Verb-Noun vs. Noun-Verb - <AUTHOR> https://simblob.blogspot.com/2019/10/verb-noun-vs-noun-verb.html <comment><USER2> > Something I noticed at the time was that the syntax for functional languages > tends to be verb then noun: f(x), whereas the syntax for object oriented > languages tends to be noun then verb: x.f().... There's a big difference in > usability though: auto-complete.

Auto-complete also really helps with discoverability. Consider checking for the presence of a key in a map/dictionary. In Java, auto-complete will quickly lead you to `map.containskey(key)`. In Python, though, you'd have to know that the syntax is `if value in dict`.

Now, let's check for the presence of a value. Auto-complete again quickly leads you to `map.containsValue(value)`. In Python, Google tells me that it's `if value in dict.values()`, which seems more difficult to stumble upon.

And that's for a built-in data structure. A lot of my job involves trudging through other people's code, trying to figure out how they architect their ball of cats. Auto-complete is a great tool for that; it lets you quickly and easily poke around, and see what the various nouns in the system can do.

<comment><USER3> Actually FP is more often verb-verb as in compose these verby thing together in this way to make a new verb then finally give it a starting noun.

<comment><USER2> One of the things I like about Java's streams is that it makes the verb- chaining more obvious, at least to me.

list.stream().filter().mapToInt().sum() just reads better to me than sum( mapToInt( filter(list) ) )

<comment><USER4> I know most will disagree but I find code the above hard to read. I'd much prefer

        const people = list.stream();
        const peopleOlderThan50 = people.filter(??);
        const average = peopleOlderThan50.mapToInt().sum() / peopleOlderThan50.length;

Or some such thing. The more complex the chain the harder it is for me to read. Does anyone else have that experience?

<comment><USER5> I agree. Naming parts of your code is important. An alternative to named local vals is to either use named functions instead of lambdas: people.filter(olderThan50) or (I use Kotlin) use named extension functions: people.countOlderThan50()

<comment><USER6> In any nontrivial application, doing this for many of your types, does this not bloat your API considerably, which adds to the cognitive load?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I remember doing some research on language for a psychology course in college and I think it's important to warn hacker news that the expieriences people have with nouns being more intuitive and fundamental is absolutely not a cultural universal. Westerners place unusual emphasis on nouns and while it may be that "get" is less specific than "item_id" in English, it may be more be the opposite if you speak a language that has specific and concrete verbs and abstract nouns. This is one of those times where your intuition about what is logical and obvious might be wrong.

<comment><USER8> Kadir beneath Mo Moteh.

Speaking of which, I wonder whether we'll program in Tamarian one day. Whether we'll be able to build functioning software from a really high-level abstractions, and perhaps not try to micromanage it too much.

(And then when something goes wrong, the program will simply say, "Shaka, when the walls fell.")

<comment><USER9> You maybe be interested in the Petrovich language: [http://www.dangermouse.net/esoteric/petrovich.html](http://www.dangermouse.net/esoteric/petrovich.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > vim's commands like d0 are verb then text selection (noun), whereas in more > conventional text editors (including Emacs) you'd first select some text > (the noun) and then invoke a verb like delete.

I would say vim is also noun-verb as you can select text and then tell it to perform an action on it, but supports convenience methods for verb-noun, or just verb. It's just that most the verbs also have a default selection they apply to as well, whether it be a character, a line, or some larger block of content. Thus, 'x' deletes one character, but 10x deletes 10 characters, using 'v' to select text and then x deletes the selected characters. 'dd' deletes the default (current) line, '10dd' (or 'd10d' to mix it up) deletes the next 10 lines, using 'v' to select a range of lines and then 'd' deletes those lines. Additionally, you can just define a range of lines to apply a command do in command mode: 10,20d deletes lines 10-20.

<comment><USER11> I think vim makes more sense if you think of it like a Forth. In a general sense, the entire language is noun*verb (zero or more nouns followed by a verb).

I know what you're going to say, "dw is a verb noun!" but really, it's not. w is verb--it's a function that, in this case, takes the d function and applies it to a word. The fact that it is a verb is proven by the fact that the expression executes when you type the verb. It's unfortunate that the vim verb "w" corresponds to the English noun "word", but that's probably the best that could be done given there are only so many keys on the keyboard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This gives words to a frustration that I've had with many roguelikes. I don't want to /drink/ -> /ladder/, I want to do ladder things with the ladder, which should be a very short list. Freedom does not great game design make (by default).

<comment><USER10> The problem with applying this to some roguelikes, such as Nethack, is that part of the fun is finding out what you can do. Getting a handy contextual menu when you find a sink, or an alter, or whatever makes the game easier and less confusing, but also takes away a wonderful aspect of it when you learn or hear about some new crazy aspect of it.

That's not to say it doesn't have a place in roguelikes, just that each game needs to carefully consider what it brings to the table, and also what it cuts out.

<comment><USER13> > takes away a wonderful aspect of it when you learn or hear about some new > crazy aspect of it.

It might be useful to think about this in term of how many players it affects.

My opinion is that for each seasoned roguelike player who enjoys this "wonderful" aspect, there will be multiple roguelike newbies who will be discouraged by the unfriendly UX and just leave.

<comment><USER14> That encapsulates what happened in the transition from text parser (keyboard- driven) games to mouse-driven games: discoverability went up, complexity went down; the first generation of gamers lost interest and a second larger generation of gamers came into being.

<comment><USER15> Not everyone lost interest... I loved keyboard driven games, and I love mouse driven games, too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> One of the things I dislike about the OO noun.verb() syntax is that frequently you have multiple nouns. For example in some graphics systems, you've got a canvas to draw on, a pen which knows styles for line thickness or dashes, a brush for how to fill, and a shape to be drawn. Who owns the verb? They kind of all do:

        canvas.draw(pen, brush, circle)
        circle.draw(canvas, pen, brush)
        ... and so on

The other issue I have is in closed object systems where you can't add new methods to classes in the library. Say I want to add a new type of shape, maybe an emoji face composed of several circles. Depending which class owns the methods, my new smiley method stands out from the other shapes which are provided by the library, and I think the lack of symmetry is ugly:

        canvas.draw(pen, circle)
        draw(canvas, pen, smiley)

For simple cases, inheritance solves this, but then you get into worse trouble when Alice builds a derived class to support smileys, and Bob builds a separate derived class to add stick figures. Which version of the canvas do I instantiate to support both? Maybe this implies the method should be on the shapes, but I can contrive other examples which break that too. (Another approach is monkey patching, which has it's own flaws, and so on.)

There aren't many languages which support multimethods, but overloading functions is sufficient for statically typed cases, and it's appealing (for me) to have the same syntax for "builtin" methods and ones you add yourself:

        draw(canvas, pen, brush, circle)
        draw(canvas, pen, brush, smiley)

Other people have mentioned languages with "uniform function call" syntax (where f(a) and a.f() are synonyms). I guess that's ok if you're in the "there's more than one way to do it" camp. I don't think that completely addresses the problem though. I could make more examples, but this post is getting long already.

For what it's worth, I really dislike it when languages implement operator overloading for binary operators as methods on the first object without a way to dispatch to the second object. This makes it very difficult to have your new types play well with the builtin or library provided types. Binary operators really are functions with two arguments.

<comment><USER17> This whole comment section tells me that almost no one on HN really understands OOP.

OOP is not about nouns. It's about establishing protocols between subsystems. What you're describing are the typical fake "dilemmas" of someone coming from a static, class-oriented programming languages like Java.

Look up Class Responsibility Collaborator exercise.

<comment><USER18> > It's about establishing protocols between subsystems.

Is that what it's about? I try to establish protocols between subsystems without OOP quite often. Are you referring to message passing specifically?

<comment><USER19> > Is that what it's about?

I'm pretty sure most people who strongly like OOP are sure their particular definition is the correct one. I haven't seen many people agree about what that definition is though. I generally dislike OOP, but perhaps that's because my definition is "encourages implementation inheritance". As you're keen to note, the standard list of other things (encapsulation, message passing, dynamic dispatch, interface inheritance, and even "establishing protocols") are available in a lot of other languages which people don't generally consider OO.

Perhaps I'm ignorant, but I like my way of doing things, and a.f() is less attractive to me than f(a) for all the reasons I listed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This seems to jive with my experience, but I'm trying to formulate a back-of- the-envelope mathematical explanation. Here's my thinking: nouns are in 3D space and verbs are in the 4th dimension (you need the concept of time to have a verb).

By going "noun-verb", you are fixing the first 3 dimensions and leaving one remaining (hence the ~1000x reduction in search space for autocomplete). By going "verb-noun" you are only fixing 1-dimension, leaving the other 3 unknown, and autocomplete would have a larger search space.

Putting it another way. If I started a story "the year was 2015", I've only narrow the one time axis, but the "noun/place" hasn't been narrowed at all, so you still have a sphere of possibilities. However, if I started a story "we were on the Golden Gate bridge", I've pinpointed the 3-dimensions of place/noun, and now the reader only has to pinpoint where on the "time-line" we are. And even that timeline has been shortened to a segment of ~100 years.

<comment><USER21> _However, if I started a story "we were on the Golden Gate bridge", I've pinpointed the 3-dimensions of place/noun, and now the reader only has to pinpoint where on the "time-line" we are._

How does the reader trying to guess the date narrow the choice of verbs?

You might be on TGGBridge jogging, and the date is irrelevant. It seems like fixing the location to TGGBridge narrows the possible verbs, but it's still a huge list - "we were on" means you could be doing anything people can do - photographing, touring, jogging, sketching, working as a bridge repair crew or structural engineer or a vehicle breakdown van or an Uber driver or protesting or meeting up in a well known location.

In English, "I was driving.." implies a vehicle, but "a car.." doesn't imply you were driving it, or necessarily doing anything to/with it at all.

<comment><USER20> > How does the reader trying to guess the date narrow the choice of verbs?

My thinking is when someone visualizes something they need to visualize the place/noun first and the verb (what happened over time). The first requires 3 dimensions and the latter just one more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is exactly the thing that has always bothered me about PowerShell. A lot of PowerShell's effectiveness derives from the number of nouns that Microsoft has built support for, and a defining trait of any given script is usually the set of nouns it operates over, so it's weird to me that all the commands start with the verb.

<comment><USER23> I've never been able to quite put my finger on why I loath Powershell so much, but yes, I think this is part of it. I also dislike how verbose commands are (and the shortened versions are not safe to use cross-platform), and the weird Pascal-Kebab-Casing-Hybrid of idiomatic Powershell also irks me.

Still, there is something else... I just don't like it.

<comment><USER24> I could never get used to PowerShell, but in languages like Bash I /really/ like using short flags in the REPL (for speed), but long flags in scripts (for legibility). Unfortunately, this means there's a higher bar to learn and I've never seen a way to enforce this (I rarely see others use this convention). I hoped PowerShell would address this or the ISE (maybe great autocomplete negates the need for short flags?)

<comment><USER25> Disclosure, I work at MSFT and I have a special place in my heart for PowerShell.

PowerShell provides incredibly flexible syntax, enough that it can satisfy most styles of script writing.

The practice you describe (short names in CLI and long names in scripts) can be achieved. A couple of things to note about how PS binds arguments to function calls: 1\. If you omit names, the parameters are bound positionally. 1\. If you use names, you do not have to type the full name. It is sufficient to type an unambiguous prefix of the parameter name and the most appropriate parameter will be selected.

So for example in the CLI you can just to `ls -r -fi _.csproj` whereas in a script you can use the fully self-documenting `ls -Recurse -Filter_.csproj`.

Hope this helps!

<comment><USER26> Another commenter complained about short aliases not being safe cross- platform, and this is an example. In powershell core on Unix systems 'ls' is the 'ls' command, not an alias for Get-ChildItem. So I would say the correct "long" version for your example is 'Get-ChildItem -Recurse -Filter .csproj'.

In my opinion this is a non-issue (at least when comparing powershell to other shells) because the number of cases where you have to worry about bash command 'X' actually being different from your system (even across varieties of Unix-y OSes) is much greater than this handful of convenience aliases in powershell.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I like Nim's approach to this issue: `f(x)` and `x.f()` are completely equivalent to one another.

[https://nim-lang.org/docs/tut2.html#object-oriented-programm...](https://nim- lang.org/docs/tut2.html#object-oriented-programming-method-call-syntax)

<comment><USER28> This feature is also in D. I am a fan.

<comment><USER29> Rust checking in, UFCS present

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I clicked the link hoping it was about language. But it is about rogue likes and programming.

Since english can verb nouns like nominalization, i can't tell what the benefit is. one boards the board of a ship, levers a lever, and locks a lock.

We "lockpick" more often than we "save face" perhaps English is a head-first language.

In formal writing, a difference exists between nominal and verbal-style.

<comment><USER31> The article is more about user experience than English language nuances.

Take one of your examples, you're much more likely to know you can "board" once you know there's a "ship." Without the ship as context first, only people who are already familiar with ships know that boarding is even an option.

This provides a poor experience in terms of discoverability.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Relatedly, there's a vim-like editor that is all about moving from verb-noun to noun-verb.

[https://github.com/mawww/kakoune](https://github.com/mawww/kakoune)

<comment><USER33> This was mentioned in the posted link

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I used to prefer car.drive(), now I prefer drive(car).

I don't buy the auto-completion argument. Can my IDE really tell me all the ways I can use an Integer? I don't think so.

When it hit home for me was when Java 8 lacked Stream.takeWhile(predicate) and I decided to implement it for myself. I could implement takeWhile(predicate, stream), I could not implement stream.takeWhile(predicate).

<comment><USER35> Also, the autocomplete argument isn't a big argument, as writing is the less time consuming task in the process.

<comment><USER36> Autocomplete is one thing. Getting a list of suggestions is more important, because you might not know the name of the function.

<comment><USER35> I agree, I guess that noum.verb() is indeed better to find those

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I wonder if the ergonomics of text based adventure in SOV-order languages is/was substantially improved for this reason.

北に行く (north, go) ポーションを飲む (potion, drink) スライムを戦う (slime, fight).

</comment><comment><USER38> There's no reason you couldn't type `noun.` and get autocomplete to `verb(noun)`

<comment><USER22> Or just support calling "verb(noun)" as "noun.verb()" all the way through: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Function_Call_Syntax](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Function_Call_Syntax)

<comment><USER39> At Onshape we're considering doing this for our language FeatureScript[0], as discussed here[1]

This would make the call e.g. v1->cross(v2) syntactic sugar for the call cross(v1, v2).

The main reason it's not just an obvious win for autocomplete and readability is that it provides for multiple ways to do one thing, and is one more thing you need to know when learning this new language. Rather than having some code call plane->yAxis() and other code call yAxis(plane), it _might_ be nicer to have only one way.

The other counterargument: the OOP-like syntax could support the expectation that polymorphism works like e.g. Java, where e.g. v1.cross(v2) would only considers the type of v1 when deciding which overload to call. FeatureScript has multiple dispatch and will consider the types of all arguments when choosing an overload.

All that said, the change it seems like a win overall, but we're waiting for the language to mature more to see if clearer arguments emerge.

[0] [https://cad.onshape.com/FsDoc/](https://cad.onshape.com/FsDoc/)

[1] [https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/comment/33495/#Comment_...](https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/comment/33495/#Comment_33495)

<comment><USER22> _> Rather than having some code call plane->yAxis() and other code call yAxis(plane), it might be nicer to have only one way._

One option is a linter/formatter that can warn and configurably push you in one way or the other.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Hang on. Is no-one else here just blown away by the fact that the guy lucked into meeting Garriot & Watson? Man, I'd have given my right arm for that as a kid.

<comment><USER41> Yeah that part stuck out to me too. Lucky guy!

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> See also Steve Yegge's _Execution in the Kingdom of Nouns_ (2006):

[https://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/03/execution-in- kingdo...](https://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/03/execution-in-kingdom-of- nouns.html)

<comment><USER43> The part of the article talking about dropping to one verb ("use") made me think of the same thing ("execute").

The benefit to verb/noun (or noun.verb) is getting BOTH. If you effectively drop the verb, you lose out on half the communication.

To use another comment, you may not want to quaff a ladder, but it is a bad idea to assume you just "ladder", and if assume too narrow a field it leads to frustrations. (In programming or in games. Back when I looked into text adventure games (interactive fiction) there was a truism that "use" was a _bad_ verb)

If you ARE wide enough....then you have little difference between noun verb and verb noun except for the effort required.

Honestly, I was more interested in the first part of the article, that talked about checking the state if the world rather than a sequence if steps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> The flip side of this, that they don't mention, is that this asymmetry exists only if you design your interfaces in FP / OO languages differently. Most OO designs I've seen have a large number of classes, each with very specific methods. Most FP designs I've seen have few (or even zero) custom types, and a large number of methods can apply to a large number of types.

As Alan Perlis said back in 1982:

> "It is better to have 100 functions operate on one data structure than 10 > functions on 10 data structures."

When I'm writing in a FP language, it's true I don't get much autocomplete help, but the upside is that I've got 100 core functions that operate on almost anything. Even if you flipped around the order of the syntax on screen, autocomplete wouldn't help much, because you can apply any verb to any noun. I rarely have to convert between types, and when I do it's a couple words at most.

When I'm writing in an OO language, with typical class libraries and frameworks, I get a lot of help from autocomplete, because once you know the "type", there's only a few things you can do with it. The corollary is that I usually spend half my program converting from the type I have to the type that I need.

(Think about English. We could simplify the language by eliminating words like "eat", and just say "I'm going to go _use_ lunch", but then we wouldn't have the word "eat" available for any other nouns, even where it'd be helpful and clear.)

> It is better for programmers if they can choose from two medium length lists > than to have to choose from a very long list (where a lot has to be typed > before it's useful) and then a very short list (where not much is gained).

This doesn't tell the whole story. As they say, you write code once, but read it many times. I'm perfectly OK with giving up autocomplete (for writing) if it means I don't have to spend twice as many lines of code (for writing _and_ reading) to convert an X to a Y just so I can call f() on it.

The more generic the functions, the less code I have to write, and having less code has huge benefits across the board -- for writing, reading, debugging, testing, performance, and so on. Autocomplete can be nice, but it's not nice enough to want to sacrifice everything else.

</comment><comment><USER45> Note that not everyone FP lang is verb-noun. Sure, most are, but your F#/Elixir/Scala's are more often than not written in a noun-verb form with the `|>` operator or something vaguely equivalent (syntax extensions in Scala's case).

</comment><comment><USER46> I think what the topic gets towards is that if you view all possible actions as a multi dimensional array of (all nouns)*(all verbs), it makes sense to first choose the one of (nouns, verbs) that is initially the smaller set

</comment><comment><USER47> I find this whole conversation interesting as someone who is working on a text adventure (shameless plug: [https://danger.world](https://danger.world)).

I personally chose verb-noun, but it would be very simple to flip it around.

</comment><comment><USER48> Is this really verb-noun/noun-verb or verb-object/object-verb?

<comment><USER49> verb-object / object-verb is more specific in the context of this story, yes. And indeed, when you introduce indirect objects or other fanciness, additional dimensions of complexity can be introduced (GUIs, for instance, can have ambiguity in terms of whether object-verb-indirect_object is represente by click-command-click or modclick-modclick-command).</comment></comment>


Backoff: Python function decorators for configurable backoff and retry - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/litl/backoff/ <comment><USER2> Seems very similar to the riprova library. I've found it very useful for asyncio web scrapers.

[http://riprova.readthedocs.io/en/latest/](http://riprova.readthedocs.io/en/latest/) [https://github.com/h2non/riprova](https://github.com/h2non/riprova)

</comment><comment><USER3> Cool. If I were maintaining build/deploy nonsense written using Python, this could be quite helpful. A lot of the build/deploy stuff I maintain is -alas- written as Groovy scripts for Jenkins, and I've hand-rolled a similar, simpler wrapper construct. It started up being used to place, and now it's probably used in a dozen places throughout various build, test and deploy scripts.

Usage:

      retry_unreliable(3){
        sh "essential_but_unreliable_thing --failure-probability 0.01"
      }

Definition:

      def retry_unreliable(int max_attempts, Closure func) {
        def error = null
        assert max_attempts > 0
        def delay_initial = 8.0f
        def delay_multiplier = 2.0f
        def delay = delay_initial
        for (attempt = 0; attempt < max_attempts; attempt++) {
          if (error) {
            sleep(delay)
            delay = delay_multiplier * delay
          }
          try {
            func.call()
            error = null
            break
          } catch (e) {
            error = e
            println("Unreliable operation failed during attempt ${attempt+1}/${max_attempts}:")
            println(e.toString());
          }
        }
        if (error) {
          println("Unreliable operation failed repeatedly for ${max_attempts}/${max_attempts} attempts. Gave up")
          throw error
        }
      }

Sometimes doing something like this isn't necessarily the right course of action -- e.g. if an external service you depend on is struggling to reply to your requests because of load, hammering it with additional requests when it starts to fail isn't the right solution. But quite a lot of time ladling on stupid retry logic turns an irritating rare failure case into a non-issue.

</comment><comment><USER4> Same as [https://pypi.python.org/pypi/retry](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/retry) no?</comment>


Experts disagree on whether Covid-19 could have leaked from a research lab - <AUTHOR> https://thebulletin.org/2020/03/experts-know-the-new-coronavirus-is-not-a-bioweapon-they-disagree-on-whether-it-could-have-leaked-from-a-research-lab/ <comment><USER2> Because everyone knows it's much more likely that people got it from bats being sold at a fish market, then from the level 4 lab across the street...

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9)

If you review the links in this article the only scientific paper that is linked says, no, there is no evidence it came from a lab. Every source except the paper linked is from other articles that are not science journals and are often opinion pieces. I call bullshit. Science Journal or GTFO.

<comment><USER4> That says very little. It says that we have not been able to find anything in the genome that proves modern gene editing technology was used.

Well, so what? People aren't generally making that claim. It's a straw man.

Nothing in your article rules out the possibility of a lab creating the virus via conventional breeding, by passing the virus through human cells and/or by infecting cells simultaneously with human viruses. Nothing in your article rules out the possibility of a lab accident; indeed there have been several lab accidents in China that released dangerous viruses.

Look at this research:

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18077725](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18077725)

It is 2008 research from the lab in Wuhan. They created a virus by combining SARS-CoV with HIV, targeting the human ACE2 molecule as receptor. These features match those of our current pandemic. (India reported the HIV link, and the use of ACE2 is widely known)

We shouldn't be so quick to dismiss the possibility. Note also that China is actively trying to point people away from this line of inquiry. We should resist that effort.</comment></comment>


Importance of regular, consistent release schedules in webdev. - <AUTHOR> http://mygengo.com/talk/blog/release-schedules/

<comment><USER2> I don't know about this guys. Seems simple to me —If the product ain't ready, you don't release.

</comment><comment><USER3> So how does this tie in with continuous deployment where people "release" several times a week, or even several times a day?

Not that I disagree, whenever I was working on pretty much anything the constant "We can't release this, there's this missing and this, and that thing doesn't work, and that isn't the prettiest" ... well it can kill pretty much any project.

Release early, release often. Hide in shame if you have to, but just bloody release.

<comment><USER4> I think the basic premis of his article is sound- Having a schedule for releases lets you better plan the elements of the release (migration? config changes?) and makes the release an occasion (everybody knows that day is "release day", that afternoon is QA, you can make sure they know what is included in the release).

For bugs, I can't agree they should always wait a week. Keeping a production branch where the code is in sync with your deployments lets devs quickly patch and roll out bugfixes, comfortable in the knowledge they aren't deploying somebody else's code at the same time. I've make some customers darn happy by fixing a bug that same afternoon, and I couldn't kick that habit.

But for larger feature rollouts or refactorings, I'm a fan of having everybody on the larger team (devs and non-devs) in sync- and that's easiest when there is a regular, predictable schedule.

I'd also argue that having a regular schedule for deploys makes you _more_ likely to ship, you need to ship something Thursday! :-)</comment></comment>


How many people are missing out on JavaScript enhancement? - <AUTHOR> http://digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/2013/10/21/how-many-people-are-missing-out-on-javascript-enhancement/

<comment><USER2> It is what I've suspected for a while, the number of people who proactively disable JavaScript in their browser is just a fifth of that total of people who don't receive an enhanced JavaScript experience

Which means there are other reasons why fully tested and high quality JavaScript fails to run in a browser that fully supports it.

Quite a big chunk of this is probably people using smartphones over 3G network. As Bruce Lawson notes: "Your smartphone is only as smart as the network it's working on." \-- [https://twitter.com/marcofolio/status/388689216273907712](https://twitter.com/marcofolio/status/388689216273907712)

Also, when network infrastructure companies like Level 3 have outages, yesterday and today, causes JavaScript to fail to reach the browser in great swathes of the United States.

This is all known and understood characteristics of the Internet in general. And why progressive enhancement is the sanest option of dealing constructively in a network a developer does not have complete control over.

And this points again, that JavaScript-dependent frameworks like ember.js, meteor are broken by design, and not fit for purpose in building websites on the Web. They are not designed to work with the strengths of the World Wide Web, but only within a network where every node and connection is controlled by the developer.

</comment><comment><USER3> I hate simple websites which don't work unless you have js on. It's becoming more and more common to make "JavaScript enhanced" into "JS required". :(

</comment><comment><USER4> What about crawlers, bots and automated programs?</comment>


Robert Mercer: the big data billionaire waging war on mainstream media - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/feb/26/robert-mercer-breitbart-war-on-media-steve-bannon-donald-trump-nigel-farage <comment><USER2> I get the gist of the article, and it is scary.

I don't recall as much scare when people found out Obama's team used machine learning and data collection, as well as Hillary's later efforts, to influence voters or gain support.

I am not a Trump supporter, nor a Hillary or Obama fan; I am pretty disgusted with the US political system, however, I also recall people praising the IT/ML/Big Data teams for Obama and Hillary without even a mention of what data they were slinging or collecting.

I left FB years ago, and I feel much better for it, especially after reading this article.

<comment><USER3> Yeah. I mean, there were literal pro-Clinton astroturfing efforts that tried to pressure the media into covering the news in ways that favoured her, crafting a narrative that any negative media coverage of her or perceived sluggishness in running anti-Trump stories was proof of shameful Trump support: [https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/23/us/politics/hillary- clint...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/23/us/politics/hillary-clinton- media-david-brock.html) From what I saw, it worked; this became the dominant narrative on at least the parts of Twitter I saw. Yet there were no breathless headlines about Democrat "propaganda networks" that were "waging war on mainstream media", even though that's clearly exactly what they were doing.

<comment><USER4> "That's different!"

Both sides have no idea how alike they are.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Cambridge Analytica first supported Cruz against Trump. So there is little hard evidence that it is such a powerful weapon. Bannon is on the board of the company and these articles feel like company-fed buzz.

I led Mercer's old team at IBM for a few year and we also developed NLP/ML- based profiling technology. They work better than chance but not much better (there is lots of published literature on the subject) and definitely not enough to make a big difference from just feeding fake news to everybody equally.

<comment><USER6> _They work better than chance but not much better_

When you're dealing with razor thin margins in individual electoral districts, and 300M people, even slightly better than chance can be pretty powerful.

<comment><USER7> Razor thin margins seems to lead to a multitude of arguments for how a variety of things could have swayed the election. None of these things explain why the election was close, but that seems like a much more important thing to understand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is the new normal. Get used to it.

I keep telling people, things are going to get really weird. You tell me, what happens in a complex adaptive system when the cost of information (transmission and storage) goes to zero? Yah, shit gets weird fast.

Does anyone think Cambridge Analytica is the sole proprietor of tech like this? Will they remain the only ones? What if one person leaks the model? What if someone open sources a better one? We know this story. After some time this is going to become as accessible as any other tech, and Things. Are. Going. To. Get. Really. Weird.

<comment> FLUX-YOU It doesn't have to be. We don't have to accept manually reading through news articles and spending precious time digesting that information and connecting all of the dots in our flawed heads with our flawed memory.

We need tools for information digestion and management to cast more informed votes. Unless we just want to admit that voters can't keep up with their government and hold it accountable, in which case we need tools to manage a government that cannot manage its own information input/output.

Critical thinking is nice and the most basic requirement, but it doesn't enlighten you to facts that you simply don't have time to discover. You can make educated guesses and you could be right, but they are still guesses.

To go and find all of those facts, you have to spend an enormous amount of time reading _all_ sources of information (Breitbart, MSM, alt-right, ADL, etc.) or you have to admit you are making decisions with incomplete information. You also have to watch videos, listen to sound bites, and read tweets.

Time is the real enemy and the reason so many people give up in the face of this information-saturated reality is that no one has enough of it to continue using their eyes and ears to parse the world's raw data. Anything that reduces the time cost of being an informed voter is going to have the greatest impact of managing information and governments.

<comment><USER9> The problem is, reading all sources of journalism and synthesizing them into a coherent narrative does not necessarily get you to the truth.

<comment> FLUX-YOU It's something to be taken into account, but no, the tools will probably not be a "truth meter". But for every 10 articles the media pumps out, maybe I only have to read 1 article. This is always going to be lossy, but it obviously should be less lossy than a human.

I think that it will be easier to make tools to manage and summarize accurately than to limit the rate of growth or output of information.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Using big data and propaganda to nudge elections was already well enough known to be a minor plot thread in House of Cards a few years ago. The one thing I find lacking in discussing anything like this is that the articles are always written from one side. You can say that this article is about Mercer, so it should only focus on his activities, but it's really about controlling influence in conservative politics, when this is all being done in the presence of George Soros. There was enormous detail in the article. I'd rather read half that detail, and then look at the activities from the liberal side, and compare and contrast. To me, the interesting part isn't that one side or the other is doing these things; it's what BOTH sides are doing to US.

<comment><USER11> And there you've slung just enough mud to implicate Obama in the same kind of antics without offering any tangible proof. And conflated Big Data and propaganda too. Nice.

The Obama campaign's use of technology was well documented - a two minute Google threw up detailed articles from MIT, Forbes, Technology Review.

If you have a substantive point to make about any of that, or any proof at all that the Obama campaign has indulged in the kind of propaganda Bannon et al are neck deep in, you should make it instead of resorting to hand wavy arguments like this.

<comment><USER12> "And there you've slung just enough mud to implicate Obama in the same kind of antics without offering any tangible proof. "

Are you kidding? Obama invented the use of social tools to get elected. [1]

Google, who, as an org make up probably 95% Obama voters, have a deep relationship with government [2]. And Sheryl Sandberg worked for the Democratic apparatus.

There's nothing entirely wrong with either things (possibly), but the point is that it's 'nefarious' when conservatives have money and access but not when massive and institutional entities like Google do for the Democrats? Google and Facebook are two organizations that, if they chose to, could control the outcome of the election - that's a pretty scary conflict of interest. Exxon certainly couldn't. Where is the uproar?

Surely, it's worth pointing out where 'big money/business and politics collide', but it's very hypocritical to scream about the plight of one side, and not the other.

If anything - this somewhat hypocritical posturing, generally supported by the MSM, gives credence to those who argue the MSM is at least softly biased in one direction. Though I tend to generally trust most of the big news orgs, I believe there is a degree of 'sidedness' on this issue.

[1] [http://mprcenter.org/blog/2013/01/how-obama-won-the- social-m...](http://mprcenter.org/blog/2013/01/how-obama-won-the-social-media- battle-in-the-2012-presidential-campaign/)

[2] [https://googletransparencyproject.org/articles/googles- revol...](https://googletransparencyproject.org/articles/googles-revolving- door-us)

<comment><USER3> Yeah, there was a whole wave of breathless reporting about the wonders of the Obama campaign's use of big data, microtargeting, social media, etc after the 2008 and 2012 elections and how the Republicans' failure to do this proved they were behind the times. It takes about five seconds with Google to discover this. Compare, for example, this article with [http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/victory_lab/...](http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/victory_lab/2012/10/obama_s_secret_weapon_democrats_have_a_massive_advantage_in_targeting_and.html) or [http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/10/harper-reed- obam...](http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/10/harper-reed-obama- campaign-microtargeting)

<comment><USER13> "how the Republicans' failure to do this proved they were behind the times"

I distinctly remember that. Then there's a fit now among liberals that the Republicans are doing what liberals say they should've been doing. Hell, they're doing it better. Liberals will need to up their game plus have a final candidate that's worth something in next election.

<comment><USER14> Up their game by enlisting the help of a foreign nation to help stand up an entire group of social network trolls whose entire mission is to muddy the waters and push fabricated stories?

<comment><USER13> Elections have always been dirty. It seems winners now use social media or trolls. So be it until that is banned and policed. Losing a Presidency because you followed the rules feels much worse than gaining it breaking some. I don't even think it's possible any more for honest plays to happen given superficial voters with conflicting needs/wants that cost average of $200 mil of others's money to reach.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> As a Brit it concerns me that somebody can donate the use of such a powerful tool for a political campaign without registration. Especially as the donation was from a foreign citizen.

There is far too much shadiness going on. Yes the horse has bolted with Brexit but there are more elections around the world and if the democratic process _may_ be being distorted then I think it needs investigation.

<comment><USER16> What is distortion of democratic process, specifically?

Most political processes are distortion. Political ads are never basic presentations of fact. At best, they're just exercises in cherry picking, but typically they're spin and outright lies.

Major media outlets all have their political slants and their subsets of slants presented by their various journalists. More distortion.

Is it political distortion when you bus in voters of a particular party to the polling places who would otherwise not have bothered to vote?

<comment><USER15> We don't really have political ads in the UK, it's certainly illegal to lie in any advertisement in the UK.

I meant a tool was used and was not registered as a donation. This may have distorted the campaigns because the two sides had to disclose all donations.

That one chose not to, is in my view dishonest, thoroughly inappropriate and may very well have been ilegal.

I am not naive, hence my comment. For future elections election officials will need to be observant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Social media optimisation could very well be the cancer that kills democracy. Still I find it hard to imagine the likes of Trump or Farage to be these evil masterminds orchestrating media manipulation and shifting popular sentiment with advanced AI. Perhaps they are mere pawns of technocratic billionaires fulfilling a grand plan like Asimov's Foundation series.

<comment><USER13> " Still I find it hard to imagine the likes of Trump or Farage to be these evil masterminds orchestrating media manipulation and shifting popular sentiment with advanced AI."

Think of it more like CEO's with their executive dashboards, Wall Street journal, stock tickers, and trusted advisors. They're going day-to-day with their finger on the pulse of the company and markets. They have people constantly advising them on various things that pop up. They mix their own style and ideas with that advise to determine course of action. It happens so much it becomes natural for them.

Probably like that but in direct & orchestrated way given how election campaigns work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Is it just me, or do these new players who operate in the background have more technical knowledge, quant mindset and solid data analytics connections.

Mercer is CEO of Renaissance Technologies and seems to own piece of Cambridge Analytica. Peter Thiel and Palantir. Even Mark Zuckerberg seems to have political ambitions.

<comment><USER19> Steve Bannon (the Breitbart News figurehead) is on Cambridge Analytica's board. Yes, that Steve Bannon, chief strategist for President Trump: a guy who – completely coincidentally – has already started his campaign for 2020.

Big data, microtargeting, and social graph analysis are being used to manipulate the electorate.

<comment><USER20> Inform the electorate about their view point.

<comment><USER19> Their view point and reality are incompatible. For instance, Breitbart repeatedly claimed that the airport protests were "terrorist-funded" by CAIR. There is no factual evidence that the airport travel ban protests were funded by any politically-motivated group seeking to wage violence against the United States. It's a viewpoint, sure. But it's wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This feels like the invention of gunpowder, to me – but for the art of deception rather than war. Up to this point, a politician could say a different thing depending on who was in the room, and we would get an occasional peek at that: like HRC's public & private positions on Wall Street, or Romney's 47% comment. But now there can be 220 million different things to say in 220 million psychometrically-crafted rooms. That feels disruptive.

</comment><comment><USER22> I went through the tweets of a trump troll on Twitter, non-stop pro trump co tent nearly 24/7, no way this person has any job other than literally being a Twitter troll. Someone is bankrolling this and much more.

</comment><comment><USER23> Sad that political sides is what rises to the top in this conversation. I would hope the "big data" and how its used could be looked at by both sides with the same thought "is this a good idea?"

I hope whatever side of politics you fall on that you can see its not a single party or even just the government,its the propagation and use from every day citizens and their ignorance of what and how information will be used.

</comment><comment><USER24> There's another Guardian article from yesterday about how Mercer donated free help to the Brexit Leave campaign: [https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/feb/26/us- billiona...](https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/feb/26/us-billionaire- mercer-helped-back-brexit?CMP=share_btn_tw)

</comment><comment><USER25> I don't know what or who to beleive anymore even these comments here and should I even be commenting now! Maybe that was the plan to make everyone paranoid? Is this just another bit of data about me for "The Machine or Samaritan" to consume.

</comment><comment><USER26> > Cambridge Analytica makes the astonishing boast that it has psychological > profiles based on 5,000 separate pieces of data on 220 million American > voters – its USP is to use this data to understand people's deepest emotions > and then target them accordingly.

This is nothing new. This is the Obama data machine/Civis/270/etc etc (who didn't Eric Schmidt fund after 2012?), AFL-CIO/Catalist, the party databases... This is the basic strategy today regardless of side. Whatever business layer Cambridge Analytica has on top of that data is not novel.

The "conspiracy" to manipulate is truly bipartisan now.

<comment><USER27> There is a distinction between deeply understanding someone at scale and using that understanding to either bait them computer generated propaganda or suppress their vote.

<comment><USER13> That's my take. They kicked it up a notch from human execution to computerized execution of the models they were collecting before. Their models might be better, too.

<comment><USER27> If I was a federal prosecutor, I'd go after Cambridge Analytica for computer mediated election fraud. Effectively, it is using AI to run a dynamic con job.

Map out exactly what the voter wants to hear, bury your message inside a wrapper of fake news that speaks directly to them.

The part that makes it so insidious, is that ad targeting is so fine grained, that only the victim will be able to see the ads, it is an imperceptible enemy. Literally zero rebuttals given.

<comment><USER20> No they should be going after voters who voted for Trump.

<comment><USER28> This kind of partisanship helps absolutely no one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> We need trusted, asynchronous, peer to peer, encrypted streaming applications, and we need them to become normal! These centralized data repositories need to rot in the ground!

Why couldn't something like Twitter or instagram be built out of p2p protocols? Where users actively curate their connections predominately in person with people they actually know? I think there's actually a demand for this. People I know are tired of the polluted mainstream social media channels, but know no other options.

<comment><USER30> You may be interested in patchwork:

[https://github.com/mmckegg/patchwork- next/blob/master/README...](https://github.com/mmckegg/patchwork- next/blob/master/README.md)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Mercer does have a point about bias in MSM. MSM called Steve Bannon an anti- Semite when he is in fact very, pro-Israel and very much against anti- Semitism. However, they failed to report that the Democratic National Committee candidate who almost won, Keith Ellison, was mentioned by the Anti- Defamation League, "Ellison's remarks 'deeply disturbing and disqualifying'". [1]

He was one of only 8 members of Congress to vote against the Iron Dome anti- missle system which protected Israeli civilians from Hamas rockets. [2]

[1] [http://www.adl.org/press-center/press-releases/israel- middle...](http://www.adl.org/press-center/press-releases/israel-middle- east/speech-raises-new-doubts-about-Rep-Ellisons-ability.html)

[2] [http://jpupdates.com/2014/08/03/rep-ellison-explains-anti- ir...](http://jpupdates.com/2014/08/03/rep-ellison-explains-anti-iron-dome- funding-vote-need-cease-fire/)

[3] [http://dailycaller.com/2016/11/17/democrats-must- scrutinize-...](http://dailycaller.com/2016/11/17/democrats-must-scrutinize- keith-ellisons-anti-semitic-past-and-ties-to-radical-islam/)

MSM chose not to report the Anti-Defamation League statement (ADL says Bannon is not anti-Semitic BTW) about Ellison nor did it report that he was one of 8 members of Congress to vote against Iron Dome, an anti-missle system that protected Israeli civilians from Hamas rockets.

EDIT: After the DNC election which Ellison lost, the Wall Street Journal disclosed the following:

"Mr. Ellison, who is an African-American Muslim, also faced complaints about his past associations with the Nation of Islam and statements he has made that were perceived as criticizing Israel. Haim Saban, an Israeli-American donor who funded the construction of the DNC's Washington headquarters, in December publicly called Mr. Ellison "clearly an anti-Semite.""[4]

But they should have disclosed this information before the election.

[4] [https://www.wsj.com/articles/democrats-elect-tom-perez- party...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/democrats-elect-tom-perez-party- chairman-1488054192)

<comment><USER32> Well, that's just about the misleading conceivable way to cite the ADL, which has an whole page that is entirely critical of Bannon, its first headline reading "BANNON HAS EMBRACED THE ALT RIGHT, A LOOSE NETWORK OF WHITE NATIONALISTS AND ANTI-SEMITES." (em. original) and, in literally the next paragraph after the one you're paraphrasing about his antisemitism, says:

 _Nevertheless, Bannon essentially has established himself as the chief curator for the alt right. Under his stewardship, Breitbart has emerged as the leading source for the extreme views of a vocal minority who peddle bigotry and promote hate._

<comment><USER33> Embracing the alt-right is not being antisemitic. Particularly given the fact that, as the ADL documents and any casual perusal of Breitbart would reveal, Breitbart is mainly anti-Muslim and pro-Jewish. From what I can tell, Bannon's view is that the west should embrace it's Judeo Christian heritage in order to win an upcoming war against Islam. He also seems to feel that Israel and the Jewish people are important allies in this fight.

That's not antisemitism. It's certainly anti-left, but that doesn't make it antisemitic.

Similarly, a protestant's failure to be catholic doesn't make them a satanist.

More or less the same applies to Trump as well. Here's an article that lays this out quite well, though I suspect you'll refuse to engage with it: [http://www.socialmatter.net/2017/01/17/aggressive- stupidity-...](http://www.socialmatter.net/2017/01/17/aggressive-stupidity- trump-russia-narrative/)

<comment><USER32> Take it up with the ADL. This whole story really doesn't belong on HN, and I flagged it, but I couldn't let that misleading comment go without a rebuttal.

<comment><USER31> The point is the ADL issued a statement about Ellison and his fitness of leadership for the DNC. Certainly newsworthy, but the NY Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic and other news organizations declined to report this vital piece of information.

<comment><USER34> News organizations certainly reported on it. Here's one example:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/01/us/jewish-groups-and- unio...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/01/us/jewish-groups-and-unions-grow- uneasy-with-keith-ellison.html)

I'm sure there are lots of other examples. I certainly heard of it repeatedly. But I would not call it "vital."

<comment><USER31> Thanks for the reference. I hadn't seen anything at all until yesterday. Curiously, the article was on page A18 -- way back on in the "A" section. Nor did it mention that he was one of 8 Congressmen to vote against funding for additional missiles for the Iron Dome anti-missle system that protected Israeli civilians from Hamas rockets.

There was at least one Op-Ed about Steve Bannon and anti-Semitism but no opinion piece of Op-Ed in the NYTimes or otherwise about Ellison and his views.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I love how the article uses the phrase "our data". LOL. We shout from mountain tops and then whine when people record us.

</comment><comment><USER35> /rant/ So another hit piece on someone that supports Trump. This is the new left-wing extremist strategy... ie, destroy powerful voices fighting to safeguard our country and improve American lives. The Mainstream Media wants to be taken seriously with this tactic. Never heard of cnsnews.com either. Went through it and it's rather right-wing conventional. Nothing like this over-the-top ranting lunacy of an "article" disguised as journalism.

The author made sure to paint another Trump supporter in a bad light by using words like antisemitic, islamophobic, scary, brainwashing, disrupting the MSM, extremist sites, creepy, propaganda, amplify particular political narratives, playing to emotions. These words and many others have become their divisive talking points. I was surprised that I didn't see Hitler, Fascist, Racist and Sexist too. It's laughable if they weren't so transparently vulgar.

There's also stuff about tracking and usage habits but not a word about Google, Facebook, Twitter, George Soros (and his countless disruptive sites) and the REAL power (the MSM) - all engaged in extremist misrepresentation, censorship, outright lies, news coverups, blacklisted topics, paid rioters, banning users, manipulation of trending topics, physical assaults on the public by paid thugs. He mud-slings terms like "ethical regulations" in regard to Mercer when the real power has been documented to have long crossed the line and hold the details of our lives in their data-sharing databases with NO accountability.

He segues into "playing the victim". The privileged elite that has long held the reins of manipulating public opinion is (laughably) the victim now. The MSM, which has engaged in massive coverups to support their candidate, that has used fear-mongering through misinformation, that holds ALL the keys and power is now the victim. I would borrow the following from the race-baiting left... _" check you privilege at the door"_, in response.

I started off as a fairly objective person during the political process. I liked Bernie, grew to despise Hillary and her divisive rhetoric (and noted how often the MSM media blacklisted explosive stories about this corrupt politician who was selling our country away, piece by piece). I wasn't even a Trump supporter and NEVER visited anything right-wing. I was long sold on the idea that the right-wing was racist. I got ALL my news from the MSM. They betrayed my trust and continue to do so daily. The author has learned nothing.

<comment><USER13> "/rant/ So another hit piece on someone that supports Trump. This is the new left-wing extremist strategy... ie, destroy powerful voices fighting to safeguard our country and improve American lives. "

They haven't safeguarded anything. The last time Republicans were in control of the military-intelligence complex led to wars on false pretenses that killed more Americans and foreigners than 9/11\. The cost was hundreds of billions of dollars with estimates of several trillion in long-term liability. Money that could've been spent on education, healthcare, infrastructure improvements, business subsidies... anything with provable benefit to Americans' lives. ISIS formed as a direct result the Iraq war as predicted those of us protesting. They killed even more people. The local surveillance then failed to spot a guy in Boston spewing out hate speech online and visiting red flag countries... the ideal case for mass surveillance.

So, conservative policies previously led to the murder of thousands of Americans, maiming of thousands more, more terrorists in Middle East, tons of tax dollars lost w/ no gain to average voter, and some defense CEO's getting richer. That's not safeguarding our country. That's an active threat to it. It will be interesting to see whether history repeats given the new Republican President is quite different from priors. More like a knockoff of Silvia Berlusconi in Italy given all the campaign stunts/claims on top of corrupt, business dealings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Good to see the all powerful msm have some competition

</comment><comment><USER37> If you dont use facebag they have no power!

<comment><USER38> No, if everyone doesn't use Facebook then they have no power. My decision has, at best, a tiny marginal impact.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Should we take this journalist seriously when she writes:

"This is a billionaire who is, as billionaires are wont, trying to reshape the world according to his personal beliefs."

<comment><USER13> I don't know. I've noticed many people reading articles, including Trump supports I met, think that a billionaire is necessarily more knowledgeable in business... more areas than they made billions... in general. Additionally, many of them sincerely believed a billionaire saying he wanted to get rid of corrupt politicians and that he was honest. Maybe this is what author had in mind when reminding readers that billionaires are usually incredibly selfish people that, like all people, want to influence the world based on their own beliefs and preferences. People can forget sometimes that they're people, too. Very, aggressive people with money to make stuff happen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> >This is a billionaire who is, as billionaires are wont, trying to reshape the world according to his personal beliefs.

This is what anyone who votes or participates in the election process is doing. Hell, it's what this journalist is doing.

>They're dead, I learn, because they – we, I – "cannot be trusted".

Please, as if you hadn't worked out you can't be trusted before. You knew what you were doing with the above line.

</comment><comment><USER41> The article seems to be a good example of why people don't trust the press anymore. Little actual information, but a lot of fear mongering: "billionaire trying to control the world", "data analysts controlling our emotions", the ad ban on Breitbart as a proof that they are evil and antisemitic (rather than showing examples of them being evil and antisemitic), and so on.

Obama already used data science in his campaigns, and Hillary spent more money than Trump afaik. Advertising and user targeting are not new inventions.

<comment><USER42> "data analysts controlling our emotions"

is really nothing new. Sensing the emotions expressed by someone and then nudging them through targeted advertisement is a multi-billion business. It is proven to be effective in that realm. Is it fear mongering when one wonders about the political impact of this technology when employed on a massive scale?

Little actual information?

"Cambridge Analytica worked for the Trump campaign ... it was reported that until recently he had a seat on the board."

"A few weeks later, the Observer received a letter."

"earlier this week, I ended up in a Pret a Manger near Westminster with Andy Wigmore, Leave.EU's affable communications director"

Concrete facts about how people and organizations relate. Events and named sources. First hand interviews.

<comment><USER41> It's not news that Trump employed Cambridge Analytics. Their actual impact is overblown. I think that has been discussed several times before.

In any case, as you say, it is nothing new, and open to everyone with enough money (as Clinton had). If you want to suggest it was unfair play, then maybe you should rethink how the president is elected in general. Should TV advertisements be allowed? They also manipulate people, and favor the candidate with the most money. How could you ensure that people vote without having been manipulated? Maybe nobody should be allowed to consume any media for 2 years prior to the election?

There are also presumably entities with far more data available than Cambridge Analytics, as have been mentioned on HN frequently before. Advertisers have been collecting data on people for a long time.

<comment><USER28> _If you want to suggest it was unfair play, then maybe you should rethink how the president is elected in general. Should TV advertisements be allowed? They also manipulate people, and favor the candidate with the most money._

There are definitely people who are looking to reform election campaign rules and the influence of money. There's been plenty of debate regarding cases such as Citizens United.

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

To imply that people aren't _also_ concerned about factors beyond Cambridge Analytics is disingenuous.

<comment><USER41> The point is - everybody could have employed CA, or other firms with similar offerings. That is the game of the presidential election, which one candidate won. To suggest something sinister went on is far off.

<comment><USER28> That's a lot of extra text (eyeballing, looks like about 50%) to support something that wasn't your point.

<comment><USER41> What do you mean?

Edit, since HN doesn't let me reply: the point is the article suggest something sinister going on, whereas it is mostly just business as usual. Note that claims about the effectiveness of CA also come mostly from CA executives. It could almost be a PR article for CA...

Other aspects also reek of conspiracy theory, like the "you set up outlets like Breitbart to replae the established media" \- really, just like that, you set up news sites that are more popular than the established ones? And with a shocking, enourmus investment of 2 million dollars, too? It really seems as if Billionaires control everything, don't they? In fact, reading the article, I get the impression that rich people are generally evil - leftist ideology much?

<comment><USER28> Half of your comment addresses questioning how presidents are elected, implying that the parent ignores other issues with election campaigns. It does not support your point that using services like CA were open to anyone with money.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google's jobs search draws antitrust complaints from rivals - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-google-antitrust-exclusive/exclusive-googles-jobs-search-draws-antitrust-complaints-from-rivals-idUSKCN1V30IX <comment><USER2> Google is under concerted attack, likely financed by state actors.

True evil is MBS ordering the murder of journalist Khasshogi. True evil is invading and conquering Crimea. True evil is murdering your generals with anti-aircraft guns or watching dogs tear them apart while still alive.

Serving banner ads across sites does not even remotely compare.

<comment><USER3> This comment is all kinds of irrelevant.</comment></comment>


Bootstrapped, Profitable, & Proud: Alien Skin Software - <AUTHOR> http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2536-bootstrapped-profitable-proud-alien-skin-software

<comment><USER2> _Don't undercharge. Once you are confident that your product is great, don't be shy with your price. The smart people will pay for it. The whiners will leave. We had a product for a while that was much cheaper than our other products. Those customers required far more tech support than the professionals who use our other products. It was a relief when we discontinued it._

I cannot repeat this lesson enough, and this is the thirtieth time I have heard another company chime in with it. Charging a premium means your worst customers go afflict a competitor instead.

</comment><comment><USER3> Beat me to it :p

One thing that really sticks out to me here is the emphasis on _NOT_ growing too large. I think this is a management view that is going to grow increasingly common in the future.

Despite years of pounding in our heads that growth is the only avenue to success, people are finally realizing that great culture, lifestyle, and profitability are enough. Sure, some people will never have _enough_ and will continue to grow for the sake of growing. But the idea that you can lead a 20 person company for many years and enjoy the profits is very tantalizing to a lot of us Gen Y-ers that watched parents work themselves to death.

<comment><USER4> It really looks like that's a preferable future than the one we currently suffer with: large, immovable conglomerates that lobby for an upper hand in the market, have an open disdain for employee culture (i.e., the "take all the fun out of making video games" quote from Activision CEO, who probably wouldn't be anything without absorbing the then small-company Blizzard for World of Warcraft), and will outsource core competencies for the quarterly concall to sound 10% better over same quarter last year.

I think the larger advantage is that, because of smaller nimbler companies, there is keener, more increased competition, leading to better products and more reasonable prices. Because of the lowered overhead inherent in smaller companies, more of them can be spread out. If you look at the wasteland that is the midwest right now, they could really use smaller companies dotting the landscape that work on all the sexy (hell, even unsexy or staid or sterile) industries that were heretofore dominated by gigantic conglomerates like Micrsoft, GE, Medtronic, EA and others.

The days of "get big fast" is over. It caused web 1.0 to crash and burn; but from that there is a more mature 2.0, which companies like Facebook, 37 Signals, github, twitter, Valve represent and who are starting to inspire others.

If small business truly represents the largest employer in the US, we have almost a national moral imperative to eschew building (and supporting!) large corporations and multinationals in favor of small ones, don't we?</comment></comment>


The Results Are in for Remote Learning: It Didn't Work - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/schools-coronavirus-remote-learning-lockdown-tech-11591375078 <comment><USER2> Really? I learned an amazing amount about virology in the last 3 months, taking a couple online courses, studying the textbook, and listening to This Week in Virology (TWIV).

I have also spent a lot of time on Machine Learning (for example, Andrew Ng's Coursera course) and more textbooks.

I can't read your article due to the paywall. Perhaps you only talk about children learning. I remember my friend Bob and I "wasting" our after-school and weekends playing with our chemistry sets as kids. We also built model rockets powered by vinegar and alka-selter tablets.

You don't need a formal setting to learn. You just need interesting material. Any kids with an interest in science would definitely love "games" like this Nuke plant simulator [https://www.prepintl.com/nuclear-power-plant-simulation- game...](https://www.prepintl.com/nuclear-power-plant-simulation-game/)

Or the Microsoft flight simulator. Or... you get the idea.

My kids learned to swim in a backyard pool. They now swim like fish. I took "swimming lessons" for 4 summers at school and I still can't swim.

School is neither the best place, nor the only place where learning occurs.

So, no, "the results are NOT in".</comment>


Major Cities Unlivable by 2050 - <AUTHOR> https://mobile.twitter.com/byjacobward/status/1189305629879554048 <comment><USER2> > _Before now, the satellite images used to generate height measurements > confused the software that made the estimates. Basically, we were confusing > the heights of the tops of trees and buildings with the surface._

Yeah right, it must mean that now it's correct.</comment>


Beyond the Bell Curve, a New Universal Law (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/20141015-at-the-far-ends-of-a-new-universal-law/ <comment><USER2> If anyone wants to dig into this further start here:

[https://www.math.ucdavis.edu/~tracy/talks/SITE7.pdf](https://www.math.ucdavis.edu/~tracy/talks/SITE7.pdf)

I find it to be a very approachable paper.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sadly, Leo P. Kadanoff, quoted in the article just passed away.

</comment><comment><USER4> New paper by Majumdar & Schehr ( who discovered the E^-N^2 vs E^-N asymmetric tails to the Tracy-Widom Distribution in the OP ) looking for phase transitions in random walks.

"Random walk with random resetting to the maximum" by Majumdar, Sabhapandit, & Schehr

[http://arxiv.org/abs/1509.04516](http://arxiv.org/abs/1509.04516)

</comment><comment><USER5> _" Suitably scaled, its summit sits at a telltale value: √2N"_

Doesn't this statement apply the _any_ function with a maximum?

<comment><USER6> "Suitably" doesn't mean "arbitrarily". In this case it probably means something like "relative to the number of variables, N".

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I immediately thought of this: [http://www.enterprisetech.com/2014/05/22/cisco-ceo- predicts-...](http://www.enterprisetech.com/2014/05/22/cisco-ceo-predicts- brutal-brutal-consolidation/)

</comment><comment><USER8> there already exist methods to generate skewed distributions that are very similar to the ones shown in the article. not sure how this is new. Skewed distributions arise form a more general case of the normal distribution but with added parameters or the use of special functions

<comment><USER9> The main point is not about generating skewed distributions, it's about "universality" \- the same distribution starts popping up in seemingly unrelated settings. E.g., (large) eigenvalues of random matrices is connected to the length of the longest increasing subsequence of permutations. In a sense it's the discovery of a new kind of central limit theorem.

<comment><USER10> As someone who has studied statistics in college, there is little original or novel about these finding. Any distribution can be reversed-engineered to find its characteristic function.

<comment><USER11> Yeah but certain characteristic functions popping up in seemingly unrelated places is a BIG deal.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Solarpunk - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solarpunk <comment><AUTHOR> Credit due to hearing about it on the rather good podcast Imaginary Worlds:

[https://www.imaginaryworldspodcast.org/solarpunk-the- future....](https://www.imaginaryworldspodcast.org/solarpunk-the-future.html)

This ticks quite a few boxes for me, so I was surprised I hadn't heard about it until now.

</comment><comment><USER2> And this is its manifesto: [http://www.re-des.org/a-solarpunk- manifesto/](http://www.re-des.org/a-solarpunk-manifesto/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Do any HN readers have recommendations for Solarpunk novels?

<comment><USER4> I am looking at [https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/89580.Solarpunk](https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/89580.Solarpunk)

I have only read Walkaway by Cory Doctorow, which I highly recommend. I have seen the Mars trilogy recommended elsewhere, but haven't read it myself.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the recommendation!

I've also found this list, which might be useful: [https://best-sci-fi- books.com/16-best-solarpunk-books/](https://best-sci-fi-books.com/16-best- solarpunk-books/)</comment></comment></comment>


Notes on traveling alone as a woman in India - <AUTHOR> http://www.candaceroserardon.com/2013/08/woman-traveler-in-india/

<comment><USER2> Nice article! It's a sad, sad world out there. My wife sent me this: "It's a baby girl!" [http://wp.me/p1BPc5-dV](http://wp.me/p1BPc5-dV) A story on why India is the rape capital. [PS: And I will be a dad soon.]</comment>


Under AI's Watchful Eye, China Wants to Raise Smarter Students (2019) [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/video/under-ais-watchful-eye-china-wants-to-raise-smarter-students/C4294BAB-A76B-4569-8D09-32E9F2B62D19.html <comment><USER2> Everyone's focusing on the pressure this adds but that seems largely due to cultural factors. Of course students feel more pressured if the data is primarily used to criticize them. But what about evaluating the teachers ability to keep students focused on a task? Or evaluating if a new medication is making a difference for a student with ADHD? As a side note, it seems like lazy journalism to not seek out more commentary from people involved in the project. Their expert was a random Neuroscientist from San Fransisco for gods sake, they could at least have explained why they found his particular criticism worthwhile but they never even establish if he's familiar with the specific work being done in China. If the research is being done in China and the tech is bespoke to the research program in China it's weird to prioritize input from American researchers without some degree of explanation is all I'm saying.

<comment><USER3> > If the research is being done in China and the tech is bespoke to the > research program in China

The headbands are produced and donated to a Chinese school by an American company! The people protested and the authorities told the school to stop using them.

<comment><USER2> The headbands were handled via a partnership with Zhejiang Brainco Technology Co Ltd. so donation is far from the right word to use. One of their partner's cofounders is also a Harvard PhD holder so it's hardly a case of the Chinese company just being there to take up space as is often claimed around here. This is a donation in the same way that lots of large American companies are Irish. And the objections from parents as well as the government's cited reason for the shutdown were on data privacy grounds according to multiple articles which is a valid criticism but unrelated to the actual usefulness of the devices. So I'm not sure what you're actually driving at here.

<comment><USER3> > The headbands were handled via a partnership with Zhejiang Brainco > Technology Co Ltd

Which I guess is a subsidiary of the US-based company BrainCo located in Massachusetts. The article describes the provisioning of the headbands as a donation, which I guess makes sense if you're a startup and you want to test a pilot program in a market that might be receptive to your product.

The fact that Chinese parents protest on social media and with the authorities (on ethical grounds, it appears from the Quartz article) and the authorities banned the device on privacy concerns, sounds a lot like what would happen in the West.

As an aside, every time I read an article about the Chinese society I discover a much more nuanced picture than "it's a dictatorship with no free press and human rights". It's not a democracy for sure, but the idea it's a totalitarian state where all dissent is banned seems very far from the truth.

<comment><USER4> > every time I read an article about the Chinese society I discover a much > more nuanced picture than "it's a dictatorship with no free press and human > rights".

This is a generalizable realization. If you're aligned with any political faction, it's best to assume that what you hear about other factions is more negative than the reality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> as an autodidac that did extremely poorly in school, but flourished when people FINALLY left me alone and let me concentrate on what I am interested in: I could not imagine what kind of hell this would be. For a lot of the population School sucks and is a waste of time.

<comment><USER6> I'm similar to you - autodidact, poor in school, successful later - and I think it depends how the A.I. is implemented.

My observation of school was that the ratio of 1 teacher to 25 students (who all have different learning speeds) means that the teacher is optimally teaching only a fraction of the kids, the rest at each side are overwhelmed or bored.

If the AI is able to help the slower students and stimulate the brighter ones, then I think that would have taken away a lot of the boredom for me and made it a much better experience

<comment><USER7> _> the ratio of 1 teacher to 25_

As an aside, I've often wondered if it's not class size that's the issue, but conflicting ability and _personality types_. Things like the GATE program grouped high ability kids, but personality matters and it would be interesting to match students together and with a compatible teacher. Of course, this might fail spectacularly as one of the benefits of diversity is getting other perspectives, and learning empathy. But I think it would be an interesting experiment, especially in a class like math.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Training kids like this reminds me of training AI itself:

Make the reward getting a better grade and the kid will only optimize for that. Eventually the kid (the agent) will be out in the wild and they will have a weak understanding of what the reward is and how to optimize for it (it will be harder for a fine-tuned kid to do domain adaptation towards different and more abstract fields and problems).

<comment><USER9> There's another side to this issue too: Professors themselves are often optimizing their content for testability, rather than for providing actual, functional lifelong knowledge.

<comment><USER10> > Professors themselves are often optimizing their content for testability, > rather than for providing actual, functional lifelong knowledge.

Hah! I think you have this backwards. Most professors are quite concerned about imparting knowledge when the vast majority of the students simply want a piece of paper with the University's logo on it.

I knew of _very_ few professors in electrical engineering or computer science who tried to optimize for "testability".

<comment><USER11> The choice of using the word professor, seems misleading to me. Far more often teachers will adjust their content to ensure optimal performance in tests. Especially in a education system like this.

I can only imagine what side effects this must have for motivation. When you are cautiously trying to appear focused, can you even develop a passion for a subject?

<comment><USER10> Oh, you mean high school.

In the US, at least, the answer is actually "Yes. You can even develop a passion for a subject and instill it into your students."

My father taught English almost 4 decades in a very rural school. No Child Left Behind had him quite concerned intially.

Until it came down ...

He laughed at it. "Flag poor students early"\--okay, his grades were in Excel since he was _terrible_ at math--sort, print, tell administrators to go away. "Need writing samples"\--"I have two entire filing cabinets of writing assignments for this years classes. Which drawers do you want?"

Now, I have to avoid generalizing. My father did not teach in an inner city school (the area had brutal poverty--but probably less crime) where they were continuously under threat of being forced closed by the government. He also did not teach in China or South Korea where getting the piece of paper seems even worse than the US.

However, the US isn't as brutal on the "teach to the test" fronts as many other places.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Here's a more complete story:

[https://qz.com/1742279/a-mind-reading-headband-is-facing- bac...](https://qz.com/1742279/a-mind-reading-headband-is-facing-backlash-in- china/)

Seems that the headbands were donated to a school by a US startup that put them on the market as a consumer product, probably targeting China's 'tiger' mothers; that people protested, and the authorities banned them.

The video says "this school is using" and while it sounds like an generic example, it's actually ONE school, using for a short period of time a product donated by a US startup.

</comment><comment><USER12> I remember reading this in 2019 even before I ever noticed(2019) is a part of the title. The tech antagonized me by a lot, to my belief, the attempt went way way beyond necessary evil and also scented of scam. This is disgusting, it's narrated by a curious young male voice, explaining how the device is working on himself, his classmates, and how the teachers and others will know then their attention is drifting away from the class. This shouldn't happen, I can't even imagine how they got their IRB approval in the first place. Collecting and using EEG data from a consented subject for a scientific investigation is one thing, but using a poorly designed toy to regulate human behavior is another. The former one has an explicit scope that helps the human race to understand itself, but the later one is an onset of nefarious control freaks en masse that targeting not only your body, but also your mind.

Btw as a previous research assistant who spent 5+ years in brain imaging, the tech behind this also looks weird to me, you can't get meaningful EEG data in a room with so much interference. I don't see any follow-ups on this either. It usually takes 2 painful hours, give or take, to properly prepare ONE subject for an EEG experiment, and 15 minutes at least after that for them to wash off the glues on their head.

</comment><comment><USER13> It reminded me of Brad Pitt's character in "Ad Astra", when he talks about "compartmentalization". As a human, you become part of a machine that is society / the military. You become part of "an effective team".

</comment><comment><USER14> This is probably just research from some institution. Why the WSJ generalize and say that "Under AI's Watchful Eye, ---> China <\--- Wants to Raise Smarter Students".

They should rephrase it into something like "Research tries to find if..."

I trust western media the same as Chinese media...

(Edit: format)

<comment><USER15> > media the same as Chinese media

Not quite. Western media lies because they want to earn money and survive.

Chinese media lies because they are government controlled and the CCP propaganda arm has a well planned communication strategy to steer public opinion in the desired direction. Both in China and worldwide.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The design is ironically could be seen as an anology to one of the most famous novels in Chinese history of all time - 'The Journey to the West'[0].

In the novel, the monk Sanzang has a golden ring on one of his disciples - Wukong's head, and it was used for causing extreme headaches with a spell, in order to control Wukong to follow his will because he is smart but violent, and IMO sounds like an ADHD guy.

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

</comment><comment><USER17> The primarly role if these headbands since more like conditioning to me than to actually read brainwaves.

You condition them as kids to respond to these headbands, then sooner or later companies will require them for workers.

<comment><USER18> Yeah, the headbands appear similar to Scientology's "E-meter", which is a fake tech device used to control the victims.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> It seems "1984" and "Brave New World" came with a bit of delay. First rule of abstraction, whenever you abstract something you loose intrinsic value. Why is "concentration" favouritised? What about other brain states. I am afraid this experiment is wrong as much as it can get, what we believe we become.

So I can easily imagine, kids that deals with emotional issues of tyrant parents, and then get double punished because they were dealing with those emotions.

<comment><USER20> I thought concentration was weird too. I've had a few EKGs and they don't read anything above the noise when I'm doing simple math (which is what they ask most people to do). So I just started coming up with really difficult problems for myself to do and bingo, they can read activity again. This leads me to believe that if someone is performing well but concentration is in the noise or low, that you would want to instead push them to new topics, not punish them. Giving this data to parents seems like a bad idea because of this. You already know material well, so while the teacher is discussing it you drift off or your brain doesn't have to work hard to take information in. Parents see low concentration so get mad because you aren't using your time in school wisely (which is true, but not your fault). You then score low on tests because of the stress. Cycle repeats.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> In addition to grades, these headband readings add additional pressure to kids. Forcing kids to improve their grades at the cost of their mental health is unacceptable.

<comment><USER22> > Forcing kids to improve their grades at the cost of their mental health

This sounds like the status quo of many educational systems worldwide. It's very depressing to me. Obviously some countries are worse than others, but even the US isn't great compared to say, Nordic countries.

<comment><USER23> This.

It's easier to criticise other countries' education systems, but for some reason we try to avoid criticising our own.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> To be honest, few today are educated. The most favorable characterization is that we're putting the youth though a mill that produces semi-technically savvy savages. That fact that so few people with diplomas (of which I am one) fail to see that is because they haven't the slightest clue what being educated means. Also, fallacy of sunk costs (that piece of paper was rather expensive and time consuming).

</comment><comment><USER25> I wonder if there will be some sort of feedback where they discover the conditions under which kids ACTUALLY learn and thrive.

Like they figure out the successful ones slept in every day, had sex early, went to parties and drank from time to time.

<comment><USER3> On the other hand, all school teachers pay attention to check that their students are focusing. They use neural networks for that (their own neural networks) that are very well trained in detecting lack of focus from body movements, facial expressions, chatter, etc. A device that actually allows more easily to detect focus is scary if it's used improperly, that is, if focus is required all the time. But if used in a balanced way allowing for prolonged periods of relax and "mind wandering" it might actually be helpful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This stuff is SciFi and doesn't exist.

FFS if it exists sell it to adults and make $$$

This conspiracy that China has all this secret technology is a bit embarassing to believe.

</comment><comment><USER27> Sounds to me like a fashist's wet dream.

</comment><comment><USER28> Because micromanaging people is how you get more Feynmans and Shannons.

Bengio, Hinton, and Lecun were pariahs for decades, until all of the sudden they were rock stars.

I feel so bad for the 1.3bn people living under this. If we're not careful its going to keep creeping into the West and creativity will suffer.

Edit: removed profanity

<comment><USER3> > I feel so bad for the 1.3bn people living under this bullshit.

So the WSJ succeeded in its purpose of spreading anti-Chinese propaganda. Wow, so easy. Check a more complete story here:

[https://qz.com/1742279/a-mind-reading-headband-is-facing- bac...](https://qz.com/1742279/a-mind-reading-headband-is-facing-backlash-in- china/)

EDIT: less snarky. Please pay attention, I have the feeling that Western media are building an anti-China sentiment because the West (the US in particular) feels threatened by China's economic and technological growth. Criticism of China is fine and due, but let's avoid being tricked by the media (of both sides) in re-aligning with our own tribes. This is the way conflicts are prepared and started. We need understanding, diplomacy and cooperation, not anger and sabre-rattling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Reminds me of a certain novel I read about few years back where certain people would become living calculators through some kind of chemical intervention. Losing all personality in the process they'd become incredibly productive savants capable of sifting through an ever increasing volume of data.

<comment><USER30> Guessing you're also excited for December 18? ;)</comment></comment>


Remember the flash genetic algorithm car game? - <AUTHOR> http://ingenuitywelcome.com/game/

<comment><USER2> I started doing this and next time I looked at the time 2 hours had gone, totally addictive. My best is 90%

</comment><comment><USER3> These guys have plants in my home town. Really great, innovative company. The kind of thinking the auto industry really needs more of. Here's hoping they continue to be successful.

</comment><comment><USER4> Fun, but they should really let you design a few base cars, plugin the genetic algorithm and let it go

</comment><comment><USER5> can anyone get 100%? my top score is 90

<comment><USER6> Got 100% 15 seconds, 15 coconuts <http://img259.imageshack.us/my.php?image=carlt3.jpg>

<comment><USER6> did some small changes in driving... 12 seconds <http://img148.imageshack.us/my.php?image=topscoreuz9.jpg>

<comment><USER7> Yea, large tires are the secret, I got 10 seconds with this:

<http://img14.imageshack.us/my.php?image=cartgx6.jpg>

<http://img129.imageshack.us/my.php?image=coolcrop1tv0.jpg>

I can't help but wonder how fast it's possible to get to the end. I think I can shave a few fractions of a second from my time but it starts being a question of bouncing correctly. Also that little nub in the center keeps things from rolling around as much which helps stability but it's still easy to flip. (ect)

PS: I did get one to do 12 seconds to the end without complex driving just holding right arrow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I ditched cars for a one wheeled sled and managed to get 93% in 20 seconds

</comment><comment><USER9> it doesn't load for me, just a blank screen, what do I need to do?

<comment><USER8> refresh - it did that for me too

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> awesome!</comment>


Major app vulnerability that could affect 99% of Android devices unearthed - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/google/2013/07/04/major-app-vulnerability-unearthed-could-affect-99-of-android-devices/ <comment><USER2> Not affecting Play Store apps so it's really irrelevant. If you try to download an app without paying or knowing the source of it you probably deserve a virus. ;) It's like if you get some knock off drug off the internet and gives you more trouble than gain... would you blame the pharma company?

<comment><USER3> Not entirely irrelevant. From what I've read, downloading directly from the Play Store has been taken care of. That probably also means the Play Store / Play Services verifier for sideloaded apps is checking for this exploit.

That being said people who use other app stores and don't have Play Services (e.g. Kindle Fires, Chinese devices, etc.) probably have some legitimate room for concern (at least until those stores are in the loop and are taking countermeasures). Of course that's nowhere near 99% of Android devices, but why let the facts get in the way of a good headline?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5987097](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5987097)

</comment><comment><USER5> This could be a problem for all the custom rom guys installing Gapps/play store apk's. Many Chinese manufacturers dont get access to official google apk either

</comment><comment><USER6> ugh, another sensationalistic news story

edit: Yeah. There's no way this affects 99% devices, because 99% people won't bother downloading apps from non-Play sources.

<comment><USER7> Exactly.

Read my comment I left there couple days ago. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5976087](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5976087)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Looks like a good try to force Android users to use only Google Play. "...perhaps via a third-party app store or fake app links."

</comment><comment><USER9> Are Android apks converted to BlackBerry 10 bars still vulnerable?

</comment><comment><USER10> So, if I get this right, it's a bug which could be used as a feature by Google to work more effectively with the NSA.

(It doesn't sound too far fetched to me, since we know that the NSA has even installed hardware at companies like Google.)

EDIT: to the downvoters: if you downvote, say what you don't find ok. Is it the critical thinking part?

<comment><USER11> > since we know that the NSA has even installed hardware at companies like > Google

you do? I never heard of such thing - can you tell more?

<comment><USER10> I know, it's not easy to keep up with all these revelations coming out every day...

Here you go: [http://gigaom.com/2013/06/29/new-prism-slides-say-the- progra...](http://gigaom.com/2013/06/29/new-prism-slides-say-the-program- allows-nsa-to-eavesdrop-on-live-conversations/)

<comment><USER3> These slides are not nearly as clear-cut as you imply:

[http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130701/00444723675/newly-...](http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130701/00444723675/newly- leaked-nsa-slides-prism-add-to-confusion-rather-than-clear-it-up.shtml)

<comment><USER10> Well, yeah, in the end it all comes down to who you're willing to trust. So it's everyone's personal choice.

Personally, the only "web company" I'm willing to trust, is Mozilla. And that's probably the result of the fact that they're not-for-profit. And that fact eliminates a great deal of potential for corruption.

<comment><USER5> Mozilla gets all their funding from Google</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>