Parents: Read the damn box - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/126017-parents-read-the-damn-box <comment><USER2> > "CONTAINS HOMOSEXUAL CONTENT. DO NOT BUY THIS GAME IF HOMOSEXUAL CONTENT > OFFENDS YOU"

Well, then, you'd also have to include:

> Contains Aliens. Do not buy this game if the concept of extra-terrestrial > sapient life conflicts with your religious beliefs.

> Contains women not covering their face. Do not buy this game if > unaccompanied and uncovered women offend you.

> Contains the destruction of a historical site. Do not buy this game if poor > archeological practices offend you.

You could go on forever.

<comment><USER3> _> Contains the destruction of a historical site. Do not buy this game if poor archeological practices offend you._

You know, there's probably the germ of a pretty cool idea for a game in that.

<comment><USER4> I'd love to see a remake of "BomberHehhe!" - (<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDFbFmZCsHY>). An option to play as evil and destroy ancient monuments (or cause as much damage to non-target buildings as possible) would be funny.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One minor quibble: "sexual content" is a set that most definitely does include "homosexual content". There's no need to grant Happeh the idea that they weren't properly warned.

It seems to me that we should not feel any compulsion to cater to those who think that there is inherent _moral_ difference in non-heterosexual behavior.

</comment><comment><USER6> Orthogonal to everything brought up in the article: I'm still stunned by how many parents have no problem with depictions of graphic violence but go nuts over sexuality and nudity. Arab culture is the most sexually repressed I've ever encountered, but we here in The States are not that far behind.

<comment><USER7> I keep wondering about this. The argument comes back all the time, and yet sexual repression continues unabated.

I wonder if it's because violence doesn't provoke the same copycat response as sexuality does. After all, the whole existence of porn is based on it being a stimulant for sexuality. However seeing a violent scene doesn't stimulate you to go beat something up. Or at least any human that I know of ;)

<comment><USER8> I don't know about that... as a kid, I would usually jump off the walls for about 30 minutes after watching Jackie Chan flicks.

Luckily, he only fights bad guys. =)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I thought the way these things were handled in the Mass Effect series was good. You really do have to go looking for these sorts of things, they don't force it on you in any way.

It's like paying cover at a strip club, going to the back room, and being offended by nudity.

This isn't a case of not reading the box. It's a case of getting your pitchfork because you heard a rumor.

<comment><USER10> I agree, but another problem is the fact that people read the box cover as much as they read the game manual, which is to say, not at all.

<comment><USER11> No matter how clearly labeled, common-sense, or standard practice something is, people will always find a way to rationalize not knowing or push their dislike of it on to someone else, usually an undeserving person. It is a simple lack of personal accountability, and happens everywhere.

I worked for years at a bar, the number of people who tried get more scotch put in the glass when they ordered it neat (no ice), because it didn't look as full as their friend's on-the-rocks was astonishing (poured via shot glass, simple displacement effects here). These were ph.d level people who should know better. Of course the on-the-rocks people tended to complain about it tasting "watered down"... sigh.

Anyway, there is a highly amusing website: <http://notalwaysright.com/> that will probably provide insight into this phenomenon. I believe most of those stories have happened, having witnessed most of the scenarios (albeit with my own customers...)

Point being, excusing people for not noticing the big rating that is on the front of the box is probably the wrong answer, at some point we have to accept that someone needs to be responsible. Otherwise, we just keep passing the buck, I mean how long until we can just claim "oh I didn't understand the rules for labeling, it is obviously too much to expect me to read all those rules, we need a better rule system from $oversight_org", and then the org says, "oversight is too hard, how were we supposed to know that those naked people actually meant nudity"... and on and on

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This argument has about as much chance of persuading the public as the 'read the damn terms of service' argument.

People don't want clear warnings, disclaimers, or notices - they want the things they dislike to simply not exist.

<comment><USER13> ToS agreements are long, convoluted, and full of confusing legal verbiage. Sentences like "Contains violence, sexual innuendo, and some nudity" are short, direct, and easy to read, if a bit vague. That's a pretty big practical difference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm not hugely privy to the storyline, but it is my understanding a loose group of forum-goers from reddit, 4chan, neogaf, and probably other communities banded together to vote EA into the #1 status of worst company in america for various legitimate reasons. EA then very shortly after (like within a week) introduced this idea that they received the designation in part because of backlash regarding homosexual content in one game (of a series that has been featuring such content since '07). Now no one cares about why EA was really voted into this honor, but rather all the issues related to this (seeming) misdirection. This article is a perfect example.

EA: 1 Consumerist+Voters: 0

<comment><USER15> Oh yes of course, there are no people who oppose gay rights. There is a complete equality, legally and socially among people of different sexualities. No sir-ee, completly impossible that there are people opposed to gay rights,

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The "consumers hate us because of homosexuality in our games" is a PR move from EA to cover the fact they were voted worst company in America for reasons that have nothing to do with sexuality.

They were voted worst company because of their spyware distribution service, anti-consumer DLC practices, and ruining otherwise great developers by buying them and forcing out lackluster sequels designed for profit over all other considerations. I'm not saying that's wrong for a company to do, I'm just saying that's why online communities are upset.

But as long as they keep claiming the people who don't like their company are homophobic, they draw attention from these things in the media.

</comment><comment><USER17> I find it intriguing that, in the Sci-Fi genre, for so long nobody has really taken issue with the idea of inter-species romantic relationships, but yet when homosexuality is thrown into the mix, some people who probably wouldn't care about humans in relationships with robots or aliens really get bent out of shape.

I guess the upshot of my comment would be: If you're so worried about a child bumping into deviant views on anything, why are you exposing them to science fiction?

I'm sure there's sci-fi written to abide by current moral bounds, but I find it somewhat less "believable" than sci-fi that leaves all options open.

</comment><comment><USER18> The funny part of all of this is that games like Mass Effect barely brush the PG-13 barrier in terms of depictions of sex. What people are the most upset about is the frank and open acceptance of homosexuality. To which I say: go crawl back under your rocks, and good on EA/Bioware for not being bigoted asses.

</comment><comment><USER19> Good reply to the original comment:

> Do you have a big sign on your head that says "CONTAINS BIGOTRY. DO NOT > APPROACH THIS PERSON IF BIGOTRY OFFENDS YOU."?

</comment><comment><USER20> I am still a bit shocked that this is an issue. As clearly pointed out, if you don't want to see homosexual content it is not forced upon you.

The fact that homosexual content is in the game is great because it allows the user to direct the relationships as they see fit. This is a huge selling point for the Mass Effect series in general.

Corin_11 hit the nail on the head though, they are not surprised because they were not warned about the content. They are using that argument to mask the fact that they don't want any homosexual content in the game at all.

</comment><comment><USER21> I resonate with the rant (not so much the light grey text on white theme but that's something else) which is that many parents are not proactive in their kids upbringing with regard to morals or societal expectations. But lets look at that part of it for a moment.

Parents are really busy these days, most often they both work, a depressing number are single parents, they have a certain amount of 'parent/child interaction' time available when they are both in the same place as their child and they are not asleep. Further, the normal foibles of kids consume some of that time uncontrollably (you have to go to the doctor to get that bean pulled out of your nose, you have a history project due tomorrow that needs help, going to and from soccer / band / daycare / school Etc. Parents also need times for themselves to process work stress, spouse stress, family issues, etc.

Now in that environment your kids like to play computer games (seems pretty common) and the friction of getting games is fairly loose, but games (like books) can introduce your kids to concepts before you as a parent have had a chance to put some structure around it. That will lead to questions and discussions that really do have to happen 'right now' because not giving kids any guidance when they encounter those questions is really bad parenting. My personal opinion is that 90% of a parent's 'job' is to prepare your kids for the society they are about to enter, poor preparation reflects badly on them, on you, and is generally a losing proposition for society in general.

So 'read the box' as an indicator for 'good parenting' is not sufficient.

We always made dinner time a time when everyone got together, had a meal, and _talked_. We have an old copy of the World Book encyclopedia, a dictionary, the CRC Handbook of Physics and Chemistry, a world atlas (post USSR breakup) and the desktop science reference all to settle arguments of fact :-). But more importantly as our children aged we talked about money, violence, relationships, crimes of intent, crimes of passion, morality vs legality, responsibility, politics, civics, religion, and books. The goal was to have the conversation about a topic started _before_ it came up as a question so that when it did come up they would bring it to the table and we'd talk about it.

So exhorting someone to do that, embrace parenting as your primary responsibility to your children, its a good thing. But I totally understand when folks are so exhausted from the rest of their life that it takes a back seat.

So read the box, talk about 'cartoon violence' versus 'real' violence, go sit in the local ER some time if you're in a major metropolitan city to see what 'real' suffering looks like rather than on screen, add a med kit and blam back into the action. Most kids can separate imaginary from real at a pretty young age. Personally I don't think it is inappropriate to understand reproduction and sex fairly young, it's probably not worth trying to explain the impact on ones brain until puberty since it's really hard to convey that the chemistry of your body can work against your judgement.

Understand that when you have kids it is a bigger commitment than just saving money for them to go to college. :-)

<comment><USER22> You make good points. As a busy parent, I certainly sympathesize with people that feel like they have too little time to monitor what they're kids are exposed to.

I think one very significant factor is making sure that they can come to you, as a parent, when they come across a new concept. Of course, as you said, I would prefer to introduce the concepts on my timeline, but I also need to be ready to deal with them whent he come up. More than that, I need to make sure my kids feel comfortable coming to me when they come up. Otherwise, it won't be a discussion I need to have "right now", it will be a discussion that happens with other friends that are probably just as confused and unprepared as mine are.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> As a company, I want many people to buy my game.

If some homophobes feel cheated -- that's even better than the money they payed for the game.

</comment><comment><USER8> For those that think they can control EVERYTHING their children will ever see, hear and experience - I have news for you, you're going to fail. Not only will you fail in your attempt, your children will most likely be handicapped living in your bubble that lacks critical thinking.

Also, while you may be a Christian/religious person here on Earth, I don't see how that applies to a future with aliens, other planets, etc. With the way things are going, it's almost guaranteed that religious power will be a thing of the past as soon as we can prove other life/civilizations exist besides the one here on Earth.

One obviously does not need religion to have good morals or good values. Different doesn't mean wrong, and certainly not in this case. Homosexuality, polygamy, asexuality, and natural gender change (clown fish) already exists here on Earth in one form or another. It's not hard to conceive that these behaviors also exist on other planets even if we don't get to witness it firsthand today.

Anyway, if you want to live in a bubble, make yourself blind and deaf and just don't buy anything. If you choose to interact with the growing, ever changing world, expect to learn something new when you do it.

<comment><USER24> > With the way things are going, it's almost guaranteed that religious power > will be a thing of the past as soon as we can prove other life/civilizations > exist besides the one here on Earth.

OK, I'll bite. Why?

<comment><USER25> Agree. They've so far been able to reinterpret religious writings to encompass pretty much any development, regardless of how illogical it sounds. I don't think the discovery of life elsewhere would break this trend.

<comment><USER8> You're right - they have been able to spin things to their advantage. However, to my understanding, many are still based on the geocentric view of the universe and that we are a very special exception to every other planet we've observed w/o life.

We are just now discovering that planets are actually abundant and are all around us. A thought that seemed alien just years ago when we thought every other star lacked planets.

While I can't predict what aliens will be able to teach/tell us when they arrive (or when we find them), I do feel that a real "first contact" will change or make a lot of people rethink what they really think they know.

<comment><USER26> Other _intelligent_ life will probably have a huge effect. But simply finding life, even complex life, won't.

The question now is the reverse - suppose we find nothing? Suppose we find no life even in an environment that should have it?

<comment><USER8> Finding life will be the prequel to finding intelligent life. You're right that finding life itself won't change the views of people who choose to close their minds, but it will be the start of many realizing we're nothing special, but rather, something very common.

Also, I'm almost certain there are life in other planets in our solar system. It'll just take a few (relatively speaking) more years to prove it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> "one would think the presence of any sexual content at all (to say nothing of "partial nudity") would convince most parents that Mass Effect 3 isn't right for their children"

Fun. Dismissing weirdo homophobic comments and ending with weirdo "nudity is certainly bah and not for kids".

For me, both is a reason to shake my head in disbelief.

</comment><comment><USER28> Of course having games that encourage killing people is better than games that might have sexual undertones.

</comment><comment><USER29> The front of the box could be nothing more than a giant M ESRB logo and these parents would still buy the game for their kids.

</comment><comment><USER30> _I hugely disagree with this._ I'll give 3 examples and some more explanation:

I'm not sure about others, but playing GTA 1 at 10 years old didn't make me a serial murderer as far as I know, nor did it offend me to shoot people's heads off on the PS2 with GTA III later. My parents did actually return this game though, they thought it went a bit far. Or my father did, my mother never got to see it, probably for the better.

Earlier, I think at about 7-8 years old, I played Command and Conquer 2: Tiberian Sun. I think it was 16+, might have been 18+. Yeah you really could see a few pixels blood for like two fifth of a second. Now that made me a real dictator, and afterwards I was screaming under the table. Sure...

Then the last game I really played a lot is OpenArena, mostly a Quake 3 copy. So with real pixels resembling some 90's version of blood and gore. Must say I never noticed it until I started playing a bit more pro, and I noticed the gore was actually in my field of sight. Then I set com_blood 0 and my visibility was improved... I was about 15 when I started playing. The game is 17+ but I only noticed that when I was 17 (I'm 18 now). That, too, didn't quite offend me.

So WHY do I ask? Why are we even bothering to print these things on the covers anymore? It is a very slight indication of what age category the game is for, but much more useful would it be to put on the covers something like "Blatant sex" or "Dull game good for children under 10". Now that won't happen, but the equivalents wouldn't be such a bad idea. Then they could stop making judgments of which size fits all (since you can hardly put up a personality test in the shop before getting an age recommendation).

Also something people apparently fail to notice how it's called an age _recommendation_. Here at least. Still though, as 15-year-old you won't be able to buy a 16+ game. Like the expansion pack for Command and Conquer 3. It doesn't even contain blood or sex or anything! Maybe in the cut-scenes of the campaign, but I never even played that (skirmish and online ftw). How could they know? They can't! So why make anymore judgment than a recommendation?

 _Moral of this rant:_ Parents: Don't you dare looking at the age rating! If it says what's in the game, like drugs or violence, that might be of some use. Best would be to just watch a gameplay trailer someone put on Youtube, then make the best decision for _your child_. Can you really trust other's to make the best decision?

<comment><USER31> Some of the video game ratings here used to include a more detailed summary of the content, with meters indicating the level of language, violence, sexual content/nudity, etc. in the game, making it easy to decide if a game had too little or too much of a particular category of offensiveness for one's tastes. These days, though, all I see is the unhelpful letter "M", or maybe the occasional "T".

<comment><USER32> Those letters are helpful in making the snap decision as to whether to even bother investigating the content further. I can't give every game/book/movie/whatever proper review, so it helps to know that some sane adult marked it with an easily-understood cue. If there's an "M" or "T" on the box, I don't want to waste another second wondering if it's suitable for my toddlers.

Example: "Happy Tree Friends" is advertised & starts with cute forest animals in simple & colorful renderings; an appropriate parental cue helps prevent having to explain other definitions of "rendering" to a kid who can barely talk and is wondering why seconds later that cute squirrel is shrieking, spewing red, and has a bad case of the ouchies. A prominent "T" would be helpful to those adults who don't know the show and are being pestered by a 3-year-old to watch it on Netflix.

<comment><USER30> True, an indication of recommended age may help in the Happy Tree Friends case. But I think some 10-year-olds might also not like it very much, and they are teens already. If it said "strong violence", that probably works even better.

Of course the best thing is watching a trailer on Youtube, but you can hardly do that for every series the children ever watch. This is more realistic with games, at least until they start buying or downloading their own games.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How do you break the cycle of needing experience to find a developer job? - <AUTHOR> I graduated in 2016 with a degree in computer science. Honestly, I was a crap student at the time dealing with personal issues, plus working my way through school.
Fast forward to now, after working in sales for 1 1/2 years and realizing I do want to do development after all. Problem is, I have no relevant work experience. I've been unemployed for a few months now and have put out ~150 applications with not one interview or call.
I'm really frustrated. I'm curious if anyone has any advice on breaking this endless cycle. It makes me feel like I will never find a job doing development. <comment><USER3> Beyond building a portfolio, as others mentioned—

You're assuming you have no relevant job experience. This is not necessarily the case. Lots of skills you need as a programmer are used in other jobs as well. So things you learned while working in sales might well make you a more attractive candidate than some other person straight out of school. E.g. being able to work independently is hugely valuable, and partly it's about technical knowledge you haven't accumulated, but mostly it's about a whole bunch of skills that transfer from other jobs.

Compare your skills as _salesperson_ to what they were when you started - <USER2> did you learn? What can you do now that you couldn't then?

(Also, happy to look at your resume - firstname.lastname@example.com)

</comment><comment><USER4> There are always positions open for less experienced developers. Any employer will want you to show that you are able to contribute.

I got my first job ever as an IT administrator. I was previously administering network in my dorm. My new employer was very large, very known company. The had a test prepared to evaluate their candidates, about 50 closed questions. I have aced the test and got invited for discussion and based on that I was hired as a junior admin/helpdesk guy.

My first programming job I got after few years of administering critical systems at large companies. I was writing some scripts and even small apps to automate things, integrate systems, etc. I got hired as a senior admin for a company to admin an application that was still in development. The problem was, the application development team were missing deadlines. Since they did not have the application ready I got notified they will have to fire me for lack of job. I proposed I can try and help them to develop the application faster, and that's how I got my first development gig.

</comment><comment><USER5> It's incredibly difficult. I applied for a hundred jobs, finally got one. Now I'm freelance/contract, which I stumbled into by luck (got fired and landed clients the same day). The best piece of advice I can give, is to keep building side projects to build a portfolio, meet as many people as you can in the field (network), and if possible, expand your job search criteria. There are lots of small companies that have a difficult time finding anyone at all that can work on their code. If you put your time in at some smaller companies, you can build your resume and inch up the ladder. These kinds of jobs aren't glamorous but they've given me a lot of confidence in myself as a programmer. It also helps that teams are usually tiny and you can get a ton of experience doing different things that would be someone else's responsibility at a bigger company.

</comment><comment><USER6> one approach i've seen and used to make hiring decisions:

do a great open source project to show you have the skills w/o the experience. ideally something relevant to potential employer.

what they really want to know is if you know the shit, not how long you sat in a desk. people lie about such things so years in a job is a proxy for truth

<comment><USER7> or alternative to working on OSS is to create a product and try to sell it. If it sells you dont need a job at all and yout are sitting on a money making startup. And if it doesnt then you can use this product to show case your skills to the potential employer.

<comment><USER6> YES! Great point! And having known the business inside and out, plus the tech, plus showing what a hard worker you are - you'll be a triple threat!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> hey OP I had a similar situation to you, except I was still working while making the transition.

Background - IT degree comprised mainly of electives from a Law dual which I ended up dropping. Worked as a business analyst for 4 years and before that in IT support. All at the same pseudo-govt body.

Over the last 1-2 years working there, I spent my days at work just surviving. Enough to get by. The nights & weekends were spent building product(s) that I tried and failed to launch as startups. I had pretty much no programming exp. but grinded through it. Started with Ruby on Rails, rebuilt the same app about 3 times. Then moved to React front-end and Rails backend. Built that one twice.

Eventually worked up the courage to start applying. Made sure my resume/interviewing focused on two things: 1\. my experience working in a team environment and solving problems (i.e. my BA work); and 2\. my experience building web applications as seen by examples that were deployed. In answering most tech Q's I referred to things I had done to get my web app to work which were similar.

I now work as a front-end (React) dev in an awesome company getting paid well and building interesting things. I've been there for almost a year now.

You may need to grind and it will be frustrating but you can do it. Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER9> One avenue for that is the non-profit service sector, if you can maintain their systems it has pretty stable hours tasks are long range and you have time to develop skills and stuff. You learn a lot about the nuts and bolts of office work, data management, communication, and reporting.

Downside is pay is not anywhere near the private sector, also if funding gets cut, as a non direct services position, you may be under cutback consideration.

<comment><USER10> I worked as a BA until I got work at a non-profit doing lightweight database admin and legacy app administration. Now in my second year I'm helping rebuild our internal apps with react and .NET. I'm hoping to set myself up well for my next position.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I know many companies (mine included) have internal programs to switch career track. One option could be to step in in sales, and apply for the program. The downside is that you'll still have to do sales for a bit. Also, I'm not sure this is something I'd discuss before getting the job, so I guess another risk is that you won't be accepted in the program.</comment>


Show HN: Teena - Unix in Python, powered by Tornado - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/zacharyvoase/teena

<comment><USER2> This is cool... I started something very similar to this 6 months ago.

I took the Tornado event loop (rather than depending all of Tornado) and made it work with pipes, signals, and child processes (SIGCHLD mainly).

I based it on the Node.js API. Node has the stream1.pipe(stream2) API which is very nice. And I think node has a tee() as well.

Teena's API looks different at first glance -- I'll test it out and see what the advantages are.

I wrote this since I have a server that it starting a lot of child processes and the only way to properly manage timeouts and unexpected child deaths is with an event loop.

I didn't connect it to the server yet but I used it in another project which is like a better xargs -P (and better than GNU parallel). I'll put the code up at some point.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Note from the author: this is still a work in progress, but I wanted to demonstrate that Tornado (and async I/O in general) is useful for more than just network servers.

</comment><comment><USER3> Why tornado instead of asyncore? Tornado seems like a heavy dependency for this type of project.</comment>


There's no way to query an address in brooklyn on Google maps - <AUTHOR> https://www.google.com/maps?q=55+Water+Street,+Brooklyn,+NY+11201&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi2oJSYxofgAhVSneAKHXi1BdkQ_AUIDigB <comment><AUTHOR> To be clear, whats happening here is that 55 Water St, Brooklyn, NY 11201 will always produce a pin for 55 Water St New York, NY 10004. Notably, 55 Water Street, The Empire Stores, Brooklyn, NY 11201 (which is a very strange way to format an address including the name of a store) will result in the correct location. Basically every dependent service is affected by this including Lyft, Seamless, and Uber.

Interesting as well is that there's no clear way to submit a bug report to google when the search results are wrong because its not technically an issue with the map data.

<comment><USER2> If you have local knowledge, can you add the address to [https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/250402627](https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/250402627) (edit button, similar to wikipedia, just more visual editor)? It won't end up in Google database but many others (Apple Maps uses OSM data in many countries).

I work in geocoding myself ([https://opencagedata.com/](https://opencagedata.com/)) and can't quite see why Google engine would misplace the result here. Lots of users mistype zip codes so they're sometimes discarded when another full match is found.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Having worked there, I confirm it's a pain, since this issue is pervasive to any service using those. People often have to mid-direct their deliveries, cars, etc to nearby addresses (54, across the street, works fine)

<comment><USER3> I've also had to fight with both Uber, Lyft and Seamless for refunds on mis- services to this address multiple times

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Whoa, yeah, I tried "55 water st, brooklyn,ny" in maps.google.com and it dropped the pin in Manhattan (the gigantic office 55 Water building that houses DTCC.)</comment>


Ask HN: How do you deal with feeling alone and/or not reaching your potential? - <AUTHOR> Hey guys, I'm a backend developer in Elixir currently working as a contractor for almost 5 years on multiple projects.
Even when I previously worked in a bigger team, I felt technically alone anyway - usually, I'm the only backend developer in the team. I'm missing some kind of feedback loop, a group of people I could grow my experience and improve my problem-solving skills.
I love to talk about technology, think of better solutions to the problem and implementing such solutions into real-life projects. I'm learning new stuff, going deeper and deeper, but I'm not sure If what I'm applying in my projects is the best solution or even the right way of doing things and I know I'm not reaching my full potential.
Did you manage to create a group of individuals you can talk about technology with and get feedback from and grow with? <comment><USER2> There are some things you can try: Contributing to open source projects, conferences or even in-person courses with group projects and the like.</comment>


From Business Cards to Contacts - Without CardMunch - <AUTHOR> http://www.fullcontact.com/2013/03/13/cardshark-business-card-reader-app/

<comment><USER2> It's nice to see a good balance between useful App and useful API. I used this feature previously but now I can easily point friends and the rest of the team to it. Data portability alone is worth paying for and the API flexibility lets the available features grow faster than Fullcontact's efforts on their own. Kudos on good work for the front end of identity.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a must-have for meetups. I recently just churned through a stack of year-old cards from SXSW and various meetup groups I'd just never gotten around to putting somewhere.

</comment><comment><USER4> It says your first 25 cards are free. What's the business model, and why would I pay money when CardMunch is free?

<comment><USER5> Seems like the only difference from CardMunch is they import contacts to Salesforce for you.

<comment><USER6> This is a huge deal for folks stuck in Salesforce. I've already had our team of 6 regional sales managers begin using the app.

<comment><USER7> There's also an API behind the scenes</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Melomics – Computer Generated Music - <AUTHOR> https://melomics.com/

<comment><USER2> This is great, I've been toying with this idea myself for years! Makes me happy that somebody put the effort into doing it so well. The last update from the "news" section is from about a year ago: does anyone know if it's still being actively developed?</comment>


S. Korea Not banning cryptocurrency trade - <AUTHOR> https://cointelegraph.com/news/official-no-cryptocurrency-trading-ban-in-south-korea-government-says <comment><USER2> Well this is a relief to hear</comment>


Equifax Data Breach Settlement - <AUTHOR> https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/cases-proceedings/refunds/equifax-data-breach-settlement <comment><USER2> $125 for being okay with making my retirement more insecure/unprobable than it already was. Awesome!</comment>


Piriform Security Notification – CCleaner has been compromised - <AUTHOR> http://www.piriform.com/news/release-announcements/2017/9/18/security-notification-for-ccleaner-v5336162-and-ccleaner-cloud-v1073191-for-32-bit-windows-users <comment><USER2> The discussion is substantial, and over here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15274339](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15274339)</comment>


Ask HN: Why are all the Digg stories immediately killed? - <AUTHOR>

I submitted mine and it was instantly a dead link. <comment><USER2> digg.com is perm-banned on HN, maybe because HN didn't want to become (the old) digg?

EDIT: To clarify, HN didn't want to become the old digg just like HN doesn't want to become reddit. The old digg community was... Less than stellar.

<comment><AUTHOR> I never used the old Digg, did it have a similar look and feel?

<comment><USER3> No. It only had one main column, like say a blog, or like Reddit, but I think it also had descriptions, not just headlines on the main page. I think this one looks a lot better. But I hate that they force you to use FB login.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is the fix just to submit the original? I've never used digg but isn't it just adding comments to the original story? In many ways, I think this policy should apply to reddit links as well, but at least reddit has original content like AmA's

EDIT: Spelling

</comment><comment><USER5> HN is not a democracy. If you watch closely enough, you'll see plenty of posts (and comments, and users) disappear if the moderators do not agree with them.</comment>


Spore User Research Outtakes - <AUTHOR> http://vimeo.com/1704058

<comment><USER2> This is also very cool: <http://www.spore.com/comm/prototypes> As far as I know Spore is the first game to publish this kind of previous work, and not just the source code (some games published design docs, and a lot of games published postmortems too, but entire working prototypes? I've never seen that).

<comment><USER3> Introversion Software released a lot of development stuff for their game Uplink (tagline: Trust is a Weakness) on a separate CD. You can download the contents of the CD from their site as well: <http://www.introversion.co.uk/uplink/otherfiles.html>

<comment><USER2> Thank you for the info.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> omg, i love this. the little kid in the blue hat is hilarious. i wonder if IDEO has outtakes too.

</comment><comment><USER5> "The designing never stops."

</comment><comment><USER6> That was comedy gold.</comment>


Internship Based Question - <AUTHOR>

I am pursuing my degree from the Coventry University & looking for an Internship(IT) in Dubai. What's the best way to find one? <comment><USER2> I had the same query as yours. That is when one my friends' referred me to a firm called "Pursue Asia". I wanted to pursue an internship in Human Resources. It fortunately turned out to be a good experience, as Pursue Asia not only arranged a firm for my Internship, but also took care of me during my stay in Dubai. Here's their website just in case if you want to have a look at it : www.pursueasia.com</comment>


YC S2015- invited to interview or not? - <AUTHOR>

When will the YC applicants know whether they have been invited or not for interview? <comment><USER2> I got our rejection email a few minutes ago. A couple things to remember for those in the same boat:

1\. YC is just a means to an end. It's cliche but getting rejected to YC should not deter your startups path. If it does, it's a bad sign.

2\. My team and I were excited about the opportunity as usual but we made sure we kept our expectations realistic and didn't get our hopes up. There are too many ups and downs in a startup to let this have a big impact on you. We didn't get in last time either, but I'm actually thankful because we wouldn't have been ready and it would've been a wasted opportunity.

Focus on growth and executing toward your goal above all else, that's the tl;dr of the YC experience anyway. Keep fighting the good fight.

<comment><USER3> I'm by no means in a position of power, but if I saw a company "come across my desk" that applied and got rejected by YC, that would still stand out to me as a unique company, because they tried. Especially if that company acknowledged the reasons they were rejected and what they learned from the rejection and what they'd change next. Good luck on your next step!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> At this point I'm just going to pause my inbox with [http://inboxpause.com/](http://inboxpause.com/) and open it in the morning, see everyone on the other side.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm too waiting to know the same. Haven't received any communication yet.

</comment><comment> ts-hn From a quick look at Twitter:

Accepted for interview: [http://www.apptreerevolution.com](http://www.apptreerevolution.com)

</comment><comment><USER6> Did not get an interview either

<comment><USER7> Head up!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Anyone yet to recieve a communication from YC?

<comment><USER8> Just got the mail. Surprisinlgy, I received the mail at almost the same instant I commented for the first time on HN. Anyways, It was a rejection. :(</comment></comment>


Reset your life - <AUTHOR> http://levels.io/reset-your-life/ <comment><USER2> First and foremost: this was posted on Monday the 22nd of April, 2013.

Secondly, the guy writing this is extremely privileged yet implying he somehow had a hard time and had to "escape" the system. If anything, his life was getting monotonous and he did indeed reset it, but not completely. He still had his massive bank account when he left for Thailand, so in the end it was just moving without having to transport all the belongings (as he got rid of everything).

<comment><USER3> It's _Eat, Pray, Love_ for the tech crowd.

I've seen a lot of these articles. It reminds me very much of 4HWW. They're all written like the author is overcoming some major hurdle and achieving some sort of enlightment, but in fact they're basically just going on vacation after becoming hugely successful.

<comment><USER4> You've got to cope with the burden of success _somehow_ , right? :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It sounds like (or at least the title suggests that) the author would advocate this extreme approach to others? Perhaps I can advocate another approach:

If you're feeling signs of depression or panic attacks, seek out the help of a mental health professional.

There are real neurological and physical implications to the symptoms the author describes. Picking up and moving won't be an option to all, and may not work even for those who do have the option.

<comment><USER6> I know a very good mental health professional, a trained psychologist with a Ph.D. She says (and I'm paraphrasing) that 99% of people's problems can be treated by getting away from sources of stress, and exercising. These things work much better than most forms of therapy, and most of her sessions involve convincing clients to do these simple, effective things.

So if you're having problems, going to Thailand is excellent medicine, if you can afford it.

<comment><USER5> Sounds like a safer conclusion for a mental health professional to come to than a layman, given proper data. That is, I trust your friend's opinion on this topic more than yours or mine, but in more advanced cases I'm sure she'd prefer to see the patient than they skip her counsel.

The technical community has a higher than normal prevalence of mental illness. We need to learn to put more stock in real, educated, professional advice on these topics than blog and forum-based accounts of self-prescribed solutions.

<comment><USER7> > The technical community has a higher than normal prevalence of mental > illness.

What makes you say this?

> We need to learn to put more stock in real, educated, professional advice on > these topics than blog and forum-based accounts of self-prescribed > solutions.

Yes. See also any thread about food.

<comment><USER5> >> The technical community has a higher than normal prevalence of mental illness.

> What makes you say this?

[http://www.tablexi.com/blog/2013/04/developers-and- depressio...](http://www.tablexi.com/blog/2013/04/developers-and-depression- end-the-shame/txi-life/)

>> We need to learn to put more stock in real, educated, professional advice on these topics than blog and forum-based accounts of self-prescribed solutions.

> Yes. See also any thread about food.

Food? Food sources? Cooking? Farming? What are you talking about?

<comment><USER7> > _I know of no formal study, but I wouldn't be surprised if the rates of > bipolar and depression amongst software developers are double that of the > general population._

So, you're just guessing about rates of mental illness among the technical community?

> Food?

Yes, food. The threads are full of weird anecdote and semi-mystical bollocks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Shaking things up can be cathartic and sometimes the exactly right thing to do. More frequently, I've found, changing one's life in smaller degrees can have a profound effect on mood and well being: exercising more, eating healthier, getting more sleep, meditating, consuming less media, keeping a clean living space. It's worth checking the low-hanging fruit -- small things can make a big difference.

<comment><USER9> I've been thinking about 'big changes' in my life and in that of my families. I too am privileged to a degree. Reading your comment though has made me think and I'd like to thank you for that. Its easier to think of doing one big step, but really you're right - I need to stop thinking that I'm too busy to meditate or do yoga and I just need to do it. I've already stopped consuming too much media but every single of your points are valid in terms of what I need to do. Thank you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I had a panic attack recently. Let me tell you, it is worst feeling in the world. The urge to reset your life after such a event is almost natural. It's like, If I don't change right now, I would not be able to live any longer.

I started changing little things. I started sleeping more.

I made it a point to do a 6 Km walk everyday.

I cut down on alcohol.

I stopped seeing people whom I had wanted to avoid for a long time but was not doing so out of social pressures.

I started seeing my parents more often.

I also signed up for an online meditation course.

I started working less ( Looking back, this maybe was the most effective thing)

It takes days to overcome a full fledged panic attack. For days you would dread that you might get another panic attack when you're least expecting it. Like when you're in office or when you are driving or when you're shopping.

I have changed my lifestyle and I can tell you I am quite happy after I did so.

I hope OP also experienced something similar.

</comment><comment><USER11> Not to play armchair psychologist but the whole minimalist thing strikes me as a way to put unnecessary extra stress on yourself. Having nothing means having no excuse not to constantly work, and you shouldn't constantly work. You should fucking relax every now and then, drink a few beers and watch something mindless on your obscenely large flatscreen.

Having shit is a way to make your life be about more than just what your early-20s self told you was necessary to consider yourself a success. If you think life is only worth living if you follow [insert well known person]'s biography to a T then your bound to have incidents that make you want to do crazy things like "reset" your privileged life.

* the preceding is not a judgment on the author's decisions, which are his own, but rather a commentary on the "minimalist" movement.

<comment><USER12> OK, but you don't need things in order to relax. In fact, many of the best ways to relax don't need things (or at least, very many things). I think that's the point.

Rather than owning an obscenely large flatscreen (and stand to put it on, and couch to sit on while watching it, and apartment to put it in, and cable/Roku/DVD/(insert content device)) you could...

Go for a walk

Go for a walk in nature, now it's a hike!

Go to a museum

Play frisbee (borrow if necessary)

Ride a bike (rent if necessary)

Find some music to listen to

<comment><USER11> You can do all of those things while also owning stuff. Owning stuff just makes it easier to relax. Instead of planning to relax... you just walk into a room with distractions available.

Having distractions readily available is benefitial to your mental health. Sometimes you have to not over-analyze your every action. Have an office which is empty, that's what I have, for when you need complete concentration. Stop making early-20s dreams your entire existence.

<comment><USER13> Right. But what about distractions that you never use but still end up having to maintain (which involves over-analyzing and mental costs)?

Minimalism is about making that same decision. It's about eliminating those things from your life that don't bring more fun to you than their maintenance costs. Stuff that is making it _harder_ , not easier, for you to relax. What qualifies as minimalist living is an inherently personal decision. For some, everything can fit in a backpack. For others, even a mansion may be minimal.

Owning "only 100 things" isn't the _definition_ of minimalism. Only an example. Like "delicious", "minimalism" is a subjective concept.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Uprooting your life and doing a "reset" as described will make you feel good for a while.

Unfortunately, "wherever you go there you are." You can't outrun yourself, and thinking a reset like this is anything more than a temporary band-aid is misguided.

</comment><comment><USER15> Shaking things up and changing your life drastically is fun and exciting......... for a while. Then you have to learn to build a life that you find sustainable, whatever it is, or else you will always be running. This is sometimes called the "distance cure".

Again, doing this feels great. For a while. I did it myself. But you should learn to distrust that good feeling, to examine it and find out why it's happening. A note of warning though, you probably won't like what you find. It's really easy to fool yourself into thinking that you are effecting change when really you are doing anything but. We are being lied to, by ourselves.

<comment><USER16> As someone considering changing my life drastically, I would appreciate if you could elaborate on this post.

<comment><USER17> Week one: "Great, my life is changing! It's a fresh new start!"

Week two: "It's nice making new friends every place I go!"

Week six: "I kinda miss hacking, having my place, a stable life and my usual clique of friends. But not too much. Moving is cool but where am I really going? And for what?"

Week ten: "Actually, I'm just doing what I was doing before but in another part of the world. And I realize I'm not even building something that's gonna last because I know I'm just gonna move out whenever I feel like it."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "Life is like the best video game ever, it has amazing graphics, infinite amounts of levels, a huge map and this ridiculous great freedom. I just needed to pick up the controller."

<comment><USER19> not sure this would go down as well for someone without a well established developer's expertise/experience. i can imagine landing at a foreign destination, after my life-reset and then asking '...now what?'

<comment><USER18> True.. If someone who wasn't already an established freelancer / contractor in the IT field tried to do what he did, they'd certainly have a hard go of it. And, if they wanted to mirror the author's "reset", they would certainly have to think longer term than most people seem to be capable of; 2+ years minimum of pushing yourself to learn, gain experience in the field, and build a network of contacts.

<comment><USER20> Probably hardship is the exact thing that he wants to experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> They say that if you make over 35,000 a year you're in the top 1% of the WORLD.

How we look at the the ultra rich with their 4 mansions and Lamborghini's is how the average world citizen looks at people like this guy.

</comment><comment><USER22> Alright to this guy had an anxiety attack, and decided to reset his life : [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6580196](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6580196)

He went to Thailand and explained the process : [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6540030](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6540030)

Then made a post of about how explaining his process has affected his blogs' stats : [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6577524](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6577524)

Hopefully another epiphany in Thailand, another reset, another relocation, another blog post, another HN hit...?

break;

</comment><comment><USER23> Why Thailand, though? I mean, Europe itself is more diverse than the US, for example, you could've moved anywhere within the continent and still have a massive change. Prague, Madrid, London, Berlin, Warsaw, Zagreb (new EU member, Croatia) all very different - why Bangkok? Could've moved to Australia even :-D

<comment><USER24> Thailand is cheap and safe. They have good infrastructures (internet, hospitals, transportation...). It's hot all year long. There are many expats and tourists so it's easy to find similarly minded people.

Also there are tons of affordable sex workers. Prostitution is not frown upon there as it is in the West. I don't know if it was a motivation for this guy, but it certainly something that attracts many men.

<comment><USER23> That could be said for some of the major cities in Europe, as well (including the prostitution, which is not illegal in Europe, just brothels are)...

<comment><USER24> Of course, Europe has good infrastructures. But Thailand is much cheaper than Europe (almost an order of magnitude cheaper for food and lodging).

An other thing that makes Thailand appealing is that there are many expats or long term tourists slacking/working there, so you wouldn't feel out of place living there with no well-defined purpose. I don't think you could get the same kind of vibe in Europe.

As far as prostitution goes, Thailand is VERY different from Europe and the US.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Last time I saw 'this post' was 643 days ago, and my observations then[1] still seem to be holding true now :)

[1][https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3470328](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3470328)

Not that it's a bad thing! I'd just love to see a follow up from one of these.

<comment><USER12> So your observation was "Unknown or expired link" ??

:)

<comment><USER25> Whoops, link fixed to the permalink.</comment></comment></comment>


Adderall Has a Tech Industry Problem - <AUTHOR> http://modelviewculture.com/pieces/adderall-has-a-tech-industry-problem <comment><AUTHOR> This piece spoke to me in a lot of ways. I'm not an adderall (or similar) user, but as a startup co-founder I can totally see the appeal of it that drives others—people much like myself—to it.

The first thing that stood out to me was the normalization of this in the San Francisco/Silicon Valley culture, which casually overlooks or ignores the risks involved. Not one person I know in tech who's taken it recreationally has ever made mention of the risks, perhaps because they don't think they experience any side-effects (or they're not impeding enough for them to care).

Then, the pressure of being the "10x" performer is very real; hero programmer or startup co-founder, you're weirdly expected by the tech environment—rarely by individuals, in fact—to be able to pull off amazing productivity and quality. Especially as a startup founder, this pressure—if you're susceptible to it—can lead to a very pro-work, anti-social [activities] feeling, which is isolating and subtly demoralizing on an [inter-]personal level.

Lastly, the part in the piece about reasons people use to self-diagnose away any symptoms of ADHD and argue (again, to themselves) that they don't have ADHD spoke to me in a very eye-opening manner. I've done _all_ of those things, and have felt miserable over them. Now, my 'symptoms' could still be caused by the stress of being a startup founder, but this piece set me on the course to explore and treat it as potentially a real condition I can get medication for. Or, find out it's not that (for me), and have the comfort of knowing this is something I can reduce by reducing my stress. Either way, I'm immensely grateful for this piece.

</comment><comment><USER2> I'm curious about the actual statistics of ADD/ADHD drug abuse in the tech community. I do have friends that have started taking Adderall but stopped quickly, or only take it rarely, because of negative effects. By negative effects I mean it made work and relationships harder, not just adverse side effects of the drugs.</comment>


2.7M phone calls to Swedish medical advice service laid open for anyone - <AUTHOR> https://computersweden.idg.se/2.2683/1.714787/inspelade-samtal-1177-vardguiden-oskyddade-internet <comment><USER2> This is... insane. 2.7 million phone calls, containing the most sensitive information imaginable, just available on an unsecured server. Many of the files indexed by phone number, making it trivial to look up any given person. This has got to be one of the worst data breach in history.

The article contains a gold nugget in a partial interview with Davide Nyblom, the CEO of Medicall, the company responsible. When asked for comment by the magazine:

Davide Nyblom: "I've checked with our IT, what you're saying is not possible."

Reporter: "I have the files in front of me."

Davide Nyblom: "I've checked with our IT, and it can't happen".

Reporter: "Do you want me to play you one of the files?"

[hangs up the phone]

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> (Swedish language article)

Some context: In Sweden, one can dial 1177 to receive medical advice for anything that isn't an urgent life and death situation. The trained medical staff at the 1177 call centers give advice at the best of their ability, or see to that the caller goes to an emergency room, schedules an appointment or even has an ambulance, when applicable.

Now, some of these calls apparently get routed to an off-shore operation in Thailand, were Swedish expat staff help out during off hours and such.

The publication Computer Sweden found that every call forwarded to this call center laid open for anyone with internet access to download or stream. All that was needed was a URL - there weren't even any password credentials needed.

All in all, 2.7 million calls were affected, from 2013 and up until the very moment Computer Sweden contacted the responsible company, and had them up their security.

I can't even start to fathom the vastness of this breach of integrity.

</comment><comment><USER3> Fine them off the surface of the planet. This is just beyond bad. It is not just something that happens. The amount of failsafes that should have triggered before something like this should be so high that the probabilities should be indestinguishable from 0.

Apparently it is only calls from three län (administrative regions), but only because the others didn't use the service of the company in question.

</comment><comment><USER4> This must be one of the worst breaches I've ever heard of. Imagine if this archive is leaked and someone made it searchable or something. I wonder what the chances are that someone has downloaded this. Probably not that high, but at the same time it was just plain old HTTP with directory listings and waw/MP3 files. Not completely unfeasible that someone is crawling stuff like that.

The URL was apparently [http://126.96.36.199:443/medicall/](http://22.214.171.124:443/medicall/).

</comment><comment><USER5> It's not the first time when swedish gov/public organizations show that they don't have any notion of security in their world view.

</comment><comment><USER6> Duplicate with [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19191241](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19191241)

</comment><comment><USER7> Sweden is joke when it comes to privacy. Yes, in Sweden GDPR applies, but in practice is not applied at all. Just type in Google the name of any resident in Sweden and you´ll get a bunch of companies providing information about full name, address, picture and directions to where they live, indications of where to turn, right, left, to go to the flat where the person lives, how much they make, whether they are married or not, own a car, a house an apartment, etc. All because the public agencies sell personal information which has not been anonymised. The Swedish Data Protection agency is another joke. Have they said anything about this? I wonder if they are going to do anything at all. According to the GDPR the region government as well as any other company or organisation should have contracts in place with reliable providers and they are responsible when going into a contract with some one who is not reliable, so the 1177, the region government, Medicall, etc, they are equally responsible.

<comment><USER5> While you are right that data like your address is freely available it should be mentioned that data like your income is a bit more "protected". One has to pay for it (and AFAIK there is a limit on the number of items a private person can buy) and the person whose data is queried is notified about such query (who asked what). Also some info is not so detailed as it may seem first. What does it give you if I say that I own a Volvo in the country where 30% of cars are Volvo? EDIT: spelling

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> does Sweden have a HIPAA equivalent? if not, is it something that would have been applicable?

<comment><USER2> I'm not a lawyer, but I presume Sweden has laws governing patient privacy. Even if not, Sweden certainly has the GDPR.

<comment><USER9> PUL might apply too.

<comment><USER10> GDPR replaces PUL</comment></comment></comment></comment>


True Wealth Is Not Money - <AUTHOR> http://www.dpegan.com/the-wealth-of-sapiens/ <comment><USER2> "Wealth is genuinely understanding how the world works, so that we can have a high degree of control over it. So you know what mold to use, when, and why."</comment>


Wists-ful thinking: lessons from a prelude to Pinterest - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2012/05/27/wists-ful-thinking-lessons-from-a-prelude-to-pinterest/

<comment><USER2> "Wists was also too early. The big social networks weren't in place yet for the site to leverage off of."

This. A few years ago a friend of mine had just joined a company called Groupon. He showed me the sharing component and I knew right away it would be successful.

I remember first encountering the group buying idea around 1999. It was a good idea but lacked the distribution channel that Facebook and Twitter provide.</comment>


Ask HN: What's your point of view on code review services such as Codacy? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> N/A. All of my code handles private data (don't most revenue-generating programs?) and I can't/won't send my code to a third-party server.

<comment><AUTHOR> What about on premise version of these services?

<comment><USER3> Hi there. I'm the CEO and Co-founder of Codacy. Thanks for asking this question.

Our on premise product is designed for companies that require discretion and a higher security scrutiny.

We take security and data protection very seriously in our on premise product. We don't have any access to the product or machines running Codacy. We're _very_ open to feedback and improvements and this is why we constantly are improving our policies and deployment processes. We have some of the largest and most security focused corporations using Codacy Enterprise.

Happy to answer more questions!</comment></comment></comment>


In Santa Barbara Channel, underwater sound system keeps whales and ships apart - <AUTHOR> https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-08-14/in-the-santa-barbara-channel-an-underwater-sound-system-tries-to-keep-whales-and-ships-apart <comment><USER2> I thought it was going to be about speakers that send out some kind of noise to keep the whales away. It's not: it's about microphones on buoys that listen for whales, send alerts to scientists, who then alert ship captains in the area to voluntarily slow down.

However, the article also notes that ship captains are already ignoring warnings to slow down, and there are no penalties for going fast and hitting whales, so...

<comment><USER3> Most captians want to keep their vessel in good shape and will avoid whales when possible purely out of selfish reasons. Simply providing the safer option seems quite effective when the power of law is absent.

<comment><USER4> It's not about what captains want, but what the companies they work for want.

> _Louttit said that as long as slowing down is voluntary, some companies will > take the bad press that comes from arriving to port with a whale stuck to a > ship's bow._

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was on an Alaska cruise last year. While I was on the bridge tour, a whale breached nearly perpendicular to the bow a few hundred feet away while the ship was underway at 20 knots. I don't think it was hit, but there's literally nothing a ship like that can do if the whale is going to surface in its way like that. The officer in training told us whales were generally dumb and paid little attention to the movements of large vessels, unlike dolphins.

<comment><USER6> I had a similar experience on the ferry to Alaska last week (excellent experience, I'm eager to travel on it again.)

Incidentally, I think those ascribing malice or depraved indifference to the captains of these ships are misguided and being very cynical. People generally love whales, and from what I've seen, people who work on the water love them more than most. Given the opportunity to avoid hurting a whale, I'm quite sure most would eagerly take it. It is however a matter of risk tolerance. E.g. a warning that a certain route gives you a 1% chance of hitting a whale will likely be treated differently from a warning that a route has a 50% chance of hitting a whale. The world is never black and white and to a certain extent, we all tolerate some amount of risk.

<comment><USER5> > those ascribing malice or depraved indifference

Yeah I agree. The bridge I was on had two lookouts and a watch crew, I'm sure that they would attempt to avoid a whale if it were possible. But the truth is that a gigantic ship moving at 20 knots can only has so much maneuverability, so accidents will happen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Our local amateur radio club has a couple AIS receivers in view of the channel[1] and a PTZ webcam on Santa Cruz island that sometimes shows views of the channel[2].

[1] [https://www.sbarc.org/ais-marinetraffic- system/](https://www.sbarc.org/ais-marinetraffic-system/)

[2] [https://youtu.be/16e6wem3nMQ](https://youtu.be/16e6wem3nMQ)

</comment><comment><USER8> I was sailing during one of the periods that they shifted the shipping lanes. It was terrifying being on a small craft without AIS and not knowing when I entered/exited the shipping lanes.

The existing shipping lanes are well charted, and have been on those charts for several decades. I hope that if they do choose to move the lanes, the do it permanently so that charts can be updated.

<comment><USER9> bobbing around with big boats is terrifying, even with AIS.

As a child we frequently had sailboats near Wilmington/Long Beach CA and had to deal with all the industrial traffic near those ports. Even as a kid I learned pretty quickly that you never rely on big boats seeing you -- just get out of the way in any way you can.</comment></comment>


Why Wesabe Lost to Mint - Marc Hedlund's blog - <AUTHOR> http://blog.precipice.org/why-wesabe-lost-to-mint?c=1 <comment><USER2> Already here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1746832></comment>


The Broken Chain Problem - <AUTHOR> https://seekingquestions.blogspot.com/2017/03/four-parables-one-lesson-broken-chain.html <comment><USER2> You see this in every field, including IT of course.

My favourite example of this was the introduction of the Microsoft Distributed File System (DFS) service into a customer environment. We were only using the DFS Namespaces feature, which is like DNS for file shares: the client downloads a blob of metadata and uses it to find an underlying file share for a logical name. The caching is very effective and the additional delay is negligible.

They had a file performance problem. So of course, they point the finger at the last thing that has changed in the environment: DFS! It must be DFS! I calmly point out that if the performance is bad _after_ a connection has been made, it can't possibly be DFS, it's out of path after the initial negotiation. It's like blaming DNS for slow downloads. Makes no sense! But nope. They just won't accept that. It's the last thing that has changed!

I came back a week later to discover that instead of 2 redundant DFS servers, there are now 6 redundant DFS servers "for performance". To their surprise however, the file shares are still mysteriously behaving poorly.

They dragged me along to a meeting with a cast of thousands to discuss the issues. One guy spent most of the time arguing for increasing the number of DFS servers to 8, 10, or perhaps even more to solve the issue!

Meanwhile I'm having a side-conversation with the storage guy, who sheepishly admits that 3 out of 4 fibre channel paths were down, and this started at about the same time frame as the deployment of DFS. I point this fact out to the room. Everyone looks at me while blinking slowly. A few more moments of silence pass. Then someone helpfully suggests adding more CPU and RAM to the DFS servers. Maybe 8 processors and 64 GB will do the trick!

<comment><USER3> I don't understand, why do things like this happen? Is someone emotionally invested in upgrading the DFS servers?

<comment><USER2> In this particular case it was "politics" in the smallest sense of the word. The head of the storage team did not get along with the head of the infra team, so the infra guys would solve the problems they could solve, ignoring any storage subsystem problems because that was a "dead end".

This is exactly like the boy looking for the coin under the light. It feels like it _could_ be productive, versus definitely not being productive. It doesn't matter that logically it won't work, it's the feeling that matters.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I immediately thought of 2 related points:

The Scream Test: If you see something and you don't know what it does, remove it and see if anyone screams.

Chesterton's Fence [0]: "reforms should not be made until the reasoning behind the existing state of affairs is understood" (Though the purpose of this fence is not obvious, there may be valid reasons for its presence.)

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence)

<comment><USER5> Uhm, it's interesting, I see a little contradiction in your two points...

<comment><USER6> Well, it's about balance.

If you applied the "Scream" test for a component you don't know what it does in an airplane, it might fall/explode/whatever.

If you do it in a non-critical codebase, it might just break the build, and have someone call you for it.

In the first case, the Chesterton's fence caution is more advisable. In the second, you could go with a "remove it and see what happens" approach.

<comment><USER7> There were a few times in the development of Apache CouchDB where whole features were "accidentally" removed as a way of pointing out that the test suite didn't exercise them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "When you want to influence the world around you, make sure that your action is causally connected to whatever you want to influence."

How can we know when an action is causally connected to an effect? Western philosophy since David Hume has struggled to find a solution to this problem. The 'problem of causality' is that it is extremely difficult to establish cause and effect with any degree of certainty. All we have is correlation. Modern thinkers (e.g. Judea Pearl) are still grappling with this problem today.

Pearl's fascinating talk on this subject at PyData 2018 is available on YouTube: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaPV1OSEpHw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaPV1OSEpHw)

<comment><USER9> It only seems to be difficult for philosophers.

<comment><USER10> Like many philosophical problems, regular people solve the problem of causality by plugging up their ears and saying "lalala, I'm not listening." And then we get crap like analytics marketing teams.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Meh. If you take the average of everybody's nose length, you still have a better estimate than just pulling a number from thin air.

Also, the inhabitants' action is basically what scientists do all the time when they run experiments. Correlation is not causation, but quite often it is a good lead.

<comment><USER12> They didn't average the length of everyone's nose.

They averaged everyone's _estimate_ of the emperor's nose.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Sometimes it's hard to identify a broken chain on the spot and a lot of marketing tricks are based on that. Highly recommend you to read Freakonomics if you haven't yet.

Also this article mentions two observations of Richard Feynmann and I just can't stop admiring the curiosity and wit of the man. His biography totally inspired me and made me laugh a lot

</comment><comment><USER14> 3 of these stories are on HN regularly, but the soviet one was new to me.

Now I wonder: what should the central planners give as metrics? Is there anything that works?

<comment><USER15> Obviously, number or weight of standard-compliant nails.

<comment><USER16> But then you need someone to test the nails for standard-compliance, and what metrics should you give them to make sure they do a good job...

<comment><USER17> You can revert to a count-based performance target, and test for compliance based on parcel weight

(e.g. a 2-inch finishing nail weighs 0.79 g; if a factory reports 1 mil units, take a random .8 kg sample, check if there's ~1k nails).

<comment><USER16> Then the factory will just prioritize making sure all their nails weigh the same over any other consideration.

<comment><USER17> They should be prioritizing count (I mentioned that was the performance metric). They actually wouldn't need to "make sure all their nails weigh the same", only that on average they weigh as much as the template. If you can't save time by using less material, and you can't save time by generating fewer units, might as well make the foundry mold match the template, no?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I look forward to analyzing the sequence of physical forces that connect me wanting to tell someone something to keys being pressed on a keyboard to an email showing up in their inbox as part of my decision process at work.

We don't have time to analyze entire chains so we make assumptions about chains that should be unbroken. Occasionally but inevitably we make wrong assumptions.

</comment><comment><USER19> > but none of the townspeople know anything at all about the emperor's nose, > so the causal chain from the actual emperor's nose to the elders' estimate > is broken.

They do. They are humans, and humans have noses.

Using the statistical method decreases the chance that a wild guess by the sculptor ends up angering the Emperor and causing deaths in the village.

<comment><USER20> I don't think the sculptor was planning to sculpt an outlandish alien nose. The problem is that if your statue doesn't look right heads will roll.

The story isn't about the selection of outlier data points as being representative - its more about drawing conclusions through seemingly plausible sounding methods that are nevertheless completely disjoint from the thing you're reasoning about.</comment></comment>