnt_ask_for_distance_sales.htm)

Edit: In the US it looks like it's illegal to send you something you didn't order unless it's a sample or from a charity.

[https://postalinspectors.uspis.gov/investigations/MailFraud/...](https://postalinspectors.uspis.gov/investigations/MailFraud/fraudschemes/othertypes/UnsolicitedFraud.aspx)

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> I've never bought the same thing twice from Amazon. I think this is publicity/advertising like the helicopter drone story.

</comment><comment><USER54> If this means that they would start fronting the cost of importing all my weird Japanese SFC games then I'm all for it.

</comment><comment><USER55> Surely I'm not the only one that kept checking to see that the date on this article wasn't April 1st.

</comment><comment><USER56> Better yet, send packages by drone and return them if the user hasn't purchased it yet. D:

</comment><comment><USER57> "... in your garden/on your balcony, while you're away at work."

</comment><comment><USER58> > Of course, Amazon's algorithms might sometimes err, prompting costly > returns.

If I keep getting boxes on my doorstep that I didn't order, I don't think Amazon should expect me to keep sending them back.

I'm not turning my front porch into an Amazon micro-warehouse.

<comment><USER59> I do not see how getting free stuff is ever a problem.

<comment><USER58> Certainly not, but the "costly returns" implies an expectation that the customer would ship the product back if it were sent in error.

<comment><USER60> Amazon once sent me the wrong parcel by mistake. I expected a long convoluted returns process, but instead Amazon just said I could keep all the items and that anything I didn't want, I should give to friends or a local charity.

It's probably cheaper & more time-efficient for Amazon to write off the cost of the item than to deal with reshipping & restocking an item that can't be sold as new anymore.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> So.. it's like prefetching.

</comment><comment><USER62> AOT delivery, excellent.

</comment><comment><USER63> Kind of like pre-crime.

<comment><USER64> I'll be worried when Amazon starts hiring precogs. The question then would be, would I want something before I want it?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you become a micro investor or angel? - <AUTHOR> I have some money set aside. I want to take some chances while learning about new technologies that I can invest in.  Any recommendations on how to proceed, where can I find the best opportunities to invest? <comment> hiding-vertical Funny, I literally just posted an Ask HN about how to attract investors for something that's in a vertical niche deemed "safe" / "growth" even though it's mostly bootstrapped services business and not really a venture startup.

Trying to figure out if that's appealing to angel investors these days with all the uncertainty

</comment><comment><USER2> If you want to learn, do some paper trading first. Stock markets have lots of opportunities for investment. don't bet more than 2% on a single investment idea, particularly when starting out.</comment>


'The details of your involvement will be gruesome' if you continue suing us - <AUTHOR> http://www.recode.net/2016/5/26/11792922/gawker-nick-denton-peter-thiel-open-letter <comment><USER2> Because journalism, like other major professions has an aura of respectability, it needs to be protected from charlatans who wish to don it as a mantle whenever it suits them and to cast it aside just as easily to further their selfish purposes

Denton needed to decide a long time ago whether he was a journalist or not. Based on the output of his organization he clearly decided to not be a journalist.

Now, having sown the wind, he is reaping the whirlwind. And in a desperate attempt, he wants us to ignore everything that he has done and stood for up until now and to pretend along with him that he is an actual journalist standing up for journalistic values and integrity.

The best analogy is that of a homeopathic quack who dons a white coat and pretends to be a medical professional to gain patients & attention but also wants to have the privilege of disparaging 'allopathy' to set himself apart and above actual medical doctors.

</comment><comment><USER3> Would anybody agree that although there isn't a direct threat, it is heavily implied?</comment>


Scala: The Android programming language you didn't know you had - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9219546/Scala_The_Android_programming_language_you_didn_t_know_you_had?source=rss_applications <comment><USER2> I do game programming for Android, and use Scala for my server infrastructure. I'd like to use Scala for the Android device as well, but haven't even tried because I'm concerned about garbage collection. You see, I can't even use Java iterators in areas that are called on every frame on the Android device, because those create little object instances that will trigger garbage collection. So I have to write for loops. There are all kinds of things I need to do in an action game in Java on Android to carefully pre-allocate my memory and not trigger garbage collection.

When I look at the code that Scala produces, it's spinning off little instances of auto-generated classes all over the place to work the magic that it works. You can't breathe in Scala without it generating a few anonymous classes and instantiating them. All that is fine for an app where the device is idle between UI events (a "normal" app), but how does it fly in a game? I can see and "feel" a noticeable glitch when my machine GC's, and I need to avoid that pretty much at all costs. How in the world do you avoid that with Scala in an action game? So far I've been assuming that you pretty much don't avoid it, so I haven't bothered trying to use Scala for my games on Android.

</comment><comment><USER3> Any news on Clojure for Android? Last I checked (~1.5 years ago) it was too slow because reflection works differently on Dalvik than on a normal JVM, or something like that.

I would prefer getting into Clojure over Scala.

<comment><USER4> I'm interested in that as well. In addition to the reflection issue, I believe another issue was that every program brought in the whole core library. So even a simple Hello World app would get to a few megs. It also made start-up of the apps relatively slow. This was quite a while ago though and I do seem to recall that Android support was on the radar, so maybe these issues have been fixed now?

<comment><USER5> Scala also has the library bloat problem. The most common workaround for now is to run all apps through ProGuard --- not for the obfuscation, but just to get rid of unreferenced library classes. Which actually works well, but it does add a tedious minute or two to builds.

<comment><USER6> ProGuard doesn't really solve the problem for Clojure though, as most of the Core library is necessary for core features of the language to function. Dropping 'eval' support for Android targeting Clojure apps might work, but it hasn't been done near as I can tell.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "To start with, you don't need as many semicolons."

Is this a cute way of saying you will end up with fewer lines of code to do the same thing, or that you just don't need to use semicolons?

I think if you're trying to convince someone to use a new language, you should be a little more clear.

<comment><USER8> Scala infers a lot of things including semicolons, when possible (typically almost always, except when two or more statements are put on the same line).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I would like to share my experience with Scala and Android. Maybe someone can tell me what I am doing wrong.

Speed and start up time does not appear to be a problem, even if you are using a good part of the library. The problem with scala is it takes so darn long to build your simple app. Size of generated output is not a big deal, though it will be larger than Java for simpler stuff. But unless your app is trivial the media elements will make a much larger contribution to your final size than the code. Also the growth is non linear. Here is what I mean.

If you hello world and proguard your app will be the same size as a java app. But once you bring in some scala stuff - collections or language features which need the library it grows by an order of magnitude. So a 20k Java app vs 100k Scala for the same app. After that initial bump the additional baggage is gradual so that eventually the java app of similar complexity will generate similar sized output. Speed is not meaningfully impacted in my experience. If you are making a game it would be worth considering preallocating arrays and doing basic memory management to avoid stalls.

You will have to avoid some idiomatic scala because functional programming is too easy going in terms of allocation. So manually iterating java hashtables and arrays instead folding over maps and lists. I will note that for my simple app I fold over lists with little impact for now. Scala has the basic advantage of being a java with less boilerplate. The little things add up. But if you are not using it as a functional language is it worth it? I think so. Instead of using it as just a functional language you can use it as something else. more? By leveraging caseclasses, Extractors and pattern matching you gain in expressivity while retaining declarative elegance. your mileage may vary.

So the problems are: You can't easily debug. But Mostly, building takes Forever. It takes 4-5 minutes to build the simple hello world activity. I humbly suggest the scala team look at their android support.

Getting F# on WP7 was a piece of cake in comparison. Building is normal, debugging is there and getting it to work was a matter of referencing a targeted dll.

</comment><comment><USER10> > Statically typed Java language pushed as alternative to JRuby and Groovy for > building mobile Android apps

According to the SpringSource P.M. for Groovy: "Groovy is not able to run properly on Google's Android mobile platform. A project started porting Groovy to Android, but performance wasn't there (20 secs to startup a simple Hello World)" (<http://docs.codehaus.org/display/GSOC/Groovy+Ideas>)

Perhaps Scala is the ONLY alternative to Java.

</comment><comment><USER11> Drawback: the environment must load the Scala runtime.

Sometimes is better to add some semicolons instead of slowing down the whole device.

Scala is great, but in this case the choice must be made carefully.

<comment><USER12> Yeah, I'm curious about that. When article said, "He lists benefits of Scala development for Android as _speed_ , easier programming, . . . ." (emphasis mine), that turned my head a bit.

I would think the best Scala could hope for would be to _match_ Java's performance. I can't imagine how it would be faster.

Are there actual numbers for Android development? What do you lose doing Scala and where?

<comment><USER11> Found this, but not sure if it can be considered reliable:

[http://scala-programming- language.1934581.n4.nabble.com/Scal...](http://scala-programming- language.1934581.n4.nabble.com/Scala-on-Android-Performance-td2004054.html)

The following one instead is an official Google doc with some benchmarks between Java/Scala/C++/Go (not specifically related to Android), where it's stated that actually Java would be more performant than Scala without the GC:

[https://days2011.scala- lang.org/sites/days2011/files/ws3-1-H...](https://days2011.scala- lang.org/sites/days2011/files/ws3-1-Hundt.pdf)

 _"In other words, Scala spends 7699-2416-1 = 5282 clicks on non-GC code. Java spends 14073-10484-110-2 = 3477 clicks on non-GC code. Since GC has other negative performance side-effects, one could estimate that without the GC anomaly, Java would be about roughly 30% faster than Scala."_

Very interesting. Also, Scala JARs are 3.6x bigger than the Java equivalent (due to the runtime files, see page 7).</comment></comment></comment>