Twitter Sees 6% Increase in "Like" Activity After First Week of Hearts - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/11/10/twitter-sees-6-increase-in-like-activity-after-first-week-of-hearts/ <comment><USER2> > The reason? According to Weil, "It's easier to understand."

We aren't comparing apples to apples. It is a different button with different meaning.

The barrier to my "liking" something is substantially lower than my "favoriting" it. I understand both, but I'll do more of one than another.

The real question is what the goal is and whether user are getting more value from more likes versus fewer favorites.

Are my interactions 6% more engaging? Does the quantity of interactions cover the decrease in quality of meaning?

Subjectively, I don't feel like it. Favorites had more meaning to me than Facebook likes precisely because there was a higher bar. They've diluted the meaning of a term and are, unsurprisingly, seeing people use it more often.

<comment><USER3> Am I the only person who hasn't changed how I use that button?? It's what I use to "mark" a tweet so I can easily come back and either read/refer to it later.

<comment><USER4> Not, you're not the only person who uses it the same way. Indeed, it's incomprehensible to me that people would intentionally change how they use something that _they know is functionally identical_ just because it has a different image and word associated with it. I can see how the change might have a more subtle, subconscious influence over the long term.

<comment><USER5> Most people don't follow stuff like this very closely. Does the average person actually know it's functionally identical? I might not if I hadn't read about it here, at least not right away. If nothing else I would like something just to see what happens.

<comment><USER6> Most people don't realize that Liking on Tumblr bookmarks things in a list (a _public_ list, unless you disable it!) either. Or that liking a conversation on Facebook causes you to follow it (people usually think you have to comment; "commenting to follow" is a very common phrase.)

Over time, social media platforms have effectively converged on the same basic set of verbs, with each verb doing _everything_ all its parents did. But people still think of the verb as being the same one the platform started with, and limit their use to that use-case. I think it can be smart to switch from a "dialect" verb signifies to a "common loan-word" one, precisely to get people to take notice that the verb really has done more than they thought for a while now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A week in, could easily be attributed to the Hawthorne effect; [0] if the trend continues after a month or longer, might be worth talking about.

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

<comment><USER8> I agree with your assertion that the increase is at least in part due to the fact that the feature is new, but I think this would more aptly be classified as the novelty effect. [1]

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

<comment><USER7> Yeah, possibly. I saw an _awful_ lot of favoriting immediately after the introduction seemingly meant as sort of a commentary on the change itself - explicitly favoriting to show support for favoriting. But either way, interesting to see if the trend continues.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I never understood the "bookmarking" feature that was favoriting. Hearts/likes/kudos are pretty universally accepted as a way of showing support without having to engage with a comment/response. This was long overdo IMO.

<comment><USER10> What, then, is your workflow for when you are reading through tweets, see someone you follow/respect post a url to an interesting article you'd like to read later? Or perhaps post a quote you'd like to use later?

Copy/paste the url into another tab, then bookmark it? Favoriting tweets for later review is a substantially more convenient workflow.

<comment><USER11> > Favoriting tweets for later review is a substantially more convenient > workflow.

So, you favorite it, read the article later and then unfavorite? If you don't unfavorite, how do you differentiate between a bunch of links int he past week that you may/may not have read?

If I want to read something later, I add it to my "Read It Later" service of choice: Pocket.

<comment><USER12> Practically, I haven't had a problem. I remember there was an article I wanted to read, I go to my list of favorited tweets, and I find it.

Dedicated read-it-later services just end up being a list of articles I haven't read and feel bad about.

<comment><USER11> > Dedicated read-it-later services just end up being a list of articles I > haven't read and feel bad about.

It used to be for me, too. Now I'm much more loose about marking something as read without reading it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> 6% is pathetic increase and stronger sign how little people engage on the platform.

The engagement ratio of Instagram to Twitter is several orders of magnitude off.

You look are Redbull on both platforms. Twitter they have average of 40 retweets and 150 likes/faves, plus some replies. Instagram they have 50-80k likes and 100 to 1k comments.

Even if twitter had 1000% increase that would not help the platform where there is so little active engagement.

<comment><USER14> 6% is a pretty substantial increase for just changing the icon and name of the action. Hell it's a pretty substantial change in general for a feature that is presented so prominently.

Either way, how do you propose Twitter gets to Instagram volumes other than through lots of incremental changes? Instagram didn't get where it is today in one fell swoop.

<comment><USER15> >in one fell swoop.

Not all the way, but a team of 13 did pretty darn well in just two years-- enough that it then caused Facebook to make an offer

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm happy for them but I fail to see how a '6% increase in like activity' will change the financial situation for twitter in any meaningful way, assuming that this is not just a momentary up-tick (which is fairly common after any change).

<comment><USER17> Increasing engagement of new users makes Twitter more sticky? They don't have a financial problem as much as a growth problem.

Ultimately, six percent is a significant movement and it's certainly not a bad thing for the company.

<comment><USER18> > Increasing engagement of new users makes Twitter more sticky

"Engagement" seems to be one of those alternative metrics that companies point to when they're not making actual money.

<comment><USER17> I think you're being a little cynical. On boarding a user is not mystical. You need them to begin using your product. And as they continue to use the product they develop habits. No use? No habit.

That use is called engagement. It's not a marketing term, it's a product term that's used in marketing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "6% increase in likes" can mean a few things in the statistical sense.

* 6% increase compared to the same time last year?

* 6% increase in WoW favorite/like activity?

* 6% increase in the probability that a given user will favorite/tweet a given tweet?

Granted, in all cases, 6% is a lot at Twitter's scale, although depending on the metric used, it may not be proof that the change is unequivocally better.

<comment><USER14> Or the most likely meaning: In the AB test, the group with the heart had 6% more likes/favorites than the control group.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Well, not like it's a surprise, they've A/B tested it, saw increase in CTR, implemented.

<comment><USER21> I always understood "favoriting" to be like "saving" a post in reddit. However, the digestabilibty of tweets are pretty much instantaneous so "saving" them is without merit. So I understood the genesis of "hearting" or "liking" to be very much so a re-branding of a highly adopted UI. Was this move organized before @jack came back to Twitter?

<comment><USER22> I actually come back to a lot of saved Reddit posts, particularly ones on programming subreddits where I can't easily read the article or mess with the code on my phone.

<comment><USER23> That's the point - a Reddit post can be much more substantial than a tweet usually is, so saving makes more sense for the former than the latter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm sure a lot of folks will disagree with me but as someone who doesn't use twitter i find this absolutely delusional. Even if you do use twitter I can't imagine the perceived importance of this and all the media traction didn't get at least a chuckle out of you.

</comment><comment><USER25> This isn't the most useful statistical figure. The heart feature is novel — the increase could be due entirely to folks trying it out. A more meaningful figure would be to look at the folks who have constant favoriting habits (with stars that is) and see how their behavior changed. Personally, I'm more reluctant to heart tweets, as my Twitter account is mostly professional and it feels a bit unprofessional to "heart" a colleague's tweet.

</comment><comment><USER26> I clicked a few just to see the animation. If a lot of people did that there is your 6%.

<comment><USER27> I clicked much more than one time (just to see the animation).

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Correlation != Causation. It's a highly visible change - users will be testing it out and in many cases it seems - making fun of it.

In my opinion the main (not only) reason it feels familiar to people is because of Facebook. Since when was it easier to understand the use of symbol for 'love' towards 140 characters of text than use the symbol for 'favourite'?

</comment><comment><USER29> is this really news? I find this an embarrassing headline to top this site. "Social Network X changes wording/icon on link, sees change of a few percent in some direction over the course of a week, trend may change direction at any time, we'll keep you posted"

DON'T CHANGE THAT CHANNEL!!

</comment><comment><USER30> 6% increase compared how? Week-over-week? Daily average? Gross average? How much does it fluctuate each week? How likely is a 6% difference on any other week? Has this been adjusted for variance?

I see nothing in this article other than two overly-verbose paragraphs summarizing a couple of tweets.

</comment><comment><USER31> I want to know if it is at the expense of retweets. I'll say what I thought before: Like vs. Retweet is now confusing (and I think detrimental to what Twitter probably wants which is retweets since those increase engagement). They should have renamed Retweet to like (people on other social networks expect likes to show up on their friend's feeds), and either dropped favorite altogether --or-- just make it a little bookmark icon! Like/Bookmark makes way more sense to me than Retweet/Like.

</comment><comment><USER32> I think stars were good _because_ they were vague. They had various meanings: some used them like "likes", some used them as bookmarks, some used them almost to acknowledge receipt, some used them to express empathy, some used some combination of these (like me).

"Like" is much narrower. It's also at odds with its own symbol, <3 (goddamnit HN please stop stripping emoji), which means "love", a more intense emotion with different connotations.

</comment><comment><USER33> I've yet to see heart/fave/star/like buttons being context aware. I've heard anything from people using these mechanisms to read articles later, to using them as attention grabbing devices used to steal eyeball hours from distracted phone users, and everything in between. "Like" activity is a misleading metric and could mean _anything_ because it's stripped and devoid of context.

</comment><comment><USER34> A major part of the Twitter ad pricing formula includes "engagements"

If they can get more people to "engage" by clicking a heart instead of a star, it's more revenue for them, even if it doesn't improve user experience at all.

Of course, there's a good chance the market for Twitter ads will correct, and value an engagement lower if the new engagements don't lead to sales or click- throughs or whatever metric.

</comment><comment><USER35> I probably fit into the camp of people who would 'like' but not 'favourite'. BUT I am not a regular twitter user so perhaps my POV isn't that usual.

I think of 'favouriting' something as a kind of bookmark that I might want to go back to some time. I know that's now how you use twitter, but this definitely coloured my opinion.

</comment><comment><USER36> I would assume that a good chunk of that initial increased activity has less to do with it being a better name/icon, and more to do with the increased awareness/attention to the feature in general, due to all of the press around the change... Will be more interesting to see the % of new users that make use of it after a few months.

</comment><comment><USER37> When I first saw the twitter favourite feature, I'd assumed it was a "save this tweet to review later for your list of favourites" since that's how the term is used on other platforms. I quickly learned otherwise, but it is definitely simpler if they just stick to existing conventions.

</comment><comment><USER38> I'm surprised, I'm sure the number of likes would fall on Facebook if they switched to using hearts.

People seem to have a personal/emotional attachment to the heart symbol, which makes it suitable for social networks like Instagram, because you can love a picture! But a Donald Trump status? Not so much.

</comment><comment><USER39> I don't know what took them so long.

Anecdotally I used to get more engagement on my tweets via the cross-post on Facebook than I did on Twitter. The kicker -- I was working at Twitter and the people liking them on Facebook but not faving them on Twitter also worked at Twitter (!)

</comment><comment><USER40> Epic nonsense.

<comment><USER41> completely agree

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I think success is probably better measured by the number of UUs receiving and or giving likes than the sheer number of likes given. Still more is better all other things equal.

</comment><comment><USER43> I'd be interested to see if this is just because it's new and novel or because of some sort of human psychological difference. The latter would be really interesting.

<comment><USER44> I believe it's the latter, but there is no way I'm discussing that viewpoint in here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> that heart animation is flippin' cute, thats why

</comment><comment><USER46> This seems potentially misleading without proper context, like... were "favorites" growing before, if so at what rate?

</comment><comment><USER47> Because people wanted to watch the little confetti splash, or observe the UI break when clicking the heart too fast. :)

</comment><comment><USER48> > The reason? According to Weil, "It's easier to understand."

or people just a new icon and wanted to see what it did.

</comment><comment><USER49> Time to buy their stock!

</comment><comment><USER50> Huge gain. But didn't they A/B test this before?

</comment><comment><USER51> Twitter just wishes they had a nickel for every like.

</comment><comment><USER52> the "love" button wasn't supposed to be "like"

</comment><comment><USER53> Sex sells.

</comment><comment><USER54> Wow - that's pretty exciting. Great to see that Twitter is innovating again.

<comment><USER55> This was literally just a reskin. I'm all for Twitter succeeding, but classifying this as an innovation stretches the term til it snaps.

<comment><USER56> I read andyl's comment as one laced with extreme sarcasm.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> That seems extremely low given the hype and attention this change got.

</comment><comment><USER58> Get a fucking life. All of you. Who fucking cares!?</comment>


Can we all agree? No more 'You are unsubscribed" emails. - <AUTHOR>

If you send one of these after a user unsubscribes from an email blast, please stop. <comment><USER2> I've always assumed those emails are sent because if you forward a newsletter to somebody else, your personal 'Unsubscribe' link will still be on the bottom, therefore the person you forwarded it to could click the link and unsubscribe you from the newsletter without you knowing about it.

But with the unsubscribe confirmation, you'll know right away and can resubscribe if needed.

</comment><comment><USER3> I like the positive affirmation that I have been unsubscribed. Yes, a web page "You are unsubscribed" is preferable, but an email confirming in subscription is better than dead silence.

I don't like the unsubscribe responses that tell me I will get email for 10 more days after I have unsubscribed.

<comment><USER4> I agree. I want some kind of confirmation that I'm unsubscribed, either e-mail or (preferably) a web page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> To comply with CAN-SPAM mailing list unsubscription can't require a password, which means there's negligible security on it. Sending an email confirmation acts as a safety check that person unsubscribing actually is the email account holder.

</comment><comment><USER6> Sending these emails drive down your domain's mail open rate and CTR[1], so it probably makes sense not to send those from that perspective.

1: My best guess is that if a user unsubscribes from a list, they aren't likely to open the subsequent confirmation email. If they are likely to open the email (use an A/B test to find out), then it probably makes sense to continue sending these emails, because there isn't any harm in mildly annoying a user that's decided to leave your app anyway.

</comment><comment><USER7> I enjoy the affirmation that I've been successfully unsubscribed from a mailing list. Simply seeing "You're unsubscribed" on a web application just doesn't cut it for me.

</comment><comment><USER8> Everytime I receive one of those I die a little (a lot) on the inside</comment>


Teacher anxieties may subtract from girls' math scores  - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/55590/title/Teacher_anxieties_may_subtract__from_girls%E2%80%99_math_scores

<comment><USER3> This is not a girl story, or a math story, or even a teacher story. This is a union story, because unions make it impossible to reliably guarantee that American public school teachers demonstrate confident mastery of _second grade math_.

 _Regular assistance from math coaches might diminish math anxiety among elementary school teachers, she suggests._

Spiffy, we can spend more money on professional development (and pay union members to offer it, and pay union members to attend it) so that people with graduate degrees can bone up on their _second grade math_.

<comment><USER4> Have an axe to grind, don't you? It's too late to get into a debate, but suffice to say that everything you're bringing up are concepts you carried into the article and were not mentioned, even tangentially, there.

<comment><USER3> You know the basic theory behind Five Whys, how a failure isn't a one-off event but it is the symptom of a process failure? And how that process failure is a symptom of another process failure, etc etc?

Why can't our girls learn math? Because they are modeled that girls aren't good at math.

Why are they modeled that girls aren't good at math? Because their teachers have "math anxiety". Here endeth all politically correct investigation of this topic, continue at thy own peril.

Why do their teachers have math anxiety? Because their teachers are incompetent at elementary mathematical skills. See the article referenced by tokenadult, replete with examples of things like a K-6 _faculty_ without a single person who could calculate the area of a rectangle.

Why are their teachers incompetent at math? Because the schools hire and retain people who are incompetent at math.

Why do the schools hire people who are incompetent at math? Because the schools have no hiring process which would weed out people are incompetent at math from the hiring pool, such as a simple test of second grade math.

Whj do the schools have no simple tests of second grade math? TRICK QUESTION! Schools do have simple tests of second grade math. They are just prevented from actually administering them or using them to make hiring decisions, by union pressure.

<http://www.nea.org/home/18018.htm>

Quote: Five Reasons to Oppose the 'Highly Qualified Effective Teacher' Mandate: ... It measures teacher performance mainly through use the use of standardized test scores... It contains harsh penalties that limit employment options for teachers... This proposal will likely exacerbate the teacher shortage problems we already face in [subjects like math].

<comment><USER4> Sure. But this is all supposition dressed up to sound convincing. Here's some of my own, hopefully somewhat convincing as well:

Why can't our girls learn math? Because they are surrounded by a society where math is frightening black magic, a society which largely looks down upon anyone who is good at math, and particularly so those who specialize in it. This is emphasized for girls; the linked article provided evidence that their math abilities declined in proportion to the amount in which their teacher reflected those societal pressures.

Why do their teachers have math anxiety? See above.

Why are their teachers incompetent at math? See above. Also, _their_ teachers were incompetent at math. (See the exact same referenced article.)

Why do schools hire teachers incompetent at math? Most of all, because math is not valued. But also: Because there aren't enough teachers available to only hire perfect ones. Because the ways of measuring "good at math" are quite brittle, let alone measurements for "good at _teaching_ math."

\----

In other words, you have your axe to grind (unions) and I have mine (a thoroughly anti-intellectual culture); personally I find mine rather more convincing. Neither was really directly brought up by the article.

[Also, my axe doesn't conveniently align with over-repeated, loudly shouted political talking points, which is nice. ;) ]

<comment><USER5> That may explain why public school teachers do poorly at teaching math. Maybe also science. But it doesn't explain why they are also bad at teaching every other subject, including English, music, and physical education.

It's also hard to believe that the modern age, an age where being a "geek" carries an enormously reduced stigma than at any time in the past 4 decades (if not longer) is somehow paradoxically significantly more anti-intellectual than any other time in that range.

In short, I find your arguments unconvincing as the explanation for the primary reasons why modern education in America is exceptionally poor compared to recent history. However, the idea that teacher quality has degraded significantly due to decreasing teaching standards and accountability seems to fit all of the observed evidence better.

<comment><USER4> At this point, we're about 10,000 miles away from the actual article -- which did not contain a single mention of overall education quality, not one fact about how education has changed over time, precious little evidence for or against widespread poor teacher quality, etc. The sample size was seventeen, for hecks' sake, and it was about how if you put "math is hard" Barbie up in front of girl students, they do worse at math!

> modern education in America is exceptionally poor compared to recent history

This is an assumption that you and the grandparent both hold very dearly. But is it even true? Nobody _ever_ provides anything but anecdotal evidence for this claim.

A 'debunk' site: [http://pareonline.net/getvn.asp?v=6&n=1](http://pareonline.net/getvn.asp?v=6&n=1)

Historical literacy rates in the US: <http://nces.ed.gov/naal/lit_history.asp>

If our education is so poor compared to recent history, why hasn't literacy fallen?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If a teacher of either gender feels "math anxiety" when reading a receipt or teaching elementary school math, they probably shouldn't be a teacher. I honestly don't care about what gender stereotypes girls are picking up. The fact that teachers this bad at math exist in large enough numbers to produce decent statistics is far more shocking.

</comment><comment><USER7> I don't see any evidence that the gender of the teacher matters at all - <USER2> on the details the article provides, the study seems equally consistent with the hypothesis that girls learn math worse than boys in the face of bad teachers, for whatever reason. Or (less PC, of course) that girls are naturally less capable at (or interested in) math, but respond better to good teachers than boys do. Or any of dozens of variations on that theme.

I'm not sure what the researchers were really hoping to accomplish here, honestly. Without looking at male teachers as well, both good and bad, there's absolutely no way to tell whether any of this "effect" (if you can even call it that, given the miniscule sample size and admittedly "small but statistically significant" (i.e. quite possibly bullshit) effect) is at all related to the gender of the teacher.

This is exactly the type of study that makes me weep at the mere existence of some of these soft sciences - even if it was right, all it tells us is that we need better teachers, as if we didn't already know that. What an utter waste of time and money...</comment>


Apple iPhone Unveiling [LIVE BLOG] - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2011/10/04/apple-iphone-live-blog/

<comment><USER2> and now the store is updating <http://store.apple.com/> "We'll be back soon"</comment>


Causal Inference Book - <AUTHOR> https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/miguel-hernan/causal-inference-book/ <comment><USER2> There's also this primer, recently out: [https://www.amazon.com/Causal- Inference-Statistics-Judea-Pea...](https://www.amazon.com/Causal-Inference- Statistics-Judea-Pearl/dp/1119186846)

</comment><comment><USER3> There are very interesting and fairly recent results on causal discovery under additive noise models [1]. Although such models aren't universally applicable the underlying concept is intuitive and a good fit for many problem domains. On the time series front, google open sourced CausalImpact [2] for Bayesian structural time-series modeling a few years ago. Looks like RankScience [3] is putting that research to good use.

I'm surprised that causal discovery doesn't get more play. Aside from the direct applications to scientific research, causality is a strong consistency hint for assessing models/features learned from data.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8776582](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8776582)

[2] [https://opensource.googleblog.com/2014/09/causalimpact- new-o...](https://opensource.googleblog.com/2014/09/causalimpact-new-open- source-package.html)

[3] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13552862](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13552862)

<comment><USER4> The theory you mention about additive noise, is clever but doesn't strike me as robust at all. It's been awhile since I looked at that literature, but when I did it seemed really unrealistic, that at some level it reduced to assuming that all deviations from normality are interpretable in terms of the desired causal inferences. There might be some scenarios where you could reduce the variables involved to the point where that idea is feasible, but otherwise it seemed really unbelievable to me.

Part of me wants to dive into this causality modeling, because it seems up my alley, but I'm very sceptical of it showing anything definitive. I do observational research, but short of a priori randomization, I'm sceptical of any claims to causality. Even then, with experiments, I'm deeply sceptical unless something has been replicated across various secondary conditions by multiple distinct groups.

Modern causality theory and modeling has definitely raised the bar in terms of what we say about data, and I love it, but sometimes I wonder if causality is a red herring. Even with hard experimental evidence, I'm tempted to not interpret it beyond "when someone does X, this tends to happen."

<comment><USER5> It does seem too good to be true, but they've compiled a real-world dataset of causal relationships, and the additive-noise and fancier ML algorithms _do_ seem to infer the right direction well above chance, so there's at least something there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Check this one out, it is the classic in book on causal inference: [https://www.amazon.com/Experimental-Quasi-Experimental- Desig...](https://www.amazon.com/Experimental-Quasi-Experimental-Designs- Generalized-Inference/dp/0395615569)

<comment><USER7> Nah, Robins started (asterisk) all this causal/propensity-scored/pretend- experimental mania.

It's what drove me back to hard interventional experiments and eventually to adaptive clinical trial design.

(Asterisk): ok more like Pearl started it and Robins made it more practical with doubly robust designs etc. I still find most of the mechanics rather shady.

<comment><USER8> > I still find most of the mechanics rather shady.

Interesting, can you expand on this? I have no experience with causal inference and would like to learn more. Thanks!

<comment><USER7> Look up confounding by indication and some of the power/sensitivity studies for so-called doubly robust estimators. Counterfactuals are reasonable. A lot of "let's turn this observational study into a designed experiment with math" approaches turn out not to be. That's the gist of it; if you want rigor, you should read the papers. I don't have a reference to hand at the moment (on phone) but it shouldn't take more than a few minutes of searching google scholar to hit the appropriate vein. The bottom line is simply TANSTAAFL.

<comment><USER8> Have you seen the new paper, "Human Decisions and Machine Predictions"? [http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/sendhil/files/w23180.pdf](http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/sendhil/files/w23180.pdf)

I'm wondering if their methodology is reasonable?

From the abstract: "Millions of times each year, judges must decide where defendants will await trial—at home or in jail. By law, this decision hinges on the judge's prediction of what the defendant would do if released. … Yet comparing the algorithm to the judge proves complicated. … We only observe crime outcomes for released defendants, not for those judges detained. This makes it hard to evaluate counterfactual decision rules based on algorithmic predictions. … We deal with these problems using different econometric strategies, such as quasi-random assignment of cases to judges. … A policy simulation shows crime can be reduced by up to 24.8% with no change in jailing rates, or jail populations can be reduced by 42.0% with no increase in crime rates. Moreover, we see reductions in all categories of crime, including violent ones. Importantly, such gains can be had while also significantly reducing the percentage of African-Americans and Hispanics in jail. … While machine learning can be valuable, realizing this value requires integrating these tools into an economic framework: being clear about the link between predictions and decisions; specifying the scope of payoff functions; and constructing unbiased decision counterfactuals."

<comment><USER7> they seem to be fixated on how shiny and new L1 penalties are, in 2014. Greg Ridgway started using gradient boosting machines (GBM) for propensity scoring in the early 2000s, and I didn't see them cite him, so I kind of hate them already. On the other hand, at least GBM works well.

I'm no economist, though. Perhaps this is novel at NBER. It's just odd to see someone acting like using an ensemble to enable data-driven model selection is something new.

nb. I didn't read the entire 76-page paper (partly because it's obscenely verbose). A quick skim and here are my from-the-hip remarks. If they suck, I'll refund every cent you paid me ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It makes me feel sorry for the researchers that Harvard puts ads at the bottom of their web page.

</comment><comment><USER10> I read through about 10 pages of the first book ("without models"). It struck me as very nearly identical to current statistics practice. It clearly differentiated itself as discussing counterfactuals (the data needed to actually determine causality) but I could not find the section of the book that described how counterfactual data can be inferred from missing data (without it being "turtles all the way down").

Does anyone in this area have a succinct way to explain how counterfactual data can be inferred by these techniques - and how traditional statistics practice is not able to perform this inference?

<comment><USER7> Part II describes what you are asking for.

I wish abbreviations like inverse probability weighting and marginal structural models were expanded in the second book. It's annoying to have to look up "IP weighting" only to discover "oh, it's IPW, god damn you [authors] to hell".

MSMs are interesting. Now I remember why Robins' name stuck in my head. The book shows all the math explicitly, which is nice, and it delves into causal inference for time-to-event data, which is also nice.

Now I'm curious whether they look at piecewise constant survival models for time-varying coefficients. It's mentioned, but I didn't read enough to see if it's treated in detail. If it is, everyone who does A/B testing should read the book, because this is one of those "little details" from biostatistics that becomes super important at big retailers (like, say, Amazon, where the principal economist at the time pointed it out to me).

<comment><USER7> Answered my own question -- Part III of this book is what I am waiting for. I was going to send the authors a note, which seems silly, but my name is in an awful lot of standard textbooks just because I sent in corrections or notes, and for some reason I find that satisfying. Like I made some sort of a difference to some students somewhere.

<comment><USER11> Sorry if I missed something - where do you see a part III?

<comment><USER7> It's mentioned at the end of Part III, in chapter 17, on survival models.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Haven't read the book, but the concept of causal inference from event data really deserves more attention. Automatic/assisted cause analysis in complex systems has huge potential.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you have any particular example or domain in mind?

Regarding the automatic analysis, Automatic Statistician (Tenenbaum & Ghahramani et al.), which is supposed to automate / assist the exploratory analysis, comes to mind. Not sure if it'd be fair but I tend to lump some of the probabilistic programming - such as BayesDB - platforms into the same bucket. While these are exploratory tools, they are ideally (pragmatically) meant to help identify associations and context whereby correlation is highly suggestive of causation.

Another area of interest: one of the comments below mentioned adaptive clinical trial design. I know that Bayesian trials are intensively implemented in some cancer research centers such as MD Anderson (off-topic: curious to what extent IBM Watson was used as part of this protocol). I would love to know whether adaptive trials are increasingly popular or widely used in pharma industry.

<comment><USER12> I was thinking about debugging & failure modes, in distributed systems. There's potential to automatically test hypotheses by starting systems from known states.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I have seen an earlier version of this book recommended here on HN, and thought that some might be delighted to know that there is a revised version available to download.

</comment><comment><USER13> Surely the title should be "causal"?

<comment><USER14> Yes-- And don't call me Shirley!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Those who develop desktop apps, what is your toolset? - <AUTHOR> Are there still devs making desktop apps? What is your toolset, and could you share a link to your app? <comment><USER2> JavaFX

[https://www.vinumeris.com/lighthouse](https://www.vinumeris.com/lighthouse)

(there's a promotional video).

Note that to use it requires you have some bitcoins.

WRT the development process, it worked pretty well. The 3rd-gen Java UI stack is much better than Swing and was a pleasure to work with. Much better than the web stack.

The app is open source if you want to read the code:

[https://github.com/vinumeris/lighthouse](https://github.com/vinumeris/lighthouse)

I built the installers for each platform with the 'javapackager' tool that comes with JDK8+.

</comment><comment><USER3> Java 8 (SE) with Swing.

Of the few other UI toolkits I have tried, Swing has proven the most flexible in terms of resizable layouts.

I have dabbled with some web dev (html,css, javascript). It all seems hacky compared to working with Swing.

<comment><USER4> Look into Google Web Toolkit when you get a chance, web dev toolkit with more of the Swing and less of the hacky.

</comment></comment><comment> thomas-b Most of our desktop applications are made using C#/WPF/VS but I've been strongly considering Electron ([http://electron.atom.io/](http://electron.atom.io/)) since Visual Studio Code was released which is made with it, and really doesn't have the feel of "yet another web app trying to look desktop-y". I'll most definitely try it out for our next desktop app project.

</comment><comment><USER5> I've used Java with Swing before, and I've done some prototypes with Python and PyQt/Pyside, which I think works pretty great.

Been meaning to make something with Electron or NW for a while, but I'm apprehensive because of the downsides (executable size, app performance, appearance).

</comment><comment><USER6> After a long absent from the desktop I returned developing in JavaFX. Oh boy has desktop app development improved on Java! I liked it a lot, using FXML to define the GUI, MVC built in etc.

</comment><comment><USER7> I recently did a desktop app www.autoannote.com using node-webkit. I know it's still all html/css but that's the only way I figured to create cross platform desktop apps.

<comment><AUTHOR> Is it autoannotate?

<comment><USER7> Yep. [http://www.autoannotate.com](http://www.autoannotate.com)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Maintaining a rather old Java desktop application, and I've been using Abeille. It is old, poorly documented but still pretty neat. Code is closed source unfortunately.

</comment><comment> V-2 C# .NET, WPF, Visual Studio. I can't share a link

</comment><comment><USER9> Windows 10 Universal apps

Visual Studio 2015, C#, XAML, TFS</comment>


I published my first short novel, and it is on Github - <AUTHOR> http://albanlv.tumblr.com/post/33568493339/i-published-my-first-short-novel-and-it-is-open-source

<comment><USER2> Imagine if LOTR was on github...

I like the idea of modularization in fiction. This already happens in fan fiction, but you have to extract most of the parts yourself (I think?)

It would be really useful in SF/Fantasy novels where you have to build out lots of worlds, characters and miscellaneous details like languages, landscapes and history.

If you could "borrow" a lot of the structures that are in a Creative Commons license and use them in your story, you could focus on the parts that are important to you, and let others focus on what works for them.

Artists could come in, draw characters. Cartographers could make maps. App developers could make interactive features. Linguists could make fictional languages.

<comment><AUTHOR> It reminds me of Tube, that aims to create an animation movie with content and data cc licensed. The idea is to make elements (modules) such as a characters, moves, light patterns, easily reusable. <http://urchn.org/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think writing a novel on Github is a fascinating idea, if people can read your revision history and see the entire evolution of the text.

<comment><AUTHOR> Silvia Hartmann is exploring the idea of allowing the reader to follow the creation of a novel by writing on Google Docs. you can follow her on real time here [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AwxZlO1uVnFFKh_NWAlZ78oK...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AwxZlO1uVnFFKh_NWAlZ78oK2c5gxzvVCfrYbe7EOE8/edit?pli=1#heading=h.f0dths2bdy48) With Github we can add to this the revision history plus branching, forking... I think we can go beyond the idea of a novel as a unique finished version written by a unique author. Novels could be as open source software : you don't have a finished product, but versions, and you don't have an author, but several contributors.</comment></comment>


A vulnerability in WebLogic, WebSphere, JBoss, Jenkins, OpenNMS and others - <AUTHOR> http://foxglovesecurity.com/2015/11/06/what-do-weblogic-websphere-jboss-jenkins-opennms-and-your-application-have-in-common-this-vulnerability/ <comment><USER2> I'm from the Jenkins project.

I wish the authors of this post gave us a heads up beforehand. It put our users at unnecessary risk.

At Jenkins project, We've published a mitigation script ([https://jenkins- ci.org/content/mitigating-unauthenticated-re...](https://jenkins- ci.org/content/mitigating-unauthenticated-remote-code-execution-0-day-jenkins- cli)) while we work out a better fix for users.

<comment><USER3> It seems that users have already been at unnecessary risk, given _In fact, even though proof of concept code was released OVER 9 MONTHS AGO, none of the products mentioned in the title of this post have been patched, along with many more._

<comment><USER4> Has anybody reported anything? The commons project seems to have been made aware of this just this weekend through third parties. If nobody reported anything no wonder it didn't get fixed.

<comment><USER3> See the talk given in January [http://frohoff.github.io/appseccali- marshalling-pickles/](http://frohoff.github.io/appseccali-marshalling- pickles/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> One thing I really liked about the write-up is the thoroughness that everything was explained. Nothing was assumed. The author explains what burp is why it was used. Broke down the basics in a high level and the touched on the simple things. Showed exploits in multiple frameworks. Really a well done article just from a write-up perspective let alone the impact of the issue.

</comment><comment><USER5> Anyone actually have a CVE I can reference in talks to leadership so I can not look like a neckbeard security geek that's acting self-important?

<comment><USER3> Unclear if there is one yet: [https://cve.mitre.org/cgi- bin/cvekey.cgi?keyword=InvokerTran...](https://cve.mitre.org/cgi- bin/cvekey.cgi?keyword=InvokerTransformer)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Kenn White said it best: "This will get very ugly: unpatched, full remote exec on Java-based web svcs that use a popular serialization library

<comment><USER7> To be fair, it's not really "remote": he attacked communication channels that are almost invariably maintained deep "behind the firewall". If you are exposing Weblogic's or Websphere's admin ports to the internet, you have bigger problems. A competent setup (I know, a rarity in the enterprise world) will also use encrypted channels for administrative protocols (both WL and WS can do that very easily). A competent application developer (I know, a rarity in the enterprise world) will not send serialized java objects on plaintext over the internet (among other things, it's horribly inefficient).

This is just one of 23432542574358 attack vectors that can be deployed across intranets and _already_ are routinely ignored, and a hard one at that. It should be patched, and it's a bit shameful to leave it lingering for more than a year, but it's hardly the end of the world.

<comment><USER8> Well, true for websphere, but for weblogic the affected port is the default listening port, not the admin port. So for a public facing weblogic installation you have a problem.

<comment><USER7> That's because the default port of the Admin Console instance "doubles up" as management port. At the very minimum, you would front that port with a webserver that will only forward internet requests to the appropriate contexts pointing to applications; but to be honest, if you're exposing the Admin Console instance _at all_ , you have bigger problems from a design and security perspective.

<comment><USER8> I don't think this is about the admin console. The author only used the admin tools to create a t3 server request. The only thing you really need is a server accepting the t3 protocol (=Weblogic RMI). Which is every node, not only the admin node / a node with a deployed admin console.

A load balancer / forwarding web server might filter the t3 requests, but I wouldn't want to rely on this. Also t3 can be tunneled over http (although this is not enabled in the default configuration).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is very similar to the series of serialization vulnerabilities that hit the Ruby on Rails world in early 2013.

Black hats are going to have fun with this one. :-(

</comment><comment><USER10> [https://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/3rrr9z/what_do_webl...](https://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/3rrr9z/what_do_weblogic_websphere_jboss_jenkins_opennms/)

[http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/commons-dev/201511....](http://mail- archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/commons- dev/201511.mbox/%3C20151106222553.00002c57.ecki%40zusammenkunft.net%3E)

[https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Information_leak_through_ser...](https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Information_leak_through_serialization)

</comment><comment><USER11> The first thing I thought was "written in Java". The more straightforward headline would have been better, I think.

<comment><USER12> The straightforward headline would be "Security flaw in commons-collection deserialization". The anti-java snark really isn't welcome.

<comment><USER13> Its not really a problem with commons-collections and unfair to color it as their issue. Its like blaming the library that is part of a ROP chain for the exploit. The issue is what gets you in first, which is instantiating objects without any thought as to what they are from un-trusted sources.

Something that is called out in the Java secure coding guidelines:

[http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/seccodeguide-139067.h...](http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/seccodeguide-139067.html#8)

and is something that goes way back in many languages. It seems to be a vuln pattern that keeps getting repeated sadly.

<comment><USER14> It's also not specific to Commons Collections - the same escape is available through Spring and Groovy as well.

[http://www.infoq.com/news/2015/11/commons- exploit](http://www.infoq.com/news/2015/11/commons-exploit)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I had to backport a fix for a similar vulnerability in a Seam installation three years ago. The solution at the time was to limit the directories and sources from which serialized object representations could be read.</comment>


Ask HN: Best city to start a career in 2019? - <AUTHOR> If you were starting over, where would you start today? <comment><USER2> I would start in the city where I grew up and currently live. Giving back to your local community is important. Especially if you have a new trade or know something that is currently not there.

Biggest plus points:

\- No car required. Everything could be bikeable

\- Your network is already there

\- It's probably cheaper then moving to a 'big' city.

If you are looking for money, and money only. Go to the default startup hotspots and cities. But if you are looking to find personal happiness, I'd say doing that in a place that's more quiet and less competitive would be much more rewarding.

<comment><USER3> There's another response to this supporting staying where you grow up. I'm not against this in any way, but leaving your home community has value as well.

I left where I grew up in rural suburban Ohio and followed my girlfriend to a college 500 miles from home. Beyond her, I knew no one else (and we quickly broke up).

I then moved east to Boston after graduating. Once again, knew no one. I had no financial support from family, no couches to sleep on, just quite literally me and my dog.

I built a life there, which was my own. It was tough, had some bad roommates at times, was in debt and poor, but quickly learned all the things I needed to be self sufficient (sans the food gathering) in this life. I met the woman who would later become my wife, started a career, made great friends, and eventually moved to LA.

My wife grew up in NH, went to school in Boston, and her "moving away" was when we went to LA. It was an important growth moment for her, and she's been able to learn things about herself she couldn't with her support structure in Boston.

So, moving away has tons of challenges. But, in a lot of ways, it's like joining a startup. You end up wearing a lot of hats because there's no one else to wear them for you. You quickly learn you can tackle problems in front of you better than you realized, and you gain confidence that will serve you throughout your life.

<comment><USER2> You made a valid point here that I didn't express in my original comment. I'm not saying traveling is bad. I basically wanted to state that starting a career doesn't necessarily have to be in a Tech Hotspot. It can be a smaller community as well. Where tech skills can be much more of value.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> US-Centric:

With a CS degree: SF or Seattle or wherever I could find a FAANG/MS type highly regarded big tech company to recruit me to, since the entry level market is soft among startups and a lot of non-tech BigCos seem to be a path to stagnation (based on my experience interviewing candidates from such backgrounds).

Software developer without a CS degree: best chance of being hired is probably at a startup or agency. I'd go somewhere with a startup scene but lower CoL than SF or NY. Probably Seattle or Austin.

Other fields: follow the jobs. To break into publishing, New York. Film, LA. Anything that's not specific to an industry (say, marketing), I'd probably find somewhere with moderate CoL that's undergoing an economic boom. Then consider moving somewhere with higher CoL but also higher salaries once you're established - since if you can save the same percentage of your salary you'll save more total dollars and reach financial targets faster.

</comment><comment><USER5> Starting out? 20s? Maybe be nomadic, do a year in Barcelona a year in NY do some digital nomadding.

</comment><comment><USER6> It really depends.

Latin America: Sao Paulo

North America: Portland

Europe: Berlin

<comment><USER7> Why Portland? It's a nice place, but the job market is highly competitive and not super lucrative.

<comment><USER6> Because it isn't crazily expensive like SF, people got good mindset and I see a lot of potential for growth.

Highly competitive is a quality, no?</comment></comment></comment>


A Paris startup is becoming an Uber for people with disabilities - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2015/10/04/wheeliz-car-sharing-disabilities/#8T2jAQ05vuq6 <comment><USER2> > "It's very difficult to get around when you are in a wheelchair, because > public transportation is not accessible,"

I'm from Holland and I know we have an easier time with my county being called the 'Low Lands' but in the Netherlands we try to make streets and public transport as accessible as possible for wheelchair (and blind) citizens. I visit Paris often and feel there is a lot of room for improvement. It's like they don't care about disabled people at all...

<comment><USER3> The places I've been to in the US seem pretty good, though as a non-disabled person I don't think I'm qualified to say that with any certainty. Anyway, intersections have basically all been updated with the "dots" at the edges of sidewalks, and buses have for years supported wheelchairs. Certainly better than in some less developed countries I've been to where there aren't any handicap parking spots for starters, though of course they deal with more immediate problems.

<comment><USER4> Places in the US are good because they're required to be by law:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_with_Disabilities_Ac...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_with_Disabilities_Act_of_1990)

<comment><USER5> Funny timing, since it seems the European Accessibility Act - promised since 2011 - will finally be voted this week: [http://www.edf- feph.org/Page_Generale.asp?DocID=13855&theblo...](http://www.edf- feph.org/Page_Generale.asp?DocID=13855&thebloc=34373)

<comment><USER4> I'm somewhat shocked that the US was actually ahead of Europe on something.

Disclaimer: US citizen

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This seems wonderful. Please be wonderful and spread all over the world.

</comment><comment><USER7> Please tell me its called Handicar

<comment><USER8> Sorry boss, the name is Wheeliz. Looking forward for even more competition in this wacky race of Uber-like services.

<comment><USER9> We need a service for getting uber-like services off the ground.</comment></comment></comment>


How to beat Amazon's Kindle. - <AUTHOR> http://slate.com/id/2226503 <comment><USER2> Single-page version: <http://www.slate.com/id/2226503/pagenum/all/>

</comment><comment><USER3> It's not fair to compare advertising bucks on an apples to apples basis. Amazon has something on their store below every book which is available for the Kindle (which is most of them by sales volume) saying "Available on Kindle". The cash value of those ads would be enormous, far, far more than Sony has spent I'm sure.

</comment><comment><USER4> I've resisted the Kindle due to its DRM and whatnot, and up till now, the Sony device didn't have much appeal either. But I'm quite interested the ability to "check out" books from the New York public library and to read Google Books in epub format. Those may be the killer features I've been waiting for.

<comment><USER5> Many of the Google Books titles are already available for free for Kindle usage from sites like FeedBooks.com; it's quite easy to download those titles over the air.

<comment><USER6> FeedBooks has less than 3000 'official' books (mostly public-domain titles) and around 600 user-submitted books; over a million Google Books can be read on the Sony Reader. However, the OCR quality of ePub content from Google is spotty. I believe all books on FeedBooks have been proofread.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> I'd go with the second lesson. Kindle makes it really easy to buy a new book: you don't need computer or even wifi network, just hit the button.

I wonder if it is a good idea for rivals to create a market with one point-of- entry but different sellers. Think of, well, Amazon for anything but e-books.

<comment><USER2> On a second thought, such an open market will make price-unification impossible. And that is Kindle's another strong point.

<comment><USER7> Why is price-unification good? Price-competition is better for consumers.</comment></comment></comment>


Who will win the SXSW mobile war—Highlight? Sonar? Glancee? - <AUTHOR> http://chill.com/marc/collection/mobile-ambient-awareness-apps

<comment><USER2> Nobody will win, they will be forgotten, just like how everyone forgot about group messaging apps after sxsw 2011

</comment><comment><USER3> Is there a greasemonkey script to dump SXSW HN posts like the one for twitter?</comment>


Lessons Learnt after getting robbed off $11,000 in 17 days - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/how-i-learned-ruby-rails/8a1118fe3d7f

<comment><USER2> I'm trying to parse exactly what happened here. The way I understand it is that forks of private repos stay private. So did the contractor fork, clone, and then push it to a separate public repo? That has lawsuit written all over it...

<comment><USER3> as far as I know, the contractor is based in some other country. Not sure about international laws here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The grammar in this makes it nigh unreadable...</comment>


Italy looking to kill user-generated content sites - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/02/italy-preparing-to-hold-youtube-others-liable-for-uploads.ars

<comment><USER2> This move is obviously motivated by politics and business. Berlusconi basically runs Italy like a corporation that he owns, and since he controls 90% of Italian media his interests don't align with sites such as youtube, Reddit, Digg, etc. that pose a threat to his business. What he's doing is what any (heartless..) savvy businessman would do: Cut out the competition. Of course this is absolutely terrible for Italian democracy and free speech.

It's nothing personal - only business.

<comment><USER3> It is also personal. Berlusconi has a huge, and still growing, number of legal problems. He successfully hides them on the media he owns or controls (6 tv channels out of 7). The few newspapers that are not aligned to his policy are read by an handful of people. The only way truthful news about his misbehavior reach the Italian people are social network and similar. So it makes sense to shut them up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's simple, really. Italy profits from being connected to the internet more than it costs them, so they'll do the right thing eventually.

This goes for any country that wants to control / regulate the internet that gets a substantial portion of their telecommunications via the net.

If Djibouti or Upper-Volta would decide to legalize stuff like this they could get away with it because the public outcry would be relatively small, if they do it in Italy then whichever political party was the one to make that decision will find themselves without any power at the next elections.

I would take this with a substantial grain of salt. Less than a week ago Italy's prime minister suggested that Israel should join the EU:

[http://www.israeltoday.co.il/default.aspx?tabid=178&nid=...](http://www.israeltoday.co.il/default.aspx?tabid=178&nid=20492)

think of it as publicly funded entertainment.

</comment><comment><USER5> I kind of wonder if Google might get fed up and ditch their Italian office. Recently I also read this attack piece in the Corriere della Sera, which is usually a reasonable paper:

[http://www.corriere.it/economia/10_gennaio_28/mucchetti_4de4...](http://www.corriere.it/economia/10_gennaio_28/mucchetti_4de4be8a-0be8-11df- bc70-00144f02aabe.shtml)

Italian only, but basically the guy has it in for Google and the fact that they get paid in Ireland, in Europe, and thus avoid some of the fun and exciting Italian taxes and regulations, and thinks they should be subject to a number of inane rules that the local companies cooked up to split up the publishing market amongst themselves.

</comment><comment><USER6> Let's ban this, let's outlaw that.

I like it how govs have no basic clue about this Internet thing.

<comment><USER7> Controlling the masses communication has been something governments have always tried to do, they always will.

<comment><USER8> Similar to what's going on in China.

And on Italian News TVs there was NOT a word about this decree.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Good luck with that Italian government.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, especially as online-publishing is a freedom of speech issue and unless Berlusconi rescinds Italy's membership in the European Union, he'd have to be able to prove that essentially banning access to free-speech online isn't a violation of freedom of speech European Court of Human Rights. Any judgement by the court is wholly binding on the member states and legally has to be complied with or they can ultimately be forced out of the EU, but would likely be subject to sanctions and receive no 'rebate' from the taxes their citizens pay to the EU.

Being forced out of the EU would mean all their citizens working in the EU, outside of Italy, could potentially lose employment _immediately_ due to not having work visas. Every Italian citizen living in the EU would have 6-months to return to Italy, and by how most immigration policies work they would be unable to apply for a work visa or even citizenship within their country of occupation. The exact same would happen to any EU citizen living in Italy, which could potentially be devastating for the economy in Italy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is as atrocious as banning public speaking.

</comment><comment><USER12> Does Italy acting like an idiot affect startups in the rest of the EU?

<comment><USER4> In the EU Italy is not exactly first on the list of 'markets' that you think of when starting out.

First off, the UK & Germany, then France, Spain, Scandinavia, Benelux, then Italy, and Greece. Switzerland usually gets pulled in alongside Germany and France with the portion of the country that only speaks Italian to come along when Italy goes in, Austria usually around the time that Germany is done. That's simply a consequence of the amount of business done online and the size of the populations of those countries.

Former eastblock countries usually follow last, but there is a shift happening there, they definitely figure higher in the consciousness of start-ups today than they did even 3 years ago.

<comment><USER12> I was wondering if a non-Italy EU startup could be caused problems by the Italian Gov?

<comment><USER13> The short answer is no - unless they depend on Italian cusomers (or bank via Italy). The longer answer depends on Italy's relative sway with the EU versus your 'home' nation & the significance of what you're doing, but is a qualified 'no'.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Apple Leak Reveals Sudden iPhone X Cancellation - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2018/01/21/apple-iphone-x-buy-sales-specs-new-iphone-release-date/#5569735010cb <comment><AUTHOR> The headline is very clickbaity, but the content seems notable. It should actually say that production is ceasing in the summer, earlier than for previous iPhone models.</comment>


Social Commerce Startup: 3 guys, $7k/m revenue, eyes world domination  - <AUTHOR> http://www.e27.sg/2010/06/21/interview-flutterscapes-global-domination-plans-with-japanese-products/

<comment><USER2> Found this site on textfugu.com (owned by Koichi, a nice guy, see <http://www.helloko.com/2010/06/income-report-may/> , strange he is not on HN), and wondered how they could guarantee a low rate of frauds. Sadly the article doesn't say much about their internal processes.</comment>


Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella recommends reading these 10 books - <AUTHOR> https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/satya-nadellas-book-recommendations-for-success-and-culture-change-2019-8-1028763624 <comment><USER2> [https://outline.com/c6ZVxD](https://outline.com/c6ZVxD)

</comment><comment><USER3> It's a paid link. Can someone help?

<comment><USER4> Was also going to ask this question.</comment></comment>


Chronic treatment with hydroxychloroquine and SARS-CoV-2 infection - <AUTHOR> https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.26.20056507v1 <comment><USER2> "After adjustment for age, sex, and chronic treatment with corticosteroids and/or immunosuppressants, the odds ratio of SARS-CoV-2 infection for chronic treatment with HCQ has been 0.51 (0.37-0.70). Conclusions: Our data suggest that chronic treatment with HCQ confer protection against SARS-CoV-2 infection."

Assuming this really does help protect against one virus, I wondered does that mean it would help protect against ALL or ANY other virus as well? There's no small number of people that have been taking this for a long time already, do they tend to catch colds or the flu or other virus caused illness less than other folks?

<comment><USER3> > After adjustment for age, sex, and chronic treatment with corticosteroids > and/or immunosuppressants [...]

Interestingly, I didn't see from the summary that they were controlling for the conditions for which individuals were being treated with HCQ and the impact they had on their lives.

If people with Lupus are treated with HCQ (they are) and people with Lupus are often forced to make behavioral changes like staying indoors and out of the sun and avoiding physically demanding activities - which they are - doesn't it seem reasonable that those lifestyle changes would result in fewer SARS-CoV-2 infections?

FWIW, I'm very much open to the idea that HCQ may be a viable treatment for COVID-19. I've not kept up with the clinical results since it became a political issue, but it originally seemed to be a promising avenue of research. Once Trump started talking about it, it became all but impossible to find data about its effectiveness that wasn't obviously politically motivated.

This paper doesn't appear to be politically motivated... but it also doesn't appear to provide strong evidence one way or another.

<comment><USER4> I was also wondering about this. No discussion of the likelihood of someone who knows about their condition and is being treated for it being exposed in the first place. If they had a lower likelihood in the first place then it would also look like HCQ had the desired effect.

I am interested by a couple of their references, specifically regarding the possibility of HCQ only working as a prophylactic after a sufficiently long period of exposure. That could be a contributor to difficulty in replication.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> 2005 article (on an _in-vitro_ study) also:

 _" Chloroquine is a potent inhibitor of SARS coronavirus infection and spread"_

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1232869/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1232869/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Consider [https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=medrxiv.org](https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=medrxiv.org)

Of all the nearly 160 posts from this domain, only three are flagged. Three that have, through various sociological and political reasons, become toxic or divisive to a large degree. The content/conclusion itself shouldn't be political, but that's where we are at.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Articles like this don't need the "flagged" treatment.

HCQ studies need serious review and discussion.

The theory has always been that HCQ increases Zinc in the cell which blocks viral replication ,might have a small effect and might help with early infection.

Research like this does not need the heated politics.

We need good clinical trials and reproduced studies.

<comment><USER7> Agree and what does "flagged" in HN mean? :\

The FAQ and Guidelines doesn't explain it.

I was following this post to see if more knowledgable people would comment if this study seems good or not (since I have no idea).

<comment><USER8> It means that enough people flagged it, so it got flagged.

The motivation for flagging is probably something along the lines of "this surely will promote poor quality discussion".

Less visibility means less discussion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This hasn't even been peer reviewed yet. Don't expect that _you_ , the average HN reader, knows better than reviewers with relevant backgrounds.

<comment><USER10> Peer review, while extremely useful in bringing out some, or many warts of a work, is not a substitute for quality control, which depends only on the authors.

> Don't expect that you, the average HN reader, knows better than reviewers > with relevant backgrounds.

After what happened with the Surgisphere paper, where the first problem was the statistics (caught by post-publication comments) and only later there was the problem of fake data, the mere presence of a secret review does not mean the work is up to anything.

P.S: yes, I work in the fields of biology and pharmacology and have written and reviewed a number of papers myself.

<comment><USER11> I still think it's a fair comment that most Hacker News readers are not the audience for pre-prints. It's simply not possible for people untrained in the art of reading papers in a specific field to make reasoned judgements.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> There must be a prize for this kind of work.

"\- 360,304 patients with suspected SARS-CoV-2 infection

\- Of these 360,304 cases, 26,815 were confirmed by a positive PCR test. The rest had negative PCR tests.

\- In the set of patients with case definition, 1,292 received HCQ (at least 2 grams per month)

\- The proportion of HCQ chronic treatment was higher in negative patients (0.36% vs. 0.29%, P = 0.04)

\- We were able to show that patients taking HCQ have had reduced odds of SARS-CoV-2 infection"

No joke, that is the basis for their claim. Just like "compared to those that we suspected could have tested positive, it turned out that among those that weren't positive there were more people proportionally receiving HCQ." I don't understand how that can actually prove something. One can surely find a lot of things that are proportionally more present in those tested negative, but without any meaning.

<comment><USER8> That's how screening for drug treatments often works. You look for those kinds of correlations. You move on from there. With many drugs, we don't even know how or why they work for certain things, but we prescribe them anyway.

There's nothing wrong with the claim, it seems to be factually accurate. The authors are not claiming that HCQ is an effective treatment, they say _the data suggests_ that HCQ is protective.

<comment><USER12> > they say the data suggests that HCQ is protective.

Only, I fail to see that the data does that. And their explicit claim is, which I specifically quoted directly from the paper:

"We were able to show that patients taking HCQ have had reduced odds of SARS- CoV-2 infection"

It's not different than "there were more people believing in Santa Claus proportionally in those negatively tested, so that means that Santa Claus belief reduced odds of SARS-CoV-2 infection."

It just doesn't.

Even if A is true, in such a construct B doesn't follow. Like it was already noted, those treated could have been also less willing to do risky things. Or it could have been a mere coincidence, like in the Santa Claus example.

<comment><USER8> > It's not different than "there were more people believing in Santa Claus > proportionally in those negatively tested, so that means that Santa Claus > belief reduced odds of SARS-CoV-2 infection."

If people who believe in Santa Claus have a 0.5 hazard ratio of contracting HIV, that _suggests_ that belief in Santa Claus is protective against HIV. If we flip "belief Santa Claus" for some random drug, it would be the same, you just couldn't obviously tell that it is implausible.

Just because data suggests one thing or another doesn't mean that whatever the data suggests is true. It's still just a correlation, but you _always_ start with a correlation.

You're simply not used to the jargon but feel entitled to criticize the authors for just doing their work. Please don't do that.

<comment><USER12> I claim that their statement

"We were able to show that patients taking HCQ have had reduced odds of SARS- CoV-2 infection"

is not true. It's not jargon. It's a false statement given the data that they presented. To "show" that the "odds" are reduced compared to something they have to show the reasonable odds of that something. I don't see them showing that at all, or that their paper actually demonstrated "odds."

<comment><USER8> I just realized you're the guy from the other thread. You have a rather hostile way of interpreting other people's writing.

Please, consider:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Would you pay for revenue forecasting? If so, how much? - <AUTHOR>

I recently worked in a small consultancy with a mix of employees and contractors. Both have advantages: Employees are cheaper with higher margins, but you pay them from day one whether they work or not; contractors can be paid when you are, but for this you pay them more.
Forecasting each month's "free cash" was a major challenge: With enough cash and a good prospect of a long-term gig, we could hire an employee. Otherwise, a contractor.
Accounting packages don't help: They track actuals and generally work on an accrual basis. The balance for a month is not just cash on hand but cash plus receivables.
I could not find a forecasting system suitable for a smallish consultancy. There are systems for larger firms ($$$) and for manufacturers, etc., but not for us.
I created a too-complex spreadsheet to get us kind of close: One sheet per worker with formulas to calculate actual current expense Vs actual current cash on hand, free cash, etc.
By adding sheets for prospective workers, I could determine when we could hire them, how long they could sit on the bench (some people you don't want to pass up), what bonus structures might work, etc.
I'm back on my own, don't have that problem anymore, but thinking we cannot have been the only company with it.
Would you pay for a forecasting service? Add entries for workers with daily rates/salaries, expected expenses, etc. The system would project expected cash for any period and allow you to play out scenarios (can I hire Bob on Dec 1st and Alice on Jan 15th?).
I'm thinking of starting with a free app using local storage so users can get value without registering, but at the price of always having to use the same browser, same machine, with no export capability, no sharing, etc.
Paid services could include cloud storage, access from multiple devices, have multiple editors, ability to limit people to roles (to be defined), export to CSV, Accounting packages, etc. <comment><USER2> I really like the idea of using local storage for free version.

This means that the users can see all the potential of your app, not being limited, and he will have to pay for storage. Really great idea!

<comment><USER3> Sounds like the free app will be fine for most small consultancies (app sits on the laptop of the person who looks after the budget) and wouldn't use much space anyway. They never have to read the marketing material on your website again, can't be induced to pay if they use the tool intensively via rate limiting, and you have no ability to analyse which non-paying customers actually use the service, and whether their usage patterns differ from paying ones

If you're going for a freemium model, limit the free version's forecasting horizon and/or the number of fees/expenses/revenue streams that it will factor into the calculation

<comment><AUTHOR> Excellent observations and even better suggestions, thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hmm I would pay for a service that would help me boost my revenue so I could forecast high revenues :).. but not a service that helps me broadcast. Just help me boost my revenue, don't predict it.</comment>


Dreamwidth Banned by PayPal in 2008 for Refusing to Censor Users - <AUTHOR> https://dw-news.dreamwidth.org/38065.html <comment><USER2> The article is from April 2017. The title has been editorialized, which breaks the HN guidelines ([https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)). On HN, submitters don't have special rights over articles and don't get to frame them for everyone else. Doing the latter, as this thread amply illustrates, amounts to controlling the discussion.

Worse, the detail that was cherry-picked (presumably because censorship issues are a hot topic) refers to something which the article makes clear happened years ago. Making it sound like it happened today ("Dreamwidth Banned by PayPal for Refusing to Censor Users") was egregiously misleading. We take story submission privileges away from users who do this kind of thing, so please don't do it. I've added 2008 to the title above as a fire extinguisher.

Submitters: If you want to say what you think is important about an article, you're welcome to do so by posting a comment to the thread. Then your view is on a level field with everyone else's.

</comment><comment><USER3> "About six months after opening, PayPal -- our payment processor at the time -- demanded that we censor some of our users' content (mostly involving people talking about sex, usually fictionally, in explicit terms) that was legal and protected speech but that they felt violated their terms for using PayPal."

Seems reasonable to me.

<comment><USER4> To me, too. Paypal isn't a government institution. They can choose who to partner with by whatever metrics they want.

<comment><USER5> That argument becomes weaker as responsibilities and power are transferred from the government to the private sector. How many of the rules that we follow are currently dictated by a corporation, rather than a government? Do we not want checks and balances on all rule-makers?

<comment><USER6> Then why shift such responsibilities to the private sector in the first place? If they must be regulated as stringently as the public sector (especially in terms of things like free speech) then they should be public goods.

I think it's much more viable to translate some of these privately owned aspects of the internet to publicly owned institutions. Then you obtain the free-speech allowances you desire without burdening a private company with further regulation and restrictions.

This isn't the only solution of course though. But just claiming that these goods are so important doesn't necessarily mean they _should_ be treated like government entities. They're not - that's not how the laws here work.

<comment><USER5> I don't believe that government is seriously hindered by free speech, but rather by it's lack of profit-incentive and by the perverse incentives of our current implementation of democracy. We should expand the free speech rights, and other basic human rights, to cover all people in all situations.

Actually, that profit incentive thing is debatable, I take that back. A for- profit government could be quite horrifying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _" It took us a few months to find a payment processor willing to take money for us without concern trolling about our users' immortal souls or whatever..."_

Pretty much the best line ever.

</comment><comment><USER8> This is a perfect use case for cryptocurrencies.

<comment><USER9> Imagine if they had started taking bitcoin payments in 2009, 2010, 2011 or 2012?

They wouldn't have to be worrying about their seed fund or keeping the doors open at this point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm gonna go out on a limb here and take what may be an unpopular position: If you're a financial services firm, you should be forbidden from refusing services to anyone who is not committing an illegal act. Services like PayPal are starting to sound like insurance companies prior to the ACA. If it's not illegal you should not be allowed to turn customers away.

<comment><USER11> Doesn't this open up the door to using legality as a proxy for morality? Shouldn't a company, regardless of the service they provide, be free to establish their own conditions under which they will act or not act?

<comment><USER12> morality is relevant, rarely people that is doing something that we think immoral see their acts as immoral too.

"Shouldn't a company, regardless of the service they provide, be free to establish their own conditions under which they will act or not act?"

like a restaurant in south refusing to serve blacks? with restaurant you have at least some options, but with businesses with monopoly finding an alternative is very hard or expensive.

<comment><USER13> >like a restaurant in south refusing to serve blacks?

Which would be illegal as race is a legally protected status.

<comment><USER14> Isn't sexual identity / orientation protected as well? These companies are banning clients for simply talking about sex.

That seems like a grey area but it's treading pretty close to discrimination in my mind.

Then again, should Google be forced to put adsense ads on a porn site? Really murky territory.

<comment><USER15> > Isn't sexual identity / orientation protected as well?

Nope. As I understand it, sexual orientation is not officially a protected class[0]. Seems like it should be, but it isn't.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> [https://www.manilaprinciples.org/](https://www.manilaprinciples.org/)

</comment><comment><USER17> I'd love to understand the business benefit to PayPal of censoring its customers, particularly when the content they are trying to censor is not "criticism of PayPal." Has PayPal actually measured some negative effect on its bottom line when people who use their service talk about sex?

<comment><USER18> Disclaimer: I'm a PP employee.

While it's complex (and I don't fully understand it all myself), the simple answer is risk management / fraud. Adult content tends to be extremely risky from a fraud and legal compliance perspective and companies like PayPal (and Stripe, and Google Checkout, among others) choose not to do business in this arena because the risk / reward model just doesn't justify it.

Specifically, subscriptions to sites that offer digital adult content are not allowed per ToS:

[https://www.paypal.com/us/selfhelp/article/faq569](https://www.paypal.com/us/selfhelp/article/faq569)

<comment><USER19> Netflix certainly offers "digital adult content" in shows like Easy, movies like Below Her Mouth, but PayPal accepts their business. You can buy content on Amazon with PayPal, which sells a TON of out and out porn.

Is it maybe more fair to say that small sites that offer adult content are not allowed?

<comment><USER20> Likely it's those selling _predominantly_ adult content. Amazon's offerings are not predominantly adult in nature. Nor are Netflix's. Presumably, if there's a higher occurrence of fraud with those merchants whose wares are predominantly adult in nature, processors consider these types of business more risky. However, they (processors) already have a tool at their disposal to combat fraud: the rate that's charged to the merchant for taking payments. My understanding is that riskier businesses tend to pay a higher rate for their card processing as kind of an insurance against (inevitable?) fraud. And then it would be my opinion that an account shouldn't get terminated except due to actual (excessive?) fraud.

<comment> drunken-serval > And then it would be my opinion that an account shouldn't get terminated > except due to actual (excessive?) fraud.

Except VISA won't tolerant a fraud rate that requires 300% fees to cover costs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Good for PayPal, they are a private business and can choose who they will allow on their platform.

</comment><comment><USER22> People still use Paypal? Abandoned my account 2 years ago, never looked back.

<comment><USER23> What do I do if I want to purchase something off of eBay?

<comment><USER24> Buy it, but be aware that guiriduro is going to look down on you for not being hip.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> How is this allowed in Paypal policies?

<comment><USER18> [https://www.paypal.com/us/selfhelp/article/faq569](https://www.paypal.com/us/selfhelp/article/faq569)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Ah yes, the eminent moral authority of PayPal.

</comment><comment><USER27> Time to move to Stripe.

<comment><USER28> And they don't allow things like porn, gambling, and guns. I'm OK with payment processors setting their own rules based on their own ethics, but its a problem if all we have is this little oligopoly of choices. We need more choices.

<comment><USER29> What's the reasoning for not allowing those things? Does it bring additional legal problems or something? I could see the issue with potential child porn or something like that but shouldn't a payment processor be siloed from any legal issues there?

<comment><USER30> The biggest thing payments processors are concerned about is fraud. Certain lines of business are risky because they simply result in more fraud, plus there's a whole other level of restrictions enforced by the banks themselves. I don't know what the exact reasoning was behind the ban in the article, but there are entire teams dedicated to developing risk models that attempt to identify merchants that will end up resulting in a loss before it happens.

Payments processors like PayPal may just be middlemen between banks, but if the merchant owes the bank money and is suddenly nowhere to be found, the processor is the one who takes the hit.

<comment><USER31> > there are entire teams dedicated to developing risk models that attempt to > identify merchants that will end up resulting in a loss before it happens.

And yet they are unable to distinguish a legitimate and widely popular blog hosting site which does not intend to defraud anyone but allows people to host erotic fiction, from a shady porn site. Makes you kinda question what those teams are doing the whole day, doesn't it?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>