Gold price rises above $2k for first time - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/business-53660052 <comment><USER2> Might be a good time to sell then.

"While sitting in the shoeshine chair, Kennedy Sr. was alarmed to have the shoeshine boy gift him with several tips on which stocks he should own — yes, a shoeshine boy playing the stock market.

This unsolicited advice resulted in a life-changing moment for Kennedy Sr. who promptly went back to his office and started unloading his stock portfolio.

In fact, he didn't just get out of the market, he aggressively shorted it — and got filthy rich because of it during the epic crash that soon followed.

They don't ring bells at the top, but apparently when shoeshine boys start giving stock advice it is time to head for the exits."

[https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-spot-stock-market- bub...](https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-spot-stock-market- bubbles-2017-10?international=true&r=US&IR=T)

<comment><USER3> This anecdote illustrates how the market could be seen as a big society-level pump and dump scheme. The guys at the top invest early at a low price, then pump the investment downstream as much as possible, then dump when things start looking too much like a bubble (i.e. "the shoeshine boys start giving stock advice"). If enough people at the top dump at the same time, the bubble bursts and there's a crisis.

Even if some of the guys at the top couldn't get out in time, they are unlikely to get ruined by playing the game. The guys at the bottom on the other hand, usually end up literally paying the price for their risk-taking.

<comment><USER4> That would be true if the market didn't consistently outperform inflation over the long run. Dollar cost average...buy and hold. Markets are subject to irrational swings in either optimistic or pessimistic directions. Rich people go bankrupt too. For every short there's got to be someone with equal volume going long...and vice versa.

<comment><USER5> > That would be true if the market didn't consistently outperform inflation > over the long run.

It should be pointed out that this is true mostly of the _US_ _stock_ market.

Empirically, this isn't true of non-stock markets and isn't true of many non- US markets.

Buy-and-hold is a popular advice in the US because of the rather unique bull run over the past few decades in this market.

<comment><USER4> Past few decades? It's been true for over a century. Even if you rode out the Great Depression and held your Dow index. Now, I'm not claiming the current prices aren't a bubble, but bubbles (booms and busts) are normal part of any market.

<comment><USER6> I saw an inflation-adjusted chart of the S&P 500 that showed we are basically getting back to even after the 2009 crash.

<comment><USER4> It's at all-time highs right now, way over what the stock market was in 2007, 2008. The S&P had already bounced back to pre-2009 levels by 2014. At 3350 right now, it's more than double what it was in 2007 (1500). Inflation has not doubled since 2008. Inflation is near all time lows and interest rates are near all time lows and have been for at least a decade.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I forget where he said it, but at some point Paul Krugman makes the point that the price of gold will tend to rise when real interest rates are low. He makes a similar point here (written in 2019):

"After all, the price of gold soared from 2007 to 2011... So why did gold soar? The main answer seems to be plunging returns on other assets, especially bonds, which were the product of a depressed world economy."

[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/13/opinion/goldbugs-for- trum...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/13/opinion/goldbugs-for-trump.html)

So we should expect the price of gold to rise while the pandemic is out of control. Once the coronavirus is defeated, we should expect the price of gold to fall.

<comment><USER8> Krugman in his usual arrogance neglects to consider the price and indeed monetary history of gold. It is and always has been "real money" and most people either consciously or subconsciously trust gold more than the pieces of paper we call money, and its price is not a reflection of people chasing returns but rather people having less faith in the current monetary system (which is backed by nothing). The record physical delivery orders at Comex proves this [1].

If the dollar hyperinflates, where would people go? Crypto is obviously interesting, but gold is the supreme form of money that requires zero trust (while crypto is near trust-less, you still need to trust the cryptography to be secure).

[1] [https://reuters.com/article/gold-cme/102-tonnes-of-gold- chan...](https://reuters.com/article/gold-cme/102-tonnes-of-gold-changing- hands-on-cmes-biggest-ever-delivery-day-idINKCN24W1KW)

<comment><USER9> > If the dollar hyperinflates, where would people go?

The dollar is inflating right now, where are people going, besides gold? Why would the dollar _hyperinflate_?

<comment><USER8> Hyperinflation is the phenomenon when people wake up and realise that real estate and prices rising is not a function of real prices increasing but rather their money losing value. We already have extreme asset price inflation (not to mention the rapid expansion of the monetary base). In my opinion it is only a matter of time before people realise what is going on, start dumping their dollars/euros/pounds/etc., and use something else for their daily transactions and savings, probably crypto at first. It is worth noting that _every_ fiat currency throughout history, without exception, has eventually hyperinflated and collapsed to nothing.

<comment><USER9> > Hyperinflation is the phenomenon when people wake up and realise that real > estate and prices rising is not a function of real prices increasing but > rather their money losing value.

That is not actually what hyperinflation means.

> We already have extreme asset price inflation...

Sure, but we don't have asset price _hyper_ inflation.

> In my opinion it is only a matter of time before people realise what is > going on, start dumping their dollars/euros/pounds/etc., and use something > else for their daily transactions and savings, probably crypto at first.

Dump the dollars for _what_? Most people have no savings, they have a monthly paycheck that goes right to expenses for the most part. That alone greatly limits the velocity of money and therefore the rate of inflation.

Those people that (rightly) expect inflation (not _hyperinflation_ ) have already piled into other asset classes.

Either way, there can't be _hyper_ inflation without a commensurate increase in money supply, which can't be achieved just by people spending their money more quickly.

> It is worth noting that every fiat currency throughout history, without > exception, has hyperinflated and collapsed to nothing.

That is untrue. Hyperinflation is exceptional. Inflation over a long time can erode a lot of the value, but that isn't hyperinflation and it's not necessarily a problem either.

<comment><USER10> > That alone greatly limits the velocity of money and therefore the rate of > inflation.

Nitpick. It limits the potential increase in velocity of money. Spending your money as soon as you get it is pretty much as fast as possible. The reason why there is little inflation is that these people don't have enough money to buy all the things they want to buy, meanwhile someone else is sitting on a fat stack of wealth and wondering what to do with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Gold price soaring represents the failure of the political establishment to manage a fiat currency. Populist proclamations via money printing, corporate welfare, and the corrupt dismantling of the rule of law (basically stealing TikTok for example) will only aid in the descent of the current fiat system into new lows and hence take gold into all time highs.

<comment><USER12> Underrated comment. One of the reasons third world countries continue to remain third world is because of gangster corruption such as this. It is really sad that America has fallen to such levels and is no longer the shining beacon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> If Milton Friedman is right, and inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon, it will be interesting to see how this plays out. There is a huge fight right now between deflationary forces caused by an unprecedented collapse in both supply and demand, and inflationary forces from both fiscal and monetary stimuli. The risk I've read over and over is that the stimulus overshoots the deflation risk and we get higher inflation--I think that's what gold is starting to respond to. But the most interesting thing to me is that gold does best when deflation takes hold because it forces a massive inflationary push from the government to reflate the currency (e.g., Executive Order 6102 and the Gold Reserve Act of 1934 changing the price of gold from $20.67 to $35 overnight). Talk about an inflationary shock! How would they do it now a days? Direct helicopter money into everyone's bank account...oh, wait, we are doing that...But the scary part is that demand is crimped by fear of going out and spending, so we see Amazon beat EPS by 10x because everyone simply spends online instead. What a time to be alive! But joking aside, how do you inflate if people don't want to spend? I guess if/when a vaccine comes, and everyone rushes back out is when we could see inflation jump.

<comment><USER14> >Direct helicopter money into everyone's bank account...oh, wait, we are doing that

Except the amount is peanuts, peer countries are doing 2k/mo without issue but its somehow a struggle or hyperinflationary for the US to do 2400 over 6 months?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Gold is not simply a shiny metal or a collective fiction. I think many historians (e.g. Harari) got this wrong. Humans first learned how to manipulate metal through gold around 40k years ago. It sparked the metal industries that advanced human civilizations. Humans progressed through Bronze Age, Iron Age. Gold was an icon of metal technologies. Its use as money probably predated written history.

[https://bitflate.org/post/2019/11/29/how-gold-became- money.h...](https://bitflate.org/post/2019/11/29/how-gold-became-money.html)

<comment><USER16> That's true, but history of something does not equal it's value today. Otherwise companies like DEC would still be around, no?

<comment><USER15> Harari sees history as fiction. But I think we need to make a distinction between fiction and physical reality. Gold is a physical reality that got married into human's fiction.

DEC technologies are still around. They just got replicated and extended into other technology stacks. It's not easy to replicate gold. The easy way is to mine more gold. Technologies are ideas. Gold is physical.

Bronze and iron became less popular after BC. Will steel go away any time soon? No. Humans have worked with gold much longer. Gold has had its ups and downs. It has always come back for thousands of years. This suggests it's not going away (Lindy effect).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Gold: If you don't have the physical gold in your IMMEDIATE possession, you don't own gold.

<comment><USER18> I feel like I'm missing some underlying point here, since you're assuming there is a financial difference between buying, say, 100 gram of gold on the stock market vs having it stored at home.

<comment><USER19> He's implying if there were some serious financial disaster, digital records saying you own gold are going to mean little.

<comment><USER20> If there is a serious societal collapse, gold is going to be the last thing on your mind. Bullets, fuel, tools... trust relationships with other people... all infinitely more valuable than gold in a crisis. People who own physical gold are preparing for an extremely unlikely event, where society has collapsed in a very specific way.

A HAM radio and the skills to operate it would be worth more than its weight in gold in many disaster scenarios.

<comment><USER21> Not everybody holds gold as a hedge against complete and utter collapse. It can be a sensible hedge against a weakening dollar, such as is currently happening.

<comment><USER20> Right, in which case you do not need to physically possess it, which is what we're talking about here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I bought some about 10 months ago as a practice investment, as I figured it was easier to understand than the share market and it had given an average 10%/year return over the past 10 years (well at least in Australian dollars). Kinda wish I bought more though, but who would have predicted a worldwide shutdown?

That said, the gold price has barely moved compared to how much silver has skyrocketed the past few weeks.

The question I'm pondering is, is the value of gold/silver skyrocketing, or is the real tangible value of the USD crashing? I guess only time will tell

<comment><USER23> > The question I'm pondering is, is the value of gold/silver skyrocketing, or > is the real tangible value of the USD crashing?

A strong decline in the value of USD would be reflected in the prices of all commodities and their is no general commodity price inflation at the moment; the gold and silver price increases are an outlier. The price of gold and silver is increasing because the demand for gold and silver is increasing.

<comment><USER22> That's a good observation! While not a commodity, I'd just add that where I live (Australia) the price of housing has also been sky rocketing the past few years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This got me thinking.

If our currencies and financial system were completely based off the value of gold and/or other precious metals where the amount on the planet is finite, wouldn't this eventually cause the opposite of inflation where the prices of goods and services go down as less and less gold is available as the population grows?

Wouldn't that also mean that wealth inequality and hoarding of gold make things even cheaper as less and less can afford to buy/sell at higher prices?

<comment><USER11> Prices do go down. Smartphones for example, or clothing, tvs, music and entertainment via netflix, etc. Even food is now more attainable than ever. Technology and efficiencies in production naturally generate deflation, but _for some reason_ governments insist on enforcing an inflationary policy.

<comment><USER8> They insist on enforcing inflationary monetary policy because it is thinly- veiled regulatory capture. No matter what the academics say to try and justify it (it is not justified and does not hold up to critical analysis, see the Cantillon effect), inflation is phenomenon that redistributes purchasing power from the people to those who are relatively closer to the central bank and the printing press (they can purchase assets and spend money before inflation hits the rest of the economy).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The real questions is: Why has gold risen so much and platinum (which is much rarer than gold) stayed relatively flat recently (down since 2009) and is currently worth less than have as much? Platinum was > $2K/oz during the 2008-09 financial crisis...it's now under $1K/oz. What makes gold's intrinsic value so much higher?

"The price of platinum changes along with its supply and demand; during periods of sustained economic stability and growth, the price of platinum tends to be as much as twice the price of gold; whereas, during periods of economic uncertainty,[7] the price of platinum tends to decrease because of reduced demand, falling below the price of gold, partly due to increased gold prices."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platinum_as_an_investment#:~:t...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platinum_as_an_investment#:~:text=The%20price%20of%20platinum%20changes,because%20of%20reduced%20demand%2C%20falling)

<comment><USER26> Perhaps platinium prices arr more set by practical uses for things like catalytic converters and the demand is down with the rest of the economy?

Of course gold's speculation value is essentially memetically driven by history and platinium tends to lack that.

<comment><USER25> Platinum prices have declined every year, more or less, for the last decade. Car manufacturing world wide has increased in that same time frame (even excluding EV that wouldn't need platinum).

<comment><USER27> When you look at the macro trend, platinum has trended gold since the 80s... until around 2014 where it started going the other direction. [https://www.macrotrends.net/2541/platinum-prices-vs-gold- pri...](https://www.macrotrends.net/2541/platinum-prices-vs-gold-prices)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Gold is the oldest ponzi scheme that exists out there!

* The practical uses of it are totally diminished because of this "novelty premium".

* Can't use it online

* Can't use it offline either (Can I buy a starbucks with it?)

* Securing it and moving it around is risky

I don't get it, who's buying this crap?

<comment><USER29> Pro points of gold:

* It's relatively rare and production is naturally very limited (in contrast to e.g. diamonds that can be produced from carbon)

* It has a special tax-free status in some legislations.

* It can hardly be destroyed (you can easily loose your bitcoin when your hard disk dies)

* it's beautiful and you can use it for jewelry and art

Seems like a good choice if you see the risk of inflation, or of a state taking your money.

<comment><USER30> Another important point is that it can be blended.

Also, to add to the jewelry point, humanity has a nearly unlimited desire for luxury and will always seek out status, which is why so many thousands of years later humanity still has such an immense desire for gold jewelry when we very obviously don't need it. Status seeking is not going away.

The continued expansion of human population, rising living standards and finite quantity of gold, ensures it will grow more scarce per capita (driving up its perceived value persistently).

At the median our soon to be eight billion people will have a higher standard of living than when we had only one billion people. There isn't nearly enough gold to match that extraordinary change.

<comment><USER28> > "Status seeking is not going away"

you are correct, but what is high status now may not be high status in the future. For example: it used to be high status to have gout, but not so much now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I use to scoff at gold investors, I was one of those 'only the sp500 is the right asset class, it always beats every other asset class over the long run' type people.

then in 2019, I saw a chart of asset prices over the last 20 years. Gold, oil, and real-estate out performed the sp500 over that 20 year period (to me, a reasonable 'long period of time').

its actually still true today in 2020, probably will remain so for a long time.

gold aug-2000:aug-2020 = 409:2000 or 4.89x sp500 aug-2000:aug-2020 = 1471:3327 or 2.26x

that is serious under performance over a 20 year period, which has been true for ever a year now. not true with oil anymore though.

<comment><USER32> For stocks[1], August 2000 is just about the high water mark of the dot-com bubble; for gold[2], August 2000 is the bottom of a "V" that extends 20 years in either direction.

I'm not saying you cherry-picked August 2000 as a starting point to make gold look good (20 years is a nice round number and a reasonable time span), but if you were cherry-picking you couldn't do better than that.

[1] [https://www.google.com/search?q=sp500+historical&oq=sp500+hi...](https://www.google.com/search?q=sp500+historical&oq=sp500+historical&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l7.1975j1j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8)

[2] [https://www.macrotrends.net/1333/historical-gold- prices-100-...](https://www.macrotrends.net/1333/historical-gold- prices-100-year-chart)

<comment><USER31> That's true, but stocks are also at all time highs now, so its not a completely unfavorable position for stocks. This is the reason why I said it will likely out perform over that window for a few years.

The problem is, someone who is working and saving money away doesnt get to choose the window they are in.

I wouldn't buy gold here, but if gold ever drops around the range of 1500, I am not going to miss that chance again at having some of it in my portfolio.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I'm not a gold bug, and I certainly won't buy it now at the all-time high prices.

That being said:

I have enough Krugerands and similar gold coins in a very secure safe (in ground, in concrete) so I could GTFO if I had to and go somewhere else. All 4 of my grandparents had to pack up and leave suddenly and having something small you can pawn/hock/sell is handy. (Two fled Lithuania, one fled Belarus, and one fled Gaza City in 1929 when all the Jews were suddenly expelled. The families had all been living comfortably in the respective location for hundreds of years--or thousands in the case of Gaza.)

<comment><USER34> The inflation adjusted price of gold is still below 2008 and 1980 peaks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I was thinking of buying some gold mining company or gold ETF shares a while ago. Still time for the ETF buy I suppose, but maybe wait for a dip before buying the former.

<comment><USER36> > but maybe wait for a dip before buying the former.

No real dips for the last 60 days. There might be one that goes below current level in the near future but there also might not be.

<comment><USER37> > There might be one that goes below current level in the near future but > there also might not be.

Insightful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I've always thought of the gold prices as a fear index.

</comment><comment><USER39> It's people vote "I agree that things are really bad now and probably stay the same in the near future" by their own actions.

</comment><comment><USER40> IMO: if you have tens of millions, buy 10KG of gold and 100kg of silver and bury it just in case. As an investment it sucks when compared to the rest but then a tiny percentage of your networth is nothing when considering that it may be useful if SHTF

<comment><USER41> I heard once that their still finding caches of gold from the fall of the Roman empire. It didn't help those rich papos, why would it help you?

I truly don't see gold being of any use in a collapse where suddenly food is the most valuable asset.

<comment><USER42> FWIW, during the (first) IMF default in Argentina, when the local economy and monetary system was in total collapse, gold was the most sought after item for trade and barter. People consistently said afterwards that they wished they had kept more savings as gold.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Not surprising. The money supply has increased sharply: [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2)

<comment><USER44> And yet velocity of M2 has decreased sharply.[1] Therefore, hyperinflation seems unlikely unless the real economy unexpectedly recovers rapidly. However, since money is not neutral in the short run[2], we could actually get additional output from the increased money supply. That said, I'm personally skeptical of that claim in this crisis. Additional M2 can have zero effect on output when the law itself has forbidden workers from showing up and producing goods, and in some cases has discouraged them from trying to do so.

[1] [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2V](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2V)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monetary- disequilibrium_theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monetary- disequilibrium_theory)

<comment><USER43> Indeed, velocity has decreased sharply. I also do not think hyperinflation is likely, even if the economy recovers quickly. But I do expect to see asset price inflation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Cryptocurrencies are rallying as well. Some of them tap into the same economic logic as gold.

<comment><USER46> I thought so as well, but I'm starting to believe it's more looks civilians running away from faultering currency ( Venezuela, turkey, Russia, HK ).

Which has very similar market conditions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I have some gold and the storage is more expensive than I thought :)

<comment><USER22> Whoops! As long as it's less than the rate of return I guess?

I managed to find a company that offers "pool allocated storage" for free, with an option to "cast" it to a shippable product for a small fee. Perhaps it's worth you shopping around for cheaper storage?

I wonder if that's where the programming term cast comes from.

<comment><USER47> Yeah, I will have a look into that. I bought my gold in 2009 so not much to complain. Luckily, if it's securely stored it's hard to get stolen. 100% sure gold is better protected than your typical bonds/stock at the high street bank.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> People lose confidence due to the shutdowns.

<comment><USER49> Not really. If that was true, stocks would be tanking but they're also at a high. There's just a lot money around and low interest rates so all assets increase in price. I just wonder how long that can last for and how it will end.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Someone said what is to be watched is gold to silver price ratio. Not sure.

</comment><comment><USER51> Wow 263 comments ... interesting to see what hackers really care about)</comment>


"Women at Microsoft are sexualized by their male managers," lawsuit alleges - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/03/sexual-harassment-at-microsoft-often-goes-unpunished-lawsuit-alleges/ <comment><USER2> Barely a story, devoid of proper information. Microsoft has 125 employees world wide, they would never risk a PR nightmare by going too soft on a proper investigation.

>108 complaints of sexual harassment >119 complaints of gender discrimination

"Out of all of the claimed instances of gender discrimination, Microsoft's internal investigation only found that one such complaint was "founded." [...] yet ERIT still perplexingly found that the behavior did not rise to the level of a policy violation."

The real evidence, if there is any, will be locked behind the court case until it finishes and a proper verdict is reached. Until then articles like these only fuel baseless allegations in the current #metoo climate.

<comment><USER3> > Microsoft has 125 employees world wide

That's missing a "thousand" before "employees", right?

<comment><USER2> heh, yeah</comment></comment></comment>


Help HN: Cannot recover my Google Adsense because of single 1$ mistake - <AUTHOR> Dear HN,
I need your help on this issue, maybe by doing this I can catch attention of Google Adsense Team members.
In 2014 September, I have published an android app in play store (only one app, I don't have any other app) and in order to get experience and feel of AdMob I have created AdMob account for the first time, I haven't have any experience with it yet.
It worked roughly 1-2 month or less and made ~1USD, I haven't received it, then suddenly got email about illegal activity and my account has been blocked. At that time I didn't know how to find who is making that illegal activity and appealed again. Team responded with block.
2015, November. I have unpublished my app from Google store.
Now 2016, I tried to appeal, but got rejected. because of almost 2years old, beginner mistake now I am losing an opportunity to use Google AdSense forever.
I know Google seriously responds to illegal activity, but does Google Team think I did this thing intentionally? for 1USD? Maybe I tested my app 2-3times when I first integrated AdMob, maybe that was the reason for illegal activity, maybe some user intentionally created illegal activity.
Is this considered right losing lifetime opportunity just for 1USD, forever?
I hope someone will help with advice on this issue. <comment><USER2> My suggestion from extensive experience: move on.

It's 2016 and there are better and highly competitive alternatives to Adsense.

If you'd rather have Adsense, just apply for a new account with absolutely zero credential similarity to your previous account (this includes IP address, mail address etc...)

Best,

</comment><comment><USER3> Google adsense today is not what it was 10 yrs ago. You're not losing lifetime opportunity to use Google.

You gaining clarity to discover better options.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Seems, I made mistake while writing content.

@@ -1,1 +1,1

-Dear HN,

+Dear HNers,

<comment><USER4> But after all, what _is_ HN without HNers? It's like the sound of one hand clapping.</comment></comment>


Amusing Ourselves to Death: Huxley vs Orwell - <AUTHOR> http://www.highexistence.com/amusing-ourselves-to-death-huxley-vs-orwell/

<comment><USER2> When I first saw the film Clockwork Orange many years ago, I found Ludovico Technique very disturbing. Now it's just another day on the internet. "Amusing Ourselves to Death" is a great book, but I haven't read it in so long I can't say if it's still relevant or just come to pass and now unremarkable.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludovico_Technique>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death>

</comment><comment><USER3> Just below this post is "Tips for Gamifying Your Mobile App".

</comment><comment><USER4> Huxley also had thought drugs can only make us dumb (like soma in Brave New World) - until someone shown him psychedelics.

He even wrote later a book describing utopia (Island) which contained similar things as in Brave New World (drugs use, assisted reproduction, sexual openness, exposing children to death), but used in positive way.

</comment><comment><USER5> Previous posts:

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4607098> (2012)

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=627476> (2009)

</comment><comment><USER6> Read the book...

[http://www.amazon.com/Amusing-Ourselves-Death-Discourse- Busi...](http://www.amazon.com/Amusing-Ourselves-Death-Discourse- Business/dp/014303653X)

</comment><comment><USER7> There have been states since 1984 was published that seem to have used it as a template. See Czeslaw Milosz's comments about the book's impact behind the Iron Curtain. Or just consider the DPRK today. Both authors got it more or less right, in other words.

<comment><USER8> But Orwellian states are eventually falling, because people rebel against oppression. Perfect totalitarian state can be a one of which citizens are not aware.

<comment><USER7> Your first sentence conspicuously relies on the word "eventually". And there's no reason to assume that history is a linear march forward. Orwell's words may again be relevant, "even" in the west.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why is it either/or? Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 depicts a dystopian future full of both bookburning and constant information. I think Huxley and Orwell both had it right (though the authoritarian disinformation and suppression of information may be more subtle at the moment than Orwell imagined).

When we become overwhelmed by trivial information, we start to hate substantial/meaningful information, and both what we hate and what we love conspire to bring our ruin. (Not that I am that I'm a cynic or anything ;)

<comment><USER10> _"When we become overwhelmed by trivial information, we start to hate substantial/meaningful information, and both what we hate and what we love conspire to bring our ruin."_

Is it hatred, or simply a desire to get the "cheaper" information? It seems like human brains are wired to assume a kind of information parity, in which "Kim Kardashian buys a soda" is equal in value to "Germany annexes the Sudetenland". Understanding the latter has a lot of prerequisites, each of which is also a piece of information that has to be acquired, and so the latter is rightly seen as requiring more work than the former. And so, if you have a greedy information-gathering algorithm, you'll prefer the Kardashian data to the WWII data. This is why I admire people like Carl Sagan, David Attenborough, and all the other great popularizers of complex subjects, because instilling that passion and showing _why_ some data are more important than others is a really hard job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Well, I _was_ interested in the book that inspired this comic, but I followed the link to the original [1] which states that the "comic was respectfully removed in March 2012 due to the wishes of the copyright holders of the text."

1) [http://www.recombinantrecords.net/docs/2009-05-Amusing- Ourse...](http://www.recombinantrecords.net/docs/2009-05-Amusing-Ourselves-to- Death.html)

<comment><USER11> Please don't let something like that keep you from reading a book. If you don't want them to get your money, get it from a library.

<comment><USER5> Brilliant! Libraries... I remember them... And much more ethical than the method I was considering.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask: How do you turn a hardware prototype into a real product? - <AUTHOR>

I'm trying to figure out the best approach at creating a new hardware product that I've come up with.
The idea is pretty simple and my sense is something like Arduino or even LittleBits type of thing would work fine.
What I'm not sure about is whether Arduino or something like LittleBits is the right way to start because I want to eventually turn it into a commercial product. How do you take an Arduino prototype (or little bits, etc) and turn it into a real product? Has anyone had experience with this?  Googling it didn't produce anything useful though I'm still digging. <comment><USER2> Certainly start with an Arduino if you want to turn it into a commercial product. If you can't get it to work with an Arduino, then a Beaglebone is probably the next step up. Stay away from Raspberry Pi, as getting the Broadcom SOC is not for the new player. Once things are working at the breadboard level, look at implementing it in a single board, eliminating all the redundancy in the schematic. While you're getting it working on a single board, work with an industrial designer to come up with a housing if you want something nice looking. Then, it's time to work on building up a batch. There are quite a few Contract Manufacturers in the US who would be happy to build your boards for you, and I'd recommend staying in the US to start with.

Think about testing in there, how are you going to test the 100 or 200 units you've build, and how are you going to handle the broken ones what people have.

I'm sure I'll think of more things later.

</comment><comment><USER3> * Breadboard it.

* Investigate the IP space and file a provisional patent. $500.

* Find an OEM that can handle fulfillment. There are a ton and you don't need to find one in China; I'm working with one in Iowa right now. I came to them with a pretty solid circuit (no microcontroller) and they made it better and cut my bill of materials by 30%.

* Unless you like the idea of holding inventory, try to find a volume buyer (or maybe look at kickstarter). The point is to find a market willing to go for pre-sales, or else you're going to need deep pockets.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, very helpful.

I'm not sure I would have any inventory, the idea is pretty specialized and I would be selling it to a limited number of large institutions.

<comment><USER3> The best play, IMO, is to sell the company within the provisional period.</comment></comment></comment>


A Giant Speaker in Taiwan Is About to Switch on Again (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/beishan-broadcast-station-art <comment><USER2> I'm reminded of Dougal Adam's fictional band, Disaster Area [0].

>Disaster Area was a plutonium rock band from the Gagrakacka Mind Zones and was generally regarded as not only the loudest rock band in the Galaxy, but also as being the loudest noise of any kind at all. Regular concert goers judged that the best sound balance was usually to be heard from within large concrete bunkers some thirty-seven miles away from the stage, whilst the musicians themselves played their instruments by remote control from within a heavily insulated spaceship which stayed in orbit around the planet - or more frequently around a completely different planet.

>Their songs are on the whole very simple and mostly follow the familiar theme of boy-being meets girl-being beneath silvery moon, which then explodes for no adequately explored reason.

>Many worlds have now banned their act altogether, sometimes for artistic reasons, but most commonly because the band's public address system contravenes local strategic arms limitations treaties.

[0] [https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Disaster_Area](https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Disaster_Area)

<comment><USER3> sound like mbv

<comment><USER4> Hahaha! Heck yeah! Huge fan of Loveless here...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Some would remember HHGttG, but there's no need: Pan Sonic could probably find a proper use for this monolith. That's the band that have used in their concerts an armored car with a 5000 watt riot dispersion siren—effects of which include nausea and loss of orientation.

A shame that they're disbanded and Mika Vainio is no more.

<comment><USER5> To clarify, their sound is rather idiosyncratic: it's more electronic soundscapes, if not plain electric: [https://youtube.com/watch?v=5_XmsZ3YJ1M](https://youtube.com/watch?v=5_XmsZ3YJ1M)

They fiddled a lot with instruments that they built themselves: [https://youtube.com/watch?v=qHioD9QZTyE](https://youtube.com/watch?v=qHioD9QZTyE) (here with another Finnish fiddler Erkki Kurenniemi).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have a feeling that if a similar thing existed in the US, it would become used as a "sonic billboard" for playing adverts all the time, and pranksters would occasionally attempt to get that infamous Rick Astley tune to emanate from it...

</comment><comment><USER7> That photo's bizarre - I can't judge the size of the speaker at all. It could be 100m tall or 10cm tall. The article says it's 30 feet (10m), but in that case the bushes must be really tall, and the flag really tiny.

<comment><USER8> This article has a photo with people, for scale: [http://artasiapacific.com/Blog/SonicTerritoriesPerformanceRe...](http://artasiapacific.com/Blog/SonicTerritoriesPerformanceRecap)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> this is old news - the article is from august 2018, and states the speaker will turn on for a weekend in August 2018

</comment><comment> em-bee i suggest to build another speaker on the other side, and use it to exchange messages with each other...

<comment><USER10> Or the world best stereo seperation... you could charter a boat for 'audiophiles' to hear a mono pressing of the beatles.

<comment> em-bee how does that work?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Building giant speakers to mock the Chinese from must be close to the peak of human pettiness. It is worse than the Frenchman in Monty Python...

</comment><comment><USER12> I found a video about the performance on the island:

[https://vimeo.com/302678937](https://vimeo.com/302678937)

</comment><comment><USER13> > mega-megaphone

So, a gigaphone?

<comment><USER14> I think you mean teraphone (10^6 * 10^6 = 10^12)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Somebody needs to start a rave in there

</comment><comment><USER16> Geography fail. Kinmen is not in Taiwan.

<comment><USER17> Source definitely needed as Wikipedia and other easily searchable sources online seem to disagree.

From Wikipedia: "Kinmen or Quemoy (/kɪˈmɔɪ/; Standard Mandarin Pīnyīn: Jīnmén; Hokkien POJ: Kim-mn̂g (locally) or Kim-mûi), officially Kinmen County, is two groups of islands governed by the Republic of China (Taiwan) and located just off the southeastern coast of mainland China."

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

<comment><USER18> I actually think you're being too kind. Extraordinary claims made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence, and reliable sources online don't "seem" to disagree - they quite unambiguously say the exact opposite.

A low-effort comment brashly making incorrect, unevidenced assertions, presumably intended as flamebait, probably deserves a downvote and nothing else.</comment></comment></comment>


Bubble Bubble Everywhere - <AUTHOR> http://plentyoffish.wordpress.com/2007/10/30/bubble-bubble-everywhere/

<comment><USER2> So, even if the stock market does lose 20% of it's valuation in a "stock bubble," who is going to lose? It's going to be big blue chip financial companies that are overexposed to bad mortgages they purchased. And, blue chip tech stocks like Yahoo, GOOG, Intel, MSFT and HP might take a beating, but what does that mean for the startup scene?

Even if there's another round of layoff's in Silicon Valley, I think that it will be awful for the people involved, but it will only mean good things for startups as there will be more unemployed software engineers around looking for work. That's good for potential employers/founders.

It might mean that fewer companies will be interested in acquiring startups, but that just means that you still have to be smart about your burn rate and find a source of revenue. You might not be able to build to flip quite so easily.

A bubble isn't going to stop people from using the internet and it's not going to stop companies from advertising online.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, but maybe it can make smaller ad budgets? Or, smaller VC budgets? Less people choosing to go into the startup scene, instead of safe jobs? It is all about expectations I'd say.

<comment><USER3> What the heck is a "safe job"?

<comment><AUTHOR> This one you perceive a safe job.

Yeah, yeah, we all know here that there's no safe jobs anymore, and in our economy we're all exposed to global risks. yada yada But, besides the Startup News, there are people who still believe that computer engineer in Microsoft, Merill Lynch or whatever else, is "a safe job".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "The best is yet to come, as Advertising rates will increase and I think Microsoft will become a leader in the space as they are innovating and Brian McAndrews who leads the Advertiser and Publisher Solutions seems to know what he is talking about."

That is simply laughable. Ask anyone who has used msn adcenter vs google adwords. Microsoft have absolutely no clue whatsoever IMHO.

<comment><USER5> I'm not so sure that Marcus's claim is entirely invalid. I think what he is trying to propose is that in the long run the competition that Google will be facing by having another ad publisher like Microsoft, will make things better for site owners as it will give more competition in the ad space.

As we know Google is cash filled with money made from their ads program. If Microsoft is willing to give more of that money back to the site owners to gain market share, Google will have to react.

<comment><USER4> It's not the money though. If microsoft offered far higher rates for publishers, and far lower rates for advertisers than google does, I'd still be reluctant to use microsoft. The main blocker is that they simply cannot write webapps. The interface for dealing with adcenter is amongst the worst webapps of all time. It's a very very slow painful procedure to get anything done at all. Things you can do in adwords in 5 minutes can take hours in msn adcenter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Stop talking about bubbles and get back to coding. All the billionaires made in that era didn't pay attention to the idoicy going on around them. They just executed. Now I'm off to follow my own advice.

<comment><USER7> And this is how you can tell it really is a bubble: people talking about becoming billionaires. It's silly and smacks of a get-rich-quick scheme.

If a bubble is best defined as irrational exuberance taking valuations as multiples of intrinsic value, then the fact that the exit strategies are different and there are fewer IPO's than 10 years ago is irrelevent. Web 2.0 seems to be clearly Dot Com Bubble 2.0.

<comment><USER5> Just cause he included billionaire in that sentence, does not safely support the inference that he's thinking of a get rich quick scheme, or prove that we are in a bubble.

People will always look to the achievement's of Bill Gates and Larry Page regardless of the cycles the industry maybe in. In a recession or depression, investors will still always quote Warren Buffett.

<comment><USER7> ... the achievements of Bill Gates ...

Exactly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> My thoughts exactly. Anyone who thinks were in a tech bubble doesn't understand what those words mean. We are not in a stock market bubble. And a stock market bubble was what burst in 2000. The downturn in the economy was not caused by small startups failing, but by new, swollen public companies shutting their doors.

If Facebook, Meebo, Bebo, Plentyoffish, iminlikewithyou, justin.tv, reddit, digg, Pandora, Last.fm, Hotornot, TechCrunch, PodShow, Boing Boing, Life Hacker, Prosper.com, 43 Things, SixApart, Gawker Media, 37 Signals, Wordpress.com, Scribd, and Zimbra all went out of business _tomorrow, simultaneously_ , we would not see the huge rash of pink slips we saw in 2000. The stock market would not crash because of it.

It's not the same at all. Funny names != a bubble, and neither do over- valuations by private investors, and neither does a lot of entrepreneurs trying to start companies. It's called capitalism. Get used to it.

<comment><USER8> Indeed. We're not in a tech bubble -- we're in a real estate bubble. And as far as the crash of _that_ market is concerned, we're still in the early part of March 10, 2000. The real pain has yet to begin.

The bottom line is that I wouldn't go whistling past the graveyard quite yet. A truly astronomical amount of debt has been accumulated by normal (i.e. not rich) people in the process of puffing up US home values. Unlike the dot-com crash, a worst-case scenario in the housing market wipes out the finances of a huge block of US consumers. And without free-spending, US consumers you can kiss the market for most small internet companies goodbye.

The apocalypse doesn't have to come from within; the people who are worried about a "tech" bubble aren't paying attention.</comment></comment>


The origin of "log in" (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://www.designcult.org/2011/08/why-do-we-call-in-logging-in.html <comment><USER2> It's quite amazing how many words (and phrases) in common usage are actually nautical terms.

For example...when was the last time you said: 'Everything is above board'

'That company needs a bailout'

'A storm is coming, we better batten things down'

'Did someone just let the cat out of the bag?'

'We better clear the deck so we can start this new project'

'This project is doomed. We need to cut and run'

'My son is an excellent student. He passed his exam with flying colors'

'They successfully used a loop hole to get around the rules'

'You better toe the line' (usually mis-spelled as 'tow the line' on the internet these days)

There are many, many more.

But then you have to remember, at one point in history, all things shipping and nautical _were_ the high tech of its day, and for a long time period.

As for me, I'll be giving any more phrases a _wide berth_ and waiting until the _sun is over the yardarm_ so I can pop a beer.

<comment><USER3> Interesting, I did not realize the nautical context of some of these phrases :)

Could you explain 'letting the cat out of the bag' in this context? I'm asking because I've read a different legend: Apparently on markets a few centuries ago, young pigs were frequently sold in bags. Sometimes people tried to sell captured cats as farrows in the hope the buyer would not open the bags before the deal was made and the seller far enough away. IIRC they chose cats because they sounded similar to farrows. Lacking farrows I cannot confirm that :)

<comment><USER4> It refers to the cat o' nine tails, which was used to punish sailors in the Royal Navy and was, supposedly, kept in a special bag. It's also where "not enough room to swing a cat" is said to come from.

[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/09/Cat-o%27-...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/09/Cat-o%27-nine- tails_\(PSF\).jpg)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Login is a noun (and adj). Log in is a verb.

So the right one to use depends somewhat on the context. It's the "login page" but "you need to log in". But it's not super clear in all cases.

<comment><USER6> I always catch myself saying 'I got it _offline_ ', but I wonder if it is incorrect to say that and instead to say I got it online. What's your take?

<comment><USER7> Could you use the expression in context?

If you're saying e.g., "I got this pdf offline", I would argue your usage is incorrect and that saying, "I downloaded this pdf","got it online", or some variant would be more accurate.

That is, unless you would consider, 'got it offline' to be an idiomatic expression for 'downloaded/retrieved-from-the-internet' in whatever region you're from. ~

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> That's a fun read. It is true that in time sharing systems the ability to attach an identity to things the mainframe was doing was a direct requirement of the accountants who wanted to distribute the cost of that machine to the users.

</comment><comment><USER9> Like the author, I frequently get hung up on which of "log in", "sign in", or any of their variants is 'more correct' every time I put together software with users.

"Authenticate" might be the most correct verb, although it's not very user friendly?

<comment><USER10> Personally I prefer "log in" to "sign in" because it makes it stand out more from "sign up", thus hopefully leading to fewer users accidentally selecting one when they wanted the other. And regarding the variations, I've always been under the impression that "log in" is the act of logging in, while "login" is either the situation/event ("a login happened") or an alternative term for username.

<comment><USER9> You're right that "log in" is more distinct from "sign up" (and works because "logging up" doesn't make much sense), and I definitely agree with you that 'login' is a noun, if anything!

Both "log in" and "sign in" are anachronisms though - they're justified when you're actually signing-in-and-out of a computer system or building to log your visit, but the metaphor doesn't _technically_ make as much sense when you're talking about authenticating the user on a website.

The evolution of the terms does let you nicely abstract away the actual mechanism of authentication for a user, which I suppose is the point.

<comment><USER11> > to log your visit

That is what many systems will do when you "log in", so to me that makes the most sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's interesting that the 1964 CTSS manual† linked from the article (OCR'ed by Google††) uses "login", one word, no blank. See page 6 (page 14 of the PDF).

I knew about ships' logs, but I didn't know that the word "log" originated from the use of a wooden log tossed overboard attached to a knotted rope, so that the observed speed could be entered into a book that eventually came to be known as a ship's log.

Also interesting in that manual is that each "segment" of a command (what we now call a token) was six characters, blank-padded. The 7094 had 36-bit words and 6-bit bytes.

†[http://bitsavers.trailing- edge.com/pdf/mit/ctss/CTSS_Program...](http://bitsavers.trailing- edge.com/pdf/mit/ctss/CTSS_ProgrammersGuide.pdf)

††[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:SapGOxk...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:SapGOxkAdpwJ:www.bitsavers.org/pdf/mit/ctss/CTSS_ProgrammersGuide.pdf+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

<comment><USER13> Isn't that in reference to a command literally named "login", presumably due to the lack of a good convention for separating words without the space character?

Like "useradd" on contemporary Linux.

<comment><USER12> That's very likely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> My father used to use a system (IBM?) that required him to 'track on' and 'track off'. Anyone come across this?

<comment><USER15> Around here, it was "wand in" and "wand out" because they used a light pen to read a barcode on their badge to access the AS/400\. My Dad still says "wand in" when he logs into his Mac.

<comment><USER16> Talk about old-school computation

I've heard some people use the term "Abended" for a crash, because it was an "ABnormal END" \- Abend

<comment><USER17> The first time I heard the word "abend", I asked the speaker what it meant. He couldn't really answer: "you know, a _bend_!" Eventually I got the sense that it meant "crash", but it seemed like some crashes met his unarticulable criteria and some did not.

<comment><USER18> Segmentation fault = abended. Python program crash with stack trace = not abended?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Amusing that a techie assumed it was invented for computers and someone came along and corrected him that it was in use long before. Props for the author on acknowledging it with the edit at least, even if he didn't correct his conclusion that it is an unnatural usage.

</comment><comment><USER20> I liked this, a pretty cool origin of a now common phrase we use. I liken it to the origin of the term Computer, the person who would compute the result of some mathematical function...

<comment><USER12> [http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/10/comput...](http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/10/computing- power-used-to-be-measured-in-kilo-girls/280633/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's interesting that this is the second recent article recounting the history of the term 'logbook', but in answer to a different puzzle: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7559141](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7559141).

</comment><comment><USER22> Surprised it hasn't come up in this thread already, but an excellent and free resource for this sort of thing is EtymOnline[0]. It's volunteer-made[1], has an easy search and quick on-results-page answers.

Here's the search page for Log: [http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=log](http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=log)

[0] [http://www.etymonline.com](http://www.etymonline.com) [1] at least mostly - see [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2580631](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2580631)

<comment><USER23> I find [http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/etymology](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/etymology) [the talk page for that one is fun] to be pretty good as an adjunct to EtymOnline.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I seem to remember some movie or TV show where it was "jack in", sort of plugging yourself into a system. Not sure about the opposite version though.

<comment><USER25> Or Andromeda, where you had to physically stick a jack in your head if you wanted to do any serious work with a computer. [http://andromeda.wikia.com/wiki/Dataport](http://andromeda.wikia.com/wiki/Dataport)

And the opposite of "jack in" is "jack out" :p

<comment><USER26> Hmm, there are indeed two pairs, in/out and on/off.

I wonder how consistent everyone is about using the correct antonym, and how often you end up with in/off or on/out.

<comment><USER27> "out" is not the opposite of "in": Are you in line? No, I am out line!

<comment><USER26> "in"/{"out", "out of"}?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Personally I do not think that 'log in' or 'sign in' are really satisfactory. The phrases are 'verbally skuomorphic'.

On the one hand you have 'log in' and that conjures up images of a mainframe computer with blinking lights (or something left in a toilet bowl), then, on the other hand there is 'sign in', that is a bit namby-pamby and reminiscent of what you do when you sign in when visiting someone in some posh office building.

We need to introduce a new word, something that has no real-world metaphor, that combines all the delights that go with made-up-words-for-programming. Recursive backronyms are great, plus the English language needs a word that rhymes with orange. There could be some real meaning to the word, as in, once '[xxx]-ed in' then your communications are certified NSA proof. Any suggestions?

With the right word we can introduce it in the programming community and, from there, it could enter into the wider audience and get into the OED.

'Sign in' is a relatively new contrivance, does anyone know what the first website was to use that? How did _they_ invent it and get others to follow their example?

<comment><USER29> the concept of "signing in" is not unique to a web page though, you also do it at a hotel. you also do it if you have dinner reservations. you also do it if you pick up a package at the post office. You also might do it when you show up for work to be put on the clock.

sign in, check in, clock in, log in. its all referring to a social process that is unique to that engagement between those two parties. What is performed can be widely different, so it makes sense to go to these sort of common words.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I had always assumed it just came from the fact that something is literally logging the fact that you have logged in/signed in/starting using the service/whatever.

Always seemed rational enough to me!

</comment><comment><USER29> i always pressumed the source of the phrase was due to being "logged" by the software. eg a user is "logging on" because he is literally going on the log. If you review the server logs youd see the user on (or in) the log.

the same kind of verbage is used in all similiar scenarios. you check in at a hotel for instance.. Check, sign, log, etc etc are all really just various words that roughly mean the same thing. Log just happens to be whats popular on the web.

</comment><comment><USER31> what rolls down stairs, alone or in pairs, rolls over yours neighbors dog?</comment>


Why I Think @TheOnion Has Unfollowed A Record 485,000 People On Twitter - <AUTHOR> http://twittercism.com/the-onion/

<comment><USER2> If you want the hypothesized reason TheOnion unfollowed a record 485,00 people, the author says:

>I assumed whoever it was that managed their social media campaign had decided that enough was enough, and pulled the plug.

The rest of the article is filler.

</comment><comment><USER3> I certainly hope it's not surprising to anyone that a company following half a million people isn't paying close attention to all of them.

There's little _technical_ reason for The Onion to follow back its followers. Yes, Onion employees could read a random sample of their followers' tweets, or use filtering software that selects useful-looking tweets for human attention. But they can simply use their followers' RSS feeds for that; they don't need to formally follow them back. The only advantage I can think of is that Twitter automatically bundles your followees' RSS feeds together into a single feed. (But I'm curious how Twitter delivers an RSS feed that aggregates half a million talkative users -- does it still work at that volume?)

Naturally, follow-backs are merely symbolic at that scale, so mass unfollowing doesn't strike me as news. It was a little interesting to see the how many immediate unfollows The Onion's move triggered, though.

<comment><USER4> The other reason is so people can DM them. That's usually the reason why popular accounts follow people.

<comment><USER3> Ah, I didn't think of that. Thank you.</comment></comment></comment>


Z80 Symbos OS now has networking support on MSX - <AUTHOR> http://www.msx.org/nl/node/4993?page=358 <comment><USER2> The MSX was a funny beast.

The MSX used the Z80, which is similar to the Intel 8080. After the 8080, Intel made the 8086, an enhanced 16-bit version.

CP/M ran on, among other things, the Z80. When IBM made the PC, they wanted something like CP/M, so Microsoft took an 8086 port of CP/M and made it into MS-DOS. Then when Microsoft Japan came up with the MSX standard, Paul Allen ported MS-DOS back to the Z80, to create MSX-DOS. Because it was ultimately derived from CP/M, and ran on the same chip, MSX-DOS could (at least theoretically) run CP/M programs unmodified!

<comment><USER3> It lasted for quite a while and founded an unbelievable number of huge gaming franchises.

The last version of the systems, the MSX turboR ran an R800, a Z80 compatible semi-16-bit CPU. This was required because the 16-bit successor from Zilog was the Z8000 which _wasn 't_ Z80 compatible. There was also the Z80000, a 32-bit CPU, but I don't think that was Z80 compatible (but it was probably powerful enough to just emulate it at full-speed).

It's weird the confluence of decisions that made Intel and Motorola decide to keep making new, more powerful CPUs, that were backwards compatible (until Itanium) while this wasn't necessarily a prized requirement in the industry. People were pretty happy to just port whatever over to yet another system since that was just the state of things.

IIR, there was never a 16-bit successor to the 6502, despite being one of the most popular processors of all time.

Between the Z80 and the 6502, 8-bits just really had nowhere, evolutionary- wise, to go.

<comment><USER4> The 68000 really took over from the 6502, even though it was completely incompatible. There is a 16-bit 6502, called the 65816, from WDC. They are still in production today and were used in some very high volume applications, like the SuperNES game console, but only really in the Apple IIgs personal computer. By the time the 65816 came out the 68000 was well established both in workstations and in the Atari ST, Commodore Amiga, and the Macintosh. The 68000 family had a long life and competed quite well against x86 for a while.

<comment><USER5> The 68000 really fascinates me, because it has an interesting legacy: the m68k ISA was heavily inspired by the DEC PDP-11 ( _the_ classic Unix architecture), and the assembly language was almost identical.

If a few things went differently, the modern computer industry could've been dominated by a descendent of the PDP-11...

Instead, however, we got x86, which is the worst of all possible worlds. People like to shit on x86 for being CISC instead of RISC, but the truth is that a good CISC architecture has lots of things (e.g. orthogonality) that can make up for not being RISC, and x86 is just a really poor example of CISC. The ultimate CISC ISA was VAX, but PDP-11 and m68k came pretty damn close, and it's a real shame that they got crushed under the x86 juggernaut.

<comment><USER6> x86 works really well as an ISA in the modern micro-op world. The instruction stream acts as a primitive kind of compression - common programs are more concise than they would be under either a fully orthogonal or a pure RISC approach.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> For those who do not know: the MSX/Z80 running this OS runs at 3.58 mhz. Symbos is a preemptive multitasking graphical OS with, now, networking running on machines with 3.58 mhz and 128kb of mem. It is an incredible feat in many ways.

</comment><comment><USER7> The MSX machines (made by Yamaha) that the USSR imported in 80s had network built into BIOS[0]. Now I wonder if it was that model special feature only?

[0] [http://www.sensi.org/~tnt23/msx/yamahamsxnet.pdf](http://www.sensi.org/~tnt23/msx/yamahamsxnet.pdf) (NET BIOS manual in Russian)

<comment><USER8> Oh yeah...I remember. In my school back in Soviet Union we had a computer lab with MSX machines. I remember my teacher could load programs, remotely reset and do a few other such things from their console.

Reading the documentation, it seems the network was explicitly created for teaching. The instructions refer to the case of a classroom of 15 students and a teacher. It seems it was possible to load programs, send mail, private messages, check network status.

<comment><USER9> Yamaha was quite good at glomming networking features on top of MIDI. They did it in a few ways - I remember double-taking in a Tokyo ops room when I saw a Yamaha C1 being used as a server for a bunch of CX5M's .. traditionally a game or music-making setup, but in this case it was electronic mail and bulletin- boards .. in Japanese ..

Anyway MIDI lives on today because its a great little easy networking protocol, easy to implement and suddenly your device can communicate to a lot of other interesting things..

<comment><USER7> So it was MIDI! I suspected as much but could not find any documentation.

Funny that since it was the first network I've seen I was naturally expecting all networks to use mini-DIN cables and daisy chaining. The next network, many years later, was a co-axial setup - my mind was blown.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Symbos is still being developed for? I thought that stopped years ago. Great to see it still around.

Any chance of getting the source opened in the near future?

<comment><AUTHOR> Prodatron went back to work on it about a year ago I think. I ask for open source regurlalry and he is thinking about it. Although ofcourse, you do not really gain anything more than proper comments as it is asm. It saves time.

<comment><USER10> Ah okay then, I might have to pester him to see if a port to the C128 is possible. I know that the Z80 in that only runs at 2mhz but it would be an interesting experiment.</comment></comment></comment>


Not OK, Google - <AUTHOR> http://fullstack.info/not-ok-google/ <comment><USER2> Not OK: Annoying pop-ups begging me to join a newsletter, interrupting my ability to read your blog post. Stop that.

<comment><USER3> I think a very positive change for HN would be to vote down meta-comments about article design/ads/fonts/pop-ups.

I don't see how they add any substance to the discussion. We all got the same pop-up, we all find it annoying. Voting it up to the top of every HN discussion is not likely to change it. Who even knows if the author will ever see this thread.

The topic of this post is whether Google can listen to, and presumably record, our conversations with little to no warning. To me that seems more worth a discussion than yet another pop-up email form.

<comment><USER4> HN mod dang agrees. Here's his post:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9238739](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9238739)

> A reader emailed to complain about how this and other HN discussions often > become derailed by off-topic carping about blog design. I agree completely. > Could there be a more classic form of bikeshedding? It would seem parodic if > it weren't sadly real. This has become more of a thing on HN lately. It > needs to become less of a thing.

> I don't mean to pick on you personally, or just on this one comment. (Your > second sentence alone, by the way, would have been a helpful contribution.) > The problem is the tedious stampedes such comments spawn.

I agree. I used to make those comments. I've tried to cut it down.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is spinning out of control. Regardless of whether the hotword detection is enabled by default or not (it's not), arguing that loading a module may harm your privacy is just plain nonsense. Most of software is loaded as one big, binary blob. It may or may not contain harmful for privacy parts you know or don't know about. The issue is totally orthogonal to how it is loaded. Literally every binary you run may access your microphone and send whatever it wants, wherever it likes, at any time. Until you prove an unwanted transfer of recording you didn't ask for occurs, it is just ranting "binary blobs considered harmful".

The original issue - loading a binary into an supposedly open source browser (Chromium) does make sense and is valid. Making it something else than it is - an issue about Google Chrome and how it loads its modules, shows ignorance or purposeful bloating a news that is not a news.

Please rant on things in the right context. Otherwise you are hurting the case you think you are fighting for.

<comment><USER6> Are you referring to the article or the general discussion?

I would see your point in general closed-source software but in this case the way the module is loaded does indeed make a difference: it (silently) downloads and installs a closed-source blob with the ability to record audio into a piece of otherwise open source software. Specifically a browser, one of the biggest attack vectors anyway.

<comment><USER5> Quoting [https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=500922#c...](https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=500922#c6)

The significance of this depends on whether you're running Google Chrome (the official distribution) or Chromium. Now, you've reported in your "steps to reproduce" using Chrome on Mac.

If we're talking about Chrome: Google Chrome (as opposed to Chromium) is not open source. It contains various bits of proprietary binary code, and always has. Therefore, whether it downloads the hotword module from the web store, or includes it in the distribution, is irrelevant from a trust standpoint. From our standpoint, the fact that the hotword module is a separate extension (rather than built in to the browser) is an implementation detail.

Since a lot of the discussion is centered around Chromium on Linux, I want to address the concern that Chromium is entirely open source and yet it downloads a proprietary module. The key here is that Chromium is not a Google product (we do not directly distribute it, or make any guarantees with respect to compliance with various open source policies). Our primary focus is getting code ready for Google Chrome. If a third party (such as Debian) destributes it, it is their responsibility to enforce their own policy. And I see that they have now done that (as of 43.0.2357.81-1) by disabling the hotword module. We have also made changes from Chromium 45 onwards to make it easier for third party distributors to disable hotwording (see Issue 491435 ).

Another key point is that the binary blob is not a native executable or library. It is a NaCl module, and therefore subject to the full sandbox of the NaCl platform. The hotword module has the same privileges as any website (except that it automatically has access to the microphone).

\-- EOQ --

Also I believe the binary blobs are downloaded from a static address and hopefully signed somehow. The security concern is something I would accept as a valid argument, but if Google domain and whatever certification they use is compromised user has much larger issues than his audio being recorded.

Anyway, I'm trying to fight privacy-wackos that are spawning lately. Privacy is about having a choice to not share. In such meaning you can take almost an arbitrary definition of what you consider private and ask for a way to protect this idea of privacy. It should however not hinder the innovation and prevent developers from building great software. It's ok if I choose to trade some information in exchange for an interesting feature.

There seem to be many people fighting for not giving up their extended vision of freedom, not paying for software in any way, not even ads, and expecting high quality results. "Expecting" is a keyword here. Everybody is very much free to use Firefox, which is considered better for achieving the above results, yet the talk about Chrome shows how many people want to have the cake and eat it (and do it in private so nobody knows, because we all care so much about your f-ing cake).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A bit of analysis of how it actually operates:

On my windows pc chrome only reacts to ok google when you have a new, empty tab, or the google search page open and active as the main tab. Additionally i checked with procmon what network activity chrome was making, and while it starts sending stuff AFTER "ok google" is activated, it doesn't send any between me saying it and chrome confirming it.

The theory that it's a small local plugin is also affirmed by the fact that my cellphone can do "ok google" without any sort of network, and is sometimes tricked into activating by audiobooks that make noises completely unlike "ok google".

I found the plugin installed, but deactivated by default. So, for the story of this dude to make sense, he'd have to have someone at his computer activate it (or if he's using a linux distro, the maintainers might've activated it by default), and would see the light blinking on new tabs and google search pages.

<comment><USER8> Is your phone tricked by audiobooks playing from the phone itself, or another source? I'd be really surprised if the phone's audio could trigger itself.

<comment><USER9> My iPhone regularly reacts to words that sounds like "Hey Siri" when I'm listening to audiobooks using the in-built speaker.

<comment><USER8> Wow, surprising. You'd think they would have that filtered out, just like they have to when taking a call on speaker phone.

<comment><USER9> This is pure speculation and I'm nowhere near qualified to speak with any accuracy, but perhaps it's the case that the processing requirements would reduce battery life too quickly. Although, having said that, "Hey Siri" only works when the phone is plugged into a power source, unless you use a jailbreak tweak to turn it on all the time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> At least as far back as 2011 or so, I noticed that Chrome was causing my computer to behave differently when something was said.

My setup at the time: a mac pro with 3 30" cinema displays.

The first time I noticed it I was several feet away from the computer talking on the phone -- actually about something the NSA probably _would_ have had a keen interest in (the NDAA allowing for indefinite detention was about to be passed and I had just booked a flight to Stockholm) -- when my screens flashed and redrew slowly enough to be noticeable.

It happened more than once during that phone call.

And after I quit Chrome it didn't happen again.

Even during the phone call.

Everybody I mentioned it to seemed to think I was batshit insane. So I stopped mentioning it years ago.

And now that I see this, I'm willing to bet that there's more: a screen-grab capability that never accounted for grabbing 12,288,000 pixels at once.

The Ministry of Privacy (Minipriv) it seems, has had telescreens in our homes for years.

<comment><USER11> > Everybody I mentioned it to seemed to think I was batshit insane.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Okay, so it sends data after you've said the trigger phrase, but not before, that much we've all agreed on. Has anyone determined what it's sending? Hear me out here...

For the trigger to work, which doesn't require key presses or other physical input, the microphone must be active and keeping a buffer of live speech, right? Okay, let's step aside for a moment to examine another piece of technology that keeps a live buffer of streaming media...

I have a TiVo. I love that thing. One of the coolest features is this: TiVo keeps a buffer of live shows on each of its tuners so that, if you opt to record a show that's been on for ten minutes, it can save it from the beginning, literally "capturing and digitally storing the past", once I press "record".

Back to Chrome/Chromium: Until someone determines what it's sending, and their black box makes it difficult to see the source of what audio is encoded and how it's encoded, and given that the technology to keep a rolling buffer of 30 minutes of streaming audio and video has been around in TiVo since, well, the first TiVo... Is it really so hard to believe that Google could be sending packets containing audio spoken in the room before the trigger phrase was captured?

It wouldn't take much for Google to assuage this privacy concern.

1) Opt-in, not opt out

And

2) Show us what's in the black box (or at least publish tcpdump-verifiable specs on what you're transmitting). If there was a debug option to transmit in clear text, and a statement of the audio codec used, that would give me some sense of understanding, even though that still leaves steganography as an option. I don't have enough tin foil for that hat right now.

<comment><USER13> How would you prove everyone's black box behaves the same way and in certain geographic areas or when it detects certain NSA software or certain keywords on websites it goes into whole room bug-mode?

<comment><USER12> I couldn't. I didn't say it would make me feel secure, just that it would give me _some sense of understanding_. It would, at least, prove a modicum of sincerity and authenticity to the otherwise opaque, "just trust us, okay?" position they're currently taking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Finally, a feature that helps me transition back to Firefox or safari.

</comment><comment><USER15> Maybe someone should create a privacy-conscious Chromium fork.

Call it Duck-Duck-Chrome

<comment><USER16> Whereas Iceweasel is the "free as in freedom" version of Firefox, perhaps the Chromium fork should be a called Dullium.

<comment><USER17> SRWare Iron. It's still in development.

<comment><USER18> Yeah, don't use that, shady maintainer: [http://www.insanitybit.com/2012/06/23/srware-iron- browser-a-...](http://www.insanitybit.com/2012/06/23/srware-iron-browser-a- real-private-alternative-to-chrome-21/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I wonder if they have a legal base for this in Europe.

This was severly frowned upon on the Debian Bugtracker last week. Thanks to the Debian team for standing up!

Context: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9724409](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9724409)

</comment><comment><USER20> How do I disable this?

chrome://settings/search#voice doesn't show anything

chrome://voicesearch/ shows

Google Chrome 43.0.2357.124 () OS Mac OS X NaCl Enabled Yes Microphone Yes Audio Capture Allowed Yes Current Language en-US Hotword Previous Language en- US Hotword Search Enabled No Always-on Hotword Search Enabled No Hotword Audio Logging Enabled No Field trial Install

<comment><USER21> > Hotword Search Enabled No

> Always-on Hotword Search Enabled No

It's already disabled.

I don't understand the outrage here. I remember chrome asking me if I want it listening all the time for "Ok Google", I thought "Obviously not" and said no, and that was the end of it.

<comment><USER22> It SAYS it is disabled, but do you know if it can be remotely enabled at will or if they mean it is disabled only to send your search terms and open a google.com page but still enabled for spying?

<comment><USER23> How do you know that firefox binary can't do that?

<comment><USER20> Theoretically you could build firefox from source..

But yes, it's still an issue. Does anyone have a solution to trusting GPG keys on company websites? If their website gets hacked, the key could be replaced, the source-control could be replaced and you'd never know..

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The feature is opt-in. What am I missing here?

<comment><USER25> What Goggle says is op-in to today often turns into op-out tomorrow.

<comment><USER26> So FUD? What basis is this on? And, more importantly, how is this situation any different than any other binary that have disabled features?

Are people just upset b/c chrome can access the mic and web cam? Browsers have done this for decades.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The fact that device manufacturers do not generally provide a PHYSICAL switch to toggle microphone (or camera) connectivity, irrespective of what any software blob might attempt to do, says a lot about the state of respect for user control in this industry.

</comment><comment><USER28> > While I was working I thought I'm noticing that an LED goes on and off, on > the corner of my eyesight.

I'm sorry, this is bullshit. Even if Ok Google is activated it only listen in a new tab.

<comment><USER29> > Even if Ok Google is activated it only listen in a new tab.

So whenever the author opens a new tab—a thing that I do constantly when I work—the LED goes on and off. What's bullshit about that? Maybe their story is, but I'm not sure why you have a problem with that part.

<comment><USER28> > So whenever the author opens a new tab

From the blog:

> While I was working I thought I'm noticing that an LED goes on and off, on > the corner of my eyesight. And after a few times when it just seemed weird, > I sat to watch for it and saw it happening. Every few seconds or so.

Can you tel me when it is stated when a tab is opened.

He claims that Chrome is listening in the background. I repeat, bullshit until he can provide any proof of that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Are there any countries/jurisdictions/states where this style of Google eavesdropping is or might be illegal? France maybe?

<comment><USER28> What eavesdropping?

<comment><USER30> I mean the activating an audio recorder when someone expects privacy. Some European countries are big on that, right? or it might come under wiretapping laws?

<comment><USER28> First it has to be an activation of an audio recording, isn't?

What audio recording has been activated?

<comment><USER30> Isn't that what this is? google activating the mic on his webcam to listen for "ok google" without his permission?

<comment><USER28> Then he has to show that this is the case, isn't?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> AFAIK it is a opt-in at least here in France. However ,disabling it should be made easier than going to the params menu.

</comment><comment><USER32> SUBSCRIBE TO MY MAILING LIST!!!!!!!! AAAA!!!

how the hell i hate such popups

</comment><comment><USER6> Here's the corresponding ticket: [https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=500922](https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=500922)</comment>


Ask HN: What's a runtime? - <AUTHOR> Is it another process running which my program deals with or is it like a library which has some specific responsibilities? In that case, what are those responsibilities?<p>This wasn't of much use https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3900549/what-is-runtime <comment><USER2> Not to be confused with the standard library, it's a piece of software necessary to do the very initial setup operations to make your program run (for example setup the stack, etc.). It's platform-, OS- and compiler- dependent. It's usually included in the final executable by the linker.

<comment><USER3> Not just initial setup, but also ongoing services.

For instance, a language like Java has the garbage collector, JIT, etc. as part of the runtime.</comment></comment>


How The Twitter Community Took on Facebook's Zuckerberg - and Won - <AUTHOR> http://twittown.com/blogs/facebook/how-twitter-took-facebooks-zuckerberg-and-won

<comment><USER2> Twitter really shines at this kind of thing, much more effective even than the massive protest Facebook groups were because it can more quickly connect like minded people, even if they don't happen to already be friends.

Now when some news breaks that I'm skeptical about, or if I want to get a quick poll of the public mood, Twitter search is the first thing I turn to.

It's like a massive town square for the whole world.

<comment><USER3> The problem with using Twitter for polls is the sample (Twitter users) is very homogenous and very unrepresentative of the target population, that is unless your target population is Twitter users.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The article states "people were rushing to delete photos and incriminating messages". I find that very untrue and the article made the ordeal bigger then it actually was. Not to mention it wasn't just twitter but also people blogging and such. Things in the past such as the news feed had a 10x larger uproar then this did. (I know I'm going to get down ranked just because you disagree with me)

<comment><USER5> _(I know I'm going to get down ranked just because you disagree with me)_

Sorry go to off topic, but what makes you think that? Comments at HN are generally only downvoted for being inappropriate, immature, or extremely insubstantial. Say something interesting and you'll probably get upvoted even by people who disagree with you.

Back on topic, I agree, the article dramatizes things quite a bit. Maybe the new ToS were first noticed/discussed on Twitter, but I don't think that mean Twitter "won" something against Facebook. Also, pet peeve: overuse of the word 'viral'. If 'went viral' just means 'got Dugg' then it's not a very meaningful term.

<comment><USER6> As someone who I'd like to think has proven to be of some worth to the community I can tell you first hand that people downvote based on disagreement all the time. In my experience it's just a few jerks (I've never been significantly down voted on a quality comment) but it does happen.

I think there was even an "Ask HN" topic on this a while back with people defending the fact that they downvote because the disagree (Sorry, not enough time to search for it right now)

Oh, and I agree completely about the article.</comment></comment></comment>


Liverpool Football Club's reliance on analytics - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/22/magazine/soccer-data-liverpool.html <comment><USER2> So I didn't read the article but 25 years ago I was part of a group of 100 15-17 year olds in the US recruited by Liverpool to see if we were good enough to go over seas to their academy to finish up school. So I've been following them ever since.

What I remember reading in their 2nd game against Barcelona is the data team told the coaches about how Barcelona was slow to setup for set pieces mostly corner kicks. The ball boys are all academy players and the coaches told the ball boys on corner kicks to get the ball to the Liverpool player as quickly as possible.

I believe it went as far as them having more ball boys then usually to just have 4 of them sit with a ball in each corner.

<comment><USER3> That's an amazing level of attention-to-detail. Liverpool seem very interested in perfecting every aspect of the game. Another example is that they have the world's only throw-in coach. [https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/45405476](https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/45405476)

<comment><USER4> This liverpool and Manchester City teams are setting the bar very high for what sports is going to be in the future. There is no way teams would go entire seasons with just one defeat (against each other) without paying attention to every tiny opportunities of success.

Case in point, in preparation of next weeks champions league final, Liverpool are at a camp simulating Madrid weather and pitch surface. Even if they don't win, the knowledge they gain and the precision data they obtain for next season is crazy!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This season makes all these decisions look better in hindsight; but as mentioned in the article it didn't work at first. Liverpool tried to Moneyball their way into Top 4 and failed often. Classic examples being when they needed strength in positions like DM, CB or FB. They ended up going for players which made sense stat/pound. It led to LFC signing up players like Sakho or Moreno who had good stats for their value at that time but never worked out. Like in case of Sakho, he doesn't have the presence and leadership needed in the back and LFC needed it badly at that time.

</comment><comment><USER6> > The Liverpool Football Club's reliance on analytics

British sports team names are usually not written with a definite article like that. Maybe someone who knows more about grammar than me knows a proper term to describe why. Is it something to do with British English tending to treat companies, teams, etc as plurals rather than singulars ('Liverpool are' more often than 'Liverpool is')? Anyway, that 'the' shouldn't be there, and it isn't in the article.

<comment><USER7> I loved the line from "The Good Shepard" when they ask why the article 'the' is never used when discussing CIA.

Richard Hayes: I remember a Senator once asked me 'when we talk about CIA why we never use the word the in front of it.' And I asked him 'do you put the word the in front of God? [0]

[0][https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Good_Shepherd_(film)](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Good_Shepherd_\(film\))

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Are there any good soccer data collections (free / reasonably priced) for an individual programmer to build something like this?

<comment><USER9> Detailed per play/player stats involve quite a bit of effort to collect, and thus are not typically free. Sports stats in general is a fairly closely guarded and proprietary area. Here an interesting article about it from 2014: [https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-people-tracking- eve...](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-people-tracking-every-touch- pass-and-tackle-in-the-world-cup/)

I have to assume computer vision will largely automate the process of collecting sports stats, even in real-time, if that hasn't already happened. For that I think you would need access (and licensing rights) to a quality video feed of the matches, different than what is broadcast for human consumption (i.e. shows the entire field of play the whole time).

<comment><USER10> It does exist: [https://www.hudl.com/](https://www.hudl.com/)

Lots of your local and state tax money for high school / university sports programs gets dumped into it

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> My company's data analyst got his degree in soccer data analysis (and is a Liverpool fan!) It's been an interesting sector to learn about and ripe to learn from, too, as they seem to operate rather separately from what we might call "data science" here. Sport tech seems to be ripe for learning from and to cross over into more traditional tech scenarios.

<comment><USER12> Where did he study for that?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> As a Liverpool supporter of almost 11 years (beginning from one of the clubs lowest points), I find this is absolutely fascinating. Curious to know how the research team was involved in the signing of Andy Robertson – perhaps the best value signing in recent memory.

</comment><comment><USER4> Anyone who's been watch European football for a decade knows how much disparity exists between teams that can afford data science and teams that can't.

Sports are filled with numbers and any teams/players who can afford it has such a leg up, its not even a joke

<comment><USER14> There's much more at play than just analytics. Formations, club culture and coaching styles factor heavily into player performance.

Manchester United for example have spent VERY heavily on new players since 2013, and the ROI has been awful almost across the board. They acquired Alexis Sanchez in 2017, who was joint top scorer in the 2016/17 season with 24 goals. At United, he has scored only 5 goals in 18 months.

Chelsea FC are scoring one duck after another by signing Morata, Giroud and Higuain, all of whom have flopped as strikers despite doing well in their previous teams.

Arsenal are an example of a team that uses analytics to suss out bargains in the transfer market. And yet, two of their most expensive analytics-driven signings, defender Shokrodan Mustafi and Granit Xhaka, have fared poorly while cheaper buys like Sokratis Papasthopulous have thrived.

<comment><USER4> I don't think you get the scale of analytics. It's not just goals, touches, formations anymore.

It's about entire models of game play style and running simulations with a prospective player to see how they fit in. The data science there is not querieable science. It's more about simulations with numbers.

<comment><USER15> I'm wildly skeptical of this. Do you have anything I could read to better understand it? From where I'm sitting, this isn't Sabermetrics, chiefly because football isn't a series of set pieces with very clearly defined plays and variance of individuals. You sound pretty confident in what you're saying though so I'd be genuinely thrilled to be shown how idiotic my supposition is!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Meta: it's a weird use of "The" in the title, it's about "Liverpool Football Club" and the definite-article is unnecessary. Indeed the "The Liverpool Football Club" makes it wrong as Liverpool is one of two [major league] Liverpool based football clubs [Liverpool, Everton], at least.

Being a pedant is annoying sometimes.

<comment><USER11> I think this is a US/British English distinction, since saying "The New York Mets" or "The Dallas Cowboys" is the norm, but never "The Manchester United" or "The Rangers" (despite being a plural).

Come to think of it, does any NFL team _not_ end in a plural?

<comment><USER17> My favorite sports trivia question:

Name the 7 NCAA FBS (Div 1 college football) teams whose name is not a plural and also does not contain a color (i.e. Crimson Tide doesn't count).

Hint: Two of them are the same team name at different schools

<comment><USER18> Stanford Cardinal, Norte Dame Fighting Irish, Illinois Illini, Syracuse Orange, the two Wolf Pack (NC State and Nevada), and I cannot think of a seventh school.

If I can't use colors then I guess Syracuse doesn't count.

<comment><USER19> "Fighting Irish" could still be plural, couldn't it?

<comment><USER17> Good point, I should have clarified, I meant "doesn't end in 's'".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Soccer would be a much better sport if it didn't have such restrictive substitution rules. Freer substitution would open up a new dimension to the game and give coaches and data analysts more room to strategize both during the game and when hiring players.

<comment><USER8> It would then become American football where offense and defense get swapped out as soon as there's a possession change. No thank you. I like soccer just the way it is now.

<comment><USER21> Hockey manages to keep the action going while substituting half of the team at once. I think soccer could manage a couple guys at a time.

<comment><USER22> Rugby used to be the same with 3 subs, but these days you can pretty much sub half the team. It really destroys finding value in superior fitness, tactical planning of the starting side etc.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


In 2017 Google removed 3.2B bad ads, blocked 320k publishers, 90k websites - <AUTHOR> http://tecknowlogic.com/in-2017-google-removed-3-2-billion-bad-ads/ <comment><USER2> This merely repeats content from [https://www.blog.google/topics/ads/advertising-ecosystem- wor...](https://www.blog.google/topics/ads/advertising-ecosystem-works- everyone/), thus the HN rules ask you to submit that instead.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is there a way to review and see what has been blocked?

This kind of service should be both transparent and safe for reviewing by any interested party.

</comment><comment><USER4> It is scary that Google has become the gate keeper.

</comment><comment><USER5> Sorry, sounds like a drop in the bucket.</comment>


Ask HN: Is there a HN for Ruby news? - <AUTHOR> I enjoy a number of the posts submitted here, but wish I saw more Ruby news on the front page. Rust, Python and Julia seem to have more of a sway with this community.<p>Does anyone have a suggestion for active sites with a more Ruby-centric community? <comment><USER2> [http://www.rubyflow.com/](http://www.rubyflow.com/)</comment>


Globish: the worldwide dialect of the third millennium - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2010/mar/29/globish-international-language <comment><USER2> "Globish is not about the making of a 1500-word vocabulary, but about the way in which Indians, Chinese and many Africans are now turning to English as a liberating and modernising phenomenon (last year, the government of francophone Rwanda not only applied to join the British Commonwealth but also declared English to be the official language of the country)."

Fascinating article. The use of English (in the form the author describes as "Globish") as a worldwide interlanguage is still growing very rapidly.

After edit: This link from the submitted article

[http://www.jpn-globish.com/articles.php?lng=fr&pg=120](http://www.jpn- globish.com/articles.php?lng=fr&pg=120)

is helpful as an example of what the author is describing.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yeah, get ready for English to lose its articles ('a/an', 'the'). Being exposed to Indians and Chinese I already find it's easy to leave them out.

Damn you, Indians and Chinese.

<comment><USER2> Russian (another Indo-European language) and Latin (the classical Indo- European language in the Romance branch of the language family) both do just fine without articles.</comment></comment>