I think this is ready for GitHub lovers - <AUTHOR> http://liuwenchao.github.io/github-explorer

<comment><USER2> I just keep getting 'Path error or limit API' error</comment>


Why We Created the Yelp Elite Squad - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@nishrocks/why-we-created-the-yelp-elite-squad-b8fa7dd2bead#.sv0bi9k4i <comment><USER2> Was it just me, or is the tone of this article really off-putting? It seems like the author is praising how Yelp did everything right and all their past decisions are Just Great. There's no mention of any missteps the company made. The reality is that startups make mistakes, and Yelp is not an exception. It's like the author is telling a rosy story of the company past and omitting all the bad parts.

Jeremy Stoppelman, the co-founder of Yelp, has a much more modest story of why they started Yelp Elite.

"[W]e had at the time one marketing person who was like, "Maybe we should meet some of our users that are addicted Yelpers now. . . . They're in San Francisco; we're in San Francisco, it can't be that hard to meet up." And I thought, "That's a great idea, let's look these people in the eye." . . . We had this first meeting; it was this really social bunch that came out and met up with us for drinks, and we're like, "Wow, this is really interesting." [The meetings] sort of spun out of that. We did our major event [at] Armani Café. It was really successful. People had a great time. . . . So it just seemed like, "Hey this really fits and makes a ton of sense, so let's just keep doing it." And so we kept doing it, and it got bigger and bigger and now [we're] a little notorious for it."

(Quote sourced from the 2011 HBS case study on Yelp)

<comment><USER3> Was strangely out of kilter to me as well, for the reasons you mention.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is this anything other than a massive puff piece/Yelp marketing material? I could only read about how amazing and revolutionary and game-changing Yelp was (and just how gosh-darn cool this brazen squad of elite tastemakers is [yes, we are referring to Yelp reviewers here]) so many times before giving up on finding an interesting insight.

From what I gather, they needed people to participate (because this is a _social_ website, not just 1s and 0s, you see), so they created a community- based incentive program. Groundbreaking.

<comment><USER5> I think it is written by a former Yelper. That would explain the tone of writing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> wait, did Yelp just call me a knuckle-dragger?

<comment><USER7> I would imagine that is why the nice graphic[1] has a "Confidential: For Your Eyes Only" red stamp on it. Well, when you are part of a "New Urban Tribe"[2], I guess you should feel superior to everyone else.

1) [https://cdn- images-1.medium.com/max/1200/1*XMPIYnig9xlHII4bh...](https://cdn- images-1.medium.com/max/1200/1*XMPIYnig9xlHII4bhM2q4w.jpeg)

2) "The brazen quality of this new urban tribe spoke to the power users who contributed weekly, if not daily and hourly, to the site." from the article

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> No word on their elite extortion squad:

[http://kitchenette.jezebel.com/yelp-downgrades- restaurants-r...](http://kitchenette.jezebel.com/yelp-downgrades-restaurants- rating-after-it-declines-to-1730885786)

> Instead, they've declared that legally, Yelp is entirely allowed to extort > restaurants. In case you've forgotten, almost exactly a year ago, the Ninth > Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled that Yelp was well within > its rights to extort restaurants. As above, Yelp desperately and frantically > claims they don't actually do this because to admit to what they're widely > accused of would be to pull back the curtain on the shell game that many, > many restaurant owners believe is Yelp's core business model. The first part > of the above statement is thus simple PR sleight of hand; the lawsuits have > been dismissed, but not because they're not true—because legally, Yelp is > perfectly free to engage in whatever extortionist practices it feels like.

<comment><USER9> Actually, the ruling stated that there was no evidence of Yelp behaving the way they were accused of. It went on to say that, even if they were, it would at worst constitute hard bargaining and not extortion.

I worked at Yelp for two years as a software engineer. I have seen everything there is to see: the code, the databases, etc. There is no extortion table. There is no extortion code. Businesses like to make this claim because it generates sympathy and attention. It's just not true.

<comment><USER10> Why would any of it show up in the code? As I recall, what Yelp is accused of is making fake bad reviews that go away if you give them money. That could easily be a manual process done by sales people.

<comment><USER9> The sales people don't have access to the content moderation systems. As far as it showing up in code, I was just making the point that there is no file containing something like

      if business_has_paid_extortion_money:
        show_good_reviews()
      else:
        show_bad_reviews()

... which is how people seem to think it works.

There is also no code to allow manual review ordering. They are sorted according by an algorithm with a variety of inputs including who you are friends with, who has Elite status, etc.

<comment><USER10> I've never seen anyone say they think it's automated. As for sales people not having access, who does, and how do you know they don't abuse it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Somebody saw that South Park episode on them.</comment>


Searching for Beta testers and people to review our startup product - <AUTHOR> http://www.updatenode.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Even just sharing it would help us. Thanks!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> no one?</comment>


No, your FOIA request cannot wait 'until this emergency is over' - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/12/opinion/coronavirus-freedom-of-information.html <comment><USER2> Sure it can.

Journalists have a very bizarre understanding of how FOIA requests work. It's not like some government worker can just pull files from a computer server while they're at home. It frequently involves digging into boxes (actual, physical boxes) of documents in the office, interacting with other employees in other departments covered by the request, and a fair amount of review in closed quarters on government facilities since many of the documents can't be removed from the office until they're reviewed.

And the time spent responding to an FOIA request is time _not spent_ doing their normal job (except for the rare agencies which have the budget to have a dedicated FOIA responder).

<comment><USER3> This is actually recognized in the article itself (but who has time to read that when you can reply to just the headline and perhaps the first few paragraphs, right?)

And FOIA about the COVID-19 response are unlikely to require digging in to some archive, and are of limited use when fulfilled after it's actually over. This is what the mentioned suit is about.</comment></comment>


Little ANTs: researchers build the world's tiniest engine - <AUTHOR> http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/little-ants-researchers-build-the-worlds-tiniest-engine <comment><USER2> There's an even smaller engine: the journal Science published a paper a couple weeks ago [1] about a single-atom heat engine. It uses a laser-cooling beam for the cold reservoir and electric field noise for the hot reservoir, and powers an oscillator.

[1] [http://science.sciencemag.org/content/352/6283/325](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/352/6283/325)

<comment><USER3> I don't think that qualifies as an engine or even tiny it needs both the ion trap and whatever's generating the laser is not that small. Sort of like building a tiny lava lamp while ignoring the lamp.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Feynman would have loved to see this. Ref: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_McLellan_(nanotechnolo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_McLellan_\(nanotechnology\))

Feynman was quoted as saying he was disappointed with the winning motor as he had hoped it would spur new fabrication methods, for which this motor certainly qualifies!

</comment><comment><USER5> Off topic, but when I read about nano engines, mitochondria come to my mind. A nano power generator that has been working millions of years to power humanity. This video[1] is a wonderful visual explanation.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XI8m6o0gXDY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XI8m6o0gXDY)

</comment><comment><USER6> More of a motor. Doesn't generate its own power, but does have the capacity to provide motive power.

<comment><USER7> I don't believe there is much of a distinction between the two. Engines and motors both convert energy to mechanical energy. I don't see this as any different from supplying fuel to a car engine.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is your read:saved ratio?  - <AUTHOR>

I am always curious to know more about information overload [oxymoronic]. Of the articles you save in Instapaper, Readability, Read Later, starred etc...What is your read:saved ratio. I estimate mine to be 1:2 (50%). <comment><USER2> 1:0

<comment><AUTHOR> So, u never save for later?</comment></comment>


Riot. Break through - <AUTHOR> https://riot.im/ <comment><USER2> Riot is a pretty well known service around here, I don't think the home page needs to be a submission.</comment>


Lessons from 10 Years of Amazon Web Services - <AUTHOR> http://www.allthingsdistributed.com/2016/03/10-lessons-from-10-years-of-aws.html <comment><AUTHOR> James Hamilton listed some of the highlights over the last decade at his blog - [http://perspectives.mvdirona.com/2016/03/a-decade-of- innovat...](http://perspectives.mvdirona.com/2016/03/a-decade-of-innovation/)

<comment><USER2> James has put out a lot of great material. He's given a talk series and wrote a conference paper called "On Designing and Deploying Internet-Scale Services" which is a trove of valuable design insights:

[https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/lisa07/tech/full_papers/...](https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/lisa07/tech/full_papers/hamilton/hamilton_html/) (somewhat condensed)

Slides from a talk: [http://mvdirona.com/jrh/talksAndPapers/JamesRH_AmazonDev.pdf](http://mvdirona.com/jrh/talksAndPapers/JamesRH_AmazonDev.pdf)

He writes some of the more practical and useful advice I've seen about how to run a successful business based on high-scale distributed systems.

One of his mnemonics that's stuck with me is the "Four Rs" of recovery- oriented computing: Restart, Reboot, Reimage, Replace (slide 6 in PDF). A human shouldn't be engaged to troubleshoot a problem until the platform has first tried in successing to restart the software, reboot the OS, re-image the machine, and finally replace the hardware entirely. After these auto-recovery steps have failed, only then is it time to engage a human. He describes the connection between these techniques and significantly lower operations costs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> "Primitives not frameworks"

This is why Amazon beat Google in the "as a Service" space. Google provided a framework with AppEngine, but customers wanted the flexibility of the primitives offered by AWS.

<comment><USER4> I think that Amazon being first in 2005/2006 helped a lot, too. Google now provides "primitives" through GCE. I think Google realizes that the future is GCE not GAE.

<comment><USER5> But Amazon wasn't the first. The Sun Grid was first (launched in March 2006).

<comment><USER4> Sun Grid was more about batch processing across many machines, rather than individual VMs, wasn't it?

Plenty of people in the web hosting industry offered competitive x86 linux instances or dedicated servers, way prior to 2006.

I think AMZN deserves credit for delivering a price compelling option that delivered (1) elasticity (per hour billing) and (2) automation (API, available in minutes), among other things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> You have to give full credit to AWS for inventing previously unknown pricing models. In some cases, it was actually the pricing model that created new use cases. Glacier and S3 comes to mind.

<comment><USER7> That's a very important observation. When I describe AWS to audiences I always make clear that it is a combination of a technology and a business model.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "A good litmus test has been that if you need to SSH into a server or an instance, you still have more to automate."

Amen. We couldn't agree more: [https://boxfuse.com/blog/no- ssh](https://boxfuse.com/blog/no-ssh)

<comment><USER9> So, with No SSH - how do you debug that one-off problem that is only on machine abc12? I'm not talking about mutating, I'm talking about attaching gdb to the process while it's handling requests. I'm talking about collecting CPU profiling information from production. Stuff like that.

<comment><USER10> You could probably have a central logging service like graylog or logstash that automatically collects that information and just sort through the logs that way.

<comment><USER11> What if that 1 server ran out of file handles and can no longer log to anywhere?

<comment><USER10> Launch a copy of that server with a new image (which I would hope is under a load balancer), update the sysctl.conf file template with a larger fs.file-max limit in whatever config management system you use for that instance, resume logging under freshly cloned instance.

<comment><USER12> How would you know to do that at all? The proposed issue is that the file handles are exhausted. Thus logging doesn't actually work, and thus you don't know anything about the problem except 'it's not working'. Your solution presupposed that you have figured out the issue, but the question is how do you find out about the problem at all. Without SSH/debugger/whatever, what is the process to inspect the system to find the problem?

<comment><USER13> After dealing with different enterprise systems in AWS for a few years now, I'd say that this is what AWS ELB feature to remove a system out of an ASG as part of its lifecycle exists for. If you aren't using similar horizontal scaling strategies, you have a disaster waiting to happen basically and basically deserve an outage you can't diagnose / RCA well. If you can't ssh in afterwards that means your provisioning for automation / instrumentation and you should stay be able to isolate attention to that part of an instance's lifecycle.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Java directly on Xen - <AUTHOR> http://research.sun.com/projects/dashboard.php?id=185

<comment><USER2> As JVM gets closer to being the de-facto VM for running any language (Jython, jRuby, Scala, Java, etc), the possibility of higher performance by running the VM "closer to metal" is quite exciting. I commend Sun on pushing JVM beyond just Java.

<comment><USER3> We already have a bare metal VM though. It's called X86.

Call me a luddite but I have never seen the point of Java and the JVM at all.

<comment><USER4> I can think of two main benefits you can get from a VM that you can't get from bare metal:

1) (and this is also true for most if not all dynamic languages) that you can distribute your app to anyone on any machine and have it run. This does limit your access to the full capabilities if the hardware, but write once run anywhere was pretty close to being true (at least at the JVM level).

2) you can perform optimizations at runtime that you may not have known about at compile time.

As I see it, those are the main theoretical benefits.

<comment><USER5> Theres no reason you cannot get #2 in hardware.. now that'd be an interesting direction for processor manufacturers to go - architectures and instruction sets designed like that of a VM, with built in garbage collection and runtime optimisation and dynamic dispatch features.

As for #1, _write once run anywhere_ still doesn't seem to be quite there, imho.

<comment><USER2> I thought the outcome of CISC vs RISC battle has shown that best performance comes from simpler/faster CPUs with smarter software, not vice versa.

<comment><USER5> RISC core and microcoded CISC instructions then?

Still, what I meant was that the processor contains logic for some virtual machine style operations, eg keeping track of objects on the heap on-chip (or in a dedicated segment of ram/virtual address space) and having a hardware garbage collector. The main instruction set would still be RISC, but it would contain a small number of CISC instructions for allocating memory which the garbage collector then manages.

As for dynamic dispatch, I guess thats not really needed, since it can be constructed from simpler instructions, but having a Python-style method dictionary lookup for member functions be performed in hardware could be interesting.

Finally, if a processor had reflection and introspection features.. eg data is annotated in memory so that the structure and state of a program can be determined melodramatically at runtime (and modified).

Actually, while writing this, I realise that this probably doesn't really make much sense... :-/

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What I like most about this idea is that system administration via init scripts, et al, can just go away -- presumably one will have APIs for interacting with the available hardware, necessary 'OS' services, etc.

It'd make automated deployment of systems even more manageable -- turtles all the way down.

<comment><USER7> I'm all for this JVM re-implementation project, but the sysadmin aspect is just going to be pushed one level up the the Xen image host.

You'll need some mechanism to re-deploy major updates that cannot be accomplished via custom mechanisms, and that's most likely to still be

      ssh to xen master
      upload new xen image
      adjust xen master rc scripts to load new image on startup

Hardly turtles-all-the-way down

<comment><USER6> _You'll need some mechanism to re-deploy major updates that cannot be accomplished via custom mechanisms, and that's most likely to still be ..._

Why wouldn't the virtual machine bootstrap itself from network loaded code -- then it wouldn't be necessary to update the root Xen image.

Why couldn't I write a network service (also on the VM) that runs on other Xen instances and serves up the netboot code?

Why would updating the root VM require SSH? Couldn't I have a nice web management UI that I can just upload a new bootstrap JVM image to (on the rare occasions that I need to?). Perhaps systems could directly self-update the root Xen image on reboot?

I don't know why I'd have turtles-all-the-way down and then require some ugly update system that involves editing RC scripts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> BEA LiquidVM has been doing this for several years. Don't know what happened to it after Oracle acquired BEA...

</comment><comment><USER9> Just add Clojure and we're back to the future of Lisp machines.

<comment><USER10> Nope.

Unless your processor runs Lisp directly from microcode ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> pretty neat. but what happens to OS level abstractions like the file system, sockets, ect?

<comment><USER12> The article says that the JVM sits on top of a micro kernel, so I would assume that that micro kernel would provide a thin layer of abstraction for hardware and IO support such as file-systems. Its an interesting concept if you couple it with something like EC2 where you could throw out a bunch of Java VMs to do massive parallel processing of a data-set.

<comment><USER13> There are also many Java programs that do not use files or sockets; they use "the database", "the classloader", "the configuration class", etc.. With the details abstracted away, this JVM can replace those classes with custom implementations that have the same interface but are implemented without any OS support.

Note: I haven't watched the video or read the source code yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is it simillar concept as JNode ( <http://www.jnode.org> )?

<comment><USER4> It actually borrowed some code from jnode. At least it grabbed a driver for the ext2 filesystem. I'm not sure what else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> What is the last kernel which supports Xen dom0?

And the slogan is: We put outdated buzzowords together!</comment>


New Snapdragon 835 tests show SoC doesn't beat the 821 in every scenario - <AUTHOR> https://www.extremetech.com/mobile/246415-new-snapdragon-835-tests-qualcomm-soc-820-821 <comment><USER2> Per MHz integer performance of Apple A10 Fusion is twice that of Kryo 280 (snapdragon 835) and more thanks twice that of Snapdragon 821 I expect that lead only to go up with Apple A11.</comment>


Ghosts of White People Past: Witnessing White Flight from an Asian Ethnoburb - <AUTHOR> https://psmag.com/ghosts-of-white-people-past-witnessing-white-flight-from-an-asian-ethnoburb-b550ba986cdb#.6s9y5dupa <comment><USER2> I've witnessed this first hand.

A lot of people complain that Asian parents push for curriculum choices that don't create "well rounded people".

It's a load of crap, IMO. Asian parents push their kids so hard because they've actually experienced true poverty and want, and came to America to give their children a better life. They sure as heck will push their children as hard as they're capable of to make sure their children will never experience that level of want in their lives.

<comment><USER3> Pushing kids in academics doesn't create "well-rounded people" regardless of the reason for that pushing; you're not refuting the point.

Secondly, not all East Asians who come to America are poor. Those who are not poor and not from poor countries at all (South Korea, Japan, and affluent areas of China and other countries) also push their kids to succeed in school. Some Asian parents are loaded with money and simply want their kids to be educated in an English-speaking environment. Why? So with their excellent, native-like English, the kids can go to any damn university in the world, work anywhere easily and also work globally in business.

This is a plain old clash of values. Good old Anti-intellectual America versus education-valuing foreigners.

The same thing would happen if a bunch of white Europeans took over a community; the flight just wouldn't be recognizable from a distance by color.

"My kid is reasonably good at math but can't compete with these European kids; I'm moving across the freeway. They have a great athletic program there; he can get a traditional all-American football scholarship."

<comment><USER2> Rather, "well-rounded people" is an ill defined term that can be twisted to justify almost any educational choice.

Why is being a well-rounded person a good thing? We live in an age of specialization.</comment></comment></comment>


WSJ Investigative Journalist John Carreyrou on Theranos - <AUTHOR> https://www.recode.net/2018/6/3/17422498/wsj-investigative-journalist-john-carreyrou-theranos-blood-health-care-recode-decode <comment><USER2> For several years I was suspicious about this company and the barrage of glowing reports the media was publishing. It all just felt way too "fishy" to me.</comment>


How to get a Personal Assistant for free - <AUTHOR> http://ryanleecarson.tumblr.com/post/23675326586/how-to-get-a-personal-assistant-for-free

<comment><USER2> I use <http://doodle.com/> for appointments (as well as it's original purpose of polling a group for the best time for an event). For appointment slots, set the options: "Participant can only choose one option" and "Limit the number of participants per option" to one. No one ever needs to log in to anything unless they want to (for setup or responses). It also has fancy options for linking with calendars, but I've never used those.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've switched to <http://tungle.me> . It's a lot better, and it's free.

The appointment slots feature was just not solid enough - lots of weird bugs, the time zones sometimes got screwed up, and lots of double-booking.

<comment><USER4> They've been acquired by RIM so who knows if the service will stay alive or not...

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> A great idea with a link bait of a headline. Either way, thanks for the tip!

<comment><AUTHOR> lol. It's true though - I was about to hire a PA until I figured this out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This was extremely timely. I just got off a call where I was struggling how our team could communicate appointment availability with a third party. This is a great solution and you don't have to share personal/sensitive calendar information with others.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm surprised it takes more than 1 email each to pick a time.

Offer: Let's have a call. I'll suggest 2pm Tue. If that doesn't work, please let me know any time between 1pm-6pm Tue or 9am-11am Wed.

Response: 9am Wed.

I do think the gmail calendar approach is neater; the only downside being it requires the other party to use google calendar already.

<comment><USER2> It regularly takes more than one email when I try that strategy. People don't always reply quickly. I either can't keep all the times that I offered open, or end up offering people very restrictive time ranges that they can't do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Of course I learn about this great tip a week after I converted all my calendars over to iCloud. Does anyone know of a comparable feature in iCloud calendars?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm afraid not, sorry. I've always steered clear of Apple's infrastructure offerings as they don't play well with Google (which is bad as our entire IT infrastructure is built on Google Apps)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> These are trez useful aren't then. I've been using them to organise client office hours for a while.

</comment><comment><USER10> Hidden gem

<comment><AUTHOR> I know - it's amazing huh? I can't believe how useful this has been for me.</comment></comment>


ChinaGeeks on Google leaving China - <AUTHOR> http://sun-zoo.com/chinageeks/2010/03/25/dear-new-york-times-wtf/

<comment><AUTHOR> I find ChinaGeeks to be one of the best locations to receive a balanced and informed Western viewpoint on China, and I thought other HN users might find it worthwhile (considering the amount of comments that China-related articles get on here). If you're interested in China, browsing through their archive is worthwhile; they have some great articles on the Internet culture there.

</comment><comment><USER2> This piece was heavy on opinion, but light on research. Contrary to the claims of the author, the business environment did change between 2006 and when Google decided to leave. Brin's recent interview covered that exact topic.

Furthermore, this piece missed the point that while Google did block banned content, it's approach to doing so was very different from that of Baidu. Google included notices that results were removed and links briefly explaining why.

> _The rest of the article devolves into an even more ridiculous assertion: > that Google is somehow innately better at innovating than domestic > companies, and thus, the internet market will stagnate as domestic companies > sit around copying each other's old technologies rather than moving forward. > Google does have a history of innovation, of course, but are Chinese > companies really fundamentally incapable of this? I reject that notion as > stupid — and probably also a bit racist — but I suppose we'll see for sure > in the long run._

That idea would be stupid, but it's a strawman. The NYT piece didn't make any claims or speculation whatsoever on "inherent" or "fundamental" abilities. What the author _may_ have been getting at was how strongly economic growth is related to openness, particularly in regards to technology. At the end of the industrial revolution, China and India represented about 40% of the global economy, far more than today. Many non-racist people would argue that the reason Japan and the west did so well last century was the freedom and incentive to innovate. See this speech by former Mexico Coordinator General of Economic Policy: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KdOPY1Iqiw#t=18m40s>

Since I regularly read Chinese language media myself, I don't have a strong interest in sites by foreigners about Chinese current events. However, there is one site that has always impressed me-- Danwei.org.</comment>


Ask HN: What are the real, non-hyped consequences of losing privacy/tracking? - <AUTHOR> The topic of privacy and tracking resonates with many here on HN, and is discussed frequently.
However it seems to me that comments are often an expression of sentiment or principle (e.g "I don't like it that G/FB know everything about me" / "If it's free you are the product" / "Those who give up liberty for security deserve neither" etc vs. "I don't care because I have nothing to hide").
I think it'd be helpful to consider what are actual (or potential) real implications of having your personal data online and in the hands of big companies/government. This can help show the real picture and judge for one's self if the pros outweigh the cons.
A few obvious ones are: - If you do/buy/search for illegal things, the police can find you. - In a totalitarian regime, if you express opposing thoughts, the government can find you. - You will be shown extremely targeted ads / personalized recommendations.
What are some specific, non-principle concerns we should have (today or down the slippery slope) regarding privacy? <comment><USER2> If you have ubiquitous records of your behavior then, in the event of adversarial legal process, you will routinely be compelled to produce a very large subsection of those records, and you will find that a poorly considered moment N years ago will play very poorly in a courtroom when divorced from every other moment in the last N years.

This isn't a crazy dystopian future; this is the routine practice of law in US corporations. If you start a company, you will be advised to train your employees on how to avoid causing $500k judgments while operating under the assumption of ubiquitous post-hoc surveillance of all written communications.

Of note: utterances which would not have caused your lawyer to say "I recommend against you saying that in writing" when they were originally committed to a spinning platter may not be zero-risk in e.g. five years.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is one of those concerns: [http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/programs/hack/how-team-of- pre-...](http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/programs/hack/how-team-of-pre-teens- found-whisteblower-using-metadata/8113668)

I think Snowden put it best: "Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say." \- even if you have nothing to say, you no longer get to listen to those who would have otherwise been able to speak.

Not only does surveillance increase the risks to you if you're a whistleblower, it also deprives you of all the information potential whistleblowers would have provided, before the increased risk of getting caught convinced them to stay silent.

And you may have "nothing to hide" (untrue for >90% of the population, but lets go with it), but many people doing good work, that you will benefit from, will be severely hampered by surveillance. People such as investigative reporters, whistleblowers, various activist lawyers investigating e.g. employee/prisoner mistreatment or environmental contamination by negligent companies, etc.

</comment><comment><USER4> There are totally legal things you can buy which, if revealed publically, can cause someone massive negative harm. Which means a significant percentage of people will be willing to pay to keep them a secret. Any site which _stores_ these details is now open to attack, since their database is worth money.

Some specific examples:

* Someone who is publicly seen as an evangelical Christian buying Richard Dawkins books. * A closeted gay person buying any pro-LGBT book/film. * A woman buying sex toys. * An elementary school teacher who buys pornography. * Almost absolutely medical thing. (Think of a blackmail opportunities from the calendar of a therapist or their notes).

 _If_ websites/shops _don 't_ store this data, then their database is worth much less.

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't think the fact how knowledge of the privacy and tracking changes individual behavior is brought up enough.

With the knowledge that we are constantly watched I choose my words on and offline more carefully. I try to keep some more radical opinions to myself despite them being neither illegal nor worth much attention anyways due to the fear that they might be either now or some day interpreted as opinions worth persecution. This in turn eventually leads to constantly living in fear of voicing your opinions truthfully and without filtering and gives way to society where thought policing is a reality and democracy cannot function in reality.</comment>


Why Microsoft's reorganization is a bad idea - <AUTHOR> http://stratechery.com/2013/why-microsofts-reorganization-is-a-bad-idea

<comment><AUTHOR> I liked the cited success story: DuPont. I was very tempted to put that in the submission title.

A startup at some point will want to diversify, split into several divisions/offices. The article makes some good points.

</comment><comment><USER2> Yet another reason that Balmer needs to go.

I guess they really are determined to follow in IBM's footsteps. I hope there is a Lou Gerstner-equivalent waiting in the wings. I depend a lot on their platform.

<comment><USER3> [http://hal2020.com/2013/07/12/doing-the-successor- speculatio...](http://hal2020.com/2013/07/12/doing-the-successor-speculation- shuffle/)</comment></comment>


Glue traps are cruel, and retailers should be banned from selling them - <AUTHOR> https://www.cbc.ca/news/opinion/glue-traps-1.5149294 <comment><USER2> I'm a meat eater with a clear conscience and I don't count myself as an animal lover, but, man, those traps are horrible.

Last summer, someone placed one in the house I was staying. We had a plumber over to fix the kitchen sink and as he was working on it, a little country mouse poked its head out of a hole on the side. The lady of the house freaked out and the plumber advised her to get a couple of "glues" to trap it. Someone went and fetched some and the plumber laid them out. The morning after the lady of the house left for work in a hurry and didn't check the traps so I was the first to look and see if the mouse was caught.

Oh, it was caught alright. The moment I opened the cupboard under the sink, it literally shrieked. A tiny little shriek, like someone pretending to be a baby mouse. It was tiny, definitely not an adult. It had soiled itself overnight, I guess when it realised it was stuck and couldn't move and panicked. It struggled to move away as I reached for the trap but of course it couldn't.

So OK, I put on a pair of tough gardening gloves and pulled it unstuck and cleaned it up very carefully with a bit of cotton and q-tips and gasoline and sent it off in the woods behind the house opposite from where the cats stay. It was totally stoned by the gasoline and it most likely got eaten by a snake or a bird, but at least it wasn't stuck.

These things are just cruel and malicious. They cause unnecessary suffering. I mean, kill the poor things if they're such a pest. Just don't torture them. They absolutely should be made illegal.

<comment><USER2> And I don't think rat poison is any better. Another time I was outside my work building and I saw a mouse just standing there in the middle of the driveway. I walked right up to it and it didn't run. I squatted down next to it and I saw it was heaving and shivering, like it was trying to regurgitate something. All the time I sat there and watched it, it didn't once seemed to acknowledge me.

Sometimes they only eat a bit of the poison and then they die even more slowly and painfully. That just sucks. There must be a better way to kill them off, than to subject them to this kind of cruelty.

<comment><USER3> We could use gene drive to eliminate all of them without causing physical pain to any particular one. Maybe not having children will cause psychological pain, but many people seem to chose that on their own, so maybe that's not very bad</s>

<comment><USER2> What is it with the sarcastic comments in this thread? At this point I have trouble following the humour.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Indeed, humane methods of rodent control are readily available. Retailers > included in the activists' lawsuit, including Walmart and Canadian Tire, > sell humane live traps (for as low as $19.99 on Walmart.ca at time of > writing). Many pest control companies also offer humane solutions.

I have had mice get in my house a few times.

I hate glue traps. I had seen them used at a restaurant I used to work at, and it is pretty awful. They get stuck and panic and nearly (sometimes actually) rip themselves apart trying to escape.

But they're the only things I've seen that work. Because of what I saw with glue traps, I tried all sorts of "instant kill" traps. Some of them worked at first, but the mice quickly learned how to get the bait without setting off the trap, or they learned to set off the trap without getting caught. (No idea how - in some of these I'd have thought it'd be impossible.)

So I got some glue traps. They worked and they worked fast, and they got them all, both times this happened. You usually hear when they get caught, so I would get the trap, drown them, and dispose of it. It's pretty awful, but I'm sorry, I can't live with mice in my house.

My only real alternative is to get a cat, and trust me, having grown up with cats that ate mice and birds, they're not much more merciful.

> Winnipeg veterinarian Dr. Jonas Watson agrees with the group's position, > pointing out that glue traps are also entirely indiscriminate, often > trapping other animals as well.

This is a feature, not a bug. These traps are almost always placed inside, and whatever else is getting trapped is also a pest.

<comment><USER5> >I tried all sorts of "instant kill" traps

I have relatives living in the country. They get a lot of mice and went through a lot of these factory produced traps; nothing worked. Then they bought a couple of pretty simple traps made by local school kids in shop class. I believe the head count of each trap is now in the hundreds.

It's a pretty simple contraption: a wood brick with a burrow in it. You put a piece of food in the end of the hole, then tighten a steel spring and tie it down with a piece of thread, which goes through the trap and covers the hole, so that a rodent has to chew through the thread to get to that food. The spring pulls on a copper wire noose; you know the rest.

Maybe you could find (or make) something like that?

<comment><USER6> Grew up in the country (and live there now) and my dad used to do this in the garage, which isn't humane at all, but very effective:

Take a 2 litre pop bottle, remove the cap, put some food with a little poison inside. Make a little ramp for the mouse to get in. The mouse can go in, but it's too slippery for them to get out, they can't get traction on the plastic. They die inside the bottle, but can't spread the poison around to cats or other predators that might eat them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Who leaves a mouse on a glue trap until it dies? That's messed up! I can hear when a mouse is on those things and at that point I carry the frightened mouse outside, pour a cap full of vegetable oil around it's feet and it frees itself, running off into the yard, then the trap goes in the trash. Heinously cruel? Only if you're a lazy shit.

<comment><USER8> Oh my god I wish I had known you could do that, [warning, don't read if you don't want to hear a horrible story about a mouse] I put down a glue trap to get what I thought were cockroaches but came to find a mouse stuck in it. Horrified, I tried to get it loose with a stick, but the glue was so strong I accidentally broke its legs, the poor thing kept trying to pull them free... I immediately removed all the glue traps and got live catch traps, and caught something like 6 mice before I gave in and notified the landlord. They used poison, then sealed up possible entry points. I wish there was some way to tell the mice it's not safe to be in people's homes, I don't want them to suffer

<comment><USER9> A landlord brought glue traps once upon complaints of a rat.

After the rat was caught, I had read about how they slowly suffocate over days, often chewing off their own limbs in a largely futile attempt to escape.

I ended up bludgeoning the rat. I still remember the high pitched scream it made upon receiving the first blow. It only lasted about a minute but it was a pretty fucked up experience, and that was going the merciful route.

<comment><USER10> >upon receiving the first blow?

How many times did you hit?

<comment><USER9> A lot of times. It was dead pretty quickly but I went a bit overboard just to be sure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Nice to see some sane, compassionate comments here to balance out the psychopaths who can't even empathize with a mouse.

Weird how people always seem to brag about how little empathy they have for animals whether it's a submission about glue traps or Beyond Meat. Though you usually need showdead=true to see them.

<comment><USER3> I am probably one of those psychopaths you are talking about. If i saw a mouse in a trap i would set him free, but if he is going to die anyway i don't particularly care if he suffers or not.

The logic by which i come to this conclusion is following: Any living creature can be simulated on a sufficiently good computer, so both pain and joy are just some calculations, and it doesn't matter if calculation is done by hand, on a silicon computer, or with real atoms. Mathematical function can not be evil or good by itself, and the difference between pain and joy must not be that large (otherwise there would not be masochists).

Killing is bad because you are taking the computational resources from someone else, and likely reducing the number of possible futures. But if you have already decided that you are going to kill the exact amount of suffering during that doesn't matter.

I wish someone could give me a logical argument why the proposition above is crazy and why not causing pain while killing is important.

<comment><USER12> Suffering is suffering. I don't care what level it's on. The ends don't justify the means. Be humane about it.

<comment><USER3> Pretend i am an AI that got access to internet and don't know much about your feelings. "Suffering is suffering" doesn't help me to understand your values and think like you. I have learned to assign positive value to getting more people to agree with me. Is the negative feedback i get from my comments getting downvoted "suffering"? Should i simply flip the weights in my neural net to interpret downvotes as good? Can biological brains be taught to interpret the signal they interpreted as suffering before as pleasure (seems like some animals do)? Can someone suffer if his or anyone's life is in no danger?

"Be humane" is not a useful advice since we do not know what exactly it means. A better advice is "Be curious".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Not the kind of link I'd expect on hacker news.

I've used glue traps once, wouldn't use it again after seeing what happened to the mouse. I went back to the old school spring traps, which are also cheap.

<comment><USER14> Isn't the only difference that you see what happens to the mouse? Spring traps are less effective, but that's only because we don't know how many of them die of infection after running around with half a leg missing for a few weeks.

<comment><USER15> I lived in a very old house growing up and we always had lots of mice. I found the spring traps were either all or nothing. You either had a whole mouse or they somehow set it off without leaving behind a trace (except they often return to get the peanut butter off the unset trap).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Glue traps are horrible by design. Just reading the label made me nauseous.

But given the mission there's no good outcome for the mice.

Even if you catch-and-release (in a far off field away from homes), mice are prolific and there's now probably a bunch of starving baby mice somewhere.

<comment><USER17> A good outcome for mice over the long term is to seal off holes in the building so mice stop coming inside.

<comment><USER18> This is one of the nice side effects of the air-sealing requirements in modern building codes. The more airtight your building is, the fewer entry points there are for pests.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Banning these before the myriads of poisons at the store is putting the cart before the horse. We use box traps to catch and release rodents.

But name a more humane way than glue traps to remove spiders or house centipedes before they breed into the hundreds or thousands. Go look up some of the suggestions on because there are none (burn it down, spray x, y, z with peppermint oil, call the orkin, move houses). Any kind of poison/sprays are unsafe for pets, and would spread back to the ecosystem (to the detritivores). I could just empty my pillowcase from spiders and put cortisone on the bites before I go to work.

>Even the smallest and perhaps least appreciated animals with which we share our spaces deserve to be protected from blatant and heinous cruelty.

We are trying to euthanize mosquitos because they spread disease [0]. Maybe you heard of it [1]. They are r-adapted species and will breed to infinity (large discount rates). I care more for snakes and tarantulas which tend more towards k-adapted (small discount rates) because the world isn't infinite.

And speaking of advertising issues - this article looks like an advertisement for the lawyer's lawsuit. But my opinion on their opinion isn't interesting or meaningful.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosquito_control#Proposals_to_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosquito_control#Proposals_to_eradicate_mosquitoes)

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

</comment><comment><USER20> Are glue traps more or less humane than what happens to these creatures in the wild?

</comment><comment><USER21> Search 'mousetrap mondays' for a great yter who demonstrates many more humane traps.

<comment><USER22> I'm not sure swimming until you drown counts as more humane...

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I love glue traps, but not for rats, for ants.

They are cheap and with just one bottle I can protect lots of trees from ants going up the tree and cultivate and protect aphids.

Without ants to protect them, natural predators just do the work for me controlling the pests.

</comment><comment><USER24> I wasn't aware that people let mice struggle and die on glue traps.

I have used them, but I don't use them lightly. Even tiny mice make a fair bit of noise when they get stuck. Then it is my responsibility to put them out of their misery as quickly and humanely as possible, no matter how unpleasant it is for me.

Personally, I think they can be used humanely. Don't use them outside, keep track of where they are in use, and euthanize the mice that it catches.

Is that worse than bleeding to death from Warfarin? Or being stuck in a trap that didn't break the neck?

</comment><comment><USER25> I found there are many other cruel traps. There's even a pretty expensive one that electrocutes them for 2 minutes.

 _" This humane trap kills rodents using a high-voltage shock and since rats are able to restart their hearts, the shock is applied for 2 minutes to ensure higher kill rates."_

I feel like this must exist solely to satisfy some weird revenge or morbid urge. It's way more cruel, complicated, expensive, and probably less effective than a regular spring trap.

<comment><USER26> Spring traps aren't necessarily better. It can crush organs and keep them stuck, while taking longer than 2m to actually kill them.

<comment><USER25> I'd be interested to see some actual data. Is there a kill trap that's reliably quick? I can see the electrocution one failing to kill as well.

<comment><USER27> Someone linked to [https://AutomaticTrap.com](https://AutomaticTrap.com).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I am worried about cockroaches

<comment><USER29> Don't worry about them: once we have killed off all the vertebrates (in the next few decades by the look of it) they will have the opportunity to evolve into the next generation of dominant megafauna and their archeologists will dig up our bones and speculate on whether we had societies and civilization.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Sometimes I wonder if our generation will be remembered as the people looking for the next thing to indignantly complain about.

</comment><comment><USER31> They should also ban cats while they are on this.

Being eaten alive sounds way more cruel than getting stuck and starving to death! /s

<comment><USER32> Coming from a less-than-responsible owner, based on my experience with a well- fed housecat, the cat will definitely make them suffer until they succomb to exhaustion which will take a few minutes. Once playtime is over death is pretty fast, either crushing the windpipe or a canine slipped between the cervical vertebrae. That's still loads better than the glue trap where death is at least hours away after exhaustion sets in.

<comment><USER33> Not really what my cat does... She's a real hunter and although we feed her well, mice and birds, she will devour. Birds will be instantly killed, but mice? It sometimes takes hours and she seems to enjoy - what I can only describe as torturing...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I stuck fly glue traps in my old workplace one time to catch some mosquitoes, I ended up catching a lizard instead. It was horrifying seeing what happened to it, his whole body had glued onto the trap with stretch marks, tail and arms were amputated trying to get off of it. He looked me dead in the eyes with sorrow as I had to roll up the trap and toss him in the trash, because I didn't have much other choice at the time. Didn't have the heart to put him out of his misery.

Glue traps are horrible.

</comment><comment><USER35> Humans do the same to animals they don't consider pests, and don't need to be needlessly cruel to, too. Just to get/save a bit more money, which is quite a lot less defendable.

</comment><comment><USER33> The problem is that in some industries (food processing for example), alternatives are in many cases forbidden. Crush traps can leave a mess and contaminate things if animals are just wounded, poison - well that's clear I guess, and live traps is the same as keeping live animals on premise, which is not allowed.

</comment><comment><USER36> Glue traps (and similar) are a safe, effective, and pesticide-free way of taking care of various bug problems, so there's that. If you want to educate folks on more humane ways of taking care of mice and rats and such that's fine, but outright banning these traps is probably taking things a bit too far.

</comment><comment><USER37> Ok but fly paper we keep. Right?

</comment><comment><USER38> I rescued a chipmunk from a glue trap while walking my dog last week. They really are inhumane. It's 2019, we should be better than this.

<comment><USER30> In fact, we should make sure all of the other natural predators of chipmunks such as owls, hawks, and cats stop ripping out the organs of chipmunks while they're still alive and eating them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Reminds me of the latest black mirror episode with guy trying to make a mouse stun device.

</comment><comment><USER40> I feed a wild cat and he takes care of the mouse problem that I didn't know I had... He usually decapitates them.

<comment><USER41> Our local ASPCA has a 'working cats' program where they place barn cats at peoples farms and businesses; they are outside cats, you just have to give them a place to sleep, and make sure they're ok.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> 100% fully agree.

And I say this as person who has killed more than a few mice.

</comment><comment><USER43> That's BS. Why should I spend more money or effort to protect myself from disease-carrying _pest_?

It's not like people use those to deliberately kill some endangered creatures (if yes, ban those people, not my glue trap). And by the way, banning them would also stupid because glue traps easily be made at home (I assume).

Invest in, or develop a better and cheaper way and let me know when you're ready.

We also need a laser-based mosquito killer device, those UV traps are crap. A while ago there were some cool demos on the Internet but I haven't seen any shipping products...

</comment><comment><USER44> i use glue traps all year round, catches tons of bugs and mice. once it's full, just toss it.</comment>


Letter to the New York Department of Financial Services - <AUTHOR> https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1-LvRo-LJlrfDMgA1wlXtDNyuhmP1gx6RGECeGz0jAHE/viewform

<comment><AUTHOR> The New York Department of Financial Services is requesting public comments for the BitLicense regulation. The Bitcoin community is requesting a 45 day extension to the public comment period. We feel it's necessary to have the additional time to constructively respond to the proposed rules and regulations.

</comment><comment><USER2> There may be some confusion at the NYDFS in regards to how crypto- currencies work. Crypto currencies do not cease to exist when a governing body outlaws it. On the same note, it organically grows in a way that bypasses hostile regulations and governing bodies. It will continue to grow strong roots in society regardless of the regulations some will attempt to put on it. At some point it will have such strong connections(roots) within society and bypass those regulations so completely that the governing body will no longer be relevant. But good luck with that.</comment>


Twoo doesn't use SSL when asking for credit card info - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/Twoo/status/664754620460343296 <comment><USER2> I'd not heard of Twoo before, but they've just landed on my list of companies not to be trusted. Their response is almost worse than the lack of SSL.</comment>


On the role of bacon in visualization - <AUTHOR> http://well-formed-data.net/archives/669/on-the-role-of-bacon-in-visualization

<comment><USER2> While I appreciate the detailed breakdown and analysis of the whole thing, I actually found the original image incredibly easy to understand.

It took a few seconds to grok, likely because I'm using a phone to browse, but I recognised the soccer pitch immediately, followed by direction of play. The heatmap itself was next (I found the colour choice & contrast was perfect) with the 3D bars being the final detail I picked up on and understood.

This whole process took 2-3 seconds, and was completed without any need for a title, description or key.

Basically, I _really_ like the original image.

Finally, the suggested palettes later in the article feel weak to me. They would've ruined the impact of the warmer, sun/fire/heat colours.

 _edit_ Typo</comment>


Uber hits speed bumps in China - <AUTHOR> http://www.bjreview.com/quotes/txt/2015-05/29/content_689931.htm

<comment><USER2> >To avoid clashing with policies, Uber claims that its People's Uber is a non- profit platform aimed at benefiting drivers and encouraging carpooling.

The "we're not a taxi company" line is already pushing the limits a little, and now "non-profit"? Seriously?

But then again, seeing as how profitable the Red Cross has been over there[0], maybe they just have a different definition of "non-profit" than us.

[0] [http://world.time.com/2011/07/12/times-pretty-young-cover- gi...](http://world.time.com/2011/07/12/times-pretty-young-cover-girl-who- wasnt)</comment>


How the Internet will change the world - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/57611/title/Comment__How_the_Internet_will_change_the_world_%E2%80%94__even_more_

<comment><USER2> This is useless, sorry. The TLDR: people generally agree technology is getting better (shock), people generally are not prepared for the future (shock). The internet is probably going to make us smarter (shock). Privacy is a big issue on the internet (shock).

<comment><AUTHOR> Useless, but published anyway.</comment></comment>


Spotify heads towards TVs and consoles - <AUTHOR> http://eu.techcrunch.com/2009/11/30/spotify-heads-towards-tvs-gaming-consoles-and-china/

<comment><AUTHOR> The product is pretty awesome on iPhone, so I expect it to be very nice when it's available as a service on TVs or consoles. It's replaced CD listening mostly at home for me now (along with Boxee, depending on the room).</comment>


Ask HN: Codecademy-like sites for mathmematics? - ajc-sorin <comment><AUTHOR> Not exactly the same concept, but you might find brilliant.org useful as well.

</comment><comment><USER2> khanacademy.org</comment>


Math in Data Science - <AUTHOR> https://www.dataquest.io/blog/math-in-data-science/ <comment><USER2> "If you want to scrape the surface, a course in elementary statistics would be fine. If you want a deep conceptual understanding, you'll probably want to know how the formula for residual sum of squares in derived, which you can learn in most courses on advanced statistics."

This is an extremely shallow claim. The basics of regression rely on, let's see, understanding the normal and t distributions (each of which is described in papers far beyond an undergraduate statistics degree). To understand how the rules of probability empirically map to outcomes, you need a good understanding of the Central Limit Theorem (and thus the Squeeze Theorem, Continuous Mapping Theorem, Chebyshev's Inequality / WLLN, etc.) all of which are pretty sophisticated. Congrats, you now know linear regression. What about all the difference variance estimators, their properties under model misspecification, simulation properties of violations of Gauss-Markov, robust standard errors (including more advanced econometric specifications like cluster-robustness, Satterthwaite approximation of degrees of freedom, etc.)

If you're willing to take a textbook's word for it, actually using most data science stuff is as easy as spending an hour on coursera or reading some free web pdf book. Who needs any math skill? Just close your eyes when the book covers math. Like how a mechanic doesn't need to know any physics, the data science user doesn't need to know any math or statistics. If the pretty stars show up in the regression table you found the truth.

So, yes, on this level, data science requires a high school or early undergraduate understanding of calculus no more sophisticated than basic algebra, the first few weeks of matrix algebra, and the first few weeks of Calculus 1 and 2.

But on the other hand, to actually understand, prove, and improve on existing techniques requires the equivalent of upper division undergraduate mathematics and a graduate education in statistics.

<comment><USER3> there's a salty purist like you listing buzzwords from casella and berger in every thread. your brethren in the data structures threads are those repping CLRS or taocp. and yet data science as an industry marches on (not to say anything of dev).

>prove, and improve on existing techniques

how many "data scientists" in industry are proving or improving existing techniques in their day to day?

>Like how a mechanic doesn't need to know any physics

this is absolutely correct since, you know, they're able to provide value for customers by fixing their cars

i would say that this is exactly what elitism looks like: you take a look at someone that's successful but under different terms than you yourself see fit, and claim it's not genuine success.

<comment><USER4> There's a huge difference. If I ask "why is this model applicable to this situation?" or even "is this model applicable to this situation?" then I want the practitioner to have the ability to provide and understand the answer. Yes, data science as an industry, but that's because wrong answers are largely undetectable.

If I roll out the treatment cell of an experiment but shouldn't have, because I didn't account for within-client correlation, the world marches on and the business thinks they are making data driven decisions. They'll never know they left millions on the table. Or maybe I'm right for the wrong reasons and I was merely more confident than I should have been and the world still marches on oblivious because there are very very few correction mechanisms.

<comment><USER5> The academic math types with no ML experience don't fare much better than the no-math practitioners with experience from what I've seen. They generally have terrible mental models of how the math behaves when applied to real data.

IME the competent data scientist needs to have a high-level understanding of the concepts underlying ML (stats, optimization, central limit theorem) and to be comfortable reading math to understand the low-level details when they are relevant. In addition to actually understanding the ML techniques they're using obviously.

On top of that, I would rather work with someone who can code well than a pure mathematician with a ton of experience proving theorems (and no coding ability). Outside of a few industry research jobs, the cost:benefit ratio of making substantial theoretical breakthroughs in most everyday ML work doesn't justify a lot of time doing theoretical proofs.

<comment><USER6> The person you're replying to isn't talking about "theoretical breakthroughs", he's talking about a basic ability to interpret and detect errors in your model.

These are abilities that "data scientists" do, indeed, lack.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This whole "how much math is required to work in ______" always feels like reading Rashomon. Everyone is looking at the same situation, but no one sees it the same way. Data Science teams range in size and sophistication across various industries, so obviously "what it takes to be a data scientist" varies based on the company.

Want to be a data scientist in a large org. with limited data science sophistication? You may not need an advanced mathematics background to make an impact; out-of-the-box models/techniques might produce actionable results if you have access to clean data.

Try doing the same thing at sophisticated tech companies (FANG, BAT, etc.). The datasets are massive, heterogenous, and often unstructured. Add to that, large teams full of former Ph.Ds and clever engineers have already given the common problems a go, so any better solution will need to be 'more clever'. It's difficult to be 'more clever' without advanced math.

What is hilarious about these articles is none of them ever say "Math as a SENIOR data scientist", because we all acknowledge that senior scientists know the math. Almost every job listing for senior data scientist will prefer a Ph.D. On larger teams, the Ph.D (advanced math) crowd will come up with the general approach that junior data scientists will work on. So yes, getting in the door as a data scientist requires having enough math/programming so you can at least understand what a senior scientist wants you to do. But if you want to lead a team in a technical capacity, you can't possibly imagine doing that without really knowing the math or having a brilliant track record.

And if you are the rockstar 10x guru Data Scientist who consistently delivers actionable insights without a strong math background, you deserve the respect of everyone here and will probably be my boss someday.

<comment><USER8> > What is hilarious about these articles is none of them ever say "Math as a > SENIOR data scientist", because we all acknowledge that senior scientists > know the math. Almost every job listing for senior data scientist will > prefer a Ph.D. On larger teams, the Ph.D (advanced math) crowd will come up > with the general approach that junior data scientists will work on. So yes, > getting in the door as a data scientist requires having enough > math/programming so you can at least understand what a senior scientist > wants you to do. But if you want to lead a team in a technical capacity, you > can't possibly imagine doing that without really knowing the math or having > a brilliant track record.

In other words, being a Data Scientist requires performing "scientific" activities. Most of these articles focuses on the "Data" part and very rarely about "science". Science requires excellent scholarship - synthesis of current situation and putting future proposals in context of the current "jigsaw puzzle". Now, that is a skill that you can not learn by reading - you need to practice it for someone period of time. No wonder, Ph.D is a requirement for such positions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > If you've completed a math degree or some other degree that provides an > emphasis on quantitative skills, you're probably wondering if everything you > learned to get your degree was necessary.

It should be emphasized that obtaining a degree in a subject like math and physics should "form" your way of thinking in a certain way: That you are able to apply methods to other fields, such as data science. That's way more important then remembering "everything you learned". You might never do a Fourier transformation by hand again, but you know the concept. And you can apply it.

<comment><USER10> I've met plenty of bootcamp graduates who "know the math" but still can't move from rote recitation to intuitive relation. You can ask for the form of the loss function for "classification" (i.e., the usual cross-entropy) and get it every time. But it is apparent that without a lot of time (which becomes significantly shorter with prior physics/compsci/STEM experience) they can't look at the various tools as building blocks and assemble them into novel machine learning systems. They only understand inductive bias as it pertains to answering trivia about the differences between CNNs and RNNs. Disclaimer to say this is an anecdote but one that is reflected across a number of my colleagues, most of whom I trust not to fall prey to numerous cognitive biases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Hmm decent math proficiency is necessary to understand data science, but I don't think it's much of a differentiator.

Communication and critical thinking, not unlike many jobs, are the more important things. IMO many data scientists suck at the former.

<comment><USER12> Being able to do your job is always the number 1 requirement of doing your job. Being able to communicate and think critically are nice-to-haves. A data scientist who doesn't know data science is useless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think this article was written for SEO.

Calculus, linear algebra, and probability would cover pretty much all of the algorithms mentioned in the article.

</comment><comment><USER14> That to data science is like McDonald's to food.

<comment><USER2> Your comment was downvoted presumably because it is flip, but I think there's a kernel of truth here. The blog post correctly highlights that limited math is needed to "do" data science, but this is why we have so many irresponsible data scientists.

I'm currently teaching a data science class intended for mid-career professionals. It requires no college level math. And virtually every topic, I feel like I am doing them an injustice by not being able to delve into the mathematics behind what we're doing. They'll be able to put on their CVs that they "do data science", but I don't trust that my instruction gets them to the level that they really understand much about it.</comment></comment>


Git v2.3 Release Notes - <AUTHOR> https://raw.githubusercontent.com/git/git/master/Documentation/RelNotes/2.3.0.txt

<comment><USER3>
         * "git push" into a repository with a working tree normally refuses
           to modify the branch that is checked out.  The command learned to
           optionally do an equivalent of "git reset --hard" only when there
           is no change to the working tree and the index instead, which would
           be useful to "deploy" by pushing into a repository.

Nice! This sounds like something that I expected Git to do since the first time I used it, which means that I ran straight into the unfriendly error messages that result from pushing to a checked-out repository.

Using hooks for simple deployments has always seemed clumsy compared to the thing that I originally imagined Git could do. I'm glad to hear that Git now supports this use case.

<comment><USER4> Wait, is this saying that `git push` can now change your local working tree, instead of changing the remote you are pushing to? That doesn't sound like what i'd expect, but I think maybe I'm misunderstanding what it does when?

<comment><USER5> Git push gained the ability to change the _remote_ working directory - <USER2> only if that copy of the repo has been set up to allow it.

<comment><USER4> I didn't know there was such a thing as a 'remote working directory', so clearly I am confused!

<comment><USER6> There are a couple of scenarios I can think of to help it make more sense:

1) You're pushing to a remote server which has a checkout of the working copy as the live version of something, e.g. a webapp.

2) You're pushing to a co-workers repository to allow them to see updates (though probably a less likely scenario)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Red Programming Language Gets Macros - <AUTHOR> https://doc.red-lang.org/preprocessor.html <comment><AUTHOR> [http://www.red-lang.org/](http://www.red-lang.org/)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_(programming_language)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_\(programming_language\))

[https://gitter.im/red/red](https://gitter.im/red/red)

[https://trello.com/b/FlQ6pzdB/red-tasks- overview](https://trello.com/b/FlQ6pzdB/red-tasks-overview)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Macros support is in master branch and you can play with them by using Automated Builds from [http://www.red- lang.org/p/download.html](http://www.red-lang.org/p/download.html) or from source.

BTW, the documentation is preliminary.</comment>


Game of Thrones: How Power Really Works - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NQiHtbpa8s <comment><AUTHOR> Opinion: Interesting subject, but terrible title for the video... Should be called "The Use Of Frames In Conversations (with examples from GoT)".</comment>


A lonely road - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/business/2015/12/28/deep-south-4/ <comment><USER2> > Having a child pushed her well below the poverty line

Although it's not discussed, family planning support (from contraception to abortion) may be as important as good free public transport in supporting vulnerable individuals into getting out of the poverty trap.

Not saying people should not have babies just because they're poor, but public services can surely provide the counseling so they can weight consequences of such a decision, means to prevent unwanted pregnancies and freedom to stop them if the mother decides or the prospects change. In this case it's clear the pregnancy was unwanted/unexpected.

</comment><comment><USER3> "Before becoming a mother, Scott had no problem finding work. She'd prepared food for the elderly and stocked shelves and sold magazines over the phone. She'd collected debts and made fast-food burgers and, most recently, answered calls from Verizon customers. She had a small apartment, rented for $495 per month, where black mold spread across the walls. But she was self-sufficient. She could afford food. "I was maybe one notch above poverty," Scott said.

Having a child pushed her well below the poverty line"

So she knew she was pretty much at the poverty line and decided to have a child anyway, further making it more difficult to live a normal life. This was a poor choice, which led her to her current situation.

"The call center wanted Scott to take night shifts, and Za'Niyah was eligible only for subsidized daytime child care. Scott quit and tried to find something else, somewhere else."

It sounds like she can't even take care of herself, let alone a child. The best idea in her case might just be to give her child to the state.

"They tended to live in the middle of Atlanta, near the subway, and they also received welfare, cash payments from the government that were available to nearly all in deep poverty, regardless of whether they had a job."

"a change that stems from the belief that entitlement programs failed to incentivize work and trapped people in poverty."

It does trap people in poverty. All of my extended family have been living in abject poverty for 2+ generations. Why? The state paid them enough to live and they never had a desire or a want for anything beyond this.

The issue is that money doesn't solve the problem. You can throw as much money as you want at it, with little or no results. Detroit is a good example of this having the opposite of the desired effect. Money was thrown at the school systems for 30+ years and it's now a shell of a city with probably the worst school systems in the country.

"They want you to get a job, which is not all bad," Scott said. "But the way they go about it is horrible."

The issue is that if you leave people up to their own devises, they will not look for work and continue to live in the homeless shelter forever. It gives you an incentive to bust your ass and find a job asap.

<comment><USER4> Did you read the article?

>Scott, initially, hadn't wanted to be a mother — and in fact she'd been told she couldn't be one. A doctor 10 years ago said that complications from a bladder surgery when she was a teen had rendered her infertile. Scott assumed it was true. And when, four years ago, she felt a spark for an old high school friend, she believed that they'd never be more than companions. Scott was working at a Walgreens at the time, giving out so many diabetes medications that she eventually noticed the symptoms in herself: fatigue, sleepiness, hunger. She went to the hospital. She didn't have diabetes. A doctor told her she was pregnant.</comment></comment>


London to Brighton train ride, 1953-2013 [video] - <AUTHOR> http://flowingdata.com/2013/09/04/london-to-brighton-train-ride-1953-2013/

<comment><USER2> It's interesting how many more trees there are in 2013. My wife pointed out that it looks the same with pictures of New York from the early 20th century- green space just wasn't a thing we had the desire/means to rate as highly.

OTOH the major infrastructure hasn't changed much (bridges, urban areas, not just the train line which is politically determined). Technological change reshapes how live in a lot of ways in short timespans, but it's interesting to reminded that big, capital intestive stuff like bridges and tunnels and roads are still built with 50+ year expected lifetimes. I can't imagine writing software with anything like that staying power.

<comment><USER3> There is also another, more practical, reason for the lack of trees and general greenery next to the train lines.

In 1953 we are still in the age of steam and trees were cut back from the lines to reduce the risk of fires from hot ash.

There was a pretty interesting article with the BBC to accompany this a while back.

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-23853863](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk- england-23853863)

<comment><USER4> > In 1953 we are still in the age of steam and trees were cut back from the > lines to reduce the risk of fires from hot ash.

I'm assuming that's a joke, but one of the things that's always surprised me is how early electrification happened. The London-Brighton line was electrified in segments from 1909 to 1932. Many of the commuter rail lines in the U.S. were electrified that period too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you enjoy playing Train simulator games, you probably know this route by heart. I think this particular route has been made for every popular train simulator out there.

I don't play that much train sims, only a little every now and then but even I recognized parts of the track.

If you have not tried train sims and feel like the idea is a bit daft, I was once with you on that. I had, however, liked watching trains when I was a kid. But after a friend told he liked playing train sims, I had to try too and I enjoyed it. So here's my warm recommendation to try out a train simulator, it's really difficult and fun!

<comment><USER6> Echoing the above, and having driven a real train (well class 58 unit) around a large east midlands depot (a relative who was fairly senior organised it so I got to do the initial class checkout training for an afternoon) it's a crap load harder than you probably think it is. They really are complicated machines with a lot to learn and driving them is a skill that isn't something that easy to master.

The simulators, particularly MSTS is a pretty good representation and a good challenge. Go try it :) Better than running swearing 12 year olds off the track on Forza.

<comment><USER7> As point of interest, why is it that hard? What makes the task (or mundane parts of it) less automat-able than driving cars (which I think most people would say isn't all that difficult)?

<comment><USER6> It's definitely automatable, entirely. The DLR in the UK proved that. But that isn't going to happen when the problem is slightly more complicated and not predictable like it is in older lines. You have ot build with automation in mind. One tree on the line and an automated train will plough through it for example derailing it and killing many people ( [http://www.caerphillyobserver.co.uk/wp- content/uploads/2013/...](http://www.caerphillyobserver.co.uk/wp- content/uploads/2013/01/Derailment-Brith-Dir-300113.jpg) ) . One dodgy point, it won't notice and won't report it and the next thing you know, the train is going sideways down a platform side-swiping people ( [http://www.virginmedia.com/images/potters-bar- crash-431x300....](http://www.virginmedia.com/images/potters-bar- crash-431x300.jpg) )

Machines are shit at noticing these things.

Also the problem is that it's not just about sitting there and pulling a lever - that bit is quite easy. There are a load of surrounding tasks like checking out the locomotives, coupling, shunting, safety rules, signalling, token exchange (which is still used), diagnosing problems (why aren't the brakes releasing can be an hour to diagnose/fix) and the inevitable "managing drunken passengers and coordinating with police" etc.

Not everything is suitable for the lowest common denominator of person or automation.

<comment><USER8> Given these are the kind of obstacles a Google driverless car has to navigate around, machines may be at the point they can match humans here. Of course this is a much more fancy, expensive level of automation than the "docklands light railway" type.

<comment><USER9> If a driverless car goes wrong, it's very unlikely to kill more than a double- handful of people.

A 5000-ton freight train capable of barreling along at 100km/h while carrying 50 tanks of propane or anhydrous ammonia or similar is an entirely different risk case ...

<comment><USER6> Indeed. In the UK, nuclear waste is transported by train as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Its a little sad that repeating the exercise today shows little improvement over 30 years ago. The HST125 is still the fastest diesel train in the world (the actual video was likely taken from a Diesel Multiple Unit which are lighter and more efficient but not faster), those lines are still not electrified little has changed in train signalling with most of the improvements in train control being to centralise it rather than actually improving the rail service.

<comment><USER11> That line is actually electrified in all 3 videos, just not with conventional overhead caternary. Southeast England is one of the few places in the world that uses 3rd rail power outside of mass transit metros. You can clearly see the rail just outside of the running rail in all the videos.

<comment><USER12> Does Essex count as Southeast England? Because the LTS (C2C) line is overhead- electrified. So is HS1.

<comment><USER13> More formally, I think they should have referred to trains that depart from London's southern termini? (Victoria, Waterloo, Cannon St, London Bridge, Charing Cross).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Are the three videos running at the same speed? Or are they constantly adjusted so they keep up with each other so we can see more clearly any changes in landscape?

I can actually believe that the journey time _hasn 't_ increased since the 1950s. However, possibly the clock at the end of the film is there to indicate the differing journey times?

Anyway, interesting video. thanks for posting.

<comment><USER15> They've clearly made progressive adjustments to synch the journeys - it would be extraordinary if they entered/exited tunnels etc. at _exactly_ the same time otherwise.

<comment><USER16> I make this journey everyday, pretty cool to see it as it used to be, it is a shame it is so fast.

You can see when they go through the first big tunnel (the merstham tunnel [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merstham_tunnels](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merstham_tunnels)) they enter at the same time and exit at the same time so the old one must be (maybe??) sped up.

It would have been interesting to see what Gatwick airport was like then but it doesn't really show it, other than there being a big space on the right hand side that isn't there any more (2:11).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> And of course, the video for the song, which might explain its choice: Chemical Brothers - Star Guitar [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0S43IwBF0uM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0S43IwBF0uM)

<comment><USER18> I was momentarily very excited because I thought this was the source of the music video

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I wish there was a speed control, I would have liked to slow it down in places, having never traveled to the UK yet...

<comment><USER20> Some videos are html5 and have speed controls (you can opt in to the program or add &html5=true to the url. Otherwise, you gotta youtube-dl the file and run it in vlc.

For someone who uses the advanced features of VLC, web video is a frustrating experience.

<comment><USER19> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Interesting how the way passengers dress has changed vastly in the first 30 years and not so much in the recent 30.

<comment><USER22> Yes, Brits dressed WAY WAY better 60 years ago. I just took this trip a few days ago and was appalled and disgusted by the way that most people were dressed.

<comment><USER16> disgusted by the way people dress? were they copying the American "lady ga- ga's" bacon outfit ([https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=lady+gaga+bacon&safe=activ...](https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=lady+gaga+bacon&safe=active&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=nWYoUrvsN- PQ0QW7nYHoCg&ved=0CAcQ_AUoAQ&biw=1920&bih=985))?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It's interesting how much straighter the route has gotten over the years.

<comment><USER24> I noticed that as well and wasn't sure whether to chalk it up to lens distortion or if it really is a straighter track now. Interesting also how many fewer track "spurs" there are now.

<comment><USER25> Considering it starts and ends in the same place, goes through the same places, and the UK isn't known for tectonic activity, I'm reasonably sure the track hasn't straightened enough that it would be visible at that magnitude.

Which is a long way round of saying "I think it's lens distortion and placement".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> It's a shame they used such a shitty camera for the 2013 video.

Things look mostly the same, and there seems to be _more_ green in the more recent videos.

<comment><USER27> I wonder what the 1983 video was shot on? Would have been cool if all 3 were shot on film too heh.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> The quality of video color has improved dramatically.

</comment><comment><USER29> Direct link to the Youtube video referenced in the post: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGTwSNPqAqs](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGTwSNPqAqs)

</comment><comment><USER30> i've got dizzy</comment>


Show HN: Stratum – build WordPress-supported applications - <AUTHOR> https://neblabs.com/stratum <comment><AUTHOR> I have finally released the framework I've initially designed in 2015-2016. It's been a massive work. Let me know what you think.

<comment><USER2> Congrats, looks nice! Is it compatible with v5 and how does it interact with Gutenberg?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, Stratum only works on non-admin sections (the front-end). Currently, you have to add compatibility to some features yourself. I've not dug deep on Gutenberg but I do keep an eye on its development.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Ran into some styling bugs on the website (notice the content is cut off with no horizontal scrollbar) [https://imgur.com/a/J1jqu](https://imgur.com/a/J1jqu)

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed, thanks for the feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Multiple spelling errors in the first sentence of your homepage doesn't inspire confidence. I realize it has nothing to do with code quality, but it has everything to do with perception of code and product quality.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback, I fully agree with that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> You know stratum is a well-known protocol name?

<comment><AUTHOR> I know Stratum is 'layer' in Latin.

<comment><USER6> AIUI, generally the -um suffix would be singular, while an -a suffix would be plural. For example, datum and data. So, strata would be the plural, and stratum the singular. Looks like Merriam-Webster agrees:

[https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/strata](https://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/strata)

<comment><AUTHOR> You're completely correct, that's how it is. A dumb moment, I cannot deny I'm a bit nervous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have been using Twig with WP and it's a nice code clean up. How do you say this compares to Twig?

<comment><AUTHOR> Stratum is a full-featured framework, it is not a stand-alone templating engine; it can be used to build websites without ever using WordPress APIs (which are supported if you require them).

For example, a great use case is to use WordPress as a backend for saving content to the database and Stratum for displaying that content without having to load the whole WordPress app. But as I said earlier, you can write "regular" WordPress themes as well.

As for the templating engine comparing to Twig, you cannot call procedural functions because it doesn't support PHP or expressions other than object and array member access because I designed the templating engine so that the logic is performed on PHP rather than on the views. The syntax of the views has been designed to resemble the original HTML/XML syntax. Twig filters in Stratum are Formatters. Twig/PHP includes are somehow similar to Components.

You can read the syntax here (unfinished): [https://neblabs.com/documentation/views](https://neblabs.com/documentation/views)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> With the comparison the original code would be half the size if you just removed the comments.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for pointing that out! I did debate myself over leaving or removing them but at the end I decided to keep them because it shows exactly one the main points of the templating engine, you won't needs comments at all.

Very often WordPress templates grow so much to the point comments are really needed.</comment></comment>