Why we don't sell ads – WhatsApp Blog - <AUTHOR> http://blog.whatsapp.com/245/Why-we-dont-sell-ads <comment><USER2> WhatsApp isn't about putting ads into the app but for better data collection. That is why Facebook bought them. Facebook sells ads and targeting data and one of the best ways to analyse a persons life to better target them for ads is from their personal, non-public communication. You will talk about many more things in private conversation with friends and family than you will publicly on your Facebook profile.

A simple example is you are talking to a few friends on WhatsApp about booking a holiday somewhere, you talk about locations, dates, prices, etc. all in private, now Facebook can take all that data and using their massive Facebook tracking system start advertising offers for hotels in the places you are looking at going, shops you often mention that sell clothes for your holiday, travel insurance, etc, etc.

You don't need to stick ads IN the app to monetise it. In fact keeping it clean and ad free is the best thing to do as it keeps your users happy and using your app more which in turn leads to more and more data collection.

I think the $1 a year thing is a load of crap that is used to distract people away from the whole "if it is free you are the product" idea. If WhatsApp looks like it is not _free_ because you have to pay $1 a year then psychologically you "trust" it more because it is something you pay for rather than something that is analysing every thing you ever say to build a better advertising profile. Also has anyone actually ever paid that $1? I don't know anyone who has, they always get some "promotion" that gives them another year free for being a loyal WhatsApp user.

<comment><USER3> That could explain why I've been getting oddly accurate (highly targeted) ads on FB related to the niche of a new app I'm developing. I haven't _liked_ similar stuff on FB and I was wondering how in the world FB knows that info (I have talked about it extensively via whatsapp). So there are only 2 options:

1- They somewhat are able to read my browser history even when I have ABP with "Fanboy's Social Blocking List" and a selective JS blocker installed.

2- They read my whatsapp messages.

<comment><USER4> How would they link your whatsapp account to your facebook account? Whatsapp only knows my phone number and what phone numbers I contact, and my facebook account doesn't know my whatsapp phone number.

<comment><USER3> Because Facebook knows my mobile number... I provided it long ago (IIRC for setting up some ad campaigns or was required as anti-spam measure)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Messaging/chat are inherently bad apps for advertising anyway. This post was also from 2012, before selling to Facebook for 19B.

<comment> yoz-y I'd say that messaging is amazing for advertising. Consider this scenario: \- you come to a restaurant \- you see a QR code on the menu, if you flash the code and share it with your friends the restaurant will give you a discount

In this case the customer is motivated to use the coupon because they have a discount and their friends are more likely to come because they trust the poster.

First time I've seen this method was in China but I would not be surprised if it were actually quite common (haven't seen in in Europe so far though)

<comment><USER6> See I feel like this is a slippery slope. Speaking 100% anecdotally, a text message / direct message like that is expected to be personal communication; if my friends start bombarding me with ads in my text messages, we're going to have a serious talk.

Via email is fine, mostly because it's expected that I'll be spammed. But it'd feel much more intrusive if my friends started texting me stupid codes to save 5% on their burrito.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I do actually find their monetization strategy laudable.

Selling your product to users is, in my view, a far more ethical monetization strategy than selling your users to advertisers, and tends to result in far less potential conflicts of interest.

That said, I also believe communication in general is too important to be left to proprietary software, which is why I won't be using WhatsApp anytime soon.

<comment><USER8> If you want to have a messaging app, everyone needs to have it. If everyone needs to have it it needs to be free.

Even if you could run this app by charging users just 50c, it would fail and get beat by an app that was free.

<comment><USER9> > If you want to have a messaging app, everyone needs to have it.

The people I want to talk to most need to have it.

> If everyone needs to have it it needs to be free.

Or at a cost they're willing to pay.

> Even if you could run this app by charging users just 50c, it would fail and > get beat by an app that was free.

Assuming of course that the other app could sustain itself.

I don't understand your argument. SMS worked just fine for a long time and is still used, yet it costs money either monthly or per message. Telephone calls cost money. Sending letters costs money. I'd hardly count those as failures when it comes to messaging mediums.

<comment> yoz-y SMS had the advantage that everybody had SMS. This is not the case at all for new messaging services.

People do not want to use another messaging service, there are already too many. WhatsApp was one of the first and came in time where connectivity got barely good enough to support the service, that gave them a huge advantage.

<comment><USER9> > SMS had the advantage that everybody had SMS

Well not everyone (the first one was sent 7 years after the first mobile phone call). And if you want to consider it to be everyone, then it's an example of something where everyone has it yet it's not free.

> People do not want to use another messaging service

No, and therefore you need to offer something better to make up for the annoyance of changing.

I understand your point, it's the clearest example of a network effect and given two identical products the cheaper should be more attractive. However, this doesn't mean it _has_ to have everyone and _has_ to be free. Those are beneficial, but not absolute requirements.

Right now, I'd pay money for a decent messaging service with push & pull, with a simple API that supports sending images. It doesn't even have to have many users, I simply want this service at the moment and will pay money for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm wondering why did facebook buy WhatsApp? Oh, maybe to get better data from us to sell... yeah, Ads.

<comment><USER11> I suspect it's because WhatsApp's backend can be turned into a platform that will run WhatsApp itself as well as Facebook Messenger.

There's a lot more opportunity to do messaging between businesses and individuals (eg. customer service) as well -- see messenger for business.

Not saying Facebook isn't out to sell ads, just that there's probably a lot of reasons that Facebook might want WhatsApp's technology and team. Especially as they try to move more conversations onto their platform and reach out into other markets.

<comment><USER12> No company was acquired for its "backend".

<comment><USER13> Nonsense. Google's acquisition of Applied Semantics (which developed AdSense) became a major revenue engine for the company. There are countless other examples as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > creates app that leeches your contact list and spam people to o install the > app in your name

> post about hating advertising

you can cut the irony/hypocrisy with a knife. what's next? a post about how he loves client interoperability? heh.

<comment><USER15> > _spam people to o install the app in your name_

Any references for this? I've been using Whatsapp for years and never saw them do this. _I 've_ spammed people, in person mostly, to install it back when Whatsapp wasn't ubiquitous where I lived yet, but that's it. I assume that's not what you meant.

<comment><USER14> it shows (or used to, or maybe it's an entirely different app. i only check them out in a sandbox at time of launch) all your contacts as "offline" and when you messaged them it sent out a sms or something else they would get hold of from the contact list your just gladly provided them and it appeared as a message from you asking them to install it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> That blog post became irrelevant the day Jan Koum signed the deal with Zuckerberg.

Sure, WhatsApp isn't selling ads TODAY, but you better believe it's coming. You don't shell out $19B for a 'defensive play'.

<comment><USER4> So wait, you know that Whatsapp has never have ads, but because it some day theoretically could have ads, you're saying that the post is irrelevant? Damn.

Facebook have been bying all kinds on successful tech companies that don't have any relevance to the Facebook social network ad service, like the Oculus Rift. Not every company keeps selling one single thing forever you know?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I didn't realise this was 2012 until I started reading the comments. I wonder how much this post has changed post acquisition. I suspect Facebook grabbed my entire contact list from WhatsApp - the numbers in my phone were the only way to connect me to some of the people they suggest. As much as I hate it, it was a pretty crafty way to extend my social graph.

</comment><comment><USER18> What I don't understand is that effectively for me, and everyone I know, Whatsapp is indeed free. Everyone started using it despite the "1st year free, after that pay up" and every year since we get a message saying like "we extended your membership for another year, please consider paying though". I'm not sure if it's different in other countries but from where I stand there's loads of people using whatsapp and not paying a cent for it.

</comment><comment><USER19> >Have you considered the alternative?

Yes and they are better. i'm using Hangouts, Telegram and Line... why should I use WhatsApp? These App all have more functionalities and are "free".

<comment><USER20> It's not "alternative to whatsapp", it's "alternative app monetization strategy".

<comment><USER21> flew right past him. What would be a better monetization alternative though?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> One big problem WhatsApp suffers from is having a majority of userbase in developing countries. India, where credit card penetration is still very low and people still are not accustomed to the concept of "buying" software, WhatsApp, simply keeps extending the free subscription period because most of people would find it very hard to pay, even something as little as $0.99.

On the contrary, people here are ready to see obtrusive ads and avoid paying anything, because "free" is better.

<comment><USER23> I really don't get the hatred for ads -- it's really weird to me. I haven't been bothered by an ad in probably the past 3 years, I can't remember the last autoplaying ad I saw.

I like ads, they make the internet frictionless. I don't need to worry about what I've paid for -- everything just works in return for giving up a little bit of my screen.

I discovered Atlassian through ads and I really like their products, I assume those were targeted -- so if anything I've benefited from tracking.

Maybe I'm a sheep, but I like easy - and I like that the people providing me with articles, how-tos, etc get paid for doing that. I have yet to see a viable alternative to ads for a low friction internet -- people using adblock are, in my opinion, bringing us closer to the tiered internet than cable mergers ever will.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> (2012)

</comment><comment><USER25> When is Android to iOS end-to-end encryption coming? Since they aren't relying on ads, then they shouldn't need to rely on data-mining private conversations either.

<comment><USER21> how is it end to end when data is stored on their servers, i would assume its stored without encryption right?

<comment><USER26> You can do end-to-end encryption just like with emails. Just the metadata (sender, recipient) needs to be plaintext.

<comment><USER21> Ahh, i think i get it. but that brings us back to my question; how is the data store on the server, Encrypted or plaintext? if its encrypted would that mean decryption happens per each session. e.g. when using whatsapp web ( could it be why they need the phone to be online? )

<comment><USER27> They seem to use a public key method.

How I would do it was by distributing keys to devices at login and let friends use a users public key to encrypt messages to him.

Now you pack that encrypted message in a metadata envelope, send to server to be later retrieved by the owner.

The keys should never leave the device.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> How can this make frontpage? Is this news or relevant anyhow?

<comment><USER29> Particularly when you consider the fact that this article is from 2012.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> The article is 2012, not 2015. Let's see what they do when they hit 1B users.

</comment><comment><USER31> This is quite a hypocritical post from a company that sold out to Facebook. I guess money > values.

<comment><USER4> "If partnering with Facebook meant that we had to change our values, we wouldn't have done it."

[https://blog.whatsapp.com/529/Setting-the-record- straight](https://blog.whatsapp.com/529/Setting-the-record-straight)

<comment><USER31> Being a subsidiary of a company that does exactly what they are advocating against is an endorsement of their activity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> They didn't sell ads for a very simple reason - they wanted to get as big as possible, as soon as possible for the sole purpose of selling themselves to FB/Google.

That was the plan from day 1 (imho).</comment>


Editor-in-Chief of Index.hu Dismissed - <AUTHOR> https://index.hu/english/2020/07/22/szabolcs_dull_editor_in_chief_index_dismissed/ <comment><AUTHOR> The largest Hungarian news outlet is just being destroyed amid growing political infuence.

See some previous posts for background:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23843605](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23843605)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23711874](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23711874)</comment>


How Sears Could Have Used the Cloud to Stay Available Black Friday - <AUTHOR> http://devcentral.f5.com/weblogs/macvittie/archive/2008/12/03/how-sears-could-have-used-the-cloud-to-stay-available.aspx

<comment><USER2> Cloudbursting? Seriously?</comment>


NJ Supreme Court: No 5th Amendment right not to unlock your phone - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/08/nj-supreme-court-no-5th-amendment-right-not-to-unlock-your-phone/ <comment><AUTHOR> It seems there is no clear consensus on whether, and in what circumstances, the fifth amendment applies to phone passcodes:

> Earlier this year, a Philadelphia man was released from jail after four > years of being held in contempt in connection with a child-pornography case. > A federal appeals court rejected his argument that the Fifth Amendment gave > him the right to refuse to unlock hard drives found in his possession. A > Vermont federal court reached the same conclusion in 2009—as did a Colorado > federal court in 2012, a Virginia state court in 2014, and the Massachusetts > Supreme Judicial Court in 2014. But other courts in Florida, Wisconsin, and > Pennsylvania have reached the opposite conclusion, holding that forcing > people to provide computer or smartphone passwords would violate the Fifth > Amendment.

<comment><USER2> This is going to have to be decided in US Supreme Court and I hope it happens sooner rather than later.

<comment><USER3> That is the opposite of the Supreme Court's approach. They want this to be argued over and the facts laid out as much as possible so the issue is clear, and the conflicting approaches demonstrated (and range of cases that fall into the ambiguity zone), before they step in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> kube-system The core argument here sounds surprisingly reasonable: that the Hubbell case was a 5th amendment violation because the defendant was asked to make a judgement call about which documents to produce, and that a fishing expedition would be a 4th amendment case.

</comment><comment><USER4> Now it is just a matter of time before Apple and other manufactures will implement a 'fake PIN' just like Truecrypt/Veracrypt backup password feature: A void unused phone profile with a separate data store. Looks legit, but keeps the actual interesting data locked away.

<comment><USER5> That's illegal too. If the police find out you provided them fake data, that's the crime of lying to police.

<comment><USER4> Then it is up to the implementation to make it look legit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Of course the whole thing will generate a lot of debate (and has been covered many times before), but I point out a situation that could be regarded as similar:

A court can compel you to give blood (or have blood taken from you) if you're suspected of drunk driving. That is not incriminating testimony, but the result may incriminate you.

I can see the logic being similar here. Fingerprint, passcode -- courts and law enforcement are clearly testing the limits of where the boundary is.

<comment><AUTHOR> But a passcode exists only in your mind and you have the right to remain silent.

And what if it isn't your phone but you've been compelled to unlock it and you genuinely don't know the passcode? I don't think the blood withdrawal is an apt analogy for a password though I do think it makes sense when discussing compelling a fingerprint scan.

<comment><USER6> > But a passcode exists only in your mind and you have the right to remain > silent

There isn't actually a "right to remain silent" per se in US law. The various right to silence all have limitations.

For example, suppose a smuggler shoots and kills a bounty hunter in a cantina. The bartender tells investigators you were there and are the only person who had a clear view of what happened. Investigators want you to tell them what you saw.

However, you are on parole and being in a cantina violates your terms of parole. If you testify about the shooting that is tantamount to admitting to a parole violation, and it is back to prison for you so you try to invoke your Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

Prosecutors then grant you immunity for any parole violations that occurred while you were at the cantina. Your testimony is no longer be self- incriminating, and can now be compelled.

<comment><USER7> 1\. Tatooine is extra jurisdictional territory for 5A. 2. I witnessed it. Han shot first.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It'd be nice if there was a form of encryption where a user could provide a secondary password plus a unique hash associated with a file to check if that file is present without opening up access to everything.

<comment><AUTHOR> Or if you could set a "self-destruct" or "wipe disk" passcode. We toyed with a similar idea for ATM cards in Massachusetts after a woman in Boston was abducted, forced to withdraw money from her bank account and then brutally murdered.

The idea being that you'd have a PIN and an optional "911 PIN" that would work exactly the same but alert authorities. The PIN would grant you access to accounts and give you money, etc. so anyone holding a gun to your head would be clueless but by entering the 911 PIN authorities would know you were in need of immediate assistance.

It was ultimately scrapped because the regulator backed off of requiring additional ATM security once the news stopped covering the murder. But the same concept could be applied to unwanted cellphone intrusions.

<comment><USER9> There is a setting on iOS to wipe the device automatically after 10 failed passcode attempts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think that covid has pretty well killed the idea that the constitution is relevant in any situation the government feels strongly about.

<comment><USER11> I hadn't considered it this way, but you are correct in that the COVID-19 crisis has been putting a lot of stress on the limits of government in the constitution. It also seems clear that federalism and individual liberty are at odds with the effective fighting of highly contagious diseases in a coordinated fashion. I do not want to give the government power because they have a track record of abuse, but how does a society fight something communicable like this?

<comment><USER12> Even Hayek said epidemics were an obvious exception to most of his economic ideology and called for government planning: [https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1274130684337172481](https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1274130684337172481)

Mostly we just have had anti-biotics, effective vaccines, etc. for everything deadly and have basically forgotten how to govern in the face of the massive externalities presented by communicable diseases. Whether someone thinks covid is severe enough to justify which particular actions is one thing, but if we had something like an incurable smallpox or measles going around there would be a lot more consensus on government action.

<comment><USER13> Would we? I am not convinced the amount of idiocy would be low enough to prevent problems. Most of the arguments I have seen have been "this is a hoax" type or other arguments not based in reality. I agree there is an arugement to be made over whether or not to close based on death rates and whatnot, but I do not hear those arguments that much.

The people screaming that it is a hoax and its their freedom I generally assume would react similarly to a even more severe crisis. Maybe I am over estimating their numbers based on the fact that they are loud, but assuming they will realize it is really serious in the cases you describe is a leap I am not willing to make.

<comment><USER12> There would be many more people with personal experience of death of loved ones young and old and I think that would mean less deniers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > New Jersey's Supreme Court has ruled that compelling a suspect to unlock his > or her cell phone doesn't violate the Fifth Amendment.

For those who couldn't be bothered to think through the triple negations in the title.

</comment><comment><USER15> Is there anything for android that resets phone under a specified duration if not unlocked or used?

</comment><comment><USER16> Do you still have the right to remain silent?

<comment><USER17> AFAIK You have a right to remain silent during your arrest and before you face a judge.

If court orders you to do something (legal ofc) you will have to do it, if they ask you a question - you will have to answer it. Except something that would incriminate you or your immediate relatives.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Of course the unexplored downside of this ruling is that the punishment for forgetting your passcode (password etc) is now life in prison...

<comment><USER3> I think a court would reason that if a phone is being used hour by hour, it's not likely that a person would "forget" that passcode suddenly, and there is a more simple explanation of what's happening.

<comment><USER15> Eh. I have forgotten important passwords and lost accounts that I had used for years the next day. It absolutely happens.

<comment><USER19> I have too. It's very rare but really disconcerting when it does happen. Human memory is pretty faulty.

<comment><USER20> I have too. Staring at my keyboard in complete disbelief that a password I used hours before had fallen out of my head. Still amazes me that I can forget things so easily</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Hakaru – Probabilistic Programming - <AUTHOR> https://hakaru-dev.github.io/ <comment><USER2> I was very interested to try it out, but it requires a licensed version of Maple.

<comment><USER3> It doesn't require a Maple license exactly. Maple is just needed to use the simplifier. It is perfectly possible to write and run Hakaru programs without having Maple installed.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for pointing that out. I'll try it.

I'll find out what "computer-algebra guided optimizations" are I'm sure ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I occasionally use probabilistic programming systems, and find this project fascinating, but I've been wondering for a while what the vision is.

Is it meant mainly as a research project/proof of concept (seems I've seen elsewhere that it's funded by the DARPA PPAML project), or is it intended to become a commonly used piece of software with a community like pymc3 and stan?

<comment><USER5> The PPAML project yielded a lot of cool work, I think that many people are still figuring out the most impact use case. I believe that the most mature new production language is Figaro, out of Charles River. They have some good example projects and a introductory text for their language.

[https://www.cra.com/technical-expertise/probabilistic- modeli...](https://www.cra.com/technical-expertise/probabilistic- modelingprogramming)

[https://www.amazon.com/Practical-Probabilistic- Programming-A...](https://www.amazon.com/Practical-Probabilistic-Programming- Avi- Pfeffer/dp/1617292338/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1473442874&sr=8-1&keywords=figaro+probabilistic+programming)

That being said, I'm very happy that Hakaru is getting attention.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> How does it compare to PyMC?

<comment><USER3> I think PyMC is a much more mature solution. Also while PyMC is much more focused on sampling, Hakaru is more focused on Bayesian inference and trying to represent stochastic models in a way such that any inference algorithm could be applied to it.

<comment><USER7> Why does it look like Python all of a sudden? What happened to embedding probabilistic programming in Haskell?

<comment><USER3> That's the concrete syntax for the language. It was chosen to be make the language more familiar to people who do machine learning in Python. The embedded design we had made it very challenging to develop new inference algorithms and to combine them. You can still find that version of hakaru at [https://github.com/zaxtax/hakaru-old](https://github.com/zaxtax/hakaru-old)

<comment><USER7> And here I actually used the old Hakaru. What would be the problems in porting it to more recent Base libraries and GHC versions?

<comment><USER3> I expect no significant challenges in porting to more recent version of GHC. Some version bounds will need to be loosened and an Applicative instance added for the Measure monads. Also if you have any feature requests for that version I'd be curious what they were.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Gold prices soar to 7.5-yr. high as Fed drops "atomic bomb" - <AUTHOR> https://www.kitco.com/news/2020-04-09/Gold-prices-soar-to-7-5-yr-high-as-Fed-drops-atomic-bomb.html <comment><USER2> Someday SpaceX will float a mining rig up to an asteroid and a year later gold will be worth 1/100th of what it used to be.

<comment><USER3> Why does OPEC have extraction limits?

<comment><USER4> Depends on the value of oil. Gold is a pretty useful material for space-based applications, so someone industrially extracting it in orbit may have very little reason not to crash the price.

<comment><USER3> If they can secure their storage, they can sell slowly at high prices. Assuming a capitalist society, profits are one reason not to crash the price, at least until there is competition in asteroid mining, at which point see OPEC.

<comment><USER5> I'm curious if that's true. If someone had a supply so large that it was effectively unlimited, that would be a cap on the price. And that cap would dissuade speculators and investors, especially if anyone was worried that this company could start dumping supply to get cash.

<comment><USER3> Depends on how long they can limit information on supply. There's also the possibility that new technology which enables discovery and mining could trigger other downstream uses for gold as a raw material, changing the industrial demand curve.

There have been periods of high oil prices even when supply was plentiful, caused by many external factors.

<comment><USER5> Ah I didn't think about increased usage. That makes sense, but I wonder how much of the price is speculation/using gold to store value versus industrial usage?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


An American Pedigree - <AUTHOR> https://prideout.net/lineage/ <comment><USER2> Did you make the diagram with d3?

<comment><AUTHOR> Of course :)

<comment><USER2> Which d3 API?

<comment><AUTHOR> I used the "partition" layout to make the sunburst diagram.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Masayoshi Son: The Most powerful person in Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/90285552/the-most-powerful-person-in-silicon-valley <comment><USER2> Great article, great storytelling.</comment>


Show HN: Personalized, email-based "Wirecutter for anything" - <AUTHOR> https://www.picksane.com/ <comment><USER2> Wanted to log on here to just say that I've been beta testing this for the last 3 weeks and it's actually pretty darn useful in a few contexts.

The no-brainer use case for me is actually buying something cheap - e.g., toilet paper. I often find myself spending 20 minutes combing through Amazon to find the cheapest package that doesn't suck when I don't really care about toilet paper at all and don't worry too much about trying to save $3...but it's human nature to want the best value.

So it's a lot easier to just have someone tell me exactly what to buy and I can spend 30 seconds and know that I didn't leave a few bucks on the table and that I got a good product.

Of course, I know the founder so I trust them to actually suggest the right thing (in the same way that I know basically trust Wirecutter blindly), which makes the service useful, and I think the question is whether their reports are good enough that they can convince strangers/random users to trust them in the same way.</comment>


Google Circles and Path 2.0: How good UI design cannot fix a broken solution - <AUTHOR> http://www.elezea.com/2011/12/google-path-ui-design/

<comment><USER2> Yes, good UI design cannot fix a broken solution. But how can this article talk about a "broken solution" when it doesn't even mention the _problem_?! If you don't see the problem, the solution isn't "broken"; it's just solving a problem you don't have.

I would have expected this article to actually discuss what problems they are solving and exactly why their solution is wrong/broken. Instead it just says "meh, it doesn't solve anything!" without any justification.

How can you even talk about "solutions" to social networks and not mention privacy at all?

<comment><USER3> The problem is that he has more "friends" than he understands. Having 100 people in "friends" is bullshit. Nobody can have 100 friends. They can have 10 friends and 90 acquaintances. Those 90 probably go in "I'm interested in following their messages but in reality its all public anyways".

Circles are like C. You can shoot yourself in the foot (by horribly missusing em), or you can make it sing. Google has been following the trends and making circles better. Following is an excellent feature.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've argued for a long time that Facebook has the huge advantage of having even reach most of the laggards. All other social networks that don't focus on an entirely different niche (like Instagram) will probably fail or stay small.

However, a social network doesn't necessarily need 800Mio users to be relevant. Even a small social network with an avid and interested user base can succeed.

And this could be the main differentiator here: A user base consisting out of people that love fantastic design. If they and their design-loving friends are on there, and don't require the facebook-laggard-surplus, then Path can succeed.

<comment><USER5> Sure Path's design is great, but as you say it focuses on classic facebook users. It is designed to interact with friends and family, which is what people use fb for. So maybe the best exit for Path is to get bought by facebook.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I could not agree with this more. I really love the Path UI and played with it for a few days, but I just uninstalled it entirely from my iPhone because I was tired of being notified on two separate social networks.

I had to decide, "Where should I check-in?" or "Where should I post this photo?" and it all came down to my 10 or 12 'nerd' friends on Path vs. my large circle of friends on Facebook. That decision is what killed it for me.

<comment><USER7> This is why I am not friending any of my "nerd friends" on Path. Only family, many of whom live across the country, and my (coincidentally very non- technical) two circles of close friends, who also live throughout the country.

There are precisely two groups of people I don't particularly want seeing the relatively personal stuff I post on Path: my "nerd friends", and everyone.

For me, Path is somewhere between a social network and a personal diary: it's the excerpts from my diary that I want to share with the people I'm close to, and I hope they'll share those moments back.

Facebook can't do this well for me, Google+ failed to, and I don't particularly expect Path to, but it has a better chance than anything.

<comment><USER8> how to get family&friends to start using Path though, other than the initial 'shiny new' app thing. Seems making the move from fb is a task everyone struggles with

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9>
        people don't buy products – they buy the benefit.

People also can't differentiate needs over desires, they also can't help themselves against the herd mentality, otherwise they wouldn't be using social networks and playing Zynga games in the first place.

This emphasis on benefits is exaggerated, as clearly if people thought really well about it, a lot of companies would go out of business.

Also, great software in usage goes beyond the purpose imbued by the creators. Sometimes the creators don't even know the problem it's trying to solve. I'm pretty sure the creators of software like Excel couldn't envision the myriads of ways in which it will be used and why it would be of any usefulness versus a custom form / listing developed by somebody in Fox Pro / dBase in an hour. Facebook is also great because it is different for everybody - for some it is a vanity contest, others like to keep contacts to old high-school buddies, others like playing stupid games, others like to be notified of events and so on and so fort.

</comment><comment><USER10> tl;dr for the below: If it's too much work with their UI, it's a UI problem.

> The problem is that it's just too much work. I've long since given up trying > to maintain my Circles, and I'm pretty sure I'm not alone. Circles also lost > its core utility for me. After I put about 100 people into different buckets > I couldn't remember who I put where, and what I was supposed to share with > which Circle. So I just gave up and started sharing everything publicly.

> It doesn't matter how great and fun an experience is, good UI design cannot > fix a broken solution.

I actually think Google Circles' problem _is_ poor UI design, not a broken solution. Lists are a great way to manage things, but you need to have powerful operations on top of lists. I said it when they came out that I was disappointed with their lack of a Venn-diagram interface where I can define sets of people in terms of other sets and their operations. (Why then "circles" and not "groups"?) On-the-fly one-time-use circles would have been nice to have, too. And they didn't have an API for a long time so it's not like someone could straightforwardly go implement such things in a third-party app. (I haven't been following the API so I don't know if someone could do this now, but I'm pretty sure their first version of the API didn't even allow POST requests--awful developer UI.)

On a second note, I think good UI can cover up a broken solution. Look at the mobile world with "everything-is-an-app" largely thanks to the iPhone.

<comment><USER11> Agreed on overlaps. Circles are essentially tags/labels with a nicer UI. I wonder why tags are the chosen solution for _every_ classification task these days. They're great for information retrieval because they easily let you widen or narrow the scope of what you're looking for. But defining data permissions? Not so much. It feels like designers avoid hierarchal UI paradigms because they're old, but automated inheritance would've been nice on Google+.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I really do think Path can retain its users past this initial "ooh shiny!" phase if it can continue to add features to differentiate itself as a mobile diary and solve that user need -- it is not trying to compete directly with Facebook

</comment><comment><USER13> OK. UI is great. But whats the app doing?

Telling you it is your own journal and allowing occasional sharing? So a personal blog that works from your smart phone and thus lets you do stuff that Wordpress won't?

I like it, I must say. But why would users use it? Self gratification? What is their business model? A la four square? Will they eventually have checkins and deals?

</comment><comment><USER14> I would love for Path to be a tightly integrated Facebook client. The interaction is great and it's really a joy to use. The problem is, I don't want to have to keep up with another network, even if I'm supposed to use this one differently than I would Facebook or Twitter.

</comment><comment><USER15> Path excludes me because I don't have an iOS or Android device (yes we do exist).

<comment><USER16> Email works really well for most if not all that Path does. The interface is pretty bare bones, but the utility has stood the test of time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I completely disagree. This is the classic Silicon Valley echo-chamber view of Path. Path is not made for the Silicon Valley technorati.

Path is more like iMessage than it is like Facebook or Twitter.

I go for a run. No one knows I'm going for a run. I post to Path. Now if I get mugged, my sister will know where to dispatch the cops to.

I post a photo of a family member. I get a "so-and-so visited my Path" notification. I can then go and chat with them about the photo cause I know that they have seen it.

I go to sleep. My friends check my Path before they SMS me to make sure they don't interrupt my sleep.

The problems it solves for me:

\- Did so-and-so see that photo I posted? They can view it on their own time. Once they've seen it I'll have a conversation with them about it.

\- I live on my own. My family knows where I am if I accidentally disappear.

\- I am asleep. Don't wake me up.

<comment><USER18> _I go for a run. No one knows I'm going for a run. I post to Path. Now if I get mugged, my sister will know where to dispatch the cops to._

How will they know that you got mugged?

<comment><USER19> You wallet is linked up to your iPhone which auto-tweets once the wallet is emptied.

Jokes aside, if you have daily contact with someone and they don't answer your calls / don't show up, you know where to look.

<comment><USER18> So a day later, someone will come looking for you? That is probably not helpful.

The "tell someone where you're going" rule is for trips longer than running. It's if you go on a two-day bike tour and aren't back by the third, or if you're going backpacking for a week and aren't back in 10 days. It doesn't do much for a quick jog in populated areas; a passerby will notice your corpse long before anyone you know thinks to figure out your running route and go look for you.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Eric Schmidt, in Control - <AUTHOR> http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/01/23/eric-schmidt-android <comment><USER2> How does this make it to the front page? Gruber cuts and pastes a third party quote from Schmidt and this make HN top stories? Perhaps linking to a more complete article would be more beneficial. Say the interview where the quote was taken out of context:

[http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20091007/live-from-new- york-...](http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20091007/live-from-new-york-google- cofounder-sergey-brin-meets-the-press/)

The context is more along the lines of Schmidt was commenting on how Google was entering a buying phase again. They had a reputation of finding small start-ups that were interesting and absorbing them. He then points back to how some of these turned out to be big wins, like Android and Google Earth. Buying a startup for a couple million is peanuts to Google. I think they are more profitable by moving quickly on these "small" tech purchases than sitting and debating the logistics beforehand.

<comment><USER3> Sometimes less is more

<comment><USER2> Context is everything.

<comment><USER4> eh, I find the isolated quote interesting and relevant in light of the recent CEO change (surely the reason it was posted).

<comment><USER2> Well if you look at the interview, the next question is about large purchases and that those require review. I.E. These two items were very small when they were bought, Youtube (the example given) wasn't and requires evaluation to make sure it will pay off.

Pulling this quote out of context is trying to make it look like Schmidt wasn't in the know. When in reality at the time these were bought they were very tiny, and only grew into the "power-houses" they are now under Google's tenure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> While Gruber posts this to point out how little control Eric Schmidt has, I'm not that surprised. For a company the size of Google, a few millions is pocket change (they make that in profit every hour (!)). I'm not surprised the founders (who still control the company) can spend that without too much hassle.

</comment><comment><USER6> It does seem a little strange that the founders could complete acquisitions without even informing, let alone getting the approval of, the CEO. Is that normal in corporate governance?

<comment><USER7> A few million dollar acquisition is so small, it's akin to a new hire or hardware purchase. Not worth debating with other members of management (provided you've all agreed to go out and make acquisitions).

(Written on Android, incidentally)

<comment><USER8> Not to mention the dual class thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Gruber pisses me off to no end. So much inaccurate analysis, it's mind boggling. He became particularly unbearable after Google went after Apple during the Gingerbread keynote. He just hates all things Google and you can almost always ignore anything he says about them.

</comment><comment><USER10> Surely the founders have some leeway when it comes to purchases of this scale.</comment>


Why is Elon's idea so offensive to journalists? - <AUTHOR> https://www.quod.us/article/why-does-elons-media-ratings-idea-offend-journalists <comment><USER2> Because Musk's got skin in the game. It's different when an objective 3rd party creates such a site. When someone under fire from journalists suggests such a thing, its obviously a hostile act and demands a response.

<comment><USER3> This. Journalists don't want skin in the game. Elon wants to give it to them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It might be because Musk is a hypocrite, with vested interests and a dubious relationship with the truth.

Just a couple days ago Musk tweeted out he would enable 'full self driving features' in August. It was a craftily worded, trivial statement, and basically means that people who paid for FSD would get a few minor upgrades.

Nonetheless, several dozen media outlets happily, uncritically gave him some free advertising, with many falsely implying or reporting outright that Tesla's would actually be able to drive themselves come August.

Did Elon get upset about that? Of course not. Lie, distort and pander all you want, so long as you're saying nice things about Tesla.

Say something negative about Tesla, though, and it's off to the Ministry of truth with you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting that you point that out, 'full self driving features' does sound pretty misleading, I kind of glazed over that headline when I saw it yesterday myself.</comment></comment>


Social Security's day of reckoning may be even closer than we thought - <AUTHOR> https://www.marketwatch.com/story/thanks-to-covid-19-social-securitys-day-of-reckoning-may-be-even-closer-than-we-thought-2020-04-15 <comment><USER2> I was never going to see a penny from social security anyway. Maybe this will save me two years of payments into the federal slush fund!

<comment><USER3> Oh they won't let us stop paying. They'll just take more, and then they'll means test us when we're eligible to draw it and tell us that we saved too much money so we're not eligible.</comment></comment>


Kryptos Sculpture: A New Clue in a Decades Old Mystery - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/01/29/climate/kryptos-sculpture-final-clue.html <comment><USER2> There is still no hint as to what the cryptographic system is, although the new plaintext eliminates some more possibilities.

In 2005, the creator Jim Sanborn said [he'd] be "modifying systems and developing my own which would make it virtually impossible for [Ed Scheidt, CIA cryptographer] to decipher all of it". The question after that was always: if he expects a CIA cryptography expert would not be able to solve it, why should anyone else be able to?</comment>


A Good Resume Is Not Enough – More Things Job Seekers Need to Land Job Interview - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/carolinecenizalevine/2019/12/07/a-good-resume-is-not-enough-five-more-things-job-seekers-need-to-land-a-job-interview/ <comment><USER2> I'm at odds with some of traits of modern hiring in tech that are mentioned in this article. Specifically the point about having an online profile.

A few years back, I deleted all of my social media accounts except for LinkedIn. Outside of my personal blog, (which I started this year to maintain some sort of online presence and to learn how to write) I don't have a very visible online profile. The problem is, I'm not sure I want to be visible for the sake of privacy and security. It seems more and more, private sector employers want you to be a rockstar blogger, conference speaker, have many open source contributions, side projects and leetcode/hankerrank profiles. In my recent experience, trying to go from an IGO contractor to a private sector startup employee has been somewhat difficult due to the emphasis on intangibles that aren't related programming skill or domain specific knowledge. It doesn't seem right to give all our professional data to LinkedIn nor does it seem right to exclude job candidates for not having a profile. The same can be said for having a profile that is tumultuous.

The best hiring process I've been through also turned out to be the best job I've had. It was conversation with a very tight-knit Perl shop where they asked me to review a piece of their code, at the time I didn't know much Perl so I had ask a lot of questions about what this and that did. It turned into a 2 hour conversation which lead to an offer on the spot.

On the other hand, I went spent close to 15 hours going through interviews with non-FAANG company offered me a 1/3 of what I make now.

<comment><USER3> Completely agree. Microsoft and LinkedIn should not be gatekeepers to all hiring and it's ridiculous this has become an informal requirement.

I've made a personal decision to never open a LinkedIn account. If this costs me then I'll bear the cost but I think it's the right thing to do and hopefully this becomes obvious at some point.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you handle accounting/bookkeeping for your SaaS company? - <AUTHOR> <comment><AUTHOR> I'm going through the process of setting things up right now, and deciding on tools and approaches (cash based vs accrual based) is somewhat overwhelming. I'm curious how others have solved this problem.

<comment><USER2> Not to be mean, but why would you ask a bunch of strangers how to set up your accounts instead of an accountant? This seems so obvious to me. Some things you should just spend a few bucks on to make sure it's done right (i.e., legal, too).

<comment><AUTHOR> Eh, I'm just a fan of getting thoughts from multiple different data sources. Obviously an accountant will be an important/final step, but by casting a wide net and asking others to share their experiences, that lets me ask better questions when I do reach out to the accountant. Individual accountants also may know a lot about the legal accounting requirements, but they may not be as familiar with all available bookkeeping software, for example.

Note that the question asks how others handle their process, not how I should handle mine.</comment></comment></comment>


The largest known prime number has emerged. It has more than 23M digits - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/the-largest-known-prime-number-has-emerged-it-has-more-than-23-million-digits/2018/01/12/e641cef0-f6e2-11e7-beb6-c8d48830c54d_story.html <comment><USER2> >"Anyone can download the software free. So you, too, could discover a record- breaking prime number — if you have enough patience."

Maybe mining zcash is lucrative, but finding a new big prime number sounds pretty nice

<comment><USER3> I wish we can collectively "mine" solutions for questions that are currently un-solved.

Like Larger prime number, or create a hive mind that acts as an AI.

<comment><USER4> Isn't that the point of projects like folding@home?

And hive mind AI is literally skynet.

<comment><USER5> The Borg would be a better analogy; Skynet was just an AI with a specific purpose, no hive-mind about it.

<comment><USER4> Well that's more reassuring.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There's a site for large prime numbers, and I wondered Mersenne primes have been the largest primes known - since 1992, and since 1952 with an exception for 1989 to 1992. GIMPS - [https://www.mersenne.org](https://www.mersenne.org) \- has topped the list since 1996.

[https://primes.utm.edu/notes/by_year.html#table2](https://primes.utm.edu/notes/by_year.html#table2)

</comment><comment><USER7> I have two questions:

1: How do we know it's the largest known prime number? What qualifies as a 'known' prime number? Is there an official registry somewhere?

2: Are all prime numbers smaller then this one also known? Or could somebody still come up with an unknown 'not very large prime number'?

<comment><USER8> 1\. Essentially, yes there's a list. Since there doesn't exist a higher level formula to identify primes it's been verified by some variation of a brute force method.

2\. That all smaller primes are known can't be verified. Primes of this size are usually found by a number of formulas that find "likely" primes and then verified by brute force (afaik). Because of that fuzzy match to start there might be smaller primes that haven't yet been identified.

<comment><USER9> Calling it brute force isn't quite right. There is an efficient algorithm for prime determination (Lucas-Lehmer primality test) on Mersenne Primes (numbers of the form 2^p-1).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucas–Lehmer_primality_test](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucas–Lehmer_primality_test)

<comment><USER8> Thanks for the reminder! And this is my bad because I was paywalled on my phone and didn't see that it was, in fact, a mersenne prime that was found.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16063946](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16063946)

</comment><comment><USER11> Given that we know that there are infinitely many primes, why are we interested in knowing ever larger ones?

It's somewhat like asking, what is the largest known natural number?

<comment><USER12> If nothing else, "what's the largest prime number you've found?" would be a fun question to ask another intelligent civilization, should we make contact with one.

<comment><USER11> Alright, that's a good one :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Quote from the Article: """The figure is calculated by multiplying 2 by itself 77,232,917 times and then subtracting 1."""

Would HN agree that multiplying 2 by itself once is 2⨯2 = pow(2,2), twice is 2⨯2⨯2 = pow(2,3) and N times yields pow(2,N+1)?

The Mersenne Prime found is pow(2,77232917) − 1, hence the article got the number wrong?

<comment><USER14> If you're going that way, you can also interpret it - pardon my programming - as the following:

      int result;
      for (int i = 0; i < 77232917; i++) {
          result = 2 * 2;
      }
      return result - 1;

... which obviously results in 3. Also a (mersienne) prime, but not quite as big as you'd expect, and certainly not millions of digits long.

<comment><USER15>
      int result;
      for (int i = 0; i < 77232917; i++) {
          result = 2 * 2; <----- you basically said result=4 77232917 times
      }
      return result - 1; <--- and then 4-1=3

so of course it will always be 3

<comment><USER16> That is the joke.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: When To Chat – A time zone tool for remote teams using Slack - <AUTHOR> https://slack.whentochat.co/ <comment><USER2> This is a cool little bot, but I'm not sure if it is priced appropriately.

$10/mo is too low. Makes it feel cheap. I'd recommend if you want to keep that same price to go for an annual membership.

But a better price would be in the $29/mo range. Still affordable by team, and you would actually get paid for your work.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting. You're not the first person to say it's priced too cheap, actually. I'll reconsider the pricing. Thanks for the feedback!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Internal Server Error

<comment><AUTHOR> I just saw this in the logs. Not sure what happened. If you have info about the path you took (was it during auth with slack or..?) that'd be super helpful.

<comment><USER3> I clicked on Add To Slack, chose the channel I want to add it to, click on Allow, and the error comes up. I haven't been able to get past that part. But I'm pretty sure I know why... I'm not an administrator. Just wanted to add this as I work with people in different time zones. I'll ask the admin to add it ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! That confirms what I saw in the logs. I've added a warning message to catch that error and mention admin access is required. Thanks for catching that.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Economics of Organ Transplants: Dying People Shouldn't Have to be Beggars - <AUTHOR> http://reason.com/archives/2010/03/15/dying-people-shouldnt-have-to

<comment><USER2> I appreciate how paying for donors (even in the form of a charitable donation) can be seen as a slippery slope, but I really only see two options - 1) Allow payment, or 2) Automatic Opt-in system for everyone to be a donor.

Since the second is perhaps less politically palatable, and (as the article notes) in the US there are already precedents for blood and sperm, I wish this legal action every success.</comment>


My customer wants me to record a video of how I develop his software product - <AUTHOR> http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/110487/50688 <comment><USER2> In this case, it's probably a good idea to fire the customer. These types of outrageous requests don't exist in a vacuum. People like this are very difficult to deal with, tend to be very miserly, and will be a non-stop headache. The customer will question everything you do, why you did certain things a certain way (even if he or she has no idea what they are talking about), etc. Drop kick this customer from your life - it's not worth it.

<comment><USER3> If the client is 'not worth it' you're just not charging enough. Just work out what your price is and send them a new quote. Don't ever fire a client, that's just silly. Make the client say no.

<comment><USER2> According to the article:

 _"...The customer considers that if I don't want to record the video, it's because I have something to hide and want to lie about the real time spent on his project"_.

Dealing with a client that tells you from the outset that they believe you are going to lie to them isn't merely an annoyance. It presents a risk to your career. This client will never be satisfied, or trust a word you say. He will inevitably sue or trash your reputation because, in the end, it isn't possible to satisfy delusional clients. That risk isn't worth any amount of money.

<comment><USER4> These kind of quotes from a customer should be instant red flags that they are not someone you want to work for. Devilboy does have a good bit of advice about charging an outrageous amount, but it's important to pick your battles. Sometimes no amount of money in the world is worth the headache that a customer like this could cause.

<comment><USER5> There is always some amount of money that is worth the trouble. Now, it may be some amount of money that cannot be paid by any entity aside from governments, Exxon, Apple, and a few others, but it is some amount of money nonetheless.

<comment><USER6> > There is always some amount of money

BS.

Happiness as a function of wealth is not a linear curve. After the first few millions, a hundred millions or a billion isn't that a big deal.

Therefore, if the price to justify some headache or discomfort is above a million or so, just getting rid of the headache is more valuable.

<comment> loup-vaillant Happiness isn't the only thing we care about. With enough money, I'd start thinking about optimizing the world, or at least give something to the most efficient charities out there.

<comment><USER7> With enough money, I would do the same. With too much money (say in the billion range) I think I would go all well-intentioned super villain on the world.

<comment> loup-vaillant Seriously, if you're careful enough, that could be a good thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is something I actually offer to my clients, and I do it for fun. I guess I was inspired by watching some of Notch's screencaps over a few days.

So I capture it with RecordMyDesktop (I run xubuntu), and run through an ffmpeg script (<https://github.com/choptastic/watchmecode>) that resizes the video to be the same length as an MP3, and makes an X minute screencap montage for the client.

Then it produces something like this, which I did while working on a specific feature[2] for my sports league management system[1]: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hwn7mfmo0SQ>

In my experience, my clients basically find it interesting seeing a snippet of how a programmer works. I had one client who would show the video around in his office like it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. At first, I thought the reaction was sarcastic, but I realized after the 3rd time showing another employee, and _his elderly father_ , that he was just genuinely impressed by it.

THAT SAID, if a client _required_ this of me because they wanted to _monitor_ me (to make sure I'm working or whatever), I'd let them know that "sure, I can do it for the most part, but I have to disable it when checking my email, and any time spend curating the video due to privacy concerns will be billed to you as well."

But if a client asked it of me to satisfy their own curiosity of my workflow (which is unlikely, since I typically just volunteer it anyway), I'd be more than happy to do it.

[1] <http://bracketpal.com> (homepage is still embarrassingly sparse, as I've been working one-on-one with customers, a landing page redesign and online customers are coming first).

[2] The video above is the screencap of the implementation of this feature: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxTfaSfa_dQ>

<comment><USER9> Watching Notch's Ludum Dare videos inspired me to create my first OS X app store app. It takes screenshots at a configurable interval and than creates H.264 encoded video of the resultant timelapse.

Here it is: <http://appstore.com/mac/ScreenshotTimelapse>

Here are 25 promo codes if anyone wants to try it out: <http://pastebin.com/K6Xx59jY>

<comment><USER10> See also: <http://www.timesnapper.com/> for Windows

(Classic version 'free forever'; doesn't seem to support stitching all the images together to export a video but should be do-able manually.)

<comment><USER9> For OS X users, you can take a screenshot from the command line with /usr/sbin/screencapture, so putting together a little script to make a screenshot timelapse is pretty trivial. With that and ffmpeg you can replicate most of the functionality of my program in just a few lines of bash. :-)

<comment><USER11> Indeed :-) I use

brew install watch watch -n10 'screencapture `date +%s`.png'

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> As absurd as this situation was, it really doesn't surprise me in the least. Having been an independent consultant for several years, I've had some client requests that were real humdingers. My favorite of all-time (I'm paraphrasing, but this was a real conversation):

      Client: We would like a fixed-price bid on this project.
          Me: Well, let's talk about your project. What's the scope?
      Client: We're working on a list, which will grow over time.
          Me: Let's make sure I understand. You want a fixed price for a variable project?
      Client: Yes. We're budgeting $5000.
          Me: I'm sure I do not understand.
              Do you expect the entirety of work to basically be my
              bill rate X number of hours = $5000?
      Client: We expect you to manage that. The reason we're interested in a fixed-price
              bid is because we need to contain costs.
          Me: You mean contain *your* costs. Do you think there is any risk
              in this project from my side?
      Client: Only your time is at risk.
          Me: (face-palm)

<comment><USER13> What's the polite way to tell them "there's not a chance I, or any other reasonable person, would consider this request" and keep the door open to future work? Or is it not worth keeping that door open?

<comment><USER14> I used to give them one attempt at education as to why software development isn't off-the-shelf if it seemed reasonable that they might simply be new to that sort of project. In practice, though, it was almost always the case that they were simply being unrealistic and hoping to find someone new / desperate who would give them more than what they paid for.

<comment><USER15> How well do _those_ projects go? I've had bids rejected for being too high, even when other developers failed to deliver due to underbidding. Some people never learn.

<comment><USER14> In a couple of cases, it went well – there are people who genuinely appreciate being educated about what they as a businessperson need to know about approaching software dev. Sadly, it's a definitely not a high success rate: if you don't get an impression that the conversation is going well, there's probably a good reason for that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Something I dealt with a lot in oil & gas engineering, and have never personally witnessed in software engineering, is a "change order".

The contract is signed. At this point, if you deliver on your end of the deal, they _have_ to deliver on theirs†. If they want anything other than what is in that contract - additions, changes, removals - you send them a change order. This is a new document for both parties to sign, covering the new request, and comes with its own price tag on top of the contract already agreed.

These are essential when you are engineering an actual physical product, because changing the specification of a natural gas compression plant when it's half built is very, very expensive. Change orders are an excellent tool for ensuring not that scope creep doesn't happen, but that scope creep doesn't turn a profitable project into a loss.

† Of course, practically, no-one wants to take on a client that they will have to sue to get the money from. But you should know where you stand when that contract is signed - you deliver your part, they deliver theirs. You can simply say "no" to additional requests and deliver on the original.

<comment><USER17> This is extremely common in corporate software engineering, where a contract specifies exactly what will be delivered.

In practice, those change requests are usually rejected, because the people with control of the money aren't the people using the product, and the customer ends up paying for something they aren't happy with.

A lot of Agile methodologies are a response to this extremely strict change control.

<comment><USER18> _A lot of Agile methodologies are a response to this extremely strict change control._

The problem, from what I've seen, is that developers understand agile development, but the "money people" don't. To them, "agile" is just a buzzword that means "good" and they aren't actually interested in participating in the process. So now you get people who don't understand, or aren't interested in, attending demo sessions, prioritizing the backlog, or reading/writing user stories. And when things don't proceed along a nice, smooth, water-fall like sequence, they get stressed and start complaining.

One place I'd say the Agile movement has fallen on it's sword, is in terms of promotion, education and buy-in from the "business community" to the point that they understand that Agile processes require their active participation.

<comment><USER19> If you want to do Agile development, then you also have to do Agile billing - i.e., not a pre-agreed price limit for "thingamajig that does X, Y and Z", but in essence renting the team for each sprint with an understanding of what you'll get in each development (and billing) cycle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This customer sounds like a bad apple and should be fired, but there is some justification for such an idea.

ODesk enforces the use of their time tracking software for hourly projects. Their staff economist, John Joseph-Horton, has some interesting papers about the justification for this. He argues it is actually in the interests of freelancers to have such a system in place.

Basically, freelancers prefer to be paid hourly (or daily, or whatever), rather than per-project, because clients love ratcheting and requesting endless tweaks otherwise. But clients prefer to pay per-project, so they can predict how much stuff will cost and not have to risk paying for freelancers that pad hours. ODesk's solution removes some of the risk for hourly billing, making it a more acceptable solution for clients, which works out for the benefit of freelancers.

A similar concept is how companies benefit from being able to be sued. Because you can sue them if they screw you around, you feel more comfortable dealing with them.

<comment><USER21> In my screwing around with oDesk, I've selected flat per-project fees; no snooping and its a lot easier not to worry about hourly fees and angry clients imo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> As a past software manager of a elite team(of super smart people, engineers, phDs) and developer myself: Never do that, say NO.

Don't try to justify it. Don't lose your time with this person, don't lose emotional energy.

It is one thing to be efficient, another to "look efficient". You can be not efficient but look like you are or the contrary, specially when your client don't have a clue in software.

The reason this customer wants the video is to go against you, as you said, he already does not trust you.

When you do, he is going to go and say: look, you are not working 80% of the time, so I am paying you 20%. Probably he already have plans for doing that.

He probably does not have the money, or the organization changed plans and don't need the software as much as when the agreement was done and wants to backpedal with any excuse.

</comment><comment><USER23> This is very common on remote work sites like Elance. Elance calls their version WorkView. It's not strange at all and actually beneficial for both sides of the interaction. This is because if you accept an hourly job with WorkView, Elance guarantees you'll get paid for your hours. For the employer it is obviously beneficial as well because you have more piece of mind the worker is actually spending their time working.

</comment><comment><USER24> The customer clearly doesn't understand how creative work is done and approaches it with a factory mindset where workers are busy with their hands. A large amount of software development work are done in thinking, which appears to be inactivity to the outsiders. A lot of problems are solved while taking showers or driving. Does he want to video record those?

Two approaches for this client:

\- Simple say no, and don't waste time trying to reason it with him.

\- Just say no to the project and move on.

<comment><USER25> A lot of my work also happens on paper, and I don't share those either, as they are my notes and designs. Anything that needs to be sent on to the customer I transfer to electrons.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This answer is great: "This is the right answer. In business, when someone asks you do something extra the correct answer is "Yes I can do that. It will cost you $X." Make the other person say no if you really don't want to do something. Charge a ridiculous amount for it. Of course, there is the danger that they will agree which is why you charge something that would still be happy with. I would probably want it up-front as well."

<comment><USER27> The problem I'd have with doing this is that it would be difficult to think of a price I would be happy with.

The customer sounds like the type who would use this video to nitpick _everything_.

\</comment></comment><comment> On June 1st from 11:03-11:07 you spent your time on google searching for something called an API. I demand you deduct 4 minutes from my bill. \</comment><comment>

Then if you get tired of dealing with it he can trash your reputation and he has edited video to back it up. Let's face it, if someone has hundreds of hours of footage of your work, they can find problems.

The whole thing sounds like a nightmare that could easily spiral out of control.

<comment><USER28> > Let's face it, if someone has hundreds of hours of footage of your work, > they can find problems.

Yes but they will have to spend hundreds of their own time to do that (and if they intend to sue you to get their money back, also a lawyer's time.) I wouldn't worry - they will lose their own job long before they find enough evidence to harm your reputation.

<comment><USER29> Do not underestimate the amount of determination or free time available to an unreasonable client. If they were able to do cost-benefits analysis and good- faith estimates of the value of someone's time, they probably would not have made a request like this to begin with.

In short, do not expect reasonable behavior from unreasonable clients. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> What is your customer paying you to provide? I've had an issue with "time- based" cost for a long time. I've done freelance work since 2001, and I use time to estimate my projects (very roughly) and even to invoice it (based on what I had estimated for them). Many clients are comfortable with that. On larger projects, I even paid other developers and had them submit their time to get paid. But I have never tracked my own time or outlined it for a client. In fact, with those other developers, I just wanted to know "how much" time they spent so I could pay them. The applications we worked on had the features implemented as requested. The client was happy with what was delivered to them.

While I did not track my time, I often found that I spent less time than I estimated. I say that because my freelance was on some evenings and weekends, and it simply didn't add up to a great amount of time. Once, I had a client over time, that often paid late, and we stopped working together when he had an outstanding bill. Much later, he contacted me with an urgent request. I got up front payment for twice what I estimated. Then I dug into the project and completed it in a tiny fraction of the time it took me to do it.

If you contractually agree to give clients "dedicated time being truly productive towards creating the requested end result", then I suppose you really need to be meticulous about tracking your time and providing records of how that time was used to move the project forward. I'd really rather not get in the habit of selling my time at all. I'm selling my ability to reach your objective, to build what you want to use. We'll define to the best of our ability what I'll be providing to you, we'll agree on the price, and then we'll measure our success on my delivery to you and your payment to me. What happens in between is of my concern, and it is in my best interest to spend my time effectively and perform efficiently.

</comment><comment><USER31> Fire the customer

It's not even worth the cost of justifying it.

It's very simple: "I don't do this kind of service"

You'll waste less time that can be put to better usage like getting other customers

</comment><comment><USER32> My first thought was to reply "that's outside the contract and subject to my standard rate".

What's the standard rate? £400/hour for this, including set-up time, transferring the files etc.

The number doesn't even matter - just make it big enough to be worth your while in putting up with such nonsense.

</comment><comment><USER33> This is part of a common trap in contracts and employer relationships, which is measuring and paying for the wrong thing. In this case it's time.

Afraid you're being ripped off by a contractor? Write the contract so that you only pay in acceptable increments against the deliverables you want at a price you're happy to pay.

We once had a client request we deploy software across all desktop computers to measure how many keystrokes each user made, how often their screen saver was on, etc. I pointed out that they were already measuring employee activities such as calls answered, customer satisfaction, policies not surrendered (i.e. customers planning to sever their accounts who were retained) etc. why measure and reward activities when you were measuring and could reward results?

</comment><comment><USER34> Switch from being paid by hour to being paid by task. Client describes a project, together you split it into a list of small tasks, you assign value to each task, client agrees to it, and you get paid by task. Then it is up to you how productive you are..

<comment><USER35> We're quickly migrating to this model. You have to be (much) better about estimating work, but switching from cost+ to value added pricing really makes better sense (and your margins increase).

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Reminds me of <http://hackertyper.net/> \-- several characters appear for each keystroke :D

<comment><USER37> I think you crashed their site :).

>>Warning: mysql_connect() [function.mysql-connect]: Too many connections in /var/www/html/hackertyper/config.php on line 6 DB Error, overload!!!! Crap, system crashed :/<<

Interesting how a single well placed post can achieve so much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> To play the devils advocate here, What if the customer wants to have a blog series on how that product was built? Key software design decisions, features, etc. What if he wanted to run this video by another software developer who only agreed to do software reviews, etc. How different would this from recording a bunch of screencasts on building a product. The customer gets knowledge of the entire build process, from the initial sketches to the final release.

But most if not all of it would be too much to deal with for a freelancer and should at least incur a 3x price increase to deal with the various variables involved.

<comment><USER39> Seems pretty clear this was not the case, since they told him they didn't believe he was working. I think this is just another point in favor of NOT billing by the hour for contract work. If you are billing for the product delivered, rather than your time, it takes your work habits completely off the table.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> This really makes me angry. Not only the fact that there are actually customers out there who demand such outrageous bullshit from their contractors but also that most certainly there are freelancers who put up with that sort of behaviour.

What makes this all the more infuriating is that both the original poster and lots of commenters waste a considerable amount of their valuable time for justifying or coming up with a solution for weaseling out of the contract with the customer while the only reasonable answer to said customer is to bugger off.

</comment><comment><USER41> This is a reason I just switched jobs from the services/consulting industry to a startup with a product. I just dislike working with clients.

I think most software engineers prefer this. But I'm not sure.

</comment><comment><USER42> Just send him an endless loop of the scene in Swordfish where Hugh Jackman is coding.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vO_O4AD1MhI>

<comment><USER43> It is an amazingly realistic depiction of life as a software programmer. "No, no....yes!"

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Given that this was posted in Sept. 2011, I don't think he's waiting for suggestions from us :D

<comment><USER45> Here's his update:

While all those suggestions are equally valuable, I've personally chosen to say to my customer that I accept to do the videos, but in this case, we must renegotiate the contract, keeping in mind that there will be a considerable cost, including the additional fee for copyright release. The new overall cost would be in average three times the actual cost of the project. Knowing this customer, I'm completely sure that he would never accept to pay so much, so the problem is solved.

Second update:

The customer effectively declined the proposal to renegotiate the original contract, taking in account the considerable additional cost.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> This reminds me of an observation I made while out at lunch one day. I was at a local restaurant having lunch and realized that two tables away, there were some of the ladies who were janitors at my work. After a couple of minutes of over hearing them talk about my work place, they were pretty outspoken, one of them said "....and they just sit there and stare at the screen all day......and they get paid all this money - I don't get it...."

</comment><comment><USER47> You've got to know when to hold 'em. Know when to fold 'em. Know when to walk away. Know when to run.

This clients sounds like they would be a world of pain.

</comment><comment><USER48> Surely the free market covers this? The contract specifies estimated and maximum costs for the project, and presumably includes a definition of the scope / requirements to be covered and delivery date. If the client thinks you're charging for work you're not doing then presumably they think you're too expensive, so should the two parties should agree to terminate the contract and the client should go and find someone else to build it. If they can't find a better rate then so what if you're charging them to spend a few hours a day on Facebook; the fact you're still able to deliver your side makes that irrelevant.

The only issue is if the maximum cost is far beyond the estimate and there's no justification of why that may be the case beforehand. If there is good justification before hand you should be able to let the customer know if that risk's been realised and report on it immediately, giving evidence to show that this risk became a reality.

</comment><comment><USER49> My thinking is this:

If you fire the customer, then in the customer's mind (s)he was right to be concerned, and you just proved it by running away.

Contract in place, signed. Keep all records of the unreasonable request and attempt to change the contract conditions. Do the work. Bill the customer. Sue if they don't pay.

<comment><USER50> If they think you're a crook from the outset, their hypothetical future confidence is not worth the effort.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Time to dredge up out of the tar pits `The Mythical Man Month' and video how much a few lines of debugged code are worth.

</comment><comment><USER52> You are looking at this as a problem rather than an opportunity.

If I were in your shoes I would calmly explain that you do offer video of the coding in the condensed form that the HN person 'chops' shows.

That service of offering the video will cost $X more per hour to implement and you would be happy to rewrite the contract to include that service.

</comment><comment><USER53> Well, the customer is always right. I wonder if I can offer that as a competitive advantage.

I'm only half-joking. I can't see how the customer will get any value out of the videos though. I guess this only makes sense if the customer is one of those bewildering people who assume programming is just typing all the time.

<comment><USER54>
      I can't see how the customer will get any value out
      of the videos though.

Have you ever been in the situation where you discovered you were mis-billed for something? I certainly have. Accidental mis-charging does happen, even between parties that trust one another. Still, most businesses are willing to tolerate a certain level of error.

Given that occasional mis-charging is inevitable, how can you make sure it's below the threshold you're able to tolerate if you don't maintain audit records?

With that said, I'd fire the client assuming I wasn't desperate for work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Experience says the only solution to a situation like this is to fire the customer and likely refund any money taken already, no matter how much sunk cost you have.

Long-term, purging yourself of a toxic customer is at least as valuable as gaining a new one. For added points, direct him to your competition.

</comment><comment><USER56> I don't understand why this customer signed a contract with somebody they believe to be a crook. Surely not doing that is in hypothetical don't get yourself scammed to oblivion 101?

</comment><comment><USER57> I would be afraid of leaving it on when I am done working and giving the client an overly intimate glimpse into my personal life

</comment><comment><USER58> I'd say "Sure thing, you send me a video of your 8 hour work day and I'll send you one of mine."

<comment><USER30> Yes - I need to see where this money you're going to pay me with is coming from. Each step of the process. Please trace it back to when the money was printed while you're at it and include all labor and transactions that took place since then that made it possible today for you to transfer it me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> "I'm going to sue you later. Please collect evidence for me."

</comment><comment><USER60> Okay fair enough. Now how much does he want to pay for that?

</comment><comment><USER61> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zE1LbC4Fvs>

</comment><comment><USER62> Record yourself typing like mad for 10 minutes. Montage a 40-hour loop.

<comment><USER63> Just write a script that outputs "all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" for 40 hours, see how that tickles him.

<comment><AUTHOR> <http://hackertyper.net> can make you look good while all you are pressing is a space bar ....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> Since he is wanting an outrageous demand, I would say DO IT! Before anyone disagrees, there is an upside. Since this is a stupid request, I would turn around and come up with an outrageous fee to do this. A fee so high that it would definitely get you smiling if he decided to pay you. Of course, justify that you will need this amount because of the camcorder you will need for the paper and pen work, the extra storage space, and the extra computer equipment you will need to "allow this to happen". Also, add in time to purchase this equipment, be sure to get the top of the line with markups, and add in the fees and related expenses. Be sure to get the money from the client as well so you don't get burned.

</comment><comment><USER65> I wouldn't advice trying the technical arguments ("the video could be faked!" etc) since the client is clearly unfamiliar with freelancing and these arguments would simply serve to confuse. Either 'yes' or 'no', the 'yes' having whatever caveats you want to go with it.

I've never freelanced, but I've spent a lot of time doing support, and I know what kind of personality is being dealt with here. The solution the poster has come up with is probably the best one apart from firing the customer (not always fiscally possible)

<comment><USER66> _...since the client is clearly unfamiliar with freelancing..._

That made me think of that cuatomer's employees and their working environment. I've read just the other day about a tech company over here that _forces_ employees to have lunch at the company restaurant (with abusive prices) among many other outrageous measures. I'd say no to this kind of people, just because I don't want to make them any money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> Just reading the question made my blood pressure rise. Yowza.

No developer should ever succumb to that kind of babysitting privacy invasion.</comment>


Find two numbers from an array that sum to a target number - <AUTHOR> http://cubui.com/development/javascript/find-two-numbers-array-sum-target-number/ <comment><USER2> _"The time complexity is O(n) because we iterate the array of numbers containing n elements only once."_

If only. That ignores the dictionary look ups.

Also, there's the tiny problem that this code is buggy. It only works if, for every number in the array, _target - number_ also is in the array. It doesn't even work for the example given in the problem description, returning _(9,0)_ as one of the answers.

I hope this was posted as a warning that not everything you google is correct since, otherwise, this would not be interesting at all.</comment>


How to measure performance in machine learning - <AUTHOR> http://blog.piekniewski.info/2017/07/27/measuring-performance-ml/ <comment><USER2> This is a great example on how one can get fooled by optimizing the wrong measure. This should be introductory material to machine learning, before any algorithm gets introduced.</comment>


Same-sex marriage legalization associated with reduced antigay bias - <AUTHOR> https://www.pnas.org/content/116/18/8846 <comment><USER2> A recent episode of "Hidden Brain" [1] on NPR covered the massive reduction in anti-gay bias over the last few decades in the US. A quote from the summary of episode at the link I gave:

> "This is actually one of the most surprising things in the whole history of > public opinion," says Stanford sociologist Michael Rosenfeld. "There's more > and more rapid change in attitudes towards gay rights in the past thirty > years in the United States than there ever has been in recorded attitudes in > the United States on any issue."

In the episode itself, they compare how fast attitudes are changing toward various biases. If anti-gay bias continues shrinking at the rate it is currently shrinking, it will be under a decade for them to be pretty much gone.

Biases about black people, on the other hand, would take about 60 years to mostly go away. Biases about skin tone...about 140 years. Biases based on ago...over 150 years.

(NOTE: those are not predictions. They are simply illustrations of how rapidly or slowly those biases are changing right now. It is extremely unlikely that any particular bias is going to diminish at a constant rate from now until it is virtually gone).

[1] [https://www.npr.org/2019/04/03/709567750/radically-normal- ho...](https://www.npr.org/2019/04/03/709567750/radically-normal-how-gay- rights-activists-changed-the-minds-of-their-opponents)

</comment><comment><USER3> If you consider system oppression to be a form of validation for bigots, then it follows that removing that validation would result in reduced bigotry.

</comment><comment><USER4> There was a 2017 study that looked at people's attitudes related to Obergefell:

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28758838](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28758838)

One of its interesting findings:

> a five-wave longitudinal time-series study using a sample of 1,063 people > found an increase in perceived social norms supporting gay marriage after > the ruling but no change in personal attitudes. This pattern was replicated > in a separate between-subjects data set.

</comment><comment><USER5> Makes sense. People respect the authority of the law/government to varying degrees. Of course their opinion is swayed when the government officially sanctions something. People don't have strong, let alone informed opinions about tons of things so legality is a signaling mechanism for good/bad.

<comment><USER6> I agree. Many people (perhaps those without religion or some other mechanism that provides an external moral code) just adapt the law as their moral code: if it's legal, it's moral; if it's illegal, it's immoral.

Of course, this fact is always obfuscated when talking about drug legalization because it is harmful to the legalization effort to suggest that legalizing a drug will lead to increased usage/acceptance of said drug (usually the opposite claim is made - that legalizing the drug will _reduce_ usage)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> So, my two reactions: 1) duh 2) but, proving cause vs. effect seems tricky here, since which states legalized was in no way assigned randomly. An accelerating decline in antigay bias would be exactly what we should expect to happen around the time the legislature or courts see which way the wind is blowing, and legalize gay marriage. Not that I disbelieve the conclusion, but this doesn't seem like it would be very convincing evidence if I weren't already convinced.

<comment><USER8> This title is misleading considering their findings. Only in states that were already moving towards legalization and reduced bias did you see a sharper reduction after federal legalization. States that weren't moving towards legalization only dug in their heels and had increased bias after federal legalization. Looks like another case of the government trying to speak for everyone with a one-size-fits-all solution and only serving to polarize people further.

"Although states passing legislation experienced a greater decrease in bias following legislation, states that never passed legislation demonstrated increased antigay bias following federal legalization."

<comment><USER9> The government (the Supreme Court in this case) wasn't speaking for everyone, they were merely protecting the rights of a certain segment of the population. It's an important distinction to make. There was no constitutional basis for denying same-sex marriage.

<comment><USER7> True that, but that can be completely true, and yet it can be also true that having it imposed by the courts leads to a backlash, and an increase in anti- gay bias.

It is sort of like how people never like it when their candidate in an election loses, but if the courts intervene and disqualify their candidate, their resentment of the winner is greater. Regardless of whether the courts were right or not, the fact that a non-electorate authority made the decision, increases the dissatisfaction with the outcome.

<comment><USER9> Good point, I guess the comment to which I responded could be read two different ways also.

No one likes to be forced to do anything, and any perception of unfairness could easily elicit a stronger response of resentment or resistance.

I personally think when it comes to protecting rights it may be warranted, but I definitely see how the situation you explained could also be true. It's a tough thing to balance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Normalization was always the concern for both those for and against same sex marriage. It was never about the benefits or the sanctity, not really.

<comment><USER11> Sure, gays who got thrown out into the street after their lifelong partner died and the parents inherited the house weren't bothered by that in the least. Keeping the house was never one of their goals.

(Does this need a sarcasm tag? Or can people figure that out on their own?)

<comment><USER10> The problem you mentioned did not require marriage per se, it just made it easier. Inheritance and visitation and all the legal stuff could have been conferred by domestic partnership. Marriage, in this case, was somewhat besides the point.

Normalization has a much greater impact than property rights.

<comment><USER11> Many years ago, I read an interesting article about an idealistic young hetero couple cohabiting. They chose to have a baby together.

The guy began saying "My wife and I just had a baby" so people would actually congratulate him. When he said "My girlfriend just had a baby" people were all "Oh, sorry, dude. That sucks."

Trying to arrange health coverage, wills and a zillion other things involved jumping through so many hoops they were considering getting married because a lot of those things would be automatic or vastly easier if they were married.

Normalization isn't insignificant. Neither are the 169 rights a gay college professor stated in one of my classes were conferred by marriage.

<comment><USER10> >Neither are the 169 rights a gay college professor stated in one of my classes were conferred by marriage.

None of those rights have meaning without normalization. I think of this, sometimes, when I consider moving out of California. My husband was in the hospital once. I wasn't sure he was conscious or not; I had to tell the receptionist who I was to find out what room he was in. He didn't think twice, I was able to proceed without incident. Would the same have happened if I lived in rural Texas? Sure, marriage is legal everywhere for us. The law is on our side. But the law doesn't mean anything if the people standing between you and your husband don't respect it.

<comment><USER11> You need normalization to exercise those rights as effectively as possible. Certainly, prejudice can mean there is a difference between theoretical de juris outcomes and de facto actual outcomes.

But normalization without those rights still leaves you unable to do a lot of things. It leaves you with "You can't visit your husband in the hospital because policy says _family only_ and the law says you aren't family, even though no one here is a homophobe. We still can't let you through because we can get fired for breaking the rules."

You need both things to enjoy a high quality of life. I don't know why you are arguing otherwise.

Rights without social cooperation certainly hampers your ability to exercise those rights, but social cooperation without rights is still a big problem.

I could see someone taking the position that normalization implies having the same rights as a baseline starting point. But I cannot see arguing that normalization is more important than legal rights and legal rights were never the point.

I will add the article in question indicates legalizing it is helping to normalize it. Rights are not some insignificant detail, not by any stretch of the imagination.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Baumeister had a pretty interesting idea on where antigay bias comes from: [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016748701...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016748701630277X)

> Men compete to amass material resources, with the goal of getting a good sex > partner.

> Men compete in groups to amass resources, so men see other men not just as > sexual rivals but also as coalition partners.

> Male homophobia is often not about sex but rather invokes the stereotype > that a homosexual man will not be an effective coalition partner.

</comment><comment><USER13> So the fact that weed is illegal means there could be an anti-smoker bias? One based purely on the law and not any other reason? Probably. I still say legalizing pot smokers should be the next civil right.

<comment><USER14> Certainly, it would remove a lot of the stigma of pot as contraband and pot smokers as criminals. Fine, upstanding citizens don't want to be associated with criminals, right?

<comment><USER13> True. Like in Pineapple Express when he doesn't like his drug dealer thinking they are friends.

<comment><USER5> Regardless of the type of business doing business with friends is generally ill advised and often leads to hard feelings and broken friendships.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Proving a compelling causal relationship between the first and the second of those factors is a _very_ tall order, IMHO.

</comment><comment><USER16> I can't read the article b/c of paywall, but I do wonder how they controlled for legislation vs. the effects of media, subsequent social pressure and acclimation, the higher likelihood of legislation being passed in a state already favorably disposed toward SSM, etc. Also, what is the definition of "anti-gay bias"? My guess is that any critical attitude would be classified as such which is an ideological tactic i.e. normalization through the repeated conflation of opposition with bias or even hatred. In any case, the idea that the government can play a role in normalizing certain behaviors and attitudes is not surprising. With history as my witness, all kinds of things, good and bad, have been normalized partly by government backing.

In any case, whether SSM makes sense or should be recognized is not a matter of purported benefits, but a matter of principle. It doesn't take much imagination to recall evil deeds that may result in some desired effect. What matters is whether SSM should _in itself_ be recognized. Note the use of the word recognition. Marriage is not a manufactured social construct (pace postmodern), but a natural institution that governments only have the freedom to recognize. Neither societies nor governments can arbitrarily manufacture institutions. They can _pretend_ to do so, just as they can pass immoral "laws", but neither such ersatz laws nor such ersatz institutions have any legitimacy and thus may and must be freely rejected by citizens (coercion has forced citizens to simulate assent and submission to such false laws and institutions, of course).</comment>