Artificial eyespots on cattle reduce predation by large carnivores - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-020-01156-0 <comment><USER2> I live in an area with native Cougar and Bear. Local hunters told me a couple decades ago the best thing to do in the woods when you are alone is to put your sunglasses on the back of your head. They explained that large cats typically attack from behind. When the glasses are on the back of your head it confuses the cat as to which direction you are looking and makes them hesitate (therefore less likely) to attack you.

It always made sense to me. This study seems to reinforce their advice.

<comment><USER3> Tangentially related: fighter jets do this too.

Interesting how universal these tricks seem to be.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_CF-18_Hornet...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_CF-18_Hornet#/media/File:Canada_Joins_the_Fight_Against_ISIL_141030-F-MG591-642.jpg)

<comment><USER4> Now I'm laughing at the idea that this was the purpose behind the WW2-era fake teeth painted on fighter planes.

They really need a second study that paints big gnarly WW2 fighter teeth on cows to see what effect it has.

<comment><USER5> No big gnarly teeth, but re: the sibling comments, searching "dazzle cows" reveals [https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/figures?id=10.1371...](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/figures?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0223447)

sadly not genuine dazzle camo but in the ballpark

<comment><USER4> That's neat and makes sense. I mean, aren't zebras basically "dazzle horses"?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The eyes were painted on the cattle's butts.

Went looking for images, the article did not disappoint: [https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-020-01156-0/figures/1](https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-020-01156-0/figures/1)

<comment><USER7> That is indeed terrifying. I can see how predators might have second thoughts

<comment><USER8> I wonder how it affects their fellow cattle, though. It must be weird to see your colleagues staring at you with their butts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Anyone who's read Babar the Elephant knows that trick :-)

[https://www.telerama.fr/sites/tr_master/files/styles/simplec...](https://www.telerama.fr/sites/tr_master/files/styles/simplecrop1000/public/assets/images/085-1-2_0.jpg?itok=NlqjJpxi)

</comment><comment><USER10> In India, Tigers attack and eat people on a regular basis. Villagers wear specially made face masks on the back of the head to confuse and dissuade attacks from the back.

There is evidence that prehistoric cats preyed on humans enough to have evolved specialized incisor teeth for crushing human sculls.

<comment><USER11> I'm assuming they're a protected species or firearms of sufficient caliber are not prevalent in these villages?

<comment><USER12> A handgun won't be of much use if you're jumped on from behind by a beast 3 times your weight and many times your strength.

<comment><USER13> If pouncing on villagers routinely resulted in catching a 12ga slug (buddy system when doing high risk things will do a pretty good job of guaranteeing that) then the tigers that live long enough to pass on their genes would be the ones that don't make a habit of pouncing on villagers.

It only takes a few generations for animals to become afraid of or lose their fear of humans. You see this in all sorts of species when hunting pressure is applied/removed.

<comment><USER14> I suspect you'd find that a single untrained human, even well-armed, isn't always sufficient to kill a tiger.

So rather than avenge your buddy and improve the tiger gene pool, you'd get killed too.

<comment><USER13> You don't have to get them every time just often enough that they stop doing it It's about making it statically much riskier for the tigers to misbehave, not saving everyone.

<comment><USER14> Per [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger_attack](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger_attack) the majority who attack humans are infirm and desperate. Doubt taking them out of the gene pool would do any long-term good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm kind of thinking that this wouldn't scale. If some of the cattle have eye spots and others in the same area don't, the predators might be intimidated, or they might just say "that's weird, I'll hunt something else". But if all of the cattle have eye spots added, the cougars might just think "f it, I'm hungry".

<comment><USER16> My thoughts exactly. It'd be good if multiple separate herds could be tested, but that would get pretty expensive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> > Although no known contemporary mammals display anti-predator eyespots, the > effects of eye patterns and gaze have been shown to modify behaviour in this > Class including in humans, domestic and wild canids, and domestic cats.

Is there a reason mammals don't/haven't evolved this way? With cattle and other domestic animals I can understand that humans have been knowingly and unknowingly interfering with evolution so I suppose that isn't surprising. But why haven't deer or bunnies, for example, evolved to have white patches on their rear ends the way insects and birds have?

<comment><USER18> I suppose if they all had it, noone would be fooled anymore.

<comment><USER19> That argument would seem to apply to insects with eye markings as well, so can't be correct here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> First black and white spots to reduce mosquito bites, now artificial eyespots to reduce predation. By the end of decade, the cattles will look like mutants from a glance.

It's not bad though.

<comment><USER21> We are all mutants.

<comment> blaser-waffle In fact, you are descendant from the original mutant(s)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm wondering if the same effect applies to humans. For example adding pictures of staring managers/bosses in offices, painting faces/eyes reduce certain behavior. A cool experiment would be paintings of police men reducing graffiti

<comment><USER23> Posters of eyes in cafeterias make it more likely for people to clean up after themselves [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S10905...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1090513810001224)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Everything is better with googly eyes on.

</comment><comment><USER25> Interesting. If that's the case, I wonder why no large mammals evolved these patterns like for example, butterflies did.

<comment><USER26> It might be one of those things that fools predators for a few generations, and then starts having the opposite effect. Lions learn to look for the massive eyes, cos they're the tastiest bit of a cow...

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Seagulls are real rascals where I live. The rude little buggers will grab your lunch right out of your hands, especially if you sit down, and become unobservant for a second. But here's a neat trick. Just look them in the eyes. This will make them really uneasy. An informal test is to put your lunch down on the ground while you stare into their hungry eyes. Usually they won't dare to grab it, or they'll stay insecure longer, before making an attempt. Some will just straight out fly off, once you start to give them the evil eye. And about that, another great way to get rid of birds, is to start walking around them like someone stalking them for dinner. They won't stay long if you give off predator vibes.

</comment><comment><USER28> It works in stores to prevent shoplifting too.

And to keep people from trying to buy cigarettes while underage.

Eyes are magic. Pattern recognition that reaches down deep, maybe past the reptilian. Getting looked at can cause anxiety.

Maybe this adds to the appeal of masks.

<comment><USER29> >reaches down deep, maybe past the reptilian

it goes straight to the amygdala - the "lizard" or the "fight or flight" brain - see the brain scans in the link below for example. It is very short connection path from retina, something like right past the primary visual cortex, right beyond the last layers of simple/automatic pattern matching.

[http://nautil.us/issue/39/sport/the-strange-brain-of-the- wor...](http://nautil.us/issue/39/sport/the-strange-brain-of-the-worlds- greatest-solo-climber)

> Getting looked at can cause anxiety.

not surprisingly as it is usually the last thing one see before being attacked, so no wonder that amygdala starts to fire well before your conscious comes up with upper level decision whether there is any danger.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Reminds me of the watching-eye effect:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watching- eye_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watching-eye_effect)

<comment><USER31> The Eye of Sauron is a great motivator.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> The really surprising thing about this is that it took so long for people to think of it.

People have been painting eyes on boats for millennia (for no practical reason we _know_ about--maybe our ancestors had a problem now passed?) and wearing fake eyes on their own backsides for decades, but painting cattle never came up.

Even more novel is the idea, suggested in the conclusion, of using eyespots to protect depleted predator species against retribution by armed herdkeepers.

</comment><comment><USER33> Wow, eyes on your butt saves your butt. I'm surprised that predators would not have figured this out and started ignoring them but apparently 100% survival rate. Definitely an improvement.

I wonder if you could make highly durable vinyl stick on eyes that would allow you to just apply them once a year. Put prism covers and you could make them blink as the cow moved like those cards that flip between two images based on the angle.

</comment><comment><USER34> Interesting. From what I understand, an 'eye' pattern can be computed by taking variations of the standard map.

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

Cellular automata and reaction-diffusion is well observed in biology as morphogenesis.

I'm curious, is there a color-specific advantage to monochromatic patterns that can be explained by theory?

</comment><comment><USER35> I was amused by a podcast I listened to where some guy delivered donuts and a pay on the honor system coffee can. He found that drawing a pair of obviously fake eyes on the collection box significantly increased the amount of money he received per donut.

So apparently even humans are sensitive to obviously fake eyes.

</comment><comment><USER36> The reduction in predation by large carnivores masks the fact that african large carnivores are being systematically wipped.

And, well... most large carnivores hunt at night. I think that white eyespots just would make preys more visible in the dusk and dawn, when the "90%" of predation events happen.

</comment><comment><USER37> I remember seeing a documentary where they showed fish having "eye" spots on their rear: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foureye_butterflyfish](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foureye_butterflyfish). I found it such a hack.

</comment><comment><USER38> What's more crazy about this is that the 25 day survival rate for these cattle is only 98%.

</comment><comment><USER39> <goes to buy Googly Eye Glasses to wear on the back of my head to avoid mountain lions>

<comment><USER40> I've heard years ago that wearing googly eyes on the back of your helmet is a good way to cut the chance of a cougar attack on a bike. Just like you I think I'll go grab some today!

<comment><USER41> I wonder if googly eyes on the back of a bike helmet would reduce the chance that you get rear-ended by a car as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> "Should animals have more eyes? Why don't they? Onion Science Editor Raef Gillis wonders." [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUOAZisYQjM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUOAZisYQjM)

</comment><comment><USER43> Surely predators will eventually learn that eyes on the back of animals are to be ignored?

<comment><USER44> > ... eyes on the back of animals ...

Q: Cubs! If you attack a horned prey animal from the front, what will happen to you?

A: You will be gored.

Q: Cubs! How do we know which end of the animal is the back?

A: The back end has no eyes.

Q: Cubs! What happens to us if we do not pay attention to prey eyes?

A: We will not reproduce.

<comment><USER45> The back ends tend to be a bit kick-y.

Is that a quote?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> I can honestly say that this is the most unusual article I have ever seen on Hacker News.

</comment><comment><USER47> It's interesting to relate this to adversarial attacks on computer vision systems. Something "low-tech" like this that works on mammal predators might protect against predator drones one day.

</comment><comment><USER11> Looks like the cross marked cattle faired better than unmarked as well (though not as well as those with false eyes). I wonder the significance of that.

</comment><comment><USER48> Maybe painting a gaping artificial mouth snarling with long pointy fangs on a cow's butt would help too?

</comment><comment><USER49> Sounds like adversarial patches

</comment><comment><USER50> Won't predators learn eventually not to get fooled by that?

<comment><USER51> Do you mean at an evolutionary time scale or within their life times?

<comment><USER52> I think both would occur, as long as the particular predator has a sophisticated enough brain to learn this.

On an evolutionary timescale, there would probably be an arms race of sorts leading to an equilibrium of predator/prey phenotypes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> These are basically adversarial techniques to take advantage of weaknesses in a biological neural net. Love it.

</comment><comment><USER54> Even better: Eyespots with built in lasers.

</comment><comment><USER55> I bet if you painted a picture of Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia founder) on the cow, not only would the carnivores not eat the cows, they would probably bring the cows food.</comment>


Around February, I saw an article about fault vs. responsibility. Can't find it - <AUTHOR> Please help...
If you know the article I'm referring to, please let me know.
It was an older looking website, not on a platform like medium, or any type of blog hosting site.
It had a bunch of scenarios and laid out who is to blame in that scenario..
It was based on the idea of having to stop blaming yourself for everything, while still taking responsibility, and not feeling guilt/shame for everything.
It was really well written, and everything I'm finding on Google is terrible. I've also looked through pretty much all the articles using the algolia search for pretty much all relevant keywords.
If you can help me with my search, I'd really appreciate it. <comment><USER2> maybe: [https://medium.com/shipharder/take-responsibility-dont- blame...](https://medium.com/shipharder/take-responsibility-dont-blame-it-on- the-users-7978f78d0d)

or: [https://medium.com/serious-scrum/the-subtle-art-of- avoiding-...](https://medium.com/serious-scrum/the-subtle-art-of-avoiding- blame-and-taking-responsibility-998bb7f33d2f)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the try! It was an older looking website, not on a platform like medium, or any type of blog hosting site. Thanks.</comment></comment>


How Internet startups lose value with greater traction - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/design-startups/dbd4be853322

<comment><USER2> Ah, remember the rise and fall of ChatRoulette ^_^? First example this article gives, in " _#1 – LESS SOPHISTICATED PARTICIPANTS ENTERING THE SYSTEM DILUTE VALUE_ ", of how in that case a lack of curation killed it.

The article, which includes suggestions for solutions of problems, looks comprehensive and very useful.</comment>


How to Do Business with Extremely Busy People - <AUTHOR> http://www.aaronstannard.com/post/2012/02/10/How-to-Do-Business-with-Extremely-Busy-People.aspx

<comment><USER2> _Email is often a crappy medium for doing business anyway – pick up the phone and call the busy person's office if you aren't able to get ahold of them via email_

People seem to be one way or the other on this. Personally, I hate blocking communication like phone calls and visits, especially when busy. I think a busy person's time is most respected with non-blocking queries.</comment>


Show HN: Bongo – Go ODM for MongoDB - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/maxwellhealth/bongo

<comment><AUTHOR> As our team has been transitioning to Go for some services. We've built a few awesome open sources repos for Go lang. We would love any feedback and help. You can view all of our Go projects at [http://maxwellhealth.github.io/#/Go](http://maxwellhealth.github.io/#/Go)</comment>


Tell HN: Don't stay up late commenting on HN - <AUTHOR>

Many of you are going to stay up late commenting on HN posts tonight, or any other given night. When you do this, you're wasting time that could be spent sleeping. By depriving yourself of sleep, you are less able to handle the stress of the next day. Please take care of yourself and get the fuck off of the internet. You're not needed here. Thanks! <comment><USER2> Actually I'm perfectly competent at making my own decisions. Piss off.

<comment><USER3> You're not acting like it.

<comment><USER4> Leave him alone. He's just cranky from lack of sleep.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "When you do this, you're wasting time that could be spent sleeping."

Why not just argue the general point: When you are on HN you're wasting time that could be spent doing something productive.

</comment><comment><USER6> Perfect night for this if you're in a place that just had a DST switch-over. To me it doesn't feel like 11:30PM at all. Initiating "get the fuck off the internet" subroutine now...

</comment><comment><USER7> oh yeah, daylight savings.

goodnight!

</comment><comment><USER8> Why should I waste time sleeping when I can be posting scarcely relevant comments to occasionally inane HN submissions, for example the suggestion that people not stay up so late?

</comment><comment><USER9> What if you sleep in the morning?

</comment><comment><USER10> I just woke up and I'm commenting on HN while I'm taking a crap. This allowed?

</comment><comment><USER11> No, thank _you_.

<comment><USER12> Well placed italics totally inverts the meaning of the sentence. Nice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Try again, next time with data like "posts after 10pm get fewer up votes than those during other times of day. Even when controlling for timezone."</comment>


LIGO detects probable black hole merger event - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/ligo/status/1145405632553656326 <comment><USER2> With the caveat that I have nothing to do with ligo and so don't know much...

I _think_ that during this ligo run (it just turned back on in April-ish) they expect to find roughly 1 event per week. So this will be fairly common! [1] is a nice summary of what they have found so far.

For people here interested in the engineering side of LIGO, it is absolutely mind blowing. The effect of the gravitational waves is tiny (fractions of the size of a proton change in length) and so there are so many things that need to be incredibly tightly controlled for. I went to a talk on this a year or so ago, but can't find the slides... Here's a summary [2] and the wikipedia page also has some info.

1 - [https://www.sciencenews.org/article/ligo-virgo- made-5-likely...](https://www.sciencenews.org/article/ligo-virgo- made-5-likely-gravitational-wave-detections-month) 2 - [https://www.engineering.com/Education/EducationArticles/Arti...](https://www.engineering.com/Education/EducationArticles/ArticleID/14333/Engineering- the-LIGO-Gravitational-Wave-Detectors.aspx)

<comment><USER3> > fractions of the size of a proton change in length

...less than a ten-thousandth the charge diameter of a proton.

<comment><USER4> I wonder if, as we get to smaller scales, do things start quantizing? Are we far from it?

<comment><USER5> LIGO is extremely far from quantum gravity.

The gravitational waves in question have no quantum properties, either because they have so many quantum numbers in them that classical behaviour is recovered, or because they are classical "all the way down". LIGO, its siblings, and their foreseeable successors are unlikely to help resolve this. The results have already constrained the space of quantum gravity theories from which General Relativity must be recoverable, but that is not the same as preferring (much less indicating) any particular approach to quantum gravity that will be consistent with LIGO et al.'s results.

That said, LIGO's detector itself relies upon the details of quantum mechanics, as it is also sensitive to quantum noise from its immediate environment. However the quantum mechanics in question are purely local, and have nothing to do with distant events like binary black hole mergers. (LIGO is not sensitive to those distant quantum mechanics — it's either outright blind to them, or at best they blur into classicality — and it's hard to envisage a human-buildable detector that would be sensitive to their gravitational influence within our solar system).

<comment><USER6> Is there such a thing as real phenomena that's classical "all the way down", as you have put it? If yes, which such phenomena is easiest to understand?

I was under the impression that all of classical physics was special cases of quantum and relativistic physics, just like the relativistic equations of motion "degrade" into classical equations of motion when we postulate that all velocities involved are much lower than the speed of light.

<comment><USER7> In this sense "classical" means "not quantum". General relativity is "classic" in the sense that position and momentum are variables rather than operators. They have real values rather than functions.

So it's distinct from "classical" meaning "Newtonian" (or, perhaps "Newtonian + Maxwellian"), which is the sense in which "all of classical physics was special cases of quantum and relativistic physics".

<comment><USER5> Yes, all true, but we have the Hamiltonian formulation (e.g. [https://arxiv.org/abs/1505.01403](https://arxiv.org/abs/1505.01403) which is a nice book chapter) which "… is also the starting point for the canonical quantization program, which constitutes one main approach to the as yet unsolved problems of Quantum Gravity. In this approach one tries to make essential use of the Hamiltonian structure of the classical theory in formulating the corresponding quantum theory." From there you could jump to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canonical_quantum_gravity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canonical_quantum_gravity) which has references.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Ok, their twitter humor is on point: [https://twitter.com/LIGO/status/1145427537629208577](https://twitter.com/LIGO/status/1145427537629208577)

edit: actually all their replies are hilarious.

<comment><USER9> Wow yeah, these are hilarious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This will sound cynical, but at this point, it's no longer news unless it's a binary neutron star merger. If there's an electromagnetic counterpart, then it's _big_ news.

If you have a gravitational wave detection with an EM counterpart, you can get a redshift and luminosity distance, which means that you can measure the Hubble constant (in a way that is completely independent from Type Ia Supernovae). Binary black hole mergers are not expected to give off any EM radiation.

There should be a few binary neutron star mergers this run, and with some luck, there may be one with an EM counterpart.

<comment><USER11> Presumably if the location could be determined accurately enough and it was close to a galaxy, we could conclude that it was most likely _in_ that galaxy, and thereby get a useful measurement though?

<comment><USER10> Not with gravitational waves alone.

People do want to correlate large numbers of binary black hole mergers with galaxy positions and come up with a statistical measurement of the Hubble constant, but no single BBH merger will be clearly identified with one galaxy under that scheme. You need lots of mergers, and the Hubble-constant determination is more model-dependent.

Binary neutron stars with EM counterparts are much more straightforward.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Yes, the experimental details are stunning, particularly with an experimental physics background.

As someone who had a narrow escape from a PhD working on resonant bar-type detection attempts, I've never understood how those were ever thought to be sensitive enough -- whether decent calculations just weren't available or what. Unfortunately, you're typically not in a good position to evaluate such things before starting the work.

<comment><USER13> Weber's initial calculations and experiments with bar detectors were a reasonable effort, because gravitational waves were something that nobody believed in. Bar detector has an advantage - it is cheap. A strong enough wave could excite it and it would have been great and cheap discovery. But later when nothing was being reliably detected, people turned to more expensive interferometric detector. Today it is believed the bar type detector could only detect extreme events nearby, which are very unlikely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Can anyone explain how I should be reading that graph?

I'm surprised that the gravity anomaly is coming from a large region of space. And it's a curve. Is that expected? Why is it happening?

A black hole merge is coming from a single point in space, so I would have expected there to be a single point. But I'm definitely missing something.

<comment><USER15> It does come from a single point but they can not tell where inside the shaded area of space the single point was.

As far as I can tell from their website the event was seen by Virgo and only one of the Ligo detectors (Livingston), which makes localization in the sky rather uncertain. No clue at the moment why the second Ligo detector (Hanford) did not see it.

<comment><USER16> From what I understand a lack of detection can also tell you something about where the point of origin is.

<comment><USER15> If you had a working detector taking good data than not hearing it also tells you something. But if the detector was not taking good data for whatever reason (local seismic event, high surface winds, technical glitch), then it doesn't help you. Also afaik (and I am not an expert) the first automatic pipeline doesn't use non-detections.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> How can black holes merge from our perspective, if something needs an infinite time to reach the event horizon from our perspective?

<comment><USER18> Because it doesn't take infinite time from our perspective. The object falling into the black hole experiences strong time dilation due to the extreme gravitational field, but that doesn't affect a remote observer.

<comment><USER17> In the twin experiment, the observer sees his twin age slower, so it _does_ have a remote effect. From the perspective of the object falling into the black hole, the local conditions do not change, time is progressing normally etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm fascinated about the degree of automation. It seems that all the necessary computations are made and presented on that website. I would love to learn more about this and their tech stack.

</comment><comment><USER20> Was there not some severe doubt on the whole signal inference? I recall an article that critized them for some changes in the protocol and also questioned the statistical significance of their findings. How is the current state of that discussion?

<comment><USER21> Pretty much dismissed by later analysis I believe. Also, please bear in mind LIGO/VIRGO pinned down a neutron star merger with an optical counterpart, so there is independent confirmation the detectors can lift signal out of the noise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> 19 candidate events past 92 days since the improved system was turned on- about every five days.

I am not sure what elevates a candidate to a confirmed event.

Candidate events are posted quickly in hopes of observing associated photons.

</comment><comment><USER23> I love how that data is public, and viewable by anybody.

</comment><comment><USER24> This is so incredibly cool.

</comment><comment><USER25> Is there anywhere that I can read up to understand the graphs?</comment>


US pressured Dutch Safety Board to downplay tech faults in 2009 Boeing 737 crash - <AUTHOR> https://nltimes.nl/2020/01/21/us-pressured-dutch-safety-board-downplay-tech-faults-2009-turkish-airlines-crash-report <comment><USER2> Worth noting in Dutch news that the safety board chairman confirms US pressure, but denies that they altered the report or that the report downplays the tech faults in the first place [0].

[0]: [https://nos.nl/artikel/2319562-van-vollenhoven-vaker-druk- ui...](https://nos.nl/artikel/2319562-van-vollenhoven-vaker-druk-uitgeoefend- maar-we-bleven-altijd-onafhankelijk.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> From Chernobyl (TV series):

"When the truth offends, we lie and lie until we can no longer remember it is even there, but it is still there. Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid."

<comment><USER4> I guess there are people who really believe that reality is malleable and if you say something often enough it becomes "true", as O'Brien explains in 1984:

 _" I tell you, Winston, that reality is not external. Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes: only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal. Whatever the Party holds to be the truth, is truth."_

<comment><USER5> We do not talk about reality anymore. This is so 20th century stuff... We talk about alternate facts...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Relevant comment from yesterday: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22101953](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22101953)

"Even a fix now proposed for the Max has similarities with the past: After the crash near Amsterdam, the F.A.A. required airlines to install a software update for the NG that compared data from the plane's two sensors, rather than relying on just one. The software change Boeing has developed for the Max also compares data from two sensors.

Critically, in the case of the NG, Boeing had already developed the software fix well before the Turkish Airlines crash, including it on new planes starting in 2006 and offering it as an optional update on hundreds of other aircraft. But for some older jets, including the one that crashed near Amsterdam, the update wouldn't work, and Boeing did not develop a compatible version until after the accident."

<comment><USER7> I don't know anything at all about aviation, but if redundancy of sensors is so crucial to these systems then why don't they have like 10 of them on there just in case? Are they particularly expensive? Do they need to be in certain locations on the plane to work properly?

I'm obviously thinking about this from a software point of view where redundancy is cheap but I am curious if it's just greedy cost cutting or if there are legitimate reasons for this stuff.

<comment><USER8> Because that would add several million dollars to the airplane's price. An angle of attack sensor (the sensor MCAS relies on) for a small, twin-engine private jet can cost nearly $50,000. The ones in the MAX cost a lot more.

Even if cost wasn't an issue, space and weight are. There are just so much stuff you can tackle on the fuselage or inside the engine cowling before it starts affecting the airplanes ability to fly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> _-___________-_ It's really easy to pile on and see every single 737 crash from the past as somehow related to the MAX crashes now.

There are actually very few similarities between this crash and the MAX crashes. The failure was in one part of a highly redundant system with additional warning systems. The pilots failed to correctly react to the failure and failed to do basic airmanship like monitor their speed until it was too late.

Whereas the MAX failures may well have required well-above-average piloting skills and instincts to successfully recover from, this one simply required basic competence and attention.

<comment><USER9> Why are you focusing on the technical dissimilarities instead of the poor design based on one sensor and "blame the pilot" similarities?

<comment> _-___________-_ I don't believe the concept of "blame" has any place in air accident investigation. Pilots should be able to report their mistakes without fear of prosecution or internet mobs, and investigations should be able to highlight errors on the part of pilots where they exist without the same kind of fears.

This is not an automatic system relying on a single sensor, as MCAS was. An airliner in flight is a complex system of which the two pilots are a very significant part. There were multiple failures here, and the technical failure was not particularly unusual. What was quite unusual was a failure of basic airmanship on the part of the pilots. A good investigation would (and did) look at how that situation came about so that training or human-machine interface can be improved to prevent it happening again. It's not about blaming, it's about understanding.

<comment><USER10> That sounds interesting, but I still blame Boeing, liability is about blame and Boeing has been bending over backwards to blame pilots for its own technical failures.

<comment> _-___________-_ This kind of absolutism really doesn't help.

Air travel has made absolutely enormous strides in safety mostly because of rational investigations that don't focus on one party but try to understand all the factors that lead to an incident. The irrational, emotional response to the MAX incidents is eroding that.

Boeing and the FAA definitely have significant issues in culture and oversight. They should be resolved so that Boeing can continue to build safe aircraft and the FAA can effectively oversee the US aviation industry.

At the same time, not every pilot in every flight deck is the same. Some are more capable than others. Some have been trained better than others. Some come from a culture where the "power gradient" between captain and first officer is hard to overcome in order to provide effective CRM. Some come from a culture where they're afraid they'll lose their job if they accurately report incidents. All of these things, and more, are factors in air safety.

Focusing on one factor or one company really doesn't help.

<comment><USER11> Hmm.

Agree willingness to own up and discuss errors is critical to long term airline safety.

However you only seem to be applying this to pilots and not to Boeing!

Isn't the issue with the MAX, and potentially now earlier episodes, that for perhaps perfectly understandable commercial reasons, Boeing and even the FAA haven't been upfront and honest about engineering issues and how to improve stuff - ie _they_ have been guilty of playing the blame game - on to pilots - who are often conveniently dead.

<comment> _-___________-_ I think I've been quite clear that I see significant issues within Boeing and the FAA and that they should be resolved.

If you ignore the shrill media and look at the actual investigative work going on, I don't think anybody is seriously suggesting that the pilots were the sole cause of the MAX issues, and certainly nobody is "blaming" them.

At the same time, I don't know anyone working in aviation who thinks it's 100% a coincidence that the first crashes happened with those two airlines. There are always multiple factors in play.

My personal view on it is: the MAX was a flawed design due to the expectations it placed on pilot training, competency and in particular, instinct in a surprising situation. That's it. The aircraft was still capable of flying if the pilots reacted correctly to the failure, and the reaction was one that they were in theory trained for, but it's not reasonable to expect an average pilot to be able to do that instinctively in the time available.

Talking about "cost-cutting" or whether a certain engineering decision was made to save money is irrelevant, because engineers make trade-offs every day - that's an important part of their job - and every single aircraft flying (yes, including Airbus!) has a design that involves trade-offs, even in safety-related things. For reasons that are now being explored, Boeing's engineers made faulty assumptions when evaluating those trade-offs, probably augmented by pressure to avoid mandated additional training of pilots, and the regulatory oversight didn't catch it, or didn't want to due to being in a too- close relationship with Boeing. Those are the problems that need to be solved on the aircraft side.

I'm sure that given enough time you would have seen MAX crashes from other airlines, but it's no surprise to me that the first crashes (and, in an alternate reality where the MAX continued to fly, likely the majority of the crashes) were with airlines that are well-known in the industry to have lower standards of hiring, training and maintenance. Digging into that might well find some problems that need to be solved on the human side.

<comment><USER11> > and certainly nobody is "blaming" them.

Not now the facts have come out, but originally - how about:

Congressman Sam Graves:

"In May, Graves insisted that "facts in the preliminary report reveal pilot error as a factor". He went on to claim that "pilots trained in the US would have successfully been able to control this situation".

[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/extra/sd9LGK2S9m/battle_over_blam...](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/extra/sd9LGK2S9m/battle_over_blame)

> At the same time, I don't know anyone working in aviation who thinks it's > 100% a coincidence that the first crashes happened with those two airlines.

And here you are effectively repeating that.....

You basic premise is ridiculous. The idea that because some airlines/pilots aren't as good as others, then it absolves Boeing.

Boeing should not be selling a plane into a market that don't cover markets natural variant in pilots and airlines. That's like selling a car only F1 drivers can safely drive to the general public ( and crucially without telling them it's really F1 driver only... ) and claiming it's perfectly safe despite lots of crashes because Lewis Hamilton doesn't have a problem with it.

You could also argue the second crash happened because of the blaming of the airline/crew on the first crash.

Sure there are other factors - it's a question of how many times do you have to roll the dice before you get a crash - clearly far too few in this planes case - and that is _entirely_ Boeing's fault.

<comment> _-___________-_ I'm not claiming that anything absolves Boeing, and I can't see how any of my words can be interpreted in that way. I encourage you to read what I'm actually writing rather than imagine what I'm thinking.

There are serious issues to be resolved by Boeing and the FAA. There are issues to be resolved around airline company culture. There are issues to be resolved around pilot training and other human factors.

This " _entirely_ Boeing's fault" stuff just encourages a blinkered view of the situation and is exactly the absolutism I was referring to in my grandparent post.

This absolutism is encouraged by the media (just look at that BBC headline: "Battle over blame") and is thankfully absent from the actual investigative work.

While I have no idea why hot air from a congressman is relevant here, the first quote from Graves is accurate. Pilot error was identified _as a factor_ in the preliminary report, and every subsequent report has also identified it _as a factor_. Obviously there are far more important factors, but it's still a factor, and every factor should be considered and possibly acted upon. As I mentioned in a grandparent comment, the multi-factor approach to accident investigation is one of the reasons air travel is so safe today.

The second quote is pretty much impossible for him to back up and should probably be treated as the usual political noise -- he is, after all, a congressman.

<comment><USER11> I said:

> Sure there are other factors - it's a question of how many times do you have > to roll the dice before you get a crash - clearly far too few in this planes > case - and that is entirely Boeing's fault.

You said:

>This "entirely Boeing's fault" stuff just encourages a blinkered view of the situation and is exactly the absolutism

You haven't understood what I wrote.

Let's say there is a dice - that represents the chances of a combination of different factors occurring ( weather, pilot experience, plane maintenance, chance of debris hitting sensor, cosmic ray hitting computer - whatever )

What numbers that dice rolls is _entirely_ _out_ of Boeing's control.

However what is _entirely_ _in_ it's control is what happens when particular combinations, represented by the numbers, come up.

So if there is a plane that crashes only when you roll a six, and a plane that crashes when you roll a five or a six, clearly the second plane is 100% worse and yes the individual crash depends on what the dice rolled - but the relative safety of the plane doesn't!!!

Do you understand now?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The fact remains that this crash was 99% pilot error. The A/T displaying "RETARD" for something like 60 seconds and the airspeed got down to something stupid like 80 knots (airspeed is prominently displayed in at least 3 places right in front of both pilot's faces) so it was pretty obvious that the auto approach was not correctly configured, but what did the pilots do? Nothing. They just sat there gormlessly for over a minute, oblivious to dozens of warning signs right in front of them. No pilot should rely on the radio altimeter so much that they literally fall out of the sky when it fails.

Every single Boeing plane has two buttons called "autopilot disconnect" and "autothrottle disconnect", and when you press them, then you can fly the plane and it will do exactly what you tell it to do. I mean _fly_ the plane, i.e. left hand on yoke, right hand on throttle, feet on pedals. If those systems fail, then yes, blame the manufacturer. But those systems basically never fail.

<comment><USER13> When landing there is a lot going on. I don't know how airliners do it but at those airspeeds and especially when landing an audio readout of airspeed for every 10 knots dropped would be very useful.

<comment><USER12> Boeing planes do have some features like that, one is called GPWS ("Ground Proximity Warning System") and it yells things like "Sink Rate, Pull Up"! and then it makes obnoxious "Whoop! Whoop!" noises. There's also the "stick shaker" which literally starts violently vibrating the stick (which is basically in between your legs so it's impossible not to notice) and also makes a lot of noise. But I don't believe any amount of aural warnings will help a pilot who has decided to leave the autopilot on below 1000 feet when it's perfectly obvious the plane isn't correctly configured at all.

<comment> _-___________-_ Turkish does seem to have some kind of problem with the landing phase in general:

* THY A333 at Port Harcourt on Dec 31st 2019, runway excursion, tyre damage

* THY B738 at Odessa on Nov 21st 2019, runway excursion and nose gear collapse on landing

* THY B738 at Lviv on Jan 6th 2019, runway excursion during backtrack

* THY A321 at Bucharest on Jun 22nd 2017, overran runway on landing

* THY B738 at Pristina on May 2nd 2016, runway excursion on landing

* THY A319 at Sochi on Sep 28th 2016, ATC prevented controlled flight into terrain

* THY B738 at Nice on Aug 27th 2016, went through extended centerline and descended below safe height

* THY A321 at Tbilisi on May 5th 2016, hard landing

* THY A343 at Antananarivo on Jan 9th 2016, touched down short of runway

* THY A333 at Kathmandu on Mar 4th 2015, runway excursion and nose gear collapse

* THY A320 at Istanbul on Apr 25th 2015, hard landing, go-around, engine problem, gear problem, gear collapse, runway excursion

I could go on...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > the _New York Times_ reports based on _its own research_.

The original NYT article, with only a few HN comments:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22098270](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22098270)

"Boeing's Responsibility in a Deadly Crash 'Got Buried'"

<comment><USER15> People probably assumed it was about 737 MAX crashes, not the older NG.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Hmmm. The only thing I wonder is whether there may be a fundamental architectural issue with their approach to "Flight Computer in command".

From my understanding, every 737 has two flight computers, but only one is in command at a time (I.e. generating commands to drive things like A/P, A/T). If other hardware in the plane is connection-wise split between the two computers, you will end up in situations where the two computers fundamentally disagree on what reality is.

The only backup in that case is good airmanship to know that you are in an anomalous condition, diagnose whether you have a set of gauges that you can rely on, and finally, what to do about it. ATC could have been utilized to cross-check instruments.

This is honestly non-trivial machine operation 101. Your sensors can be wrong.

A resolution I might suggest moving forward is an MFD function that allows pilots to manually remap avionics data sources in flight. Structure it as a Source->Sink system. Then again, I'm reluctant to drop that type of burden on them as it sounds quite similar to the structure of certain other software of I'll-repute; however, it would provide a remediatory mechanism a Pilot could utilize in flight.

Though it doesn't help at all if everything is hosed. That's what A/T A/P disconnect and stick and rudder skills are for though.

Overall, it does strike me as possibly being same in type in terms of manufacturer philosophy playing a part; but in this case there was enough done wrong by the pilotsthat it doesn't necessarily seem like a worthwhile hill to die on to go after Boeing for it.

Interesting there was explicit pressure against doing so though. That raises questions, but sufficient time has gone by that likely most documentation to be investigated is long gone.

</comment><comment><USER17> The Dutch Safety Board published the original technical report by Prof. Dekker [0].

[0]: [https://www.onderzoeksraad.nl/en/page/16227/turkish- airlines...](https://www.onderzoeksraad.nl/en/page/16227/turkish-airlines- rapport-prof.-dekker)

</comment><comment><USER18> It's bad to rely on national champions like Boeing. Like Blackberry and Nokia, their pride leads to their eventual fall, taking out thousands of jobs with them when an upstart from outside (Apple) surges ahead. Better to have multiple smaller active competitors.

</comment><comment><USER19> sure it was an hardware fault that started the event, but now blaming the whole thing on a system that has a warning system, duplicate readings to check faults and bypasses to work around the issue is deeply misguided and ignores simple facts about how safety is attained in aircrafts: trough redundancy and training.

this is completely different from the mcas where the default configuration lacked redundancy, the pilot lacked training and the bypass procedure ineffective unless executed at low speed and high altitude before the dive would lock the trims

<comment><USER9> Boeing's cost-cutting design and their culture of covering their own ass and blaming the pilot seem particularly relevant and relatable.

<comment><USER19> no, it's not relevant unless you can substantiate how the cost cutting was related to the crash and it'd be an hard case to make, since the faulty system were redundant and the warning themselves were redundant with lights, audibles and whatnot. the hardware did all it could to get the pilot to go around and reassess the situation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Because do human lives even really matter anymore? Nah, screw 'em, hurrrr money!</comment>


Holocene Extinction - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction <comment><USER2> Humans can have a beneficial impact on the environment too, by terraforming and making the land more productive.

There's some evidence that the Amazon mix of fruiting tree and nut species were selected for by humans.

"The Supposedly Pristine, Untouched Amazon Rainforest Was Actually Shaped By Humans"

[https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/pristine- untou...](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/pristine-untouched- amazonian-rainforest-was-actually-shaped-humans-180962378/)

Since some people us this as political grounds for eugenics and population control. Such as one child policies, like China used to have. I think the proper way need to view ourselves, is as "gardeners" and caretakers. What we destroy in one area, we should rebuild in another, or make better.

For example, we could make connected "green corridors" that span the entire country, through which animals can migrate and live in. We have disrupted the migration paths of some species with out cities. But nothing says that we can't make it better by providing routes for these animals around our cities and farms.

<comment><USER3> May I kindly ask, why do you feel the need to jump out and defend the human species as also being good in the face of what is described in the article?

I am genuinely interested in understanding what motivates this reaction.

<comment><USER2> You are here, so obviously you feel "good" enough and worthy to exist. With population control its always the "others" need to be eliminated. No one wants to start with themselves. Its an extremely selfish position really. Its also not very logically viable, since those that feel the world is over populated and kill themselves, will just be selected out of the gene pool. Leaving only those that want to live, procreate and prosper behind.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Many times there is a heavy dose of misanthropy in these environmental discussions. Phrases like "humanity is a virus", etc.

I would like to share a different perspective.There is a saying, "It is better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all."

Even if humanity overburdens the planet and goes extinct in the next 100 years, I prefer what we have now, than if we had remained hunter-gatherers or pre-industrial.

We have spread out to every corner of the world. With irrigation, farming, heating, air-conditioning, etc, we have transformed the most inhospitable habitats into thriving cities. Members of our species have even set foot on the moon.

We have improved the quality of life for members of our species, especially the poorest. If you had to be born as a female child to a random mother, there is no other time in the humanity's existence where you would be better off than now.

We invented language that can express the deepest and most profound thoughts to the person standing next to us, and invented writing that can encode it in a form that can be understood millennia later, and invented telecommunication that can transmit it instantly anywhere in the world.

Our concept of the "universe" has grown. It is no longer the local grassland or forest. It is no longer a steppe or continent, or even our globe. Our concept of the universe includes solar systems and galaxies and super- clusters, and even the possibilities of a multi-verse.

All animals try to control their environment, but we have learned to do so on an unprecedented scale. We learned early how to control the large fauna that could eat us. Most humans walk freely about, safe from large predators. We also, much later, learned how to control the small predators - the bacteria and viruses.

We have also learned how to control ourselves. We learned how to control reproduction. We can keep from getting pregnant when we have sex, if we desire, or get pregnant without having sex. We can organize into communities and coordinate and cooperate at a scale and sophistication beyond any other animal.

So, if this time is the time that we have ultimately outstripped the earth's capacity to support us (unlike the many, many false alarms in the past), then I say, cheers to humanity: we have lived, we have loved, we have laughed, we have wept, we have left our mark in our corner of the universe.

Yes, let us try to develop technology and do things that help ensure humanity can stay like this for much, much longer. But let us not disparage humanity and all we have accomplished.

<comment><USER5> 100 years may be optimistic.

And I don't think young people or children today deserve an agonizing life watching their loved ones, their own children, perhaps, starving to death or dying in a water war.

Also you don't need to be a hunter gatherer to not rape the planet.

<comment><USER4> > watching their loved ones, their own children, perhaps, starving to death or > dying in a water war.

Sadly, this was close to the default condition throughout much of human history. It is only recently, with the benefits of industrialization and globalization that we have made that kind of thing much rarer than it was.

<comment><USER6> I think this is far less evident than usually assumed. The life of the last hunter gatherer tribes is probably the best approximation we have on how our ancestors may have lived. And while death is a more common (and swifter, less problematic) occurrence for these people, they were hardly unhappy compared to us -- sure, they didn't have iphones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Fun" statistic: in less than half a century, we've gotten rid of around _60% of Earth's wildlife_. [1]

[1] [https://www.wwf.org.uk/updates/living-planet- report-2018](https://www.wwf.org.uk/updates/living-planet-report-2018)

<comment><USER8> This is an incorrect interpretation of the report. Or at least, the way it's stated is misleading. We have not "gotten rid of" 60% of wildlife on Earth. What has actually happened is (since the 1970s), the _average_ reduction _per species_ is 60%. Some species lost more than 60%, some (far) less.

This is still bad news, but I feel it's important to point out that we haven't (for example), lost 60% of all species on the planet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> A huge chunk of our net impact on global warming and deforestation is a direct result of our food system, namely animal agriculture.

There is disagreement about just how inefficient turning an acre of corn into slabs of cow, but it should be clear that it is some fraction of the efficiency of just eating that corn as food itself.

<comment><USER10> What about in the case where animals can extract more nutrients from plant food than we can? Cows in particular have specially built stomachs that can extract nutrients from plants than we can. I don't think this would be enough to make eating meat more efficient, but it may be necessary to eat some meat to get nutrients you wouldn't otherwise get from plants.

<comment><USER11> > but it may be necessary to eat some meat to get nutrients you wouldn't > otherwise get from plants.

It is not necessary to eat meat.

<comment><USER10> Necessary is not the right word. More efficient might be better. It's entirely possible to get protein from plants and omega-3 from vitamins, but from a human health point of view, is it more efficient?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The Biomass of mammals on Earth is sobering.

Livestock, mostly cattle and pigs (60%) Humans (36%) Wild animals (4%)

<comment><USER13> Oh, just wait until you include avians. There are so many chickens. Soooo many.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Struggling to find a word for it, but it's obvious that humans lack the will collectively to avoid certain types of systemic multigenerational issues.

Climate change is the most obvious, but there's long list of issues like this that if suddenly every human on Earth magically expected to live 1000 to 10,000 years would become more pressing issues.

As a semi-futurist, this is the core issue, it's not that humans don't see the future, they're unable to change... the issue is that humans simply do not care about the future.

<comment><USER15> Even if humans did care, that doesn't mean they could organize a meaningful response.

COVID-19 is affecting people right now. It, and other viruses like the flu, are just a giant rhythm game: if everyone could be isolated for 2 weeks, it would be over in 2 weeks, and we'd never have to deal with it ever again.

We just have a fundamental coordination problem. A lot of foresight and resources are required, and only a Central Overmind that mind-controls everyone would be a practical way to implement that kind of coordination. When the price of non-coordination is extremely jacked up, like in a crazy future where anyone can cook up an antimatter bomb or an extinction-tier supervirus (or super AI?) at home, it's obvious that the only tenable mode of operation is massive surveillance + censorship (and perhaps hivemind motor control) by a Central Overmind. :D

<comment><AUTHOR> I've thought about how a hive would manage, but I suspect there are other weaknesses a hive would have that would come to light pretty quickly (you know besides lack of free will, and extinction from depression or lack of motivation). We probably need something new, but seem unable to experiment quickly with new ideas.

<comment><USER14> "Hive mind" as it relates to a singular species is a work of science fiction to my knowledge and barriers to such a systemic centralized existence appear to defy the laws of physics, information theory, etc.

Even the human mind in my opinion does not exist as a hive and at best described as an ecosystem that eventually experiences systemic failure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This makes me wonder if perhaps sentient life/civilisation is simply incompatible with nature by default. That doesn't make the former bad or mean that we shouldn't try and preserve the nature world, just that I suspect any species that evolves to be like humanity is probably going to have a similar effect on its ecosystem. Any alien world with a sentient species might also be in a similar situation for many of the same reasons.

That might be why space travel is so important to focus on too. A single planet simply doesn't have enough resources for a species with a planet wide civilisation and modern/advanced technology. So you're stuck with the choice of either expanding outwards, sticking with extremely basic tech, or having a far lower population.

<comment><USER17> You don't need to have intelligence. Intelligence is just a form of fitness, but other species have had ecological hyper-fitness before (look at what happened with rabbits in Australia). All of them display the same behavior: massive growth and then overshoot and collapse. We're exactly on the same path right now. I don't think is very plausible to make an inhospitable planet livable.

<comment><USER18> This exactly. If animals with intelligence didn't exist there would still be nothing to keep an imbalanced species from taking over and wreaking destruction upon other species.

<comment><USER19> Yet billions of years in, until we arrived, there was no failure to be sustainable. We're the first species to potentially cause a global extinction event (arguably we already did)

<comment><USER20> > We're the first species to potentially cause a global extinction event

There's evidence that cyanobacteria did it earlier, on an even more massive scale:

"...biologically induced molecular oxygen (dioxygen, O2) started to accumulate in Earth's atmosphere... causing almost all life on Earth to go extinct." [0]

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This way of living, with that many people on the planet is not sustainable. We are on a runaway train to extinction and we want it to go faster. The economy!

<comment><USER21> Are there any resources for determining which US politicians support environmentalism (specifically meaningful, evidence-based policies as opposed to vapid virtue signalling) and/or where the "battleground" states are? I guess in general I'm looking to get involved more in climate politics, but I don't know where to start.

<comment><USER22> Check out Citizens Climate Lobby. citizensclimatelobby.org

Non-partisan group attempting to get a carbon tax and dividend law passed, and they are making progress. They continue to get new co-sponsors on their bill, they do a lot of training on how to get involved, how you can speak to your Congressperson etc.

<comment><USER21> Thank you! I'll dig into this. This sounds like exactly the thing I've been looking for!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> My question to people who think this is objectively a bad thing - given the usual line of thought to get that conclusion is that we shouldn't be prejudiced towards valuing humans any more than other living creatures (which makes sense), then why would the replacement of non-human biomass with human biomass necessarily be good or bad?

Now I kinda know some sensible answers to this question. For one, genetic diversity in life is critical for survival given diversification means at least a few strands can survive sudden unexpected events. i.e if everything were giant dinosaurs there may have been no life left after the dinosaur extinction. The other answer is that we are pre-built to aesthetically enjoy thriving nature (which is probably meant to drive us towards protecting genetic diversity).

However given the human backlash to human trashing the environment, I could easily see us settling on an equilibrium where life is not, at least for the most part, the kind of wild chaotic world that it was before us, but a world where the environment is increasingly managed to some degrees by humans. You see this as nations getting richer stop eating cats, dogs, care more about preserving the environment, raising better treated wildlife, etc.

In that case, perhaps humans can help facilitate a new epoch in nature where genetic diversity is not just a biproduct of a random process, but a conscious goal. Granted this would require a much deeper knowledge of nature, humility to know when we can't control everything, and a cultural shift towards being stewards of nature. But given the shifts that have already occurred in human thinking around nature, I don't think this is outside the realm of possibility. Given our increasing energy usage, it's probably the only route in which we don't end up causing environmental catastrophes that either kill us off, or our civilization. That and finding new planets.

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm optimistic that a few things will help save us from ourselves: lab grown meat, electric cars, and solar power.

My undergrad degree is in biology and it was depressing to learn how humans have eviscerated nature. I remember joking with a classmate during my evolution class saying "what way are we going to learn about how humans destroyed nature today?"

</comment><comment><USER24> The problem is that too many of us do things with a marginal utility near 0 which are bad for the environment just to buy food, pay debts and pay landlords.

The solution is obvious. Do nothing. Just do nothing (obviously you can read, ride a bike, write poesy and so on...).

States should pay people to do nothing rather than destroying the world.

</comment><comment><USER25> 'Ecologically, humanity has been noted as an unprecedented "global superpredator"'...

</sigh>

</comment><comment><USER26> Now imagine survivorship bias applied , six times

</comment><comment><USER27> Misread Holocene as Holodomor. Both extinctions being man made of course. So Holocene is the macro of Holodomor.</comment>


Open: A tool for teachers to create and share lessons with their students - <AUTHOR> http://opentheclassroom.com

<comment><USER2> This could be awesome.

I'm not sure I like the idea of lessons being electronic in a systemic way. (When I worked on Elgg, originally an elearning app, I declared that I'd stop immediately if I thought people would use it to replace face-to-face lessons.) Nonetheless, this is going to have a lot of very positive real-world applications. Kudos also for a very simple, friendly design.

Here's what I don't like: the use of the word Open for a centralized service that presumably has a commercial business model. Open education is a generic term for a kind of learning where barriers to entry are reduced as much as possible. Think OpenCourseWare, the Open University, etc. The name for this service feels like it's trying to co-opt and take advantage of that movement, even if that isn't actually a motive here. Education is a very emotive area, and a public good, so a lot of people feel it's best suited for free and open source software. Your work is cut out for you to justify yourselves being a commercial enterprise that stores lesson content from teachers, and I'd suggest that calling yourselves Open is not a good first step.

Finally, this became a running joke with Elgg, so I gotta ask you: are you SCORM compliant?

<comment><USER3> I don't see any reference to downloading the content to use inside of a third party learning management system, so I don't see how SCORM compliance would be relevant. Although, the ability to take the content with you would be great.

One thing I have built in situations similar to this is build a SCORM wrapper that can load the content in an iframe and translate scoring and tracking data back to the LMS. They could do this while still maintaining a fully hosted content model. Many of my clients will not consider an authoring tool for content that cannot be hosted in their LMS.

<comment><USER2> The ability to take the content with you, I think, is crucial. A lot of the existing learning management systems have very poor functionality, so it might be neat to use Open as a central control panel for these lessons, and push them to your relevant LMS when appropriate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Using a single very common word is horrible and will confuse people [0]. If they insist on using the word 'Open', I suggest capitalising it to 'OPEN' maybe?

I welcome cheaper education tools. However there doesn't seem to be anything 'open' about this. No open source code commitment, use is 'free' and students appear to need permission from the teacher to enroll. It seems that they should rename themselves to Online instead.

[0] <https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Open>

<comment><USER5> Our tool is Open in the sense that access to it for teachers and students is free. The reason teachers and students can't sign up right now is we're in closed beta.

\- David, Co-Founder

<comment><USER4> How free is free? Do they submit resources that only you can own the copyright to like IMDb does? Can anyone not an official student participate allowing public education?

How are you going to fund maintenance with no clear business model?

I hope it doesn't discourage you!

<comment><USER5> Open is free for individual teachers to use. We will not own resources submitted to Open.

And yes, anyone can watch any lesson on the site (another reason we're named Open).

Our revenue model is based upon service we intend provide to schools.

<comment><USER6> I think this path looks great. One obscure thing to be aware of in this space is the giant lurking patent troll (Blackboard.) Good luck!!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wish them the best, but there is no information on the website.

There's not even a video of what the tool is like. If it requires digital tablets to use, does it only run on windows, or the ipad, or android...

And as rameshnid points out, most teachers don't have the free time, the inclination, or possibly the skill to create their own multimedia-based lessons and homework activities from scratch.

Ultimately I think, many educational innovators are forgetting the fundamental problems with education - only 30% of students who go through the process end up proficient in reading, math, and science. And even many of those who are proficient end up not learning much at all in college and have serious misconceptions. They don't really learn until thrown into the world later on. See for example the opening of the video Minds of Our Own, where Harvard & MIT graduates given a battery, bulb, and wire can't even make the bulb light: <http://www.learner.org/resources/series26.html> Or Jerome Epstein's work, which found a significant percentage of college students only had an 8th grade or even 4th grade level of understanding of math.

Overcoming these and other misconceptions involves more constructivist and interactive techniques that lectures and flashcards and drill & kill software don't address.

</comment><comment><USER8> I spent some time last year working on a similar product here in Mumbai. We had an amazing product, but the challenges here in India were -

1) Teachers don't like to record videos/ make digital teaching aids, unless initiative is from the top.

2) Its difficult to make videos of the quality of Khan Academy, not every one can teach like Khan

3) Its additional work load on already underpaid teachers

So these things got me thinking-

\- Can you incentivize creation of high quality lectures? Maybe raise donations and pay teachers who create the best content.

Anyway good luck with it. Also let me know incase you want a demo of our effort in case we can collaborate on this. (I don't know if this is appropriate here, please correct me in case its not welcome)

</comment><comment><USER9> Really like the idea - have been waiting for an application that will allow teachers to become masters of their own digital pedagogical content. However, I'm not a huge fan of the attack on classrooms - perhaps it's a personal opinion, but 'needing improvement' doesn't necessarily mean 'broken', and the statement makes me question the efficacy of a service purporting to be a panacea for all the flaws in a traditional classroom.

<comment><USER4> You might be waiting a long time simply due to one corporation wanting a monopoly over online educational resources, Blackboard Inc [0].

[0] [https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Blackboard_In...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Blackboard_Inc.#Blackboard_legal_issues)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> horrible name. assuming you do get enough traction with it otherwise, it's going to cause nothing but confusion when talking about. "opens" you to other naming problems in the future if you try to expand the brand to other products Example: the Open Gradebook -- is it open, or is it owned by the Open company -- do you prosecute everyone other website or software with Open in the name? can of worms is "opened". :)

my two cents

<comment><USER11> I agree Open is too generic. Open should serve as a qualifier for a name that is more describing of what the software does.

<comment><USER5> 'Open Learning' is one idea we've been playing around with

<comment><USER12> I agree that 'Open' is really generic.

Maybe 'Transfuser', as in 'Knowledge Transfuser' :-) ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I met with these guys a few days before they went to their final Thiel presentation to talk a bit about where we're heading w/ Khan Academy and their brainstorms. @david and @nick, congrats on making the cut!

Super nice, motivated guys. Hope they deliver something cool and push the education envelope.

</comment><comment><USER14> Watching lectures at home, doing "homework" at school. This makes so much more sense to me than the default way we do it now.

</comment><comment><USER15> This seems like it could be really useful when paired with "The Gutenberg Method" (<http://entropysite.oxy.edu/morrison.html>), which basically asks students to do the assigned reading at home, along with some type of annotation of "Here's what to look for".

Then, in class the next day, the teacher answers any questions, briefly covers any difficult concepts, and they can spend the rest of the class-time engaging with each other instead of lecturing.

My suspicion (disclaimer: I was, at one point, a teacher) is that if you want people to use this service, you'll have to show how it improves instruction, and you'll have to do so in much more concrete terms than you have here.

That said, if I ever have a classroom of my own again, I can see myself using this tool when appropriate.

</comment><comment><USER16> Have you guys in any way been inspired by Salman Khan's (khanacademy.org) work? Perhaps a cooperation could benefit both of your organizations, and consequently the rest of the world.

Improving education is always a very laudable goal. And even though I see the value of having many parties to chose from, I think in this case a lot more can be achieved by reducing fragmentation of the available tools and sources and having potentially major players join forces.

<comment><USER17> I don't get the sense from the Khan literature that they intend for "normal" teachers to record their own lessons. I could be mistaken?

<comment><USER16> It's not portrayed in that way, no. Khan Academy seeks dedicated movie makers.

Letting the teacher do it instead can have its benefits. Certainly when it comes to teaching a customized or niche curriculum that simply isn't available on a place like khanacademy.org.

However, I do think that having videos recorded by people who excel at that kind of stuff (like Salman himself) also makes a lot of sense. A good voice and a clear way of explaining potentially difficult subjects can not easily be done by everyone.

One would say that a teacher should be able to do it, but talking to a computer screen is a lot different than talking to a classroom. And from my own experiences I know for a fact that not nearly all of them have the charm and capacity to convey a subject in an understandable and inspiring manner.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is a cool idea, in _principle_.

I am generally unconvinced - and have been for a long time - of the efficiency of video lectures. When I was homeschooled, the video-curriculum students (Abeka Video) never seemed to do quite as well as the ones with live instructors.

I am, however, quite enthused about the idea of educational startups, and I certainly hope to be proved utterly wrong!

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm not sure why all of the other commenters are so negative. This looks amazing! Khan Academy for the local high school... I love it.

I wish that I could have gone to a school where I watch the lectures at home and spend the 74 minutes with the teacher working on problems.

</comment><comment><USER18> If you want to sell this to teachers, you need to talk about how you will decrease their prep. time. Any hint of increasing prep. time is a show- stopper.

E.g. I do about 2-4 hours of unpaid work for every paid hour in the classroom.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> By the way the two founders are 20 Under 20 Thiel Fellows.

<comment><AUTHOR> ( [http://thielfoundation.org/index.php?option=com_content&...](http://thielfoundation.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=15&Itemid=19) )

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Using digital tabets -> "Using digital tablets"</comment>


When Does Cognitive Functioning Peak? - <AUTHOR> http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0956797614567339 <comment><USER2> I think studies like this are a real shame. The topic is interesting, but the method and the analysis are terribly poor. It is quite disingenuous to use "Across the Life Span" in the title of the paper when no longitudinal data was collected. Also, "smoothing" and "dampening noise" are quite worrying to see. The process of making data fit your statistical models or tools like this is another form of inaccuracy (or dishonesty).</comment>


How to More or Less Contribute to Open Source - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/copperwall/https://dev.to/copperwall/how-to-more-or-less-contribute-to-open-source-4716-4716 <comment><USER2> [https://dev.to/copperwall/how-to-more-or-less-contribute- to-...](https://dev.to/copperwall/how-to-more-or-less-contribute-to-open- source-4716)</comment>


Google's Groupon groping reveals the shifting power in the web world - <AUTHOR> http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/12/04/googles-groupon-groping-reveals-the-shifting-power-in-the-web-world/ <comment><USER2> "Its mobile and OS efforts essentially amount to parallel operations in the company; neither one is likely to become Google's new core, but more to layer on what that core is."

It's only partially true today - Android is good extension of several google products, like GMail, Maps and Calendar and they need to keep pushing that and making it better - for example the music store that'll automatically sync everything shown off at Google IO.

</comment><comment><USER3> They seem to forgot Jaiku</comment>


GM, Lyft to Test Self-Driving Electric Taxis Within a Year - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/gm-lyft-to-test-self-driving-electric-taxis-1462460094 <comment><USER2> I see a pattern emerging here: One phase of an enterprise producing training data for another phase of the enterprise to create massive automation.

In this case, it's Lyft and GM joining forces, but this kind of partnership can (and should) happen between a company good at logistics to produce training data quickly and efficiently and a company good at turning that into data products.

Some companies are good at/doing both in-house: Amazon (E-Commerce and IaaS), Google (self-driving cars and search), Facebook (The world's most addictive website) are some of the examples.

If I were a small group of AI powerhouse, I'd definitely consider approach bigger companies with excellent logistics producing rich data.

</comment><comment><USER3> The thing that concerns me is, there are all these companies now trying to build self-driving cars, but how much information sharing is there?

I would rather see one huge open-source project, that all these companies contribute to. I think we would get self-driving cars a lot sooner if everyone worked together, not separately.

</comment><comment><USER4> Wow, that's a lot faster than I expected. I wonder how they'll handle making sure it's the right person getting into the car.

<comment><USER5> From another article on it:

>Lyft officials said the initial tests will be done with human drivers who will take control if they are needed.</comment></comment>


Tell HN: readwriteweb.com Canvassing HN'ers for their 'HN Love' - <AUTHOR> http://jacquesmattheij.com/readwriteweb.com-canvassing-hn-members <comment><USER2> All of these meta-police postings are starting to get ridiculous.

I get that you're outraged because someone asked you to read or post something, or vote for something; but come on - surely you have a little more faith in the intelligence of the people here that you don't think that we're just going to blindly submit things because someone has asked us to.

This sort of submission doesn't accomplish anything except starting arguments. Even if a thousand people vote this up, nobody is going to stop asking other people to vote for their submissions, nobody is going to stop emailing people from out of the blue and asking for them to submit stories, nobody is going to stop posting links to their submissions from other sites with a plea to upvote it.

Instead, the top story is now about how someone was once again done wrong by the dark and terrible forces of the internets, conspiring to destroy the very fabric of Hacker News.

It's the sort of story where everyone can weigh in, because there's no barrier to entry for having an opinion. You can already see the race to the right margin starting, and this has only been up for 2 hours.

Good content has its way of making it to the front page. I can generally tell when I submit something if it's going to make it to the front page; I haven't had to ask anyone for any votes and yet they get there.

I guess I'm a little irritated about the insinuation that we don't have the capability to make decisions as to whether or not we vote or submit something. The suggestion that we can't is just getting old.

<comment><USER3> As several people have pointed out, the core 'problem' is that it opens the door for less scrupulous activity in the future. I think we all have a mutual respect for the intellectual capabilities of the current HN'ers in regard to not blindly submitting or upvoting stuff.

However you can't ignore the fact that as HN gets more readers there's more skin in the game for startups. Getting your story to the front page could get you some of the momentum you need to attract that first angel investor, or to find your first seed group of alpha users. There are plenty of forces that will tend to corrupt the process as HN gains more readership.

We can't just consider the issue at hand, you must also consider the precedent this sort of thing sets and how that could evolve in the future.

Edit: I find it a tad ironic that the people saying this stuff _isn't_ happening are also linking your comment in IRC and asking for it to be upvoted. Point being: it just rings false to 'lobby' for votes. Nothing personal, just an observational, I get that it is at least partly tongue in cheek.

<comment><USER4> I'm not so sure that a dangerous precedent is being set here. Don't you think it's far easier (and more harmful to the community) to game the killing of stories than to game the promoting of stories?

<comment><USER3> Just because one is bad doesn't mean the other isn't. I'd argue that neither are particularly desirable, however, there are less reasons to kill content than there are to promote your content to the front page. It may make sense to kill content in the narrow band where that content competes with your own startup and/or blog, but beyond that there doesn't seem to be much reason for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> When people ask for marketing advice on HN, one of the things I always suggest is getting to know bloggers in your niche because, hey, help them help you. This is generally fairly well-received advice here, and has been practiced by many folks successfully. (I really like Peldi's pitch emails. They're on his blog somewhere, and are very worthy of emulation.)

I am unsure in what relevant respect contacting someone to post something to HN is different than contacting someone to post on their blog. Is it that we have a reflexive allergy to being marketed to? I find that people generally don't mind, as long as they're buying what you're selling. For example, every once in a while I get an email from startups about the new foozit they're working on, particularly for A/B testing.

Heck yes, I want to hear about that. Please, send me email. I understand you're not sending it to me because you woke up this morning and decided "What can I selflessly do to brighten Patrick's day?" That's OK -- we're all businessmen here. If you know my name and have given enough individualized attention to believe I will like it, I'll at least give it a looksie. (Running /bingo/ against whois records does not count as personalized attention -- and no, I'm also not impressed that you have a fake female persona do the letter.)

While it is extremely unlikely that I'd ever submit something from ReadWriteWeb or your tech blog of choice (simply because if it was worth reading y'all would all have already seen it probably days in advance of me), I wouldn't feel particularly dirty submitting something that I discovered via an email. I mean, since you guys are my main source of startup/software/etc news, and I don't submit duplicates, eliminating the "somebody told me about this" route would pretty much mean that the only way to find something to submit would be to write it myself.

Not that I have a problem with that, either. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Accounts are free, what stops someone from posting it by themselves? If it's good it will float to the top (or at least, it should).

By asking 'well known' people in the community to submit stuff for them they're trying to ride the reputation of others in order to maximize their exposure, while at the same time hiding the fact that these are not 'natural' submissions.

It's like using other HN users as your personal sock puppets.

<comment><USER5> Rather than using an identifiable person for my example I'll use non-existent Bob. Suppose Bob has been here for the last 3 years and has a bazillion karma and is well known to everyone as The Freaking Man on the subject of email marketing. (Sidenote: Do we have a Bob here? We could really use a Bob here. Show yourself, Bob!)

Anyhow, suppose some random email startup convinces Bob that their thingee is worthwhile enough to post about. Yes, I would trust that endorsement more than I'd trust randomHacker123's post. That is because Bob's endorsement _matters_ to me, because I can use it as a filter for things I am likely to enjoy.

I understand they're using Bob's endorsement to maximize their exposure. I'm just _not troubled_ by that. Bob's endorsement _matters_ to me, at least on the subject of email marketing. He's doing the work sifting through the email marketing pitches so I don't have to. Yay! Bully for Bob.

<comment><USER6> Nobody who is an expert on e-mail marketing would ever wander in here. They'd be too busy driving their Ferrari. I came in here by accident and came away with a prime example of why Hacker Newspaper doesn't link to comment threads. For every one intelligent comment by you, Patrick, there's a hundred by a bunch of people getting into bicker-y little soap operas about who voted for who. I study the Bobs and I can tell you they're all too busy for that shit. :-) I'm a little too busy for it myself.

Anyway, for the record, I will happily get any story on the front page of Hacker News for the right price. I'm not kidding, I've done it before, on purpose. I once set out to teabag Hacker News and get a story about my own balls on the front page. It only took me two attempts. My e-mail is firstname.lastname@example.com and I am more than happy to take your ducats.

<comment><USER7> I'm glad you've finally stated outright that this community means nothing to you other than being a great place to advertise. I think it was already fairly obvious... but thanks for clearing up any doubt. You realize that paid upvote rings are a large part of what killed digg, and are killing reddit? And they will kill HN, if they become common enough. It may seem innocent and fun while you personally do it, but before long the front page is nothing but posts about balls, and who wants to read that?

Feel free to rag on all the "drama" it creates, but that's because people here actually care about the quality of this site. Is that stupid? Naive? To you, clearly. But I think it's perfectly reasonable to desire that your favorite stomping ground not become just another place where the almighty dollar trumps all.

<comment><USER8> Well done for falling into Giles' trap...

Standard response: don't feed the trolls (even the well-known trolls)

<comment><USER7> I'm well aware of the possibility that he could be trolling, but I also don't doubt that he'd do all he could to push an article to the front page for money. Obviously I can't control his actions, but what do you suggest we do? If we all just ignore him, it might work, but it also might suggest to people on the fence about the issues that the HN community doesn't care about that kind of behavior.

<comment><USER8> Dude, when it comes to Giles, it's not a "possibility that he could be trolling". It's a certainty. :-)

<comment><USER7> So what does that mean exactly? That because he's "always trolling," any attempt to argue with him is a waste of time? It seems like an easy cop-out, like declaring "I'm an asshole," before being a dick, and somehow thinking that excuses the behavior.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The fact that a company - any company - is not posting material on its own behalf suggests that it is attempting to rely the poster's reputation to get it promoted rather than pure the merit of the article quality.

I don't particularly see anything wrong with this as long as there is a degree of transparency and the poster adds an initial comment to the effect that:

Bob from example.com asked me to post this and since it is clearly neat, I have.

or

Bob from example.com asked me to post this and since he paid me $500, I have.

... as appropriate.

<comment><USER10> The issue there is that unless you're posting a link to a blog entry you wrote (that allows you to make that such a disclaimer), HN will only display the link. I don't think we should start encouraging content-less blog entries that allow us to fully disclose that we're being told to post something. Just post it if it's worth posting, don't if it's not.

<comment><USER11> It's easy enough to drop a comment, if it's highly relevant, it will be upvoted to near the top of the heap.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's possible that it's more insidious than simply trying to get high-profile users to submit links to their articles. When you try to submit a duplicate link, the system will redirect you to the older submission and _cause you to automatically upvote it._ If you can get a handful of people to 'submit' the same link, you've managed to boost your article's ranking and likely will get it on the front page.

<comment><USER13> I am not that high profile and I have been approached because I have a midrange karma.

<comment><USER14> I've been on the leader board for a couple of years, and I do get plenty of random requests about starting HN meetups (I host Hackers and Founders -- Silicon Valley ). I also get a number of random pings to give feedback on people's sites, which I'm generally happy to do.

That being said, I've never been approached to submit a post.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Hey Jacques, I just read your post and as per my email, I sent you my article for feedback. I DO want to do a better job in writing stories that are useful to the HN community and this is why I reached out in the first place. It was never my intention to undermine any aspects of the community, if anything I asked you for your advice in honor of your position as a community leader. I have no problem nominating my own stories, but your nomination and feedback tells me if an article is a good resource for entrepreneurs and programmers. Thanks in any case for your initial email on trends. For those of you who do want to let me know what stories you'd like to see written in 2010, I'm grateful for your feedback.

Dana Oshiro

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Dana,

Thanks for posting here.

I'm not a community leader by any stretch of the imagination, as I already wrote to you, just someone that in episodes spends way too much of his time on HN.

My 'nomination' will never be given to stuff I'm asked to submit because that already stacks the deck, I'm no longer unbiased towards what you wrote.

I'll post the stuff that I find on the net while surfing, irrespective of the source of my relationship with a source.

As a rule, if someone mails me their submissions I'll read but not upvote, unless it is excellent stuff.

If I come across readwriteweb articles that really interest me - and not through my inbox - then I'll definitely post it, or upvote it, but otherwise definitely not.

I understand that the pragmatic view is that 'everbody does it' but I simply don't feel comfortable with doing this.

It suggests some kind of collusion, possibly in the long term a quid-pro-quo and I like to be independent.

Over the years I've had plenty of press on my projects but not once was there any kind of behind the scenes dealing going on, and I frown on the cozy relationships that some press people build with people in the industry. Having press contacts is one thing, getting too close is imo not good.

As for HN, I'd expect readwriteweb.com content to be caught by enough people to be submitted anyway if it warrants that, I doubt you'd need to go out and solicit it (I could be wrong there), so for that you really don't need me or any other HN user specifically.

The best 'nomination' you can get here is to simply post your stuff and see what sinks and what swims. It's far from perfect, good stuff will fail plenty of times and fluff will rise to the surface but on the whole it is better than anywhere else, and to carefully read the comments, there is plenty of really good feedback there.

best regards,

Jacques

<comment><USER15> Thanks Jacques. I appreciate the discussion and I've learned a ton about the community in this process. Thanks HN.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Ah shoot. RWW and VentureBeat were the only blogs I really trusted in the startup space. Needless to say, all respect lost for RWW. And it's not like RWW could be added to the banned domains list, because they actually write a lot of stuff people are interested in.

<comment><USER17> One bad apple does not a blacklist make, surely?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> What is the big deal here?

It is a very well known fact that in _most of the_ social news websites people always contact the users with the most reputation ask them to submit/upvote their articles.

If you want to get featured in Techcruch or RWW or any high profile blog, you have to send them emails to get their attention (opposed to they noticing you because you are a promising startup).

This is the way the world works. There is no point in blaming someone who comes from _that_ world for contacting you privately. If you think it is against the spirits of HN, great; now let Dana Oshiro understand the same by telling him this privately.

There is nothing black hat in what he did. It is what they always do. It is their standard operating procedure - contacting powerful people in other fields and build a reputation from there.

I don't want to sound as if I don't care about the quality of HN. I do. I just want to suggest that people from outside may not know these norms and it is not polite to disgrace them in public like this.

<comment><USER19> If it's not a big deal then posting this isn't 'disgracing them in public' surely?

<comment><USER18> "Hi John, over here there is no need to talk so loud to get attention"

Vs

"Hey everyone, did you ever notice John talking loudly to get attention?"

<comment><USER20> I don't think there's any shame to discussing this in public and I don't think any less of RWW or Dana for inadvertently sparking it. It affirms what the HN community values and let's "outsiders" know what expectations are. This isn't a witch-hunt, it's just public discourse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Just a data point: I'm in the top 100 (though not top 10 likes jacquesm!), know a couple of people at RWW (not the person involved with this, though), and I've _never_ been approached by anyone randomly at RWW or anywhere else with the intention of gaming or posting to HN.

</comment><comment><USER22> I think it's naive to assume there's anything that happens on HN that _isn't_ socially engineered in some way.

Sounds glib, but render down the actions and incentives of participation on the site. In a business-focused environment where there's opportunity to influence a large group, whether for direct commercial gain or reputation- building, competition will necessarily arise.

We're all socially engineering each other all the time.

Take away posting attribution and karma and it mightn't be that way, but those are big incentives for continued participation, once a person is invested. Could the site exist without them?

</comment><comment><USER13> Wolfire regularly approaches me to post their blog posting to HN. The blogs are really interesting and seem to be very popular so I really don't feel bad about posting it for them. In fact I don't do much distortion either I mainly just post it with the regular title.

<comment><USER23> I will take full responsibility for this. I felt weird submitting my own content, so I asked my friend to submit it on my behalf, which is obviously much worse. I have since learned that submitting your own content is encouraged, so I am basically a dumb ass and humbly apologize to the HN community and to zitterbewegung for asking him in the first place.

-Jeff from Wolfire

<comment><AUTHOR> Spoken like a man, thanks for that.

<comment><USER24> Hey Jacques - Well, we've certainly got egg on our face now. =)

In Dana's defense, she wasn't asking for a submission. She was trying to put the story on your radar in the event that you were interested in the topic.

I'm sorry you saw this as her trying to turn HN into Digg - which RWW certainly doesn't want to do. We'll be submitting our own stuff from now on.

In the end, whether you're talking about Digg, Twitter, Reddit, or a more niche site such as HN or Slashdot, the best content comes from active members of the community. I guess ReadWriteWeb needs to have more startup writers as active participants, not just content creators.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I think all the valid points have been made; maybe it's time to flag this out of existence(meta).</comment>