1984 – When women stopped coding - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/17/356944145/episode-576-when-women-stopped-coding <comment><USER2> Because women are smarter. I notice that graph compares Computer Science ($50K-$150K/year), to Medical School ($150K--$1M), Law School ($120K--$1M), and Physical Sciences (???).

Women see the writing on the wall on High School: Med/Law School offer a clear career path to the upper middle class, while CS offers a muddy path at a middle class life.

They also see "rich" old Doctors and Lawyers. They have never seen a "rich" old programmer, because they don't exist. Programmers are washed out by 50, while Doctors are in their prime at 50.

Data: I am an 80's kid. All the smart girls knew to go to med/law school. All the nerdy guys like me wasted time learning 6502 assembly. We are all doing OK, but the women make 2 to 3 times as much as the men.

<comment><USER3> _THIS_. I love programming, and spent my childhood hacking away on Apple IIs/Amigas/etc., but if I had my teens/twenties to do over again, I would pursue a career in Medicine (couldn't have stomached a career in Law, methinks) while continuing to program as a 'hobby.'

Alas, I followed my "passion." Blech.

<comment><USER4> Grass is always greener. If you were a medical professional you'd probably be having the exact same thoughts, wishing you had taken up law or computers, anything to escape from all the blood, broken bones and sick and dying people, day in day out, with no end in sight.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have daughters and was not able to get them interested in any computer unless it involves games or social media.

But the boys they hang out with are the same way- games only, for the most part.

While I played a lot of games on my computer as a youth, I also spent a lot of time trying to program games. Today, I'm a developer.

Because of kids' fascination with their phones and tablets, and because programming isn't a "normal" thing on computers, I really don't have high hopes for the future of the development community at all, much less for the future of women in this field.

But, getting back to the topic of my daughters, my experience has been that:

1\. If given the choice, they would not choose the constructive, mechanical toys I grew up with where they might get into robotics or mechanical engineering (e.g. Thames & Kosmos or Mindstorms) although one enjoyed putting a tin can robot together.

2\. They also would not choose the electrical kits to put things together and get into electrical engineering, although I did get a kit and my daughters played with them a few times. It just took too much time and attention to have anything happen, and when it did, it wasn't exciting the way it was for me as a kid- it was boring compared to their phones and tablets.

3\. As for development, I was able to show one of my daughters how they could play music by programming in emulator of an old computer, but they had little interest. I was able to get that daughter to work with me to use Scratch to program something for about an hour and she really liked it, but she's not asked about it since.

Today's environment is just not the same. As much as parents who are developers try to get their kids into development, I just see it as a losing battle.

What the world needs is an operating system (or systems) or even an application or set of applications that almost everyone would want to use that require programming in some form or fashion to accomplish everyday tasks better.

But, iOS, Android, OS X, Windows, Linux and most applications that people use and games people play- they don't really work like that so much. You can get by without learning to code as a casual user, and the bar is so high now to create anything that a casual user would actually want to use or play. The closest thing to it really is a spreadsheet application or rules in an email application, and most users barely use those.

<comment><USER6> Over the course of the next century programming will become a blue collar profession. Children who develop an interest in programming will become about as common as children who are interested in tablesaws or cutting torches.

<comment><USER7> Programming is more akin to engineering than factory working. Languages are getting simpler and more powerful but programs are getting more complex. 15 years ago a typical developper didn't need to worry about multithreading, connectivity or security. It's fundamentally an intellectual job and will remain.

<comment><USER8> From my Western European point of view, I see a lot of these intellectual jobs being outsourced to Slovenia, Poland and even the Philippines.

I am advising my kids to have good technical skills but also great people skills.

<comment><USER9> So? It's not like the people in Slovenia, Poland, or the Philippines are less intelligent or less well educated than people from Western Europe.

<comment><USER8> So? So my kids don't live in a low wage country and will need to differentiate themselves to keep making the big bucks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> 1984 was the year that CS _majors_ began to drop off. You're not talking about girls that were begging their parents for a C64. You're talking about girls that were born circa 1962-1966 and after.

Many early programmers in the 1960s and 1970s were women because it was seen as the equivalent of secretarial work, a sector of the office labor that women were confined to due to overt sexism. The profession was then masculinized in overtly sexist ways. If women fled CS, they were fleeing an overtly sexist niche (which both locked them into submissive, secretarial roles as well as undervalued their technical accomplishments). [http://gender.stanford.edu/news/2011/researcher-reveals- how-...](http://gender.stanford.edu/news/2011/researcher-reveals- how-%E2%80%9Ccomputer-geeks%E2%80%9D-replaced-%E2%80%9Ccomputergirls%E2%80%9D)

</comment><comment><USER11> _And these toys were marketed almost entirely to men and boys._

That's a pretty bad correlation-is-not-causation slip there. Marketing efforts, especially in new markets tend to take the path of least resistance. If they were marketing to males, it was most likely because males were showing an early interest in those products and likely to be the quickest way to grow marketshare.

My personal experience was that I didn't need anything marketed to me. The K-Mart in my town had a couple of running new computers on an aisle where a friend walked up to them and typed: 10 PRINT "I AM THE GREATEST!" 20 GOTO 10

I was immediately fascinated and wanted one.

<comment><USER3> He forgot the INVERSE:FLASH :)

My first program on the new family Apple ][e was a flashing, infinitely- scrolling insult directed at my older sister.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Doesnt intuitively make sense to me... adult women stopped being drawn into the computerfield at the same time that male children began getting computers as gifts? wouldnt their be a distinct lag effect of maybe 5-7 years between when the boys got their computers and entered the work force?

I think the shift probably had more to do with the perception that computer programming was 'important', a lot of the early view on computer programming was driven by the physical interface... women were viewed as suitable for programming because they were historically suitable for typing and secretary work... i think on some level it was being viewed as a form of dictation that was in a bizarre 'shorthand'...

<comment><USER13> Your intuition around the 5-7 years lag time would seem to line up pretty damn well with the beginning of the computer revolution in the late 70s. What's the problem, exactly?

<comment><USER14> I agree. Both the TRS-80 (which was specifically mentioned in the audio version of the article) and the Apple II were released in 1977.

<comment><USER15> >By 1982, an estimated 621,000 home computers were in American households, at an average sales price of US$530.

In a country of 220 million people. If we assume about 4 people could access a single computer, then 1,1% of population had access.

So it seems commercials of Apple II and TRS-80 was the thing that compelled women to stay out of the field. Or alternatively getting your hands on dads TRS-80 was incredibly compelling experience to almost every boy out there.

Edit: this stuff then [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05M80HHNB6s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05M80HHNB6s)

<comment><USER16>
      > If we assume about 4 people could access a single
      > computer, then 1,1% of population had access.

High school students aren't representative of the general population. Schools had computers, so _all of them_ had access.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The actual article is here: [http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-...](http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when- women-stopped-coding)

<comment><USER17> I think it's important to also show the graph of absolute numbers of computer science students. Maybe the absolute numbers will show that the number of female students did not decrease, but rather the numner of male students increased dramatically, making the female share drop.

Just an angle I would pursue.

<comment><USER18> I had the same thought so I checked [1].

Really very odd graphs of both male and female students. I haven't seen anything that really explains the peaky total number let alone the ratio profile.

Interestingly the higher degrees seem to be pretty stable in ratio terms. Not sure what they may be indicative of though.

Very strange.

[1] [https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d12/tables/dt12_349.asp](https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d12/tables/dt12_349.asp)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I don't think it's about absolute numbers, women did not stop coding. It's just more men starting to code, which makes the share of women smaller.

<comment><USER20> I was thinking along the same lines (personal computers = more boys interested in CS). Then I found this in the comments section of the article:

[http://i111.photobucket.com/albums/n134/im_thatoneguy/CSDegr...](http://i111.photobucket.com/albums/n134/im_thatoneguy/CSDegrees_10-27-14_zps43c754a2.png)

Interesting that there was a dip of both males and females around 1984. So I'm not so sure of the statement above anymore. However, around the year 2000 there's this peak where males do outnumber females by a great deal (even if the number of females joining also increased).

If all these graphs are accurate I'd wonder more about the Y2K rather than 1984...

<comment><USER15> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_video_game_cras...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_video_game_crash_of_1983)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I don't believe this narrative of "it's because home computers were marketed only to boys". At least, I would like to see some more evidence for it.

It seems more likely to me that the story starts sooner, there must have been a reason why computers were marketed to boys. Maybe the first home computers were considered part of the electronics hacking scene (radio shack and what not), and that was already more popular with boys? How many women went to the Homebrew computer club were people were trying to create their own computer before you could just buy them off the shelves (people like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak)?

Maybe girls saw home computers and didn't like them.

I don't know - but neither do the tellers of the "marketing is at fault" narrative.

</comment><comment><USER22> _The share of women in computer science started falling at roughly the same moment when personal computers started showing up in U.S. homes in significant numbers... And these... were marketed almost entirely to men and boys._

Great, another travesty for which we have marketing to thank.

<comment><USER23> The hate towards marketing that is present on HN is almost comical at times.

My experience is that, the more you study how marketing works, the more you realize marketing is about what people already want and try to appeal to that. Sure, big companies like Coca Cola have more sophisticated techniques to make their brands appealing, but still, if you look at Coca Cola's marketing, what they sell is "happiness", which is what people want, and they make the association to their beverage.

From this point of view, there is no "travesty" to thank marketing for. The reality was that probably personal computers were more appealing to men, so it made more sense to spend marketing resources towards them.

Why it was more appealing to them is a good question to ask, and it could be because of many reasons, including culture and society. But marketing probably didn't create that desire, it just used it.

<comment><USER24> I think you've totally missed the point _why_ people hate marketing. It's not because of a lack of understanding on it's mechanics.

> From this point of view, there is no "travesty" to thank marketing for. The > reality was that probably personal computers were more appealing to men, so > it made more sense to spend marketing resources towards them. Why it was > more appealing to them is a good question to ask, and it could be because of > many reasons, including culture and society. But marketing probably didn't > create that desire, it just used it.

Marketing is _absolutely_ about the manufacture of desire. Though above you make the connection between Coca-cola and the harmless association of this beverage to "happiness", this is over-simplifying things somewhat. The psychology of the brand, upon which modern consumer society is dependent, and which marketing ruthlessly exploits, is based around the construction of a self solely through conspicuous acts of consumption rather than through human experiences, relationships with friends and family, or other pursuits traditionally considered to be more laudable.

Though arguably it is required in keeping the wheels of capitalism spinning (and by proxy food in our bellies); in reality, marketing is the process of co-opting, subverting, and ultimately extinguishing joy and the human experience.

<comment><USER25> Marketing only manufactures desire if you interpret desire in the most narrow possible sense as desire for a specific product.

What marketing actually does is make desires concrete and suggest to the audience how that desire can be fulfilled. If you look at one of the most famous examples of successful marketing, diamond marketing created demand for a specific product, but it was only able to do so because the emotional needs the marketers tied their products to were already there and not being adequately met.

<comment><USER24> The term desire works in a broader sense, as long as you differentiate between a need and a desire.

A _need_ (I guess I'm referring here mostly to needs in the context of those defined by Maslow's Hierarchy) is defined as something that is an absolute; an end state. There is a requirement of truth for something to be a _need_.

A _desire_ is defined as "a strong feeling of wanting to have something or wishing for something to happen". A desire is open to suggestion, to invention and misrepresentation.

Taking your example of the diamond industry: The "needs" being targeted here are pretty much the solid base of the pyramid (sex & shelter, family/stability, love & intimacy). Does a tiny, expensive shiny rock from Sierra Leone provide those needs? No; obviously it is the symbolism of giving to/receiving from someone in the hope that they will provide those needs to you. Did humans manage to satisfy those needs before De Beers came along? I'm pretty sure they did.

The desire for diamonds among the general populace was completely manufactured, whereas the aforementioned needs always existed, and (I strongly suspect) were always being filled before the normalisation of diamond rings as intentions of marriage.

I suppose diamonds (at least in the context of use as jewellery), and the whole story of De Beers are a shining example of commodity fetishism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> 1984 was also when manufacturing jobs went into decline. In my locale a lot of displaced auto workers went into programming.

(edit: Off-by-one-century error)

</comment><comment><USER27> I've read elsewhere how in the earliest days of computers, men designed the hardware and relegated the programming to women because it was seen as clerical work, albeit advanced clerical work. Because of this, women, such as Grace Hopper, became well established in the field.

The advent of the Apple II and TRS-80 exposed kids (including myself) to computers, and with these machines, programming was the most accessible aspect. You could try to modify the hardware, but then you risked ruining the most expensive piece of equipment in the home. However, you experiment all you wanted with the BASIC prompt, and that's how I learned to program. There is something different about girls and boys such that this kind of tinkering with gadgets appeals much more to boys than girls.

I remember excitedly showing our new Apple II to my cousin who is 6 years older than me, and who had recently finished her CS degree and was working in "data processing." I expected her to have the same gee-whiz reaction I had, but she was not impressed. To her, the Apple II was a silly and expensive toy.

I think that in a way, when myself and other male "Micro Kids" entered the university and professional CS world, we changed the dynamic from a more professional to a more hacker-like culture. Not only did our numbers heavily tilt the gender distribution, but I think we also made the culture less attractive to women.

My cousin, now in her late 50s, is still in IT as a higher-level manager in a large oil and gas firm. Right now, she appears to be spending a lot of time dealing with the logistics of some major office relocations. It is probably the kind of work that many on HN would consider boring, but I am sure it is essential to the smooth operation of a large modern corporation. When I hear her talk about her work, she comes across as being more responsible and practical than her younger male peers, and I don't doubt that's the case.

<comment><USER28> _> There is something different about girls and boys such that this kind of tinkering with gadgets appeals much more to boys than girls._

There is something different about what our culture teaches and signals to girls and boys from the moment they are born such that this kind of tinkering with gadgets appeals much more to boys than girls.

<comment><USER29> Same thing if you want to be a programmer and happen to not be indian, white or chinese.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> > _But a lot of computing pioneers, the ones who programmed the first digital > computers, were women. And for decades, the number of women in computer > science was growing. But in 1984, something changed. The number of women in > computer science flattened, and then plunged._

Those statistics kind of refute those lamenting male culture etc for the lack of more women in computer science.

One would imagine the 1969-1984 that the graph shows, the "male culture", bro attitudes, etc were far more imposing that they are in the milenial, PC environments of today. We're talking about the seventies to early eighties, after all!

And yet, there were more women back then than they are now.

(Always suspected the usual explanations weren't the reason. It's not like medicine, law school, finance, etc have much better male cultures than computer science).

</comment><comment><USER31> Isn't that about the same time when greed driven people started doing such crappy games that adults (women included) stopped playing them altogether? After the market nearly died they had to move games from electronics to child toys but they had then pick either boys toys or girls toys and they went with boys.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i08CVkBxvBM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i08CVkBxvBM)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_video_game_cras...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_video_game_crash_of_1983)

It seems that there is only one way for normal people to enter programming and it's through games.

</comment><comment><USER32> Can someone post the TL;DR (uh....TL;DL?) from the podcast here? Looks like a decent discussion going on, but can't tell that anyone actually listened :-)

I'll cop to the fact that I'm just not going to spend the time, though I'm interested in the conclusion(s).

<comment><USER33> The post was updated with a link to this transcript/summary: [http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-...](http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when- women-stopped-coding)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I started Edinburgh University in 1983, and there were about 10% women on the CS course. There were more, I think, on the AI course, but that was in a completely different department.

</comment><comment><USER35> Because they know better than doing unpaid overtime, keeping up to date in an ever changing industry driven by popularity contests and having to work for free on some open source project because somebody thought that what you do in your free time is somehow more relevant CV wise than what you actually do for a living.

I wouldn't worry much anyway. We won't be seeing many of those articles once the bubble bursts.

</comment><comment><USER36> > But in 1984, something changed. The number of women in computer science > flattened, and then plunged.

So did the number of men. Bachelor's degrees in CS peaked in the US with 27k men, 15k women in 1985-86. Then they dropped by 1993-94 to 17.5k men, 7k women, and then started going back up. By 2002-04, they both had reached new peaks of 44.5k men, 15.5k women.

There's something going on here that is more complicated than what is captured in that sex ratio graph.

Data from here: [http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d12/tables/dt12_349.asp](http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d12/tables/dt12_349.asp)

</comment><comment><USER37> A lot of indian women are taking to coding/programming career. Currently, the estimate of number of women programmers in india is about 1,00,000. They are expected to grow to 2,00,00 in less than 10 years.

<comment><USER38> Not to be nitpicky, but you probably want to review how you typed those numbers. The second is smaller than the first, and the commas are not grouping the zeroes in groups of three. I suppose you mean either 10^5 or 10^6, but I'm not sure which.

<comment><USER39> They're using the Indian numbering system -- see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_numbering_system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_numbering_system)

<comment><USER40> That's really interesting, thanks for the link.

But it still doesn't make sense, because if you remove the commas from 1,00,000 and 2,00,00 you end up with 100000 versus 20000. Based on the examples in your link I'm assuming that the last figure should be 2,00,000. In the examples all the high number always end with three zeros.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Maybe it's actually the time that men became more interested in software.

The first programmers were mostly females because men in STEM were probably more interested in physics and hardware. This is entirely a hunch on my part, but even the term "soft-ware" sounds almost derogatory.

Imagine if math was called a soft science? Why, it's all imaginary!

I think the term "soft science" is some derogatory towards fields like social sciences.

</comment><comment><USER42> I find it interesting the transition towards physical sciences and away from computer science in the late 1980s. At that time, my mother, who was educated and worked in chemistry, started working at home as a programmer. It was a very good job that allowed her to work remotely most of the time and set her own schedule.

</comment><comment><USER43> Transcript or tl;dr available?

I assume it has to do with computers becoming a mass-market commodity and marketing strategies involving "traditional" gender roles.

<comment><USER44> Yes. Last paragraph of the page, link after Update:

-> [http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-wom...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-women-stopped-coding)

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I would like to see a parallel breakdown of _professors_ by gender, for the same fields in the same time frame.

</comment><comment><USER46> According to [1], 1984 was the year when Common Lisp and MATLAB were invented.

But perhaps a more causative correlation is that in 1983, C++ was born (after being called "C with classes" a few years before).

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

<comment><USER47> But what would these technologies have to do with the decline of women in CS?

<comment><USER48> Probably nothing.

More likely marketing computer as boy/nerd toy is what caused a shift.

<comment><USER21> Why is that likely?

<comment><USER48> I said more likely, but why is that more likely? Because huge shift in public opinion are from my experience, most likely made by marketing agencies.

Also ads like these: [http://howtonotsuckatgamedesign.com/wp- content/uploads/2013/...](http://howtonotsuckatgamedesign.com/wp- content/uploads/2013/12/fear-of-the-female-geek-xlg_two_bytes_better.jpg)

<comment><USER21> Certainly a horrible ad. But it is for buying a machine. If such ads were the culprit, women shouldn't be driving cars either? I don't know what the ads were like at the time, but I am pretty sure they made similar ads for cars. Also not sure what kind of ads were targeted at women. It's pretty common to this day, although cheap, to just mix a random product with the claim "will make you more attractive to the opposite sex".

Wasn't it also the case that at first operating computers was deemed a task for secretaries, and then the perception changed?

I suppose they could have shown ads of secretaries being loved by their bosses because they work so efficiently thanks to their shiny new computers.

Edit: [http://www.macmothership.com/gallery/MiscAds/AdamAd.JPG](http://www.macmothership.com/gallery/MiscAds/AdamAd.JPG) \- women should just have used Macs?

<comment><USER48> Cars != computers.

Cars are a means of transportation and much more of a requirement to live in urban environment than a computer.

<comment><USER49> There are quite a few massive cities in wealthy countries where a significant number of people choose not to drive even though they can afford it.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._cities_with_most_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._cities_with_most_households_without_a_car)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Securing cloud buckets on application level - <AUTHOR> https://safecontrols.blog/2019/07/12/securing-media-stored-in-cloud-storage-buckets-against-unauthorised-access/ <comment><AUTHOR> Public cloud storage buckets are still exposing sensitive data. This is one way bucket objects can be secured with granular access controls.</comment>


AR vs. VR: Information Retrieval vs. Immersive Experiences - <AUTHOR> http://www.kennethfriedman.org/thoughts/2015/ar-vs-vr

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here. I wrote out some thoughts on the difference between AR and VR, and their future applications and use. Would love to hear any feedback you have.

<comment><USER2> I think you describe quite well the differences between the two. I think VR will be mainly used for entertainment, but also for more serious stuff (architecture, etc), while AR will have a more "functional" scope: as you said, checking calendar, checking online prices in a store - more routine stuff.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are the "best" logging practices to learn for a Junior Developer? - <AUTHOR> A short while ago I read in the comment section of an article here on HN regarding things to ask before joining a startup as a developer. The article itself was fairly interesting, but the comment section was booming about logging practices. So my questions are, from a Junior Developers stand, what is considered good logging? How often should I commit? What do I commit in regards to big changes, and what do I commit if there is only a typo correction? What and where are good ways to learn about this if my current job does not practice this? <comment><USER2> Got a bit confused about terminology, I normally call putting a message in a log file "logging" but here you are referring to "source control" I believe.

I think it varies from company to company, some are more strict that others. Big changes you write a brief summary, leave a line and write a full on description. Small changes a small one line message is enough. Both can reference a ticket too. For pull requests, always squash your commits to one commit and make that as descriptive as possible (if required).

<comment><AUTHOR> I was not aware of logging of this type, I am mainly familiar with Source Control. Could you explain to me the purpose of the Log file compared to Source Control? Do you usually use both?

<comment><USER3> What you are talking about is called "commit messages". Logging is used by an application that you are building to store information that is useful for helping find out what happened in error conditions.

As for your questions, I tell junior programmers to try to commit their code at least once every 20 minutes. That seems like a very short time! However, when you are first starting out, it is easy to take on pieces that are really large without realising it. This helps you keep the work small. It also helps you understand when you are in trouble. If you find that you can't commit something in 20 minutes or so, it's a good indication that you probably need some help.

When making your commit message, you should have a short message at the top explaining what you did. To understand what is good to write, imagine that you want to know, "How do I do X". Ideally you can search through the commit history for "X" and you will find a commit that does it. That's a good way to learn how to do things in the code. Now that you know what you want to _look_ for, try to write a message that makes it easy for the "future you" to find it.

Finally, underneath the short commit message, try to write a brief description of _why_ you made your change. If you think it is obvious, there is no reason to write anything. But I find that I write something about 2/3 of my commits. If you find that you can't think of something to say, maybe you are having difficulty understanding why you are doing it _yourself_! It's sometimes a good idea to ask someone "I know I have to do this, but I don't really understand why. Can you explain it to me?" Very soon, you will understand most things in the code.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your answer! Figuring what to do is not always easy, but I will most certainly follow your tip about "How do I do X".

But regarding logging, is this a file called log, or are there programs where you write the log?

<comment><USER3> There are lots of systems. Obviously the easiest way is to just write some text to a file. There are some libraries that make logging easier and give you some extra facilities (like formatting the time every time you write to the file, etc). There are also some services that allow you to manage logs for a lot of systems. Google has a service called stackdriver. You send messages to stackdriver and then you can go to the stackdriver service to see all the logs for all your systems.

Logging is a big topic and there are as many ways to do it as there are programmers. Some people like to log a lot of stuff (for example, every time you enter and exit a function, some people will write an entry to the log! That way they can see how the program is running. Personally, I hate that :-) ). Some people like to write only error to the log.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Lisp in Vim with Slimv or Vlime - <AUTHOR> https://susam.in/blog/lisp-in-vim-with-slimv-or-vlime/ <comment><USER2> I experimented a little with Lisp in Vim this year but I didn't get the point of the various plugins for it to be honest.

All I did was set up two keybindings; one that opens a terminal buffer and starts SBCL, and one that copy-pastes the expression around the cursor into that terminal buffer, executes it and jumps back. Worked surprisingly well and allowed me to edit Lisp code in a file while being able to quickly run it on the side.

I do recommend using a plugin like rainbow parentheses, I find that helpful in all languages but especially in Lisp.

<comment><USER3> Which plugins did you experiment with?

Can you share your two keybindings with us?

<comment><USER2> Sure, but note they're NeoVim-specific(the terminal buffer works a bit differently there). And I adapted them to work without my other custom shortcuts, so they're longer(and even more indecipherable for sane people...I'm sure this could be done in a cleaner way).

Open a terminal running SBCL on the right with "\ls":

        nmap <leader>ls :vsplit<CR><C-w>l:terminal<CR>i sbcl<CR><C-\><C-N><C-w>h

Execute paragraph around cursor with "\e":

        nmap <leader>e vipy<C-w>lpi<CR><C-\><C-N><C-w>h

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is there any modern editor that supports Lisp-oriented development environment like SLIME or one of these plugins? I am not familiar with Vim and I find it hard to get used to all the numerous shortcuts available in Vim.

</comment><comment><USER5> There was a related article by Steve Losh[1] last year where he too suggested Vlime or Slimv for working with Lisp in Vim. Looks like I finally have to git it a shot.

[1] [http://stevelosh.com/blog/2018/08/a-road-to-common- lisp/](http://stevelosh.com/blog/2018/08/a-road-to-common-lisp/)

</comment><comment><USER6> From the OP:

      git clone https://github.com/kovisoft/slimv.git ~/.vim/bundle/slimv
      echo 'set runtimepath^=~/.vim/bundle/slimv' >> ~/.vimrc
      vim +'helptags ~/.vim/bundle/slimv/doc' +q

Is this a common way of installing Vim plugins?

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure what's the mainstream way right now, but I don't think it's commonly done by echoing stuff to the end of the .vimrc file.

My plugin manager is Vundle, where you basically just add a line in the .vimrc with the repository name, and then run :PluginInstall. Quick and easy.</comment></comment>


Google Linux servers hit with $5m patent infringement verdict - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/04/21/texas_jury_says_google_infringed_linux_patent/

<comment><USER2> This isn't google-specific; any company using the linux kernel is vulnerable to being sued over infringing this patent.

[http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph- Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sec...](http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph- Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=5893120.PN.&OS=PN/5893120&RS=PN/5893120)

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't understand what they patented. Is this a patent for a hash table implemented using a linked list with garbage collection? How is this patentable? There should be a ton of 'prior art' concerning the data structures, and garbage collection was certainly around for decades before this patent was filed.</comment>


Ask HN: What are you predictions for decade 2020-2030? - <AUTHOR> Share your thoughts on what will happen / change in this decade. Tech, economy, world politics anything. <comment><USER2> 955 comments in [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21941278](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21941278)</comment>


Galois Theory for Beginners (2010) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.math.jhu.edu/~smahanta/Teaching/Spring10/Stillwell.pdf <comment><USER3> Galois fields are used in crypto a bit, and I recommend this lecture to understand it in the context of crypto

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1v2tX4_dkQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1v2tX4_dkQ)

PS: He has an entire series of lectures on his channel. Highly recommend.

<comment><USER4> Thanks ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Fun fact: Evariste Galois made major contributions to math in his teens, before dying in a duel at age 20.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89variste_Galois](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89variste_Galois)

<comment><USER6> Wikipedia reminds me that the version of his death (staying up all night before the duel to frantically write down his mathematical ideas at the last possible moment) that I read in _Men of Mathematics_ may have been overdramatized, apparently like a number of the stories in that book.

<comment><USER7> What definitely did happen is that Galois was worried that he might not win the duel and that he might never get the chance to redeem himself in front of his mathematical peers. We know this because of the letter he wrote before he died; we actually _have_ it, and WP has a scan of a page: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:E._Galois_Letter.jpg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:E._Galois_Letter.jpg)

It is hard to overdramatize the events of Galois' life. He lived during a revolution, he went out into the streets to protest and fight, he was arrested multiple times for his outrageous political speech, and he laid down his life for his political beliefs. A friend of mine who survived a chronic and often- fatal disease in his teens used to quip, "Well, if I were Galois, I'd have already made my best contributions and died by now." Galois indeed burned fast and bright.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This document was also mentioned yesterday on the 'Why is the quintic unsolvable?'[1] post. The post also has some additional interesting references in the comments. Worth checking out!

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14685466](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14685466)

</comment><comment><USER9> Can anyone help me understand what is happening at the bottom of page 23 (page 3 of the PDF)?

It says any permutation sigma of x_1, ..., x_n can be extended to a bijection of Q(x_1, ..., x_n) defined by

        sigma f(x_1, ..., x_n) = f(sigma x_1, ..., sigma x_n).

But I don't see how this definition can be consistent. For example, let

        f(a, b) = a - <USER2>
        g(a, b) = a/a + b/b = 2

        x_1 = 5
        x_2 = 3
        sigma x_1 = x_2
        sigma x_2 = x_1

Then according to the formula:

        sigma f(5, 3) = sigma (5 - 3) = sigma 2 = f(3, 5) = -2

But

        sigma g(5, 3) = sigma 2 = g(3, 5) = 2

Contradiction?

<comment><USER10> Great observation.

The American Math Monthly is a journal by college professors for college professors. The readership is expected to be familiar with the topic. Groundbreaking results are published elsewhere. Whew. Unfortunately, neither is AMM a place for professors to summarize the contents of a 14-week course for adult learners.

Let's use your observation to illuminate 2 abuses of notation that happen all the time between those in the know.

The first abuse is not explicitly calling out that the coefficients a_i are restricted. The polynomial of which the a_i are the coefficients must be irreducible. That is omitted in the paper, but is typically understood. For otherwise, the field extension doesn't work, as you've found out.

When the a_i denote an irreducible, then the roots x_i are all outside Q.

And then there is no contradiction.

Your example uses (x-5)(x-3) which has all roots in Q--the diametric opposite --which is why sigma breaks down.

Digression: If you know some Haskell, you'll notice that a permutation on the roots basically fmaps to a (field) endomorphism on Q(all x_i). But here the converse is also true (exceptional in Haskell, except for trivial cases): every such endo comes from a permutation. (end of digression)

The second abuse is in the title. This is really "(My Opinion on) How to Teach Galois Theory to Undergrads" with a subtitle of "By Jettisoning the Fundamental Theorem and Focusing Exclusively on Quintic Unsolvability." The subtitle is omitted and the title shortened and de-colloquialized to read "Galois Theory for Beginners." This is all part of the prestigious mathematical tradition because ink, paper, and papyrus once upon a time were terribly scarce. Sorry about that.

Quintic Unsolvability is like FLT. The big prize is not the Yes/No answer but the VIP theorems--the statements of which are neither as easy to explain nor understand as QU nor FLT--used to nail down some pesky boolean.

So throwing out the FT of GT shortchanges the undergrad. It especially shortchanges the math-aware software professional who would appreciate experiencing the galois correspondence which later morphs into an adjunction in category theory. Quite cool.

GT has pedagogical messiness like inseparable extensions which can be skipped on a first pass. As a royal road to FTGT, I recommend the approach of fixing all fields as subfields of the complex numbers. See Postnikov's Foundations of Galois Theory available on google books the last time I checked. Nice exercises too.

p.s. (Galois) adjunctions are like a general theory of "How to Run Anything Backwards Even When There's No Chance in Hell." That's the power of math for you.

<comment><USER9> OK, thanks. Your answer has allowed me to follow the paper a little further, though I think your answer may be inconsistent with the other two answers I got. Also I haven't been able to show myself that if the x_i are the roots of an irreducible polynomial, then Q(x_1,...,x_n) is symmetric with respect to x_1,...,x_n, in the sense claimed in the paper without proof.

<comment><USER10> > OK, thanks.

No worries.

> Your answer has allowed me to follow the paper a little further, though I > think your answer may be inconsistent with the other two answers I got.

I was trying to be helpful.

That said, in lieu of the irreducibility criterion, you could stay in the original context where all the variables a_i, x_i, and alpha_i are indeterminates so that all the extensions are higher-ranked rational function fields over Q.

So Q(a1,a2) is a field in 2 indeterminates and Q(x1,x2) is an extension of that.

They are isomorphic to subfields of C, but we don't think of them as subfields of C because there don't come with canonical embeddings. You have to choose the algebraically independent transcendentals.

> Also I haven't been able to show myself that if the x_i are the roots of an > irreducible polynomial, then Q(x_1,...,x_n) is symmetric with respect to > x_1,...,x_n, in the sense claimed in the paper without proof.

There's no claim. The paper's just defining what it means for a field extension to be "symmetric w.r.t." to the adjoined elements.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Galois had an insight that I always seemed particularly deep to me: that problems should be classified not by topic area (analysis, theory of equations, geometry) but by their underlying form.

Galois was ahead of his time.[1]

[1] You could say he was ahead by a century, to quote a famous song.

</comment><comment><USER12> Beginners?

</comment><comment><USER13> Galois theory without functor... Without fundamental theorem of algebra. Are you kidding?

<comment><USER14> It's a five page article in the _Monthly_ , but I'd hesitate to include either topic even in a book.

<comment><USER13> Why? Whitout a clear explanation Galois functors you miss everything... And without the fundamental theorem of algebra, it's going to be very hard to have any real life example.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I have never studied group theory, so this is way beyond what I'm ready for. But I scanned over a few sections and read to the point that I got lost.

The part that surprised me is that it seems to focus on rational numbers. I always assumed that Galois Groups were focused on more abstract concepts of sets. Is Galois Theory mostly about rational number (or even real numbers), or is the author just using the rationals to keep the paper focused on beginners?

</comment><comment><USER16> this guy was AMAZING at maths</comment>


Advice on marketing hyper-local b2b startup - <AUTHOR> Hey, we're launching an office catering startup in Toronto, ON. To refrain from being self promotional I won't share its name or URL but rather, I'd like to share a general idea of what we're doing and get some collective wisdom from you.
The idea is partnering with local restaurants and catering companies to be the "Uber for Office meals". What does this mean? It means that we can do volume orders, e.g. orders with a minimum required order amount of $150, and a minimum required notice time of 24 hours.
With over 15 restaurants / catering companies signed up with accounts (listings) with great offerings. I'd like to gauge the best way to market this and sell it. Given that it's a "hyper-local" marketplace of restaurants and catering companies offering "platters" essentially, what's the best way to get people using it and trying it out?
And then to provide more general advice, the take-away here can be applied to almost any hyper-local, b2b focused startup.
Thanks! Looking forward to engaging with you. <comment><USER2> samples.</comment>


Google's product strategy: Make two of everything - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/10/googles-product-strategy-make-two-of-everything/1/ <comment><USER2> During my time at Google, I definitely had the experience of "my" product being killed in preference to a competing product. In one case, I did not even know that the competing product existed until the public press release.

What was most frustrating is that the decisions did not seem to be motivated by product superiority. The "winner" was not a better product, or at least this was not demonstrated. Instead the decisions were driven by whichever product better aligned with the internal political winds this week, such as the tension between the Nexus partner model vs the Pixel in-house model. These "strategy shifts" were often preceded by senior leadership shakeups, which were themselves frequent.

It was hard to escape the conclusion that the quality of my work was irrelevant. It was demoralizing.

<comment><USER3> You're one of the most prolific and impressive programmers around. I'm sure you could have your choice of product manager...

<comment><USER4> who is he/she?

<comment><USER5> Take a look at [http://ridiculousfish.com/blog/posts/will-it- optimize.html](http://ridiculousfish.com/blog/posts/will-it-optimize.html) and more posts on that blog, some very interesting stuff there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There is no strategy. The thought of Google having a central product management strategy -- and successfully executing it across many teams -- is hilarious to people who work there. It's chaos that outsiders try to read into.

This is a consequence of bad internal economics and incentives. Google PMs and engineers are incentivized to create new products and ship them by quarterly deadlines (perf/promo cycles) rather than align their teams towards a cohesive user experience. Thinking this way would occasionally cause teams to, gasp, not build a product they wanted to build. Everyone needs to ship something, ideally something new. After all, you don't get promoted for deciding not to build something. I've seen awful products/implementations go out the door and get killed or reimplemented soon thereafter. And people still list these as "achievements" on promotion packets (and they get promoted despite the product failing!).

The company is _kind of_ trying to address this by changing promotion criteria, but it's culturally ingrained and won't change for some time.

<comment><USER7> Informative, thanks.

Is this why Google announces sweeping changes every year at i/o and redesigns the Android UI every single year?

eg. use the dedicated search button on the phone, btw this button no longer exists, respond to the menu button, btw this button no longer exists, put menus at the top, put menus at the bottom, use hamburger menus, don't use them, use swipe navigation, use swipe navigation if it fits with your app, do things to ENCHANT and DELIGHT the user. According to the UI guidelines, clicking a button should cause the user to burst into tears of joy due to the delightful experience they have just had.

Is it because they need to appear to be producing new things all the time? If so, it'd also explain why some products get released to much fanfare (and applause from the BBC Technology news team it seems) and then get no updates, maintenance and get binned a few years later. (Many examples of this). The most annoying of these was the Talk replacement for Android (Hangouts) which got rid of features of Talk and still has an abysmal tablet interface and general bugginess ("Did you not get my call???" "No").

I am not meaning to be overly critical, but the constant change for the sake of change is wearying. I have been using Android since the G1 and every i/o they have redesigned the interface. The examples of "bad UI" and "bad text" are all from their own older versions of Android. It makes you wish they'd make their mind up.

<comment><USER8> That's exactly the thing that pushed me from Android after 5 years. If I'm a paying customer, I want to be treated as one, not a beta tester with $currenthypedthingwedemoedatIO. That's why I'm still convinced that Google doesn't make products, but tech demos.

<comment><USER7> That seems a good evaluation of it! It is particularly starting to grate on me how I rarely get updates for my phones despite the security holes found in the versions of Android I am running. Also, I look at reviews of Android M on Ars Technica etc. and realise that I will never ever be running that version of the OS on my devices, not in the foreseeable future. It saddens me.

<comment><USER9> Reviews of M exist? Wasn't this just the development version released? I really question this. Get a Nexus device. updates are guaranteed for 2 years. Blame your phone's manufactures for not getting updates not Android or Google.

I would love to know how many years of support does qualcomm guaranteed for their chipset driver updates. I remember reading this was an issue for Google updating the Galaxy Nexus.

<comment><USER7> You're right - they were just overviews of the previews of M. I did notice that many things were changing in them too - I found it odd that the way pages were laid out was so fluid/changeable compared to the previous M preview given that UI guidelines should dictate how things are laid out.

The fact that things move around so much would be indicative of not being really sure how it should look (despite the UI guidelines), perhaps? If I was buying a car and the next version of the car the next year moved the dials to the other side of the dashboard or swapped whether the indicator stalk was on the right or the left of the steering wheel, you'd ask what the heck was going on. Yet this appears to be normal for Android.

I would love to blame my phone manufacturer for not getting updates, apart from Android was started with the Open Handset Alliance. It doesn't appear to be much of an alliance to me.

It's a daft situation. If you bought a laptop and could only install hotfixes and KB releases via Dell, yet Dell did not give them to you, would you be happy with Microsoft? Would you take their advice to just buy a Surface Pro from them? That would be unrealistic because it would ignore the massive market that is Wintel devices; rather you would expect Microsoft to only provide Windows to Dell if they agreed to provide hotfixes Microsoft gave them.

If you had a MacBook Pro and El Capitan would not run on it, yet you were aware of all the security holes in Mavericks and some in Yosemite, would you accept advice to just buy a new MacBook to get security fixes? Or would you expect Apple to backport fixes when they know that a sizeable percentage of customers are connecting to their App Store with older versions, given your purchase fee of the hardware?

The solution to not getting updates for a device is not to buy a new device.

Google boasts how many devices they have all over the world (see last year's io keynote) and how Android is everywhere, yet it failed to mention the important point about Android being everywhere: that it is insecure outdated Android that is everywhere.

Google know how many people are connecting with older versions (the Play dashboard tells you what percentage is running which version), so they should push out updates or mandate in their agreement with phone manufacturers that a timely update cycle should be followed, or the agreement would be terminated. There would be no other way to keep control or maintain a high standard.

I say this with a plethora of Android devices and with my dayjob of writing Android apps. It is a rubbish situation for security.

<comment><USER10> You assume they had/have the leverage to "force" manufacturers to let them centrally update their handsets which isn't very fair.

<comment><USER7> All devices have Google apps on them, and phones without these are considered "lesser" and won't sell. (When's the last time your Android phone from a "big name" seller came without Google Play market?).

If so, they have access to a central repository - Google. Google could just refuse to give them the OS with Google apps unless the manufacturer/carrier pushed out updates. It would be in both party's interests to agree to do this - Google because it would stem the tide of insecure phones and the stench of dodgy apps being prevalent even in the official market; and for the phone manufacturer, updates and apps, and happy customers.

At this rate I am not going to get another Sony, that's for sure.

<comment><USER8> I owned only Nexii from 2011 on and I'm not even sure Google wants to update those thoroughly. They sacked 4.2 for Nexus S, 4.4 for Galaxy Nexus although they can run it (and they did with custom ROMs) just fine.

Last straw was the Lollipop update for the Nexus 5, where it turned out a perfectly working device into a nightmare with memory leaks, mobile radio drains and camera freezes, where a daily reboot was actually mandatory. Their bug report tracker is full of complaints, yet they didn't do anything and are casually talking about M. Sorry, I don't have to wait a year, then pray if my current device is going to be supported, or just cave in and get a new device the new Android revision will enter the market with.

So until customer experience becomes a priority, I'm not investing a single cent or a second of my time in Android.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This isn't a google strategy. This is a generic Big Corp. strategy. The same thing happens at eBay, Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, etc. It's not a good thing. It is usually an indication that the higher ups don't trust each other or are trying to one up each other for the year end bonus round. It is just a wasteful strategy overall and only happens at places that can afford it.

<comment><USER12> It's usually encouraged by the even-higher-up, i.e. the CEO. It's actually fairly rational from his perspective: he has more options, he can cover more of the market, he insures against product failure, and his reports can't get complacent.

Yes, it's wasteful, and yes, it's demoralizing as hell when you're the ordinary employee whose product just got canceled. But then, you should understand (at least at some level) that your work is meaningless when you go join a big company: the reason they're big is because their product is already "good enough" for millions of people.

<comment><USER13> It's not different at a small company. At a small company you have "pivots" or "going out of business" or "competition from another company", instead of "competition from another team"

<comment><USER12> Almost makes you think that the part that's wrong is the narrative that we're sold as kids, y'know "Work hard and good things will happen to you." It's more like "Work hard and there is a ~2-3% chance good things will happen to you, but if you don't work hard there's a 0% chance good things will happen to you."

<comment><USER14> Be clever and good things will happen to you.

<comment><USER15> Be clever and make good things happen to you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Old inside joke at Google, you know your project is "important" with two or three other groups are working on exactly the same thing. When I was there, it was debated whether or not this selected for the right attributes (it tends to reward groups that execute fast versus ones that execute well). It did not help that some times when they didn't do that (just let one group build it) they didn't always get the result they wanted either.

<comment><USER17> The worst offenders were probably workflow / pipelining systems; just about everyone needed to write sequences of mapreduces, and thought that the existing solutions weren't a perfect fit. IIRC there were at one point over a dozen different workflow systems in use and advertised to at least some degree to other groups, which made picking one even harder due to the paradox of choice. The solution was of course to write a new one.

<comment><USER18> When I studied library design, the situation you described was the basic indicator of "domain misunderstanding": no one understands the domain well enough to produce a suitable abstraction. If the problem persists for a couple of decades, it might imply that domains have been improperly mixed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Well, now we know what happened to all of the previously-good Google products. I hate to complain about free products, but will make an exception for Google, which constantly removes features and usability as if a PM's bonus depends on it.

Give me back my color-coded GMail threads, ability to edit the subject without multiple clicks, and view features not hidden by submenus.

And that's just GMail, and that's just off the top of my head.

<comment><USER20> LOL.. I switched to Hangouts (from Voice) for my SMS, voicemail and messaging... on my phone, it works pretty nicely... on the desktop actually sending an SMS from my GV number to a contact is nearly impossibly without entering the phone number by hand.

<comment><USER21> >on the desktop actually sending an SMS from my GV number to a contact is nearly impossibly without entering the phone number by hand.

Yes, this is absolutely ridiculous. I have to look up the phone number using Google Voice plugin (which is nothing but a directory search now since Hangouts disables it), copy/paste the number into Hangouts, and SMS/call from there. It is completely unacceptable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> One reason that small companies so often beat big ones is that if you have 10 startup teams competing agains one big company team, one of the 10 will probably make the winning product.

So a big company that is open to doing 2-3 similar things at once should be more likely to produce winners.

That said, as an ex Googler, I agree with others here that this is probably more an accident of internal dysfunction than a brilliant strategy. It might still work though.

</comment><comment><USER23> Article from 2014 - "Oct 17, 2014 5:00am PDT"

</comment><comment><USER24> Eric Schmidt used to say: "Our goal is to have more at-bats per unit of time and effort than anyone else in the world."

</comment><comment><USER25> I must admit - this is kind of why I started moving AWAY from Google. You just don't have any guarantee that the product you're using won't be shelved in leu of a "better" (newer) solution.

</comment><comment><USER26> They forgot Picasa vs Google Photo!

<comment> Digit-Al They put Eclipse vs Android Studio, but Eclipse is not a Google product.

<comment><USER27> At first glance I read that as "...but Eclipse is not a great product"

Android Studio is based on IntelliJ which is a far more polished IDE.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I recall Apple's norm is running a half-dozen competing designs at once, choosing the best and killing the rest come delivery date.

</comment><comment><USER29> Yay, more wood behind fewer products!

And no wood behind things people actually want or use!

And the wood behind the ones we liked ended up all warped and weird!

</comment><comment><USER30> What about search?!

<comment><USER12> Shortly before I joined in 2009, Google had embarked on a project to rewrite Search from the ground up. It was canceled after a couple years, and in many cases the work of individual subteams was folded into the main search engine.

Search also periodically rewrites _parts_ of the search stack. Caffeine [1] was a complete rewrite of the indexing system, Hummingbird [2] is a near- complete rewrite of the ranking algorithm, Panda [3] and Penguin [4] were partial rewrites of the ranking algorithm, the serving system continually gets rewritten, and we redid the visual design every year starting in 2010 [5][6][7][8]. You'll notice that there was no 2012 redesign; it was canceled. That's what happens when the "new" search isn't better than the "old" search.

[1] [http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search- index-...](http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index- caffeine.html)

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

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

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

[5] [http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/spring- metamorphosis-...](http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/spring- metamorphosis-googles-new-look.html)

[6] [http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/24/3904134/google-redesign- ho...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/24/3904134/google-redesign-how-larry- page-engineered-beautiful-revolution)

[7] [http://searchengineland.com/google-launches-new-unified- desi...](http://searchengineland.com/google-launches-new-unified-design-for- mobile-devices-172991)

[8] [https://www.google.com/design/spec/material- design/introduct...](https://www.google.com/design/spec/material- design/introduction.html)

<comment><USER31> Can you disclose how much "better" for such rewrites? And what metrics were measured? I guess there is a conflict between CTRs on organic results and ads, so one has to be picked (or maybe a combo of the two). And what the magnitudes of the improvements? a few percentage or a few bp?

<comment><USER12> I can't disclose which metrics are measured, sorry. Basically, they had to be at least metrics-neutral with strategic value (where "strategic value" means "some exec thinks this is a good idea and we really need to do it"), or pretty strongly metrics-positive without an exec's personal interest. Conflicts between CTRs on organic results vs. ads happen less often than you think, they're usually an issue only on full-page redesigns. I was an informed bystander for a few of them - I can't detail the precise process, but let's say that it's a complex balancing act that tries to balance the interests of all constituencies: users, webmasters, advertisers, and shareholders. (The one constituency that _doesn 't_ get a break are the poor engineers and PMs that have to implement it all..we often had some incredibly complex solutions to make the page marginally more user-friendly.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> > A report from The Economic Times of India says that Google is working on a > fifth instant messaging program. This one reportedly won't require a Google > account and will be aimed at Whatsapp.

And how will Google be able to get onto the Whatsapp network and use their proprietary protocols?

<comment><USER33> I think they mean the new app is "aimed at [surpassing] WhatsApp", not that they're building a clone that runs on the WhatsApp network.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> It's just a waste of productivity. Not a strategy.

<comment><USER35> Back in the day people explained the USSR's superior economic performance (according to the public data at the time) as being due to the USSR not wasting resources on competition like capitalist countries did.

If you assume the planner knows the right thing to do is that's actually a perfectly valid argument. It's actually pretty heartening to see the people leading Google don't believe this about themselves, though, because people who think that usually aren't correct.

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


Show HN: Detect articles with corporate sponsors - <AUTHOR> http://www.ianww.com/ad-detector/ <comment><USER2> John Oliver gets into how bad the practice has become lately in a recent Last Week Tonight episode: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_F5GxCwizc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_F5GxCwizc)

<comment><USER3> That's good. It reminds me of a recent blog post by Yoni Freedhoff about nutritionists posting sponsored tweets. Often the disclosure is not at all obvious.

[http://www.weightymatters.ca/2014/07/7-nutrition-hashtags- yo...](http://www.weightymatters.ca/2014/07/7-nutrition-hashtags-you-need-to- be.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is cool, but a lot of PR is even more devious! At my first job ever, I was sometimes paid to simultaneously ghost-write stories by executives, then pitch the stories to magazines. So, it was still crap advertorials masquerading as content, but even harder to detect.

I wonder if you could do a linguistic analysis to gauge bias and ad-iness, and show a score. Gather a corpus of paid advertorials and compare to ostensibly unpaid material.

<comment><USER5> This I don't mind.

At my company though, those articles are ghost-written, and then they ask every employee to retweet and share it on Facebook and LinkedIn. It hasn't gotten to the point where we get in trouble for not doing it, but I fear that point is quickly approaching.

One line that I won't cross is if they start requiring me to post to social media using my personal accounts, and I will change jobs over it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I remember that a respected West Coast newspaper contacted my tiny retail store about doing some advertising with them in the mid 90s. The sales person actually said it that if I placed a certain amount of advertising with them, I would have a reporter come out and do a human interest story for the local section of the paper.

Talk about native advertising!

Since then I've learned to expect that at least 80% of the stories in papers are planted stories. That is they are stories whose ideas and information is provided by PR firms.

The best ones are the ones where it is not obvious.

A recent crazy but is it? example: national quasi-public radio here in Eastern Europe has been running reports on [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_Trade_and_Investm...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_Trade_and_Investment_Partnership)

They sent a reporter to USA to interview what seems to be overwhelming pro TTIP sources.

A public radio station struggling for funds sending a reporter on a month long junket? Something does not vibe right here.

I am hoping the financing comes from some EU public fund and not something even more nefarious.

This reminds of the time that US paid journalists if they run anti-drug stories.

Here's a very leftist source but I assume the facts are correct: [http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2005/01/will-j13.html](http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2005/01/will-j13.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> Can it perhaps have an option to strip native advertising from my web experience completely?

I don't want to see links to native advertising. I don't want to see the short leader blurbs about them showing up when I visit the front page of other news sites. I don't want to even be aware that native advertising exists, I want it completely torn out of any article or website that I go to.

Ironically I would likely even pay a small one-time fee for such an extension/program.

</comment><comment><USER7> I work in media (for Mashable, specifically, though not in an editorial capacity), and I'm puzzled as to how people are getting native advertising so wrong. I'm aware that my paycheck is linked to this sort of thing, so full biases disclosed, but I really do think that there's a misunderstanding of what it actually _is_. There's this tendency to conflate "someone paid money to have their name attached to this article" with "someone paid to have a good article written about them", and they're _wildly_ different.

(I should disclaim that these are my personal opinions as someone in the industry, and I don't claim to speak on behalf of my employer)

"Native advertising" like _The Atlantic_ 's Scientology advertorial is unequivocally bad. It's sneaky, it's underhanded, it purports to be unbiased reporting when it's anything but. However, that is really the exception rather than the rule. (It's worth noting that this has been the status quo in print magazines for quite some time; brands provide 1- or 2-page ads which are presented to look like an article that belongs in the magazine, with a tiny bit of "This is an advertisement" text stuffed in a corner. I'll scan a few if folks are interested. They're massively worse than the sort of native advertising under discussion here.)

"Good" native advertising is the practice of letting brands pay to attach their names to thematically-relevant articles, whose content is _not_ bought, directed by, or advertising the brand who wishes to advertise on it. This pays really well for media outlets, converts well for advertisers, and results in less obtrusive, annoying advertising for readers. For example, from the FTC workshop on native advertising:

> [An example] is American Express, who came to us looking to reach female > small business owners. So what we created on Mashable was a site called -- > sorry, a content series, including videos and articles and info-graphics > called "The Female Founders Series" where we profiled female entrepreneurs > in technology, profiles and videos and vignettes, that we published on > Mashable that were presented by American Express.

([http://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/public_events/1713...](http://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/public_events/171321/final_transcript_1.pdf) page 43)

In this case, profiling female startup founders is directly in Mashable's wheelhouse; it is relevant to our audience (which is socially and technologically savvy, young, and a majority of whom are female), and it's relevant to our advertiser. At no point are Amex's services pushed or touted or even talked about. Amex doesn't get to write the articles or have any editorial control over them. Our KPIs are typically engagement, so in order to deliver on our end of the deal, we have to provide content that people enjoy and want to share. The sponsorship is clearly disclosed in the interest of transparency, but at no point does the sponsor get to inject their brand, agenda, or marketing fluff into the actual content; it is always adjacent to it in the form of "sponsored by" highlights and traditional ad units.

The key difference here is that Amex can say "We want our name to be in front of people for every page view of this series of content", rather than "We are going to do a traditional ad buy which will be demographically targeted to US females 19-30 years old, which may or may not end up associated with this series of content". They can't say "Write about this founder, and tell the story of how Amex made her business succeed"; we flat out will not do that.

I'm of the opinion that this kind of advertising is actually _better_ for all involved, as long as editorial independence is maintained. All media is sponsored at some level - advertising drives the entire industry - so if the benchmark for "good" content is "content that advertisers don't have any stake in", then...well, good luck. Advertisements that advertisers push through otherwise-respected media outlets in the guise of articles written by the outlet from a journalistic standpoint are bad, but they are the tiny minority of native advertising.

<comment><USER8> Do you think that brands paying for their name to be associated with articles does not influence the content and quality of the journalism?

Do you think a series about solar energy sponsored by BP is not going to be less critical of BP?

While the distinction you make is valid in theory, it requires a legitimate firewall between advertisers and journalists, a safeguard that is in rapid decline in most places.

Personally, I presume any sponsored content is influenced by the sponsor.

<comment><USER7> The intent is that it does not influence the content and quality of the journalism. How well that is actually maintained is up to the sales and editorial teams striking the deal, of course.

A good team won't take a deal that will tie their hands; if BP says "We want a solar energy series, but you can't say anything bad about us", then that deal isn't likely to be struck. We might pitch them on an alternate series that doesn't risk putting them in the crosshairs, but letting the brand have any say in the content is a big no-no, and the sales team works to try to find advertising opportunities that work well with advertisers, rather than working against them.

Just personally, I think it's healthy to assume that any sponsored content is influenced by the sponsor, but I don't think it's valid to write off any content that happens to have a sponsorship attached to it as invalid, inaccurate, or biased. Be suspicious, but equating native advertising with PR dronespeak is flawed.

<comment><USER9> BP wouldn't say "we want a solar energy series but you can't say anything bad about us".

They'd say "we want a solar energy series, and we might want another in three months depending on results". The writers would simply not bite the hand that feeds them.

<comment><USER7> BP doesn't talk to the writers; they talk to sales. The hand that feeds the writers is very specifically not the advertiser. I can't speak for other companies, but our sales team is good enough to recognize that an alternative energy series sponsored by BP is ripe with potential for conflict, and would likely steer them in a different direction.

I really do hear what you're saying, and I 110% agree that it's a legitimate concern. If I saw a post on solar energy sponsored by BP, I'd be looking for the hook, too. That's why you need a good business development and sales team; recognizing those conflicts and working around them before they become an issue is a critical component in making this kind of thing actually work.

<comment><USER10> [http://mashable.com/2013/06/25/call-to- hacktion/](http://mashable.com/2013/06/25/call-to-hacktion/) [http://mashable.com/people/lauren-drell/](http://mashable.com/people/lauren- drell/) [http://mashable.com/2013/08/16/hdhacks- recap/](http://mashable.com/2013/08/16/hdhacks-recap/)

So they talk to a "Branded Editor" who writes the intro and then you post it as a series of native articles which is just marketing content straight from Home Depot.

It seems BP would be able to do the same thing which is effectively identical.

Maybe this seems fine to you but it doesn't to me.

It is one thing to have what are essentially links to other sites as "native advertising" its quite another to let them shill on your site. Imo anyway.

<comment><USER7> This is standard business development - mutually-beneficial partnerships which result in business gains for both parties involved. The series you linked is, IMO, a pretty decent example of native advertising. Original content was produced, the partnership with Home Depot was very clearly and loudly disclosed, at no point were there "Here are the links to the Home Depot(R) items you need to build these things, go buy them" links stuffed into the content, and the content is related to Home Depot's business (and may in fact incentivize people to go to Home Depot to buy things, the horror!) and yet is not "Home Depot is the best, Lowes sux, go buy all your stuff at Home Depot".

To let a brand "shill on your site" is called advertising. It's fine to hate it, but it is what it is. At question here isn't the practice, but rather, the degree to which it's made clear to the reader what is advertiser-produced and what is not, and the question of whether advertising copy is being pitched as not-advertising or not.

Given the chance, how would you do it better?

<comment><USER10> > Given the chance, how would you do it better?

> It is one thing to have what are essentially links to other sites as "native > advertising"

You already have "Presented by" posts that link offsite. Only use those types of "native" ad units.

It works with Google, it works on Reddit, etc.

It has no conflict of interest issue.

You don't have the issue of "Presented by" not being interpreted as "Paid for by" [which is what it is and not everyone will realize it]. Etc.

Get rid of the shill syndication that is basically "reporting on the market we sell stuff in".

But hey, if you are happy with it, go for it. I'll just go elsewhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Great Idea - I think this really should be integrated with [http://allaregreen.us/](http://allaregreen.us/)

AllareGreen is a "..free browser extension for Chrome, Safari, and Firefox that exposes the role money plays in Congress. Displays on any web page detailed campaign contribution data for every Senator and Representative, including total amount received and breakdown by industry and by size of donation."

In fact I am rudimentarily working on a Bias Detector type application that shows, if it is sponsored content, if the main principals mentioned in it are on the payroll of companies etc (does some other things such as Sentiment analysis, chronology ordering etc).

<comment><USER12> Can you tell more about that application? Is it going to be open source? Is there any way I could contribute?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm not sure that I like this. I know it's not really like Adblock or whatever it's called.

I _never_ notice advertisements, and I am surprised more people aren't the same. You've been doing the same thing for years -- it's so easy to tell what's content and who's not.

I so occasionally get caught by the very clever ones - and so what? If you're big on privacy, I guess you would care more tun I would

As I'm growing older I don't mind donating small amounts of monies to good websites and projects. I just wish more people were like me in that regards -- it'd definitely be more profitable IMO. Has anyone got any experience in this (a/b testing maybe?!). I think this behaviour came from the ease of buying from Google Play or the App store... It's almost like, "I just spent $35 on apps last night?"

Some corporate advertisements really are stupid. I just imagine someone's crated the perfect advert and the client goes, "make it pop!!!". Those are the ones I would not mind vanishing - but if it's helping the website then I'm all for it -- my continued visits are purely based on their content and ease of use.

<comment><USER2> This is an ad. [http://ad-assets.nytimes.com/paidpost/dell/will- millennials-...](http://ad-assets.nytimes.com/paidpost/dell/will-millennials- ever-completely-shun-the-office.html#.Us2ZbfRDvni) The entire article is an ad - you're saying you wouldn't notice this? The whole point of native advertising is that it's not easy anymore to tell what's advertising and what isn't. Only 41% of visitors realized that native ads were advertising at all. [http://www.iab.net/about_the_iab/recent_press_releases/press...](http://www.iab.net/about_the_iab/recent_press_releases/press_release_archive/press_release/pr-072214)

<comment><USER13> Thank you heaps for your comment! I'm not quite sure why I am being down-voted though. To clarify my browsing habits are at the point where if I do see an intrusive advertisement or something that is just words rather than a coherent bit of content I'm looking for.

I clicked your link and immediately closed it. Then opened, looked closely, and my eyes did not catch on to anything so I closed it again.

Your second link was very informative, interesting stuff though.

The rest of you can't tell me your browsing habits have not evolved enough to know what is which and this is that?

<comment><USER2> How would you even know? I can say that mine have not. Ars Technica started cross-posting articles from Wired, which I would rather avoid. But for weeks, I would only realize that I had clicked one when I got to the bottom of the article. It's just exhausting to check all the bylines all the time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> nice, how are you doing the detection. do you have to some logic specific to each of the major "news" sites, or is it more generalized than that?

<comment><USER2> Your other post (the one you edited) is dead because it was a duplicate of this one. You should delete that one and edit this one instead.

<comment><USER14> I've got an HN chrome extension that might have caused the glitch. oops. I'll leave it alone as slang800 answered it. thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Cool - will definitely install!

I've been working on some projects along similar lines. First one is [http://churnalism.com/extension](http://churnalism.com/extension)

Browser extensions which check news articles against a central database of press releases, and can highlight shared text. Disclaimers: It's pretty UK- centric and I think the infrastructure needs a lot more work. I'm somewhat hesitant to expose it to HN at all... but hey :-)

There is also [http://unsourced.org](http://unsourced.org), which lets you attach warning labels onto news articles. There's a browser extension for that too, but the whole project is pretty quiescent right now while I work on other things. But I've got a lot of plans for both these projects...

Not one of mine, but for a more US-oriented tool, also check out: [http://churnalism.sunlightfoundation.com/](http://churnalism.sunlightfoundation.com/) (again a website + browser extension combo)

</comment><comment><USER16> I don't think I need a browser extension to tell me that the bulk of content on the example sites they show (especially Forbes and Buzzfeed) is sponsored.

I'm more interested to see how it performs on less obvious sites that at least maintain an air of journalistic integrity.

<comment><USER17> you can read the logic here: [https://github.com/typpo/ad- detector/blob/master/src/rules.j...](https://github.com/typpo/ad- detector/blob/master/src/rules.js)

<comment><USER16> I was more or less criticizing their presentation of their product rather than the actual product, i.e. I think they could use better examples.

<comment><USER18> The examples were done on the most trafficked sources first since a lot of people visit these sites frequently. Anyone can contribute new rules for matching and detecting advertorials.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I would like to see a lot more projects along this line of thinking.

</comment><comment><USER20> Nice. I'll check this out. I was also hoping that it did some type of heuristic detection, but I know how hard that can be to get right.

</comment><comment><USER21> If there's anything worse than the giant banner ads, it's the ones that trick you into clicking them.

</comment><comment><USER22> Great idea!

Installed.

</comment><comment><USER23> That's cute. Installed.</comment>


My Favorite Startup Lessons From Startup School - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2010/10/16/my-9-favorite-startup-lessons-from-startup-school/

<comment><USER2> _Conviction Isn't Everything_

It's easy to quit when things aren't going well and you don't have conviction.

<comment><USER3> I would expand/reword Gannes' point as:

 _You have to work past some initially misguided, romantic illusions._

I saw this theme in (at least) three of the talks.

Andrew Mason spoke of moving from the abstract, wishful-thinking, crusading original vision of the ThePoint to the concrete, feedback-enhanced, tangible- returns model of Groupon.

Dalton Caldwell, founder of Imeem, contrasted the wide emotional appeal of remake-the-music-industry startup concepts with the hard numbers and legal environment that makes those same dreamy businesses impractical.

Brian Chesky of Airbnb showed that even with their basic concept in place from the start, and a series of creative launches and early media coverage, getting both their offering and messaging just right for eventual hypergrowth took lots of detours, time, and tweaks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great read. Does Groupon really have 2500 people on staff?

</comment><comment><USER5> "Go to your users!" PG to AirBnB</comment>


Bugs in web service app before you release it to public, even for beta - <AUTHOR>

If you are doing a web service and you know it is going to take about the next 6 months of your time irregularly to fix some bugs. But you already have reached a point where your service can be useful with bugs to your customers.<p>What's your opinion on releasing your product. Whether you would release it or not. <comment><USER2> Considering it doesn't crash or having game-breaking bugs - ship this bi*ch.

As to the time - depends on the situation. The more severe, annoying or disabling the bug, the more rapid solutions one must apply.

I personally, can't give you direct estimate on the collective people's expectation.

</comment><comment><USER3> In my experience most customers are pretty tolerant as long as you immediately fix the bugs. If you take your time fixing the bugs they'll start wondering whether you're still working on the software. Not a good situation. Customers want to be sure that you're on top of things.

<comment><AUTHOR> For bugs in web services, how much time do you think is feasible (that you can fix bugs in) before customers get disappointed and starts to leave your product if you are unable to fix the bugs.

<comment><USER3> I don't know. I almost always fix the bugs immediately (same or next day). If I can't do that in that short time frame, I'll explain it to the customer and ask them to give me a couple of days to fix it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> No software is ever 100% bug free. I say ship it and use customer feedback to help find new bugs and prioritise the fixing of known ones.</comment>


Does Familiarity Breed Contempt Among Judges Deciding Patent Cases? - <AUTHOR> http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2347712

<comment><USER2> "Notably, the relationship exists for rulings finding noninfringement; judicial experience had no relationship to the likelihood a judge would find a patent invalid"

<comment><USER3> Thank you for posting this. This is yet another argument in favor of the "do not editorialize in titles" policy.

<comment><USER4> We changed the title to be that of the article. (The submitted title was 'Lemley: "more experienced judges are less likely to rule for the [patent owner]"'—which, to be fair, is an accurate quote from the abstract.)

<comment><USER5> Reading the title as it now provides interesting material for brief thought experiments. Since it isn't clear whether the judges tend to favor patent owners or those with new products and services that may infringe, one can imagine reactions to either finding. If the judges tend to favor the new/infringing products, then we can imagine a reaction affirming the judges' status as experts, and saying that the perspective from that status further proves how messed up the system is. Alternately, we can imagine that the judges are consistently finding in favor of patent holders, and begin winding up to deliver an explanation of how the problems of the system are exacerbated by judges who have little familiarity with the technology.

I could be wrong in imagining that the reactions are so malleable, but if they are it says to me that this type of survey treatment of the data is probably a worthless exercise in confirming biases. A bias toward believing there are too many patents issued for ideas that are not novel can be correct, while at the same time anything that confirms the same conclusions regardless of opposite findings is probably a waste of time. I could also be missing the point of the paper though.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Pimp my uTorrent: An angular.js app to remove the ads in uTorrent with 2 clicks - <AUTHOR> http://schizoduckie.github.io/PimpMyuTorrent/#/

<comment><USER2> Neat concept and website. But it doesn't work for all the ads especially the top bar banner right below the search bar and above the active torrents.

<comment><AUTHOR> have you tried restarting utorrent? :)

Some of the changes don't appear unless you restart it.</comment></comment>